The Danger of iPads in Schools - <AUTHOR> http://matthall2000.tumblr.com/post/40973782626/the-danger-of-ipads-in-schools

<comment><USER2> I don't know how old OP is, but I'm 20 and first computing experience was graphical - with Windows NT 4.0. My elementary school had Macintosh OS 7/8 (don't remember exactly). However all I can remember doing on these computers were playing games - AOL Kids, Math Blaster, JumpStart and Zoombinis.

I didn't start programming until I was 13 (out of my own curiosity) and I wasn't offered any sort of programming classes by my junior year in high school.

My point is I think for most of us who grew up in the era of graphical interfaces, computers have always been glorified xboxes. When GUIs were introduced and we had options like Math Blaster I don't think many of us actually considered that we could write our own games. In elementary school I think the bar may be a little too high (not to say it can't be done). That said, it didn't matter to us that the machines were directly programmable. We didn't have the resources to create our own MathBlaster and I don't think any of us would have patience to wrestle with gcc.

I think Codify is a much better tool for teaching programming than a plain text file would be. Its a lot easier to make a "cool app" from a app that hides all hard parts of making a game (like a graphics library) than to try and convince a kid he should mess around in the console.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting - do you remember at all how you first got into programming? How did you even find out it was an option? And what was the first thing you tried to make?

BTW, I'm the OP and I'm 38, I started with Logo on Apple II's at the Library, but I'm wondering if there's something more we should be doing to help kids get into this stuff.

<comment><USER2> My friend and I both got started with Flash. His dad was a graphic designer and we both knew with Flash you could create games, but we didn't know anything about programming. However after his dad showed us how to make a play/replay button, we played with the concept more, and made a Rock Paper Scissors game. (This was done by animating every possible combination, then having a "play button" that would jump to a random frame).

We did have to do a lot of Googling (we were only ever shown how to make a play button), but I don't think its very different from what Codify is trying to offer. After we had most of the basic programming control structures down and learned some of Flash's features (ActionScript 1 was very easy to use) we were off making games.

In hindsight, you are right. Simply having the programming environment to do whatever we wanted helped us learn. I remember we jumped into networking to create online versions of our games. However I am not sure if there is a way to recreate that push - we simply got into it because we spent so much time on sites like Newgrounds and armor games.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Kids who are inquisitive (future engineers) will still want to take the devices apart and will find a way to write apps.

You are focusing on the device not the environment. Consider a book, you cant edit or create with a book but that doesn't inhibit potential authors.

iPads allow (admittedly somewhat limited) creative activities, as well as supporting a raft of consumer educational software, consoles do not (so much)

edit: In addition, we should trust our educators to determine the best tools from those available to achieve the desired pedagogical outcomes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well put. However, I would argue that we should be attempting to reach the kids who might not realize they could or would like to be future engineers. The problem with the book analogy is that it's very obvious how you would make a book, all the pieces all there in front of you. It's not obvious how you might make an app for the iPad, none of the requirements are present. When I show kids how they're made, they're generally amazed.

Finally, I'm not sure we should trust our educators without question, this stuff changes very quickly and very few of them are programmers. In the 30 years since I've been programming there doesn't seem to be much change in how programming is taught in schools, so it might be time for a rethink.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, it's a more complex procedure to create an app, but the kudos for achievement is proportionality higher. It could therefore be argued that there is a rough balance in terms of motivation (assuming kudos drives motivation).

The fact that educators are not inherently technically adept is precisely why they need devices that can be reset and redeployed quickly and simply. If you take into account the attention span of young kids you can see why these devices have become so popular so quickly.

The target market in this context is a younger age range than the age at which programming should be introduced to the curriculum (admittedly this a contentious issue).

I'd argue that the use of iPads in this setting only reinforces the importance of learning to program when the opportunity present itself. How many of our peers were put off a possible career in programming as a result of the high barrier to entry presented by the flashing cursor and a lack of comprehension of the relevance of writing code? We need a proportionate representation of all personality types in the programming world to provide the best solutions for the non-programmers (at least until everyone is a programmer). Maybe this early exposure will attract people with insights we currently lack to careers in programming.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a great point, I didn't consider how many people got turned off a computer right from the start because of an unfriendly interface like a basic prompt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think that a prompt is the reason why kids get interested in computer programming. If that was the case, we could call this The Danger of Windows 95 in schools.

If anything, the prolifieration of apps makes a lot of programming more attainable for kids.

Hardward hacking, on the otherhand...

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think the prompt itself is the thing, it's the perception that the machine is under their control. In these kinds of things perceptions seem to matter a lot, especially to kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have Scheme on my iPad. You can get Python for iPad, too. Not much useful you can do with them, but useful for learning programming.

But yeah, if you want to write native apps for the iPad you need a Mac and Xcode. Of course, it's not like people write Android apps on Android very much.

</comment><comment><USER6> I can see the author's argument, but I think there are more fundamental issues to be dealt with. My high school, for example, discontinued Computer Science classes altogether due to low enrollment.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is sheer insanity to me. I just don't understand why comp sci isn't taught as a fundamental course like math. Do you have a sense why nobody was enrolling? Was it seen as too hard, too nerdy, something else?

<comment><USER3> I'd say that it's usually because the pace of change in the industry is too fast for the curriculum to keep up.

Maths courses written in the time of COBOL are still being taught. The only option is to teach the basic fundamentals, which (without application) makes for a very dull subject.</comment></comment></comment>


Read this while you are on the plane heading to meet investors - <AUTHOR> http://shelfmade.wordpress.com/2007/10/28/read-this-on-the-plane-ride-to-meet-investors/

<comment><USER2> Read venture hacks? <http://www.venturehacks.com></comment>


Investors Tap Into 401(k) Money Tax-Free for Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601014&sid=aJgR6jQ5ikWk <comment><AUTHOR>
      Here's how it typically works: An investor sets up a corporation, establishes a new
      401(k) plan there, rolls over his or her existing 401(k) or Individual Retirement
      Account, and then uses part or all of the plan's assets to buy shares of the new
      company. This funds the new business, while keeping the tax- advantages of the
      retirement plan.

Brilliant

<comment><USER2> Maybe ... as noted in the article:

If you can't convince others that your venture is worthwhile that should tell you something.

This may or very probably will put you under IRS scrutiny, in which case you had better have done everything just right.</comment></comment>


How Secret Used Automated Testing for Their Android Launch - <AUTHOR> http://blog.testmunk.com/how-secret-used-automated-testing-for-their-android-launch/ <comment><USER2> This is not terribly difficult to get running locally (at a smaller scale). Square has a tool called Spoon[0] that makes it really easy to run a test suite across a bunch of devices.

On a recent project, we had 5-7 devices plugged into a spare box that would run a test suite on every push. It worked out great and the ability to capture screenshots was really helpful for the design team to help spot strange UI issues. More details on the setup here: [http://www.sep.com/sep- blog/2014/01/06/android-robotium-and-...](http://www.sep.com/sep- blog/2014/01/06/android-robotium-and-spoon-a-practical-guide-for-testing-on- android-devices/)

But if you need larger device coverage, Testmunk looks pretty awesome :)

[0]: [https://github.com/square/spoon](https://github.com/square/spoon)

</comment><comment><USER3> I appreciate TestMunk's goal to make automated mobile testing easier and more accessible, and I truly hope they succeed in that, but for the love of testing, please do not view that example feature file at the bottom as an example of proper Gherkin.

It is riddled with implementation details and brittle explicit waits. To be fair, they did clearly state: "we generally recommend against fixed waits" but then please do not put this forth as an example to be copied. Scenarios should describe the behavior from a user perspective and leave out implementation details. You should not have to change the your Gherkin no matter how much the underlying implementation changes so long as the expected behavior remains the same. Not to mention the misuse of the Given/When/Then keywords and the "I logout" steps -- that is what before/after hooks are for.

I also recognize TestMunk points out that this feature utilizes standard steps to get your first test cases going and to get some screenshots. They also advocate for the page object pattern, which is good, but it might be helpful to be clear that this is not how you'd actually want to write your Gherkin, whose true value comes when written with/for product owners, free of implementation details.

<comment><USER4> Can someone explain to me the appeal of Gherkin and other such tools? I don't see why the example on that page are anything but code that wants to "look better", and just ends up introducing another thing to maintain in your application.

How is writing a step in English and writing the English to translate it to code better than just writing the exact same steps in code to begin with?

<comment><USER5> Gherkin/Cucumber's big thing is that it lets the people who can't read code (i.e. project managers, suits, and customers) understand what's being tested. Usually along the lines of:

"As a user, I want to buy things, so I should be able to put things in the cart and get an accurate total price"

or

"As a user, I want to view the site in my own language, given I have come from a German network address, I should get the German language site"

This frees you from having to explain the finer points of cookies, or geoip, or any number of concepts to people who do not operate on a level that close to the bare metal.

The translation isn't really error prone either and isn't hard to implement from the programmer's side. Say that language example above? The actual test would be written like:

        As a user,
        I want to vew the site in my own language
        Given I have come from a German network address,
        I should get the german language site.

Those last two things are recognized via a verbatim regex (basically /^I have come from a German network address$/),

and the actual implementation code does something based on that, say, setting a test IP to a known German netblock, and the last line would actually load the site and look for the right localized strings.

So they're rather closely coupled together. If you change the wording of the test for whatever reason, the old code won't work anymore (actually, I think Cucumber will tell you that there was no test found), necessitating someone to actually verify that the test as written actually tests what the new requirements are.

<comment><USER6> > "As a user, I want to view the site in my own language, given I have come > from a German network address, I should get the German language site"

I hate this philosophy so so much. If I wanted the German-language site I'd ask for it.

<comment><USER5> It's somewhat difficult to "ask for it" in a way that's accessible for a large number of people. Either way, you're presuming something that may or may not be true.

It's safest to handle the main use case, that is, people using the most prevalent language of the region, and implement a language chooser for everyone else.

<comment><USER6> > you're presuming something that may or may not be true

What's that? I'm presuming that there's more than one language available, but so does the initial example.

<comment><USER5> I mean no matter what you do, you're defaulting to a language that the user of your site may not speak.

<comment><USER6> I don't consider it "unsafe", or problematic in any way, that [http://en.wikipedia.org/](http://en.wikipedia.org/) gets you English wikipedia _even if you access it from a German IP_ , whereas [http://de.wikipedia.org/](http://de.wikipedia.org/) gets you German wikipedia _even if you access it from an Australian IP_. There are plenty of websites that will not give you the page you request no matter what you ask for, if they think you _should_ be going to a different page. That's idiotic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Secret did NOT get $35M in a Kickstarter campaign, it was venture capital. Or was that a joke I didn't get?

<comment><USER8> Looks like it was edited on the sly:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://blog.testmunk.com/how- secret-used-automated-testing-for-their-android-launch/)

<comment><USER9> Better link, since Google will eventually update their cache: [https://archive.is/RAKfE](https://archive.is/RAKfE)

(Yes, I get the recursive irony of archiving a Google cache result).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Given I wait for 5 seconds

Then I press view with id "splash_signin_text"

Then I wait for 2 seconds

Then I clear input field number 1

Then I wait

...

Looks like someone never bothered understanding what Given/When/Then are for.

<comment><USER11> I think that describes most people. What's wrong with this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find the text hard to read on my screen. Does it have to be so gray?

</comment><comment><USER13> It was like a mobile phones orchestra. Amazeballs.</comment>


Ask HN: How To Dethrone Google?  - <AUTHOR> Would it be systematic? For example, would a company have to compete in the search space first. Would that even be the best avenue to become the world's largest data aggregator? <comment><USER2> I have given this some thought in the past -- the only analogy I can really think of is comparing it to trying to compete with Amazon

Companies that try to go directly head to head against Amazon (Overstock, Buy) end up meddling along unable to really gain any traction.

The ones that actually do _compete_ with Amazon are the scrappy niche ecommerce sites. The ones that can hyper-target their marketing efforts and deliver a far superior and more engaging experience. I used to work for a company that sold specialty products and we didn't have much trouble competing with Amazon when we offered things like really detailed guides, fun product videos, unique and tailored buying advice, etc. Things that don't scale...

I think what we could eventually see more and more of when it comes to competing with Google will be niche search engines. For example, despite Google's flight search, Kayak still provides a far superior experience. Google can't effectively scale their search results the same way a hyper focused and scrappier company can.

There are a lot of verticals that could eventually begin to chip away at Google's market share moving forward. It will continue to get tougher for Google to compete in each of them.

The natural roadblock of course being initial branding to the point where people stop going to Google to find you, instead opting to go directly to your site to search (no easy task).

<comment><USER3> I find Google Flights to be much better than Kayak, and so have the couple people I've talked to about the difference. What do you like more about Kayak?

<comment><USER4> Other than flexible dates and more search options, Kayak has direct search links to the airlines. Google flights (while having brilliant map search) asks you to call a travel agency and in many cases the price was not as accurate as Kayak

<comment><USER5> This is surprising to me because Kayak uses ITA Software [1] which is owned by Google. Perhaps Kayak has better relationships with the airlines than Google and cultivates more accurate pricing this way.

[1] [http://www.itasoftware.com/index.html](http://www.itasoftware.com/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In general you dethrone companies by offering better or cheaper products. In the case of Google, the product is sold both to advertisers and to consumers so each case should be examined.

With regards to consumes, you'll have to offer better since you can't offer cheaper than free. But Google is motivated to offer better service so it'll be extremely complicated. One kind of potential better would make search so much better that people won't press on ads - which Google isn't interested in, so they might not offer such service, so you might have an opening there.

Another option is to attack the adversity side :find a huge ads inventory and create a service more efficient and cheaper than Google. But that's extremely hard because on top of advertising space you need better data than Google.

</comment><comment><USER7> On mobile, Facebook is looking to own the majority of the apps on your home screen regardless of whether it has the explicit Facebook brand or is under Instagram/WhatsApp/etc. On Android, you still have your first party apps and on iOS your browser homepage is most likely Google.

On desktop, native applications fell by the way side as websites and web apps have become more powerful. Google is your initial connection from the browser (Chrome), to search, to a website (Google Analytics), and to their ads. They own your workflow and thus habits.

On mobile, native apps are more popular. The device (Android), app store (Android Market), app, and ads still have Google influence but definitely not as much as on the desktop. Companies like Flurry have great offerings for app analytics and ads are fragmented among a ton of companies.

Google needs to think less in terms of multi-platform and more in terms of mobile only. If you're mobile only and are capturing market share quickly, Google will be jealous.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just for the search part, should be easy enough: Why? Because Google, Bing, Duck Duck Go, etc. search totally sucks for over half, say, ballpark 2/3rds, of the (nearly all safe for work) content on the Internet, searches people want to do, and content they want to find. So, build something good for the other half+ or 2/3rds. Then could be maybe a little bigger in search than Google but nothing in phones, self-driving cars, video glasses, etc. Then move a little into Google's part of search and, thus, 'dethrone' them. Tough really to kill them off because for a narrow part of search they are quite good and tough to improve on.

Version 1.0 of the software is written and being tested and polished.

Would anyone here like to see an announcement here of going live?

<comment><USER9> why does it suck for the 1/3 ?

<comment><USER8> Google, Bing, Duck Duck Go, etc. do not suck for their 1/3rd. Instead they are from something up to okay up often quite good up to excellent.

Recently they handle some special cases in cute, special ways but for most of their core work are still basically an old library card catalog subject index with the results sorted by a gross popularity measure. Net, their technique can work quite well when looking for content based mostly on just text, possibly from metadata, and where the user has a list of key words/phrases that accurately characterize the content. In that way they grabbed their 1/3rd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you enter a race, and chase after the fastest runner, you will find you are always at least a step behind.

Instead concentrate on your race, choose your own route, your own pace. The fastest runners may take a wrong turn - and had you been following them you would have taken that wrong turn also.

There are plenty of people ready to prevent obvious market abuses, and we have yet to even glimpse the shape of the world of tomorrow. Focus now on the problems for which we know the shape of the solution, poverty, war, famine, medicine and worry about Google and Big Data when we know what we want it to look like.

</comment><comment><USER11> Google as a whole : I don't know. But I suppose Google Search can be rendered useless when when an NLP engineer creates a website generator whose content is indistinguishable from human-generated content, i.e., when the Turning test is passed as far as static website content is concerned.

What will happen at that point is that a million SEO idiots will create a trillion spammy websites and blogs that the Google Search engine, or rather the Page Rank algorithm, cannot handle. Every Google search returns 90% junk, interspersed with a few genuine search results. The Internet will becomes a Graffiti filled ghetto, impossible to auto-index and we will be forced to go back to the early Yahoo Directory days : manually created categories of real sites. Ironically, the otherwise-useless people who live off being online personas, aka famous bloggers, will have a centre-stage role to play in this new era : their web sites are the ones which are eminently trustable. They wll be the new institutions of online reputation, having been there from since the dawn of the century!

By that point, it is possible that gmail, et al will have lost their relevance, too, (WhatsMail?), and suddenly, Google does not have a single attractive eyeball outlet.

</comment><comment><USER12> In general, you can't dethrone a blue chip company. All you can do is position yourself so you have the opportunity to take advantage of any major mistakes they make or market shifts against their favour.

In software, the market often shifts because the platforms change fairly frequently. e.g. Mainframe to PC to Web to Mobile.

<comment><USER7> Google has publicly admitted they did not recognize the emergence of social. Despite their size and resources, their size, culture, and business process prevented them from capitalizing on it sufficiently well enough to prevent Facebook from practically owning social for the past 5 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Google will dethrone itself, probably not as quickly as say Xerox, but I think it will [0].

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction)

</comment><comment><USER14> There are a few possibilities but the easiest one is to come up with something that would radically change the way we interact with the web.

I say, the first company to create a True AI will dethrone any company on the market with ease. Or a company coming up with a product for a totally different market and dominating it and then after capturing users, offering features of other competing companies like FB is doing now. You need a really Big Buzz as well.

I am usually able to predict with a 95.4% accuracy some parts of the future ( no arrogance intended) so I strongly believe one of these things will happen in the near future.

<comment><USER15> True AI will dethrone IP of entire humanity. It will be interesting times when (human intelligence) << (machine intelligence) and you get machine intelligence for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> First you'd want to steal their traffic, then you'd want to steal their customers.

You're going to want a few things: a free modern webmail app, a fast & useful map application, a good search tool of course. Reinvent Adwords/Adsense. Throw in a private social network app, make iOS/Android versions of everything, and just try not to run out of runway. ;)

EDIT: oh and write a modern OS for a vast assortment of wireless mobile communication devices. And make sure manufacturers can chop-shop your OS to their liking. Then you'll need to rewrite your iOS/Android code, of course.

</comment><comment><USER17> Google does a thousand things, but only one of them makes any money -- advertising. If somebody (e.g. Bing) is able to capture a bigger share of eyeballs, or if somebody (e.g. Facebook) finds a way to target ads better so that people will be more likely to click on them, or if somebody (e.g. you!) finds a way to solve the fraudulent-clicks problem (the enormous elephant in the room), then Google will see its revenue stream dry up. And when it happens, it will happen FAST.

</comment><comment><USER18> The way to dethrone Google isn't to steal their traffic. It's to dampen their ads.

You don't win with a frontal attack. It's a better strategy to come in from the side, or even do the opposite of Google.

Make browsers hide Google's ads, or show yours instead, and you control advertising. You can make a browser plugin that shows ads only based on user preferences. For example something like AdBlock, but putting advertising money to users' pockets rather than Google's.

</comment><comment><USER19> I dont think the seach space is necessary. As long as you can attack their advertising income you would have them by the balls. Without search you might run into trouble serving up your ads.

I think the most likely point of failure for them and pretty much all american tech businesses is the developing world markets especially those which run in different languages. Whatsapp pointed this out and now alibaba has confirmed it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Quick answer it would be a tough battle that would require significant amounts of cash backing.

The "play dirty" approach. Use the same technique used to dethrone Microsoft years back. Right or wrong, Microsoft was called a monopoly for including IE within Windows. What is so different now with including Chrome within Android? What has changed that nobody has the same fight in them to take that battle on.

<comment><USER21> Google does not have a monopoly of Android (let alone smartphones). Also, Chrome has not been included in any version of Android I have used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> 1\. Use DuckDuckgo for searching. 2\. Use Yahoo (or anything else) for email. 3\. Install Adblock. 4\. Pass it on.

That will deprive them of 99% of their revenue.

<comment><AUTHOR> It does deprive them of their search ads on the Google landing page. But, what about Google Maps/Android/YouTube? Or any of other data collection services they offer. It would also take a large unison effort by consumers to change their search habits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you can find a way to get people to view ads, click on them. You can eat some of Google's food. It doesn't need to be search. Google is an ad company in search clothing.

</comment><comment><USER24> Buy Oculus, create a VR world that replaces the Web, sell targeted ads in this VR world that convert better than AdWords.

<comment><USER25> The Oculus angle is interesting but what were the lessons learned from the failure of second life? Targeted ads in the real world don't hold a candle to AdWords because of purchase intent and context.

<comment><USER24> The main lesson learned from Second Life is that a VR world needs to satisfy real needs for it to get widespread adoption. High-fidelity socializing across physical distances is my best guess for the first such "real need."

The purchasing intent part is a good question. People use Google search for product/service research, which is where the purchasing intent comes from. The question is, could this research be done better in an immersive VR world?

<comment><USER26> _High-fidelity socializing_

Advertsising works on TV because the latter is a passive medium. It's the story-teller and you are the listener. VR is more like gaming-- there is product placement-- but the decisionmaker is using the SW to make decisions. Decisioning and being receptive to stories are different cognitive phases, especially with respect to T+1 buying intent. _High-fidelity socializing_ , however, is the last place you want someone trying to manipulate you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any Podcast Hosts Here? - <AUTHOR> http://we.fo/<p>Saw this on Product Hunt and it seems rather intuitive.  Apparently it makes smart landing pages for different shows. <comment><USER2> Are you the owner? It's ok to post your stuff here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20708781](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20708781)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not the owner actually. I just read about the guy who made it being a kid from 17 and found it fascinating. Wasn't sure if anyone used it or not after seeing it</comment></comment>


Tech guy looking for business person co-founder - <AUTHOR>

Hi.
I have quite unusual problem.
I've been a web developer for 5+ years and I can say that I became a PHP (and LAMP in general) guru.
I can build any kind of web application and I had experience handling website with thousands of visitors per hour.
On the other hand, I'm an 'entry-level entrepreneur'. I'm finishing my MBA at Babson College with concentration in Entrepreneurship and I'd like to start a company after graduation.
Right now I'm working on a prototype of one idea that I think is great (yeah, of course, everyone thinks his idea is great). My problem is that I can't implement it on my own. I can build the whole application from scratch, but I can't sell it neither to customers nor to VC's. I'm just not that kind of guy. So I need somebody to team up with, but I just don't know where to look for. My college is one of the options, but so far I had no luck...
Can anybody suggest the best strategy of finding a good BUSINESS co-founder? I know there are a lot of people looking for technical co-founder but where are they??
It's probably the biggest decision I have to make now and I want to do it right.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> You'd be hugely popular at the co-founders meetup (<http://www.meetup.com/Co- Founders-Wanted-Meetup/>)

The real question is how would you choose who to work with? How do you separate the fake biz people from the genuine ones?

Here's the beginning of an answer: pitch your idea. Let the business person tell you how to change it to make it better. Then decide if that advice is sound or not.

PS: a business person who tells you your idea is great and offers _no_ improvement is just a consultant trying to steal your money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link. I think they are located somewhere in Silicon Valley area, while I'm in Boston - I'll try to find something similar here.

As for your question - I think it's better to find somebody who you can really work with rather than an excellent business person whom you will hate. So personality does matter here. But it's a good question, I'll have to think more about that. In any case it's a good problem to have - so far I have nobody to choose from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand why you can't do everything yourself, or at least learn or try or why can't you sell it to customers or vc's. I am like you a single founder on techside, and I am very much trying to put my self out of my comfort zone, by talking to people, attending more events, and public speaking. What I look for in a co founder is they had a previous startup/s or has successfully raised money in the past. And really believes in the idea. In the beginning of any tech startup, most of what needs to be done will fall on your shoulders.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, but I think good co-founder will balance me in a good way. I hate public speaking and all this networking stuff (that's might be the reason why I'm in this position right now). On the other hand I like to work in a team.

Plus I'm not a native American, so for many VC's it's a red flag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First of all fill your HN user profile! You are missing on potential connections that you can make through this thread.

Oh and shoot me an email (address in my profile), I might be able to help.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think you'll need to be a bit more specific with regards to _what_ you're looking for in a biz co-founder. You've already got an MBA (pretty much) so what d'you expect the biz guy to bring to the table that you won't already know something about?

The only thing I can think of would be market experience i.e they've worked somewhere in the industry you're targeting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment, good point actually. Market experience is exactly what I'm looking for. Plus some sales skills I guess. I cannot call potential customers and ask to try my product - it's not my best suit. Also I think that no one should start a business alone (especially his/her first business).

MBA itself does not give you the skills and most importantly experience.

<comment><USER5> I think you're selling yourself short if you believe you "can't sell it neither to customers nor to VC's".

I expect selling to VCs requires a certain amount of posturing and hubris but doing some Customer Development should be possible for anyone. Customer Development is _not_ sales. You might find it difficult at first but when you realise you're offering something of value to someone it feels a lot better.

Unless you can reveal what market you're in, the advice you get here is going to be pretty generic. If we knew that you were interested in $FOO then a few folks might know about $FOO meetups or conferences that you could attend. Also, bear in mind that you will still need some sales skills to convince a someone to join you.

<comment><AUTHOR> The market I'm going to is e-commerce. The application would create some certain benefits for e-commerce owners. So it's B2B.

I guess I could try doing everything on my own, but due to some circumstances I really need a partner. I'd rather not convince anybody to join me. Maybe it's naive, but I think if a person believes in the idea and the skills I have - he/she will want to join me without any persuasion.

I'm also OK to join somebody if he/she has an idea I would be interested to work on. I realize that my idea could be just a piece of crap and I did not realize it yet.

<comment><USER6> Isalmon..shoot me an email. I have some experience with B2B businesses and am located in New England. (email@example.com) I've been looking for a technical person to work on ideas with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I went down this path. After 9 years as a valley engineer I started building companies. It's been a great run - 5 companies! And ive been lucky.

My advice - just do it.

You will find the right partners along the way, but even if you pull a partner in, -all- the founders should sell.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. Did you have all 5 companies at the same time or one after another?

<comment><USER7> One after the other. Five companies at once would probably, finally, kill me. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hey shoot me an email, I might be able to help and if not I can make a few suggestions if you decide to go in alone too. (email@example.com).

</comment><comment><USER9> my question here is, why would you be thinking about vc's at this point? Start small, look around familiar territory (family, friends, and fools...lol) for raising a small Angel round and also potential biz partnership.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm planning to bootstrap everything, but exit strategy will involve some VC's for sure.</comment></comment>


Vermont College Campus Selling for $3M - <AUTHOR> http://www.maltzauctions.com/auction/363014/155-acre-college-campus <comment><USER2> I clicked to see which one this one, and it wasn't even one of my two guesses:

Southern Vermont College: [https://newsletter.tpw.com/t/d-689D3D2456F21DFF2540EF23F30FE...](https://newsletter.tpw.com/t/d-689D3D2456F21DFF2540EF23F30FEDED?fbclid=IwAR1TrDtoVAHclzLbxzwuiQrmBoTBY8E8WYi- owBpHos3B-KmF-Zp9A7mfUg)

Marlboro College: [https://vermontbiz.com/news/2020/april/21/530-acre- marlboro-...](https://vermontbiz.com/news/2020/april/21/530-acre-marlboro- college-campus-listed-sale)

It's a small state, and is losing a lot of colleges. If you are in the market for a Vermont college campus and have been waiting on the sidelines, right now it's certainly a buyer's market!</comment>


NSA surveillance program reaches 'into the past' to retrieve, replay phone calls - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-surveillance-program-reaches-into-the-past-to-retrieve-replay-phone-calls/2014/03/18/226d2646-ade9-11e3-a49e-76adc9210f19_story.html <comment><USER2> Read foreign country as US here too.

Basically they can record everything and a constitutionally defined "search" doesn't occur unless a human search and looks at the information.

Binney and other were talking about this even long before Snowden.

So what happens now, everything you do gets recorded, stored in their data center and kept for decades. As soon as you do anything they deem suspicious they might find you downloaded strange foot fetish porn when you were in college and try to blackmail you.

<comment><USER3> Evidence?

<comment><USER4> Here's your fucking evidence:

The FBI had access to the Boston bombers phone calls.

* [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs-july-dec1...](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs-july-dec13-whistleblowers_08-01/) (important part at 2:10)

* [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/04/telepho...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/04/telephone-calls-recorded-fbi-boston)

I'll quote the slip up of Tim Clemente, a former FBI agent:

> All digital communications are uh uh... There's a way to look at digital > communications in the past. And I can't go into detail of how that's done or > what's done but I can tell you that no digital communication is secure.

<comment><USER3> The FBI is tasked with cases on US soil involving US persons.

<comment><USER4> How does that that give the FBI legitimacy to record phone calls of US citizens?

<comment><USER3> Ever hear about the mafia and RICO laws? It is 100% legal to listen to phone conversations with a warrant. If you have evidence of wholesale FBI phone call collection and eavesdropping I'd love to see it.

<comment><USER4> I already linked you the evidence in my previous post. Stop being purposely obtuse. At this point you just seem to be part of another NSA program. [1]

I'll just quote the lead:

> The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate > social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet > conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.

And more recently, GCHQ's JTRIG program. [2]

Again, I'll quote:

> (The core self-identified purposes of JTRIG is to) use social sciences and > other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate > outcomes it considers desirable

[1]: [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy- ope...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation- social-networks)

[2]: [https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig- manipula...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig- manipulation/)

<comment><USER3> That is illegal? I see propaganda every time I flip by Fox News.

<comment><USER3> Stop downvoting what you disagree with....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "At the request of U.S. officials, The Washington Post is withholding details that could be used to identify the country where the system is being employed or other countries where its use was envisioned"

Therefore there is no point to the article.

<comment><USER6> The status quo is then restored.

All this article is is chest-pounding by the US to warn potential competitors in the global sphere of influence.

<comment><USER3> What is wrong with that? The program described in the article is legal.

<comment><USER7> If it's legal, then we need to change the laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Nobody is listening to your telephone calls," Mr. Obama said. "That's not what this program is about."

It's about recording your calls to listen to later.

<comment><USER9> In this context, the troubles with that statement are "your" and "this program".

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130729/12223823986/senat...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130729/12223823986/senators- not-impressed-with-james-clappers-carefully-worded-responses.shtml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It says NSA only keeps 1 month of voice records. I think they store everything for couple of years, perhaps indefinitely. Storing all that voice is very cheap and is too juicy to let go. Also there were rumors about this recording for the past 30 years.

GSM voice codec has rate 13 kbit/s. 6 billion people x 1 hour of talking per day = 6e9 x 3600 x 13/8 = _35 TB /day_.

<comment><USER11> As with most newspaper articles that have government officials providing material input, what isn't said is usually more important that what is. (That's true in any context, not just NSA -- read stories about your local Mayor and road projects with a critical eye too)

The article states nothing at all about retention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I posted this spreadsheet in another thread to give an idea of the cost of storing all of the nation's calls.

I figured an annual cost of about $11 million.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqWtA_3af-R0dE5...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqWtA_3af-R0dE5hVGdZNUxkZlBYck83TkQ2NlJxQVE&usp=sharing#gid=0)

(the spreadsheet allows editing, so you all can play with the numbers).

<comment><USER13> What does it cost to transcribe All VOICE calls ->TEXT for faster analysis, apply DEEP learning to it, and apply a graph of Everyone bigger than Facebook to these patterns?

<comment><USER14> The voice->text is inaccurate enough (especially because the many different languages that can be used) so you have to keep the original recording and not just the text; but yes, you can easily do things like "find all conversations where the word 'nakamoto' is heard" with mass scale voice/speech analysis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if it's not Afghanistan, Iran or any of the usual suapecta but actually Canada. We've got a puppet federal government submissive to US demands.. A small number of large NSA friendly telcos that reach a large majority of the population, and a large number of immigrants from all over the world. Perfect testing ground for such a system.

<comment><USER16> Why not all 3 and throw in the US as well?

The goal is too record everything which means implementing programs like this in as many countries as they can. Actually identifying which countries such programs are currently operating in would be tricky without a leak. It's a real shame this article didn't publish it.

<comment><USER17> This makes me wonder how Greenwald, Gellman, and Poitras come to a consensus on what to hold back. Clearly they all have access to the data and it would be possible (read: very likely) for them to disagree on what should and should not be withheld.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sadly, it seems that the majority have become inured to the offensive over reach of agencies such as NSA, GCHQ, etc.

The only way to play it as if the _country where the system is being employed_ is your own.

Yes, I said it... I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the aforementioned country is the USA.</comment>


Show HN: Help programmers from Syria get jobs elsewhere - <AUTHOR> http://hireprogrammersleavingsyria.org <comment><USER2> Yesterday my wife and I were discussing the UK vote on intervening in Syria. It is such a horrible plight for people trapped in the middle of this, that both options of going in or not going in are equally awful.

The conclusion was that we don't know what the right answer is, but there must be some better way. We've got to stop thinking that military action is the only alternative.

We need to seriously do some bigger, different thinking. Possibly the UK granting opening it's doors to anyone who wants to flee this hell? I don't know.

Initiatives like Hire Programmers from Syria are a great start to thinking differently. I have no idea if it will be successful at achieving its goals or not, but I still applaud the effort.

Well done, and good luck.

<comment><USER3> The right thing would be to convince Assad to offer a truce, step down, and allow a democratic election to happen. He'd have to be given protection, too, otherwise he'd never agree to stop, because he'd fear too much for his life.

Of course, even if they do convince Assad of that, it doesn't mean things will go smoothly. The "rebels" might still be upset if they lose the election, which is why it's so important UN or whoever needs to guarantee fair elections. It's the least they can do to appease the rebels, so they don't want to start the civil war all over again. They could even guarantee some sort of remuneration from the state for all the people who lost a family member in the war.

This is the least violent, and best solution for everyone involved.

<comment><USER4> IMO the right thing to do would be to solve _just_ the chemical weapon problem, and solve it in the most limited way possible.

Have Assad escrow his chemical forces with the Russians at the Russian naval base in Syria (Tartus), on the basis of "you may have lost control of your forces; they must be kept safe so there will be no unauthorized use."

Other than that, focus purely on helping the civilians. I dislike both Assad and the rebels (the AQ/etc. groups), and don't want either to win. I also don't want them to fight forever, because it is killing civilians.

We should provide secure IDP facilities within Syria (either camps or protected cities), with real force (so we never again have another Srebrenica), or just focus on providing what infrastructure we can (free internet/phone/tv/etc. from Rivet Joints and UAVs and cross-border, medical supplies, etc.).

Taking sides doesn't really help.

(Letting Assad step down and go into comfortable exile in Iran or Russia would be fine, too, but making regime change a requirement to deal with chemical weapons seems to be an overcomplication.)

<comment><USER5> This is exactly spot-on.

My only addition would be that the rebel groups must be inspected to determine whether they have gained control of any chemical stockpiles.

<comment><USER4> Definitely -- all chemical weapons should be escrowed. I'd be ok with doing a 1 for 1 swap of chemical for conventional weapons in exchange, if required, if the goal is just to get rid of the chemical weapons.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. That's smart foreign policy. A limited definable goal, preservation of the norm of prohibition against the use of chemical weapons, and a way to accomplish it that respects the interests of each of the parties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why are Syrian programmers the only ones worthy of help here?

<comment><USER7> The website or post in no way implies that this is the case.

One reason to choose Syria is that the situation may be more acute than it is in most other places in the world at the moment.

One reason to choose programmers could be that this is also the industry that the founder is active in, perhaps making it easier to approach potential customers.

<comment><USER6> I'm going to clarify my question here:

Why are Syrian _PROGRAMMERS_ the focus?

It would be just as easy to divide up the population into any other constituent subgroup and select only those for help.

Any of these would also be a valid goal according to the effort being proposed here:

Syrian auto mechanics Syrian bakers Syrian musicians Syrian nurses

You are presupposing that you can ONLY easily help programmers and furthermore, ONLY those Syrians with programing skill SHOULD be helped. Taken to it's logical extension, you end up helping people based on Ethnicity or Religion.

Why not instead focus on trying to help the greatest number of people in the most expedient way possible: by working to END this terrible civil war. That's CERTAINLY possible given the assemblage of talent reading these words.

You're setting your sights FAR TOO LOW.

<comment><USER8> OP is organizing something that might end up helping (or even saving) many Syrians. You're just bikeshedding.

This is HN, it's only natural to focus on programming. There are many here with the authority to hire programmers, not many people hiring nurses or mechanics. Besides, it's easier to get a visa if you're a programmer, and it's also easier to get remote work (e.g. in case a Syrian can't get a visa to US or EU but can move to Lebanon or Turkey).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And what about those who didn't choose to have programming as a career?

<comment><USER10> This is HN and there are many initiatives to help Syrians.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> help to make better situation there rather than.. displacing people from their country.

<comment><USER12> Yes, well, that's probably what many would love to do. Please tell us how.

In the mean time, let's go for the alternative that seems less ideal but concrete and doable.

<comment><USER13> I bet you can vote in your country. Learn to use that.

<comment><USER12> Me 'learning to use my vote' seems a rather long term solution to the very immediate problem that is at subject here.

<comment><USER13> Cause you're accepting 4-year vote. This can be changed. More things like this will happen in the future. Let's find a real solution and not just patches when the inevitable already has happened. Jeez Western people...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thank you very much for this, I'm Syrian (programmer) and seeing this makes me feel really happy and grateful.

I know this could possibly be a life changer for a lot of Syrians (I will try as much as possible to spread it across my friends and colleagues are still alive there)

For a Syrian, living abroad means a lot, it means having basic human rights, equality, freedom of speech, and easy access to knowledge etc .. those privileges are taken for granted by most western people.

Unfortunately, We are victims of a geographic accident and we have to go through a harder way to have those privileges.

</comment><comment><USER15> The idea here is apparently that there are people living in a war-torn country ruled by a murderous dictator who will gas his own people and the only reason they haven't left is because they can't find a good programming job. As if they're sitting there on Monster.com as the bombs rain down, desperately refreshing for a job with benefits.

The degree of disconnection here from the reality of the situation in Syria is so enormous as to be insulting, even though that was not the intent.

</comment><comment><USER16> Please consider making the font color higher contrast. Not everybody has a super bright LED display. It's hard to read for me.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is great, but I've been trying my very best to get hired in a decent web company in the US for the past year or so, and all my attempts have failed many times because of visa issues or that the company wasn't interested in candidates from outside the US.

<comment><USER18> And when you'll succeed, I'm not sure you'll feel like being in some kind of "Land of the free": [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/us/fbi-sharpens- scrutiny-o...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/us/fbi-sharpens-scrutiny-of- syrians-in-us-for-signs-of-retaliation.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Israeli startups want to hire Syrians. Here are startups that are hiring: www.mappedinisrael.com

</comment><comment><USER20> So... where are all the Syrian programmers? This website says none are available.

<comment><USER21> It's a chicken and the egg situation I think; I believe the purpose of this site is to connect people and probably stemmed from the Ask HN thread the other day [1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6300923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6300923)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Emailing helpout@ failed permanently. Via your mail to link, just a heads up

<comment><USER23> email@example.com instead of .com. Fixed. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The email on the website didn't work.

</comment><comment><USER25> AWESOME. Huge Kudos for that Matt !

</comment><comment><USER26> We need this for every profession. Seriously, lets just take out all the civilians from a conflict and leave the place to those who willing choose to die for it.

Open all the borders. Revolutionary, radical, but consider the thought before you trash it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why only programmers? What are you, "professioncist"?</comment>


Ask HN: Should I attend a Bootcamp with a CS degree? - <AUTHOR> Since graduating with a CS degree, two years ago, I have been unable to find a job. All I've done was make a website for someone, some personal projects, and a 2-month contract at a startup (Node.js developer) in NYC. I have about 7k (minus whatever taxes I'll have to pay) left over (only used it for public transportation, food, and paying my parents) from that contract. I did try to network by volunteering and meetups, but that led to no-where. I am located by NYC. I did get about two interviews since the contract ended, but I can't put my finger on why I didn't pass (one was for a QA position). There were absolutely no technical questions. The salary I'm targeting is $65k to $70k. I'm really lost on what to do next. Studying CtCI won't help, since I've never even been asked anything like that in an interview. Do I even need more projects after my contract and previous personal projects?<p>Should I spend all my saved up money on a Bootcamp? <comment><USER2> You haven't specified how long ago was this contract, but either it's a recent thing, which means you aren't looking long enough to be worried yet, or it is this way for long, which means you aren't interviewing enough. Though you didn't complain about the response rate, so I guess it's the former.

And you haven't specified what jobs and positions are you looking for. Are you sure they were appropriate for a junior programmer like yourself?

> Should I spend all my saved up money on a Bootcamp?

Probably not, judging from the climate around them that can be seen here. You also already have obtained some credentials (CS degree), which is a proxy for potential future competence in the case of people who don't have experience. Another similar proxy probably won't help much.

</comment><comment><USER3> no, don't.

i think it would look pretty strange on a resume. if you have a compsci degree, you should already know how to write software, which is what a bootcamp would teach you.

i don't know the details of your resume/career thus far, but you might want to think about how to present your career such that there are no gaps. point is, HR types need to whittle down very large stacks of resumes, and 'gaps' are an easy way to do that.

keep applying and going to meetups, and working on your programming skills. it isn't easy, but you'll snag a job eventually!</comment>


It's always a good time to revisit the brilliance of Elizabeth Bishop - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/its-always-a-good-time-to-revisit-the-brilliance-of-elizabeth-bishop/2019/11/08/eee0767c-023b-11ea-9518-1e76abc088b6_story.html <comment> john-radio Such an outrageously good poet. My favorites of hers are some of my favorites of all time:

"Sestina" [https://staff.washington.edu/rmcnamar/383/bishop.html](https://staff.washington.edu/rmcnamar/383/bishop.html)

"Visits to St. Elizabeth's" [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53008/visits-to-st- el...](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53008/visits-to-st-elizabeths)

"The Armadillo" [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57076/the- armadillo](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57076/the-armadillo)

</comment><comment><USER2> Bad article. Sell me on her poetry not her biography.

<comment><USER3> After all it is a review of a biography of Elizabeth Bishop, not a critique of her poems.</comment></comment>


On-Demand Attorneys? This Chicago Startup Is Making It a Reality - <AUTHOR> https://www.americaninno.com/chicago/chicago-startup/on-demand-attorneys-this-chicago-startup-is-making-it-a-reality/ <comment><USER2> Are these numbers a typo?

>Now a year after launching LawCo, Glennon says the startup has about 125 attorneys available on the platform and has matched more than 20 cases.

That is 1.7 cases/month and 0.16 cases/lawyer/year. And in any case a total of 20 cases/year.</comment>


The Gazelle Web Browser - Stanford talk Wednesday - <AUTHOR> http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/090415.html

<comment><USER2> 4:15PM, Wednesday, April 15, _2008_ <\- Edit: I'll assume that's a typo, as tomorrow is the 15th and the correct date is listed here:

<http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/>

<comment><USER3> I think that's a typo, check <http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> But will it have good support for w3c standards and a fast JS vm?

<comment><USER5> Frankly I don't care about its w3c standards and fast JS - those are problems people are working on, and it's not the interesting part about this browser. It's not meant to be a "production" browser that you will be using tomorrow to surf to facebook.

It's about applying the principles of operating system design to better use the browser as the next platform for applications to be built on. Google started this with chrome, and Gazelle takes it to the next level. Hopefully a major browser will utilize these principles for their next generation browsers.

<comment><USER6> Indeed. I saw a talk by Chris about Gazelle, and the numbers put it far behind IE8 in terms of performance (it is based on IE8, so that acts as a lower bound).

Starting from your own core, it might be possible to keep separation of concerns while not sacrificing performance so much. As an example, c.f. L4, which proved that microkernels are not necessarily slow.</comment></comment></comment>


Pentagon war game includes scenario for military response to domestic rebellion - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2020/06/05/pentagon-war-game-gen-z/ <comment><USER2> Pentagon has plan for X, for values of X that are possible, is literally the job.

Do we want a military with extremely powerful weapons executing a carefully considered and studied plan, or just winging it?

And truth be told, joint / cooperative exercises are often more about C2 experience and relationship building and less about the actual objective. "Aliens attack" would be almost as effective at the primary goals. So why not have some fun with it?

The Intercept does veer into click-bait occasionally.

<comment><USER3> The fact that they are doing their job is not interesting or relevant. What's interesting and important is the specific scenario they are forced to consider, and what it says about the state of the country.

<comment><USER4> The reasons behind this type of planning are interesting, but I wouldn't read _too_ much into them. I've sat in on this type of wargaming before, and generally the workflow is as follows:

Military think-tank identifies a situation for which where there is no modern war plan, a situation which could possibly happen if global circumstances change.

Think-tank writes up a detailed notional scenario describing the world in which that situation could occur and hands it off to military leaders.

Military leaders present it as a war game to their staff, assign different units to different sides.

Military staff proceeds to generate plans to win their side of the 'war', possibly executing maneuvers in mock battles or training events, and write up lessons learned and battle tactics and strategies.

These write ups are compiled into "war plans" and codified.

<comment><USER4> To clarify, these are done _constantly_. A large portion of the training events that the average military service member does are in support of these wargames. They are extremely effective in keeping up mission readiness at all levels; commanders get practice solving difficult military problems in peacetime, battalions get practice coordinating deployments and operations, and individual units and personnel get practice using tactics and equipment. The only real downside is that they are vastly expensive.

<comment><USER5> They are less expensive than losing the occasional war.

<comment><USER4> True! But when was last time the US was forced into a war? I believe that was World War 2. Ever since then we have been voluntarily policing the world, and losing many of those "wars".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> non-entity > In early 2025, a cadre of these disaffected Zoomers launch a protest > movement. Beginning in "parks, rallies, protests, and coffee shops" — first > in Seattle; then New York City; Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; Las Vegas; > and Austin — a group known as Zbellion begins a "global cyber campaign to > expose injustice and corruption and to support causes it deem[s] > beneficial."

These are the bad guys???

On another note, their profile of zoomers is pretty interesting. Perhaps it might just be the spots I hang out on the internet, but most of us do seem to radicalize easier, or at least fall further to whatever respective side of the economic spectrum.

<comment><USER6> > campaign to expose injustice and corruption ... These are the bad guys???

Propaganda 101: Call yourself the warmest, fuzziest name you can think of, something nobody could ever possibly disagree with.

<comment><USER3> Actions can be just or unjust regardless of how shrewdly they are portrayed. Logically then, you think the parent post's opinion is biased by propaganda?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They pay people to come up with scenarios. They range from mundane to far out there. If they didn't make up stuff like this they wouldn't be doing their jobs properly. I'm sure the NCOs had a blast making the PowerPoint for this one.

</comment><comment><USER8> What strikes me about their scenario is how it assumes there is a core group making malware to rob the corporations.

While that would make an interesting episode of CSI: Who Cares, it doesn't square with the flash rebellions we've seen since the Arab Spring.

The nature of rebellions in our time are sudden, decentralized, massive protest movements with no clear leaders and no clear goals.

Much harder to counter one of these protest waves than troll the darknet for anarcho-hipster corporate raiders.

<comment><USER9> The "no clear goals" part makes it really hard to satisfy the rebels to the point that they stop the rebellion, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Pentagon is expected to plan for every eventuality. If they don't, they'll be blamed for not being prepared. The US had plans to invade British domains, such as Canada, between the two world wars (in which they were both allies)

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

</comment><comment><USER11> >Both the September 11 terrorist attacks and the Great Recession greatly influenced the attitudes of this generation in the United states, and resulted in a feeling of unsettlement and insecurity among Gen Z.

I'd be surprised if zoomers cared at all about 9/11, since they would've been too young to remember or process it.

<comment><USER12> Yes but not too young to be affected by the subsequent laws and wars.

Some of these kids have only known our country in a state of endless war.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I have a younger sister who is Gen Z and I'd say it's more to your point. All she knows is the rhetoric that the United States has its back against the wall and, like a caged animal, is scared and frightened and trying to bite the folks trying to help it.

I think the notion of American Exceptionalism died with Gen Z, in my opinion, so much so that it can't even be taught in schools. Granted, I'm probably speaking from a point of privilege as my family is from a very urban and developed part of the country which is traditionally more worldly and not so US-centric (NYC). But, I clearly remember what I was taught in middle/high school as a younger millenial, and what my sister is being taught now is totally different in terms of ideology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Am I supposed to be shocked, surprised, or enraged by this? It seems fully expected (and desirable) for the military to plan and practice for this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel like D: interested. Now that I read it, I came to realize that of course the military is preparing for this and a zillion other scenarios as well - I just found this one particularly interesting because I never would have thought about something like this myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Germany now has 20 million retirees that just got a raise of 3.5%-4.5% in their pensions . Already 1/4 of the population expects to be paid by a dwindling and ageing workforce. Before long 1 adult will have to pay for 4 retirees (in Denmark). This isn't a problem that will lead to military conflict necessarily, but (almost) for sure to a collapse of social safety nets by mid century.

</comment><comment><USER15> Consider Clausewitz / On War. Planning and executing an engagement is tactics, coordinating engagements to further the objective of the war is strategy. In modern military thought, a domestic rebellion would be one of a series of engagements in a war. Why was this war game executed / considered in such a stripped down context?

<comment><USER15> Clausewitz / On War: 1832. All military thought until today can not be read without first reading Clausewitz to understand to what the author is responding. It's like LISP, but for the military, and in an alternate reality where if every single PFC knew LISP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If a majority of people are rebelling, then the pentagon's scenario should be how to help that majority reassert control over a runaway executive branch.

No harm in having a scenario where a _minority_ of people commit a domestic rebellion.

</comment><comment><USER17> > Execute order 66.</comment>


The habit of habit engineering - <AUTHOR> https://threader.app/thread/1078647576201703427 <comment><USER2> "make a spreadsheet", "listen to this podcast/audiobook", "INBOX ZERO", "check out this cool new app" (which turns out to be fundamentally the same as the last app)

I feel like everything I've seen on this topic in the past 10 years is the same stuff over and over.

I used to be young and spriteful, and I'd to get giddy at the prospect of "the new way" to form habits and improve whatever it was I wanted to in my life, but now I'm just a jaded old man with the same problems. I've made some token improvements here and there but I'm willing to wager that if you pick up this spreadsheet today you won't be using it a year and a half from now.

It really surprises me that no real ground has been broken on this subject in recent years. We seem to be obsessed with the topic but it's a constant problem with a fairly stagnant set of solutions.

<comment><USER3> Turns out planning isn't useful in any way until you assess current situation clearly. Turns out assessing current situation isn't easy at all. There is no single clear and easy fix to this.

<comment><USER4> Planning isn't useful if you do not intend to take action based on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think many of the habit creating methods tend to forget that habit creation should be easy and not test your willpower.

For example, I spent years trying to reduce my weight and in spite of balanced diets, group motivation etc I failed a lot. Then one day I read about keto. I enjoy eating fatty foods a lot, so relying on fats as energy seemed easy. Eventually when I started my diet, it was like a walk in the park. I enjoyed my every meal and never felt like I was being forced to do something.

On the other hand, for stuff like mediation I tried the method mentioned in the thread. Complete the habit, mark it in a habit tracker. It worked great.

But, later due to a family emergency I had to travel and those were two stressful weeks. In those weeks, completing the habit and then tracking felt like a chore. It was at that time I realized for better or worse I saw these things as checklist items and not habits.

Lately, I have been trying the Tiny Habits method from BJ Fogg. The premise of this method is to make habits automatic and not rely on trackers or alarms to complete them. And instead of relying purely on will power day by day to complete them think of the smallest step possible. It works great for the three habits I have started with.

<comment><USER6> > ...habit creation should be easy and not test your willpower.

I couldn't agree more. I tried going to the gym to stay in shape, but it was touch-and-go.

Then I discovered that I enjoyed rugby and open water swimming, and that changed everything: exercise was no longer a chore, it was fun! And that makes a world of difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The best way of tracking that has worked for me over the years has been automatic tracking. For example my fitness band automatically tracks my workouts and gives me the summary, it automatically tracks my sleep too, my meditation app automatically tracks my meditation sessions, writing a blog as a part of completing the understanding of something new I learnt automatically tracks my learnings. Keeping things simple and automated is the best way to go as far as tracking is concerned.

</comment><comment><USER8> Good article. Never heard the term 'habit engineering' before - this topic is mostly plastered with the word productivity.

I also deal with this a lot, like many others, mostly centered around logging activity, saving information and todos. I started logging my daily activity and expenses in a simple keyword-based txt format since 10 years, coupled with an ordered way to store photos, automatic pc/mobile time tracking, and service backups (chat logs, social media, etc). I started to write a simple open source platform to review all these on a unified interface, but time is short and there's always something more important.

Shaping habits sounds intriguing and rather different to this. Exemplified with the last sentence above, hard-coding specific time for 'habits' could be more effective, but it's also rather brittle if you don't have an orderly strict daily routine. This is super subjective - great systems can serve as toolboxes for everyone to compose what they need.

But the whole topic is really interesting, a wide intersection between self- development/meditation and technology. I'm really interested in the systems of others - wish 'habit engineering' or a similar term would be widely known to distinct complex lifestyle routines from the sea of generic 'productivity tips'.

<comment><USER9> > I also deal with this a lot, like many others, mostly centered around > logging activity, saving information and todos

I used to preserve and organise all my digital life as well, but at some point I found it really liberating to just let things go. Storage might be cheap, but maintaining a comprehensive archive takes effort which could be better spent on future projects. In fact, I realised that treating historical data as ephemeral helps me achieve more and obsess less about perfection.

Of course this is just my personal opinion, different approaches work for different people.

<comment><USER10> Agree. I've spent a lot of time quantifying and logging parts of my life in the past, but I wasn't using the data to guide future action. So anything I track that isn't helping me achieve something, I now stop tracking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been using Habitica + Anki for a while now and I'm quiet sure that this is by far the best of what I picked up this year.

[https://habitica.com/](https://habitica.com/) [https://apps.ankiweb.net/](https://apps.ankiweb.net/)

<comment><USER12> Came here to say this.

Any tips on using Anki for remembering texts such as theory etc. (those not in question-answer format.)

<comment><USER13> Use cloze deletions! [https://apps.ankiweb.net/docs/manual.html#cloze- deletion](https://apps.ankiweb.net/docs/manual.html#cloze-deletion)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've gone one step further and have built a simple CRUD app for all the things I'm tracking.

I find this easier to update from my phone than a spreadsheet.

I'm a big believer in 'streaks' as a form of motivation and I've got simple views in my app for representing this for habits.

I use the same app for more general tracking of my life, it's not just for habits.

Having all the data in a database makes querying and understanding this data easier for me.

I'm not suggesting this is for everyone. It only works if you know a framework pretty well. I know rails and it has a pretty good scaffolding feature to bang out forms and basic views in minutes making it faster than creating a spreadsheet for me.

<comment><USER15> Do you store all values into a spreadsheet?

<comment><USER14> Nah,they the rails app runs on the free tier on Heroku with a postgres db.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I do that too: tracking time I spend at work. Peter Drucker recommends to keep a log for a while and then to review how you've spent your time.

Still, looking at this blog, it kind of feels weird, in the sense that through this approach we're creating machines rather than humans. Perfect performance as life goal seems creepy

<comment><USER16> "Still, looking at this blog, it kind of feels weird, in the sense that through this approach we're creating machines rather than humans."

Totally agree. this is why this approach isn't easy to be accepted by the wide audiences.

" Perfect performance as life goal seems creepy" Creepy is a harsh word, this word is abused by Americans. I understand what you try to say. may I use the word " a little bit of disturbed"

<comment><USER15> Thanks. Creepy is probably indeed a bit harsh

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Comments on the thread ([https://twitter.com/ali01/status/1078647601371799554](https://twitter.com/ali01/status/1078647601371799554)) are generally useful.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm using my Pavlok to break old bad habits and remind myself to do new things (but not both at once). A few shocks really gets my monkey mind to alter it's behavior...

<comment><USER19> Link for the curious like me: [https://pavlok.com/](https://pavlok.com/)

It's a wristband that gives you electric shocks.

I realize I've actually used one before, while playtesting a VR game which used this to give "damage taken" feedback. I was pretty bad dodging hits despite the motivation.

<comment><USER20> Wow!! Do you know what Vr game that was? I've always wanted to integrate Pavlok with vr

<comment><USER19> It was a friend's prototype for a class in game development, actually, so it's not available publicly. I did find it was a little disorienting to get shocked in the right wrist even when hit on the left side - something to keep in mind if you ever want to develop it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As usual, not even a word how to stay motivated despite distractions. Like, other people (I don't mean internet social networks) and occassional illness.

<comment><USER22> We're not supposed to "stay motivated despite distractions".

If somebody close to you dies e.g. it's ok to mourn them, before picking up.

If a family member has an issue, it's ok to drop our productivity while helping them out.

We don't have to be perfect performing machines 24/7 -- nor does it matter in the end, when we'll all be in the grave.

As for lesser everyday distractions, the suggested "habit forming" is precisely a way the author proposes to stay motivated in face of them.

<comment><USER23> Exactly. All this nonsense here about discipline tells me people haven't really even started. We're not meant to be machines. Test habits that shut find useful, as well as motivational tools that you find useful. But don't try to force yourself into a schedule each day that makes you miserable.

For me the best way has been to slowly try to change my habits, eg from juice and soda to was and from tea and coffee to caffeine free tea. There's no need to be perfect, just to slowly try to shift your habits in a generally better direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Great article. I would appreciate a breakdown of the provided spreadsheet, for example I'm unsure of what "Weight" is supposed to be.

Who wants to create an app with me? Simplify the stats and streamline the data entry, then provide a way to lock down certain apps to a given time-limit a day, which cannot be passed without logging/completing a certain percentage of your daily habits/goals.

<comment><USER25> It comes from the OKR obsession of Google.

You "weight" your different outcomes so you can come to a single score were the outcomes are weighted based on their priority to the organization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> My go-to tool for creating habits has been Moleskine Weekly notebook.

You get 2 pages for each week. I draw a table on every Sunday, then I check in every night.

Weekly notebook is better than freestyle, because the empty pages remind me I need to fill them in.

It's also just the right size for traveling - so I take it everywhere with me.

</comment><comment><USER27> Totally on board with this idea! I've been experimenting with similar things, and I wrote my perspective here: [http://b.knrz.co/whats-the-right-thing-to- do](http://b.knrz.co/whats-the-right-thing-to-do)

<comment><USER28> You show 2 screenshots on your blog post. What app is that?

<comment><USER29> By looking at this list [https://www.lifehack.org/668261/best-habit-tracking- apps](https://www.lifehack.org/668261/best-habit-tracking-apps)

the screenshots match 'way of life' #24

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Or: Don't Break The Chain! as Jerry Seinfeld would put it:

[https://www.writersstore.com/dont-break-the-chain-jerry- sein...](https://www.writersstore.com/dont-break-the-chain-jerry-seinfeld/)</comment>


A Software Development Company Can Be Your Startup's Best Friend - <AUTHOR> https://altar.io/how-a-dev-agency-can-be-your-startups-best-friend/ <comment><USER2> Low code platforms are quickly becoming he better choice to outsourced prototypes. How do you think Dev shops will adjust?</comment>


Report: Gmail about one-third as expensive as hosted e-mail - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090108-report-gmail-about-one-third-as-expensive-as-hosted-e-mail.html <comment><USER2> I'd be interested to see the results if they compared hosted email to a full feature (message previews, column views, etc) mail service.

Users who have these features aren't about to give them back.</comment>


The Internet Is Burning - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/24/the-internet-is-burning/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 <comment><USER2> It all sounds very nice and grand, but the author had this epiphany _during the presentation of a security vulnerability in Cisco 's products_. Cisco's superior software engineering practices may in fact make their products more secure than the majority of software, but it _didn 't keep them from being broken_.

The fact of the matter is that security is hard. Balancing security with usability with speed of development with ROI is a tricky proposition. Cisco has a fundamental need to write high-security code because what they are selling is highly-secure infrastructure. That same need doesn't exist for other entities, and it _shouldn 't_ exist, because that security comes at financial and usability costs, at the least. That isn't to say that software developers shouldn't employ best practices and strive for secure code, but security is not a boolean, and it seems somewhat naive to equate "many people write imperfectly secure code" with "nobody cares about security".

There's a middle ground between security being a "debacle" and it always being a persistent threat. Bugs exist - and will always exist. You can spend lots and lots of money making sure that fewer bugs exist in your code, and you can spend lots and lots of money writing in-house code or auditing external code, but unless there is economic incentive to do so ("a security breach in our difficult-to-update firmware will leave our company devastated"), spending those resources makes very little sense. Additionally, all it takes is _one_ bug to bring your massively expensive hyper-engineered software to its knees, as we saw in the Cisco case.

Security is always not about writing perfectly-engineered, hyper-secure code. It's about tradeoffs between financial resources and usability, and it's about mitigation of potential damage. If you write code predicated on "this is so well written that it can never be broken", you're in for a bad time.

<comment><USER3> Just watch this before use Cisco crap: [https://media.ccc.de/browse/conferences/sigint13/vortrag_mp6...](https://media.ccc.de/browse/conferences/sigint13/vortrag_mp6_og_-_2013-07-05_12:00_-_cisco_in_the_sky_with_diamonds_- _fx_-_greg_-_5115.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The security lapses and mistakes are, unto themselves, not getting worse. They're exposing a dramatically greater number of people and a lot more data accordingly. That is all that has fundamentally changed, and that tells you the problem.

<comment><USER5> This is an important point. When I first started using the internet in the late 80s there was nary a non-mil site (and even those were iffy) that I couldn't get into almost instantaneously using remote exploits in widely used software like sendmail; and once in it was almost trivial to get root escalation, often through fairly well known (by the standards of the time) issues with the way suid root programs would badly parse environmental variables that you could maliciously malform to get the suid program to execute other arbitrary programs.

Things were much less complex back then but the security was far worse on the whole than it is today. People would just telnet around! In plaintext! On local networks that were largely switch-free with ethernet adapters that would gladly go into promiscuous listening mode. Not to mention things like full- blown IP spoofing before ingress/egress filtering was common and all the TCP stacks had terribly predictable sequencing.

The important things that changed are as you said that dramatically greater number of people are impacted by these issues, and to a lesser degree the people hacking into systems back then on average were less likely to have any malicious intent or financial motives (the change with this is somewhat directly related to the first point).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's a very good article. highly secure practices need to become pervasive, or surveillance will forever remain pervasive.

One big problem, though, is that governments are buying zero-days. Why tolerate that, and the people making zero-days? They should be treated like bioterrorists making enhanced ebola virus.

<comment><USER7> > Why tolerate that, and the people making zero-days? They should be treated > like bioterrorists making enhanced ebola virus.

That is the silliest thing I've heard on hackernews in a while. Criminalizing disclosure of security flaws would make everything MUCH less secure. Security flaws would still be found by unscrupulous individuals, it's just that the users and creators of the flawed software wouldn't know about them.

<comment><USER6> > _Criminalizing disclosure of security flaws_

I made no such suggestion, much less proposal. The problem is commercial, militarized development of zero-day exploits and selling to the highest bidder.

UNLIKE responsible disclosure by legitimate security researchers, weaponized exploits are very analogous to the freelance development of bioweapons and then auctioning them off to the highest bidder. It is a cancer on computing, and deserves to be stamped out, as such a bioweapons development would get wiped out quickly and conclusively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This quote leaps out _" Oh, it's been awful if you're an activist, a dissident, a journalist, a victim of identity theft, a specific target of the NSA, etc; but most people aren't."_

It isn't all that different than the 'real world' where if someone decides to target you in meatspace there isn't a lot you can do (except perhaps arm yourself and the outcome of that is dubious at best). I'm all in favor of building a more secure network though. We could even use the pipes that are there, definitely going to start small though.

</comment><comment><USER9> > _I'm pleased that I was a Heartbleed hipster, dissing OpenSSL before it was > cool (i.e. ten days before Heartbleed emerged into the light) but I don't > pretend to be a security expert._

When did it become appropriate to diss open source software without the expertise to create something better, and why does he think this is brag- worthy?

<comment><USER4> Open source is now the majority concept, if not in distribution then certainly in ideology. It won. It's to be expected that technology hipsters would turn against it. We'll probably see a new wave of people arguing in favor of proprietary software instead (using whatever bs reasoning is necessary, including "it's safer!").

<comment><USER10> And round we go again...

It's almost like fashion.</comment></comment></comment>


Martin Shkreli May Spend 20 Years in Prison - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2018/02/27/martin-shkreli-pharma-bro-prison-sentence/ <comment><USER2> Time to attempt to defend Shkreli again because while I find him to definitely be of questionable moral character, I get even more sore at the unhinged Shkreli-bashing by everyone I know which seems to be based almost entirely on mood affiliation and tribalism.

The reasons for him being the "most hated man in America" mentioned at the end of the article are:

>increasing the price of a life-saving drug by 5,000%, holding an anticipated Wu-Tang album hostage, harassing women on Twitter, and for his smug court appearances.

Does it seem odd that those are all lumped together in people's minds? Only the first one should have any bearing on the question of whether he's actually loathsome.

* Holding the Wu-Tang album hostage is a totally reasonable thing to do, he did pay an exorbitant price for the right of exclusivity after all. Most people in the hip hop community seem to hold the whole incident more against RZA than against Shkreli in any case.

* The claim of harassing women appears to be false, based on the evidence they linked to. I followed their link and it appears his harassment consists of inviting women to go to the presidential inauguration with him. When they turned him down (in the most insulting terms they could personally think of, apparently) he didn't say any more. So that's harassment now?

* >his smug court appearances. Not exactly a federal offense.

The serious allegation is about raising the price of a life-saving drug, and on this point I totally understand hating him. I can't bring myself to hate him based on that though.

Personally I don't see how it's much different to take a ridiculously underpriced drug and raise the price to what the market will bear vs. being CEO of a company and keeping your drugs' prices at its historically high point. I know everyone hates CEO's of pharmaceutical companies anyways but my point is how is he any worse than the lot of them? Purely because of emotion.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think you have the full facts regarding how he behaved towards Lauren Duca.

[https://www.refinery29.com/2017/08/166717/lauren-duca- martin...](https://www.refinery29.com/2017/08/166717/lauren-duca-martin- shkreli-sexual-harassement-twitter)

<comment><USER2> These subsequent actions he took are harassment, I agree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love this guy because he gives us a genuine and unfinessed view of how brazen pharma is. His outspokenness is unique but his business dealings are not.

Some will says that this sends a strong message, but I think the only take away people in similar situations will have is: keep your mouth shut if you're exploiting the system.

</comment><comment><USER4> Shkreli is being made an example of because he's an easy target, with relatively shallow pockets.

Compare him to the Sackler family, the sociopaths behind Oxy, for example...

<comment><USER5> Get them a life sentence, sounds good to me

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 20 years prison seem ridiculously high in the light of the fact that most of the investors gained money instead of loosing money. He might have abused or misused invested money but in the end they benefited from it, if I understood the news stories correctly.

<comment><USER7> I think it is important to show our financial laws have real teeth. A hard sentence acts as a warning to others.

<comment><USER8> This punishment looks unusual, though. Shkreli called too much attention towards these unethical business model, but there are more people doing it. If he's the only one convicted that harshly, it just sends a signal that you can do it, but with more discretion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't think he deserves it

<comment><USER10> > ...held responsible for $10.4 million in losses

If you steal a car, you go to jail. This dude stole 400+ cars. Does 20 years really seem out the question?

<comment><USER11> If you steal 400 Honda Civics and return 400 Teslas in their place (by Lying/Deceiving Owners), should you go to jail? Not defending him in regards to the law, but whether he "deserves" it or not seems to me a reasonable question

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how his parents feel about him? Are they proud? Disappointed? Indifferent?

<comment><USER13> I remember reading that his parents were working class, he didn't grow up a rich kid. It's hard to imagine how they could instill the work ethic in him that they seem to have without also instilling a moral compass, but maybe he's just chemically imbalanced.

This comment is far too much supposition for this board, apologies.

<comment><USER14> > It's hard to imagine how they could instill the work ethic in him that they > seem to have without also instilling a moral compass

It's not at all hard to believe that they could instill a value system focussed on working toward material gain while not instilling a value system focussed on values that compete with working toward material gain.</comment></comment></comment>