"We are working on getting Sublime Text 3.0 final ready to launch" - <AUTHOR> https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/is-sublime-no-longer-updated/30712/11 <comment><USER2> I'm a (more or less daily) Sublime Text user, in addition to a few other editors.

After reading through the thread, the developer's points seem to be rational, coherent and well-delivered. I can understand some of the frustration from users, but not the outright hostility towards the end of the thread. They only have so much bandwidth, and the responses feel very "patient" to me.

To be honest, I've been using Sublime Text since before work started on version 3 and I don't really understand why there is such a fixation on the update cycle. Unless I'm mistaken it's only two full time developers, and historically it's been only one. The dev releases feel _very stable_ to me, though of course I can't claim my workflow is the same as everyone else's.

I can't think of any particular features the text editor feels like it's missing. They seem to be nailing it, in my opinion. I ascribe to the philosophy that perfection occurs when there is nothing left to remove, not nothing left to add - they are relatively slow with adding new features, but the editor is blazingly fast and consistently delivers the experience I want in an editor.

For what it's worth, my opinion here is colored by the fact that I don't really think about the development cycle of most of the software I use. I couldn't tell you what major point release I'm on for 1Password. _I think_ it's 6 on macOS, but I'm not confident. I just update it when it gives me an alert. Similarly, I don't really know what version I'm using for JetBrains PyCharm or CLion, and I've never followed the development roadmap. All I typically know is that I'm on the most recent version for the desktop software I use, and if something seems buggy or odd I check the changelog and then maybe look into it.

I'd be genuinely interested in hearing why people seem to be disappointed with Sublime Text, and what features they wish it supported.

<comment><USER3> Something that I didn't like about Sublime was the random radio silence.

They'd do a few regular beta releases, then just randomly _complete_ radio silence for months, a year or so - then, bam, another release, some "I'm not dead" activity on the forum from jon, then randomly silent again - maybe for a month, maybe a year - maybe forever.

The editor was good - although not free of bugs - but that complete lack of communication - did I just buy dead software? will there _ever_ be another release?

That makes it hard to have confidence that the software will continue to be supported - and hard to build a community around. The plugin ecosystem has definitely suffered a lot because of this stop-start cycle.

Bear in mind that the bugs that Sublime _does_ have often hit plugin authors hardest and they're the ones that need docs & help from the original developer, who's often been completely AWOL for months or years at a time.

<comment><USER4> This pretty closely matches my experience. I was trying to develop plugins for ST3 and it was a complete bitch.

Documentation is rare, often wrong, and the best you can do is try to find another plugin and dig through the source for that to determine how to implement something.

Or you can ask a question and... radio silence for months.

So I left.

I went to VSCode and Atom, both of which are more active and (total blessing for plugin developers) have source code available for viewing.

I really like Sublime. I think it's a great editor. I don't use it because I have better things to spend my time on than hoping a single dev gets the bandwidth to answer my question, or that I can hunt down some obscure plugin that happens to have the correct 'magic' that's not documented anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been running this beta 3 version for years now and it's been rock stable. To the point that I sometimes wondered what the difference was with SublimeText 2.

This final v3 might involve a licence upgrade but if there's one dev team I happily support it's these guys, what an awesome product.

<comment><USER6> > _I 've been running this beta 3 version for years now and it's been rock > stable._

Same experience. OS X, lots of plugins (Python, JS, Go, JSON, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love Sublime.

I'm not sure what to say about the belief some people have that 'we need releases twice a month' for a stable, high-performance product. I don't want or need product releases twice a month unless there's a good reason.

I feel like the regular releases crowd is mostly cargo cult driven by a desire to emulate the big web companies who are constantly - and often infuriatingly - tweaking their products for whatever reason.

From what I can see, this desire/need for constant tweaks arises mostly because web companies tend to ship very buggy products, and because there seems to be this belief that a company is going out of business if their web page that doesn't change often enough.

<comment><USER8> Bingo.

Very relatedly, I kind of wish TeX Live would release _less_ frequently -- the 4-GB-of-crap song and dance is a pain, even once a year.

<comment><USER9> random question, is there a xelatex compiler that works online? I only really use LaTeX for my CV (though I would like to write papers in it!) so it'd be nice not having to have that huge MacTeX install on my hard drive all the time.

<comment><USER8> i think Overleaf ([https://www.overleaf.com/](https://www.overleaf.com/)) is kind of what you had in mind?

It shouldn't be too hard to combine [https://github.com/thomasWeise/docker- texlive](https://github.com/thomasWeise/docker-texlive) and a linode server or something into a LaTeX CaaS, either, but I can't say I've ever done so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like Sublime Text and would be happy to pay around $15 to upgrade to v3 but anymore and I will stop and really think about what I am actually spending my money on. Yes Sublime Text is very nice but the world has changed with the arrival of Atom and Visual Studio Code (not to mention Visual Studio Community being a free for many people).

I use Sublime Text for personal projects I make no money from so obviously I don't want to spend out much money when I can get other excellent editors for free.

<comment><USER11> what does VSCode do that sublime3 doesn't? I ask as a sublime user who took vscode for a brief spin and then put it down when I wasn't quickly wowed.

<comment><USER12> Frequent high-quality updates, lots of communication, great plugin ecosystem, open source.

<comment><USER13> > Frequent high-quality updates, lots of communication

Genuine question: does this really make a difference in your day to day usage? I feel like once I've learnt the ~20% of features that are useful to me on a regular basis everything on top is marginal gains. Im really not that bothered by loads of new features.

<comment><USER14> Yup I can relate. I would change the "high-quality updates" to "lots of integration taken care by the community".

I really really do not want to spend time to figure out on my own how to integrate this or do that (unless I need to) and the myriad of plugins/packages available to Emacs and Atom is something that is insanely helpful if you need to do something quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love sublime. When I used to have to write legislation, and amendments, I had a set up that made it much easier using sublime

<comment><USER16> Now this is really interesting. Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER15> The IT dept at the lobbying firm I was at set it up for me. Legislative writing requires certain formatting, and referencing to the US Code. I could hot key things and it made the formatting very easy. When writing amendments, it made it easier to do strike throughs and new language additions by color coding them, and inserting hyperlinks to reference bills and laws. I really wish I still had access to it because it was incredibly useful.

<comment><USER17> That's awesome of the IT department, and kind of outside the scope of what I'd expect their knowledge to be - customizing an IDE. Was that the "standard IDE" for the company or something? Maybe you just had a random Sublime expert on the team?

<comment><USER15> Probably the latter. That was not the standard at all. If anything, our "standard" was MS Word. This was a new idea when I lamented on the difficulties of using Word. The IT guys came up with this solution, and I absolutely loved it. Others stuck to Word, but Sublime was absolutely my go- to. Another minor, but critical point, I really loved the color scheme. Dark grey was much better than bright Word white.

<comment><USER17> Hah yes! I've always wondered why word doesn't have a dark theme. When I was a recruiter I was always working in word and outlook and it hurt my poor eyes. I wasn't allowed to install a blue light dampener either :( Luckily found settings on my monitor to cut the blues, but still.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm not sure I understand the complaints. What will a "stable" tag offer that isn't available already via dev builds? Are there things that are limiting your productivity or effectiveness? How will formally calling it "stable" change your life as a developer?

</comment><comment><USER19> > When 3.0 is released, upgrades will be available for $30, or $15 for users > who have purchased recently

I will buy it again for the full price as a "Thank You!" to the developers. I have been using Sublime Text daily since 5-ish years and it has always been amazing. It's easily one of the best 50-60$ I have ever spent.

</comment><comment><USER20> Are people more concerned with a piece of software being "finished" these days than the features available to them?

</comment><comment><USER21> Serious question: What's keeping people who are frustrated with Sublime Text from switching to VS Code or Atom?

<comment><USER22> The Electron runtime (JavaScript). I work on projects that load files that are tens/hundreds of thousands of lines. No Electron based apps can handle that without choking and crashing. Electron is decent for smaller files and it's got a great ecosystem, but they are definitely not optimized for performance.

<comment><USER12> Just FYI, the most recent version of vscode supports huge files.

(I agree in general about Sublime performance vs Electron -- Sublime is way more responsive.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This "kaiser101" guy is an unfortunate e-jerk. He says: "I agree that there are only 2 people working on this product," as if that's something one could disagree with, and then goes on to say that people paying $70 - for Sublime 2, no less - have a _right_ to know when the next stable release will come out.

I am using the dev build for my production work and it runs like a Swiss watch. The title of OP and the forum post is essentially a troll to instigate the developer(s) to come out and give a more definitive answer.

</comment><comment><USER24> Sublime 2/3 has been very valuable for me. Don't know what all the fuss is about there being no roadmap or some other stuff. The dev team has never asked me for another dime other than the initial license fee. I've written so much code on it (and the code has made so much money for me, in return) that I'd gladly pay for Sublime 3 whenever it comes out.

</comment><comment><USER25> I love ST3, paid for it personally and influenced my ex-boss to stop procrastinating and actually buy it.

I wonder if they could look at staggered pricing system; where you can get:

N-1 release at £X; N-2 release at £(X-0.1*X) etc.

Where N is devel release channel.

That way people in N-2 will know what is coming and approx when.

People who want 'clarity' for the sake of it can pay less and STFU?

</comment><comment><USER26> Sublime text is an amazing editor, I cannot even remember how many times MS reverted updates on code because of stability issues. I have never faced a single bug in sublime. It just worked and I applause the developer for being an "engineer" and not a hacker coder cracker who moves fast and brakes things.

</comment><comment><USER27> They would avoid a lot of trouble if they change the version name:

Dev -> Beta

Beta -> Final

Final -> Legacy

The current beta versions are rock solid. If you have been sticking with the previous stable version, you have been missing a lot for no reason.

IMHO this is the same mistake the Gnome team is making recently: Calling the finished version "final" or "stable". "Final" means to me "doesn't crash and has no bugs (as far as possible)". It doesn't mean that it receives no more updates. On the contrary, if it gets no more updates I would call it "legacy" or "abandoned".

<comment><USER28> I didn't intend to use the term "final" as based on your definition, but rather was just trying to make it clear we were talking about graduating out of beta, since the term stable is somewhat overridden with Sublime Text.

We are definitely going to continue development of 3.0, so it won't become legacy any time soon. And yes, we do realize the beta period stretched on a tad too long. ;-)

<comment><USER27> Thanks for your reply!

Yeah, I guess the problem is now that people are not sure which version is supposed to be used for daily work, which version is still under development, etc..

But it is great to hear that development is continuing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It sounds like S3 is going to get a huge feature - is that why people are desperate for an update? Or have the user just gotten used to seeing something update every three days for any reason?

</comment><comment><USER30> Sublime Text is the only text editor that never let me down. I don't remember it crashing, a single time! I also paid for a license. I don't see what else is there to improve.

</comment><comment><USER31> I finally broke down and moved away from Sublime. I love it, but I couldn't justify the price. I'd rather invest in an IntelliJ IDE that I use every day and use Atom instead.

<comment><USER6> > _I love it, but I couldn 't justify the price_

$70 dollars or so every 4-5 years?

<comment><USER12> In many countries $70 is a lot of money. Especially when there are superb free options (like vscode, neovim, etc.)

<comment><USER6> > _In many countries $70 is a lot of money_

For farmers yes. Not for developers in those countries -- which can make $30,000 - $50,000 in the international market.

<comment><USER32> You mean, remotely? I never figure out how to break into that market. Are you talking about freelancing or regular employment?

<comment><USER6> Remotely -- and it can be either freelancing or regular employment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Recently I've moved away from Sublime. The irritating modal dialogs about updates and the new tabs package manager would create all the time were just too much. For most coding I've switched to VS Code, and for simple light editing I've gone back to Notepad++. VS Code really is fantastic these days (and I was originally a big skeptic of any Electron based editor)

</comment><comment><USER34> I used to use sublime a ton but I feel like in this day and age things like atom and emacs have left them behind with a much more mod-able UI.

<comment><USER35> You're aware that emacs had a mod-able UI for at least the last thirty years or so?

<comment><USER12> The modern editors take "mod-ability" to the next level because of tighter integration with the graphical chroming. (E.g., it would probably not be very straightforward to have a minimap 30 years ago.)

<comment><USER14> You are underestimating emacs a lot (even if we talk about 30y ago)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Your comment is visible so you aren't (anymore at least).

<comment><USER17> What's the difference between hellbanned and regular banned?

<comment><USER37> Hellbanning is "scream into the void" mode. You can login and post and see your posts appear as usual, but nobody else will see them.

<comment><USER32> Just to add, one can see the posts of hellbanned people by changing the "showdead" option in one's profile to "yes".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Wow Sublime that's quite a throwback. I remember it back in it's hayday as people ultimately flocked from TextMate. And then the community flocked to Atom. Hopefully Atom won't see the same fate since they are backed by a commercial organization, GitHub.

</comment><comment><USER39> Why don't they scale their development team with it's popularity? My initial guess would be greed and arrogance. If their priorities are shifting on a regular basis, that demonstrates to me a lack of mature leadership.

<comment><USER40> Because they don't have to. Sublime Text 3 has been rock solid for like 2 years now, and the competitors (VS Code and Atom) are like the same thing but slower and use javascript instead of python for plugins. There really isnt anything missing that they have to scramble and add people to help with.

Not everything always needs growth.

<comment><USER39> Products have to be maintained, because operating systems update around them. New bugs happen. You need growth to fund the maintenance your existing customers expect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> To be honest after more than 4.5 years of development I don't care anymore about Sublime. Meanwhile there are a plenty of alternative editors available with very simmilar functionality. So why pay a lot of money for a poorly maintained editor?

<comment><USER42> A lot of money?

<comment><USER41> As I see it $70 is a lot. VScode is free and offers me almost the same (if not more), plus it's activly develop.

<comment><USER43> TBH for something that you probably use daily for your day job, $70 is not a lot at all.

And last time I tried, working with large files was a pita on vscode.

<comment><USER44> I'm not the op, but for me, it's not really worth $70. I use visual studio daily, and just use another editor for odd things - editing a value in a config file etc. 70 bucks is too much for yhatcfor me. Atom/vs code have way too much of a start up time for a quick one file edit, so I use notepad++</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the gaps in current infrastructure software? - <AUTHOR> There's a lot of open infrastructure software out there, but it wasn't until recently that some problems got decent solutions (like prometheus for monitoring, kubernetes for orchestration, minio for object storage). What problems could do with fresh implementations? What's some internal software you wish had an open implementation?
If you had three months to work solidly on a new piece of open source infrastructure level software, where would you place your effort?
Use this thread to generally complain about infrastructure. <comment><USER2> The "boilerplate" needed to launch a web application, to make anything people need to sign in to you have to add a bunch of functionality that we see many services get wrong and do poorly, and it just gets worse as you add complex functionality like subscriptions. It's a lot of work and a lot of margin for error rewriting this stuff again and again.

I already started but I would spend 3 more months on this problem, trying to separate the boring stuff into something reusable and better than rewriting: [https://userdashboard.github.io/home](https://userdashboard.github.io/home)

</comment><comment><USER3> Usability. Just recently I went down a particularly deep rabbit hole when I tried to run Angular unit tests with a headless Chromium browser on a Jenkins CI server.

Suddenly I found myself having to debug various Docker images, Jenkins files and Kubernetes pods.

Not only are these tools often used indiscriminately, regardless of whether they're actually needed for the use case at hand but there frequently also seems to be an apparent disregard for the non-functional requirements of the people using them.

Sure, I can launch "kubectl" or "docker exec -it" to see what's going on but as someone who merely wants to run unit tests I shouldn't have to.

<comment><USER4> > Angular unit tests

Talking as experienced front-end developer, currently working in an angular project, I must indicate that there are no Angular unit tests in existence. A unit test that requires a full browser to run is not a unit test, but a full e2e test. Exactly the same as the endpoint tests that require opening a server and binding to a port.

<comment><USER3> With Jasmine tests running with "ng test" (i.e. with Karma test runner rather than Protractor) the system-under-test usually is a single component, directive or service.

Therefore, conceptually these indeed are unit tests.

You could argue that because a browser environment is required for running these units the tests are integration tests.

Still, they're commonly referred to as unit tests (including the official Angular documentation).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Proper version-controlled DNS that is usable by non-developers.

Existing solutions like DnsControl and OctoDNS are great for development/devops teams who are familiar with Git, CI/CD, editing files in- line with a specific syntax and creating a merge request.

However, these can often be foreign concepts to general sysadmins or Windows technicians.

What'd be great would be to have a nice web frontend that implements version control with Git, and uses DnsControl or OctoDNS as the DNS-editing backend, but completely abstracts this complexity away from the users.

A comparable problem would be that non-developers may find Git on the command- line challenging, but the GitHub/GitLab web GUIs make it easy. I want to be able to say: Non-developers find DnsControl and OctoDNS challenging, but _[x open-source solution that doesn 't exist yet]_ makes it easy.

<comment><USER6> Can you elaborate on the business case here? Why would a business want to make it easier for non-developers to implement infrastructure as code, when they can give the task to the developers they already have, or hire more developers who will also be able to do other things that add business value?

<comment><USER5> This is for organisations that either do not have skilled developers, or for organisations where the development team doesn't look after core infrastructure.

The target audience for this is traditional sysadmin roles and Windows technicians - in other words, people who are not used to non-GUI stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Datadog/New Relic competitor (app telemetry), maybe built on top of ELK/Graylog and Grafana.

Something to wrap around PostgreSQL to replicate RDS on your own infra (monitoring, provisioning, snapshots and transaction log shipping to various object stores).

</comment><comment><USER8> Getting around AWS IAM, or making it into a standard all cloud providers could adopt. As posted on HN a while back: [https://forrestbrazeal.com/2019/02/18/cloud-irregular-iam- is...](https://forrestbrazeal.com/2019/02/18/cloud-irregular-iam-is-the-real- cloud-lock-in/) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19742038](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19742038)).

</comment><comment><USER9> I've found deploying to all these new infrastructure tools is a big gap. I've been open sourcing a tool [https://deliverybot.dev](https://deliverybot.dev) that I built internally at my current org.

</comment><comment><USER10> Breaking down monolithic databases into microservices.

Containerism and modern devops practices become borderline impossible when you're working with a monolithic database that's encumbered in complex business processes. Ideally you're working with independent, decoupled microservices, but that's far from the reality that most admins face.

</comment><comment><USER11> DevSecOps automation/management system - Way to instrument, monitor, manage and visualize DevSecOps

</comment><comment><USER12> Real multi cloud. I want to be able to spread my app all over the 3 public cloud infrastructure.

<comment> o-__-o Cloudcenter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> my yamls have hackful types system, dynamic type systems, and no OR(type x = a of string| b of int) types, lack of language definitions (BNF).

<comment><USER13> and it is not clear at all how updates are merged on cluster and which will definately fail, not proper math applied</comment></comment>


BitTorrent secures and open-sources DHT bootstrap server - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.bittorrent.com/2013/12/19/dht-bootstrap-update/ <comment><USER2> I'm always amazed the BitTorrent DHT infrastructure has been working so well for so long:

Real-World Sybil Attacks in BitTorrent Mainline DHT: [http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/lxwang/publications/security.pdf](http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/lxwang/publications/security.pdf)

Crawling BitTorrent DHTs for Fun and Profit: [https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/dht- woot10.pdf](https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/dht-woot10.pdf)

Profiling a Million User DHT: [http://www.michaelpiatek.com/papers/dht_imc_falkner.pdf](http://www.michaelpiatek.com/papers/dht_imc_falkner.pdf)

Lying To The Neighbours - Nasty effects with tracker-less BitTorrent: [http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events/4210.en.h...](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events/4210.en.html)

<comment><USER3> Re: the last link

>In the Kademlia adaption for Bittorrent a peer's address (NodeID) is to be generated randomly, or more appropriate: arbitrarily. Because randomness isn't verifiable, an implementation can advertise itself with popular NodeIDs or even change them on a per-packet basis.

At the end of the slides they suggest sha1(ip+port) as a possible fix. This would increase the barrier-to-entry of a Sybil attack to the point where an attacker needs to be able to spoof IP addresses or connections. However, I believe that a sufficiently motivated and financially equipped attacker may already exist who would still be able to attack this scheme. Perhaps an alternative to sha1(ip+port) could be some form of cryptographic signature scheme, where the NodeID is a public key or hash of a public key, and a node is only considered "real" if it is at least able to sign responses with the private key that corresponds with the NodeID.

Maybe operators of nodes should be allowed to tweak some kind of setting that controls how paranoid the node should be of Sybil attacks.

Maybe it would be possible to include some kind of hashcash or Bitcoin scheme to make Sybil attacks more costly. There has to be some way of requiring an attacker to expend considerable computation power.

<comment><USER4> Hi, that last link was my talk from 3 years ago. Last year at 29C3 a couple of friends proposed doing this kind of security with elliptic curve cryptography. See the lightning talks recordings. Their code is here: [https://github.com/rtreffer/dht](https://github.com/rtreffer/dht)

<comment><USER5> The Youtube link has disappeared, unfortunately, unless there's a better link than this one: [https://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/wiki/Lightning_Talks](https://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/wiki/Lightning_Talks)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A little bit off topic, but I tried to get a developer API key for Bittorrent Sync, and never heard of them.

Same thing for Bittorrent Live.

Has anyone been successful in getting those ? Also, with the twitch flop (quality of the website, lags, 60 sec delay, PR problems) why don't we hear more about the Live service ?

</comment><comment><USER7> I applied for BTSync API and ended up in my inbox that same night. You may want to ping them in their forum if you aren't receiving one...

<comment><USER7> This was meant to be in response to the earlier comment by ritonlajoie. Sorry about confusion posting this on its own...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Question for the HN crowd: how does one can use DHT/trackerless to not only distribute files, but updates to them too?

Sort of like an ever continuing magnet link if you will?

<comment><USER9> BTSync is the obvious "Duh!" answer. Since its UDP traffic, controlled by DHT (so long as you disable their central tracker in your conf) and updates on the fly.

What I wind up doing (since I don't trust BTsync) is using inotify to watch the sync directory + mktorrent to create a new torrent on file change + pypush to push the new .torrent to various servers

<comment><USER8> Yeah but then you end up changing the info hash, and thus your magnet is changed.

What I'm trying to do is to basically embed the magnet link in my program and sort of having it self check itself for updates. It that makes sense :)

<comment><USER10> Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the magnet link a hash of the files? Then it would not be possible to change the files without changing the link.

<comment><USER8> it is exactly that, unfortunately...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Big Day - <AUTHOR>

We applied to Y combinator and I know today is 'D' day for a lot of anxious people out there. Does anyone know if applicants that are not invited for an interview get some type of rejection letter? and do you know when they start letting people know.....any other excited applicants out there not know how to contain themselves....? <comment><USER2> There's definitely been a dip in productivity here today haha. One thing I wonder is if they call or email? YC's application page says "We'll call you," but all of the stories I've read says people have received email invites.

edit- Maybe it was my imagination, but at this point it just says "we'll invite." So my bet is on email, since that's an awful lot of phone calls.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is what I am thinking too. I know they said they cant respond to every last application to explain why you weren't accepted, but I'm hoping they at least let you know when the selection process is over, or this anxiety might dip into tomorrow...or the whole week, who knows! ha. Good luck on your application. Let me know if you get a response!

<comment><USER2> Likewise!

<comment><AUTHOR> Didn't get in, I will try again this year though! I hope you had better news!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> They send you an email whether you get accepted or rejected. I believe if you get accepted you get a link to calendar system to pick a date/time for your interview.

If you get accepted after the interview they call you to let you know.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the info!</comment></comment>


Experience with Using Python as a Primary Language - <AUTHOR> http://hplgit.github.com/edu/uiopy/uiopy.html

<comment><USER2> I personally also think it's high time to abandon Matlab:

        https://abandonmatlab.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/hello-world/

We've bred a community of scientific programmers who learn Matlab and teach Matlab, locking in generations of scientific hackers to an inferior programming language due to cultural inertia. It is time for change.</comment>


H1-B: Immigrants make up nearly three-quarters of Silicon Valley tech workforce - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/17/h-1b-immigrants-make-up-nearly-three-quarters-of-silicon-valley-tech-workforce-report-says/ <comment><USER2> Note how the Mercury spins this -- it throws H1-B right in front of the title even though the stat is specific to _citizens_ and therefore has nothing to do with H1-B.</comment>


Another mobile game that will mess with your brain and fingers - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cengalabs.elasticcatch

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a new challenging and funny game on Google Play Store - <USER2> Catch. It is hard to play like Flappy Bird and Two Cars but more entertaining than them.</comment>


Ask HN: Start date is set, but I got another offer. What to do? - <AUTHOR> So I accepted a job offer two weeks ago and am set to start next wednesday. However, a company that had flown me out to PA last week just offered me a role. Of course, it's conditional on various background checks (i'm a felon)
What is the right course of action is these situations?
The base pay is equivilent, but company B has significantly better benefits and growth potential.
Company A:
start up/small, good people, laid back culture and dress, limited benefits and no 401k, they offered me job after one 40 minute phone interview, in midwest
Company B: big corporation, casual dress, good benefits and 401k match, better growth opportunities, hiring manager is awesome, in east coat (PA)
What should I do in this situation?
a. Start at A and then go join B in two or three weeks
b. Turn down A and wait for my conditional offer to be finalized
c. Turn down B and commit to company A
d. other
 PA does have legislation, Pennsylvania Criminal History Record Information Act, which should make it harder them to retract the offer after doing the background check <comment><USER2> You don't join a startup/small business because of the best traditional benefits like a 401k, you join because of the challenge and chance to make a huge impact. You need to figure out what type of environment you are best suited for, a startup or a larger enterprise. They are extremely different, so that is really the decision IMO.

As far as switching after accepting one position, it generally burns a bridge, as would being there for 2 weeks then jumping ship. At the same time, employers have very little loyalty anymore, so if I felt it was right I'd change my mind, but with dignity and honesty to the parties involved. e.g. I wouldn't do it without being up front. Your reason can be as simple as you thought it over and felt that the small/startup business wouldn't be the right environment for you personally at this time and it wouldn't be fair to them either if you wound up only being there for a few months, so you have decided to continue your search... Or something along those lines.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think at this stage in the game you owe it to Company A and yourself to pick option C. It's not worth burning bridges, especially in technology, where you never know who you are going to work with next. You made the commitment now stick it out for a minimum of 6 months. If you aren't satisfied with your growth at that point then go and look for other jobs.

In the future, I would recommend not accepting an offer if you have any decisions for other jobs still pending. Once you get the other offer you should be transparent about your situation. It may give you a little bit more leverage for negotiation, or the company might say now or never, but you won't be any worse off for doing so.

Just my 2 cents.

</comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps you could request a 1 or 2 week deferral of your start date at A, citing last-minute personal reasons. Such a thing would not be unheard of, and that way you neither do anything dishonourable* (as long as you don't lie) nor close any options prematurely.

* Well to be fair, assuming your pending employment is at-will, there's nothing actually wrong with quitting immediately after your start (after all, maybe you simply won't like it there); it's a just a bit inconsiderate toward A to start if you don't really believe you're committed to it yet.

</comment><comment><USER5> IMHO you should pick "c. Commit to Company A."

1\. You have made a committment to Company A, honor it.

2\. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Company A has come through for you with an offer. That is big. Company B is "conditional on various background checks" \- my spidy sense is making me itch all over.

3\. A small company is much less likely to care about your "checkered" past.

4\. You aren't working for the hiring manager (I assume), so it doesn't matter how awesome he/she is. Salesmen are always awesome until they close the sale.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your response. This definitely seems like the right things to do. After all, I did commit to A. However, my immediate supervisor would be the hiring manager, and we had good chemistry. I can't speak to how well I get along with company A because I never met any of them, just a quick phone interview, after which they offered me a job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have you signed the papers with A? If you have, might want to check the consequences of leaving early or is there a probation period of 1-2 months where you and company A have the right to terminate the employment within 24 hours? If yes, then I'd say take (a) in case B does make you a real offer after the background checks :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I allready accepted the offer and everything is finalized. Start this week. Since they hired me after just one phone call, I know they plan on reviewing my performance after three months, but that's about it. If I abandon the job, it says I'd forgo any compensation but that's about all in the contract and employment handbook

<comment><USER6> Alright! Focus on doing a great job at (a) and see how things go with B from there. Who knows, you may fall in love with the work you're doing at A and change your mind :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> d. Start at A. Tell B you need a few weeks to consider. Assuming everything is ok at A for a few weeks, turn down B.

Reasoning: Company A hired you after only a 40 minute phone interview. Wait to make sure you indeed can start that job, that you get paychecks, and that there are no surprises.

</comment><comment><USER8> Some companies let you start even though the background check hasn't completed. Meaning there's a possibility company B could let you go even a week after you started, the minute they find out about your past and it's conflicting with company policy.

</comment><comment><USER9> don't do b), that's the worst option if the second offer falls through.</comment>


Why can't I get people to participate in this market research? - <AUTHOR>

I've been an online community grrrl for a long time, and I've been a software development person (in one role or another) for even longer. So when I told a client I'd help out with a market research study examining the tech adoption trends for PHP developers, I was sure that the community would cheerfully participate. Especially since anyone who did the 30-minute phone survey would get a $25 Amazon gift certificate AND a summary of the results; that's worth somethin', I figured.
I was wrong.
Despite posting a "help on a survey" message on several forums, people have stayed away in droves.
To some degree, I'm sure, it's because I'm looking for people with a specific background: in the US or Canada; regularly using one of {Joomla, SugarCRM, Drupal, WordPress, phpBB} for paying/outside work (not the company's own intranet); willing to talk to a charming geeky person on the phone. But I expected that the number of people meeting that criteria is far higher than the results would imply.
I realize that some people don't want to give out their email ID to ANYone, but if you're going to be interviewed by phone, how else can you be reached to say, "How about Tuesday at 2pm?" This isn't spam, dammit; it's real live market research asking about the tools and platforms you use and how you choose them.
If YOU are not shy, of course, I hope you'll participate in the survey ( http://www.marketsurveys.com/sb/sb_s.php?s=120&p=100121&g=4d4502a838 ). But really, I'm looking for input on why I've gotten such lousy response. <comment><USER2> People are not, generally, reachable when and where you need them. A bitter fact of business life is that, usually, the rest of the world works at a different pace than you.

I suggest you drop the phone interview requirement and conduct your research online; a secure, well-tracked form will do. If it's good enough for Nielsen and Price WaterHouse Coopers, it should be good enough for you.

P.S. Professionals might not be too thrilled about the $25 reward as well.

[Edit: Also try not to pester web-savvy communities too much, or someone might decide to feed your link to 4chan and you will get all the high-quality TIME Magazine-esque data your heart desires.]

<comment><AUTHOR> There's also an online survey -- THAT we had no trouble filling. You can collect facts in an online survey when you know all reasonable/possible multiple-choice answers ("Which IDE do you use?") but they are useless for asking, "Why?" or "What would make you change your mind?" Those do need a conversation.

I do try to avoid pestering communities, truly I do. Mostly I'm an ordinary participant!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe you've already answered your own question. When I hear "market research survey" in 2009, two words come to mind: "spam" and "work".

</comment><comment><USER4> Really its simple math:

The people you want to interview charge around $100/hour (or more). You're asking to buy >$50 worth of time for a $25 gift card.

Change the offer to $50 payable via Paypal, commit to it taking 30 minutes or less, and you'll probably get some responses.

<comment><AUTHOR> Out of curiosity -- would you be more willing if it was a chance for a single participant to get $500?

<comment><USER4> Not really, given the odds it would be worth less than the Amazon card.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pretty simple - a 30 minute phone survey for a $25 Amazon gift certificate is a lousy deal. Do you really need 30 minutes of questions? You are going to restrict yourself to developers who have a high tolerance for boredom.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually the first two I did took closer to an hour. And neither of the guys were bored.

I _did_ say I was charming... or maybe I just have interesting questions to ask.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I struggle to talk to my mother for 30 minutes on the phone, I doubt I'd have the patience to do a 30 minute survey.</comment>


Show HN: Softcover – A publishing platform from the author of the Rails Tutorial - <AUTHOR> http://www.softcover.io/ <comment><USER4> Congratulations on the launch.

As the first author on the platform, [http://conqueringthecommandline.com](http://conqueringthecommandline.com), and as the author of two other books ([http://books.markbates.com](http://books.markbates.com)), I can say that this was the easiest, and nicest tool chain I've worked with.

It took me from saying "I'm never going to write another book again" to "I have so many books I want to write now!".

<comment><USER5> Very nicely done. Just finished reading the whole. Hope you'd write the sequel.

<comment><USER4> Glad to hear you like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remember meeting Michael Hartl in the airport prior to RailsConf a couple years ago. Great guy & I recall he mentioned this idea. Nice to see it launch–best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Erik! I remember that meeting fondly—in line at Long Beach Airport en route to Austin, if I recall correctly. I hope all is well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is very interesting and well done. I have a few questions.

1\. Am I allowed to sell the files elsewhere? For example, sell the .mobi file on Amazon Kindle and publish a printed version via CreateSpace.

2\. Are the files watermarked at all with Softcover's branding?

3\. Is this open to authors everywhere or are there restrictions?

4\. Will this handle sale taxes for authors? I'm a Canadian author with a PST/GST account, will I be able to collect that from Canadian customers?

PS: The Browse and Setup links on conqueringthecommandline.com are meant to point to softcover.io, so they are broken at the moment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great questions, Antonio. I've just deployed an update to the front page at [http://www.softcover.io/](http://www.softcover.io/) answering some of them, but for convenience I'll answer them below as well.

 _1\. Am I allowed to sell the files elsewhere? For example, sell the .mobi file on Amazon Kindle and publish a printed version via CreateSpace._

Yes, you retain copyright on everything you make and can do anything you want with the files. They get built on your system by Softcover's open-source toolchain, so you have complete control.

 _2\. Are the files watermarked at all with Softcover 's branding?_

No, the books have no Softcover branding. The online version has an inconspicuous Softcover-branded footer by default, but even that can be removed with a simple config setting, as described in the manual ([http://manual.softcover.io/book/marketing#additional_informa...](http://manual.softcover.io/book/marketing#additional_information)).

 _3\. Is this open to authors everywhere or are there restrictions?_

Softcover is open to anyone, and there are no restrictions.

 _4\. Will this handle sale taxes for authors? I 'm a Canadian author with a PST/GST account, will I able to collect that from Canadian customers?_

I don't know about this one. If you join the [Softcover Google Group]([https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/softcover- publishing](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/softcover-publishing)), I'll introduce you to my cofounder Nick Merwin, who is in charge of stuff like this. If we don't currently support collecting Canadian sales tax, we might be able to add it.

<comment><USER7> Thank you, Michael. I joined the group.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems like an alternative to [https://leanpub.com/](https://leanpub.com/) with much better design. I'm very impressed.

<comment><USER9> Thanks, I manage the front-end design and development so hearing that warms my heart!

<comment><USER10> As the frontend dev, any insight as to why you didn't go responsive with this? It's a nice looking site and you did a great job, but I'm surprised - <USER2> this is a publishing platform that obviously caters to multiple devices - <USER3> not see a device-agnostic approach to the site.

<comment><USER9> It's on the way!

Long answer: Over the course of development there had been some thought as to whether or not the Softcover site would just be an informational site for the Softcover gem and a place for authors to get their sales stats, and then each book page would be its own separate thing that would be more or less fully- customizable by the author. Point is that most people would have had to be interacting with the site on a desktop because that's where they'd need to do things like install gems and run the server.

We've kind of moved away from the idea of having a Myspace free-for-all, towards something that is more of a designed garden, planning on allowing a good deal of customization on the book side – each book page loads a completely separate stylesheet from what is used on the rest of the site for that reason.

With that I'm going to be focusing on redoing a lot of the presentation side to meet what we'll need, and a part of that will be responsive styling.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the answer. That's good reasoning; I figured as well as this all seemed put together it wasn't "oh, geez, didn't think of that!" so I'm glad to see there was a reason. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks amazing and further increases my respect for Michael Hartl. I don't really have publishing intentions, yet making this as seamless as it is should allow people who have talent and desire to publish their works easily.

I see that Michael is answering questions here, so here is one. If someone decides to publish... let's skip anarchy, let's say erotic and porn novels, is this still game?

Now that I think this through, someone can use toolchain and get their stuff published anyway, I would just like to know, where are boundaries of your service?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words. We might not choose to highlight titles that could invite controversy (especially not early on), but our intent is to produce a flexible publishing tool that is limited only by the imagination of the author. If that imagination includes, e.g., erotica, I wouldn't in principle have any objections, especially if (as I would generally recommend to most authors) they opted to use a custom domain name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm so excited about this! I'm currently drafting the last few chapters for Explore Flask (web development book funded via Kickstarter) and the whole self-publishing process is a mess when it comes to formatting. It looks like the Markdown + Latex solution with things like boxes, code blocks and tables pre-configured is an awesome way to do things. I'm almost certainly going to switch to this toolchain from pandoc.

I'll also look into using the sales / hosting platform too. I'm a little hesitant to put that in someone else's hands, but you guys have done such a great job that I'll probably end up giving in.

Can't wait to start working with this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great to hear it! Don't worry about sales & hosting platform; Softcover supports custom domains, so you're never locked in. You could switch your domain over to your own website at any time. I just know from experience what a pain it can be, so we figure lots of people will be happy to pay a small percentage in exchange for the convenience of not having to build and maintain everything yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is very well put together, and makes me excited about the possibility of writing in the future. mhartl, I did your rails tutorial a few years ago with very little programming background, and it singlehandedly got me interested in programming enough to switch majors and spend all my time learning and building things. Thanks, and congrats on the launch!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, glad to hear it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Congrats on the launch. Looks great and is tempting me to take a real stab at writing I've always flirted with. Q: is there planned integration with print? Could you send out text to a printer and get an actual book made? DO you have relationships with any printers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Glad it looks tempting.

We've definitely looked into print. It's a tough nut to crack, and the ecosystem might not be mature enough yet for automatic integration. Lulu, for example, built an API, but not enough people used it, so they closed it to new developers. I'd love to offer a print solution at some point, though, so we'll keep an eagle eye on it.

In any case, the Softcover production system uses LaTeX, which is designed to make print-quality PDFs. The default output is optimized for tablets, but adapting it to a print-ready version is fairly straightforward. I expect we'll incorporate that into the typesetting system at some point. But unfortunately right now you'll have to do a lot of work by hand no matter which production system you use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks excellent, congrats on the launch.

Also if anyone out there hasn't read Michael's Rails Tutorial, read it now. The best and most thorough tutorial I have ever read on any topic, it opened my eyes to modern web programming.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is awesome! Well defined, and I like the design and intro video. I wish there were something like this for writing journal articles. Right now, it's a total pain.

</comment><comment><USER17> I saw this go to the second page. I don't think it's enough to link to [https://news.ycombinator.com/newest](https://news.ycombinator.com/newest) rather than the story from twitter to avoid being penalized. I think saying that it's on Hacker News might be the way to promote it without getting penalized. I think this is right up HN's alley though so I expect it to stay on HN for half a day. :)

</comment><comment><USER18> Very cool project. Just in case if people are interested in Python for something like this, I've been using some code to do this (slides): [http://bit.ly/pythonclass](http://bit.ly/pythonclass) \- Its in alpha and I've been using this to teach my python class. Haven't pushed it to github/bitbucket, but I would love to share (or work together with others) if there is demand.

</comment><comment><USER19> @mhartl FTW! Great work.

Kind of reminds me of a LaTeX for the web. Source code files -> properly formatted documents. I may use this in a future project. Looks awesome!

</comment><comment><USER20> Looks like a nice product! Congrats on the launch.

One of the main concerns for any new book is marketing. Are you planning to address this issue?

<comment><AUTHOR> The Softcover sales platform includes a marketing page with slots for author bio, testimonials, FAQs, etc. (See, for example, Mark Bates's marketing page at [http://conqueringthecommandline.com/](http://conqueringthecommandline.com/)) Softcover also supports an optional free HTML version of your book, which can be a great marketing tool. Finally, we are planning to develop a step-by-step "Marketing Wizard" to give authors detailed advice and guidance in their marketing efforts.

<comment><USER21> Do authors have the option of providing a book preview for free online rather than the entire thing? Or does that feature only allow for the entire book to be made free online?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, Softcover has integrated support for making downloadable previews. In addition, currently the HTML version has to be either 100% free or 100% behind a paywall, but we plan to add the capability to make select HTML preview chapters available as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I love it! One comment I do have though is that the space alloted to the video on the page is quite large. Larger than the default zoom in Firefox at least. While it isn't a huge deal to not be able to see the whole picture and there is a full screen button, it might be helpful to some to make the video smaller on the page.

<comment><USER9> Yeah... I wanted to do a big full screen stretching video. But probably easier to constrain it. Changed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This has the potential to become the definitive way to publish and buy books online. Amazingly well done.

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting, especially in context of the FG Press announcement. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm running into error with "softcover server" not sure if it's my set up or if it's something in softcover.

I'm on os x, using ruby 193

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the inconvenience. If you join the [Softcover Google Group]([https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/softcover- publishing](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/softcover-publishing)) and post the error message there, I'll take a look and see if we can figure it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Congrats on launching!

Reminded of when of a youtube video where you talked about this idea and how you solved your money problems through the rails tutorial.

</comment><comment><USER26> Congrats, looks good. Will it remain free? What will be the restrictions in the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The Softcover production system is available for free as open-source software under the permissive MIT License. Softcover just takes a cut of sales, so we only make money when you make money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This looks great. I was not able to find out myself: Where is the source-code hosted?

<comment><USER9> That is totally up to you. You can write your book and push changes to GitHub, store the book files in your Dropbox directory, tempt fate and just store them locally, etc.

Softcover just pulls in the HTML and eBooks that are compiled from the source code, as well as the book config files, and generates the views and links.

<comment><USER27> Thanks for that info, but my question was about the source code of Softcover itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Ash-k This is cool.. congratulation

</comment><comment><USER28> Awesome. I'll look into this when writing my thesis.

</comment><comment><USER29> Bookmarked this for when I complete my novel :)

<comment><USER9> I know you are joking a bit, but if you were really thinking about jumping into writing a novel, being able to publish nicely formatted HTML chapters as you write them for free to people is a great way to get people interested from an early stage.

It's a model that has worked in the past for some people, including this recent example I heard about on NPR: [http://www.sciencefriday.com/segment/02/14/2014/andy-weir- th...](http://www.sciencefriday.com/segment/02/14/2014/andy-weir-the- martian.html)

He slowly published each chapter, then when he finally finished the book, he posted the ebook versions for free on his site. Eventually he added it to Amazon (and had to attach a price to it because they don't let you give away ebooks) to help people load the ebook onto their Kindle with less friction than making them download and transfer the file, he found that he was selling more copies of the book than he was giving away for free on his site.

It's exactly that model of openly sharing what you are working on with the people that are going to use or be entertained by it that we want Softcover to encourage.

<comment><USER30> thanks for point to that, i hadn't seen it before, and it's a great example of the experience many have had, namely that giving away an e-book can spur sales of it.

-bowerbird

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Backend has become simple enough that you wouldn't have to pay much attention. The great design of this website has anything specific to do with its Rails backend?

</comment><comment><USER32> How does this differ from leanpub?

<comment><AUTHOR> Softcover is based on the Rails Tutorial model, which differs from Leanpub in several key ways. I actually think Leanpub is a great service if it meets all of your needs as an author, and in fact if it had met all of _my_ needs I might not have bothered building Softcover. (Of course, Leanpub didn't exist when I first started publishing the Rails Tutorial in 2009, but I might have used it for follow-on products.) Here are some of the important differences:

\- _Softcover comes with an industrial-strength, open-source production system._ This means you can write heavily formatted books with cross- references, code listings, tables, etc., and interactively build them locally, all without being locked in to a proprietary system.

\- _Softcover 's HTML books are first-class citizens._ The online version of the Rails Tutorial is a key part of its marketing strategy, so it has to be polished and prominent.

\- _Softcover gives you your customer list._ Letting customers opt-in to share their email is fine for more casual authors, but it isn't ideal if (like me) you're trying to build a business.

\- _Softcover supports custom domains._ It's important to me to use a custom domain for branding/SEO and so that I own my own traffic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is the logo an ouroboros?

<comment><USER9> It is! Idea was to signify our desire to consume traditional publishing with a new publishing model. Publishing eating publishing.

<comment><USER34> "New publishing model"? You could have just used a photocopier.

<comment><USER30> now, now, peter, let's not get cranky. :+)

you've seen other competitors before, and will probably see a whole lot more, and all of them won't be as incompetent as those you have faced down in the past.

ok, for those of you who might not know, peter is the force behind leanpub.com...

which is highly similar to this site, but has been around for a few years already.

so, no, this is not a "new" model, and there _will_ be similar tool-chains that will come soon, and i can guarantee it, because i'll be releasing one that i've been working on for over a _decade_ now.

but we do not need internal squabbling, because killing corporate publishers is gonna be hard, no matter how many of us are committed and dedicated to doing it.

yes, they are dinosaurs, and yes, they _will_ go extinct, eventually, even if we do absolutely nothing. but they are also dinosaurs with _very_ deep pockets, and that's a significant factor in the greedy money-ruled world we have today.

so welcome to the revolution, softcover. strap on a helmet, and let's get to work.

-bowerbird

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is awesome!

</comment><comment><USER36> Congratulations! Will use it. By the way, thank you very much, Mr. Hartl, for the rails tutorial. It was life changing for me, a former completely non-tech guy, now running my customs brokerage business trough a collaborative database tool horribly coded by me myself :) edit: misspell

</comment><comment><USER36> I noticed that when changing from one chapter page to another, it loads much faster than the original rails tutorial, that takes forever. Nice improvement, still note a little latency though. It will be nice for people to study the Rails Tutorial Book when published on Softcover's new platform. Is going to happen?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is already a version of the _Rails Tutorial_ book that builds on Softcover, and in the coming weeks I plan to move the full tutorial over to the Softcover platform (taking care to preserve things like legacy download links). Watch for an announcement once the change-over is complete.</comment></comment>


Tesla Is the Hot Spot for Young Job Seekers - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-is-the-hot-spot-for-young-job-seekers-1543150801 <comment><AUTHOR> > Tesla's stated mission of accelerating the world's transition to sustainable > energy appeals to many of its 45,000 workers, some of whom are willing to > work 100-hour weeks and eschew the common perks of tech companies, such as > free food. __Instead, some employees say, they run on adrenaline, stock > options and a shared passion with the company's leader to change the world. > __

> Kiran Karunakaran says he was making $80,000 a year at a Philadelphia > electronics company when Tesla offered him $95,000 and stock options to > become an engineer in 2015. Though Apple made him a $115,000 offer around > the same time, he says, the 29-year-old Mr. Karunakaran took the Tesla job. > He said the decision was a no-brainer.

> Other Tesla employees said they have turned down offers from companies such > as Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo and Uber Technologies Inc. that were 20% to 50% > above their Tesla salaries.

> "What really attracts young people to Tesla is instant gratification," Mr. > Karunakaran said. "You see these incredible things you've worked on come to > fruition, on the road, in months," he said. Mr. Karunakaran left Tesla in > May after three years—one year shy of the full vesting of his stock > options—to follow his wife to Seattle for her job.

\----

> Anusha Atluri, a second-year M.B.A. student at Carnegie Mellon University's > Tepper School of Business, spent the summer as an intern on Tesla's Model 3 > assembly line in Fremont. Partway through the summer, Ms. Atluri spotted a > way to tweak a step in the manufacturing line that she thought might speed > up production. She put together a PowerPoint presentation for the rest of > the team and, encouraged by the response, she suggested following up the > next week with management to discuss implementing the change.

> "They were like, why not just try it tomorrow?" she said. The process > changed the next day, and within a week the line was running more > efficiently, she said.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for that, but I don't think it qualifies as fair use unless your quoting to make comments.

I think we should respect the wishes of original content creators to paywall their content.</comment></comment>


San Francisco has moved to ban e-cigarettes - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/San-Francisco-has-moved-to-ban-e-cigarettes-Juul-14016011.php <comment><USER2> Of course it has.

</comment><comment><USER3> Could they maybe also ban tobacco in general?</comment>


Surveillance Giants [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/POL3014042019ENGLISH.PDF <comment><USER2> >The Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which data from 87 million people's Facebook profiles were harvested and used to micro-target and manipulate people for political campaigning purposes, _opened the world's eyes to the capabilities such platforms possess to influence people at scale – and the risk that they could be abused by other actors._

>Ultimately, _it is now evident that the era of self-regulation in the tech sector is coming to an end: further state-based regulation will be necessary_ , but it is vital that whatever form future regulation of the technology sector takes, governments follow a human rights-based approach. In the short- term, there is an immediate need for stronger enforcement of existing regulation. Governments must take positive steps to reduce the harms of the surveillance-based business model—to adopt digital public policies that have the objective of universal access and enjoyment of human rights at their core, to reduce or eliminate pervasive private surveillance, and _to enact reforms, including structural ones, sufficient to restore confidence and trust in the internet._

Note: I only read the executive summary, emphasis above is my own.

We've had the Snowden leaks, Cambridge Analytica, and others in the last decade which have brought the power, abuses and potential for abuses of Google, Facebook et al. into the mainstream conversation on a number of occasions. Brows furred, briefly, but ultimately society decided that it ultimately didn't care.

Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Google (all products), Android, Oculus, Nest, etc. etc. are all still soaring on success after success, despite mainstream society having had their darker sides widely revealed to them.

The facts were laid out, even Colbert broke it down to a level of "<Facebook/Google> can see your dick pics", society evaluated the situation and ultimately decided it preferred "free" services, media, content, algorithm-driven filter bubbles and more _above all else_.

These services are empowered by consumer choices (primarily one of convenience above all else, there's no shortage of alternatives to these services) and hence will only change due to changes in consumer choices.

Tech moves too quickly for meaningful regulation, tech companies are powerful enough to lobby to gut most proposals and they are rich enough to have the very best of legal counsel to actively utilize loopholes, and defend their behaviour if/when someone does pull them up on it. The potential upsides for regulation are minimal, at best. The potential downsides are absolutely enormous and could readily result in human rights abuses that far exceed data- driven ad targeting.

One example of the such potential regulations is the current talk about weakening encryption to "protect the children".

Handing the regulation and well-being of the internet to government's that change entirely every 4-8 years, and whose priorities change on smaller timelines, who've been shown to use that internet to commit absolute acts of abuse as is (Five Eyes et al.) will only end badly. As we've seen with China, handing it to life-long dictatorships only ends badly also.

If people care, they'll stop using these services and products. Those that don't accept the consequences they've acknowledged and signed up for. Based on the outcome, that which is known as the internet will iterate and evolve to meet whatever the new needs of the consumer are. Let's keep the government out of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I view the real issue is the "why" behind the surveillance, rather than the tool itself. Examples:

\- Consumer-based: Facebook and Google's type of data collection is best handled through the use of GDPR-like legislation, in USA. It's just a matter of these tech companies lobbying and watering down the statute so it's ineffective.

When this conversation gets brought up in congress, I implore everyone to go to [https://congress.gov](https://congress.gov) and read the actual bill to make sure it covers everything they claim. Look at it side-by-side with GDPR. Is it _really_ giving consumers the protections they feel they deserve from businesses (I guess we can use the term "user")? Politicians are masters at making bills seem like they handle an issue when they're stripping regulation and giving a deal to business interests at the expense of natural persons.

Business get bail outs all the time and are very hawkish making sure their legislation meets their interests. They have lawyers and team up to secure objectives, no care is given to making sure it's not to the detriment of "us". Natural persons are quelled by nice little platitudes, that's why reading bills themselves instead of news articles/tweets is so important.

\- National security in terms of subversion: This is the one that worries me most because it depends on how national security is defined based on a countries policies. In China, this entails this Xinjiang and Hong Kong situation. From their view, they are quelling uprisings, but one could also intellectually argue HK / Xinjiang / so on should have self-rule and nation status.

If you want to talk about human rights and surveillance, what liberties do the people in Xinjiang have? Imagine being born in your ancestral homeland and find your own culture is being methodically destroyed from foreign oligarch bureaucrats thousands of miles away. If you were Uighur and born there, how would you make sense of life?

When people in Xinjiang are being watched closely, the backstory has such direct implication to people's lives, and what options do they have to leave? To redress grievances? When does it finally end?

US and UK have a history of giving countries democratic self-rule and a rolodex of success stories. There will always be surveillance in various ways, hopefully in the future the backdrop with Xinjiang will be them 1. protecting their own independent nation and 2. consumer data protection laws? (not to say East Asia region are privacy sensitive as US/EU, heh)

\- What do people really feel?

Would an independent Xinjiang vote for a GDPR-like consumer regulation? If you look at Kazakhstan, it doesn't feel like they care about surveillance at all. It's not fashionable to pretend to care about, a la twitter, people have other pressures in live to worry about.

On a final note, the few people in US that scoff at surveillance are the same people who line up to get $1600 smart phones. They don't wait for GDPR laws to pass before getting a phone, they hit "I agree" to the privacy policies on tons of apps/websites. I wonder how much it _really_ matters to them. :P It's not easy to tell what a society feels.

<comment><USER4> > What do people really feel?

They probably feel being stalked. They must be anxious and paranoid.

> On a final note, the few people in US that scoff at surveillance are the > same people who line up to get $1600 smart phones

Like they have a choice not to have a "smart" phone. Like with dumb-phone they can avoid cell-tower tracking, voice recording. The people that scoff at surveillance are an indicator that something is broken. State and corporate stalking must stop.

<comment><USER3> > Like with dumb-phone they can avoid cell-tower tracking

I don't think there's any kind of cell phone that can avoid being triangulated. I believe it has to do with call routing.

If that mechanism was completely removed, wouldn't there be no way for us to get phone calls, and calls would drop between towers.

Wouldn't a better way of exploring this be to begin at who is accessing the data and why? Businesses have a legitimate case to access their own information to provide a better experience, at the very least.

Also if it's a criminal / national security purpose, what's wrong with the idea of a big data / hay stack warrant, in certain circumstances? Isn't there some situations where it'd clearly make sense?

> The people that scoff at surveillance are an indicator that something is > broken.

While there's probably always a case to improve things, when I read conversations on data privacy, I feel many don't want to draw nuance into the technical and legal specifics.

Regardless of society, isn't there always a certain kind of person, due to their upbringing, feels persecuted, though? Isn't there also a type of person who just raises a stink out of pure catharsis? Aren't they almost always ignorant of basics behind the law or technology of what they rant about, often both?

If it was really a sincere thing, why not go into details: e.g. For instance, GPS'ing a vehicle. State or federal law? What predicate / proof is needed? Is there a notification or redress? How long does it last? Any scoping/minimization? Is it supervised judicially or administratively?

While I think of it, maybe there's a reason these things are kept ambiguous, I guess in every country: I don't think people want organized criminal enterprises like mobsters, spies, drug lords, and terrorists gaming the system.

> State and corporate stalking must stop.

I don't think all government surveillance is the same. In most cases they seek authorization to access a private businesses data some how.

If someone is a "normal" consumer, a hospital patient, etc. I don't think the conversation is the same anymore. Wouldn't this be what most normal people care about?

<comment><USER4> > If someone is a "normal" consumer, a hospital patient, etc. I don't think > the conversation is the same anymore.

That's the thing. Crime-prevention is a plausible excuse. "Normal" consumer's data is mass harvested, profiled, stored, and used for social engineering of some more convenient "normal" consumer. Is there so many mobsters that require exabytes of data storage [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center)

> Regardless of society, isn't there always a certain kind of person, due to > their upbringing, feels persecuted, though?

Well there were some precedents of abuse in history. Secondly, people don't like to be a subject to be ruled. Thirdly, some people are under(d)evolved and still are primates that fear any powerful entity (leopard) watching them. Surveillance makes them paranoid and then depressed and then they snap and bad things happen.

<comment><USER3> > Well there were some precedents of abuse in history.

And in the case of Xinjiang is right now, unfortunately!

> Surveillance makes them paranoid and then depressed and then they snap and > bad things happen.

Two points / ways I can take that:

\- Big picture: In Eastern Europe, the turning point was more more complicated than that. Many informants / surveillance - but they were ancillary - antagonists being monitored were eclipsed by legitimate beef with how they were getting treated day to day. There were strikes, austerity things, and the security apparatus clamping down harder was probably one of the last straws. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_Revolution)

The other thing worth mentioning is how the government monitored and disrupted strikes in workplaces, which presents an impossible situation to employees. In USA there are rules around that: [https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we- protect/whats-law/employers/i...](https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we- protect/whats-law/employers/interfering-employee-rights-section-7-8a1). In this instance coworkers, eventually will talk to each other, and this situation is so much more direct and practical rather than a vague thoughtcrime thing

\- Individuals: There are people who develop schizophrenia, very rarely will they be violent. That process begins partly due to biology and partly due to trauma during childhood, and sometimes involves substance abuse. They are super, super sensitive and associate conspiracies to objects, people, and events. They attract attention to themselves, and the thing just feeds itself.

Persecution is a recurring theme (it's not that people are oh so nice! the world is bad and spiteful), and it commonly manifests itself with suspicion of being watched and followed. Also noteworthy is the intensity attributed to events, and the compulsion they feel to keep bringing it up. Common is bringing up sexual fears out of thin air ([https://youtu.be/5LPS7E-0tuA?t=525](https://youtu.be/5LPS7E-0tuA?t=525)), superego run amok. The sad truth is many were traumatized as children and further degraded as an adolescent. Not being able to process twisted family situations makes it extraordinarily hard for them. You wouldn't want to trade childhoods with them.

Normal people feel distrust, in these cases they're processing information extremely dysfunctional way. Like people who complain about privacy, they have an amazing pattern of not understanding technology, laws, and organizational structure. Everyone is busy and stressed with their own lives and trying to figure it out (and people are also caring, on the other hand, but they won't accept that). You'll also notice the common theme of omnipotent paternal/maternal persons or organizations. There's always an information deficit, they don't go research or pull documents on a subject.

They feel there's no potential reality for them without a punishing, omnipotent presence. So they're in hell, no doubt.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Noisli 3.0 - Your digital place for focus - <AUTHOR> https://www.noisli.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello. I'm Stefano, co-founder of Noisli.

We are happy and excited to share something we have been working so long and hard on. Noisli 3.0 is a complete redesign and rebuild of our Web app which provides a cleaner and better user interface and some great new features. You can see what's new here [https://blog.noisli.com/introducing- noisli-3-0/](https://blog.noisli.com/introducing-noisli-3-0/)

For those of you who don't know Noisli: we provide background sounds that mask distracting noises around you in order to help you work and relax. You can get inspired by our playlists or mix and match the different sounds and create your own perfect sound environment tailored to your needs. We also offer a timer to help you work in sessions, so to help you prevent burnout (because nobody can concentrate for 8 hours straight), as well as a text editor with a distraction-free writing mode.

Noisli was born in 2013 out of a personal need to fight the lack of noise when we worked from home and to tune out the distractions when we had to work from an open office. We're on a mission to create a calm place for focus no matter where you're working from today, and we're big believers in creating a valuable product which is long lasting and brings you joy while using it.

Come and join us!!

</comment><comment><USER2> Don't you think asking $120/year for a white-noise generator is excessive?</comment>


Chaos Computer Club Congress starts today. Livestreams. - <AUTHOR> http://27c3.iphoneblog.de/

<comment><USER2> The CCC really needs to sort out their internet presence. It's confusing. A little hopefully helpful list:

Schedule: <https://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/>

Official streams: <http://27c3.fem-net.de/>

Status information on the official streams: <http://twitter.com/c3streaming>

Unofficial HTTP streams (what this submission links to): <http://27c3.iphoneblog.de/>

Congress Wiki: <http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/wiki/Welcome>

You should be able to find the recordings on the Wiki soon.

Not so relevant for those who only want to watch the streams are the congress blog and Twitter account: <http://events.ccc.de/> and <https://twitter.com/27c3>

And if it weren't in German I would now link the news report about the first congress in 1984 for context and fun. Ah, well, I will do it anyway: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATWJcq5_qNA>

</comment><comment><USER3> More streams: <http://27c3.fem-net.de/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Quick link to the keynote (live right now): <http://saal1.h264.27c3.fem- net.de/>

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm looking for a schedule for this event but when trying to view <http://events.ccc.de/> I keep getting an "Error establishing a database connection" error..

Anyone with a working schedule?

<comment><USER4> This should be working fine. Try [http://events.ccc.de.nyud.net/congress/2010/Fahrplan/index.e...](http://events.ccc.de.nyud.net/congress/2010/Fahrplan/index.en.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can directly stream these with mplayer:

rtmp://berlin1.rtmp.27c3.fem-net.de/rtmp/saal1_hq

rtmp://berlin1.rtmp.27c3.fem-net.de/rtmp/saal2_hq

rtmp://berlin1.rtmp.27c3.fem-net.de/rtmp/saal3_hq

Sound might not be working right yet.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> To get a good overview of presentations today see: [http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/day_2010-12-27.e...](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/day_2010-12-27.en.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The keynote speaker, Jacob Applebaum, really knows how to woo the crowd. He has some great points like:

"Even though the government has a monopoly on violence, violence cannot solve math problems."

heh

<comment><USER7> Jake Applebaum is doing the keynote? I thought that Rob G. did that

<comment><USER4> Yea it was Rop Gonggrijp.

<comment><AUTHOR> I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really wish I could be there in person. Was really looking forward to talking to some of the people behind YaCy (<http://www.yacy.net/>). :<

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm coming to Berlin for a vacation, I'll pop by on Wednesday if there are one day tickets available for that day.

</comment><comment><USER10> iphoneblog?

<comment><USER11> I too was curious at first but it seems like a true hacker is simply using one of his domains. Seems not to be shady marketing.

<comment><USER12> yep, he is one of the "bits und so" guys, a german tech podcast with many listeners from the hacking community.</comment></comment></comment>


Business 2.0 on Justin.tv - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.business2.com/beta/2007/04/not_ready_justi.html <comment><USER2> Man, those Ustream guys are such fakers. They don't have any technology; they just use a laptop with a webcam and a wireless connection. And yet reporters keep mentioning them as if they were comparable.

A bit like the seed funding business, come to think of it...

<comment><USER3> How is Justin.tv any superior technology wise? He is still using a camera (a helmet cam) tied to a laptop which he carries on his back, right? And Justin uses EV-DO cards for wireless internet access. Admiditely, Justin.tv will probably trounce Ustream due to their content anyway but technology wise I dont see much difference..

I personally think there is a better way of doing this... Please see our YC app for more info ;-)

<comment><USER4> Comparing technology in Justin.tv and webcam with wireless connection is like comparing Lisp and Java..

Justin.tv created barrier by using the best mobile technology they know of. With that they can show contents that can not be achieved by users of Ustream.tv. The geeky gears give them branding, network effect and intangible assets, etc to widen the gap with other competitors

<comment><USER3> Well, I'm actually interested in the specific differences rather than speculation. In the end content wins, but my curiosity was more on the technology. I'd like to find out more but at the same time I understand the Justin.tv guys will want to protect their trade secrets.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Startup idea: Facebook as a trusted distributed computing service - <AUTHOR>

A startup group could create an app where companies bid on user's processors.  Users only can lose by not participating, so companies would have a huge pool of willing participants.<p>Facebook provides the accountability, allowing a trusted distributed computing community to form. <comment><USER2> I talked about a variation of this idea with pg, and he brought up some important points. First, who uses enterprise software like distributed computing? Outside of research, it's people unlike us, so what do we know about them? Pretty much nothing. Additionally, what IT manager at a solid company is going to buy the "el cheapo" (pg's phrase) solution when there are guys from Sun telling him/her "Just buy our system, and if anything bad happens, we'll fix it, and you won't lose your job."

BTW, the RSA Factoring Challenge has been over for some time: <http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2092>.

But back to my first point, what else - besides trying to factor big numbers - would I/you/a-20-something-hacker do with a big distributed network? I can't think of anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, I can think of a couple, but no killer app ideas. I have considered integrating it into another idea, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting idea, but why would I (as a user) willingly want to give up my CPU cycles for another company? Simply put: What is my incentive?

With distributed computing services like Folding@Home or SETI@Home the incentive is usually to help out with the pursuit of science.

<comment><AUTHOR> The companies pay them. Companies bid to have users increase their process' priority, or promise to pay a percentage of the earnings. Plus, most people barely use their CPU at all most of the time. If the system was secure with enforceable contracts, I don't see why this wouldn't work out.

<comment><USER4> Computers use a lot less power when they are idle. Do you think distributed computing can pay enough to cover the user's increased electricity bill plus enough of a profit to make it worthwhile for the user?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point. I'd have to research the issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a different version (and I haven't checked to see if such a facebook app exists): Why not pay users to fill out surveys? Help companies that need market research, and help consumers (like eRewards).</comment>


BRIN Index for PostgreSQL: Don't Forget the Benefits - <AUTHOR> https://www.percona.com/blog/2019/07/16/brin-index-for-postgresql-dont-forget-the-benefits/ <comment><USER2> I'd be interested to know some specifics on how big the index is and how well it performs for different values of the pages_per_range parameter on this dataset.

</comment><comment><USER3> tl;dr is this:

> BRIN indexes are efficient if the ordering of the key values follows the > organization of blocks in the storage layer....Keys on generated sequence > numbers or created data are best candidates for BRIN index</comment>


Exploring the effect of microdosing psychedelics on creativity - <AUTHOR> https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00213-018-5049-7 <comment><USER2> The study assessed pre and post microdosing of the participants. Not a double blind study so I would be wary of the results.

<comment><USER3> So many studies like this end up being unreliable because of improper sampling. It wouldn't have been difficult to have a proper control group for this study.</comment></comment>


Twitter revenue dilemma - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/09/twitter-and-the-revenue-dilemma/

<comment><USER2> This is an absolute classic of Valley bubble thinking: once you have revenues, its impossible for someone to buy you at a price totally unjustified by your present ability to make money.

<comment><USER3> So the lesson is ... don't earn revenue?

<comment><USER4> 1\. Don't monetize. Hype yourself up to make it seem that monetization is trivial, but maintain that you're going for growth right now.

2\. Monetize and hope to hell it's not a disappointment.

Once you try something, it becomes a 'known'. And for several startups that could be "we know we can't monetize this very well".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is so unbelievably backwards. If there are conversations actively going on inside of Twitter or any organization about if it is a wise move to start making money, they seemingly have missed the point of running a business.

At the end of the day if there is some magic switch Twitter can turn to start generating revenue, they'd be fools to not turn it on. Say what you will about ridiculous valuations, but its a much stronger negotiation card to have in your deck at acquisition time if you are actually you know, generating money, and don't need to sell the company because you will run out of cash otherwise. Until then, Twitter runs the risk of the world basically realizing (or at least thinking) the emperor has no clothes and running out of cash before getting bought by someone still drinking the kool aide.

<comment><USER6> _pre-revenue stream_

      Here's a shiny black box that can potentially solve all the worlds problems......
      Our growth is tremendous, so get in now while the escalator flies to the moon!

_turn on revenue stream and the revenue plateaus at a negative cash-flow position_

      Here's a shiny black box that ain't makin' us money. Who wants to buy it?

It's not too difficult to understand why a company with tremendous (most of us here would say overhyped) growth is afraid of generating revenue that doesn't come close to matching the hype (I mean growth).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _The company has to decide whether or not to turn revenue on. It sounds ridiculous, but it is a real decision. Once revenue is on, how the company is valued by the market can change dramatically._

 _So when Twitter talks about turning on revenue, it isn't such a small decision. They have no idea how much money they can make off the service. Selling data to search engines, display ads. Search based ads. Premium/business accounts, etc. There are no comparable revenue streams at other companies that they can fully rely on._

I think the more accurate revenue _dilemma_ is how any of those items mentioned above are going to generate meaningful revenues.

</comment><comment> nick-dap Turn on revenue? Did I miss the point where they actually discovered how to make a profitable social networking service?

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting post. Explains why they may not put ads against their search page. People will think:

"okay, is this the best thing they can think of"

or

"do they need the money?"

or, as the article says:

"whatever they are making, that's about all they'll make unless they grow more"

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd bet they're making quite a bit of money now just in licensing fees to use their logos (among many other possibilities they're not going to reveal).</comment>


Show HN: RDPY – Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol in Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/citronneur/rdpy

<comment><USER2> This is one of the best Python codebases I've seen in a while.

Code is easy to read and understand from reading the source, documentation is pretty comprehensive as well. Really exemplifies the proper implementation of OOP concepts in Python, which unfortunately is hard to find these days.</comment>


Haskell I/O and XPath - <AUTHOR> https://blog.adamretter.org.uk/haskell-io-and-xpath/ <comment><USER2> This feels like cargo culting. The point of IO isn't the RealWorld stuff (that's an implementation technique, and not even really true these days as IO offers all sorts of other facilities), the point is that it's a way to get the language's type system to help you distinguish between accidental control flow and essential control flow ( [http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/WhatsFunctionalProgrammingAllAbo...](http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/WhatsFunctionalProgrammingAllAbout.html) ). Without the type system it's a lot of ceremony for no benefit.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do agree that the RealWorld stuff is there to enforce control flow, but that is exactly one of the things that we needed. I also realise that the modern GHC optimizes such things away, so there is no RealWorld!

Regards implementation, as the type system available in XQuery is much more limited than that of Haskell, I had to choose some mechanism to represent an IO. Actually representing it as a state transforming function that operates on the RealWorld, as was done in the design of the IO Monad for Haskell, seems to work pretty well.

I tried to follow closely and adapt both: 1) Section 7.3 "Monadic I/O" from "A History of Haskell", Hudak, Hughes, Peyton Jones and Wadler 2007 - [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/2016/07/history.pdf) 2) Section 4 "Implementing monadic I/O" from "Imperative functional programming", Wadler and Peyton Jones 1992 - [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/1993/01/imperative.pdf)

<comment><USER2> I appreciate that your implementation follows the Haskell one. But the point of IO isn't the implementation, it's to make it easier to maintain code that interacts with the real world. That's the part that feels cargo-culty to me (having gone down the same path in Python once): if the type system can't actually enforce that your monads are composed correctly then you pay the same cost you would in Haskell but don't get the main benefit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> On a side note: IMHO this article contains one of the most accessible explanations I have seen about monads.

<comment><USER4> It's an outstandingly well-written introduction, but it only goes so far; a more formal treatment (an inevitably longer one, off topic in a discussion of I/O) would be needed to understand what, exactly, can be done with monads and how they differ from other types.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good post, and clever technique.

Site feedback: That blue bar at the top make it looks like your page hasn't loaded. If I want to see how far I've read, I will just look to the right side at the scrollbar.

</comment><comment><USER6> Aha, nice! I have wondered about doing something similar before.

As part of a module on XML for my MSc I decided to go maximum overkill, and created in XSLT a simple key-value lookup, a breadth-first node search algorithm, and a simple TAP-based test suite to make sure it all worked properly. Almost looked at seeing how much of the Functional Data Structures book I could cram into XSLT for my dissertation before choosing something a little less ambitious.

</comment><comment><USER7> That is a good writeup, a fun read! I love Haskell but I tend to use a small subset of the language. This means that I am effective when working in my own Haskell projects but reading and understanding other people's code takes time and effort.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow! Great article, and interesting info on Philip Wadler!

</comment><comment><USER9> It's never a good day when I have to pull out AWK and XSLT because that's all the server supports.

</comment><comment><USER10> didn't know Wadler was part of xquery et al .. interesting.

good read</comment>


BBC detector vans are back to spy on your home Wi-Fi – if you can believe it - <AUTHOR> http://theregister.co.uk/2016/08/06/bbc_detector_van_wi_fi_iplayer/ <comment><USER2> With a little 'help' from ISPs they could do IP to street address lookup. No need for a van.</comment>


Someone from svvply creates reading.am: what are you reading? - <AUTHOR> http://reading.am

<comment><USER2> Ive been using it for about a week now. The home page will start to get cluttered as more people begin to use it. Itll be interesting to see if/how they address the issue, I would guess with some kind of following system where you add people to your main page feed. Another part of reading.am I find interesting is how interesting stories make big blocks on the feed because a bunch of people are reading them, thus attracting more attention and presumably, more readers. You could argue thats just a less efficient upvote system though.</comment>