Ask HN: Why is Elon Musk such hero to the tech community? - <AUTHOR> Yes, he's done some outstanding things but I feel people would make him a saint if they could. Why is the worship so strong? <comment><USER2> I think worship is overstating the attitude.

Things I admire: his scale of vision (replace fossil fuels, expand beyond earth, augment human intelligence); his willingness to go for clean-sheet designs; his persistence, iterating and learning from failures; his personal commitment, both in working on and financing his ideas; his obvious enjoyment of his work.

Thing I dislike: over-hyping things; driving employees too hard; being too thin-skinned; the personal attacks, especially in public; his general appearance of being gleefully unaware of his own privilege.

If he went home to his family and workshop in the relatively modest Musk compound instead of hanging out with stars, private-jetting around the world, and being a jerk on Twitter, I'd be more impressed.

But I think a part of the attraction is that he seems like "one of us": an engineer who (like us, in our dreams) has taken the napkin projects from a long session at the pub, and made them real.

</comment><comment> tony-allan Elon Musk is not and never will be a saint, especially in his personal life however he is a brilliant visionary who can execute when it comes to space and electric cars.

There have been many problems along the way and so far he has overcome them. If he doesn't implode or run out on money he will succeed.

I would love to see humans on Mars in my lifetime and I think he will be a big part of that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Both Tesla and SpaceX are completely awesome. Having developed one of those businesses would be a huge accomplishment, having developed both is something beyond.

Musk has shown some paranoia, and some bad behavior on Twitter.

<comment><USER4> reusable spaceships - every techies childhood dream. All those black and white movies where the rocket ship landed by being a rocket, everyone thought that was just the stuff of movies. The dude built it! For that alone he is legend. He's also made money from it. Having said that - not sure I'd like to work for him, but no ones perfect.

<comment><USER5> > All those black and white movies where the rocket ship landed by being a > rocket, everyone thought that was just the stuff of movies.

That's how a spacecraft landed on the moon way back in 1969. SpaceX was just the first to do it on Earth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't worship him. I do admire his determination and abilities and wish there were more people with them who also had the means to actually get stuff to happen.

Hmm... actually... the fact that people like Musk are so rare is discouraging. There are quite a few people with say $100M+ net worth and it seems like most of them don't do much. If wealth were a true meritocracy I feel like Elon would not be remarkable.

</comment><comment><USER7> The idea to take it upon yourself to make humanity a multi-planetary society is just awesome. Succeeding at it is just mind-blowing.

If indeed we manage to establish a self-sustaining colony elsewhere this is a bigger step in our evolution than moving from water to land.

</comment><comment><USER8> My favorite part about this question is that it allows for an SAT like comparison that tickles me to no end when people realize how true it is.

Trump is to Boomers as Elon Musk is to Millennials.

They are almost the exact same personality wrapped in only slightly different generational belief systems. Where Trump made waves in the 80s by being the "winner" type, Musk made waves by being the "visionary" type.

Both are voracious exaggerators bordering on pathological liars. Both are media whores who appear in movie cameos as themselves. Both are completely despised by former business partners. Both use Twitter as a personal echo chamber.

Only reason Musk hasn't gone bankrupt is because the US government kept all of his businesses afloat with major capital infusions. At least Trump's bankruptcies didn't cost tax dollars.

Musk is worshiped because a lot of people don't want to face the fact he's a bullshit artist so they have to take comfort in the illusion of his persona.

<comment><AUTHOR> I must say that's a very good comparison. Musk has mastered the use of the media for his purposes. Just like Trump has done over the past 40+ years.

It's a Very fair comparison. We might be seeing president MusK in 20 years.

<comment><USER5> He can't be president of the U.S. because he doesn't meet the Constitutional requirement of being a native born citizen - he was born in South Africa. He only became a U.S. citizen in 2002.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some new things to try in life? - <AUTHOR>

I'm eighteen and looking for new challenges. What are some new things in life to try?<p>Examples of things I have decided to try:<p>- playing the piano<p>- drawing<p>- Krav Maga <comment><USER2> Travel.

If you're just coming off of high school, it's socially acceptable to delay starting University by a semester or two to go backpack around the world for a while. If you can scrape together a few grand to do so, definitely jump on the chance.

Fly one-way to Bangkok, get a room on Ko San road, then walk downstairs and grab a beer in the bar. Talk to people, ask where they've been and where they're going. Ten minutes of this will probably be enough to load you up with 6 months worth of amazing things to do in SE Asia.

It's cheap there. It's easy to get around. The locals are friendly and speak English. You'll rock it.

Fly out, say, tomorrow afternoon (or the day after you graduate, if you haven't yet done so). Stay as long as the money holds out. Use your last $600 to buy a one-way flight home from wherever you happen to have ended up.

You'll come back never having to ask strangers for a list of new thing to try again.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> The things you've listed are all "skills." Learning new skills is great, and you should do it for the rest of your life.

Don't limit your 'trying things' to just new skills, however. Consider new experiences you'd like to have. Others have mentioned travel, skydiving, etc... Those experiences are what make the memories that last a lifetime, long after you're past the novelty of being able to plunk out tunes on the piano. Here are a few suggestions:

* Go eat at a Michelin 3-star restaurant, even if it the price seems crazy.

* Next time the Mormons or Jehova's Witnesses knock on the door, invite them in and listen to what they have to say.

* Go to a concert, especially one that's outside your "norm" (Been to a few rock concerts? Go to the symphony. Or vice-versa).

* Volunteer at a soup kitchen, homeless shelter, or some other place where you'll work hard for nothing more than feeling good about contributing to society.

That said, when you do tackle the skill stuff, I highly recommend Josh Kaufmann's book "The first 20 hours" ([http://www.amazon.com/The- First-20-Hours-Anything/dp/1591845...](http://www.amazon.com/The- First-20-Hours-Anything/dp/1591845556)). In which he teaches how to become "not a beginner" at something fairly quickly.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm checking out the book and it looks great! Going to try it out with something.

Other than that, good suggestions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A few things come to mind:

\- learn to cook properly so that in adulthood you won't rely on junk or premade meals;

\- volunteer in your local community;

\- write a short story (up to ~1000 words) every day for the next month;

\- start a sketch book and doodle ~1 page every day for the next month;

\- join an online course ( [https://www.coursera.org/](https://www.coursera.org/) ) or teach yourself a new skill ( [http://ocw.mit.edu](http://ocw.mit.edu) );

\- learn a prototyping tool or a programming language and join a videogame jam ([http://compohub.net/](http://compohub.net/))!

Whatever challenge you take on, be sure to have a clear goal in mind, so that you won't just do random things. A goal will let you see how far you've progressed, have a feedback and be more motivated. At the same time, don't be a slave to your self-imposed goal. It's a tool to frame your actions and make them meaningful; don't beat up yourself if you don't achieve it, enjoy the ride!

</comment><comment><USER5> \- Skydiving.

\- Fourteeners. Some are easy, some are hard.

\- Get a dog, build a relationship with it. They're both family members (should be, from your POV) and pack members from their POV. You need to train your dog, get professional advice; violence is _not_ part of legitimate training (see family member above).

</comment><comment><USER6> Not all of these would classify as "new challenges", but overall they will expand your perspective and expose you to interesting new ideas.

\- Taking long walks (5km +) in your neighbourhood can give you a new perspective on your surroundings

\- Snow Skiing or Diving - expensive, but both worth it if you haven't tried them

\- Volunteering at a local organisation

\- A part-time job that's _way_ out of your normal focus. I've worked part time as a real-estate agent, photographer, IT technician, and learnt a lot about life doing so.

\- Do some online / self study in a literature, psychology, philosophy or politics.

</comment><comment><USER7> Things to try?

Read the story of a man named John Goddard, sometimes known as "The Man with the List."

Check it out: [http://www.johngoddard.info/bio.htm](http://www.johngoddard.info/bio.htm)

I came across his story when I was a few years younger than you -- I'm 61 now -- and it has inspired and guided my entire life. Read his story; read his list. The two of them ought to provide you with enough ideas for a lifetime.

Here's his list: [http://www.johngoddard.info/life_list.htm](http://www.johngoddard.info/life_list.htm)

</comment><comment><USER8> Help someone without expecting anything in return.

I rather hope that's not new to you, but it is for a lot people...

</comment><comment><USER9> Walk from Whitechapel to Portobello Road via Harrods

Learn 10 Chinese or Japanese characters

Learn 10 phrases in Hindi, Indonesian, Russian and Spanish

Visit a refugee camp

Go to Botswana

Build something with a Raspberry Pi

Cook scrambled eggs sous vide

<comment><USER10> > Walk from Whitechapel to Portobello Road via Harrods

At this time of year? Can I wait until spring?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would substitute Krav Maga with kickboxing/muay thai/mma since you can't practice it and it's not a sport.

</comment><comment><USER12> Travelling by kayak or bike for 800-1500km will give you a new perspective on things. I did about 750km when I was 17 and it changed my life. You can check out my article on my kayak trip this year in Poland to get an idea.

</comment><comment><USER13> Travel to the end of a road. If you're starting in CA:

\- Travel all the way to the east coast, using no interstates.

\- Head north until you reach Alaska.

\- Head south until you reach Tierra del Fuego.

<comment><USER14> I don't think you can go all the way to Tierra del Fuego by road. If I recall correctly, somewhere in Central America, it's broken. Also, some places is quite dangerous.

At least research it before you try...

<comment><USER13> That's absolutely true. It's the Darien Gap, and you basically take a boat around the gap, from Panama into Colombia I believe. But the point is, pick a destination at the end of the road, and get there by traveling over the land/ sea; no airplanes, and no interstates. It's not about the destination, it's about all the experiences that aiming for the destination brings you to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Forget Krav Maga, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

</comment><comment><USER16> Girls

<comment><USER14> You mean, like, sex? Or do you mean actually understanding them?

Those two are not equivalent...</comment></comment>


Why Responsive Design Sucks - <AUTHOR> http://blog.raavel.com/2013/09/09/responsive-design/

<comment><USER2> These are the symptoms of bad responsive design. There are ways to mitigate these things by really going about proper responsive design, and that takes actual usage.

(#3 Is a huge pet peeve of mine)

I fear too many designers only "test" the mobile site; they don't actually "use" it. Using and testing are two _vastly_ different things as the former actually puts you into the driver's seat for a ride from the visitor's (read: customer's) perspective. Until that happens, designers are only engaging in speculative design that they _think_ is responsive. It's not quite the same.

All the problems highlighted shouldn't be happening on a properly designed and architected site.

</comment><comment><USER3> The author seems to misunderstand what responsive design actually is.

Responsive design is not simply 'download everything, show less on smaller screens'. If your version of responsive design sounds like this, then you're doing it wrong.

Responsive design means taking into account the form factor of the device, and tailoring the layout / positioning etc in accordance. This may mean hiding links and buttons behind some extra drop-down menu or something similar, but you shouldn't be simply hiding things that the user is suddenly not allowed to view.

Additionally, if making your site responsive adds so much extra crap that your 'responsive' version loads noticeably slower than the non-responsive version, then I'm going to hazard a guess and say that your original design is also bad.

</comment><comment><USER4> Responsive design isn't about desktop vs mobile, it is about the whole range of possible screen sizes from very small to very large.

</comment><comment><USER5> I take issue with #1 - I'd rather not have a website make assumptions about how I want to use it based on the device. A single point of entry for all devices makes for a consistent experience, and good responsive design will allow you to get to where you want to go efficiently.

</comment><comment><USER6> Literally everything the author states is Very Wrong, or a symptom of only noticing bad implementations. The most frustrating part is that they are coming from the perspective of responsive design only being used for mobile, which is super, ultra Wrong.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think author is confused about what responsive design actually is.</comment>


The surprising connection between you and a giant panda - <AUTHOR> http://www.ubiomeblog.com/the-surprising-connection-between-you-and-a-giant-panda/ <comment><USER2> How are you, a giant panda, Prince, and TNT related? A surprising bacterial link :)</comment>


Seth's Blog: First, do no harm--three rules for public interfaces - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/04/first-do-no-harm-three-rules-for-public-interfaces.html <comment><USER2> The truth of Rule #1 is burning into my memory by hot water. I'm aware that JavaScript libraries these days can do also sorts of cool tricks. Menus can drop and fade in, rotating while at it. Navigation can be done with a 3D sphere! But the reality is that you have maybe 5 seconds of my attention when I land on your site to see if the content interests me, and if those 5 seconds are spent trying to wrestle with your whizzy controls then I don't even know what you were trying to say before I go onto the next site.</comment>


Pennsylvania High School Rolls Out 1,700 Linux Laptops to Students - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/761499-pennsylvania-high-school-rolls-out-1700-linux-laptops-to-students

<comment><USER2> Installing Ubuntu 13.10 rather than the LTS12.4 shows the way in which it is easy to create technical debt with Linux via lack of expertise. Linux rewards knowledge but. mercilessly punishes poor upfront decisions. Now the school district faces upgrading all those laptops before the end of their service life.

<comment><USER3> Given that they gave everyone sudo access they don't seem that concerned with stability/security. Which means that going with the latest over LTS isn't necessarily a bad thing.

<comment><USER4> > they don't seem that concerned with stability/security

Security of what?

This was the right call. Students should absolutely be able to do what they want with their machines. These aren't servers where users' sudo access would let them interfere with other tenants.

If something gets broken, IT can just reimage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Pennsylvania High School"? Let's hope they turned the webcams off this time[0].

[0] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/19/schools- spied-o...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/19/schools-spied-on- students-webcams)</comment>


The Compositional Nature of Vim (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://ismail.badawi.io/blog/2014/04/23/the-compositional-nature-of-vim/ <comment><USER2> _> What I'm trying to get at is that I never really took the time to learn how vim worked. I had no clue about the big picture. I didn't know any concepts. [...] , really I was just getting by on ad-hoc memorization. [...]_

 _> Composition: The magic of vim is that it's comprised of lots of small primitives that compose well together. Among these primitives are motions, operators, and text objects._

This popular Stackoverflow answer also explains vim's concepts of "verb + noun": [https://stackoverflow.com/a/1220118](https://stackoverflow.com/a/1220118)

Also, a lot of beginners are perplexed why vi uses "hjkl" keys for cursor movement. It's because the 1976 ADM-3A terminal didn't have any dedicated arrow keys like the 1986 IBM PC 101-key layout:

[https://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow- keys](https://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_keyboard#Keyboard_layou...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_keyboard#Keyboard_layouts)

The "hjkl" overloaded with arrow movements is also related to why vi requires a "insert/append mode" that more modern text editors don't need. In vi, you're initially in "command mode" and you have to press 'i' or 'a' to insert or append text. In contrast, if you develop a new text editor after the introduction of keyboard hardware that has dedicated arrows/PgUp/PgDn/Home/End/Ins/Del/Fn1-Fn12, you no longer need to architect the editor software to have 2 special modes. Overloading the A-Z alphabet keys with non-text commands is what motivates having to switch between 2 modes. This leads to vi users _repeatedly pressing the Esc key multiple times to really make sure_ they're no longer in text input mode. Instead of "<Esc>:wq<Enter>", the vi "wrong mode by accident" paranoia leads to "<Esc><Esc>:wq<Enter>".

(EDIT ADD: the Esc key double-tap as reflexive muscle-memory may also be related to _timeoutlen_ which many vi users are unaware of and don't change: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15550100/exit-visual- mod...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15550100/exit-visual-mode-without- delay))

<comment><USER3> You had a really nice, informative comment about the history of vi and the weird keyboard of the ADM-3A terminal and then you had to take a cheap shot at vi users. Why?

I've been using vi/vim/nvim for nearly two decades now and I only press escape (actually C-[, since I mapped caps to control) once each time I need to get out of insert mode. I don't have "wrong mode paranoia" because I can see at a glance what mode I'm in by the appearance of the cursor. When I finish inserting, the cursor moves one place to the left and highlights the last character I inserted. In vim it's even easier because the cursor changes appearance in insert mode.

<comment><USER2> _> you had to take a cheap shot at vi users. Why?_

You misinterpreted. I wasn't taking a cheap shot at vi users. When _I_ use vi, I press Esc multiple times. My behavior is common and this is apparently somewhat of an "in joke" among vi users.

It's a behavior similar to pressing 'C' _multiple times_ on calculators to _really really_ clear out the entry. Pointing out that common behavior is not "taking a cheap shot at calculator users". Out of habit, I also press C multiple times on calculators and I don't know why I do that even though my brain's logic says it's redundant.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/a7qeye/the_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/a7qeye/the_unspoken_rule_for_using_a_phones_calculator/)

EDIT ADD: related HN thread about the _" :wq"_ string accidentally being saved in source files because some vi users didn't realize they didn't escape text insert mode: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7798529](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7798529)

<comment><USER4> I've never heard of Esc Esc being an in joke amongst Vim users. And I rarely (never?) hit ESC twice, because it's obvious when I just tapped ESC, and because of VIM's speed I can immediately see when things changed.

Is this a GVim/MacVim thing maybe? Is that slower? Or do all these people hitting ESC twice somehow have bad keyboards which don't often transmit the ESC key signal?

Also, the reason you hit C on calculators twice is because there is actually a reason to hit it in many calculators, and has no connection with Vim, and the difference between the 2 modes isn't obvious. Hitting C once only clears the current result, but doesn't clear the previous results. So if you type in 45+ the calculator after hitting C once (assuming you had 46 typed in), the calculator will add 45 to whatever you had originally. OTOH if you hit it twice, in many calculators it will also additionally clear out the previous results, so the 45+ only adds to 0.

<comment><USER2> _> , because it's obvious when I just tapped ESC,_

I learned vi (not vim) on old DEC and IBM AIX machines via Telnet (not local GUI). With those more primitive console emulators, the cursor change for different modes wasn't obvious.

 _> Or do all these people hitting ESC twice somehow have bad keyboards which don't often transmit the ESC key signal?_

The Esc-double-tap was a very common way to make sure you're not in text insert mode: [https://www.google.com/search?q=vi+"press+esc+twice"+command](https://www.google.com/search?q=vi+"press+esc+twice"+command)

For whatever reason (e.g. possibly unawareness of timeoutlen delay causing Esc to behave in unexpected ways), many vi users end up redundantly pressing Esc twice.

 _> Hitting C once only clears the current result, but doesn't clear the previous results. _

I thought the newer calculators with dedicated "C" (clear) and "CE" (clear entry) didn't require pressing "C" multiple times. (I just tested this on a Texas Instruments desk calculator with dedicated C & CE buttons and it only requires pressing C once to clear out everything. (But I still press C multiple times out of habit.))

<comment><USER4> Good to know about the timeoutlen.

Also newer calculators have a distinction. But I've definitely used older ones where both keys were on the same button (separated by a slash?) but I know I habitually press C twice and it's likely because the calculator I used most growing up needed you to press C twice for CE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It provides a keystroke-based language for working with textual information. That language embodies concepts that we think of the information and operations relating to it in terms of -- words, sentences, code blocks, etc, and deleting, changing, etc these. This allows us to directly translate our thoughts "I want to delete this sentence" into actions "das".

</comment><comment><USER6> I use Emacs and have been wanting to try spacemacs or evil because I suspect that modal editing is more efficient. Moreover my fingers hurt a lot and Emacs definately isn't helping.

The only thing preventing me from switching to evil (I would never switch to vim because it honestly just seems strictly inferior) is that I use Dvorak on a Kinesis keyboard. I'm not sure how well vim keybindings work on Dvorak, but I suspect not very well (atleast the hjkl part). Does anyone have experience with Dvorak and vim/evil? Is it acceptable?

<comment><USER7> I've heard a lot of speculation, from the vi camp, that Gosling and Stallman have RSI that emacs caused. Again, speculation. Google search for it, I can't find anything worth linking, all speculation.

I do know people who have had wrist problems and found vi more comfortable. I know when I have to type control sequences I find it painful if I do too much.

I'd say just try it and see if you find it more comfortable. Spend a couple weeks suffering through a bit less productivity and see where you are at. I did that a few years ago and am super happy with the results. In my case it was ditching some bad touch-typing habits and switching to a custom keyboard layout to optimize for my environment.

As far as Dvorak, I've heard of people typing in Dvorak but doing command-mode in qwerty. That seems crazy to me, but would definitely work. I can't imaging switching layouts that frequently in my head, but I guess once you got used to it it'd be no big deal.

<comment><USER8> Using emacs doesn't mean you have to use the default keys. I don't, because I find the defaults bad. I use the arrow keys and other bindings changed to my taste and my hands don't hurt.

Emacs is only a bunch of defaults which you should adapt to your needs.</comment></comment></comment>


OpenEMR v5.0.1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.openhealthnews.com/content/openemr-community-releases-monumental-upgrade-their-open-source-ehr-update-ready-download <comment><AUTHOR> I am looking for some strong server side programmer volunteers (and volunteers of _all_ types)! Email is in my profile.

Be a force for good in the developing world !

[https://open-emr.org/welcome/](https://open-emr.org/welcome/)

-Matthew (OpenEMR Admin)

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm late to the game but wanted to provide some context for the discussion. The dominant EMR in hospitals is Epic - can't find a cite but the ballpark is that more than 80% of academic medical centers __have adopted (ie, paid through the nose for) Epic.

As a clinician, I find Epic to be horribly clunky - it definitely detracts from time with patients and impairs collaboration among clinicians by 'hiding' important details in multiple sections/submenus. It's like a Frankenstein's monster of Windows 3.1 and Atari 2600 Basic.

As a researcher, the very restrictive agreements that Epic insists upon have a profound impact on our ability to a) make good use of health records data for research and b) develop extensions to Epic, for things like decision support and risk stratification. (In the latter case, they essentially 'own' anything that touches their code.)

BUT - like the old saying goes, no one ever got fired for buying IBM.

Moral of the story: Hooray for OpenEMR, VistA, and all the open platforms! This round was lost to Epic, but hopefully the next round we can do better.

(edit: __\- academic medical centers in the US. Rest of world, you can do better!)

</comment><comment><USER3> From what I understand the software for EMRs isn't very complicated (message queue + message parsing + encryption). What is an issue is integration with other provides who....

        1. Have the data you need
        2. Charge a huge premium for integration
        3. Don't like giving up their data
        4. Always have their slight twist on message format

This is a huge step forward still. This kind of software is not easy to get right. Soooo many variables and sooooo much demanded customization as well as almost mandatory adherence to incumbent UI designs

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, you'd be surprised. There are not many good EHRs out there. It's all about the features and the ability to make the system work with your workflows and use cases.

Of course, your points are valid though! That is the state of the "behind the scenes" side of things :).

EDIT: Just saw your edit and your correct assessment of the need for a great UI (we have gaps, but a good team working on it).

<comment><USER4> Having used many EMRs over the past 10 years, I totally agree—there are not many (any?) good EMRs out there. Most are clunky UI/UX nightmares that end up interrupting the visit and leave me frustrated and staring at a screen far more than I should be.

I stumbled across OpenEMR a few months ago (as I was cursing Epic and praying for a better open source option) and must say that I'm impressed with the speed of progress. I'm certainly not a developer but I am a physician—if you need any more volunteers from medical personnel, I would be more than happy to help.

<comment><USER5> 90% of Epic's issue is how a Hospital implements it. It is so configurable that compliance and leadership will lean on it way more than they should to drive policy leading to BPAs, poorly created OrderSets, and way too many documentation points that contain low value....Then there is the case of not implementing the features that Epic releases that will make life better for the users because the IT department is underfunded or the leadership does not want to change....and then the fact that many users do not like to be trained on how to improve their use of the system.

<comment><USER6> The other issue with Epic is that it's designed for hospitals. The parent comment sounds like a doc in a smaller practice. There are certainly EMRs out there better suited to that environment (disclaimer: I work for one that I think does an especially good job at that)

<comment><USER4> Yes, I primarily work in a small clinic setting, though I've also used Epic in a hospital setting and have been similarly unimpressed! ;)

In general, I think that EMRs try to cram as much information onto the screen as possible, without enough thought toward what pieces of information are useful at particular times. It's like the opposite of the experience that I have on a well-designed website. Most of my complaints are around that phenomenon, as well as all of the unnecessary clicking / scrolling required due to poor design. I also think that the cost of implementing / migrating these systems is insane, especially when that just adds to our already overpriced health care system. It's hard not to think that companies that build EMRs prefer to be as closed and proprietary as possible, to prevent an easy switch to a competitor.

A few things that I do like in Epic and think are generally good features in EMRs: -lots of shortcut keys -saved phrases (I think they're called "smart phrases" or some nonsense like that) -single click connectivity into clinical resource websites and some hospital portals -modern browser support (I seriously used to use an EMR that could only be accessed on an old version of Internet Explorer -- "just make sure you don't let the computer update the browser") -eprescribing

My favorite EMR of the 10 or so that I've used was at the VA. (I've heard, though not verified, that that EMR was licensable for almost no cost outside of the VA, but was ignored in favor of "nicer" systems.) I don't know if it is the same now, but it was extremely simple in appearance with some basic fields for writing notes, an image viewer, a quick way to order and review labs, etc. Looked almost like a terminal. Copy/paste functionality. Most importantly, because it was used at every VA in the country, I was able to easily review records/labs/images from, for example, a 65 yr old veteran who had just moved from across the country. No faxes, no scanning. It is this sort of uniform system for data access that we are missing right now in medicine in the US and it is wasting time, costing us a lot of money, and damaging patient care.

<comment><USER7> It's kind of a shame about VistA, the VA system. It's the most widely used well liked hospital system

>The VistA system is highly rated by physicians, receiving the highest overall score in Medscape surveys of over 15,000 physicians in 2014 and again in 2016, receiving particularly high marks for connectivity and utility as a clinical tool. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VistA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VistA)

and available free open source [http://worldvista.org/AboutVistA/copy2_of_index_html](http://worldvista.org/AboutVistA/copy2_of_index_html)

but hospitals instead spend hundreds of millions on Epic and Cerner who I presume have fancy sales teams to push those to hospital managers.

<comment><USER8> It's also written in an obsolete, obscure programming language [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS) .

<comment><USER7> Mumps is also used by Epic, the market leader and various banks. It or a variant is being developed by InterSystems who claim their system is the world's fastest object database. So it struggles on. It actually sounds quite interesting tech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I started contributing to OpenEMR 1-2 years ago. Great community! If this is your first foray into open-source I'd highly recommend getting in touch with the admin and getting involved in the many exciting projects happening. We are currently working on integrating OpenEMR with PACS so if you are interested feel free to reach out to me or OP!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

We are better off for you!!!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Getting a LOT of emails from interested programmers. Woot! Please get in touch for non-programmer roles too (documentation, clinical, infra, ui, design, etc)

<comment><USER5> What is the ODB for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> ODB?

<comment><USER10> Ol' Dirty Bastard, a former member of the Wu Tang Clan who died in 2004. Java has long had the ability to communicate with his departed spirit with its ODBC technology.

<comment><USER11> Clearly downvoted because you called a Windows tech a Java tech

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> OpenEMR 5.0.1 is truly a game changing release for OpenEMR users. The features like Image viewer, Docker integration are really cool and handy. Also looking forward for more exciting features like cTAKES integration.

</comment><comment><USER13> Archived version, since the site seems to be down.

[https://archive.is/GDVO5](https://archive.is/GDVO5)

</comment><comment><USER14> really good people are involved with this software project and they make it easy and fun to contribute; there's still a ton of work to do so get involved if you're able

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm a volunteer that has been contributing to OpenEMR for more than a decade and the last year, which is well represented by this 5.0.1 release, has been by far the funnest and most exciting yet. It's a great community that is open to volunteers of all types; come check us out.</comment>


What does it mean for a number to be transcendental? - <AUTHOR> http://math.stackexchange.com/a/1686299/18947 <comment><USER2> This is such a beautifully written, concise, and easy to understand explanation of transcendental numbers. Before reading this, my "definition" of transcendental numbers was just a hazy understanding based on one example number, pi.</comment>


Reddit Has Become a Battleground of Alleged Chinese Trolls - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/reddit-coordinated-chinese-propaganda-trolls <comment><USER3> I think right now there are three main kinds of internet trolls in things like this. First would be the government sponsored ones who tend to post in unison or have some theme. These seem to mainly be Chinese and Russian. Second are the freelance trolls, people in it to make money by building an audience for advertisements. A lot of these people are in Macedonia where they can make relatively good money spreading false blogs on Facebook or something. Finally are the home grown true believers who are just posting their honest views in an abrasive, hostile, or threatening manner. I think the majority of trolls belong to the last group, but the first two have an outsized impact at creating new stories and coordinating messaging that is amplified by the third.

<comment><USER4> If you're going by the original meaning of troll you're missing the fourth category; the people who post something inflammatory because everyone freaking out and arguing at each other is amusing to them

<comment><USER3> I think that type has mostly gone away/become the third. People "ironically" posting racism seem to all just be flat out racists now. As Kurt Vonnegut said "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

<comment><USER5> > I think that type has mostly gone away/become the third

I think you underestimate the entertainment value of intentionally posting inflammatory things. It's fun to play devil's advocate. That doesn't mean you believe it.

<comment><USER6> Regardless of what one believes, posting specifically to inflame or upset people is a form of aggression. Where aggressive debate is a norm accepted by all participants this can manifest as interesting or even productive competition, but where it is unilaterally inflicted on unwilling respondents it quickly generates into sadism.

<comment><USER7> > Regardless of what one believes, posting specifically to inflame or upset > people is a form of aggression.

This is a ridiculous, not to mention untenable, position. I take it you never read Socrates? He saw great value in poking and prodding -- being the proverbial gadfly.

<comment><USER8> Socratic inquiry and racist trolls are only similar if you refuse to think beyond the shallowest surface description.

<comment><USER7> I'm not going to defend this straw-man. Refer to what I quoted.

<comment><USER9> > posting specifically to inflame or upset people

That's not what Socrates did, was it? I thought he was just making observations and asked questions he thought had merit, _despite_ knowing it would upset some people. But the objective wasn't to upset people in the sense of them feeling bad, more like medicine that tastes bitter but is beneficial in the long run.

What I do see a lot is that people impute a bad motivation for a question or claim that allows them to dismiss it without actually having to answer or challenge it, so today, Socrates surely would be _called_ a troll by many. Wouldn't make him one though.

<comment><USER7> Socrates was certainly a provocateur (troll?). I think what the _objective_ of a provocateur is: (1) to get people angry or (2) to create discourse or (3) etc. -- is up for grabs. My point was that claiming it's "aggressive" is nonsense.

> Socrates surely would be called a troll by many

Exactly. I contend that he would be called a troll by the person I quoted -- which I think is wrong.

<comment><USER6> Your contention is mistaken, I'm a big fan of Socrates.

That's why I gave examples of aggression that could be healthy or productive. A football game or a boxing match is an aggressive competition but one in which all participants contend voluntarily. Likewise, a debate or dispute can be quite heated but nevertheless proceed by mutual agreement. I distinguish these from cases where aggression is inflicted upon unwilling recipients.

<comment><USER7> > I distinguish these from cases where aggression is inflicted upon unwilling > recipients.

That's a clever distinction, but I don't think it's sufficient. It's not clear that, e.g., the Athenian leadership, were "willing recipients" in Socrates' case and so your test would fail.

Further, I think this thread itself is a testament to the murkiness of "willingness" \-- are we willingly engaged in a formal spar? We disagree, we're talking, we're debating. If I had thinner skin, I could accuse you of aggression and that would be that. You could do the same.

The "marketplace of ideas" should trump an individual's sensitivities. I will concede that the internet complicates this. Weirdos† -- neo-Nazis, furries, flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, bronies, hoarders, etc. -- can now find like- minded communities that validate their weird beliefs. The danger is the town square turning into a bunch of silos. Weirdos can often be a good thing for a society if their beliefs are validated in the marketplace. But they can also be a very dangerous thing if they all congregate on 8chan.

† By 'weirdos' I mean those that hold fringe beliefs or partake in fringe activities.

<comment><USER6> Socrates did not follow these leaders of the city round Athens haranguing them while they repeatedly asked him to go away and leave them alone, and while we could mine Plato for examples of rude phrasing or an irascible attitude, I doubt that a modern translation of Plato's ancient reports of Socrates' style of talking will yield any definite conclusions.

I am not trying to reinvent the notion of discourse, but to say something about the patterns of behavior that are readily observable and functionally comparable to real life interpersonal interactions. Imagine, for example, if I had responded to your initial comment with vile personal slurs or similarly inappropriate behavior and then mocked you for getting angry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://twitter.com/CraigSilverman/status/110627276452315136...](https://twitter.com/CraigSilverman/status/1106272764523151361) »

Moderators and users on Reddit say they've seen coordinated activity on the site by pro-China accounts. "The pro-CCP effort vastly overshadows any operation by the Russians," one person with insight into moderation practices told us.

China expert Bill Bishop said the activity fits with the Party leadership's emphasis on controlling the discourse about China outside of the country. He said said it's hard to know which accounts are simply patriotic Chinese people, and which might be government actors.

We obtained a list of accounts banned frm r/geopolitics for what was described as pro-China trolling or related behavior. Some were burner accounts created just for the purpose of weighing in on China threads. Others seemed to be genuine Chinese ex-pats studying or working abroad

r/geopolitics mods implemented new rules as a result.

"We've had to implement a rule that prohibits posts from accounts less than 20 days old. This has helped to an extent but these redditors seem to be very patient and disciplined, and can 'wait out' the 20-day requirement."

<comment><USER10> It's simple to work around those time requirements. It's not uncommon to see accounts that are months old with 0 prior activity become super active as soon as a thread criticizing China shows up.

<comment><USER11> Observe the saddening axiom -

There is no such rule set that a dedicated troll or attacker would be unable to circumvent.

Instead consider every rule as a evolutionary hint for attackers - <USER2> they reach a point that they can often pass for perfectly normal users.

People are creating accounts now, filling them with karma and health comments in funny subreddits. Then a year later, they will bring it out and use them.

<comment><USER12> For everything that's wrong with cryptocurrencies and the /r/cryptocurrency subreddit, I really like their approach to tagging users. Main activity outside of this subreddit? You get tagged. A lot of activity in one specific coin subreddit? That's a tag. New account? Tag. Old account with little activity before? Tag. Longer time with no activity on CC? Tag.

It feels weird at first, but it's actually a great way to recognize trolls.

<comment><USER11> I expect this to become explicit in many other forums based on how I know internal mod tools behave.

This is problematic, because it is effectively the same way as saying "this person is a foreigner", and tribal identities overwhelm the initial intention of a information granting doohickey - see the fate of the upvote and downvote button today.

<comment><USER12> > the same way as saying "this person is a foreigner"

I disagree. It gives you context for what the person wrote. Everyone has a tag (even if some are positive).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not so sure Hacker News is free of the same group. Post an article critical of China sometime and watch the comments. People genuinely posting opposing viewpoints is fine and normal but there is something very uncanny valley about most of them.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party)

<comment><USER14> I appreciate your concern for HN quality, but this kind of comment is the reason why we have a site guideline asking people not to insinuate astroturfing without evidence. If you think you're seeing abuse, the guidelines ask you to email email@example.com with specific links so we can look at specific data. We always look. Occasionally we find it, and when we do, we crack down on it hard. But it's rare, unless you count users getting their friends to upvote their startup or whatever, which is a different phenomenon. And the cases we've seen have basically all been of corporate abuse, not nationalistic.

Overwhelmingly the most common case is people accusing others of posting in bad faith merely because the other's view is so far from their own that they can't conceive of them having it for legit reasons. This is a reflexive reaction—a feeling that we all need to recognize and _stop_ ourselves from expressing in raw form. When people vent it into comments, the result is either war between the two sides, or, if one side outnumbers the other, an ugly mob dynamic in which a few people are ganged up on for being different. Those few either leave, or they become resentful and break the site guidelines badly themselves, as a way of lashing back against unfair treatment. All these outcomes poison the community.

Not to pick on you personally—it happens because of how human nature reacts to the weird conditions of the internet, which we're not wired for. It is hard for all of us to grasp how large and diverse the community is, and how divided it is on divisive topics. Nationalistic themes are some of the most divisive ones, and unfortunately are growing more common these days.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER15> You say that, but here's a perfect example of what appears to be an obvious Chinese account that is currently unbanned.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=thetechlead](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=thetechlead)

<comment><USER14> Obviously we don't ban people for being Chinese. Presumably you mean it's "obvious" that they're a Chinese government agent. If so, your post is illustrating the very dynamic I was writing about. Your intention is positive, to protect the community, but when you express it this way, the effect is to poison the community you mean to protect.

I'm familiar with that account. Their posts, and what private data we have, are completely consistent with who they say they are: a former Google employee and startup founder who has lived in both China and the U.S., has a Kubernetes war story, opinions about Python, Go, PHP, software deployment and so on, and who is frustrated by comments about China here because they feel many commenters don't know what they're talking about. It's natural that someone who lived many years in both countries would feel that way. Some of their comments have broken the site guidelines, but that's a separate issue—and who of us wouldn't, having our integrity attacked outright like they have?

This is clearly a case of somebody being singled out for suspicion because they have different views, formed by different experiences, than others here. When users do that, it puts us in toxic territory. Is it ok to accuse people of being government agents, shills, spies, or astroturfing, just because they have a different view on some geopolitical or economic question? Obviously we need to not go there.

It's fine if you're not persuaded—I don't expect that—but please consider the downside of being wrong. What if this person is as innocent as you are, motivated by the same things as you? Can you imagine what it would be like to show up here and see it debated whether you're a spy and a liar? Even a single case of someone being unfairly subjected to that is unacceptable. If the community is to avoid "sinking its teeth into itself without realizing it" (Schopenhauer's memorable phrase) and falling into a poisonous swamp, we need a presumption of innocence. And so we do: the guidelines say _Assume good faith_. If you stand on the dry ground of that assumption, I see no path that gets you to that user being a bad-faith actor any more than you or I are.

I feel bad about holding up an individual user to some sort of public trial like this (another reason why the guidelines ask people to email concerns to us rather than posting them here)—can you imagine what that must feel like? But since the issue is the integrity of the community and its moderation I feel like I'd better say something.

<comment><USER15> Thank you for the well thought out response, in that case I am happy to concede I was wrong. Let my post serve as an example of what you were pointing out.

<comment><USER14> That's an incredibly generous response. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reddit has been rife with brigading and manipulation for years. At this point, it's been this way for longer than it was an idyllic place to discover cool nerdy stuff. This is precisely why there are so many very active and hyper- strict moderators now. Not all, of course. It depends on how much "heat" the community contains and how much the subject matter attracts. They have to act like police in bad neighborhoods, because that's just the reality of the place.

Throughout the 20th century, the Eastern Bloc had to deal with western media eroding the narratives of their society. Now, it seems that the tables have turned through social media. But instead of creating images, stories, and music of the wealth and richness of life brought by self determination, it's far more effective to simply sow chaos and jam our society's means of information exchange.

EDIT: We are in years numbered such that they appear widely in science fiction. In objective terms, we are doing better than we ever have in all of history. In 2019, we need to embrace the normal. We should be suspicious of the lurid and the outrageous. We should be skeptical of the accusation and the conspiracy theory. In 2019, these are all the viral pathway to easy money and influence. We need to start looking at these things like we now look at the products of medicine shows. Not all of these things are necessarily bad. However, we always need to be mindful of the incentives.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)

<comment> 52-6F-62 There are still some good ones, but they tend to be smaller and rarely political. For instance, r/homelab is still pleasant. (Though it might inspire negative effects on your credit cards)

<comment><USER16> Conservative readers might be surprised at this, but I find /r/stevenuniverse to be quite tolerant and accepting. I've even called out sexual-orientation based identity politics there and had some substantive discussions. Other times, I've been downvoted to oblivion, though. There is some activist brigading there, but the general culture of the place seems to reflect the culture of the show. (Politically left, but if you are a good person who accepts others, we will accept you. You won't be judged by how you were made, rather by the quality of your relationships.)

<comment><USER17> Isn't Steven Universe some American cartoon? Why would the sub for it be relevant to discussions of any kind of politics? What am I missing?

Note that I haven't seen the cartoon, but from adverts it seemed pretty banal rather than political.

<comment><USER16> _Why would the sub for it be relevant to discussions of any kind of politics? What am I missing?_

The show has been pointed at by conservatives as an example of gender/identity politics. However, the ethos of the show is that we really should accept people no matter how they were born, and judge them on the quality of their relationships. What's more, this isn't transmitted by saying it, rather by showing it. IMO, more careful observation shows that it's actually the opposite of identitarian media, despite surface appearances.

Occasionally, some identitarian rah-rah comes up there, and I feel the need to point out that we're all in this together, and isn't that what the characters show us?

 _from adverts it seemed pretty banal rather than political._

It transcends the political, like all good, honest art should.

<comment><USER17> Huh... well I live and learn, thanks for the detailed answer.

<comment><USER16> There's one episode that on the surface, or to a child, would be a completely banal story of a kid helping his dad clean out the garage. There's of course, an emotional subtext of people thinking about the past, and past relationships, and people they've lost. Then, there's another subtext, invisible to a child, where there's the story of a widower who has an affair with the friend of his dead wife.

It's one of those cartoons that's one thing on the surface, but has other things for the adults.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The flip side is that every non approved opinion is now a "troll." I responded to someone on Twitter saying that I didn't think the Mueller investigation would amount to much and I got called a Russian troll. It's a way of pretending that opinions you don't like don't actually exist.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you ever meet someone from mainland China, such as university students, they take criticism of China very seriously. For example, mentioning Taiwan as an independent country is an offence and will shock most Chinese mainlanders. But this is similar to foreigners criticizing the 2nd amendment or similar parts of American culture. It will create the same passionate response in most Americans.

The more Chinese students learn about websites such as reddit, the more you will find these responses. You can't just expect them to just sit idle. The fact that English is not their native language will however make others qualify them as trolls/bots

<comment><USER20> I work with a lot of people from mainland China and I have not once gotten the impression of any generic sensitivity to criticism of China.

<comment><USER21> > I work with a lot of people from mainland China and I have not once gotten > the impression of any generic sensitivity to criticism of China.

Those kind of reactions often, but not always, get muted the longer the person is exposed to more diverse perspectives outside of the mainland.

There's also a cultural trait in China where you strongly defend your in-group against criticisms from an out-group, even if those criticisms are valid. I have a Chinese friend who considers his mom to be kind of lazy (and tells her so), but if someone from outside the family made the same criticism, he'd strongly defend her as a hard worker. The same thing is true of criticisms made by non-Chinese of China.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wish people still lived by the idiom "Don't believe everything you read". It's like social media stopped all forms of critical thinking in society.

<comment><USER23> > I wish people still lived by the idiom "Don't believe everything you read"

When did they ever?

> It's like social media stopped all forms of critical thinking in society.

Human society as a whole is irrational and does not engage in critical thinking. Small groups of highly focused individuals, or individuals themselves sometimes can, but it takes too much effort most of the time.

<comment><USER24> We trust our friends and family, our tribe. Something shared on Facebook by an uncle is more trusted than a maliciously researched article on the New York Times.

<comment><USER23> Trust implies a lack of critical thinking. When we trust something we don't think about it deeply, we just accept it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The timing of this is interesting as just about a ~month ago there was a mini protest because Reddit accepted significant investment from the Chinese company Tencent and users began pushing Tienanmen Square Massacre images to the front page.

</comment><comment><USER26> The number of gov-backed trolls is overestimated. Majority of those are simply real people using VPNs. It may sound hard to believe, but think twice about the huge size of population and high rate of Internet penetration.

Chinese population is largely nationalistic and conservative, and some hawkish groups are very active online. There is a joke that Great Firewall is not for controlling Chinese people but protecting Westerners from Chinese netizens.

</comment><comment><USER27> All upvote/downvote based social media is inherently toxic to public discourse and extremely manipulable. Something major was lost in the transistion from BBS and forums to this insanity we have now. It used to be that long form discussion and nuanced viewpoints were the norm. If someone had an opinion you disagreed with, you could either refute it or ignore it, not _make it dissapear_. Now everything thoughtful or balanced in any way is buried under a mountain of "gotcha" quips, and moral certitude, bot or not.

<comment><USER28> It's not just upvotes and downvotes. Twitter doesn't track karma, so people just compete on number of followers or retweets or other measures of "reach" instead. Upvotes are only one way to trigger that dopamine hit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> That's the way the Chinese Communist Party rolls. If it can't control individuals, it controls the platforms, either directly or through proxies. It started with mass media ([https://freedomhouse.org/blog/media-control-china- model-comp...](https://freedomhouse.org/blog/media-control-china-model- complexity-and-thoroughness)), social media, the Internet ([https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/great-firewall-of- china](https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/great-firewall-of-china)), and telecommunications in the PRC, expanded to "overseas Chinese" communities in Southeast Asia, Australia, and North America ([https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/monitoring-0327201811...](https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/monitoring-03272018113611.html)), global tech companies ([https://money.cnn.com/2018/04/05/news/economy/china- foreign-...](https://money.cnn.com/2018/04/05/news/economy/china-foreign- companies-restrictions/index.html)), and now global social media communities ([https://mashable.com/2016/11/22/facebook-censor- china/#PGexF...](https://mashable.com/2016/11/22/facebook-censor- china/#PGexFR6YsiqJ) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19121882](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19121882)).

This forum may well be next.

</comment><comment><USER30> Genuinely curios, since I believe Reddit is banned in China, so can't Reddit counter this by simply blocking traffic from China?

Or, perhaps Reddit doesn't think this is a problem, or at least not a problem they want to tackle given their recent funding from Tencent.

<comment><USER31> That's not really how the internet works, because of VPNs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I feel like this is one of those ideas that sounds good to Chinese, in China, but will inevitably produce backlash and the opposite reaction in the West.

<comment><USER21> > I feel like this is one of those ideas that sounds good to Chinese, in > China, but will inevitably produce backlash and the opposite reaction in the > West.

IIRC, in both China and Russia, state-actor trolling was perfected _domestically_ control the local population before they started to export it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This idea of a world with chinese and russian trolls with no mention of other state actors seems to be missing a rather big part of the picture.

</comment><comment><USER34> Here I am in my nice and warm bed made by HN, where n00bs are marked green, and unless you're active you can't down vote. This, coupled with consistent moderation, HN means that we don't see this noise. It seems such a simple solution to vitriolic trolling. (Thanks guys!)

It'd be interesting though, to see the metrics of signups and their origin to see if they even bother here...

</comment><comment><USER6> Is anyone aware of tools/research on instrumentation of such activity on social media? I don't mean text mining or semantic analysis of trolly content but the patterns of activity and interaction. At present I use directed graphs with k-means type clustering/community detection algorithms but that can lead to difficulty seeing the forest for the trees.

Imagine, for example, that Hacker News members were grouped in different teams - red, greeen, yellow, and blue - and that the teams competed to dominate discussion threads and grow their own discussions as semantic 'territory'. Imagine further that you had to represent this without any text, using only the time, post size, and threading structure, but with prior knowledge or manual curation of team membership. I'm particularly interested in how a thread could be represented spatially, but _not_ as a time series (ie viewing progress over time would require animation). It's easy to visualize the ebb and flow of territorial conflict on a geographic map, with armies crossing borders and territories expanding or shrinking over time, but how to do that for emergent 'territory' like the expanding and branching threads of a busy discussion topic? I sometimes imagine it like a growing plant or tree with different colored leaves to represent competing affiliations, but there are surely better approaches.

tl;dr how can you visualize evolving discussion threads without using text?

</comment><comment><USER35> I think this is an interesting subject, but I would remind everyone of Hacker News' excellent discussion policies on this subject: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment><comment><USER36> Post anything even remotely critical of the chinese government and your reddit post will be downvoted and spammed with whataboutism and FUD.

I posted a comment about the forced labor camps of Muslims in china and the same username replied two different times arguing two different things. In one reply the Muslims in these camps were terrorist and had to be arrested for the protection of the chinese civilians and in the other reply saying they're not labor camps they're trade schools to help them get jobs.

</comment><comment><USER37> Somewhat silly question: can we build a firewall around china from the outside?

<comment><USER38> yes, geo ip ranges can accomplish close to this

<comment><USER39> I can spoof my address in 1 second. Are you saying that Chinese hackers and trolls cannot do the same?

<comment><USER38> "close to this"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> According to this article and comments here I should be getting paid simply for disagreeing with the pro-USA nonsense everywhere. Where do I apply?

</comment><comment><USER41> We need authorship attribution plugins for Firefox/Chrome. Identify propaganda and submarine advertisements/shilling.

</comment><comment><USER42> You should have a look at [https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/) it reminds me of a communist times I was living years ago.

<comment><USER23> Fascinating. Almost every comment is either outrage or blaming Western media perception of China.

Are these real? Professional trolls? Probably a bit of both? Can we even tell them apart?

I guess we just to be skeptical of everything you read online, but damn is it exhausting. Easier to just cut off these data streams and just live life ignorant. "ignorance is bliss"

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I saw here a pretty good pattern of anytime a story about Uyghurs was posted there was a post or two about: "I just traveled through there and it's nothing like the article says, it's quite peaceful."

There were even some hilariously worded posts about how: "At least unlike the US I don't have to wear my backpack on the front for fear of thieves." That almost seemed like the height of communist era type poster propaganda...

That kinda came in went pretty quickly.

</comment><comment><USER44> its funny for buzzfeed to complain about trolls or really anything on the internet,them being a perfect example of internet cancer

</comment><comment><USER45> Shills/trolls pretty much have the freedom to do whatever they want on Reddit. Vote manipulation and simulated conversations between groups trying to steer the discussion seem to be fully sanctioned by the mods and admins.

If you look at the comment history of the accounts involved, there's often a pattern of accounts that used to only discuss US sports teams before going dormant for a year or more and coming back with a strong interest in defending some corporate or government entity 24/7.

</comment><comment><USER15> derp

<comment><USER14> I responded to your other post about that: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358).

Please stop this now. It breaks several of the site guidelines.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Chinese/political Trolls have been on Reddit forever. I noticed it in full force when Obama was running for president.

But, it only seems to matter now because Trump. I still wonder if Hillary would have won the presidency, if all of this foreign meddling with our elections would have been swept under the carpet.

<comment><USER39> Foreign meddling happens every single time. It's normal in any election.

This time, since Trump won he won not because of people voting for him, but because of Russian trolls.

It's just that the other side doesn't want to admit defeat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> This may be a silly, but I have been kicking around this idea of creating a politics based lobste.rs of sorts; the users would need to go through a vetting process to be able to contribute. Possibly even crazier; users would need to go through some further vetting process to discuss a particular topic. Maybe this is already solve-able via Reddit, but i would prefer it to be off reddit. Any thoughts? There seems to be no place for very well informed and educated individuals to discuss politics that is publicly accessible imo and something like this could address that.

</comment><comment><USER39> Can we really trust BuzzFeed with any kind of reporting?

This might or might not be true, but the fact that reality mirrors what BuzzFeed says is purely coincidental.

<comment><USER48> You mean can we trust the Pulitzer Prize winning staff of Buzzfeed News or can we trust the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist organization Buzzfeed News?

Because I don't know if you know this, but many members of the staff of Buzzfeed News have won Pulitzer Prizes and the organization was a finalist in both 2017 and 2018. The accuracy of their reporting is no more suspect than any other well-respected media organization.

<comment><USER39> Yes. That actually makes me wonder about the Pulitzer Prize, if what you're saying is true.

From [https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/buzzfeed/](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/buzzfeed/): "overall, we rate Buzzfeed Left-Center Biased due to story selection that tends to favor the left and Mixed for factual reporting based on poor sourcing and a few failed fact checks.".

They're also selling their own brand of kitchenware if you're not aware of it (see [https://www.buzzfeed.com/samanthawieder/tasty-kitchenware- wa...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/samanthawieder/tasty-kitchenware-walmart)), which is a perfect indication that not even them believe their journalism will get them anywhere.

They're a biased, failing enterprise that spins news to cause outrage and get a few clicks.

Someone at BuzzFeed won a Pulitzer Prize..? That doesn't mean that BuzzFeed's journalists don't generally spend the whole day writing listicles or biased articles to try to avoid bankruptcy.

The author--Jane Lytvynenko--has bright red hair and might identify herself with news reporter, but has no track record and not even a LinkedIn profile. Her tweets read like "Hello happy Thursday here's a selection of memes from a pro-Bernier channel plz enjoy". I mean, "plz"? Give me a break.

<comment><USER49> >The author--Jane Lytvynenko-- _has bright red hair_ and might identify herself with news reporter,

Is this some kind of ad-hominem attack? I don't see how it is necessary.

<comment><USER39> It's not, I'm just saying that journalists usually look decent to inspire trust, while she has bright red hair and uses "plz" instead of "please" in her tweets.

<comment><USER49> And I reiterate that you are using ad-hominem and no-true-scotsman attacks to discredit someone instead of using their words or actions. Btw her hair looks a pretty normal shade of red/brown in all but one google image search result...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> This article is purely innuendo and quotes from reddit posts that insist that there is an army of Chinese trolls specifically arguing against things that they are personally opinionated about. This article contains no actual information or evidence about what people in China may or may not be actually doing.

I don't mean to imply that there are any fewer than 50 people being paid by the Chinese government to post on English-language websites full time, but Reddit is a cesspool of paid posters.

It's just a particularly US/Western neo-cold war paranoia that it's somehow mostly or even largely the Chinese and Russian governments. The evidence usually cited is that somebody is agreeing with the Chinese or Russian government, and since no one could possibly agree with the Russian or Chinese government Q.E.D.. For Russia, it doesn't even matter whether the poster agrees with the Russian government, because what the Russian government wants to do is foment strife and confusion in order to weaken the West, therefore both sides must be Russian.

I also don't mean to imply that there any fewer than 50 people being paid by the Russian government to post on English-language websites full time.

I'd just put those into perspective by trying to imagine the number of people employed by the governments of English-speaking countries to post on English- language websites full time; then add the number of full-time posting shills from private companies, including that person about 3 cubes down from you.

China's published propaganda is improving, though; they're starting to get that Anglo-American reasonable liberal tone down. That sometimes make me think that a lot of posters who are pounced on for being Chinese shills are just Chinese people expressing Chinese opinions, but without the trained skill of wrapping them in some circular argument about practicality and respect.</comment>


Growing evidence for dark matter - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21678126-powerful-gamma-rays-centre-milky-way-look-signs-elusive <comment><USER2> dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10545191](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10545191)</comment>


Why Material Design Didn't Achieve a Grand Unification - <AUTHOR> http://www.xda-developers.com/has-material-design-achieved-the-unification-it-originally-aimed-for/ <comment><USER2> ...and the default color scheme and shapes looked like a neon version of something straight out of the 1970s</comment>


Show HN: Data Engineering Project for Beginners - <AUTHOR> https://www.startdataengineering.com/post/data-engineering-project-for-beginners-batch-edition/ <comment><AUTHOR> Simple project to help beginners get started with data engineering. This is my fist post on HN, any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the illuminating post. I like how Apache Airflow is used to move the pyspark script to a S3 location so that it can be read by the EMR step. I remember working on a project where we wanted to automate a data pipeline using Airflow and had this problem of how to get our pipeline scripts to the right locations.

<comment><AUTHOR> @gifflar Glad you found it illuminating :). Yea moving spark script to S3 using a Airflow task is usually the easiest.</comment></comment></comment>


Could an atomic bomb stop the Gulf Oil Leak? - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpPNQoTlacU <comment><USER2> I'd suggest everyone itching to push their pet theory first READ the _informed_ discussion over at the theoildrum.com. Industry knowledge, not eco- hand-wringing, gives this a BIG thumbs down.

 _"Suggesting an idea that has been consistently rejected for its several weak points literally dozens of times on this site alone, is an indicator that you havent been really paying attention. In short, explosions will not work because the bottom of the GOM is mud, for thousands of feet below the surface. any explosion at the surface will only make the problem worse. any explosion in the well shaft will only make the problem worse. Its been suggested to think of the bottom as a bowl of pudding, there is no way to use explosives to seal it up. it just doesnt work that way.

While its a common lust for most people to wanna blow up any problem they cant solve and seems to work pretty well for America in the past, it will not work here."_ <http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6531#comment-634447>

<comment><USER3> I should think that industry knowledge has lost a little bit its cachet in recent months.

<comment><USER2> I'm sure it has.

But it's kind of like a lot of engineering fields. As reported in the NYTimes, engineers reported the risks and management made the decision to ignore those risks.

So I'd still suggest that if those deeply involved with drilling oil say nuking the well is fucking stupid idea, then it's a fucking stupid idea - especially since already _sounds_ like a fucking stupid idea. Perhaps it would work in a MacGyver movie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of Centralia, Pennsylvania, where an underground coal fire has been burning since 1962. It will probably burn for another 150 years or so. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania>

</comment><comment><USER5> What could possibly go wrong?

<comment><USER6> Oil could start leaking into the ocean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You would still have to drill another hole, which would take the same amount of time as a relief well.

<comment><USER8> A shallower hole, which would take less time.

<comment><USER7> Does anyone know the breakdown of how much time each part of drilling a relief well takes? Prep vs Equip Deployment vs Drilling vs etc?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Perhaps someone here is familiar with the natural structure of oil reservoirs, such as the one that is currently spewing forth in the Gulf. I would be interested to know if they would fear, as I do, that nuking the reservoir would effectively just blow the top open.

<comment><USER10> Yeah... we're talking about miles of rock... There's no way you're going to blow an opening between the reservoir and the sea-floor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why does it have to be an atomic bomb? I'm no explosives expert, but I think it is very likely that one could find a non-atomic bomb with the necessary power.

<comment><USER8> A narrower hole, which would take less time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am surprised no one has mentioned Godzilla. Seriously though what about the effects on marine life if they miscalculate?

<comment><USER13> Modern nukes have very precise control over their yield. The idea is to explode it deep in the rocks under the bottom of the ocean.

If they miscalculate by a couple percent, nothing weird happens. I doubt they could miscalculate by the orders of magnitude required to do real damage to the ocean.

It would be very unlucky to hit a natural nuclear reactor...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Might be an idea to read "Engineering with Nuclear Explosives":

<http://www.archive.org/details/engineeringwithn00plowrich>

[Edited to point to archive page, rather than the PDF].

<comment><USER15> Warning: 66mb pdf.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wouldn't that cause a tsunami?

<comment><USER14> Some nuclear weapons had relatively small yields - as low as 10 tons of TNT:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition)

<comment><USER16> Do not call the Russians then: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba>

<comment><USER17> Is it just me, or is there a fair bit of inconsistency on that page? Notably, the fireball is listed as being: 8km diameter, 3.5km radius, and 2.3km radius.

 _could have caused third degree burns 100 km (62 miles) away_

That's big, all right. Wow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I _hope_ this is viewed as a last resort. Not because I have any fear of the nuke itself, but because if it _fails_ it could easily make the leak quite literally unstoppable / uncontainable by spreading it.

<comment><USER2> We are at last resorts.

But this is no sort whatsoever.

It would cause less harm to set off a nuke at a randomly chosen location to symbolize our frustration.

<comment><USER17> _We are at last resorts._

After trying a couple things (or is it just Top Kill that's been attempted)? Hardly. According to [1], they've spent ~1 billion so far, and part of that is paying people off, not fixing the problem. Surely the damage will be many _many_ times higher than that, especially when factoring in ecological damage and future repercussions - _they could get more groups involved_ , it's pretty much just BP doing all this, with their money. They have no interest in fixing it as-fast-as-possible-and-damn-the-costs, just in saving face (ie, "fast enough") and surviving the costs (ie, don't over-do a solution).

Not saying they're deliberately delaying, just that they don't wish to commit economic suicide if it can be avoided. Meanwhile, everything dies, and hurricane season is coming.

[1] : [http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international- busin...](http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/Oil- leak-costs-rise-to-930-m-BP/articleshow/5984527.cms)

<comment><USER18> BTW a hurricane in the area is probably the best thing that could happen. It will totally clean all the shores for us.

It will also oxygenate the water.

Remember the oil is not eternal, it's very biodegradable. If you can spread it out with enough oxygen it will all be gone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why can't a huge concrete block stop the leak?

<comment><USER20> The oil pressure is so high that a 5 mile tall mud (twice the density of water) needed to be pumped into the well, as its own pressure was not enough. The involved forces are incredible.

<comment><USER19> I suspected pressure was too high, but how exactly high? Wouldn't a nuke blast essentially shut the vent with rocks? So there must be a threshold for how heavy that concrete slab should be. Also, what is '5 mile tall mud'? A column of mud 5 mile high (how wide, how dense) equivalent of pressure?

<comment><USER18> 5,000 to 7,000 psi. At about twenty feet wide.

If my calculations are right, you need about 30,000 metric tons of weight to stop it. And don't forget whatever you put down there will also float because of the water. So you need even more weight.

<comment><USER19> Thanks! That put it into a perspective for me. According to <http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=titanic+weight> Titanic weight was 53,149 tons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It can wipe out the entire ecosystem of that area as well.

<comment><USER22> The ecosystem of the deep-underground geology? (As hypothesized, blast products might not even reach the sea floor.)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Cloud Integration for Developers - <AUTHOR> https://addons.heroku.com/elasticio

<comment><AUTHOR> Simple to use add-on - JavaScript integration widget that can be embedded in your app and immediately connects it to multiple APIs like Google, LinkedIn, Salesforce, Xing, etc.</comment>


IronPython 2.0 is released - <AUTHOR> http://www.codeplex.com/IronPython/Wiki/View.aspx?title=v2.0.0%20Release%20Notes&referringTitle=Home

<comment><USER2> Awesome. I'm really excited to be able to write DLL's in pure python for the CLR, and then hook them up to run in Windows as native-looking apps easily.

Now that there is a Python2.5 equivalent version, they can focus on getting performance out of IronPython, which is already really good:

[http://www.codeplex.com/IronPython/Wiki/View.aspx?title=IP20...](http://www.codeplex.com/IronPython/Wiki/View.aspx?title=IP20VsCPy25Perf&referringTitle=IronPython%20Performance)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hah... I am amused by the 4+ thousand percent difference with TryExcept... why is that? (Ipy is slower by 40 times?)</comment>


You've Moved to South Lake Tahoe to Work Remotely? Please PM - <AUTHOR> I'm a Google SWE who moved to South Lake Tahoe. I would like to get in touch with folks doing the same.<p>If you or someone you know is moved to Tahoe and works remotely, please reach out! <comment><USER2> HN doesn't have direct message system. You need to add your email address to the 'about' field of your profile. The email field is hidden from other users.

<comment><USER3> And this is a "Google SWE"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> cool</comment>


Should developers worry about ageism? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37671/should-developers-worry-about-ageism

<comment><USER2> I'm 37, and I had a recent experience with this.

I went on a few interviews, and I didn't get either job. I passed a phone screening, long brutal technical quizzes, and a few hours with managers. These were for senior dev positions, but I suspect most of the candidates were younger, maybe late 20s early 30s.

I didn't feel any age-related discrimination at all, but I still felt something was wrong. I started asking myself, "why am I standing here, at a whiteboard, showing an interviewer how to recursively search a binary tree?" "Why am I creating the primal of the dual and proving that the min of one problem is the max of the other under optimal circumstances?" I solved the problems, but maybe they picked up on something from me that shows... maybe a slight irritation or exhaustion.

I realized that it's not ageism. I was irritated with myself. Sure, I "shouldn't" be doing this for the umpteenth time, but the shouldn't is directed at me, not them.

If you've been in the business for over a decade, yeah, maybe you "shouldn't" be taking technical quizzes, but that's because you "should" have a reputation to stand on, not because interviewers should see your grey hair and decide that it's a stand-in for testing your technical chops! (I got into programming late, so even though I'm 37, I've only been seriously programming for about 10 years).

I remember Joel Spolsky (a big proponent of having devs write code during interviews) still said (I'm paraphrasing here) "if you're an independent film maker and Uma Thurman is interested in your film, you don't ask her to audition, you try to sign her!"

The top celebrities in our world tend to be the leads on extremely successful open source projects. While very few devs can get this "celebrity" status, you can still a smaller useful network - and really, how many job offers do you really need?

Speaking at conferences, working on open source projects, working on side projects, writing interesting articles in a blog are all good ways to do this. On a much smaller level, just being very helpful and engaged in your job, and producing good software can help.

I'm on that smaller level, but I realized "why am I doing this?" I called up my network, discussed some jobs, and got a nice senior dev/architect position pretty quickly. No technical interview was needed, because these folks had already worked with me on code plenty of times.

It's not ageism to say that your career and approach to development needs to change as you get older. Another line I loved from a movie called "surfing for life" - "age is inevitable, it's the growth that's optional".

<comment><USER3> I'm also 37, and I haven't encountered ageism (yet). I might be lucky, however - I get most of my gigs through a tight network of acquaintances, and so I rarely have to interview. My experience is that so many places are so desperate for truly good help (where "good" also means you're capable of communicating well with other human beings), that age matters much less than it might otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing I find comical is the idea that young people have an easier time keeping their skills "up to date."

One of the truisms of computer science and computer industry is that the practice in industry reflects things that were current in computer science one or two decades ago. If a SmallTalk or Lisp developer fell into a coma 10 or 20 years ago, they are not going to be shocked by how much progress has been made while they were out of commission. They are going to be amazed that the median developer still does not have as productive environment as they did when they were last conscious.

Give them a couple days to get up to speed on the general idea behind HTML and web browsers, and a couple more days to get the specific details of whatever C derived syntax is being used, and they will be ready to be productive. If you are a new developer, everything you are learning is new. For an old developer, it's just a matter of learning the diffs.

<comment><USER5> I think it's a shame many new developers will never see a mainframe environment (I barely did)... There is a massive amount of things that are just "done right" (and plenty wrong) that are great things to learn from.

So even if the technology is "legacy" - there is a lot you can bring forward to almost any domain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ageism exists and it gets worse as you get older. I think geebee did the right thing, but came to the wrong conclusion. If you are experienced and good, you are probably expensive. You can probably be replaced by 2 new grads, H1B's, or a whole offshore team. I was. Read the comments on stackoverflow and you will see such stupid comments as the one who said he didnt like older programmers because they talked about their kids, yeah must be old 30 somethings. Or the usual inane remarks that imply older programmers never made it beyond Cobol.

Experience does matter. LOC per year dont matter; it's writing the right lines, or choosing the right architecture that does matter.

geebee hit the interview nail right on the head. Most interviews are structured to weed out incompetent new grads, hence the programming tasks and the language lawyer questions. When I'm in an interview, I really dont want to waste my time describing when I would use an abstract class over an interface. Why waste time with programming problems with someone who has been doning it for 20-30 years. The successful interviews discuss how I would tackle the real problems that the company faces.

<comment><USER7> As someone who's conducted dozens of interviews over the last few years, I can tell you that there's no way to infer from someone's age or resume if they can code or not. Plenty of people with stellar resumes and 20 years' experience come in and absolutely bomb on relatively simple coding problems. Maybe they used to know how to code but have gotten rusty since they've been doing more management or hands-off architecture recently, but for whatever reason they can't solve problems that any recent grad ought to be able to solve. Some of those people can talk a good game when discussing higher-level stuff or when they're doing a lot of hand-waving, but they just can't translate it into code effectively. My point is not that "older" people can't code: when you do find someone with 20 years experience who can code well, they're generally incredibly valuable. Rather, it's that you always have to be skeptical and can't take someone's resume or stated experience and skills at face value. Those questions are there to filter out people that won't be successful in our company because their coding skills are below par, regardless of age, experience, or education.

If someone asks you to do something that seems "beneath" you or trivial, just do it as well and as quickly as you can so you can get it over with and talk about more interesting things, or use the problem itself as an excuse to start a conversation about something more interesting than the problem itself ("the interesting thing here, is that if you write it this way it's easier to test" or "if you used a language like X, you could write this more easily," or "realistically, I think this function would be more useful if you changed it to behave like this, so that it would then be useful for doing Y and Z as well as X.")

It's nothing personal, it's just the interviewer's job to be skeptical about your stated skills until you prove to him or her that they shouldn't be.

<comment><USER8> I think ageism sometimes shows in the assumption that the "rusty skills" phenomenon is so much more prevalent than the "untalented graduate" phenomenon. So, yes, I agree that interviewers need to be skeptical. But they need to be skeptical about their own preconceptions as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's legitimate worry about ageism: too often employers don't offer a non- management ladder. The answer for that is to work at a company that offers such a ladder (there are many) or work in a start-up (where they can't afford to have "pure managers").

There is also shops which are driven by buzzwords rather than actual technology, who are just looking for bunch of kids who match a keyword list. I wouldn't want to work there anyway (whether at my present age, or in ten- fifteen years).

There's also the illegitimate worry: "some 22 year-old will replace me"; this is of the same genre as "my job will get outsourced to India". The answer to that is don't do simple, trivial work. Be something besides a byte pusher (incidentally, great deal of "web development" is indeed simply pushing bytes). Anyone can make a CRUD app with PHP and MySQL: learn something which isn't immediately listed in the craigslist jobs section, perhaps? I'd argue that, for example, no place that is hiring Haskell developers or developers with understanding of machine learning practices age discrimination.

</comment><comment><USER10> Quick response to 2nd place comment: if you're older and your skills profile is burdened with assembly language, we're always interested in talking to you. =)

</comment><comment><USER11> Whistling past the graveyard. Keeping your skills up is necessary, but insufficient. Over 50? Welcome to the top of the layoff list. The baby boomers are getting kicked out of the workforce. There has long been worry about what will happen when the boomers retire in large numbers. Well, it may be happening early. Good luck to us all.

<comment><USER10> What this tells me is that when you reach your (conventional) prime earning years, your "hard" skills focus should start tilting towards things that will help you entrepreneurially.

The reality is, once you hit 30, if there's a tangible "layoff list" anywhere you work, you have a serious career risk you should mitigate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> depends on the industry and company I think.. maybe there is ageism in the ruby on rails web dev world

But, in one defense industry company I worked at the average developer age was in the 40s. If anything there was reverse ageism there.

Point is just be good at what you do and dont worry about it.

<comment><USER10> Python actually feels like a "younger" crowd to me than Ruby, which got a big influx of Java and "agile" people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This topic was discussed 3 years back in [http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.302825....](http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.302825.73)

</comment><comment><USER14> Developers shouldn't worry about something they can use. If you're young, people will naturally overestimate your ability to learn new things; if you're old, they will assume you already know older technologies pretty well ("If he's been doing this for twenty years, how could he _not_ have encountered that at some point?")

</comment><comment><USER15> There are "ageist" technology employers out there, especially on Wall Street where 35 is considered "old" (you're either MD-level or at the top of the RIF list), but my observation is that if you're good, you can always find someone who will hire you.

I think that a problem a lot of aging developers face is that many of them went into "programming" because, like law or medicine, it was a respectable career choice that provided a middle-class standard of living and a cozy work environment. This is fine, but if you're not willing to dedicate serious energy to keeping your skills up to date, you are going to be forced to contend either with an income plateau, or a move into management.

<comment><USER16> I think that at many employers experience can work against you especially if the manager isn't too technical. A 22-year-old will be like "I'm a net- generation Ruby rockstar and I'll build you a ninja terrorist website" whereas a 40-year-old will be more, umm, realistic.

<comment><USER17> The 22-year old will also be willing to accept a lower salary; and be less able at the politics of the workplace and more willing to be abused.

<comment><USER17> I am curious as to why this comment is garnering so many upvotes.

Let me be clear; I do not think those traits are net positives overall. The fact that when we are young we are a bit too willing to defer to authority is an artefact of buggy monkeyware. Any Manager/CTO who hires youngsters because they are easy to browbeat and relatively cheap is on crack; it feels real good at first, but it destroys you sooner rather than later.

Most teams benefit from a diversity in age as well as in outlook. You need people who are experienced enough to be able to see through the bullshit, but you also need people who will stay up late hacking on a skunk works project because they are excited about the work.

<comment><USER10> I don't understand your point here. Holding the quality and priority of the work constant, the employee who is cheaper and easier to "browbeat" is in fact lower drag. The market is very rationally going to select for the lowest drag fit for any role.

<comment><USER4> "Holding the quality and priority of the work constant"

That is a large qualification. It is possible that quality of work and willingness to be browbeaten are inversely correlated.

<comment><USER10> That isn't my experience at all. I've found no correlation at all.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Classic Typewriter Page - <AUTHOR> https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/ <comment><USER2> Tangentially, for a new manuscript I just started, I opted for a monospace courier sans font instead of the usual Times New Roman I always go with. I am liking it quite a bit for my rough draft: [https://quoteunquoteapps.com/courierprime/](https://quoteunquoteapps.com/courierprime/) Very much in the spirit of fonts from type writers. I'm using Courier Prime Sans.

</comment><comment><USER3> I enjoyed "The Chinese Typewriter: A History" by Thomas S. Mullaney [1]. An interesting look into the history and technology used to create typewriters that can produce almost all the Chinese (and later, Japanese) characters in various ways.

[1] [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chinese- typewriter](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chinese-typewriter)

</comment><comment><USER4> Richard Polt is also the author of the typewriter revolution. A good book!</comment>