Ask HN: What makes a company worth staying with as engineer? - eric-hu My impression is that many software engineers stay at a company for 1.5-3 years and then go elsewhere.  It's usually at least financially motivated.  I also read about people looking for new engineering challenges and responsibilities--specifically not management.<p>It seems like Google and Facebook have this solved. Are there any small or medium sized companies that typically retain engineers for more than 3 years? What do they do to make this happen? <comment><USER2> I used to work for over 6 years in company with 200+ employees, where only 30 people were developers. Why? Well, mainly because it was - at the time - <AUTHOR> to find a good job in my town, and this company trained me as specialist in not-so popular in my country programing language to maintain hermetic, monolitic and ogrish system.

They paid moderately. It was not-so-bad salary if you were looking at earnings in town, but it was low if you would compare it to other cities and other companies.

But it wasn't the main reason I left and find myself a new, better, job. Yes - financial reason was important but only as last nail to seal the coffin (so to speak).

In my previous job I was told I am needed, but no one from mid and higher managment act like it was so. When they insist to tell them about problems, when they ask about solutions, when they thrive to change, you give them all of that just to hear you are a nuisance - you became frustrated. And when your frustration level reach certain point - you quit. Took me four years to make this decision (I've got very high boiling temperature).

I don't know how other small and medium sized companies keep people longer than 3 years, but my current employer act immidiately as I ask for tools or suggest changes. Owners, co-CEOs have direct contact with team all the time. People don't work in stress ("something happend on production? well, that's rather bad news. Fix it, please, and avoid those errors in the future. Hey! Anyone for darts?"). And hey - they pay better which is good thing (despite everything you may say - you sell your most valuable thing - hours of your life, it's rather smart to sell them at proper price). And they keep working this way for 13 years. With 30+ people.

Turns out - you can.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to work at a place that was able to hold onto a sizable proportion of its technical talent for many years at least in part by allowing remote work.

In the minority of cases this was an in-office employee who went for remote either indefinitely or for a period of a year or two so they could go live somewhere else.

In the majority of cases it was someone in another location who was hired. They had the option to move to where the office was (including help with the visa system if necessary) or just staying where they were and working remotely. If a person is particularly attached to where they currently live and that area happens to have relatively modest employment options for technical people then chances are you will retain that person for a very long time.

I would note that whether retaining staff for 5+ years for reasons like the lack of similarly well paying options elsewhere is somewhat debatable. Holding onto staff for a long time is not in and of itself always a good thing.</comment>


Urbit: a personal cloud computer - <AUTHOR> https://urbit.org/ <comment><USER2> My prediction is the personal server for the p2p network will be the device you already own and pay for, your handheld.</comment>


Picking technologies for a desktop app in 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://fman.io/blog/picking-technologies-for-a-desktop-app-in-2016 <comment><USER2> Poorly writing article. Why post something like this where they do not have knowledge on writing programming news and articles?. Plus the fact that calls C++ unproductive and Python most productive language it makes to wonder why bothering reading from this garbage

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry you feel that way. What exactly do you find poorly written about the article? I stand by my statement that Python is more productive than C++ (on average, anyways) and I believe most people who have used both languages will agree. That's not to say that Python is a _better_ language - it is much slower so if speed is a requirement then it obviously isn't. But from a productivity standpoint, oh yes.

<comment><USER2> I found it poorly writen because, based on title, I expected to find an article about Desktop Apps GUI Frameworks, not programming language opinions. Plus you forgot some popular frameworks: JavaFx, Windows.Form.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, so I suppose you don't mean that the blog post is badly written but that the title is poorly chosen. I tried to not make it about only GUI frameworks by using the word "technologies" instead of GUI/frameworks. But maybe I could have been clearer.

I didn't mention many popular frameworks because the article was already getting long and I didn't want it to get even longer. I should have probably addressed JavaFx (the reason I'm not using it is startup speed; the JVM simply takes too long). Windows.Form is not cross-platform afaik, hence doesn't satisfy the first requirement mentioned in the post.

<comment><AUTHOR> I expanded the blog post to explain why Qt was chosen over other GUI frameworks (eg. JavaFX or Windows Forms).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Build the #LAMP stack in 5 minutes  - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cgcardona/config_files/blob/master/LAMP_stack.md

<comment><USER2> Step 5 does more harm than good, IMHO. In most LAMP scenarios, you don't want your MySQL server to be facing the public.

The default, on the other hand, is pretty secure, and I recommend it (unless you have a really good reason to do otherwise).

<comment><AUTHOR> Good to know I'll look into that Thanks</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Academic projects that were monetized by their creators? - <AUTHOR> In the spirit of "Successful one-person online businesses" ¹, - I'm curious to know about academic research projects that were monetized by their creator(s).<p>[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22858035 <comment><USER2> Google [http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Monetized directly by the creators, or by the institutions they work for? Most research-oriented universities have established offices to commercialize work done on campus, and 'incubator' programs to spin off development.</comment>


Ask HN: Is EMBA from MIT/Wharton or MBA from UCLA Worth It? - <AUTHOR> I am almost 32 and have a decade of experience in tech under my belt. However, I feel that I am stuck and unless I earn eMBA or MBA,it's hard to get into executive management.
I earn at least 150k from my job but that's like everyone these days are making if you are in Seattle/SF/NYC/valley.
Doing an eMBA from MIT is 20 month long. This also means that I have put in all of my savings I accumulated for buying home and may be take on additional loan. My organization does not give a penny for employees.
I am wondering if anyone has done it here and was it worth it 2/5 years down the line. <comment><USER2> If you have a company that will promise you a management job when you finish your MBA and _pay for the MBA_ , then do it! Otherwise, it's not worth it.

You can find a management job that doesn't require an MBA at your age and with your level of experience. I have only a Bachelor's and have been in management roles since I finished school. I'm now at an executive level, and I'm younger than you.

One question is, "Do you enjoy management? Do you want to be a manager?" It's a radically different job than being a software developer (if that's what you are).

I'd also suggest looking into companies like Salesforce, which have offices in Houston and Atlanta, and which pay you the SF salary wherever you live. Moving out of Seattle/SF/NYC/Bay and making the same salary would instantly double your spending power. It sounds like you're willing to move anyway, if you're considering Boston, Philly, or LA.

The cities I'd suggest looking into, if you want to stay in tech and have a much lower cost of living: Atlanta, Nashville, Raleigh, and Tampa. All have much better quality-of-life than their reputations suggest.

</comment><comment><USER3> I admittedly never attended either one of these programs. My friend got an MBA from UCLA and has been extremely successful with that I will say. She learned a lot and felt it worth it.

Just want to say despite possible down votes....You might get a lot of "don't waste your money in college" types who often think these programs are worthless. Definitively I will say either one is going to be extremely worth it. Don't listen to any potential haters

<comment><USER2> I'd never say "don't waste your money in college"! College is fantastic.

MBAs are not college. They're not about an education. They're bullshit.

Many people I know in tech consider them to be negative signals, and I've seen internal job listings instructing recruiters not to hire MBAs. I've known investors who won't invest in someone with an MBA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Actually, I have another approach for you.

You're suggesting doing something incredibly expensive (in time and money) based on an assumption: that it'll make you more money.

Why not test your assumption? Ask people at your target companies if they'd hire you for a management role without an MBA. Ask then if that would change if you had an MBA.

This is too big of a decision to make without knowing whether your assumption is wrong.</comment>


Able – Small Business Lending - <AUTHOR> https://www.hiable.com/

<comment><USER2> I love the problem they're attacking. I agree completely that early- stage/small business lending is one of the great challenges in entrepreneurship today. "Banks lend money to people who don't need it" rings very true.

BUT --

"How do we do this? First, we examine data from a business's customers through the collection of reviews, check-ins, and connections that have already been generated across social media."

I strongly disagree that this is the right solution. This is essentially taking the underwriting process and shifting it from banks to...social media users? Honestly, as much as I have distaste for the small business divisions of most banks, it pales in comparison to the distaste I have for the collected "wisdom" of (most) Yelp reviewers and Foursquare Checker-Inners. "The food was outstanding but the server made one mistake -- 1-STAR!!!"

So now, what they're saying, is that not only does a bad review have the potential to hurt your ability to gain new customers, now it can hurt a business' ability to get credit and financing.

I genuinely think they're onto something here - and I think they're working on a critical problem - but I think using social media reviews (in their current form) as a credit signal is a mistake and the wrong approach.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Maybe Able might have the same outcome as Outbox which closed recently.

There are many unanswered questions here as to what happens if a small business does bankruptcy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well that's a giant 180.</comment>


Low-Wage Workers Lose Out When Tech Jobs Gain - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/08/technology-employment-multiplier-effect-inequality-research/595291/ <comment><USER2> That's so true in every context. Low wage workers doesn't get many opportunities to brush up their skills with the fast changing business environment. And log wage Jobs are.mostly manual jobs where automation is taking lead. Sometimes I think it should be banned for humanity sake</comment>


The Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate - <AUTHOR> http://oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/appa.html

<comment><USER2> The one thing that annoys me about the web is all the reruns.</comment>


Welcome to Powder Mountain – a utopian club for the millennial elite - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/16/powder-mountain-ski-resort-summit-elite-club-rich-millennials?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other <comment><USER2> >>> "The goal will always remain the same," says Elliott Bisnow, Rosenthal's business partner: "To be a beacon of inspiration and a light in the world."

I may be jealous because he made tons of money where I didn't do shit, with the tools of my trade. But I certainly don't envy that kind of attitude. C'mon, one needs a little more than a business success to be a "beacon of inspiration and a light in the world". Altruistic doesn't mean enlightened.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=powder%20mountain%20utopian&so...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=powder%20mountain%20utopian&sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)</comment>


What is Freedom? - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/111091089527727420853/posts/VFQcGofBkNb?tab=XX

<comment><USER2> I spent my early adulthood from 18-22 and 24-31 as a Marine. I've found I can't muster up much patriotism anymore. American exceptionalism, even less. I wore the "cloth of our nation" for many years, before, perhaps, some readers of HN were even born. (It's possible!) While I believe that American ideals strive to capture the very highest potential of civilization, my disillusionment is total.

I spent a long time in Iraq, and I was part of the federal Hurricane Katrina response immediately after the levees broke. I was a fervent George Bush supporter & believer until I saw what happened in New Orleans, and was a strong opponent after my second Iraq tour.

What little faith I had in our elected leaders has been methodically sought out and destroyed by Obama's term in office. The vigor with which politicians will consume each other to the detriment of national interests is... heartbreaking. I foolishly afforded myself a little of "that hope-y, change-y stuff", but our president's ineffectiveness -- either because of his own doing or the resistance in Washington -- has made me regret that.

And now, we have Sarah Palins and Michelle Bachmanns running around belittling science, undermining factual rightness, and generally spitting in the face of honesty. Anthony Weiner's weiner was dangled in front of us to distract us from the deficit, and it appears the only bipartisan, bicameral unity our Congress can muster anymore is the belief that an electronic dickshot must be dealt with immediately. The federal deficit can wait.

I dunno. Happy 4th, I guess. Fireworks are cool and my kid seems to like the festivities. But for me, I won't be waving a flag around anytime soon. America for me has become, ironically, much like communism: A beautiful ideal that is ruined by greed and power-mongering.</comment>


Economics 101: How much are you willing to pay to live? - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/Health/spike-cost-oral-cancer-drugs-puts-squeeze-patients/story?id=38733586 <comment><USER2> Title: Spike in Cost of Certain Oral Cancer Drugs Puts Squeeze on Patients, Study Finds</comment>


He Blew the Whistle at JPMorgan Chase, Then Came the Blowback - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/11/business/he-blew-the-whistle-at-jpmorgan-chase-then-came-the-blowback.html <comment><USER2> It still amazes me how people have absolutely no problem stealing or screwing people. I mean, no guilt whatsoever. If you look at the history of how a lot of people have made their money many of them have accumulated their money by methods that I would consider theft (or screwing people) even if technically legal. The robber barons provide rich evidence of what I'm talking about. Even in current times you can find them, although no longer called such.

<comment><USER3> True, but since 2008 at least, I think any level headed rich person would have to take any promises made by JP Morgan with a grain of salt. They might get screwed but they might still get the best return on their investment compared to more honest alternatives. It's still a choice to make in where you put your money.

Everything I hear about investment banks is that their job is to rip off rich people. If you don't like that, then use a regular bank and get a regular couple of percent interest.

<comment><USER4> > If you don't like that, then use a regular bank and get a regular couple of > percent interest.

It's not that simple when you have retail banks and investment banks all tangled up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's important to recognize that all this happened on the fringes of JPM - this appears to be some private wealth branch office. Small brokerage outposts like this are generally rife with issues - they have less supervision (frequently a single broker with their supervisory license) and even in better supervised conditions brokers spend the majority of time out of the office and away from the eye of compliance. Compounding the issue is older brokers who are used to different norms in the business - which explain some of his complaints on the broker's FINRA record: more aggressive selling (his suitability complaints), phone orders (the late order entry complaint), etc. Even though he was vindicated, this type of record is common for brokers in these roles. I suspect that is why they chose these specific trumped up charges against him.

I am waiting for the article that tackles the issues at these branch offices head on.

<comment><USER6> Is it really limited to the branch offices?

Over the years, JP Morgan has been fined $35 billion.

[http://www.dividend.com/dividend-education/a-brief- history-o...](http://www.dividend.com/dividend-education/a-brief-history-of- jp-morgans-massive-fines-jpm/)

And that's just for the cases the government caught and proved.

<comment><USER7> > And that's just for the cases the government caught and proved.

"caught and proved" can also be read as "alleged and settled". In virtually every one of those cases, nothing was "proved" in a court of law. Allegations were made, and JP Morgan agreed to a settlement. They are certainly not guiltless, but it is far less cut and dried than you make it out to be.

<comment><USER8> Why would you settle in court when you were innocent? I consider agreeing to a settlement to be akin to a statement of guilt, but you don't? Why not?

<comment><USER9> The fights are often more expensive than the settlements, and these settlements have gone from a rare black mark to being a cost of doing business.[1]

Similar discussions are common in the criminal law, and it is well-known that a large number of people plead guilty to crimes they did not commit; people do this because the costs to themselves and to their families are much higher if they fight the charges than if they just plead guilty.

[1] [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/802ae15c-9b50-11e3-946b-00144feab7...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/802ae15c-9b50-11e3-946b-00144feab7de.html#axzz3tzmemQP4)

<comment><USER10> lawyers fees dont cost billions (yet)

<comment><USER7> You'd be surprised: [http://www.thewire.com/business/2014/04/heres-how-much- ameri...](http://www.thewire.com/business/2014/04/heres-how-much-americas- biggest-banks-spent-on-legal-bills-this-quarter/360773/)

<comment><USER6> Those numbers include settlements.

> This quarter, some banks paid out so much in litigation fees — including > billable hours, court costs, and settlement payouts

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > That may mean a big payday for Mr. Burris. If the S.E.C. deems he gave it > "original information" the leads to a successful enforcement action, he ... > would be entitled to a bounty of ... $20 million to $60 million.

I wasn't aware the S.E.C. had a bounty program in place. That's quite the amount, probably more than he could have made in a lifetime at JP Morgan.

<comment><USER12> The IRS have something similar, Bradley Birkenfeld received more than $100M when he blew the whistle against UBS.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Then Mr. Burris's lawyer asked — twice — whether "someone at JPMorgan" had written them. Ms. Kazmi testified, "absolutely not.""

...

"And, with respect to Ms. Kazmi's testimony that no one at JPMorgan had drafted the letters, she "answered truthfully based on what she knew — she did not realize that anyone had provided the customer with the courtesy of typing up a verbal complaint or issue," Ms. Wexler said."

Absolutely is a definitive. It means you DO know.

</comment><comment><USER14> The capacity and willingness of financial institutions to completely fuck everyone over repeatedly and consistently must be a universal constant at this point.

</comment><comment><USER15> It is wonderful when honest people are vindicated.

</comment><comment><USER16> I was hoping for a nice outrage inducing story, but this one left too much ambiguity about who was really at fault for me.

<comment><USER17> If you see this as ambiguous, then you are either seriously impaired or perhaps working for jpmorgan. After he quit and filed a complaint against jpmorgn, jpmorgan created three false complaints against the former employee. Then basically lied about it. They are about to pay a $200 million fine for what he alleged they were doing. jpmorgan is all wrong here.

<comment><USER18> Your comment would be much nicer without the first sentence.</comment></comment></comment>


Linux-powered pen - <AUTHOR> http://firstname.lastname@example.com&activity_name=tgdailynews_2013-07-16&dt=&auto_login=Z3VydWRhdGgucHJhc2FubmFAZ21haWwuY29tQCMkQCMkNTc4NzY2QCMkQCMkMTM3MzkyMDE3MQ==&src_type=autoLogin

<comment><USER2> Kickstarter link: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lernstift/lernstift- the-...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lernstift/lernstift-the-first- pen-that-vibrates-when-u-make)

The article doesn't mention that the device aims to aid kids when writing. That change a lot of the perspective of the device usefulness.

</comment><comment> martin-adams >> Linux-powered pen that won't let you make errors

Makes no sense. It'll vibrate when you make a spelling mistake. Isn't that a little after the horse has bolted?

<comment><USER3> I imagine the user will overstrike the misspelled word, use a dictionary, and write the word correctly. That will help form correct muscle memory for writing words correctly.

I'm more worried about weight and size. Children have small weak fingers, and some of them benefit from thin light pens / pencils.

It's an interesting idea though - perhaps they could make a pen that captures everything you write and dumps it out at the end of the day? (I think that's already been done, but I have no idea how popular it was.)

<comment> martin-adams They used one of those systems when I filled out the order forms for the suits for wedding. It took about 3 times longer than just typing it into the computer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is a bit like making a steam powered scythe trainer.</comment>


Microsoft: Firefox's billion claim is 'interesting math' - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/13/microsoft-internet

<comment><USER2> A billion downloads, not a billion users. If there are only 200 million users and they kept up with 1 point release in 5 then you'd already have a billion downloads.

<comment><USER3> I download the latest trunk on all computers I use and all OSs on those computers.

The latest trunk build automatically downloads and installs the newest nightly build every day.

I've been using firefox since version 0.5 (2002) and I've probably been running the latest-trunk for half of that time.

Conservatively, I've downloaded firefox > 1000 times. Just sayin'.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, every time I see that stat, it just sounds like a great argument for diff-updates:

[http://blog.chromium.org/2009/07/smaller-is-faster-and- safer...](http://blog.chromium.org/2009/07/smaller-is-faster-and-safer- too.html)

<comment><USER5> Firefox already uses bsdiff to generate binary diffs for update distribution. Courgette looks like a promising way to shrink those updates even further. (Details in the discussion linked from: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=504624>)

I can't find a reference, but I think the "one billion" count only counts full downloads; updates installed via "Check for updates" aren't included in the count.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I went to Mozilla presentations at the last FISL (Forum Internacional de Software Livre / Free Software International Forum) here in Brazil. They explained clearly that one billion downloads don't mean one billion users. And, honestly, I don't see nothing wrong in this kind of marketing.

Even though the download counter isn't a reliable source for the exact number of users, it's still reasonable to estimate a software's growth based on the growth in number of downloads between versions. I can't think of a better, marketable way to promote Firefox based on it's growth.

<comment><USER7> But saying a billion isn't the same as giving an estimation of growth. It just seems like a misleading (even if true) statistic.

<comment><USER6> If a billion downloads today is much larger than what it used to be, then yes, I would see it as an estimation of growth.

I see easily how can it mislead people, but, really, I don't see it as enough reason to not promote the software that way. 1 billion downloads is really something to celebrate, and I would celebrate it even if it has a potential to mislead some people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In other news, Microsoft considers addition 'interesting'.

</comment><comment><USER9> Classic issue of "how do you measure the penetration of open source". I've been installing Firefox as part of my distribution's packaging system for the last few releases. Since this is a download from a distro mirror, Firefox can't really include these statistics, but merely estimate. I'm not sure this qualifies as "interesting math".

On the other hand, the only place to legitimately get Internet Explorer is from Microsoft, so it's easy for Microsoft to count.

</comment><comment><USER10> "If you're satisfied with what you're doing and you're not particularly curious about new technology and don't really care, upgrading sounds like a hassle..."

That's why developers should make it worth the hassle by simply not supporting them. Twitter is a good example of a way to do it. At least with the old design their rounded corners didn't show up in IE and only showed in firefox, safari, and maybe Chrome.</comment>


Obama's 10 Leadership Mistakes (And How Not to Make Them) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/08/obamas_10_leadership_mista.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-WEEKLY_HOTLIST-_-AUG_2009-_-HOTLIST0824 <comment> onreact-com Wasn't it that HN prohibits top 10 lists in headlines and besides politics is not welcome here? Are some publications exempt from that rule?</comment>


Kent State shootings - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_Shootings <comment><AUTHOR> Dear Americans, seems you lost _it_ long before the _PRISM_ happened.

<comment><USER2> If by "it" you mean our humanity: sure, we gain and lose it with each human, over and over in flux. Kent State had nothing to do with secret surveillance or secret warrants, however.

<comment><AUTHOR> I meant "freedom" more or less.</comment></comment></comment>


Sifteo announces early access details for Cubes: $99, Q1, lots of extras - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/05/sifteo-announces-early-access-details-for-cubes-99-q1-lots-o/ <comment><AUTHOR> From the horse's mouth [1]. The pre-order page [2]. An information page [3]. An FAQ [4].

\----

[1]: [http://blog.sifteo.com/2011/01/sifteo-announces-sifteo- cubes...](http://blog.sifteo.com/2011/01/sifteo-announces-sifteo-cubes-early- access-program/)

[2]: <https://www.sifteo.com/early_access>

[3]: <https://www.sifteo.com/product>

[4]: <https://www.sifteo.com/help>

</comment><comment><USER2> Please don't submit spam to HN.

<comment><USER3> This is not spam, IMO. Awesome new technology which started at the MIT Media Lab which is completely unique to anything else on the market. I think HN is exactly the right demo to show this off to.</comment></comment>


The Sorry Lives and Confusing Times of Today's Young Men - <AUTHOR> http://www.phillymag.com/articles/the_sorry_lives_and_confusing_times_of_today_s_young_men/

<comment><USER2> During the 30+ years I have lived in Washington, DC, about every 10 there has been an article or book about the unsatisfactory nature of Washington men. I don't say that we/they are not boring, unreliable, etc., etc. But I never got that feeling that the writers set a standard that we ought to live up to. They were invariably longer on snark than reflection. And here we have

'Bruno Mars seems to have articulated an entire gender's worldview in last summer's hit "The Lazy Song":'

As no doubt Bachman-Turner Overdrive did with "Taking Care of Business" or Madonna with "Material Girl".

<comment><USER3> For what it's worth, I've noticed that practically every article in this genre is written by women. Is this really a new phenomenon, or is it perhaps a well- worn trope that garners attention? The men are all "losers", not worthy of the attention of achieving women. I think there's a fundamental bias in this line of reasoning, not to mention the lack of actual evidence to supplement the string of anecdotes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My father, formerly a union rubber worker in Akron, once noted that, when the big tire manufacturers stopped paying workers in cash on payday, their wives were ecstatic. This was because, on payday, a not insignificant fraction of guys would take their wads of cash and head off to the bar. Or, they would take out $20 and hand the rest over to their wives, telling them that the remainder was the amount they had earned. Apparently, it was not until the 1960's that paychecks became the standard in Akron for union laborers at the Big Three. My dad's view, from having talked to many men working in the factory, was that the majority of the era's blue collar married men simply turned their checks over to their wives, asked for a few dollars for beer/cigarettes, and allowed the women to manage the financial matters of the household. This is in stark contrast to anecdotes I've read/heard about the wives of white collar men during the same period who were largely in the dark about household finances.

Perhaps a significant fraction of men were never terribly ambitious, but they maintained social acceptability through the ease by which they could earn a middle-class living as a union factory worker? Their wives seemed content to "wear the pants" by taking care of financial affairs. Of course, to outsiders, they likely allowed the man to maintain some sense of dignity by feigning subservience (my presumption of the era's cultural standards). I'm not suggesting that factory work was not physically taxing, but jobs were generally available for anyone who wanted one. My dad recalls collecting factory job offers from Firestone, Goodyear, and BF Goodrich in a single day. Some guys who couldn't read or write very well would bring someone with them to fill out the application forms.

Is it that today's men lack the ambition of those from a generation before, or has the disappearance of union manufacturing jobs and other for-the-asking means of maintaining a middle-class lifestyle take away the false floor keeping men grounded?

</comment><comment><USER5> It's the 1950s. There are a hundred jobs. Many women are expected to stay home, so most jobs go to men. Of those 100 jobs, most are occupied by men.

Fast forward to 2012. Productivity has risen due to technological innovation. Old jobs eliminated. New jobs created.

Between population growth and productivity gains, let's assume that there are the same number of jobs per capita for the adult population. Many women are now working so the adult working population has probably doubled relative to population growth.

The jobs that pay the bills are now distributed among both men and women and don't just go to the men by default.

By arguing for equal rights and equal pay, women have also gained equal expectation to be the breadwinner and to be the pursuer in sexual relations.

Complaints like this are absurd. It's simply a "market" becoming more efficient.

Women cannot be simultaneously upset about this without also be upset with equal rights to labor without being contradictory. To do think otherwise it to want to have your cake and eat it too.

If you are interested in this article, read up about women and part-time work in the netherlands. Fascinating stuff.

[http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/why-do-so- many-...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/why-do-so-many-dutch- women-work-part-time/)

Regarding this article from Philly mag: I 100% agree with John Mayor's sentiment about porn and women. Porn is oftentimes more satisfactory than sex with most women. Some women are exceptions, but in my experience many bring little more than looks to a sexual relationship. Sex with most women is often more trouble than it is worth because of all the expectations involved, emotional and financial. I've met women with jobs that still have expectations that men pay for things.</comment>


Vancouver slaps 15% tax on foreign home buyers - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/vancouver-slaps-15-tax-on-foreign-home-buyers-2016-07-25 <comment><USER2> I wonder what the cost is to acquire a company incorporated in Canada and if the new tax takes those kinds of shenanigans into account. Here in California, buying a company that owns property is much cheaper in Prop 13 terms than buying property.

<comment><USER3> Canadian corporations have to have a certain % of the board as Canadian residents so I don't think we'll be seeing too much of that sort of fraud. At the same time this tax seems like a band aid solution taking the politically easy solution of blaming foreigners rather than looking at the structural problems of low interest rates combined with government regulations and groups preventing the construction of new housing.

I haven't been to Vancouver too often but I know here in Toronto you can get into the downtown core and still see rows of single family homes . . . which doesn't make much sense for a city this size. The city core has gone towards building expensive million dollar homes rather than high rises that could support many many families.

<comment><USER4> Actually, I think the rules are more flexible than requiring Canadian residency. You've a different tax requirement if you're not Canadian- controlled, though. And they do, I think, tax heavily on investment income in businesses, but not so much land if it's required for the business.

It's certainly an interesting idea. Might depend on which jurisdiction you've incorporated under, whether provincial or federal....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I grew up in West Vancouver and there are countless neighborhoods and streets with empty million dollar houses. I remember they would go on sale and within a few days they'd be off the market, sold $30,000 - $100,000 above asking price. This has driven up prices to ridiculous heights. The average salary in Vancouver for a Software Engineer is around 75K, yet the price for a detached single family home is around $1,500,000. I don't think there is anyway for a single working family to afford a single detached house anywhere in Metro Vancouver area. This was long overdue

<comment><USER6> And how does this get local people into those empty homes?

<comment><USER7> It won't. This tax is ultimately unenforceable since it would be trivial to put down a family member as living at your vacant house. All they would have to do is collect mail there and it would be virtually impossible to prove otherwise.

<comment><USER5> Not true. It's fairly trivial to see if someone is living in a specific location. A simple bank statement shows where you've been spending money and tends to be good indicator of whether you're in Vancouver or not.

Canadian government already has a program like this in place for recent immigrants to ensure that they actually reside in Canada during their permanent residency period. Over the past fews years many people immigrated to Canada and left after landing to become 'convenient Canadians' five years later. Canada already knows how to do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The province will also allow the City of Vancouver to impose an annual > vacancy tax on some residential properties that are left uninhabited.

That seems like a great idea. Just throwing out an idea that could be terrible, why not tax all people who don't personally live in their home? That would effectively be a discount for people who want to buy and live in their own home, while discouraging people from buying multiple properties they don't need for their survival and collecting rent.

<comment><USER9> Collecting rent isn't necessarily always bad since not everyone can buy a house, regardless of the price of the property.</comment></comment>


Type annotations in Python's error messages - <AUTHOR> https://tirkarthi.github.io/programming/2018/07/28/type-annotations-error-messages.html <comment><AUTHOR> Author here, feedback welcome on the error message format.</comment>


Ask HN: What's your dayrate? - <AUTHOR> What's your role, location and dayrate as a contractor? <comment><USER2> Control systems engineer, Western Australia, $AUD1000-2000 depending on hours and location.

Beer is $10 a pint where I live, some places more.

Decent family house not to far form the city $700k-1M.

Reasonable 2brm apartment in good location 500k+.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even in WA, good pay! How many years exp (if that's ok to ask)? I'm getting a fraction of that in Syd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> programmer, amsterdam/netherlands, 600 eur (about $635) however because of the really really stupid laws in the Netherlands most companies will not hire a contractor directly, so there are lots of recruitment companies acting as a middleman taking at least 15 eur an hour ( every hour for the duration of the gig)</comment>


Stanford Lecture Notes on Probabilistic Graphical Models - <AUTHOR> https://ermongroup.github.io/cs228-notes/ <comment><USER3> An amazing text on this topic is Martin Wainwright/Michael Jordan's Graphical Models, Exponential Families, and Variational Inference: [https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~wainwrig/Papers/WaiJor08_F...](https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~wainwrig/Papers/WaiJor08_FTML.pdf)

<comment><USER4> wow ! thank you :) this should be required reading/prereq, ideally, before taking the PGM course offered via coursera.

<comment><USER3> This is more of a graduate-level text though. It's as close as you can currently get to Michael Jordan's forthcoming book on graphical models and ML.

<comment><USER5> Is this the book that's been in development for the past decade with bits and pieces available online?

<comment><USER3> That's the one :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For anyone interested, here are the materials for the Graphical Models course at Oxford: [http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~evans/gms/index.htm](http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~evans/gms/index.htm)

</comment><comment><USER7> OpenCourseOnline, different Stanford professor: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPSQfOkb1M8&list=PL50E6E80E8...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPSQfOkb1M8&list=PL50E6E80E8525B59C&index=1)

Carnegie-Mellon: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcVJ_zsynMc&list=PLI3nIOD-p5...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcVJ_zsynMc&list=PLI3nIOD-p5aoXrOzTd1P6CcLavu9rNtC-)

</comment><comment><USER8> For a practical application of using graphical models to "solve" a bayesian problem, I recommend Frank Dellaert's whitepaper, which cover Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM, a robotics algorithm) using similar techniques: [https://research.cc.gatech.edu/borg/sites/edu.borg/files/dow...](https://research.cc.gatech.edu/borg/sites/edu.borg/files/downloads/gtsam.pdf)

<comment><USER9> I'm not an expert in Probabilistic Graphical Models but I do know factor graphs well. I've also read quite a bit of the recent SLAM and VO stuff that came out of Dellaert's group.

Here's the thing: Dellaert loves to write about SLAM from a viewpoint of probabilities and densities. I think he likes to see himself as a mathematician. However at the end of the day he's working with Gaussian noise assumptions, just like everyone else, and the solution is obtained by some form of Least Squares, again, like everyone else.

I would really like it if he just cut all the probabilistic thicket and went straight to the core of how his methods improve the SOTA just in terms of how the friggin Least Squares problem is set up and solved (e.g. like here [1]). But I guess that would probably take away most of the "magic".

[1] [http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/mcba/pba.pdf](http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/mcba/pba.pdf)

<comment><USER10> > However at the end of the day he's working with Gaussian noise assumptions, > just like everyone else, and the solution is obtained by some form of Least > Squares, again, like everyone else.

Well you need _some_ kind of model to optimize, and finding the perfect one is a _vastly_ more difficult problem that probably begins to incorporate some stuff from information theory (which starts to become rather a different field).

I don't actually see the issue with researchers working on algorithms to solve the Gaussian noise versions of these problems — they can usually be extended to some other model relatively easily (for instance, rotation synchronization via Riemannian manifolds can incorporate a Pseudo-Huber loss function without much difficulty).

Also, what is SOTA?

<comment><USER11> > Also, what is SOTA? State Of The Art

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For a novice, it's hard to assess how important PGMs are currently.

Investing my time to learn Deep Learning (CNNs, RNNs) vs. Random Forest vs. PGMs vs. Reinforcement Learning well enough to be able to apply the chosen approach, it seems that PGMs are not high in the list, is that correct?

Are there Kaggle competitions, in which PGMs have been the best approach?

What are the real-world problem areas that PGM's currently excel at compared to other methods?

<comment><USER13> Random Forests is not really at all in the same class of depth(no pun intended) as the other models you've mentioned; if you understand decision trees, random forests are just a way of combining independently trained decision trees that is less prone to overfitting.

I'd probably rank these areas in order of importance as follows: deep learning, pgms, reinforcement learning. Deep learning as a framework is pretty general. PGMs, as I have seen them, don't really have any one killer domain area - maybe robotics and areas where you want to explicitly model causality? Applications for reinforcement learning seem the more niche, but maybe that's because they haven't been adequately explored to the extent that DL/CNNs/RNNs/PGMs have been.

<comment><USER14> Tree based algorithm have it's place. I dunno what your definition of depth is but it all depends on your data.

I'm doing a thesis on tree based algorithm and it works great for medical data.

Granted I have little exposer to NN, you can't do that with NN when clinical trials data is small as hell.

It's all base on the type data and your resource and criteria.

NN is really hype and people tend to over look other algorithms but NN is not a silver bullet. I don't get how you rank those importance either, it could be bias.

<comment><USER13> Oh there's no question that tree based methods are effective - <USER2> forests/gradient boosted trees routinely win kaggle competitions. But I was more referring to how random forests is learnable in a day, whereas deep learning would probably take at least a few weeks to learn properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We have a professor in our college, who uses this thing with great passion. I took two related courses under him. The problem with this thing is he uses his own mental image and notation in the lectures and examination. Even the internet seems to be highly affected with this problem. I think there are many concepts that are not hard but it takes time to get a feeling. Like see "monads are not burritos" essay. It describes the problem of using analogies in explaining monads. This seems like a great page in the sense it uses minimal confusing analogies as is common in most resources in bayesian rule.

</comment><comment><USER16> In their "Probability review" at

[http://ermongroup.github.io/cs228-notes/preliminaries/probab...](http://ermongroup.github.io/cs228-notes/preliminaries/probabilityreview/)

I see two problems:

(1) First Problem -- Sample Space

Their definition of a _sample space_ is

"The set of all the outcomes of a random experiment. Here, each outcome ω can be thought of as a complete description of the state of the real world at the end of the experiment."

The "complete description" part is not needed and even if included has meaning that is not clear.

Instead, each possible _experiment_ is one _trial_ and one element in the set of all trials Ω. That's it: Ω is just a set of trials, and each trial is just an element of that set. There is nothing there about the outcomes of the trials.

Next the text has

"The sample space is Ω = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}."

That won't work: Too soon will find that need an uncountably infinite sample space. Indeed an early exercise is that the set of all events cannot be countably infinite.

Indeed, a big question was, can there be a sample space big enough to discuss random variables as desired? The answer is yes and is given in the famous Kolomogorov extension theorem.

(2) Second Problem -- Notation

An _event_ A is an element of the set of all events F and a subset of the sample space Ω.

Then a _probability measure_ P or just a _probability_ is a function P: F --> [0,1] that is, the closed interval [0,1].

So, we can write the probability of event A by P(A). Fine.

Or, given events A and B, we can consider the event C = A U B and, thus, write P(C) = P(A U B). Fine.

But the notes have P(1,2,3,4), and that is undefined in the notes and, really, in the rest of probability. Why? Because

1,2,3,4,

is not an event.

For the set of real numbers R, a real _random variable_ X: Ω --> R (that is _measurable_ with respect to the sigma algebra F and a specified sigma algebra in R, usually the Borel sets, the smallest sigma algebra containing the open sets, or the Lebesgue measurable sets).

Then an event would be X in {1,2,3,4} subset of R or the set of all ω in Ω so that X(ω) in {1,2,3,4} or

{ω| X(ω) in {1,2,3,4} }

or the inverse image of {1,2,3,4} under X -- could write this all more clearly if had all of D. Knuth's TeX.

in which case we could write

P(X in {1,2,3,4})

When the elementary notation is bad, a bit tough to take the more advanced parts seriously.

A polished, elegant treatment of these basics is early in

Jacques Neveu, _Mathematical Foundations of the Calculus of Probability_ , Holden-Day, San Francisco, 1965.

Neveu was a student of M. Loeve at Berkeley, and can also see Loeve, _Probability Theory_ , I and II, Springer-Verlag. A fellow student of Neveu at Berkeley under Loeve was L. Breiman, so can also see Breiman, _Probability_ , SIAM.

These notes are from Stanford. But there have long been people at Stanford, e.g., K. Chung, who have these basics in very clear, solid, and polished terms, e.g.,

Kai Lai Chung, _A Course in Probability Theory, Second Edition_ , ISBN 0-12-174650-X, Academic Press, New York, 1974.

K. L. Chung and R. J. Williams, _Introduction to Stochastic Integration, Second Edition_ , ISBN 0-8176-3386-3, Birkhaüser, Boston, 1990.

Kai Lai Chung, _Lectures from Markov Processes to Brownian Motion_ , ISBN 0-387-90618-5, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1982.

<comment><USER17> If the notes only discuss discrete valued RVs there is no problem. This looks like the case since from greping for "continuous" there are few results: [https://github.com/ermongroup/cs228-notes/search?l=Markdown&...](https://github.com/ermongroup/cs228-notes/search?l=Markdown&q=continuous&type=&utf8=)

<comment><USER16> Hmm, discrete only? So, can't take averages, state the law of large numbers, the central limit theorem, convergence, completeness, do linear regression, etc. Can't multiply a random variable by a real number. Hmm ....

Will be in trouble when considering a sequence of, say, independent random variables, say, as in coin flipping.

Will have trouble with P(A|B) and E[Y|X].

And the notation is still wrong.

<comment><USER17> On my planet all of those concepts work whether your RV takes values on a countable set (what a discrete RV means) or a continuum.

<comment><USER16> Right. And if don't want to get involved in what, really, are the measure theory foundations of probability, then fine. Nearly all of statistics has been done this way.

But if do try to give the measure theory foundations, as the OP did, then at least don't make a mess out of it.

If don't want to get the measure theory right, then, sure, just leave out the foundations and start with events and random variables. The measure theory foundations are so powerful, so robust, so general that in practice it's tough to get into trouble. A place to get into trouble: In stochastic processes, take the union of uncountably infinitely many points, call that an event, and ask for its probability. Okay, then, don't do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> course like these make me wonder ... how much one can dress up basic probability. i think the answer is A LOT

<comment><USER19> If you can derive all this just from probability my hat is off to you.</comment></comment>


Live from SF with the founder of Startup Weekend as we launch helphookup.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.grid7.com/archives/191_podcast-30-startup-weekend.html <comment><USER2> The concept is great. Is there a beta?</comment>


Zeros in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://zero.milosz.ca/

<comment><USER2> I wish I went through a page like this when I started JS. It might be useful to try to make some of the more illogical ones in bold, like NaN==NaN=false or [0]==0=true but [0]==[0]==false.

Also at least first and second table seem to be symmetric. To help visual parsing half of them could be hidden.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice writedown, albeit quite difficult to parse visually. Some mouse-dependent row / column highlighting would be quite beneficial in this case.</comment>


GitHub Report Card - <AUTHOR> http://githubreportcard.com/ <comment><USER2> I'm a Technical Product Manager at GitHub. I just took a look at this (pretty cool, maybe we should have deeper user metrics...). I saw a couple of comments about the 'write access' so I just figured I'd chime in and point out that it's a required scope to get all of the private contrib info out of the API. I definitely encourage people to be mindful of what access they grant, but for what it's worth I did it :)

<comment><USER3> > it's a required scope to get all of the private contrib info out of the API

Is there a technical reason why that's so, or is it just an artifact of the way GitHub's OAuth scheme is set up? I can't think offhand of a reason why it should be the former, but my experience with GitHub private repos is somewhat seldom, so it's quite probable it is necessary for a reason of which I'm unaware.

<comment><USER4> The new Integrations api they announced at their conference should allow way more granular control. Still in beta though AFAIK.

[https://developer.github.com/early- access/integrations/](https://developer.github.com/early-access/integrations/)

<comment><USER5> You are totally correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you want to grant it read-only to public repos, try this link:

[https://github.com/login/oauth/authorize?response_type=code&...](https://github.com/login/oauth/authorize?response_type=code&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fgithubreportcard.reflect.io%2Fauth%2Fgithub%2Fcallback&scope=user%3Aemail&client_id=da6db9cf6cad668b0b89)

<comment><USER7> This should be much higher. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have over 200 open source repos, and 2-3 private once on GitHub. They are private for a reason and it's irresponsible of GitHub to "force" me to make this choice in order to participate in the echo-system of 3rd party apps that connect to GitHub. In todays developer world, you need a lot of these 3rd party tools in order to be a productive programmer (granted not this one, but hey).

It's even more irresponsible of this dev WHO WORKS AT GITHUB to take this fact to lightly. Read AND write access to both my public AND private repos is an insane amount of trust to put in another person. I'm sure this person is a stand up individual. But does he/she write secure code? How easy is it to gain access to his database of access tokens?

In this world of Yahoo/Sony/You-name-it hacks that we live in, I'm honestly surprised there haven't been a hack yet where someone got a hold on a whole bunch of access tokens to private repos. You could do A LOT of damage with this. I'll never sign up for a service such as this and the author should be ashamed to even suggest it.

Instead he/she should focus their time on fixing this issue at GitHub instead of making apps like this.

<comment><USER9> _echo-system_ I like it! Kind of a mash-up with echo chamber, which seems equally applicable.

In case English is not your favorite language, the word I believe you're looking for is _ecosystem_.

<comment><USER8> Ups, thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> GitHub data is public (for public repositories) and archived, so you don't even need to use auth.

Example superquick BigQuery for tabulating all 2016 Push Events to GitHub by a given user for each day-of-week (1 = Sunday):

       SELECT DAYOFWEEK(created_at) as day_of_week, COUNT(*) as num_pushes
       FROM TABLE_DATE_RANGE([githubarchive:day.], TIMESTAMP('2016-01-01'), TIMESTAMP('2016-12-31'))
       WHERE type = "PushEvent" AND actor.login = "minimaxir"
       GROUP BY day_of_week
       ORDER BY day_of_week

Tabulating commits is possible too but requires JSON shenanigans. (Although the BigQuery data does not have commit dates which may not necessarily be the same as Push dates, so that may be a problem)

</comment><comment><USER11> Once you have your report card, don't forget to revoke access. [https://github.com/settings/applications](https://github.com/settings/applications)

<comment><USER12> Good point. I can see a lot of people are worried this is getting write access. Thanks for providing a link and a reminder.

<comment><USER13> This immediately suggests the ability to provide permissions only for a specific transaction at a time.

In fact, I believe that that is essentially how Vault manages security.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Please include a checkbox to exclude private repos. I have a lot of private work that I just can't let anyone see. Thank you!

<comment><USER15> Important note: these reports are accessible only by you, the user. They are not publicly available.

<comment><USER16> > these reports are accessible _only by you_

And by you, githubreportcard, and by all of your devs, etc, etc. I'm no lawyer, but I have a feeling this is what some of those NDAs were talking about.

<comment><USER17> Sure, but GitHub and all their devs have access to your private repos too. If that doesn't violate the NDA I'm not sure why GHRC would violate it either unless they've been grated special exception.

<comment><USER18> The company put the code on GitHub, and the company has the rights to do so. The developer who signed the NDA doesn't have the rights to do that. And if the code was actually stored elsewhere and the developer decided to create their own private repo and upload the code there, that would be a violation of the NDA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Open Source Report Card (OSRC) used to be a similar application that I used quite a bit with my friends. Unfortunately it seems to have broken with changes to the Github API.

OSRC: [https://github.com/dfm/osrc](https://github.com/dfm/osrc)

</comment><comment><USER20> The page is not scrollable so if you're on a small screen and want to see the rest of the image then here it is: [https://githubreportcard.reflect.io/images/screenshot.jpg](https://githubreportcard.reflect.io/images/screenshot.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER21> There's no preamble describing why this report is a thing, nor what will be included. I'm waiting on mine to be generated, but the landing page leaves much to be desired.

<comment><USER21> It gave me:

\- Total commits

\- Unique repos

\- Unique languages

\- Total commits by day of week (my favorite graph as it shows a clear trend in my coding style)

\- Average commits per day

\- % of commits made on weekdays vs weekends

\- Collaborators by changes (other GH users who collaborated on my repos)

\- My additions (+ LOC)

\- My deletions (- LOC)

\- My open source changes

\- Preferred language by repo count (owned)

\- Stars on my stuff

\- Forks of my stuff

\- # of people subscribed to me

Some easy tweet templates at the top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It would be awesome if I could see the whole image in the landing page without having to resize the page. Maybe you could allow the visitors to, you know, scroll a bit?

Also, I'm under some NDAs so I cannot allow access to the private repositories. It'd be great if it took only the public ones or public data.

</comment><comment><USER23> > We're experiencing unusually high traffic so we'll email you when it's > complete.

That's a nice touch!

<comment><USER24> same here. are you still having the same problem?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Not sure if anyone else is getting this, but I can't seem to scroll down past the fold for the site on Chrome on my Windows 7 machine.

Tried using Internet Explorer 11 and nothing showed up at all...

<comment> joatmon-snoo Yeah, it's just poor UX on their part. The "report card" that you see is actually a screenshot cropped from the bottom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It wants the ability to WRITE to my public AND private repos & create issues. no. just no.

<comment><USER15> Unfortunately, there is no such thing as read-only access to GitHub repos. Read/write access is the only scope that GitHub currently grants: [https://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#scopes](https://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#scopes). If you've given a third-party app access to your repos in the past (CircleCI, Auth0, TravisCI, Heroku, etc.), that access has been read/write.

<comment><USER27> Shouldn't have used OAuth then.

<comment><USER28> You must not be familiar with OAuth authentication for Github. There is no way to access your repos to analyze except by allowing write-permissions. Github doesn't allow read-only unfortunately.

<comment><USER4> [https://developer.github.com/early- access/integrations/](https://developer.github.com/early-access/integrations/)

<comment><USER28> >Early Access

<comment><USER4> Just means its in beta. You can signup and use it instantly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Looks like it's getting a bit overloaded at the moment, got the following error (and indeed, it's missing a good chunk of data):

      We ran into a small snag
      Some of your change information might be missing.
      GitHub didn't generate repository statistics fast enough so we gave up after a few tries.

</comment><comment><USER30> I am weary of having managers that might be somewhat incompetent being given a tool like this to help manage developers.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think you're misattributing merge commits or pushes of repository histories where I'm not the author or something. You claim I've contributed over 2M lines of code in 2016, which... I don't think is right.

</comment><comment><USER32> Unfortunately, it only shows commits done via github directly - not commits that come in from other sources (I.E. if you have a gerrit instance, that mirrors to github)

</comment><comment><USER33> The main page sticks when trying to scroll all the way to the bottom. Running Safari Version 10.0.2 (11602.3.12.0.1) on OS X 10.11.6 (15G1212)

<comment><USER34> If you're referring to it getting stuck at the "Top Collaborators by Changes" graph, I think that's actually the bottom.

I had the same experience in Safari, but after looking at the page source, I think that's actually the complete page. It also looks the same in Firefox Developer Edition.

Here's the report card image used[0] - it actually does end in the middle of that graph.

The only thing below that is a footer with the "Crafted by reflect" mark but it's hidden if the browser is wider than 768px (in which case it shows up on the top right).

[0]: [https://githubreportcard.reflect.io/images/screenshot.jpg](https://githubreportcard.reflect.io/images/screenshot.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> What is the difference between Reflect and and something like Power BI? They both have embedding, apis, designers, etc.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is there some way I could use this for our private Github? Would be interesting to see those numbers.

</comment><comment><USER37> This application does, for some reason, require _write_ access to all of mine and my organisation's repos.

Just no.

<comment><USER15> We understand your reticence (Reflect employee here). Two things to note:

1\. GitHub does not grant read-only access to repos. Any time you authorize a third-party app to access your repos, you are granting write access. We will never write to your repos, and our report card isn't doing anything out of the ordinary (i.e. it's not doing anything that TravisCI, Auth0, and a lot of other GitHub third-party apps don't do). 2\. Your report card is accessible only by you and is not publicly viewable.

<comment><USER38> I've read your other replies here and you're apparently still missing the point several people are trying to make:

The "report card" being public isn't the big concern. The problem is that they don't know _you_ and they certainly don't _trust_ you. Perhaps they trust some other devs/orgs ("TravisCI, Auth0, and a lot of other GitHub third-party apps") but that has nothing whatsoever to do with _you_ (and "but you trust them, so why not us?" is a laughable argument).

The "report card" requires write access to user's repositories -- and your statement that "we will never write to your repos" isn't worth the bits it was written on. While some folks are obviously okay with that, many aren't and likely never will be (regardless of how many times you repeat it) for any number of reasons (personal privacy, NDAs, etc.).

<comment><USER39> Just to expand on the parent's point further: it's not just about what the service does, it's about what could happen in a worst-case scenario if the service is compromised by an attacker.

Companies get hacked. Well-known companies get breached and their data stolen. When these companies store access credentials from users, those access credentials can be stolen too. For example, see the recent DataDog breach [1]. Security credentials that customers gave to DataDog, for the purpose of allowing DataDog to monitor their infrastructure, were compromied by an attacker:

> the attacker gained unauthorized access to three of our AWS EC2 instances > and a subset of our AWS S3 buckets. Those AWS resources included user > credentials for the Datadog service, service metadata, and _credentials > shared with Datadog for third-party integrations_.

The attacker then used those credentials to penetrate systems owned by those customers! Customers were hacked not because the customer did anything wrong, but because they trusted DataDog, and DataDog did something wrong.

Security-conscious customers will consider the implications of trusting any service they rely upon, and will consider "What could go wrong?". Very few companies get security right enough to avoid being breached.

A company with read/write access to many users' GitHub repositories, including private repositories, will _certainly_ be a major target for attackers. It's not so much that attackers care about source code _per se_. Rather, attackers know that all kinds of other information such as access credentials, username/passwords, etc. get checked into source control by accident or sometimes even intentionally. The credentials might be hidden in the sense that they don't show up in a branch currently, but are present in some historical version of some branch - perhaps a dotfile someone checked in by mistake, and deleted, but didn't erase the history of. It happens. An attacker will scan this source history and find those credentials.

Every company that accepts credentials from customers to integrate with other parties should understand the pivotal role they play in the security of their customers. What the service _intends_ to do is only part of the story. What the service _could do_ if compromised by an attacker is an important piece of the story, and limiting this blast radius by embracing least privilege is an important part of earning the trust of security-conscious customers.

It is a shame that GitHub does not make least privilege possible in this scenario, by failing to offer a form of access less powerful than read/write access. To solve this problem well, GitHub would ideally offer a read-only API, and perhaps a read-only metadata API that can view commit histories but not the content of commits. Then, a service integration built on this API can reassure its customers that, even if the service is hacked, an attacker has no ability to push commits to customer repos, nor view customer source code.

[1] [https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/2016-07-08-security- notice/](https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/2016-07-08-security-notice/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Might as well just publish [https://i.sli.mg/d3m2MD.jpg](https://i.sli.mg/d3m2MD.jpg)

More constructively, people should publish the projects they worked on, not how often they press save.</comment>


SaaS Pricing (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/saas_pricing <comment><USER2> My experience building Cronitor is that it's very hard at "small business" scale to make money selling subscriptions for $10 a month.

We cover this in our indie hackers interview, but we not only saw faster revenue growth after a ~3x price increase but also lower churn and fewer requests for discounts.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if that's because of the "small business" scale, or because you are in the B2B space, that expects higher prices? I'd be very curious to hear stories from people trying to build B2C products with a one/two person team charging $5-$10/mo, and how that worked out.

<comment><USER2> Great point, I'm certainly oriented towards B2B by habit. There is definitely not a market for $50 a month personal SaaS products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> His segment on pricing in a recent Indie Hackers podcast is worthwhile: [https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/013-patrick-mckenzie- of...](https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/013-patrick-mckenzie-of- appointment-reminder)

</comment><comment><USER5> Finally, a startup post on HN. Thank you.

<comment><USER6> This is Hacker News not Startup News.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Who is this guy. And why should i listen to his advice?

<comment><USER8> Yeah, the patio11 fervor has always been a little mysterious to me. I think he is a fine HN poster who has some helpful blog posts. That's all well and good, but it doesn't justify his celebrity status. It puts him in the category of like the upper 15% of HN posters (and yes, I know his karma). I think the fanfare is a little overdone.

I assume that HN just thought it would be cool for "one of their own" to be raised to celebrity status and Patrick was right-place/right-time. And who can blame him for enjoying it?

<comment><USER9> Lol. Bitter much? Considering how much terrible advice is on this forum from people who wouldn't know the first thing about building a business, at least Patrick has a track record.

<comment><USER8> Why would I be bitter? I have no personal animosity against Patrick. We don't compete in any meaningful way and I can only recall a few very limited interactions in the comment sections on HN. If anything, I feel a personal affinity for him, as I also ran a side business that ended up having a similar demographic to BCC (in a totally different sector).

I have nothing against Patrick whatsoever and as I said, no one can blame him for taking advantage of the position that the social media gods awarded him. I just think he's overrated. I normally wouldn't comment just for that, but I guess I felt bad for the parent commenter taking all the heat, and wanted to let him know that he's not alone, and some of us are even willing to say it without using a throwaway. ;)

<comment><USER9> "I just think he's overrated" fair enough. I just think that a lot of HN folks drawn to business-oriented posts are trying to start something business oriented of their own. He has some useful things to say/write. Some of it good, some of it not. But usually interesting.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Replicating South Park Characters in chats using GPT-2 - <AUTHOR> https://www.soulreplica.com/brodown <comment><AUTHOR> We fine-tuned GPT-2's 774M model using all seasons' South Park scripts. The result is a model that we can use to generate chats/conversations between South Park characters. If you've watched the show before, the characters' language style is extremely on point w.r.t. who they are in the show. Depending on the initial message fed into the conversation (either random, or from a live tweet) the conversation could sometimes be hilarious. Let us know what you think!

</comment><comment><USER2> Hello, creator here. Just launched today - let us know what you think!</comment>


Can Do vs. Can't Do Cultures - <AUTHOR> http://bhorowitz.com/2014/01/02/can-do-vs-cant-do-cultures/

<comment><USER2> The story about Western Union's internal report is sadly false.

[http://blog.historyofphonephreaking.org/2011/01/the- greatest...](http://blog.historyofphonephreaking.org/2011/01/the-greatest-bad- business-decision-quotation-that-never-was.html)</comment>


The Monty Hall Problem: A Statistical Illusion - <AUTHOR> https://statisticsbyjim.com/fun/monty-hall-problem/ <comment><USER2> The intuitive explanation I like is this: Suppose there are 10000 boxes. You pick one. Monty Hall knows where the prize is. He opens 9998 boxes, leaving just two closed: your original choice, and one other one. Should you switch? Before Monty Hall opened any boxes, the chances of the prize being in one of the boxes other than the one you chose was 9999 in 10000. This probability does not change when he opens 9998 of these. So you should choose the remaining box, not your original choice.

The same argument applies with 3 boxes, but intuition is much less reliable in this case.

<comment><USER3> I always found that one makes things more complicated. I like this explanation better:

You win by switching as long as you were wrong in the initial guess. You have a 2/3 chance of being wrong in the initial guess. Therefore you will win by switching 2 times out of 3.

Can also phrase it in reverse: You lose by switching if you were right in the initial guess. You have a 1/3 chance of being right in the initial guess. Therefore you lose by switching 1 time out of 3.

<comment><USER4> This was the key for me as well in having a real understanding of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This problem is confusing partly because the premises are often incorrectly stated... as in TFA.

If it is given that Monty _always_ picks a door that does not have a prize behind it, then indeed the correct answer is to switch doors. But otherwise, there is no advantage in switching: 1/3 of the time he would expose the prize, and in the other 2/3 of cases you are just as likely to win without switching.

<comment><USER6> For an article focussing on assumptions, it's rather sloppy to state the situation as

"Monty opens one of the other two doors, and there is no prize behind it."

rather than

"Monty opens one of the other two doors, one which he knows has no prize behind it."

which rules out the interpretation of Monty opening a door that by chance happens to have no prize behind it, leading to a different answer.

<comment><USER7> I'm not convinced him knowing where the prize is before opening the door matters. If he opens a door and knew there was no prize you now get the same info as if he opened the door and was surprised there was no prize. In both cases switching its better. And if he unwittingly opens the door and there is the prize, again switching is better.

His knowledge before hand doesn't matter, switching its always better.

That said, I feel like there is a limitation in our modeling of probability that this problem isn't easier. Yes anyone who knows stats can solve it, but somehow we're using the wrong "language"that the problem is still tricky. Geometry isn't tricky becsuse we have the right language for it. Geometry is "hard" when problems are hard/complex. Monty Hall the problem isn't complex, but solving it correctly is still difficult.

To take a programming term, probability applied to this problemfeels like it has accidental complexity.

<comment><USER8> What if Monty only opens a door when he knows you've chosen the prize door?

Extension: what if Monty tosses a coin to decide whether to open a door, conditioned on you having chosen the prize door?

Specifying Monty's behaviour matters, I think.

<comment><USER9> Monti's a priori knowledge absolutely matters and should have been stated in the article. If he had no knowledge beforehand about which door the prize was behind, then you would have to expand the probability table to include cases in which Monti opens one of the remaining two doors and accidentally reveals the prize, in which case the user just loses without getting the opportunity to switch or not switch. Monti knowing the door is hiding the prize and actively selecting the non-prize door versus just guessing and sometimes accidentally revealing the prize, are two different statistics problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Many previous threads: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22monty%20hall%22%20comments%3E10&sort=byDate&type=story)

(Sharing for curiosity purposes.)</comment>


Underground Wonders - <AUTHOR> http://blog.longnow.org/2008/11/13/underground-wonders/ <comment><USER2> These photos are great! I'm impressed with this stuff. Which one did you like best?</comment>


HashiCorp Cloud Platform - <AUTHOR> https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/announcing-cloud-platform/ <comment><USER2> Can I use terraform with this so I don't need to use the website for HCP setup?

Is HCP in any way restricted? Say, I want to use HCP but my requirement would be that the HCP Controller be in eu-central-1 for AWS In FRA or europewest1 for Azure in AMS.</comment>


Got degree envy? No worries, you can still make it big. - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/24/got-degree-envy-no-worries-you-can-still-make-it-big/

<comment><USER2> > The top ten institutions in this group accounted for only 19 percent of the > entire sample.

These top 10 institutions (3.5% of 287) supply almost 20% of the founders of tech startups. It's nice to know that it's not a requirement but what did people actually expect? I think that 20% is still pretty damn good for these schools. Higher than I would have expected. There's nothing magical about a school that makes you successful.

> Of the Ivy graduates, 28.6% ranked these networks as important.

Ivy schools will attract those who attribute great value to such networks.

<comment><USER3> And in other news, botanists like plants and fish like water.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Number of times author mentioned he went to Harvard: 4

<comment><USER5> I find that with Harvard alumni, I usually know they went to Harvard within five minutes of meeting them. And I'm not typically doing the asking.

<comment><USER6> My more cynical Harvard friends say that you can always spot the Harvard alumni because they learn that the polite thing to say is "I went to school in Boston".

<comment><USER7> If you say you went to Harvard, people's attitudes and interactions often immediately shift, in ways that sometimes can be overtly uncomfortable (other times the changes are subtler). The subsequent conversation often then feels less genuine: some sort of odd barrier has been erected; everything you say is filtered through "oh, so that's how Harvard students think" etc.

I don't think it requires any cynicism to understand why people prefer quiet indirection, and it's really less about "being polite" and more about "trying to relate as people unfiltered by prejudice". Not sure that's quite coherent, but maybe it helps in some way?

<comment><USER6> It does make sense. It is simply odd the baggage which seems to come with the Harvard name, something which you acquire at 18 and yet seems to follow you and define you more than any other institution I can think of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think we've already had this discussion.

</comment><comment><USER8> Duplicate: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=900086>

<comment><USER9> Not a duplicate exactly, but carrying the same message.</comment></comment>


Man and Uber Man - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2014/12/uber-travis-kalanick-controversy <comment><USER2> > "It's hard to be a disrupter and not be an asshole."

I really hate this false dichotomy that gets perpetuated. No, being disruptive or innovative does _not_ require being an asshole. And acting like an asshole does not make you more innovative or disruptive.

I hear statements like this all the time - "Well, {Jobs/Zuckerberg/Ellison/<insert figure here>} was an asshole." Being an asshole doesn't make you a better entrepreneur (and even if it did, is that _really_ a pattern you'd want to perpetuate, or is it better to "disrupt" that too?)

Incidentally, Sarah Lacy (founder of PandoDaily) recently wrote a piece about this topic and used Uber as the main example[0]. Though even if she hadn't mentioned Uber, I think the point extends far beyond Uber, and she does too[1].

[0] [http://pando.com/2014/10/22/the-horrific-trickle-down-of- ass...](http://pando.com/2014/10/22/the-horrific-trickle-down-of-asshole- culture-at-a-company-like-uber/)

[1] [http://pando.com/2014/10/06/venture-capital-and-the-great- bi...](http://pando.com/2014/10/06/venture-capital-and-the-great-big-silicon- valley-asshole-game/)

<comment><USER3> Nobody agrees on who's an asshole. It's more likely that in order to be successful you need to stop caring so much about whether or not you are liked by everyone.

<comment><USER4> And stop caring so much about laws. Seriously ignore all laws that don't fit into your self serving reality distortion field. Don't worry, VC's will give you extra props for those "legal hacks."

<comment><USER5> With all the special interests and the bullshit and the lobbying that goes into making laws in the US (and much of the western world), it's getting pretty tough to blame anyone for having no respect for the law or due process. If the ruling class doesn't like where that could lead (i.e. pitchforks), it's pretty easy to fix, but so far there doesn't seem to be much interest.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dear YouTube: An Open Letter from Irving Azoff - <AUTHOR> http://www.recode.net/2016/5/9/11609494/irving-azoff-youtube-artists-streaming-music <comment><USER2> I'd really like to see this discussed. There's something to be agreed with, _and_ disagreed with here.

Email dang (see the FAQ) for a resubmission.

</comment><comment><USER3> Definitely an important read; one industry heavy weight taking on another.</comment>


Secret Huawei enterprise router snoop 'backdoor' was Telnet service - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/30/huawei_enterprise_router_backdoor_is_telnet/ <comment><USER2> Another day another Bloomberg 'story' [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18162440](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18162440)

</comment><comment><USER3> I would love to have "only telnet" to the home router of the author, it's just telnet after all, right? It's like saying the opening the port 80 on your router to the internet is safe because it's just plaintext over the line.

<comment><USER4> It wasn't open to the internet.

Routers and such have several interfaces, including one called often "management". If you can plug an ethernet cable into that interface you get superpowers. That interface was where they offered telnet.</comment></comment>


L.A. couple is housing homeless people, one small building at a time - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-shared-homeless-housing-20180608-story.html <comment><USER2> This is a great story, but it's not going to do much to solve the issue on a systemic level without comprehensive zoning reform: [http://seliger.com/2017/08/30/l-digs-hole-slowly- economics-f...](http://seliger.com/2017/08/30/l-digs-hole-slowly-economics- fills-back-proposition-hhh-facilities-program).

I've worked on many homeless-service applications in California (and in fact finished one this week), and the biggest problem by far is parochial zoning policy.

</comment><comment><USER3> I will use this article to share a couple of thoughts about homelessness:

#1 - How can there be freedom if there isn't a right to a place to be? Otherwise one is essentially forced to work just to exist.

#2 - It's often said that one "cannot blame society". The point is not to blame _anybody_ , but to approach the issue in a nonjudgmental fashion.

<comment><USER4> Do you advocate taking money or property from people who are working and giving it to this who aren't? Is it more just that the worker is forced to work to house themselves but to also house someone else?

Is that freedom?

<comment><USER3> Notice I didn't say a right to housing, but a right to a _place_. As in a lot of land, where presumably I could build my own structure, or at least pitch a tent.

Realistically speaking, the solution could be a guaranteed housing subsidy for all regardless of income, so those that do "pay their own way" aren't penalized.

<comment><USER5> The mountains etc are always ready for new inhabitants, and you're unlikely to be disturbed.

<comment><USER3> I believe I have a right to somewhere reasonably close.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Bitcoin uses so much energy - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/07/09/why-bitcoin-uses-so-much-energy <comment><USER2> This is interesting. I hope we're moving towards other consensus algorithm. Not sure if that's going to happen (or is even possible) with bitcoin, but alts definitely have room to innovate here.</comment>


Ask HN: How Can One Correctly Assess Their Own Ability? - <AUTHOR>

I am sure that most of you have, by now, heard of "Unskilled and Unaware of It."[1] This paper, authored by Justin Kruger and David Dunning in 1999, describes how the least competent tend to overestimate their abilities while the most competent tend to underestimate. The eponymous "Dunning-Kruger effect"[2], referenced on HN from time to time, serves as an explanation for those unfortunate individuals in our field and in others who possess that toxic mixture of ineptitude and intellectual indolence (they lack the drive to improve, because they see nothing that requires improvement). While providing us with a compelling warning against hubris, it does not seem to provide any further clarity concerning self-assessment; according to Dunning-Kruger, you likely succumb to illusory superiority or illusory inferiority, but either way your perception of yourself is likely to be illusory. One of the authors, Dunning, described how the study shook his confidence: "I began to think that there were probably lots of things that I was bad at, and I didn't know it."[3]
One might conclude from Dunning-Kruger that since accurate self-assessment appears difficult, you ought to just err on the side of caution and try to underestimate your abilities. After all, what harm can come from that? Unfortunately, this advice seems to contradict insight gleaned from other cognitive bias studies. Take the Pygmalion Effect[4]. Teachers were told that certain students chosen (unbeknownst to the teachers) at random had high IQs and would turn out to be high achievers. The result: those students ended up becoming the high-IQ high achievers that their teachers had been led to believe they were. It would seem from this that one should do the opposite of what Dunning-Kruger intimates; you should overestimate your abilities, assume you are among the elite, and with enough time and effort your reality will come to match your perception of yourself.
I feel somewhat torn between not wanting to end up as one of those arrogant incompetents but also not wanting deprive myself of whatever benefits positive thinking might bestow. After all, can you really be successful without some confidence? How do you manage self-perception, confidence and humbleness?
1. http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/unskilled.html
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
3. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/01/18/MN73840.DTL
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect <comment><USER2> Competence is not a constant. Even if today you may not be as skilled as your potential indicates you could be there is a simple way to change that:

Do stuff! And learn while you're doing it. Spend time reading and really absorbing and integrating the stuff you read until it makes sense, then apply that knowledge, repeatedly.

Nobody was born competent.

So use your abilities as they are today as a starting point and build them up from there, and don't worry too much about where you are on the scale, as long as you keep moving up you'll be fine.

Interaction with other people (here on HN there are some pretty smart people and they're not at all scared to share their knowledge) can accelerate that process, both because you can learn from others and because you can test your knowledge.

The fact that you're posting this here would indicate that you already got that last point :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Clickable links:

<http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/unskilled.html>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect>

[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/01/18/...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/01/18/MN73840.DTL)

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Find and spend time with people who know more than you. You will know different things, and you might be clever, but you need to be in an audience that drags you up, and keeps you honest.

There are things I'm really, really good at, and I know that because I can do them and others - who I respect and admire - can't. There are other things that I'm pretty poor at, and I spend time with people, learning from them and trying to improve. They tolerate me because I try to have the right attitude, and I give freely of my time and knowledge. In return, I receive their time and knowledge, and we all benefit.

One side note: One's individual and personal "worth" is not derived from skills or knowledge. Use comparisons to assess knowledge and ability, but not your worth.

</comment><comment><USER4> Something that has been helpful for me: I try to separate the skills/knowledge from my ego.

I went through a period where I was something of a "star" on a few small email lists and was constantly heaped with public praise. I was uncomfortable with that but was told I had "poor self esteem" and these kind, loving folks were going to assist me in getting over it. Of course, the more some folks sang my praises, the more others felt compelled to kick the living crap out of me and try to bring me down a notch or twelve. Having concluded that my aversion to public praise is rooted in wisdom, not neurosis, I have since worked hard on learning to present good information that stands on its own merits while simultaneously deflecting public praise since it actually undermines my efforts to put out good info by putting too much of the focus on me and my ego. In spite of still putting forth controversial ideas, I get beat up less these days. With getting beat up less, I have less need to have folks telling me I'm wonderful because I don't have all those psychic wounds to salve.

I suspect one reason very competent people underestimate their abilities is because they tend to attract lots of criticism. In other words, they are a threat to the pecking order and people make huge deals out of any tiny mistake they make (basically a desperate attempt to say "you're not All That, dammit!"). The approach I have worked out helps get around that issue. I am perfectly willing to admit that I make mistakes and because I do not let people paint me into a corner and make this all about me and my ego, I get a lot less of that type of negative feedback than I used to. (It still happens, but it's not socially and emotionally crippling anymore.) This helps remove negative social bias (hostility) from my attempts to self-assess. That has had a net positive impact on my confidence and self-assessment.</comment>


U.S. Census: "Race" has "social definition" and isn't anthropology or genetics - <AUTHOR> http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> The statement about the Census Bureau about the "race" categories it is required by federal regulation to ask about says in full

"The U.S. Census Bureau collects race data in accordance with guidelines provided by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and these data are based on self-identification. The racial categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically. In addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race item include racial and national origin or sociocultural groups. People may choose to report more than one race to indicate their racial mixture, such as 'American Indian' and 'White.' People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race."

<http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_RHI525211.htm>

A similar statement is found as footnote 7 in the Census Brief 2010 "Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010" (submitted here as the main link opening the thread)

<http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf>

which reads

"The race categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and are not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically. In addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race question include race and national origin or sociocultural groups."

An earlier statement by the Census Bureau for reports on the year 2000 census

<http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_RHI625200.htm>

says, "The concept of race as used by the Census Bureau reflects self- identification by people according to the race or races with which they most closely identify. These categories are sociopolitical constructs and should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature. Furthermore, the race categories include both racial and national-origin groups.

"The racial classifications used by the Census Bureau adhere to the October 30,1997, Federal Register Notice entitled,"Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity" issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)."

In other words, the professional demographers who work on the United States Census claim only to be following the law, not to be practicing biological, anthropological, or genetic science when they ask for self-identification of "race." That claim has continued through two different presidential administrations as the bureau conducted two successive decennial censuses and numerous community surveys. The Census Bureau practice is based on are based on regulations from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which were announced on 30 October 1997

<http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg_1997standards>

to take effect no later than 1 January 2003 for data collection by all federal agencies. The summary of comments on the 1997 regulations makes clear that not all Americans are united in regarding the current set of categories (which has changed several times in my lifetime) is meaningful. The distinct differences between the categories used in the United States and those used in any other country in the world should make clear that categories are indeed "sociopolitical constructs and should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature." I bring this up because several recent threads here on Hacker News have interpreted "race" categories as if they have genetic or anthropological meaning, which they do not.

The long story about how to think carefully about race and ethnicity in the human population can be found in the books recommended for first reading in a Wikipedia user bibliography "Anthropology, human biology, and race citations bibliography"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Anthropol...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/AnthropologyHumanBiologyRaceCitations)

in Wikipedia user space.</comment>


Useful Only for Scrap Paper: Michelangelo's Drawings - <AUTHOR> https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n03/charles-hope/useful-only-for-scrap-paper <comment><AUTHOR> A few days before his death in Rome in 1564 Michelangelo is said to have destroyed all the drawings in his house. He had done something similar on at least three previous occasions. But despite his efforts more than two hundred drawings are almost universally accepted today as being wholly or in part by his hand, and most experts would argue for a much higher figure. Substantial though these numbers are, it is clear that only a tiny fraction of the drawings that he produced has survived.</comment>


Girl Dragged into Water by Sea Lion Treated for Possible 'Seal Finger' Infection - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/25/529968425/girl-dragged-into-water-by-sea-lion-treated-for-seal-finger-infection <comment><AUTHOR> "Seal Finger" \-- This one was news to me.

I have worked with Sea Lions before - they are fast and aggressive.

They are also fast on land for short distances - they can take out dogs that get close enough.

Another example: [http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/04/they-dont-call-them-sea- lion...](http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/04/they-dont-call-them-sea-lions-for- nothing/)</comment>


Hivemall now joined into Apache Incubator - <AUTHOR> http://incubator.apache.org/projects/hivemall.html <comment><USER2> You can find the Incubation status here [http://incubator.apache.org/projects/hivemall.html](http://incubator.apache.org/projects/hivemall.html)

The old project page can be find in [https://github.com/myui/hivemall](https://github.com/myui/hivemall)</comment>