Ask HN: How to help a guy with no CS backgrnd learn enough to get a job in tech? - <AUTHOR> I have a friend who has had an accident that forced him to change his professional career. He's now looking to enter the tech world and will do an online BSc in CS. However, I feel like he lacks a lot of background and the degree will most certainly be insufficent.<p>How can I help him learn  enough that he can then start learning on his own? Can you recommend good introductory content? (intro to how computers work, basic unix, basic programming, ...) <comment><USER3> Some of the coding bootcamps have pretty detailed curriculum including intermediate and capstone projects. If somebody puts up useful mini-app backends in Rails or Django and shows they can unit test, branch/merge in git, do basic config/admin on linux db/solr/elastic/web etc servers, that should be a pretty employable. Or data sciency: spider and assemble clean datasets.

Look at meetups, there's fair number intros to python, R, rails, go, C# etc sessions in any decently sized city.

This is asking a lot, it might take 18 months, or a lot longer than those bootcamps. That's ok, it's like learning Mandarin or violin or the first couple years of college applied math, just take small steps, the simplest things that could adequately work.

Lists of basic skills: Uncle Bob Martin's book,

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12829561](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12829561)

[http://web.archive.org/web/20150417115543/http://samizdat.mi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20150417115543/http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html)?

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks a lot for taking time to elaborate. take care!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tell him to sign up for Treehouse[0] to start learning the basics of whatever subject he wants (app dev, web dev, etc.), and from there he'll find out if he actually likes it or not.

If he decides that he likes it and he's feeling driven, there are _tons_ of resources[1] online for learning a lot of what he'll get with the CS degree, including video lectures from MIT[2] and Standford[3].

[0]: [https://teamtreehouse.com](https://teamtreehouse.com) [1]: [https://github.com/open-source-society/computer- science](https://github.com/open-source-society/computer-science) [2]: [https://www.youtube.com/user/MIT](https://www.youtube.com/user/MIT) [3]: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0F8848A0E4B65481](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0F8848A0E4B65481)

</comment><comment><USER5> Start with Math. He attended university and was working on a Bachelors so I assume he has a base of some math knowledge. Computers are really just calculators and computing engines. Have him start doing basic programs to do basic math. No fancy libraries, GUI, IDE's, build tools, etc. needed. Either pick a language you know a lot about or pick one you also want to learn and learn together.

Once he can get basic math working (e.g. calculator via command line), build a UI for a calculator. Probably a good bet to go with some web front-end since those jobs are more common. Again no libraries or Javascript framework-of-the- month stuff, just basics.

From the background you said he was studying Physical Education... find some dataset that interests him in that area. Build a web app with that data that does something related, shows it, has simple forms to capture data, etc.

Once he's done that, he should have a good understanding of what programming is like and if he wants to continue and spend money on a degree.

The key is probably linking his interests with programming, which could naturally lead to some niche jobs in sports science using programming.

</comment><comment><USER6> Your friend should be able to easily learn everything he would need to know to land a software eng job in no longer than 1 month by reading online tutorials.

I have watched several of my friends go from absolutely 0 knowledge to senior software engineers in less than 6 months. Being a software engineer is incredibly easy and requires no innate talent.

</comment><comment><USER7> The "Learn Enough to be Dangerous" tutorials are excellent! e.g. [https://www.learnenough.com/command-line- tutorial](https://www.learnenough.com/command-line-tutorial) And the price is affordable (HTML version is free, can buy PDF).

Also freecodecamp.com has a nice structured program, also free.

</comment><comment><USER8> Beyond content, I'd suggest helping out an open source project or two - <USER2> building a portfolio of progressively harder projects. Projects cross cut a bunch of different topics, and so can really help you learn how to achieve tasks rather than just learning material

</comment><comment><USER9> Make sure he has access to a computer easy to learn program with and also a good internet connection so he can flip between different websites. I don't know the nature of the accident but don't forget the basics - the learning environment, the people he has access to.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Longer explanation of my friend's story: [https://colobas.github.io/2017/02/27/help-me- help/](https://colobas.github.io/2017/02/27/help-me-help/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I would be willing to help

contact me HackerNews AT OpenDomain dot Org</comment>


Brave Browser Adds Bitcoin Payments - <AUTHOR> https://news.bitcoin.com/brave-browser-bitcoin-micropayments/ <comment><USER2> To the critics: The problem is, how to pay for content while maintaining user control over their privacy? Micropayments seem like a solution, and Brave has found an economical way to implement them. How would you change Brave and,

* Still solve the confidentiality problem

* Be realistically economical: Everyone gets paid

* Earn a profit (not a sin and a good way to make the project sustainable)

* Have a technical and practical means of widespread adoption (e.g., personal contact with one website at a time isn't practical).

Social change, such as user confidentiality on the Internet, comes when someone finds a practical way to get it done, not when we all complain about it. Naysayers on the sidelines who simply don't like change and find fault for sport are, as reformers have long pointed out, the biggest obstacles.

Kudos to Brave for tackling this tough and very important issue. They just might change the world.

<comment><USER3> "* Earn a profit (not a sin and a good way to make the project sustainable)"

It is a sin if you're doing it by replacing a publisher's advertising with your own.

<comment><USER4> I believe the default setting in brave is to block ads not replace. The user has control over what the browser does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I'm an advertiser, why would I want to advertise _only_ to people who _can 't afford $5/month_ to turn off ads internet-wide?

That's the problem advertising faces; as soon as you encourage people with disposable income to avoid all advertising, the whole system becomes pointless.

<comment><USER6> Says a lot about the sociatal value of the system, really.

<comment><USER7> But it's better (at least in some respects) than the alternative, which is that people don't have the option to see the content even if they are willing to pay. That happens because they can't get enough people to follow through on that valuation of the content (e.g. due leakage through client circumvention) in order to produce it.

It's a massive coordination problem that Brave (and IIRC the Google Contributor project) are attempting to solve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell I have a website. How do I let the Brave Browser know what my bitcoin address is, so that people who visit my site can send me money? Presumably I can just shove it in a HTTP response header or HTML meta tag? Anyone know where the docs for this are?

<comment> mike-cardwell Oh. They take a 5% cut. Next question, how do I prevent this system from working on any of my websites?

<comment><USER8> How else would you suggest they maintain the infrastructure without turning the users back into the product?

<comment><USER9> What infrastructure is there to maintain? Conceptually all that needs to happen is:

* Website sends HTTP response header containing a bitcoin address

* Browser keeps a bitcoin wallet

* Browser shows a button to send bitcoin from said wallet to said bitcoin address

And that's it.

<comment> mike-cardwell Yes, that is ideally how it would work. Yes, they have infrastructure which needs paying for, but that infrastructure only exists in the first place so that they can take a cut of the donations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Full disclosure I'm Founder of [https://pagescrub.com](https://pagescrub.com) a "pay for no ads" project

Based on my research Brave will probably have a hard time through UX issues and companies/webpages boycotting it.

I talked to readability founder who tried to take money on behalf of webpages when blocking ads. Readers were very happy about the service and loved to pay. But the issue was the companies didn't "take" their money. Mainly because they didn't like that readability did all of that without asking them before. One can say they were simply pissed. From my view Braves users also have to change to much. A new browser + a new payment system.

Best would be if the reader pays on one page and the rest is done for them. No new browser, No Plugin, No Special payment system. Of course this page has to negotiate with each Website first. With [https://pagescrub.com](https://pagescrub.com) I tried exactly that.

</comment><comment><USER11> I want to like the idea of Brave but have a hard time seeing this project taking off. It requires buy-in both from publishers, who make more money from ads, and from visitors, who probably don't want to spend money, configure a payment option, or switch from their current browser. Good idea for a cross- browser plugin, but an entire browser?

<comment><USER12> Ya, agreed. I'd much rather have this built into my ad blocker extension. IE, I could configure a wallet there which I could fund and they could send micro- payments based on the ads I block.

(sorta like Google's contributor but more open / distributed)

<comment><USER13> Yup. I see no reason why this could not be implemented as a WebExtension (which will be compatible with Chrome/FF/Edge). Perhaps performance would suffer a bit relative to native. Having a synced history between Chrome devices, is enough reason for me to not switch browsers, let alone stored form inputs.

Having a general purpose wallet built into the browser would be quite interesting. Think 1 cent Bitcoin paywalls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's a neat idea, but I feel like users need to be rewarded for it to really take off. Look at Patreon as an example: If you support someone there, they will often deliver rewards every month and payment is tied to the reward.

This straightforward implementation ignores some of the privacy ideas, but might be a starting point: If a site notices I'm using a Brave-compliant browser, it tells me that I can unlock some new articles, music, artwork, search features, or whatever by funding my Brave wallet and clicking the 'support' button. Once supported, they deliver the missing content.

Even a simple 'Thank you for supporting us with Brave' would probably encourage use.

<comment><USER15> Publishers hate Brave though: they destroy much of the value those impressions have and then take a cut.

Or at least they hate the idea of Brave, I doubt they take it seriously enough to really hate it. Brave will probably be resigned to the software scrap heap after this funding round runs out.

<comment><USER16> As the interface shows, users get a report of how many times (and for how long) they viewed their top X websites. They then have an new _option_ to contribute Y$ to those sites proportionally and _effortlessly_.

This is a totally new option for people who dont want to see ads.

Publishers who hate this plan show similar behavior to tobacco companies in the 1980s. They have a profitable, entrenched market and don't want to yield one bit of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's interesting that the balance is displayed in USD, instead of Bitcoins. Does this mean that Brave is holding on to my USD, and buying up Bitcoins at time of payment? Seems like both I and content creators could get shafted with exchange rates.

</comment><comment><USER18> Who exactly would use this product?

You'd have to be someone who doesn't mind ads, but doesn't like bad ones, while also being someone who is willing to pay for content so you do not see ads.

More to the point, in what possible universe is there a moral justification for stripping a publisher of the advertising they've selected, only to replace it with your own, and then dictating to the publisher what percentage of that revenue they deserve?

If you care about users, just strip out ads. Don't replace them.

If you care about publisher's getting paid, just establish a mechanism that makes it easy for people to stick a META tag in their header which shows a Bitcoin address for payment remittance.

Publisher's can then implement a mechanism to verify whether individual users have paid.

If your project needs to make a profit, either charge for the browser or the service which intelligently strips out ads, the way Tivo charges for their "Guide" feature.

This is a convoluted business model which helps literally no one other than Brave.

<comment><USER2> > Who exactly would use this product?

People who value their privacy and don't like to be tracked

<comment><USER18> Those people would just use an AdBlocker, in their existing browser and on their mobile device.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I should have said: People who want content creators to be paid fairly, but who don't want to be tracked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can someone elaborate on where the Brave wallet is stored? Is it stored on the clients device or on Brave's servers somewhere?

<comment><USER20> I feel like articles about the Brave model tend to misleadingly represent the situation.

Brave has servers that replace websites' ads on-the-fly. They receive money from advertizers for doing that. As a result, the wallet is on Brave's servers.

But publishers don't get paid. The money is stuck on Brave's servers until publishers come to an agreement with Brave, which the huge majority of websites have not. In fact, some publishers have expressed their intent to sue Brave (see [http://www.wired.com/2016/04/brave-software-publishers- respo...](http://www.wired.com/2016/04/brave-software-publishers-respond/)). Since Brave behaves like they have made a unilateral contract with publishers that publishers have not signed, there is a fair chance that the publishers could win in court.

<comment><USER21> Could this push advertisers toward delivery over https?

I am assuming that brave won't replace https content on the fly of course.

<comment><USER20> In theory, they actually can replace https content on the fly.

They are the browser. They have control.

They can convert the visible URL to a call to their proxy server, which performs an HTTPS call on your behalf. They receive the request, replace ads, and send it back to you in TLS, along with the certificate information that they received from the real server, which they'd show the user.

But I expect they won't do that, so one can hope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> They wrote about URL based microdonations.

For example for content creators like youtubers so that youtube doesnt get a cut from the donation.

How does Brave decide who has a legitimate claim on that money?!

<comment><USER13> Presumably the user who generates the URL can claim the funds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> One case in which Brave does not want to replace website ads is for sites that run their own ad networks, or ones which have a contract with an ad network expressing that they will not resell user data.

A large part of their motivation hinges on ad networks routinely reselling user data without express consent. The business opportunity assumes users will pay (in this case by viewing ads to benefit Brave, the website owner, and themselves) for the privilege of not having their browsing habits tracked. If the net result of this experiment is that websites move toward non-tracking ad networks with legal protections against reselling user data, users no longer have incentive to use Brave, but it's a net win for user and website owner.

</comment><comment><USER24> Donation buttons on websites are no where near as prolific as they used to be 15 years ago (Paypal donate buttons). I can't help but feel this is just because people don't want to donate - they'd rather keep their money. This is not a friction problem.

This feels like Changetip v2 which is in my opinion not a viable business model. Their target market is people who want to donate widely and not specifically. This is a user group I don't think exists, the ones who want to donate are a subset of the websites most dedicated users.

In my opinion this is an unsustainable business model.

</comment><comment><USER25> So it's like Google contributor, but it runs through Brave.

Brave is a story of how to take a good product and make it bad. It started out as "Link Bubble" which was one of the most innovative apps on Android. Brave bought it, introduced a number of bugs, and added "Brave Shields". These 'shields' generally break most sites around the web by blocking trackers and, more importantly, replacing website ads with ads that pay Brave.

Note: I work for Google but have nothing to do with Google contributor.

<comment><USER11> > replacing website ads with ads that pay Brave

Do you have a source for this? I had not heard of this until now.

<comment><USER25> [https://brave.com/about_ad_replacement.html](https://brave.com/about_ad_replacement.html)

The graph shows the following payout distribution:

      * 55% publishers

      * 15% ad partners

      * 15% brave

      * 15% brave users

Whatever you think of internet ads, I don't think Brave is a publisher's best friend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Brave Software incorporated more than 1 year ago. They raised $7M (?) over its existence. But no one practically knows about them. And who cares about ads and Bitcoin? I personally just ignore them everywhere, have kind of immunity already. The other people use AdBlock. Why would anyone want to pay for removing ads on web, use another browser for that, or pay for that with Bitcoin (who cares?)? I guess, I am missing the whole point of what those guys do and why...

</comment><comment><USER27> It's a good start, but I think there needs to be a meta tag (as mentioned) to specify a payment address rather than have Brave hold the money.

I hope this comes soon

</comment><comment><USER28> Isn't this kind of like Flattr ([https://flattr.com/](https://flattr.com/)) ?

</comment><comment><USER29> With a choice of paying someone to remove ads or removing those ads with any one of a number of free methods, I'll choose option #2.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is there a way to add bitcoins to Brave, without having to scan my ID on Coinbase?

<comment><USER4> Yes, it generates an address to send them to.

<comment><USER30> Ok, but where do I get bitcoin?

<comment><USER31> You can usually buy small amounts of Bitcoin directly on www.coinbase.com via ACH without ID. Depends on the fraud score the ML fraud system assigns to you.

Circle and LocalBitcoins are also options (although I've never used Circle).

Disclaimer: I work for Coinbase

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why add features that users don't really care about before features that users do really care about?

There are a minimum set of extended functions that I need from a browser that I'm going to use daily. They are: a speed dial that I can manually organize, a quick javascript switcher and an adblocker. Brave has only one of those.

So I'll stick with Chrome/Chromium on my desktops thank you very much. On mobile, Dolphin Browser gives me 2 out of the 3. So, for a long while I did most of my mobile browsing on an 8 inch Windows tablet with full Chrome. Recently I have been trying out an iPad Pro 9.7 to replace that tablet. It's a better device in every way except for the web browsing which is a second rate experience on iOS.

However, I'm thinking of forking Brave for iOS so that I can make it do whatever I want. It's just a wrapper for WkWebView written in Swift. Shouldn't be too hard to alter for my purposes - I might get started this weekend!

<comment><USER2> This could be said of any innovation. Users want faster horses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Wake me up when they support financial privacy. Monero or nothing.</comment>


The Mystery of Economic Growth  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/world/asia/22iht-letter.html?_r=3

<comment><USER2> shorter version: there is no single solution - problems have context that must be worked with (this may sound familiar to anyone who develops software)</comment>


How smartphone industry turned gentlemen's agreement into full-scale patent war - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/16/2786970/FRAND-smartphone-industry-apple-motorola-samsung

<comment><USER2> Oh dear. Another important policy debate about patents that's going to be hijacked by supporters of a corporation who have no understanding of the issues beyond a desire for their team to win.

<comment><USER2> I liked this quote, (partly because it's a genuine example of "begging the question" in the old philosophical sense):

 _"They're presumably asking Apple for the maximum 2.25 percent royalty, and that's a huge amount, especially considering that standard-essential patents typically only cover a specific and inexpensive component of the overall device."_

So the _inexpensive_ component is actually not inexpensive if you count the cost of the IPR, kind of like a song from iTunes, or a Mac OS X disc, or a Hollywood blockbuster DVD is inexpensive if you don't take acccount of the IPR. Unfortunately, without the legal right to use the IPR these inexpensive things are at best paperweights or a random string of digits, at worst grounds to be sued for piracy or patent infringement.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who's hiring Summer interns? (January 2011) - <AUTHOR>

And who wants to hire me? <comment><USER2> SAN FRANCISCO, CA - (on-site only, we can help relocate)

Quizlet (<http://quizlet.com/>) - creating a better way to study, over 1 million users, great JavaScript games, voice recognition, text-to-speech audio

Check out jobs page for real-time stream of what people are studying: <http://quizlet.com/jobs/>

Looking for: great back-end (PHP5, Memcached, MySQL) and front-end (JavaScript/Ajax) developers who want to work on products to help making studying better for 3 million people/month.

</comment><comment><USER3> Boston, MA (not remote)

MDT Advisers - We're a small quant investing shop working with machine learning, financial analysis, and the hardest dataset in the world. We have an internship that is similar to our full-time analyst position: <http://www.mdtadvisers.com/careers/qea.jsp> , but that isn't on our website.

You can email me at firstname.lastname@example.com with any questions you have.

</comment><comment><USER4> We're looking for interns. In addition to what's listed on our site, we're putting together an intern team to build an android app (starting from scratch, though it will be similar to an existing iPhone app). We can provide housing if you don't live in Southern California.

<http://jobs.laserfiche.com/View/Details.aspx?jobid=33>

<comment><USER5> Thanks for posting this here! I just applied :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I will. I started filling my application. I also opened my Dream Team project on <https://secure.bettermeans.com/projects/1144> It's actually opened for those hanging out alone with Ideas or Skill. You can also find my profile there. Hope to see you this summer.

</comment><comment><USER7> Can you say a little more about yourself? You can also email me directly at joseph at hellofax dot com.

<comment><USER6> @guiseppe was it @mariusz? If so, you can find my profile on linked in (the same as nick).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> CompanyLine is looking for product engineers. Email me (Brett @ CompanyLine) for details.</comment>


Secret Cars Kept Under Wraps, in Public - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/automobiles/07CAMO.html?_r=1 <comment><USER2> It might be argued that the point now is to attract attention and buzz, rather than hide it as they claim to be doing.</comment>


Good code needs few unit tests - <AUTHOR> http://andreyf.tumblr.com/post/459323557/good-code-has-few-unit-tests <comment><USER2> This argument is not sound at all. The statefulness of your code has nothing to do with why we write unit tests. Even if you write a purely stateless function, it would still be useful to write a unit test to check for correctness. If you are doing TDD, you wrote the test before you wrote the function and that way you know exactly when you are done (because the test now passes). If you wrote your test afterwards, it is still useful if you ever change the behavior of the function, because any unit tests that were written that use this function will now let you know where and in what manner your change has affected the entire code base.

If you are writing bad stateful code that has a lot of bugs and you are not smart enough to figure out how all the states interact, unit tests will help you a lot, but there are many other scenarios where unit testing is useful.

I would not say good code has few unit tests. I say arrogant code has few unit tests. If you write few unit tests, as the size of the codebase grows, you have increasingly less certainty about how any change to the existing codebase will affect other parts. When the codebase is small, this is not a problem. If you are very intelligent, the size of the codebase that you can manage in your head might be quite large. But you are just wasting mental capacity that might have been doing so many more interesting things if you didn't have to remember everything and could trust your unit tests to give you the information you need when you need it.

<comment><USER3> I'm not completely against TDD. However, one thing I've found is bugs are caused by things you didn't think to write a test for (or write your code to handle sans tests). The mundane stuff I see in the vast majority of unit tests are things an experienced programmer almost never screws up. So how do you write a test for a case you couldn't foresee?

My biggest argument in favor of writing tests is to ensure my code doesn't break relative to other people's code. There are many times I've encountered an update to a ruby gem with no major or minor version change that has broken a, usually implied, contract with my code. I say implied, because duck typers, at least what I've seen in the ruby world, tend to be slack about formalizing interfaces. I write tests to protect against that sort of thing.

<comment><USER4> _So how do you write a test for a case you couldn't foresee?_

You don't, but once you discover it, you write a regression test to make sure it doesn't come back.

However, IANATDD, I am not a test-driven developer - I don't see any reason to be dogmatic, but I do think unit tests can be extremely valuable. So this answer might not be TDD-approved.

<comment><USER5> " _So how do you write a test for a case you couldn't foresee?_ "

"You don't, but once you discover it, you write a regression test to make sure it doesn't come back."

Sure, that's SOP in any good dev. house that does testing. But you've failed to address a key weakness in TDD. The real question is how do you discover these sorts of defects given that a single developer writing in a TDD style is unlikely to do so? TDD is clearly not a cure all, and this is a major weakness of it. Other development techniques, many of which can complement TDD, such as formal code reviews and beta testing can do a better job of getting you to higher product quality than TDD alone.

<comment><USER6> "TDD is clearly not a cure all"

Who said it was?

<comment><USER7> Exactly!! There is no such thing as a cure all. Anybody angry over a technique that does not solve all problems is clearly suffering from the Silver Bullet Syndrome.

<comment><USER8> What? Why does something have to be perfect for somebody to get angry over it?

<comment><USER7> Not exactly sure what you are asking. I mainly meant any tool you use will not solve all of your problems. Pretty basic common sense, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The point doesn't follow from the headline. The argument isn't that unit tests are bad per se, it's that good code has fewer testable abstractions, and thus requires fewer unit tests.

Which is basically isomorphic to "good code is tight code". Duh.

<comment><AUTHOR> _The argument is that good code [...] requires fewer unit tests_

Great point, my mistake. Title and headline updated (was: Good code _has_ few unit tests). I really wish it were "duh", but measuring code quality by "unit tests per line" [1] is frighteningly common, and seductive in its simplicity and intuition.

1\. Not necessarily directly. It might be in the form of "I'll add more unit tests to improve this code" (unit tests either cover an interface or they don't; going in to 'add more unit tests' to 'improve' code means you didn't define a clear enough interface to begin with). Or "our open source project has more unit tests than another" (but I won't point fingers).

<comment><USER10> But "unit tests per line" is a _good_ metric. Why? Because programmers (well, at least I) hate writing unit tests. If you have a high unit-tests-per-line ratio, then writing one fewer line of code will let you avoid writing several lines of unit tests.

The easiest way to bump your unit-tests-per-line metric is to delete lines of code. That's a positive thing, in my book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The title should have been "A lot of unit tests does not mean you've written good code." I think the implications of the post are correct, but I think it would be incorrect to say that if you have a lot of unit tests it means poor code.

There are engineers who have a difficult time seeing things architecturally (for reasons ranging from ability to priorities). Razor sharp focus can produce a lot of unit tests while missing some refactoring that might have helped reduce the code base, and therefore the number of unit tests.

[Edited]

</comment><comment><USER12> The thing I rarely see brought up in discussions of automated testing is longevity. If you have a team of developers and the codebase is going to be around for a while, you need to grow tests over time so that the someone doesn't accidentally break something they weren't aware of and so that you can refactor your code with confidence that you're not breaking existing functionality.

Sure, in an ideal world, everything is isolated by clean interfaces and encapsulation, but even in that ideal world, you still have a complex system that produces sometimes unexpected side effects (the emergent behavior of a software ecosystem).

</comment><comment><USER13>
      - One quality measure of an abstraction is the complexity
        ofits interface (ie API size).
      - Another measure is the amount of state the abstraction
        encapsulates.

The simplest abstraction of many interfaces is two methods:

      setParameterForNextCall(paramName, paramValue)
      call(functionName)

The API is small, not complex and the amount of state is small, given that parameters are only set right before a call, all parameters are cleared after every call and no other state is retained. Yet it's clear to anyone that this isn't a good abstraction and that it doesn't result in an implementation that requires few unit tests. It requires an immense amount of documentation and allows a great many variations that yield bad/unexpected results.

      Hence, good abstractions require few unit tests.

Abstractions don't have unit tests: _implementations_ have unit tests. It's the size and complexity of the implementation made possible by the abstraction that matters.

<comment><USER14> That interface is certainly inconvenient to use, and potentially quite dangerous without a clearParameters().

It's not at all a rebuttal of the article, though. The article points out that the number of unit tests a design requires is larger for more complicated designs. An interface like yours would require no fewer tests than another interface exposing the same functionality using conventional function calls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Good arguments need few straw men.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hm. I think, one could condense the argumentation as follows: Number of Unit tests = c * (Complexity * Use Cases + State-Tests) for some constant c, if Complexity is a measure of the interface complexity, use cases is the number of use cases of the API and state-tests is the number of tests required due to statefulness of the API.

I think, this approximation is at least not wrong. I don't know if the characterization is complete, but it looks right enough to fool me :)

However, I think the problem in the argumentation is that the author assumes that "use cases" is small. While I agree, that usually, the number of use cases for an API should be small, there certainly are abstractions with a lot of use cases which are good even though they require a lot of unit tests.

An example of such a big abstraction is something I developed in the recent university project. Basically, it is a domain specific language which is compiled into state machines on partial bit sequences (which are used to describe data deserializers). The major job of this abstraction can be described in a few formulas and the abstraction hides enough complexity to be worth it, but it requires quite a large number of unit tests due to the number of possible edge cases in the specification of the DSL. Thus, at least I'd consider it a good abstraction in spite of needing many unit tests.

</comment><comment><USER17> BDD encourages the developer to define a clear behavioral specification for the unit of functionality before you implement it. By first focusing on the usage I find that the abstractions I produce are simpler and in turn have fewer unit tests. I think the author is saying that TDD done well results in fewer tests for simpler code.

<comment><USER18> All good code has the property of clear specification. The place where BDD really shines is that it forces you to use your own abstraction in practice, which often uncovers where it is unwieldy to use.

Another way to get lean code is to use a proper, powerful, static type system. It enforces you to think about the code "skeleton" and the "tests" are done automatically by the type checker at each compile/load of the code. It also reduces the amount of testing needed: There is no way something different from an integer can be passed as a parameter, so you do not need to account for that.

My code does not use many Unit tests per se. But it does autogenerate a lot of test cases to check certain properties. Autogeneration is excellent at producing corner-cases, so if that is what you are after... I generally find this is a better use of my time as a programmer: Better spend some time developing the autogenerator than writing boring tests which my code for most part will pass in first attempt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> All he is really saying is that simple architectures are better than complex architectures, if they fulfill the same functions.

I don't argue that underlying point, but the way he got there sure was a lot more complex than, "KISS."

</comment><comment><USER7> Any line of code metric is fundamentally flawed.

<comment><USER20> Including yours? ;-)

<comment><USER7> Exactly!! I can take your response as meaning two different things, both of which I agree with.

\- My assertion is fundamentally flawed. \- Even the line of code metric YOU come up with is fundamentally flawed.</comment></comment></comment>


From $0 to $20,145.92 in 2 months with a side project - <AUTHOR> (screenshot: https://share.getcloudapp.com/yAu288nm)
I've been building open source software for the past 10 years. And I always thought that monetization was evil.
It took me a while to realize that money is not evil, money is oxygen.
In December 2019, I decided to learn more about sales. So I went to Amazon and bought several books.
In the end, I only read one - but I quickly realized that if I really wanted to learn this, I'd have to practice it in real life.
I love my job and I was definitely not looking to leave it. However, you can always start a side project, and that's what I decided to do.
I opened GitHub, looked at my open source projects, and built a plan around monetizing Dracula, which is a dark theme for developers.
At first, this seemed like a crazy idea. Who would buy a color scheme for their code editors?
When you start, there are all these inner voices trying to stop you, but deep down, I knew I could build something meaningful.
In February 2020, I launched and... people started to buy. The feeling of receiving even $1 for your side project is unbelievable.
It's really hard to explain. It opens your eyes to a different reality.
Two months later this side project already made $20,145.92.
If you're considering creating a side project, stop waiting, and do it. Do it now. I mean it, close this page and start it right now.
I'm sure you're not going to regret it a couple of months from now.
If you're curious about this side project I created, you can check it out here: https://draculatheme.com/pro <comment><USER2> This is honestly the first time I'm hearing about someone monetizing a color scheme. I didn't even now such a thing was possible.

Was it already popular before you started to monetize it? I see that the Github repo [0] has 12k+ stars, so I assume it was already pretty popular beforehand. Did you get more exposure (and GH stars) after the choice to monetize it?

Also, what things does the bonus screencast cover?

I just downloaded the Alacritty theme [1] and to my liking the background is too bright (I guess I prefer it darker than Dracula hehe), so I changed it to 0x000000, but other than that I like it, it's definitely pleasant on the eyes.

[0]: [https://github.com/dracula/dracula- theme](https://github.com/dracula/dracula-theme)

[1]: [https://github.com/dracula/alacritty/tree/af38d360e9589a75a2...](https://github.com/dracula/alacritty/tree/af38d360e9589a75a27bc6d94f30b9931deb9e50)

</comment><comment><USER3> > At first, this seemed like a crazy idea. Who would buy a color scheme for > their code editors?

I have thoughts like this all the time when I look at my github repos.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally! We think that our own projects will never be that successful, but we'll only discover if that's true or not if we try.

<comment><USER3> I have a long drive this afternoon. You've given me a lot to think about. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What sales books did you read? Which would you most recommend?

<comment><AUTHOR> I read Launch by Jeff Walker ([https://amzn.to/2xoLNav](https://amzn.to/2xoLNav)). I would say it's a great book for starters like me, which didn't even have a mailing list yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's great, how are you handling sales?

edit: i found out its via stripe

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using Gumroad to manage transactions, affiliates, etc.</comment></comment>


A week in Cuba was the most educational trip of my life - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dtemkin/spending-the-last-week-in-cuba-was-the-single-most-educational-trip-in-my-life-4d6a628760ec#.duks615eb <comment><USER2> The author fails to mention that the reason the internet is not available to most people in Cuba is because private internet access is illegal in Cuba. The public internet (internet cafes, etc.), including social media, is monitored by the Cuban secret police. Political dissenters, or anyone criticizing the Castros or their cronies, are harshly punished, usually without a trial. Censorship is strict. So, good luck with it, Netflix.

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

<comment><USER3> By gum! Still with that story about the Cuban secret police in 2016...

I'm Cuban and I'm now in Cuba, university professor, not affiliated to any political organization, and I check HN almost all days and personally I do not feel limited in any way, only by its high cost. In the same way private internet access is not illegal, is just nonexistent as option because most Cubans cannot afford the current costs of Internet infrastructure at home.

<comment><USER2> "Secret police" may have been the wrong term. The point is that the society is closely monitored by the authoritarian government and there is "widespread abuses of political rights and civil liberties". You and the author seem to imply that the problem is they need to lay more pipe, when the real problem is the authoritarian government is forbidding internet access in order prevent an Arab Spring in their country. This is a perfect example of why Obama's Cuba policy is such a fail. He could have easily negotiated freer internet access in exchange for U.S. trade agreements, but he did not, and the Cuban people are suffering as a result.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#Contempor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#Contemporary_Cuba)

<comment><USER4> Given that freer internet access could be highly politically destabilising for the current regime I seriously doubt that Obama could "have easily negotiated freer internet access". The opposite would seem far more likely.

The Cuban people were already suffering - the US' new policy can start to change that. Nothing else will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've found that there's a number people who are afraid to come out and say they didn't like Cuba, it's a very unpopular opinion. I spent two weeks there as part of a 6 month trip through North and Central America, and before I went, everyone said they loved it. Since then I've found I've spoken to two or three people who have said they were glad I told them I didn't like Cuba because they didn't either, but everyone else loves it. Obviously this is a small sample size, but I found it interesting.

Personally I thought that Viñales particularly, and Havana to a lesser extent, to be the most touristy places I've ever been. Of the three main streets in Viñales, almost every building was either a Casa Particular or a restaurant catering to tourists. In downtown Havana, the number of Canadians/Australias/Kiwi's/Europeans was incredible, more so than anywhere else I went in Central America.

Almost every daily activity was more difficult in Cuba than anywhere else I went (probably because of the embargo) - restaurants and supermarkets were constantly out of stock, exchanging money was an hour long ordeal...

That being said, if I had my time again, there's nothing I'd change, it was definitely a unique experience

</comment><comment><USER6> A buddy of mine lived and worked in Cuba for many years.

While the place is not perfect, he had many great things to say about it. About how family and connections are more important than material possessions, about how healthcare and education are rights that everyone has and doesn't think about, and about how the purpose of life is not just to go to work more and earn more money.

My friend is Canadian, and he genuinely loved living in Cuba, which tells me a lot.

<comment><USER7> Hmmm. That does not quite explain the exodus of people or the people who desire to leave.

I understand the universal education and healthcare, but that does not go very far when on average your take home is about 100 bucks a month.

And I don't see Mexicans (who have good relations, or Dominicans or Venezuelans for that matter) getting on boats and hoping for a better life in Cuba.

One thing, among others, Cuba does offer is a kind of time warp porn which some people find compelling, yet, day to day life, I imagine many Cubans would trade for an economy which was not ruled so much by decree and doctrine. They have had to live in that imagined idyll where humans have not been despoiled by money...

Rather because they have so few material possessions they have no choice but to enjoy the few things they can count on in life.

<comment><USER8> Some people will always leave for what they perceive as 'greener' pastures.

My wife's family, for instance, are immigrants, and we know many people who came from her country (their population actually shrinks YoY because of the mass exodus). An interesting phenomenon is also that many of them are disillusioned with life in Canada, having left to become 'rich', only to be very poor and overworked, and unable to go home because of the stigma about people who 'wasted time' (ie. immigrated then went back).

You even see it within countries - Canadians from the east coast who go west. And often you see it go 2 directions - many people immigrate from North America and Britain to France to live an 'idyllic' lifestyle, and there's an equal amount of French people going the other direction for 'economic opportunity'.

The existence of people who desire to leave isn't necessarily indicative of it's quality of life... Hell, I don't even plan on staying in Canada forever, but I'm well aware of its benefits.

Edit - stats on the Canadian diaspora: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_diaspora](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_diaspora)

With the amount of Canadians living abroad you'd swear it was literally Mordor...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I also went to Cuba. I really enjoyed the trip and found the people super nice. Well, except for the touts, who were super aggressive. But otherwise a great trip.

I also found it a complete repudiation of socialism. Seriously, if you are a fan of socialism, go to Cuba and you will get that fixed in a hurry. Houses are literally collapsing because they are not being repaired while what seems like half the city sits around on the street waiting for a ration book. Stores that take the local currency are empty. Its like the Soviet Union in the 80s.

It's also amazing how much has stood still. Its like you went back in time to the 1950s and the Cuban missile crisis was yesterday. The cars, the propaganda, the buildings, broken political and economic systems, all of it.

[To the down votes: Sorry if that is not a message you wanted to hear about Socialism. You shouldn't take my word for it. You should go see it yourself.]

<comment><USER10> Firstly, communism != socialism != social democrat.

Secondly, 50 years of trade embargo probably has a lot to do with the decay and lack of availability of goods. America tried hard to ensure that Communist Cuba would fail and collapse, and it didn't.

It might be fairer to compare Cuba with other agricultural-exploitation countries like hyper-capitalist Honduras.

<comment><USER11> This is funny. The latin american left always complains that "USA imperialism" is what prevents their countries from being fully developed nations. Cuba is free of that imperialism and then people complain the embargo is the problem... You can't have it both ways.

By the way, Cuba has always been free to trade with every other country apart from the USA...

Hyper-capitalist Honduras?! The 113th country in the Economic Freedom Index now qualifies as "hyper-capitalist"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I also recently had the chance to visit Cuba. Incidentally, I was there the day Alan Gross was exchanged for the last of the Cuban Five and the announcement of detente was made. I've been to 39 countries by last count, and this trip was among my favorite.

One of the most radical things about my experience was that I traveled directly from San Francisco, and the two places could hardly feel more different. Walking down Market Street, the full breadth of American inequality is on display like nowhere else. As poor as Central Havana is, you simply don't observe the same level of open desperation. One might say their government makes this so, but it's actually our government that imprisons the largest percentage of its citizens of any country in the world. Look, I'm not saying I would live in Cuba over the USA, but I do think we should be doing a far better job caring for our most vulnerable.

Here's my reflection on the experience: [https://alanjaytravel.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/cuba- go/](https://alanjaytravel.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/cuba-go/)

</comment><comment><USER13> When I saw this picture[0] I instinctively reacted with: "Ew. What's wrong with their tomatoes?"

Then I remembered that that's how all tomatoes used to look originally[1], and that their tomatoes probably taste way better than the neon-red freaks that I buy at the supermarket.

[0] [https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*yVBQ_1SeMOk4kcib-q...](https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*yVBQ_1SeMOk4kcib-qBNTA.jpeg)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato#Modern_commercial_varie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato#Modern_commercial_varieties)

<comment><USER14> Not sure about the choice you typically get in a US supermarket, but speaking from experience living in Europe, it's really best to turn your intuitions upside down. Most vegetables and fruit just taste way better, the further they are from their common variant, since there was less chance to select taste out of them. So, for example with tomatoes go dark, yellow, oval shaped, 'deformed' ('oxen hearts' a.k.a. cuoro di bue). With carrots go yellow or dark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting. I was literally in Cuba last weekend. (I'm an American) I have a very different take on the city of Havana and the country.

Going to wrap up my medium article soon.

<comment><USER16> I was figuratively over there too. Great experience anyways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > I had never felt safer in any city around the world, including my own. While > many buildings were falling down and their inhabitants living in near > poverty, their spirit seemed unbreakable. We may not agree with their > economic or social policy, but the people here seem genuinely happy.

People say the same about North Korea.

<comment><USER18> > I had never felt safer in any city around the world, including my own. While > many buildings were falling down and their inhabitants living in near > poverty, their spirit seemed unbreakable. We may not agree with their > economic or social policy, but the people here seem genuinely happy.

Interestingly enough, you can say this about most places you visit for a short period of time. As a tourist you typically get a surface feel for the place. After spending a measurable amount of time (9 months+) in a Similar place (the dominican republic) with friends who said similar things after short visits, I can say much of this is attributed to seeing people in nice, quaint, sanitized parts of life you see as a tourist rather than an accurate description of what's actually happening culturally.

That's to say that you don't really get into interpersonal relationships when you're in a place for a week. People seem generally happy because most people are friendly - specifically to strangers - especially when those strangers mean revenue or money for themselves, their business or their community - especially on the first pass. After spending time and living there - there's many of the human emotions you're familiar with stateside including contentment, joy, but also anger, sadness, jealousy (and yes) unhappiness too (gasp) - it's just that you don't see the negative emotions when you're only there for a week.

It's always a little disingenuous or a little naive when people come back saying "they have so little, but are so happy." It is true on one level, but also is conveniently dismissive of recognizing that you only experienced a sliver of their actual lives.

<comment><USER19> That was obviously not the intent of the author's statement- to suggest that "they have so little, but are so happy." Rather, it is a common observation that the Cubans are a "confident, and undefeated" people despite years of propaganda and other measures meant to bring them to their knees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Cuba is not known for its food...

What? Cuban food is well-known all over the US.

<comment><USER5> His next sentence explains his point - the food you get at Cuban restaurants is nothing like the food you actually get in Cuba. Most of the food in Cuba is simple and quite bland

<comment><USER21> I wonder if the Cuban food in the U.S. is the authentic version, imported by those who were able to flee the revolution, while the food found in Cuba today is the result of fifty years of poverty.

<comment><USER22> This absolutely true and I've heard it discussed in cooking shows about Miami. Thousands of cubans fled to Florida and started mom and pop restaurants, the people who stayed had to make due with meager rations and the culinary culture died.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> $5 us for a straight razor shave? This guy got absolutely taken to the cleaners

</comment><comment><USER24> >I was struck over and over how thrilled the people were to know we were American and the sheer excitement that more of us are coming.

It's all about the money. American dollars can buy luxuries the Cuban peso can't afford, and that's something anyone can get excited about.

<comment><USER4> I've visited several countries where that's true - but none of the locals responded anything like this article describes. Don't underestimate the power of culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Also highly recommended, Alan Gross's story of five years in Cuba:

[http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/transcript-alan- gross-...](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/transcript-alan-gross- cuba-221365)

</comment><comment><USER26> I've found this quote really inspiring, specially for the startup folks:

"No hay tarea difícil, sino hombres incapaces" \- Ernesto "Che" Guevara [1]

That would translate (i think, correct my english if i'm wrong) to: "There is no difficult task, but incapable men"

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

<comment><USER27> You do know Che was a mass murderer who thought blacks and gays needed to be extinguished, right?

<comment><USER28> That's an unsupportable summary.

Guevarra was politically naive and made many awful decisions w/r/t ideals, strategy, and tactics, with in some cases disastrous results. I think heroizing or canonizing him is a poor choice. But calling him a "mass murderer" robs that label of meaning. By any standard which you might consider him a mass murderer, most US presidents of the past 80 years would equally qualify.

With regards to all three of your claims, this seems like a fairly reasonable analysis: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1lt4rb/was_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1lt4rb/was_it_the_truth_behind_the_critical_controversy/cc2l72k)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So a guy goes abroad and finds a wonderful culture, and immediately thinks of ways to destroy its culture with useless crap like the internet. Perhaps he can also import rampant inequality, junk food, greed, limitless porn, cars with designed obsolescence etc until everyone is as damaged and atomised as the average American.

<comment><USER30> _rampant inequality_

You think the US is more unequal than Cuba? I'd love to see what the Castros are worth vs. the lowest paid Cuban.

And in my books, being thrown in prison because you express a viewpoint counter the gov't is pretty _damn unequal_.

<comment><USER31> Outliers make for poor descriptors, but still; probably less than that between Bill Gates and the lowest paid American.

It would be more interesting to see the differences between two typical families in the 10% and 90% of income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> ...if only the reality of Cuba was as positive as so many bloggers think it is.

[https://www.yahoo.com/news/cuban-agents-brutalize- democracy-...](https://www.yahoo.com/news/cuban-agents-brutalize-democracy- protesters-1393527552835638.html)

<comment><USER8> Did you watch those videos? Because I'm curious how anyone can watch those videos and call what the police did, "brutality".

I've seen more police "brutality" in the suburbs of Canada when the bar closes...

BTW, brutality is in quotations because no one can possibly watch those actual videos and call the police actions anything close. The protester (singular) who was arrested, was not only twice the size of the fat, out of shape police officers, but there was barely a scuffle.

Here's a good picture of the police brutality from your link: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ceaq1QXWsAIOVNu.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ceaq1QXWsAIOVNu.jpg)

and here as well: [https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/hfg17gfMjN_RcKbCTm1hPw--/Y...](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/hfg17gfMjN_RcKbCTm1hPw--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjtzbT0xO3c9MTI4MDtoPTk2MA--/http://40.media.tumblr.com/1118af5e62014e1197457484a36971cd/tumblr_inline_o4m7jfrPzo1tj53wd_1280.jpg)

So brutal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is just a slideshow.

</comment><comment><USER34> You make it sound like there isn't a repressive regime in power that brooks no decent and certainly doesn't allow anyone to voice an opinion contrary to the establishment.

[http://abcnews.go.com/International/304-dissidents- arrested-...](http://abcnews.go.com/International/304-dissidents-arrested- ahead-obama-visit-cuba-human/story?id=37823936)

<comment><USER35> Attacking someone about their country like that is a particularly distasteful breach of civility on Hacker News. It's for Cubans (as for the people of any other nation) to decide the nature of their government; it's certainly not for us to harangue them about it.

Moreover, assuming that what you're saying is true, you're putting the person you're talking to at risk if they answer freely. That's not a fair argument to have and certainly not for fake internet points.

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11476566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11476566) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER34> So you're saying refuting someone who claims there is no danger to speaking your mind in Cuba by posting a link to people arrested for speaking their mind in Cuba, isn't a conversation, but an attack. And furthermore I shouldn't engage with anyone over the internet because they might be from Cuba and I might endanger them?

And further I shouldn't even be talking about it, because if, for the sake of argument, Cuba has a repressive secret police that throws people in jail for speaking about unapproved ideas, I shouldn't say anything about it because it's Cuba's business?

Using that philosophy no one should have spoken out about S. Africa's apartheid because they might get someone in trouble and it's S. Africa's business anyways.

Anyways, good to know how hacker news works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > I do look forward to going back to Cuba some day, and hope that Americans, > as they discover more about this society, are respectful of their history > and culture and contribute to the next phase of this awesome island.

Dream on ...</comment>


Ask HN: Whatever happened to AngelGate? - <AUTHOR>

Ever since TC got acquired by AOL, they haven't posted anything on AngelGate.<p>Part of the deal? :P <comment><USER2> They waited a week, which was long enough to outlast Silicon Valley's attention span, and then nobody talked about it ever again. Except for one "whatever happened to...?" post on HackerNews, which spent a few hours on the front page and then was also never talked about ever again. And then the next time something like that happened, there wasn't much outrage, because it wasn't _new_ any more, wasn't unusual, and people remembered that their outrage hadn't accomplished much last time.

<comment><USER3> Also known as: Facebook privacy concerns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I guess the parties involved all suddenly had an epiphany. They woke up one morning and realised that by making such a big fuss about nothing, the only thing they were liable to achieve was to fuck themselves over by bringing in federal oversight into their industry.

So they shut up.

</comment><comment><USER5> You can speculate and create theories on the matter and bound some probability of them being true, but there is a fundamental property of news. There are lots of things we don't remember or care about, but we did before. These events? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009> What happened to the Haiti earthquake news? Haiti still needed help even before the recent Cholera outbreak. The Wikileaks news will die again like it did before. Heck, even Spitzer has a primetime show on CNN after his scandal.

Silicon Valley news isn't the only news with a short half-life.

</comment><comment><USER6> I always assumed it was a pre-acquisition PR splash for TC, and not a genuine concern on Arrington's part. Especially considering what alienation of wealthy tech investors could do to his professional future.

</comment><comment><USER7> Arrington was too busy spending his millions

</comment><comment><USER8> Either the publicity got all the participating angels to back off any deals they made, or it wasn't really a thing in the first place.

Regardless, I don't see what AOL would have to do with it

<comment><USER9> Part of the problem with the characterization of "Angel Gate" is that it is so hard to say what collusion among angel investors would look like, and even if it occured, if collusion as independent organizations would be sustainable.

There are lots of pools of angel investors around the country, I didn't see "angel gate" as anything different then a precursor to forming some sort of investment pool.

Those independent or newly pooled investors would still have to compete with VCs, other pools of capital, private investors and a number of other smaller investors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If nothing else, looks like Bin38 got a new website out of the deal.

</comment><comment><USER11> Beyond attention spans and the like, the underlying premise of AngelGate was flawed. There are not 10 angel investors in the Valley that make 100% of deals which is what was asserted in the original post.

The supply of capital is incredibly fragmented.

All in all, great for pageviews on TC but not much else.

</comment><comment><USER12> Michael Arrington's coverage of AngelGate came off to me as 'you're on notice' - a warning against colluding, etc more than anything else.

</comment><comment><USER13> Just out of curiosity, what's left to discuss? The event already happened. I seriously doubt that even with AOL in charge TC would let it go if there were more news on that front. I think the simplest explanation is just that there simply isn't any news left to report.

</comment><comment><USER14> Haters stopped hatin', playas keep playin', as Dave McClure would say.

</comment><comment><USER15> Paid to make the problem go away, new news cycle. AOL is primarily a consumer brand, ironically, with out consumers. This means that in order for AOL to purchase them they need to have moved from the producer market to the consumer market. Thus a story about startups financing is no longer relevant to most of their audience.</comment>