Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation - <AUTHOR> https://news.ubisoft.com/en-us/article/353364/ubisoft-joins-blender-development-fund-to-support-open-source-animation <comment><USER2> Hopefully, Krita[1], GIMP[2], and Inkscape[3] will get a similar amount of support.

[1] [https://krita.org/en/support-us/donations/](https://krita.org/en/support- us/donations/)

[2] [https://www.gimp.org/donating/](https://www.gimp.org/donating/)

[3] [https://inkscape.org/support-us/donate/](https://inkscape.org/support- us/donate/)

<comment><USER3> Has GIMP meaningfully improved in the last 5 years? Every time I've had to use it I've been confused by the lack of features and strange UI.

<comment><USER4> I had much the same experience as you, but the new UI update is similar to the Blender UI update in that it's incredibly more usable.

<comment><USER5> How long ago did GIMP get a UI update?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Not only will Ubisoft help funding online support for Blender developers, Ubisoft Animation Studio – a department of Ubisoft Film and Television – will also use Blender for their productions and assign developers to contribute to Blender's open source projects."

This seams like a really big deal. It's one thing to try to create a desert of profitability around yourself, which a lot of huge companies giving money to tangential FOSS projects could be construed as. It is quite another to have them commit to use the software internally.

Are there any other large multimedia companies that are known to primarily use FOSS media production programs?

<comment><USER7> Yes it's a big deal, developers that submit code is probably worth more than the membership which is (only) €30K/year (if my research is correct: [https://fund.blender.org/corporate- memberships/](https://fund.blender.org/corporate-memberships/)), so those 30k will allow them to hire a dev halftime, as blender fund says that 30k are equivalent to "half year developer time".

Well it depends how much those developers will actually contribute, but it's still very good news.

But on the other hand they just got 1.2 million from Epic Games for 3 years ... to me this seems to be a much bigger contribution: [https://www.blender.org/press/epic-games-supports-blender- fo...](https://www.blender.org/press/epic-games-supports-blender-foundation- with-1-2-million-epic-megagrant/!)?

<comment><USER8> > For Corporate Patron (120k/year or more) membership please contact us > directly.

I suspect Epic obviously fell into that category.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This happens just 7 days after Epic Games contributed with $1.2m[1]. The future looks bright for Blender. If more companies follow, it might finally have enough funding to give it the development resources that it deserves.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20442131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20442131)

</comment><comment><USER10> The link seems to redirect to [https://news.ubisoft.com/notfound](https://news.ubisoft.com/notfound) without any visible content.

Here is the press release from Blender: [https://www.blender.org/press/ubisoft-joins-blender- developm...](https://www.blender.org/press/ubisoft-joins-blender-development- fund/)

<comment><USER11> It seems the Ubisoft news website is a bit buggy, or theres an issue with its cached pages. If you go to the main news page[0], its not there. However, if you click "Latest", it brings to to the same URL, but with the Blender article on top. Clicking that still brings you to the notfound page you linked.

Edit: It's now there on the news home page without having to click "Latest", but it still 404's.

[https://news.ubisoft.com/en-us/home](https://news.ubisoft.com/en-us/home)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Kudos to blender's marketing team. They get a bit of free money from this. But the true motive for Epic and Unisoft is likely an attempt to strong-arm Autodesk into providing better support and maintainance. Dissatisfaction with Autodesk lack of care for their DCC tools has been growing for a very long time now, but studios also have a huge investment into these tools as parts of their proprietary pipelines. Expect Autodesk to kowtow soon and make sure that none of these companies will make the switch. If it means that Autodesk actually delivers bugfixes for the version the customer has instead of one or two releases down the road, it is a good outcome for the studios.

<comment><USER13> Blender is replacing an in-house tool, not software licensed from Autodesk. You might have missed the following section from the article

"We decided to transform a workflow centered on _in-house software_ to a more agile development environment supported by open source and inner source solutions. This way, our research and development and pipeline teams could focus their energy on bringing innovative ideas to the table, while working closely with the creatives.

In that new workflow, _Blender is replacing our in-house digital content creation tool._ "

<comment><USER14> This still feels like a warning to Autodesk. They are replacing what they already can with Blender, and investing the money required to get it to where it needs to be in order to fit their other workflows.

<comment><USER15> I don't think Autodesk cares! Pixar bailed on Maya and Autodesk still put Maya on life support (and laid off the Maya R&D team). If arguably the biggest actor in the animation game doesn't get Autodesk's attention, why would Ubisoft?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe this new UI change to Blender means it is high time I learn how to use it. Tried it before but couldn't get past left click not doing what I expect left clicking to do, but apparently things are more user friendly now.

The influx of money/talent from Epic and Ubisoft is great though. Blender was, from what I've seen from the outside, looked on affectionately as being a good tool, but maybe this leads to them being a consideration for primary tool (beyond just free) in the way the commercial tools have been.

<comment><USER17> I felt the same way and 2.8 has been a HUGE improvement for me. I have a commercial Maya subscription and I have to admit I almost like Blender better at this point. That's less a knock on Maya which is still great, just acknowledging that Blender has come a really long way.

My only small beef is I wish they'd use system dialog boxes for save/load, and texture painting still feels a little clunky.

<comment><USER18> Blender's build in file browser is really nice once you get used to it. The thing I like most is that a lot of shortcuts you use when 3D modeling also work on files. Things like box selection, invert selection with 'ctrl I', and select all/deselect all with 'A' all work as expected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If I'm reading correctly, this means they'll pay about €30k / year (see [https://fund.blender.org/corporate- memberships/](https://fund.blender.org/corporate-memberships/) ), and "assign developers to contribute to Blender's open source projects". The latter is probably higher value, but I'd have preferred if they'd already started before making the announcement.

Otherwise this just feels like previous broken promises: [https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/125952/Ubisofts_Ancel_Pl...](https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/125952/Ubisofts_Ancel_Planning_To_Open_Up_Rayman_Origins_Tech.php)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'll go ahead and say the quiet part loud, if Blender can create a low cost alternative to Maya and the rest especially for entry and beginning level modelers and animators, this is a great thing.

<comment><USER21> Isn't it already the case? Blender is somehow popular with indie developers.

<comment><USER12> I'll counter as devil's advocate here and state that blender is only popular because it's the cheapest option, not because it's actually good. Commercial offerings are still ahead by a lot, especially in usability (the most important aspect for creative tools), but so is their price tag. And the indie developer is a pretty poor idealistic fellow without a production budget from which to afford luxuries like proper tools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow, that's so great. This announcement, the one from Epic Games, and the release of v2.8. So many great news for Blender! That makes me really motivated to try out to create a project using it.

<comment><USER23> I feel like 2.8 preview is what made companies step forward to support it. It was a big step in making blender a more attractive alternative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Didn't Epic just made a similar announcement?

Anyway, I wish more FOSS projects could copy blenders way of working. They start a very big and ambitious project then update the code to support it. For example Elephants Dream gave them character animation. Big Buck Bunny gave them hair rendering & animation.

[https://www.blender.org/about/projects/](https://www.blender.org/about/projects/)

<comment><USER25> I believe this is also the same approach Mozilla have taken with Rust & Servo (although Servo is not quite as production-ready as I was expecting this long down the line, although re-reading the description, perhaps it was always meant to be a cute project, not a browser for the masses)

<comment><USER26> I think the history of Servo has been retconned a bit. See for example this fluff piece from late 2012, shortly after the project was publicly announced:

[https://www.geek.com/chips/new-firefox-rendering-engine- serv...](https://www.geek.com/chips/new-firefox-rendering-engine-servo-was- purpose-built-for-multiple-cores-1531707/)

"A new rendering engine for Firefox is being developed by Mozilla, and it's being built from the ground up for multi-core computing environments. Mozilla has delivered some pretty major performance improvements to Firefox over the last few versions. The IonMonkey JavaScript engine is firing on all cylinders, and now it looks as though the Gecko engine may soon be replaced by something much more modern."

If this wasn't Mozilla's intention from the beginning, they certainly didn't do much to temper this enthusiasm or clear up the misunderstanding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> related:

"Laws of Tech: Commoditize Your Complement"

[https://www.gwern.net/Complement](https://www.gwern.net/Complement)

</comment><comment><USER28> Blender was always somewhat looked down upon, from my own experience seeking resources online. Hopefully this changes people's opinions.

<comment><USER29> I'm playing with 2.8 today and it's totally changed my opinion. In about 1 hour it's gone from, "Blenders that weird tool that I can never figure out" to "I'd prefer to use Blender over the Autodesk tools I'm more familiar with"

I'm really impressed by the quality of the UI design in the update

<comment><USER28> Wow, you're right. It looks so much better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link seems to have broken, see also [https://www.blender.org/press/ubisoft- joins-blender-developm...](https://www.blender.org/press/ubisoft-joins- blender-development-fund/)

<comment><USER30> While this is 'good' for the users of the software, isn't it 'bad' for the software industry?

Community funded projects will never match the salaries that companies like AutoDesk pay their developers.

<comment><USER31> Ton Roosendaal (Blender creator) estimated in 2018 interview that 3D software market is very small, and pulled up Autodesk's (3DsMax/Maya, etc) business results from that time, which amounted to 25000 - 30000 yearly licenses. He also claimed that Maya has "maybe 20" developers behind with things being similar for other products.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg) (jump to 1h mark)

<comment><USER30> At $1500/yearly subscription, 30,000 licenses is $45 million a year. Don't foreget about everyone who works at Autodesk that isn't a developer but stil involved with the product. And then there are plugin writers (are there commercial plugins for Blender?) and resellers etc

<comment><USER32> Autodesk does $2.7B/year in revenue. The revenue from 3DsMax and Maya is a rounding error compared to the revenue from their CAD products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What are your thoughts between Krita and Gimp? I know a lot of you love Gimp but I find it a bit dated

<comment><USER34> I don't recall anyone ever _loving_ gimp, at least beyond it's GPLness. It's been the butt (deservedly) of UI jokes for as long as I can remember.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Hey if it hurts Autodesk I'm for it.</comment>


Ask HN: Can you use Tor for *all* your personal browsing while on Google Fiber? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Why not? You'll encounter a lot of censorship from not being able to join most IRC servers to not being able to check in on your flight because the website blocks Tor users, but sure you can if you want to, regardless of the ISP.

Isn't that the whole point, being able to connect to information regardless of your physical location or ISP?

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes but I think you'd be better off using it to anonymously purchase a VPS in your desired country of exit. Then set that VPS up to run a web proxy on a secured hidden service, and perform your personal browsing via it.

That way - assuming that the VPS provider is trustworthy - you get to avoid the ever-present malicious exit node operators, and websites that refuse service to Tor exit node users. While still making your browsing data untappable via Google Fibre, and dissociating your IP address from the VPS IP address.

The only downside is that your behaviour is not masked by those of hundreds of other Tor users as you only have your own VPS as an exit point.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes. Your endpoint is liable to be in another country, so sites that sniff that might be affected (google defaulting the german, some youtube videos not playing because they don't have play rights in Vietnam, etc). Google also likes throwing captchas at in case you're a bot. And if you login to gmail, they'll assume you're being hacked and text you about it.

Actually, aside from google properties, I've only seen a couple sites respond negatively to tor (slashdot and some blog that banned everyone from even seeing content based on a spam block list of some sort)

</comment><comment><USER5> I wouldn't try to buy anything with a credit card while using Tor. Many online businesses, especially ones with high fraud risk like hosting companies, will reject your payment if you're using a proxy. The company I used to work for would suspend your account until you sent in a picture of a government issued photo ID. If you didn't within 48 hours, they would close the account and you'd have to wait five business days for the refund.

Bitcoin should be fine though.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes you could. However, the speeds you get depend on the TOR exit nodes bandwidth. I have seen 0.2 to 5 Mbps when using TOR.</comment>


Ask HN: Any News or ETA on Python Replacing VBA Within Excel? - <AUTHOR> I remember the survey: is there anybody with news on the project? <comment><USER2> I assume this is the survey you were referring to:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15927132](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15927132)

The lead program manager from the linked survey states:

        I want to be clear this remains an area of exploration
        for us, without any specific timeline.

So nothing to report for now. I suspect this will take a long time to roll out.

[https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/304921-excel-for- windows-...](https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/304921-excel-for-windows- desktop-application/suggestions/10549005-python-as-an-excel-scripting- language)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for that.</comment></comment>


Reading Is Forgetting (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2015/06/26/reading-is-forgetting/ <comment><USER2> I think this is a vast oversimplification. I may not remember the details of every book, but I do remember the main themes and elements. I think the usefulness of rereading ultimately depends on what one's purpose is in reading a particular book.

If I read a Dan Brown novel, it's purely for entertainment purposes. I remember what it was about, and to read it a second time would be of little benefit and even less enjoyment. But then I read George Orwell's 1984, where the enormous insights I gain from it exceed the enjoyment and make it worth revisiting. The second reading is even more gratifying than the first because I'm able to consolidate my understanding and discover nuances I'd missed on my first reading.

<comment><USER3> You:

> I think this is a vast oversimplification. I may not remember the details of > every book, but I do remember the main themes and elements.

The article:

> Only on a third or fourth reading, he claims, do we start behaving toward a > book as we would toward a painting, holding it all in the mind at once.

> Nabokov does not mention forgetting, but it's clear that this is what he is > largely talking about. The physical effort of moving the eyes back and forth > remains exactly the same on every reading of a book, nor have I ever found > it particularly laborious. What is different on a second and subsequent > readings is our growing capacity for retention, for putting things in > relation to one another. We know the end of the story now and can see how it > is foreshadowed at the beginning, how the strands are spun and gathered > together. Rereading Mrs. Dalloway, for example, we are struck on the first > page to find the comment "What a lark, what a plunge," of Clarissa's > sallying forth from her house into the street, aware as we now are that > later in the book one of the characters will plunge to his death from an > upper window. At once we feel we know the novel better, or at least are more > aware of its careful construction. It is gratifying.

<comment><USER4> I find this holds for music as well. From Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to Vivaldi's Summer to Nine Inch Nail's The Downward Spiral, one simply cannot grasp all the concepts, ideas, conflicts, and motifs in a single listening. In fact, even after listening to them for _decades_ I still find nuances and expressions that I've never noticed before.

Another interesting thing about classical music in particular is that different conductors will emphasize different motifs. Listen to Furtwrangler vs Bernstein conducting the fore-mentioned Ninth, for example. It is like seeing two photographs of the same person: obviously the same body but completely different representations. And each teaches us something different about the Beethoven's intentions and inspiration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > I ran across a quotation from Vladimir Nabokov on the Internet: "Curiously > enough," the author of Lolita tells us, "one cannot read a book: one can > only reread it."

...

> Nabokov continues his essay, quoting Flaubert: _Comme l'on serait savant si > l'on connaissait bien seulement cinq ou sìx livres._ ("What a scholar one > might be if one knew well only some half a dozen books.") The ideal here, it > seems, is total knowledge of the book, total and simultaneous awareness of > all its contents, total recall. Knowledge, wisdom even, lies in depth, not > extension. The book, at once complex and endlessly available for revisits, > allows the mind to achieve an act of prodigious control. Rather than > submitting ourselves to a stream of information, in thrall to each > precarious moment of a single reading, we can gradually come to possess, > indeed to memorize, the work outside time.

...

> Couldn't there be a hint of irony in Flaubert's _Comme l'on serait > savant..._ ("What a scholar one might be…")? Is it really wise to renounce > all the impressions that a thousand books could bring, all that living, for > the wisdom of five or six?

That question has been on my mind lately. I can't speak to fine literature like the author of this article, but with high quality non-fiction, I've found that becoming well-read suits me better than widely-read. By that I mean I've discovered more benefits from reading fewer books deeply than more books superficially. This notion of slowing down and reading less would have been anathema to my younger self.

<comment><USER6> It might be that different approaches to reading are more useful at different points in your life. When you're young, inexperienced, ignorant, inevitably mentally provincial, you might well gain most by reading widely and quickly in order to acquire perspective and a passing familiarity with a lot of things. Once you've built a reasonably rounded, if shallow, model of the world, and started to learn which parts of it you are most passionate about, you'll probably gain most by going deeply into those.

Breadth first search, then depth on the best matches, in other words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I do not believe what we read is "forgotten" as in deleted. I believe, it remains as a distinct series of patterns that may or may not be elicited again, depending on circumstances. Proust's "madeleine" is a perceptual example of this and we all have many such. Often, entire passages of books I read come back up to my awareness without me even knowing what the book was. I could possibly investigate but I prefer to rely on this human ability to retrieve percepts or meaning in an apparent random fashion, as I trust my brain entirely. There are amply enough potential connections or patterns of connections in anyone's brain to store, in a way or another, pretty much anything we are exposed to, from the trivial to the essential. As far as I am concerned, a book read is a book stored. Maybe not wilfully remembered, but mine.

</comment><comment><USER8> One of the primary reasons I read books is to get a wider perspective on how everything works. It's true that the first read is barely enough to recall any details but it's suffice to grasp the essence. And often, essence is all I want. I can barely recall anything from "The Ascent of Money" but the book enabled me to finally understand the financial system—How money works? Where does it come from? Why does US has $18T of federal debt? All questions became crystal clear because of the book's simplicity.

I don't feel good about re-reading because there are tons of similar books which can explain things in intriguing way to leave a lasting impression. Unless I run out of options in that category, reading more seems a better choice.

</comment><comment><USER9> For me it comes down to diminishing marginal returns. I figure that the first time I read a book I might retain 50% of what is written. Just the big picture stuff. Reading through that book again, I might retain an additional 20% of what the book has to offer. I'll probably remember a lot more details this time around but I already had a general understanding of the concepts going into the second read. With each additional reading after that I may pick up on some new and interesting nuances that I did not understand the first few times around but I am really only adding a few more percentage points of understanding towards some hypothetical "Complete understanding". With this in mind, there are really only a select few books that are worth the opportunity cost of beginning another.

I think that if you are reading to better yourself professionally however, there is good reason to revisit old topics since a few more percentage points of understanding might make a big difference when it comes to job performance relative to others in your field. This idea is probably best on display in athletics. Take baseball. The difference in skill between a minor league baseball player and one playing in the MLB relative to the skill level of the broader population is minuscule. However, to make any money playing baseball you have to be in the .000001% of the talent pool and thus it is worth it for minor league ball players to spend a great deal of time for just a few points boost in there batting average.

</comment><comment><USER10> pg essay "How You Know" [http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for linking that. I'd read it before, but it was useful to read it again ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "The purpose of reading is not to pass some final judgement on the text, but to engage with what it has to offer to me now."

Agreed, and I can't help but wonder if an exploration of that topic would have been more worthwhile.</comment>


Show HN: Extension for Scanning Doc in Dropbox, Gmail, Sharepoint and Salesforce - <AUTHOR> https://asprise.com/webscan <comment><AUTHOR> Unlimited scans in Gmail only. We are testing a SaaS model for scanning on other sites. It works on Windows only for now.

Comments and suggestions are welcome :)</comment>


Many Chinese suffer discrimination based on their regional origin - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/china/2019/04/13/many-chinese-suffer-discrimination-based-on-their-regional-origin <comment><USER2> For how "homogeneous" China is considered, regions often define people more than ethnicity or racial groups. A common greeting that most people ask is "Where are you from?" Both migrant workers and the growing middle class now have the ability to travel anywhere in the country to further their futures.

Back in the 70s or even the 90s this mixing of people was pretty much unheard of. Shanghai culture was only in Shanghai while the rest of the country was their own little thing. Only recently have the people and culture of the country begun to mix.

The grouping of everyone in China into Han Chinese is a simplification IMO. A person from the Northern regions of China can't even speak to a person from the Southern region while the culture of every part of the country is drastically different and would make the differences between Americans look miniscule.

<comment><USER3> >would make the differences between Americans look miniscule.

The culture, custom and language difference is definitely more drastic than it is in the U.S. I was somewhat bullied as a young kid in Shanghai because I couldn't speak Shanghainese that well.

However value is mostly not as divisive as it is here. I'm talking about the same kind of success is valued and worshipped throughout the country, urban and countryside alike. People also largely share similar family value, similar world view, and even similar opinions of domestic and foreign politics. In the U.S. I get the impression that everyone wants the best for the country, but they just drastically disagree on what an "ideal America" should look like. It's looking more and more like one side's paradise is the other side's nightmare.

Personally I theorize a lot of that is due to decades of centralized media, propaganda and a top down, heavily scrutinized education system, but in this case one can't help but wonder if democracy is _always_ better judging by the extreme polarization of media bubble and social value in American society. In fact, we reached the level that democracy is only tolerated in the U.S. but not liked by most people. If you give a theoretical ballot/proposition to Hilary voters that strip Trump voters of voting rights and vice versa, I have a feeling a significant amount of voters across both sides will vote YES, but not admit in doing so.

But that's discussion for a different day.

<comment><USER4> US is more diversity than China definitely. At least in China, most people speak Mandarin, eat noodle and rice. But in US, how many people speak English? Eat Hamburg?

<comment><USER2> 71% of China speaks Mandarin compared to 80% of America who can speak English.[1][2]

>Eat Noodle and Rice.

The cuisine of China is actually very varied. Rice is more common in the Southern and Middle parts of China compared to noodles which are found mostly in the Northern Parts.

You could not find a Dim Sum place in Shanghai compared to Southern cities because Dim Sum is more of a Southern tradition. While the cuisines of Shanghai are completely different than ones found in Xian, Xinjiang, and Hubei.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_China) [2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You should hear what people say about people that were born and raised in the US South.

Seems in some places, it's perfectly (socially) acceptable to pick on others, as long as you're picking on the 'right' group of folks.

<comment><USER6> Do people from the South (that aren't a part of traditionally discriminated groups) get discriminated against actively because of their birthplace? Does Joe Redneck lose jobs because he was born in Georgia rather than California? What do those Southerners say about people like me living in San Francisco, CA?

Not trying to be aggressive, I just want to know why you think the cultural discrimination against white Southerners is equivalent to that against Chinese ethnic groups that are being actively oppressed, or some other group that is being actively oppressed.

<comment><USER7> _Do people from the South (that aren 't a part of traditionally discriminated groups) get discriminated against actively because of their birthplace?_

In 2019, it has become fashionable to impute beliefs on another person on scant evidence. Perhaps as little as what someone looks like, or what 'type' they are based on the first impression.

Back in the day, we used to call this bigotry.

I dream of the day when all Americans will be judged not by [surface signifier] but by the content of their character.

EDIT: If you are on the Left, then it is especially incumbent on you to call out _your own side._ What's more, if you're afraid to speak up, or frequently decide to hold your tongue, start asking yourself _why_.

It's a frequent trope in history: Sociopaths co-opting a cause and the language of movements.

[https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths](https://meaningness.com/geeks- mops-sociopaths)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some aspects of this discrimination are institutional, encoded in the Hukou system - a registry that restricts your access to government services based on birthplace rather than current residency.

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

</comment><comment><USER9> Regionalism is a word. Most countries suffer from it as well.

<comment><USER10> I'm from Alabama. I'm pretty familiar with regionalism in the US. But it for the most part stops at social situations. I've never once heard of a large nationwide company filtering out candidates from the Heart of Dixie just on principle, like, for example, Meituan was apparently doing with people from Henan. This is a whole new level of regionalism.

Now when you get to the interview and they hear the traces of the accent that you still manage to retain despite your best efforts, well, there's no helping that.

<comment><USER11> > I've never once heard of a large nationwide company filtering out candidates > from the Heart of Dixie just on principle

I've seen it happen. "Culture fit" ends up being the stated reason. I lost my southern accent for a reason when I moved out west.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The difference is it's quite blatant and you can do nothing about it like the 996 work schedule. People of one province hate the people from basically any other province, sometimes one part of a province hates another part.

</comment><comment><USER13> As someone from one of the regions the article claims is discriminated against, I have literally never faced discrimination on the basis of the region I'm from. And it's not like they can't tell given that my accent is quite heavy. The dialect I speak gets made fun of a lot but that's done as much by people from the region as by people from outside it. The fact that the article straight up opens with poorly done translations of online comments makes it pretty obvious that it's just another puffpiece using cherry picked examples.

</comment><comment><USER14> i wonder what kind of discrimination south asians face as well. considering vast majority of south asians in tech are from certain parts of india.

<comment><USER15> Nobody hates and discriminates against Indians more than other Indians! ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> From what I read even though what the school did is totally horrible, there is a lot of hatred for "Henan" people.

</comment><comment><USER17> Whereas in the US, we only discriminate against people based on the origin of their license plate?

<comment><USER18> The difference is that the U.S. is not targeting a regional majority / national minority using advanced technologies, and then placing them into re- education camps as a matter of policy.

<comment><USER5> I disagree. For many in the African American (and others) community, the war on Drugs (I'm referring to Marijuana especially), has been just that.

Of course, the US doesn't call them 'camps.'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So, like everywhere in the world? This China bashing is getting stupid.

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure how factual reporting on what is in China is invalidated as China bashing because similar phenomena occur elsewhere on the planet? Aka the what aboutism logical fallacy.

<comment><USER19> It's not whataboutism, I'm saying that this is perfectly normal and therefore I don't think it's valid criticism of China in particular.

<comment><USER21> I don't think it's intended to be criticism of China in particular. "Common thing happens in China, here are the details" is interesting news for some people.

For example, I was aware that Northeasterners are seen as a distinct group, but not in terms of external rejection, but rather internal cohesion, e.g. when one of my friends joked that hearing the Northeastern accent of his taxi driver made him feel almost at home.

<comment><USER13> >not in terms of external rejection

I'm from the Northeast. Your initial assessment was the correct one. There is no external rejection of Northeasteners. Hearing others speak with a Northeastern accent is strangely reassuring though.

>"Common thing happens in China, here are the details" is interesting news for some people.

Except that's the issue, with articles like these the thing that's claimed to be happening are extreme cases but they make them out to be common. Because it's China nobody reading the Economist can smell the bullshit as they have no direct knowledge. I see it happen with Japan related news too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Chinese have different sensibilities than westerners. It's completely normal and accepted for them. They have a word for self-important westerners who are obsessed with politically correct speech and behavior - baizuo. It's a different world there.

</comment><comment><USER23> That's not news that's normal and accepted in China, and been like this forever :D.

<comment><USER24> > That's not news that's normal and accepted in China, and been like this > forever :D.

What's normal and accepted in one place can be news someplace else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Yes, there is a discrimination on your intelligence and charisma.

</comment><comment><USER26> Now if only the Chinese implement quotas, restrictions on speech, affirmative action, diversity initiatives, trigger warnings and identity politics, to protect the discriminated of course, they can look forward to the same harmony, cohesion and mental well being the US currently enjoys.

<comment> yoz-y Disregarding the snark: the Chinese already do apply quotas, affirmative action and diversity initiatives in universities for example.

<comment><USER26> That is great news for America. Can you share some details?</comment></comment></comment>


YC S13 candidates unleashed "World redeem" mobile game - <AUTHOR>

Besides being at Google Play and Amazon, "World redeem" is now available at Apple Store. Download it and check it now. facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/WorldRedeem <comment><USER2> Some feedback on your post: A) You should use the "Show HN" title format. Your current title sounds like a press release. B) link to the app itself, not the Facebook page for the app</comment>


What happens when programmers don't want to program - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@gerstenzang/what-happens-when-programmers-don-t-want-to-program-f7281820e4f2

<comment><USER2> >> A shocking number of some of the best professional programmers I know aren't interested in programming for the rest of their careers: 40+ hours a week for 40 more years. Sure, the high comp and benefits will keep a lot of them around for a while. But that doesn't seem like a permanent solution, especially as we lose our most experienced engineers.

I feel myself growing weary of this field, but it's not because of the activity of writing code, but observing the same folly, again and again, at one company after another. And it's only getting worse.

To illustrate, when I worked a large corp, they had business analysts who knew the business, and actively engaged development. When I then went to medium/small companies, they typically had no business analysts, indeed no one who was capable of working with development to define projects and work out the edge cases.

Then seeing this formalized as 'agile' development were the developers become the business analyst, and devops where the developers become the sys admins, I wonder, what is it everyone else at these companies, what are they doing exactly?

<comment><USER3> _what is it everyone else at these companies, what are they doing exactly?_

Enhancing shareholder/VC value.

Oh, and making more money than us, and claiming credit for our hard work and understanding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have been programming fulltime for 30 years which is 3/4th of my life and I still find it magic. Although I now do a lot more management tasks, program standing, go on long walks or to the gym while crunching harder problems or when in need of creativity, I never stop feeling great when something I made works. It's why I recommend everyone to at least do some coding; it's often a great creative outlet.

When I am coding I forget everything and often I make too long hours. Not because I have to but because there is so much more to code; work coding, side project coding, hobby coding... I cannot see how I would ever start to dislike it.

By the way; if there is a shortage of coders (as the article says), how come the demand is not a bit more flexible as in allowing people to work from different locations? I know for instance there is a large demand in Silicon Valley while here (in Europe) many of friends, who would work quite a bit cheaper than the prices I see flying around there, sit idle. They just cannot or don't want to move.

<comment><USER5> >there is a shortage of coders

There's a shortage of companies that are flexible about paying higher salaries, offering remote work, and doing away with whiteboard interviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I consider myself to have a lot of mental stamina. I can focus for hours if I have to, and sometimes to job really requires it, e.g. you need to get something fixed for a customer. I don't consider this an unreasonable part of the job, but it takes a mental and physical toll that needs to be managed. As I get older (early 30's now) I expect to have less inclination and ability to do this kind of intense mental workout, and therefore move more towards management. My understand is that manual workers like builders tend to do a similar career transition.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm reading HN. So there's one data point.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not gong to finish being a professional software engineer any time soon, but I can certainly see the end from here. Like, it's no longer inconceivable.

The basic problem is that developers want to grow and solve new and interesting problems--and at the very least, this billing of them as 'programmers' pretty much implies a mentality of factory assembly that doesn't fit.

It's the core structure companies and businesses that burn out/burn through developers, and until that changes, you'll keep losing talent.

It's not enough to pay us decently, though many don't do that. It's not enough to give us a direct stake in the revenues of a project, though almost nobody does. It's not enough to give us interesting problems to solve, though few even have those problems.

You've got to do _all_ of those things.

We're collectively sick of solving problems that have been solved before, and also of self-inflicted problems that anybody with half a brain should've seen coming but biz wouldn't listen to tech.

We're sick of working with people that aren't clever and don't want to learn.

We're sick of making me-too apps because that's what gets funded.

We're sick of having to play catch-up on constantly evolving tech, made so by firms who are playing the VC moneyball game and who derive their profits from marketing and pushing tech that honestly is no great improvement on what's gone before and which may simply implode when the money dries up.

We're sick of dealing with and babying customers who literally do not understand the value we create for them, and for having a profession with social cachet only slightly above child molestor.

We're sick of being managed by people who _by definition_ don't understand their business well enough to teach an idiot savant how to run it automatically (which is exactly our job description).

 _That 's_ why we don't want to program anymore.

EDIT: Interesting on the downvotes...fat fingering things on mobile, or what?

<comment><USER8> There are also lots of problems that we are just not interested in solving. A lot of convoluted business logic that any sane person would just not want to muddy themselves with. It may be difficult, but it doesn't feel worth it.

<comment><USER9> This seems an apropos place to recycle a rant from Reddit:

[...] This happens when the managers/executives try to push the problem onto IT/engineering, blithely assuring everyone that "The New System" will somehow paper over and solve their org/process inconsistencies.

This means that the engineering teams gets requirements for one tool to handle the multiple teams' workflows and business-logic, stuff which nobody seems truly interested in harmonizing long-term. Thus your tool needs a fuckton of special-case logic and workarounds, leading it to become a monolith of spaghetti. Even if it started as a bunch of separate systems, they become slowly woven and pulled together by all special-case webservice calls and database state-sharing.

Then, after release, some people in suits spend a while patting each-other on the back, claiming to have materially improved "how we do things"... up until somebody wants to make a seemingly-simple change that conflicts with all of the other pick-up sticks.

P.S.: In a weird way, the implication that the programmers can fix those big issues is flattering, but it fades quickly as you realize:

1\. You probably aren't actually being given the freedom/power to solve the real problem.

2\. If you were to solve the real problem, the company would be underpaying you.

3\. Even if the first two things cancel-out, the end-result is a PITA.</comment></comment></comment>


Afghanistan's only PC manufacturer - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/04/ars-visits-afghanistans-only-pc-manufacturer/ <comment><USER2> This isn't some achievement, this is a company trying to avoid the crazy ~40% protectionist import tariffs.

The subtext here is that Afghanistan is hobbled by tariffs that make necessary economic goods so insanely expensive it's possible to compete with Dell and Samsung and Lenovo in your garage.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if this is useful, for a country with as little economic prosperity as Afghanistan. (A) A country like that cannot easily tax income or even consumption to raise taxes the way modern economies can. (B) Ricardo's model of relative advantage might break down at the edges when a country is competitive n so few fronts. (C) Maybe it's helpful to have openings like this that are easy, but might lead to more sophisticated industry later on.

I'm not convinced the same rules apply to countries with a 50+X difference in productivity.

<comment><USER4> A: A country as unproperous as Afghanistan should probably try to focus more on raising wealth, not taxes. Making it harder for an already poor population to buy computers isn't it.

B: A poor country's advantage is really low cost. Punitive tariffs erase that advantage. Then again, so does high security costs.

C: That's a big might. In the meantime it makes it much harder for the much more numerous industries (with much higher value add) that _depend_ on computers to take off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Their website: [http://bluesonic.af/en](http://bluesonic.af/en)

and YouTube channel: [https://www.youtube.com/user/bluesoniccomputers](https://www.youtube.com/user/bluesoniccomputers)

Their all-in-one desktops have integrated batteries. Useful when the power grid is unreliable, I guess.

<comment><USER6> > BlueSonic presents the BluePanel – the All in One Desktop in one > portable panel, easy to carry, light and portable with multi touch screen.

That's not the machine I think of when I see the word "desktop".

<comment><USER7> It's too big to be considered a tablet and its definitely not a laptop. It is definitely meant to go on a desk. I can't imagine trying to use a small LCD TV in my lap the same way I can use a tablet or laptop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Unsurprisingly, it appears that the "BizBook 1"[0] is a re-badged Taiwanese Clevo W740SU[1] which was also sold as the System76 Galago Ultra Pro[2]

And why is it so hard to find pictures of old Clevo laptops on vendor sites? Not even support pages. :-/

[0] [http://bluesonic.af/en/product/bizbook-1-af-40su- gallery/](http://bluesonic.af/en/product/bizbook-1-af-40su-gallery/)

[1] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/7182/90-minutes-with-the- clevo...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/7182/90-minutes-with-the-clevo-w740su- featuring-iris-pro-hd-5200)

[2] [https://system76.com/static/images/support/guides/galu1-quic...](https://system76.com/static/images/support/guides/galu1-quickstart.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> Their stuff doesn't look half bad. I'm surprised.

EDIT: It's Canadian-based.

<comment><USER6> You don't build the laptops or phones they are selling with a few technicians in a workshop.

They're assembled to some definition of "49%" \- where all the major design and component fabrication is done - and then glued together in Afghanistan.</comment></comment>


How Prosecutors Wiretap Wall Street - <AUTHOR> http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/blog/archives/2009/10/how_prosecutors.html;jsessionid=LQWUFVHYNIZGNQE1GHPSKH4ATMY32JVN <comment><USER2> If you build it, it will get used. The system was justified in the name of "terrorism", and is getting used for white collar crime.

I wouldn't want to bet against it being used for other things as well. Such as to give prominent, connected politicians inside information on their opponents' campaigns.

<comment><USER3> Few years back there was wiretapping of government officials in Greece. It turned out that was used wiretapping interface of the phone switch. Presumably illegally, nobody was caught.

As you wrote - you build it, it will get used.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Found this article because it was mentioned by Bruce Schneier today:

[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/11/the_fbi_and_wi...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/11/the_fbi_and_wir.html)

<comment><USER3> And comments are worth reading.</comment></comment>


Cost-Based Optimizer in Apache Spark 2.2 - <AUTHOR> https://databricks.com/blog/2017/08/31/cost-based-optimizer-in-apache-spark-2-2.html <comment><USER2> If you are interested in the code behind this, I wrote an overview last month on the functionality and links to the different code that backs the improvements they talk about: [http://hydronitrogen.com/spark-220-cost-based- optimizer-expl...](http://hydronitrogen.com/spark-220-cost-based-optimizer- explained.html)

There's a fair amount of overlap, but where the databricks article explains the techniques with charts and high level explanations, I go over the code instead.

</comment><comment><USER3> On this topic, I really like the Join Order Benchmark paper: [http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol9/p204-leis.pdf](http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol9/p204-leis.pdf)

It basically shows that most cost-based optimizers are pretty bad at cardinality estimation, which compounds when queries use more joins.

</comment><comment><USER4> Still catching up with postgres which added multivariate column statistics in 9.6 :)

Not that this isn't a great development in itself...

</comment><comment><USER5> What's cool about these statistics-based approaches is that you mostly don't even need fully up-to-date statistics, just overall decent stats, unless you have an insane amount of churn. Meaning - you can get query speedup without insertion overhead: you choose to take that overhead any time you want using ANALYZE.

Very neat stuff from the databricks team!

<comment><USER6> For non latency sensitive queries you can also run dynamic sampling.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone hired a whole team to build a new startup? - <AUTHOR> I am wondering if anyone has ever hired a whole team to build a new startup based on an idea and if it worked? I am in the position where I have a number of very high quality business ideas, the money to fund them, but just no time to build a new startup.
Rather than just let these ideas rot, my thought is to hire a team to build the startup(s), but I have a feeling that this might not work well in practice. I want to create a true startup and share the equity, but I worry that all I will end up with is some poorly supervised employees working half-heartly on an idea they don't care about.
Has anyone ever tried this approach or heard of it being a successful strategy? <comment><USER2> To me it looks like you've hit the problem on the head. Not having the time to build a startup boils down to not having the time to vet the candidates for its workforce and not having time to create a company culture. Looking to outsource an entire team suggests not having a rollodex deep enough to bring in cofounders...or rather bring in obvious cofounders.

In the end, the problem is identifying people who are likely to build a successful company and in terms of maximizing the chance of success, broadening the potential investment beyond companies developing one's own ideas looks rational.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes for this to work the people involved need to take ownership of the projects. How to achieve this is what I am struggling with and would like to know if anyone has achieved success trying to create a startup like this.

I am an Angel investor and I see heaps of great teams working on totally terrible ideas and I want to say to them "drop what you are doing and come and work on this project". I don't of course do this, but everytime I see one of these teams I want to.

<comment><USER2> Maybe an alternative is to hand off responsibilities at the existing established company to free up time for new ventures. Those ventures could either be external or within the framework of the existing firm. One potential side benefit is that such strategies fit into a the development of a succession plan at the established company.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have actually started to do this, but if you have been running a business for a long time this is not easy as almost all the processes are built around you. My expectation is it is going to take me at least 18 months to get the business into a state where I am not needed.

<comment><USER2> That sounds more sound than trying to outsource everything while running another business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure is - the problem of course is the other projects just rot in the meantime :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am CTO of a company that handles these kinds of problems. We work with investors and operate as a start-up incubator. Not every company is the same, and I can't speak for others - But we don't take a project we don't believe in and i'm intimately involved with every project. We don't actually assign people to it - they kind of choose it themselves. So there's always passion.

The hardest part is communication. You solve that, as we have, and you're golden.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment. It sounds like your company is involved in solving similar problems, but have you dealt with a situation like I am inquiring about?

<comment><USER3> If you're talking about hiring an external team - Yes. We are an external team someone would hire. Otherwise we have numerous internal projects our people work on - We let them pick and choose what to work on.

Before my business partner and I started our own business, we were brought in by companies to handle their marketing and development problems. We would help pick individuals to join the team and be involved in setting up the internal team.

On-top of that, I also work at Red Hat as a Consultant, so i'm often flown in or brought in to help internal teams with projects and integrations.

So, Perhaps not the exact same situation. But I've been involved in similar situations and problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the closest I'm come across.

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

There's a little bit of an overlap with a startup studio.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have thought about creating a startup studio, but this doesn't really solve the problem just shifts it to a new location. Instead of not having the time to start a startup, I now have the problem of not having the time to start a startup studio :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> you might try to find someone who has "the same" idea as you or close enough to come to a common vision. But, I think it's important to find someone that "takes ownership of the business" regardless of how much equity is in the deal.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope someone doesn't have the same ideas as me :)

I agree that for this to work the team needs to "own" the idea, but how to achieve this? My best idea so far is to find teams that have the passion, but who are working on crappy ideas and somehow convince them that there is a better option. Has this ever worked?</comment></comment>


Americans Are Delaying Health Care Until Tax Refunds Arrive - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-12/what-to-spend-your-tax-refund-on-how-about-the-doctor <comment><USER2> As employers switch to High Deductible Health Plans where insurance doesn't kick in until one has spent a deductible of several thousand dollars, many people are delaying health care in general. A doctor's visit that once cost a co-pay of $30 is now frequently a cash price from $130 to $400, plus more for lab work. With higher costs and much of them unknown in advance, many skip getting things checked until it seems absolutely necessary.

<comment><USER3> I paid 400 dollars to have a doctor tell me to neti pot my nose after having sinus infection for 3 months. Might not be rational but fuck everything about this system. Who is pocketing all this goddamn money?

<comment><USER4> Through no fault of the author, this comment thread explains the trick. The article talks about US health care access but the discussion quickly goes off into the weeds of the US health insurance market. As soon as we start talking about premiums we adopt business language and metrics and abandon medical language and metrics.

All that money is pocketed by businesses run for profit. It's pocketed because it can be. It can be because untreated a sinus infection can kill you. Not a bad business to be in by the standards of business.

<comment><USER5> > As soon as we start talking about premiums we adopt business language and > metrics and abandon medical language and metrics.

To provide healthcare you need doctors, who need money to pay rent and student loans. You need an office to put the doctors in. You need drugs and medical devices, and researchers to come up with them. You need lawyers to keep the doctors from conducting the Tuskegee Experiment. And nurses and lab techs and janitors etc.

That is all business stuff. Paying employees and managing offices etc. If you don't pay the employees enough then they get another job and quality of care suffers. If you pay them too much then costs get out of hand.

The way you determine how much is the right amount is by letting people choose how much to pay for it. If you have a runny nose and the doctor wants ten million dollars to see you for five minutes, you blow them off as unreasonable and get a different doctor. If you demand to see them for $10 and that isn't enough to cover their costs, they blow you off as unreasonable and get a different patient. Somewhere in the middle there is a price above what it costs and below what it's worth where you neither die of a sinus infection nor sell your first born to have it cured.

There are a lot of reasons this works poorly in the US. Low deductible employer-provided health plans making consumers price insensitive, lack of price transparency, an excessively burdensome FDA approval process that impairs competition between pharma companies, etc. But those are specific failings that could be addressed.

Switching to central planning just adds a new problem without solving the existing ones. If consumers pay nothing, not even actual cost, there is even less incentive to forego unnecessary procedures. Setting prices by committee is a sure way to either overpay (and waste money) or underpay (and get supply shortages). If drug companies still set prices then costs remain high, but if they can't charge the prices they do and still have to go through the same very expensive approval process, you stop getting new drugs. And then you add another trillion tax dollars to the budget which every campaign donor in the country will have a chance to divert a chunk of away from actual medicine and into their own pockets.

> All that money is pocketed by businesses run for profit.

The significant majority of that money typically goes to employees, not shareholders. The costs are too high, but it's not because the average medical practice is turning a huge profit, it's because the existing regulatory environment causes providing medicine to be unnecessarily labor intensive (i.e. inefficient).

<comment><USER4> And yet, here we are talking about business instead of health.

<comment><USER5> Because it's a business problem. The problem isn't that doctors don't know what to prescribe when you have an infection, it's that healthcare is so expensive that people can't afford it.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that people don't get healthcare. Price is just the rationalization for denying it.

<comment><USER5> Price is way of measuring when it should be denied, because it has to be at some point. You can't spend the entire US GDP to save one life, even if it would work. At some price you have to say it's too expensive.

Then the question is, do you want to decide that amount for yourself, or have someone else deciding it for you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why why why do you put up with this in America?? I live in the uk and health has always been free at point of use.

The cost is spread amongst all tax payers and costs kept low.

I honestly don't understand why not every single American is screaming for access to health services that are literally on their front lawn.

I cannot fathom this is any way shape or form.

<comment><USER7> Many of these articles exaggerate the price of healthcare in the US. I'm an independent contractor and pay for my own health insurance. My wife and I together cost less that 500/month (universal care would take way more in taxes) Checkups are covered, prescriptions are mostly free or very inexpensive, and if I do have an emergency, I don't need to wait 6 months to get treated, like in the UK or Canada. I also get some of the best doctors in the world.

A good test of a country's quality of healthcare is where people that don't have to worry about money go to get treated....that's currently the US.

It has problems, but sacrificing quality for nationalization is not the solution.

<comment><USER8> That's some blatant misinformation. In Canada you don't wait for treatment. If you need treatment, you will be treated. Stop spreading some garbage myth.

<comment><USER9> I don't know where you live in Canada, but that's not entirely true. There are long waits for some procedures (far longer than medically indicated) and a significant number of people cannot access primary care because of the shortage of GPs (especially in rural areas). I would still, 100%, rather live in Canada than the US but your comment (intentionally or not) completely glosses over the waiting lists for some medical specialties.

<comment><USER10> People in the US see short lines and think "wow I can use our system whenever I want" instead of "wow our system is so expensive that it's usage is much lower than capacity".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Out-of-pocket medical spending jumps once the money hits people's bank > accounts.

It is a bad thing that tax withholding is one of the few ways Americans can have savings. When you live check to check this can be your only option.

<comment><USER12> That tax withholding is the only way that many Americans manage to save speaks more to a lack of self-control than anything else.

If Uncle Sam can save a lump-sum for you by deducting from your paycheck, you could have done the same (in fact, better) with a bit of resolve and a bank account.

<comment><USER13> 78% of American workers live pay cheque to pay cheque.

I would suggest that of the two possible hypotheses, the one where the system itself doesn't let them do anything else, might be the one more worth examining than the one that betrays a complete lack of empathy with your fellow citizens.

<comment><USER14> The bottom 78% of incomes varies widely, so we know it's a result of spending, not earning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Would you pay a few % more in taxes knowing that every human in this nation could receive the healthcare they need? I would without a second thought.

<comment><USER16> Would not be nearly enough.

U.S. health care spending grew 3.9 percent in 2017, reaching $3.5 trillion or $10,739 per person.

That exceeds tax federal income tax revenue by about $2 trillion

The us govt already spends so much on healthcare.

<comment><USER17> The problem isn't that we don't have socialized healthcare. The problem is that for some reason, healthcare in this country is ridiculously expensive. We can't have both; only one or the other. If healthcare is too expensive and you socialize it, the government will be bleeding even more money trying to pay for it all.

<comment><USER18> The answer is obvious: deregulate. Indian surgeons already perform more heart bypasses more often for a tenth the cost with better outcomes.

Down with the AMA. Probably the organization with the most blood on its hands in peacetime America.

<comment><USER17> It is a lack of regulation that got us into this mess. I don't hate the free market, but the prices in the US are caused by the free market gouging as much as they can out of someone who has no bargaining power

<comment><USER19> It's not a free market when the alternative to buying id dying. It's more like putting a gun to someone's head and saying "give me $50k or I pull the trigger." That's not a free market transaction, it's a mugging. It doesn't magically become better if you get to choose which mugger you pay, or play them off each other to negotiate down in price. It's still a forced transaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This has been true forever. Everyone is broke after Christmas and refunds turn the lights back on for retail starting in the end of March.

<comment><USER21> Yep... Even car sales increase because people have money for the down-payment.

A large population of Americans do not have much savings. Could be bad money management, low paying jobs, bad luck (health issues) etc.

<comment><USER22> Phht, bad money management. When loan sharks are peddling 450% payday loans people are being taken advantage of by corporations. The government needs to practice better money management, not us private citizens. Close tax loopholes.

<comment><USER23> Actually both. It was crazy when I read from a person that he preferred paying his rent over eating, but it actually makes sense: if you get to the street, and not able to clean yourself, the chances of getting a job goes down dramatically.

<comment><USER24> If you get evicted, you're going to have a lot harder time getting into another apartment, too. It's also a lot easier to get help with food than to get help with a place to live.

<comment><USER25> Also food is insanely inexpensive. Doesn't come anywhere near cost of housing unless you have a large family.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you are reading this and find yourself in the same situation... consider decreasing your withholding and have the money deducted into a HSA or FSA instead. You can still use the money for health expenses, and you will also get a 20-30% tax discount.

<comment><USER27> Note that the tax benefits of a Health Savings Account are much better than the Flex Spending Account, if you can get it. [0] [https://www.investopedia.com/insurance/hsa-vs- fsa/](https://www.investopedia.com/insurance/hsa-vs-fsa/)

HSA contributions are:

* Deducted from your paycheck and skip all taxes

* Allowed to earn interest, tax-free

* Carried from year to year

* Tax-free when used on health expenses

* Flexible amount

FSA contributions are:

* Deducted from your paycheck and skip all taxes

* Not able to accrue interest

* "use it or lose it" per year

* Fixed Amount

<comment><USER28> HSA contributions do not have to be deducted from you paycheck and you don't have to use the provider that your employer has selected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is insane given that the executive branch has been jiggering around with the withholding amounts for the entire year. Yes, you probably paid slightly less in tax during the year, but unless you were paying attention to your federal withholding, you're probably in for a shock with your federal return.

<comment><USER30> The solution to people's inability to save is not for the government to hold their money hostage.

<comment><USER31> > The solution to people's inability to save is not for the government to hold > their money hostage.

Meanwhile, in the real world where the left-hand side of the Bell curve exists, and where many people have poor impulse control, that actually is the solution to some people's inability to save.

Heck, as a student I worked in a union shop where this was actually baked into the collective agreement because of past experience of people not being able to save.

It shouldn't necessarily be mandatory, and there are ways to adjust one's withholding taxes, but it isn't all-bad.

<comment><USER32> But wouldn't we all be more free, _really_ , if we just gave everyone enough rope to hang themselves & then locked up the left-hand side of the bell curve in debtor's prison?

<comment><USER33> Does the left hand side of the bell curve actually owe any federal income tax?

<comment><USER34> FICA is always paid, and hits lower wages harder. You know that money just goes to the general fund.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Withholding is an awful idea designed to favor the government over the taxpayer and to psychologically soften the blow of the ridiculous tax rates we pay. It's especially bad with mandatory withholding by the employer. It shouldn't happen. Taxpayers ought to figure out how much they owe and write the check for it at once. This is especially true since consumers can't invest that income or get interest on it: I could get a 6-month CD and make some extra money otherwise.

<comment><USER36> I would like that system, but unfortunately most of our fellow citizens would end up broke come tax time. Most people simply say "I can spend until my bank account is empty".

That's why most people choose impound accounts when they get a mortgage. Because they literally can not budget money for the bi-annual property tax bill, so they have the bank take the money every month.

It's also why teachers are offered a 10 check plan or 12 check plan. They get the same money, but most of them choose the 12 check plan, just so they don't have to remember to save money to live in the summer.

That's why the banks offer those "save your pennies" plans. Every time you make a debt card charge, they round up to the nearest dollar and then put the rest in a savings account for you. Because people are that bad at budgeting.

Can you imagine most of the people you know having the ability to set aside 20% of their check each month and not spending it ever?

<comment><USER37> IRS actually has a documented policy on the "12-check plan":

[https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs- tege/409a_presentation.pdf](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs- tege/409a_presentation.pdf)

Wonder how many teachers understand that the net financial effect amounts to a zero-interest loan from themselves back to the school district?

<comment><USER38> That example teacher is very well compensated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Canadians with their great health care system seem to think that they need ~250K salary/year to feel comfortable [1] So most people are either too desperate or aspiration too high that no government in the first world can make them happy.

1\. [https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/11/03/average-salary- cana...](https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/11/03/average-salary-canada- wealth_a_23579661/)

<comment><USER40> And Canadians think they need $750k for retirement - are they expecting to retire for three years and then die?!

[https://business.financialpost.com/personal-finance/the- magi...](https://business.financialpost.com/personal-finance/the-magic-number- for-retirement-savings-is-756000-according-to-poll-of-canadians)

<comment><USER41> Does everyone spend 100% of their salary, no matter how large it is?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I need to recheck my W-4. As far as I know, I pick the right things there and still get a stupidly large refund.

<comment><USER43> Make sure you've done 2018 taxes first. For a lot of us the total tax owed went up by some amount while the withholding went down. And just put whatever additional net shows up in your account somewhere for next year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Why are they over-withholding?

</comment><comment><USER45> In Canada, people wait much longer than Americans do for ordinary diagnostic tests.

[https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn- wa...](https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn-wait-times- for-health-care-in-canada-2017)

Rationing access to healthcare is not the answer.</comment>


WTF Google, you stole my $5 - <AUTHOR> http://programmerstrouble.blogspot.com/2012/12/wtf-google.html <comment><USER2> Google, for a company that reputes to perform services, is probably the single most consumer-unfriendly company on the planet. Their customer care dept. consists of one crazy cat lady in a cabin in the hills of California. They've sold enterprise services for years (or pretend enterprise services, at least), sold multiple phones and devices, have the largest ad network on the Internet and they STILL don't have anyone you can call if things go wrong. Unless you're Kevin Rose and Google will get bad pub, they absolutely do not care about your problem. Shut up slave, or go back to Hotmail.

Your experience is not even irregular. I'd say this is the typical experience for people dealing with Google when everything doesn't go 100% correct.

<comment><USER3> You can't have both free (or extremely cheap) services and have highly available tech support. I'm not sure if you've ever been part of a company building a call center for tech support in the US but it is a nightmare. It can easily be one of the most expensive elements of having a service-oriented business.

<comment><USER4> IOW, you get what you pay for. That said, Google could do much better in customer service -- they indirectly make money on the backs of these customers. It seems deceitful to let people invest heavily in your ecosystem, knowing you won't help them when stuck (and they're so entrenched they just can't leave).

<comment><USER5> > indirectly make money

Indirectly? Read the blog post. $5 moved from the customer's credit card to Google's bank account. Clearly, Google is _directly_ making money from this person.

<comment><USER6> It's a nominal amount. There aren't too many people who are developers, and the amount is likely dwarfed by several orders of magnitude by the 30% revenue on purchased apps. The $5 is purely an anti-spam mechanism. If it were free, spammers could flood the app store with cruddy apps.

Not that this excuses their behavior. App developers are a source of revenue, and treating them as such would be less evil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sorry in advance for the rant but i think it is fucking stupid to charge developers at all. Yes, it is nothing, but the principal itself leaves a sour taste. I am improving your platform, you are going to take 30% of anything made, and you want me to pay you for that privilege.

I know this applies to others too (worse at times) and that there is some rationale behind this (reduce hoards of crap), but it just stinks, to me, in principle, and i'm sure there would be better ways of going about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> With the Chrome extensions you can't actually charge any money yet, so I'm just doing it pro bono to help the users of the crappy website.

<comment><USER7> My flippant response would be to provide it to mozilla users where you are surely not charged. You didn't mention the site, so i don't know if you could just publish it there (surely that can be done with chrome extensions?) or just as a bookmarklet?

<comment><AUTHOR> I could try that, thanks for the suggestions. The website is of the Dutch public transportation system, the part where you can view which trips you've made with your electronic travel card. It was designed completely from the viewpoint of the system, not that of the user. I.e.: Instead of seeing how much each trip costs, you see what got subtracted (a sort of deposit) when you checked in, and what you got back when you checked out. etc etc. Once I can publish the extension I'll write another post with the details...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been a google supporter for years, until they do something ugly to you, and now that love is gone. Fuck you google, if you don't listen to your users you're doomed to extinction.

You stole my hard earned money in adsense for over a couple of years. All of a sudden you decided to close my account for activity fraud. I swear to god I never clicked a damn ad. My stats show no abnormal visits (analytics from google) just a steady flow of a hundred visitors a day, just ten cents a day in adsense.

But you stole it without any explanation, just that you can't give any info to protect your algorithms and your sponsors.

Well fuck you, then who protects the user?

You stole just $100 from me, but I hope you lose it all. I'll do all I can to see you on your knees.

Fuck you google.

<comment><USER9> If that is stealing at all, it is on behalf of advertisers. Google doesn't get paid when you don't.

<comment><USER10> Not true - inventory availability and user data are gathered. Google receives value from a publisher using Ad Sense tags, if they chose to use that value by returning ad (getting paid by an advertiser) then Google makes money. At the end of the day an unused impression opportunity by Google may cost a tiny bit of computing resources, but its an unused opportunity for revenue by the publisher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If the $5 is to keep out spam, doesn't the fact that he has already confirmed that he is not a spammer by paying the $25 from before for the android thing? Why keep asking for money and bounce him around like this? This is what you expect from a crappy company with outsourced customer support , not google.

<comment><USER12> > This is what you expect from a crappy companies with outsourced customer > support , not google.

I'd expect you to expect _algorithmic_ customer support from Google.

<comment><USER11> True, but even Google need some real thinking people in customer support. Algorithms are not enough for all your customer interactions, at least not for now anyway.

<comment><USER12> Sure, common sense suggests that they _do_ need some real people in customer support, but haven't you read the horror stories of their algorithms banning people?

People had their accounts closed with messages like: "Your account is now closed permanently. We won't tell you why. Don't try contacting us, we will not respond. Fuck You."

They have some real people working with customers, but they're meant for big, rich customers-they-want-to-keep. _You_ get the algorithm treatment, and you're not supposed to even reach the real people there.

<comment><USER11> I'm surprised Google act like this, on the one hand they want us to use Google for everything, apps, email, cloud storage. And on the other hand all we get is the algorithm treatment. Unless they change this I can see blog post after blog post slowly eating away at Google's reputation.

<comment><USER12> I bet we've only seen a small fraction of all the cases. As long as they can keep doing it without "too many" people knowing, they're fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've actually had the same issue with Google for over a year. I can't use Google Wallet to pay for anything (including Android apps on the phone)! I've tried removing and adding my card back. It gives me the same error. I've resorted to asking family members to use their accounts to purchase items on my devices. This error is really frustrating!

</comment><comment><USER14> Google is not anymore a company it used to be. They are now just in the process of streamlining their profits - closing down products that are not creating huge amounts of money , making free products into paid ones , over- promoting their social network and making lives of webmasters into roll- coaster rides by frantically updating their search algorithms .

I suppose Customer Support is the least of their concerns

But ironically enough as you have posted the problem on HN , it will surely be solved very swiftly less in the sense of customer goodwill but more of a PR move. This just reminds me of how are governments work - You have to know somebody from the inside to get the work done - and this is what Google is becoming.

<comment><USER15> This is nothing new, Google customer support has always been terrible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I had a similar terrible experience spending $10 to transfer my number on google voice. Got the whole "Uh oh. There was a problem" error. Waiting for support like you, and then I found some obscure google group post that suggested my address on google wallet was wrong. After fixing that and waiting a day or so I finally made purchase successfully.

Google checkout/wallet is less than good, combined with virtually non-existent support is a terrible combination.

</comment><comment><USER17> Another example of how Google does not (or is not willing to) do customer support.

If it works: great, if there's a glitch, well, tough.

</comment><comment><USER18> Isn't this what your credit card company is for?

I had an issue where Paypal never refunded the $2 fee for verifying my account and instead pocketed the cash instead. I got my bank to issue a chargeback over the phone - it took all of five minutes.

<comment><USER19> Then your GMail account is instantly locked for fraud activity, since you foolishly used the same account for everything. Good luck contacting them for support to fix it.

<comment><USER5> This is why you should avoid Google when you can.

They're eating the Internet. The more you depend on them, the harder it'll be to cut ties when they give you crap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Well, I was a Google Apps customer and paid my money for a year of paid GMail with my own domain. There was a technical error, my card was indeed charged and despite countless e-mails and trying to call _anywhere_ for a resolution nothing. E-Mails just like this article had.

I wonder how many customers Google owes money to for things like this? Maybe we could tally this up and petition them to pay out.

<comment><USER10> I would not be surprised if they get hit with a Class Action someday. For their long tail products, the impact to single users is small but across the board, i'm sure it adds up.. reminds me of that evil scheme to take .0005% of a penny from everyone.

Their B2B services is also lacking, turn over for their employees is high y/y.

..maybe this is the new of state internet services at scale?

edit: grammar

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm not excusing it, but it seems plausible to me that the Android charge is separate from the Chrome charge because they are different projects that probably have completely different systems. It's the same poor experience you sometimes have with tech support phone trees with e.g. a credit card company, where each time your call is redirected they ask you for your information again -- poor integration between different wings.

</comment><comment><USER22> Google may actually penalize their phone support for being on the phone for over 3 minutes.

Story: An acquaintance got on the phone with support department to troubleshoot a problem. The support person was struggling to help. As the 3 minute mark approaches, the support person gets increasingly anxious. Finally, he straight up confesses that he has a 3 minute call limit beyond which he may get penalized.

And then hung up on my acquaintance seeking help.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been bitten by googles non-existent customer support too while dealing with my adword account(s). Somehow I had two accounts, but one of them was transferred to my friend by changing all the info + have him verify the new bank account. Sure, I probably messed up somehow.. but it should be easy to fix but it's impossible to get in contact with them. I mailed multiple times over 1-2 months.. with details what I had done. Never got a single reply. Extremely frustrating. I want to put their ads on multiple sites, but they wont let me :).

</comment><comment><USER24> Google really need to sort their support out. When evaluating Google Apps for our organisation, we couldn't even get through to a human. This pretty much killed the evaluation up front.

Chargeback!

<comment><USER25> The problem here is that it's not just a Chrome Developer account, it's a Google account. There may well be an automated process to lockout users that owe them money.

Steam has a similar flaw. If you file a chargeback on any game you purchase then you'll be locked out of every game you ever 'bought' until you resolve the issue.

<comment><USER24> Why the hell would you invest in something so risky then?

I refuse to pay for anything which can be taken away at the whim, process or incompetence of another.

<comment><USER26> Because it gives me the best odds. Store-bought: can lose or break the disc, sometimes the DRM won't let it install on my system. Pirate: might be missing some of the data, might be invalidated by an update, always that slight fear of viruses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> You get my upvote. It's long overdue that Google overhauls this.

</comment><comment><USER28> Seems like an open-and-shut case for a chargeback.

<comment><USER11> The trouble is its only $5 and it's not even worth worrying about getting the money back, it's not going to hurt Google doing a chargeback anywhere near as much as this blog post will hopefully hurt them.

Unfortuanlty for Google, because they have essentially no human face, public shaming is our only option to open up a dialog with them.

<comment><USER9> If Google merits enough charge backs, credit card companies will notice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> That's why google is working so hard on AI, that way they don't have to staff a proper customer service department.

Hopefully they'll get that done in time for them not to be out-competed by a company that actually cares about their audience / customers.

</comment><comment><USER30> Can't he (or couldn't he) dispute the charge with the credit card company?

<comment><AUTHOR> I could but I really can't be bothered. The fact that I can't publish my extension does bother me.

<comment><USER31> It could have taken less time to call your CC company than to write this blog post.

<comment><USER32> Unless Google retaliates somehow. I'd be surprised if they didn't immediately ban or somehow freeze all of his Google accounts and services in response to a chargeback.

<comment><USER33> That's what we do where I work. If someone wants money back, all they have to so is ask, and it will be done, with no hard feelings and they will be welcome back if they ever change their mind.

Do a chargeback, and they go on the "never do business with this person again" list.

<comment><USER9> You'd go on a rampage destroying customer's personal files if they call for a charge back? That puts you on my "never do business with this person " list.

<comment><USER33> 1\. Where did I say anything about destroying a customer's personal files?

2\. Customers do not call for chargebacks. When customers call, they get a refund from us. A chargeback happens when a customer does NOT call us, but rather goes to their credit card issuer, and claims they did not authorize the charge on their credit card (which is generally a lie).

Wen that happens, the credit card company reverses the charge, AND accesses the merchant (us) a fee of around $20. Even if we were able to prove to the credit card issue that the customer is lying, and so the chargeback would be denied, we'd still have to pay the $20 chargeback fee.

Doing a chargeback without even trying to contact the merchant when you wish to undo a purchase is a very scummy thing to do, except in cases where it was definitely a fraudulent charge.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Demand and Salaries for Data Scientists Continue to Climb - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-careers/demand-and-salaries-for-data-scientists-continue-to-climb <comment><USER2> Compensation may be going up, but at top tech companies, software engineers still make significantly more than data scientists for the same level (twice the RSUs). I've noticed at non-tech companies, the reverse seems to be true: data scientists make slightly more than software engineers.

<comment><USER3> That's why you become a data engineer and get the best of both worlds. If you can market yourself to a company as a "full stack data developer" you will make more money than either category

<comment><USER4> "data engineer" is often considered a lower prestige title than data scientist. "Data scientist" is a title recently thrown around a lot for positions that used to be called "data analyst", with no strong ML or SWE ability required. Amazon's title for scientists with strong ML engineering ability is called "Applied Scientist" and it's paid significantly higher than SWE

<comment><USER5> You're claiming to know amazon internal except you're also using SWE, not SDE, the standard name for software devs there. Also amazon seems to hire very few Applied Scientists and thus is likely cherry picking for this role. The one I work near is an industry thought leader at Principal Applied Scientist. They'd be a leading researcher if they were in academia.

<comment><USER4> Software engineers are given the SDE title at Amazon but I just used SWE as the more general "software engineer" acronym.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Might be one of the most overrated jobs, other than product manager.

<comment><USER7> And software architect

<comment><USER8> That's a fun job, though.

You can spend your entire tenure explaining to people that just because something starts and serves up a web page, it's not a good idea to run 30 year old software in Production... eventually you get to the point where you can only hire Senior Software Engineers to take care of our software and then it becomes a fucking priority to unfuck your stack because your payroll costs are the most expensive line item.

Yes I'm salty as fuck.

<comment><USER9> > because your payroll costs are the most expensive line item

Payroll costs are always the most expensive item. And they should be.

<comment><USER8> Doesn't always have to be, there are some industries where a small group of payroll can be outspend by high levels of hardware.

If you're a tech heavy company, you'll sometimes see a cloud bill being higher than your payroll costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Any Data Scientists from Toronto here? I'm up for a salary review soon after my first year after grad school and I'm trying to get a feeling for how much I should ask for.

Indeed.com shows a $121k average for Toronto. Does that sound somewhat accurate? I'm only making $85k so maybe I should be asking for much more.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hands off my data, scientists!</comment>