Ask HN: What non CompSci courses to take in college? - <AUTHOR> Courses in any of the other departments that would help in a programmer/entrepreneur career ? <comment><USER2> Writing! Programmers need to be able to make themselves understood by other humans. You need grammar, style, structure, and lots and lots of practice. If you confess to your advisor or an English faculty member that you're not terribly interested in literature, but you want to do what it takes to become an effective non-fiction writer and communicator, they can probably point you in the right direction.

(And if your school should happen to offer a rhetoric class, take it/them.)

<comment><USER3> Or you could actually be interested in said literature and take classes on it :) I think literature and code have a lot in common, they both tell a "story", though with code it tends to be more imperative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Investigate the professor, or whoever is actually teaching.

What I got out of my courses depended in some very significant ways more upon how they were taught and by whom, than upon the ostensible topic at hand.

I have great respect for educators who have sincere interest and a passion to convey it.

These are also the people who tend, one finds, to have a better handle on the "mechanics" that are important to and education. Writing, presenting, engaging in dialog and debate, _respecting_ one's conversational partner -- even while endeavoring to enlightened them as to their mistakes and assumptions.

Such people also engage you in the work, so that it's actually interesting and enjoyable to do. It's a lot easier to learn things, including those "mechanics", when that is the case.

That said, do try to get some -- but not solely or even primarily -- grounding in the "real", workaday world. Schools matriculate too many students who have no idea what they face once they walk out the door.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would recommend a Statistics class, if it is not already a requirement. In this increasingly data driven world, it's handy.

<comment><USER6> If I could go back and do it all again, I'd definitely do more stats courses.

Also if you're interested in data science in general, some basic linguistics (syntax/semantics) would be useful. (Saying this as someone with a PhD in natural language processing, who had to self-learn all the linguistic background the hard way)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any philosophy course will help you a lot. Whether it's for thinking, or just to appease some of your wandering thoughts. A general Intro, Ethics or Epistemology will do you good.

A course on art history will open your mind a little and get you thinking about design, aesthetics, and much more.

If you don't read classic literature, take a course on classic English or Russian lit. Most of these novels are timeless and could provide an important impression on you.

<comment><USER8> Completely agree - I loved philosophy so much in college that I changed my art minor to philosophy. You wouldn't think that CompSci and Philosophy would go good together, but I couldn't be happier with the results. Some of the classes even have direct correlation with how you should think as a programmer. You should ABSOLUTELY take a Logical Reasoning course.. unfortunately for most schools that is a 2 or 3 hundred level course so you may have to take some philosophy intro classes first.

<comment><USER9> I agree, but would suggest a higher level course focusing on the works of Quine and Davidson may be of interest to an analytic mind. For a cs student with a strong mathematics background, a propositional logic course is often too basic.

I would also suggest a course in either philosophy of science or philosophy of law. I found courses in other areas; aesthetics, epistomology, existentialism to be much navel gazing.

If you go this route, I also suggest you keep in mind the goal for these courses should be to hone your skills in analytical presentation. Philosophy generally require you produce many papers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Public Speaking (where you actually do it to groups not in class, may need to go to something like toastmasters or find your own to properly practice this)

Technical Writing/Composition - People tie writing well up in their brain with literature. This is due to the American educational establishment thinking writing belongs to language arts teachers, who all have English degrees. There may be a "science writing" course offered at the grad level, see if you can audit it.

Accounting 101 - This class will teach you the fundamentals of all the things you will have to do with your bookkeeping. You're really not going to be able to afford to hire a bookkeeper at first most likely.

Publishing (aka, School Newspaper) - A semester of this will teach you how press works, allow you to see the revenue model of papers, and will allow you to see things first hand a newspaper is writing about before it comes out. This is very useful later in life for understanding how to properly help newspaper writers and editors not mis-spin your business

A course on pricing in the business school - They don't always have these, but the theoretical frameworks they talk about may be easier to digest in the classroom setting then picking it up on your own after you leave school.

</comment><comment><USER11> You would benefit greatly from an intro to philosophy class.

<comment><USER2> I agree, and yet I hesitate. People who have taken one or two philosophy classes are often insufferable and not least to themselves (or so I suspect). E.g., there's no broadly accepted 'answer' in epistemology (can we know things? What does it mean to say we know something?), and in an intro class you're only likely to be introduced to the problem and a few of the historically popular responses. These may lead you to conclude that philosophy is a lot of sound and bespectacled fury, signifying nothing or else that your newfound cynicism about knowledge constitutes an important superiority over naive mortals.

Epistemology is just one example. Whatever tickles your brain in an introduction to philosophy--whether arousing your curiosity, 'clicking' with something long felt, or leading you almost to despair--you should treat as a diagnosis. Valuable information, no doubt, but almost worthless to you unless you go on to seek treatment, that is, to study it further.

<comment><USER8> Your experiences and/or preconceptions about what happens in a philosophy class differ greatly from what I experienced in school. Any decent philosophy teacher will present the historically popular responses and then let the class discuss and explore their own feelings on the subject. Nearly everybody goes to school with some kind of social and spiritual programming from their upbringing, and a few philosophy classes goes a long way in opening up your mind to the broader world. NO philosophy class should ever attempt to make you believe that one way of thinking is right or wrong, but instead should present all the ways of thinking so you are at least aware that they exist. Even knowing that such other schools of thought are out there makes you better able to communicate with and understand different people who think in a variety of ways throughout your life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd suggest some form of design/arts/UI/UX course. Break the "This looks like it was designed by a programmer" loop!

</comment><comment><USER13> I've taken a few courses suggested here and just a small bit of warning: Make sure you're going to enjoy, or at least be interested enough, to learn something.

I've taken Psych. I've taken Sociology. I've taken Philosophy (both Logic and otherwise). I've taken technical writing courses.

Other than the logic courses, I hated them all. I hated them to the point where, though I passed, I did not take anything out from them at all. It just didn't interest me.

All I'm saying is that as you read these suggestions, try to make sure that you are taking into account that there's something you want to get out of the class so that if you end up not liking it you can focus and try to get something out of it. -- I didn't, even though I could have.

</comment><comment><USER14> Philosophy -- learn to see things from different angles, different philosophies. Most importantly, observe how others in your class react to discussing touchy philosophies and concepts, like religion and politics. Learn to step outside that box, and be objective while respecting opinions, and make your own decisions. Trust me, its well worth it. Both for the laughs, and for the wisdom.

edit: Just noticed I'm echoing what many others have said. Interesting that we all had the same thought.

</comment><comment><USER15> Psychology. Knowing how other people work is a fantastic multiplier, especially for entrepreneurs.

</comment><comment><USER16> Some options to step out of the technology/science/engineering courses:

* A business course or two could be extremely useful depending on the course content -- you probably want to talk to a course counselor in the Business school about this.

* Take at least one art/design course. As a developer, I cannot tell you the number of times I've wished I understood design a little better. If nothing, understanding basic design principles will allow you to creatively contribute to a designer at some later date.

* Learn at least one new language. You haven't mentioned which country you're from (your profile doesn't say much), but Spanish is a good choice in the US. Personally, I wish I learnt German (I'm Indian and I find German a lot similar to Hindi and other Sanskrit-derived languages).

* Take a course that furthers your hobby: Photography, Art, Snowboarding, Archery and what have you.

* Take a course in the biology department. Preferably one that tells you more about the human body -- yourself. At the very least, you should be able to read your doctor's professional diagnoses or reports and understand what they mean. Know proximal vs distal, dorsal vs ventral and so on.

I'm sure there's more. I haven't had enough coffee to think right now though.

</comment><comment><USER10> Philosophy, especially one of these areas:

Ancient Greek/Roman, especially epistemology and stoics. Helps with accepting what comes and questioning how you know what you know.

Late 19th Century. Helps with questioning your real role in what you do, and why you should or should not.

Surveys of Eastern Philosophy. Adds a certain playfulness to life, also disabuses you of American perceptions of Asian traditions (such as Zen, widely mis-characterized in the west).

</comment><comment><USER17> I think a lot depends on the teacher. If there is a really good teacher which challenges their students then any course can be a great learning experience (even beyond the material covered). Obviously, it will always be different between schools. If I were you, I'd ask fellow students to see if anyone has taken a truly interesting/challenging course.

I took a Negotiations course my senior year of college and it was easily my favorite class of all time. There was a lot of roleplaying and class debate, but the teacher played Devil's Advocate and poked holes in everyone's arguments. He truly required us to think creatively and analyze a situation thoroughly before speaking/writing, or else he'd rip us apart. It was a breath of fresh air after many other classes were purely focused on learning concepts, rather than applying them creatively.

</comment><comment><USER18> >programmer/entrepreneur career

Specifically in this career, I'd like to say that CS courses alone is sufficient, certainly not optimal, but sufficient in making you a good programmer, though it's up to you what you make of your program.

For entrepreneur, in my experience, you have got to be a people person. And, you have got to understand the finances. For business/marketing and related classes I would say that generally different courses have different business logic which may or may not work depending on the situation. So, I would say prioritize on performance arts/public speaking if you're not already a people person. Else, go the finances route. It's amazing what basic knowledge of time value of money can teach you.

</comment><comment><USER19> I took Environmental Science and Evolution and Biodiversity. Both jolly interesting. Expanding the breadth of your knowledge is always good. Your best bet is to pick courses that interest you, that you will enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you have floating credits, take something that you are interested in learning, not something you think that will help you in the long haul.

I talked my way into a 300 level (non-entry level) Buddhism class because I wanted to learn about it but didn't have the pre-reqs my senior year and loved every minute of it.

I learned about cultures I'll probably never see and ways of thinking that have only improved my ability to reason about complex problems. There's something to be said about learning for learnings sake!

TLDR; Take something you don't know much about, but want to learn about and it'll expand your mind.

</comment><comment><USER21> Accounting/Finance will do you well. Business law, too. It will help a great deal to know when to start a business as a C Corp or an S Corp, how dilution works, how to keep control of your company, when and how to file patents, copyrights, and trademarks, the downside of taking money, how to build cash- flow, profit and loss, and balance sheets, etc.

If you get some business basics in, you lower your chances of getting screwed. Being able to protect your interests and work efforts could end up being your most valuable skill.

</comment><comment><USER22> Learn to write!

And not just in the baseline required rhetoric class that require little more than a pulse and a spellchecker - find a composition course that will actually demand something of you. Fiction writing, poetry, etc., something that makes you really learn how to communicate.

On that note, if you can find a presentation-heavy class, consider that. There's a lot of accessible comm classes that force you to get up in front of a crowd repeatedly - this could be invaluable in an entrepreneurial career.

</comment><comment><USER23> Public speaking.You need to be able to convey yourself clearly and effectively when you need to the most.

If you are a well-spoken engineer among a pack of average engineers, you will stand out.

</comment><comment><USER24> Other than the business courses mentioned by others...

Technical writing courses, if available, are invaluable. Being able to write and explain things clearly is an amazingly helpful skillset to develop.

Linguistics classes can be useful for helping you think about both computer and human language construction and use.

Engineering courses can help develop problem solving skills.

On any classes you take, I'd try to dig up syllabi from previous semesters to see if they're worthwhile (try to find the same teacher/course combination).

</comment><comment><USER25> I took 3 100 level business courses: Intro to Business, Intro to Marketing and Intro to Business Law. I'd recommend anybody with entrepreneurial ambitions take something similar. Of the three, I'd say the Intro to Marketing had the most useful information in it.

Taking at least 1 course in Accounting probably wouldn't be a bad idea either.

You might also find some value in Statistics courses, and other Maths courses that aren't part of your CS degree.

</comment><comment><USER26> As a Business Administration graduate, I can safely advise that Social Psychology, Negotiation and Human Resources are the best courses an entrepreneur can take. You can learn Business Law and Accounting on your own, they are easy. As I see from the comments, Programmers tend to dismiss finance, but finance strengthened with operations research can make a mediocre company a great one.

</comment><comment><USER27> Definitely take Econometrics if you can talk your way around the pre-reqs. It will teach you how to actually apply what you learn in stats 101.

</comment><comment><USER28> I really enjoyed my Sociology courses. It's good to learn "the big picture" of how societies and cultures as a whole work and interact.

</comment><comment><USER29> Reading, Writing and Arithmetic.

Marketing - If people don't know that you're selling something, it won't get bought.

I agree with a lot of the Philosophy comments people are making, but in general you should try to avoid as many people as you can if they are not your customers.

Your direction usually dictates your education. Your ability to learn new shit is far more important than your inherent knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER30> Take Econ courses. Understanding economics changes the way you make decisions. At it's simplest level, an understanding of sunken costs and opportunity costs overrides many "logical" decisions people make daily. At a more advanced level, understanding market forces and reactions will help in an entrepreneur career.

</comment><comment><USER31> I would suggest taking some music class. I am not a music person but have recently taken up piano and somehow feel it's a great way to spend time after a day long of programming (or... reading) in the office.

But this won't _directly_ help you with programming as career, it's just one way to spend time. YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER32> Languages. At least one. Get yourself to reading and conversational competence. Agreed with zoomzoom on philosophy.

Accounting.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'd recommend you take an intro to macroeconomics course. You'll learn about how monetary policy works (interest rates) and that will help you your whole life. Understanding economics helps you understand business trends, investing, and it gives you more perspective on current events.

<comment><USER2> Maybe it was just the class I took, but I took macro and wished from the first day and ever after that I had taken micro. I felt like one class of micro might have gotten me some information I could actually use in business, whereas one class of macro was far from enough to get a handle on current events or monetary policy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Business and marketing courses seem the obvious thing.

I'm not sure how much an economics course would help, seeing as the basics should be covered by the business course.

</comment><comment><USER35> Abstract Algebra, it will change the way you think about mathematics and data structures.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks all for the many interesting suggestions!

</comment><comment><USER36> Philosophy, Drama, Applied Math, Russian Literature, a spoken language, Travel/Exchange programs. All those have helped me immensely in addition to a computer science curriculum.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is an odd request for Hacker News. Everyone here knows that the liberal arts are stupid. Focus. If you have time to take courses outside of the CS department you should be using that time to write unit tests for your homework assignments or think about how you can work in SEO optimization strategies into next semester.

<comment><USER6> That's terrible advice, I hope you're being sarcastic but I fear not. There's plenty of useful stuff outside of CS which isn't liberal arts.

Maths, stats, electronics, physics could all be useful in an entirely computing-based career.

Biology or chemistry could open up a career in bioinformatics, molecular modelling or simulations. Likewise linguistics for text mining, information retrieval, speech/language processing.

Economics if you're interested in being an entrepreneur.

The crunchier end of philosophy, where it overlaps with maths and linguistics and cognitive science, will give you a much deeper frame of reference for understanding many hard problems.

Not all computing jobs involve twee social web startups or mundane CRUD.</comment></comment>


Internet Explorer 9 launches tonight, we've got your early look - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/14/internet-explorer-9-launches-tonight-weve-got-your-early-look/ <comment><USER2> Yeah, "the next-generation Web" of the previous generations. There's no support for:

— HTML5 forms. More precisely, <input>s with types of "search", "tel", "url", "email", "datetime" (even more, anything of /^date.*/), "number", "range", "color"; <select>, <datalist>, <progress> and <meter> elements. Also no support for :valid, :invalid, :optional and :required selectors.

— "placeholder" (!), "autofocus", "autocomplete" and "multiple" attributes.

— HTML5 history API (let's all enjoy the hashbang kludges)

— HTML5 drag and drop

— HTML5 app cache

— Microdata

— IndexedDB

— FileReader and FileWriter APIs

— WebSockets

— WebGL

— Web Workers

(Source: <http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/ie/115460/#comment_3739820> [in Russian]. The list contains only features that are supported by at least one browser.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it possible to move the tabs onto their own line? I rarely browse with fewer than 10 tabs open so having them share space with the address bar and buttons would be pretty awkward. Likewise, long addresses are obscured by the fixed width of the 'one box' even when all the space to the right is vacant. Can that be resized?

I would like to be able to just try it out instead of asking basic questions but first I would have to make a Windows 7 VM etc. etc.

<comment><USER4> Yes, dedicated tab row was one of the #1 feature requests, and indeed, was fixed for the IE9 Release Candidate.

See: [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/02/15/user- experienc...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/02/15/user-experiences- listen-learn-refine.aspx)

<comment><USER3> That apparently kills both birds.[1] Thanks for the link. :)

[1] [http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/IEBlog/2011/Feb/uellr- imag...](http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/IEBlog/2011/Feb/uellr-image7.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Feels to me like a browser that isn't cross-platform doesn't have much legs in 2011 (at least Safari can pull the WebKit card)... I use multiple platforms every day and it just doesn't make much sense to use a different browser on each one.

I guess they'll get the current IE8 users, hopefully even convince some people to get new machines or upgrade to W7 -- all good for a web developer. But as an actual competing browser? I don't think so.

</comment><comment><USER6> If this makes people get off IE6 & IE7 it's good enough for me.

<comment><USER7> It will mostly get users off IE8. Users of older versions of IE who still haven't upgraded to IE8 (2 years old!) simply can't or don't want to upgrade.

Also, most IE users run Windows XP. IE9 will never be available for Windows XP, so those users are stuck (unless they switch to a third party browser or buy a new computer).

<comment><USER8> If Microsoft were truly committed to moving people off of IE6, they would have a modern solution specifically for XP users. They screwed it up, they fix it.

3rd party developers target older OS versions all the time; Microsoft should be in a great position to support XP. And even if they don't want to, they should still have an official stance that encourages the use of _some_ modern browser, even if it means they have to suck it up and recommend Firefox for XP users. Better still, issue a service pack for XP that installs Firefox automatically; then IT groups can be sure that a modern browser is on all their machines, and internal apps can finally target the modern browser and require its use.

<comment><USER9> No other operating system manufacturer (outside of the embedded realm) does anything near what Microsoft does for XP. Suggesting that it is a failing of the IE team to not support XP is a little disingenuous with the rest of what people say. I see very few people complaining that Apple killed the PowerPC line, and XP far predates that.

Microsoft has been pushing people off of XP for ages, but many people hold the misapprehension that XP is 'good enough' in some sense. This is further complicated by the fact that most people who still use XP don't want the system to change. If Microsoft were to release such a service pack, the first thing that nearly all of the IT groups of whom you speak would do would be to block it from automatically installing. Those that wouldn't would have already set up the base install to have a modern browser (IE8, Firefox, Chrome).

<comment><USER3> > No other operating system manufacturer (outside of the embedded realm) does > anything near what Microsoft does for XP.

Who are you including in that category apart from Apple? Compatibility with 30-year-old OS features is often considered a worthwhile goal among current UNIX descendants.

> I see very few people complaining that Apple killed the PowerPC line, and XP > far predates that.

Is WinXP compatible with x86 and x86-64? Is Win7 not compatible with those? I don't see what point you're making by mentioning CPU architectures. And the 'universal binary' made this switch largely transparent to owners of either CPU.

> many people hold the misapprehension that XP is 'good enough' in some sense

Leaving aside the accuracy of this, surely if it is a misapprehension then it should cause problems only for those people. Instead Microsoft have made it clear that it's a problem for their own profit growth and that those users need to be coerced into upgrading.

But even that's being done in a half-assed way that makes it more of a problem for web developers. Which other Microsoft titles are being developed to be XP- incompatible? Certainly not Office 2010. Aside: backwards compatibility was largely maintained under Mac OS Classic from 1984 to 2001. The break, coming with OS X, was necessary, not contrived.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why not compare it against firefox 4, rather than 3.6? Acid: 97 SunSpider: 426.7ms Peacekeeper: 3221 Points

Chrome 12: SunSpider: 417.5ms Peacekeeper: 7030 Points

<comment><USER3> Because it's the stable release, not beta.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just can't stand the cut-off back button and the odd WPF-inspired font anti- aliasing. It sticks out like a sore thumb. Otherwise, a decent release.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's refreshing to see them adopt some minimalism in the application, even if it does look like a ripoff of Chrome.

<comment><USER13> Except worse looking. Not sure what they were thinking with the tabs. For higher contrast, or those with colour deficiency it is hard to see which tab is selected. I noticed this in the beta, but had hoped it would be ironed out before the final. _sigh_

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> More importantly, when will iFixit have their teardown?

</comment><comment><USER12> Does the big back button on the left bother anybody else? It's layering looks horrible. Either bring it to the front or decrease it's size so the bottom isn't cut off.

<comment><USER3> It looks a bit wrong but it's an effective use of space (creating emphasis and a comfortable click zone while also conserving real estate).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd like to see them compare against Firefox 4 RC instead of Firefox 3.6.15. Firefox 4 is going to be final in the next couple of weeks or sooner, and IE9 is not final yet either. A comparison against Fx4 and Chrome 10 would be much more representative of the current state.

<comment><USER7> Alright, I applied some Google-fu to find out how FF4 RC1 scores on the same tests that Engadget mentioned in the IE9 article.

FF4 RC1 scores 97/100 on the Acid3 test, IE9 scores 95/100. We don't need to go into the accuracy of the rendering, they both fail. It would be nice if they caught up, Apple has been shipping an Acid3 compliant browser for 21 months already. Then there's SunSpider, the results of which differ as different hardware is used, but in all the reports that I found, IE9 scores better than FF4 RC1. And lastly, there's Peacekeeper. FF4 RC1 is dead last in that test, by quite a long ways.

So it didn't really matter whether Engadget used FF 3.6 or FF4 in their tests.

UPDATE: IE9 is out now: <http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/></comment></comment>


NNs Designing NNs: Multi-Objective Hyper-Parameter Optimization - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.02120 <comment><USER2> Nope. The singularity is not suddenly here because people are using machine learning for machine learning hyperoptimization. These aren't even new ideas and the fact that they happen to be using neural networks doesn't make it magic.

<comment><USER3> Fitting username. Shouldn't the title be edited for editorialization?

<comment><USER2> It should. I should also clarify, I don't mean to take anything away from the authors by saying 'these are not new ideas'. This paper is still a contribution, I only mean that the general idea of AutoML (I'll stretch the typical application and say this is AutoML) is not new.

I am thinking that it's time for a new browser plugin. We already have cloud- to-butt, we need singularity-to-...</comment></comment></comment>


Future Day - <AUTHOR> http://futureday.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> _"So few of us actively try to envision the future and change it for the better. Even small tweaks, such as coming up with a new way to explain a coming technology to the public, can have big positive consequences. Let's use Future Day as an opportunity to promote the big goals, like extending the human healthspan, spreading freedom, and healing our environment."_

— Christine Peterson, Chairman, Personalized Life Extension 2012, Co-founder, Foresight Institute</comment>


Show HN: Birthhits – Create a Spotify playlist of top songs on your birthday - <AUTHOR> https://www.birthhits.com/ <comment><USER2> That was quick ;)

[https://twitter.com/rrhoover/status/950734760975872000](https://twitter.com/rrhoover/status/950734760975872000)

@rrhoover Jan 9 "Request for product from @spotify: A playlist of top 40 hits from the day you were born, on your birthday"

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it felt a bit like a race actually ;)</comment></comment>


If this woman stays off her smartphone for an entire year, she'll win $100k - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc15.com/national/if-this-woman-stays-off-her-smartphone-for-an-entire-year-shell-win-100-000 <comment><USER2> This has got to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. They have no way of knowing if she did it. They gave her her a flip phone and at the end of a year they're going to have her take a polygraph test. That's the setup. Wow.

<comment><USER3> Would you risk $100k to touch a smartphone at any point during a year?

<comment><USER4> I think that's really close to the price point that would keep me away from a smartphone.

<comment><USER5> I'd just buy some JNCO jeans and get a netbook

<comment><USER3> HAHA, that's true, a netbook could function as an effective replacement for a smartphone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This doesn't sound bad at all if you can use a laptop, which the rules say she can. I strive for functionality parity between my phone and laptop, so anything I need to do or data I can access is reachable from both.

<comment><USER7> Wanted to say this as well.

I barely if ever use my phone. Everything is on laptop.

<comment><USER8> I also came here to say that. This is basically free money. Although, you might have a hard time navigating around a city without modern navigation tools like Uber, Lyft and Google Maps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > a Kyocera flip phone that she can only use to call and text

She should get a Twilio account. ;-)

I say this half seriously, because I know it may not be in the _spirit_ of the challenge, but it would be enriching to cobble together some simple scripts to receive an SMS and proxy things like Google queries, maybe maps directions, Calendar lookups, maybe a Tweet-sender, HN headline fetcher, etc. It would be constrained but educational and fun. (I say "fun" because HN.) Bonus marks: IVR and/or voice rec version.

<comment><USER10> Google actually did run a service on 600613 (I think) for some time that would text directions and info from certain queries. I was disappointed when I found out it was down.

<comment><USER11> Wow, that just reminded me of ChaCha.

When I finally got an unlimited text plan(~2009), I asked soo many questions. I was still on dial-up at the time, so it was actually faster than trying to look something up on Yahoo. And as a bonus, I could still use it while my mom was on the phone!

[https://www.cnet.com/news/chacha-gives-you-answers-via- text-...](https://www.cnet.com/news/chacha-gives-you-answers-via-text- message/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not difficult given the incentives. But the lie detecting sounds a bit worrying.

<comment><USER13> It blows my mind that people still use the "lie detector" (polygraph) for anything.

<comment><USER14> They are used for intimidation primarily. If you are being interrogated by a police officer and gullible enough to believe in polygraphs then you are more likely to tell the truth.

However, I bet the effect wears off after the first interrogation because you lose that last ounce of doubt "what if it works".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This parallels the Twilight Zone Episode "The Silence"[0] which itself has roots in Chekhov's "The Bet"

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silence_(The_Twilight_Zone...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silence_\(The_Twilight_Zone\))

</comment><comment><USER16> It's ironic that a mainstream brand which presumably advertises a lot is sponsoring this challenge considering that smartphone addiction is caused by advertising (as it incentivises the social platforms to maximise engagement so they see more ads thus make them money).

</comment><comment><USER17> My dad doesn't own a smartphone. He has a flip phone that he takes out when he goes on trips but where he lives (rural Maine) there is no cell reception so he doesn't see a point in having anything fancier (also, having watched him attempt to operate a smartphone, it's probably for the best). Does someone want to pay him $100k for that?

</comment><comment><USER18> This is trivial. Get a gps for the car. She has a flip phone. And she can still use laptops and desktops. She could even get a laptop with lte if she really wants. I'd do this for a tenth or even a hundredth of the price although the lie detector test seems suspect.

</comment><comment><USER19> In other news man ties arm behind back for an entire year for $100K...

Not only is a lie detector test far from definitive but why? Why would you knowingly put yourself in danger this way? It's akin to driving without seatbelts or airbags.

<comment><USER20> Are you serious about not having a smartphone being on par with not wearing your seatbelt? If anything, not having a smartphone is safer than having one because you're not going to be staring at it while driving, crossing the street, juggling knives, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Paul Miller did a similar thing (no direct internet access for a year) for The Verge a few years back.

</comment><comment><USER22> I did an 11-month detox on a dumb phone and loved it. It's like fasting, just mind over matter.

<comment><USER23> And where's your damn hundred thousand? There's no justice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> How will she use her 2FA ;)

</comment><comment><USER25> Apple Watch with cellular, for hailing Ubers and messaging?

<comment><USER26> iPad mini with cell service?

<comment><USER25> The rules say no tablets. Could do iPod touch with cellular hotspot though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This sounds like one of those "you could live in this mansion free forever, but you can't ever listen to Beyonce again. Wyd?" Instagram posts.

The answer is always yes, sign me up.

</comment><comment><USER28> Actually, she'll win more like $200k, $100k for the contest and another $100k producing value for others because of all the additional free time she'll have thanks to the absence of useless distractions.

</comment><comment><USER29> I have been doing that for the last 40 years, give me $4M! But if fixing other people's phone counts, I'm out of luck.

<comment><USER30> Smartphones haven't existed for 40 years!

<comment><USER31> I'm sure that made the early years a lot easier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why do people need to be rewarded money to do something like this? Why can't the reward be a better social life or better mental health? As the person says in the article, "Getting away from the smartphone has been freeing, and it has opened my eyes and made me more aware of some of my other bad health habits." That's a pretty good reward for most. I'd take that $100k and use it to spread awareness about social media and its health effects. All a project like this does is reinforce the idea that people should only do things for monetary gains, including bettering their body and mind.

<comment><USER33> > I'd take that $100k and use it to spread awareness about social media and > its health effects.

I would bet $100,000 that you would spend $0K of the $100K to spread awareness about social media and its health effects.</comment></comment>


Quay.io Down - <AUTHOR> http://status.quay.io/ <comment><USER2> yeah it's not the first time in those recent months.. just to talk about something while it goes back up again.. someone know a valid alternative ? I mean free, unlimited public images host ?

I've found docker hub rather slow, interface was terrible even if with recent updates seems getting better ( I don't know if they improved network speed )

just being curious.. someone know how much bandwidth those docker repos are eating? I suppose that's something huge :)</comment>


NewServers: Bare Metal Cloud - <AUTHOR> http://newservers.com/ "The only server cloud that delivers dedicated servers instead of virtual instances on shared servers." <comment><USER2> Doesn't softlayer (<http://softlayer.com/>) provide this same service?

<comment><USER3> It is even called the same thing "Bare Metal Cloud™" And it seems as though softlayer has a trademark on that... interesting!

<http://softlayer.com/cloudlayer_computing.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, if the responsiveness of their website is representative for their servers & service then I'll happily pass "NewServers".

<comment><USER5> Seems really snappy to me...I'm in Phoenix on Verizon.

I looked for a decently large file to download from their site, but couldn't find one.

Granted, I'm used to dealing with VPS hosts like linode and slicehost; maybe offering something like that isn't customary for hosts like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://newservers.com/nap-of-the-americas.html>

They are hosted in NAP of the americas, which is based out of Miami,FL.

Not exactly the best place for a datacenter (except if you want extra low latency to south/central america)

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.cloudclimate.com/newservers>

"PING Times from Locations Around the Globe (48 Hours)"

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it just me or does that attractive, female customer service technician work for a lot of companies..?

[https://support.newservers.com/themes/client_default/staffon...](https://support.newservers.com/themes/client_default/staffonline.gif)

<comment><USER8> Headset hottie. Every business targeted at geeks must have one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't understand it because their content is very Buzzword Compliant, but this is what I can gather: they sell you dedicated servers billed hourly and provisioned quickly, much like a cloud provider.

<comment><USER10> It's a cloud provider that doesn't use Virtualization. You don't need Xen or OpenVZ to have a handful of boxes and an API to address them as a distributed redundant machines. (Does anyone even know what Beowulf clusters are anymore?)

<comment><USER9> Oh man, that's a blast from the past. Haven't use a Beowulf since my PhD days 5 years ago. Thanks for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's a pretty cool setup, really. I almost made an ass of myself by saying "they should be using blade servers" when they are, in fact, using blade servers.

I would really, really like to know how the power density of blades like this compares to the potential power density of hefty machines running virtual instances. If you can get close with dedicated blades, something like this would make a really desirable (and sustainable) premium "cloud" offering.

</comment><comment><USER12> I dont see the niche myself..

If you want instant provisioning and scalability then use the cloud. If you want dedicated servers, well, buy a dedicated.

<comment><AUTHOR> I became interested in NewServers while looking for affordable dedicated server hosting providers. I am personally less interested in "cloud" scalability for my pet project, and more in getting a "decent" quality dedicated server or 3 for a "decent" price (lots of hand-waving here I know). That is, I find EC2 to be "expensive" for what I want; I'm not super profitable yet in my tiny little startup so saving money yet maximizing server performance at the same time is the tradeoff I'm researching.

I have not found any hosting providers besides NewServers that are as affordable for "lots" of RAM. Also, NewServers' bandwidth quota is 3GB/hr with $0.10/GB overage.

NewServers offers add-ons like extra RAM. These require maybe a couple of days but for me, I don't need pure cloud scalability in minutes. I just want a few cheap dedicated servers.

Consider this configuration;

               Intel Processor           Cores  RAM  HDD                    Price/Hour
        Jumbo  2 x E5405 Quad Core 2Ghz  8      8GB  2 x 500GB SATA RAID 1  $0.38

An always-on Jumbo is thus:

        Jumbo = 720*0.38 = $273.60/month

RAM add-ons:

        8GB     $0.04/hr    720*0.04 = $28.80/mo. more
        16GB    $0.08/hr    720*0.08 = $57.60/mo. more
        24GB    $0.12/hr    720*0.12 = $86.40/mo. more
        32GB    $0.16/hr    720*0.16 = $115.20/mo. more

Thus, a Jumbo with 24GB RAM = $273.60 + $86.40 = $360.0/month with _lots_ of bandwidth transfer.

Compared with something like EC2, this is a no-brainer on the cost front, _provided_ you do not need the other Amazon features... (I don't, but that should be made clear).

Also, I talked with Alex at NewServers and their turnaround time for provisioning servers with the above add-ons is "2 or 3 days". Good? Bad? That's fine _for me_ but do note that servers with add-ons are not provisioned on the order of minutes but days.

Thoughts? What am I not considering but should be?

<comment><USER12> Well the prices didnt look very great to me.

For example I rent a few UK based dedicated servers which cost me (converting in my head here) $150-$190 a month. Specs are similar to their Fast package but with 8GB of RAM and unlimited bandwidth.

That is around average price here in the UK; I assumed things were similar in the states, but I guess not?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> FWIW

        We do not keep any servers unused, all servers are recycled
        and added to queue so the customers have equal rights to get
        them... and we cannot keep them reserved because of the costs...
        instead you should consider leasing them for longer periods
        so you have them available.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, random comparison of Redis performance on NewServer vs a Linode (dedicated vs VPS):

<https://gist.github.com/e115e1f62f5f5bad55ee>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "The only server cloud that delivers dedicated servers instead of virtual instances on shared servers."

</comment><comment><USER13> I interviewed these guys at Structure 2008 for my blog. They were pretty nice and rather reasonable people. They seemed to have an understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. To be fair, they're not targeted at the Web 2.0 market that EC2 has targeted. They're more suited as an alternative to dedicated servers, and seemed to be targeting traditional businesses who are bad at capacity planning.

<http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/29307> was the interview if anyone's interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you elaborate on your comment about targeting companies bad at capacity planning? I did not get that from the interview at least. Also, I am considering using them and wonder how I might be implicitly bad at capacity planning :)

<comment><USER13> Forgive me, I'm a much better technologist than I am a blogger .. Hence the sparse number of entries on my blog!

In general, I feel that the whole EC2/instant provisioning model of servers, which for any moderate (10+ serverS) application tends to be far more expensive than owning your own hardware over the long run, is a sign of an infrastructure that either does not excel at capacity planning, or that is unable to plan for capacity.</comment></comment></comment>


Using d3 to create directed graphs - <AUTHOR> http://bl.ocks.org/cjrd/6863459

<comment><USER2> You should make an app for FirefoxOS that does just that. I bet that it would be really simple from what you already have.

<comment><AUTHOR> interesting suggestion, why firefox OS?</comment></comment>


How To Avoid Getting Fired From Your Own Company - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/31/how-to-avoid-getting-fired-from-your-own-company/

<comment><USER2> A few more tips, if I may be permitted to leverage my own experience and the experience of my friends and acquaintances:

* _Avoid personal drama_. I suspect that in more cases than we realize, management-level changes happen simply because people stop working productively with each other. In particular, you need to be prepared to DISAGREE AND COMMIT; to be able to signal that even in cases where you disagree about the direction of a decision, you aren't plotting behind the scenes for its failure.

* _Stay close to the money_. Most of you are tech people. As a tech person in a moving company, you can basically be doing three things and still be perceived as someone who is executing: you can be shipping product improvements, you can be doing "marketing engineering" (ask Patrick what this means, but, briefly: "things that improve customer acquisition or customer LTV"), or you can be talking to customers/the market. There seems to be a huge trap for techs in startups in the "CTO" and "Chief Scientist" and "Architect" roles; AVOID THEM.

* _Be strategic about roles and hiring_. This stuff about palling around with the board may be important, but from what I can tell, the game is won or lost on the org chart. Don't hire people who are going to ladder-climb around you. This is one aspect of Startup Soap Opera Drama that is not overhyped: the market is lousy with people who, for good reasons or bad, have a primary goal of being one of the key people on the m-team. A simple trap to avoid: if you're the Dir/E, be _very_ careful about who the VP/E is; if she can't be you, aim for your kid's godmother. Similarly, if you're in Product Management, even as VP/PM, be very careful about VP/Marketing.

* _Be careful about demotion_. Clarifying special case of the previous note: in a lot of biz cultures, there's basically no such thing as a "demotion"; usually there's only termination, lateral moves, or "constructive" demotion (hiring SVP/M to oversee and eventually consume raw the VP/M, then EVP/M for the SVP/M, etc). If you allow yourself to be demoted, and your m-team is a bunch of assholes (not an infrequent occurrance), you can be perceived as weak.

* _Keep zeroes out of the m-team_. Human resources doesn't belong in the m-team. The Dir/M in a single-product company where a VP/PM handles 99% of marketing doesn't need a seat at the table just to represent "Marketing". The less vital a role is, the more likely they are to be a magnet for bullshit politics.

* _Be customer facing_. I think I said this already: if you aren't committing code that the company will sink without, you should be meeting customers or partners constantly. Be very careful about getting sucked into the conference circuit. It's easy to convince yourself that a particular conference is important to your business but be perceived by everyone else in your company as a tourist.

* _Be on the same page with your board_. In two of the cases I've been directly involved in, the conflict underlying a planned coup was at the level of "are we going to grow the business or are we going to position the company to get bought". It seems like you need to have an eye for the kinds of decisions that involve liquidity. Early on, your board may be worried that you're tilting the game for an early exit; later on, especially if you aren't on the original founding team, you may be perceived as an obstacle to bizdev when your VC just wants to get rid of a board seat gracefully. You don't have to agree on every decision, but it seems like you really do have to be perceived as having aligned interests.

* _Be extremely cautious with metrics_. Anyone who's ever managed a sales team knows about "sandbagging", where the guy running a region lowballs the numbers so he can sail over them and collect bonus accelerators. A lot of devs have a natural habit of being optimistic --- about schedule, about product adoption, about support costs, about COGS --- all of which gives the management team ammunition down the road.

<comment><USER3> How do you know this / did you learn this?

I'm constantly trying to counteract know-it-all syndrome. Studying other fields where I'm not an expert has been very eye-opening, but examples like your post are even more interesting.

<comment><USER2> I'm (probably) significantly older than you, have spent my whole career in startups, and so have many of my friends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Answer: Re-evaluate what the meaning of "yours" is. This should be obvious to anyone. Once you start selling off ownership of your company to others, it's not just "yours" anymore.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is it possible to draw up an employment contract for yourself that has steep penalties if you're terminated? That way, even if you lose control of the board there's still a strong disincentive to getting rid of you.

<comment><USER6> You certainly can. The real question is: if you do, will you be able to attract any investors at all?

<comment><USER7> Why would anyone even want investors that didn't believe in the founder sufficiently to agree not to displace him for X years, or else pay founder lots and lots of money? While it may turn many investors away, I know I wouldn't want a group of investors that didn't believe in my ability to run the company and were just trying to get away with a coup that will allow them to control the IP.

<comment><USER8> If that is important to you, you can make it clear to the investors before they come in, and get them to agree to limit their ability to remove you from the board and from your position running the company. This can be done in a shareholders agreement. The problem is (a) if you need the investors more than they need you, they will not agree to this, and (b) people often think of this only when they are on the verge of getting the boot, when it is too late to work something out. Investments usually always begin with everyone singing "kumbaya" in harmony, and every investor always says they invest in founders, but when things don't go according to plan, the founder who's sold control is often going to be the first to go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think that under some circumstances, getting fired from one's own company could be cause for celebration. If the company is at least reasonably successful, it means that someone else has grown to feel a sufficient sense of ownership and responsibility about it that they're willing to put themselves on the line. And it sets you free to start the next one. Isn't that what you really want to do anyway?

\-- Not always, I know. But thinking about various businesses I can imagine trying to start, most of them I wouldn't be so attached to that I'd want to keep doing them forever. And I can easily imagine that once I got over the shock of getting fired, I could come to appreciate the opportunity to move on, particularly if I got a little cash in the bargain.

</comment><comment><USER10> this is yet another reason why I want to always bootstrap and retain 100% equity (or at least controlling share if I give out grants). So much pain, hassle, risk avoided. You _might_ have to grow slower, maybe, depending on the particulars. But I think it's worth it.

<comment><USER11> Fear is a bad reason.

<comment><USER10> caution. prudence. applying the wisdom that you want to have as few moving parts as possible to reduce complications. not fear.

i don't play with dynamite because the upside doesn't interest me and the downside bites hard. same for playing on highways, jumping out of planes, juggling swords, etc. is it possible to do all these things and come out undamaged/unhurt/unhassled? sure. but there are alernatives available to me that have similar upsides or better, with less downside. YMMV

<comment><USER12> It is hard to dominate a market when your competition has x million dollars. Even if they last only a few years they have sucked up market that is hard to take back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Most of the article reads like Power and Politics 101; I was relieved to discover this part at the end:

 _You should also bear in mind that sometimes, the coup plotters are right._

</comment><comment><USER14> If this is a big concern to you, get your money from VCs and angels that aren't in the habit of firing founders. The Founders Fund, as I understand it, has an explicit policy of not funding anyone they think they might need to fire, because they expect that if you have to fire the founders the company is probably going to tank anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> VCs rarely go into a deal expecting to fire the founder. The only way that would make sense is if A) the business is red hot and B) the investors see the founder as a lucky fool rather than as the person responsible for the business' success.

That's a pretty rare combination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Step 1: Don't give up a significant portion of your company.

<comment><USER16> That's not enough. Under most corporate bylaws the board has the ultimate power. You could own 90% of the shares and still get fired.

<comment><USER17> But if you own 90% of the shares, can't you just fire the board?

<comment><USER16> My understanding is that unless you have provision (in a shareholder's agreement for example) that gives you that power the answer is no. I believe that if you sued the company a judge would likely intervene on your behalf though.

<comment><USER8> Ultimately the directors are always elected by the shares, and unless there is something really strange about the voting rights, someone owning a controlling interest in the shares should be able to control election to the board, which in turn would allow that person to control the board. Controlling the shares + controlling the board = controlling the company.

<comment><USER16> The shares do elect, but the owner of the shares can be required to vote a certain way. You could sell 90% of your shares and add a "ELECTION OF BOARD DIRECTORS" clause to the agreement.

This is the same way drag along rights work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "The only way to be totally fireproof is to own a controlling stake in your company"

I wish the article was on 'how to own, keep and maintain controlling stake no matter how many rounds of funding you do' ...

<comment><USER19> There will never be an article like that-- because the only way to do it is to have nearly infinite leverage when raising money (see Facebook and, likely, Twitter).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sounds like a really good argument for doing everything possible to go solo.

<comment><USER21> This article just covers the downsides of selling equity to raise money. Obviously there's an upside - having money in the bank with which to grow your business. Some projects need a team of people and that costs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm both the author of the post and an investor. If everyone bootstrapped, I'd be out of business. But I want entrepreneurs to know the risks they face.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Plan your career so that you can retire by 40.</comment>


Ellen.page - <AUTHOR> https://ellen.page/ <comment><USER2> Upvoted because Ellen is a wonderful person (she went to school with my little brother).

But not sure why on Hacker News :)

<comment><USER3> The TLD .page is brand new (it's not available for general registration yet) and someone's last name being a TLD is cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://endless.horse/](http://endless.horse/)

<comment><USER5> Managed to crash mobile Firefox with that one. Scroll down a bunch, select all, copy, paste into address bar.

<comment><USER6> can't reproduce on Brave, maybe switch for better browser?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of will.i.am - the shortened form of the legal name "[https://www.will.i.am/index.php"](https://www.will.i.am/index.php").

(I'm sure someone can reword that into a joke that's actually funny)

</comment><comment><USER3> Kinda shocking [https://larry.page/](https://larry.page/) isn't resolving to anything yet. I presume Google reserved it for themselves.

(Google is the operator of the .page TLD.)</comment>