Those who teach - <AUTHOR> http://ninjasandrobots.com/those-who-teach

<comment><USER2> (pre-emptive horn-toot warning/apology, its a career story, as my entire software career so far has followed from stuff learned and done on SO. If you read this I hope it makes you consider contributing to something like StackOverflow. The rewards can be much more concrete than "just" knowledge and a website score.)

I did the StackExchange (StackOverflow) and start-a-blog approaches that this article suggests and it worked out beyond anything I could have expected. I think that good teaching is the best way by far to becoming an expert at something.

Right before I was graduating college in 2010 I got an email from my former employer who had offered me a job (I had accepted) talking about what he had in mind for my upcoming work. The email read, "Do you know anything about the new Canvas element?"

I didn't.

There wasn't a lot out there for canvas in 2010, just some pretty proof of concepts and bad tutorials. I felt like I had two choices: Try to build something with canvas to learn how to use it, which always felt like a good way to use very little of something, or try to learn by teaching, which in college seemed like the only way to understand something in depth.

Sidenote: I believe that if you can't explain it, you don't understand it. This is just as true for political/philosophical positions as it is for mathematical rules. This is also what separates reasoning from mere opinion on many topics (ie, one's opinion on abortion. Regardless of what it is, if you can't explain your position to me, you don't have reasoning, you have a vague notion gotten from parents or peers that happens to pass as an opinion).

So I took to StackOverflow like a fiend. Whenever there was a question asked too often, I'd write a blog post tutorial about it. After a year I had answered more than 10% of all canvas questions ever asked. (It did end up being a bit of an addiction. If I put StackOverflow on my resume, it will have to be under the header "Poor Time Management".)

StackOverflow is gratifying. _Really gratifying._ Forget the points, too, especially if you're in a niche topic. The people I was helping gave me the only encouragement I need[1].

I didn't realize it at the time, but after a while I just became a resident expert on canvas. Even really obscure questions like this[2] presented my mind with easy solutions after answering so many other questions. I didn't believe myself an expert until one day, I had forgotten how to do something, so I Googled the answer and clicked on the StackOverflow link.

The answer-er was myself. I didn't even remember writing the particular answer, but there it was, and past me literally (re)explained to future me some canvas trivia.

In two years I went from knowing zero about canvas to being one of very few visible human resources for canvas on the web. I got a book deal[3] and several job offers out of it. That means that contributing to SO and helping people ought to favor even the most mercenary among us.

I still receive a steady stream of emails from people asking canvas questions. I try to help where I can, but feel overextended these days. Even while being overwhelmed, I still get the feeling that teaching is the most important thing I could be doing.

I had considered taking some time off my job to do nothing but make JS tutorials, and try to make some "Bob Ross"-style learn to program with JS videos, update the MDN, and hold office hours in StackOverflow chat.

My "dream job" would be doing something like that full-time, maybe for a year, but I can't really afford to quit work for more-or-less charitable web stuff just yet. Someday though, probably in a couple years, I'll have the money to "buy" the time.

[1] <http://i.imgur.com/POZmt.png>

[2] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10060242/html5-canvas- glo...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10060242/html5-canvas- globalcompositeoperation-for-overlaying-gradients-not-adding-up-to)

[3] The book contains _lots_ of interesting canvas tips and quirks I've found in the past years (and a canvas performance chapter!) <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0672336278/>

<comment><USER3> Yeah, StackOverflow is an incredible way to learn things. It's basically how I went from knowing nothing about functional programming to being obsessed with Haskell and category theory. In a pretty short time, at that.

I now want to try teaching people more directly, but it's somewhat difficult. My university is unfortunately really biased against functional programming (much less the interesting theory stuff). There are some cool meetups around, and I'll probably give some talks there in the near future--after summer--but it would have been cool to TA a class to. One day.

This is also why I think that having a good culture of education, both on the learning side but also on the teaching side--is so important for a company. That's one of the main things I'm looking for now when I consider where I would like to work.

<comment><USER2> I think it would be a really cool idea if you asked different CS professors if you could make a guest presentation one class to talk about functional programming languages. Some of them would probably be thrilled with the idea.

<comment><USER4> DO actually prep and come up with enough material to fill the time slot, though. One of my professors asked me to sub in for him when he was busy but the material was fairly basic (intro to SQL) and I was an idiot and didn't even bother finding out what they had just read.

I know my SQL reasonably well, but I had no idea what to actually say when confronted with an entire 50 minutes of dead time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To teach is to learn. -- Japanese Proverb

To teach is to learn twice. -- Joseph Joubert

I taught CS to high school students for ten years. I found the most welcome questions were always the ones I had not considered. Especially if it meant admitting you did not know. There is something in that admission that builds student confidence. Preparing an explanation and going over it with the class awards a tacit accolade to them all that tends to inspire more questions.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. I'm coming up to a decade of teaching CS in high school as well. The best times are when I don't know the answer to something I've been asked (and considering my classes go down the rabbit hole with topics pretty frequently this happens a fair bit :) since not only do I have to go learn about it I also have to learn how best to explain it and ascertain understanding of it in my students. The best moments are finding a really great way of relaying a difficult concept and having my kids have that "ahah" moment.[1]

I also started studying Karate about 5 years ago, and being given lower grade classes to teach helped my understanding of my own technique immensely (sadly it did nothing to alleviate the fact I was a creaky old man of 31 when I started ;P).

[1] One of the problems of teaching a set level of students though is you tend to stagnate at that level without your own side projects, which get less attention because of the time factor. That's about the only regret I have with teaching as a profession.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm definitely not going to disagree with this, but there's also a _lot_ to be said for age and experience when it comes to understanding things. Being exposed to it once starts you off, but even if you don't think about or work at it consciously, the second time -- particularly years later -- unless you've been living under a rock, you're likely to see a massive improvement in your understanding right off the bat.

This is particularly true when you're still working your way through school. That time is more dense with learning _about_ learning than any other time you're likely to spend; it's not something you might be concentrating on intentionally, but building up your abilities and knowledge result in the way and speed at which you learn changing and improving.

Like I said, I'm not denigrating teaching or its positive effects in this vein at all. But there's also something else (at least one something) at work here that might be playing a larger role than realized.

<comment><USER8> > there's also a lot to be said for age and experience

I would propose that deliberate practice ([http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/05/04/deliberate- practice-h...](http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/05/04/deliberate-practice-how- education-fails-to-produce-expertise/)) is more key than age (I could be goofing off for 40 years) and experience (I could be poorly repeating the same inefficient niche for a long time).

<comment><USER9> Deliberate practice is likely more effective than age, but I suspect that, as the parent comment suggested, simply letting a concept rattle around unattended in your brain for a number of years can improve your understanding of it the next time you encounter it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yeah there is research on this, too - it's usually called "learning by teaching," although there are other names, too, like the "protege effect": <http://ideas.time.com/2011/11/30/the-protege-effect/>

But generally, the idea is to help _students_ learn, instead of just yourself. So, instead of lecturing, give _them_ opportunities to explain the material to others, do study groups, etc. Even explaining material to yourself helps you understand it better (this is called the self-explanation effect, by Michelene Chi and others). So, you can embed prompts after questions that ask students to reflect and explain what they learned, or have students blog or keep a journal about their work (or contribute to stackoverflow, yahoo answers, or similar support forums).

Anyway, read How People Learn, a free book: <http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9853>

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been TAing Computer Science 101 (Design of algorithms) four times now, and I cannot agree more with this post.

Having to teach something forces you to go one step deeper in your level of understanding. When it's only for yourself, you stop when you get the idea. And this is good enough. But when you know you will have to present it in front 200+ students, then you make sure you really understand it. You can't help it, your mind is trying to find edge cases, to put it in a another context, ...

Same as Nate, I first enrolled as a TA because it was paying my tuition fees. But I got a whole new enlightening understanding of the algorithms we study in 101: Divide and Conquer, graph algorithms (DFS/BFS/Dijkstra/Bellman- Ford/Kruskal/Prim/...), greedy algorithms, NP-hard reductions, etc. I now genuinely enjoy thinking about algorithms, or proving one algorithm is correct, or deriving the time complexity analysis. Now I TA really because I enjoy it, money is just a side benefit.

</comment><comment><USER12> Excellent. I 100% agree. The best way to learn about a topic, is to promise a group of people to teach them about it sometime soon in the future, and then go off and prepare. Just remember nobody expects a teacher (of any sort) to have 100% of the answers 100% of the time. Great learning exchanges happen when there is a question that can't be answered by the teacher, and the class + teacher together try to find the answer.

Last May I sent a shot across the bow, telling my research group I would be teaching a boot camp on C programming. I spent the next 2 months refreshing my knowledge, and putting together a webpage/wiki sort of thing and generating sample code, etc. By the end I had a great resource not only for others but for myself, and along the way I ended up recoding a bunch of stuff in C and now it runs ~ 80 times faster (than Matlab/Python).

</comment><comment><USER13> Yet another benefit of teaching:

Some students intuitively grasp one explanation, while others will require another. I had the opportunity to have the time and students with patience, and I became very good at recognizing when a student actually gets something and when they're trying to hide that they don't (which is something that a lot of intelligent students have mastered.) This enabled me to switch how I was explaining a concept at need, which required me to come up with new explanations on the spot.

When teaching arrays to students that couldn't name a programming language two weeks earlier, you become quick at developing a toolkit of different ways to think about concepts.

</comment><comment><USER14> "The best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else."

I learned that in college, and it's held true for many of the things I've tried to learn.

I think that's why it's so useful to talk through a difficult problem with another developer. You often arrive at an answer as you're discussing it.

</comment><comment><USER15> "You think you know when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program." -- Perlis

</comment><comment><USER16> Teaching is not just great for learning a skill, it is also the best marketing method I know. By teaching you build a following that sees you as an expert and is happy to pay for a small portion of your advice.

Here's a post I just wrote on the subject: <http://nathanbarry.com/marco- polo/>

</comment><comment><USER17> There's another important reason to teach.

A lot of people fall into the trap of building solutions for non-existent problems. (I certainly have) By going out of your way to help & teach others, you notice what problems people keep having, and what solutions currently exist.

Crassly put, teaching is the nice way to do market research.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's a really good lesson I've heard delivered in a different way by doctors. They say in medical school the way you learn a procedure is to "Watch one, Do one, Teach one". Even though they have limited expertise themselves, the act of teaching forces them to approach the problem in a different way.

</comment><comment><USER19> I can relate to this very much as I've learned and relearned a lot of the basics by tutoring other kids and now my own.

However, there are things that are more teachable than others. Math, science and basic school curriculums are teachable but a lot of management and marketing is not. Over the years I've seen so much damage done to my company through consultants that teach things that should never have seen the light of day. Perhaps some of them are poor teachers but I think the bigger problem is the assumptions that what worked in one situation will work in most others.

</comment><comment><USER20> There was an article in Science last year[1] that backs this anecdote up with statistics. Graduate students who teach in addition to performing research are better at designing experiments than students who perform research alone, despite the vast amount of time that teaching consumes.

[1] <http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6045/1037.full>

</comment><comment><USER21> Having moved to teaching after 10 years of software development, I can definitely relate to this post. I love how researching how to explain something has really made me understand concepts on a much deeper level. I appreciate things I never appreciated when doing pure development, and it's driven my hunger to learn more as opposed to learning enough to get a task done.

</comment><comment><USER22> After the second year at my university I took a summer job to teach the first year kids C and functional languages. My understanding of imperative and sequential paradigm(and the functional) had never been so succinct before.

</comment><comment><USER23> I used to be a teaching fellow at NYU for iOS programming - what OP says about teaching to learn is absolutely true.

I don't think I'd be nearly as skilled or knowledgable about Objective-C, Cocoa, APIs, or mobile development generally if I didn't have to guide my students. The added benefit of my situation in particular was that each student worked in teams to get something pushed to the App Store - helping me figure out how to manage multiple "dev teams" at once.

If you want to get really skilled at something, teach it.

</comment><comment><USER24> "If you want to learn something, read about it.

If you want to understand something, write about it.

If you want to master something, teach it."

–Yogi Bhajan

</comment><comment><USER25> I love teaching and I jump at chances to teach for exactly these reasons. It's always enormously edifying (although often also exhausting).

<comment><USER26> It really was exhausting. I'd be up so late doing my own work and preparing for class, I'd get up 15 minutes before class would start, and drive. I'd park my car in the Professor's parking lot to avoid looking for parking so I could get to the class on time. Only once was my car towed. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I can't believe no one here talked about Feynman. He is the quintessential example of the great teacher.

<http://www.pitt.edu/~druzdzel/feynman.html></comment>


Spotify Soundtrack your brand - <AUTHOR> https://www.soundtrackyourbrand.com

<comment><USER2> the pricing sounds a bit steep for what it is (350 sek is ~50 usd/month). the only noticeable improvement over a standard account is the music calendar, which seems like a pretty easy hack over the spotify api.

would make for a fun music hackday project.</comment>


Once a Symbol of Power, Farming Now an Economic Drag in China - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/13/world/asia/once-a-symbol-of-power-farming-now-an-economic-drag-in-china.html <comment><USER2> I have lived in China.

The New York Times sees the solution as privatization. Very American. But if privatization happens in China it will be like in Russia: A few will be given the property of all(as the property is in theory collective of all). Russians are so angry about privatization there.

I am not such a fan of the American system, USA is very rich but also terribly poor. Living in the USA you see poorer people than anywhere else in a western society. And poverty is rising enormously.

Ironically, the original American system was giving property in small chunks to anyone who took it from the Indians.

This differentiated it from systems like Latin America, in which property was given to a very few people. This has been a total disaster for them.

Also, US of A territory is as big as China for 5 times less people.

There are ways in between. You can make cooperatives that aggregate rights(which is what Chinese have, not property) of small farmers into big territories.

I was born in Spain and some cooperatives work very well there because they are well organized by the same workers. It is very common to share tractors or distribution channels between a group of farmers.

<comment><USER3> >I have lived in China.

> USA is very rich but also terribly poor. Living in the USA you see poorer > people than anywhere else in a western society. And poverty is rising > enormously.

This is a very interesting perspective; did you ever travel to rural parts of China? I have never been to china, but my Chinese lab mate says that the best translation for Chinese outside of the cities is "peasant" not farmer. One good example of the way these people are treated is the lack of public education for people in these areas. In the US some schools are _much_ better than others, but every child is guaranteed a public education, and has the opportunity to train for a reasonable job.

Similarly I have friends from Iraq and Nepal who are happy here. Pretty much everyone in the US has heat, running water, a modern dwelling... I know very little about Europe and other western societies though, so perhaps it is much worse here than in some places.

<comment><USER4> > This is a very interesting perspective; did you ever travel to rural parts > of China?

China isn't what would normally be considered a western society; I assume they were talking about the developed world.

Much of the developed world does have substantially better social safety nets that the US, and lower rates of income inequality, though probably not due to the distribution of ownership of farmland.

<comment><USER5> " _Much of the developed world does have substantially better social safety nets that the US, and lower rates of income inequality_ "

Can you point me to your sources on this, I'm quite curious?

<comment><USER6> The better social safety nets are damn obvious. Much of Europe (including UK) has free education up to College-level, truly universal healthcare (State- Sponsored for all citizens).

As for income inequality, the statistics are pretty telling.

[http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/08/news/economy/global_income_i...](http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/08/news/economy/global_income_inequality/)

But it is the goal of liberalism to have strong social safety nets and equalize pay to all. The US has a different culture with different values... tending towards the "conservative" and with great trust in market forces.

"Obamacare" is seen as Socialism and half the population seems to hate it. But Obamacare only establishes rules for the free market to operate under... standardizing health care plans across insurance companies. There is no state- sponsored health care from the law, and yet people are still worried about socialism.

Obamacare is closer to Credit Card reform, in that it forced all credit card companies in the US to standardize upon the "Annual Percentage Rate" / APR so that everyone can comparison shop across credit cards. With Obamacare, all insurance companies have to offer similar plans (bronze, silver, gold, platinum), and they must cover certain provisions (contraceptives make the controversy here). So now when you see a "Bronze" plan from say... Aetna Health Insurance, you know it is similar to "Bronze" plans from Kaiser Permanente.

As far as the "Socialism" goes... US has had Medicare / Medicaid for nearly 80 years now. The "socialist" part of our health care system has existed for a very long time, but no Republican seems to want to attack it.

But inside the US, _any_ new laws upon the market is seen as a "Market Distortion" and is criticized as "Socialism". Because most American's don't even know the meaning of that word. The absurdity in the "Net Neutrality" argument is more proof of the free market sheeple ignoring important issues and placing their trust in the free market instead.

<comment><USER7> Obamacare is closer to car-insurance, with the caveat that even if you don't want a car you still have to buy the insurance. THAT is what has most of the nay-sayers agitated.

Medicare/Medicaid are, like the student loan programs with college tuition, at least partially responsible for driving up the costs of healthcare in the US.

We've backed ourselves into a very difficult corner, and getting out of it isn't going to be easy, and it won't be popular.

<comment><USER8> Car insurance doesn't protect you, it protects the other drivers on the road. You can decide to risk it, and if your brand new car is totaled, its on you [assuming you paid cash, if you finance it any lender will also make you get collision and comprehensive]. What you can't decide to do is forgo liability insurance so that if you hit someone else's car they have to extract the payment from you rather than from a well-capitalized insurance company.

Of course this is all state regulated (and this is US-centric, but so is Obamacare), so it can work differently in different places.

Health insurance nominally protects you, though some make the argument that it protects society as a whole from any individual burdening the system.

<comment><USER7> Put Drs/Hospitals/HealthCare in place of the other car, and your body in place of your car. The analogy works very well. ACA is acting as the bank in the car insurance analogy, demanding that you HAVE to have bumper-to-bumper collision insurance.

In the car insurance case you can forgo the car and thereby forgo purchasing car insurance, but with the ACA you can't forgo health insurance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The great thing about China as a country to study for examples of national policy is that China was divided into two parts. After 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (中國國民黨) regime had effective control only of the island of Taiwan and a few offshore islands that are technically parts of other provinces of China, its policy direction could be distinguished from the policy direction of the Communist Party of China (中国共产党) regime ruling the mainland regions of China. Land reform, all over the world, is a crucial problem in national economic development. Taiwan's program of land reform was notably successful[1] and acclaimed in books from a rather leftist perspective[2] by the 1970s. By the 1980s, I was living in Taiwan and occasionally visiting Hong Kong and China during a three-year stay overseas, and I had been continually reading the Chinese press (first in English, and then in the original Chinese) since beginning my study of Chinese language and history in 1975 (while the Cultural Revolution in China was winding down).

I've seen a lot of policy claims about China go back and forth over the decades. Plainly, China's Communist government has never been as careful about individual rights or civil liberties as Taiwan's government was even while it was still a one-party dictatorship. (I lived in Taiwan both before and after the mostly peaceful transition to multiparty democratic government with full protection of individual rights and civil liberties there, and China is nowhere near as far along that path as Taiwan already was in the 1970s.) Rural people in China need economically productive employment to continue to advance in prosperity. The country still needs food production, even if it ends up with many fewer farmers, as all other countries do along the path to economic development. Private land rights with actual legally protected sales of those rights can eventually rationalize how land is used for farming, and who lives where. (Many of my uncles and quite a few of my cousins in the United States in 2014 are STILL farmers, generations after when most Americans have stopped being farmers.) The key issue is whether the Communist Party's overwhelming appetite for corruption will allow the needed economic transformation to happen or not.

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

[2] [http://www.tni.org/tnibook/how-other-half- dies-0](http://www.tni.org/tnibook/how-other-half-dies-0)

</comment><comment><USER10> The article states that China's problem is too many little farms, and that farmers can't consolidate because the land is owned by the government. It even goes as far as suggesting that private ownership of the land would help get bigger, more efficient farms instead of a larger number of smaller ones. I understand this is a US site so they're not allowed to say that, but aren't they basically making the case for collective farming (as in communism)?

<comment><USER11> No, they are making the case for having a large proportion of Chinese farmers leave their plots to allow them to be aggregated into larger farms operated by fewer people.

There are two basic problems there: Too many people, and that it is hard for farmers to provide sufficient security to get loans to finance industrialisation because they don't own any land. With the latter, you could get collectives arranging to aggregate their land and e.g. share machinery.

Basically, they've socialised the land ownership, but not socialised the farming operation, and as a result they have a mismatch where they've made their farmers a high financing risk. Either socialising parts of the farming operation, or privatising the property would both likely be better than their current alternative for profitability of farms.

But the issue of too many people exacerbates the problem: More efficient farms have the potential to be more profitable because you can farm a larger area with fewer people. If the number of people remain constant, you don't have the same incentive, since you are paying for the labor anyway, and probably won't be able to afford it either. So ultimately whatever they do, they will want to encourage a reduction in the number of farmers.

The problem is that the government would not like to have to deal with a growing unemployment problem in the cities by driving people to leave their plots, and they also would not enjoy the social unrest it could potentially cause to force the issue. Hence their slow reforms.

(It's also very indicative about the ideology of the Chinese government that it has _not_ made any moves towards socialising the farming; e.g. they could have increased the land rent but provided farmers access to collectively owned farm machinery as part of it, or even explicitly required farmers to arrange cooperatives and only rent out bigger parcels of land - instead they are opting for means of making farming rights a commodity subject to market forces)

<comment><USER12> This is spot on.

To note, China did delve into farm operation collectivization under Mao, but this was almost completely undone by Deng.</comment></comment></comment>


Walmart Gives Up Replacing Store Cashiers with Machines - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2018/05/16/walmart-gives-up-replacing-store-cashiers-with-machines/ <comment><USER2> I think this article is a bit misleading. According to the original article[1], they're not getting rid of the self checkout lanes, they're getting rid of "Mobile Scan & Go" which is using a mobile app to scan and checkout.

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-15/-leery- cu...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-15/-leery-customers- prompt-walmart-to-shelve-self-scanning-service)

<comment><USER3> A grocery chain near me tried the mobile hand-scanner concept over a decade ago. The trial stores quietly cancelled the program about a year later. I asked the manager and he said the scanner-enabled stores were showing higher theft rates.

The store had a weak mechanism in place to prevent theft (random 'audits' by cashiers to match your cart to the receipt), but it was obvious there were way too many ways to game the system.

Self-checkout must be doing okay. The Target I frequent just remodeled and tripled the number of machines.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I'm quite sure that what is happening is that a particular solution wasn't working well, so they're discontinuing it and continuing with the general search for better solutions.

I'm confident they're still working toward solutions that require less from customers, not just less from employees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I dislike self-checkout; it's not simply because most times I use such systems there seems to be an issue that requires attention from a staff member, but because there exists a human checkout line then there also exists a line that involves less work for me.

When my kids are in tow, as is often the case at the grocer, then having someone do the work of scanning and bagging is enormously convenient. At the self-checkout I'm juggling the timer in the software that grows impatient when I pause, the line-up of humans behind me that do the same, the kids I brought with, and the process of scanning and bagging.

Even without my kids, why wouldn't I opt for the convenience of having a human do some work for me?

<comment><USER6> My local grocery store, Woodman's, has 4 types of checkouts. Normal full service, 15 or less self checkout, over 15 self checkout with a conveyor, and their newest self checkout with a conveyor but they bag and assist.

That last option is the best. It's the quickest as there is two pay stations with dedicated baggers. I use it every time. It is the only store I have seen that has this option. If other stores knew about this system I'm sure they would adopt it.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/7afm5r/t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/7afm5r/this_check_out_lane_scans_items_as_they_pass/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love the Walmart checkout machines. They suffered initially from poor software. The update made in the last 4 months or so is 100x better.

I see two frequent problems.

The first is people with a full cart of items. Without the lazy susan of bags, scanning and bagging takes a long time. Not to mention checkers presumably have some training regarding grouping like items and other tricks of the trade Walmart has gleaned over the billions of transactions in their history.

The second is people that are not confident using the software - I hate to generalize, but usually it's older people. Someone unfamiliar or inefficient with the software can slow down the customer flow significantly, even if their cart size is small.

I love it not only because as a millennial that works in software, using the self check and adapting to unfamiliar situations comes easier to me, but also I rarely check out with more than 5-10 items because I go shopping 3-5 times per week rather than once per week.

<comment><USER8> RFID resolves this and other problems including inventory and theft. Even if you had to do this via visual inspection its still very possible.([http://mentalfloss.com/article/501060/man-buys-two-metric- to...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/501060/man-buys-two-metric-tons-lego- bricks-sorts-them-machine-learning))

<comment><USER9> I thought Walmart dictated to their suppliers that every item had to have an rfid chip in it, and this was years ago. Perhaps having one on every single item was cost prohibitive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Note that his article isn't about self checkouts, it's about "Mobile Scan and Go" which was some sort of "use your phone to scan your items as you shop" scheme.

</comment><comment><USER11> ... instead, they will resume replacing two store cashiers with one store cashier to increase profits.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've heard nothing but raves for scan and go at Sams Club. I wonder if they'll keep it for the warehouse clubs?</comment>


Writing Decisions: Headline tests on the Highrise signup page - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1525-writing-decisions-headline-tests-on-the-highrise-signup-page <comment><USER3> I'm glad that Jason has decided to start throwing data behind his design decisions. It's certainly easy to go overboard on data collection, but a little good data is better than no data at all.

Quick story - a company I used to work for decided to A/B test their signup page. Everyone in the company could submit their "version" of the page. In the end, the best performer was the secretary, while the worst performer was the marketing guy.

<comment><USER4> Not surprising. To do sales well you really have to be able to step back and think like someone who knows _nothing_ about what you're selling. Hard for someone who's been buried deep in a project for a long time.

One of the reasons I love trade shows. By the end of a few days talking to potential customers at a booth you'll have a rock solid pitch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One caveat in A/B tests -- you have to be careful in deciding what metric you use to pick the winner. They used the number of immediate conversions. But maybe they just increased signups of freeloaders who will abandon the account within 30 days. And maybe not. Another, possibly better, metric would be the number of paying customers after 30 days, rather the number of conversions today.

</comment><comment><USER6> That's a huge difference in sales from subtle changes in wording and font sizes. Definitely shows the importance of A/B testing.

</comment><comment><USER7> We played with multivariate testing at the last company I was at, using an expensive platform built by Optimost (now part of Interwoven):

[http://www.interwoven.com/components/pagenext.jsp?topic=PROD...](http://www.interwoven.com/components/pagenext.jsp?topic=PRODUCT::OPTIMOST)

(We also paid a company that did optimization via Taguchi methods, and found them to be a bit of a scam.)

Besides this and Google Website Optimizer, I'd be curious if anyone on HN has used other AB or multivariate testing tools? I would absolutely love something open source that I could plug into Django templates on the server side, rather than depend on external Javascript code to rejigger the page.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting – I wonder what the variance in the "kind" of sign-up might be. Perhaps those designs that highlight the "free" aspects will encourage a lot of try-outs that then bail after the 30 days; while the designs that don't will see more longer term sign-ups.

The results of a follow-up after 30 days to see how many stay could also be enlightening.

</comment><comment><USER9> Here is similar article related to design - <USER2> ([http://www.boalt.com/blog/2008/10/great-design-is-a- bottom-l...](http://www.boalt.com/blog/2008/10/great-design-is-a-bottom-line- business/))

</comment><comment><USER10> the moral of the story is that advertising in place of information gets consumers/users to act.

<comment><USER11> Advertising is a medium of information, not a substitute for it. I think the moral is that people love free trials and it's essential to test your landing pages.</comment></comment>


Sage 5.6 released - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sage-announce/wa_NL7_8iII/discussion

<comment><USER2> One of the recent ideas I've been playing with is a dedicated (mobile) device for Sage (or some other maths software). Essentially an overpowered "calculator". Main differentiating factor compared to running some app on a smartphone would be a good physical keypad. That would both make input easier and free up lots of screen estate. Being a special purpose device it could be even accepted for tests and that way break into the educational market currently dominated by TI and their 20 year old designs.

With all the recent trends around hardware tinkering, such as 3D-printing and cheap ARM-boards, I don't think such project would be entirely infeasible, or even overly expensive.

<comment> throwaway54-762 This is an awesome idea. Please execute on it =). Sage just runs as a web app; given something in the form-factor of a large phone with hardware keyboard and a touch screen, you could have an awesomely useful calculator.

Maybe packaging it up as a tablet app would be a good first step in this direction?

<comment><USER2> sorry about the long post, but you're the first person showing some kind of interest for this project so I got bit excited :)

I don't think porting to tablets (Android) would help that much. The reason for that is that Android is so vastly different from regular Linux that the work couldn't be readily reused. Also designing a good UI for touch-only would be very different from a keyboard-based UI. That is especially important if the hardware keyboard is one of the main selling points.

The development of such device could feasibly be divided to three parts, which could executed partially in parallel.

First would be the software, which I think would probably require the most work. I'd (re)write the whole UI, designing it from scratch to suit small screen. Most of the software work could be done on PC, which makes life bit easier.

Second part would be designing the keyboard. This is bit tricky as it needs to be designed with the UI and changing the physical layout would be fairly tedious. So you wouldn't want too many iterations of it. Good thing about the keyboard is that it could be made fairly independent of the rest of the system, and be pluggable via eg USB to PC.

And lastly would be putting everything together and on actual hardware. I'm a software guy, so I'm probably underestimating the work involved here. But imho it seems like getting basic prototype up and running hardware-wise shouldn't present too much trouble.

Of course once you reach the stage that you have mostly working prototype, then the real work begins. Designing a solid case, miniaturizing everything, optimizing power efficiency, and getting it to run on battery for a reasonable time. And at the same time honing the software to perfection.

For the hardware I have been thinking following configuration:

* 4-5" 16:9 display. Using widescreen might seem odd at first, but the idea would be that you could have two panes side-by-side to boost productivity.

* BeagleBone as the main board. Simply seems most suitable for the task. Small size, decent enough performance, good Linux support etc.

* Form-factor blatantly ripped off HP 200LX [1], one of the major inspirations for the whole project. I'm quite convinced that clamshell is the superior design for this kind of stuff.

* Case could be milled from aluminium. For prototypes I don't think the cost would be prohibitive compared to alternatives. And I'm not all that convinced of 3D-printed structural parts.

* There could be some kind of expansion port which has some GPIO pins and maybe ADC/DAC or something routed to it. That would allow the system to be used for data acquisition, which could make eg physics and electronics classes more interesting.

And for the software I'd have sage under ipython, and then a custom front-end for that. The front-end would most likely _not_ be web-based like the current ones for various reasons. I had also some ideas about running everything under a tiling WM for multiple workspaces and some other stuff but that's fairly sketchy at this point.

[1] [http://www.retroisle.com/others/hp95lx/Pictures/images_95lx/...](http://www.retroisle.com/others/hp95lx/Pictures/images_95lx/hp95lx.jpg) That's a x86 computer running MS-DOS fitting on your palm. From the mid-90's. I think we can do something at least as cool today.

<comment> throwaway54-762 > Also designing a good UI for touch-only would be very different from a > keyboard-based UI

Right, I am assuming a soft keyboard as part of the UI here. But yes, eventually hardware keyboard is important.

> I'd (re)write the whole UI, designing it from scratch to suit small screen

This only needs to change if your screen is small -- otherwise the sage notebook seems reasonable at tablet sizes... but yes, if you're aiming at the Ti hand-held form factor it must be changed.

> I'm a _______, so I'm probably underestimating the work involved here

C'est la vie

> That's a x86 computer running MS-DOS fitting on your palm. From the > mid-90's. I think we can do something at least as cool today.

Definitely. This project sounds awesome (and also a bunch of work) -- good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone know if there is a summary big-changes release notes anywhere? I'm a huge fan of sage, but I'm sad that I can't easily follow its development without sifting through the minutiae of all the "made XYZ hashable" (etc) tickets.

<comment><USER2> Can't find such release notes, but you can search for "major enhancement" tickets from Trac, that might give you better overview:

[http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/query?priority=major&...](http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/query?priority=major&type=enhancement&merged=~sage-5.6&col=id&col=summary&col=component&col=keywords&order=component)

Based on the ticket count, combinatorics seems to have gotten most enhancements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Again, I'd like to say, AXIOM is the most powerful Computer Algebra System. Its powerful, rich, strong and dynamic type system allows using type deduction to "prove" (Curry–Howard correspondence). For example, by its implementation of Risch algorithm, it can prove integrate(sin(cos(x)),x) has no elementary expression. And it can deal with almost any indefinite integral. try this on other CAS: integrate(1/(x^3 _(a+b_ x)^(1/3)),x) (there is a lot more...)</comment>


How to prepare for public beta?  Readiness checklist - <AUTHOR>

I did enterprise software in my past life, and am curious about what you need to do to get ready for public beta of a consumer website.  OK - there's the obvious - have some alpha testers - make sure the code is working.   But, I'm curious about what kind of support resources are needed, hints/tips from past experience... <comment><USER2> Well, the release early and release often mantra still stands. Make something basic but that works well and get it out - tell people about it. Tell us about it. Take the feedback you get and if you agree adopt it and grow this way. Run a blog on your site and let people know about your plans.

Have a read of this. I found it interesting:

[http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2006/05/mark-fletcher- blogl...](http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2006/05/mark-fletcher-bloglines- onelist.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> This was validating: on self-financing, on being cheap/don't like to spend, outsourcing, holding off on getting incorporated. Yes - will definitely tell yc about it. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> (A) Make it really obvious how to contact you via email.

(B) Answer the emails... Quickly, positively, and gratefully.

(C) Create a FAQ and make that easy to find.

(D) Update the FAQ as you answer emails.

(E) Update your site based on the feedback.

</comment><comment><USER4> Huh? Support resources? Preparation?

Enterprise past life, eh?

Just get it out there already.

:)

</comment><comment><USER5> What's your site? Let us check it out and if we like it you know you're on the right track. If we don't we can tell you how to improve it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks - very practical advice - will definitely go to this forum to get feedback.</comment>


Venture Capital Report Examines Who Gets Funded - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129090134

<comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't locate a direct link but the "full 28 page report" is viewable and downloadable as a PDF via docstoc on the CB Insights blog: [http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/venture- capit...](http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/venture-capital- human-capital-report)</comment>


Japanese worker punished for starting lunch three minutes early - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/21/japanese-worker-punished-for-starting-lunch-three-minutes-early <comment><USER2> How was this even reliably measured? If my boss knew how many minutes/hours/days of lost productivity he has paid me for...

...he would probably fire me, unless he also saw the results I've delivered.</comment>


Show HN: Full AWS Inventory on a Single HTML Page (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/devops-israel/aws-inventory <comment><USER2> Am I missing something, or is it insane that there are companies profiting and hacks thrown together to decipher how much you're going to pay AWS at the end of the month?

<comment><AUTHOR> AWS tells you how much your are going to pay. The bigger problem is that they only tell you the accurate amount once a month.

And while they do allow you do go over a million screens to find out "what it is that I am using" out of their hundreds of services, there is no one single place where you can see "Everything AWS" without some hack or a third party vendor.</comment></comment>


Spies worry over "doomsday" cache stashed by ex-NSA contractor Snowden - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE9AO0Y120131125?irpc=932

<comment><USER2> > The passwords are in the possession of at least three different people and > are valid for only a brief time window each day, they said.

That's pretty weird sounding. What sort of 'cloud' setup would act like that?</comment>


Phil Libin explains why Evernote took money - <AUTHOR> http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2805

<comment><USER2> I think that it's not just a matter of separating exits from liquidity, but that it is reasonable for anyone with any serious net worth to diversify their assets. If you are worth $20 million because of the equity in your company and 100% of that $20 is tied to that company, it is completely reasonable to diversity some of that $20 million. However, I would say that you need to be prudent about signaling. Diversifying all the risk away from your own business isn't a good sign, but diversifying up to 50% is reasonable. I will add that it's quite ridiculous for investors to be highly diversified and than judge entrepreneurs for wanting to diversify some of their assets when all their net worth is tied up in their startup.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I haven't heard of that story about decoupling exits from liquidity before. At where I live, the mantra is that if you take money, you _must_ have been looking to an exit. If someone put money on you, they _must_ be eyeing for a quick exit - there's no way around it. In fact, I've heard many "mentors" and investors explicitly tell me exactly that.

Is this separation that Phil talks about a common knowledge in the Valley? Or anywhere else?

<comment><USER3> This was actually forshadowed by pg in 2005[1]:

 _The most dramatic change, I predict, is that VCs will allow founders to cash out partially by selling some of their stock direct to the VC firm. VCs have traditionally resisted letting founders get anything before the ultimate "liquidity event."_

[1] <http://paulgraham.com/startupfunding.html></comment></comment>


Silicon Valley CEO Pleads 'No Contest' to Abusing His Wife - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/17/silicon-valley-ceo-pleads-no-contest-to-abusing-his-wife-and-is-offered-a-deal-for-less-than-30-days-in-jail.html <comment><USER2> >The prosecutor in the case, Assistant District Attorney Steve Fein, described the plea deal to The Daily Beast as a fair outcome, noting that accessory after the fact is also a felony, though not a violent one that would place Gattani at risk of being deported back to his native India.

>Fein noted that the plea calls for a six-month jail term, though only 30 days of actual incarceration, with the balance served in the weekend-work program, doing manual labor for eight-hour shifts but otherwise at liberty. Fein maintained that Rastogi offered no objection when he provided her with the details of the deal.

Some other lovely things this guy said: >"Yeah I would like to see you murdered," he says. "I used to always think, like in some murders (in movies and all) they show that the murderer stabbed the victim with a knife 45 times; how would someone do that. Killing someone even once is so difficult to accomplish. Then how can that person/man stab the knife in the victim's body so many times. I now imagine and can relate now to doing that to you. And I am not kidding. If you can't believe me I can swear on anyone's life."

This doesn't seem like justice given this is his second incident. I am all for second chances, but beating your wife probably multiple times should be grounds for having the book thrown at you including getting kicked out of the country. How he is getting 30 days for all the things he put this women though. They need to throw him jail for a while.

</comment><comment><USER3> Many years ago my colleagues and I helped another colleague and her kids move out of her home. She was deathly scared of her abuser husband and planned everything in secret. But things quite stressful when the husband showed up in the middle of the move (a neighbor called the husband thinking a burglary was taking place). In the end nobody got hurt and we drove away the moving van but we were all shaking. Her husband was a NASA scientist.

The point I want to make is abusers come from all walks of life and are of every nationality. Please do not use this incident as an excuse to generalize or discriminate against Indians or any other particular group. Abusers need to be punished to the full extent of the law, regardless their origin. In this particular case you can look up on crunchbase who funded this guy's company and try to bear pressure.

<comment><USER4> Seems crunchbase updated his profile. [https://www.crunchbase.com/person/abhishek- gattani#/entity](https://www.crunchbase.com/person/abhishek-gattani#/entity)

Seems like the investors aren't quite happy with him too. [https://pando.com/2017/04/18/i-am-seething-anger-calling- him...](https://pando.com/2017/04/18/i-am-seething-anger-calling-him-animal- would-be-disgrace-animals-cuberon-investors-react-reports-domestic-violence- ceo-abhishek-gattani/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Strangely, it appears the main reason this was not elevated to felony assault is because the DA in St Clara County avoided that because it could lead to deportation which the DA prefers to avoid, "Fein indicated that his boss, Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen, seeks to avoid such deportations".

That seems odd. Not saying Rosen's decision is as malformed as Aaron Pesky's, but it deserves some questioning.

<comment><USER6> Gotta keep the H1B train rolling at all costs! Don't dare discourage it with any deportations...

<comment><USER7> I think deportation would result in this person getting off scot-free in their home country, which the DA would rather avoid...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I uprooted this not because I think any of us should take purist interest in the tragic events of someone else's life. The article is interesting on many levels.

This how an abuser works, subtly and forcefully both. The dialogue is also bizarre in that it focuses on technical details as a vehicle (and would be almost incomprehensible 10 years ago.

It shows how the justice system works at the retail ("end user") level, when most discussion of justice issues happens at a macro level.

And it shows how ubiquitous cameras/recording devices change not just police and politicians, not just big airlines, but the justice in proples' lives. Ubiquitous surveillance cuts both ways.

(Plus there's the weirdness of the court being in "fabled Palo Alto" \-- wtf?)

<comment><USER9> The stereotypical wife beater is an unemployed alcoholic white man who wears a ketchup-stained wifebeater (hence the nickname) and lives a trailer park. They're not loaded senior execs/CEOs running large companies in Palo Alto, which is one of the richest cities in the entire US.

And of course, if someone conforming to the stereotype were to find themselves in court facing identical charges, they would not be walking away with a slap on the wrist...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> He's apparently the CEO of Cuberon. Wanted to know so I could make sure it's not a company I'm doing business with.

<comment><USER11> They used to post here long back. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10661084](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10661084)

<comment><USER10> s/They/He it appears.

<comment><USER11> No, I meant the company when I said they.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I found this video very interesting. I always hear about the sexist tech culture, but I've never been a witness to it. Seeing this video helps me get a more complete picture. I can now see how an asshole like this would take his attitude to work and treat female employees in a similar manner.

Obviously this is not unique to tech, but hearing a guy beat his wife over a "bug", something I deal with and talk to people about at work daily, is really disturbing in a unique way.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why hasn't this gotten more press? I realize it's a new story but when you Google his name the first thing that comes up is his disgusting LinkedIn page. Hoping this seriously disrupts his life. Because that would serve him right. What a sociopath.

<comment><USER9> It will. Felony convictions will torpedo virtually any career.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Okay, I admit I found it hard to read the beating transcript in detail so I just skimmed. Could someone tell/confirm for me: is he actually beating her because of a software/design problem?

<comment><USER8> No, he is using a software problem as an excuse and a tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have no idea what the Santa Clara judge was thinking, but I think he just made a whole lot of women feel like taking such things to court will actually make things work. I'm pretty sure Neha will get beaten up even more after Guttani leaves in 13 days.

Why would he even care if he gets deported. Does America really want scum like this? Silicon Valley investors will invest in his company anyway, just the way United stock has sprung back.

This makes me incredibly sad how such actions go away unpunished without any serious repercussions.

<comment><USER15> You mean 'she':

[https://ballotpedia.org/Allison_M._Danner](https://ballotpedia.org/Allison_M._Danner)

[https://law.stanford.edu/directory/allison- danner/](https://law.stanford.edu/directory/allison-danner/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> even the trivial jail time of 30 days is not what he'll actually serve--that's apparently only 13 days.

towards the end of the article:

"The parties had apparently decided to knock the two days off what was effectively a 15-day jail sentence, making it 13 for Gattani. And Gattani would be allowed to serve the weekends first, in accordance with his preference."

(the "two days" refers to portions of two consecutive days Gattani spent in jail immediately after his arrest.)

the sentence is of course based on the crime he was charged with--but he crime he was charged with was not "felony assault", instead it was watered down to avoid any chance that he'll be deported.

But to 36-year-old Rastogi's dismay, the top charge against Abhishek was reduced from felony assault to felony accessory after the fact, with an accompanying misdemeanor of "offensive touching."

so those nine or so loud whacks heard in the audio recording--the sound of Gattani hitting his wife on the side of the head with a closed fist--were just "offensive touching"

and the "accessory after the fact" is just bizarre. Gattani wasn't an accessory to the assault, he was the assailant--the only one!

The particular type of accessory--"after the fact"\--refers to someone who did not even participate in the primary offense, but was only involved after it was committed (eg, usually invoked when someone conceals or destroys evidence of the crime).

and even to that Alice-in-Wonderland charge, Gattani only had to plead "no contest"; apparently he wasn't required to plead "guilty" to get the benefit of the plea bargain.

</comment><comment><USER17> Though I don't claim this particular case is usual, it is sadly true that wife abuse is far more common in Indian culture than in the US.

In a conversation recently between my wife and an Indian neighbor, it was mentioned in passing that a spouse would be jailed for physical abuse. The married Indian women looked rather worried and asked if it happened just once and that was it then surely no one would get in trouble?

<comment><USER18> It's dangerous to justify a statement about a large group of people or their culture using anecdotes. It's the kind of reasoning that leads to racism, antisemitism, etc.

<comment><USER9> Here's a data point: 57% of a survey of young men in India said it's OK to beat your wife. [http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-04-25/india...](http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-04-25/india/31398208_1_domestic- violence-spousal-violence-centre-for-social-research)

The equivalent figure in the US is 10%. [http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/03/18/39286028...](http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/03/18/392860281/alarming- number-of-women-think-spousal-abuse-is-sometimes-ok)

<comment><USER19> Men in India are far different than Indian men in America though. Indian men in America have the lowest crime rates by an order of magnitude in all facets, are the wealthiest, possess the highest percentage of college degrees etc. You're seeing the best and the brightest with a few scum that slip through the cracks. There are tens of millions of people in India especially in villages that force marry children and do a whole bunch of stupid shit. This is a completely different subset. If this study was done for Indian men in America I am confident that it would be as low or lower than any other ethnic group

<comment><USER17> You may be right; Indian Americans will probably be closer to American norms than Indians.

<comment><USER4> I believe when it comes to Skilled Immigration policy, America has some really good filters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why has this story not gotten more press? You Google his name and first thing that comes up is his disgusting LinkedIn page.

</comment><comment><USER20> >> Multiple times in the past, Mr Gattani would come back home from Cuberon, his startup, after having an argument with his co-founder and tell me, "you and my co-founder (who shall remain unnamed) are the same – lazy, empty promise makers, Positive fools, with no results. I can't trust him." >>

</comment><comment><USER21> This is shameful and sadly just another example of one of the reasons why so many woman do not come forward.

Also extremely upsetting to see next to nothing about it on twitter. We badger United (rightfully so), but us living and working here in the Bay Area barely seem to even notice things like this. It's our voice that can have the most impact here in at the very least making it difficult for him to keep his job. Without severe consequences people, especially those in power, will continue to abuse.

</comment><comment><USER22> There seem to me several perpetrators in this case, with Gattani being the primary one. DA Jeff Rosen and Assistant DA Steve Fein, along with Judge Danner are all perpetrators, by ridiculing the victim, and aiding Gattani to stay in the country and further torture and victimize the victim further. The people of Santa Clara county will remember DA Jeff Rosen when it is election time. SHAME on you Rosen.

</comment><comment><USER23> we need to deport people like this

<comment><USER24> Why? He will just go be a rich asshole in India, we should take his money and than deport him.

<comment><USER2> He needs to be in Jail. I would highly recommend reading the entire article. This guy seems like a psychopath. He put that woman through hell.

<comment><USER25> Putting him in prison costs us - the taxpayers - money. Deporting him doesn't.

<comment><USER26> He's a criminal, and criminals should go to jail. Only after release they should be deported.

Cost is not the issue. The issue is letting criminals go unpunished, because their only sentence is getting a free ride back to their country (which, btw, is also paid by taxpayers dollars).

<comment><USER25> >>He's a criminal, and criminals should go to jail. Only after release they should be deported.

That's not how it works. We deport illegal aliens instead of putting them in prison, despite the fact that they broke the law. The reason is obvious.

>>The issue is letting criminals go unpunished, because their only sentence is getting a free ride back to their country (which, btw, is also paid by taxpayers dollars).

The cost of the plane ticket simply _pales_ in comparison to housing and feeding him over the course of many years.

Besides, the US has treaties with most countries whereby deported criminals serve prison sentences in their home countries. I can assure you prisons in India are not very comfortable...

<comment><USER27> > We deport illegal aliens instead of putting them in prison, despite the fact > that they broke the law.

Because usually the law they broke wasn't criminal, and quite often if it was criminal (particularly if any other crime than illegal entry— which not all "illegal aliens" are guilty of, because, e.g., visa overstays—is involved) they serve a criminal sentence first, and then are deported (and sometimes, not even _then_ are deported.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What he did is really shitty, but is this article appropriate for HN? This feels much more like smut than articles I am used to seeing here.

<comment><USER29> I'm disturbed seeing this article as well, but if the tech industry is going to face the facts, this needs to be upvoted.

Gamergate?

Uber's woes?

It's indicative of a larger problem.

I would prefer less commentary and more call to action in the discussion, but that's just me. This is happening right in Santa Clara! Call the "Santa Clara Hall of Justice!" This is local government, tell them how you feel.

(Yes, the number is on the web.)

<comment><USER28> So a discussion of a larger problem in tech would seem very warranted on HN, but this article is very specific in its scope and it comes out in the discussion that formed around it. I.e. lots of, "this individual is disgusting" vs "this ties into the larger problem in tech." Again, I completely agree with the sentiments expressed - but HN is an explicitly walled garden.</comment></comment></comment>


We raised a seed round with Cuban and Betaworks - <AUTHOR> http://blog.superfeedr.com/betaworks/cuban/investors/seed/seed-round/

<comment><USER2> Awesome! Many congratulations!

Did you exchange emails with Mark and he agreed to provide funding? I remember reading that he funded Red Swoosh or Ice Rocket that way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mark has been incredibly responsive, but yeah, this happened mainly over emails :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Congrats that is awesome, keep up the good work.

</comment><comment><USER4> Congrats!

I'll admit to not knowing much about the various usages of XMPP, outside of Jabber. Is this any different than turning text messages on for Twitter, where people I'm following == feeds and texts == jabber messages? Or is there something else cool about this that I'm not getting?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think sprsquish pretty much answered that. We're "content-agnostic" as long as they're feeds. You subscribe to a feed (and that could be a twitter feed and you receive notifications), however, please not that we're an API service, so not for "consumers" directly. Check <http://notifixlite.appspot.com/> for that!

<comment><USER4> Isn't RSS itself a push? Or you're just changing protocols?

Sorry for being such a n00b...

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, RSS isn't push. RSS us just a common way of "formatting" the information, but it stays where it is :) If you (or your reader) don't poll it, you'll never see new items.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Redshift - Flux Alternative, Easy to Install on Ubuntu - <AUTHOR> http://jonls.dk/redshift/

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised this hasn't been shown here yet.</comment>


Ask HN: Metrics for startups? - <AUTHOR>

Are there any metrics that are valuable to startups?  If so, which ones and why do they matter (or, how do you use them)?  I am thinking mostly of software metrics, but other trains of thought are welcome as well. <comment><USER2> it kind of depends. in general, its best from a planning or PM perspective (and probably important to people funding you) to know the big four: timeline, size, cost, quality.

exactly what you use to measure each one is flexible. they might not be important for a startup to track thoroughly, but its good to know the general neighborhood you're in on each point. funding won't last forever.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure I understand your question here. Who is the intended user or audience of the metrics?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am open to interpretation. Where I am coming from right now is project completion time, when our tyrannical overlords force us to record utterly meaningless metrics (SLOC) using tools that make it harder, not easier (our line-counter).

I'm just curious if this is something that startups even have to worry about.</comment></comment>


Booking.js – Availability and Scheduling API - <AUTHOR> http://booking.timekit.io/ <comment><USER2> Is this actually open source? Or does it have open source components but depend on a hosted backend?

I made something similar like this a while ago, it may be half baked but its fully open source & has some unit tests - [https://github.com/bookingbat/engine](https://github.com/bookingbat/engine)

<comment><USER3> It's open source if you use timekit.io (their backend essentially .... ). So not really.

<comment><USER4> Well... in fairness to this product, it's licensed with an MIT license, so in theory you can plug in whatever danged infrastructure you want.

Seems disingenuous to say "not really" to the open source question when it has such a liberal license. Fork it to use whatever you want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Double-clicking the grid in Firefox (44), nothing happens. I would have assumed it would have opened a booking link? Perhaps this is because I'm using the demo, or am I not understanding the use-case of this product?

<comment><USER6> couldn't figure out how to do anything with the demo in Chrome either.

<comment><USER7> It worked for me in Chrome, here's a brief description of how it behaves: if you click on an empty cell nothing happens, which probably means that empty slot are "unavailable", but when you clock on an "available" slot i.e. those cells that have a blue border, a modal window comes up with a form in it, and you can finalise your booking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is really cool - I wonder, can I have someone find a booking that works for their time schedule, then redirect to Stripe to pay, then back to finish the scheduling?

<comment><USER9> We're working on a Stripe integration (see [https://github.com/timekit- io/booking-js/issues/20](https://github.com/timekit-io/booking-js/issues/20)), but you could actually add it yourself with the callbacks. Check out the docs on Github or ping me on Intercom on the page if you need some guidance

<comment><USER8> Yeah or one could just put the Stripe paywall in front of it. Like imagine a nail salon or hairdresser or whatever using this on their website - Have them pay Stripe first, then upon successful charge they are redirected to your booking.js thing. Very cool.

<comment><USER10> Make a payment to see "we are fully booked till next year"? I think using callbacks to trigger stripe's checkout.js is not that hard, unless you hate your users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like it but it should support more versatile times, right now I can only make it use full hours.

<comment><USER9> You can customize the timeslot lengths, see the following config key:

{ timekitFindTime: { length: '30 minutes' // natural language input of duration } }

There's also a dropdown in the setup wizard where you can pick a few defaults :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting possibilities! How granular can the calendar entries get?

<comment><USER9> Hey there! All the way down to 15 minutes and as long as you'd like them (in 15 minutes intervals)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I get an empty box under Marty McFly on iOS. Anyone else?

<comment><USER9> Hey, here's an interesting challenge:

The widget is using a Google Calendar underneath and as people try the demo and book timeslots, the calendar gets filled up and availability disappears. So right now I'm doing my best trying to frantically delete all the demo bookings as they come in so they don't block other visitors (which is what happened to you) :)

[https://media.giphy.com/media/42109OHM6YFS8/giphy.gif](https://media.giphy.com/media/42109OHM6YFS8/giphy.gif)</comment></comment>


JS.Class - Ruby-style JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://jsclass.jcoglan.com/ <comment><USER2> Is it honestly that hard to learn a language, and its own particular idioms and best practices, rather than forcing the idioms and best practices of another language on it?</comment>


Ask HN: Wasted Server Space? - <AUTHOR> If you are paying for hosting or have your own server(s) up 24/7 and are not using all of its capacity would you consider renting it for computational purposes? <comment><USER2> Yes. Please don't think this is a new idea, though. :)

To make running untrusted code safe, it would have to be a restricted VM. And I think it just turns out that there aren't that many problems that it's profitable to recode for an untrusted environment, have no communication between nodes while they solve the problem, and run on an ad-hoc net.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean by profitable to code for untrusted environment? how can this be fixed?</comment></comment>


Exercise May Make Bullied Adolescents Feel Less Suicidal - <AUTHOR> http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2015/09/exercise-decreased-suicidality-sadness <comment><USER2> [http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?p=4556](http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?p=4556)

Tldr: rigorous twin studies find no such effect and an analysis of the meta- analyses suggests publication bias.</comment>


The Smartest Unknown Indian Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/02/22/mitra-zoho-india-tech-inter-cx_sm_0222mitra.html?feed=rss_technology

<comment><USER2> Web 2.0 blah aside, if this guy is really hiring high school graduates from poor backgrounds instead of elite (by Indian standards) college graduates, that in itself is worthy of praise.

</comment><comment><USER3> Competition is good for consumers and I think its about time that Silicon Valley had a run for it's money. I'm pleased also that he turned down the offer (though of course we don't know what the offer was!) as he is obviously wanting to build his business. Too many people build to sell these days instead of building to last

<comment><USER4> > Too many people build to sell these days instead of building to last

Establishing ongoing relationships is a core Indian value which can grate with more transient methods of doing business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Zoho is well-positioned, with a great strategy, but I believe their flaw is they build products that are good, not _great_.

</comment><comment><USER6> basecamp you are now on the hotseat...

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.uncov.com/2007/12/13/zoho-show-is-why-you- need-a-...](http://www.uncov.com/2007/12/13/zoho-show-is-why-you-need-a-dual- core-cpu)

[http://www.uncov.com/2007/10/17/zoho-db-software-as-a- disser...](http://www.uncov.com/2007/10/17/zoho-db-software-as-a-disservice)

[http://www.uncov.com/2007/10/16/zoho-s-ajax-spreadsheet- is-a...](http://www.uncov.com/2007/10/16/zoho-s-ajax-spreadsheet-is-a-cruel- joke)

<comment><USER8> Uncov as a reference. Boy, what has the world come to! Regardless, the arguments Uncov has against Zoho's spreadsheets are equally applicable for Google's spreadsheets too!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Tyk – Open Source API Gateway written in Golang - <AUTHOR> http://tyk.io <comment><USER2> Looks awesome, but curious if you are going to continue to support and develop Tyk? It seems like it was a side/weekend project. If we are going to integrate this in-front of our API (expose to our paying users), we have to have confidence that you can continue to support, maintain, and handle our traffic.

Frankly, instead of TYK CORE & DASHBOARD being free, make it $12 a month. That gives us confidence you can continue to iterate and improve. We are interested in chatting further and willing to pay. By the way, I read the $150 plan as per month, and didn't really flinch, then I noticed that it is $150 per year. You are significantly under charging.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - it's not a weekend project and has taken quite some time to build - part of the reason for making the core app open source was to ensure that it could be easily supported long term and empower end users.

With regards to price - we are offering the dashboard for a price, the main application that your users will interact with is completely free, so we're charging what we feel is a fair rate for a piece of software you may use for quite some time...

Maybe if we end up with a hosted service we'll look at higher monthly pricing.

<comment><USER3> $150/year is not a sustainable price for the market you're operating in. You could and should quintuple your price. This looks like an excellent product and would basically be a core component of any business that chooses to use it.

You should want the kind of customers who don't blink at $750/year, because those are the customers that are going to be ravenous about your product and will continue to pay year after year.

<comment><AUTHOR> Solid advice. There's an argument for going after large customers and in this market that seems to be the way things have gone. Everything is big enterprise, if not now it is somewhere we are looking to enter once we are ready.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks great! Is it possible to aggregate a bunch of requests into one (and get a single response with multiple responses)? This is a common pattern and sometimes very useful in web app scenarios to limit latency issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at the moment, but it can certainly be added.

I assume you mean some kind of pipelining so that if multiple requests that have the same signature come through then only one gets executed and the response is shared amongst all the requesting clients without them ever touching the underlying application?

<comment><USER4> This could be an interesting use case indeed, but what I need is more like what's described in this paper [http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/emag- microservices](http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/emag-microservices) Page 8. So the usecase is - you have a client that has to call say 8 microservices, but doesn't want to invoke them one by one or in pararell due to nature of HTTP protocol. Rather it wants to execute just 1 request with 8 calls (batch them) and get returned single response that encapsulates 8 responses.

This is for instance how facebook does it: [https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/making- multip...](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/making-multiple- requests)

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it, yes that would indeed be very useful for heavy-use APIs, and shouldn't be too much of a problem to implement. However it would essentially add a default batch endpoint to an API which isn't defined by the owner. Also, certain things like maximum batched requests would need to be implemented. Also, how would this affect quotas and RPM? Many questions, but well worth investigating, will add to roadmap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Have you looked at Vulcan Proxy?

[http://vulcanproxy.com/](http://vulcanproxy.com/)

It doesn't have the SaaS thing y'all be doing, but the APIs and structure of the proxy seem pretty well thought out....

<comment><AUTHOR> Took a closer look at this today, it really does look incredibly flexible, interesting to see how easy it is to add middleware to an endpoint stack.

This might be an approach for us if Tyk functionality expands beyond an API Gateway and adds more reverse proxy features, though I feel this might muddy the waters.

Adding IP-based request limiting to the roadmap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting - A pal of mine was working on one of these in Go as well for his organization; I was contemplating writing one in Go also.

I was your first star; but have no time to look at the code in depth yet!

</comment><comment><USER7> I find it difficult to compare features as the rows are not aligned.

<comment><USER8> Really? For me they are all aligned, with the exception of the REST row which isn't present in the basic level.

<comment><USER7> Firefox-31.0 with no javascript.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In your Readme.md: "We are orking to increae test coverage of features" Do you mean "working to increase"? :)

<comment><USER3> There's more. On the marketing page:

"developers need ot <\-- eat too"

"API's" should not have an apostrophe.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, thanks for the spot!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You have <meta content="Bootstack - Bootstrap 3 Theme"> still.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, will pull the boilerplate out... Eek!</comment></comment>


Code Like a Pythonista: Idiomatic Python - <AUTHOR> http://python.net/~goodger/projects/pycon/2007/idiomatic/handout.html

<comment><USER2> Is there something like this for Ruby?</comment>


Help FBI by uploading your Boston Marathon photos here - <AUTHOR> http://bostonbombingphotos.org

<comment><USER2> Though I'm assuming this site is done with good intentions, unless it's an official channel, it could create more work for the FBI right now. Alternately, useful data could be submitted to this site, but not to the FBI directly, and useful intel could be missed.

"The FBI has set-up 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324), prompt #3, for anyone who has information, visual images, and/or details regarding the explosions along the Boston Marathon route and elsewhere. No piece of information or detail is too small."

Source: [http://www.fbi.gov/news/news_blog/fbi-assists-boston- police-...](http://www.fbi.gov/news/news_blog/fbi-assists-boston-police- department-regarding-explosions-along-marathon-route-and-elsewhere)

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot of people will mistakenly think that site is endorsed by the FBI. Which to be I kind of think is the intent of the "Help [the] FBI" line.

</comment><comment><USER4> And what is the creator of the site doing with the photos?

</comment><comment><USER5> This seems a bit counter productive. Perhaps it is just me. But if the FBI wants to follow up, how exactly would that be possible with the format for this site?

<comment><USER6> Filed an issue:

[https://github.com/kencochrane/boston-bombing- photos/issues/...](https://github.com/kencochrane/boston-bombing- photos/issues/2)</comment></comment>


The Future of Identity Belongs to Apple and Google - <AUTHOR> http://evhead.com/2011/05/future-of-identity-belongs-to-apple-and.html <comment><USER2> Doesn't this really ignore Facebook Connect?

Federated authentication is finally at a tipping point:

\- The business case for federated access is based on making it easier for consumers to sign-up and use your services and cheaper and faster to integrate with business partners

\- Security and implementation costs are often barriers however these can be overcome with strong authentication for a limited number of identities and via technologies such as OpenAM

\- The tipping point for federated authentication is here, if you want to get in front of the curve Open-ID is well worth implementing

Read more: [http://www.rakkhis.com/2011/04/federated-authentication- secu...](http://www.rakkhis.com/2011/04/federated-authentication-security- that.html)</comment>


The first community chatroom for engineers who work in sales/bizdev/growth - <AUTHOR> https://chrissmith.typeform.com/to/avsPju

<comment><AUTHOR> Backstory- I've realized it's a super hard role and one thats lacking a community online. The goal of the community is to share strategy and best practices with other sales engineers. Especially in the SaaS field. My background is as an applications engineer, sales engineer in hardware/software and now sales engineer at Segment.</comment>


Cool Things You Can Do with the Facebook Graph API - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitepoint.com/2-cool-things-can-facebook-graph-api/

<comment><USER2>
      GET /{user-id}/likes/{page-id}

may produce false-negative if user has weird privacy policy. Using signed request (tab applications) is only safe way to check if user is fan of a fanpage.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty sure the second example is a violation of Facebook policy prohibiting pre-filled or app-generated content in the message parameter content. Yes, you can get the user to fill in the message content in a text box and use it, but I suspect using the same content to post many comments via an app will trip an alert on the banhammer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, this guy did it -> [https://www.quora.com/Python-programming- language-1/What-are...](https://www.quora.com/Python-programming- language-1/What-are-the-best-Python-scripts-youve-ever-written/answer/Akshit- Khurana)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Facebook's API is extensive. You can use FB as part of content management system—say, staff posts events, updates, photos onto Facebook page, and you periodically pull it all, cache, and display content (possibly with interactions) consistently with the rest of your website.

<comment><AUTHOR> Never thought of it that way!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1) Use Graph API to scrape all users who have interacted with a brand. liked, commented, etc. 2) Target ads directly to those users 3) ???? 4) Profit!

</comment><comment><USER6> Those "like" contests violate the Facebook terms and will get your page banned.

<comment><USER7> That was true, two years ago but not anymore. Its perfectly okay.

<comment><USER6> You're right. I wasn't aware of that, thanks!

[http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/new-facebook-contest- and-...](http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/new-facebook-contest-and- promotion-rules/)</comment></comment></comment>