Discovering Two Screens Aren't Better Than One - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/technology/personaltech/surviving-and-thriving-in-a-one-monitor-world.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> Meh.

What this article really means is "If you get distracted by things, keeping distractions up on more screens will make you more distracted."

I have my laptop screen and 3 extra monitors:

1) Email. I keep my main inbox very filtered - email that shows up there is important and I need to see it and read it asap

2) IRC/OCS. Work communication primarily happens through these, and much of it is important.

3) Browser open to our internal workflow tools / tabs for research

4) Laptop screen, closest to me out of all of these, where I have terminals open, etc.

I originally only had one extra display outside of the monitor, but my productivity /very/ measurably went up when I added more displays. No more hunting to find the window I wanted. Easy to reference things when talking to people. Easy to reference things when working on a server. etc etc etc.

So, like just about every tool out there, the usefulness is determined by the use case that prompted it, and how effectively you use it.

<comment><USER3> How are you using the three external monitors from a laptop? The reason I stick with a desktop is because I very heavily rely upon three monitors and haven't found any decent solutions to do so with a laptop. I'm using ubuntu, so I understand if the OS is a limitation, but I'd still love to hear about what you're using to make it work.

<comment><USER4> I'm not who you asked, but I have:

2012 Retina macbook pro 15"

27" display port dell 24" display port dell 27" Samsung on hdmi to dvi cable.

It will run all 4 screens at once.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. I have a 2013 MBP from work and my monitors have HDMI and I seem to recall HDMI / DP converters. I'll need to check if the display ports work well with ubuntu. Thanks!

(two 27s and a 24! Fantastic!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since this is HN and most people here have written code, I compare multi- monitor setups to a text/code editor with a single panel/pane. You just don't do it! Sublime, N++, Atom, etc. all support multiple panes (split screen). Once you get coding enough you never go back to using a single pane.

Same thing with multi-monitor. As long as you are productive (unlike the author), more screen real estate is better (obviously, there are limits)

Personally, I like dual 27"s. Allows you to run 4 full size (think 8.5"x11") word docs at 100% side by side. Very nice!

<comment><USER6> What the author failed to account for is the fact that not everyone does the same type of work. As a security researcher I spend a fair amount of time watching real-time code execution while simultaneously watching & modifying network traffic. In a typical solution review I might have Wireshark running on one monitor, an HTTP editor/proxy running on another hooked to the browser, another HTTP editor/proxy running on yet another monitor hooked to the web service. That's three monitors right there. Next I'll have the browser running on a fourth monitor and possibly be reviewing code and code execution on a fifth. On the sixth and seventh monitors I'll be doing research including static code analysis with the eighth and ninth monitors dedicated to coms (chat/email) and writing up my results. I routinely switch between my multi- monitor solution and a single screen laptop and there's just simply no way I can effectively do my job on one monitor these days. I'll do "simple" reviews on my one monitor laptop and stick with the multi-monitor solution for the harder stuff.

[http://defaultstore.com/mydesk.jpg](http://defaultstore.com/mydesk.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've gone back to a single screen. It turns out, using tools like SizeUp/Spectactle/etc. were all I needed to balance the two tasks I spend 90% of my time multitasking between - coding and the output.

When I had a second monitor on, it had my IMs, emails, Twitter, etc. and became a source of distraction more than anything.

Anecdotally, I've worked in bullpen offices where everyone has a second screen and consistently see Facebook, YouTube, or Netflix being actively used while coding. Not as passive background noise, but constant code, fb, code, skip commercial, etc.

It makes sense to me that by having more screens, either on our desks, in our hands, or on our walls, we're doing less while pretending to do more.

<comment><USER8> Protip: put productive things on >both< monitors.

<comment><USER9> And now you're split between two productive things. More reason to procrastrinate.

Better just have the productive thing you should be focused on one at a time up on a sigle monitor.

<comment><USER8> Uhm, if it's distracting you from that task at hand, instead of helping you complete it, it's not a productive thing.

My code editor lives on one screen, usually with four files in veiw. My browser and console live on the other. It's really no different that one screen.

<comment><USER3> Exactly right, communication tools should have no real estate if you're trying to focus. I keep three screens: one with multiple terminals, one with my code editor(s), and one for displaying whatever I'm coding (android emulator, browser, etc) as well as docs, research, etc.

If I'm coding, all comms are off to avoid any distraction - specifically to avoid notifications. I'm I'm in support mode (flapping server, etc), comms are up, but they get a tiny slice of real estate next to my terminal with logs and such so we can triage and move on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This should be titled, "two big screens aren't better that one big screen." I've had multiple desktops with two 21" CRTs, back when that made you a fancy boy, and had considerable improvement in workflow from it. Now, with my 27" Thunderbolt monitor, I can't imagine the frustration of having to turn my head instead of move my eye to change my mind's focus.

This transition was after having done most of my development on a 15" laptop, and re-learning how to be productive without distractions... everyone's mileage will of course vary, so blanket statements are worthless.

<comment><USER3> I transitioned from three 19" monitors to two beautiful 27" monitors for about a year. I hated it. Nonetheless, I gave it a worthy shot and allowed myself to get used to it. Turns out, I'm most productive when I have at least three separate contexts, in which a single window (or a couple representative windows) can hold the full screen, without needing to worry about rearranging things.

Unfortunately, moving to a single screen of any size is debilitating by a large margin for me these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I may be alone, but I'll generally take 2 19" non-widescreen monitors over a single giant monitor any day of the week. There's something (possibly as a minority windows user) that I really like about throwing things from screen to screen. Especially when I have to do the rare front-end tweaks. Some people may be able to spit out perfect CSS without seeing the site they're working on, but I'm 95% a back end dev, so when I have to do the odd styling related task, it's a lot of try this, refresh, try this.. something that works about three times as fast when I have two monitors.

At work, I have three. 2 high quality widescreens, one center, one to the right, and a tiny (by my request) 17" standard ratio screen to the left that email sits on all day long. It moves so rarely that it catches my eye when it does, but again.. it was such a low cost investment that it's almost negligible. When I come home I have one large screen, and an old 17" standard screen to the left. The left screen is almost always playing a TV show or movie, and the center screen is everything from life, to work, to just wasting time.

If I had a single point with all of this, it's that windows don't mean the same to me as screens do. Even with the new win8/metro style interfaces ability to segment screens, I really like the "this one does this, this one does that" effect I get from two monitors.

<comment><USER12> I'm a mechanical engineer, but I largely feel the same way. I have one higher quality screen in front of me dedicated to Solidworks and a second screen dedicated to everything else; usually a task list/ McMaster-Carr/ Excel and Soundcloud or whatever music and task manager (need to know if Chrome + solidworks are eating ALL of the RAM).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think 2 (or more) screen displays make sense for professionals who need the extra screen constantly up -- e.g music producers seeing both their DAW audio lanes and individual sequencer piano rolls, or video editors watching the video tracks, color controls etc on one monitor and a full screen of the movie in the other.

For programmers not so much (even something like console output/build results you better decide when to focus on it, rather than constantly having it as a distraction).

<comment> X-Istence For me it is the ability to have my code up on one screen, and a debugger on the other. So that I can look at my debugger, and look at my code at the same time.

Or instead of a debugger, have a web browser with my current site, the web inspector, and my CSS so I can make modifications easily.

Programming with multiple monitors makes me a faster programmer as I am spending less time switching between applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A news junkie finds out that distracting himself makes him less productive. From this we can conclude that ALL people who have two screens should forget the second one. Right.

<comment><USER9> Or, with a more charitable and less snarky reading, let's condlude that it's possible that "2 screens can be worse than one".

Or maybe that most people are "news junkies" that can benefit from less distractions, whether they believe it applies to them or not.

<comment><USER13> While I agree that my comment was snarky, the author didn't couch the statements at all.

"Discovering Two Screens Aren't Better Than One"

That makes it sound an awful lot like a fact or a universal law, not someone's personal opinion. When it's clearly one person's opinion.

Just about everyone who needs to "multi-task" by reading documentation and applying that knowledge can and likely will benefit from multiple screens. I wish I had three, really.

That's a huge part of the economy; software, CAD/CAM, basically anything engineering-ish at all.

To suppose that the way that you use a computer is the same as the way everyone uses a computer is rather arrogant, don't you think?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have my main monitor with my vim editor, one monitor with the terminal (tests, logs, console, debugger...), those two are single windows split in multiple pieces.

On the third monitor I have the actual app running (be iOS simulator, browser window or normal native app, virtual machine, whatever)

And I have a fourth monitor with team chat, documentation, sourcetree and "general browsing".

When I work I just keep my email and other IM closed. Those are distracting in single or multiple monitor mode anyway.

I have two horizontally stacked 27' monitor at the center and 1 vertical 27' monitor on each side. This provides a quite compact work area, at least I can see the whole estate without moving my head too much.

I am now traveling and on a single screen, and I am more distracted that ever, because I cannot keep my work "open" all the time and as soon as I switch to another window, it's full screen and covers everything.

</comment><comment><USER15> So he should really go old school and work on a 24 x 80 ASCII terminal :-) There are _no_ distractions :-)

<comment><USER16> You can use screen though :-P

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I use two monitors to code, debug, shell, test, etc... with when I am working and nothing else is open on that machine other than work or research related to what I am doing. Not even email is open. All of my distractions (email included) are on my laptop with it's own extra screen. The key (for me anyway) is setting your screen saver to come on or go blank after a short period of inactivity mine is 5 minutes. This visually blocks anything from grabbing my attention on this machine. Now all the flashy alerts and popups are hidden from view.

This article should have been titled something else as the multiple monitors aren't the issue. If you are being distracted with multiple monitors from the work you are supposed to be doing then you need to close those distracting items or block them visually.

</comment><comment><USER18> While everyone seems to be focusing on the issues of distractions, I have found myself in the habit of using one screen due to a particular testing issue. All of the devs in my group were using two screens, and so were the testers, but the majority of our customers used one screen. Customers would run into issues which the devs wouldn't be able to reproduce. It turned out that the issue was pop-ups ('foo is bar; click ok to continue') which would appear normally if you were running the app in your right-hand screen, but which would appear off-screen to a single-screen user. Being the only single- screen user in the development group enabled me to solve the bug and prevent many future cases of the same bug getting through into production.

</comment><comment><USER19> My setup for front-end development:

* 15" Retina MPB at 1920x1200 (iTerm 2 with either 3 or 4 panes)

* 27" Thunderbolt (two documents side-by-side, currently tolerating Atom)

* 27" iMac in target display mode (browser and dev tools).

And that's just the three spaces that I do most of my work in. I've got other spaces set up for general browsing, email, image editing, chat, etc.

It's probably excessive for most people. But I need to see all of these things. If I can't have them all up at once, I have to do a lot of switching between windows and spaces, and that takes a time. It's small amounts, but it adds up. I rely on tools like Gulp and BrowserSync to help me save small amounts of time. Staying focused by keeping my work in front of me really does help to keep me focused.

</comment><comment><USER20> For just writing code, like real algorithmic stuff, I've never been more productive than on my 12" ThinkPad X201. Multi mon is great for many things, but in-the-flow _coding_ doesn't seem to benefit. Unfortunately, Lenovo trashed the ThinkPad line, and I actually hate every minute I'm using my T440p. I'd pay $3000 to get an X201 with updated hardware. Nothing else I've seen comes close to the old X series. It had a full sized real ThinkPad keyboard, no compromises!

<comment><USER21> I like my X220 off of ebay. It's a 12" machine, but it's fast enough for me and pretty cheap. The screen isn't great, though...

<comment><USER20> I held off on the subsequent X series because of the dumb 16:9 screens _at low resolution_! Less than 800 vertical pixels just doesn't work. Also, after the X201_ they started breaking the keyboard, killing the full-sized legendary boards.

The X240 finally improved the screen a bit, but has totally ruined the pointer input and keyboard. Plus apparently it has a lot of problems, and they crippled the RAM (8GB max, in 2014).

I wish some hardware hacker would find a way to mod these things. I'd pay $400, plus costs, to mod modern ThinkPads to use the old kb and pointer setup. I've lost at least that much in decreased work, frustration (I have a under 20% success trying to right click on the abominable clickpad, and worse for middle click) and literal physical pain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If your primary use for a second display is email, then sure I guess it could just be a distraction. But when you're working with several applications at once to accomplish a single task, multiple monitors are a necessity. If you have ever spend any time at all doing data entry, it's immediately obvious how much more efficient it is.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think this is just another case of a tool blaming his tools.

He is obviously distracted by default, and incapable of going without Facebook on IV and Twitter through a nasal tube.

With great firepower, comes great opportunity to shoot one's self in the foot. He doesn't realize that this doesn't mean it's counterproductive, but rather that he is.

</comment><comment><USER24> Ubuntu virtual desktops are enough for me, and I use them all the time.

When I have to use Windows, I end up installing VirtuaWin just because of the muscle memory related to my workflow.

</comment><comment><USER25> I agree with the author. Working with 2 (or even 3) small, low quality monitors is worse than working with 1 decent monitor.

</comment><comment><USER26> I agree that two are worse than one, but only if that one is big enough - 27" or above.

</comment><comment><USER27> truly laughable,

also when your primary screen is a 27 inch 1080p wide panel display as he seems to have in the picture, you probably aren't feeling as constrained as most people with their 4 year old low res 15 inch laptops.

<comment><USER9> > _truly laughable_

I, and lots of others, find it quite reasonable. Any counter-arguments besides the quick dismissal?

> _also when your primary screen is a 27 inch 1080p wide panel display as he > seems to have in the picture, you probably aren 't feeling as constrained as > most people with their 4 year old low res 15 inch laptops_

Well, I work on a 15 inch laptop and don't feel constrained. And lots of people work on 13" Macbook Airs and the like and feel quite focused and OK. It's not like it only applies to people with 27" monitors.

<comment><USER28> I have a counter-argument that seems about as strong as the author's.

Sometimes I use one monitor and sometimes I use two. I perceive less friction when using two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> IMO... We should start banning the times with their new paywall.

</comment><comment><USER30> the only reason i have a second screen is because i have a laptop plugged into an external monitor.

I hardly use my retina display for anything. i miss my 17" mbp displays.

</comment><comment><USER31> Seems like classic Hawthorne effect...

</comment><comment><USER32> > But if you wouldn't watch a movie or play a video game while you're trying > to get something done, why would you keep an app as distracting as email > sitting within your field of view?

Because... I wouldn't? I use a window manager and I don't have a system tray (so no email notifications, for example). Often, I have one application open on each screen, perhaps a PDF reader, a text editor or a browser. Then, if I need to actually look at two things fairly back and forth, I'll split that screen into two, or use both monitors. What if I don't need the second monitor? I guess it could just be looking at the wallpaper, or displaying an analogue clock (that is: if I'm not looking too much at the clock, pining for the time to pass quicker!).

Does using two monitors make me more productive? I don't know yet. But I don't see how two monitors would make me more susceptible to procrastination. If I feel the need to fire up the browser and go to reddit or something, that's pretty much as with one monitor as with two. The time and effort I save by not having to minimize the currently focused app in order to open the browser, compared to just opening a browser on the already blank second monitor, seems so small as to be inconsequential to a bored, wandering mind.</comment>


Congrats on the 10 Year Anniversary YouTube, Now Please Fix Content ID - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/congrats-10-year-anniversary-youtube-now-please-fix-content-id

<comment><USER2> Also please make content id available to all rights holders.

I made the mistake of signing up with an advertising company with content id access, simply because i was curious as to who was using my CC licensed music (non-commercial) in their videos.

At first it all worked very well and the ad company compiled a list of videos using my songs some with millions of views which was very gratifying regardless of the (in some cases) liberal interpretation of the content licensing.

Over the next few weeks however most of the video makers took down my music in response to the correspondence they were receiving from youtube viz. complying with compulsory advertising.

I tried to contact some of the video makers via their channels and eventually succeeded in one case. The person in question forwarded me some of the content id compliance literature and to be fair it was very heavy handed. In their position I would likely have reacted as they did.

As my music continued to be removed / taken-down I attempted successfully to extricate myself from the ad platform but the damage had been done and to my knowledge none of the content-creators who complied with the take-down notices are using my music now.

Afterwards I attempted to sign up for content id myself and also contacted youtube's customer service but received no response in either case.

Content id could be of huge benefit to music producers, like myself, if (a) it was available (!) and (b) it had more nuanced controls. I would be happy to pay an annual subs, for example, to identify my music on youtube so I could contact and possibly negotiate with a video-maker over the rights to use my music in a commercial setting.

Forced advertising, which lets be honest is a pretty abhorrent concept anyway, simply does not work, at least in my experience.

<comment><USER3> I don't believe that is going to happen. That's why we started [https://pexe.so](https://pexe.so) where we are offering content id to every content creator, go outside of YouTube (still included though) and focus way more on analytics than just rights enforcement

<comment><USER2> Very interesting, I'll check you guys out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article seems a bit misguided to me. Fair Use is something that YouTube cannot really judge for itself; instead, it's something that a court must decide, because it's often not clear cut. The courts must think about the context and how exactly the content is being used. This must be done on a case-by-case basis. Fair use is effectively a legal defense that one could use if they were sued for copyright infringement. With or without Content ID, content owners could file DMCA takedown requests against people who upload their content, fair use or not. And in those cases, it's still up to the courts to decide if a particular usage is fair use or not.

Ultimately, if the EFF wants this stuff fixed, I think it should focus its attention more on the laws themselves, and not the companies who are required to implement them.

</comment><comment><USER5> The only way to 'fix' Content ID is to kill it. It isn't necessary; it only helps a few gigantic media companies, and they already have effective ways of getting relief by sending automated takedowns.</comment>


On Community Migration from Digg to Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://www.kqed.org/arts/multimedia/index.jsp?id=16960 <comment><USER2> Reddit needs to figure out how to create more subreddits without having to overcome critical mass every single time. I'm sure I'm kicking in an open door here, and I believe I read that they were working on it already, but I haven't seen a real solution so far. The recommendations system theoretically makes it feasible for all articles to go on one big reddit even with a large and diverse user base, but in practice, they're still suffering from a situation where new subreddits are hard to get off the ground while the main page has to be shared by different subcommunities with different interests.

</comment><comment><USER3> According to Compete, at least, reddit is growing and Digg isn't:

<http://snapshot.compete.com/reddit.com+digg.com?metric=vel>

<comment><AUTHOR> According to compete's visitors graph, Digg's month-to-month growth is actually 44.7%, much higher than Reddit's 30.1%.

I looked up the metric you used, and compete.com describes it this way:

"Use Velocity to understand how much more or less time people spent on the site, or their level of engagement. If a site can garner and sustain more of an individual's time it should generally be considered a good thing."

So, it seems that reddit visitors spend more time there than digg users do on digg.com.

<comment><USER3> Oops. I assumed by "velocity" they meant velocity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Digg influx seems to have hurt Reddit quality. Yahoo! started out as a human-edited collection of links; looks like there's a good reason to return to that model.</comment>


After Trump and Putin leave, the Finnish president heads for a drink - <AUTHOR> https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000005762136.html <comment><USER2> President Lincoln rode the train to Washington. No security. He was practically anonymous - just another guy on the train.

People could walk right into the White House and seek an appointment with Lincoln.

After his assassination, everything changed. Presidents got more security, etc. Things really changed again with the advent of the Anarchists in the early 1900s, who assassinated president McKinley. "The Black Hand" is a fascinating read that touches on this.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30971759-the-black- hand](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30971759-the-black-hand)

These days, presidents and other high officials get credible death threats all the time.

<comment><USER3> It's also self-reinforcing. Kill the American president and you're extremely famous, because he is supposed to be the best-protected man.

Kill the Finnish president and spend the rest of your life in prison? Less enticing.

I don't remember who killed Anna Lindh a few years ago. I kind of remember who tried to kill the pope many years ago (spelling etc. gets problematic).

I certainly know (not remember (I haven't been born) who killed JFK.</comment></comment>


Google mashup - find the "web 2.0" startups near you - <AUTHOR> http://www.fourio.com/web20map/ <comment><USER2> This is awesome. The only problem is that there doesn't seem to be any web 2.0 mashups near me... :(

</comment><comment><USER3> How sad, Michigan seems pretty underepresented on that map. :-( I guess Maybe we are too busy making cars and furniture. Here's hoping that changes in the next few years!</comment>


Sara Lacy speaks out after criticized Mark Zuckerberg interview - <AUTHOR> http://www.clubenetwork.com/index.php?option=com_mamblog&Itemid=37&task=show&action=view&id=476&Itemid=37

<comment><USER2> Live Sara alone!!...... not.

Seriously, who gives a sh!t. This is more valleywag type conent, has nothing to do with HN.

</comment><comment><USER3> Who?

<comment><USER4> That was exactly the problem. I walked out of the keynote along with ~60 others around 40 minutes into it. Ridiculous. It was an atrocity.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the downmod - perhaps you were also there and could provide greater insight?

It was a train wreck. I don't mean to fuel the hype on this at all, but noone had any context for who she thought she was and Zuckerberg deserved significantly more respect than she was giving him.</comment></comment></comment>


What are some APIs that you would like CLI clients for? - <AUTHOR>

Inspired by this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5849359 <comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone know of a good directory of APIs?

<comment><USER2> mashape.com</comment></comment>


Mr. Robot - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Robot_(TV_series)

<comment><USER2> I've watched the first episode as the pilot was free to download, so my opinion is based only on that episode. While it was unique in some ways a few lousy tropes managed to sneak in. Like making the love interest a bumbling scatterbrain who needs to be saved. For all I know in later episodes her character develops into a secret mastermind, but in the pilot she was weak.

Not every female character needs to kick ass, just as every male character doesn't need to kick ass, but if you have a small set of core characters with fewer than 50% being female, avoid weakening their character so that they have to be saved every time they walk into a fuck-up. Even just make them mildly competent.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mr Robot feels like the answer to both Matrix and Fight Club. 16 years later, we're still living in this dystopian pre-apocalyptic malaise, and we still have problems, but our solutions didn't work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes - and hackers are still stereotyped as wearing hoodies and speaking street. Sort of annoying really, as I know plenty of hackers who never fitted that stereotype and yet could own everything on sight in a few keystrokes.

<comment><USER3> Naturally, the solution is vigilantism.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple to DOJ: Bite me - <AUTHOR> http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/05/26/apple-to-doj-bite-me/?hpt=hp_t2

<comment><USER2> This article is heavily biased and seems to have been published straight from Apple's PR department.

<comment><USER3> So, if there happened to be a really clear-cut, one-sided case out there, how would an unbiased news organization report on it?

<comment><USER4> "Apple filed response to DoJ." <Link to response.> Possibly a summary of claims.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, but if the situation is clear cut then a good news source should say exactly that.

Just publishing X did Y and alleges Z leads to the current situation where creationists, global warming deniers and so on are given space in news reporting as if these issues were to be decided by personal opinion and not by facts.

<comment><USER6> No, absolutely not. An awful news reporting agency would say "creationists think X, but evolutionists rip them to shreds." That is bad news reportage. Good news reportage would say "creationists say X, evolutionists say Y, the facts that are evident are Z." This is clearly not what CNN have done with this piece. It would be nice if they had.

The simple point is that engaging in inflationary and imprecise colloquial language like "totally rips it to shreds" renders the article pretty much useless for communicating clear facts, _especially_ if there is one clear winner. Don't tell me who's right; that is pointless and communicates only opinion. Tell me the facts, and make them as stark and as clear as possible. "Totally rips it to shreds" is not a fact; it's vague cant wrapped up in metaphor. Bad reportage.

<comment><USER7> I think you're conflating style and substance a little too fully. I can appreciate your objection to "ripped it to shreds," but that's not a very substantive objection to the reporting/analysis.

Your desire not to be told who is right is problematic. Just because opinions on the shape of the earth differ doesn't mean the news media must refrain from telling it's readers the truth. If you want to compare press releases and come to your own conclusion you don't need a staff of reporters for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Get the reply here: [http://ia701206.us.archive.org/6/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.394...](http://ia701206.us.archive.org/6/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.394628/gov.uscourts.nysd.394628.54.0.pdf)

The reply is persuasive in sections as to present Apple fostering competition in the eBooks market. (Lots of comparisons to Amazon's dominant position, indeed it does appear that the iBookStore is aimed at disrupting Amazon's stranglehold.) Which is not unusual, since competition would lead to Apple's gain.

However what is clear is that Apple do have something to answer for, albeit a far less serious offence rather than Anti-trust/collusion.

I suspect this came about so quickly as a result of Amazon lobbyists, rather than a legitimate concern of the government against Apple and the eBook market for the benefit of consumers. I'm of this thinking because the government is typically slow to act and rarely do so preemptive as they have done here. (That and Amazon owning nearly the entire eBook market, stands the most to lose.)

Note, lobbying does not imply that Amazon forced the government, rather they could have simply alerted them to the situation.

As for throwing publishers under the bus, that's a claim that lacks understanding of what a reply should entail. (I.E. you answer the case as it applies to you.)

<comment><USER9> The DOJ antitrust dept has been so emasculated from doing it's actual job that just about the only thing it acts on are open and shut cases with hard evidence like the price fixing here. So some careerist at DoJ had a chance to buff his resume up with a high profile case, got some open and shut evidence and boom here we are. Apple may or may not have been party to this but no one cares and this will die a quiet death later on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Apple and a number of publishers have already settled with the EU Commission [1], which began an investigation before even the DOJ. From a legal standpoint this is not an admission of guilt. Apple believed that either a) the legal costs of mounting a defense were about the same as the potential damages, b) they could not win in the European Courts (this could be because of the interpretation of their anti-trust laws), or c) the PR debacle would harm their brand and reputation too much. I would pick a combination of B and C in this case, though mostly B.

As far as the DOJ anti-trust division is concerned, their job is to investigate and prosecute companies that allegedly partake in anti-competitive behavior that adversely affect consumer prices. They saw a rise in prices as competition increased, which is contrary to how price dynamics are supposed to work in an increasingly competitive market. Given that the source of this rise in prices was due to simultaneous pressure from publishers on Amazon to switch to an agency pricing model from a wholesale pricing model, it makes sense that the DOJ would investigate. This suit will likely take a few years to come to a conclusion.

[1] [http://www.macworld.co.uk/ipad-iphone/news/?newsid=3353332&#...</a>

</comment><comment><USER11> It looks to me like whoever wrote this article has never seen an initial legal statement like this before. It's very common for lawyers to make these sorts of claims early on in an investigation or case.

For example in a drunk driving suit, a good lawyer would immediately claim his clients rights were violated and this or that procedure wasn't followed properly. It usually gets you nowhere and is just legal posturing.

Can any lawyers here give a more technical explanation of this happening?

</comment><comment><USER12> "[AAPL] cuts the government's case to shreds"

Wow, is CNN a news organization or a press release promotion mill?

CNN's one-sidedness made me uneasy enough to research the contrarian opinion, this is the best summary I found:

[http://paidcontent.org/2012/05/14/e-book-class-action-new- de...](http://paidcontent.org/2012/05/14/e-book-class-action-new-details/)

Effectively the evidence in the govt's case shows that:

a) AAPL recognized that they required the collusion of the top 5 publishers to set market pricing, and actively solicited them.

b) AAPL suggested pricing to the top 5 publishers.

I believe in due process, just pointing out that there is clearly more here than CNN's summary allows.

<comment><USER13> It's a CNN-branded opinion blog covering Apple, not a CNN news report.

<comment><USER14> I searched the page for the words blog, opinion, and editorial => zero matches. It does look like an opinion piece, but they should at least label it as such.

<comment><USER15> When I saw the words "Bite Me" in the title, it set certain expectations for what was to follow. I would have been surprised had it been anything but an opinion piece.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In theory a news article is finished when all facts have been stated.

In practice a news article is finished when all facts have been spun.

</comment><comment><USER17> Given a choice between AAPL and AMZN as a source for purchasing "ebooks", which would you prefer?

<comment><USER18> Given those two options, I would choose... the Pirate Bay.

<comment><USER19> this</comment></comment></comment>


Why talent agents for engineers don't exist - <AUTHOR> http://blog.alinelerner.com/why-talent-agents-for-engineers-dont-exist/ <comment><USER3> Another difference between actors and the engineers the OP is talking about is that engineers are salaried employees who do a job search every few years at the most, and actors are self employed freelancers whose jobs last at most a few months. In that sense it almost doesn't make sense to talk about the unemployment rate for actors.

An area where it may make more sense for engineers to have agents is in the freelance space. Any dev shop that has a sales team is doing essentially the same thing.

I would consider paying a finder's fee to an agent-type entity who could find me decent projects and keep my pipeline full so I didn't have to worry about it.

<comment><USER4> That's a difference now, but should it be this way? Realistically, any engineering project you work on should only be lasting a few months. If you built it correctly, you should finish it and hand it off to contractors for maintenance. Top-level engineers should be spending their time implementing hard new projects, not maintaining old ones.

Is there any inherent reason why companies could not hire top engineers on a contractual basis for 6-12 months at a time? Given how specialized many projects are, it seems it would be more efficient to do this than hiring a new specialist full-time for each new project. The only reason I see that companies do not do this now is because it simply isn't the norm.

Also, as an engineer, I would prefer to work on a new project every couple of months.

<comment><USER5> > Is there any inherent reason why companies could not hire top engineers on a > contractual basis for 6-12 months at a time? If you built it correctly, you > should finish it and hand it off to contractors for maintenance. Top-level > engineers should be spending their time implementing hard new projects, not > maintaining old ones.

Many if not most technology companies want their expertise institutionalized, especially when it comes to the most complex aspects of their business. This is where they create the most value and have the greatest opportunity to build competitive advantages. There is no incentive to outsource their high-value work to somebody who is going to be gone after a few months.

This is why companies like Google, Facebook and Apple are willing to lavish the most desirable candidates with significant cash and equity compensation.

> Also, as an engineer, I would prefer to work on a new project every couple > of months.

Become a consultant. You may be able to make a lot more money, _but_ :

1\. You may find that there are no opportunities to work for the type of companies you'd like to work for because they don't hire consultants in any real volume.

2\. Limiting yourself to two or three month engagements will exclude many of the lucrative opportunities, which typically demand multi-month if not years- long commitments.

<comment><USER6> In #2 are the "lucrative opportunities" for consulting on a multi-month/year contract or were you referring to the equity/benefits/stability of being a salaried employee?

<comment><USER5> I was referring to lucrative consulting opportunities.

Side note: the "equity/benefits/stability of being a salaried employee" are somewhat overestimated.

1\. Equity has risks associated with it that are discounted during good times but become painfully obvious when the business cycle turns. Think Google or Facebook are great companies with bright futures? You can buy their shares without having to work for them for 4 years.

2\. If you're working as a high-end consultant, you will easily be earning enough to create a tailored benefits package for yourself. For instance, you can set up a self-directed 401(k) and defer up to $18,000 of your salary (2015 limit). Your business can also contribute up to 25% (or 20% if you're a sole proprietor) of its profit as a profit-sharing contribution. All told, you can stash away up to $53,000/year pre-tax in a 401(k).

3\. Stability is an illusion. Most salaried employees are at-will and can be terminated at any time for any reason, or no reason at all.

<comment><USER6> I completely agree with you. And honestly, I'm surprised how many people on these salary/negotiation HN threads say startup equity is a serious part of their financial plan. I treat any equity offer like Monopoly money -- it's probably worthless, but if not then it's just a nice surprise.

By the way, any advice for salaried engineers who'd like to start consulting? Anything you wish you'd known or things you'd do differently in hindsight?

<comment><USER7> Few people get rich on salary. There are many, many examples of folks rich off of equity. They are clearly different propositions, and the value people assign to them depends on the person.

<comment><USER5> > There are many, many examples of folks rich off of equity.

This is true, but you need to look at who they actually are. The majority of folks who become fabulously wealthy off of equity (read: owning a piece of a business) are the folks who start those businesses and manage to hold on to most or all of the equity.

Most of these businesses are obviously not in tech, but if you want to filter out non-tech companies, the power law distribution of equity-derived wealth in Silicon Valley still doesn't favor employees, even those who join companies early on.

<comment><USER7> And yet I know several personally. Wealthy off of equity from being early employees. Maybe half a dozen. That's enough to make a person believe.

<comment><USER8> Yes, there are anecdotes of individuals who had a large payout from being an early employee. It's a major risk/reward proposition, and the likelihood of the reward is quite low.

It's basically like being paid in lottery tickets. Fine so long as the rest of your salary is enough to pay the bills, not fine if you depend on it for your retirement, and either way, some of us would prefer the well defined payout of cash.

<comment><USER7> Except its not really like that at all. You get paid in cash plus equity. The value of the equity part is somewhat under your control. Hard to affect the value of the lottery ticket.

It may seem hopeless, and indeed many other factors do make good product companies fail. But when other factors do NOT intervene, then the remaining value does depend on your execution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > There are people who still have trouble finding work in the status quo. > Examples might be engineers who:

> don't look good on paper but are actually very good

I think (hope?) I fall into this category. She talks about five on-site interviews being the usual limit for a single job search. After twelve years I have only _ever_ had five, and it isn't for lack of trying.

Actually I think my interview performance history is pretty good. I have had about twelve phone/live screens, of which I passed nine, resulting in five on- site interviews.[1] Those on-sites yielded three offers, of which I accepted two. The problem is, the response rate to my resume submissions is horrid. Even when I have an "in" at the company. I heard too many times while switching between programs at my first employer something to the effect of, "We would have never hired you by looking at your resume, but I'm glad we did." I have other, similar statements concerning underestimation of what I am capable of.

Maybe what I need is more of a marketing specialist than an agent, but I have always imagined that to be the primary job of an agent. I really need someone to help me figure out how to present myself better. I would actually pay for that service; I guess, as she says in the post, there are not enough of me to support a business. Is that something that could be combined with a conventional recruiting operation, though?

[1] Two on-sites I declined, one on-site didn't happen because the company decided not to hire for the position[2], and the third on-site never materialized because the company just stopped talking to me.

[2] Or so they said. Maybe they switched me from "pass" to "fail" after telling me I passed.

<comment><USER10> It has happened to me that I was turned down for an engineering position whose main focus was working with a tool that I had developed the year before, because the other guy had a MSc and I didn't. HR people are weird.

<comment><USER9> That is where I see a big value proposition in agents for engineers, even in "hot" markets: cutting through HR's crap. That doesn't change, no matter how hot or cold the market is. I feel like that has been part of my problem, not knowing how to finesse my way past those gatekeepers.

I still have trouble marketing my relevance to technical people, though. I don't have a very forceful personality, nor am I comfortable talking about myself without becoming (in my mind) a know-it-all douchebag. I need help and coaching on that front, too.

<comment><USER11> This is an interesting side effect of [http://offerletter.io](http://offerletter.io) , I've noticed - we've been aggressively institutionalizing knowledge around many of these kinds of processes. Tends to give folks we work with a leg up.

(Incidentally - We offer precisely this kind of help and coaching - let me know if we can help! mallyvai at offerletter.io :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Aline, this is a fantastic article. I agree with many of the points in principle, but I don't agree with the outcome. I believe a model where candidates pay 3rd parties for precise jobhunting help is economically rational, and can work - it's effectively what we're doing at [http://offerletter.io](http://offerletter.io).

Here's where you and I diverge:

1) Yes, engineers and other in-demand workers have ready access to jobs. I remember when I was looking for a good engineering job out of Amazon, I was basically spammed nonstop by virtually every party on the planet.

2) But the _opportunity cost_ for poor job selection is enormously high. The difference between choosing between a good startup on good terms, and a less- good startup on less-good terms, can literally mean the difference between retiring 20 years early having your work used by millions of people, and just puddling around for a few years with, say, the occasional PyCon lightning talk for visibility.

At [http://offerletter.io](http://offerletter.io) , we are doing precisely this - we are getting paid by engineers, designers and PMs for value added - in this case, during the negotiation process. Our team of Advisors guides candidates on the "last-mile" of offer selection and negotiation in exchange for a cut of the increase.

It makes too much sense - there's massive information asymmetry during the process, companies are full of shit, and many people outside of "the club" \- however you choose to define it - just don't know what they're worth, or how to get it. While we can't justify charging the $10k-$30k that recruiters make, the incentives are still incredibly strong for us to do what we do.

And of course there's the ethical and human component, which is very strong - I tried more traditional recruiting for a while and just raw selling of companies is so tiring. I like helping people first - all of the Advisors do.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure we're actually disagreeing. OfferLetter.io works precisely because you're focused on the negotiation part. There, your incentives are aligned (it's always in your interest and the candidate's to get them more money). And there, it makes sense to pay you because you're only paying if you do end up with a higher cash salary.

If you were to branch out into helping people find jobs, I don't think it would work. All of a sudden, you'd always be incentivized to find people cash- rich, equity-poor positions, largely limiting the pool. Money is important, but at the end of the day, it's just one of many factors. It just happens to be the most easily quantifiable one.

Moreover, if we ignore this disincentive for a moment, if you were to branch out into end-to-end job search (rather than just the negotiation part), you'd quickly become frustrated because for a lot more effort, i.e. everything before the negotiation, you'd be getting much less money than you would if you just struck a deal with the company side o the market instead.

<comment><USER11> If we're talking about incentive alignment being the primary driver, I personally don't believe it's impossible to justify taking an equity cut, if possible and reasonable (10-20%), with the mutual understanding that the outcome is going to be much better if we help with the beginning of the process. Building a reputation for being really awesome would be challenging - people would want to know that it's worth the fee. Two other big blockers:

1) Multiple levels of taxation

2) Startups will be wary of having random third parties on their cap table

There's probably other stuff too. But I don't think it's impossible, just very hard. There are other ethical concerns from this side as well - <USER2> talent agents don't always have the best persona. It's part of why we're avoiding the "Agent" moniker at [http://offerletter.io](http://offerletter.io) and branding ourselves as Advisors instead.

This is a long ways off, of course - there's a lot of work to be done even in at the narrow step of the funnel we're targeting right now.

<comment><USER12> re: #2, that's why god invented derivatives. contrary to popular belief, you CAN write derivatives on your private stock options - the derivatives will just also be worth nothing if the engineer leaves early / company folds / etc. and they will be a tax nightmare even if you take early exercise and handle everything correctly. i'd LOVE to see someone pull this off successfully though.

<comment><USER11> This is a _great_ point. If you have more detail or insight about how we might go about this (or precedent around it) , definitely let me know!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Frankly, I'm surprised that instead of recruiters or agents, there aren't firms dedicated to employee assessment.

The value add to employers would be a standard assessment tool, reduced screening time for employees that can be eliminated quickly based on lack of skill, and using an assessment that is potentially better correlated with good employees than things like degree and school, or previous employer (decreasing both false positives from people who can't hack it despite their credentials, and decreasing false negatives by letting people with the skills demonstrate them).

For prospective employees, you get a single assessment that may open up a lot of jobs. Since the company doing the assessment isn't the one hiring you, they can tell you what you need to work on, even provide training opportunities.

Imagine someone telling you, "You aren't quite what we need, take these onlike courses and pass them and we will almost definitely be able to find someone to hire you."

And by acting as an intermediary between prospective employees and employers, the time cost of submitting resumes to employers that aren't well matched is decreased.

Further you might be partially eligible for a job, but lack specific skills, and they can ask if you are willing to take a temporary pay cut in return for on the job training as you work.

One of the things personally holding me back, is that you really need to be in school to get an internship. I already have a degree, just not in CS, and I'd love to be able to learn on the job at the intern level, instead of feeling stuck unless I go back for a master's degree.

I think there is a real opportunity, not just for such a company, but for a company that creates a standard or standards for assessment and licenses it/them to different companies.

Further, such assessments would be useful to assess not just individuals, but educational programs. Compare performance for people who graduate from different programs, including online training.

<comment><USER14> I think the problem here is just the complexity of the issue. I doubt there can be a standardized test to evaluate you on your software engineering ability. If such a test could exist I'm sure University Degrees and GPAs would be the only job requirement. However, not so sadly, GPAs are still only a good heuristic.

I think the problem of understanding if a person is a capable engineer is so specialized that only a better engineer would be able to evaluate adequately. In which case, are these companies really going to hire and pay engineers competitively to be recruiters/evaluators? And even still, 1. their evaluation would only be for the specialization that was evaluated and 2. Depending on the amount of time spent evaluating, to predict a candidates average performance over time, through stressful times and through calm times, rather than just their perhaps peek or perhaps low performance over the stressful evaluation period, will be exceptionally hard. Maybe I'm wrong but this is just from empirical evidence that I've gathered working with people in university and in the real world during my career.

Don't get me wrong, I agree, as demonstrated by its high barriers to entry, it is a real opportunity if someone is able to simplify or scale this. However, I'm not as optimistic as you seem to be that this is even possible.

I hope I'm wrong, it would sure make my life even nicer. I would just start working as a freelancer, and take six month vacations since it would be so easy to "get back in the game".

<comment><USER13> Maybe you have to be a capable engineer to evaluate others. But you could still potentially do better then HR.

As for GPAs, read [http://qz.com/180247/why-google-doesnt-care-about-hiring- top...](http://qz.com/180247/why-google-doesnt-care-about-hiring-top-college- graduates/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Another niche that can theoretically exist is the "superstar" engineers. If the best engineers got paid 10x more than the worst, the best agents could obtain salary improvements in the 100k's for their clients, for which a commission would make sense. This will probably not exist, for reasons "we will leave for a future blog post" (tm).

<comment><AUTHOR> Heh, I wish 10X engineers got paid 10X more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Agents can and should exist if only for bargaining on salary and benefits. The average person in just about any field could benefit from an agent to negotiate on their behalf.

Most people simply don't negotiate any part of their job beyond initial salary. Sometimes people might negotiate benefits, but that is somewhat rare.

More importantly, unlike traditional contracts with expiration dates, the average person doesn't renegotiate their deal very often or at all. They take what they get from their boss, hoping to get at least a cost of living increase, which is more and more rare.

All of this means that each year you are effectively earning less if you don't renegotiate your deal. What was maybe a good deal 5 years ago is now worth 11% less than it was when you started.

So, unless you are renegotiating your deal, you are agreeing to keep a deal that is less valuable each year.

Knowing that, having an agent or any mechanism to force negotiating on an ongoing basis would be a huge step in the right direction for most people.

<comment><USER17> It would be awesome to have a professional negotiator bargain for salary/benefits. But, I'd be worried that most, if not all, employers would simply refuse to speak with them. How would that even work?

Company: Here's your annual cost-of-living increase. Me: Ugh, I think you should talk to my AGENT! Company: Our policy is to only discuss compensation with the employee. Me: ???

<comment><USER11> [http://offerletter.io](http://offerletter.io) takes a similar but distinct tack - we generally find that advice tends to work better. A little bit of coaching and mentorship can go a long way here. Drop me a line if you want to chat! :-) mallyvai at offerletter.io

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wish agents existed, at least for the contract market. Once a contract is finished, it could take a while until one finds the next gig, so having an agent would definitely help. A dream of mine was (before getting married and 'settling down') to be able to work contracts 6-9 months of the year, and to travel the rest. Temporary contract work would be ideal for that scenario.

I understand why the recruiting market is skewed in favor of recruiters and companies, yet I wish there was a bit more quality for engineers. In my 10+ years in IT, I have only met one reliable recruiter - someone I could call upon when I had a need, and who knew my background and skills. 99% would forget about me as soon as that particular position was filled.

<comment><USER11> Freelance and contract engineers do have options - Aline mentioned [http://www.10xmanagement.com/](http://www.10xmanagement.com/) in her post. There's also [http://toptal.com](http://toptal.com).

<comment><USER19> Can anyone vouch for those services? Are they worth it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think that assessing technical talent is fundamentally different than other types of talent, because technical stuff can be measured more effectively, and talent for writing code or designing and then implementing an architecture is also easier to measure than, say, social skills. However, there are other aspects that we should not underestimate:

1) How well this person works in a team? 2) What's his/her goal in life? Is he "done", and looking to "park" in a job until retirement? Or still very willing to learn a lot? 3) How professional is his work? I mean: does he write documentation, does he care about shipping software that is elegant and functional, etc. Etc.

There are two companies that I admire for what they're doing in this field, at two different stages:

Gild.com - a very unique approach to measuring technical talent, by using a proprietary algorithm that takes your github, stack overflow, etc, mixes all up, adds some juice, and voilà: you have a score. A successful, estabilished company.

CloudAcademy.com - younger and smaller, they mix tech snippets, videos, and an amazing quiz system to assess your skills (currently focusing only on Cloud Computing stuff, e.g. AWS, Azure, Google Compute Platform, Rackspace, VMware vCloud Air). They also added practical labs. What's interesting is that after 20-30 minutes of assessing your skills, they get a very clear picture of what you know and what you don't, which I believe is very hard. (Disclaimer: I am an advisor and investor in the latter.)

</comment><comment><USER21> I've never been through a job application / interview process that didn't result in an offer. 4 interviews, 4 job offers, 3 taken, in about 11 years in this industry.

That probably means I haven't been aiming high enough. But I'm also very selective about who I'll consider interviewing with, yet I'm not particularly active in searching. Unless a company comes to me, and I like the company, I'm unlikely to interview. This pretty much guarantees that I'll never work for a big company unless via acquisition.

I think there's definitely a problem in "matchmaking". I'd like to be approached by more interesting companies doing interesting things, but I'm not interested enough to spend the time to actively seek them out.

Most approaches are by startup of the week types. And I was never contacted in the first 5 years I lived in London, while I was working remotely for a California-based company (Borland then Embarcadero) - it wasn't until I switched to a local job that I turned up on their radar.

<comment><USER17> Your experience is probably well outside of the norm. I remember both tech downturns, and I would have given and arm and a leg for some kind of "agent" during those periods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This business will only grow in the next couple of years. Programming, as a skill, has little-to-no barrier to entry. More and more classes are teaching people how to program.

On one hand, it's great so many people are learning to code. I'm a firm believer in the cause. However, it will also inevitably flood the engineering labor market with a lot of noise.

Companies don't want to spend time sifting through piles of resumes from people who started programming in rails six months ago. "Talent agencies" offer a nice value prop to companies: filter out the noise. I suspect we will start to see more of these companies popping up in the next few years, and the business model will gain traction as more of the labor force moves into engineering.

</comment><comment><USER22> Would a Talent Agent work for remote workers? Lots of engineers I know would love to work remotely, but when they tried, they couldnt find high paying consistent jobs without putting in considerable effort marketing and building relationships. Could be worth looking into.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an interesting idea. I expect there may be some opportunity here, at least while working remotely isn't ubiquitous.

<comment><USER22> Only a few people can make remote work for them. Its hard, you have be very focused and well planned. And you have to find other social opportunities. I dont see a lot of companies, specially startups allowing it.

<comment><USER23> I would suggest joining Toptal. It's not that hard and you do have a flexibility regarding working hours and availability. You can read about Toptal experience at [http://cakecoded.com/article/toptal- review](http://cakecoded.com/article/toptal-review) or [https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20141023135603-2...](https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20141023135603-26354472-why- have-i-joined-toptal)

I wrote the last one, and I'll be happy to connect you to my co-workers that can answer any other question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Headhunters use this same sort of model. For example, take a look at the finance industry. They interview talented, young people with 2 to 5 years of experience for specialized positions (private equity, investment banking, corporate finance), then try to match up that person with one of the positions in their database. The potential new hire isn't charged a dime. The headhunter charges the hiring firm a percent of the new hire's starting salary (30% to 50%).

The assumption behind this model is that:

1) Companies are willing to pay for the best talent

2) No in-house capability to recruit or choose to spend their time on the core function of their business rather than screen individuals

3) (Salary + placement fee) > cost to recruit that person themselves

</comment><comment><USER25> (Cofounder of 10x Management here.)

Thanks for the shout-out, Aline! You point out the main difference in our models, which is exactly what makes our talent agency work: the key is the focus on contract/freelance placement.

Recruiters who do full-time placement optimize for the short-term -- a single transaction -- which leads to all sort of misaligned incentives and shady practices. With 10x, we work with the same talent over the course of years, so we optimize for the long term and help the people on our roster for (ideally) the duration of their careers. And the talent is more than happy to pay for our services.

>>> "Agents make sense when it's hard to find a job or when the opportunity cost of looking for work is high enough to justify paying someone else.... For engineers, because the shortage is in labor and not jobs, paying out a portion of your salary for a task you can easily do yourself doesn't make much sense."

This reminds me of the "adverse selection" argument we hear a lot, i.e. the best programmers have no trouble finding work, so wouldn't an agency only attract people who aren't good enough to source their own opportunities? The simple answer to this: Tom Cruise has no problem finding work, but he still has an agent. He wants to spend his time acting, not negotiating, invoicing, collecting, etc.

You also mention that the talent agency model works for niche skills, but then you say there isn't a big enough market for these skills. I'd disagree with the second half of that. Technology is getting increasingly specialized. Software, hardware, electrical, all have sub-fields and sub-sub-fields and sub-sub-sub-fields. The same general model applies to most of these sub-sub- sub-fields, and there are absolutely enough of them to justify a market.

In fact, the niche skills lend themselves especially well to the talent agency model, since companies don't necessarily need to employ those people full time. Data science is a good example of this... a lot of companies could benefit from the insights of a data scientist, but most of them don't need a salaried data scientist on staff. Through 10x, companies large and small have a la carte access to pre-vetted specialists (and generalists), on demand.

</comment><comment><USER26> I used to have an agent. We tried really hard but companies pretty much refused to work with us or worked very reluctantly. I thought the deal was really good, I do my awesome work and my agent gets me in front of best places I could do that work, but unfortunately we couldn't make it work.

When I say hard, mostly we tried for few months and it didn't work.

P.S. To clarify, I would happily pay a cut from my rate to my agent, that was the deal. I wouldn't mind upfronting as well, but we both knew each other well.

<comment><USER11> This things take time :-) If either of you are really phenomenal and well- known then it should be possible - good people have a lot of leverage. It's not unusual for certain directors, C-level people, etc, to bring in third parties to negotiate on their behalf or work with them during the process, for example.

What's your background? are you still looking?

<comment><USER26> That was my thinking and certainly would help to have someone negotiate and present you properly. I am not looking but if you ping me, we can be in touch. My background is rails/javascript, I am lead at parkwhiz at the moment.

I always felt that relationship between recruiters and us was not right, both sides are not motivated to build relationships. I did build some and got some really nice people to help me when I need it. But this is more exception then the rule.

<comment><USER11> I started [http://offerletter.io](http://offerletter.io) to help with this :-) [http://linkedin.com/in/mallyvai](http://linkedin.com/in/mallyvai) \- add me!

-Vaibhav

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Interesting read although it seems overly focused on the differences between Hollywood and certain types of engineering in the average difficulty of finding a job. I suspect it's more about the huge differences in how the market works for typical actors and typical engineers as opposed to their relative employment rates. And some of it probably boils down to "it's just the way things are done."

</comment><comment><USER28> Remark:

If I could pair with a "engagement specialist" who would find me a reliable stream of contract work at the usual rates for contract work (i.e., adequate to handle benefits) & skim off the percentage, I'd be extremely open to that idea.

Marketplaces like, e.g., odesk, are simply worthless to me.

</comment><comment><USER29> > Engineers were super excited about this. Until I mentioned the part where > they'd have to pay me, that is.

It's a curious thing in an age where people prefer to cut out the middleman-- e.g. stock brokers & travel agents. Some people still want (need) their own Jerry Maguire to find a job.

<comment><USER30> Depends on what the middleman provides. If it's domain expertise that'll take time and money to gain, they're useful. If it's just connections, well, the Internet is making that obsolete.

And if it's just storage, Amazon's breathing down your neck. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It sort of happens for freelancers in UK. Recruiter gets the cut of what employer is paying, frequent job changes are very likely (2 years in a "worst" case) so good candidates are worth taken care of.

</comment><comment><USER32> If the distinction is who writes their cheques, aren't they just called marketing people, and they work on the scale of selling consulting teams?</comment>


A debt jubilee is the only way to avoid a depression - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/21/debt-jubilee-is-only-way-avoid-depression/ <comment><USER2> I'm someone that has never borrowed money long term. I have credit cards but I pay them off at the end of the month. I have zero debt. A debt jubilee would be very unfair to all of us who don't like and don't have debt.

But these are extreme circumstances under very hard times so I am 100% for debt forgiveness. If we don't the payment of debt will suck up most of the available money and there will be little for the overall economy. I dought that we would go into a depression since the government safety net would go into effect. We are starting to see it now. But growth will come to a crawl and stagflation will show its ugly face as production slows and the money supply increases. Also, companies will start to layoff workers due to a lack of consumer demand and make matters worse. The social aspects of unemployment might even be worse than the pandemic itself.

I also see nationalism increasing and leading to the destabilization of many governments.

We need to get past the fairness aspect and know that if we are selfish we will all lose in the long term. This is the time for debt forgiveness.

The way to get past the feeling of unfairness is to have the federal reserve buy a huge chunk of the debt and forgive it outright or have people pay it with zero interest over a very long long term where it has little impact on the household.

There are no easy answers but debt forgiveness is a good starting point.

</comment><comment><USER3> What about all the people who were responsible and managed their debt?

<comment><USER4> I do contracting work. Many of my clients pay late, not so much because they want to pay late, but because they have a lot of debt to juggle. They end up taking loans, which messes up their cash flow and makes them prioritize paying off banks over contractors.

So as a result, people end up owing me tens of thousands of dollars. I've stopped contracting, because it was pointless to do this and not get paid, and settled for a less productive, full time job. If people just had more money, I think they could actually pay more.

We probably have to clamp down more on debt afterwards, though. It's only a way for rich people to get richer. It would be ideal if banks acted like VCs and shared the risk.</comment></comment>


New gadget extracts evidence from cell phones - <AUTHOR> http://www.newbritainherald.com/articles/2010/05/17/news/doc4bf200be2b09e276969185.txt

<comment><USER2> FTA:

"With the Internet it has exploded, but a lot of chief and command officers didn't understand and chose to put their resources in things like burglary or homicides."

This is probably the most egregious example of justifying something "for the children". I'd much rather the police department put resources into catching murders. Murder is worse.

</comment><comment><USER3> These aren't particularly new.</comment>


Should You Choose a Female Doctor? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/well/doctors-male-female-women-men-heart.html <comment><USER2> I ended up with one for a time due to insurance hassles. She was great. One of the best experiences I've had.

Having struck a few discussions about this, I've settled on being gender agnostic. Good doctors can consult where needed, and good patients can communicate well enough to indicate when needed.

I had the discussions with others, some who have strong gender preferences, some who didn't. I wanted perspective. Just an inclusive body of opinion to consider, FWIW.

All doctors are high value people. They have put in the work, and while they vary as people do, I would not want discrimination limiting them. They went in to fix the people, and the vast majority of them are all about doing that.</comment>


Verizon Routing Millions of IP Addresses for Cybercrime Gangs - <AUTHOR> http://www.spamhaus.org/news/article/726/ <comment><USER2> Verizon is also allowing spammers to abuse Vtext, their email-to-SMS gateway with spoofed domains. No SPF/DKIM checks so they can forge email From headers and send out tens of thousands of spam text messages: [http://blog.unto.net/a-bug-in-the-system-or-why-isps- should-...](http://blog.unto.net/a-bug-in-the-system-or-why-isps-should-use- spf.html)

<comment><USER3> We've found that DKIM keys are often if not always ignored by major mail carriers.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. I found that my custom-domain Fastmail address went from spam to the inbox in GMail the moment both SPF and DKIM were set up correctly.

<comment><USER3> I think the presence makes a difference, and SPF is often at least partially respected. But I think DKIM is so often incorrectly configured that most major mail carriers just decide they have to let it through anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Starving spammers of IPs is not really a solution to spam anyway. Reforming smtp is. And it is long long long overdue...

What I don't understand is that pretty much everyone has an incentive to eliminate spam. ISPs to reduce traffic, emails providers to produce a better service and spend less time dealing with spam. Users for obvious reasons. Only the NSA enjoys the current unencrypted status quo. Why doesn't it happen? Why are we stuck with a 30y protocol?

<comment><USER6> The incentives aren't aligned right. Every business will still need SMTP to receive email from outsiders, and through that SMTP will come spam. Even if two businesses decide to switch to a better protocol between them, they're still running SMTP to reach anyone else.

And unless you permit sending a single message to both SMTP and better-than- SMTP recipients without any UI awareness, you've built a product that's strictly worse than SMTP for end users.

You could add features to email to make a more compelling product, and then kill seamless integration with other SMTP users and still have a better product. (See e.g. Slack. Or Facebook, for personal email.) And then maybe in many many years nobody will want email any more. But that won't be quick.

<comment><USER5> The market is very concentrated. If gmail, yahoo, microsoft and comcast announce that they will gradually increase the spam level on non-"new smtp" traffic, you can bet that adoption rate will stellar. Yes smtp will have to be around for a while but if you treat any legacy mail traffic as suspicious once it becomes <10%, I think it will go away within 3-5 years.

<comment><USER6> Most of those providers already enforce DMARC between themselves, which provides all the anti-spam benefit you could hope for from a new protocol. (In terms of protocol beauty, it's awful, but in terms of functionality it does what you want.)

If Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Comcast announced that they are making it more likely that outside email (from online stores, from individual Exchange installations, etc.) will be marked as spam _when it 's not actually spam_, people will find new email hosts. Somehow.

If they just want to mark traffic as spam when it is, they're already doing that.

<comment><USER5> I am not so sure. Senders are more concerned about their emails not appearing as spam in gmail than the other way round. If all it takes is to update their software, I believe they will do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is too ironic for me. I've been fighting for almost a year to convince Verizon that the emails my server sends are not spam.

I got nowhere. Their forms to be unblocked just reply "Yes you are a spammer, Bye". Contacting a human has been futile.

And this is the same place that is ranked as the top host for spammers?

<comment><USER8> Actually, it's not really that surprising that the top host for spammers would (a) be bad at distinguishing spammers from non-spammers; and (b) know it has a problem and flail around aggressively trying to shut down spammers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Would filtering based on the bogon list fix this? Is the bogon list still a thing?

<comment><USER10> Indeed it is. Team Cymru are (afaik) one of the best sources for this currently: [http://www.team-cymru.org/bogon-reference.html](http://www.team- cymru.org/bogon-reference.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm no fan of spam, but this seems to tie in to net neutrality. I'm not sure I want verizon deciding who is good or bad on the internet.

<comment><USER12> It's not a net neutrality issue, these are bogons. A bogon is a block of IP addresses being announced by a network that shouldn't be announcing them. For instance, if you own the IP block 192.0.2.0/24, and then I announce a route to 192.0.2.0/24 from my network, my announcement is a bogon.

Bogons are unacceptable regardless of what they're being used for, because the announcer is essentially hijacking those IP addresses. In this case the addresses being hijacked aren't being used, but they still don't belong to the group using them.

Any ISP that propagates BGP announcements from their customers should have filters in place to prevent this from happening. Verizon isn't doing their due diligence.

<comment><USER13> I thought a bogon was an Australian hillbilly? Hrmphf...

<comment><USER14> That's a bog _a_ n.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Cui bono?

They make coin from the spammers, right? Might have a little something to do with their negligent complicity.

</comment><comment><USER16> Looks like extending BGP with certifications won't help against this type of network hijacking.

What's most troubling is that Verizon ignores the anti-spam efforts. Did someone fall in deep sleep while reading the mails?!

</comment><comment><USER17> Verizon routes millions of IP addresses for people who cheat on their taxes, beat their wives, smoke crack on the weekends, and litter on the subway.

<comment><USER18> Well if those people lawfully own those IP addresses I don't see why Verizon should stop.

If the people stole those IP addresses, then something should be done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How about spamhaus.org just go to court then? It is bad idea to let verizon decide what documents are forged.

</comment><comment><USER20> Good. Do we really want ISP's (or anyone) deciding who and who is not a "cybercrime gang" anyway? It's trivial to expand the current vogue definition.

<comment><USER21> Uh. Replace "cybercrime gang" with " _people that do not own these IPs_ " and reread the article.

<comment><USER20> In another universe, a "cybercrme gang" lost it's /16 today due to a xyz regulatory body's decision deeming it as such.

"In addition, spamming from these stolen IP addresses is a felony under the US CAN-SPAM Act." said another way.... "In addition, sending information in a unauthorized fashion is a felony under the US CAN-SPAM Act."

Should we really be cheerleading more rules and tighter restrictions on comms? Uh. Lets require biometrics to xmit!

<comment><USER21> If you're against the entire concept of allocating IPs, I can't help you there.

<comment><USER20> I'm against the implied idea that this is a problem we need more rules to fix. If V's peers are really annoyed, they can take their own action.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you pay for good documentations? How much? - <AUTHOR> I deal a lot with APIs, it seems to me that the bigger the company it is the less they care about API docs. Would you pay for good, well written, updated docs? How much? <comment><USER2> I believe [https://readme.io](https://readme.io) is doing quite well, so I would venture to say, yes, people would pay over $59/mo for it. Is that what you mean? Or do you mean you would rewrite documentation for popular APIs so that they don't suck?

<comment><USER3> (Founder of ReadMe here!)

Yup! Companies definitely invest time and money into docs, especially at big companies. And smaller, cooler companies like Stripe and Twilio are showing them how important it is.

To answer the original question, technical writing contractors are very common! To get started, I'd highly recommend getting involved with Write The Docs. They have two big conferences each year, a Slack channel, and almost every city has a meetup: [http://www.writethedocs.org/](http://www.writethedocs.org/)</comment></comment>


How a $20 tablet from India could blindside PC makers, educate billions - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/26244/how-a-20-tablet-from-india-could-finish-off-pc-makers-educate-billions-and-transform-computing-as-we-know-it/ <comment><USER2> My country (Uruguay) deployed the OLPC, but the problem is that teachers are not prepared to take advantage of it. I worry that India will make the same mistake.

I interviewed some teachers, and they praised the fact that most children were inquisitive and taught themselves how to use the main programs quickly. But they also cricicized that they disrupted classes too much, and the lack of support from the education ministry.

Teachers are much more resistant than kids to use them.

Another problem is that the XO laptops break A LOT, and when they're functional, kids forget to charge them before class, no idea how a tablet will fare.

I also believe that the tablet form factor is much better suited for class use. I dislike the fact that the screen in a laptop breaks visual contact (tablets are much better at that), and laptops are not the ideal form factor for books (I'd rather have e-ink, but a tablet would be multipurpose).

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazing how something with the potential to impact so much gets so little attention because it's not a kickstarter?

<comment><USER4> I don't know, I'm trying not to be negative here but the company mentioned and the numerous under $x (where x= 200, 100, 20) Indian computer stories that have the potential to change Indian education have mostly been vapourware and/or failures.

Contrast this (and here I try to redeem myself in terms of positiveness) to the Raspberry Pi project which not only delivered but over delivered, even though there were delays.

<comment><USER5> The first version of this product was criticised; the second version is better.

(<http://www.akashtablet.com/aakash/index.html>)

There's a commercial version that anyone can buy. This is more than $20! But it's still cheap and reasonably specc'd.

(<http://www.akashtablet.com/ubislate/index.html>)

Some comments yesterday (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4769265>) suggested that they're already building 100,000 units, which is pretty good.

<comment><USER2> The linked articles have some interesting information as well.

<http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/15/hardware-is-dead/>

Decently spec'd tablets are already selling U$ 35 in China (though, from personal experience, the real cost is higher due to lack of quality control).

Edit: the same thing happened with the 1st gen Aakash: "Hundreds of Aakashes arrive at IIT Rajasthan for testing; a third of the devices don't start at all."

I'm also excited about the potential of tablets as enablers of new business models :) . It's a nice time to be an entrepreneur :)

<comment><USER5> Someone tried shipping Kindles to Africa. It wasn't a great experience.

And they've tried using the big Kindle DX in US colleges, but that was also not a great success.

It's a shame, because it is exciting tech.

US Colleges - ([http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e185bce2-b76a-11df-839a-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e185bce2-b76a-11df-839a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2C0wNaK5Z))

WSJ calls Kindles "rugged" ([http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230376810457746...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303768104577462683090312766.html))

Gigohm says nearly half the Kindles sent to Ghana broke ([http://gigaom.com/2012/04/27/worldreader-kids-e-readers- kind...](http://gigaom.com/2012/04/27/worldreader-kids-e-readers-kindles/))

But Worldreader have turned this into an opportunity, by launching an independent repair centre ([http://www.the-digital- reader.com/2012/06/13/worldreader-lau...](http://www.the-digital- reader.com/2012/06/13/worldreader-launches-first-independent-kindle-repair- center/#.UKD4r-OTtR4))

Recycling electronics could be valuable for developing nations. It's such a shame that unscrupulous people ignored any semblance of safe and ethical working conditions, and now it's not legal to send electronics from the UK to developing nations to get recycled.

<comment><USER2> I agree that the current Kindle is not the best format for college - I have one, and I'm doing a business degree (technology MBA).

In my experience, both paper and traditional tablets (such as the iPad) are much better suited for case studies and reference material - the refresh rate and lack of touchscreen of the older Kindles are both dealbreakers, and it would need a tablet-like UX to be more usable.

I actually use my Android cell phone for classes, download the PDFs of the case studies and all that. I still prefer paper (I'm used to spreading multiple pages around, something you can't do with a tablet. Maybe with a Microsoft "Surface".. err Microsoft PixelSense).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Markdown page – Create a web page with just markdown - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/oscarmorrison/md-page <comment><USER5> Props for the simplicity in getting something published. That's really cool.

Along similar lines, I went back to LibreOffice recently and made a few web pages with it, just to try it out. It worked better than I expected.

After adding a simple PHP controller to the mix, injecting some CSS for responsiveness and other tags as needed, I have been impressed with how easy it makes publishing. If a single-pager is what's needed (or multi-pagers perhaps; I just haven't tried it yet), if what matters most is getting links and information public, it's a useful tool.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is kind of neat but why not just use pandoc?

pandoc -s input.md -t html -o output.html

[https://pandoc.org/](https://pandoc.org/)

<comment><USER7> Why would you want to constantly recompile documents every time you make an edit to them? Why would you want to juggle two files for every document you produce?

<comment><USER8> For what it's worth, this is the problem GitLab Pages solves. A simple "git push" to a properly to figured repo will rebuild and redeploy your static site, the actual html output doesnt go into the repo.

<comment><USER9> This is for people who don't want to setup and manage a deployment pipeline hooked up to a git source code repo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone for taking the time to look, and give some feedback. Most definitely better options out there, but I was really aiming for simple, and low tech knowledge to get a md page on the internet.

I added a wiki page [https://github.com/oscarmorrison/md- page/wiki](https://github.com/oscarmorrison/md-page/wiki) explaining a couple of use cases, and some more details. Feel free to leave more feedback / open issues. Thanks Oscar!

</comment><comment><USER10> There has been Strapdownjs[1] around for quite a while now. It's simple, supports some theming as well. Anyway, good luck with this. Always fun to build something from scratch.

[1] - [http://strapdownjs.com/](http://strapdownjs.com/)

<comment><USER11> This is more evidence to me that <xmp> needs to not go away, I know browsers are considering it and I really hope they don't go that route.

I use <xmp> for html code commenting - see the source code at [https://elementcss.neocities.org/](https://elementcss.neocities.org/)

The one thing these markdown examples are missing is a way to do grids! I bet there's a clever way to make columns and rows work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like it a lot, both concept and execution. Little nitpicking:

> Create a webpage by just writing markdown, nothing else!

The "nothing else" bit looks inaccurate, there's a script tag at the very beginning.

<comment><USER13> Nitpicking more: raw html (including script tags) is valid markdown! So it technically is markdown and nothing else.

<comment><USER12> Noted! Then again, super nitpicking, if that script tag in the beginning is part of the markdown document, then it should also be displayed in the final document.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Throwing in to the list of alternatives to this: [http://mdwiki.info](http://mdwiki.info) which actually does not even require you to create a .html file, but just plain .md files and a standard/template version of mdwiki as index.html.

Disclaimer: I am the author of it, and it is nowadays unmaintained.

<comment><USER15> Why did you archive the repo?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> A neat party trick, but what actual use-case is there that isn't better served by server-side Markdown to HTML conversion?

<comment><USER17> Here are three use-cases:

1\. You are editing documents locally on your computer. This lets you double- click to view nice markdown in a web browser with a `file://` url.

2\. You are editing a website, but don't have control over the server-side code.

3\. You don't want to install a markdown rendering library on the server.

<comment><USER16> > You are editing a website, but don't have control over the server-side code.

You don't have control over the server-side code, but it will let you inject

...as an optional way to use the library. Browsers won't (shouldn't?) try to render the contents of the script tag before you get to it, so it would act like a typical SPA.

<comment><USER24> Yesss, finally a use-case for the `<noframes>`-hack! This is actually even better than the approach of OP since we're guaranteed to get a plain text representation of the text (instead of the browser parsing it as HTML).

example.html:

        <noframes>

        # Header
        Welcome to my simplest site

        - <USER2>
        - <USER3>
        - <USER4>

mdpage.js:

        document.write("

");

        document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function() {
          var script = document.createElement('script');
          script.src = "https://unpkg.com/showdown";
          document.head.appendChild(script);

          var noframes = document.querySelector('noframes');

          script.onload = function() {
            var converter = new showdown.Converter({
              emoji: true,
              underline: true,
            })
            converter.setFlavor('github')
            main.innerHTML = converter.makeHtml(noframes.textContent)
          };
        });

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks @judofyr + @matt-tingen. I just updated it to use the 'noscript' opening tag. Good idea, and solved my normal html not working problem! Thanks a bunch!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder what effect having a page solely in markdown has on SEO? Without markup for headers, links, etc, how will search engines prioritize content? Will they use the raw content or the parsed HTML?

<comment><USER26> I'd imagine anyone particularly concerned with SEO would be likely to prefer a more fully-featured method of content management anyway.

<comment><USER27> One of the problems of the modern web.

Sure we can add JavaScript and make the web work the way we want, like this example, but many more... but what about SEO?

For example, I had a page for my app, it was very minimalistic and pretty, I targeted the 400 msec cold loading time, instead of a screenshot, I had a very well encoded h.265 screen recording (it's okay, people who can run the app, can certainly see the video), that video didn't cost more than a well optimized JPEG.

But I had to drop the video, and only load it after the JPEG loaded because of SEO reasons. Google isn't smart enough to recognize the video unless it's a YouTube video.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I looked for something exactly like this a while ago. Thank you very much for posting this.

</comment><comment><USER29> Awesome, nice work! I like the simple usage of just adding a script tag to the top. I also experimented with this idea[1].

[1] - [https://github.com/hachibu/md_spa](https://github.com/hachibu/md_spa)

</comment><comment><USER30> [http://oscarmorrison.com/md-page/](http://oscarmorrison.com/md-page/) shows only a blank page on firefox.

I even disabled NoScript for the site. Thanks, I'd rather have plain HTML.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just tested in on FF 62. Seems fine. But yeah I have really only tested it on chrome

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Sorry to sound cynical but this 10-15 minutes of work?

<comment><USER32> time well spent

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> So how does this work exactly?

It looks like you wrote a script.js file, which calls showdown.js library (converting markdown to html). A uglified version called `md-page` is made pulling both resources

Basically, the script does following

1) wait for page to load

2) add css-styles via javascript

3) shove all the markdown in a variable "markdown", passing it as one giant string

4) Add settings for showdown.js

5) Rewrite entire markdown on page to HTML via showdown.js

6) Append to body and render

I could fork it and add breakpoints / run debugger but this is what I got from looking at source code

<comment><AUTHOR> yep. you're 100% on the money. no wizardry here. Couple of extra features like ability to hash link, and external url open in new window. but that it

<comment><USER33> [https://github.com/oscarmorrison/md- page/blob/master/script....](https://github.com/oscarmorrison/md- page/blob/master/script.js)

Line 43 to 48, I am not entirely sure what that hashlink does. What is the setTimeout function for? Could you expand on that?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's to make linking to headers work. Eg oscarmorridon.com/md-page#code

As the element doesn't exist at time of first load this is a work around to focus on id once content is rendered in html

<comment><AUTHOR> * [https://oscarmorrison.com/md-page/#code](https://oscarmorrison.com/md-page/#code)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Interesting. Out of curiosity, does anyone know if is there a webserver that natively converts Markdown to HTML?

<comment><USER35> Caddy server has this feature baked in: [https://caddyserver.com/docs/markdown](https://caddyserver.com/docs/markdown)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> [Markdeep]([https://casual- effects.com/markdeep/features.md.html](https://casual- effects.com/markdeep/features.md.html)) has waaay more features than this.

<comment><USER37> So does HTML/CSS+JS. A project aiming at simplicity probably isn't one to criticize for lack of features.

<comment><USER36> the mechanism for using both the projects is the same -- include a JS file. If the effort to use both is the same, why would I not use the one that has more features?

<comment><USER38> Maybe he doesn't need the features, or maybe it is slower

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> That will be usefull. Nice work.

</comment><comment><USER40> Why can't web browsers render basic markdown natively (no plugins)? Wouldn't that be a much simpler and more secure parser than HTML?

A _Markdown Web_ would look like the early Web.

<comment><USER41> [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7763](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7763)

<comment><USER40> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> static site frameworks like jekyll, hugo and gatsbyjs support this.

gatsbyjs supports md, yaml and external graphql

</comment><comment><USER43> Is it me or you folks just invented HTML?</comment>


We spent 12 years building Airbnb and lost almost all of it in 4-6 weeks [video] - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/RileyCNBC/status/1275098889389998080 <comment><USER2> Sorry, but I really cannot be sorry for Airbnb. I'd actually be glad if Airbnb goes down.

It has made life so much harder for people needing to find a home (either property or long-term rental), made prices go up (sometimes insanely), wasted so many housing in cities. I'm not even sure I find their business really "legal" as it's not so much different from hotel trade (not sure of the wording here) and could be considered as unfair competition.

Of course if it means loss of job for people working there that's something I am sorry for. But I have great hopes they will find another great job.</comment>


Ask HN: Who is working in Healthcare? - <AUTHOR> What kind of projects have you been working on in the Health IT space? <comment><USER2> I have a very very very backburner project for using game technology to teach health principles. Someday, I hope to develop it further.

</comment><comment><USER3> An ehr customized for optometrists.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you guys do in terms of interoperability?</comment></comment>


Hurd, SeL4, Thoughts - <AUTHOR> https://nalaginrut.com/archives/2019/12/11/hurd%2c%20sel4%2c%20thoughts <comment><USER2> Kubernetes and gnu Hurd I believe cannot be compared it's like saying banana and a cart of apple are same. Kubernetes is some simple container orchestration later more specific to Linux with cgroups and namespace support in kernel. It is done similar by LXD (not as popular as k8s).

I think microkernel architecture did not take off because the device drivers required for inter operating with different devices and chips were not developed for those specific microkernels.

Linux benefited from work on BSD and other flavours of Unix besides gnu. GNU Hurd was altogether new with not much industry support.

Indeed Linux faces device drivers issues even today. Apple took mach micro kernel and used BSD userland utilities and built a powerful drivers for its device eco-system so it worked.

The day Hurd ir any other alternative has support it will work. May be if google can built it for Zircon and use it in Fuschia.

We need to build an eco-system around the microkernel for gnu if need it to be used widely, until such time it will remain on fringes.</comment>