Church of Kopimism holds that file sharing is sacred - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/26/world/europe/in-sweden-taking-file-sharing-to-heart-and-to-church.html?_r=1&hp

<comment><USER2> Kopied him: St. Ignucius.</comment>


What it's like in Egypt: An email from my mom - <AUTHOR> I just received this email from my mom who has been visiting my sister in Cairo. Some background: My sister Noelle lives there and teaches at the American University of Cairo. She is married to John, an Egyptian man. My father is Lebanese and my parents lived in Lebanon during much of their civil war before I was born.
Here's a lightly edited version of what she wrote:
Dear Friends,
There is still no internet here in Cairo as I write. The servers and the internet have been turned off, but I have decided to get my email ready so that I can send them when there is access again. The mobile phone system has been turned on again, according to Noelle who called hers from her land line. But it's so busy that it's almost impossible to call anyone yet, and the internet has not come on all of today.
It will be interesting to see who has written to check that I am still alive, and yes, I am still alive. As I asked before, please pray for the poor people here. They live on almost nothing, and my heart goes out to the parents who have nothing to feed their children. The poverty and suffering is so difficult, and the rage of the people is true. The rich are getting richer, and the poor are so unable to find jobs and ways to care for their families.
With my BA in Biblical Archaeology, I have been tempted to go to the National Museum of Cairo and stand guard with other Egyptian citizens, but what could I do with my cane as a weapon? We have seen photos of glass cabinets broken into and now empty in the museum, and it saddens me that a few foolish people would steal the gold and some of the amazing antiquities from the pharaoh's times, an incredible treasure of Egypt.
On Friday, Noelle's husband and my son-in-law, John, with his friend, were out for many hours in the vast crowds, photographing, dodging water cannons but still very wet from them and suffering from all the tear gas in the air. He and his Belgian friend, David, a houseguest who is planning to move here, went out together to observe and report on the events. David, who left for Brussels, going to the airport on Saturday morning as soon as the curfew lifted at 7 AM, said that the gas was terrible and miserable.
John wrote a news story for his Arabic newspaper which is both an online and in a printed paper. And he brought us home a tear gas canister so that we could see "the gifts that America sends to Egypt". It was made on Kinsman Road in Jamestown, Pennsylvania, 16134. Manufactured in 2003, it is three years beyond its expiration date, but John said that it still worked very well. I rubbed my eye after I handled the canister, and I am regretting it now. It's a few feet from me, but I can smell it from here. We are putting it into a clear plastic bag as a reminder of yesterday. Done.
People and families of those who have been injured, over 1000, and killed, over 150, like the young woman hit in the head with a tear gas canister while she stood agreeing and shouting from a bridge that Mubarak must be deposed, need so much prayer and care. John and David gave their scarves to men who were bleeding, and they called us on the land line from the newspaper office to ask for first aid advice. People were helping each other, but only some went to hospitals. But there was a shortage of fire trucks to quell the fires or ambulances to help the wounded.
Last night the citizens set up check points to search vehicles that were heading into areas where there were still riots. An ambulance that civilians searched had weapons and bullets in it going to the security forces. The people went crazy and took these weapons away from being supplied to the police who were going to use them on the people. Still, John said that people brought to the newspaper office both large and small bullets that had been removed from people or found on the street. So the police started out using rubber bullets which can wound and some times kill, and later used real bullets that can easily kill the citizens.
People here usually do not have weapons. This is not true in Lebanon. Last week I saw a hand gun, a rifle, and a semi-automatic machine gun at a neighbor's home. He was happy and proud of them and felt they helped him keep his family safe and protected. John describes the police here as being brutal and inhumane and the jails as frightening places where torture is common and terrible.
Last night, the army was shooting multiple rounds into late in the evening, and I woke up this morning to that sound. With the curfew, people are protecting their own property, which is a good use of their time, since the police are not in evidence, and they have taken responsibility for chasing them off the streets. Some friends came over, I made a soup, and we prayed together for Egypt, and we watched TV for a while. Then we played RISK. We didn't finish the game until 2 AM, and I, having won and lost the USA and won Europe, was the winner at RISK. How fun was that!
Personally, on Friday, I hobbled three blocks to the vegetable and fruit market and bought some fresh produce. Red cabbage, dirty potatoes, small zucchini, sweet potatoes, red peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, oranges and bananas. They usually wash their salad items in vinegar, but most of the vinegar had been taken by John and his friend to fight the worst effects of the tear-gas, so I boiled tomatoes to pop the skins off and peeled the other items.
I found and bought a good fresh crunchy romaine lettuce, and I am going to find more vinegar today so we can eat a salad, I hope. I found a sweet little village farm lady on the side of the road with a basket of greens, so she sold me the lettuce and some green onions. She wanted 65 cents. I paid her $1 because I wouldn't ask her for change! Usually you cannot find anything that was just picked that day, so this was a bonus for my having hobbled out to shop. [...]
I will include a photo of the scene, but I am hoping to turn out an impressionist painting of the scene of Tahrir Square with tens of thousands of protestors in it in front of a huge government building at night. The largest protestant church in Egypt, Kassar Debara, is hidden behind it. Of Egypt's 80 million people, 10% are Christians. Some Muslims have been guarding Coptic churches while Christians pray, and on Friday, Christians were guarding the mosques while Muslims prayed.
[...]
Hearing the gun shots late into the night (as the army is firing into the air to keep looters away) has reminded me of the war years Georges and I spent with André and Noelle in Lebanon. We always slept in the most hidden bedroom, and we kept the children with us so they wouldn't be afraid. One evening, our apartment parking area near the stairs had a car that blew up because someone had wired a bomb to it. We had been at a party playing RISK, and we were fifteen minutes late getting André home for his bed time. We heard the loud blast of the car bomb as we were leaving, but only knew it was our building when we arrived home and all the doors had been shattered open. If we had been on time, we and our ears would have been finished. Georges spent the whole night with his drill and common sense repairing people's doors so they could lock themselves in their apartments.
John's mother and brother, Nadia and David, are staying with us for several days now that the other David has gone home. It's too far to come for a visit during the curfew and then to go home by the subway, over an hour away. David, an architect, has a terrible and painful sickness, familial mediterranean fever. Different ethnic groups have this, Armenians, Jews, and Egyptians. What a difficult and painful sickness it is. The mothers get to share a bedroom. You can read about it on Wikipedia, but, of course, I cannot. I don't have access to the internet. Another teacher also stayed with us last night to understand the news and watch some TV stations here.
Now that we finally have had the internet turned back on, I shall look forward to reading your emails! I am flying out on Friday or Saturday, depending on when Lufthansa finds a space for me. [...] I am asking God to help me find a way to the airport. Gas stations have been rather closed. I hope to see and talk with many friends next week! Please pray for the helpless and hopeless in Egypt. <comment><USER3> "Of Egypt's 80 million people, 10% are Christians. Some Muslims have been guarding Coptic churches while Christians pray, and on Friday, Christians were guarding the mosques while Muslims prayed."

This.

I hate it when people use that - but if anything deserves it, it is "This."

<comment><USER4> I might be a little slow, but I didn't understand. What is "this"? What do you hate people using? Prayer, Islam, Christianity, or people professing religious harmony for maybe sorta political ends?

<comment><USER5> Using the word "this" after a quote is kind of internet short-hand for saying "this is super significant and bigger than any individual."

He said "this" but then said he doesn't like using it but had to in this case because it just fit. I think this usage may have come from Reddit?

<comment><USER6> Wherever it comes from, it's one of the most obnoxious comment patterns on the internet, and I'd be extremely disappointed to start seeing it here. If something is worth quoting without further comment, a naked quotation is perfectly sufficient. If it needs special emphasis, how about just a simple "!" at the end.

Writing "this." as a comment and then adding an apologetic explanation afterward is even worse, if that's possible. If you need to write a sentence about the importance of something, how about writing something relevant instead of driving the conversation onto a tangent about commenting style.

* * *

Edit, since apparently this was unclear: it _is_ obnoxious, _to me_ (implied in my statement, though I'd guess it's obnoxious to plenty of others as well). The danger with hackneyed phrases† and metaphors generally is that they encourage a lazy discussion style that decreases the signal-to-noise ratio. It is my personal experience that communities where usages like "this." are popular are, on the whole, less relevant and interesting than ones where they aren't. I don't want people to start pulling quotations from linked articles as their entire comments, even if it might sometimes be appropriate, because when such comments are encouraged, the trend is toward banality and repetition.

† a hackneyed phrase itself. hah.

<comment><USER7> It's not obnoxious; it's an idiom, or a potential idiom, that wouldn't have caught on if it didn't fill a niche. Your suggested alternatives aren't the same thing at all. A naked quotation doesn't communicate what the quoter is feeling; you can't stick "!" at the end of a quote without changing it; and a free-floating "!" would be still more nonstandard and harder to read than "This."

It's just language evolution at work.

<comment><USER8> I'm tired of hearing about the degradation of language content - the 'race to the bottom' of simplified language - being defended as 'just what language does'. Why can't people be proactive about the language they want to use?

What's wrong with someone discussing why they think it's poor, and providing motivation to a 'this'-er to see why it's poor and changing their behaviour towards a more informative approach?

Particularly in an intellectual environment such as what HN wants to fill, why is it wrong to say 'please don't dumb down conversation, please inject content'? After all, screaming 'first post' and trolling are also natural social progressions, but they're frowned on too.

<comment><USER7> You misunderstand how language changes. New forms always start out as incorrect. Incorrect usages that catch on eventually become correct usages. If everyone stuck to "good" usage, language would stay frozen, which would be a disaster for us humans. Fortunately, we can't control this. Language, as Heidegger said, is the master of man, not the other way around.

Educated people often perceive themselves as defending proper English or whatever against the uncouth hordes. One can see this in the arts, where the same people usually want to perpetuate classical forms. But once a form becomes classical it rarely produces much of lasting worth. Today's classical forms were yesterday's popular (or culturally marginal) forms, while yesterday's classical forms are mostly forgotten today. There are exceptions, of course, but this rule is remarkably stable. It took centuries for Shakespeare to be recognized as classic.

It's fun to note that this rule enables one to make some reasonable guesses. For example, it's more likely that our science fiction, comic books, and movies will be remembered centuries from now than it is that our literary novels will be. (Remember that the novel itself, at the time that the great European novels were being written, was regarded as a guilty pleasure - <USER2> way we regard, say, TV. _Proper_ writers wrote drama in verse.) Ditto for rock and roll and hip-hop over orchestral music. And so on.

Once you see that railing against new linguistic forms is just one of those get-off-my-lawn complaints that are forever with us, much as the old always say that the young are ruining civilization, you become free to enjoy how things change. Real intellectual culture is closely connected to the marginal, lowly, and popular; it's pseudo-intellectual culture that wants to erect a wall against them.

<comment><USER8> Out of curiousity, if we shouldn't correct the language of those we believe are using it poorly, how would one justify the correction of subtle hate speech, which is about stopping language from being used to form a base opinion about a class of people?

Is this not interfering with the way individuals choose to use language, molding language into what we want it to be rather than letting it be what it naturally falls to?

<comment><USER7> Fair question. It seems to me that language isn't ever intrinsically hateful; what's hateful is the intent with which humans sometimes use it. "Nigger" isn't hateful when Chris Rock uses it; arguably not when Mark Twain put it in Huck Finn either. That's one of the fascinating things about language: the minute you try to pin it down, new usages appear that escape your grasp. Often to comedic effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "...he brought us home a tear gas canister so that we could see "the gifts that America sends to Egypt". It was made on Kinsman Road in Jamestown, Pennsylvania, 16134."

I've seen this covered all over the news and can't understand the logic. Despite the fact that the United States has publicly backed the will of the Egyptian people, calling for an orderly transition - there seems to be a pathological need to throw some egg. No one is grabbing the 7.62 casings from the Misr-AKM and saying, "see the gifts Russia sends to Egypt?"

<comment><USER10> It's almost as if the dictator they want to overthrow has been one of America's closest allies in the region. Why, to hear them talk, you'd think America has made the dictator's continued reign a linchpin of their Middle Eastern policy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The tear gas company referenced above, which is located in Pennsylvania:: <http://combinedsystems.com/>

<comment><USER12> Just as I suspected, a search for {murtha "combined systems"} shows that this was yet another government or military connected company which located in that part of Pennsylvania due to Rep. Murtha's strongarming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _I will include a photo of the scene_

zefhous, do you have this photo? Can you make it available?

Amazing submission, thank you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, sorry it's so small.

<http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/4778/protestl.jpg>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thanks for sharing that. After reading about how the Christians and Muslims are protecting each other, I think Egytians in general must be pretty awesome people.

<comment><USER15> they're just people. there's plenty of countries out there

<comment><USER16> Mistakenly believing that an act of humanity is a sign of that person/group/country's ethical superiority is a tragically common, and tragically ironic occurrence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The US gives over a billion dollars in military aid to Egypt for strategic reasons and also to maintain peace between Israel and Egypt. This aid is not meant for Mubarak but it is for any government Egypt supports. So US should continue providing such aid even if Mubarak is toppled. Hope peace is restored soon. Thanks for posting the email. So informative.

<http://bit.ly/gxLfZj>

</comment><comment><USER18> For those interested, Al Jazeera's online producer Evan Hill tweets pretty frequently with eyewitness updates on what's happening over there:

<http://twitter.com/#!/evanchill>

Things have gone up a notch in the last 24 hours or so.

</comment><comment><USER19> Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER20> Unfortunately all praying is waste of time...

</comment><comment><USER21> Looks fake to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> What looks fake? Why would I fake it?

I'd be happy to answer questions if you are actually interested.</comment></comment>


The Bitcloud Protocol - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wetube/bitcloud/blob/master/Bitcloud%20Nontechnical%20White%20Paper.md

<comment><USER2> Great seeing others thinking of these opportunities. I put up what I'm working on today as well: [https://gist.github.com/kordless/8461482](https://gist.github.com/kordless/8461482)</comment>


Show HN: Find friends of friends that trade bitcoins - <AUTHOR> http://www.cointouch.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is my site, developed in Scala/Play/Neo4J/Mongo/Nginx. Add bids and offers for bitcoins, trading either GBP, USD or EUR. Prices are shown at a spread from exchange prices (thus updated automatically every 60 seconds). Currently supports Facebook login. Google and LinkedIn coming soon.

I'd appreciate your thoughts

<comment><USER2> Nice idea, but landing page looks slightly dodgy. I'd like a little more information before signing in through Facebook. Maybe it's just me, others may feel differently.

<comment><AUTHOR> Understood - I intend to add a T&C's page, an about page, link to @cointouch twitter feed. Would this make you comfortable to sign in?

I'll also find the best bitcoin intro guide I can and link to that.

It's just been a few evening's work so far so much scope for improvement.</comment></comment></comment>


The Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List - <AUTHOR> http://www.familyhack.com/2007/11/09/homeschooler-rant/

<comment><USER2> Homeschooling might be great, but if the author finds it insulting when people suggest they can't teach early grades because the material is so easy it makes me worry that they know nothing about education. I don't think successfully educating young kids has a lot to do with knowing the material or not, past a certain level of familiarity anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking the same thing myself while reading the article. But playing devil's advocate, they don't exactly teach a lot of theory to education majors either, let alone those in teachers cert. programs.

Personally I decided to put off graduating a few more weeks to take, among other things, a human development course in child cognition because lately I've been wondering how closely the parenting books mirror what's being published in scientific journals. If I learn anything useful then I'll post it at some point in the future.

<comment><USER2> Actually my wife is a teacher of young kids here in Australia and they do quite a lot of developmental psych, even more in the special needs graduate stuff she did. For the higher grades there seems to be very little, which goes some way to explain a lot about the crap high school teachers out there.

Most people seem to feel you need a good high school, but for my kids I really want to concentrate on the early years of learning. Home schooling in high school would probably be a massive improvement, but kids seem pretty happy to be with their friends then.

Anyway, I'd love to hear what you find out. I'm about 6 weeks away from being a father for the first time, so I'm very interested in the topic.

<comment><AUTHOR> As I said I haven't taken the class yet, but if you haven't already, check out Goleman's book Emotional Intelligence. It's really scary to realize not only does EI play a much greater role in future success than IQ, but that the brain is 85% percent formed by age five, after which EI is basically fixed. The good news though is that maximizing this is mostly a function of doing easy things like holding your child for the requisite amount of time each day and such. I guess my point is that it seems important focus first on the stuff you can't fix later if you mess up.

<comment><USER2> Cool I'll have a look. Freakonomics analysis of schooling also suggests that early years are also more important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The wife of my brother in law is a homeschool evangelist.

The bad side of me wants to commit this list to memory so that I'll be prepared the next time I see her. :-)

</comment><comment><USER4> Were/are many of you homeschooled?

<comment><USER5> I wanted to be. Does that count? :)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it's more about the attitude towards learning, so I'd say so. The main way homeschool benefited me was to not kill my intellectual curiosity (and give me plenty of time and freedom to do my own investigation).</comment></comment></comment>


Chinese crypto users lost a $20k per capita in scams last year - <AUTHOR> https://decrypt.co/16324/chinese-crypto-users-lost-a-massive-20k-per-capita-in-scams-last-year <comment><USER2> >Men were more likely to be deceived, accounting for 66.9% of total reports. However, women and the elderly suffered more in per capita losses.</comment>


How to Destroy an Arduino - <AUTHOR> http://ruggedcircuits.com/html/ancp01.html <comment><USER2> Despite all this, I've never been able to damage an AVR. Either I am very careful in my old age, or the stock AVRs are a bit more durable than this article would lead you to believe. I'm _sure_ I've shorted a pin to ground while set to high, for example, because it's a one-byte programming error to do so.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I've done all kinds of accidental abuse to AVRs, shorting outputs while testing, powering an entire circuit through the USART pins, switching the PDI connector on an XMEGA (3.3V) with a +5V USB connector, that sort of thing. They seem to be quite resilient. A classmate of mine apparently had a 5V AVR powered by +12V for quite some time in one of his projects when the voltage regulator silently failed. Apparently it operated for several days like this. My favorite discussion about the resilience of the AVR comes from 26C3 "Advanced Microcontroller Programming", available here on youtube: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=JV3BJo1JAeQ#t=2690s) "You can zap 15kV spikes into the clock inputs and it will continue to run..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have one extra ATMega168 and I will test some of these methods but I'm not sure if you can kill one of these chips just by doing some of these methods.

All I can say is that once, while programming one of these ATMegas, I accidentally swapped VDD and GND and left it there for 2/3 minutes. The chip got very hot and I burnt my finger but once I left the chip cool I was able to program it again and after 2 years it is still working.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great way to do marketing. It's not only interesting and engaging, but also actually useful regardless of whether or not you buy their product.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, none of these methods is sufficient to destroy the _Arduino_ , you will just destroy the ($2.50) AVR.

I would certainly recommend using the UNO or earlier revision with the socketed AVR.

Then you can have a couple of spare ATmega328's for backup.

<comment><USER7> One thing that always bugged me about $30 arduino is that it is mostly nothing else than $2.50 AVR

<comment><USER6> That's actually the _nice_ thing about it. After you've designed and debugged your project on the Arduino board, you can implement it with a $2.50 AVR (+ a few support items).

You can't do that with, for example, the Raspberry PI or the Netduino.

<comment><USER7> That makes sense, but what doesn't is incredible amount of projects and things (and not only DIY, I've seen some one of commercial designs done exactly in this way) that just embeds whole arduino board connected by bunch of random wires to something (preferably something composed of another relatively expensive breakout boards).

<comment><USER8> For one-off projects, the 25 extra bucks aren't really the killer. I don't see the problem with using an arduino in a commercial setting, so long as you're not mass-producing with said arduino.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >> Method #4: Apply External Vin Power Backwards

I know this one isn't true, because I did this last night with no ill effect. I accidently connected a 9V power brick with the leads reversed. Nothing happened, the Arduino just doesn't turn on until you reverse the leads.

</comment><comment><USER10> This article is literally ten instances of "How to destroy an IC: apply power where power does not belong, or apply too much power where less power belongs." with marketing piled on top of it. To be fair, if you did any of these things directly to the AVR powering a ruggeduino, the exact same thing would happen.

I'd not have been surprised to see "apply 120V AC to Vin/Vcc" on this list, simply for the common sense involved in such a statement.

<comment><USER11> The arduino might be a development board but the way i see it, the IO-pins does not have to be be a 1:1 mapping to the IC-pins. I want it to be a safe and reliable, general purpose IO-unit. For that, applying these fixes saves you from many accidental mis-connections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is #10 actually going to destroy the AVR?

 _Method #10: Exceed Total Microcontroller Current_

I'd imagine it would just temporarily disable it, but disconnecting the extra draw would put things right again... I don't think undervoltage or undercurrent physically damages the AVR?

<comment><USER2> All drawing current does is cause components to heat up. Too much heat and the components start vaporizing, and then they don't work anymore because they no longer exist. (The effects may be more subtle than this, of course.)

So yes, it's definitely possible to damage a microcontroller in this way, but I'm not convinced it's as easy as the article suggests. (I'd try on an ATtiny right now and see, but my stash is at work.)

<comment><USER8> If, as a result of the voltage and current regultors in the AVR, the AVR only sources X amount of current, adding load past that point will not magically introduce more current (and thus, heat) into the equation, though... Assuming the maximum supported load is also the maximum physically available, the maximum heat generated should be tolerated OK.

<comment><USER12> As jrockway mentions, the ATMega does not have a power regulator. That would be inefficient as regulators work by dissipating excess energy as heat. So, even if the chip had onboard regulators to limit the combined current draw of the output ports to 200mA the chip would still be susceptible to overheating.

That said, I'd guess the weak link that puts the 200mA limit in place is not actually in the I/O circuitry but is how much current can safely be drawn by the I/O pins when the chip is otherwise fully utilized - peripherals and CPU both consuming max power.

<comment><USER8> The atmega may not, but the Arduino itself does; the output of that regulator flows into the ATMega...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Awesome article. Shows some common failure scenarios of a real product, explains exactly what will happen and proposes an easily understandable solution.

One of the best electronic lessons i've read for a long time. Finally makes you realize why most pcbs has all those weird components sitting around instead of just pushing the io-pins straight into the µC.

While the avr might be able to handle some of the failures in certain scenarios it's still good to know how to protect yourself in case you use another controller or if you really want to be on the safe side.</comment>


Show HN: HN.Academy – Top online courses recommended by Hacker News users - <AUTHOR> https://hn.academy <comment><USER2> Going to recommend the most widely taken course at Yale at the moment, which fortunately is now available as a MOOC on coursera, "The Science of Well Being": [https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well- being](https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being)

This is a positive psychology course based on work by Seligman et al.

<comment><USER3> Would this be Seligman of "none of my positive psychology results replicate" fame?

<comment> barry-cotter Do Positive Psychology Exercises Work? A Replication of Seligman et al. (2005)

Results: Repeated measures analyses showed that the PPEs led to lasting increases in happiness, as did the positive placebo. The PPEs did not exceed the control condition in producing changes in depression over time.

Conclusions: Brief, positive psychology interventions may boost happiness through a common factor involving the activation of positive, self-relevant information rather than through other specific mechanisms. Finally, the effects of PPEs on depression may be more modest than previously assumed.

[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Myriam_Mongrain/publica...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Myriam_Mongrain/publication/259956843_Do_Positive_Psychology_Exercises_Work_A_Replication_of_Seligman_et_al/links/5a370f73aca27247ede1c782/Do- Positive-Psychology-Exercises-Work-A-Replication-of-Seligman-et-al.pdf)

<comment><USER3> My point exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This list mostly passes the gut check: the courses near the top are almost universally high quality, and quite reputable.

Now, why did I say "mostly" and "almost"?

Two reasons:

1\. The best technical courses are on Udacity. You may disagree but I think enough people would agree that it ought to be somewhere on the list.

2\. Learning to learn is popular but its kind of vacuous. (You may disagree, and this time I may be in a tiny minority who hold this view). So I think the sentiment reader might need tweaking.

Still, all in all, a great resource. I am bookmarking it and am glad you did this.

<comment><USER5> > The best technical courses are on Udacity.

Is that universally agreed on? The Udacity courses I had looked at (full stack development, AI for self driving cars) were good and insightful, but somewhat half-baked, and not as good as edX or Coursera.

<comment><USER6> I'm not a fan of Udacity, mainly because I paid them $800 for a single course (the first in the self-driving car series) and then they blocked all my access to the course content because I didn't finish the projects in the allotted time. I was hoping to finish later because my work schedule changed, but they were completely inflexible. I should have read the fine print. The course content was OK, but I don't think they have great policies.

<comment><USER7> I was frustrated with Udacity for the same reason, plus, their ostensible expertise is _way_ overstated [1]. The entire reason I'm paying for a course is to be able to bounce arbitrary questions off experts. They provide people who are still in the fake-it-till-you-make-it stage that's so popular.

[1] Earlier comment where I asked a basic question that went beyond the understanding of the literal face of the course. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18596450#18601298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18596450#18601298)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

Check out HN.Academy and let me know what you think. It's the result of mining the HN archives for references to online courses and then ranking them and displaying all references in one place.

Ranking currently takes into account HN stories (points) and comments (sentiment, karma, estimated points).

I had started with a much broader set of course providers, but Coursera ended up swamping the rankings of pretty much all the other providers. edX is also in the rankings with a few courses. I plan to add more providers but as of now none of them will impact the top rankings.

If you were looking to start a new learning endeavor in the new year... here ya go.

Best, Yaj

<comment><USER8> Interesting, wonder if that's because Coursera is perceived and thought of as better in general or is it due to other reasons such as general popularity. May make sense to have some kind of normalization to unbias it if the latter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You're missing fast.ai for machine learning. It's been mentioned or linked 700+ times on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll need to take the fast.ai course first so that I can upgrade my course- extraction-from-text code from regexes to deep learning. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd throw this resource in the ring since it has the most material out of anything on the list:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18230314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18230314)

Awesome page, though!

</comment><comment><USER11> Is there a sort of "axiomatic high school maths" course, that builds up from the basics without handwaving? i.e. that covers the actual reasons and proofs for things, not just the mechanics/tricks/techniques. The way geometry is taught.

Some might be beyond high school level, like fundamental theorems of arithmetic (unique prime factorization) and algebra (polynomial factors/zeros). There's also non-integer exponents, defining reals etc.

All this stuff is used in High School but must be taken _on faith_. Good for believers, bad for skeptics.

Or is this just _Mathematics 101_? [my engineering maths didn't cover it]

<comment><USER12> Not a course but I believe

Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning by A.D. Aleksandrov, A.N. Kolmogorov , M.A. Lavrent'ev

may cover this in book form. (FWIW I have not read this, but intend to at some point)

<comment><USER13> It's an amazing book! And very well written. Totally understandable!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What about high-quality intros and tutorials you can complete in less time [than a serious academic course] to acquire practically reasonable understanding of particular technologies/subjects?

</comment><comment><USER15> You know these are all affiliate links?

<comment><USER16> I'm curious - do you think affiliate links are a problem, and if so, why?

<comment><USER17> I have seen lots of udemy affiliate link spam on "learn programming" type subreddits. They use alt-accounts for fake reviews and make affiliate links looks like regular links. I'm okay with them as long as there is transparency and don't start a spam race.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The calculus course appears twice (same eventual URL), with different HN citations.

> Calculus: Single Variable Part 1 - Functions Coursera · University of > Pennsylvania [https://www.coursera.org/learn/single-variable- > calculus](https://www.coursera.org/learn/single-variable-calculus)

</comment><comment><USER18> I took the one and only Linear Algebra course cited in this list and did not care for it. I found Strang's MIT course on the subject much better. I seem to recall reading other's had the same experience.

Perhaps we need a separate index that's just YT (and Vimeo?)?

</comment><comment><USER19> The pop-up to subscribe every 2 seconds is extremely off-putting. Made me want to just close the tab multiple times. The curated content only kept me from doing it.

Edit: Nice work! Next steps would be to sort and collate similar topics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ick, that is a bug. Mind sending me details on your browser setup? yaj@the- domain-of-the-linked-story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I like the idea. Would be interesting to see Gadgets recommended by HN users, Travel destinations recommended by HN users, Books recommended by HN users, Games recommended by HN users Movies recommended by HN users

<comment><USER21> As for books, there's already Hacker News Books [https://hackernewsbooks.com/top-books-on-hacker- news](https://hackernewsbooks.com/top-books-on-hacker-news)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Recommendations need to decay by date more.

Eg, the Johns Hopkins University "Data Science" course isn't worth doing (unless maybe it has been updated?), and note that most of the comments are pre-2017.

It's an R course, but it teaches pre-Tidyverse R.

Also it's not a great course in that the assignments aren't synced to the lectures - you need to know lots of stuff which haven't been touched on to complete the assignments at each stage. (Source: I did it in 2014 or 15)

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been looking for something like this, thank you a lot! I wonder if something similar exists for HN book recommendations?

<comment><USER24> Just Google HN book threads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Awesome work!

It'd be neat if there was a search feature that let us search by subject or keyword or any other course metadata.

</comment><comment><USER26> I am curious to know how you built it, do you keep polling for the new a items on the HN? How do you figure out if it's a course? Do you use regexes for it or something more sophisticated / complecated?

</comment><comment><USER27> Looks like the list counts complaints that a course does not exist as a recommendation, or why is the Crypto II course on coursere in the list? What was the original start date, September 2014 or 2013?

</comment><comment><USER28> Any list like this one for finance / investing material? Thanks for the resource - will be put to good use. I'd love it if there were categories for paid, non-paid and overall most recommended.

<comment><USER29> Chalk me as one of those interested too. I decided that it was worth learning mastering that domain rather than continue on expanding my technical programming skills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The biggest concern I have with this is that it promotes what's already popular to the top.

This means Blockchain and crypto are there and I doubt that's the most valuable thing you can learn this year.

</comment><comment><USER31> I didn't even know there was an academy TLD. Is it saturated yet?

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm planning to enroll in statistical mechanics course. Anyone else wants to team up and study as a group? We may finish faster that way. Email me: paras1987 <at> gmail

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm looking for, and haven't yet found, a practical-as-possible, intermediate language design |& compiler design MOOC video course. Ideas appreciated.

<comment><USER34> I haven't taken these courses yet but Automata Theory is in my todo list. These are offered through Stanford Lagunita (Stanford's implementation of openedX)

* Compilers: [https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/Compilers/...](https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/Compilers/Fall2014/about)

* Automata Theory: [https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/course-v1:ComputerScie...](https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/course-v1:ComputerScience+Automata+SelfPaced/about)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Recommendations and upvotes are a neat little signal to make sticky content rise to the top. This site is a great example.

</comment><comment><USER36> I wonder if anyone ever made a list of paid only courses worth it. Now that would be really novel.

</comment><comment><USER37> Hmm... where are Gilbert Strang his courses? He is recommended quite a bit, isn't he?

</comment><comment><USER38> It would be helpful to be able to filter between free and paid off the main list.

</comment><comment><USER39> This is a useful site, but you should probably disclose on it somewhere that you're getting affiliate revenue from every person clicking through and signing up for Coursera courses through your links...

<comment><AUTHOR> I do, on every course page. Big grey box.

<comment><USER39> I missed that and I am an idiot. Mea culpa.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> AWS, Udemy and others also offer a bunch of free coursers.

It's incredible how these free courses are rolling out.

</comment><comment><USER41> Love this! Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER42> Where's SICP ?

</comment><comment><USER43> This is awesome!

</comment><comment><USER44> thanks!</comment>


Show HN: A simple Perl script that displays swapped processes on a Linux box - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/anonymous/7529780

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops, with typo. Fixed here: [https://gist.github.com/eveith/7532528](https://gist.github.com/eveith/7532528)</comment>


Apple's App Store: 15,000 apps. Google's Android Marketplace: 800 apps - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2009/01/22/apples-app-store-15000-apps-googles-android-marketplace-800-apps/ <comment><USER2> Apple's app store supports charging for applications. Google's does not. Given that the work involved in developing an app for either platform is roughly comparable, it's not at all surprising that there would be more offerings for the iPhone/iTouch ecosystem.</comment>


Peter Thiel: "I Don't Consider [The iPhone] To Be A Technological Breakthrough" - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/21/peter-thiel-new-yorker-grump/ <comment><USER2> The fundamental reason that most innovation has occurred in the computer/internet sector over the last 40-something years is that failure is acceptable in this sector. That is, when a computer or webapp crashes it's not the end of the world. But a failure in a drug or car or power plant means serious consequences, and sometimes fatalities, and subsequent regulations/laws to make sure such things are never tried again.

Now, you can make a pretty convincing argument[0] that we are as a society committing Bastiat's fallacy ("Seen vs. Unseen"), in that there are more lives lost due to not developing new drugs than there are due to failures of new drugs.

The failures are seen, the lack of new drugs is not seen.

However, the deeper point is that we are currently simply too wealthy as a society to tolerate the human costs (in deaths[1]) associated with rapid innovation in real world technologies. Wealth means necessities are met, but necessity is the mother of invention. This is why war and serious hardship gooses technological innovation. It's because life becomes cheaper, and test pilots and volunteers for new vaccines become more readily available.

I don't think Thiel would disagree[2] with this analysis, but it does mean that the problem can't be solved simply through shifts in entrepreneurial focus. Americans simply aren't ready for the kind of messiness that real world innovation involves.

[0] <http://bit.ly/mtGRyv>

[1] Perhaps strangely, we are more ready to allow people to take futile risks like bungee jumping or skydiving than we are to allow people to consciously opt out of various health/safety/etc. regulations (and suffer the consequences).

[2] Taking the totality of his statements in context, including the article on the Founders Fund website ("What Happened to the Future?"), Thiel and Levchin's point is not that the iPhone isn't innovative but more that there hasn't been much innovation in big areas like energy, medicine, and transportation. Indeed, by some measures we're moving backwards in those areas: the real price of energy has gone up, new drug approvals have stagnated, and top speeds have gone down since the Concorde was retired.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. The reason why the most innovation has occurred in this sector is because we're some of the best-funded. Look at the arms industry and you will see a similar pace of advancement - mostly due to the bottomless and nigh- unchallengeable defense spending of Uncle Sam.

Why this unprecedented level of funding? IMO this really is the heart of Thiel's argument: internet companies are capable of general obscene, absurd, ludicrous profit margins.

Think about a company like Facebook - employs a few thousand engineers, but generates revenue and impact far in excess of what you might expect from a crowd of that size.

And this is really Thiel's argument, the way I understand it. He's not saying that the iPhone isn't a "technological" breakthrough, but rather it's not a "societal" breakthrough. In the old days, when someone introduces a product, it creates new jobs across the board.

When Ford introduced a new car, it didn't just mean jobs for the people in the boardroom and drafting tables. It created jobs in their factories, and indeed _tens of thousands_ of jobs across a wide supply chain necessary to build the product. It created new jobs in dealerships, and auto shops. The job-creation effects of a product were incredibly far-reaching.

Now, fast forward to today. What jobs are Facebook creating besides the ones inside their walls? There is no employment ecosystem, no supply chain. And in this way, while Facebook is extracting record revenue from their business, the rest of America is no better off.

It used to be that success in capitalism is the tide that floats all boats, but this is increasingly not true, especially in our sector.

<comment><USER2>
      Look at the arms industry and you will see a similar pace
      of advancement - mostly due to the bottomless and nigh-
      unchallengeable defense spending of Uncle Sam.

But I don't think you're really disagreeing here.

The DoD is a lot less squeamish than civilians about experimental projects that result in death. Leave aside the issue of whether this is good or bad. For them, they are going to be seeing dead bodies as a natural course of doing business, and they want fewer ones, and so they're (much) more willing to pursue riskier projects that may cost lives.

Soldiers can be ordered to run into enemy fire, so they can also be ordered to test drive automatic cars (funded by DARPA). Autonomous helicopters that could slice someone in two if the programming goes bad nevertheless get the green light because there are already people being sliced in two, and DoD wants to reduce that number.

DoD is really pushing robotics and cybernetics forward in particular because those two result in less dead soldiers and (in the future) soldiers who can function even after losing limbs and eyes[0].

Perhaps the most concrete example of this thesis is what happens when the priorities of DoD and FDA collide. Take a look at the Pathways to Innovation program that FDA just greenlit[1].

      On a Tuesday afternoon call with reporters, Shuren said he
      expects just one or two devices to be approved through the
      new pathway each year.

      The first device up for review under the new pathway comes
      from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
      (DARPA), the research arm of the Department of Defense.

      The brain-controlled prosthetic is designed to restore
      near-natural arm, hand, and finger function to patients
      suffering from spinal cord injury, stroke, or amputation.
      An implanted microchip on the surface of the brain records
      neuronal activity, decodes the signals, and activates
      motor neurons that control the prosthesis.

      The first chip will be implanted in a patient within six
      months, Geoffrey Ling, MD, PhD, program manager at DARPA,
      told reporters.

There is a very good reason why no private company has yet gotten this kind of fast track, but the DoD has. From FDA's perspective, DoD is a (more powerful) fellow agency which deserves professional courtesy. Moreover, FDA doesn't suspect DoD of just being in this to make money. Thus a dot mil is allowed to play by fundamentally different rules than a dot com.

This is my point: when lives are on the line, people will be willing to risk lives to innovate. If not, then not.

[0] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW78wbN-WuU>

[1] [http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/FDAGeneral/24...](http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/FDAGeneral/24762)

<comment><USER4> It might seem contradictory, but the DoD cares more about it's people than most organisations and at the same time is more than willing to risk lives for progress. Consider the initial proponent / researcher of car seat belts in the US was the Air Force which studied the issue in large part because car crashes where killing more pilots than airplane crashes (at the time). At the same time, they are vary willing to test new airplanes even though test pilots often die. And more than that they where willing to risk a pilot to recreate the conditions of a crash to find out why it happens.

If you run the numbers the DoD has directly saved more US lives since WWII in that same time period. Which is not to say it's worth the budget just more useful than you might think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think Thiel is frustrated that innovation in this country has shifted from science and technology to mobile phones and banner ads. The best and brightest are working in the wrong industry. Instead of researching alternative energy, space travel, health, etc, we're researching thinner smartphones with better battery life and more effective ways to sell ads.

Makes me wonder how far along we'd be, technologically, if YouTube and Facebook had never been invented... We're just too distracted now. Maybe Fermi's Paradox can be explained by alien civilisations becoming too busy posting cat videos on Twitter to invent inter-stellar travel.

<comment><USER6> "Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers."

<comment><USER7> This is a pretty well worn quote, but it really is a good thing to keep in mind anytime you hear people talking about how [whatever] is declining. If things were getting worse even 1% as often as people say they are, we would be extinct by now.

<comment><USER8> "Worse" is subjective and contextually dependent. Describing kids' manners as worse the previous generations' manners is entirely subjective. Bucking tradition, shaking things up - these are characteristics that create innovation and efficiency.

I would argue that a healthy contempt for authority keeps the world advancing positively. Why should I "respect" some supervisor that instructs me in methods that are inefficient at completing my work? That kind of contempt for authority is welcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How many iconic, break-out products are ever "technological breakthroughs"? Behind virtually every iconic product is a string of lesser known antecedents with the same fundamentals but imperfect packaging, pricing, or timing.

Counterexamples? Would love to hear them.

Otherwise, this is an extremely banal observation on Thiel's part.

<comment><USER10> >Counterexamples? Would love to hear them.

Penicillin

<comment><USER11> Along those lines, the smallpox vaccine and X-rays.

<comment><USER12> The smallpox vaccine that eliminated the disease certainly had lesser know and effective predecessor as early as 1770:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sometimes, refinement is a breakthrough.

The AK-47 was not the first automatic rifle nor the most powerful or advanced. But because of its clean design and deployability, it is likely the most significant firearm in modern human history.

What about those statistics that show that a relative modest reduction in consumption would do more to save the environment and energy supplies than any foreseeable technological breakthrough in the next 50 years? Any refinement of technology today to reduce consumption would likely bore someone like Thiel; at the same time, they may also do more to save the world. Why is break-out innovation not to be respected?

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm part of the academic research community that focuses on mobile. My personal opinion is that both the iPhone and the iPad pushed the barrier of what was thought to be possible.

In the case of the iPhone, it redefined browsing on small form factor devices. Yes ... pinch to zoom was published before. But the specific implementation into the web browser was pretty unique. The state of the art device prior to the iPhone was the Nokia 770 tablet. Compare that to an iPhone.

W.r.t the iPad, when Jobs claimed it would last 8 hours (I think he said you could play movies the entire way on a long distance flight), I didn't believe it. Nor could other researchers I talked to. Apple's custom silicon for media playback didn't factor into people's imagination.

<comment><USER15> All those things are cool, but compare with airplanes, which made the world drastically smaller. Or with the Haber-Bosch process, which prevents us from starving. That's the kind of big breakthrough technology that Thiel is talking about. The iPhone, while really neat, doesn't quite measure up.

<comment><USER14> One of my history professors in college said something I found quite remarkable. Let me share it ... he said in the history of humanity, there have been very few revolutions. When humans figured out how to talk was one. You can suddenly communicate with others! The other big revolution was when people learned to write. Now, you ideas can span space or time. The advent of computers, telecommunications and the Internet was another such revolution. You can now instantly connect with anyone around the planet! While the iPhone can't take the credit for all this, perhaps you see why I disagree with Thiel :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _"Apple is an innovative company, but I think it's mostly a design innovator."_

Which is really the crux of what Apple is (I came here to say it and saw Thiel beat me to it). Apple has always been a product innovator more then a technology innovator.

The iPhone was still, very much, a breakthrough device. So was the iPod but neither were "technological breakthroughs"

</comment><comment><USER17> Think of all the app developers out there who are making a living off the iPhone. Think of all the web developers out there whose audience has now increased _dramatically_ because of Facebook and iPhone getting more people to use the web. What Thiel is having a hard time with is the move to an information-centric economy. Outside of better renewable energy, we pretty much have all the bases covered for basic, comfortable human existence. It's all about the creation and dissemination of information, now.

<comment><USER18> Compare that to the previous century. Where is the equivalent of the airplane, radio transmission, space travel, television, antibiotics, the Internet? Those were breakthroughs, not just incremental advances. There s never 'enough progress'. One should be an optimist though, there s innovation incubated in the life sciences

<comment><USER19> Although I mostly side with Tiel on his observations, to be fair you're comparing a century to a decade. And in hindsight it is easy to tell what was a breakthrough. Remember that when computers were invented few thought that we would have them in the palms of our hands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Thiel would have run out of karma if he had made the same observation on HN.

<comment><USER21> Good thing HN has a max of 11 downvotes (I know first hand), but I get your point, fanboyism here is strong.

<comment><USER22> I never knew that! This opens up so many more opportunities to comment! Thanks!

<comment><USER21> Hah, here's the prof <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3196443> (I don't think there's any more unpopular comment you can make here) see it's -4 that shows but realistically I think I had -11 downvotes (it might be -10).

<comment><USER7> -4 is the lowest score a comment can achieve. Downvotes past -4 won't reduce the post's score, but they will keep draining karma from the user. I don't think there's actually a limit on that.

<comment><USER23> Actually they will reduce the comment's score too, it just won't show. The difference is that if it is showing -4 and someone upvotes it, it won't neccesarily go to -3, because it's actual score could be much lower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> People are following the money and innovating in places where it's possible to build a business with limited capital in a short time. In other words, the consumer internet -- which is exactly where Thiel has made his money, and made investments.

Unlike the average entrepreneur however, Thiel has the ability to change that, by funding more startups like SpaceX and RoboteX, and fewer like Zynga and Spotify.

</comment><comment><USER21> Well Peter, you're part of the problem. The more you invest in e.g.: social networks the more entrepreneurs are going to follow that instead of, you know, what you call "innovation".

<comment><USER25> This. The best recent examples of (i) companies capturing multibillion dollar markets through timing and effective implementation of existing concepts and (ii)profit bandwagon-jumping companies with no redeeming features whatsoever I can think of are both in Thiel's portfolio. you probably know which companies I'm respectively referring to. The return that he's going to generate from Facebook and Zynga may be reinvested in exciting technologies, but in the mean time his successes offer several billion reasons for others to copy his smart bets on companies whose innovations probably won't be lauded in future centuries

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> _"Five hundred people will have job security for the next decade, but how much value does it create for the entire economy ? It may not be enough to dramatically improve living standards in the U.S. over the next decade or two decades."_

It's strange that someone as successful as Peter Thiel has been in the startup world, a world built on providing value, would make such a statement. What does the number of permanent or semi-permanent jobs have to do with the amount of value being created by something like twitter? If it took 100,000 employees to run twitter as it exists today, would that make it more valuable to the economy? Of course not.

If it only took one guy to design, build, ship, and sell the iPhone, Apple would be far more valuable to the economy, not less. You'd free up all those talented people to go out and create even more value on their own.

Also, he seems to equate increased $$ with increased living standards. By and large that's been historically true, but it's a bit misleading. Even if twitter made 0 money and created 0 jobs, it would still improve living standards. Certainly not in the way indoor plumbing or electricity raised living standards, but it still makes people's lives easier, which, by definition, improves living standards.

<comment><USER27> > If it took 100,000 employees to run twitter as it exists today, would that > make it more valuable to the economy? Of course not. > If it only took one > guy to design, build, ship, and sell the iPhone, Apple would be far more > valuable to the economy, not less. You'd free up all those talented people > to go out and create even more value on their own.

I think it depends, really. Historically, talented people have created new industries/companies that employed a lot of less talented people and allowed them to live a comfortable life. I suspect the focus of his worry is that these less talented people are nowadays less often reaping the benefits of the innovations talented people create.

<comment><USER26> Historically, those industries _required_ less talented people in order to stay in business. Somebody has to sell the product, answer the phones, sweep the floors, etc. If you created a company that could operate with out all of those less talented people, this would be a boon.

Even if you presume all those less talented employees are mindless drones, if you can provide the same service with fewer employees, you now have all the value created by that service, plus you have all those extra mindless drones to go produce value someplace else.

As to your second point, I can't imagine that's what he's really thinking. The few talented people who create the twitters, iphones, etcs, are far outnumbered by the millions of less-talented people who actually use those products.

<comment><USER27> > Historically, those industries required less talented people in order to > stay in business. Somebody has to sell the product, answer the phones, sweep > the floors, etc. If you created a company that could operate with out all of > those less talented people, this would be a boon. > Even if you presume all > those less talented employees are mindless drones, if you can provide the > same service with fewer employees, you now have all the value created by > that service, plus you have all those extra mindless drones to go produce > value someplace else.

Right, but what about the time when there's nothing sufficiently valuable for those people to do? Historically, we've been very able to replace old jobs with new ones - technology simultaneously freed people up and created new job growth segments. The question is whether technology is still capable of creating enough new jobs.

<comment><USER26> Providing value is nothing more than fulfilling someone else's desire, whether that desire is for a shiny new car that accelerates very quickly, or a new way to communicate, or something pretty to look at, or something delicious to eat, or etc., etc.

Luckily, human beings have essentially unlimited desires. For this reason, there will always be sufficiently valuable things for people to do.

If there is truly nothing valuable for an entire population to do, ie if machines can fulfill every desire we can dream up, it means humanity has finally created utopia.

<comment><USER27> Unlimited desires is probably a stretch. Substantial, certainly.

The problem is not utopia, it's the situation where there's nothing useful for, say, 20% of the population to do. I think there's plenty for the highly intelligent and well educated to get on with, but for those without (and perhaps unable to achieve) that level of education, it's a tougher situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> loup-vaillant > _Having a fully functioning computer in your pocket opens up entirely new > experiences—and markets._ […] _Social media, combined with mobile > technologies, are powering protests and revolutions around the world and > changing the way people consume information._

While I somewhat agree with this, I can't help but feel that much more is possible[1]. With current technology. If people actually owned their pocket computers, both in theory[2] and in practice[3], the changes would be much more profound.

[1] <http://lesswrong.com/lw/2c/a_sense_that_more_is_possible>

[2] <http://freedomboxfoundation.org/>

[3] <http://vpri.org/> <http://vpri.org/html/work/ifnct.htm> <http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER28> "Innovation" is a glittering generality that tech companies and their admirers feel obliged to assume, but most successful companies are built on execution rather than innovation.

Apple is actually an exemplar of execution over innovation. Since Jobs returned, none of their genre-defining products have been fundamentally novel. Even the iPad represents a category people have been trying to get right for twenty years without success. Apple likes to identify markets with demand but immature products, so that they can learn from the mistakes of earlier entrants and launch with an extremely polished, market defining product.

I don't hold this approach against Apple. On the contrary, I wish there were more companies that obsessed about creating polished, highly-functional products that run a little behind the technological curve, rather than the slapped-together assemblages of new parts from Asian electronics manufacturers' supply catalog that typify the industry.

</comment><comment><USER29> Comments like this from Peter provoke people to respond. Plain and simple. Rather than criticizing why he "thinks" the iPhone hasn't broken any boundaries, maybe he should "go-out" and stimulate more than "just 500 employees" at once (aka his reference to Twitter).

</comment><comment><USER30> > "I Don't Consider [The iPhone] To Be A Technological Breakthrough"

Isn't this essentially a strawman, since no one is claiming that the iPhone is a Technological Breakthrough?

At the time the iPhone came out, lots of people noted that it actually lagged technologically behind its smartphone peers (no 3G, subpar SMS functionality, etc), which was correct. And yet it won, it showed smartphone companies how to make a smartphone, and they have been copying that design/approach ever since.

The iPhone didn't win because it was a technological breakthrough, and everyone in tech knows this, so I'm not sure why Thiel's comment is that noteworthy.

</comment><comment><USER31> A lot of innovation we're seeing now is the result of miniaturization of older technologies, such as touchscreen, cell phones and computers. I'd say that the IPhone is rather an innovation in the lifestyle of their owners, more than a technological innovation per se.

I've been arguing this point for a few years now, that smartphones are cool devices, but rather fall in the gadget category than the civilization changing techs they are sometimes compared to.

</comment><comment><USER32> I am totally disagree. Although the breakthroughs in the tech scene are not as groundbreaking as it seems, the implications for social interaction, commerce and education is astounding. I believe we are yet to see the fruits of internet and related technologies in the years ahead of us. Khan Academy, Stanford's online classes, and tons of other educational material available through internet I believe effecting a lot of people's lives.

</comment><comment><USER18> So, if you d take a stab, in what sectors do you expect to see the real breakthroughs? My bet is on genetic medicine and the brain sciences.

<comment><USER33> Genetic engineering is going to be a tough sell with the masses. They won't touch GM corn, tomatoes, ... How the hell are they going to accept GM-mods to themselves?

<comment><USER18> A common characteristic of breakthroughs is that they are at first frightening

<comment><USER34> I remember reading a Wired article that predicated GM-augmented human engineering would first gain a foothold in professional sports, namely the NFL.

<comment><USER33> More likely something like Tour de France (O2 loading of blood)... And man, will the professional leagues have issues with this. "East German swimmers" will seem like nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Nope. It's more of a "deployment of technology" breakthrough. Most of the individual technologies there have been around for a while.

<comment><USER36> That, and a very well designed user-interface are what make the iPhone exceptional. That's why many 'geeks' don't feel it's worth the praise, there are better phones out there in terms of technology, but hardly in terms of usability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Pretty obvious though necessary statement it seems. None of the 'i' products have ever been about technology and Steve Jobs was never a innovator. It's all about design and consumer behavior, starting with iTunes and ending with iTunes.

</comment><comment><USER38> The App Store and VoiceOver. The former shifted the power balance between devs and carriers (creating thousands of jobs) and the latter has changed the lives of many visually-impaired.

I understand the iPhone ref is a strawman, but not a very good one.

</comment><comment><USER39> I agree that it was not a great technological breakthrough on it's own, but it is greatly responsible for a lot of folk's interest in new technology and programming among other things, which should not be understated.

</comment><comment><USER40> Technological, no. UI/UX? Definitely.

</comment><comment><USER41> The iPhone may not a technological breakthrough in that it changes the life of billions of people, no. In that vein, neither is Paypal, to be honest.

The part that annoys me is that Thiel drops this linkbait-worthy note, then doesn't qualify it by saying what _would_ be a technological breakthrough (I did read the new yorker summary, too). Lot of hot air here.

</comment><comment><USER42> Lots of comments here defending Apple. I think the relevant question is: why don't we see more innovation in energy, transportation or medicine?

</comment><comment><USER43> It's a design breakthrough. What's inside, the inexpensive, mass-produced components, is more or less the same as what's in all the competing devices. But the design, the packaging, is a breakthrough.

What's problematic about this Apple popularism and Apple's hermetically sealed approach to selling computing devices is that it does not encourage, let alone even permit, people to learn about what's on the inside and how it works. These are computing devices, not refrigerators.

And in the _grand scheme_ of things, that inhibits progress. It limits the potential pool of competitors and innovators.

Though it preserves the competitive advantage of businesses like Apple, Intel and others. Increased consumer uptake fueled by elegant design certainly furthers what they can do. But the incentives for them to innovate are limited. Do the minimum. Reap the maximum. That's just smart business.

<comment><USER44> It's easy to think that it does limit progress, but it likely does not. Any company that can get people to excited about technology will positively contribute to the future of the industry.

It is probably an extremely controversial thought, but Apple might be responsable for pushing more people into development/engineer jobs than Linux. I know I found my passion for technology through Apple, which eventually led me to Linux. I bet I'm not alone.

<comment><USER43> I anticipated this response. That is why I emphasize _grand scheme_. Short term, I agree with you. Long term, I do not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Smartphones affordable enough for the third world, and pervasive wireless internet access will almost definitely have a larger impact on the world than space travel ever will.

<comment><USER46> _Ever_? That's an incredibly strong statement. Ever is a very long time. Do you think smartphones will be more important than space travel in 300 years? What will the word "smartphone" mean then?

<comment><USER45> I should've added 'for the foreseeable future'. Although it gives us "feel good" vibes, having a small number of people in space does not significantly improve the lives of many people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> The iPhone contains a key invention, and several innovations. This is the simple fact of reality.

The reason these stories are constantly appearing on HN, nearly 4 years since the iPhone was introduced, is because those who want to diminish the invention of multi-touch, like everyone else, sat awed at the iPhone when it was first introduced. That was a very magical moment, and if the iPhone hadn't been a radical departure, then it would have been just another cell phone introduction. It's not often you get to see a new technology that seems magical for the first time.

Theil is talking in terms of making a dent in society. Obviously his standards for a "dent in the universe" are different than Steve Jobs. That's fine for him, but don't confuse it for support for your ideology.

There were no multi-touch devices before the iPhone. (and every time I bring this up, some one posts a link to thin-plastic keyboards from the 1970s, or the screens of the automated ticket stand at movie theaters as if they were the same.) The technology for understanding the shape of the finger when in contact with a touch sensitive display, and being able to reduce that amorphous blob down to a single pixel-- and get the pixel the user _intended_ to touch, instead of the one at the center, or whatever, had never been done, let alone, tracking multiple fingers at the same time, a non-trivial problem. This invention enabled a raft of innovations that Apple spent 7 years developing that resulted in only the second new user interface paradigm in my lifetime- touch UI. (The first being the GUI, which was also developed under Steve Jobs.)

There's an entire ideology that is anti-intellectual, anti-science and anti- mind at work here. One manifestation of that ideology is support for things like welfare, etc, because they believe that it's just chance that separates Steve Jobs from you and me. (and not hard work.) Another manifestation of it is to pretend like the products of the mind have no value at all, and one way they like to do this is to pretend like its only "good marketing" that made the iPhone successful because it was just a random collection of parts that had been invented before.

Sure, LCD screens, Mac OS X, ARM CPUs, RAM, Flash memory and lithium polymer batteries existed before, and with the exception of OS X, all had appeared in other phones. To them, that means that there's nothing innovative about the iPhone. Innovation doesn't exist in their ideology, in fact, it demolishes their ideology, so they have to pretend like nothing was invented for the iPhone. Inevitably, when anyone expresses any defense of innovation you get a lot of nonsense claims about touch panel displays int he 1970s as if that were "prior art" for multi-touch. I've even seen people on Hacker News insist that Xerox invented the GUI. (showing either they don't know what a GUI is, or they don't care.)

To the extent that this ideology has succeeded in america, we have an economic depression, little growth in industry, a great shrinking in american manufacturing jobs (because this ideology has regulated them out of being competitive with the world market) etc.

This ideology might even succeed to the point where a major institution of this country, enshrined in the constitution itself, is destroyed, simply because Google wants to make a competitive phone without bothering to spend 7 years coming up with something innovative itself.

That would be a real shame... because the place that road leads is one where the president has a "kill switch" for the internet, things like SOPA are the law of the land, and startups have to get permission from government to operate their businesses, just like manufacturers do now, and said permission isn't going to come unless you have a lot of pull. We've seen what government control over the purse strings in an "innovative" area results in: Democratic contributors getting $500M loans from government for "green energy" only to go bust a few years later... its just a looting of the public for the direct benefit of politicians and their friends. This is the aristocracy of "pull".

It's instructive to remember that Theil is a prominent libertarian, and thus very clearly not a proponent of this ideology.

All this has happened before, and repeatedly. The USA is the last remaining beacon of innovation in the world. I understand that Hacker News is frequented by a lot of college age or early 20s hackers. Don't fall for the anti- innovation, anti-mind, anti-science, anti-intellectual ideology that says Apple is evil for inventing new things or putting the product and customer first, and those who just ship ripoff products are to be commended.

Don't fall for the claims that inventing is useless, and that america is destined to just be like china (Where everything we make is a ripoff of something invented somewhere else.)

To paraphrase Margarat Thatcher: The problem with not inventing anything yourself is, eventually you run out of other people's inventions to rip off.

In fact you can see this now: The android market is commoditized. Nobody is innovating, and nobody is making any money. In fact, Apples commanding %56 of the entire phone industries profits with only %5 of the _smartphones_ , while most phones still aren't even smartphones. (this is why android marketshare is surging, its becoming the new feature phone).

This is a significant lesson for people who want to do startups. I learned it by trying to sell things on ebay when I was young:

If you don't have anything unique or innovative, you can only compete on price. And that's a race to the bottom.

To the extent that innovative companies can succeed, it is good for the startup economy. To the extent that anything innovative is ripped off, with no recourse, then the larger companies will maintain dominance because newer companies have nothing to compete with, and can't compete on economies of scale. The more things go that way, the less viable startups become and the less innovation society will have from which to benefit.

<comment><USER48> The multi-touch interface was developed by Microsoft Research in 2001:

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

>There's an entire ideology that is anti-intellectual, anti-science and anti- mind at work here. One manifestation of that ideology is support for things like welfare, etc, because they believe that it's just chance that separates Steve Jobs from you and me. (and not hard work.)

Actually it's well demonstrated that you need to have money to make money. The few cases you can site as exceptions are exceptions, and for every exception I can point to a thousand (maybe a million?) people who work hard and are barely making ends meet. And each and every one of those exception stories contains a lot of luck. Claiming that hard work == success is insulting to all of the smart people who have failed, and truly insulting to the millions who work hard in ways that you're discounting as "work."

<comment><USER49> _"The multi-touch interface was developed by Microsoft Research in 2001"_

It's much older. Multi-touch was invented in 1982, at the University of Toronto [1]. After that, it took quite a bit more research until an actual product was made that consumers could buy: in 1998, FingerWorks' launched its line of multi-touch keyboards [2]. FingerWorks was later bought by Apple, in 2005.

As an aside: Microsoft's Surface was announced in 2007 [1] and works with cameras instead of a capacitive touchscreen.

[1] <http://billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html> (author works at Microsoft, should be convincing enough to you)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerworks>

<comment><USER47> Your argument is akin to claiming that whoever invented magnetic audio recording on tapes didn't do anything innovative because Edison had already invented the gramophone.

The paper you cite claims that people were working on multitouch at University of Toronto. It is also true that touch panels (not multitouch) predate even that, going as far back as the 1970s.

But none of this is relevant, and the fact that the Surface uses cameras instead of a capacitive touchscreen is not an "aside", its the smoking gun.

Apple (aka Fingerworks) invented multi-touch, which is the method detailed in its patents and used in the iPhone.

Nobody, that I've seen, has provided an example of a product predating the iPhone that uses this multi-touch technology.

I think the problem is that you guys have believed your own propaganda that patents just cover ideas. They do not. Patents cover specific technological inventions, methods and processes.

Thus, 1970 era touch panels, the displays at your movie theater, the surface and everything driven with a stylus is as relevant to the invention of multitouch as the gramophone is to the invention of magnetic recording. That is to say, in the same broad field, but not examples of "prior art".

<comment><USER50> >Nobody, that I've seen, has provided an example of a product predating the iPhone that uses this multi-touch technology.

What about this one? Forward to about 2:30 if you're impatient. <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=884017118027634444>

<comment><USER49> You linked to a TED tech demo. The actual product didn't come out [1] until after the iPhone was in stores, and it cost $100,000.

That's not to say there weren't any multi-touch products before the iPhone, just that this wasn't one of them.

[1] [http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/07/nieman-marcus-to-sell- per...](http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/07/nieman-marcus-to-sell-perceptive- pixels-interactive-media-wall)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Thiel is right. In 100 years, people are still going to be talking about inventors like Ford and Edison. I doubt you'll find 22nd century schoolchildren reading about the little company that made shiny, walled-garden media players.

<comment><USER9> Ford and Edison. You see the irony there, right?

<comment><USER52> Wikipedia on "incandescent light bulb"(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb>):

 _In addressing the question of who invented the incandescent lamp, historians Robert Friedel and Paul Israel list 22 inventors of incandescent lamps prior to Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison._

On "phonograph" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph>):

 _Several inventors devised machines to record sound prior to Thomas Edison's phonograph, Edison being the first to produce a device that could both record and reproduce sound... [Charles] Cros's paleophone was intended to both record and reproduce sound but had not been developed beyond a basic concept at the time of Edison's successful demonstration of the Phonograph in 1877._

I won't bother to quote the enormous list of Henry Ford's predecessors that appears in e.g. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile>. I'd never do them justice.

<comment><USER52> Okay, I take it back: _One_ link to a predecessor of Henry Ford, because the story is just _too fun for words_ :

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

 _On the way, [Bertha Benz] solved numerous problems. She had to find ligroin as a fuel, which was available only at apothecary shops so she stopped in Wiesloch at the city pharmacy to purchase the fuel. A blacksmith had to help mend a chain at one point. Brakes needed to be repaired; in doing so Bertha Benz invented brake lining. She also had to use a long, straight hairpin to clean a fuel pipe, which had become blocked, and to insulate a wire with a garter. She left Mannheim around dawn and reached Pforzheim somewhat after dusk, notifying her husband of her successful journey by telegram. She drove back to Mannheim the next day._

I can't believe that I haven't heard this story before. Note that at this point in 1888 Henry Ford is still servicing steam engines; he'll start his personal experiments in gasoline engines in earnest in 1893.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Learning to code will eventually be as useful as learning Ancient Greek - 10-6 https://work.qz.com/1135017/learning-to-code-will-eventually-be-as-useful-as-learning-ancient-greek/?utm_source=Quartzaw&kwp_0=605580&kwp_4=2148932&kwp_1=897266 <comment><AUTHOR> "The need for humans to code will gradually disappear for all but the most specialized situations. Platforms will enable humans to describe in natural spoken or written language what they'd like computers to accomplish. The coding will occur behind the computational scenes. We won't code so much as direct and request. Ultimately, coding isn't the point. The objective is to define and communicate what we want computational systems to do."

This is such bullshit. Anyone who has spent time with business users trying to figure out exactly what they need (not necessarily the same as what they want) and then followed that up with actually engineering and building the software knows that this process is incredibly complex, full of need to make assumptions for the business user, and full of an incredible number of decisions necessary on the part of the devs to come up with quality code that does the job.

AI will certainly play a greater part in our lives in the future, but it's not going to replace coders in any significant way in my lifetime. And as the owner of a custom software development firm, I'm literally betting my financial future on this and not losing ANY sleep over AI's encroachment into this space.

</comment><comment><USER2> I think, just because you can do it yourself, doesn't mean i want to do it myself. Sure, i can cook that sophisticated asian dish myself, but no, I don't want to. The same goes with problem solving by applying technology.

And yes, the first sentence was meant suggestive, because, well...it also supports my point.</comment>


Show HN: PRMTV – recreate photos with geometric primitives (iOS) - <AUTHOR> https://www.prmtvapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Is it based on this [https://github.com/fogleman/primitive](https://github.com/fogleman/primitive)?</comment>


Progressive Architectures at the Royal Bank of Scotland - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Progressive-Architectures-at-the-Royal-Bank-of-Scotland <comment><USER2> Of the banks in england Natwest/RBOS seem to be the most aggressive in terms of modernising and improving their services. It's a real shame they've had technical issues over the last week because I suspect it will make it infinitely more difficult to continue pushing things forwards at the same pace.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I make myself employable at Google as a programmer? - <AUTHOR> I love programming. I have been working at a couple of startups in the last 5 years. I want to move my career forward and improve my chances of being hired at a big company that is relatively more stable. I am in my early 30s and I am feeling insecure about the future. I have sent my CV a few times to Google and I didn't get a single response back.
Outside work, I write little programs for fun and to solve my own problems. I contributed to a couple of famous open source projects and blogged about it. I have put most of my personal projects on Github (link in bio). I am willing to put as much hours as required to make myself more employable. But I feel stuck. I don't know what to focus on, what projects to start, or what books to read to get them to notice me.
I would appreciate any advice or suggestions. Thanks. <comment><USER2> Read this blog : [http://haseebq.com/](http://haseebq.com/)

This guy majored in English, was a world class poker player before he made his move into tech. In 1 year he learned enough to crush every single interview in top tech companies ( Google, Uber. Airbnb, etc. to name a few ). His blog posts provides information in extreme details. It might be of help. Cheers!

<comment><USER3> So I guess its more about learning to play the interview game than anything else?

<comment><USER4> Yes. As Einstein said:

 _You have to learn the rules of the game. Then you have to play the game better than anyone else_

It's not as easy as it sounds.

<comment><USER5> Not Einstein but Feinstein:

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Misattributed](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Misattributed)

<comment><USER4> Good catch! I am a little pedantic about quotes, but still get attributions wrong :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google reached out to me for a software development position about 9 months ago and the recruiter told me the main contributing factor was GitHub but he ended up making the initial contact through LinkedIn.

I never bothered applying because I didn't want to invest a lot of time preparing for the interview.

I would say keep doing what you're doing, just more of it. It wouldn't hurt to learn languages they use internally too.

</comment><comment><USER7> > I have sent my CV a few times to Google and I didn't get a single response > back.

This is not how you get a job in tech. Big companies like Google receive thousands of resumes from all over the world on a daily basis. Linkedin and Github are all you need to worry about. Build cool things, network with interesting people, and eventually they will start knocking on your door.

</comment><comment><USER8> Over time I collected many tips, blog posts and links to prepare for interviews at companies like Google, FB etc. But I didn't prepare for them yet, but I hope you'll use them.

Granddaddy of all collections:

===

[https://github.com/andreis/interview](https://github.com/andreis/interview)

Blogs

===

[https://medium.com/always-be-coding/abc-always-be- coding-d5f...](https://medium.com/always-be-coding/abc-always-be- coding-d5f8051afce2#.7x1rs0cik)

[https://medium.com/always-be-coding/four-steps-to-google- wit...](https://medium.com/always-be-coding/four-steps-to-google-without-a- degree-8f381aa6bd5e#.a3wq9jdkk)

[https://medium.com/@dpup/whiteboarding-4df873dbba2e#.z3ya1rp...](https://medium.com/@dpup/whiteboarding-4df873dbba2e#.z3ya1rpsp)

[http://www.restlessprogrammer.com/2013/09/hacking-coding- int...](http://www.restlessprogrammer.com/2013/09/hacking-coding- interview.html)

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/get- that...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/get-that-job-at- facebook/10150964382448920)

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html)

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000073.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000073.html)

[http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets- things...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-things- smart.html)

[http://haseebq.com/](http://haseebq.com/) <\--- just added after comment from @arkro

Hiring Companies (like TripleByte) or Companies giving you training for a fee:

=== [https://www.hireart.com/](https://www.hireart.com/)

[https://hired.com/](https://hired.com/)

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

[https://www.interviewcake.com/](https://www.interviewcake.com/)

[https://www.pramp.com/](https://www.pramp.com/)

[https://triplebyte.com/](https://triplebyte.com/)

[https://www.smarthires.com/](https://www.smarthires.com/)

Interview Prep Sites ===

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

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

[https://www.careercup.com/](https://www.careercup.com/)

[https://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=ProblemArchive](https://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=ProblemArchive)

[https://codility.com/programmers/](https://codility.com/programmers/)

[http://interviewing.io/](http://interviewing.io/)

[https://www.quora.com/Where-can-I-find-difficult- algorithm-d...](https://www.quora.com/Where-can-I-find-difficult-algorithm- data-structure-problems)

[http://www.gainlo.co/#!/](http://www.gainlo.co/#!/)

[https://www.interviewbit.com/](https://www.interviewbit.com/)

[https://github.com/mission-peace/interview/wiki](https://github.com/mission- peace/interview/wiki)

</comment><comment><USER9> I receive messages from Google's recruiters once in a while (maybe twice a year). Always through LinkedIn so I would recommend to polish your LinkedIn profile.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why Google in particular? How about the other tech giants?</comment>