Show HN: Geekmarks: An Open-Source, API-Driven, Geeky Bookmarking Service - <AUTHOR> https://dmitryfrank.com/projects/geekmarks/article <comment><USER2> > Now, assume I have a generic tag programming, and a couple of more specific > tags: python and c. I definitely want my bookmarking service to be smart > enough to figure that if I tag some article with either python or c, it > means programming as well; I don't want to add the tag programming manually > every single time. So, what we need is a hierarchy of tags. Surprisingly > enough, I failed to find a service which would support that.

What about Pinboard's tag bundles?

[https://blog.pinboard.in/2012/08/every_day_i_m_bundlin/](https://blog.pinboard.in/2012/08/every_day_i_m_bundlin/)

<comment><USER3> I created tagly ( still in development though), which has tag inheritance, an api and can be used for bookmarking / courses / dms / paywalled articles / .... Support for RSS is included ( everything / per tag / per user (depending on their tags, ...))

[http://tagly.azurewebsites.net/](http://tagly.azurewebsites.net/)

Also, tags can contain functionality. Like commentsbyhackernews, loads a new ID, where you can insert the item Id of HN and it loads the comments automaticly :) - Eg. [http://tagly.azurewebsites.net/Item/Details?id=1ce34e97-e875...](http://tagly.azurewebsites.net/Item/Details?id=1ce34e97-e875-4257-903b-7e57a8d4d6d0) is this post

When adding a url, if the title hasn't been filled in, it also fetches the <title> tag of the html page

PS. Most of my items contain machine-learning, datasets, AI, ... It's also not released yet, but i'll do it here if there's enough intrest [https://github.com/NicoJuicy/Tagly/issues](https://github.com/NicoJuicy/Tagly/issues) ( currently only used as public issue tracker)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I appreciate the motive but this is just (currently) too difficult for saving things from mobile.

I have a CRUD app that I run on Heroku that paste links into. The app fetches the page, populates the title and some tags. Saved links are organised in set of hierarchical collections - works well for me.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. I currently have a nasty little Android app which hooks into the sharing menus. It allows me with one click to append a link into a file managed through dropbox. That file is in my vimwiki.

However, I do want to have tags, and I like the idea of automating it. Scraping the title seems easy, but tagging automatically? It works well?

<comment><USER6> You might enjoy this "static" bookmark presentation tool, since you mention shared file via dropbox:

[https://github.com/skx/bookmarks.public](https://github.com/skx/bookmarks.public)

I wrote it to host my own bookmarks, with tagging, and searching. As it is just a simple HTML file, and some support media, it's trivial to handle with git and allows me to keep my bookmarks up to data across browsers and hosts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This totally rocks for first version. Congratz.

I have the same concerns as you. I currently use Diigo (after failed attempt on number of others, Google Bookmarks to be the worst in my experience) but it suffers from not having hierarchical tags which I find to be major problem. It does however let your recent tags be reapplied in single click so it covers a lot of scenarios for me - instead hierarchy I prefix my tags with 'tag category'. Lets say I research if PostgreSql is good enough so I have number of URLs all start with `database postgresql more other tags`. First 2 I will have on all URLs and will change 'more other tags' part. Diigo lets me quickly click latest tags and I manually add others. Later I can quickly drill down on tags I want and limit on hierarchy. Diigo also recommend tags to make this even easier.

One other thing I find indispensable is Diigos annotations, here is an example of your article with 2 tags and 2 annotations:

[https://ibin.co/3CTiLPkv1Jtr.png](https://ibin.co/3CTiLPkv1Jtr.png)

Since it allows for sharing, I can quickly share important bits from documentation that are relevant for colleges or lets me personally remember important aspects of entire page. This is major feature for me and if geekmarks eventually supports it I would switch to it without thinking (especially as Diigo is not free, although I use free variant that doesn't limit me in most important aspects).

Other things that Diigo offers such as caching, sharing, outliners etc. I can either live without or use some scripting to allow with geekmarks. Recent update of Android client finally made it usable and it works on phone too, something that is nice but it could be easily reimplemented using your API.

Thanks for your work on this.

</comment><comment><USER8> Cool stuff. I'm building my own bookmarking service right now with a similar feature set. It supports tags, groups, search.

I've thought a lot about offering it as a service, but I've decided against it for now for a few reasons:

\- Pinboard already exists and is super cheap with a ton of features.

\- I don't actually want to scale the service to support other users.

\- I don't actually want to handle maintenance/support for other users.

\- By limiting it to only myself, I can make it work exactly like I want it to and keep the cost really low.

</comment><comment><USER9> Maybe I am too naive but add a simple search?

Wouldn't you find it useful ? At least handier than trying to remember what were the terms used in the last search for that particular argument...

<comment><USER10> Actually, all memory-aiding tools should have full-text search capability. In this case, a bookmarking tool should fetch and store text-only version of URL content to search it later. And optionally, scan it for tags.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are you doing selective import from the browser? I'd like to split out and upload some of my bookmarks, to see if I can stick around. I generally use browser's native bookmarks manager (which does have this problem of folder/tag hierarchy you talk about) and I sometime use Slack to bookmark non-serious stuff (the stuff I don't much care about, but still would like to bookmark).

</comment><comment><USER12> I didn't exactly understand - what was the benefit of using programming/python as opposed to programming, python? Was it that when the tag is registered then doing python from then on puts it automatically in programming?

<comment><USER7> There is none really if you can use AND condition when searching tags.

It may be more practical tho. Currently as I see it, if you type 'python' it will offer you both tags and more i.e. 'programming/python' and 'animals/python' so you can choose quicker.

In many services you can actually use '/' in tags or something else such as '-'.

<comment><USER12> Sure, but seems a UX problem in some way - you could offer results

python \---Related--- python + animals python + programming

so that you could select python + programming to offer two tags at once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting… (from comments on the article): "Thanks for the comment. Honestly, I've never heard of Pinboard before, so I can't say anything about it at the moment, I'll look into this."

<comment><USER14> From the article: "I tried a lot of existing bookmarking services". Everyone except the best service I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been recently using shaarli, and so far so good. But as a fan of open source, it never hurts to have other options. I look forward to any self- hosting options, and wish the project author good luck!

</comment><comment><USER16> I'll def keep an eye on this until it supports Bookmark imports (I'm on a selfhosted shaarli instance atm)

</comment><comment><USER17> Brilliant idea to use hierarchical tags. Would some kind of integration with Wallabag be possible?

</comment><comment><USER18> I stopped using bookmarks in 2005. Google totally fixed my boorkmarking needs.

<comment><USER19> Google Search or Google Bookmarks[1]?

[1] [https://www.google.com/bookmarks](https://www.google.com/bookmarks)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can you compare with wallabag?

<comment><USER21> wallabag is not only a bookmarking app. It also saves the content of the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Needs a "Show HN:".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, added!

<comment><USER22> +1</comment></comment></comment>


IE10 falls below IE9 in market share - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/03/01/ie10-falls-ie9-market-share-firefox-hits-60-month-low-chrome-gains/ <comment><USER2> Pretty misleading title, since IE10 isn't the latest version. IE11 is the latest and went from 11.51% to 12.80% (big jump compared to Chrome, 16.28% to 16.84%). Interesting (and slightly sad) that Firefox isn't gaining - in light of these stats, I'd say things don't look too shabby for IE.

I'm not too familiar with IE (heh), but is the upgrade mechanism better in IE10? That might explain the higher drop.

<comment><USER3> > Interesting (and slightly sad) that Firefox isn't gaining

I'm guessing this has more to do with Chrome being easier to integrate into enterprise/group-policy-based deployment than anything to do with the choices of individual users, though. The only place I see Firefox on a PC in a "computer lab" or "thin-client" setting any more is when those PCs are also running Linux.

<comment><USER4> Surely nothing to do with the fact that there's television commercials for Chrome, ads every time you go to the most visited website on the Internet, etc...

<comment><USER5> Chrome is the superior browser, easy to use, syncs nicely, great developer tools. I'd say that is probably why.

<comment><USER4> Turns out "superior browser" is subjective. Firefox has great developer tools (the built in ones, not to mention Firebug). Firefox syncs nicely (and doesn't spy on what you sync). Firefox is easy to use.

For the vast majority of users, none of this stuff matters. What matters is brand recognition and stuff "just working". In-built Flash probably helps Chrome's case.

It doesn't matter which browser is "winning", the vast majority aren't picking which browser to use based on features. If Chrome is the "superior browser", why is IE dominating in market share?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Net Applications apparently have a sample of 40,000 websites, whereas StatCounter have a sample of 3,000,000 [1]. StatCounter shows radically different numbers (e.g. Chrome by far the most used, whereas NA shows IE majority). IMO, StatCounter's numbers are more likely to be accurate.

[1] [http://gs.statcounter.com/press/open-letter- ms](http://gs.statcounter.com/press/open-letter-ms)

<comment><USER7> The size of the sample is irrelevant for its accuracy. That seems odd and statistics can be counterintuitive, but consider how a random sample of a few hundred people is enough to estimate who will win the elections within a few %.

What matters - beyond a certain reasonable minimum size, which is a few hundred - is if the sample is random and unbiased. Both NetApps and StatCounter are far, far above the minimum size, so the only questions are the other factors.

But more important to realize here is that they measure different things. StatCounter measures pages viewed, NetApps unique users. There is no reason to expect those to match up.

<comment><USER8> I (W3Counter, 70k sites) measure unique users, and it's always tracked much closer to StatCounter's numbers than NetApps. Same for every other site that tracks this stuff. NetApps has always been an outlier, especially on their IE numbers.

<comment><USER9> The difference for NetApps is how they track unique users, particularly for countries such as China.

My understanding is that they basically look at the total number of unique visitors from each country that they get, then weight that number by the number of reported internet users in that country. So if NetApps sees 10 users from country A and 5 users from country B, but country B has twice as many 'connected' people as country A, then they both get equal share.

What this basically leads to is that China, which has a very large population of people who infrequently use the internet but are still counted as internet connected (and may be using shared computers), gets inflated numbers based on total population. This is also why IE8 numbers are so large- because it's still in wide use in China.

The NetApps number probably makes sense if you were to ask 'what is the browser use of the individual users across the entire planet that could possibly load my website'. But when looking at browser usage by # of page loads or predicted visitors, the numbers could very well be much closer to StatCounter.

<comment><USER7> In that example, it is ok for A and B to get equal share - if you are measuring unique users and not usage. There is no inflation here, at least not in the methodology, which looks like a valid statistical one to me.

Of course it could be wrong in practice, if the data used to re-weight is misleading (while the unweighted raw data was more accurate). That's possible in theory, but seems less likely - there is fairly good information about internet usage in general which is what is used to re-weight, certainly compared to browser share.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> These figures make no sense to me. The fact that we do not have meaningful browser statistics makes no sense either. Why is it so hard to get meaningful figures and why do the figures from the 'experts' vary so much?

In some ways 'what browser do people use' is a bit like 'what language do people speak', except it should be easier to measure the statistics. Yet, unlike the situation with languages, we have a really hazy idea of what browsers are used. As a developer it is easy to get things working in developer preferred browsers to then be clueless about what percentage of your audience use IE and what versions. Does IE7 matter any more, or IE9? Do people with those browsers almost expect sites to look wrong?

<comment><USER7> > These figures make no sense to me. The fact that we do not have meaningful > browser statistics makes no sense either. Why is it so hard to get > meaningful figures and why do the figures from the 'experts' vary so much?

It is hard to get a random sample of internet usage. There is just no easy way - how do you do it?

In theory you would pick a random router around the world, and pick a packet going through it, and if it comes from a web browser, count that. Then normalize by traffic amount in that router. That would, in theory, give the right result with a large enough sample size. But no one (except perhaps the NSA) can do it.

On the other hand, there are at least two companies that pretty much know the truth - Google and Facebook. A huge percent of people visit those sites daily, so much that they don't need to randomly sample, worry about bias factors, etc. - they can just look at the data they have. So internally, they have the numbers. But apparently they consider that information valuable, and do not share it.

<comment><USER11> Google is much better positioned than Facebook for one reason: Google Analytics. Many sites, even those which aren't otherwise using Google services, embed it and there's really nothing like its reach because all of the competing services cost money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can someone explain why the Net Applications numbers are so different from the StatCounter numbers? I would expect some variation in counting "users" versus "page views" but the difference here is stark

<comment><USER7> NetApps measures unique users.

StatCounter measures page views.

Those can be very very different, if some users browser more or if some users use more than one browser, both of which are probably true.

So it is very possible both are accurate. Or that both are wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a little surprised that their stats show IE having >50% market share. Most stats show IE having between 18% and 25% market share. My own sites show between 10% (for a tech site) and 15% (for a health site). I guess Net Applications is only sampling corporate users, who still tend to use old IE. My own stats show that IE11 has a higher number of visitors than any other version of IE.

<comment><USER14> I'd be surprised if more than 50% of computer users (55% IE * 90% Windows) changed their default browser. The vast majority of computer users are non- technical people, and they use the default browser unless someone changes it for them.

But they also browse (far) less compared to people who use alternate browsers. So statistically, your sites have a much higher chance of registering Chrome and Firefox users than IE users.

Add: OTOH, I think StatsCounter, Clicky and Wikimedia stats are more useful. They represent the "active" Internet population better. The ones who are more likely to come to your/any website.

<comment><USER15> +1 for Clicky's stats ([https://clicky.com/marketshare/global/web- browsers/](https://clicky.com/marketshare/global/web-browsers/)).

It's also so important to filter down to geographic regions you care most about when looking at these stats. It's common to see developers/companies making browser support decisions based on global stats, even when they often derive most of their profits from a much smaller region (with different browser usage stats).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How reliable are these numbers anyway?

Other commenters have mentioned differences between NetApplications and StatCounter, but I suspect there are other factors that can heavily skew the apparent market share of different browsers.

For example, it is already well known that programming-related websites get a higher than average share of non-IE visitors. I don't think this would affect the likes of NetApplications and StatCounter, because they're used by all sorts of websites. But ...

... it is also much easier to find and install an ad blocker in Chrome and Firefox than it is to do so in IE. Many of those ad blockers and similar extensions will also block the tracking beacons used by NetApplications and StatCounter.

This probably has a negative effect on the apparent market shares of Chrome and Firefox. Especially the latter, I suspect, because lots of people who consciously choose Firefox nowdays do so for privacy reasons. (Can't trust Google anymore, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER17> FWIW, several DHS department level IT shops are moving to IE11 in a few months. I'm at one where after they've been at IE8 for so many years, they jumped to IE10 last fall and IE11 is around the corner. Love it. It's been so nice not having to support IE < 10 the last several months.

And IE11's dev tools, while still a little clunky to get around, are very comparable to Firefox/Chrome for most of the features.

We also still have some users that haven't upgraded (also smaller resolution monitors) but all less than 10%.

</comment><comment><USER18> To me this just means that on more modern version of Windows more people than not have enabled auto-updates. I'd guess corporations make up a good chunk of the staid browsers.

</comment><comment><USER19> IE9 is probably going to stick around for quite a while, it's the last version that Vista users have access to. IE8 should start dropping off at a faster rate after April, but will still be with us due to home owners who don't wish to upgrade past XP. What will be interesting to see is whether home users gravitate towards new PCs or tablets.

</comment><comment><USER20> The Android browser is the new IE:

[http://www.mobilexweb.com/blog/android-browser-eternal- dying](http://www.mobilexweb.com/blog/android-browser-eternal-dying)

</comment><comment><USER21> Not a shock, corporate users are still catching up. Most that I've seen are thankfully off IE6 but only up to 8 or 9.

<comment><USER22> Most here are forced on IE 8 because PeopleSoft doesn't work on anything greater. It sucks. Luckily, we installed Chrome as a secondary choice for those who want it. And I work in IT so I install whatever I want :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't understand IE7 : if you have it, it means you are able to upgrade from IE6, so why not IE8 ?

<comment><USER24> Sometimes it is corporate policy, meaning if you are on a work computer you can't manually update it yourself.

There are still some legacy applications that require a specific version of IE, or specific IE functionality, in order to work correctly. The cost of "fixing" the application to work correctly may cost too much or be too much effort.

Of course, there may be others who may have no idea how to update, no doubt there is a whole group of (older) users where auto-update may be turned off and no idea the update process exists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I know of a bank which had just recently upgraded to IE9. :-(

It's a pain in the ass to support this.

<comment><USER24> I know how you feel, please sign the petition: [http://www.saveie6.com/](http://www.saveie6.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> What's wrong with line (or area) charts to chart values that change over time?

</comment><comment><USER27> I think IE is covered, but: "Android is the new IE".

Think of % of 2.x.</comment>


Connect Everything, a HTML5 logic game - <AUTHOR> http://connecteverything2.herokuapp.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> For a more forgiving game that does not make you loose at the first mistake try out the old version [http://connecteverything.herokuapp.com/](http://connecteverything.herokuapp.com/)

The (not terribly good) source code is on github: [https://github.com/fela/connect-everything](https://github.com/fela/connect- everything)

It is heavily inspired by KNetWalk, to which I made some collaborations in the past. An online version based on the same concept as KNetWalk is here: [http://www.logicgamesonline.com/netwalk/](http://www.logicgamesonline.com/netwalk/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Oh boy. HN, please stop posting an addictive game a day. This won't end up well. The bubble will burst, of all things, because of a sudden lack of productivity.</comment>


Who Invented Homework? - <AUTHOR> http://geekandnerd.org/who-invented-homework/ <comment><USER2> My feelings now are that there really shouldn't be any mandatory homework.

\- If you do it badly, you may as well not do it. Who else remembers flipping through "The Catcher in the Rye" so fast they don't actually remember any other character than Holden Caulfield?

\- It's an easy way for teachers to not teach, yet gives them an alibi. "Look I'm teaching, they have loads of books to read. Can't help it if they don't."

\- If you already understand it, you don't benefit from solving more quadratic equations. You benefit from doing whatever the next step is. You just burn time plugging things into (-b +- sqrt (b __2-4ac)) / 2a. And you learn the wrong lesson, which is that you have to get it exactly right, rather than why that's the equation in the first place.

\- You end up testing which kids have peaceful homes, and parents who care. Some kids just can't do any homework with the home environment they're given. School should be such that it doesn't matter if your parents are drunks or academics.

\- Totally fine with doing like in University: here's a mega list of interesting things related to the subject, go and browse around, get a feel for what the landscape is like. Come back more interested.

<comment><USER3> >burn time plugging things into (-b +- sqrt (b2-4ac)) / 2a

I swear to god, I had so much of that to do, I got tired of it and learned enough python in one night, at 15, to get the computer to do my homework for me.

<comment><USER4> I did that too, though in BASIC on a TI-83+. When I showed it to my math teacher, she said that I could use the program on any future homework and tests as long as I turned in a paragraph explaining step-by-step how the program worked.

<comment><USER5> Ah looks like you actually had a smart math teacher. Mine retroactively failed all my take-homes and homework after I showed her the program I used and explained why I did it (rote memorization is terrible, I was more interested in the theory and algorithms). I had to appeal to the CS teacher and principal at my school to reverse the grade which would've prevented me from graduating

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As an unschooler who went to school and did "homework" or any kind of "schoolwork" for the first time when I was 12, it took me about a month to catch up to my peers in terms of abilities to do the coursework, and about a year to catch up to my peers in resentment and disengagement.

Except I got to spend seven years hanging out with my brothers doing fun stuff and my friends had to spend it training to be slaves. There is no reason for the strange masochism that is mass schooling. It is not productive, does not produce smarter or more learned people.

<comment><USER7> "It is not productive, does not produce smarter or more learned people."

I would like to disagree, but I don't have anything to back up my claim that mass schooling makes people smarter or more learned.

Like you, I just have anecdotes.

But one thing is for sure. I would never have gotten to where I am today. If I hadn't learned english at school. Having lived in two countries, neither of which had english as a native language, I would unlikely have learned english unless it had been taught at school

<comment> guard-of-terra "I would unlikely have learned english unless it had been taught at school"

You could as well play a lot of video games in English and dabbling in programming. That's how I learned.

Everybody who relied on school for learning English - still barely understand it.

<comment><USER8> Out of curiosity, does this mean that you didn't have any English lessons in school?

I ask because in the field of Second Language Acquisition there's a pretty strong consensus that the optimal path to language learning involves a combination of classroom instruction augmented by interaction with (reading, listening) & use of (speaking, writing) the language.

I've spent most of my career as a language teacher, and the typical successful learner is one who isn't necessarily a language nerd, but almost always is someone who does some heavy lifting in the target language outside of class. I love students that have a goal for language use because they help me to target my instruction to bits of language that will be immediately useful to them. (One of the best jobs I had was teaching English to software developenow here I am.rs; as I researched the language they needed, I started to learn programming and )

<comment> guard-of-terra I did have some, they began slightly later than I've got hold of a PC.

I do think that some school lessons contributed their share. I just don't think that sitting behind a desk for two hours per week, for ten years, is necessary or desired. After a few years I did not need much "training wheels" and could continue to increase proficiency regardless.

<comment><USER8> > After a few years I did not need much "training wheels" and could continue > to increase proficiency regardless.

Every teacher's dream outcome. Congratulations! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I work somewhere and it's 5pm, I'm off unless there is some important deadline the next day that can't be moved. And if I work extra hours, I'll get something extra (usually money but it might also be holidays or something).

In school, teachers have the power to invade our private lives, even our set holidays(!) with pointless tasks. Apparently 40 hours a week is not enough to spend on school, we also need to give up part of every evening, part of most holidays and part of many weekends.

I really hate that system. It's completely unfair, especially if you're in school just to get that shitty piece of paper in the end. I can code already, I taught myself perfectly well, but the prerequisites for HR usually include a diploma, and your salary and career opportunities is often dependent on which diploma you have. I'm just sitting it out and hate almost every assignment we get. It's outdated and moreover, boring stuff that nobody would ever want to use in practice.

<comment><USER10> You're in for some very rude shocks in the work world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Math isn't the only class that gives homework.

Should Spanish class-time be spent memorizing vocabulary and conjugations, or practicing communicating in the language?

Should History class-time be spent reading from the book so you know what happened, or discussing those topics and their implications?

Should English class-time be spent doing silent reading, or talking about the books/authors/time periods that you read about?

<comment><USER9> It doesn't need to be class time. The issue is that "home work" invades our private lives (evenings, weekends and holidays) due to its very definition.

If I work from home for a company, it's not called homework because it is under the same conditions as normal work: there are set hours, I receive compensation, the only difference is that it's not on-site.

So should Spanish class time be spent memorizing vocabulary? No, at least not in large parts, but neither should it take more than the time allocated for the subject[1]. It's nice that we can choose to do it either in school or at home, but the way it presently works, homework takes up more time than it should.

[1] Again, I don't mean allocated class hours, I mean the total number of hours students are expected to work on something. In Dutch terms, SBUs, or "hours the course takes from your life, class and homework and everything together". All courses should have SBUs that add up to 40 hours per week, give or take 5.

<comment><USER12> Then - perhaps - this is an argument about whether homework should be compulsory or not. We are constantly hearing about company cultures that require more than 40 hrs/wk due to competition. We seem to (at least tacitly) accept this as a price to pay for success. Should it then be that you can receive the basic skills by merely showing up and working hard in class (which is often true + the primary problem with low performing students) and reserve homework for those who have higher level personal/professional goals (and structure the work accordingly)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm sure the countless hours of homework in every subject that I was never interested in (of which that number was a majority) has helped me in my current career in not-any-of-those-subjects. /sarc

I feel like the most important things in school at that age are:

\- Exposing people to a broad range of subjects that they might be interested in (and thus curious enough about such that they end up learning by themselves)

\- Having teachers that can teach their subjects with enthusiasm, so that other people can see what the teacher finds exciting so that they too can (potentially) share in that enthusiasm and curiosity.

<comment><USER14> Homework can be a good bridge to university studies imo. I would certainly have benefited from learning self-disciplined study earlier on rather than coasting through the Swedish equivalent of high school and then swapping straight into university.

For under 12s or so I dont see a reason for homework. For 12-18 year olds I think gradually moving to a more self-driven study environment would be a good thing given that most people will end up going to university by now where that is the norm.

<comment><USER15> Homework doesn't really teach self-discipline, because it is an external motivation. If anything, I think it can work against that goal, because once people finish their mandatory work, they have no energy or enthusiasm left to learn for their own sake.

Perhaps I'm projecting, but mostly homework taught me how to do the minimum possible so I could get back to playing video games.

<comment><USER16> All of highschool was just one big exercise in me doing the bare minimum in whatever subject bored me so I could get back to programming. I knew what I wanted to do and I'm sorry Shakespeare, but you and I both know Hamlet is of no relevance. My usual formula for a given class was skim the current chapter, maybe do a practice problem or two, then spend the actual class on my laptop doing something of value to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've heard teachers say "Well I suffered through it, so you can too."

I'd like to see empirical studies to see if it actually makes for better performance as students, or if it's useless. I'm guessing the demagogues would never let 'no homework' happen, at least in this country.

It'd probably also be good for the teachers, considering many complain about having to grade outside of the paid teaching day.

<comment><USER18> The research is not conclusive but it points to homework not being effective:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer- sheet/wp/2012/11/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer- sheet/wp/2012/11/26/homework-an-unnecessary-evil-surprising-findings-from-new- research/)

<comment><USER11> It points to homework not being effective _in elementary school_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> That trains you to work outside your agreed working hours and to make you feel bad if you don't do it. Essentially this is how you train slaves.

<comment><USER20> Or you learn to work efficiently and finish your homework in the minutes between classes, the bus rides to and from school, and perhaps 1-2 hours immediately after getting home.

Unless things have changed substantially (and they may have), that was all the time I needed for everything but research papers and projects requiring more thought.

Self-discipline and time management can solve most of these problems. My parents forbade video games and TV until my homework was done, and I was honest as a kid (most of the time). So I got my shit done so I could do what I wanted to do (watch Batman and Animaniacs, run through the woods like a mad man).

Homework doesn't train you to be anything other than what you (really, your parents at that age) allow it to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Homework is essential when it is well thought out and helps you understand the material better, like problems that require you to apply multiple concepts in math or science to arrive at a solution. Or language essays that require new constructs or vocabulary, essentially anything that requires you to apply your mind in new ways.

Sometimes rote memory is also required (spellings, formulae, handwriting anyone?)

If anything, the education system in general and homework in particular makes learning very systematic and structured, glossing over broader issues of exploring topics on one's own, seeking out new resources and creating one's own structure and areas of interest. It conceals the deeper questions of education, handing the students only the low-hanging fruits of tests and homeworks.

The education system is so effective, once the pupil is out, learning anything significant becomes a daunting process. The inability to plan and structure one's own learning can lead many to give up early in the process.

<comment><USER22> Sounds like you perfectly summed why our education system isn't effective. It fails to teach students how to learn on their own!

And there's nothing to say that _homework_ is essential. It's perfectly plausible to have students get everything done during the regular school day.

Well thought out assignments are obviously good. Why do they need to be done at home? It's not as if third graders are listening to lectures from 8 until 3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My brother is studying to be a teacher (In the UK) and I asked him what his opinion was on homework.

He told me that it's a good way to get students to do some study/open up the text book when they wouldn't have without a punishment if they didn't.

This, in my opinion leads to more stress and more work on those trying hard to study AND do homework. Each subject wants at least 1 hour of your home time and a student can have anywhere from 2-8 subject to study a night.

<comment><USER24> I concur with your perspective. If students aren't opening their text-book outside school-hours then that indicates a lack of inspiration being imparted.

I used to sit and read my _Ecce Romani!_ text-books at the weekends because my Latin teacher was such a wonderfully eccentric and inspiring person that I wanted to learn more for myself and to please her. I don't remember her giving us homework other than 'learn the conjugation of this verb'.

I didn't open anything else unless forced to by homework.

<comment><USER25> Interesting - my Mum was a Latin teacher and in the end moved away from Ecce Romani to the Cambridge Latin Course so the Classical Civilization element got brought out more.

You weren't in the Berkshire area for school?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Relevant clip from Michael Moore's "Where to Invade Next" (2005): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRJ1hgN7uAU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRJ1hgN7uAU) It's about the Finnish education system based on having no homework.

</comment><comment><USER27> I thought geeks an nerds enjoyed homework for the fact it is mental exercise if nothing else.

Bazinga generation nerds and geeks get out of my cyber-lawn!

<comment><USER28> >I thought geeks an nerds enjoyed homework for the fact it is mental exercise if nothing else.

Not really. Obviously there are different types of "geeks" and "nerds", but generally those type of people enjoy tinkering and playing around the stuff _they_ care about. They certainly don't like being forced to perform menial and repetitive tasks (as often homework is) because somebody else told them to.

<comment><USER29> What about people who are motivated by the prospect of academic achievement?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The article sources an another article that states that Finland doesn't have any homework, which is a statement I have no idea where it comes from. As a finnish guy, I can ensure you that there's homework being assigned on every grade from first grade to the last course you take at a university. Unless I have participated in some sort of twisted experiment where I have been given homework to do while others just pretend there are doing them.

</comment><comment><USER31> I still can't help but hate the teacher who gave the honor's class an enormous mythology book over the summer and gave it less worth to our grade than a ten minute grammar assignment.

Camel's back, etc, I failed the class, got kicked out of the mostly white honor's program to being the only white kid in most classes. I got picked on less there and enjoyed life significantly more after that. Probably the best thing to happen in my life, actually.

</comment><comment><USER32> I fought tooth and nail against homework to my own detriment. Those counselors just did not know what to do with me.

>Is There a Bright Future if You Don't Do Any Homework?

Heh. Nah, not really.

<comment><USER33> My physics teacher attempted some reverse psychology on me and banned me from doing homework. After a while, I think when he figured out I was happy with that, he got fed up with that routine and started asking for the homework again but I still didn't bother.

In hindsight my grades probably suffered, but only as far as the fact I didn't have all this still drilled into my memory. I doubt it made me any less smart, and instead of doing said homework, I played with my computer which blossumed into a highly paid career.

<comment><USER34> I'm still waiting for the "highly paid" part.

<comment><USER33> This probably just requires you to move. However, try not to spend it all living the life if you do, otherwise you'll be no better off in the end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Massive amounts of homework is the perfect training for future work in North America. When kids get used to doing 60-80 hours worth of schoolwork for the same education that can be done in 40 hours they won't complain when their future boss demands 60-80 hours of work for the pay of 40 hours.

</comment><comment><USER36> A few years ago, I found _The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing_ an interesting read. It shaped my views on homework [context: US public schools].

[http://www.alfiekohn.org/homework-myth/](http://www.alfiekohn.org/homework- myth/)

</comment><comment><USER37> This whole article is U.S. centric. Is there any meta analysis of global PISA scores and hours spent on homework?

</comment><comment><USER38> I only ever did the homework I was interested in and quite a few times it helped me understand it better.

<comment><USER28> As somebody who's never (or almost never) done homework, I have to say that I regret not doing it. I've always understood most of the material being taught and I've always seen homework as a waste of time (this is also a good excuse because I simply was lazy), however I have to admit that the very few times I've managed to sit down and do some homework, it really was useful (but I never admitted it).

Just practicing math problems, or typing out notes and essays, or even practicing a new language... That's all stuff that is useful. Sure you can go without, and probably schools assign way more than they should (I know it was the case for me), but homework itself at least is not a negative thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> When the time machine comes out, i'll use it to hang him so that humans could live happily :D

</comment><comment><USER40> Some of my best teachers would give us optional homework.

<comment><USER41> There still can be pressure from parent-figures to complete this "optional" homework.

<comment><USER40> True, but being pressured by your parents isn't as bad as having a tarnished academic record from not doing homework.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would attract you to a job in flyover country? - <AUTHOR> I've been working as a consultant for a large company in the midwestern US that does a lot of software development, both for internal use and for external services used by the company's clients.
The company can't seem to attract experienced software developers to move, only new grads (but people do stick around long after they become experienced), so they use a lot of consultants to fill out their teams.
In the past six months, I have done projects using Python/Django, AngularJS, D3, RoR, Hadoop/HBase, and other current technologies, so this definitely isn't a case where the technology stack is boring. Compensation and benefits are reasonable as well, considering the low cost of living.
So, HNers, what would entice you to consider working for a company outside of the red-hot tech hubs? <comment><USER3> "Compensation and benefits are reasonable as well, considering the low cost of living."

Why not ignore the the local cost of living and compensate at SV market rate levels? That way there is a tangible and obvious pro to the move: the delta between "tech-hub" cost of living and "flyover" cost of living.

If you scale compensation down to be relatively in-line with local cost of living you aren't really offering anyone a pro in the face of many cons (harder to find another job if this one doesn't work out, the general inertia of moving halfway across the country, likely less interesting social/cultural options, likely screwier rules when it comes to non-competes (than what you get in CA), etc.)

<comment><USER4> This is exactly what I've seen in some companies near where I live--they refuse to hire at market rates, and if they resort to "but but but cost of living" I assume they're trying to sell me something.

It's so fucking obvious--pay the same amount, have a better culture, and that should be it. Alas, some folks are a bit slow. :(

<comment><USER5> Paying the same amount would be challenging if they're not doing the same amount of business. Google can pay an average software engineer $100k because they do a lot of business. Should a company that only makes $100k in a single year pay their developers the same? Tech companies in SF tend to be pretty big/well funded organizations.

<comment><USER3> This is true, but at the same time a company making $100k in a single year probably doesn't need to hire "the best of the best" (even if they think they do, because everyone thinks they do) and can actually get by with local college grads until such a time as they hit a scale where they need outside help, by which point they can hopefully pay for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Found your problem.

 _Compensation and benefits are reasonable as well, considering the low cost of living._

I've had offers with that qualifier. They always come in 40% below market. Even if cost of living and salary is a 1:1 trade. I'll always trade up and not down.

Here is why: The primary differences in cost of living is housing. Cars, computers and software cost the same regardless. Additionally housing costs more in places where people want to live and less where they don't want to live. Sure I can buy a mansion in Minot, but I can't buy a beach. There are more subtle issues with this too. The costs of conferences, training, and tools doesn't change. There are also network effects. Potential employees check up on a businesses reputation as well. In my area I know who to avoid and have contacts in dozens of other tech focused businesses. Odds are I don't know anyone who's been within 100miles of you. What happens if things don't work out? Are you the _only_ tech employer in town?

Bluntly you're asking me to give up my existing network of people and employers for lower pay, less future growth opportunities, and all you can offer is a cheap house in a place where I may not want to live. It's not a good deal, so people don't take it.

What would attract me to a job in the midwest?

Paying market rates would be #1. Being upfront that training/conference travel opportunities will be funded. A few other tech companies within reasonable distance so I'm not in a bind if I need to move on.

</comment><comment><USER7> It really depends on where in "flyover country" you're talking about.

Are you considering Tulsa, or Akron, or Sioux City? That's a tough call, since the markets there are pretty thin. Taking a full-time job in a thin market for tech saps your negotiating leverage, because your employer knows they don't have much credible competition.

On the other hand, are you considering Chicago, or, MSP? Those are --- contrary to popular belief --- gigantic cities, larger than San Francisco. There are advantages to working in (say) Chicago over SF. You won't get your next startup funded there, but you'll have an easier time getting a bootstrapped company off the ground. There are tradeoffs, but we'd have to talk about what's important to you to hash them out.

Personally: I've enjoyed my last couple visits to San Francisco (surprisingly; I moved away from San Francisco hating them place). But I wouldn't want to live there.

</comment><comment><USER8> "The company can't seem to attract experienced software developers to move"

... at the price you're willing to pay, I assume.

"Compensation and benefits are reasonable as well, considering the low cost of living"

This seems to confirm my assumption. The benefit of having lower costs would be so I can save more, but if the pay is less then what is the benefit?

<comment><USER5> That's my biggest problem living in the midwest. I never want to move to SF or NY or places with massively high cost of living ( _because_ of the cost of living), but the pay seems to scale directly in line with cost of living anyway. If I have 20% discretionary income no matter where I am living, why would I not move to someplace more exciting?

Although I don't know if I would be able to stomach a cut from $250k/yr in SF to $70k/yr in Iowa, even if cost of living decreased to match.

<comment> mark-r As a resident of flyover country I look at it the opposite way - why would I move to the coast for higher pay only to have it soaked up in living expenses? Even with that I'd probably be downgrading my housing, and there are other aspects of my lifestyle that I'd miss. And do you really think the pay disparity is that extreme?

<comment><USER9> We moved to a rural area (nearest large city is a 4 hour drive) four years ago and I'd agree with the other commenters that housing is the only cost that decreased any - and even that is almost irrelevant as people fleeing cities have increased house prices and/or market manipulation has worked to keep housing costs relatively high. Sure you can buy a double-wide or a serious fixer-upper here that you'd never find in the city, but if you want a typical 3 bedroom middle class house you aren't getting much of a discount.

The truth is, I feel more compelled to increase my income and saving now because of the lack of opportunities in the local economy. My income is entirely from non-local customers and if my sales pipeline ever dried up I'd have no option but to move. This is basically at the heart of why I don't move to the midwest (where my wife would prefer to be) because it would be the same thing - you'd be the big fish in a small pond.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You need to pay way more than the coasts.

There are career benefits to being in a location with other tech companies. Not just finding a new job, but simply going to meetups and coffee shops and meeting people who are in a similar line of work. When you say "people do stick around" I wonder if this is part of the reason. I'd need extra money to make up for the money I'm losing by being far away from the action. Sending me to conferences might make up for this.

There are cultural benefits to being in an actual city. Ballet, theater, live music, etc. I'm sure there are wonderful small town artists but a big city will have more cultural activities by virtue of having more people. Extra money and extra vacation time (like 6-7 weeks a year) for a trip to NYC occasionally could convince me. Of course there are cities in the middle of the country, Chicago and Minneapolis for example, in which case disregard this point.

There would still be quality of life issues. I like sushi and have never had good sushi in the midwest. I like being able to read a book on pubic transit instead of driving myself to work. I like walkable neighborhoods. I like sailing. I like living in a place where it hardly ever snows, yet I can drive for a bit to a huge mountain and go snowboarding. I'd need a lot of money to give up some of these things, not sure you can even a price on it.

I'd suggest trying to hire remote workers.

</comment><comment><USER11> I lived in Omaha for a year and would definitely consider moving back for a great job, however, there's one big problem and that is: even though you're in a beautiful rural part of the country with lots going for it, you're still in the big city, i.e., the one place in that state that has the fewest of the advantages of being in a small state. You don't have the low cost of living, you don't have the strong sense of community, don't know your neighbors, can't leave the car unlocked, and it's still difficult and expensive to get away from it all. So you may have people come to work for you thinking they'll get to enjoy life in the slow lane, and then find out that they've given up all they loved about the big city but haven't experienced the promises of the country.

<comment><USER12> I'm mostly in agreement with this if you choose to live in said city, but I would argue that traffic will be better even in one of the "big" cities of the Midwest (I currently live the greater D.C./Baltimore metro area and am amazed at what people in the Twin Cities metro area consider to be bad traffic). As a result, it would be much less time-consuming to commute into the city from the countryside in the Midwest than it would be to make a commute of similar distance in SV/NY/DC/etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Moving outside a tech hub has distinct disadvantages, besides entertainment. You have less job prospects, thus vastly increase your risk and limit future growth. In addition you are less likely to branch off with colleagues and investors.

For me, the things that would sell me are 1) significant pay above net cost of living compared to tech hub 2) flexible work time policies 3) no attempt to own what I do on the side (CA has clear rules on this) 4) control over job direction and technologies 5) and lastly, maybe your company really is awesome.

<comment><USER14> Add no non-compete to the list, CA is also clear on that, and for a very long time.

It's the single unique thing about the state, and I'm convinced it has a lot to do with Silicon Valley's long term success, especially during the decline and fall of Route 128 (roughly the '80s and the PC era, which I watched first hand).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's the "Compensation and benefits are reasonable as well, the low cost of living." part. When you pay someone reasonably relative to their immediate environment what you're really saying is: Hi new hire, we expect you to live here forever because you can't save money to leave to a more expensive city and we value less than your peers in larger markets.

What you fail to realize that in order to attract talent to "flyover country" you need to compensate them for being in "flyover country".

</comment><comment><USER16> Nobody wants to pay.

Outside of tech hubs, companies don't seem to value software devs. I guarantee that if your company was paying rates competitive to the major cities - <USER2> "considering the low cost of living", but actually competing on the dollar - there would be more interest. You have to pay programmers enough to mitigate the risk that there just aren't as many jobs in those areas and there aren't as many opportunities for professional development. Instead, everyone wants to look at the cost of living in SF/NYC, and claim that it's such a better deal to move to $midwest_city, even for less money. No. The environment matters. Pay up to compensate.

Check Meetup.com. Are there large, active groups meeting regularly for a variety of languages and technologies in your area? Think about what devs have to give up when they leave a city with a thriving programmer community to come to your company.

</comment><comment><USER17> more money than on the coasts. Simple answer but people don't like "paying more."

Do you have SV/NYC/etc esque perks? Uncounted vacation, free food, etc etc?(which would all be cheaper to offer in the midwest for your company).

If you want the best people you should compensate in line with the "best"(by comp) employers OR differentiate yourself substantially.

I would totally work for "midwest market" for 25hr a week or so with full benefits. Big pay cut, big cost cut, lots more free time(but companies don't like that either).

<comment><USER18> FYI 'unlimited' vacation is not a perk, its an accounting trick that more often than not IS NOT in employee's interest.

<comment><USER13> Yup, not only do you take less vacation you don't get paid out when you leave.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> At FarmLogs (YC w12) we have been able to hire some really amazing people in the "flyover" country. We moved to Ann Arbor from Mountain View to be closer to our customers.

Ann Arbor is an attractive city. People realize that when they come and visit. Much like startup hubs, Ann Arbor has a high density of really smart people (partly because of UofM), and does have its own advantages over the Bay Area.

Ultimately, people don't join us (or not join us) because of location. We hire people that want to be a part of our mission to bring great technology to agriculture. When people get to see what we are working on, who we are, and how much progress we've made, they get really excited. At that point location doesn't matter as much. We are relocating people from all over including the Bay area.

</comment><comment><USER20> As someone searching for a job, it's hard to say. There are only a few big cities not on the coast that stand out: Twin Cities, Chicago, Austin, maybe Denver, maybe Ann Arbor. If you're not in one of those areas, you could be in any of a few dozen cities, so how am I going to find you? Plus there's just a trend where people rarely move from big town to a small town. Most people want to stay where they are or move 'up' to a better, often more crowded, area.

Compensation can be lower, no problem, as long as quality of life isn't dropping off.

<comment><USER7> I love Ann Arbor and miss living there, but Ann Arbor is the textbook case of a locale with a thin market for tech labor. Wanting to live in Ann Arbor more or less eliminates your negotiating leverage with employers.

<comment><USER21> So... you're saying I should hire in Ann Arbor?

<comment><USER7> Sure!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I live in rural Massachusetts, way too far for a Boston commute. I found that if I really got to know the local market, I could find great local developers -- I actually prefer that to NYC (where I started), where you can find devs, but it's hard to compete with the other companies there.

Our strategy was to make our place the absolute best place to work and pay appropriately -- perhaps not all the way to SF market, but at the high-end of our market. Word gets around. We were also aggressive with the local colleges.

</comment><comment><USER23> Before I moved to a tech hub I lived in a flyover state. Whenever I interviewed at companies there, the developers would be so down. They seemed almost depressed like they had nowhere to go. Invariably the management was unsophisticated and not very experienced. Their thinking about software Dev management was decades behind. Do you want to know what development was like in the 70s or 80s when programming was a blue collar job? Go work in one of those states.

At one point I realized the entire state and region had nothing for me and left. I still get job leads from that place from 80s era companies and I know following them means booting up dos from a floppy or doing COBOL work while being told what to do by a part time manager, part time truck driver. What is far worse though is the fear of being sucked into this microcosm of 'this is how we do it here'. There are no up to date companies out there, only companies that have found a local maxima of expertise that, though they don't know it, is five to ten years behind at best. You tend to get stuck being lectured by the so-called experts on some 10 year old technology that is state of the art in their minds.

</comment><comment><USER24> I work in the sticks out in Texas.

I remain freelance because I haven't found a company that will pay me my freelance rates while remaining remote and still having the power to throttle down as I'd prefer to do. I can make as much as my buddy who is a plumber working a quarter of the hours and not having to own a truck full of tools or get under houses.

Just a guess, but I'd think most of the folks who like to live out in the sticks like to live in "their" sticks... I've lived in Texas my whole life. And it doesn't take a lot of remote work to make the nut, especially if you're being compensated at good market rates.

Between those two facts, I'd suspect that the issue is that most folks who live in "flyover country" aren't inclined to move and don't have to.

You might have better luck training locals or grabbing folks who want to live in your area. Or, like a lot of folks do, hiring remote.

<comment><USER25> _Just a guess, but I 'd think most of the folks who like to live out in the sticks like to live in "their" sticks_

Agreed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I agree with most of the feedback already posted in this thread: compensation "considering the low cost of living" is not necessarily good compensation, and remote work may be the ticket. To other HNers, I would say that I just moved from Silicon Valley to the Midwest and I'm so much happier with all the open space and corn fields. In SV I used to feel trapped and tense all the time. Everyone talked about money. To the OP, I would say I work remotely for an industry-leading software company, with a Silicon Valley salary, and basically my own schedule. Don't see your goal as trying to get people to move to the Midwest, see it as trying to compete with Silicon Valley companies for talent. There are fewer jobs out here, so I have to look much harder to network and ensure job security. I wouldn't give up my current arrangement any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER27> Why not hire remote?

<comment><USER28> Yup. Hire remote and pay tech hub rates. It's that simple. You'll also get much more loyal, dedicated employees. Currently in this situation and it's really the best job I've had out of dozens.

<comment><USER29> what did you mean by tech hub rates?

<comment><USER30> Companies usually scale pay based on the cost of living in the city where the worker lives. Tech hubs tend to be high cost of living areas. A $115k job in NYC becomes a $90k job in Omaha based on the premise that it costs 25% more to live in NYC.

This accurately reflects the buying power in the two different cities but base pay also generally translates percentage-wise into other benefits like 401k matching and your negotiating position for salary at your next job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Just pay more. I'd even work in the middle of Alberta, CA if I were paid 2x Silicon Valley median salary.

</comment><comment><USER32> TL; DR: The company: its people and its mission. Everything else is secondary.

I recently moved from San Francisco Bay Area to join Farmlogs in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Here is how I thought about it:

I derive majority of my happiness from what I do, not necessarily from the money that I have in my bank account or the social ameneties that are provided by the city that I live in. This is not to say that it will not be nice to have more money in my bank account or to live in a big city like New York or San Francisco, but my self-realization that I am most happy when I am satisfied at work.

I feel that you first need to pick the company you want to work for. I chose FarmLogs. It just happened to be in Ann Arbor. It would have been nice for me if it was in San Francisco but it wasn't. Now I was not going to let that opportunity go just because it was not in San Francisco. For me, doing meaningful work has more importance than living in a specific city.

People have mentioned a lot of cons about working in the midwest but here are some of the pros:

1\. Lower cost of living: I am not kidding when I say that I save much more in Ann Arbor in dollar amount as compared to when I was living in SF. I have been able to purchase my own house as compared to spending a fortune on rent in SF.

2\. Better Negotiation: You can negotiate a better deal from your employer just because they are in midwest and want to hire you.

3\. Experience of living in a new place: I, personally, have never lived in a place where it snows and I am looking forward to that experience. I don't know if I will like it or not. If I don't, I will know snow is not for me and will go back but I have to try.

So in short, I feel one should pick a company they want to work for. Everything else seems secondary. You will spend most of your time at work, and at least for me, if I am not happy at work, I am not happy in life.

In addition, I can go back to SF anytime if I wanted to.

Thats what I have to say about that.

</comment><comment><USER33> For me, low cost of living means low quality of living. There are more things to do in more expensive cities and quality of almost everything is higher, from restaurants to doctors to schools.

Many people brought up the compensation which is fair, but for me, even if a company in mid-west offers 30% increase in my earnings I would pass.

For people like me that are minority, diversity is very important. It makes living much easier when you are surrounded with all different kind of people. By visiting some cities in Montana and Idaho I understood how good Silicon Valley and NYC are. People keep staring at us in restaurants just because we were talking a foreign language. I know it's all because of their curiosity and they don't hate us necessarily but it is not comfortable.

</comment><comment><USER34> The people, the culture, the projects, the money. Probably in that order.

If I could work with a superstar team, where I am guaranteed hands-down to be the dumbest person in the room, where I can practice leading edge software development, contribute to fantastic projects (some of which were decided by me), and get paid very well, then sign me up.

With the amazing power of the internet, even remote jobs aren't really that remote. I would say benefits like sending employees to conferences, making sure they have good equipment and comfortable surroundings, allowing change in the organization, and making sure that the entire team is always seeking to improve are good ways to attract talent. Money is also good.

</comment><comment><USER35> The first problem that comes to mind is that I'd have a lower salary on my resume, and would likely take a hit when I worked again in a high-salary state like California.

The second problem is that I'd also be taking a hit on real estate, if I ever planned on moving back to CA. This is speculative, I know, but it's how I think: I'd most likely buy a house, and, when I sold it it would be most likely worth less than if I'd just bought in CA to begin with. So I'd be taking a hit there as well.

I'd also think it would have a lot to do with the industry you're in... If I wrote software that controlled, say, oil refineries, than then I might be more willing to work in Texas.

</comment><comment><USER36> As a senior dev in the Midwest, there's a lot of jobs available to you for good pay, so having something else that differentiates you is a good idea, but it all starts with the pay. There's plenty of good talent already in the midwest.

</comment><comment><USER37> Ever since the Phoenicians invented money, there has only ever been one answer to that question :-) Basically, remote work at "tech hub" prices (that's what all your competitors are offering), or laughably oversized salaries (even by already-inflated tech-hub rates) if your client insists on having a local dev team. There's a reason it's called flyover country, and to entice me to work there (as someone who escaped from 'flyover country' to the East Coast and then again to the West Coast) is not going be cheap by anyone's standards.

</comment><comment><USER38> I work for one of the big tech companies in the bay area, and I already plan on eventually moving to a much smaller metro eventually. Mainly it's because buying a house here is crazy expensive, and also because I'd like to be closer to nature (e.g. a 20 min bike ride to a river or forest or something like that). For me, just being in a desirable small city would be the big thing (good schools, good walkability/bikability, close to naturey stuff, not too far from a major metro (< 2 hours by car)).

</comment><comment><USER39> I've always thought that it would be neat if a tech company bought a few square miles of empty land somewhere in Wyoming and build the mother of all tech campuses. Build on-campus housing and incentivize housing developers to build nearby, wire up beefy internets, incentivize other tech startups to set up shop nearby, and basically form a small tech gravitational well from nothing in a stupendously beautiful area. Maybe it's a pipe dream, but I for one would be extremely interested.

</comment><comment><USER40> Living in a mid-to-high cost of living area while I'm working now affords the following advantage:

I'm building equity in a house that I can keep when I retire because I love it here, or sell it and move _anywhere_ I want.

If I move to Oklahoma and decide I don't like it, and you're paying me in accordance with the reasonable cost of living, I'm stuck.

So, no thanks. Either pay market rate regardless of location or you're not going to entice people invested in a high cost of living area away.

</comment><comment><USER41> Remote work.

<comment><USER42> I saw some of your old comments on a past passive income thread and because of the recent similar posting with links to the old thread I was able to read about your real estate post. I had some questions if you wouldn't mind.

<comment><USER41> Sure. I took my email address out of my profile because I was getting more email than I could thoughtfully respond to. I just added it back for now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm not sure that I could be enticed to work outside of California, and the reason is because of the many friends I've made at university. Almost the majority of them stay in California and it would take far more than extra compensation to entice me away from that.

<comment><USER44> I work in Missouri, and wouldn't leave here for basically the same reason. Too many friends here from college, and my family's close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I went to school in Iowa, my wife is from Iowa, and in many ways it would be a great place for us to live. Biggest problem I have is one that simply can't be overcome: no skiing, no mountains, no forests. What Vancouver / Seattle / Portland and the Bay Area have going for them is concentrations of real tech (not just corporate IT gigs) with great geography and weather. Plus, superior compensation. Sorry, Minneapolis and Chicago have no appeal.

Playing the long-game why do you care about location when you can hire good remote talent anywhere - they are happy to stay where they want to be, you get access to the talent you want without sourcing and relocation costs.

</comment><comment><USER45> The bottom line is there's a price on it. Almost certainly in salary terms, but to a marginal degree perhaps other parts of the package.

</comment><comment><USER46> Large companies can trick them into moving. Get them at a `cool` incubator in a major city and _then_ ship them out to the farm.

</comment><comment><USER47> So you're a consultant too? What made you decide not to work there permanently?

</comment><comment><USER48> What is "flyover country"? There's a world of difference between a place like Chicago or Minneapolis (an underrated gem) and some exurb in the Deep South. Does Chicago count as "flyover country"? You can definitely get the kinds of people they're looking for to move to, say, Chicago or Minneapolis. A suburb 40 miles from Chicago, on the other hand, is pretty much a doomed location.

Being in a city (even a mid-sized city like Madison) matters more than the general geographic area. Chicago itself is rock-solid, an office park near the airport is not going to work.

* Obviously, if you're not paying a full relocation package (which includes a month or two of temporary housing, all moving costs, and a spousal placement agency) then you're not playing to win, and you won't.

* Same pay as on the coasts. Excepting Chicago and Minneapolis, you may even want to make that 110 to 120 percent in order to offset decrease of spousal pay.

* 3-5 conferences per year, fully paid. Announce it upfront as a perk.

* Establish a culture of giving back to the open-source world. Get the names of some star employees out there. People will then apply in order to work with them.

* At least 4 weeks of vacation. Minneapolis is beautiful, and its winters aren't as bad as people make them out to be, but getting out of there for a week or two in February really helps.

* Enough interesting work, and enough diversity of interesting work, that the job looks like a probable 3-5+ year fit. If it's run by McKinseys, you're dead in the water. Great engineers want to work in engineer-driven companies. Cross-country moves are too stressful to do one without an assurance that there'll be interesting work to do many years out.

* Culture of talent development and internal promotion. This needs to be verbalized in recruiting. "We're in <X>, so we invest in talent. We can't take smart people for granted." Now it's a selling point.

* Remote work. Smart people want to work with other smart people, and while you'll have some rock-solid people who are willing to move, you won't get "critical mass" unless you allow remote work.</comment>


Time is Partial: distributed consistency models and weak memory models - <AUTHOR> http://composition.al/CMPS290S-2018-09/2018/11/17/time-is-partial-or-why-do-distributed-consistency-models-and-weak-memory-models-look-so-similar-anyway.html <comment><USER2> > Time is Partial

This is definitely a new development in philosophy and even in physics. Joe Armstrong would really appreciate this.

I almost could see it vividly - the beard, 0-rh designer glasses, macbook pro with many stickers and a vegan smoothie. Time is partial, dude, you know.

<comment><USER3> ROTFLBTC! Seriously, I always tell people that there is no global/common "now()" in a (our _sigh_ ) distributed system. Leslie Lamport explained it back in 1978 already [1]. Any design assuming that is doomed to fail.

[1] i.e. discussion at [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/publication/time-cl...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/publication/time-clocks-ordering-events-distributed-system/)

<comment><USER2> Not only this. In the domain of lazy functional languages they have arrived to a similar conclusion - the only way to establish an order of evaluation in a lazy language is via nesting of function calls, which is an implementation of causality principle, if you think of it for a while. No wonder monads and other things desugars into nested function calls.

"Time" is an abstract concept superimposed on reality, a product of the mind conditioned via sequential sense organs. It is of the same nature as the concepts of "god" and "divinity". Smart people are trying to rule it out from their computations.</comment></comment></comment>


Carlsberg CEO Has a Warning for His Peers About Negative Rates - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-18/carlsberg-ceo-has-a-warning-for-his-peers-about-negative-rates <comment><USER2> This page is paywalled. Wonderfully, if you have the noscript extension installed, it won't hide the content.</comment>


Uber Accused of Espionage, Bribery, Hacking, in Former Employee's Letter - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/ric-jacobs-uber-letter-allegations-waymo <comment><USER2> This is what the behavior of a wannabe megacorp looks like:

> Uber "used undercover agents to collect intelligence against the taxi groups > and local political figures. The agents took rides in local taxis, loitered > around locations where taxi drivers congregated, and leveraged a local > network of contacts with connections to police and regulatory authorities."

> the things Uber was doing overseas "needlessly exposed Uber and its > employees to severe risk — including the likely termination of Uber's > operations and possible imprisonment of its employees — should capable > security services in many overseas locations discover Uber's espionage."

> Uber hired at least one CIA-trained contractor to collect "mobile-phone > metadata either directly through signal-intercept equipment, hacked mobile > devices, or through the mobile network itself.

Or, perhaps, a nation-state.

<comment><USER3> Taking rides in taxis and loitering where they congregate isn't necessarily illegal. Bribing foreign officials and illegally tapping peoples' phones is. There is a bright line between hustling and plainly violating the law.

<comment><USER4> IANAL but definitions of espionage are typically broader than that - if the information isn't published with the intention for it to become public knowledge, or at least somehow knowingly divulged (e.g. EULA/contractual), then it's private, and collecting (i.e. recording) the data which is private to a company or society is espionage.

<comment><USER5> Well sure, the word "espionage" can be certainly be used to make things that aren't illegal or immoral sound bad.

Employees and other people sign contracts to keep company information private, but nobody else (including journalists, competitors, investors, or just anyone curious about them) is required to help them. We can share what we know and gossip about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow. I can see why Uber did not want this document to come out. It appears that Uber was operating their own intelligence agency with bribes, surveillance, breach of systems, impersonation, etc. I can see it opening further lawsuits from many other angles.

From competitors like Lyft:

>"Uber had successfully obtained trade secrets with the complete download of its driver database ... It contained approximately 35,000 taxi driver records"

>"Uber used driver and customer impersonation to steal competitor trade secrets. This conduct not only violated the trade secrets law discussed above but also wire fraud law"

From regulators:

> "In January 2017, contacted Jacobs on Wickr and advised they had a bug in a > meeting with transport regulators and that they needed help cleaning up the > audio."

> "Jacobs heard about the practice of bribing foreign government officials. > Based on his knowledge of targeting foreign officials to identify those with > influential power, and the rapid insights into new markets"

<comment><USER7> Regarding this: "Uber had successfully obtained trade secrets with the complete download of its driver database"

If you look at how that is described in the document it appears that such data was actually obtained just by using the API and perhaps some scraping. Not so sure this actually has any legal issues. The API requests being spread over a 2 month timeframe also makes it hard to accuse them of causing any sort of burdensome load on the server.

<comment><USER8> This is a violation of the CFAA, a criminal offense, if the API owner did not authorize Uber to access it.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act)

<comment><USER7> There is no indication that they accessed the API improperly.

That link to the CFAA page on Wikipedia does not substantiate your claim.

<comment><USER8> The statute I referenced specifically prohibits the unauthorized access of servers and access which exceeds authorization. It is not difficult to argue that Uber's activities fall under "unauthorized access" or "exceeding authorization".

"Uber accessed a protected computer database to lure drivers away to work for the company even though "the database was protected by 'Captcha' to prevent the sort of automated downloading that Uber's MA team intended to carry out. MA was ultimately successful in hacking the system and obtaining the driver database. Because Uber knowingly accessed a protected computer in order to fraudulently capture its valuable contents to gain a competitive advantage, the hack violates the [Computer Fraud and Abuse Act], as well as California Penal Code Section 502.""

The CFAA is broad by design unfortunately. We've jailed people for enumerating customer data by incrementing a query parameter.

[https://www.wired.com/2013/03/att-hacker- gets-3-years/amp/](https://www.wired.com/2013/03/att-hacker-gets-3-years/amp/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Even though I loathe Uber I read their lawyer saying the ex-employee was extorting them.

Then I read that Uber paid him 4.5 million ... umm Uber paid that much to an extortionist for claims that aren't truthful? Ok yeah right .. whose pays that much to silence a lier?

<comment><USER10> The theory is that you might be inclined to pay in order to avoid a scandal that would be costlier.

For this kind of scandal, my armchair opinion is that you still have to do something at least a bit murky in order to allow yourself to be black mailed.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. Back when the news of the payoff first became public things were a lot murkier in terms of the broad picture but now that we've had the lid peeled back and we can see a bit more.

It seems a bit more obvious, to me at least, that Uber was and still is doing whatever it can to try to get to final valuation / being bought out / IPO before the severity of the scandal was fully known. I also think that we've reached the point of no return for that matter so I'm definitely interested to see how Uber and this entire debacle winds up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> May be I am being too naive, but can somebody answer two questions for me here (note: I have no personal relationship with Uber or Lyft except that I like ride sharing services more than traditional taxis):

(1) Taxi industry has been using medallion system to create artificial scarcity and scam passengers by providing low quality service at higher prices. And, this scam has been running with the help of local politicians at false pretexts (too many taxis ruin the look and appeal of the city etc.). What exactly are Uber's options in a city where the scam is supported by politicians?

(2) I personally know a lot of cities where Uber sued or used other means to force the local politicians to open up the city for ride sharing services. This benefited not only Uber, but other ride sharing companies too such as Lyft. If we believe that Uber used unethical means to get in many of the cities, what ethical responsibilities do we expect from Lyft? Should Lyft stay away from these cities or is it ethical for them to take a dip in these unethical gains provided by Uber?

<comment><USER13> (1) Only some cities use medallions. Many do not. Many more have little to zero taxi presence - you won't see cabs waiting on city streets to pick folks up. Gotta call to get one and wait. But there is a slew of other regulations to follow - such as having a special category of drivers license. The options for Uber are to follow laws or work on changing them if they want to work legally. In my opinion, this is Lyft's greatest strength. They tend to work with others.

(2) Suing isn't illegal, and a valid form of getting things changed. And sure, others can benefit from this way of _working with instead of against the system_ , just like a ruling on gay marriage isn't limited to the one couple that sued. Or like civil rights aren't limited to the few that caused problems. Asking Lyft to stay away because the market was helped by someone else doing things isn't exactly fair (Lyft has been going into markets as well and trying to change things, so I refuse to give all credit to Uber. Uber simply gets more press).

Lawsuits aren't really the thing that is unethical, though. We expect companies to not spy. Not outright break the law. Treat people equally. and so on. This applies to lyft as well as Uber.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems to remind of "Greyball".

How Uber Deceives the Authorities Worldwide [0]

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber- greyball-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball- program-evade-authorities.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> I have a long-bet that Uber will be out of business by August 2020. A friend and I have a decent bottle of wine (Grange Hermitage) riding on the outcome. And with every passing month I feel more and more confident!

It's obviously possible they'll limp through the deadline, or sell some assets like the brand. But I want to believe a company driven by ethics this bad from the top down, and which loses this much money month on month, can't survive. Bring on the fragmented second-movers in the space.

<comment><USER16> Has a company ever gone bankrupt due to bad ethics where it wasn't also a financial fraud? The core Uber business seems to still be doing well and resetting the taint of bad ethics is as easy as putting up a "under new management" sign - which what they've done

<comment><USER17>
      The core Uber business seems to still be doing well

I wouldn't call a business, which loses billions "doing well".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So when do we finally get to say, "You're too slimy to be a company anymore."

<comment><USER19> As soon as our culture decides that sliminess, or literally anything other than profitability, is relevant to whether you can be a company.

<comment><USER18> So they get to break the law as much as they want, and it's not going to make a difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Isn't this the same old news from a week or two ago? Something about a letter from lawyers of guy that worked at Uber, that contains various allegations, some of which the guy now refuses to acknowledge. Very confusing.

<comment><USER21> It came out in 3 news items. First it was reported that Alsup had received evidence from the DOJ which prompted him to delay the case. Earlier this week parts of the letter was made available to the public, and today much more about the letter, and where it came from was revealed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The similarities between Uber and E Corp are getting closer by the day.

</comment><comment><USER23> It never fucking ends with this company, does it?

<comment><USER24> Is this a bot which comments exact same thing on every Uber story? Just an observation because of how most of your comments make sense but every uber story has exact same question.

<comment><USER25> It's my observation that Uber deserves this response with each revelation

<comment><USER26> Uber keeps providing the material.

<comment><USER27> And you, me, and 98% of readers and lurkers on HN will continue to use Uber tomorrow. Whether it be to work, to the grocery store, or to the airport.

<comment><USER28> Some of us are lucky enough to live in cities where public-transport is both common-place and effective.

I've used Uber a couple of times in the UK, but only on a company-account. Here where I live there is a presence, but I've never used it personally, nor do I intend to. (Same goes for competitors.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Offer HN: Help understanding online video - <AUTHOR>

Online video is complicated. You have to worry about competing codecs, encoding settings, delivery protocols, player technologies, etc.<p>Ask me anything video related. Email address in my profile.<p>(Not mentioning my video startup because I don't want to turn Offer HN into spam, but it's in my profile if you're interested.) <comment><USER2> Hi Jon, I'd appreciate your advices on my video startup <http://videolla.com>! I dont think mentioning Zencoder is spam in that topic, its great! :) Sent you email

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it! I'll respond soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> hi, thought i'd ask in a comment rather than emailing, others might be interested to.

What sort of settings are "best" for flash videos? eg bit rate/resolution?

Every time i go to encode in flv i tend to use default settings, never really knowing if its a good idea to increase (/decrease) the bit rate etc? I have some sites where i know most people view the videos in full screen, so want high quality, but at the risk of it running slow (both because of internet speeds + flash videos are choppy on slow computers)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi!

There is no one "best" setting, unfortunately. Here are some guidelines, though.

\-- You have two real codec options in FLV: VP6 and H.264. H.264 compresses significantly better than VP6.

\-- Bitrate and lossiness are directly linked. Increase bitrate and visual quality will go up (within limits, of course), and vice versa.

\-- When using H.264, use Baseline profile if you're concerned about choppy video on slow computers. Main and High profiles compress better, but require more CPU to decode.

\-- Use one of two encoding modes: 2-pass Variable Bitrate (VBR), or one-pass Constant Quality (e.g. CRF). One-pass VBR doesn't look good.

\-- CRF mode (for x264) is great. It targets a fixed visual quality/loss, and the bitrate adjusts to match that. Think of it as an "auto-bitrate" feature.

This is a really general starting point. Any more specific questions I can answer?</comment></comment>


Congress Releases '28 Pages' That Looks for Saudi Links to Sept. 11 Hijackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/07/15/486198380/congress-releases-28-pages-that-looks-for-saudi-links-to-sept-11-hijackers <comment><USER2> Released on a Friday (like every bad press announcement) and also while the news is saturated with the French attack in Nice. I guess they really hope no one pays much attention.

<comment><USER3> From the article:

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, said it welcomed the document's release, which it had advocated for years.

The Saudi ambassador to the US:

"Since 2002, the 9/11 Commission and several government agencies, including the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., have investigated the contents of the '28 Pages' and have confirmed that neither the Saudi government, nor senior Saudi officials, nor any person acting on behalf of the Saudi government provided any support or encouragement for these attacks,"

"We hope the release of these pages will clear up, once and for all, any lingering questions or suspicions about Saudi Arabia's actions, intentions, or long-term friendship with the United States," he added.

Just because it was released on a Friday doesn't mean it was a bad news dump. The Saudi government has encouraged the release of the document for years because the classification was doing more damage than the document.

I will definitely be interested to see how independent third parties interpret the document.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "While in the United States, some of the September 11 hijackers were in contact with, and received support or assistance from, individuals who may be connected to the Saudi government," it states."

Is it stated what exactly is questionable about their affiliation? I don't think that there is a middle ground here. Either they have ties to government operations or they don't.

Very suspicious with the timing of this release as well. Great way to try and bury it with current events. This just reeks of political agenda.

<comment><USER5> > I don't think that there is a middle ground here. Either they have ties to > government operations or they don't.

I haven't read the pages yet, but it's not at all hard to imagine a grey area or two.

Imagine if we were talking about a radical Christian terrorist who'd received material assistance from a church known to be attended and funded by a senior Government minister.

Is there a direct connection between the minister and the church support of the terrorist? Even if true, was he acting in his capacity as a private individual, or with the blessing of the Government? And even then, with official blessing, or maybe just that of the intelligence or military sections?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Direct release link: [http://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/f...](http://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/files/documents/declasspart4.pdf)</comment>