Computerists - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fogus.me/2013/04/10/computerists/ <comment><USER2> There's the old quote attributed to Djikstra:

 _Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes._

But who cares about titles, really? Why do they matter?

The article makes the claim that you can tell someone's not a scientist if they have 'scientist' in their title. I'd argue for a corollary: you can tell someone probably doesn't deserve their title if they spend any significant amount of time worrying about it.

<comment><USER3> As someone who has just moved to the US and been through the "joy" of looking for work; me.

I'm a server admin, I have come to realize that what I do can be titled many different things. System admin / engineer, network admin / engineer, server admin / engineer, windows / linux admin / engineer..... and more.

I dearly wish there was just one title for my job.

<comment><USER4> Systems Engineer, note the plural on "systems." Don't shy away from this, it's a title that has existed for decades and you're in good company. Resist title inflation!

<comment><USER5> But in many industries, defense and aerospace in particular, systems engineers are people who integrate multiple technologies to build systems (such as an aircraft or missile). They don't manage computer systems.

<comment><USER4> Are we talking about those industries? It's a valid title for many sectors, and is perfectly cromulent for OS/Neteng roles.

<comment><USER6> well, when you're searching tech job boards, it sure matters. As (another) Systems Engineer (in the sense of Von Bertalanffy not Von Neumann), searching for relevant jobs is a _huge_ annoyance. I've given up on titles, and search for, or look at, job descriptions, filtering mentally the various keywords that are positive and negative indicators for what I do (feedback controls, operations research, etc.).

<comment><USER4> That goes for all of my job hunts too, but it doesn't mean I'm not whatever a simplified title of my skills implies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Comment: _In English there is a split between Software Engineering and Computer Science. German uses the word Informatik which comprises both disciplines._

It's the same for most of continental Europe.

There is theory and research focused areas like computing or computational mathematics, and there is application, informatics (more similar to a CS degree) or informatics engineering (roughly an EECS degree, or a CS&SE with more math, physics and electronics).

PS: In the US, the term "informatics" seems to be more related to the "soft"(design and business) parts of european informatics, like IT, Information Systems and Human-Computer Interaction.

PS2: In regard to the professional title, in Spain the people that study informatics are generally called "informaticians" ("informáticos" in spanish). But as with "computer scientist", people just use their job title as their professional title.

<comment><USER8> With the notable exception of "bioinformatics", which is fairly maths intensive.

<comment><USER7> right, I should have used "area" instead of "term". I meant the bachelors/masters/PhDs in "Informatics".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Computer Science is an example of a formal science:

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

Or, in parts, an applied science:

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

<comment><USER10> Yes. I haven't seen a professional programmer who calls herself a computer scientist. I think the author is beating a straw man.

And theoretical computer science is a branch of mathematics. It's as much science as math is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Neat, but

he clearly has never debugged COM bordello on Windows, because one simply cannot do it without "deciding to stop goofing off and starting applying the scientific method". To figure out what the heck 0x8C123456 for an error code means and what triggers it, you make conjectures, run experiments, go for repeatable results across multiple testbeds and frequently solicit peer review of the results. "Not a scientist"? Ha!

<comment><USER12> Not that particular software no, but I'm used my share of dreck. Maybe I guessed where the problem was and used experimentation to validate, but I would hardly call that the scientific method.

<comment><USER13> Programmers do you an abbreviated form of the scientific when debugging. Its that we wear many hats actually. But whatever, its not a big deal for those in industry.

For those of us doing academic research, however, the science part of computer science is much more an issue; e.g. should a conference accept design papers without empirical evidence?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Computer science and software engineering are different things. Computer science is a specialised subset of mathematics, software engineering is the process of making things that run on computers. They're connected in the same way that civil engineering and physics are- one underpins the other, and maybe in time what the physicists are doing will help make a good bridge. Science underpins engineering, engineering justifies science.

</comment><comment><USER15> What's in a name...

99% of what is called Computer Science is more engineering based on the 1% actually expanding the knowledge and making Elsevier richer.... (or not based on science and just reinventing the wheel over and over again as aptly noted by fogus).

I personally like the title "IT guy" as it pretty sums up what the rest of the world thinks of it all.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Countries with the word 'democratic' in them:

 _\- People's Democratic Republic of Algeria

\- Congo, Democratic Republic of the

\- East Timor – Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste

\- Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

\- Korea, North – Democratic People's Republic of Korea

\- Laos – Lao People's Democratic Republic

\- Nepal – Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal

\- São Tomé and Príncipe – Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe

\- Sri Lanka – Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka_

I don't know the details of the political situation in those countries, but my hunch is that they are less likely to be democratic than your average country.

Is there a name for this phenomena?

<comment><USER4> Well come on, why not consider context? There is no objective meaning of "democratic" outside of the ideal that no country satisfies, so what we can conclude is that in just about all cases it's to differentiate the governments from their predecessors. It just sounds a little out of place because no country called themselves anything like "The Glorious Dictatorship of Central Africa," or, "Plundered Colony of France, Southeast Asia."

<comment><USER16> > There is no objective meaning of "democratic" outside of the ideal that no > country satisfies, so what we can conclude is that in just about all cases > it's to differentiate the governments from their predecessors.

Oh come on, you can generalize that argument to practically anything. No real world examples live up to their platonic ideals so who cares if you call a duck a horse, it's just to differentiate it from a different species of duck.

> "Plundered Colony of France, Southeast Asia."

I like it.

<comment><USER4> _you can generalize that argument to practically anything_

Maybe, but that's not what I'm doing. I'm arguing for an implied "More-" before "democratic." That's what I mean by context.

<comment><USER16> Several of the listed countries aren't democratic in any sense of the word. Even with context the argument is still absurd -- we intend to communicate meaning with the words we use, and the introductory paragraph in the OP and the comment you replied to both highlight cases where what a word means and how its use are unrelated.

<comment><USER4> The sense with which you hear the word and the way the citizens hear it may be different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How about Computer Plumber, Network Plumber, System Plumber, Data Plumber?

<comment><USER18> An apprenticeship and licensing system would surely solve a large number of problems (while creating a much smaller number of new problems). I'm sure the computerist's union would be an absolute joy to deal with (sarcasm), no doubt making every other skilled trades union look like civilized extroverted yes men in relative comparison.

The existence of trained plumbers does not mean no civil engineers are educated, or no environmental scientists exist.

We already have something like union rules so that wouldn't be much of a change. I got yelled at for moving a monitor across a cube without having a A+ cert. I'm like, dude, I have a CCNP, I build my own ham radio gear and microcontroller stuff at home, I've been building computers since that meant hand soldering S100 boards, and I've been doing this stuff since before you were born (literally). Oh OK then I won't write you up ... this time, but don't do it again (WTF?)

<comment><USER17> Don't disagree with what you said.

Maybe I didn't put it clear. But I wasn't referring to apprenticeship, trade union or anything relevant to them, I was simply joking about the "plumbing" factor of any computer-related jobs/roles, the majority of them are as boring as "plumbing".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I agree about the unsuitability of terms like "computer science". I'm a professor of computer science. I'd rather be a "professor of informatics", but C.S. is the term we're stuck with. And after all, it isn't really that bad; the main downside is that people I meet at parties think my job is teaching people to use MS-Word. (I used to be a professor of mathematics; the misconceptions about that one are _scary_.)

In any case, I'd like to point out that this use of "science", while not in accord with the most common usage of the term, is not actually dishonest. Rather, it harkens back to an older use of "science" as a more general term for knowledge related to some field of study.[1]

[1] <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/science> \- see English noun definitions 1 & 2.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've worked in roles which were titled "technologist". I think it was the most correct position name I've had.

<comment><USER20> On a related note, I was thrilled when Craigstlist opened up an "Internet Engineers" job section. I think that is a great title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> A lot of trained computer scientists work primarily as engineers. Sometimes engineers do science. Sometimes scientists do engineering. In my experience it's not clear cut.

Depending on the sub field of CS, some academics do mostly engineering stuff with (hopefully) rigorous evaluations of their work, while others (HCI in particular) do a lot of formal science.

Outside of a handful places (like MSR and similar) people with computer science training generally don't participate in the production of new knowledge within the framework of the scientific method. But usually they could, if needed.

</comment><comment><USER22> Compared to what physicISTs, biologISTs, or these scientISTs practice, computer scientists are more likely to be mathmatICIANs and logiICIANs, right? So "Computericians" might be a better title for them.

Also we have the word "Hacker", which is a marvelous invention, and which make these scientists that deal with computers sound so different. Though sometime it's hard to draw the line between what we call "computer scientists" and "programmers" when we use "hacker", but "hacker" is initially been employed as a term for academes, and what's more, we like it, right?

</comment><comment><USER23> Personally, even though I have a BS in Physics, have done research for 4 years, and develop software exclusively with astrophysics experiments at a physics lab (I'm even on the most cited astronomy paper of 2012)... I have a hard time calling myself a physicist, or even an engineer for that matter.

Calling myself a "computerist" or even a "computer scientist" would feel a lot like I'd be furthering the dilution of titles with the inclusion of mediocrity, akin to the "technical support engineer".

</comment><comment><USER24> It's worth noting that "computer" used to be a job title itself, before mechanical computers replaced human computers.

Now that a computer is a machine that executes sets of instructions issued to it by humans, I think "Computer Programmer" is a perfectly descriptive job title for any human that authors those sets of instructions.

Whether or not a computer programmer is also a scientist is more a function of their training than their job title/description.

</comment><comment><USER25> In the purist sense of a "scientist" I have to agree there is not much observation -> Feedback -> progress happening. But what about some of the research in the universities?

It is worth mentioning what Richard Feynman thought about "Computer Science" - He said it was never a science but an aspect of engineering:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL4wg6ZAFIM>

<comment><USER12> > some of the research in the universities

Some of that for sure could and should be called science. However, most of the research being done is not actually pure research either but rather problem solving. (and sometimes not even solving per se)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In my university, they had computer science (which was basically maths that became algorithms), software engineering (which many people think is computer science), and computer applications, which was what some people call "informatics".

Computer science is an overused term for something that is closer to maths but thought to be closer to engineering.

<comment><USER18> We also had a computer engineering dept which mostly consisted of sticking 7400 series TTL chips in breadboards, later VHDL/Verilog. Basically the EE curriculum with more computer topic classes and less analog/RF classes.

And like the rest of the engineering dept there was "real" (aka theoretical) and "technology" (applied) degrees. One of my degrees is a AS in EE-T although I went right into computers for the BSCS (with the idea of getting into embedded using the AS-EET as leverage, which I have never managed to do, LOL)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hopefully someone has already said this:

Computer science is about research in the theory of computation. When you do your CS degree it is designed with you becoming a researcher/hacker.

Software engineering is about the practical application of that theory executed in a disciplined way.

No need for new titles!

</comment><comment><USER28> As the article suggests, science is a methodology, not a field of study. You can apply scientific reasoning to computers as well as anything else that is sufficiently stable to be studied.

So computer scientist makes some sens... Computerist? I am not sure.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think my title would fit better if it was "Error Scientist."

All of my best hypothesis crafting, experiment design, and data analysis seems to be done in the name of figuring out why my code is broken.

</comment><comment><USER30> I use "Beep Boop" as my umbrella term

It's particularly good as an initial answer to "what do you do", especially accompanied by a hunt-and-peck typing pantomime.

</comment><comment><USER31> Most people who get a BS in biology end up becoming scientific biologists, though they might apply things that they've learned about biology in more practitioner type careers. Most people who get a BS in computer science don't go on to be "computer scientists", though they hopefully apply things they've learned in practitioner type careers. Of course people without serious research oriented training/education/focus aren't going to be professional scientists.

<comment><USER18> Most people who define themselves as having a BS in bio (as opposed to it merely being a stepping stone) work as lab techs ranging from $10/hr pharmacy techs up to maybe $25/hr at a med testing lab in an expensive cost of living area. At least in the old days. Currently, probably near half end up as waitresses and bartenders, completely out of the field.

Most people who get a BS in computer science (not as a stepping stone to a PHD or whatever, etc) end up on helpdesks, maybe pulling cable or replacing mice, not doing anything scientific. Basically like the bio lab techs, it amounts to training not education. The top 25% or so, maybe less, might get software dev jobs or maybe system/network admin jobs. Even in current conditions, most will end up in their field, maybe $8/hr no benes at a call center but at least more or less in their field. The HN crowd tends a bit toward the upper level of the pack, so yes, most HN readers have it far better than median.

<comment><USER32> >Most people who get a BS in computer science (not as a stepping stone to a PHD or whatever, etc) end up on helpdesks, maybe pulling cable or replacing mice...

I'm gonna need to see some evidence to back that up before I believe it. Based on the experiences of everyone I know with a CS degree, that is completely wrong.

Are you confusing CS with CIS?

>maybe $8/hr no benes at a call center but at least more or less in their field.

I made more than $8 an hour at my first retail job. If you have a CS degree and you're making $8 an hour, something is very wrong.

<comment><USER18> I tried googling around and cannot find any direct evidence. I will say there is a feast/famine effect and right now in the hot areas looks better than I've seen since the late 90s.

<comment><USER33> > late 90s

Ahh, that explains it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materials_science>

</comment><comment><USER35> We can call ourselves "algorithmists."</comment>


Ask HN: Is there any tailless animal? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponge#Skeleton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponge#Skeleton) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echinoderm#Skin_and_skeleton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echinoderm#Skin_and_skeleton)

</comment><comment><USER3> Starfish, guinea pigs, capybaras.

</comment><comment><USER4> Do you think snake tailed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, if a snake has a head, it also has a tail. I think every animal with a skeletal system has a tail or a coccyx.

<comment><USER4> I did a little research. I guess gorillas don't have a tail :) Spider, bee?

<comment><USER5> Gorilla (and other Great Apes, like humans) have internal tails. See "coccyx".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Wireover - <AUTHOR> http://www.wireover.com

<comment><USER2> i don't understand how this is better than skype ?</comment>


Control-freak managers are getting in the way of evolution - <AUTHOR> https://6nomads.com/control-freakmanagers <comment><USER2> Reads like a fluff article which has nothing to do with control freak managers and everything to do with promoting the company's product.</comment>


A Self-Made Man Looks At How He Made It - <AUTHOR> http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/07/23/a-self-made-man-looks-at-how-he-made-it/ <comment><USER2> This speaks to a few things and our opportunity to participate in them:

No one is self made. Everyone owes it to breaks from those around them. Get over yourself. Your life isn't the only hard or misunderstood one.

Give more breaks than you get. No one is a stranger or enemy. Treat everyone as your friend and they'll become one. Treat someone like an adversary and they'll become one too.

If you don't take the time to learn someone's story you have no right to an opinion other than wishing them well.

Keeping kindness, goodness, and sharing opportunity is the bedrock of a world I want to live in.

Keeping kindness, goodness, and sharing a growing thing is a world I want to work on. We're dealing with our own stuff, together. Not everyone will get, or do this. I have my choice.

Remember how connected we are. How I treat others is how I truly do end up treating myself or being treated. Things aren't black and white, but the greys can lighten or darken based on me. The drop is in the ocean, and the ocean is in the drop.

Our universal responsibility for and towards each other. When we can see that we are owed nothing and owe our respect and contribution to the world in exchange for becoming better every day, we begin to realize what life is really about.

It's your job to understand yourself first, enough to keep moving, inward, onward and upward. Through your understanding of yourself, you'll be able to connect to others deeply and in a meaningful way. As much as this may terrify some, it will involve learning to use your heart and gut as much as your mind.

Our responsibility for our society, and our society towards us. We get the responsibility we deserve and demand/contribute to in our actions.

<comment><USER3> Great lines!

<comment><USER2> Wow, wrote this and went to bed. Glad you liked it, learning one line at a time and I try to remember to practice it one line at at time.

<comment><USER3> Yep certainly is a daily task. All the points derive from knowing yourself IMHO. You did a great job sumarizing lots of my own thoughts!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Two things comes to mind; the author embodies "I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have."

And second I wish the author wouldn't try to ram his point about tax down. He's looking back at his life and saying taxes gave me a leg up and ignoring the places where low taxes and regulation did the same (the private school, AOL).

Nobody who is libertarian argues that there should be charity or we shouldn't care for our fellow person (well nearly nobody, I'm sure their are some mean spirited people out there). The point is how efficient we do it.

He's looking down the one path that happened to him but what if instead of having a military when he was young there was just lower taxes and better support for mothers would society be better off? What if instead of Pell grants there was better primary schools? What if we gave Bill Gates more money to try and make the world a better place? What if lower taxes made food cheaper so that he wouldn't have to be fed through the schools lunch program?

<comment><USER5> I agree. One cannot just look back at all the things that have happened and conclude they are right because you have prospered. We have, or some do, the capacity to think in principles and what things actually provide real benefit.

I happen to think people are more generous when they are free to be successful and they aren't bled to death.

Even with the high taxes in the US, I read that charitable contributions are up around $300 billion.

And private charity has some incentives that are absent in government charity. People are actually more careful with their own money. And when the results are obviously bad, they change what they are doing.

The federal government has let many bad things happen for decades before addressing them. The disastrous public housing projects. Welfare that destroys the work ethic. It eventually changed course on these things, but not without much political wrangling. A private donor would move to change it after seeing the evidence.

Worse still is the total lack of gratitude and sense of entitlement that many recipients of public money seem to have. I feel most people when receiving a gift from a private donor would say please and thank you. And if the private donor could not continue to give for some reason, they'd say thank you just the same, not harass them.

<comment><USER6> Counterpoint: black people.

The federal government subsidizes Chicago's public schools to the tune of $1 billion. You think private charity would be so generous to a district that's 90% black or Hispanic? You're out of your mind if you do. Whites fought, violently, for 100 years, to keep blacks from integrating into society. When the courts desegregated the cities, whites fled to the suburbs to avoid having to integrate, leaving the urban decay that is a major target of welfare today.

The history of race in this country is an unavoidable prong of the welfare debate, and it really undermines high-minded notions of how great a system of charity could be.

<comment><USER7> You are making most of that up. There are more than 1 way to look at something, and you seem to be focusing at the smaller part.

There are also "white people" that have ended slavery (something done by every race since the beginning of time), fought for other races giving them full rights, helped integrate those races into their society, made programs that removed barriers to schools and jobs while discriminating against their own kind, and funded integration to the tune of 100s of billions dollars a year (and now a trillion dollars / year).

…Something that no other race has done in the history of the world.

> whites fled to the suburbs to avoid having to integrate

No, that's only part of it, the human part (that likes unity of race, culture and behavior). They also fled because they were scared that crime and violence would follow.

Your blame of the dysfunctions of the black community is seriously misplaced. White people are not responsible for the care of black people anymore than I'm responsible for you having a life. Until you figure this out and stop the blame game, that dysfunction will likely continue.

<comment><USER6> The idea that you can inherit money but not obligations is dysfunctional. We who live in the U.S. are the beneficiaries of tremendous investment into the country by Americans who came before us. We either inherited these benefits, having been born here, or bought into them, by choosing to immigrate here. We have inherited their sins as well. I was not born here, but every morning I ride to work on a train line that was built when Jim Crow still reigned in the U.S. and would still reign for another half a century before it was dismantled by the federal government. The obligations incurred by our predecessors are baked into the brick and concrete and steel of the civilization which they built.

The marginalization of blacks in the U.S. is not some academic issue that happened in the long-forgotten past and involved long-forgotten people. At the time my grandfather was starting his medical practice, which would sew the seeds for the prosperity of his family in my own time, blacks in the United States were systematically oppressed, prevented from participating in society or getting an education. This all happened in essentially modern times. George Wallace made his stand to resist integration 16 years after the transistor was invented at Bell Labs, and 5 years after the first integrated circuit was demonstrated at Texas Instruments. It was not that long ago even on the technological time scale, and a blink of an eye on the sociological time scale.

<comment><USER7> > The idea that you can inherit money but not obligations is dysfunctional.

The idea that white people come from old money that gets passed down from generation to generation is not based in reality. Many whites came here from the peasant class, and stayed this way for centuries. And most still are in this class one way or another.

> We have inherited their sins as well.

Sure, if you ignore every single positive thing white people have done; and if you assume that white people have some type of an agenda to actively discriminate against non-whites (at a greater degree than non-whites do against whites).

But what it really seems like you are saying is that white people in America should feel ashamed and guilty for being white.

That's a personal choice you made for yourself. Don't make it for me.

<comment><USER8> _But what it really seems like you are saying is that white people in America should feel ashamed and guilty for being white._

No, that's not what he's saying, at all. Nowhere has "old money" or "guilt" entered the equation and that you are feeling very defensive does not give you license to put words into his mouth. rayiner (who I often disagree with, but I have to applaud him for this) is saying that people with privilege have responsibilities as well as benefits. You have, and I'm going to use a technical term, a metric fuckton of privilege being born white and male in the United States.

He is saying that you have a responsibility to society to be better with it than to say "fuck you, I've got mine."

<comment><USER7> > He is saying that you have a responsibility to society to be better with it > than to say "fuck you, I've got mine."

As a citizen of the USA I agree that I have a responsibility to my country and society. I just don't agree that you get to decide for me what that responsibility is.

> You have, and I'm going to use a technical term, a metric fuckton of > privilege being born white and male in the United States.

Please, be specific about my situation and what you have decided my skin color owes, just don't use nebulous politically-correct terms such as white-privlege ... unless you are trying to end the conversation.

<comment><USER8> _> As a citizen of the USA I agree that I have a responsibility to my country and society. I just don't agree that you get to decide for me what that responsibility is._

Society does. That's why it's there. You don't define the social contract. That mindset is what leads to "fuck you, I've got mine."

 _> Please, be specific about my situation and what you have decided my skin color owes, just don't use nebulous politically-correct terms such as white- privlege ... unless you are trying to end the conversation._

You're joking, right? "White privilege" isn't a term of _political correctness_. It's a sociological construct that's used to frame and discuss relative advantage given majority or otherwise preferential traits (such as, in the United States, being any or all of white, male, heterosexual, and Christian).

Using the common constructs of the topic isn't "ending the conversation", it's being specific. I'm not going to fall prey to the commonly-used tactic of enumerating exactly why privilege is what it is so that you can attempt to bury the overall point beneath the details on which you think you can nullify the entire academically settled topic. You are welcome to educate yourself on the topic if you so choose.

You won't, but you are welcome to.

<comment><USER7> So you won't define this social contract that you (you somehow also representing the society) are holding me to (the contract I'm supposedly violating or ignoring somehow by disagreeing with something you said, or having a different P.O.V.), nor will you enumerate what my white privileges are; both of which you have brought up. Because if you did so, you'd be falling prey to _my_ (my!) tactics. And E.O.C to me too.

<comment><USER5> A contract that you cannot get out of and that never allowed you to approve or reject it in the first place, is not a valid contract. Its slavery.

Of course, it is fictional. And if they can get you to submit to the fiction, they are only too happy to tell you how it obligates you to serve their pet projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "I pay a lot of taxes. I don't mind because I know how taxes helped me to get to the fortunate position I am in today."

Exactly! I pay a lot of taxes too and do not mind. How could I be stingy on welfare, public healthcare, education, etc, anything that can help others. (no sarcasm, I mean it)

<comment><USER6> On the subject of paying taxes... there are places I could live where I would pay less taxes than I do in New York City. Texas comes to mind, but also India or for that matter Somalia. Yet people generally move in the opposite direction as they become more successful.

I find it deeply ironic that David Koch lives in Manhattan, with its high state and city taxes, as well as extensive welfare spending. It's almost as if paying taxes buys you access to civilization, which makes living in a place desirable.

<comment><USER10> I find it a little troubling that you're implying that welfare and high taxes made New York one of the richest cities in the world.

<comment><USER11> He's not implying that at all. I think he's saying that the wealthy like to live in places with high taxes and welfare because places with low taxes and no welfare are shitholes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yes, I appreciate public services. But I don't enjoy paying my taxes to inefficient institutions, or institutions that spend my tax money primarily to benefit insiders rather than the needy. And I don't want to live in a high-tax society where private individuals don't have the means to independently experiment with their capital in ways that benefit us all.

If the United States had taxes as high as Denmark, then Elon Musk wouldn't have had the money left over from Paypal to start Space X. When you watch the rockets fly to Mars, thank whatever god you believe in for low American taxes.

I appreciate the sentiment behind some of these comments, but _fuck_ all these straw men and apologists maintaining a smoke screen for poorly run institutions ( _cough_ Sacramento _cough_ ). And no, I'm not evil, selfish, greedy, or ignorant if I want lower taxes. I am making a rational judgment based on what I believe will make the best society to live in.

<comment><USER13>
      If the United States had taxes as high as Denmark, there
      would be no Elon Musk.

Why do you believe this? Denmark also has multmillionaires that fund startups or start their own.

<comment><USER12> Elon invested all his money from the Paypal sale to make Tesla, Space X, and Solar City at the same time. He had to borrow money from friends to make rent. Take away an additional 30% from his Paypal money and either Tesla or Space X would have never been born.

And that's only one entrepreneur's story. That same scenario is repeated thousands of times around the country. Taxes are sand in the gears of an entrepreneurial economy.

<comment><USER13> No entrepreneurial economy would exist if there wasn't a government to streamline the organisation of many mundane things such that the entrepreneurs aren't bothered by them. No entrepreneurial economy exists without a police force, a fire department and an influx of capable employees.

<comment><USER12> You are right! And it is perfectly possible to provide those public goods without European levels of taxation (or hell, Californian levels of taxation!). Hong Kong manages to do it with an 18% flat tax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> With any story like this, I have a hard time extrapolating it to the circumstances of anyone else. Most people have been fortunate to run into individuals that ultimately benefitted their careers. I certainly have. But let us not extrapolate one man's experience to everyone's experience. Most people never have the opportunity to even be easily lucky. Often, people have to work very hard to grasp just a little bit of luck. That reality should be recognized. And I cannot complain. I have done well for myself by working hard and grasping opportunities.

Scalzi is right to consider how he arrived at his current position. However, the tacit assumption that everyone in his position enjoyed the advantages he did is false and pernicious. Many people work much harder and sacrifice much more than the story portrays. I don't begrudge Scalzi in the slightest. My concern is that people will think his experience is typical.

Hard work is a big part of it, luck is a big part of it, and being in the right place at the right time is a big part of it. People that work smart, hard, and efficiently are not common but those that do, or at least occasionally approximate it, generally do well over the long term no matter how their "luck" plays out.

<comment><USER15> You missed the point. This is not an expectation of luck, but is his acknowledgement that he could not have made it alone. The post is not meant to help you achieve like him (which I understand is different from most of what is posted on Hacker News), but is a retrospective acknowledgement that it is impossible to succeed alone.

<comment><USER2> You so nailed it.

As a corollary I think it also speaks to the importance of keeping moving, be it inward, onward, and upward in life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This reminds me of what my grandfather told me once -

"I often hear many people(mostly teens) claiming that they are independent and they can live life as they wish. They say they don't care about society. They wrongly perceive society as something evil that is stopping them to live the life they want. They forget that in society we are neither independent or dependent, but interdependent. It is next to impossible to live completely independently."

<comment><USER2> These are really great words that stand the test of time. Inherent truth is eternal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think that if we want to have more John Scalzis in the world, we need to lower taxes. I am glad his mother could get him into private school. There are many parents who could if they did not have so much withheld from their paycheck, did not have a large property tax bill, or did not have to pay rents inflated by taxes. We don't need to pay for such an expensive military just to give military moms some help. We could give free healthcare to so many more poor women and still save money if we reduced our military budget.

<comment><USER13> They wouldn't need a private school if higher taxes paid for better public schools. Which they do in most of Europe.

<comment><USER12> The United States spends more money per pupil than most European countries[1] in K-12 education, $11,000 per student compared to the EU average of $7,700 per student. Where are you getting your beliefs from?

At some point, the public bureaucracy needs to stop draining the blood out of the private economy and learn to do more with less. Or, in the case of US schools, do more with more.

[1] [http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/education-at-a- glance...](http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/education-at-a- glance-2012/indicator-b1-how-much-is-spent-per-student_eag-2012-16-en)

<comment><USER13> You are asserting generalities, while your arguments are based on _your_ _current_ government spending money inefficiently. If you would stop arguing in generalities and instead try to address the actual problems you have (which is not the height of the tax!), you may actually achieve something.

As your own numbers show, European governments have succeeded in organising education much more efficiently than your government. This is a counterexample to your general assertion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Taxation is not equivalent to charity or 'giving back.'

This is sadly an incredibly common conflation.

<comment><USER19> Nor is it equivalent to handing over the fruits of your work to armed thugs, another incredibly common conflation.

<comment><USER20> Try not paying them then

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> TL;DR Always work hard, keep your eyes open, and be helpful.

On the point of luck, yes there is a whole lot of lucky circumstance which you have no control over that puts in you in a lucky position. But I believe you pass a point in your life where it goes from being purely lucky to being just plain prepared. If Scalzi didn't work at his craft or his networking, the opportunities that availed themselves to him probably would not have happened.

I think a lot about where I am and where I'm going. There's lots of things I do now that don't have immediate payoff. Rather, I think of everything as just training for something else down the road. So I try to get good (or at least passably decent) at a breadth of things and specialize in a few. Hopefully then when luck swings my way I'm prepared to go after that small window of opportunity with full force.

I'm also a big fan of paying it forward, like Scalzi. Not everything is money ---often it's just time. Giving someone honest feedback, lending them a hand, or supporting their efforts is all good karma. When you help others in a way you help yourself: growing your community of interest, raising the overall standard of living, moving groups of people forward.

</comment><comment><USER22> This reminds me of my favorite joke:

Man has progressed to the point of rivalry with God. Man talks to God and brags about his accomplishments. God agrees that Man has accomplished a lot.

God reminds Man that God made him from dirt. Man says "Oh, we mastered that long ago." God says he'd like to see that.

Man smiles, and reaches down for a handful of dirt.

God says "Ah, no, you go get your own dirt."

</comment><comment><USER23> It's great that OP had super public school teachers. Mine were lousy. Sorry, it's just a fact, they collected their checks and went home on the clock and didn't give a damn about the kids they taught.

There was one who was outstanding. He got laid off in a budget cutback because he was junior. Everyone agreed it was a shame, but no one did anything about it. That's what taught me what those people were about.

I've been helped by a great many people. Public school teachers aren't in my particular set.

</comment><comment><USER24> I was not impressed with both the individual and the article.

First off the man deserved all the success he achieved but seriously, he had a solid education, high self-esteem, he was summarily effectual, he showed up to work and was industrious. (80% of success is just showing up- Woody Allen)

If higher taxes assisted him then why is the United States faltering and our educational system becoming such a joke? I mean to say are we not paying enough taxes? If so how high should they be?

I pay federal income tax, SSI taxes, state tax, sales taxes, property tax, garbage fees, gas taxes, utility taxes, I pay car registration fees, and probably a bunch of fees I am missing.

My fed tax rate is 21.7%, my California tax rate is 9.55%, sales sax 8.75% I believe, but with all of the above I easy pay 40% of my income.

<comment><USER25> _If higher taxes assisted him then why is the United States faltering and our educational system becoming such a joke? I mean to say are we not paying enough taxes? If so how high should they be?_

Keep in mind that in the US, much school funding comes from _property_ taxes, and is highly tied to the specific location of the school. Thus, affluent areas "magically" have better schools, and poorer areas have worse schools.

<comment><USER26> I'm confused as to why so many comments on the story are stuck on the very few lines regarding taxes. The vast majority really leads back to his Mom's abilities to seek out ways to provide for him and then putting him in front of opportunities that eventually helped him become who he is.

If she had not been so active in putting him in the right places at the beginning, his life would have been vastly different.

But I can't place where he advocates higher taxes or the misuse of tax money.

<comment><USER25> Internet libertarians -- of which there are a few on HN -- do not like anything that even _hints_ at the possibility that government can do anything positive, or that taxes should be seen as anything other than a government SWAT team kicking down your door and stealing all your money at gunpoint to give to people who don't deserve it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is a really great and inspiring read.

The key takeaways, at least for me, were:

Your parents play a huge part in establishing a primary path through life for you. His mother worked hard and did what was necessary to give him a chance to concentrate on learning, to appreciate books, and to give him opportunities to grow and explore his world.

Your integrity, earned respect, and power of networks and relationships can't be emphasized enough. At almost every critical junction in his life, it was a personal relationship or the recommendation of people who had respect for his abilities and skills that opened a door and led to better opportunities. That says a lot, not just about the impression he's made on others (purposely or not), but on the confidence his friends, peers, and acquaintances had in him. That was no easy feat, tho some people can do it without effort. It is interesting that he remembers so many names, all the way back to teachers in elementary school. I may not have the best criteria for "great people" but to me, someone who makes the effort to remember key people in their lives for decades is in turn worth remembering.

Grab opportunities. Put in the work. I know this should be a given, but I know it can still be daunting. He took jobs he had no experience in and he moved to better opportunities as he saw fit. Passion can manifest in a kind of restlessness, and properly tapped, can mean the difference between mediocrity and absolute fulfillment.

Lastly, the most important part I think is the acknowledgment that you don't get to be where you are alone. Yes, one has to have that rare combination of drive, talent, intelligence, charisma, and everything else that makes up a certain formula for success, but "luck" can also be the result of stirring the pot just right. Being at the right place at the right time can also be attributed to having enough people recognize all the memorable and remarkable qualities one has that will make them remember to recommend you for a position or even just to point you out as an authority on a particular subject. The people around you are just as important to success.

</comment><comment><USER6> One major thing missing here: luck! Lucky to be born in the U.S.A., of course, but also lucky to be born with a high IQ (those test scores that got him into the University of Chicago), lucky to be born with a creative streak, and lucky to make certain connections in the right time in his life, etc.

<comment><USER28> I believe that everyone is helped out by a hefty dose of luck across their lives - being in the right place at the right time often serves us well.

Admittedly, it often comes down to hard work and preparation in the daily struggle, but that day where you needed to guess a few test answers and got them right, or you posted a job offer to a company you didn't think would notice you and happened to catch a random recruiters eye, or you happened to perform well on the exact day your boss wanted to promote somebody to an empty senior position they wanted filling.

Life is a series of hard work, intermingled with sprinkles of luck, sometimes good, sometimes bad.

True, having the IQ at a young age to go to a private school on a scholarship is fortunate and not the kind of advantage most people have, but I'm sure it still wasn't easy at some points, the author simply had the ability of self preservation to survive their trials.

<comment><USER6> I might be inclined to charecterize things in the opposite way: life is a series of lucky opportunities that you work hard to take advantage of.

Anyone who has the test scores to get into the University of Chicago is very likely in the top 1-2% of IQ's. It's hard to say that everything doesn't ultimately stem from that initial stroke of luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The term "Self-Made" is repulsive. If you're not acquainted with the term "survivorship bias" get to know it well before you read any success story.

Just after the end of the 90's boom, I was taking care of the storage of my [insert name of any large luxury item] and on the other side of the counter was a guy about my age and disposition who said, "hey what do you do for a living?" I gave him a minimal description and he soon responded with "Wow that's nice, my (tech-related) business went bust and now I work here behind the counter and live upstairs, trying to get back on my feet."

There wasn't the remotest possibility that there was a thousand-fold gap between us in any entrepreneurially-related skill category yet Lady Luck had placed us on opposite side of the service counter that day.

Always be humble. Life is not wholly deterministic.

<comment><USER30> Your point is not a bad one, but you clearly didn't read a word of the essay.

<comment><USER29> I got the point of the essay. Mine was more a practical rant that the term Self-Made is so widely accepted as part of culture. Being a parent for many years now I've seen more "just believe in yourself" messages in kids' movies than I can count.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Beautiful. I fear this is a story about the OLD America, before The Right took intellectual control. Most Americans now believe that welfare is a handout to the lazy, as though the poor chose to be so, and would rather receive than work.

But these people don't view the cranky old miser in It's a Wonderful Life as a glorious capitalist hero, or George as a socialist. I know these people agree with giving to those _they know_ in need, but when it's broader assistance, like through government, and those being helped aren't friends, they lose interest.

We need to get The Right to have empathy for strangers.

</comment><comment><USER32> Or as Chris Sacca once put it in "The Trouble With Libertarians":

> _I think, sometimes, like, arguing with libertarians can be really > frustrating because, I think, it can be, um..., I think it can be > intellectually lazy. And I think it can be convenient, and, in the same way > that, um, you know when everything is going right it's easy to attribute it > to your own success and when things are going wrong, it's because you got > fucked or because you were unlucky etc., like, I think sometimes, like, the > libertarian point of view can be, um..., can be rooted in a limited set of > circumstances where you give yourself a little more credit than, um.., than > you want, or than you are due, probably._

Source: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViHuU6-CFDo>

I recommend watching the entire Chris Sacca Pando Monthly Fireside chat.

It is extremely awesome.

Just a teaser of what you'll see: $12 million is gained and lost, bankruptcy makes an appearance, the dot com crash crushes everybody, the rise of Google, playing with $4 billion in cash at FCC poker, running a billion dollar hedge fund, being a ski bum whilst simultaneously graduating near the top of his class at law school, then going on to live in poverty and working his ass off just to stay in the game and getting really, really, really fucking lucky :)

Yes, that awesome.

Entire talk here: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqUG2_cmZ6I>

Both the above article, and Chris Sacca are actually referring the the just world fallacy, a derivative of the fundamental attirbution effect, which in combination with cognitive dissonance, allows people to do the following:

> _As a simple example, consider a situation where a driver, Alice, is about > to pass through an intersection. Her light turns green, and so she begins > moving forward when an ambulance blows through the red-light with sirens > blaring and lights flashing, and cuts her off. Despite knowing that there is > a good reason for the driver's behaviour, she is likely to form a negative > opinion of the driver, e.g. "what an inconsiderate driver!"._

Source: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error>

You will not believe how many things in life are, ironically enough, a derivative of the fundamental attribution error (e.g. republicans/conservatives/religion/start-up conferences - so many others).

And another video on what entrepreneurship feels like: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3NC_w9AOSA>

</comment><comment><USER33> I begin to understand why HN is so filled with negativity.

A lot of people here are bitter because they failed or because they know that they'll eventually fail. This place is a hive of socialists who do not have what it takes for to create future wealth.

It's very ironic to see them using hardware and software made by Intel / Google / Apple / etc. to spread their poisonous words.

Don't forget what made your country great (I'm not american and I'm not in the U.S.) and which kind of men you owe the technological world you live into (including, but not limited to, computers, space rockets, medecine).

And please: stop to try to create things and stop being negative with those who do. Go find a job as a state servant and, please, leave enough oxygen to those trying hard to create future wealth.

</comment><comment><USER34> Interesting, but a useless exercise.

<comment><USER35> Far from it; if anyone's able to take inspiration, or bring success to themselves or those around them, it is of great use.</comment></comment>


Crowdfunding Cheating - <AUTHOR> http://nosql.com/2012/08/23/crowdfunding-cheating/

<comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR short version: The new crowdfunding investment funder's club is cheating by extending the funding deadline for Coinbase.</comment>


Ask HN: Any companies looking for developers for expat positions? - <AUTHOR> Does anyone work at or know of any companies looking to hire U.S. citizens to work abroad? <comment><USER2> Expat assignments are increasingly rare these days. Global companies prefer local hires. The remaining expat posts typically go to seasoned company insiders with either mission critical expertise or security clearance.

</comment><comment><USER3> Companies are not looking for "expat" developers in the sense that they want an expat. There are companies looking for the best talent out there and if that means an expat, so be it.

So yes, there are companies outside the US who hire expats. I say this with personal experience being an expat in HongKong for a while.

The question to ask is:

1\. How do I find jobs outside the US which are relevant to my experience and knowledge ?

2\. For those jobs, how do I find out if they will consider expats depending on the urgency,importance and budget (very important) of the requirement.

</comment><comment><USER4> TomTom in Amsterdam hires people from all around the world. I worked for a three month trial period as a contractor, then they hired me full time and paid for my relocation from California. Qualified expats can get 30% of their salary tax free: [http://www.expatica.com/nl/finance_business/tax/The- Dutch-30...](http://www.expatica.com/nl/finance_business/tax/The- Dutch-30-percent-ruling_explained_11398.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Nokia HERE in Berlin hires pretty globally:

[https://www.linkedin.com/job/c-here,-a-nokia-business-l- berl...](https://www.linkedin.com/job/c-here,-a-nokia-business-l-berlin-jobs)</comment>


Adblock plus served with takedown order - <AUTHOR> https://adblockplus.org/blog/smells-like-censorship-big-brother <comment><USER2> Wrote Clay Shirky: "Monetizing two per cent of your audience is the easy part, doing without 98 per cent of your advertising is the hard part". Bild is discovering the latter part, and for a paper with a long history of bullying it's a difficult lesson.

At worst, APB can block bild.de if the maintainers are beaten up in court. No law against that, and if the tiff between Bild and Google is any history, most of Bild's audience will forget Bild and just go to Tagesschau or something.

Poor Bild. It must be hard to be a tabloid and have to sell yourself every day to customers who don't really care.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9Xb- buT...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9Xb- buTsVLoJ:https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php%3Ff%3D2%26t%3D41068+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=se)

<comment><USER4> As _pascalmemories_ noted, this cached version is "post-takedown" as evidenced by "[Redacted]" in the second posting along with the explicit notice "Filters deleted due to a court injunction we received today."

While I didn't see the filters "pre-takedown", a Google search for the URL [0] turns up a number of other places where it was referenced. While I can't verify that they did/do work, at least a few of those results appear to contain filters to defeat the anti-ad-blocking mechanisms put in place by bild.de. (I'm intentionally not reproducing them here in an effort to perhaps save _dang_ from having to respond to a takedown notice.) :/

[0]: [https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=41068](https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=41068)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A little passive aggressive (better than the legally aggressive approach of Axel), but pretty interesting. Not sure if I would qualify the eschewing of an AdBlock work-around as Big Brother, but the legal precedent is worth discussing.

</comment><comment><USER6> Now, when you visit bild.de with AdBlock and NoScript...

</comment><comment><USER4> Streisand effect in 5... 4... 3...

<comment><USER2> I doubt it. Bild just isn't what it was. They tried another fight like this last year, were ignored, and caved in after two weeks, claiming the whole exercise was just an data-gathering experiment.

Well, the data was gathered: When Bild grandstands and demands more income, the newspaper loses a majority of its audience.

IMNSHO Bild hasn't gotten used to being too small to bully. Bild isn't Streisand-class any more. On the web it's just another web site, too small to rouse much emotion.

<comment><USER4> I don't think their size is too relevant, in this case. It was noticed by the tech community, at least, and the first thing I did was search out the code so that I could duplicate it -- and I don't think I'm the only one who thinks like that.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Lunch with a millionaire, what to ask? - <AUTHOR>

I'm 25, I have a lunch coming next week with a millionaire (which happens to be the Chief Technology officer of the F-500 company I work for).
It's a rare chance so I'm composing a short list of questions that I'm going to ask him. Please let me know if I miss anything important. Your advice is really appreciated!
<comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--- 1/What are 3 skills you think the most important to your success?
2/ Is networking a must to be successful? If yes, How do you expand your networks? (go to conf, meetup, keep in touch with old friends...)
3/ If one advice you could tell your younger self, what would that be?
4/ Do you read often? How do you apply knowledge in books?
5/ Is being a millionaire what you originally aimed for or it's just a sweet side-effect? :)
6/ Which one is more important to your success? Technical skills or entrepreneurship?
</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--- </comment><comment><USER2> These are stupid questions that anybody could answer for him without without being a millionaire.

I would ask:

1) What are problems you are having right now that you need solved and are willing to pay money for (both for yourself personally and for your company)?

2) I think my value is not being fully realize in my current position. I have skills in X,Y, & Z. Can you think of a better way I can help the company get more value out of me as an employee?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I agree that anybody could answer these questions, but a fool's answers to these questions should be totally different from millionaire's.

Thanks for the 2 questions, I'd add these to my list.</comment></comment>


Runjs – minimalistic build system – middle ground between npm scripts and gulp - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pawelgalazka/runjs <comment><AUTHOR> I feel like there is a place for such a tool. npm scripts get out of hand quickly and are hard to read, npm-run-all does not work so well specially if you want for example to launch a live-server in a separate process.

gulp files seem overly complex for what they do and the plugin ecosystem adds a layer of complexity towards the simple command line tools underneath.

The documentation is not always up to date and the plugin does not always use the latest version of the tool.

Grunt files are super verbose. Also gulp can bite you with launching too many tasks in parallel and then you need the runSequence plugin.

I think this tool fills a very needed middle ground: the build is in js but its easy to understand and scales well but still calls the command line tools directly.

The OS dependency I would not worry about it, many developers in windows have Git bash installed which does not require admin privileges and so is a viable option in enterprises.

Its a great way to have a solid command line in windows. So thanks for sharing, i'll definitely try this in my next project and report issues if found.</comment>


Delicious is 5 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.delicious.com/blog/2008/11/delicious-is-5.html <comment><USER2> It's too bad Yahoo has neglected it so, it was a great service.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yay.

3826 bookmarks: <http://delicious.com/zzzmarcus/>

anyone else care to post a link to their profile?

<comment><USER4> <http://del.icio.us/joshua> ~ 11k bookmarks.

<comment><USER5> The man himself!

Do you hate the trappings of the Big Rewrite as much as the rest of us? (the new domain, the redesign that replaced simple sincerity with YUI smarm)

<comment><USER4> I struggle with it more than I'd like...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://delicious.com/charliecache> jesus guise your numbers murder mine; plus, my tags are in a dire need of cleaning, and since delicious doesn't really provide any builtin features for handling your keywords in batch (at least none i know of) i'm wondering if any of you have written one.

</comment><comment><USER6> one more thing, i think what delicious is doing will bring about the next phase of the internet. this is a stretch, but i'd even put them on par with google (granted, didn't yahoo buy out delicous?) in the sense that they're pooling vast amount of data making their users do all their dirty work for them, in that we're the ones in charge of describing information and figuring out what it's worth. delicious has a lot of potential, but like i said earlier i think we, the users, could benefit a bit more from our own pool of information with some sort of library or tool-kit to re-evaluate what we don't want to forget.</comment>


Show HN: I built this app to compare health insurance plans - <AUTHOR> http://pick-a-plan.appspot.com/

<comment><USER2> thanks, looks nice. I need to compare some plans in a couple weeks so I'll try this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for trying it out. I'd love to receive your feedback once you use it. Since the open enrollment is coming up, I am hoping it will get some traction.</comment></comment>


Magic Leap Could Be Looking at an $8B Valuation - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/magic-leap-could-be-looking-at-an-8-billion-valuation-28eaa0294ad1 <comment><USER2> See also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14343480](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14343480) which was also here on the front page but with a slightly different URL.

<comment><USER3> Yes. We moved the other comments thither.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Has anyone actually seen the hardware in action?

Last I heard there was some cumbersome tethered version that was described as less advanced than Microsoft's, and years behind.

Have things gotten better? (Provably better?)</comment>


Teenage hackers are offered a second chance under European experiment - ga-vu https://www.cyberscoop.com/teenage-hackers-police-britain-netherlands/ <comment><AUTHOR> I know kids will be just guilt-tripped admitting menial stuff like "you looked at how your teacher peck-typed her password and changing her wallpaper", "you found out that the school Administrator account has the password `admin`" or "you downloaded a movie", I've seen such nasty manipulation happen. A lot of adults are really petty when their incompetence is revealed, due to that they probably have no proof and this "Please confess for less punishment" lie is their only way in actually messing up kid's lives.

This only feels like a weak attempt at making gullible young people make a mistake (from their perspective) by admitting they've done something illegal (from the accuser's perspective). Especially given there's no legal protection and there's condescension and prejudiced when whitehat ways are picked, that should be fixed first. I hope this endeavor fails because it's just nasty.

<comment><USER2> > this "Please confess for less punishment" lie is their only way in actually > messing up kid's lives.

There's no indication that the intervention is predicated on confessing. I think you might be looking at this from the perspective of a legal system where plea bargains are a thing. In most of Europe, promising less punishment for a confession doesn't work, because the prosecutor doesn't have the right to interfere with the judge's decision, and therefore can't credibly promise that the punishment will be less.

E.g. the Dutch article I linked in another comment mentions the following case:

 _The police expected to roll up a large criminal organization, but eventually ended up in a boys ' room somewhere in the Netherlands. "We noticed from cyber crime officers that they often saw things like this, in which the young people did not realize how serious the fact is that they were committing. The officers did not know which intervention would be best for them. After all, the perpetrators have done something very serious, but they are still young and often deviate from the traditional perpetrators, "explains Van Dijk._

Dows that sound like petty adults using nasty manipulation to mess up kid's lives?

<comment><AUTHOR> > There's no indication that the intervention is predicated on confessing.

The article basically says that an admission of guilt is required. Otherwise the person would stay a suspect not a participant of the program.

> the perpetrators have done something very serious

And what is "the perpetrators have done something very serious"? By law piracy is very serious, changing a wallpaper can be very serious (there's a nice US case about that, but that's not incredibly relevant).

> Dows that sound like petty adults using nasty manipulation to mess up kid's > lives?

It isn't maybe written like that, but it's going to be like that. Especially given the concerns I raised in the original comment, for example the issue of laws criminalizing menial things.

<comment><USER2> > The article basically says that an admission of guilt is required.

So it does. I'm not sure where they're getting that, maybe from the requirement to apologize to one's victims that's part of [https://www.halt.nl/en/halt-programme/](https://www.halt.nl/en/halt- programme/) ?

> And what is "the perpetrators have done something very serious"?

In the case they mention, it was infiltrating an ISP's network:

 _Jansen gives an example of a boy who hacked a large internet service provider. To watch free videos, he tried out how far he could penetrate the system. Due to an update error, he had access to the company 's routers. As a result, he was able to lay down eighty percent of all internet and telephone traffic in the Netherlands. He chose not to do anything with this information, but boasted about his findings online._

<comment><USER3> For what it's worth, I obtained a way to bypass any rate limiting and quota/Fair Use systems, and basically have unlimited Internet speed and no data cap on any SIM card of one carrier. I reported the finding to them, after many escalations they in the end gave me an expensive phone as a gift and fixed the issue. It was in Serbia, so I'm not sure how relevant that is to the EU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this is a great idea, young people will always push the envelope in terms of risky behaviour. A 'scare' with a structured process that includes mentorship could harnesses a young hacking talent and be positive outcome for the youngster and society in general.

Over the long term I wonder if this will give Europe an edge in cybersecurity relative to the US?

<comment><USER5> > Over the long term I wonder if this will give Europe an edge in > cybersecurity relative to the US?

No. The headline is misleading. This isn't "Europe" doing it (as though Europe were uniform, rather than wildly different from Germany to Lithuania to Bulgaria to Russia to Italy to Spain to Belarus). The article is pitching an artificially wide premise, as a form of clickbait. It's not "European authorities," it's police in the UK and Netherlands.

It won't make any consequential difference at a global industrial scale. $1 trillion in venture capital - leading to the creation of the largest cybersecurity tech companies - every 10 years and paying extremely high salaries to attract the best talent, is all that moves the needle on cybersecurity. Everything else is a blip at best.

On what matters, Western Europe - Europe as a whole in fact, the rest of Europe is even further behind - can't or won't compete, save for a few rare exceptions. Only the US and China are on the field. Everybody else is watching from the sidelines.

<comment><USER6> > Only the US and China are on the field

Is this really the case? Most of what I see in US news is how yet another adolescent or teenage hacker was caught and faced stiff penalties and consequences, far out of balance to what the hacker actually did to make an example of him. If there's a thriving cybersecurity scene in the US, I'd say it's largely due to the private sector and not anything the US government or any of its institutions (on a federal or state or local level) have done to encourage exploration into hacking. Which is unfortunate, because it's increasingly an important topic in the modern environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's worth pointing out that the Netherlands already had programs and the legal foundations for more lenient punishments for 12~23 year olds, which I imagine might be why this experiment started in the Netherlands (with, by the looks of it, support from some EU agency).

I hope it succeeds.

<comment><USER8> One word: Kapotgepolderd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems like it would make sense to list the crimes that would fall under the "second chance" agreement to provide more information.

Like, some dingus 'hacking' into their school to change their sick days is very different than the criminal context of a 16 year old buying stolen credit cards online and using them to sell stuff on Instagram.

The type of kid that would fall into the police's 'naive-idiot' hacker criteria for this program is also probably not someone that would fare well in prison either.

</comment><comment><USER2> More information on "Hack_Right" in Dutch: [https://magazines.openbaarministerie.nl/opportuun/2018/02/ha...](https://magazines.openbaarministerie.nl/opportuun/2018/02/hackright)

Google Translate seems to do a reasonable job: [https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=2&...](https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=2&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://magazines.openbaarministerie.nl/opportuun/2018/02/hackright&xid=17259,15700021,15700186,15700191,15700256,15700259,15700262,15700265&usg=ALkJrhiqHh7nlScakVIZpw53RP3tNoCAvA)

</comment><comment><USER10> If anyone can remind me of the name of this software used to lock down windows 98 machines I'd appreciate it. It was IBM I think. Blue background for student. Green for teacher. Red for admin.

I learned how to bypass it and discovered winpopup. I messaged every computer in the school district with my account like an idiot 9th grader. I then learned a lot about getting caught, punished, and second chances. I was lucky that the powers that be didn't overblow what I did.

<comment><USER8> That was called various names, winnuke being one of them. It was nothing but a manually crafted TCP or UDP packet causing winsock to segfault.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The concept here is crucial — respond to adventurous behaviour with clear- headed guidance.

I 'hacked' my school as a teenager and disclosed my findings — I received a 'thank you' and a free pass to skip the helpdesk and talk to the sysadmins whenever I wanted.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if someday laws will be based on a formal moral foundation instead of making things illegal just because 80% of people don't like those things.

I think hacking is one of those things that are illegal because people don't like them. Ultimately, hacking is just sending messages through a wire. Objectively speaking, it isn't much different from hitting the like button on a Youtube video. Formally speaking, all messages sent over the Internet are numbers, so "anti-hacking laws" are essentially laws that make some arbitrary and undisclosed set of numbers illegal to send.

<comment><USER13> Shooting people is just pulling a small lever. Objectively speaking, it's not much different from driving a car. Formally speaking, it's the same as making physical labor illegal.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Just because you can pick the lock on my apartment door, doesn't mean that I shouldn't have an issue with it. Just because lockpicking is technically just sticking a 'key' into a lock, and turning the bolt doesn't mean it's the same bloody thing.

Intent matters. Outcome matters. Somebody lockpicking my door, to save my cat from a fire, or to deal with a burst pipe, or to respond to an emergency call is one thing. Somebody lockpicking my door, to have a look at my stuff, can, and should fuck off straight to prison. Or, at least, a couple of hundred hours of community service.

<comment><USER12> I never said that anything we can do should be legal. I said that there should be a consistent moral framework upon which all laws should be based. And I think that laws should be defined objectively, not based in intent or outcome, but in facts.

> Shooting people is just pulling a small lever. Objectively speaking, it's > not much different from driving a car.

Shooting people is more like throwing stones at them. If you own a gun, you're responsible for knowing that pulling the lever implies shooting projectiles at them.

I think throwing projectiles at someone should be illegal (above some reasonable threshold of momentum. e.g (5 g * 2 m/s)).

Picking someone's lock can be considered handling someone else's property without permission. (Physically) handling someone else's property without permission should also be illegal.

All of these things are physical actions. The state should care about the physical actions of their citizens, but not about ideas, concepts, intent, or arbitrary abstractions. Those abstractions are the citizen's business, and legislating them is arbitrary and unfair.

If I have a mental breakdown every time someone says hello to me, then should we make it illegal to say hello to me? After all, they're causing me severe mental distress and maybe I could lose my job because of these people.

In my opinion, it would be unfair to ban "hello" because one person doesn't like it. It's _my_ problem to have a mental breakdown because of specific messages, not yours or the state's.

Same principle applies to software. If your website has a breakdown every time I send specific IP packets, that's your problem, not mine or the state's.

<comment><USER13> > If you own a gun, you're responsible for knowing that pulling the lever > implies shooting projectiles at them.

If you own a computer with the ability to send packets over TCP/IP, you're responsible for knowing what sending particular kinds of packets implies.

Hacking a server you don't own is handling someone's property without permission. When I host a web service, I grant the public permission for very particular kinds of access to it. I do not grant the public permission to try to break into it.

> All of these things are physical actions. The state should care about the > physical actions of their citizens, but not about ideas, concepts, intent, > or arbitrary abstractions. Those abstractions are the citizen's business, > and legislating them is arbitrary and unfair.

Your understanding of the world is incompatible with centuries of civil, criminal code, as well as millenia of common sense.

Intent absolutely matters. Consider why mens rea is a thing. Consider why fraud is a thing. Consider the difference between accident, ignorance, and malice.

> If I have a mental breakdown every time someone says hello to me,

Are you seriously drawing an equivalence between breaking into a webserver with 'having a mental breakdown every time someone says hello'?

> Same principle applies to software. If your website has a breakdown every > time I send specific IP packets, that's your problem, not mine or the > state's.

Yes, you are. Good lord.

I take it you also don't take issue with people stealing the contents of vending machines, either? After all, there's no possible way to infer what the implied contract of a vending machine is! Sure, everyone with the intellectual maturity of a five year old understands that you're supposed to put money in, in exchange for its contents... But it's the owner's fault that if I happen to tilt it over a certain way, stuff comes out of it - without me putting any money in! I'm just manipulating it in a creative way!

<comment><USER12> > If you own a computer with the ability to send packets over TCP/IP, you're > responsible for knowing what sending particular kinds of packets implies.

Yes.

>Hacking a server you don't own is handling someone's property without permission.

I meant handling in the most literal sense: manipulating something with your hands/body. Sending a message to someone/something isn't handling them/it in that sense.

> When I host a web service, I grant the public permission for very particular > kinds of access to it. I do not grant the public permission to try to break > into it.

Morally speaking, I do not require your permission to do something that doesn't physically involve you or your property. The only relevant physical involvements here are between you and your ISP, and me and my ISP. Anything else is abstraction.

Under your permissions idea, I can go out and say "I grant the public permission to look at my face but not to say hello to me."

> Your understanding of the world is incompatible with centuries of civil, > criminal code, as well as millenia of common sense.

Your understanding of the world is incompatible with freedom and justice.

> Intent absolutely matters. Consider why mens rea is a thing.

Something being a thing doesn't justify it morally. Slavery is a thing, you know? Murder is a thing, etc.

> I take it you also don't take issue with people stealing the contents of > vending machines, either? After all, there's no possible way to infer what > the implied contract of a vending machine is! Sure, everyone with the > intellectual maturity of a five year old understands that you're supposed to > put money in, in exchange for its contents... But it's the owner's fault > that if I happen to tilt it over a certain way, stuff comes out of it - > without me putting any money in! I'm just manipulating it in a creative way!

In a world with laws that make sense, it would be necessary to explicitly define the contract, because otherwise everyone would be handling someone else's property without permission. Simply state in the contract that people have to pay $x in order to take out their goods.

If the contract says "use this machine at will and take its contents". Then yes, you can tilt it all you want, who would have thought?

<comment><USER14> Manipulating something with your hands is a very arbitrary line to cross. What if you have gloves? What if you have prosthetic arms? What if you're remote controlling a robot to physically manipulate something on your behalf? Or is it the bare skin-to-material contact you'd make illegal? What if the person has a skin graft transplant on their hands?

Like the guy above said, intent matters. That is why stuff like attempted murder is illegal. You might not physically touch the victim but if you intend on killing someone, but happen to fail, you are clearly in the wrong imo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wageslaving is better than prison, I guess.

<comment><AUTHOR> The program doesn't even guarantee that, the Dutch article has a sentence like "With Hack_Right, other punishments, such as imprisonment, are not excluded." There's a chance Google Translate got the sentence wrong but I doubt it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> All for this - and if it's successful, I wonder if cybercrime will increase in this region as folks with few prospects take a shot at getting a good job via "non traditional" means

</comment><comment><USER17> If the US wanted to take the cyber battlefield seriously they would recruit all these kids and put their skills to work.

<comment><USER18> This is just fearshopping. Why to pay, when can scare them, coarce and make them fix their stuff for free or a candy? Laws are not the same for a minor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wasn't there a similar program long-ago in the US where the FBI/DOJ/USDC diverted first-time offenders into working with US-CERT instead of Aaron Swartzing them?

</comment><comment><USER20> 'Hack_Right', really? That's the best they could come up with?

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if the US will ever release Ross Ulbricht...no way it will happen under Trump but possibly at the end of an 8-year term for a Democrat...</comment>


Stripe in Singapore - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/stripe-in-singapore <comment><USER2> Curious as to what the difference with payment systems in Singapore is to warrant a higher rate over other markets?

<comment><USER3> Smaller market leads to less competition, I assume. Notice how 3.4% + S$0.50 is _exactly_ the same rate that Braintree Singapore is charging[0].

[0] [https://www.braintreepayments.com/en- sg](https://www.braintreepayments.com/en-sg)</comment></comment>


Linux Desktop Performance Tuning – Ninja Level - <AUTHOR> https://oded.ninja/2016/10/30/optimizing-your-linux-distro-ninja-level/ <comment><USER2> "echo "tmpfs DIR tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime" | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab" Is this command correct? Shouldn't it be something like: "/tmp DIR tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime"?

<comment><USER3> In your particular case it would be: tmpfs /tmp tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime

The first value is a name since we aren't mounting a device, the source is implied to be ram because of the tmpfs filesystem.

<comment><USER2> OH I understand now, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was expecting some crazy cowboy hacks but this was surprisingly useful. The author actually explains why he is doing things instead of just dropping some scripts on the reader.

</comment><comment><USER5> Fedora:

sudo tuned-adm profile latency-performance

When DNF ask you to install tuned, say "y".

</comment><comment><USER6> Thanks a lot for this!</comment>


Has Big Business "Captured" The Economists? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/bull-market/has-big-business-captured-the-economists-435473c661aa

<comment><USER2> Not "captured", that's the way capitalism works when you don't limit the size of businesses and limit how much anyone person or group can make, they end up controlling everything. Monopoly is the name of the game.</comment>


Newsweek ends its 80-year print run with a hashtagged cover - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.theverge.com/2012/12/23/3797970/newsweek-ends-its-80-year-print-run-with-a-hashtagged-cover

<comment><USER2> Here's a link [http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and- thinking...](http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the- unthinkable/)

This article puts the end of Newsweek in the wider perspective of the greatest social revolution in history triggered by the invention of the internet. I think its still very early.</comment>