LED street lighting the newest challenge to old utility business models - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2013_11_26_Street_Fight <comment><USER2> NYC is starting to replace its sodium vapor street lamps with LED lamps, and expects that all 250,000 of them will be converted to LED lamps by 2017:

[http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/343-13/mayor- bl...](http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/343-13/mayor-bloomberg- transportation-commissioner-sadik-khan-all-250-000-street-lights-in/#/0)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder what percentage of street lights actually have activity below them? What about a motion sensing light that has dual-brightness levels? A lower level when no pedestrian or car activity is detected, and a brighter level when it is. Not only would this save energy, and look very cool when a car drives down a deserted street as lights brighten in advance of it, but it could enhance security as late night prowlers would have attention attracted to them by neighbors and police.

<comment><USER4> Most of the lights near my towns exit ramp work off of light sensors (dusk to dawn style). There are a couple where the sensor is either too sensitive or angled incorrectly (so it picks up vehicle headlights). As your car approaches, the light turns off. It's rather disconcerting when it happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> An interesting con to this LED lighting movement is that I have heard from a few CDOT engineers that the new LED lights do not put out enough heat to melt through snow that accumulates during storms and this has caused issues for traffic lighting. This is all second hand, of course.

<comment><USER6> Heat coils are very simple, as are thermostats. They could be added very easily to run when it's cold enough out that it would be helpful.

<comment><USER5> And try to get a contractor to put them in out of the goodness of their heart or go through a rigorous study to prove equal compliance with federal and state regulations? Surely you jest.

<comment><USER6> They could be built as a part of the light, since we're changing all of that out anyway. _Really_ not that hard.

Also, contractors shouldn't be studying compliance for new things. And you would pay them as you're installing the new lights. So not out of the "goodness of their heart" either. In fact, I have no idea what you're trying to get at here.

<comment><USER5> Most items installed on a transportation project must meet the standard specifications for the state which generally incorporates federal requirements as needed. Anything installed must be "per spec" and manufacturers or contractors installed items that are not per spec can be grounds for a refusal of payment or refusal of acceptance.

Specifications compliance is solely the responsibility of the contractor (who generally passes it on to the manufacturer).

In order to install your lighting the contractor would have to prove specification compliance, include the additional cost of the lights, and still win the low-bid process that almost all state and federal transportation projects are subject to. Alternatively, the contractor could win the project without the new lights and then come back with a value-added change order and these are not uncommon in my experience.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's a good idea, it just isn't feasible in the field in my opinion.

<comment><USER7> So we'll never have any new lights?

<comment><USER8> Nope. No new technology of any sort is allowed in government ever. No smartphones or tablets, because they don't meet the specifications for a computer. No electric vehicles because they don't meet the existing specification for automobiles that run on gas or diesel. Internet will never meet the specifications for a telephone system being installed into a government office...obviously that'll never fly.

Give up on anything new. Right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My neighborhood in Los Angeles recently switched over to LED. I am happy that they are trying to save money/energy, but having a bright white light outside my window has been quite obnoxious. The older lights were dimmer with a more natural light color.

<comment><USER10> Contemporary LED lighting does seem much harsher with very sharp shadows and much less pleasant to the eye than older lights. I believe that lighting need to be assessed on it's overall merits, not just based on brightness / cost ratio.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. I am sure that they could tint/screen/soften the light to help make them less intrusive. I would even be happy if they dimmed the lights. It doesn't have to so bright for people to get around the streets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They have been installing LED street lights in the UK for a while now. The LED supplier approaches a council, the council agrees to pay the supplier the difference between their normal and new lighting bill for X years. The supplier gives them the relatively expensive LED lamps (which talk to each other wirelessly) and management system. The council installs them. Supplier makes money from the price difference.

<comment><USER12> And they're horrible. They just put them in down my road and it's like prison searchlights compared to the old lighting.

To add insult to injury they put CCTV cameras on every alternate lamp as well.

<comment><USER13> And they're fine. They've just installed them in my area in East London.

The only disadvantage I've spotted is that, with the old Sodium vapour lamps, it was easier to spot when a car was coming around a bend since the headlight colour was significantly different to the ambient streetlighting. I'll adapt.

<comment><USER12> Good point.

Perhaps they put good ones in your area. I live in a cheap borough.

These ones are so bright and not diffused at all. It makes silhouettes of everything through my windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I never realized the scale of energy consumption by streetlights, though when I give it some thought, it's not all that surprising. I wonder if there would be the possibility of using these lights to only illuminate the road and say 1-2m to each side, avoiding light pollution for people living near streetlights. As it stands currently, the nearby streetlights keep my room lit at night.

</comment><comment><USER15> This doesn't make any sense.

A high pressure sodium vapor lamp has an efficiency of around 150 lm/W. An LED has an efficiency of under 100 lm/W.

Where is the energy savings? If anything an LED uses more energy, not less.

<comment><USER16> > A high pressure sodium vapor lamp has an efficiency of around 150 lm/W

Source?

Allegedly, Cree has developed a white LED with up to 254 lm/W. [1]

[1] Cree Sets New Record for White LED Efficiency [http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20120423/214494...](http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20120423/214494/)

<comment><USER15> > Source?

It's poor form to ask for a source of something that would take you 15 seconds to google.

> Allegedly, Cree has developed a white LED with up to 254 lm/W

Interesting considering that the theoretical maximum is 251 lm/W - so I wonder which law of physics they violated to do that. (Most likely it's not actually white, but reddish.)

And this time I will give you a source since this is a tiny bit harder to google [http://physics.ucsd.edu/~tmurphy/papers/lumens-per- watt.pdf](http://physics.ucsd.edu/~tmurphy/papers/lumens-per-watt.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is how you add redundant non-information to a sentence: "semiconductor- based, solid-state LED lighting".

Someone who doesn't know what a LED is surely won't understand that "clarification". Marketing mindset!

<comment><USER18> Someone who doesn't know much about LEDs might come away thinking that these are extra special LEDs, much better than the normal LEDs they're used to, without the marketing team having to say anything that can possibly be challenged. Marketing mindset!

(Se also the Mad Men episode where they come up with the new slogan for Lucky Strike cigarettes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Apparently the predicted cost benefit of doing this in Manchester (UK) will take 17 years to recoup[1]. If that's representative it doesn't seem hugely compelling for municipalities to switch at current energy prices. In the UK at least.

However I can see that it might well be disruptive for utility companies if those municipalities should decide to switch anyway(as per the article).

[1] [http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater- manchest...](http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester- news/every-street-light-manchester-could-6290787)

</comment><comment><USER20> > and the fact that bugs are not attracted to LED lights as they are to the > ultraviolet light cast from conventional street lights

Why is this listed as a benefit? A bug that is at the streetlight is a bug that is not at my house. Is there some problem with bugs congregating at streetlight that I'm selfishly ignorant of?

<comment><USER21> What's with the anti-nature attitude? Bugs perform tons of ecosystem services like pollination, food, decomposition, eating pests, fertilization, etc. A complete food web is dynamically stable, preventing infestations. This is why monoculture agriculture necessitates pesticides/herbicides/fungicides, btw.

Insects could live without us. We couldn't live without the insects. My interest is entirely selfish. ;)

Of course, this is getting into much bigger issues than just streetlights...

 _Further reading:_ [http://lighting.com/light-pollution- wildlife/](http://lighting.com/light-pollution-wildlife/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The Lion's Gate Bridge, which I believe is the busiest bridge in Vancouver, BC, relatively recently upgraded their lighting to LED. It reduced power consumption by 90%, and saves the city $30,000/yr in energy and maintenance.

In addition to the power savings, the old bulbs lasted an average of 72 hours between replacements, while the new ones have an estimated lifetime of 12 years, and replacing them is the 'hidden' cost that a lot of people wouldn't normally consider (and replacing bulbs mounted on a bridge is even worse than replacing street lights).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions_Gate_Bridge#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions_Gate_Bridge#History)

<comment><USER23> You've accurately quoted the cited article, but that "72 hours" in the article is itself uncited and has to be in error. Normal mercury bulbs are good for 10,000+ hours, and 100W is well within normal. Maybe it was supposed to be 72 months? If you are strong enough to wade into Wikipedia politics, the edit came in here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lions_Gate_Bridge&...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lions_Gate_Bridge&diff=prev&oldid=305961034)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Won't the blue in the spectrum from these disrupt people's sleep even further? [http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Health_Let...](http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Health_Letter/2012/May/blue- light-has-a-dark-side/)

<comment><USER25> If you're sleeping under the streetlights, you have bigger problems.

<comment><USER24> It doesn't seem to take much exposure to damage your sleep. A friend reported that the fluorescents in the subways made a real difference.

Our society is still really stupid about sleep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Our town just voted to buy our street lights back from the utility. It's projected to save us millions even before we upgrade them to LEDs. It's notable that the utility is forced to offer to sell them back by a state law, otherwise they would have no interest in it.

</comment><comment><USER27> The statement that Christchurch, New Zealand is leveraging 12 percent of the $30 billion reconstruction fund for this type of project is wildly inaccurate. The article referenced only discusses a potential $5m project.

</comment><comment><USER28> loosely related: charging electronic cars from street lights

[http://www.htwk-leipzig.de/typo3temp/pics/5e8c7a9140.jpg](http://www.htwk- leipzig.de/typo3temp/pics/5e8c7a9140.jpg)

[http://www.elektromobilitaet- verbindet.de/projekte/laternenp...](http://www.elektromobilitaet- verbindet.de/projekte/laternenparken-ladeinfrastruktur.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> Here's my plan: use street lighting for a wireless mesh and stick camera's in each one so the NSA can keep us all safe.

<comment><USER30> csmuk's comment says they do just that in the UK (consider this comment as a GOTO statement)

<comment><USER11> More info here for those with an interest: [http://www.leafnut.com](http://www.leafnut.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I call BS on this:

"But in most cities around the country, the local electric distribution company provides overhead street lighting as a basic service at a flat monthly rate per light, which includes the light itself, maintenance, and electricity. Therein lies the rub—regulated utilities often have little incentive to invest in more efficient streetlights, which offer a reliable, consistent, and often lucrative revenue stream that comes at a time of day (or night) when demand is low."

If their getting a fixed rate, LED's would be quite profitable for them due to lower servicing costs, and lower power consumption - meaning for that fixed rate, they take in more income.

Beyond that, in many cities - running and maintaining the streetlights is included in the franchise rights to sell power in a given city - meaning to sell power, the power company had to install and pays for the lights.

<comment><USER32> It's also a statement only applicable to the USA.

In the UK the Roads Service ( NI ) or Highways Agency are responsible for the emplacement and maintenance of lighting. So they'd be quite grateful for any power saving, as the electricity distributors charge them for actual usage.

Another solution would be to eliminate most street lighting, but that's a rather touchy subject.

<comment><USER13> I think that's only on trunk roads isn;t it? The local authority has the responsibility in towns.</comment></comment></comment>


Levodopa enhances explicit new-word learning in healthy adults - <AUTHOR> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25900350 <comment><USER2> I was taking Mucuna (a natural source of levodopa) until I found out that it increases melanin production, which totally makes sense when you think about it, but it's not recommended if you're at risk of melanoma. If you don't, then L-DOPA works great in preventing myopia as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Levodopa" sounds like a Harry Potter spell. The abstract says "the role of dopamine in modulating executive function, working memory and associative learning has been established", I wonder if there are side effects to mucking with your brain chemistry in this way.

<comment><USER4> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-DOPA#Side_effects](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-DOPA#Side_effects) : The side effects of L-DOPA may include:

      ...
      Disorientation and confusion
      Extreme emotional states, particularly anxiety, but also  excessive libido
      Vivid dreams or insomnia
      Auditory or visual hallucinations
      ...
      Somnolence and narcolepsy
      A condition similar to stimulant psychosis
      ...
      Freezing during movement
      Dose failure (drug resistance)
      Dyskinesia at peak dose (levodopa-induced dyskinesia)
      ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For the curious, they're referring to L-dopa.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-DOPA](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-DOPA)</comment>


VLC media player has been downloaded 3 billion times - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2019/01/10/vlc-passes-3-billion-downloads-will-get-airplay-support-and-improved-vr-features-soon/ <comment><USER2> I have a huge amount of respect for them, for having refused the very substantial (7-8 figures) amount of money they got offered to bundle crapware/spyware with it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15372048](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15372048)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been loving the iOS VLC player.

I have no qualms with the app, but the network tabs leads me to believe it has lots of features I never utilise, primarily because I'm not sure how.

Primarily I'm talking about the streams and downloads features.

Obviously, it's a media player. I don't expect it to provide the links for these features, but my big question is always, what's 3rd party sites or apps do provide vlc compatible stream/download links.

Are there sites / apps for this? If not, it seems like a huge opportunity for iOS considering how locked down those kinds of download / stream features seems to be in general.

</comment><comment><USER4> And they stood up for all those users when scummy people came around to buy access to those computers!

</comment><comment><USER5> Their MobileVLCKit is a huge help on our projects too.

</comment><comment><USER6> a complicated program, its far more than a media player! to say its a media player is to say a diamond is a shiny thing with no other use. thanx for the post and support.

<comment><USER7> Do you mind elaborating on what else it can do apart from being a media player?

Just for someone who uses the software daily, I'd like to know more!

<comment><USER6> VLC is a transcoder and will convert from one format to another, or from one stream container to another. VLC will capture and record a stream as well as restream. VLC will record whatever media or stream is being played. VLC has web interfaces to remotely access and controll the [VLC] application.

[http://www.videolan.org/](http://www.videolan.org/)

[http://www.videolan.org/support/faq.html](http://www.videolan.org/support/faq.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Additional FISA Documents Declassified - <AUTHOR> http://www.odni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/191-press-releases-2013/964-dni-clapper-declassifies-additional-intelligence-community-documents-regarding-collection-under-section-501-of-the-foreign-intelligence-surveillance-act-nov <comment><USER2>
      The information released today includes a number
      of internal NSA documents, training slides and
      internal guidance, which demonstrate the care
      with which NSA's foreign intelligence collection
      pursuant to Section 501 is run, managed, and overseen.

In other words, this selective declassification is not about being transparent and open. It's propaganda designed to take some of the flak off the administration. Not that there's anything inherently wrong or surprising about that since it's the kind of thing we've come to expect from our politicians. It's just that if I knew how different the Obama administration's actions would be from what 2008 candidate Obama's rhetoric led my 20-year-old self to believe, I wouldn't have donated money to him.

<comment><USER3> > It's just that if I knew how different the Obama administration's actions > would be from what 2008 candidate Obama's rhetoric led my 20-year-old self > to believe, I wouldn't have donated money to him.

If enough people felt this way, things could be a lot better. I can forgive someone who believed the rhetoric the first time, even though a lot of us didn't. It's a lesson we all have to learn, and if the lesson is learned, the mistakes aren't so bad.

Unfortunately, a majority of voters didn't think this was enough to prevent them from re-electing him in 2012, nor I fear, from electing another person just like him in 2016.

<comment><USER4> It's not like the other realistic choice in 2012 would have been any better about this stuff.

The root of the problem is that the majority of voters _like_ this stuff. Americans are, by and large, terrified of terrorists (imagine that) and want their government doing everything imaginable to stop it. Never mind that terrorism is less dangerous than e. coli or sharks, it's an important issue to a lot of people. That is what we need to change, not a few politicians. Convince the public, and the rest will follow. Not that I have any clue how to even start.

<comment><USER5> _Not that I have any clue how to even start._

Start with Hollywood. Perceptions can be changed through entertainment. It has worked well to promote equal rights. Bit by bit, entertainment can acclimate us to new ideas.

White House Down is an interesting example of a starting point:

      [spoiler alert]

Instead of the terrorists coming from the Middle East, they come from the military industrial complex and secret service.

<comment><USER6> Because Hollywood's never had military contractors as bad guys before...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love how key definitions of terms are redacted for purposes of national security. For instance, the definition of the term "associated" is redacted in the training guides for establishing an RAS (reasonable articulable suspicion) used to justify targeting of communication metadata.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, it's things like that make you wonder how much is redacted to preserve some director's ass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Don't forget why these documents are being declassified. We have the EFF to thank.

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/victory-government- rel...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/victory-government-release-more- nsa-documents-and-fisa-court-opinions-response-eff)

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://icontherecord.tumblr.com/](http://icontherecord.tumblr.com/) Really?

I didn't realize that our intelligence services were using Tumblr as an official communications channel now.

<comment><USER11> > _Created at the direction of the President of the United States, IC ON THE > RECORD provides immediate, ongoing and direct access to factual information > related to the lawful foreign surveillance activities carried out by the > U.S. Intelligence Community._

from the about us column. You could probably credit Obama's social media team, or maybe the man himself. Interesting.

<comment><USER12> If you haven't noticed, Obama is big on taking advice from those around him. The people who surround him are mostly young and new age. So tumblr is the way to go.

Obama himself is a speaker, a talker, a rephraser. And a very articulate one. His intelligence (or lack thereof) has never truly been revealed because he never does the thinking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "The information could be used only for counterterrorism purposes." Am i understanding correctly that all instances where parrallel reconstruction was employed were in fact terrorist cases?

<comment><USER14> Terrorism is anything the government doesn't like.

In all seriousness, how would we realistically ever find out which criminal cases were hinged upon parallel construction of evidence? The whole point is to conceal from judges and prosecutors (not to mention defendants) the true nature of the evidence-gathering techniques used. This completely flies in the face of due process of law, and I doubt anyone in government would willing own up to specific examples.

<comment><USER15> This is true. There were a few anti-nuke protestors arrested about a year ago. A catholic nun and some other folks committed to pacifism.

They were able to breach the security perimeter of a nuclear facility and erect some home-made banners promoting pacifism. What happened to the contractor that was supposed to be securing the site? Nothing.

[https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/15-7](https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/15-7)

They're being charged as terrorists under the full power of the law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some of the comments in the pdf files are kind of funny. [http://www.odni.gov/files/documents/1118/CLEANEDOVSC1205_L6A...](http://www.odni.gov/files/documents/1118/CLEANEDOVSC1205_L6A_storyboard_v18_Final- Sealed.pdf)

Comment [a1]: Graphic of 2 terrorists sending email to each other, show email indicating threat and containing a number without country code</comment>


The first firefox extension you should install - without Question. - <AUTHOR> http://www.wedocreative.com/blog/2008/06/applications/tab-groups/

<comment><USER2> Now that I can bookmark a whole set of open tabs and store them in a folder, I no longer use the Tab Groups extension.</comment>


I'm giving away 2 tickets to meet President Obama - <AUTHOR> http://www.ratifyapp.com/contest Hi guys. Long-time engineer here, first-time businessman. I really hope you enjoy what my new startup is trying to accomplish, which is to better connect citizens to politicians.
We haven't officially launched yet, but we're kicking things off with a fun contest. (My apologies if you're not a fan of "stealth" startup marketing promotions.)
You can read more about it, if you care to, on my personal site here: http://www.czahor.com/meet-the-president/
Feel me to ask me questions or give me feedback at email@example.com.
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys. Long-time engineer here, first-time businessman. I really hope you enjoy what my new startup is trying to accomplish, which is to better connect citizens to politicians.

We haven't officially launched yet, but we're kicking things off with a fun contest. (My apologies if you're not a fan of "stealth" startup marketing promotions.)

You can read more about it, if you care to, on my personal site here: [http://www.czahor.com/meet-the-president/](http://www.czahor.com/meet-the- president/)

Feel me to ask me questions or give me feedback at email@example.com.

Thanks!</comment>


Slaves of the feed – This is not the realtime we've been looking for - <AUTHOR> http://000fff.org/slaves-of-the-feed-this-is-not-the-realtime-weve-been-looking-for/ <comment><USER2> Interesting thoughts. Personally, I think that we need to look more at the nature of ourselves, and less at the nature of the information. We are social creatures that have evolved to interact in a certain way.

Part of the information overload IMO, stems from the fact that it is satisfying only one aspect of our need to socialize. I think what is lacking, is the ability to go socially deeper with the information presented. If we find like minded folk, we should be able to form transient groups about this commonality, and then dissolve it or ignore it when we are concerned about something else.

The problem I have with much of the information I am fed, is that it treats me like a flat list of interests. It doesn't react to my mood, and it generally doesn't allow me to make meaningful connections.

One thing I appreciate about HN, is that the people here work to inject an intellectual social human element to the interaction. The platform might not be optimized for it, but it is more or less successful.

<comment><USER3> > We are social creatures...

Yes, but as any cognitive psychology banks his career on... we are also _information-seeking_ creatures: basing survival strategies on our ability to predict, control, and assess the degree of our control, etc.

See also the last decade's research on choice behavior, etc. The whole field of marketing psychology is based on information processing (not necessarily _rationally evaluated_ information, but interpretations of _numerous forms of infomration_ ).

<comment><USER2> > _Yes, but as any cognitive psychology banks his career on... we are also > information-seeking creatures: basing survival strategies on our ability to > predict, control, and assess the degree of our control, etc._

That is actually to my point. I think feeds satisfy the information gathering aspect of our needs quite well. However, I think in large part, these services fail to provide our need to meaningfully share and to build valuable connections based on that sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a problem I've been batting around in various forms over the last several years, most recently with my "Weekly" Ruby and JavaScript newsletters. I've had a lot of encouraging e-mails and tweets from people who've "given up" on the chase for information and who are willing to trust me to curate the 10-20 most interesting stories in their niche. Long may this trend continue ;-)

At the thinner end of the wedge, though, are those information addicts. I worked on an auto-tagging system for developer content (live at <http://coder.io/>) for some time. It's turned out not to be as good as I had hoped (but at least I know why) but I'm not convinced that even developers are.. and I'm picking my words with trepidation here.. _sophisticated_ enough to put together queries, filters or even collections of topics _in the main._

Solely my opinion, though, but through these projects (and others) I'm finding folks prefer branded, curated digests of knowledge rather than filterable, 'queryable' firehoses. Either that, or I'm just better at providing the former ;-)

<comment><USER5> > I'm not convinced that even developers are.. and I'm picking my words with > trepidation here.. sophisticated enough to put together queries, filters or > even collections of topics in the main.

I'm not convinced it's worth _anyone's_ time to do so.

1\. Master the wonky interface of some search engine.

2\. Be disappointed by results of aforementioned wonky search engine.

3\. Instead find results through rapid iteration of search terms.

I've worked on an in house search engine for the last year. User have been conditioned by google to just keep trying search terms till you find what you want. No interface (that I've seen) can beat the rapid iteration of search terms with fast response times.

A good reference: Information Architecture for the World Wide Web <http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565922822>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Previous posting w/ 31 comments: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=996340>

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm curious, what information online is so important that you need immediate updates?

I can think of a few case like stock prices etc. But your social info?

What are you following that closely? Also how do you get any real word done if you are constantly drinking from the dirty water fire hose that is social media?

<comment><USER7> Actually my point with the essay was a little bit different.

If we are to have real time it need to inform us without being required to actively read it.

Mind you that you are constantly bombarded with real time information through your senses. You could call that a real time feed but instead of experiencing it as individual feed items, they come together and form a larger picture.

<comment><USER5> I wasn't trying to criticize you article, per se.

My comment was more in the philosophical sense of disconnecting from the constant stream of interference that is the media (social and otherwise).

If you can manage to filter this info to mine the "valuable" stuff, you'll have an idea for a great company.

<comment><USER7> Oh didn't take it as critique. And I agree. The one who solves this might have an interesting company going for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a solution to the described problems that has been around for several centuries, but vent out of vogue with the emergence of modern online media. Any good magazine is an example of this solution. A good magazine works because it collects information related to a certain subject of interest and has quality control. This can be done online too. Moreover, it is easier and cheaper to do this online. Unfortunately, this simply isn't being done very often.

</comment><comment><USER9> and the HN addiction is not making it easy

<comment><AUTHOR> At least HN is not real-time!... (in the strictest meaning of the word...)</comment></comment>


Bandit based Monte-Carlo planning [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~afern/classes/cs533/notes/uct.pdf <comment><USER2> UCT is a very simple idea that works surprisingly well across very diverse domains. Can't emphasize its generality enough, you can throw different problems at it and it can give you decent (may not be the best) result without using any additional domain knowledge.

It is also very easy to work with, you can easily tweak the algorithm and add heuristics for your specific domains.

Also relevant:

UCT applied to partially observable game (Poc-man) [http://papers.nips.cc/paper/4031-monte-carlo-planning-in- lar...](http://papers.nips.cc/paper/4031-monte-carlo-planning-in-large- pomdps.pdf)

Another approach for Monte-Carlo planning [http://papers.nips.cc/paper/5189-despot-online-pomdp- plannin...](http://papers.nips.cc/paper/5189-despot-online-pomdp-planning- with-regularization.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I've coded and tested sparse lookahead in a trading algorithm before using a comprehensive example as a guide. Do you know of any comprehensive walkthrough examples implementing a UCT scenario that I can use to implement and verify my results?

<comment><USER2> This tutorial seems quite good. Covers the basic and various useful UCT extension: [https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~mmueller/courses/2014-AAAI-g...](https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~mmueller/courses/2014-AAAI- games-tutorial/slides/AAAI-14-Tutorial-Games-5-MCTS.pdf)

However, the tutorial doesn't work towards a working implementation. I think you can verify your results against benchmark problems. There are a number of good implementations around:

UCT implementation with many MDP benchmark problems: [https://github.com/bonetblai/mdp-engine](https://github.com/bonetblai/mdp- engine)

My favorite implementation. The code is quite easy to read: [http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/D.Silver/web/Applications_fil...](http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/D.Silver/web/Applications_files/pomcp-1.0.tar.gz)

<comment><USER3> Thank you. I like to verify as much as I like to implement :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


James Gosling on Apple, Apache, Google, Oracle and the Future of Java (video) - <AUTHOR> http://marakana.com/forums/java/general/205.html

<comment><USER2> Bad submit timing by me again. :)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1960425> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1960422>

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm disappointed, he didn't mention the kitchen sink too.</comment>


Your international web app gets ethnicity wrong - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cubeofm.com/your-international-web-app-gets-ethnicity-wro

<comment><USER3> I was following along when I came to the German list.

I highly doubt that any German would describe the ethnicities in German society along that list, but still there was some truth in it (mention of Turkish and Balkanic immigration.)

Then I came upon the French list, and I spilled tea on my keyboard ! (I'm French.)

The CIA list apparently describes historical successive waves of immigration, which is definitely not how people in the French society would describe their ethnicity/identity. (And it's probably wrong in the same way for almost all other societies.)

This doesn't even take into account the fact that the French political culture actively discourages thinking one's identity in terms of ethnicity, and that many French people (of all ethnicities) would find any mention of ethnicity distasteful.

Particularly laughable in the French case is the "Celtic and Latin with Teutonic" label.

The lesson is simple : when localising, get local help. Ideally from several people, all of whom should both know their own society well, but also have extensive foreign experience (it helps because everyone has blind spots regarding his own society)

<comment><USER4> The list is sort of accurate for Germany, and the point still carries.

In Germany, the notion of ethnicity typically gets munged into nationality even when it really means ethnicity. Specifically, "Ausländer" (literally, "foreigner") is typically applied to someone not ethnically north-west European, even if born in Germany, though not typically to someone like myself (an American of north-west European stock). A Russian, or Pole, however, which to American eyes would just appear to be another flavor of pasty white, will often be noted as a separate group.

Part of that is codified in German nationality law which is still based in _jus sanguinis_ , based on "blood", in contrast with _jus soil_ which is for example used in the US, UK and France. For example, someone with Turkish parents born in Germany must still be naturalized to become a German citizen.

What I noticed when first moving to Germany was that the concept of ethnicity independent of nationality scarcely exists, throwing yet another curve-ball into a site which is collecting such data.

By and large, as another commenter noted, Germany is fairly homogenous, however in cities things do get mixed up quite a bit. Specifically in my part of Berlin (Kreuzberg) there's a _lot_ of variance. (Probably the the neighborhood in Germany with the lowest percentage of ethnic Germans.)

<comment><USER4> I decided to look this up and it appears that the law changed in 2000. Someone born in Germany with a parent that is a permanent resident and has lived in Germany for more than 8 years _does_ have automatic German citizenship:

[http://www.bundesregierung.de/Webs/Breg/DE/Bundesregierung/B...](http://www.bundesregierung.de/Webs/Breg/DE/Bundesregierung/BeauftragtefuerIntegration/Einbuergerung/Geburtsortsprinzip/geburtsortsprinzip.html) (in German)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Point of note: "Asian" in the US seems to mean "China, Indochina, Japan". In the UK it typically means "Indian subcontinent" (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh). (And black folks in the UK are _not_ "African-American" -- they're more likely to be Anglo-Jamaican, but can also be, well, African. For values of "Africa is a continent the size of both the Americas, with a population of around a billion people, so you need to be more specific.")

Even where the same labels exist, they may be applied to something completely different. And the meaning attached to such labels may differ significantly (something that's insulting or derogatory in one culture may be descriptive in another).

<comment><USER6> That's stung me a few times, actually - when American friends of mine talk about their interest in Asian cinema, there's still a slight mental delay before I realise that they don't mean Bollywood.

Also, when I was at university, a black friend of mine went to study for a semester in the USA and he found the amount of times that he was referred to as 'African American' absolutely hilarious. He was born and raised in London and his parents are Caribbean - making him, as you say, neither of those things.

<comment><USER7> So his parents _are_ "African-American" after all. ;-)

<comment><USER8> I know a woman who self identifies as 'African-American' because she was born and raised in Tanzania.

Since she is 5'10" and blond this causes some problems.

<comment><USER9> _I know a woman who self identifies as 'African-American' because she was born and raised in Tanzania._

If she would be identified as "white" in Tanzania, as appears to be the implication of your post, she doesn't fit the United States definition of "African-American," which is a synonym for "black."

[http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college- admissions/85867...](http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college- admissions/858679-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-7-a.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Everybody_ gets ethnicity wrong. There's no such thing.

It, like many other things, is culturally determined-- but (and this is a big but) it is almost always contentious between cultures, and often within cultures.

Not only is there no good universal set of ethnic labels that will satisfy everybody, there's likely no set of local labels that will satisfy everybody in a given area.

I can't think of too many good reasons to attempt to collect "ethnicity" in a web form, but if I were going to, I'd make it a text field, and let people enter whatever the hell they want to.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure you read the post. The post makes the same points you do, but in a different way; and it answers your question as to why you would want to collect "ethnicity".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, do people simply translate their dating websites and expect to get away with it?

American ethnicity categories don't make much sense even in the US. I hear that all Brazilians are considered "hispanic" there, even though Brazilians don't speak Spanish and are a linear combination of (native) Indian, European, African black, Arab and East Asian. Well, of course official Brazilian categories don't cover all of this. They are: "white", "brown", "black", "indian", "yellow". Obama is "brown", by the way.

Apart from ethnicity, lots of things have to change when localizing a dating website. For instance, in Japan the ethnicity field is mostly irrelevant. Japanese websites simply assume everyone is Japanese. If you're doing a website for Japanese and foreigners, you would use "nationality" instead. For foreigners X foreigners, you'd probably need separate websites for each group anyway.

On the other hand, in the Japanese Yahoo dating site there are fields for "my income" and "desired partner's income". Of course, that wouldn't translate well in many parts of the world.

<comment><USER9> _American ethnicity categories don't make much sense even in the US._

Agreed. The United States Census Bureau itself says "These categories are sociopolitical constructs and should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature."

 _I hear that all Brazilians are considered "hispanic" there, even though Brazilians don't speak Spanish_

Not by the federal definitions.

[http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college- admissions/85867...](http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college- admissions/858679-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-7-a.html)

There is a college recruitment and scholarship program for Hispanic youth that includes Brazilians, but usually the "Hispanic or Latino" ethnicity term only includes people with cultural ties to Spain. See the linked thread for a link to the full definition and more FAQs about the issue of Hispanic ethnicity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I found that first list interesting, in that I couldn't fit myself into any of the categories (besides "other").

I'm not black, asian or indian. I'm not an hispanic. I'm white, but only if not comparing to a german, or a norwegian.

I guess I could fit as a "spanish" on the German list, although I'm not spanish. I'm portuguese, but I could very well be italian (which is also on the German list).

I guess ethnicity is _very_ hard to get right. Unless someone is really "dark black" or a "blonde white" it is very difficult to classify, and even then, you can't just go by on "black" and "white", you have to give more details.

That's just goes on to say that ethnicity is bogus. However, in the context described by the article, it is an important piece of information. Maybe it should just be free text.

</comment><comment><USER9> There's a really detailed FAQ about the United States categories here,

[http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college- admissions/85867...](http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college- admissions/858679-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-7-a.html)

with considerable discussion about the edge cases of the categories and the policy behind categorizing at all.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Your DATING app gets ethnicity wrong". What other apps need ethnicity?

<comment><USER14> Why do dating apps need ethnicity anyway?

<comment><USER15> Because some people have preferences for certain ethnicities, and putting yourself into a certain group means people can search for that group and find you more easily.

Yesterday there was a rant here about how people shouldn't prefer to date members of certain races, but the reality is that people do. (Next thing we know, we'll hear that it's unfair to only date people of the opposite sex. "Excluding 50% of the population is barbaric!" Only on HN...)

<comment><USER14> _Because some people have preferences for certain ethnicities ..._

I should note that my question was more of a thought exercise, somewhat rhetorical.

 _Only on HN..._

That's ironic. As intelligent forums go, HN is probably the easiest place to get bashed for arguing that diversity is useful, tolerance is a virtue, or that racial bias exists. It's a practical guarantee that some wannabe Objectivist will come out of the woodwork to claim you're being too politically correct if you believe any of those things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sounds like the best way to solve this issue would be a visual chooser? Like looking through a small grid of icons with people smiling. If you chose female previously the icons would be girls, and vice versa for male. If I click the blonde haired white dude, you know I'm a kid from southern california.

</comment><comment><USER17> Solution : Let's users add their own ethnicity or select from list of other user added ethnicities.

<comment><USER18> I think that this would result in a large number of fragmented categories that would make the searching/matching hard.

<comment><USER19> You do have to wonder why people are restricting searches to their own 'ethnicity' whatever that means, in the first place.

Why not just stick with the facts:

      * What color skin do you prefer [white / tan / bronze / dark ] etc
      * What countries of origin are you interested in
        [Africa / Jamaica / England / poland / ukraine etc etc
      * What religion

I guess I just don't really understand what race/ethnicity actually means and why it's important to anyone. I don't know/care what my own 'race'/'ethnicity' is.

<comment><USER20> > I guess I just don't really understand what race/ethnicity actually means > and why it's important to anyone. I don't know/care what my own > 'race'/'ethnicity' is.

It's fine if you don't know/care what your own ethnicity is, but to say that you don't understand why it's important to anyone strikes me as moral posturing, or an Asperger-level lack of empathy with other people. Some possible reasons why people may care about their own or their partner's ethnicity:

1) Knowing their susceptibility / children's susceptibility to genetic diseases.

2) Wanting their children to be raised in a certain culture

3) Wanting a partner with certain shared experiences/world view

<comment><USER19> Those are all good reasons. But I don't think trying to package that stuff up into a tag 'race/ethnicity' is useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As author suggests, okcupid could just remove the ethnicity category. Simplest solution is often the best. If you want people to know your ethnicity you can just put it in your profile I guess.

</comment><comment><USER22> As a Brazilian, I consider very offensive the american difference between Hispanic and White. Were iberian europeans somehow lesser than north europeans?

No matter the answer, non-hispanic whites are ignored and the term is now used to designate people from latin countries - I, myself, being the product of german and italian "whites", have been called hispanic more than once.

<comment><USER9> _I consider very offensive the american difference between Hispanic and White._

Reading the official United States federal definitions

[http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college- admissions/85867...](http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college- admissions/858679-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-7-a.html)

carefully will show that the Hispanic category is an "ethnicity" category, the only ethnicity category in the federal classification scheme, and "People who identify their origin as Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino may be of any race" by the federal definitions. (In the federal definitions, Brazilian people are not included in the Hispanic or Latino ethnicity category anyway.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The idea of ethnicity has become intrinsically associated with race - <USER2> therefore skin colour. Hence the common categories.

EDIT: added "has become" rather than "is"

<comment><AUTHOR> Mostly in the United States. In mono-racial societies, ethnicity has little to do with skin color.

<comment><USER23> ok, to clarify I meant in terms of websites/webapps.</comment></comment></comment>


Categorize tweets automatically through machine learning. Any startup? Silly? - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on a new project that helps you to categorize your tweets automatically through machine learning.
You just need to insert some keywords/hashtags, select your categories, possible ones are sentiment, identity, issue, ... You manually categorise just some of your tweets. Then, croakun will categorise the rest for you automatically through artificial intelligence. An interactive dashboard will be ready immediately for actionable insights.
Personally, I built this to train data to analyze social media insights for clients. I still don't have the user-friendly version yet.
1. Do you find or think of any alike startups or products?
2. Would you think this auto-categorise tweets application interesting and useful?
Hope to get some feedback from you guys~ Thanks!
Give it a try at croakun.com too :-) <comment><USER2> what's the point here? It doesn't seem to categorize anything. How would I pass in some text to categorize?

<comment><AUTHOR> Note: I might be not so clear with your question, but try my best ya~

You don't need to pass in text yourself. Croakun will collect the tweets based on your inserted keywords. Then, you can start "labelling" your tweets in sentiments or issues.

Machine will learn how you label the tweets and categorize your tweets in the future based on that. Does it make the point now? Feel free to ask if I didn't answer your question and so sorry about that~</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are there any blogs/publications that are focused on "search" software? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Like Lucene?</comment>


Ask HN: Place to sleep in Mountain View - <AUTHOR>

I sold all my possessions except for what fits in my backpack and I've been in the bay area for 5 or 6 days now.  I've been sleeping on friends' couches, but I worry that I may soon warm out my welcome.<p>I've seen hacker spaces, but other than that, are there any super cheap options to get a night's sleep in the area? <comment><USER2> I recommend <http://www.couchsurfing.org/>, a great way to sleep for free and meet people at the same time.

Edit: did a quick search and found at least 12 people with a couch to offer. Give it a shot, I travelled eastern europe with this, it was great.

<comment><USER3> I think they only accept people who are touring, not those who want to work and settle.

<comment><USER4> Couchsurfing doesn't really set any guidelines for this, I've had people sleep on my couch who were moving, etc. It is really up to your host so make sure you mention this in the e-mail you send them. You might want to try couch surfing but shouldn't stay at someone's for more than 2-3 days.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I've felt pretty guilty about asking friends to host me for more than a night. It gets old for them pretty fast, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Have you considered hostels? I just Googled and it looks like there are some: <http://www.google.com/search?q=mountain+view+ca+hostel>

<comment><USER6> I'm bumping up for hostelling. I did it for a few days in Portland this year. As much as I love the couchsurfing concept, if I'm in a town to do work I'd rather pay for a service to let me sleep for cheap than feel compelled to entertain a couchsurfer host.

People usually recommended a Hostelling Internatonal hostel as you can usually expect them to be pretty clean and organized, although I haven't tried a non- HI hostel yet to justify this claim.

I'm considering working remotely soon, my plan is to hostel somewhere for a week or two at my destination, then hopefully find a good place to stay at for a few months.

<comment><USER7> I've stayed in loads of hostels in the US and other countries during my travels. The HI ones are generally better in my experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's a good chance you might find something on <http://www.airbnb.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> good idea, i've found a bunch of places already. thanks :-)

<comment><USER8> I'm glad to help. Just a random tidbit of advice if it helps: do something for your host that they value so much that they won't mind you staying there. One things that comes to mind is cooking. You could easily whip up something decent enough to thank your host when they get home or wake up or whatever. For inspiration and ideas, <http://www.startcooking.com> . Besides, I'm sure you could use some good food yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good tip. mostly with friends i've been buying them beer, but i guess that's too college-y...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Have you checked Craiglist for "room for rent" ads? Maybe you could find one and negotiate a deal for the short time you'll be around. You might offer to clean the room and take a bunch of good pics of it and post a better CL add when you leave to help them find someone for a longer term.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this part of some grand plan or did you have a family/financial catastrophe? If it was part of a grand plan, I'd advise you to rethink it, consider other options.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well I have no "grand plan", but it has nothing to do with a disaster either. It was simply a decision I made. What makes you say I should consider other options?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I stayed in Palo Alto Motel 6 when I went to the Bay Area. Pretty decent price and you are right next to Mountain View (2-3 Miles). I think I paid around $50 per night.

[http://www.motel6.com/reservations/motel_detail.aspx?num=004...](http://www.motel6.com/reservations/motel_detail.aspx?num=0041&NOA=&aYr=&aMo=&aDa=&dYr=&dMo=&dDa=&CP=&TA=)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Correction: I've seen that hacker spaces frown upon hackers sleeping there at night (which is fine). Am I wrong? Or is this correct? Any experience?

<comment><USER12> With HackerDojo, it's not really allowed. You can take naps though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's a Hacker News group on AirBnB, through which I found a couple of very welcoming hosts in the San Francisco Bay Area. Check out <http://www.airbnb.com/groups/hackernews/>.

I also met a lot of really friendly people at Hacker Dojo in Mountain View: <http://hackerdojo.pbworks.com/>. I'd recommend asking them for some advice — everyone I met there was helpful and welcoming.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER14> I mean you zero ill-will, sir... but if I read this and saw you walking up my driveway I would sit quietly until I was confident you were long gone.

This post has "socially awkward dude that doesn't pick up on increasingly less-subtle hints" written all over it.

I'm sure you're a great guy, but you would be well advised to "start with why" on a post like this. What's your story? Why should people care that you need to invade their space?

<comment><AUTHOR> Please understand, I wasn't asking for folks to host me here. I was merely asking if anyone had similar experiences and if they had any advice. I'm doing fine, I'm simply trying to plan out where I'm staying.

Thanks for your feedback, though, I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you need to network, check out HackerDojo. They are at 140 S Whisman.

Hit me up when you go, I can introduce you to the regulars there.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks alot, i was going to check that out on monday probably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've listed a place on craigslist. Let me know if you are interested: <http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/sub/1791983605.html>

(myprasanna at gmail)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all your tips. I'm gonna be heading back to the city until the 17th and then I'll most likely be back down in this area.

We COULD have a big meetup...

</comment><comment><USER16> Hey there, I'm planning on moving back to the bay area soon. If you're looking for a roommate sometime soon, let me know. email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER17> Knock on Google's door.

</comment><comment><USER18> how many nights do you need?

<comment><AUTHOR> i'm here for the forseeable future. trying to get a startup off the ground with some other misc. income sources. not yet enough cash flow to afford an apartment :-)

<comment><USER19> good luck finding a good co-founder with a good enough couch!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Congrats for selling all your possessions. Since I really spend 95% of the time using 5% of my stuff, I think I should do the same.</comment>


Ask HN: What are interviewers looking for when they give you puzzles? - <AUTHOR>

I've been doing some programming interviews lately, and they've all included "typical" programming challenges. A lot of them can be done through brute force, but it's evident they are looking for the optimal solution ie. O(n).
I'm curious, do these companies want to see if you've already done a similar questions and are able to re-apply the solution? Or are they looking for you to produce a novel approach to the problem? If the latter, is it a typical expectation for a Software Engineer to be able to produce optimal solutions in short periods of time like that?
I've been spending a lot of time studying these types of interview questions, but I continue to run into puzzles I've never seen. I'm concerned that they are looking for a degree of problem solving skills that I might not have. <comment><USER2> I have concluded the main value of these tests and interview puzzles is humiliation. It's like a fraternity hazing -- if you can survive without losing your cool you get to join the club. If you've been hired after one of these nasty tech interviews you've probably sat around with your new co- workers hearing them make fun of the candidates who didn't make the grade.

If someone interviewing you has a CS degree from MIT they may want to show off to you and everyone else how much they know and how clever they are. It's possible the job requires deep computer science expertise, but most programming jobs simply don't.

A few years ago Google -- famous for their tech interviews -- revealed that they had found no correlation between the interview tests and puzzles and job performance.

My own experience (36 years) working with many, many programmers in all kinds of environments is that some are good at puzzles and enjoy them, and others aren't. It doesn't appear to have much to do with their ability to write the bread-and-butter type of code that most of us spend our careers writing. Sure, it's good (maybe essential in some contexts) to know if an algorithm is O(n) or O(n^2). I've worked on projects where recognizing a better algorithm made the code faster or cleaner. But these are edge cases for most programmers, who are mostly shuffling data from one format to another and trying to get their build system to run on their laptop.

Of course you can ask the interviewers what they expect to learn from sweating you over puzzles, or how many times they have had to move Mt. Fuji in their day-to-day work, but challenging the interview process is probably not going to help your prospects.

<comment><USER3> > A few years ago Google -- famous for their tech interviews -- revealed that > they had found no correlation between the interview tests and puzzles and > job performance.

Any articles/links on this one?

<comment><USER2> [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head- hunting-b...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-big- data-may-not-be-such-a-big-deal.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1)

"On the hiring side, we found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don't predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart."

From an interview with Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most of them do it because everybody else is doing it. Every time some poor soul gets tasked with interviewing candidates, he just fires up a google search to find good interview questions. He reads about puzzles, fizzbuzz and _" analyzing your candidate's though process"_. And with nothing else in sight, he accepts them as the golden standard.

The best part is that each and every one of these interviewers thinks they're special. Like they are somehow clever and intelligent by asking this type of questions. They don't even realize that they are using the same lazy approach everybody else is taking.

The truth is, tech interviews revolve around your interviewer. How you make HIM feel. I've seen idiots get hired because they were enthusiastic. And extremely intelligent people rejected because _" they couldn't communicate the way I like it"_.

So in an interview forget about your skills, experience and anything else related to the job. It doesn't matter. Just woo the person across the table and you will get an offer. This works most of the time for shitty companies with lazy interviewers. And that's most of them.

Personally, I found that that companies that allow this type of interviewing behavior will overwork and underpay you. Because they don't care. They just want to push things out to make a quick buck. If you want to be treated like an expert that has a brain in his skull, avoid them completely.

Instead, find the companies that trust your experience. That act like you're as good as you say. And just make a quick check to see if you know what you're talking about. They are rare and most of them are startups. But the higher pay and better work environment is completely worth it.

<comment><USER5> Yes what truly would make them stand out is if they ask about some problem they are having in their business(redundant network access, too many tests or whatever) and ask you how to solve that and in which steps

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You're right to think that's there's almost always a trick, but interviewers generally are more interested in watching your work process than in seeing if you can get it.

When a candidate is struggling or even just asks me, "is there a trick to this that I'm not seeing?," I will give them pretty big hints. They get bonus points for knowing when to ask for help and/or for being able to incorporate new information into their code quickly. I've always been offered the same courtesy when on the other side of the table.

That said, I personally don't give much weight to challenges or tests and would be surprised to hear if anyone considered them more important than relevant experience.

<comment><USER7> > * You're right to think that's there's almost always a trick, but > interviewers generally are more interested in watching your work process > than in seeing if you can get it.*

This is true, and certainly my approach to doing interviews.

I tend to ask two kinds of questions. There are easy ones, with lots of different solutions. On those I do want to see a working answer (because they are supposed to be easy), but I explicitly track how the candidate arrived at their particular answer. I get an idea how they think, and what kinds of solutions they consider, not to mention how they deal with bad approaches.

And then there are the hard ones. They usually have exactly one correct solution, but finding that is not required. Instead I focus on how the candidate approaches the problem, and how they deal with different tradeoffs. The interesting bits are generally false path eliminations, the kinds of hints they need, and quite often how they formulate the problem to themselves.

Once a candidate has shown that they pass a definite baseline requirement for proficiency, the rest is mostly about trying to see how they approach problem solving in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Okay, so there's sort of a spectrum, with true _puzzles_ (like "How many golf balls would fit inside a jumbo jet") on one side, and true work sample tests (like "Work with us to address a programming challenge typical of what we do") on the other side.

True puzzles do not provide very much useful information, as they are often based on a trick, and don't actually overlap a lot with what we do. Even algorithmic puzzles are pretty dumb.

But problem solving, O(n), and composing algorithms _is_ very important to what we do. So what I'm looking for when I ask you to write a function so solve X is:

\- Can you understand a problem and critically think about it?

\- Can you handle super-basic logic to work out a solution?

\- Do you at least vaguely understand performance concerns, i.e. can you identify whether a given input is problematic, or talk about possible ways to improve it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel like there's always a "trick" to them though. For example, find the only non repeating number in the following sequence: 1,2,3,99,3,2,1. This can be done in O(n) time and 0(1) space if you use bitwise operators. Now, you either have experience with bitwise operations, or you don't (no pun intended). If you don't, you are very unlikely to approach it from that angle and likely won't get the optimal solution.

<comment><USER8> No, I would never ask a question with a trick in mind. I am not interviewing for people who know tricks, because approximately zero percent of our business problems can be solved with tricks. I am looking for competent execution, because that's what matters day-to-day.

If I had asked a question like that, and if you can do some bitwise voodoo to solve it in O(n), great. But what I'd be looking for is, can you solve it all? Do you understand the problem statement enough to write a general sort of algorithm? If your first pass is O(n^4) and I point it out, can you understand this, and think of ways to improve? If I point out a problematic or erroneous input, can you reason about what will happen? Etc.

I think this is what we need to look for in interviews. Certainly not, can you solve this brain teaser I read in a magazine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't ask many of these anymore but even when I do and have in the past it is never to humiliate anyone. To that point I don't even care if they give the right answer, what I want someone to do is talk out how they'd figure it out.

So at least in my opinion it is about seeing how you think not whether you can solve some complex problem in 5 minutes. This is also why I have changed how I ask and what I ask. I've moved to telling people up front that I don't care if they get the right answer, I just want them to show me their thought process and how they would go about solving it. And I will also participate and provide feedback and talk through it with you like we would as team members. This way we can see how good or bad we might work together.

<comment><AUTHOR> What type of characteristics constitute a positive result, for a situation like that?

<comment><USER9> Overall, did you successfully walk me through your thought process to come to an answer (right or wrong). Did you engage me, ask me questions, challenge my assumption if you felt I was wrong etc. Did you act as a team member trying to figure out the goal or not, did you bounce ideas off people while thinking through the problem. Were you able to eliminate possibilities because you know of limitations or issues that might come up. And really most importantly, did you come up with many, most or all of the key decision points regardless if you go the "correct" answer.

So at least for me, and my team, its never about can you state that a hash table is O(1) for access but O(n) for search vs a b-tree is O(log n) for both etc. It is more about can you think through a problem well enough to give us the best solution and will you work with us to find it. e.g. puzzle questions IMO used to be a lot about self gratification to the interviewer's own ego, now we use them to see thought processes and to be interactive to see how we all work together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What are interviewers looking for>

You can tell a great deal about the interviewers sophistication, business acumen, and level of seniority by the types of questions they ask.

The puzzler question may come off amateurish. Sometimes the interviewer is simply probing for emotional intelligence and good humour. They want to know if you'll be a cultural fit and accretive to the team. Play along, it's part of the process.

Sadly, the first level of interviews are often done by low-level types, even worse...HR flunkies.

</comment><comment><USER11> Different companies have different reasons for code tests. Generally speaking, here's what you should expect they're evaluating:

\- That you're able to take ownership of a task and see it to completion

\- That you can work with the tech stack that the company uses

\- That you can actually do what you say you can do

</comment><comment><USER12> Some interviewers just want to humiliate you and exercise their power over you.

Maybe.

Personally, I do use questions like this, and I'm looking for a combination of things.

Firstly, how much reading have you done, and how many of these things have you come across before? If you know them all, that tells me you have to hand an arsenal of techniques to bring to bear on a problem, and you care enough to have done considerable outside reading and preparation. That's a good sign.

Secondly, if there's a problem you've not met before, what do you do? Do you freeze? Do you go thoughtful? Do you ask questions to clarify? Do you look to step around the problem? Are you sufficiently confident in yourself to simply get to work, or are you worried that your inability will be seen as an excuse not to hire you?

Thirdly, as you start to work on it, what's your intuition like? What techniques do you bring to bear? Do you assume there's one, right, trick answer, or do you treat this as a challenge to be played with?

Finally, how do you react to contributions from others? Do you welcome working together and relish discovering stuff, or do you want to work alone, seeing how you get on?

All of these have positive and negative aspects when weighed against a given possible job. What I'm looking for is that balance between someone who brings new skills and knowledge to the team, and the ability to work with the team, and to have enough in common to be able to communicate effectively. Some people love puzzles, some hate them. Some are great at theoretical analyses, some aren't. Some people can devise or adapt algorithms, and some can't. A good team needs a balance, and asking these sorts of questions of people is part of finding out their strengths and weaknesses, to see how they'll fit in a team.

Do you want my advice?

Work on your abilities. Be professional in your personal development in whatever area you are interested in, as well as other related areas. Read widely, work on projects, work with people, and expose yourself to technologies outside your comfort zone. When faced with puzzles and problems like these, be yourself. Ask what's expected, and work with your interviewer in a professional manner - an interview should be a dialogue. At the end of the interview ask yourself - do I want to work with these people?

If they don't hire you for who you are and what you bring to the table then you would likely not be a good fit, and would likely not enjoy your work and/or the environment. If they offer you the position, you've learned a bit about what they are like to work with, so you are in a position to decide if you want the job.

But this is not an ideal world, so you will need to decide what compromises you're willing to make.

<comment><USER13> "Arsenal of techniques" favors one style of thinker over another. Specifically, I'm talking about synthesis vs analysis - whether you approach problems by trying to build a solution out of pieces from other areas, or by breaking the overall thing into pieces and figuring out what the pieces look like.

I'm heavily in the synthesis camp, and that kind of inquiry is something that favors my style of thinking over more analysis-oriented folks. I'm not even sure how you'd go about pulling analytic strength out of people.

<comment><USER12> Either way, giving you things to think about and work on allows you to demonstrate your strengths. And whether you "approach problems by trying to build a solution out of pieces from other areas," or by "breaking the overall thing into pieces and figuring out what the pieces look like", either way, you will have techniques for doing what you're doing, and such techniques are visible when you work on a problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> They're a gimmick.

Startups in the valley are notorious for following these. It's based off the misguided assumption that it equates to a candidate's future quality, throughput and they can mold you into any stack.

The real value comes from learning algorithms when you can actually apply them. You'll real learn things when the time comes - and self-interest in your own software / task will keep you engaged enough continue optimizing speed.

If you truly were a master at o(n) this, quadratic that and shipped voluminous amounts of code - take that and apply for a quant job.</comment>


A Basic Introduction to Quantum Mechanics - <AUTHOR> http://experimentgarden.blogspot.com/2009/07/quantum-mechanics.html <comment><USER2> As soon as I saw Schrodinger's Cat I quit reading.

<comment><AUTHOR> Then you missed the best part about quantum computers. ;)

LOL

I agree that quantum mechanics, and applications like Schrodinger's Cat are strange and seemingly senseless, but I think that it is fascinating that it may be applied to computing.

<comment><USER2> I think what people usually refer to as Quantum Mechanics (i.e. Quantum Inference) will likely go the way of Maximum Entropy. Maximum Entropy originated as a physical concept and was eventually shown to have an origin in Information Theory and is now very important to fields outside physics. Applications of Quantum Inference outside of the traditional physics applications are being developed (see <http://uk.arxiv.org/abs/0810.5290> and [http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2009/03...](http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2009/03/23/rspb.2009.0121.full)).

Quantum Mechanics is not yet completely understood as an inference method so people confuse it with physics and Shrodinger's cat silliness results.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Maps shows sunken car where missing man's body was found - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49677843 <comment><USER2> [desktop link] [https://www.google.com/maps/place/Moon+Bay+Cir,+Wellington,+...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Moon+Bay+Cir,+Wellington,+email@example.com,-80.2276265,36m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x88d92598b56f512d:0x1674a1e0c3779780!8m2!3d26.6262507!4d-80.2265756)

[mobile] [https://email@example.com,-80.227623,23m/data=...](https://email@example.com,-80.227623,23m/data=!3m1!1e3)

\-- thanks to comment below for mobile link.

<comment><USER3> I still don't see it! Which part of the pond is it?

<comment><USER4> Top left. For some reason the current image on Google Maps seems to be lower resolution than the screenshot posted to the BBC.

<comment><USER5> I think different people actually get different images om Google maps..

<comment><USER6> Google has two sets of base images. I usually prefer the plain 2D images, but you can get their reconstructed/interpolated 3D view with false color by toggling the "Globe" option in Google Maps, or the "3D Buildings" option in Google Earth. At this particular location, the 3D view has higher resolution.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, enabling 3D view makes the car plain as day, even on Firefox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nevermind it being visible on google maps since 2007...

Imagine being the homeowner who had no idea a corpse was decomposing steps from his own backyard for the past 22 years... or that a car was in the pond behind your house.

People really need to get out more often.

<comment><USER8> Nobody wanders around the gator and snake infested pond behind their Florida house.

<comment><USER9> I don't know anything about Florida. Why would developers choose to build suburbs with ponds in areas like that?

<comment><USER10> imagine the smell and mosquitoes

<comment><USER11> Most ponds don't smell.

<comment><USER12> Does the water drain, evaporate, or just stagnate?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > "Amazingly, a vehicle had plainly [been] visible on a Google Earth satellite > photo of the area since 2007, but apparently no-one had noticed it until > 2019," according to the report.

This sounds like a job for machine learning. Are there any systematic efforts underway to use Google Earth to search for out-of-place objects?

<comment><USER14> And of course for that you need some training data.

[https://imgur.com/3jYKQ6r](https://imgur.com/3jYKQ6r)

<comment><USER15> Wow that was very good! Thanks for that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Last month, I noticed there was a sign not well fixed over the road. So when I arrived home, I reported it to the appropriate authorities through a web interface. And doing so, to pinpoint it for the repair guys, I noticed that the precise sign was available to be seen via street-view. I was even able using the time-travel feature to notice that it has been dangling for more than two years.

Probably running anomaly detection on all road-signs all over the world, you could prevent a certain number of accident each year.

The deeper question behind this, is what should have been done by those who have the info and didn't act ? Once you start running anomaly detection on data how do you navigate the ethical minefield that ensue.

<comment><USER7> >Once you start running anomaly detection on data how do you navigate the ethical minefield that ensue.

Where's the minefield?

Just release it all publicly, and offer municipalities private services if they want you to really have a go at their signs.

<comment><USER16> Well depending on the pricing of the API there are plenty of low revenue services that can't be run profitably.

So depending on the pricing of the API, you let accidents happen. Or even worse, depending on whether or not the municipality is rich enough to buy your services you let them happen or not (even though the poorer the city the more likely it is that they already have maintenance issues).

There are plenty other things you may notice on street-view, like dangerous/illegal behaviors, pot-holes, even finding cars in lake can have an impact of property value.

Reporting anything is probably a legal or PR risk because of the unknown ramifications so you end-up doing nothing and the accidents happens, yet no- one can hope to offer a better service because it doesn't make economical sense because of the existing service tailored to another usage of the data.

That's not an easy problem but that's one which is at the heart of all-data related business. For example, when you have access to plenty of face pictures with flash you may notice some medical issues with eyes, obviously this is a valuable information for the health insurer, and also to the user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office told the BBC that Mr Moldt is presumed to have lost control of his vehicle and driven into the pond.

>The force said that, during the initial investigation into his disappearance, there was "no evidence of that occurring" until recently, when a shift in the water made the car visible.

I'm surprised that no one saw signs of a car going off the road back when he went missing. In the image the car is quite far from the road suggesting a lot of momentum as it went into the pond.

<comment><USER18> [http://charleyproject.org/case/william-earl- moldt](http://charleyproject.org/case/william-earl-moldt) says it was under construction at the time. Maybe nobody lived there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This same story has happened before, in Michigan, when a worker putting christmas lights on a nearby tree noticed a car in a pond from their raised vantage point.

[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/car-with-body-of-man- missing-...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/car-with-body-of-man- missing-9-years-visible-on-google-maps_n_5645f5e4e4b045bf3deead62)

</comment><comment><USER20> Note that it wasn't _found_ with Google maps, it's just that you can see it.

From the article ..

> *it was a neighbour who reported the sunken car and was not aware of reports > that Google Maps had been used."

<comment><USER21> >[Police spokeswoman] Barbera said it was a neighbour[sic] who reported the sunken car and was not aware of reports that Google Maps had been used.

<comment><USER22> sic? it's spelled neighbour in British English

Yeah, I know you are just baiting me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder how hard it would be to scan ingested maps for interesting submerged structures, and also roughly how many cars would turn up if it's feasible. I'd guess... O(100)?

<comment><USER24> Interesting thought but uneducated guess.

I bet IR scans could help, similar to how they are discovering ancient cities buried deep in the jungle.

<comment><USER25> Space-based radar is also available which provides views of metal content as an intelligence product. Brighter parts of the image = more metal. I'm not sure if it's commercially available but it would sure help to find cars in shallow water...

<comment><USER26> There is a lot of other metal in shallow water though. Just think about rubbish, buoys, marker posts for utilities, boats, sewer outfalls, gratings etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've found and reported obviously problematic submerged items on Google Maps on a few occasions. No one is interested. Now I just share them with my friends.

<comment><USER28> you should post them on a blog or make a subreddit or something. This comment section would seem to indicate people love looking at weird stuff on Google Maps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> also visible in Apple Maps. Definitely in 3D, but only just in 2D. I.e. in 2D at maximum zoom there is a light spot where the car was. 3D lets you zoom in closer, and you can see the rear end of a car even more clearly than the picture in the article.

3D: [https://www.ianitor.com/img/3dcar.png](https://www.ianitor.com/img/3dcar.png) 2D: [https://www.ianitor.com/img/2dcar.png](https://www.ianitor.com/img/2dcar.png)

<comment><USER21> If you go to [https://www.historicaerials.com/viewer](https://www.historicaerials.com/viewer) [1] their resolution isn't great (can't see the car), but you can see that in 1999 (~2 years after his disappearance) they were still building houses there... ~2 years before (1995) that area was orchards or farmland.

[1]I used 3789 Moon Bay Cir Wellington, FL 33414 United States

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder how many other cases like this can be solved with an image recognition based AI scraping the rest of Google Maps out there.. anyone on here interested in collab on that?

<comment><USER30> I suppose it would need more context than just image recognition. There may be lots of sunken cars with no bodies or no unsolved case.

<comment><USER29> You could just send an automated email to the local police departments based off of sunken car ZIP code from long/lat data. And let them decide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if they could could programmatically scan all bodies of water for submerged vehicles

<comment><USER32> Captcha of the future: Which of these photos contains the answer to an unsolved mystery?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Let alone Cthulhu is on a pond [https://i.imgur.com/CbgqpkF.png](https://i.imgur.com/CbgqpkF.png)

</comment><comment><USER34> OT, but looking at this neighbourhood, it's not surprising that there's trouble when a hurricane comes.

</comment><comment><USER35> I thought the whole idea of Pokémon go was for people to go check map oddities like that?

</comment><comment><USER36> This is unbelievable.

</comment><comment><USER37> So if a _whole car_ can stay hidden for 22 years, that tells me that in those 22 years, nobody swam or fished nearby. The aerial photo makes it obvious the whole subdivision is intercut with ponds that are obviously man-made, and they look stagnant, nasty & sad. Probably also full of pesticide & herbicide runoff(t). Everybody in the subdivision probably tells their kids to stay out of the ponds. "That's what the pool is for honey! Ponds are for poor people!" I wish Kate Wagner (mcmansionhell.com) was here.

<comment><USER2> It's Florida though. It's more of a swamp than a pond.

Very likely it does not have fish, but might have snakes and the occasional alligator.

<comment><USER38> I'm very curious why anyone would want a mosquito invested swamp/pond in their back yard. I guess it must be a Florida thing.

<comment><USER39> Flood control.

[https://www.waterfrontcleanup.com/blog/why-storm-water- reten...](https://www.waterfrontcleanup.com/blog/why-storm-water-retention- ponds-are-so-important-in-florida.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Now if only it could start giving me directions without having to click on 7 different buttons.

<comment><USER41> Did this in 3 clicks without assistant or home saved.</comment></comment>


The Top Attributes of a Great Programmer - <AUTHOR> http://programmingmatters.com/the-top-10-attributes-of-a-great-programmer/

<comment><USER2> I think that point #3 should be higher on the list, perhaps it should even be first. It is the hallmark of a professional software engineer that s/he can sit down and quickly be productive in the environment of a legacy code base.

<comment><USER3> Yes, reading code is important, but there's no such thing as being "quickly" productive on a new code base. Anyone who makes changes quickly is probably being careless.

Some, and perhaps most, legacy code bases belong in a top 10 on TheDailyWTF. The last thing you want is for someone to start tinkering with a fragile code base and breaking things that seemed unrelated. A code base of any significant size could take weeks to understand properly, and _very few changes should be made until it is understood properly_. Managers of new engineers need to be cognizant of this lead time.

When working with a new code base, the only thing that's "productive" is spending the first month just studying code, asking questions of colleagues, writing tests and documentation, and making sure that the effects of various potential changes are fully understood. Any time spent on new features at this stage is just expanding the bloat and adding risk to the project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Number one on any of these lists should be empathy for users. If you don't care about and understand those using your code, you will never be great, only good.</comment>


XNA + Farseer Physics + MT = WIN [video] - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/4067922 <comment><USER2> I would encourage anyone who thinks this was cool to check out the physics libraries available nowadays. For example with the free library Box2D you can do stuff like this and more in a matter of hours. It works in Flash too, so if you can think of something cool to do in a web app with physics, it is not difficult at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool. I've actually been playing with Farser Physics and XNA the past few weeks and you can get something up and running very quickly.

The samples and code itself of Farseer is very well done, and pretty well documented.

</comment><comment><USER4> Cool.

One problem I have with the video: the guy mumbles and have what is quite possibly the most unclear voice in the universe.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here is his web site: <http://iamhigham.com/></comment>


Bashstrap – For your OS X terminal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/barryclark/bashstrap <comment><USER2> I remember spending so many happy hours customizing bash back in my early years with unix. Now I'm older and wiser, and I just use fish.

[http://fishshell.com](http://fishshell.com)

I think that it should be especially appreciated by those who use OSX for its "it just works" approach. A couple of pro tips:

* Instead of running chsh to change your default login shell just change the shell command for Terminal.app it iTerm. This means that scripts in cron etc will still run under bash and you won't break anything accidentally.

* Just like with zsh if you want to get customized there is something called oh-my-fish that helps a bit, but seriously you're 90% there with the defaults.

<comment><USER3> Clicked on comments to say the same. When I discovered fish, I felt like "where have I been". But there's one downside though: I got used (used as in muscle reflexes) to things like ls -l `where something` and they do not work anymore, fish is not backwards compatible with bash.

<comment> tsetse-fly What's wrong with "ls -l (which cmd)"?

<comment><USER3> Nothing wrong, but just a lack of muscle reflex. I've been using bash for what, almost 20 years?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Calling this "Bootstrap for Bash" is pretty disingenuous, all I can see are a bunch of configuration files that are very basic and hard-coded to your own usage.

</comment><comment><USER5>
      It cuts out the fluff

To me it looks like the exact opposite.

<comment><USER6> I had the same feeling. I already know my username, and if there's a directory name before my prompt the "in" is implicit.

<comment><USER7> Do you know your username when you are using connected to a tmux over ssh that may or may not have another, very similar, server running inside of a screen?

<comment><USER8> Which is why you setup your shell (bash/zsh/fish) to check for the existence of $SSH_CLIENT. If it exists, you can assume you're connecting via SSH and add username and hostname to $PS1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is just some fancied up bashrc.

A (much) better alternative would be to install zsh with oh-my-zsh ([https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my- zsh](https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh)).

<comment><USER10> zsh is broken and breaks X times per year. It's annoying, really. I'm tired of wasting time configuring terminals time and again because the new version of XYZ package is broken.

Anyone who does not enjoy spending huge amounts of time trouble-shooting on the terminal should use bash. It's the default in most distributions, it supports all major features a modern shell should.

<comment><USER11> Never ran into any problems with vanilla zsh on Arch, Debian, or OSX -- just pacman -Ss zsh || apt-get install zsh || brew install zsh. What kind of problems did you run into?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is quite sad, for a better alternative starter check out Paul Irish's which seems to be based on mathias's. The link is here: [https://github.com/paulirish/dotfiles](https://github.com/paulirish/dotfiles)

<comment><USER13> Indeed, looks like Bashstrap is a fork of my dotfiles (without giving any credit, sadly). A lot of the commands, file structure, and even parts of the readme are a direct copy-paste.

<comment><USER14> It contains this description:

 _Bootstrap for your terminal. A quick way to spruce up OSX terminal. It cuts out the fluff, adds in timesaving features, and provides a solid foundation for customizing your terminal style. Based on Mathias Bynens epic dotfiles -[https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles*](https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles*)

Or was that added after posting it here?

<comment><USER13> That was added after posting it here. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6951288](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6951288)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Since everyone likes mentioning oh-my-zsh I figured I would mentioned prezto

[https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto](https://github.com/sorin- ionescu/prezto)

which is a very nice alternative and much smaller.

<comment><USER16> ^This. Prezto a git workflow makes personalization easily maintainable and deployment in new environments a snap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> bash alternate to oh-my-sh : [https://github.com/revans/bash- it](https://github.com/revans/bash-it). [https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles](https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles) has a pretty good collection of dotfiles repos mentioned in its readme.md. There are few more at [http://dotfiles.github.io/](http://dotfiles.github.io/)

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles](https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles) is fantastic, I refer to that a lot.

<comment><USER13> Actually, it looks like Bashstrap is a fork of [https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles](https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles). A lot of the commands, file structure, and even parts of the readme are a direct copy-paste…

<comment><AUTHOR> I just added credit into the repo description. Thanks Mathias!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm a zsh-er and use oh-my-zsh, but I borrowed the syntax highlighting, called it `sat` short for "source cat", and piped through less for paginated output:

      # before use: [sudo] easy_install pygments
      alias sat='pygmentize -O style=monokai -f console256 -g | less'

I like these kinds of projects, because someone always shows me something in my set up I don't have, and it's really trivial to borrow from them.

In return, I feel everyone should have a proper git log alias, here's mine:

      alias logg="git log --graph --oneline --all --decorate --abbrev-commit"

Example output: [http://d.pr/i/B9LT](http://d.pr/i/B9LT)

<comment><USER19> Instead of that git command, I just default to running "tig": [http://blogs.atlassian.com/2013/05/git- tig/](http://blogs.atlassian.com/2013/05/git-tig/) available everywhere it counts (arch, debian, homebrew)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The one thing I always add to my profile is "export COMMAND_MODE=unix2003". This will make some commands behave as you would expect them to under Linux instead of BSD.

Don't recall seeing that in my brief scan of the dotfiles.

<comment><USER21> For the record: COMMAND_MODE=unix2003 is already default in Terminal(.app), but it should definitely be set for iTerm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The one area where I see this lacking is git autocomplete. Also personally I wouldn't use the `s .` command for Sublime... maybe you could make some of the aliases configurable rather than default?

</comment><comment><USER23> Oh My ZSH works very well for me. Love it

<comment><USER24> +1 for Oh My Zsh. Has plugins for git, sublime_text, etc, and great support.

<comment><USER25> You guys may want to check out prezto too: [https://github.com/sorin- ionescu/prezto](https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you are interested in just the prompt, checkout [https://github.com/twolfson/sexy-bash- prompt](https://github.com/twolfson/sexy-bash-prompt)

</comment><comment><USER27> I like Thoughtbot's dotfiles. [https://github.com/thoughtbot/dotfiles](https://github.com/thoughtbot/dotfiles)

</comment><comment><USER28> I have done something similar for bash, but its portable across iTerm and Terminal app. [https://github.com/gauravagarwalr/Script- BackUp/tree/master/...](https://github.com/gauravagarwalr/Script- BackUp/tree/master/OS%20X/bash_scripts)

</comment><comment><USER29> What's wrong with $EDITOR?

Why would I want a terminal command for using a GUI editor?

Why would I want a GUI editor at all?

<comment><USER30> >Why would I want a terminal command for using a GUI editor?

Because you use Sublime Text and you spend a lot of time at the CLI?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Where can I find a list of those unicode prompts?

<comment><AUTHOR> I usually pull from there tables - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_symbols](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_symbols)</comment></comment>