DNA is a fractal antenna in electromagnetic fields (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21457072 <comment><USER2> One reason this is interesting is because of the possible role of charge transfer in the DNA repair mechanism. See the work of Jacqueline Barton's group at Caltech [1] for more information.

Here was how it was described when she was awarded the National Medal of Science: "For discovery of a new property of the DNA helix, long-range electron transfer, and for showing that electron transfer depends upon stacking of the base pairs and DNA dynamics. Her experiments reveal a strategy for how DNA repair proteins locate DNA lesions and demonstrate a biological role for DNA-mediated charge transfer".

If it turns out that the cell does locate damage by looking for sections of DNA that do not conduct when they should, then having the DNA acting as an antenna could interfere with that. The induced currents in the separate strands on both sides of a break could make it look like there is no break.

I'd guess that this would not be as bad as getting hit with ionizing radiation, which can actually break bonds. Non-ionizing radiation inducing currents would not break bonds--it would just interfere with repairing bonds that were broken by some other mechanism.

Still not something I want to encourage, so I'm going to avoid dumping large amounts of non-ionizing radiation into my body just to be on the safe side [2].

[1] [http://www.its.caltech.edu/~jkbgrp/](http://www.its.caltech.edu/~jkbgrp/)

[2] ...says the man who just ordered a handheld ham radio transceiver that puts out 5 watts at 144/220/440 MHz, which is several times what a cell phone puts out.

<comment><USER3> > ...says the man who just ordered a handheld ham radio transceiver that puts > out 5 watts at 144/220/440 MHz, which is several times what a cell phone > puts out.

The frequency allocations for 2G cellular communications networks do allow the ME to transmit up to 5W. That figure was inherited from the very first brick phones and still holds up, because, you know, there could be still some brick phones in use :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an interesting counterpoint to an article/thread from earlier today:

"Why Cell Phones Can't Cause Cancer, But Bananas Can"

[http://mitchkirby.com/2015/04/22/why-cell-phones-cant- cause-...](http://mitchkirby.com/2015/04/22/why-cell-phones-cant-cause-cancer- but-bananas-can/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9446505](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9446505)

<comment><USER5> Evidence trumps theory. A theory can be as clever as you like, but if it disagrees with the evidence, the theory is wrong.

<comment><USER6> And what is the actual evidence of the visible increase of cancer from EM radiation? Is there a real "signal" or a kind of "noise"?

I've also stumbled to this:

[http://www.febsletters.org/article/S0014-5793%2800%2901822-6...](http://www.febsletters.org/article/S0014-5793%2800%2901822-6/abstract?cc=y)

<comment><USER7> Well, X-rays of course. There's a pretty strong case to be made that exposure to uv increases skin cancer rates.

I'm sure you mean the lower frequency stuff though, and yeah, that's probably pretty safe.

<comment><USER6> Yes, of course, I mean all the waves on the infrared side of the light (those that we call "radio waves") not on the ultraviolet one. And I mean not including heating effects, which are already measured.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In other news, fractal antennas don't work any better than any other antennas when immersed in a bag of salt water, which is what a cell is.

<comment><USER9> "a bag of salt water, which is what a cell is"!!? Wow. It always amazes me how physicists manage to reduce the extremely complex and beautiful world of biology for their own computational comfort. Is your brain simply a "bag full of bags of saltwater"? The SAR test rationale assumes it is.

<comment><USER10> > _Is your brain simply a "bag full of bags of saltwater"?_

Also, sugar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The title could perhaps mislead people into believing that DNA is some kind of communication device for extraterrestrial beings rather than the intention of this article which is to point out that EM radiation like that from your cellphone in your pocket can cause cancer.

<comment><USER12> How different is it from the public concerns about microwaves/cellphones from the last decade ?

<comment><USER11> Not different, perhaps confirms concerns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> See also the related document the study's author submitted to the FCC:

[http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7520940937](http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7520940937)

<comment><USER9> Seems like that document has been disappeared from the FCC website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is pretty interesting, because I have radiofrequency ablation treatments every 6-12 months, where they stick wires near the nerve roots in my neck and run RF through the wire until it heats to 100C, thereby killing the nerves that transmit pain to my spinal chord.

Wonder what an internal radiosource that powerful does to the rest of me?

There's another, less invasive version called pulsed radiofrequency ablation that doesn't cook the nerves - it uses the RF signal to confuse/fuck up the nerves without killing them. Doesn't work as well, but less risk. I wonder if DNA/radio is part of how pulsed RF works?

<comment><USER14> That sounds pretty harsh which probably translates into the alternative being even harsher. Wow. I have a small RF burn in one of my fingers, about 3 mm across and as deep as the bone, it never healed properly (I got it when I was 17, a long time ago from a Tronser trimmer that I touched by accident in a 1KW FM transmitter). I hope that your treatment does not leave such marks.

Apparently the 'pulsed' version of your treatment is to keep the temperature down while still having the same effect on the nerve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> From an evolutionary perspective, considering that environmental radiation can harm organisms, perhaps DNA evolves to be highly vulnerable to such radiation so that reproduction will fail in high radiation environments where the radiation would cause other damage later.

So maybe it's more like a fuse than an antenna.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here is an open review which is also more thorough: [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10762-011-9794-5](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10762-011-9794-5)

<comment><USER17> Although this also covers non-ionizing radiation, this is a very different frequency range.

<comment><USER16> True, and if someone has a link handy for a similar review covering >1mm wavelengths it would undeniably be more pertinent. Still, the original link rubs me wrong in two ways:

1\. It's paywalled. Many of us can't even RTFP.

2\. It's clearly trying to prove a pet model.

There's nothing inherently wrong with #2, but #2 makes this article a bad place to start a discussion among non-experts who aren't in a position to judge the model in comparison to others that answer similar questions. This problem is exacerbated by #1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Perhaps we should use spread spectrum techniques instead of a single prominent carrier frequency. That way, the signal will look mostly like noise and will not trigger any biological mechanisms that resonate at certain frequencies.

<comment><USER19> We do use spread spectrum technologies a lot. I don't know about cell phones though.

<comment><USER20> CDMA, a radio interface used by some cellular carriers (e.g., Verizon Wireless and Sprint in the U.S.), is spread spectrum.[1]

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If it acts as a (relatively good) antenna to emf, then won't emf cause a mechanical stress on the strand?

<comment><USER22> Well, there are RF antennae that shoot our kilowatts or even megawatts of EMF, and there's no mechanical stress at all.

As a HAM radio operator, you could literally hang a copper wire between two trees and pump 1 kW into it. No mechanical stress whatsoever - the EMF frequency is too high to generate elastic waves in the wire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> In what cases does modern technology produce stronger, as opposed to more ordered, EMF than naturally occurs?

<comment><USER24> Radiation follows the inverse square law, while you're cellphone does not produce EM radiation which comes even close to natural high energy radiation sources you don't really put pulsars to your ear.

Additionally "natural" radiation is something you've evolved to coexist with. Take for example Uranium vs Plutonium, both are alpha emitters and they emit particles at nearly the same energy levels however that tiny energy difference results in very big difference in their effects on living tissue. The difference however cannot be explained by the power level difference alone, as both higher level alpha particles from natural sources as well as lower level alpha emissions from artificial sources showed a lower and higher amount of damage to nuclear material and cellular tissue general respectively.

And yes I am very well aware that alpha radiation isn't part of the EM spectrum as it's electron free helium nucleus, however it just shows that life evolved to be resilient to environmental sources of radiation be it high level particles like the nuclear decay of natural (existing since the 1st self replicating proteins occurred or even earlier if those had a replicating precursor) or high energy protons form the sun, or terrestrial and extra terrestrial sources of EM radiation.

<comment><USER25> > while your cellphone does not produce EM radiation which comes even close to > natural high energy radiation sources you don't really put pulsars to your > ear.

Or worse, right next to your reproductive material.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How is DNA self-similar?

<comment><USER27> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome#/media/File:Chromati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome#/media/File:Chromatin_Structures.png)

Like that maybe? DNA coils coiling into coils which again coil into coils...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> ESP!</comment>


Repl.it: online environment for interactively exploring programming languages - <AUTHOR> http://repl.it/#

<comment><USER2> We use repl.it as our primary environment during the first half of Intro to JavaScript classes for GirlDevelopIt (<http://www.teaching- materials.org/javascript/>) It's a great way for students to try out JS in a fast way without worrying about the DOM. I also love that it's got JSHint built-in, as that helps students spot their errors faster.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've used repl.it before many times, it's come in handy (especially at work) because our machines are locked down. Great way to experiment with implementing a particular req or just fooling around in general.

</comment><comment><USER4> Find myself using it for Ruby sometimes but really wish it wasn't v1.8.7. Wonder what the reasoning behind that was.

<comment><USER5> When we built this, ruby 1.8 was the more dominant version.

<comment><USER4> So, you guys have plans to upgrade when 1.8.7 is deprecated?

<comment><USER5> When we find the time ;)

Or when someone compiles Ruby 1.9 to JS, I will add it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On a related note:

rlwrap[1] is not an "online" (ie. browser-based) repl, but it can be quite useful in a shell.

[1] - <http://utopia.knoware.nl/~hlub/uck/rlwrap/>

</comment><comment><USER7> I would guess that the languages offered are those that can be converted to Javascript? If so are the others waiting to be added? Or is this the current offering?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ruby (<https://github.com/replit/emscripted-ruby>) and python (<https://github.com/replit/empythoned>) are built using emscripten (<https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki>)

I would imagine that other languages like C could be brought in if they could be compiled using emscripten. However, people have had problems bringing clang and llvm into emscripten: <https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/issues/579>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great repost indeed. This has been out for couple of years.</comment>


'42 Knees in One Day': Israeli Snipers Open Up About Shooting Gaza Protesters - <AUTHOR> https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-42-knees-in-one-day-israeli-snipers-open-up-about-shooting-gaza-protesters-1.8632555 <comment><USER2> > "On that day, our pair had the largest number of hits, 42 in all. My locator > wasn't supposed to shoot, but I gave him a break, because we were getting > close to the end of our stint, and he didn't have knees. In the end you want > to leave with the feeling that you did something, that you weren't a sniper > during exercises only. So, after I had a few hits, I suggested to him that > we switch. He got around 28 knees there, I'd say."

This is outright disgusting. I'm glad these kind of brutal policies are exposed and talked about.

<comment><USER3> Snipers go through quite extensive "desensitization" training as they are guaranteed to see the immediate outcome of their actions and they also tend to operate in a conditions when its not a clear "them or me" scenario.

Shooting someone who's shooting at you or your friends is easy, taking a shot form 100's of meters at an unsuspecting target isn't.

Their entire training is based around you are the weapon and you must do your job, Jarhead was quite a good movie about just how much emotional toll this mindset takes even or even especially in cases when they are actually denied fulfilling their role.

From day one when snipers appeared on the battlefield things like kill counts and leader boards amongst snipers appeared as a coping mechanism.

<comment><AUTHOR> The politicians who ordered them to shatter the knees of thousands of protesters must have gone through the same desensitisation training.

<comment><USER3> What's the alternative shooting them dead? Let's not pretend that this is a quiet civil rights protest, the throwing of grenades, Molotov cocktails and the planting of IEDs at the border fence happens during it.

Injuries takes a less of a political toll both nationally and internationally than fatalities.

While it's easy to say don't shoot at all you can't avoid the fact that a portion of those which get too close and are shot do have quite hostile intentions.

The issue with conflicts like these is thinking that there is a simple solution and that is for one side to stop.

The Israeli public will not tolerate casualties on their side which works both ways as it grants political will for things like the withdrawal form Lebanon and the disengagement from Gaza, however it also leads to policies like this as well as the policies of Targeted Killings that were imposed initially by the Rabin administration as a low intensity solution to the rabid wave of suicide bombing across Israel.

As long as there won't be a sufficient political will on both sides to halt all hostilities for normalization to be possible there isn't going to be a resolution to this conflict.

<comment><USER4> This is sadly a very realistic comment.

I do not have any stakes in that conflict (live in France and loosely know a few people with Jewish and Palestinian origins) and this is how I see that conflict with my untrained eye. People fighting for something hardly shareable (land) with hartred on both sides.

One case of such a situation which tuurned fine and that I am incredibly proud of is the relationship between France and Germany. 1914-18, 1939-45 and now school exchanges where children meet other children (and to my dismay - communicate in English...). Not French meeting Germans, just kids meeting kids.

I already mentioned that earlier but one of the greatest moments during such an exchange was a football match where they had spontaneously mixed teams, not Germany vs France.

<comment><AUTHOR> > This is sadly a very realistic comment. ... this is how I see that conflict > with my untrained eye

If your eye is untrained, how do you know that the comment is realistic? The data are the following: 183 Palestininans shot dead, 9200 shot in the knees "often with life-changing injuries". [1] On the Israeli side, 0 or 1 dead, 4 to 11 wounded. (data from Wikipedia).

These are the facts: an army shooting on people without receiving any damage. So, did you ask yourself where did you get the idea that the killed and wounded constituted an actual threat? I can tell you: it comes from the people who shot them. And do you think they would tell you they're shooting on harmless people? Of course not.

> People fighting for something hardly shareable (land) with hartred on both > sides.

Again: you don't realise it, but this is spin. The two sides are not equal. One is illegally occupying the other's territory. The other one is not. When you see two people fighting in the street over a handbag, you don't say "they're fighting over something hardly shareable, with hatred on both sides". You ask yourself who is the owner of the handbag, and who's the thief.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/world/middleeast/israeli-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/world/middleeast/israeli- shootings-gaza-border.html)

<comment><USER4> > If your eye is untrained, how do you know that the comment is realistic?

Because it ends with "As long as there won't be a sufficient political will on both sides to halt all hostilities for normalization to be possible there isn't going to be a resolution to this conflict."

The main problem is that both sides probably have a point - one side will say they were there first, the other they were there longer etc. And, again, they will have a point.

This is very much different from your example with the thief who has __objectively __zero rights to the bag.

I honestly pity such never-ending wars dragged through generations where everyone will claim they are completely right and the others are completely wrong, with some selected numbers on hand.

In Europe, where I live, there were wars for 1000 years between countries who thought that the others were illegally occupying "their" territory. Some of these lands kept switching sides (Alsace/Lorraine/Moselle, Silesia, ...) and I am glad they are more or less settled now and people can live there in peace.

> Again: you don't realise it, but this is spin. The two sides are not equal. > One is illegally occupying the other's territory. The other one is not.

A Google search for "why jews can historically have their land" or similar brings plenty of sources. I opened the first few and it looks clear that the land belongs to Jews.

A Google search for "why palestinians can historically have their land" or similar brings plenty of sources. I opened the first few and it looks clear that the land belongs to the Palestinians.

See the problem? I do not have a particular interest in that conflict so I do not have an opinion. I just see that people are killing each other for land and that both sides have lots of documentation to back their positions. And various political support worldwide (some for one side, some others for the other).

<comment><AUTHOR> Look, I'm not even talking about the legitimacy of the state of Israel. I think it was a mistake to allow its creation but now, now entire generations of Israelis have been born there and that's their country. Period. You cannot roll back history, and especially you cannot expel millions of people to who knows where. So everything you said in your comment is completely pointless. I'll assume you said it in good faith and were not aware of advancing a straw man argument.

The problem is that Israel occupies portions of territory that formally don't belong to it- it drives away the indigenous population, subjects them to every form of violence and harassment, controls their borders and every aspect of their life, and builds settlements on their ground, where it installs its own civilian population. This has been declared illegal many times by all international authorities. It is in blatant contravention of international law. It generates enormous amounts of suffering and hatred. And it is not a state of things, it is a process. It is going on now, it inches a bit further every day and every year.

You say you don't have an opinion, but in fact you repeat exactly the things that those who don't want this process to stop would like to hear from you: that the question has two sides, that it's impossible to say who's right or wrong, that there are many opinions. It's a form of denialism (let's hear the other side, some say this but some say that, etc.).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fuck - that was an article I wish I'd never read.

I almost hoped it would stop at the half-way mark, so I could just shake my head at people I could despise, but it kept going.

My thoughts in no particular order:

Clearly the Palestinians are physically suffering most from this - but whether they acknowledge it or not, it's destroying the Israelis involved. Similar to the US involvement in VietNam - doesn't matter if you win/lose or even why - people who come back are changed.

I don't "blame Israel" \- I work for an Israeli company. Not a choice, just a happenstance of a takeover. Quite an eye-opener when somebody politely tells you that we need to wrap up the conference call, as there are incoming rockets.

Only firm feeling I take away is that I loathe "dehumanization" \- that pernicious and onmi-present trope that is rolled out by all sides in pretty much every country, under every circumstance - and has been forever.

<comment><USER6> Even more tragically, it's destroying both the Israeli people doing the shooting and the Palestinian people who are the victims, but it's not touching those who are setting the policies which lead to that situation nearly as viscerally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's so disappointing to see a country and people founded in the ashes of a holocaust committing war crimes, doubly so against a relatively disenfranchised population (as opposed to some external antagonist in a more traditional interstate conflict).

<comment><USER8> While the holocaust did give the Israeli project one last political boost, I think the creation of Israel was not because of it but despite it. The tragic loss of millions of potential citizens had a significant impact on the demographic feasibility of the country. Ben-Gurion himself says: "For many of us, anti-Semitic feeling had little to do with our dedication [to Zionism]. I personally never suffered anti-Semitic persecution. Płońsk was remarkably free of it ... Nevertheless, and I think this very significant, it was Płońsk that sent the highest proportion of Jews to Eretz Israel from any town in Poland of comparable size."

I mean the Balfour declaration was in 1917. Herzl's "a land without a people for a people without a land" only makes sense if you read it through the eyes of a colonial European.

in reaction to the united nations partition plan ben-Gurion says: "The total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. Such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%"

a democratic and Jewish Israel was and still is impossible without the expulsion (ethnic cleansing*) of a major part of its Arab population. (regardless of the incompetence of the Arab leaders and their stupid war)

I would argue that this is not really unexpected from a country built on Deir Yassine, king David's bombing and the assassination of a UN negotiator. Acts committed by the Irgun, which was the political predecessor of Israel's right- wing Herut (or "Freedom") party, which led to today's Likud the current ruling party.

<comment><USER8> to clarify the asterisk near ethnic cleansing is because this is a highly debated topic and there is no consensus whether it happened. Expulsion, on the other hand, is undeniable.

for the first Ben-Gurion's quote check: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ben- Gurion#Childhood_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ben- Gurion#Childhood_and_education)

for the second one: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine#Jews)

Deir Yassine was in 1948 much closer than the holocaust [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre)

King David Hotel bombing (1946) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing)

The UN negotiator I'm speaking of is: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think regardless of where you stand on the issue of the Gaza protests, you would find this piece to be a good and rare, almost entirely neutral article. Good Journalism.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. This is good journalism. It simply states the facts and let's the reader decide what the implications are.

Could use a lot more journalism like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Watch _Gaza Fights for Freedom_ , a documentary by Abby Martin and Mike Prysner, for a horrifying look into what life is like in Gaza for the Palestinian people. It was filmed inside Gaza and the footage smuggled out.

It is a humanitarian crisis to say the least. I personally think it's closer to genocide.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you are shooting someone in the knee, and it is not by accident, you are the bad guy.

There may be times where you have to shoot someone to kill them, even if they are not directly a threat to you.

There may be times where you have to disable someone who is running towards you. In that case you shoot for the upper parts of the legs.

You shoot a knee and that will for ever cripple them, with no benefit to you, other than the enemy will always be in pain -- i.e. a benefit only to a psychopath.

I am not naive; I know that there are really bad people out there whom we would all be better of without, but I also understand that there is a level, which you must not cross unless you want to become just as evil yourself. These snipers crossed it, and in doing so created yet another argument to show that Israel is not mature enough to be a legitimate country.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why is this downweighted?

<comment><USER14> Any criticism of Israel must be dismissed, and authors labeled as antisemitic.

<comment><USER13> Wow, and now it's been flagged to death. There's nothing wrong with the article, either. It's evenhanded, and Haaretz is about as mainstream as the New York Times.

Is this a normal HN thing that I just haven't noticed until now? Is this subject just too radioactive to be discussed?

<comment><USER14> I wasn't referring to the article; I saw many times in different contexts, critics of the Israel government actions against Palestine being labeled as antisemitic just to make them appear as racists and dismiss their valid points.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can only wish "imagine yourself in the shoes of the protester before making a decision" would be added to the training.

<comment><USER16> There was a part that mentioned how one of the soldiers identifies with the child protestors, and how a high ranking officer mentioned if he were a Palestinian he'd be a terrorist. I don't think it matters, they are basically just doing their job (or playing the game) they've been trained for. They still have to ask for authorization from the chain of command, so it doesn't really matter what they think.

Pretty heavy article

<comment><USER9> "a high ranking officer mentioned if he were a Palestinian he'd be a terrorist" \- That was Ehud Barak, former Israeli Prime Minister.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I clicked this link, came back to the front page to check comments, and it was gone. Hm!

</comment><comment><USER18> Humans dismembering other trapped humans for fun and bragging rights. Mine as well go back to crucifixes that the Romans used 2000 years ago.

<comment><USER19> Interesting response. I don't mean to start an argument but I genuinely wonder what the reaction would be if it were a response to a Holocaust incident.

<comment><USER20> I've rarely seen a question implying such intriguing omitted context. You might not be getting downvotes if you had included it, since the question is kind of unclear without it anyway.

<comment><USER19> What context is that? You have a post describing a tragedy and a reply saying that humans have done it before. I was asking whether the same reply to a description of one of the tragedies during the Holocaust would have received the same non-chalant reaction.

<comment><USER21> Why drop into a thread in order to change the subject? Do your own research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Paywall :/

</comment><comment><USER23> At least they aren't headshots.

<comment><USER24> That's the spirit....

<comment><USER23> I know, right? Maybe next we can talk the folks firing rockets into using glitter bombs.</comment></comment></comment>


Finding n-th Fibonacci number in x86 assembler - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/przemoc/481446

<comment><USER2> Love this bit: "Are black sheep among them actually gray?"

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand why this is special. Anyone care to elaborate?

<comment><USER4> Perhaps the title should mention that it's done in a mere 15 bytes of assembler:

"; size: ; 15 bytes"

So it's a code-golf sort of thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been waiting for this all my life!</comment>


Looking back on my startup in 2010 - from 40m events/month to 300m/day - <AUTHOR> http://playtomic.com/blog/post/46-looking-back-on-2010

<comment><USER2> The second Andy Moore link takes me to a "What you need, when you need it" spam/placeholder page, fwiw. It's to the .com instead of the .ca, like the rest.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops. Also if you liked his Steambirds game he has a new one out which is awesome:

<http://www.steambirds.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So apparently there is such a lack of flash analytics platform that the biggest providers tried to force a game analytics provider to fit their use- case?

<comment><AUTHOR> Heh. There's Google Analytics but as great as it is the thing that lets you use it for Flash still revolves around the concept of "you're tracking a website". Lots of things aren't a perfect fit for that model and Flash happens to be particularly distributable - ads, video, games, widgets etc.

Those are directions I've thought of moving in but games are significantly more appealing, they're a lot more interesting than ads/videos/widgets, they don't require knowing a creepy amount of information about you, and since I make games myself I'm my own user as well.

There are still a lot of non-games using it like banner ads and stuff, but at this point it's flexible enough that it doesn't really matter a great deal if it's a game or not, just some reports won't make much sense in whatever context.

Edit: there is MixPanel as well who I've even started using on the web side of Playtomic. :)</comment></comment>


Why are software development task estimations regularly off by a factor of 2-3? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Why-are-software-development-task-estimations-regularly-off-by-a-factor-of-2-3/answer/Michael-Wolfe?share=1 <comment><USER2> Because speculation tends to be wrong.</comment>


Magic Leap employee alleges bizarre, blatant misogyny in discrimination lawsuit - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/14/14604248/magic-leap-gender-discrimination-lawsuit-sexism-misogyny <comment><USER2> This is probably the 8th or 9th time this has been posted to Hacker News. I don't understand why there are so many duplicate posts - can't we get a filter for this? Seems pretty simple, just reject duplicates, especially this many.</comment>


Jx9: A direct competitor to Lua - <AUTHOR> http://jx9.symisc.net/index.html

<comment><USER2> While the language & feature-set might be a direct competitor to Lua, the license may make it a non-starter for many.

Lua: MIT: can be used in closed source software.

Jx9: Symisc Public License (basically the Sleepycat license): Very similar to the GPL in that all source code using it must also be open source upon distribution. Otherwise, a license must be acquired at some unknown price to use it in commercial software.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the Jx9 license is correct and acceptable for open source softwares since many open source projects embed BerkeleyDB which use this kind of license.</comment></comment>


PHP is such crap, how does anyone still code in this? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Poorly, I'm afraid. There's nothing inherently wrong with PHP per se. 99% of the problems with PHP are the result of it being a language that novice programmers can easily learn and become productive in. There's nothing wrong with that and given the alternatives, I encourage it. However, novice programmers tend to write garbage code and attempt to overcome lack of architectural cohesiveness with brute force. This quickly devolves into spaghetti code and soon, Murphy's law raises its head leading to the programmer crawling under his/her desk and considering a life as a llama rancher when the web app craters in spectacular fashion.

The lesson from this is that a bad programmer produces bad code. Nothing can save us from our self and Pogo had it right many years ago when he said "We have met the enemy and he is us."

</comment><comment><USER3> Note to self: Do not learn PHP. Thanks.</comment>


Microsoft Touches $1T Value, Signaling Big Tech's Stock Market Comeback - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/business/dealbook/microsoft-1-trillion.html <comment><AUTHOR> Microsoft is pretty amazing. Staying on top of the tech industry for so long. Looks like they didn't just survive, rather thrive post PC era thanks to Azure and Office 365.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way to learn Java/J2ME to build mobile applications? - <AUTHOR>

In the near future I plan on developing mobile applications (primarily for Blackberry) that are an extension of my rails applications. I am currently using mobile optimized in-browser versions of the applications but that limits the capabilities and benefits of a native mobile application (GPS, offline capabilities, speed).
I'm looking for some recommendations on the the best books/sites/strategies to begin learning the basics of Java and building J2ME apps?
I'm coming from a web dev background (ruby,php,perl etc). <comment><USER3> First, what you really wanna do is learn the basics of Java itself - <USER2> types, flow structures, conditionals, classes, inheritance, basic data types (vectors, maps) etc. You'll find the syntax has much in common with php and perl, so it won't be alien, although you'll have to adjust to the static typing.

Second, you'll have to learn the specific mobile environment you want to develop for - J2ME, Blackberry or Android. What they all have in common is that they implement the basic java language (which I mentioned above) along with a set of packages/classes that allow your app to run the device.

J2ME is very basic and is meant to run on a very wide range of cellphones (mostly featurephones) and its also quite hard to get access to the nicer APIs (contact info, internet access etc). It is specified by Sun working with phone manufacturers.

Blackberry has its own set of APIs which allow you to access BB specific functions (email, gps, phone etc) and UI elements. This one is defined and implemented by RIM and does not have anything in common with J2ME.

Android, like the BB also has its own set of APIs that allow you to use its UI elements, access its data, etc etc and is driven by Google.

Since you're interested in BB development, most of you apps should be developed (and in many cases will have to be) using the BB API. The BB has the ability to run J2ME apps, but I think that's mostly for compatibility reasons.

Anyway, good luck.

</comment><comment><USER4> I picked up Beginning J2ME ([http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-J2ME-Novice- Professional-Thi...](http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-J2ME-Novice-Professional- Third/dp/1590594797)) earlier this year when working on a mobile application for BB and it was pretty handy. You should know that RIM provides additional apis on top of J2ME that let you create more native-feeling BB applications (and it's worth learning imo) - for this I used tutorials online and RIM's api documentation.

The developer of BBSmart, Neil Sainsbury, used to have a really helpful blog at <http://devberry.com>, but I believe he took it down after his frustrations with RIM (it's like "shouting at a brick wall").

</comment><comment><USER5> The best way is not to, I assure you.

<comment><USER6> It is used everywhere so how can knowing it be a bad thing?

<comment><USER7> Knowing it might be OK, the horrible part is actually programming in that environment. It is totally locked down, you have to buy certificates and sign your applications and stuff. Without that, your application will be almost unusable (unless you only use the games APIs, which can't do much except storing high scores). Even saving a file to a directory turns into busywork for the user, as the run time system will ask for every single directory on the path if it is OK to access it... It is a bit more liberal with actions that might cost you money like dialing, sending text messages or establishing data connections (it will ask you only once), but it is still annoying.

It is a trusted (by the network operators, not by you) computing environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I saw this the other day: <http://rhomobile.com/>

"Rhomobile's open source mobile application framework Rhodes lets you quickly build mobile interfaces to enterprise applications. These are true native device applications: they work against synced local data and take advantage of device capabilities such as GPS and PIM access."

I didn't look into it much, but it might be worth your while to investigate.

<comment><USER9> Looks interesting

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Learned it without any books, just looking at the documentation from Sun. Just get started with a simple project, I guess.</comment>


Steam Summer Sale - <AUTHOR> http://store.steampowered.com <comment><USER2> The Lord Gaben givith us a bountiful summer of sales. Take my money!</comment>


Captured On Google Earth: Mysterious Barcode Patterns Strewn Across U.S. Land - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-02/captured-on-googl-earth-mysterious-barcode-patterns-strewn-across-us-land

<comment><USER2> Contrary to the article's title and to the explanation offered in the article itself, they aren't at all mysterious. They're test targets for aerial and satellite photography. But who would read the article if its title didn't include the misleading word "mysterious"?</comment>


Download Atom without invite - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=NJngNDk8

<comment><USER2> Well, even the zip was easily distributable. I don't think they really put much effort in licensing. I guess they make it semi-invite only to get some more hype? Or maybe just to limit the amount of testers..

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice idea, but for me this 5 line mac-specific shell script had two errors. Did anyone actually try this?

Here's a version that worked for me

       #!/bin/sh
       cd ~
       curl -L --insecure https://www.atom.io/api/updates/download -A "Atom/0.1 CFNetwork/1.5" > Atom.zip
       unzip Atom.zip
       mv Atom.app /Applications/
       rm -rf Atom.zip

<comment><USER4> I am getting only {"message":"Not Found"} ... guess it doesn't anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's probably not something you should have on HN.. I mean, sure, submitting it isn't wrong but distributing IP, not so good.

</comment><comment><USER6> Any instructions for linux?

<comment><USER7> From the faq: "What platforms does Atom run on?

At the moment Atom only runs on OS X (10.8 or later). Windows and Linux releases are on the roadmap."

[https://atom.io/faq](https://atom.io/faq)</comment></comment>


An Illusion of mastery - <AUTHOR> https://www.codementor.io/vivekjoshy/an-illusion-of-mastery-7kji11zok <comment><USER2> This 'article' starts out with the following generalization:

>> Most people a few months after taking up programming will reach a certain point where they feel they are the best at what they do.

I don't think this is the least bit true. I think the opposite is true. After a few months, there will be a small cohort who believe they are well on their way to mastery. I'm not sure that 'most' people feel this way after a few months of programming.

These 'lite' articles are starting to infect both Reddit and HN. I'm all for short pieces, but really, this is like buying a bag of chips at 7-11: it's all air and no chips.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have this conversation with beginners a lot - in fact I usually use the exact same iterative-vs-functional list construction question. I think it's a good place to talk about the generality of computing and what that means.

There are an infinite number of possible computers, an infinite number of possible programming languages, and an infinite number of possible programs you could write to solve a given problem.

When you start out, just finding any way to solve your problem is so exciting that you stop there. When you get a bit more experienced, you start finding more solutions and naturally gravitate to the most clever and interesting ones. Check it out! I can implement all control flow in our Javascript application as an infinitely nested function call expansion with a trampoline!

Yes, you can. But should you?

When there are an infinite number of possible solutions, the fact that you can find one of them is not so impressive. Your skill as an advanced programmer is rather to choose which of those solutions best conveys your ideas. The computer can't perceive meaning, but other people can, and every choice between equivalent solutions is your way of telling them what you were trying to do.

In that sense, it's no different from any other kind of communication. Why are you writing this? Who is it for? What do you want them to get from it? And will it help your goal to drop in some 17th century vocabulary, or construct your sentences entirely without the letter e?

</comment><comment><USER4> Written by a student who calls himself "Python Wizard".

<comment><USER5> Let's not discourage youthful exuberance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the 1st method simply because its a generative approach vs a discriminative approach of the 2nd and 3rd one. Put it another way. This is analogous to yielding prime numbers through a sieve generation method vs a filtering method that checks for primality.

<comment><USER7> A sieve is _literally_ a filter...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Who wrote the better version?

The one who moved on instead of bikeshedding.

</comment><comment><USER9> Of those three, the third is the best because Python uses eager evaluation. Or else the list(range(0,1000,12)) approach is fine too.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's no right approach, unless specifically defined as such by some Python standard.

</comment><comment><USER10> Option 4: numbers = list(range(0,1000,12))</comment>


Tinyproj: A recap of Day One - <AUTHOR> http://tinyproj.tumblr.com/post/10329507938/a-recap-of-day-one

<comment><USER2> I think it's a really great idea, but I was disappointed to see most of the offered project were really of the bottom-feeding sorts (many offered ~$100/day) as some here feared would happen.

I'm in Vienna (which is a much cheaper market than the US/UK/AUS) and even here I don't generally charge less than 300 euros a day (~$420) and received offers for as high as 500 euros/day (~$690) for contract work in the past.

I am sure the _real_ pros who frequent HN charge a lot more than I do.

Programmers, don't sell yourself short! You are bringing down expectations and hurting all of us.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback. I think part of the issue is that I'm asking folks to give project rates and durations, and it seems (based on the projects submitted thus far) that the duration ends up being a bit of a misnomer. I think a project rate of a few grand for a simple prototype is probably above board, but if you add an erroneous or poorly anticipated duration, it suddenly dilutes the rate into bottom feeder territory. Nonetheless, I'll be revamping some of this so it's much more clear. FWIW, I rejected more projects than I sent out.

<comment><USER4> I got the email, and I didn't take the "duration" as how long they wanted me to spend on it. I took it as more of a "When you start this, you should be done in X days because we want it by then."

Should I have read it differently?

<comment><USER5> I agree that this is confusing. Maybe two different fields: 1) estimate of how long this will take 2) deadline

I can see many projects that are just a day or two of work, but where the company doesn't need it for a week.

<comment><USER3> I think that's an interesting idea. I agree that it's probably a bit confusing/off-putting as it stands now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Glad to see this starting off strong!

<comment><AUTHOR> I was amazed to read:

 _"Over 4,500 developers and designers, copywriters, and illustrators have signed up in the past few days, and the growth isn't showing any signs of slowing down."_

That's indeed an impressive response. I'm working on a webcam sideproject, and I also hope to get that amount of signups ;-)

<comment><USER3> Thanks. It's really exciting to see that this struck a chord with so many people. Interestingly, most signups are devs or designers (or hybrids). Not that many (low 100s) for copywriters and illustrators. I may remove those as an option and just focus on dev/design if becomes clear that's where Tinyproj is heading.

<comment><USER7> I suggest you keep copywriters - their job is as important as the designers' and you could perhaps help devs understand this.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What websites do you regularly visit? - <AUTHOR>

A few years ago a friend introduced me to artsandlettersdaily.com and I've been addicted since. Recently it got me thinking, what interesting (SFW!) sites might the folks at HN be visiting that I am missing out on?
Here is my list to get the discussion started. Not a very interesting one I'm afraid!
- slashdot.org
- salon.com
- rediff.com
- artsandlettersdaily.com
- reddit.com
- joelonsoftware.com
- Hacker News
Then there is a set of secondary sites, such as Seth Godin, Paul Graham, Onion news etc, that I don't visit that often. I of course check my web mail several times in a day.
So.. what are your frequently visited web sites? <comment><USER2> \- Oursignal.com (Every hour or so for quick check on new links)

\- HN (For discussions mainly)

\- Google Reader (For the rest of them)

\- Alltop.com

\- Friendfeed.com

I use IMAP for all my mail on Opera, so don't have to keep that tab open all the time.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://newmogul.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Apart from HN:

\- Engadget

\- ReadWriteWeb

\- Venturebeat

\- GigaOm

\- Mashable

\- Coding Horror

</comment><comment><USER5> readwriteweb.com

thisisindexed.com

infosthetics.com

incomediary.com</comment>


NYC's Best Angel Investor: Every Startup She Touches Seems To Turn To Gold - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/shana-fisher-star-investor-2013-11 <comment><USER2> I thought this would be about Shana Fisher. I met her at an event and she asked me to give her a list of YC cos that were good but that VCs didn't get. I realized this was the first time anyone had asked me that, in 8 years of doing YC.

<comment><USER3> did you already know that list or did you have to stop to think about it? any notable examples on that list you care to share?</comment></comment>


Firefox 16 live: Here's What's New - <AUTHOR> http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/16.0/releasenotes/

<comment><USER2> Still my favourite browser by far. I usually have 3-4 windows open and up to several hundred tabs and Firefox handles this better than anything else.

<comment><USER3> I can't fathom a reason for "several hundred tabs" unless your job specifically requires you to open that number of tabs for some (albeit strange) reason.

<comment><USER4> I use them as a replacement for bookmarks. My browser chrome is ridiculously small, just tabs, so no bookmark bar, and if I did bookmark everything into the bookmark system (which is hidden under several mouse clicks), I'd have to keep it organised, whereas tabs are at least in chronological order (approximately), which is more useful than alphabetic order when I'm looking for something without knowing what it is called.

<comment><USER2> Pretty much this. I keep tabs as temporary bookmarks, usually related to projects I am busy with at the time. I have regular cleanups where I bookmark any tabs that are long term keepers and delete the rest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How many people here have stuck with 3.6? It looks like it's only a few percent of FF users (<1% of all users).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox>

It was a really long road but with 3.6 essentially gone and silent updates, developers can worry a lot less about legacy in the Firefox world.

<comment><USER6> Anecdotally, I have an oddly large population of vistors to my site with Firefox 9. I don't know what changes were made to how Firefox updates around that time. But it seems like the update train has unwittingly left few users behind.

<comment><USER7> As a reference, Firefox 9 is the version in the packages repo for FreeBSD 9.0-STABLE and it's probably the same for a fair number of other oses that peg versions on release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the primary reasons I switched to Chrome was due to the awesome syncing abilities with Android Chrome.

Does anyone know if Firefox Mobile has matured to a point where it doesn't lag incredibly due to the huge memory footprint on Android?

<comment><USER9> It has. They semi-recently switched from XUL to native Java, which has made it as fast (maybe faster?) compared to Chrome or Browser on Android. Definitely worth checking out again.

<comment><USER10> My only real complaint with Firefox Mobile is that it doesn't play that well with Intent filters like the one the YouTube app uses to catch <http://*.youtube.com/*> requests. That said, I'm not sure how to fix that without introducing the annoying per-link popup asking me if I want to use Chrome or Firefox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I still use FF, but switch to Chrome for JS heavy stuff. Even amazon.com is laggy on FF. The things that's stopping me from switching to Chrome full-time is the Extensions that FF has. I can really customize things to work exactly the way I want. My biggest gripe about Chrome is that the download bar at the bottom doesn't go away when you finish a download.

</comment><comment><USER12> Still not the feature I'd like in there: A way to open link here instead of in new tab or window

<comment><USER13> Hasn't that been a feature from day one. Are you sure you haven't got the option ticked that forces links to open in external tabs/windows?

<comment><USER12> If I right click on a link, I see options "Open link in new tab" and "Open link in new window". What's missing there is "Open link in this tab", to circumvent these pesky websites that configure every single link to open in a new tab/window.

<comment><USER14> Workaround: Drag the link to the address bar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I hope they keep plugging away at making their developer tools better. I use Firefox as my main browser, but I often have to switch to Chrome because Firebug's performance is pretty crappy even on my Ivy Bridge laptop (with 16GB of RAM).

<comment><USER16> We are indeed plugging away on the tools (and they are getting better each release :)

Firebug will be getting faster as well as they are working on putting Firebug on top of the new debugging API in Firefox (which has much better performance than the old).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wish they'd just bump the version number to 30 then save major revision numbers for major revisions. I don't see anything in here that would warrant anything but a bump from 15 to 15.5 under the old Firefox revision standards.

<comment><USER18> The thing is, given the Firefox project's new development model, their old versioning scheme makes absolutely no sense. Deciding which version numbner to bump would be completely arbitrary and exactly as informative as just using a single number that tells the user "this version is newer than the one with a lower number", which is the _only_ useful information they can convey using version numbers.

Would you also be one to complain about the Linux kernel versioning scheme? It conveys exactly as much information as Firefox' does and works on the same principle. They just happen to have that extra first "major" number there, but it exists only for compatibility reasons. The change from 2.6.39 to 3.0 was exactly as "major" as pretty much every "point" release since 2.6.0. Yet I don't see people complaining about the version numbers every time a new kernel version is released.

<comment><USER17> I had originally included Linux in my complaint, but removed it because I didn't want to open that can of worms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So it adds Webapp support, but the Firefox Marketplace is not yet open to the public, is this correct?

<comment><USER9> That is correct. The Firefox parts have to land before the Marketplace can open, otherwise the Marketplace is useless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is 16 worth installing? Firefox used to be my favourite browser, but I stopped using it when the almost daily install and "reload or disable" addons cycle became too painful.

<comment><USER21> That cycle should be invisible now. It updates silently in the background and should only notify you if an extension gets disabled.

<comment><USER22> And unlike in previous eras of Firefox, extensions are not typically disabled by the version bump.

<comment><USER21> They should only get disabled if the use a feature that got removed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Was hoping for HDPI support, doesn't look like this update includes it.

<comment><USER24> HiDPI is available in Aurora this week (the code that will become Firefox 18).

<comment><USER23> Thanks, will checkout the Aurora build when I get a chance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Tabs in separate processes is the only thing I care about when considering switching back to Firefox. As long as a single poorly coded site or plugin can freeze or kill the entire browser, I simply cannot use Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER26> i am worried. even though it touched 16, it still sucks most of my memory and slows down the system and drains the battery immediately (1 hour of power)

Firefox still needs to improve its memory usage.

<comment><USER27> Can you be more specific about the kinds of problems you are seeing? Can you reproduce these problems in safe mode? You should file a bug at <http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/> and put [MemShrink] in the whiteboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why does Firefox's roadmap look like "copy everything that Chrome has"?

If Firefox users needed (or wanted) marketplace for (web) apps (or any other Chrome feature) they'd already be using Chrome ...

<comment><USER13> Web Apps are a very real part of the future of the web. The fact that this space exists in the first place whereby there was only desktop apps previously should be testament enough to that. I may not personally agree with Mozilla in regards to the role of web apps, but I think that we all agree, it's better to be in a position to allow users to make their own minds up rather than go off of what a few loud naysayers want.

<comment><USER28> If Wev Apps are a very real part of the future of the web why isn't there a standard for that? Or in another words, if it is the future why haven't they all sat down and agreed upon a standard??

This way we'll be begging jQuery for Web Apps or some other abstraction layer that will do all the dirty work of cross browser compatibility...

I don't see a standard for Web Apps on <http://www1.webplatform.org/> anywhere ...

<comment><USER13> Did you take the week off? <http://www1.webplatform.org/>

<comment><USER28> All I see there is another "dry as bone" index of all web technologies, like there aren't enough of those on the Internet already ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> After being a FF user for so many years (since at least there was no hype behind it among average users), I caved in to Chrome finally and completely. Moved my bookmarks (lost tagging), history and sync, all to Google.

<comment><USER22> So, that's great for you and all, but what the fuck does it have to do with the article?

<comment><USER29> I know one person's opinion doesn't matter, but I owe it as my duty to tell a parting friend that I am parting ways. Given that this friend has no interest in taking people's opinions (there is no official mechanism in place to take opinions), HN is as good as any other place to make statements.

Now, why the "fuck" do you care if what I write here has anything to do with the article or not? Perhaps something is lurking behind the shadow you may want to look after?

<comment><USER22> >Now, why the "fuck" do you care if what I write here has anything to do with the article or not?

For the simple reason that noise drowns out signal, and because _every damn article_ mentioning Firefox brings out someone saying the same thing.

If you had in some way brought it around to this particular release, your comment would have been on topic. Maybe there's a particular feature you've finally given up waiting for. Maybe some recent change in the UI that you dislike. Whatever! Don't just post empty blather, though.

("Fuck" here is simply used as emphasis, to indicate that I am exasperated by the prevalence of such empty comments.)

<comment><USER29> "every damn article mentioning Firefox brings out someone saying the same thing."

Agree, but people making such comments are also real and they may be as exasperated as you are.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The 'Over-Parenting Crisis' in School and at Home (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/07/24/628042168/the-over-parenting-crisis-in-school-and-at-home <comment><USER2> As a teacher of ages 4 up until 14, I think parents and people in general need to be concious toward what constitutes "over" parenting. Too often we as teachers see students that are behaving poorly, or having more trouble in school, because they do not have enough help or consistency at home. Parents reading articles like this might take them too literally and step too far from their child's life. Parenting should be a balance. You should know, as a parent, what is happening with your child's schooling, and be there to help. But you should not micromanage the child. Parent involvement leads to more academic confidence and success[1], and more behavioural[2] success.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3020099/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3020099/) [2] [https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/scmsAdmin/media/users/sm6/McCormi...](https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/scmsAdmin/media/users/sm6/McCormick_2013_parent_involvement.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Let me turn this around.

As a parent, I think that teachers should pay attention to research on homework that says there is on average no academic benefit, but there is a huge cost in family conflict. You have enough time in the classroom to teach and provide practice time. Free family time up for what parents see best.

<comment><USER4> > there is on average no academic benefit

What? This sounds BS. If you don't practice what you learn in school, how will you ever master it? Eg. How will you learn integration if you don't do some practice problems?

<comment><USER5> Parent also wrote "You have enough time in the classroom to teach and provide practice time" so he/she agrees with you but argues that there is enough time for that practice to take place at school.

<comment><USER3> Exactly right. Practice is essential, but it is essential that it be correct practice. According to research, supervised practice in the classroom is both superior to homework, and sufficient for learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As someone considering starting a family, I have literally no idea what parenting is anymore. When I was younger I was pretty much left to my own devices, sent off to play with my brother and then packed off to school when old enough. My parents were too busy working, cooking and cleaning to do much fancy extra curricular stuff.

I do wonder now what I should be doing to prepare for parenthood. I feel that perhaps it's not the sort of thing that can be distilled down into an easy to read 200 page paperback.

<comment><USER7> I'm working on kid #2, and my takeaway is this: "parenting science" is like "nutritional science." It's _almost_ entirely bullshit, and little to no progress has been made in the field ever. There is no use paying attention to it, other than doing/not doing the obvious things. (Don't eat too many calories; don't emotionally destroy your kids.)

Your kids will turn out how they are going to turn out. Instinctively, you'll love them and want to keep them alive, so don't worry about that. Other than that, do what you think is right and hope for the best.

<comment><USER8> This is wholly and categorically untrue. Parenting today is much different than it was 100 years ago. The way we approach children, discipline children, and help them grow into their best selves has changed a lot. And it is based on lots of research. It is also based on all of the work that therapists do with adults after their parents have messed them up so bad with their horrible parenting. Every child will be their own adventure, personalities makes parenting every child different. But to say that there aren't guidelines and that you should just do whatever comes natural is dangerous. Because beating children comes naturally to some people. Being passive aggressive or emotionally blunt with them can come naturally. Being an absent parent and not spending any time with them can come naturally as work gets in the way. If you are unsure then seeking professional help to make sure you have the basics covered is a great way to start.

Parenting is very much an art, but like all art, there is definitely a science backing it up.

<comment><USER9> The argument is not that parenting has stayed the same. It's that there's no measurable improvement in results from all the changes. So the argument goes, the changes aren't worth much, so don't worry about it.

<comment> Trill-I-Am What about crime rates going down and teen pregnancy going down?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd expect NPR to not use the word "crisis" in this context. There no obvious juncture, no imminent, looming problem that demands decisive action. There's just yet another op-ed pop-psyche piece about kids failing to learn "how to adult."

I'm not surprised by the existence of the article, it's as inevitable as my curmudgeonly response. I'm surprised NPR stooped to publishing it.

<comment><USER11> Yeah I was also thinking the term crisis was a bit of a stretch here. 'Over- Parenting Crisis' is in quotes, however, so I'm wondering if they've taken that title from one of the books?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Recently I watched a report by the US correspondent of the German public television. She spoke with parents who got into trouble because they let their children play near the house. A mom who put surveillance software on their children's phone. Parents who look on video feeds from the day care centres.

I found this shocking and also dangerous in the long run, people are getting used to surveillance might also accept it by the state.

<comment><USER13> FWIW: A "look at those crazy americans!" color story by a foreign journalist may, y'know, not be the most authoritative source for this kind of thing.

Obviously those products exist (and probably do in Germany too) and I'm sure that parent who got in trouble was a real incident. Nonetheless those of us actually raising children in this country don't actually do that stuff. Chill.

<comment><USER12> Of course it is colourful, but the reporter was a parent too and neighbours wondered why they let their children play unsupervised outside.

In Germany a court just ruled that a three year old can go alone to the bath room and their parents don't have to check on them. The child set the bath room under water and someone wanted the parents to be liable.

Also some years ago, I saw a video from a school parking lot, where the hundreds of pupils where dropped off by their parents. So instead of building several schools close to the pupils, they build one big school, to which almost no pupil come alone.

<comment><USER14> > In Germany a court just ruled that a three year old can go alone to the bath > room and their parents don't have to check on them. The child set the bath > room under water and someone wanted the parents to be liable.

Seems like the alternative is to declare the 3yo liable for the damage, which is absurd. Water like that can cause a lot of damage; it's not like they tipped over a glass on the table.

<comment><USER12> They wanted the parents to be liable for the damage, claiming they have breached their obligatory supervision to the child.

The judge said that the parents are not obligated to surveillance their child 24/7 in the flat as it would hinder the development of the child.

<comment><USER15> I would argue that parents (or legal guardians) should be held liable for damage caused by their minor children, period, without claiming that parents have an obligation to monitor their children 24/7\. The degree of surveillance is up to the parents, and I agree that continuous monitoring would tend to stifle development, but that does not remove the parents' liability. Someone has to pay for the damages, and it would not be sensible or just for that someone to be the owner of the damaged property.

The alternative to parental responsibility is that property owners simply ban unsupervised minors from the premises. They represent too great a risk to be tolerated in the absence of legal recourse for whatever damage they might cause.

<comment><USER16> > I would argue that parents (or legal guardians) should be held liable for > damage caused by their minor children, period, without claiming that parents > have an obligation to monitor their children 24/7.

The idea that _having children_ should be treated as a strict liability tort is...unusual.

Without that treatment, the damages would need to stem from some other tort by the parent (such as negligence by failure to reasonably supervise), or a tort by the child with a rule that parents are liable for the children's torts.

> Someone has to pay for the damages, and it would not be sensible or just for > that someone to be the owner of the damaged property.

That's who usually pays for damages not resulting from some failure of a legal duty, so I do think see why a child being involved would change that.

> The alternative to parental responsibility is that property owners simply > ban unsupervised minors from the premises.

Well, that's _an_ alternative, and a fairly common one where it's not fundamentally incompatible with the purpose of the property.

<comment><USER15> > The idea that _having children_ should be treated as a strict liability tort > is...unusual.

Yes, but that isn't what I was saying. "Having children" is not the tort. Damaging others' property is the tort. The parents are liable because it was their child that caused the damage. The child is their responsibility. What the child does, _they_ did.

> or a tort by the child with a rule that parents are liable for the > children's torts

Yes, exactly this.

> That's who usually pays for damages not resulting from some failure of a > legal duty...

The legal duty which was failed in this case is the duty to not damage others' property. (You do have that, right? Or are property owners simply expected to absorb the cost of accidental damage no matter who was responsible?)

> Well, that's an alternative...

I argue that it is the only viable alternative. Why would property owners voluntarily accept liability for the actions of other people's children without some form of compensation? But we don't want this alternative, because it means 24/7 surveillance and stunted development—not out of legal obligation but simply because unsupervised children would have nowhere to go.

<comment><USER16> > The legal duty which was failed in this case is the duty to not damage > others' property.

One doesn't have such a duty, otherwise we wouldn't have specific torts at all, you'd just jump straight to damages.

> You do have that, right?

No, the closest thing to that is general negligence, where you owe a duty of reasonable care. Damages resulting despite exercise of reasonable care (other than where a strict liability tort exists) do not generally create legal liability.

> Or are property owners simply expected to absorb the cost of accidental > damage no matter who was responsible?

If no breach of a legal duty occurs that produces the accident, yes, people are, in general, expected to absorb damages.

> I argue that it is the only viable alternative.

But the argument you make for that position is inconsistent with the results in reality.

<comment><USER15> > No, the closest thing to that is general negligence, where you owe a duty of > reasonable care.

So your legal system _does_ recognize a duty not to damage others' property.

I think it is safe to say that flooding the room is a good example of not taking "reasonable care".

> If no breach of a legal duty occurs that produces the accident...

Irrelevant, as we've already established that there was a legal duty which was breached.

> But the argument you make for that position is inconsistent with the results > in reality.

Only if you start from the position that parents are not responsible for damages caused by their children, which is itself contrary to reality.

<comment><USER17> Apparently, this German legal model is that small children are a force of nature, like a tornado or hurricane. That's...one answer, and maybe reasonable in the context of homeowners' insurance and social safety nets, but it's _not_ an indictment of some kind of crazy American helicopter parenting.

<comment><USER16> > Apparently, this German legal model is that small children are a force of > nature, like a tornado or hurricane.

That's pretty much the US model, too; young children are unlikely to be subject to tort liability (under common law, there was a firm cutoff at 7 years for negligence, with a presumption against liability up to 14; now in most jurisdictions it's a balancing test of age, experience, and intelligence.)

And even where a child is liable, they are likely to be effectively judgement- proof and many jurisdictions have fairly limited provisions for parent liability for minors torts (California, e.g., has a quantitatively-limited amount of parental liability, for liability from willful misconduct.)

There may be some cases where there is a negligence action against parents for reasonable care in supervision, but it's not clear that the duty the would be judged that much differently than in Germany.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think a lot of parents don't know how to effectively parent and make up for that with enthusiasm. Too much involvement, not enough parenting. I am guilty of this.

<comment><USER19> Which leads to the question of how one teaches general parenting skill.

<comment><USER20> My wife is a pediatric occupational therapist. My dad's always saying "There's no book on parenting."

My response if always "Screw you, yes there is. But you went to business school." You can pay someone to fix your injuries, or broken pipes, but you can't pay someone to raise your kids.

When my son was born, I went into it with the knowledge of three highly rated books on Amazon I had picked at random.

My wife went into it with years of experience dealing with difficult kids. She worked at a feeding clinic at a research institute, helping parents figure out how to get their kids to eat their vegetables.

I'm so grateful. My 2 year old helps fold laundry, says please and thank you, and knows to put away his toys before bath time.

I don't know what I'd do if I hadn't married this woman. I don't know where I would have gotten the skills I have now.

<comment><USER21> So what would you recommend for potential parents who don't have the years of hands-on experience that your wife had?

<comment><USER22> Be born with genes for incredible self discipline and emotional stamina, and your kids are likely to be born with those genes as well. In fact, all the books I read said that you have to apply the techniques with total consistency and regularity, or the method doesn't work. That's something I'm utterly incapable of doing.

<comment><USER16> > In fact, all the books I read said that you have to apply the techniques > with total consistency and regularity, or the method doesn't work.

Note that's long been a line used when people are selling stuff they know doesn't work, because people don't do much of anything with total consistency and regularity, so when the inevitable failures occur, you've pre-biased the buyer of your woo to find an excuse to blame themselves, rather than the snake-oil you sold them.

Even if it's not _knowing_ fraud, any parenting approach that doesn't accommodate and specifically address the reality that parents are fallible isn't going to work with real people very well, even if it might work for the mythical beasts it must be designed for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I teach in a college. Many's the time I've been waiting to get into a classroom because the folks in there are wrapping up an exam, and students come out, instantly produce the phone, and I hear, "Hi mom, I did OK on the quiz, I think ..." That's too much.

<comment><USER24> What's wrong with that?

<comment><USER25> On its own, not much. But increasingly parents are involving themselves in their college freshman's education, going to bat for them when they "unfairly" score low, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I offer the following hypothesis - competition for entry into "the best" colleges, competition for "free money" through scholarships, and competition for "good jobs" after college has _driven_ parents to micromanage their children's school "career."

The margins for "error" \- i.e. achieving suboptimal grades and cultivating interests outside of "school stuff" \- have shrunk since I was a kid.

This is, of course, in addition to the need for parents to acquire bragging rights about their children.

<comment><USER27> We gamified our kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Some schools have an explicit policy against parents doing kids' homework > and in favor of kids raising issues and concerns themselves rather than > relying on their parents to do so. These schools are part of the solution.

I'd love to see these policies tested, e.g., have five high school kids with class scheduling issues attempt to resolve them themselves, and another five have their parents call, and compare how the process goes.

<comment><USER29> High school kids have class scheduling issues that aren't just automatically sorted out by the school? Heck. Not my experience for sure!

<comment><USER30> Turns out a lot of the scheduling software out there was written by people who without formal training or who weren't paying attention in their algorithms course.

E.g., one year:

Me: requests A and B

Friend: requests A and non-honors B

hour 4: Me in non-honors B; friend in gym.

hour 5 (only hour honors B is offered): Me in A; friend in honros B.

Based on a few years of observations, I'm almost certain courses were filled using some variant of this algorithm:

        for each student s sorted by student number:
            for each non-filled course c in hour 1..n:
               if(s wants c and not in c): assign s to c and continue to next hour.
            for each non-filled course c in hour 1..n:
               if(s wants c' and not in c' and c is like c'): assign s to c and continue to next hour.

because students with lower student numbers tended to get their choices (correlated with when student joined district far better than class status) and courses late in the day were always half empty while courses earlier in the day were always filled to the brim.

Things got better each year but never in a way that would suggest someone finally decided to pick up an algorithms textbook.

I suspect by now they've purchased something that works or else managed to prove P=NP and the solution is billions of if statements fixing special cases the teachers/students complained loudly enough about...

<comment><USER29> I don't know the details, but I know my school had a person from IT with a computer science degree on secondment to the studies department at the beginning of each year to get the timetable sorted out. The phrase "least constraints matching" is something I remember being mentioned when I asked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Jonathan Haidt thinks an earlier child abduction scare sparked the overly fragile undergrads that started to appear in 2014.

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

We are raising kids lacking conflict resolution skills who can't discuss and would rather coerce someone who doesn't conform to their ideas.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm not convinced this is a real problem. The term helicopter parenting was first used in 1990 [0] New Yorker article on same topic from 2008 [1]

Articles and posts like this are chock-full of anecdotes and head-nodding, but short on studies or other data to even correlate against. Seems like this "crisis" has been happening for a long time.

Is there a longitudinal study on children who have been "helicopter parented?" vs those who were raised "free-range"?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent)

[1] [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/11/17/the-child- trap](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/11/17/the-child-trap)

</comment><comment><USER33> It's a difficult balance to strike and it's easy to judge parents either way. I'm plenty guilty of being on both sides as a parent. My particular challenge, however, stems from PTSD from childhood abuse and neglect, so I feel even -more- pressure to give my child everything she needs and wants because I don't want her to feel as alone and unwanted as I did. But I do worry that comes at the price of her independence, which is something else I definitely don't want to take away from her.

The paradoxical thing for me is that much of what I've achieved has come about because I was forced to do things on my own and fend for myself. It built a lot of "character" but at the same time I'm not anywhere near happy or content.

<comment><USER34> >so I feel even -more- pressure to give my child everything she needs and wants because I don't want her to feel as alone and unwanted as I did

This is a tough one because I think how we parent is super-strongly influenced by our experiences as a child. I think the keys here are to make sure she knows that you love and support her no matter what and that's as much of a given as that the sun will rise in the east AND to support her on doing things for herself.

It's one thing if you're there to provide encouragement or a bit of help doing something vs. telling her to get it done and walking away. She'll learn the least from having everything on a whim or you doing everything for her. If the answer is "no" discuss why. Be fair and not capricious. Kids are smart. They know the difference between a parent that doesn't care and a parent that's setting limits.

<comment><USER33> > It's one thing if you're there to provide encouragement or a bit of help > doing something vs. telling her to get it done and walking away.

The former is definitely my approach. I never just dump her into a situation and ignore her, nor do I do everything for her. For example, cleaning up around the house is a joint effort. And arguments and power struggles are always followed up by reconciliation and reassurance that I still love her despite us being angry at each other.

My biggest struggle is not knowing whether a punishment or correction is too severe (because all of the ones I received were), so I tend to be more lenient in a lot of situations where maybe I shouldn't be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If you find a behavior you don't like, figure out what's causing it. It's probably not random, parents are probably not just being dumb.

Test scores, or minor misbehaviors, or other things, can disproportionately influence someone's future, to extents that are not realistic or human. Children, left to their own devices, will have trouble surviving in a world that runs on rules that don't actually make sense. Parents can sense this, so they try to protect their children, and they play by the rules that they see. There's no advantage to being fair, to doing things the "right" way, because the message has already gotten out that the rules are arbitrary. It's not important what you know, it's important that you pass the test.

Or, as they say, "best predictor of future behavior is past behavior" (very horrible sentiment).

If you don't want parents being overzealous and a bit crazy about their children, stop making society so damn competitive and inflexible. There are so many pitfalls someone can fall down just by accident, just by being human.

</comment><comment><USER36> The eternal debate continues between the "overbearing fascist helicopter parents" and the "free-parenting grossly negligent degenerates". (I have no horse in this race and find these pieces interesting nonetheless)

<comment><USER37> Controversy sells/generates clicks. Nobody wants to read a well-reasoned, balanced article when they're jonesing for that next micro-dose of e-dopamine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Related:

> The research found, on average, children were playing outside for just over > four hours a week

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/27/children...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/27/children- spend-only-half-the-time-playing-outside-as-their-parents-did)

</comment><comment><USER39> This topic is always a great opportunity to share stories about what childhood was like just a few decades ago, so I'll share mine.

When I was 5-10, a typical day for me was spent alone or with friends outside, from sun up to down, with zero adult supervision. There wouldn't even be an adult who knew where I was going or where I was. They simply gave me the responsibility of returning home before the sun went down, and over those years I always did, mostly because I was hungry. The only exception was one day when I traveled too far, realized too late that the sun was going down, and collapsed from exhaustion trying to get home. My family searched for and found me during twilight. I learned valuable lessons that day.

I recently looked up my childhood home on Google Maps to see how far I would go, and I would regularly travel within about a 3-mile radius. The surrounding area was heavily wooded and mostly vacant.

I would see a black bear probably once a month. My parents just told me to make noise as I traveled, to keep them scared off of my position. I knew never to play with their cubs. I knew never to run from them. I knew to stand ground and be loud and aggressive if I was ever approached or charged by one.

I fell off my bike and skinned my knees probably 40 or 50 times. I have many memories of limping my bike home on foot for a mile while sobbing in pain, and then squeezing my dad's hand as hard as I could while he poured hydrogen peroxide or rubbing alcohol over my bleeding knee. Every time this happened, he would just tell me I was going to heal up fast and get right back on the bike.

A common route for me was to ride my bike along the side of the highway a few miles to a corner store so I could buy chips or candy, or visit a waitress my family knew at a local breakfast spot for some free eggs. Nobody ever stopped their car and tried to "rescue" me. The people at the shops knew how I got there, they were not concerned.

When I was about 10, my family moved to a rich white suburb outside a major city. Their policy of letting me be independent and go wherever I wanted unsupervised continued, but in this new town I was regularly approached by adults asking if I was lost, strangers asking where my parents were, and adults on golf carts with walkie-talkies reprimanding me and sending me home for no particular reason.

I found their concern for my well-being incredibly insulting. I was insulted that they thought I couldn't handle myself, and later I was insulted by the way I realized they were judging my family and my parents. As a result, I was downright rude to a lot of them, and kind of earned a negative reputation. Ended up getting blamed for a lot of vandalism despite never vandalizing anything, and causing problems between my family and other local families, simply by locals assigning blame to me for all kinds of things based purely on my reputation of being out unsupervised a lot and being rude to certain adults.

So I got a taste of both worlds just by moving. I don't think the problem of over-parenting is restricted to time and trend. I think it has a strong geographical and cultural component, too. I suspect that if I went back to my hometown, I might still find kids unsupervised, riding their bikes and skinning their knees in the summer. I've also heard from people outside the country that this helicopter parenting thing seems to be largely restricted to the US.

</comment><comment><USER40> What kind of parent does their kid's homework?!

Here's an idea. Why not have "how to be a parent" classes taught in high school or college?

<comment><USER41> Parents who understand what "tracking" is. If you aren't, you're setting your child up for failure.

<comment><USER42> What is "tracking" in this case?

<comment><USER22> Kids are separated into different classes based on ability, so there's a fast place class and a slower paced class at each grade level. My elementary school was tracked. My mom made damn sure that my brothers and me were placed in the fastest track, whether we belonged there or not.

Tracking has a lot of ominous implications due to bias, and has been abandoned to a considerable extent, but teachers still unavoidably treat different kids with different expectations. And "involved" parents can influence those expectations.

<comment><USER6> Tracking (or setting, or grouping) essentially means that the higher level groups are freed from the more distracting characters in the lower groups. Great for them, but terrible for you if you end up in one of those lowers sets and end up with a loud, boisterous and violent class for a year.

Teachers are busy and overworked. I'm sure they try their best to put kids in the correct group for each subject, but you could easily end up in the 'wrong' one with no malice on the teachers part.

My mother was a school teacher and when she found out that I wasn't in the higher group for English she fought tooth and nail to get me up there. She knew exactly what could happen in those lower groups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> "parents are more focused on keeping their children safe, content and happy in the moment than on parenting for competence"</comment>


Ask HN: How to start your own software/ML/Web consultancy company? - <AUTHOR> I am 22 years old. I have good knowledge of systems, web development, and backend development. One of my friends is good at ML and AI. We are thinking to start our own consultancy company to help other companies to build their products. Any advice I can get from HN community? How to get the first client? How to make new connections for our business? <comment><USER2> So here is what I have learned over the years from working for, dealing with, starting my own, and studying consultancy companies. It really quite simple.

Every successful consultancy company I know had several things in common.

1) The founders weren't concerned about money. The could afford to spend time bootstrapping the business because they had some source of fallback that most people don't have. For example, their parents/brother/sister may have been very well off and they knew that even if they "blow it all" it wouldn't mean starvation.

2) A guaranteed client. Most startup consultancies I have encountered had a guaranteed client. That is, a client that is already willing to work with them and throw contracts their way giving the company time to bootstrap itself while paying a few salaries.

3) Sales. Your consultancy is not different than any other consultancy. The only difference is nobody trusts you (see 4) and most prospects will likely go to a more established consultancy. You are going to be spending most of your time doing sales. Don't get discouraged, get some cheap email campaign software, get some cheap lead generation software and keep doing sales. Going to conferences and networking doesn't work in the boutique software consultancy game. It just doesn't.

4) No body trust you. You have to build the most professional web site you can afford and make yourself look trust worthy. Don't build something you can't afford but you need something.

5) (Warning: unethical) Most boutique software companies I know have some unethical gimmick. Basically if you are a white male you can hire cheap labor from India, China, South America, eastern europe and market yourself as the white western world's interface to cheap 3rd world software development expertise. You can hate me for saying that so bluntly, but google it and see how many consultancies ACTUALLY DO THAT. I know of software consultancies (several) that completely bootstrapped themselves this way thriving off of the cheap labor of the 3rd world for years to undercut competitors. This is such a popular technique that new startups are actually giving away months of there cheap labor for free in order to compete with other cheap labor selling consultancies whose prices they can't match and whose name is more well established. Please don't get hung up on the fact that I mentioned this point - its a reality.

6) Don't listen to others who tell you that you can't do it just because they can't.

7) See point 3. If you are not willing to do sales more than you do software than you should just stop right now. If you don't have enough money to pay for a sales then you have to do it yourself.

8) Don't think you have a software consultancy if you've just settled on being an independent contractor. You don't, and you are will likely just be a cog in the engine that I've described in points 1 - 7.

Hint: Nobody uses ML (I'm assuming you mean ML like in Standard ML or the like). Don't get hung up on a particular language or framework. You will just be limiting yourself to a very small segment of the market if you choose some niche language.

<comment><USER3> Why is 5 unethical? I know people who perform a similar function managing and coordinating with offshore teams and employees at fortune 100s. Being able to get stuff done with global teams is a very valuable skill not many have.</comment></comment>


Free Music Studio Means No More Excuses - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/05/free-music-stud.html <comment><USER2> The interface is cool but gets fairly obnoxious after a while. I know that it's pretty accurate as to how the original gear worked, but music UI has improved so much since the late 1970s!

</comment><comment><USER3> awesome thanks have been looking for this. there are a lot of music tools out there but seems hard to find soemthing that is just click google click download click install -> start making music.</comment>