The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer - <AUTHOR> http://www.jeanhsu.com/?p=263 <comment><USER3> Sorry, I can't hear about gender in engineering jobs anymore.

The likelihood that you will see a blog post about the "benefits of being a male software engineer" is exactly the same as the likelihood to see a blog post about the "benefits of being a male social worker".

We do not need to artificially try to bring in more engineers of a certain gender just because the numbers don't make sense.

And we do not need more blog posts calling out our oddities as engineers. We all dress like dorks. We all have our quirks. Get over it.

<comment><USER4> And this is precisely why we need still more posts.

You know why we don't need a "benefits of being a male software engineer" post? Because every day is a "benefits of being a male software engineer" day for male software engineers.

You should probably have a read of <http://amptoons.com/blog/the-male- privilege-checklist/> . As a rule when it comes to this sort of material, if it makes you feel uncomfortable and defensive, please think about why this is before commenting.

I'd love to see a post about "benefits of being a male social worker", or any other female-dominated field! As a feminist (3rd wave), I don't think equality is possible without addressing the problems faced by men, as well as women. Men in such jobs are routinely mocked by other men and subjected to ridicule by our masculine culture society. And that sucks.

<comment><USER5> I admit, I haven't read the entire checklist. When the first item on it is blatantly wrong, I kind of got turned off.

Go read about the advantages women have in hiring in the sciences: [http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12062&page=R1](http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12062&page=R1)

Anecdotally, women are also given advantages in big corporate IT, but I'm not aware of any studies. Corporations are generally loath to give away data on stuff like this, who knows what lawsuits it might bring.

I only skimmed the rest, but I found 14) particularly amusing. The politicians who stole my lunch [1], my freedom and my money all have a penis (just like me). This is a privilege how?

[1] In Jersey City, where I live and work, Steven Fulops chased away the food trucks to protect subway.

<comment><USER4> The list is a generalisation across all fields, so discounting it based on how something might not be true in your field is a bit short-sighted. #1 is true still for many fields.

Of course, the link you provided wasn't for the general tech sector - it was specific to universities, which have other aspects in play. Even within the general tech sector, there are plenty of reports of questionable hiring practices. I've found to be not uncommon for my gender (female) to be an issue during interviews, and we've seen posts here in the past about this subject. Further, women are often moved rapidly into management roles, and their technical abilities treated as suspect.

And yes, I'm speaking as something big corporate IT, and it's no better. Just looking across at our large (40+) server support teams, you can count the number of women on one hand. The application support teams here are slightly better, but only just. We're a typical shared services company in the UK, and our competitors are all very similar.

As for 14, you've found a truth about privilege lists - they might not always be things you like.

<comment><USER5> Which fields is #1 true for? Regardless, I'll assume you are right. Points 1-3 are irrelevant for the conversation we are having here (about women in tech), so I'll keep reading.

4) is a matter of whether you personally adopt a collectivist viewpoint or not. If women disproportionately adopt collectivist viewpoints, why is that anyone's fault besides their own?

5) is probably on point. 6) may be true in general, but (much like 1-3) it seems false in tech. Consider Leah Culver - "ooh, a girl that can program, and hot", as opposed to "meh, barely competent".

7-14) may be true, but are similarly irrelevant to a conversation about women in tech. Also, you still haven't explained how 14 is a "privilege". How does Obama's penis benefit me, relative to a woman?

<comment><USER6> On 14, the failure mode is called "not carving reality at the joints." Because .00001% of men wield large amounts of political power, whereas even fewer women (at least, visibly) do so, political power is a male privilege.

There are certainly reference classes for "likely to wield political power" that change the likelihood ratio by far more than "male."

<comment><USER4> You're missing the point.

The issue is not the raw numbers, but the pychological problem - that people like you are not in power, or not as equally holding power. That you are not of the type of people who have power.

And yes, there are other privileges, like White privilege, middle/upper-class privilege, straight privilege, cis privilege, not-abused privilege, and so on. These intersect to cause more issues again.

<comment><USER6> The assertion that people in privileged positions can never see their own privilege is refutation-proof; but when you start creating negative categories like "not-abused" to privilege, it's hard to claim with a straight face that anybody except the people actually in power are all that privileged.

Unless, of course, you're privileging gender privilege far above other types of privilege.

...and I just hit semantic satiation.

<comment><USER4> "The assertion that people in privileged positions can never see their own privilege is refutation-proof" Actually, I never said this, and I wouldn't. Most people who are privileged don't directly realise this, but it is common for concerned parties to learn about privilege to begin to "check their privilege" - to question how their privileges affects their interpretation of something.

I am privileged in some ways, and not in others. Generally privileges are treated as being different and hard to compare, because "oppression olympics" (arguing some are more harmful than others) never actually helps the discussion, and generally leads to people forgetting to check their privileges - who am I to speak for the experiences of other minorities?

The fact that you act amused at "not-abused" as a privilege is part of the whole problem, especially when you consider how this intersects with with privilege (or lack thereof) issues.

The concept of intersections between privileges (or the lack thereof) is important - that some combinations of the effects of a privileged society are worse than others.

<comment><USER6> My amusement is at the application of the word "privilege" to a negative description.

I currently enjoy not-superstitious privilege, not-being-kidnapped privilege, not-being-forcefed-arsenic privilege, and many others that help me maintain my status and position in ways I may never have thought of. But calling them "privileges" is silly; it leads, as I said, to semantic satiation; and that's part of the whole problem.

Many people here do not enjoy neurotypical privilege, but they don't use that language, they try to describe the actual problems they face and the ways to surmount them as efficiently as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> She doesn't mention it, but another great thing about being an engineer is that engineers are quite egalitarian and the evaluation criteria is often very objective (speed of the code, complexity of the algorithm, etc.). As a result, women just have to be good at what they do, and there's hardly any discrimination. In other fields, often, for a woman to just be good is not enough; there is overt (or covert) discrimination, "old boys" networks, etc.

// male here, but with several female engineer friends

<comment><USER8> I don't know. Engineers in general may be more impressed with skill than non- engineers, but as a woman in a technical field, I do feel constant pressure to not merely meet, but exceed, the abilities of my male peers in order to receive the same level of respect. I've felt it all my life, even as far back as middle and high school, competing in math competitions and our school's academic team, and being in the honors and AP classes.

It's not an overt thing. There's never any one comment or specific action by an individual you can point at and say, "See! Right there! You aren't giving me equal respect!" but the pressure is definitely there.

Also, the converse is true. Not only do you have to be better, to be seen as equal, anything you do wrong is magnified. Would Leah Culver's "creative" rounding method have been _nearly_ a big deal if she'd been male? I have the feeling that while people would still have joked about it, it wouldn't have been as widespread or for as long.

<comment><USER9> I think it's likely that your male peers, those who are interested in excellence, are also feeling that same pressure. I'm not suggesting that everything is equal, because it patently isn't, but the constant pressure to exceed the abilities of your peers is common, and I believe is motivating and even healthy. Someone's got to be the best at foo; if foo is important, why should you be the best at it and let others be the best at bar, baaz, quux, etc?

I've also obviously made mistakes and while the mistake spotlight is shining in your face, it feels pretty magnified, especially if you're one who has previously earned significant technical respect. For three years, I led the group in our company responsible for post-morteming every production issue, and reporting to our business leadership in a weekly meeting every issue that cost us more than $2000. In all that time, and in the rest of my two decades in the field, I don't think I've ever sensed a whiff of "you made that mistake because of your extra X chromosome..." (unfamiliar with Leah Culver, but will google now)

<comment><USER8> They probably do, but I even recognize the bias in myself. Even having experienced the wrong end of it, I often recognize myself subconsciously defaulting to less respect to another woman in technical matters.

Down in her comment <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2274993> pamelafox linked a blog post she had written about it being good to be a girl in CS, but _that_ post references a previous one she'd written in which she talks about her experience in Model UN in school, where she found herself doing the same thing. Automatically requiring other girls to 'prove' themselves more than the boys before she had respect for them as a speaker. (That post is here: [http://blog.pamelafox.org/2009/10/should-i-defend-my-cred- ye...](http://blog.pamelafox.org/2009/10/should-i-defend-my-cred-yes.html))

I try to be conscious of it, but again, I know what it's like to be on the receiving end. If this is a bias even other women _aware of the problem_ have and have to consciously fight in themselves, how many others (men _and_ women) don't even get as far as recognizing it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Re: "Being Liked"

If I were to say "I like having women at work, especially when they make brownies and are not bitches," I'd have an angry horde at my door.

But Jean Hsu thinks it is okay to say it because she is a woman?

<comment><USER11> I'm going to assume both you and Jean Hsu wouldn't be serious when they said that. In that case, if you were to say that, the angry horde would consist of women that didn't know you and were taking your words at face value, because guys have been known to actually feel that way. Those women would give Jean Hsu the benefit of the doubt, because there are few women known to have actually ever felt that way. However, with people you know, who understood the broader context of what you were saying, it wouldn't (shouldn't) be a problem.

"I like some female colleagues among my male colleagues for a number of reasons, but the fact that they tend to bring brownies definitely stands out for me, because I love brownies." There, defused the entire problem?

<comment><USER10> I agree. I'll gladly mince my words to avoid being called a sexist.

The issue here is that either Jean is being serious, in which case she's undermining workplace equality, or she's abusing the fact that she can facetiously say such things because she can get away with it. What is she trying to accomplish?

<comment><USER11> Well, clarifying what you mean to people that don't know you is not really mincing words: a lot of implicit things can remain unsaid with people that do know you, but that doesn't mean it should be possible to leave them unsaid at all.

I don't think she's trying to accomplish anything; she's just being blatantly honest and care-free, without taking into consideration how Joe Random may (reasonably) interpret what she's saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Less Drama

A male developer saying that would _so_ not get away with it :P

<comment><USER13> A male developer even thinking in terms of "More\Less Drama" ?

<comment><USER14> Usually men use the term "politics".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> only women can promote and oppose the same gender stereotypes simultaneously.

<comment><USER15> Are you promoting or opposing that stereotype?

<comment><USER13> i just admire them [women].

<comment><USER16> 'a woman can make three things out of nothing: a tragedy, a hairstyle, and a salad'

a russian sexist proverb (maybe internatnl dont know 4 sure)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Lets be honest here.

A lot of people are not going to like this type of post (as witnessed by the response here), but like any news outlet, sensationalist news sells. Jean Hsu is just following Gary V's advice and building up brand equity. There is no better way than to use your various circumstances in life to build a considerable amount of valley buzz.

Well played. I would do it too if I were in your shoes.

PS. Out of the last 10 hires I made for my previous startup, 3 of them were woman. I believe that's higher than industry standards.

<comment><USER3> IMO, this type of _buzz_ is no more than flamebait. But maybe my view of things is skewed.

PS. 30% women hires is pretty much the industry average.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I actually wrote a post with similar sentiments a while back - "Being a Girl in CS Doesn't Suck": [http://blog.pamelafox.org/2009/10/being-girl-in-cs- doesnt-su...](http://blog.pamelafox.org/2009/10/being-girl-in-cs-doesnt- suck.html)

As for the casual attire, I think it goes both ways. I'm totally into casual most of the times (to the point of wearing my head-to-toe footed pajamas to work), but then the days when I want to dress up or wear a mini-skirt or whatever, I feel like I'm standing out a bit too much and wish I was in the pop music industry instead. But alas, I have no singing talent and no autotune device, so back to coding I go.

<comment><USER19> Sometimes the men want to dress up too. If I wore a tie every day I'm sure I'd hate the bloody thing, but it is nice to occasionally get the boost one gets from dressing up. But a tie at work is definitely taboo, much more than a mini-skirt, since it sends really strong signals.

The only time I've worn a tie at work is when I've had a funeral in the afternoon, and when I drove straight to work after a party in Montreal. A suit with that slept-in look sends signals, but it doesn't imply to your co-workers that you have political ambitions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "You also get the added bonus of seeing people's confused reactions when they ask you if you're in marketing, and you tell them that you are a developer."

This sentence really surprised me. How often does this happen? Female engineers are a minority, but I wouldn't have imagined it would be _that_ big a deal to run into a female engineer.

<comment><USER21> I recently wrote an autobiographical paper from the perspective of women in technology for class. I found that women represent under 9% of the developers/designers at the company I work for, under 5% of the core developers on open source projects I contribute to, and under 3% of the contributors to those projects. So while I personally wouldn't make that assumption, it's probably not a bad one, statically speaking, for many software engineers.

<comment><USER22> Not sure that is the word choice you intended: It might not be a "bad" one it terms of your chances of being right, but it's "bad" in the sense that it's insulting, frustrating, and marginalizing for the underestimated woman.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Add to the list another 'benefit': Getting immediate attention from any male dominated forum (case in point: HN).

Having worked with female colleagues (EEs), I have found much more diversity than common behavior. These sort of articles certainly do not reflect my experience (as a male).

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm very glad my girlfriend is not a developer (and she is very glad I'm not a geologist). I quite enjoy the escape from coding that she provides for me.

</comment><comment><USER25> Until recently, I've found that claims of sexism in software were strange (I'll share a story below to explain). If anything, I've generally found that men tend to be thrilled at having women working with them, and not for the seedy sort of ways that might be expected. Most of the male software engineers I've known honestly wonder why their field has so few women in it -- known that women are full and well as smart and capable as they. I've heard of no (until recently) cases of misconduct, or uncomfortable work environments -- on the contrary, I've usually heard that when a woman engineer claims that she'd like something to make her environment better, her management will bend over backwards to try and accommodate. I _have_ heard of the usual pay issues and promotion problems. But in most cases it seems to just be a matter of not asking for them.

At any rate, the lack of representation of women in software is a huge problem in the field since it cuts off effectively half of the possible work force. More importantly, software that might better reach the female audience doesn't get written, services don't get created, etc.

Now the story.

My wife is a software engineer, her last job was a technical department head at a company with about 40% female software engineers. It wasn't super high- end work, but it provided services and data worth about $30-40million/yr to some very major institutions, so it had to be rock solid.

Her immediate boss was a woman, and 3 out of 4 department heads were women. Her boss's boss was a man.

Before that she worked for a $2billion dollar large company. In her department, there were about 30% female engineers (though in another technical department there were none, go fig). (her immediate super was a woman, but later changed to a man).

Before that she worked at an e-commerce company, of the engineering staff were women, her boss was a man, but his boss was a woman.

In every case they produced great, solid work, the companies were wildly profitable, her career progressed fantastically -- and she never complained about problems with sexism. Maybe she's been lucky, she never sought out these places, but that's where she ended up. (it could be that having so many women in the first placed altered the hiring dynamics so that they would tend to hire more women later)

Late last year, at the company she worked for, they brought in a new COO and within 4 months everything changed. Women managers were promoted up and over or moved laterally into diminished positions. Men with no engineering experience were brought in as department supervisors. My wife had her department entirely eliminated and her staff placed under all new _male_ supervisors. One woman engineer was fired because she botched a minor product management job while a male engineer was promoted to department head right after complaints of rampant racism and sexism were formally filed against him.

My wife was devastated, she tried to stick it out, but the writing was on the wall and after a few miserable, tortuous months, I convinced her to resign. It was the first time she (or I for that matter) had seen or experienced such rampant and overt sexism.

Three months after she leaves we find out from her former colleagues that the COO was fired, and that 3 out of 4 major development projects have to be scrapped (at a total loss of $7-9 million) and the company is running in the red (in a recession proof industry).

If she had stayed her problems would now be over and she might have been able to work the problem to her advantage.

But, the good side is that she's now trying to startup her own company, brushing the dust off of long dormant engineering talents, and is happier than I've ever known her to be since she's doing her own thing and writing her own rules. Her job satisfaction appears to be off the charts and I don't think I've ever seen her work so hard.

<comment><USER5> Honestly, your story sounds like a typical corporate power struggle which happened to affect a department which was (by some fluke) full of women.

If you read about HP under Fiorina, you hear a similar story. Techies were pushed aside and replaced by Fiorina's cronies (mostly marketers), and the company suffered horribly. Such stories don't always end in disaster - <USER2> certain investment bank recently brought on a new IT chief who is well known for destroying a broken department and rebuilding a highly efficient one in it's place.

The process also involves firing many managers and replacing them with people loyal to him, pushing out lots of insiders, huge numbers of formerly comfortable people quitting in disgust, etc.

The only unusual element in your story ("her staff placed under new _male_ supervisors") sounds like reversion to the mean - as you noted, "in another technical department there were none [women]". Perhaps there are other elements to the story that you haven't mentioned, but your description just sounds like normal corporate politics.

<comment><USER25> You bring up a fantastic point and it's certainly gave us things to think about while it was all happening. I have seen that kind of thing happen in my own career, but it's usually men replacing men with different men -- usually to disastrous effect.

I think what finally made us conclude the sexist element was the speed with which it happened, and that red flags were raised with HR that only seemed to speed things up -- get rid of the complainers faster than they can complain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Pretty much the same benefits when you're a guy working in a company filled with women. I just take the extra drama with the infinite supply of brownies every day.

</comment><comment><USER16> it's nice that jean wrote

> if you are a single female you can have first pick of a lot of really nice > available guys

just nice and life-asserting. for me.

</comment><comment><USER27> Another relatively male-dominated field is banking (although probably less so than programming), yet one can argue that there's plenty of drama operating within those concrete towers.

What differentiates the level of "drama" between the banking industry from the software programming industry? Is it because engineering is inherently more meritocratic and less egotistical? Or is there just too much money and power at stake when it comes to banking that one can't help but get involved in more politicking? Does the (presence or absence of any one)gender come into play at all?

</comment><comment><USER28> The part about her husband being glad he got married before moving to California reminds me of this comment:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2272748>

(It's by the author of an article that made the front page earlier today.)

</comment><comment><USER29> Beggars can't be choosers perhaps but couldn't both halves of a relationship being similar get ubalanced? Maybe just a little bit more understanding, or opportunitiy, makes up for that...

</comment><comment><USER30> My (sexist?) experience:

The few women I've worked alongside as a software engineer have been fantastic. Easy to get along with, able to focus on work tasks and still have a great lunchtime conversation, with no alpha-nerd pedantic B.S.

The women I've worked _for_ (three) have been universally terrible. Each in slightly different ways, but all had a strange, overcompensating quality to them. I'll just have to say it: bitchiness. Strange, control-freak tendencies and subsequent drama.

I've worked for two great male bosses, two idiots, and one brilliant guy who was an asshole (but at least he could be reasoned with). I would take all but one of the male bosses over any of the female bosses.

My conclusion isn't that women are bad managers, or anything like that. Rather, I believe it shows that people with lousy people skills are distributed across both sexes, and promoting worker bees to management positions is _not_ an ideal plan.

<comment><USER31> I confirm this experience and the anecdotal evidence I gathered is quite similar.

Edit: Almost forgot - I also had a female boss I would work for in a beat. I must mention that she was more of a tomboy - but still what a woman: pragmatic, ambitious, decisive, tough but fair. All the general qualities one would expect from a man, but with added softness of female persuasion and communication skills.

<comment><USER32> It's funny how good female bosses are often described as "tomboyish". I'm starting to think "tomboy" is just a synonym for "assertive but likeable woman"

<comment><USER6> I always thought "tomboyish" meant "willing to climb a tree," with possible overtones of "hair shorter than shoulder length."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> _They generally remember to shower every so often_

Oh, come on.

<comment><USER34> _Most_ of them _do_ tend to be cleaner.

But anyone remember the report a couple of decades back about water usage after the US Navy started letting women on ships? Having ladies around made the guys shower more often. Empirically, I can verify that, since getting married, I do tend to shave more often.

<comment><USER35> Just to be a contrary example, both my wife and I shave _less_ now that we're married (ie, never). Our skin is much happier, shorter showers, far fewer razors going dull, and no more cactus in bed.

She's also discovering she prefers it in other women - as a massage therapist, regardless of how recently they've shaved she'll encounter it all, and it's pretty amazingly irritating stuff.

<comment><USER30> _as a massage therapist, regardless of how recently they've shaved she'll encounter it all_

As a guy who enjoys massages and has hairy extremities: no matter how much oil is used, the hair gets pulled. One of the primary reasons cyclists shave their legs is for better massages.

<comment><USER35> That's true, and I have heard that about cyclists (in particular). I wonder if it depends on the amount of hair. I'm not very hairy, and I've never had much of a problem (a couple tugs, but after a few massages you don't notice it any more). Also, if you ever get the chance, different kinds of oil act differently, you might have better luck if you experiment a bit.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are there no online notary services in the EU? - <AUTHOR> I'm in Denmark right now, and we need to notarize  documents, the notary public is closed for anything that is not a business (which seems pretty unfair). So I looked for online notary services and it doesn't seem like I can find any EU ones, I suppose there must be a reason (like an EU ruling making it not worthwhile etc.) <comment><USER2> Because notary is Europe has different status then in US.

European notary is responsible for veryfing authenticity of all documents provided by his clients. And he is liable in case he makes a mistake.

[http://www.notaries-of-europe.eu//index.php?pageID=191](http://www.notaries- of-europe.eu//index.php?pageID=191)

[https://www.mdpryke-notary.com/2010/03/uk-notaries- public-%E...](https://www.mdpryke-notary.com/2010/03/uk-notaries- public-%E2%80%93-how-they-differ-from-us-notaries-%E2%80%93-part-1/)

<comment><AUTHOR> my next idea was - build online notary service, but on the blockchain! Because this is the one time that I thought on the blockchain might actually make sense. Although I was more thinking about verifying the people who provide the documents, not the documents themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In the US, individual states had to affirmatively enact law to allow it. Virginia was the first, which I recall as they were the only place I could find one back around 2010 for a transaction. There are still only a few, slowly increasing.

In the UK, I believe they are only authorized within the City of London (=/= "London"). But it looks like they can do "international" documents.

The gripping hand here is whether your receiving party will _accept_ an online notarized doc even if you can get it done. Best to confirm that first.

<comment><USER4> Notaries are not required in the United States. 28 USC 1746 provides an alternative. Bureaucrats will, initially at least, kick and scream, but once they (or their legal counsel) read the statute, they acquiesce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very good question. Probably because an online service that lets you sign documents electronically and keeps these documents in a public repository is so simple these days that would make evident that many notary services are not needed anymore

<comment><USER6> In Germany, notaries provide exactly that service. The repository of record is then the Amtsgericht.</comment></comment>


Bill from State of Utah that will shut off water to NSA's Utah facility [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1364529/00005087.pdf

<comment> o0-0o Can anyone shed any light on whether this bill was co-sponsored across parties, sponsored by Republicans, or sponsored by Democrats?</comment>


Real Time Instant ACH Is Live Today - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/15/dwolla-fisyncs-first-banking-customer-goes-live-eliminates-ach-delays-with-real-time-bank-transfers/cc/

<comment><USER2> The /cc/ on the end of the URL seems to break something?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4118015></comment></comment>


Sky-edit: vim-like editor as a Firefox extension - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Gozala/sky-edit#readme

<comment><USER2> Ooo, this would be really nice to have on Chromebooks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the fact that you can use the Firefox Awesomebar for opening files to edit. This is unfortunately something Chrome is not as good at.</comment></comment>


How Paranoid Should You Be?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.randomhouse.ca/hazlitt/feature/how-paranoid-should-you-be <comment><USER2> So if a group of kids leverage Twitter to play 140-char D&D for a summer, is that a botnet? How paranoid should data analysts be?

Another spin on Cartesian Doubt — run it through a Hume machine: there's no fact in our mental histories that shows that we are not dreaming.

<comment><AUTHOR> We with computer science background tend to put this claims to the margins due to the strict nature of the systems we work with.

But we forget how many correction steps those systems have to prune and filter anomalies:

\- the voltage threshold for digital signal; \- correction bits. \- checksum; \- hashes \- rings \- keepalive signals \- etc</comment></comment>


Ask HN: From IntelliJ (Jetbrains) to VSCode, has anyone done it? - <AUTHOR> Hi all,
I'd say the title is pretty self explanatory. For the last few years I have been trying to switch to VSCode. However, I keep on returning to my beloved PyCharm. Did anyone successfully switch from a Jetbrains IDE to VSCode?
I'd love to use an open source editor that I can easily write plug-ins for... but I can't seem to get the same level of productivity with it. <comment><USER2> Hi!

Yup, I did the switch from Webstorm to VS Code 2 years ago. I missed automated refactoring features, which are so great in IntelliJ.

But it's getting better, thanks to TS. Also, I was able to implement some automated refactorings as an extension.

Not sure about Python though, but I'd check for the existing extensions, see how it goes. The good news is that you could also develop your own plugins, in JS or in Python (with a server communicating to VS Code editor using the Language Server Protocol).

</comment><comment><USER3> I tried, and had the same experience as you. Lots of little things in Pycharm, like ctrl-clicking into arbitrary libraries and debugging in them, is hard to give up.

<comment><USER4> Agree. Because of that I still use pycharm for python and vscode for everything else. Default tuning for Autocompletion, PEP8 suggetions, code jumping just works so well in python.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a timely question.

I've just recently switched from IDEA and GoLand to VSCode for Java and Go, respectively.

Thus far I've taken on the order of a 5% productivity hit, but I'm sure this will disappear soon as muscle memory is formed. Be sure to remap your keys. Ctrl+W was critical for my use-case, as VSCode does approximately the same thing with Shift+Alt+(+/-)

</comment><comment><USER6> Try Emacs once.

It is Open Source. It supports Python very well. It is true extensible Editor(Elisp is Lisp which is easily extensible. there are also tons of good extensions available).

</comment><comment><USER7> I was able to switch to vscode from webstorm recently, this was mostly due to incorrect ctrl click navigation in my webstorm project.

One thing i miss is the version ctrl and diffing tools of webstorm

<comment><USER8> The merge conflict tool in Intellij should really be a product on its own. It's the best IMO

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What kind of plugins would you need for PyCharm? It has quite a lot of them and you can write yours (well, yes, in Java).

Also PyCharm is quite significantly an OSS, actually.

</comment><comment><USER10> I didn't use PyCharm. I used VSCode from the start. I'm happy with it, but I don't have anything to compare it with.</comment>


17-yo Girl Must Digest Brain Fluid Inside Her Belly to Survive - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5653150/17+yo-girl-must-digest-brain-fluid-to-survive

<comment><USER2> It sounds like she needs to just drain the brain fluid _somehow_ \- letting it overflow into her stomach was just the most convenient way to do so. Not quite as bizarre as the headline makes it sound.

Here's hoping there's an especially reliable one-way valve on that. If I had a tube running between my brain and a vat of hydrochloric acid, I'd be rather paranoid about backflow eating away my soft squishy gray stuff.

edit: re-reading that, it's between her brain and her peritoneal cavity, which sounds much less scary.

</comment><comment><USER3> The fluid does not enter her stomach, it goes into her peritoneal cavity. The peritoneal cavity is defined by the lining that surrounds your abdominal organs.

On one hand, this is totally standard, and these get installed every day. It's still amazing, but not clear to me why this was written up in Gizmodo.

</comment><comment><USER4> Summary of [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1316205/Teenage- gi...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1316205/Teenage-girl-control- rare-brain-condition-digesting-spinal-fluid.html)</comment>


JLib: Build container images for your Java applications - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/jib <comment><USER2> Hi based2, thanks for sharing, though the project name is actually "Jib" (without the 'L').</comment>


Big Ball of Mud (1999) - <AUTHOR> http://www.laputan.org/mud/ <comment><USER3> The essay is a classic.

> Shantytowns are squalid, sprawling slums. What is it that they are doing > right?

> Shantytowns are usually built from common, inexpensive materials and simple > tools. Shantytowns can be built using relatively unskilled labor.

This is a powerful metaphor, and I see it often in code.

If you've ever seen an API gateway written using the same web framework as the other services, where in order to route "/external/order" to "/internal/order", the first step steps are e.g. "File | new | Controller", call it "ExternalController", make a GET method called "order", and in there code up a http call to "internal/order" ... you have a shantytown API gateway.

It's terrible, it requires manual extending for any new endpoint. But it's not a specialised skill. Anyone on the dev team can extend it by just adding more of the same.

<comment><USER4> Well, maybe the good thing here is that at some point someone will notice that the specific gateway code can be extracted and then refactored? Idk there's probably a reason why they decided to do this, the most common answer I've gotten is, product requires feature out tomorrow. How does one reconcile this problem of competing priorities that aren't actually sized right (ie. short term feature development versus long term code health?)

<comment><USER5> You have to get management and customer support, and that's the hard part. They have to understand the idea of the capability trap [0][1]. A lack of maintenance is inviting disaster, this is true across domains. Software is cheap, though, and usually doesn't have terrible consequences (see the notable exceptions like Therac-25 or 737 Max). Who cares if your IM client is a POS, it's not going to cost lives. And even if it is junk, we can buy a new one (MS) or build a 17th one (Google).

The way around this, and again you have to get management and customer support, is to bring maintenance activities into every iteration. Create systems that can detect issues and errors early (more comprehensive testing, new testing styles like fuzzing and property-based testings; moving critical portions to statically typed languages or adding type annotations; etc.). Make addressing those issues a priority, some portion of your time in each iteration should be spent addressing concerns or increasing the ability to detect issues. Over time, when I've seen this done, it's made making changes much faster, even for larger changes. But without this, even "trivial" changes can end up taking months, instead of days or weeks.

[0] [https://web.mit.edu/nelsonr/www/Repenning=Sterman_CMR_su01_....](https://web.mit.edu/nelsonr/www/Repenning=Sterman_CMR_su01_.pdf)

[1] [https://www.systemdynamics.org/assets/conferences/2017/proce...](https://www.systemdynamics.org/assets/conferences/2017/proceed/papers/P1325.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Some what of a random question, how did you find [0] and [1]?

<comment><USER5> I don't recall now. I'd heard of Sterman from various other readings on business and system dynamics and a recommendation from here. I can't recall now if I found these papers from googling his name or a recommendation from my sister.

I think she's the one that gave me the phrase "capability trap" and Google found these and other articles.

<comment><USER4> Awesome thank you, I was just trying to figure what the current state of your mental model on the subject is :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is required reading for all software developers. Any successful software system will end up as a Big Ball of Mud or other anti-architecture eventually. It's just the nature of the beast. And while we should fight the entropy, it will occur despite our efforts (there might be a few exceptions in the world, but for the most part it is inevitable)

In order for software to be successful it needs to solve a problem. In order for that software to be successful in the long term it will have to change and adapt to continue solving the problem. Architecture usually means abstraction. And abstraction is most always a tradeoff - you sacrifice flexibility to make something common, easier. But there is the rub. A successfully abstracted architecture that solves the problem today, will not be able to solve the problem tomorrow without big changes!

<comment><USER7> There's a very short chapter in one of the books I like, _Working Effectively With Legacy Code_ , entitled "We Feel Overwhelmed. It Isn't Going To Get Any Better." The chapter offers little more than hope based on seeing turnarounds happen -- once you get some control over your code, you start developing little oases that are pleasant to work in, even if the rest is crap.

I see something similar with large software systems. A 'system' is something that can stand alone, but very large software is logically composed of many subsystems that could in theory stand alone even if presently they never stand apart from the full system or if their components are so intertwined that the logical subsystem is only a potential abstraction. While the full system might be a ball of mud, and you have little to no control over what Team X does with their subsystems and their relations/interconnects with the overall system, it is possible to rework your own subsystems in a way that they themselves aren't balls of mud and stay that way indefinitely. (I suspect this is part of some of the optimism behind microservices -- followed by pessimism when people realize the full system that interconnects everything can still easily become (or start as) a ball of mud, one even less pleasant to work in than in a monolith design.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > All too many of our software systems are, architecturally, little more than > shantytowns. Investment in tools and infrastructure is too often inadequate. > Tools are usually primitive, and infrastructure such as libraries and > frameworks, is undercapitalized. Individual portions of the system grow > unchecked, and the lack of infrastructure and architecture allows problems > in one part of the system to erode and pollute adjacent portions. Deadlines > loom like monsoons, and architectural elegance seems unattainable.

I would argue they are more akin to failed housing projects: competent architects went to great lengths to justify their existence as a cost- effective solution to an existing problem, but this approach didn't work and they offer no better conditions to their residents than shantytowns.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is one of my (two) favorite essays regarding software production - <USER2> deals with the evolution of software in an uncontrolled environment. I just posted my other favorite "classic" essay which deals with the evolution of a technical team in an uncontrolled environment. Perhaps others will find it equally enlightening: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22376468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22376468).

<comment><USER10> Don't use URL shorteners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _Here's an example of one of the scripts that generates the attendance > report:_

      echo "
Registrations: " `ls | wc -l` "
"
      echo ""
      echo "Authors: " `grep 'Author = Yes' * | wc -l` ""
      echo "
"
      echo "Non-Authors: " `grep 'Author = No' * | wc -l` ""
      echo "

"

> _This script is slow and inefficient, particularly as the number of > registrations increases, but not least among its virtues is the fact that it > works. Were the number of attendees to exceed more than around one hundred, > this script would start to perform so badly as to be unusable._

I'm not entirely buying it; I remember what performance was like in 1995, and grepping a hundred or so small files wasn't any sort of big deal, even on consumer-grade equipment like an 80486 running GNU/Linux, even with multiple users hammering on that CGI server to obtain the above output.

In any case, the logic could easily be rearranged so that the output of exactly the same code as above is cached as static HTML, which is regenerated only when the set of registration files is altered.

So if the registration exploded and the machine got bogged down with multiple instances of these slow scripts, there would be no need to change the actual code, just to plug it into the overall solution in a different way.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ok, let's see... [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22Big%20Ball%20of%20Mud%22&sort=byDate&type=story)

A thread from 2017 (6 comments): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13716667](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13716667)

2015 (9 comments): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9989424](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9989424)

2013 (21 comments): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6745991](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6745991)

2009 (2 comments): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=911445](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=911445)

2007 (2 comments): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10259](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10259)

Nothing bigger? I would have sworn otherwise.

<comment><USER9> Some of these essays (probably including a few of PG's) should be automatically put on the front page every two years or so! It looks like this (excellent) article averages about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> IMHO containerization exists because of this "pattern." It's a way to just take big balls of crap, roll them up _along with the entire host OS image_ , and deploy them as a unit. Problem "solved."

Of course now you have microservice architectures where you're basically creating programs made of containerized services. Any bets on how long it'll take to have containers-of-containers be a thing?

Maybe this could be the "big box of crap" pattern.

<comment><USER14> Putting the application in a container doesn't make it easier to make safe, controlled changes to the internal workings of the application. It doesn't help any developers understand the theory (if any) underlying the application code, that might help them understand how to code with the grain when making changes.

Stuffing it into a container to deploy it is orthogonal. It doesn't solve many problems

<comment><USER15> You're both right.

I have worked professionally in a company that is a giant, sprawling software slum at best. Containers are _huge_ there because they are perceived as fixing this issue even if they just make it worse in practice.

<comment><USER13> I see containers, at least when used this way, as a consolidation loan for technical debt. They let you consolidate your existing debt load embodied in all your messy uninstallable ball of crap software and then max out your credit again.

One of the issues here is the lost art of writing _installable_ and _well- organized_ software. It's quite normal these days to have services and apps that consist of multiple often redundant services and sub-applications wired haphazardly together with crap strewn all over systems.

<comment><USER15> It may sound contrarian, but I was very, very recently looking at a project that uses three or four different base containers because the people involved can't agree to use the same flavor of linux.

It's more like they are doing the technical equivalent of credit card churning but never closing out the accounts. I have never seen anything like this, and I have, on and off in my career, worked in contexts best described as "software superfund decon expert."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm currently refactoring a legacy codebase which has many of the attributes of big ball of mud. It seems to have started with a misguided amateur attempt at an architecture, which turned into "the most complicated thing which could possibly work", then imploded. I've been in the "trench warfare" stage ever since I inherited it after the original developers had all gone.

<comment><USER17> As a counter point, I've been here, and thought the same, but it was my lack of experience that made me think that way. The codebase was written the way it was for a reason, and I was just not experienced enough to understand it's reasoning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think the earlier (1970s) and non-pejorative use of this term "big ball of mud" (e.g., as applied to LISP compared APL) is also insightful.

To wit, if what you have is a big ball of mud anything you add to it becomes mud too. At least without heroic effort, this seems to be true. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is worth recognizing in systems thinking.

</comment><comment><USER19> This always feels so unfortunate. It's not that there isn't validity in the thesis, there is. It's just that I've worked with people that reason, "It's inevitable so why fight it? Embrace the ball and hack away" as an excuse not to do good work.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have the greatest sympathy for discovering you have a Big Ball of Mud. It may have even been polished by years of grazing touches by many hands into a dorodango, achieving a kind of beauty. Someone, perhaps many someones, spent a lot of time on it and this is your inheritance. My condolences.

Still, even the dorodango is fragile, prone to cracking, sensitive to many conditions. Inheriting one is a situation which may occur to any programmer. What the organization decides to do once they have a Big Ball of Mud on their hands is the real issue.

I consider this the reaction to the eventuality to be a real test of organizational mettle.

</comment><comment><USER21> Maintain a system with low entropy, always means injecting more energy from the outside. Because the entropy in an adiabatic(closed) system always increases.

Sometimes the energy cost/(effort) can be higher than the benefit, or the cost of the opportunity of having a mud/noise system can be negligible. As other human constructions, sometimes best is not better, it depends on the metric.

</comment><comment><USER22> Also: The Rise of "Worse is Better" [http://dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html](http://dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html)

featuring the MIT vs New Jersey approaches.

<comment><USER23> I hate this essay so much.

Wherin dick gabriel rolls up his sleeves to get into the language wars and calls more popular languages than his favourite "viruses" and says they are "worse" by definition without proper justfication. It's like catnip for those around here who want to ride a technology to career success through early adoption so then put on their language warrior garbs to hunt the heretics who dare question. Old greybeards did since the time of the dinosaurs. And it sucked then too.

Sensible argument and discussion are so much more productive, interesting, enjoyable, educational than language war flame-fests of which this is one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What the hell is with that image in the intro, with the smiling waiter?

<comment><USER25> Funnily enough, I recognize this image from The Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour" soundtrack liner notes (the image itself is from the movie). Why it's included in this article is lost on me.

<comment><USER26> It's from the meaning of life by monty python.

<comment><USER27> You're, perhaps understandably, thinking of Mr Creosote - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Creosote](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Creosote)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The founder of the first company I worked for used to say "You are only qualified to design software that you have already written" which seems to apply to this as well.</comment>


Launch HN: Emvi – Knowledge management for companies and teams of all sizes - <AUTHOR> https://emvi.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN!

Emvi is our approach to a easy-to-use knowledge base for companies and teams of all sizes and we finally reached public beta. You can use it to write down everything you need to remember, share or document and make it discoverable for everyone else in your organization.

We found that existing tools structure content in a tree-like hierarchy which tends to limit internal reach and scalability. For Emvi, we implemented a system that is closer to sites like Wikipedia, Medium or even YouTube - articles are linked internally, curated to lists and grouped by tags.

Our goal is to make it accessible for both technical and non-technical users and to keep the content maintainable for the long term.

Features we already include:

* Powerful search with filters and sorting options

* Activity feed and notifications

* WYSIWYG-editor with real-time collaboration

* @-mention any element (articles, lists, tags, users or groups)

* Full article change history

* Fine-grained rights management for users and groups on a per article basis

* Mobile support

* English and German UI

* Multiple translations for articles and list titles

Over the next few months we are planning to add comments, integrations, embeds, import/export and markdown support. We already have an API which can pull articles from Emvi, visit our blog to see it in action. Shortly after leaving beta state, we will offer a self-hosted version aswell.

Feel free to share your thoughts and questions in the comments.

Cheers, Daniel

<comment><USER2> How does an organization _migrate_ from its existing systems to Emvi? Is there a gradual adoption path?

<comment><AUTHOR> We do not have an import feature yet, but that is definitely coming. Where would you like to migrate from?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> could you explain what is the thought process that is this knowledge management have better approach from competitor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Other knowledge bases and wikis tend to rely on a tree-like hierarchy and setting access permissions with a top-to-bottom approach. In Emvi permissions are set on per article basis, so they can have company-wide reach and still be edited by a small team only. We think this scales better with growing organizations, because silos are removed by default.

Let me know if you have any more questions.</comment></comment>


What Is ScrumBut? - <AUTHOR> https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-scrumbut <comment><USER2> I think I developed that from too many stand-ups. :v</comment>


Ask HN: Introducing my son to programming - <AUTHOR> My 6 year old has an interest in science, maths and technology. I was wondering if I could introduce him to programming to see if he likes it. I'm aware of languages such as logo and scratch but was wondering if there are any others and, more importantly, if theres anything I should keep in mind or any techniques I should try?<p>Any and all advice appreciated. Programming and my love for it accelerated my learning in primary school and I was curious to see if my son has inherited the 'bug' :) <comment><USER2> I would recommend the Raspberry Pi. If he turns out not to be that interested, you won't have invested much - the computer itself only costs $35 plus shipping and taxes. Apart from the computer there is a truly awesome community, with a lot of emphasis on getting kids interested in coding, all sorts of different projects and really helpful forums if you get stuck. Scratch is very well supported.

There is even a getting started with computing kit: [https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-77882?ICID=rpim...](https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-77882?ICID=rpimain- feature-products)

That costs €139, but Matlab is freely available for the Raspberry Pi (special license), and the documentation is also freely available. What you are paying for is the bundling together with all of the accessories, which you may not need.

</comment><comment><USER3> See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11512466](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11512466)</comment>


Foursquare and MongoDB: What If? - <AUTHOR> http://facility9.com/2010/10/26/foursquare-and-mongodb-what-if <comment><USER2> This is "how I would make Twitter scale" all over again. Unless you're an engineer working on that particular system, you can't credibly give advice on how to improve it. Doing so is an insult to the profession.

<comment><USER3> What a bull-shit statement. So Twitter engineers can't take any outside advice because those people aren't working on Twitter's particular system. No one else in the world could possibly know how to make large scale messaging systems work.

I am not saying any of the arm-chair analysts are right but it is pretty presumptuous to dismiss them outright.

<comment><USER4> While luigi's statement is a little extreme, I think the gist is right. Yes outsiders can offer advice on a system, but it's really difficult to offer sound advice without specific details of the system. Perhaps outsider advice shouldn't be dismissed outright, but it ought be taken with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER3> I very much agree that the devil is in the details, and the largest detail here is how Foursquare goes about calculating badges. So without knowing that the article can't fully evaluate alternatives. That has less to do with the author not being an engineer on Foursquare's team rather Foursquare not detailing the calculation. Maybe on Riak map/reduce is fast enough and Foursquare can shard by checkin, which would be much easier to balance.

Maybe they should just implement their own sharding based on user activity. Maybe a few SSD drives on their Postgres server would solve they issue. They through the issue out there, if nothing else works tell us why.

<comment><USER4> Some informative links, in case you haven't seen them already:

* [http://www.quora.com/What-caused-Foursquares-downtime-on-Oct...](http://www.quora.com/What-caused-Foursquares-downtime-on-October-4-2010)

* <http://blog.foursquare.com/2010/10/05/so-that-was-a-bummer/>

* [https://groups.google.com/group/mongodb-user/browse_thread/t...](https://groups.google.com/group/mongodb-user/browse_thread/thread/66752f49af68619?pli=1)

Someone on this thread suggested that Foursquare's performance problem is related to the calculation of badges. I'm not sure where this idea came from. I haven't seen any mention of the issue being related to badges in first or secondhand sources.

That said, Mongo DB's map/reduce operation would not be a reasonable solution at this time. Mongo DB's map/reduce performance is, at present, somewhat lacking because it runs via the javascript engine which is currently single threaded. I know there are plans to improve performance of Mongo DB's javascript engine by switching to V8, but I don't know if V8 is multithreaded.

Often design decisions that look bad in hindsight get baked in early. By the time you realize that an alternate design would yield better performance, there may be too much data to migrate so you just have to live with it.

<comment><USER5> harryh mentioned it here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1769909> Computing the badges online (ie at each checkin time) requires having the whole db in ram for acceptable performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is essentially a non-discussion depending on how they're using Mongo. I suspect that they, as we are, might be making use of Mongo's ability to query documents based on embedded objects, which means their only choices would have been a traditional RDBMS with JOINs or MongoDB.

<comment><USER7> That's just absolutely false. What makes you think that other database systems can't be made to perform these kinds of queries?

<comment><USER6> This is based on my own experience at our startup. We looked at a number of NoSQL databases for our backend storage. While others may "be made to", MongoDB was the only one that advertised it as a feature and was by far the easiest to use for that feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not questioning the validity of the data point, but why would RDBMS have a cost of 10 times per unit of storage? I haven't heard this reasoning before. Anyone know where this comes from?

<comment><USER9> Assuming RDBMS is to be understood as ACID, this may be because of the need for more reliable hardware, and good IO hardware is comparatively expensive ?

If you use things like mongodb and co, you are giving up on single-node durability, for example, and you don't need to have as much efficient IO (e.g. reasonable fsync performances). Otherwise, I don't see why mysql would require more expensive hardware mongodb

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting writeup. The thing it seems to not address is that a different sharding model might have not worked for foursquare's data access needs. In this <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1769982> HN post harryh alludes to the fact that using user ID as the shard key was a design decision. Their current design requires that an entire user's checkin history be able to be loaded for calculating badges so sharding by user ID might have been necessary to guarantee not having the performance overhead of multi-server retrievals. From reading the various write ups it seems like the real problems (using the current load all data for badge calculations method) came from getting too close to the max memory and then the issue that foursquare's checkins weren't filling full pages so migrating data didn't actually give nodes 1 & 2 any place to write new data to (in memory) until after compaction could be performed.

<comment><USER3> Why not shard by check-in id and map/reduce to get the badge calculation? When sharding by user id, no solution is going to lead to a balanced cluster since some users will always be more active than others. If map/reduce takes to long, batch it and return the badge calculation later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find this sort of uninformed armchair analysis to be unfulfilling.

</comment><comment><USER11> _This begs the question "How we could handle the constant write load?"_

Please stop doing that. <http://begthequestion.info/>

<comment><USER12> Language is dynamic, get over it. Unless you want to stick to 'thee' and 'thy' (which clearly is not the first form of English). IMO "Begs the question" == "Raise the question" makes much more sense than the 'correct' interpretation.

<comment><USER11> I suppose I should of expected that reply.

<comment><USER12> I'm certainly not saying it to be a douche, it's just how language has worked...forever. Fighting it is pretty useless IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Off-topic: IMHO, this page has a unique and beautiful design (reminds academic papers)

<comment><USER14> I disagree; it might seem pretty from a distance, but that's about the only good thing about the design.

The font is almost unreadably tiny, the lines are too long, and the links are in simple boldface, rather than underlined and/or in a different color. The headings are _also_ represented by boldface text of the same size, which actually stands out less than the link text. There's very little visual distinction between the body of the article and the navigation junk surrounding it, making for a visually confusing layout.

This is a prime example of why the Readability bookmarklet is great.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, that page lasted about 2.5 seconds before I Readabilitified it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "To be honest, Foursquare's data load would be trivial in any relational database." Pretty insulting statement, imo.

</comment><comment><USER16> A little off-topic here, but it kind of puzzles me why MongoDB gets so much attention and the other half of FourSquare's stack: Scala/Lift, that scales just fine, and has not given them problems at all gets hardly any attention.

<comment><USER12> I think you answered your own question...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Foursquare did add more MongoDB servers, the problem was that the 5% of records that were migrated off of the full server were small, so the removal didn't result in many memory pages being released, so it didn't help. This article does not address how any of the alternatives address small records and rebalancing with small records.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there rss for HN new articles? - <AUTHOR>

Would be nice if there is rss feed for HN new articles http://news.ycombinator.com/newest. <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/rss>

There you go. It's the top articles and not newest. The link is in the footer link list

For the newest article (firehose) I'm sure you can use Yahoo pipes

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks I know about this rss. Just want the rss for the newest articles.</comment></comment>


Microsoft's new Python language server is closed source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/microsoft/pylance-release/issues/4#issuecomment-652555104 <comment><AUTHOR> Does anybody have more details why? None of the reasons given explain why: "new", "significantly enhanced", "included in proprietary service offerings". Many Microsoft open-source projects also have those characteristics.</comment>


Custom Search Engine - <AUTHOR>

I want to develop a custom search engine, where is the best place or service to learn? <comment><USER2> What do you mean by 'custom'? Have you looked at the open Alexa, Yahoo BOSS, or other search engines that allow you to interact with them programatically?</comment>


Parallel merge sort in Erlang - <AUTHOR> http://yarivsblog.com/articles/2009/03/09/parallel-merge-sort-in-erlang/ <comment><USER2> It looks like Erlang is the language in which I can just spawn processes withou even thinking about the overhead, and maybe it'll help me out if I have multiple processors or cores. Is that true? Or rather, to what extent is that true?

How well does Erlang scale to small, medium, large, and obscene numbers of processor cores?

<comment><USER3> Generally speaking, that's true. The standard practise in Erlang is to treat processes like you'd treat memory allocation in other languages - don't be wasteful, but don't spend too much time worrying about it until it becomes a problem. Processes are cheap.

If you've got a task that seems overly complicated, maybe you're trying to do two things at once; simplify it by splitting it into two processes. (Of course then you have to manage the interaction of the two processes, but each is simpler than your original process, so often this is a net win.)

If your processes are truly doing things in parallel, not just spending their lives waiting for each other, then you will get speedups with more processes - minus some overhead for process spawning communications, but this depends on how parallelisable your problem is. Close-to-linear speedups are not unheard of, especially if you have lots of mostly-independent problems to process.

<comment><USER4> Agree. I think Yariv for once violets the erlang law ;) This is not big computations && small communications (-> time_to_write_some_spawn_code) but "simple sort on numbers" which isn't that big computations so to distribute that will not give a time performance gain, as he already discovered.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's next, After I get funding? - <AUTHOR>

Hypothetical situation.
I get funding from a VC firm like Battery Ventures or Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers somewhere in the range of $5 million.
What kind of reporting do i need to provide back to the investor?  Just financial or key metrics?  I am sure each investment company is different but i am just trying to understand what are the types of things VC's are looking for after they invest.
Thanks in advance, Eric <comment><USER2> When you're looking at an investment of that size you will likely have one or more board members from the VC to look after their interests.

This is probably a good start for reading material:

<http://www.venturemomentum.com/VCBoardInfo.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> This is perfect, thanks!

The only challenge i see is (like mentioned in the post) there is no consistency between VC's. Each feel that a certain report is "The Most important" What happens when there are multiple VC's or a mix of VC's, angels and governments.

For a startup reporting to each can be really time-consuming....and wasteful especially if the time spent on reports takes away from the time spent on making the product better.</comment></comment>


How to Build the Future - <AUTHOR> http://themacro.com/articles/2016/08/how-to-build-the-future/ <comment><USER2> The 'How to Start a Startup' link doesn't go anywhere</comment>


How not to support women in tech - <AUTHOR> http://doubleunion.tumblr.com/post/77929475144/how-not-to-support-women-in-tech

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope that it isn't against HN guidelines to create a throwaway for things like this.

I don't feel safe posting a link like this under my main account. This article is really scary.

It sounds like this guy was legitimately trying to be both supportive, and delicate in his approach. Reading through his emails makes me wonder "am I the problem?"

I hope not! But according to this post I shouldn't even be allowed to ask that question!

Yikes! :-(</comment>


What is the best way to run node.js as a service? - <AUTHOR>

No 1 result on goolge is: http://blog.nodejitsu.com/keep-a-nodejs-server-up-with-forever<p>Is that the current way people do it or is there a better way to do it now days? <comment><USER2> I recently moved all our node.js tasks over to supervise. We saw just as many node crashes within 'forever' itself as our applications.

We now have a policy that node.js is acceptable for rapid prototyping, but developers are on the hook for migrating apps to [a blessed language] before production use. (edit: I realized naming individual languages is the making of a religious war)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've used a couple others like supervisor, node-dev (yeah, I know it's not meant for production) but forever seems to be the most reliable IMO.</comment>


"You're not allowed science any more" - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v489/n7414/full/489170a.html <comment><USER2> Things like this makes me ashamed to have my name on papers in Nature.

First, lets set aside the hypocrisy of a non open access journal publishing this[1]. (What happens if Sacha wants to inform her self by reading a few old nature papers?)

I am pro vaccine but far too many doctors have this fantasy that they should have unlimited control and articles like this just serve to validate that view point.

Medicine is an inexact and continually evolving science and a good doctor should always be willing to talk over the options with you and engage with you on a level beyond just parroting the current recommendations. As someone who is one of the people contributing to the body of often-vague statistics we call medicine it is continuously annoying to have to get doctors to explain their (often subjective) judgment calls they are making and actually present their reasoning analytically.

Additionally, many doctors choose to forgo recommended treatments themselves due to side effects [2].

[1] In fact you can pay extra to make your nature paper open access but it is by no means fully open access. [2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/20/your- money/how-doctors-die...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/20/your-money/how- doctors-die.html?pagewanted=all)

<comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine#Contamination_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine#Contamination_concerns)

I'm not at all anti-vaccination, but I am anti-authoritarian and anti-closed- science. People have a right to know what they're putting in their bodies. The SV40 contamination turned out to not be that serious, but it was a close call. Had SV40 been potently carcinogenic, we would have had a medieval plague of cancer.

In the end it reduces to the problem of freedom and open society: freedom means tolerating people being idiots. Freedom means it's okay for the Ku Klux Klan to mail me literature. It means it's okay for people to question vaccination because some stupid celebrity told them it caused their son's autism. It means it's okay for people to put pink plastic flamingos on their lawns. The alternative is a closed, authoritarian society.

<comment><USER4> "People have a right to know what they're putting in their bodies."

Right, and the doctor was trying to give her that knowledge, and she refused.

<comment><USER5> That does not sound like most doctors I have met.

Typical doctor's attitude is: "Look this white coat, that I happen to have and you don't? It means even if I tried to explain to you all the implications you are not smart enough to understand. So shut up and do as I say, I have more important things to do!"

Edit: I originally wrote "black coat" instead of "white coat". There must be some nasty stuff hidden in my brain's crawl spaces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "You're not allowed sarcastic metaphors any more."

"Why not?" asked the scientist.

"Because you haven't learned to employ them in a way that doesn't alienate the very people you are trying to help. Now please send in Dawkins on the way out, we need to discuss internet memes with him."

<comment><USER7> You're right, but you're wrong.

You're right - we shouldn't celebrate alienating people who need help.

You're wrong, because there is no argument that can convince someone who doesn't care about evidence.

So, please forgive us our gallows humor about this. After all, these people are content in risking the health of MY child on their Jenny McCarthy-inspired HUNCH that vaccines are bad.

If anti-vaccine folks were only risking the health of their own children, their anti-science stance (or selective-science stance) would be tolerable. As it is, they're a menace.

<comment><USER8> If your child is vaccinated, they aren't really at significant risk of catching a preventable infection from an unvaccinated child, since that's the sort of thing vaccines are designed to prevent. This isn't to say that anti- vax is a rational position, but I don't think (disclaimer, I'm not a medical professional) it puts vaccinated children at additional risk.

<comment><USER9> Vaccines by themselves are not 100% effective (see the Measles outbreak from earlier this year [1]). The additional benefit of Herd Immunity[2] helps to increase the effectiveness, which is at risk of being lost the more the anti- vax movement gains traction.

1: [http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6322a4.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6322a4.htm) 2: [http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/pages/communityimmunity.aspx](http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/pages/communityimmunity.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think we should be making a financial/societal incentive to do the right thing if the science is settled enough.

The trouble with the view presented here is that sure the children get the vaccine due to this hypothetical rule. what happens when later the children get a severe cold (say) and the mom who remembers the previous visit thinks - bloody doctors I will just keep my kid home and pray for him to get better?

Much better approach: "Ok Sacha since you declined the vaccination now I have to report it to all medical insurers. Your family insurance just doubled."

At school: "Sacha your kids are not vaccinated and we do not admit any students not vaccinated."

Apartment: "Ok Sacha your kids are not vaccinated (per this website where we can query); we will need to charge you a fee that is contributed to our residents' medical fund to cover the risk of housing you."

If you really truly start to hurt in the pocketbook, I bet there will be much more incentive to really read up on the Science.

<comment><USER11> Do you want people to read up on the science, or to accept what's "settled"?

As a professional scientist, there are few things more anathema than the idea that a scientific theory is "settled". Experiments can only falsify theories; they can never be proven to be correct. The best a theory can hope for is to remain consistent with observation.

Once upon a time, it was well-settled in large communities that the universe spun about the Earth.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, but we're talking about not vaccinating your kids, here. It might be that we're all living in a computer simulation and none of this matters but we should still act on what we observe.

<comment><USER11> I'm personally convinced that vaccination is worthwhile; I've been convinced of that by my education, my experience, and my understanding of the scientific literature. The benefit to the individual and to society of vaccines is, to me, well-established.

I'm willing to compromise part of my herd's immunity for those who wish not to receive a vaccine, even if it increases my risk somewhat. I don't think that anti-vaccine activists are correct, but it's a hell of a thing to inject stuff into their children that they think could bring them harm. Though we do it every day as a society, I don't want to be a part of a herd that resorts to compulsion on ethical questions.

Inextricable from this discussion is the fact that the children won't reach majority before the decision must be made. If we could wait until people turned eighteen before presenting them with the choice of vaccination, this debate would be different.

As a final thought -- if everyone else is immunized, it may be to your advantage to skip vaccination to avoid a tiny risk of side-effects. There's an equilibrium here, and it's not at 100% vaccination rates, even if 100% vaccination could yield eradication.

<comment><USER13> There's the rub: it's not about _you_ or what _you_ want. There are already enough people who cannot be vaccinated -- people with egg allergies, people with compromised immune systems, etc. Furthermore, vaccines don't always take, so there may be more unvaccinated people out there than we actually know of. Herd immunity works by everyone who _can_ participate participating; the more, the better.

What irritates me about anti-vax more than anything is the selfishness and privilege that goes along with it. "I don't need to put a vaccine in _my_ child's body; if herd immunity _really_ works, then _my_ children won't be the problem!" Never mind the fact that every person this child comes in contact with now has a greater risk for infection, or even transmission of diseases.

Lastly, your usage of "convinced" really rubs me the wrong way. Granted, you have a "right" to believe whatever you want, but if you trust that evidence- based science is correct, it's really not a "take it or leave it" kind of situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have spotted this totalitarian streak among some of my friends who went to med school. We should ban smoking, force everyone to do this or that. As bad as they can be, we're probably better off with lawyers in charge.

<comment><USER15> People die because some idiot parent didn't vaccinated their children, so I say yes, enforce it or don't live in society, go to some isolated island because you are causing harm, it's as totalitarian as allowing people to play Russian roulette with other people's children (actually you'd go to jail so I think we're too lenient with these parents).

<comment><USER16> your child has more chance of dying by going to the morning bus stop than their child does of dying from not being vaccinated. in fact, i'd bet your child has a better chance of dying by catching the flu from a vaccinated child than some other child not vaccinated by MMR.

i understand if someone doesn't want their child vaccinated and they can't go to public school, but forcing people is another thing, even if it is 'for their own good'.

<comment><USER17> _in fact, i 'd bet your child has a better chance of dying by catching the flu from a vaccinated child than some other child not vaccinated by MMR._

Oh good, argument based on conjecture.

<comment><USER16> Do you want a gold star because someone on the internet, who said something you didn't agree with on a post, did not publish citations? you failed human.

<comment><USER17> We're getting an impressive variety here! After argument by conjecture fails, we move on to ad-homenim!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is beyond stupid. You can't explain something, so you ban the person from having a say so. I'm terrible afraid of people thinking that this is the way to go.

As a doctor, which I am not, I would've said: the danger of your children dying or being crippled by a preventable disease is about 1000 times the risk of having an adverse reaction to the vaccine. Furthermore, I can guarantee that the vaccine will not cause autism.

This is what I tell my "anti vac" acquittance, because I can't say I'm friends with morons. But being a moron doesn't preclude the right to understand what's actually happening and what the risks are when making a decision, even if you refrained in the past to educate yourself.

But it's hard to educate, so the author would just ban the discussion altogether. You, the author, are no better than the ones to which you would ban explanations and discussion.

<comment><USER4> You didn't get the point at all.

"You can't explain something,"

That's exactly _not_ it. The doctor _wanted_ to explain the facts, with the leaflet. Sacha wanted a simplistic assurance that wasn't possible, and refused point blank to have it explained to her.

<comment><USER19> Those were the words she used, which could be _entirely different_ from her actual reasoning that she didn't feel like talking about. And if this were any kind of world where doctors overrule you because "your argument is invalid" then she will of course not be forthcoming with her doctor ever. She will instead learn the magic words "oh, Johnny had a bad reaction to a vaccine at his previous doctor in Canada."

The doctor's office is not a courtroom or an arrest where everything you say can and should be used against you.

I'm reminded of people who think it would be awesome to bug lawyer's offices or doctor's offices or confessionals to ferret out crime. It will work the first time, but after that you have totally destroyed trust so you haven't gained yourself anything and the public has lost a place to sensitive discuss issues with people they trust.

<comment><USER4> "Those were the words she used, which could be entirely different from her actual reasoning that she didn't feel like talking about."

Er, no.

She is a fictional character in a parable, entirely the author's creation. I think it's safe to assume that the words "she" used were the ones "she" intended to use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If only there was a way to outsource all decision making to an over-arching centralized authority to make all decisions for us. That entity would have all our best interests at heart and make the tough decisions for us. It would be auch a weight off my shoulders of I didn't have to think anymore. I would even be willing to pay 20-30 percent of my paycheck to it, just so it could help me stay safe. What would we call such authority?

<comment><USER21> You can give a medically informed body that understands the issues much more deeply some authority over public health policy, while still being able to think about those issues if you're interested. They wouldn't make all decisions for you, just those that have such a broad and important impact to society as a whole that irresponsible individuals wouldn't make choices that could have a net effect of significantly harming others like skipping vaccinations does.

Perhaps we could call that authority "civilization."

<comment><USER22> Personal freedom, to me, is worth the price of possible death or illness due to large swaths of the population not being vaccinated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There are a lot of comments here about the issue of how to communicate risk of different personal medical choices to patients who do not themselves have medical training. It is a tough problem. Professional stage magicians, and avid skeptics, Penn and Teller had an episode of their cable television series _Bullshit_ report on the issue of risks and benefits of vaccination. Maybe a clip from their TV show (with language that many families would find inappropriate for viewing with their children) will help communicate the risk and benefit ratio of vaccination more clearly than documents written in a more clinical tone.

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

(short clip above, long clip below)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLcOz4EKrxg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLcOz4EKrxg)

</comment><comment><USER24> Look, science, you can't have it both ways. You can't release knowledge into the wild and also keep it caged up under your control. It is no more possible than setting the barn afire then ordering the flames to go back into the lamp.

If you cannot tolerate the idea that everyone benefits from science done well, even including those who behave destructively towards scientific progress, then why are you doing science in the first place?

Screaming from the mountaintops, "No! No! You're doing it wrong! All wrong! You idiots! You morons! Stop what you're doing immediately and do as I say!" is not likely to help your cause. That is, after all, what people have been yelling at each other for centuries, even long prior to the development of modern scientific inquiry.

There may even be a branch of science that deals with social norms and cultural shifts, and perhaps the intentional guidance of groups towards given institutional goals. You could probably take the socio- prefix and append an -ology to it. Maybe ask a sociologist what usually happens when you strip a person of the ability to make their own choices, even if you are certain they are making those choices based upon flawed premises.

Applying force or coercion does little but change the portion of the behavior of a person that is visible to you. You cannot use it to change someone's mind, no more than you can make a person love you by smashing their ankles with a sledgehammer. You have to coax them to it, convincing them to change their own minds. But you can't do it for a non-rational person using only rational argumentation. It does not compile. You have to use other means to even get them close enough that argument will work.

You have to advertise. Use rhetoric. Flash some sideboob. Blow dragon smoke from your nose using cookies dipped in liquid nitrogen. Write a catchy jingle. Go viral. Write a hoax about cool teenaged kids getting electrotetanized by their musical Tesla coils. Get Bill Nye slimed on Nickelodeon's Kid Science Awards Show as he introduces the new Mr. Wizard, wingsuiting down to the venue from an orange zeppelin.

You have to make people _want_ science to like _them_. And you're not going to get there by acting like a condescending know-it-all prick-- _even if you do actually know it all, and the other person is a clueless, drooling moron_.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is a fantasy of course, which is a defence mechanism for frustrated minds.

However, the quasi-religious defence of Science as a settled body of knowledge which people must be forcibly 'educated' about is becoming depressingly common. Becoming more like a religion isn't a good way to counter superstitious falsehoods.

The patient-doctor relationship has waned, IMO. Here in the UK for most ailments I see a GP for about 10 minutes. I never see her again. No follow up, no chat, etc. Different GP next time. Perhaps social media could help build trust within practices.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is so telling. The sheer arrogance is plainly visible, as is the doctor's complete lack of empathy. There are plenty of ways to motivate people, and this is most certainly not a good one. You don't get a mule to move by pushing it.

<comment><USER27> Arrogance, which I'd call exasperance in this case, in the face of repeated ignorance of reality, is justified. You can only deal with willingly ignorant people for so long before giving up on the human race.

And the doctor in the tale did try and educate the mother before she was cut off. She just didn't want to listen.

<comment><USER26> It's fine to feel exasperated. It's not fine to treat people in such a condescending manner. People are rational, and want to understand, but unless you make the information properly accessible in the UX sense, your exasperation is due to your own fault.

The doctor did not try to educate the mother. He tried to lecture her. He offered her a bad user experience, which she naturally rejected. People are not machines. You don't just feed the same information format in and expect the same result from everyone.

<comment><USER17> So when it comes to anti-vaxxers, the problem is simply that the scientific community simply hasn't been _accommodating_ enough?

It's good to know that, yet again the fault does not lie with the common man. It is always someone else's fault.

<comment><USER26> It's not a question of accommodation; it's about accessibility. The anti- vaxxers offered better UX for many who felt shut out from scientific knowledge.

The fault does technically lie with the common man in the sense that he behaves the way he does. But we KNOW that he behaves a certain way, and further we have the knowledge necessary to mitigate the effects of those deleterious behaviors and grant the people knowledge despite them. And yet many in the scientific community still refuse to take those psychological lessons to heart, preferring to blame it on "the willful ignorance of the masses".

When you continually run up against failure, blaming the object of failure is not a path towards solving the problem.

<comment><USER28> Fully committing to this UX analogy would mean for the doctor to pretend that his medicine comes from a religious framework, simply because it's more user- friendly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> A more computational crowd might enjoy "You're not allowed bioinformatics anymore": [http://biomickwatson.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/youre-not- allo...](http://biomickwatson.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/youre-not-allowed- bioinformatics-anymore/)

</comment><comment><USER30> I like a consensus of experts as much as the next guy, but let's not get carried away.

Today's airtight methodology is tomorrow's tragic myopia.

<comment><USER31> Does that mean phrenology is not coming back?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Quick question: how many of you are against the flood of illegal immigrants making their way into the US? If you're worried about killing herd immunity, you should really be voicing your discontent over both the GOP and Democrat parties encouraging this with their amnesty plans.

Here's just one incident of an illegal bringing disease into the US:

[http://news.yahoo.com/arrest-warrant-issued-man- tuberculosis...](http://news.yahoo.com/arrest-warrant-issued-man- tuberculosis-192756320.html)

<comment><USER6> Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

<comment><USER32> A beautiful poem, one that many a legal immigrant saw upon entering the US as they began inprocessing through the Ellis Island immigration station. One that the illegal aliens will not see as they illicitly cross our border, seeking to evade what agents we have stationed there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > You've had the opportunity to read the facts and the education to be able to > analyse them, yet you have consistently chosen not to.

Perhaps if doctors understood the facts better, and could explain them better, this wouldn't be a problem:

[http://jsfiddle.net/SamHasler/c22eR/embedded/result/](http://jsfiddle.net/SamHasler/c22eR/embedded/result/)

</comment><comment><USER34> Pretty funny wish fulfillment where someone forces their own views on others. I fully support vaccination, but don't support this.

<comment><USER35> Don't support what? Mandatory vaccination?

<comment><USER22> I don't support mandatory vaccination for the same reason I don't support the drug war. No government has the right to tell me what I can or cannot put into my body. Simple as that.

<comment><USER35> But vaccination is a public health issue. You endanger others by not getting vaccinated, which is why for instance kids have to be vaccinated before they are allowed to go to school. I am much in agreement with personal liberty but part of the social contract is to take these preventative steps to improve the quality of life in our society.

<comment><USER22> Not letting kids into school is already a good way to handle this issue. It ensures that the majority will _decide_ to be vaccinated. I'm fine with the way it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I feel this way about non-technical management calling the shots on software projects :)

</comment><comment><USER37> Roald Dahl: Vaccines, Measles and his Daughter

[https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=8080516](https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=8080516)

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm confused by the awkward grammar in the title. Is it intentional for humor (like xkcd's 'going to try science') or is that wording acceptable use in British dialects?

I'm parsing it as "You're not allowed <to use> science" or "You're not allowed <to know> science", but it's right on the line of believable that I could see that sentence being used genuinely in another dialect.

<comment><USER39> They're using science as a noun. Think of it like "You're not allowed oxygen any more."

<comment><USER38> Which still sounds wrong to me. I'd expect "You're not allowed to breathe oxygen" or "You're not allowed to have oxygen".

So I guess it's "allowed" which is being used in a way I'm unfamiliar with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> So here you have a Doctor trying to be Lawyer. There is a chance, however small, of a bad reaction to the vaccine. The Doctor knows this, therefore he cannot give this woman her 100% guarantee that nothing will go wrong because of the vaccination. He knows that if he tells this woman it will be OK and nothing will happen, that if something DOES happen he will be sued for medical malpractice.

</comment><comment><USER19> This sat poorly with me. I thought "you're not allowed science any more" would mean that no one has to ever listen to her in any scientific debate. Instead, it meant that she got overruled about a medical decision.

Congratulations, you've amazingly found a way to be even worse than the antivaxxers. I didn't think it was possible.

<comment><USER40> I wouldn't be so quick to assume that the article is advocating for forced vaccinations, but I do think that your reaction to the forced vaccination does hint at what the article really _was_ suggesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wonder if the "producer at the BBC" reference was from the BBC not giving air time to climate change skeptics in debate anymore?

<comment><USER42> No. This article is from 2012.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Ok, fine, then you're not allowed individual sovereignty.

</comment><comment><USER44> It's this reasoning that gave us the 401K.

<comment><USER45> Aren't 401Ks mostly voluntary programs? I'm not aware of anyone being compelled to invest into them.</comment></comment>