F-35 Delays Mean US Marines Are Pulling Old F-18s Out of Desert Storage - <AUTHOR> https://warisboring.com/the-u-s-marines-are-pulling-old-f-a-18s-out-of-desert-storage-a9b2febe3d64#.c8y3y4k1v <comment> semi-extrinsic "poses significant affordability risks" \- this is my new favorite euphemism for "bloody expensive".

<comment><USER2> It's potentially a real issue, if the F-35 consumes too much of the Marines budget they won't have money for the stuff they do need. Think NASA with the space shuttle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The 21st century belongs to whichever country first ditches the mentality of preparing to refight WW2, and builds a robotic air and submarine force.

<comment><USER4> I agree entirely.

Drone swarms are the future. And a lot of the existing thinking about solving communications blockage is backwards, swarms in the future will be self reliant, only receiving "big picture" orders from command and allowed to carry those out.

The F-35 may be the last major manned aircraft to take to the skies. With drone swarms, it will be outnumbered, and won't have enough munitions aboard to take out a dozen or more drones.

This is tech already in active development at the normal research institutions and other major nations seem to have similar development programs.

The US might get a full life out of the F-35, but I doubt they'll build its successor.

<comment><USER5> > swarms in the future will be self reliant

I think the biggest issue is the size and power requirements of modern radars. You can't make tiny drones if none of them has a radar, so you need at least some of them to be big. If it's big and has a power hungry radar, then it also needs a big powerplant. The big powerplant drinks a lot of fuel to get any range etc. etc. If a small craft could be self reliant, then we would already be building homing missiles that provide their own radar. We don't because it makes them too big, slow, heavy and expensive! A BVR missile like the AIM-120 relies on the Radar of the firing aircraft for finding the target.

So the drones will have to be launched from carrying aircraft. We'll definitely see groups of planes very soon where some are manned, and they may be simpler and cheaper than the manned equivalent, and another category of drone that is actually launched _from_ the carrying aircraft to rely on its range. This will limit the number of big expensive planes needed, but in reality what they did then was replace cruise missiles and standoff bombs with drones, not the launching planes.

> The US might get a full life out of the F-35, but I doubt they'll build its > successor.

I also doubt they will ever make a "joint" effort again. We'll continue to see large and expensive planes though, so long as radars are massively powerful and we haven't invented backpack size Megawatt-hour batteries or tiny fusion reactors.

<comment><USER3> > If a small craft could be self reliant, then we would already be building > homing missiles that provide their own radar. We don't because it makes them > too big, slow, heavy and expensive!

I don't see this comparison is valid. Drones with radar already exist ([http://www.intelligent-aerospace.com/articles/2015/06/ias- re...](http://www.intelligent-aerospace.com/articles/2015/06/ias-reaper- radar.html)). They are worth it because they're cheaper than manned aircraft, with better loiter times, and potentially better maneuverability in unmanned fighter drones. That they're substantially more expensive or slower than a use-once missile doesn't matter, because the comparison is to a manned aircraft.

And with small-drone radar, if they're in a swarm, what's ruling out aperture synthesis approaches? They don't need a single big radar if they can collectively act as one...

<comment><USER5> > Drones with radar already exist

The MQ-9 is 11x20m and has a flyaway cost comparable to some previous gen fighters, so while it's certainly a "drone" (I hate that term), it goes all the way there and all the way home, and is much too expensive to be an expendable target or part of a "swarm". You can't make a drone that you can field dozens of to provide "security in numbers", and afford to lose a couple of. If "swarm radar" (see my last paragraph) is a possibility that lets small aircraft with small radars cooperate like a large aircraft with a large radar, then it's certainly a possibility that we can se "swarms" of <$2m aircraft used without help from the launching crafts radar. They still need to be carried to the area of operation though because of small range.

> That they're substantially more expensive or slower than a use-once cruise > missile doesn't matter, because the comparison is to a manned aircraft.

Whether their speed matters depends on what you want to do with them. It wouldn't be money well spent to use loiter-type surveillance craft as fighters. You could build unmanned craft that are fast enough to attack fighters, but it's a numbers game - once they get big enough to have speed and range, they are already very expensive and then you may need them to have high survivability which adds even more cost etc. If you make a "fighter drone" it will likely end up looking like an unmanned fighter plane (Unless: advances in radar tech or power generation). You might save some money because it's unmanned so it doesn't need cockpit, oxygen system, and is slightly more expendable, but you still can't afford to lose a lot of them.

I obviously have no idea apart from what I read on gossip sites, but I believe there will also be be common with a "companion" type unmanned aircraft that are built for forward reconnaissance and attack together with "big" fighters and bombers. They must be fast and stealthy and able to operate within heavily contested airspace. They will simply take over where the expensive large plane (manned or not) can't go any longer. When you think about it, the MBDA meteor and other air-breathing long range missiles are already a kind of fast autonomous planes that are launched from other planes. The line between "missile" and "plane" will blur even more.

Quoting the US Air Forces chief scientist Mica Endsley:

"We see unmanned vehicles being used for a much wider variety of missions. Today they are primarily used for ISR, long duration missions where we want to collect information. In the future, they will be moving cargo and more manned- unmanned teaming where they are acting as extensions of a manned aircraft."

> what's ruling out aperture synthesis approaches? They don't need a single > big radar if they can collectively act as one...

That's a good point, I don't know what the state of the art is in "swarm radar". How much better does a pair of current fighters compare to one current fighter?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So what. It's not as if the US government is fighting anyone with any real air capability. You could use Vietnam aircraft and still win against the threat.

<comment><USER7> Right, but the better planes are needed for deterrent.

<comment><USER8> If the money was used instead in financial vehicles for the adversarial countries in question, the created economic codependence would very likely be more effective than this plane

<comment><USER9> Peace is nice but I wouldn't count on a large amount of trade to end all wars.

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

> The Great Illusion is a book by Norman Angell, first published in the United > Kingdom in 1909

> Angell argued that war between industrial countries was futile because > conquest did not pay. J.D.B. Miller writes: "The 'Great Illusion' was that > nations gained by armed confrontation, militarism, war, or conquest."[3] The > economic interdependence between industrial countries meant that war would > be economically harmful to all the countries involved. Moreover, if a > conquering power confiscated property in the territory it seized, "the > incentive to produce [of the local population] would be sapped and the > conquered area be rendered worthless. Thus, the conquering power had to > leave property in the hands of the local population while incurring the > costs of conquest and occupation."[3]

...

He was partially right though

> Angell said that arms build-up, for example the naval race that was > happening as he wrote the book in the early 1910s, was not going to secure > peace. Instead, it would lead to increased insecurity and thus increase the > likelihood of war.

<comment><USER8> That's a pretty old framework. The idea of peace through codependency is AFAIK a bit newer. The biggest problem is that it looks like it could lead to sovereign insolvency which can backfire if it leads to economic calamity and the rise of a political group with an eye on conquest (see Europe 1930s)

As an interesting aside, I'm no fan of wealth inequality. However, if it looks like it's the primary mechanism that is prolonging relative global peace (as in no biological or nuclear weapons being used), I may accept the tradeoff.

There's a balance, to be a bit vulgar, between "alright we need to pay this" and "fuck this debt, we're storming the castle"</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Setting up a free VPN in 10 minutes - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/945261/how-to-get-a-personal-vpn-and-why-you-need-one-now/ <comment><USER2> Fake news yet again. This author doesn't understand that all of these exposures _have been effective since at least 2015_ and, had the Obama-era regulation not changed at all, _would continue through December_ or later ( _never_ if it failed to get OMB approval).

      Soon every mistake you've ever made online will not only be available to your internet service provider (ISP)...

Not "soon". Already and for over 1.5 years now.

      Thanks to last week's US Senate decision and yesterday's House decision, ISPs can sell your entire web browsing history

No, that's been the case and would be for over two years.

      The only rules that prevented this

No, the Obama rule change didn't take effect during his term and would not have until _next_ December.

etc.

etc.</comment>


I saved 15% or more on car insurance by switching my gender - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/alberta/comments/8fsqos/i_saved_15_or_more_on_car_insurance_by_switching/ <comment><USER2> But then you'd need to switch your gender back to male if you wanted to save money on, say, healthcare, clothing, and haircuts.

I wonder if it might all even out, at the end of the day.

<comment><USER3> Pink tax has been debunked many times. You're not comparing the same products. Male haircuts are much simpler, male clothing is much simpler, and women's biogy is different.

If you really think you could make female products cheaper, which women would still buy, why wouldn't you? It seems like an insane business opportunity. I'm sure YC would jump on that startup pitch.</comment></comment>


HTML5 Parsing in IE10 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/07/06/html5-parsing-in-ie10.aspx

<comment><USER2> Wow, this isn't what I was expecting. It's like a breath of fresh air to see a feature list for an IE version that doesn't encourage divergence of page markup for IE vs everything else. That the conditional comments are being removed is big.

</comment><comment><USER3> The biggest surprise for me is the removal of IE conditional comments.</comment>


Show HN: srctree = pastebin + git + canvas - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN.  This is my first webapp. It works like a pastebin, in which you can visually keep track of the changes you and others make to it.
I was a little reluctant about posting it here because I'm not sure it meets the HN quality standards, but, as a beginner, I would really appreciate to have some feedback and/or tips.
The url is: http://srctree.net/
An example of usage: http://srctree.net/1
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Can you draw the tree with the circles vertically staggered instead of directly adjacent, so the circles are vertically ordered by time?

[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_aHXMSfhY_hY/TFxP- Eoc3rI/AAAAAAAAAH...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_aHXMSfhY_hY/TFxP- Eoc3rI/AAAAAAAAAHQ/YGP_-35V8PQ/s1600/Screen+shot+2010-08-06+at+2.02.00+PM.png) is an example of similar data.

You could have multiple panes/columns of data, one for the graphical tree, one for the date for each node, one for the username for each node, and one for a node comment.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good idea. I will definately give it some thought. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pretty cool, but I wonder how effective this becomes under large projects with hundreds of files.

Definitely an interesting idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment.

My original idea was to create a tool that somehow helped people to debug pieces of code - perhaps a function or a single file - with help from others, so that others could pinpoint the "error" or present a nicer solution.

You are right. I don't think it would be the best way to share bigger projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> great idea i like it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

<comment><USER4> only thing i would add is to highlight the changes in the files maybe list how many changed lines there are

<comment><AUTHOR> You can see the "git diff" between two nodes if you click with the right button on a node and with the left button in another one. For example:

<http://srctree.net/3S-2>

Maybe I need to think of a better way to present this!

<comment><USER2> You should have a compare with button, and when you click the button the mouse cursor changes, and then clicking a tree node will set it as the "compare to" node.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: History of computers and oscilloscope pictures - <AUTHOR> http://volumelabs.net/oscilloscope_visualizations/

<comment><USER2> Nice work! I had no idea about that rabiscoscopio tool, but it looks really neat.</comment>


Slab – Team Wiki and Knowledge Base - <AUTHOR> https://slab.com/ <comment><USER2> I had the displeasure of using this at a previous client. It's a good example of form over function. It looks decent, but is an absolute nightmare to use:

* No Markdown editing support, only wysiwyg. Certain Markdown control characters will start wysiwyg markup blocks but not stop them, overall making it terrible to use.

* Markdown imports are bad. Valid Markdown that renders fine in StackEdit has trouble when imported into Slab. Ended up using StackEdit to render to HTML and then pasting the HTML.

* No Markdown export, so you can't export the existing text in Markdown so you can edit it in a decent editor instead of the shit wysiwyg.

* No "save" button. It's supposed to save incrementally and I guess it also saves when you exit out of edit mode, but honestly I would not trust it on a flaky connection. Just give me a good old save button when I have real feedback when the document is saved in the form of a page reload.

* It lags. They have managed to make _text_ lag. It's a sad but nevertheless very impressive achievement. I wonder how many NPM packages they have in their dependency graph. The entire product just feels bloated and you start being scared to click anywhere because it'll cause a good 1-second delay during which your CPU will be at 100%.

With these limitations I wouldn't take it for free, let alone 35$/month.

<comment><USER3> I second this. I've been trying to find some system to organize my teams knowledge base. We tried Slab, Confluence, Notion.

Everyone had so many gripes in the end, we just returned back to using google drive/docs.

<comment><USER4> What was wrong with Notion? I would've thought that it'd be the best option out right now given its popularity.

<comment><USER5> No option for hosting it yourself is the biggest reason I haven't been able to use it at clients.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Disappointed to see the usual onslaught of HN cynicism.

"Product doesn't meet my narrow expectations; is bad product."

1\. We use Slab. It's a fairly ok product in a crowded space. Needs maturity. Far better than confluence.

2\. I have had no experience with the lag that another commenter insists is a product killer, and I write and edit docs all day.

3\. The niche this product and others like it solve is to keep your entire company's docs _organized_ and _discoverable_. Remembering to file things away correctly, share content, and do full text search on google drive is... not a good experience.

4\. Editor is pretty solid and responsive. If you know markdown it's a breeze. Literally can't understand why you'd want to edit raw markdown when the WYSIWYG reflects markdown syntax as well as it does.

<comment><USER7> Your criticism of the criticism is disappointing too. Because you "can't understand why you'd want to edit raw markdown" means you don't understand the audience. I edit in raw markdown because it's faster for me, especially when I need to make changes and it's 100% predictable. I can't understand why you'd want to edit in a WYSIWYG when the end result reflects the stylistic and user experience whims of some development team.

See how that works? Markup is always predictable, keyboard shortcuts have to be learnes for every new system and if their keyboard shortcuts aren't sufficient and I have to touch my mouse, then it's a bad product. (I'm looking at you, Atlassian. Always looking at you.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> No demo?

</comment><comment><USER9> Can anybody familiar with this vertical comment on tends, leaders and/or opportunities in this vertical (team wiki/knowledge-base)

Per my research, this space is crawling with options:

1\. Coda

2\. Notion

3\. Tettra

4\. Wrike

5\. Confluence

6\. Box Notes

7\. Dropbox Paper

8\. Slab

9\. Basecamp

10\. MSFT Teams (in a way)

11\. Click Up

12\. MSFT SharePoint

13\. Marvin

14\. Monday.com

15\. Many many smaller notes apps

</comment><comment><USER10> Curious to know why would anyone want to use this kind of service instead of the wiki / discussion / documentation / issue tracking provided by the project management system? I know this service can "integrate" (mostly just links) with other system. I still don't see what the value added of this system can overcome the pain of using two systems.

May be mostly for teams do not use project management?</comment>


A path forward for an LLVM toolchain on Windows - <AUTHOR> http://blog.llvm.org/2013/09/a-path-forward-for-llvm-toolchain-on.html

<comment><USER2> Great news. The blog post discusses C++ specifically, but I wonder what (if anything) this means for C, which has traditionally been a pain in the ass in Windows due to Microsoft's refusal to support C99 (though that may be changing [1]). If they're using the native MS libc (which is great for integration purposes), it's possible they simply can't implement some features anyway.

[1]: [http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/06/c99-ac...](http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/06/c99-acknowledged-at-last-as-microsoft-lays-out-its-path- to-c14/)</comment>


Data Visualization with JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://www.nostarch.com/datavisualization

<comment><AUTHOR> Since there was a bit of interest when someone posted a link to the in- progress version, I thought I'd note that the book is now officially released. Also on [Amazon]([http://www.amazon.com/Data-Visualization-JavaScript- Stephen-...](http://www.amazon.com/Data-Visualization-JavaScript-Stephen- Thomas/dp/1593276052/)) and [Barnes & Noble]([http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/data-visualization-with- java...](http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/data-visualization-with-javascript- stephen-a-thomas/1120359157?ean=9781593276058)) if those are your preferences</comment>


One In Five Divorce Petitions Mention Facebook? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091223/1717127492.shtml

<comment><USER2> _In fact, hidden all the way at the bottom of the article is the rather relevant fact that the divorce rate in the UK has been falling recently, just as the popularity of Facebook has shot upwards. It seems like you'd have to suggest a lot more to prove that Facebook is to blame for these divorces, rather than just an additional element in the proceedings._

I hate this kind of misunderstanding of statistics...

</comment><comment><USER3> Too bad they don't mention anything about how Facebook was involved. It'd be nice to know to what degree people are meeting each other through Facebook, or if people are simply failing to cover up their alternate lives on Facebook.

I mean, we all assume that things like better privacy controls are _good_.</comment>


Ask HN: Any chance of monetizing this webapp(solarpower, price)? - <AUTHOR>

As a sideproject a year ago to learn Python and learn more about solar-energy I created a webapp that compares prices of solar-energy equipment/parts.
I did the basic work and presentation but never made it into a "professional" one, meaning optimized, good-looking etc.
I now have some time over and I wonder if I should finish it.
There (obviously) already are services like this though, the best ones covering all kinds of green services.
None of them are that easy to find and to the point. There isn't a killer green energy price comparisment service nor a solar only one.
But is this monetizeable? Clearly someone going to such a site is probably looking to buy eventually but are they just comparing and then buying in the "real world" instead?
Can it generate enough traffic? It's not like solar energy is that big (yet) but since I'm not selling, just showing(or will show) ads from the whole world there might be a market?
On the other hand for most people ordering stuff from other countries isn't an alternative so I might have to do by country. Just that there perhaps isn't that many options for smaller countries...
Is this idea worth finishing? Do you believe it has any potential? <comment><USER2> Make a website that you can order solar powered gear from. Not the stuff you need to assemble yourself, the stuff that is already complete. Start with solar generators like the SolarStik, or the one at KenSolar. Actually, both, be a reseller is my point.

Solar is a useful technology being handled by less than creative people right now. What they need are young, hungry young men to hawk their wares in a creative fashion. For example, it would be simple for an enterprising young man to fill a UHaul with SolarStiks and drive down to Houston an put a sign up on some well travelled intersections indicating the availability of solar generators. You would sell out in less than an hour, WITH the story on CNN about the fact that you did so. Free advertising. Everyone gets the point. The consumers are educated.

Every technology needs its Henry Ford, or Bill Gates . . .

Basically solar needs its Sylvester McMonkey McBean . . .

By the way, I live in Houston, and my neighbors think I'm pretty forward thinking right now since there is little gas for their generators.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Is X monetizeable", "can X generate enough traffic","does X have potential"

imho, the answer to these questions will probably take equal effort to the technical/development aspect. There are plenty of price comparison engines around... so if a domain expert in solar thought of this idea and did all the market research (to have the answer to your question), I suspect they would be developing a competitor.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not sure, what are the search volumes & keyword prices like? Are there any big competitors using those keywords? A few hours of digging on adwords will tell you a lot.

</comment><comment><USER5> Go for it. You never know what will happen until you try.

</comment><comment><USER6> _There isn't a killer green energy price comparisment service nor a solar only one._

What about Solarbuzz?

<http://www.solarbuzz.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it has stuff but it isn't that to the point/find what you need. And it doesn't seem to compare and link to prices/products. And it is ugly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _It's not like solar energy is that big (yet)_

Why would solar energy get much bigger?

<comment><AUTHOR> Decentralized and clean/green. Sure there are problems to solve before it will get anywhere though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> turn it into a social network!</comment>


Show HN: Why Spotify can have the best user experience in an app ever - <AUTHOR> https://thefifthprint.com/blogs/themixtape/spotify-has-the-chance-to-revolutionize-the-listening-space <comment><USER2> Sorry, what are you showing here?

How does this qualify for "Show HN"?</comment>


Bank Execs in Davos Privately Say London Clearing Probably Safe - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-19/bank-execs-in-davos-privately-say-london-clearing-probably-safe <comment><USER3> All the article is difficult to understand as it just throws information to the reader without getting anywhere.

If you look to an older article from November 2016 [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/11/17/europe-is- unl...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/11/17/europe-is-unlikely-to- seize-euro-based-clearing-from-london-says/) from another news source it is better written and makes a more clear point.

</comment><comment><USER4> It comes as absolutely no surprise at all to find out that the UK's post- Brexit Banking industry will be just fine.

At this point, the only possible opportunity Brexit gives the Conservatives is to turn the UK into an offshore financial tax haven.

<comment><USER5> The uk and its islands are already tax havens. No checks if you wash your dirty money through land.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We need a warning for sites like Bloomberg: (autoplay video).

I miss flash since by not installing it I didn't have to see autoplay video. What's the best way to defeat it?

<comment><USER7> Firefox has an option not to auto play movies but it can be hit and miss. It also doesn't cater to the middle line like youtube where I want auto play but not until the tab is focused.

<comment><USER8> > youtube where I want auto play but not until the tab is focused

Chromium does this by default

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe it's just me, but attempting to restrict the geographic location of where something can be cleared seems completely delusional to me. Isn't the EU basically asking the UK clearing firms to "give" their customers to the EU -- whatever that means?

I would assume that moving EUR clearing to the EU would involve setting up a company in the EU that can compete with the clearing services of the UK companies, thereby winning over customers, rather than attempt to put a restriction on which kinds of contracts (Euro derivatives) other people can enter into.

<comment><USER10> How is delusional? If the EU wants it, they pass the necessary regulation and /bam/, it's the law and it's done.

But maybe just the power to do so is enough to secure the EU/ECB's objectives. Doing it just for the jobs would be a bit petty.

<comment><USER11> "they pass the necessary regulation and /bam/, it's the law and it's done."

You do not move a trillion dollars in clearing simply by passing a law.

These things are deeply entrenched in law, culture, talent, eco-systems, support systems, staff etc. etc..

It would be like saying 'America just needs to require all products sold in America are manufactured here /bam/ \- it's done'

<comment><USER12> America does pass laws like that, frequently. Things related to defence, for example.

The EU can absolutely impose trade sanctions on the UK in order to force business out of it. The UK can do the same in reverse. Brexit is a trade war, have no doubt about it. People just don't call it that.

<comment><USER11> I think your conflating a little in both examples.

Everyone understands that 'defence' contracts are geopolitical, and there have always been expectations around those controls - from parts to purchases - <USER2> it's already in the system.

"The EU can absolutely impose trade sanctions on the UK in order to force business out of it. The UK can do the same in reverse. Brexit is a trade war, have no doubt about it. People just don't call it that."

All of those points are not appropriate.

There will not ever be any 'trade sanctions' for UK doing clearing of EU dollars. Nobody is even suggesting that. To do so would rattle all markets internationally, and kill confidence in the Euro. The Euro would lose 20% of it's value overnight, and would never recover.

The UK could not do the same in reverse (how does it ban the EU from doing Euro cleared transactions?)

And Brexit is not a 'trade war'. It's just Brexit. The 'worst case scenario' is the UK is a country that trades with EU like any other: USA, Japan, Canada. There is no 'trade war' between USA and EU.

The issues regarding EU wanting to have it's clearing within it's own jurisdiction are reasonable, but the system can't be changed overnight.

The EU is about to go through another crisis because Italian banks are about to default, and all of that lending goes through London. So guess who the EU needs?

Brexit will probably work out with some kind of trade deal, specifically involving financial services.

<comment><USER12> Not appropriate? You may not agree, but how are my opinions "not appropriate"?

I was obviously talking in generalities: if the EU banned or tariffed its citizens from buying service X from the UK, that doesn't mean it has to be service X that is banned or tariffed in reverse. That's never how sanctions are applied.

 _The 'worst case scenario' is the UK is a country that trades with EU like any other_

I can think of many worst case scenarios worse than that. I think what you mean is, you don't personally anticipate it getting worse than that.

<comment><USER13> _> if the EU banned or tariffed its citizens from buying service X from the UK_

It can't, because the UK will be a member of the WTO, like the EU. Members of the WTO can't discriminate unfavorably against individual nations in the way you're suggesting.

<comment><USER14> The UK won't be a member of the WTO since it never joined. It'll have to apply after it leaves the EU.

<comment><USER12> The UK appears on the WTO's member list:

[https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/org6_e.h...](https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/org6_e.htm)

<comment><USER14> I stand corrected. The inherited membership via GATT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Under what circumstances does the ECB's role as lender of last resort for a clearinghouse provide value? Would not having to provide that service for these clearinghouses be a good thing if it obligates (or effectively forces) the Bank of England to serve in that capacity instead?

<comment><USER13> _Under what circumstances does the ECB 's role as lender of last resort for a clearinghouse provide value?_

A Euro liquidity crisis.

 _Would not having to provide that service for these clearinghouses be a good thing if it obligates (or effectively forces) the Bank of England to serve in that capacity instead?_

Um, the BoE doesn't _do_ Euros. By converting such derivatives to GBP, it would exacerbate a Euro liquidity crisis.

<comment><USER15> What happens to the clearinghouses if there's a euro liquidity crisis and the ecb doesn't lend clearinghouses the needed euros?

Couldn't the Bank of England keep sufficient euro reserves to backstop the clearinghouses in a liquidity crisis?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Headline should read "Bank Execs in Davos Privately Say London Clearing Probably Safe". Right now the last bit is chopped off.

<comment><USER17> TL;DR: It's too dangerous to move the whole banking system that's set up in London, so it's probably going to stay as it is for now.

<comment><USER18> This is a bit more limited than that, one really specific part of the banking system. Right now, Euro-denominated transactions can be cleared in many locations, of which London is one, with a large share of the total volume. Some Eurozone countries would like to require that this take place only in Eurozone countries, and unsuccessfully pushed for that previously. Some of them think the UK leaving the EU presents a good opportunity for a renewed push in that direction (since it weakens the UK's role in internal EU politics). The people quoted in this article think that's unlikely to happen.

This is all pretty deep in the weeds for a nonspecialist audience though, I think.

<comment><USER19> > This is all pretty deep in the weeds for a nonspecialist audience though, I > think.

It's the tip of the iceberg perhaps. Deep in the weeds for sure but rather influential. Clearing is important but really what this is saying is "business as usual".

The UK would be wise to play chicken as not cooperating with the UK is bad for everyone (The EU knows this but they have to posture). The UK will smartly make some concessions that especially punish the districts that made this happen (No one will really talk about this). British Sterling will suffer for awhile as being less global should make your currency less valuable and it will - expect parity with the USD in the short term. Those who don't travel won't care and those that can won't notice.

Everyone wins then. The will of the people is had, the people that are affected contain the blast radius and life goes on, business as usual. Which is good. And we all live on.

<comment><USER20> > The UK will smartly make some concessions that especially punish the > districts that made this happen (No one will really talk about this).

The districts that voted for it?

<comment><USER21> Governments can't "punish" Parliamentary Constituencies so presumably he means most of England outside of London along with the whole of the country of Wales.

Which just goes to show how ludicrous the assertion is - all the Parliamentary talk right now is about desperately trying to connect/reconnect to the voters in these areas (who remember are the MAJORITY of the voters in those areas).

The only people who will be punished will be those who try to punish others. The former Chancellor of the Excheqeur (Finance Minister) talked about a "punishment" budget if the people voted to leave the EU. Please note I said "former" \- he was sacked.

<comment><USER22> They don't need to explicitly punish areas like Wales, just treat them like they have been treating them - business as usual without EU Regional Development funding will be devastating. Nobody's talking any more about having vast sums of money available to reallocate, so unless we're cutting somewhere else I don't see how that vast EU pool is being replaced.

<comment><USER18> Same is likely to happen in Cornwall. The local MPs are pushing for the UK government to replace the EU structural adjustment funds with equivalent amounts of UK funding, but it's now looking very unlikely that this will happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> EU has this attitude like others cannot survive without her. Too egocentric.</comment>


Why We Choose to Homeschool Our Kids - <AUTHOR> http://prosperopedia.com/why-we-choose-to-homeschool-our-kids/ <comment><USER2> Though I disagree with much in this article, I can see some of the reasoning. I agree that parents need to take more of a role in their children's lives (in US anyway). School is meant to teach some very specific skills, but it by no means is meant to raise your child. But you also learn other things in school... And I agree it can be more efficient to tailor a curriculum to a child...if your goal is to only learn that one thing. What they'll miss is how to tolerate and work with other, very different people. Traveling is great too, you can learn a lot, more people in the US should do it.

However, I worry about abandoning the system and isolation. There's already large politic, social, etc divides, I think this will make them worse.

Also, a call to be more like the prosperity when our founding fathers time? Please..that's a sheathed call for racism, slavery, and all sorts of persecution.

<comment><USER3> > And I agree it can be more efficient to tailor a curriculum to a child...if > your goal is to only learn that one thing.

I assume that by "that one thing" you mean the curriculum itself. It seems obvious that the core concern of the education system should be the mastery of some agreed-upon curriculum, and that students performance should be the primary metric by which the system is judged. The rebranding of the public schools as socio-cultural stewards is a head fake designed to move the discussion away from how these educators have failed in their core mission. It is also a natural result of the overrepresentation of social science majors in the teaching profession.

> What they'll miss is how to tolerate and work with other, very different > people.

Public schools are actually very bad at this. Especially in primary school, students primarily interact with children their same age. Students form social groups, self-segregating by gender, race, economic status, neighborhood, etc. Students learn to exclude others and ostracize those who aren't members of their groups. The author speaks writes about his and his family's experiences.

> Traveling is great too, you can learn a lot, more people in the US should do > it.

Again, the author talks about this. He moved the family to Costa Rica for six months. His children are studying Mandarin for an upcoming trip to China. Public schooling families are tied to the public school schedule, and therefore generally must travel when it is most expensive and most crowded. Also, I'm not sure why you think homeschooling would preclude or discourage travel.

> However, I worry about abandoning the system and isolation.

These children are not isolated. Again, the author talks about the myriad activities in which the children are engaged, as well as the time they actually get to spend forming more meaningful bonds with their family members. I know many people can speak to how isolated one can feel in a public school.

If by "the system" you mean our society and system of government, I'm not sure why you view these children as some sort of threat. They are well-loved and competent; and if they weren't, you acknowledge that the schools are not responsible for parenting them. Aside from textbook Marxists, even people who are against homeschooling generally feel broken homes are much more of a societal threat.

If by "the system" you mean the public school system, I wouldn't worry. The public school system isn't going anywhere. It's a massive bureaucracy and children (especially those with working parents) have to go somewhere during the day. By your standards, the schools will probably only become more successful, by housing an increasing number of children of various backgrounds in the same place during the workday.

> There's already large politic, social, etc divides, I think this will make > them worse.

I'd like to see some evidence that the homeschooling population will have any impact on whether society at large is polarized or not on a particular subject. There are plenty of issues where the polarization is simply a result of people having more information. The usual example is when some people want to build a bridge and some people don't want to build the bridge. The solution is not to compromise and build half the bridge. And a large number of people are going to be unhappy whether or not the bridge is built. But that's not indicative of a failure of government, but rather how government works. More people today understand how policies affect them personally and are able to advocate for themselves more effectively. At any rate, it's safe to say that the public schools have probably tended toward your ideal more over the last few decades and the polarization has become more pronounced, so it's tough to say that the recent small trend toward homeschooling is causing or contributing to the polarization.

> Also, a call to be more like the prosperity when our founding fathers time? > Please..that's a sheathed call for racism, slavery, and all sorts of > persecution.

This I think you nailed. It's easy to see that these people will not stop until slavery is reinstituted nationwide.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe you're just being sarcastic with the reinstitution of slavery remark?

If not, I'm interested in knowing how the idea of promoting racism and slavery could be connected to anything in this article.

I'm the author of this article on homeschooling, and I don't even recall having a thought about racism, slavery, etc. while writing the article.

If the idea is that anyone who respects and reveres the Founding Fathers must be racist, I don't see the connection, although I have seen enough revisionist historical writings that falsely paint them in a poor light (including making all of them racists because they allowed slavery) to discredit the system they set up.

For some examples of how modern historians have changed our view of the Founders, I'd recommend reading "The Jefferson Lies" by David Barton.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I was being sarcastic, which is sort of bending the HN rules but: 1. I thought I had enough substance in my post to balance it out and 2. I didn't think it was a claim that showed any depth and was therefore worth responding to seriously. Haha I mostly responded for fun and to get my own thoughts in order. I thought it was so far down the HN rankings that even the original poster wouldn't read the response to his/her comment. Thanks for a great read! The subjects of the article are a real inspiration.

Edit: Well I guess you're the subject of the article so congratulations and I wish you and your family continued success.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the compliment. Our next adventure involves starting a bluegrass band in Tennessee. We'll see how that goes.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Write simple and readable synchronous code in nodejs using fibers  - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/0ctave/node-sync <comment><USER2> This is a bad idea. The main benefit node offers is that it _doesn't_ block.

<comment><USER3> "it blocks only current thread!"

Is this satire?</comment></comment>


Employment in America: WTF is going on? - <AUTHOR> http://corcodilos.com/blog/6827/employment-in-america-wtf-is-going-on <comment><USER2> The point of the blog post is that employers need to learn how to do hiring and not expect to outsource hiring to companies that get rich off of productive companies being clueless about hiring. That sounds like good advice. As a data point, one of my all-time most-liked comments here on HN[1] is my FAQ about company hiring procedures. Yes, people who run companies that innovate and make new products and services still have to learn the timeless facts about how to hire good workers. There is no substitute for the head of the company having a firm, reality-based idea about how to add workers to the team.

Successful hiring is an outgrowth of successful management. Know what you are looking for in new workers--not just what they should be able to do the day they are hired, but what they will grow into as your company grows. Be clear about the difference between hiring clones of yourself whom you'd like to have as friends and a diverse workforce full of smart people who get things done.

As my FAQ says, use work-sample tests for all your hiring. Don't trust educational credentials, but rather verify. Use legally safe means to find out who is smart and can learn more on the job. (References and expanded details on these points are available at the link.)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543)

<comment><USER3> The saddest thing I've seen in my career is that most managers don't realize that hiring is a huge part of their job if their team contributes materially to the bottom line (directly or indirectly) and can grow that contribution by hiring people.

The people the hire managers and promote people to managers rarely stop to ask:

(1) Can this person keep the people underneath them happy and productive and make them happier and more productive? and (2) Can this person actively seek out other people to work under them that are productive?

Hiring in too many businesses is outsourced to HR. i.e. A department manager goes to HR and says "give me someone who can do X, Y and Z". HR is then left with only keywords and has little knowledge of whether or not a candidate with a differing skill set could also perform the job well or better with a little training. Only the department manager has enough knowledge to hire correctly for the needs of their team. Why we ever let them get away with outsourcing this core responsibility to HR is beyond me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll tell you what's going on. It's a nightmare to hire someone. All the reporting requirements, all the paperwork involved, all the taxes and insurance requirements.

I certainly don't want to actually hire anyone unless I absolutely have to, and even then I will get "independent contractors" or use temps if i can first.

<comment><USER5> This sounds like a political statement. Obviously those sorts of requirements do exist, but they exist for everyone and in most cases scale as O(1) and not with employee count. They might plausibly be a barrier to hiring a _first_ employee. They certainly aren't causing unemployment. As an existence proof, virtually none of those factors changed across 2008-2009, when we saw the biggest swing in employment rate since 1928.

<comment><USER6> > in most cases scale as O(1) and not with employee count

I've read in many places that startups and small businesses are a very important engine of economic growth in the US. Since that O(1) obstacle disproportionately hurts small businesses, it could serve as a long-term brake on growth.

<comment><USER7> But almost all "small" business are hobby ones that dont generate any large scale employment ie grow to several hundred employees.

In the UK the government pushes people to become "self employed" as it flatters the unemployment stats before that it was encouraging doctors to sign people of as disabled and on to a different benefit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So much of modern hiring seems like C. S. Lewis's comments about searching for your keys under the street lamp. There's a talent shortage, since everyone in the light has been hired. There's massive under underemployment, since everyone in the shadows can't get hired.

There's a few dozen billions to be made by the person that fixes the problem. I wish I could comprehend the scale of the problem - it'd be nice to be that person.

<comment><USER9> Unemployment is basically caused by fiscal policy. (Which is to say, it's political, since economics is political.) Unemployment is actually rather absurd when you think about it: people can't get jobs, even though by definition they want to; and there's lots to do. Not only do we have an economic system which has such a weird wasteful phenomenon, but we also pursue policies to ensure this phenomenon occurs.

<comment><USER10> This is true but I take it in a different direction than you probably do.

Most of the help we give to the unemployed is contingent on two things:

1\. They don't have income and

2\. They are looking for a job.

That seems like a great way to test for unemployment benefits but what it fundamentally does is ensure that if you are unemployed and need the help you can't try to supplement through self-employment. Thus our current unemployment assistance largely works to discourage new businesses from starting.

A better system would be a mandatory severance system where if you find yourself unemployed, you get a lump sum. You can look for a job, become self- employed, try to start a business with it, or any combination of these. But when it is gone, it is gone.

<comment><USER11> In fact basic income would provide both better incentives for those without a job and increase liquidity in the employment market since people would no longer have to suffer a crappy boss or work place out of fear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There is a reason the term is "talent shortage", not "labor shortage". Yes, there are tons of unemployed people. A vanishingly small proportion of those people can actually fill the jobs that people are hiring for. Hence: _talent shortage_.

Yes, hiring unexperienced people and training them is an option, but you can't do that for _your entire engineering team_. Hiring new grads isn't a problem, hiring people senior enough to make those new grads productive is.

In short, not only is this post an advertisement, it's not even an accurate one. The talent gap is a significant problem, and it's only going to get worse if we don't acknowledge it.

<comment><USER13> I just wonder how much of this talent gap is real. For example, if I am looking for Ruby on Rails experience and I have candidates with strong python and Django experience are they off the list? Or how about someone that has done PHP for a long time and you are looking for RoR.

Or let's say someone with Java experience is available but you are looking for Scala. I just use these as the initial comparisons but I'm sure there are more. Can you not let the python person train up on Ruby on Rails and have a strong candidate?

I understand its best to match one to one what is being looked for, but I wonder how many good candidates are being passed by because they don't fit the perfect stack but are likely able to perfectly adapt.

<comment><USER14> "For example, if I am looking for Ruby on Rails experience and I have candidates with strong python and Django experience are they off the list?"

I think in most companies yes, they're off the list. Bottom line-ism is king these days. Companies see bringing someone in and up as a cost, not an investment. All they want to do is pull from the well, but not put anything in. They want perfect fits, and they want other companies to make them. It sounds like a frighteningly random and risky policy.

<comment><USER15> Would it be possible to sign employees to a contract then? Flip this on it's head. i.e. we're happy to take you on board, but you have to work here for 2 years at X rate.

<comment><USER16> In the US (I know, this is a global community) we are largely 'at will' employment (a quick google suggests that only Montana is an exception). Such a contract is not enforceable. To lock people in we use things like vesting - you get stock grants, bonuses, or what have you, but only vest into them over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I enjoy Nick's work, but I am not sure how applicable it is to many software jobs:

      People must stop begging for jobs

      It's time for people to stop thinking about jobs, and high time
      to start thinking about how — and where — they can create profit.

      If I run a company, I'll hire you to do work that pays off more
      than what I pay you to do it. Today, virtually no employer knows
      whether hiring a person will pay off. That's why you need to know
      how to walk into a manager's office and demonstrate, hands down,
      how you will contribute profit to the manager's business. That's
      right: Be smarter than the manager about his own business. Stop
      begging for jobs. Start offering profit.

      Because if you can't do that, you have no business applying for
      any job, in any company.

I haven't seen too many software development positions in large companies where you can walk into a manager's office and demonstrate you are smarter about the manager's own business than he is.

      I know more about your specialized domain than you?

      I know more about design for your specialized domain
      than you or your designers?

      I know more about the algorithms developed in your
      specialized industry than your engineers?

      I know more about database design used in your
      proprietary application?

      I know more about the customers for your specialized
      domain and their needs than you do?

And I'm supposed to be able to claim that for any software development company I interview with regardless of industry?

I enjoy working in software, and I think I am pretty good at it, but one aspect I enjoy is that moving from company to company I learn about new domains, new industries, new algorithms, etc.

<comment><USER18> Pretty much every job offer I've gotten has involved walking into a manager or interviewer's office and pointing out things he can do better with his business. It's often not core stuff, but I'll frequently point out UI improvements they could make, or new technologies they may want to take a look at, or new algorithms & data structures that can solve their interview questions. And on the flip side, I enjoy learning about new businesses and new techniques they're using to the greatest extent that they'll share them with me.

A-players are not threatened by this. B-players are. I've found that it is generally good for your career to try to work with A-players whenever possible and avoid B/C/D/F-players.

<comment><USER19> I've had a similar experience. I've found out, though, it isn't really what you say, it is how you say it. Be assertive without sounding arrogant and pushy. If you go in to an interview and pretend you are a consultant selling your services, and not someone who is desperate for a job, then chances are better you will get an offer. Now part of this is reading body language, to see if what you are saying is triggering a happy emotion in the person interviewing you. For example, in my current position, it was apparent that things were in chaos. I started mentioning some automation tricks, and that lead into a strong emphasis on repeatable processes. Turns out, that was the key phrase that got me hired -- I found a dozen ways of giving the same message of automation, repeatability, and trackability. In a previous position, I had sold the hiring manager on a design for a web based user account automation system (kind of accidentally). Turns out that was their biggest pain point at the moment, handling a huge stack of account request forms. So either I was very insightful during the interview process, or extremely lucky. Or, I happened to take my vitamins that morning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is it just me or did I just read 8 paragraphs or blather pretending not to be an advertisement for some book?

I think he said that HR departments suck at hiring because they outsource to tech companies who use keyword searches.

I could be wrong, but I think the problem is a bit more complex than that.

<comment><USER21> I'd seen that before. Leads to the embarrassment of interviewing "Javascript Engineers" for a Java position and having to inform the applicant that your HR department is full of fools.

<comment><USER22> That is hilarious. Really though, most people in our industry are constantly being recruited for jobs we don't want or aren't vaguely qualified for. But, hey, it keeps LinkedIn in business!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Employers don't do their own hiring, and that's the #1 problem. Employers have outsourced their competitive edge — recruiting and hiring — to third parties whose heads are so far up The Database Butt that this little consortium should be investigated by Congress."

This. Personally, I completely and absolutely blame the employers for this mess that they have "talent shortage". I am amazed with the whole recruiting ecosystem if there is such thing here. People _are_ the most important assets of a company and giving this responsibility to a third party (read vendors/recruiters/agencies) just does not work. But again, most companies do not really bother about this. Until we stop calling people as "resources" and "head counts", this broken recruiting model will never change.

These "vendor databases" that he is talking about is a major irritation. I still get emails from some random recruiting firm where I might have sent my Resume as a fresh desperate undergrad 10+ years ago. This needs to stop.

</comment><comment><USER24> IMO many companies do not hire "underqualified" people (ie people who do not exactly match the job description) because they're afraid to hire, train and lose employees. They fail to account for the opportunity cost of lost profits due to "waiting longer" for the right hire. I'd rather have a profitable employee after 1-3 months of training than to search for 6 months .

<comment><USER25> But what if we train them up then they quit? We can't afford to do that. It's Too Risky (tm). Plus training is expensive.

...12 months later...

Why do none of our employees have industry standard skills? Lawd, it's so hard to find good people!

<comment><USER3> You pay them lower but fair salary while you are training them and then pay them a fair salary when they are trained. If you train them, you've increased their value and you're expected to pay for that additional value even if you are the one that did the training. Training an employee is a capital investment with a much greater cost of maintenance, you just need to factor that in when hiring.

Just because you paid for the training, does not entitle you to keep paying someone in perpetuity at their salary before being trained.

<comment><USER24> Basically the thinking is this: Cost of training * expected return on equity = Amount I should be able to extract out of the trained employee forever.

Selecting arbitrary numbers to keep things simple, if it costs $1000 to train the employee, and you want a 10% ROE then you expect to earn $100 per year more on that employee, forever. If the employee leaves they take that $100 per month potential away.

This leaves a few paths for employers: 1) Pay less until you have a return of capital, 2) Dont up the salary after the "asset" is upgraded, allowing you to get a much ROE as possible. 3) Dont hire untrained people, so you can capture ROI from others' training.

All of the above ignores the opportunity cost of not hiring. I presume for most profitable and busy companies, the lost opportunity is greater than the cost of training.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Taleo, Kenexa, LinkedIn, Monster.com, CareerBuilder, and their diaspora

That's not what "diaspora" means.

<comment><USER27> I found that jarring too. I assume he meant something like 'progeny'?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> A lot of this rhymes with online dating, and for similar reasons. Asymmetric information, skewed ratios, the paradox of choice ... very similar dynamics.

</comment><comment><USER29> Some great quotes in there...

"Job descriptions heavily larded with keywords make it virtually impossible to find good candidates. But every day that an impossible job requisition remains unfilled, the employment system vendors make more money while companies keep advertising for the perfect hires."

... I'm a big believer that the market will shift to "pay for results", not "pay for subscription access to an aggregated database that you have to hire 4 people full-time just to sift through".

"...employers believe they save money when they leave jobs vacant, because their accounting systems track the cost of having workers on the payroll — but cannot track the cost of leaving work undone."

</comment><comment><USER30> _There is no business plan in any applicant tracking system, no profit in a job posting, no future in federal employment metrics, no solution in HR departments, and no answers in databases or algorithms._

Meh, not really the problem. Every company realizes there is a buyers market (sans Technical) for every position, and can interview 20+ people for a help desk role.

No training is available because, what is the ROI? I know several companies (this is SLC) who don't train even for automated testing. After the testing, the employees find a better job.

Symptom or syndrome? Symptom is employee skills > company re: new job, vs higher position in company (or, in better English, training leads to employees finding better companies, vs staying with a current company and building that company.)

There is no loyalty amongst most companies for training or career development, as the ROI is not there (under utilization, a fallacy of implementation).

Should your company be based on ROI metrics per-project, and per-resource? Do you call your employees resources?

Utah (which has a large influx of Silicon companies trying to find cheap labor (typically they do) at lower cost of living thus for salary (typically they do) can look at 20+ candidates with marginal requirements met (experience/projects), but, it is a buyers market. Its not panacea like Silicon Valley, and SLC is rated very high for business, tangentially, you should be able to find top talent for top dollar.

Talent shortage, there is not, but training / development there is, and no company wants to take that on, because companies realize loyalty exists at a quarter-quarter statement (worse with a PE firm), so how do employee's progress? Change jobs every 2-3 years for a 10k+ raise.

I realize I am ranting, but skill matching to a position is broken, and no automated ATS system will fix a resume/pubic facing publication.

/end: The "problem" at a symptom level is companies holding out for "best of best" when they probably do not need such candidates, and could train for such. Given, a SharePoint admin at $20 / hr (case study), they found it, after I placed them, and they left after six months when they realized their skill set warranted a $20k raise.

Companies can under pay undergrads and mid-level candidates (who are not ivy/target/"rock star guru beer whatever") and do so, only to find a high turn-over rate.

Fix turn-over rate? Or just keep filing the desperate mid-esque level folks who just need work and would fulfill Senior level demands of work fulfillment?

/ranting

<comment><USER31> There is an easy solution and I don't know why so many companies can't understand this. It's simple, pay a fair amount and there will be lower turn over. Every employee should be evaluated every two years so that their salary is at least the market median. And a raise doesn't even have to match what an employee would get from switching jobs. For example, if an employee could get 10k raise by changing jobs, many would stay if given a raise half of that. The reason is, switching jobs is risky. Next job could have a bad boss, bad coworkers, etc. If offered, it would often make sense to stay at a good job and take the 5k instead of going for the 10k with unknown risks.

But instead they just give no raises, or even insult their high performers with a "generous" 3% and cause resentment and lower morale.

<comment><USER32> Every single survey done on employee satisfaction shows salary coming much further down the scale than other factors, like engaging work, good management, leadership, a feeling of contribution, training and growth, etc. The best, easiest, most profitable way of reducing turnover is to improve their management and leadership. Once you've reduced turnover the benefits of good training far exceed the costs and you get less turnover and more productive staff as a result. Then you can give them a raise so they appreciate the benefits of being more productive.

<comment><USER7> Employees lie on surveys like that - sorry to be brutal but its the truth in 95% of cases.

<comment><USER33> You don't get such numbers by asking people 'what would you prefer' \- that would give wrong answers even w/o lying, since many of those things are such where sociologists know that the believed preference (what you think you'd choose) differs from the true preference (what you do choose in reality).

But you get useful results if you (a) ask people how happy they are (even if they exaggerate and understate, the ranking is generally accurate), and (b) ask people if they're getting X in the company, and then measure the correlations (and do a bunch of tricky adjustments for factors that are interrelated).

I.e., you don't ask "is a fair boss important for you? are office conditions important for you?" \- but, if for example, on average the people who think they have a fair boss are feeling happier than those who think they have an unfair boss; but those who think that the office conditions really suck are just as [un]happy that those who feel that the office is okay - now, that's useful signal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "3.9 million jobs are vacant, thanks to the empty promises of algorithms. If the U.S. Congress wants a solution, it should launch an investigation into the workings of America's employment system infrastructure, which is controlled by a handful of companies."

Oh please, no. Anything Congress touches risks dying like a baby between two pit bulls.

<comment><USER34> OT: pitbulls don't harm their humans. They're only a threat to humans who are obviously a threat to them or their humans.

<comment><USER35> I don't buy that. The Pitbulls of Australia seem to have a habit of mauling and killing small children on a regular basis, more so than any other dog breed.

Maybe the Pitbulls in Australia are different but I doubt it.

<comment><USER36> Pitbulls are often trained to be mean. They are supremely athletic and strong, so they are the logical choice for fighting dogs, guard dogs, etc.

I can't say whether or not there is a genetic component to incidents of mauling involving pitbulls, but people are a large part of the problem too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> There are too many perverse incentives to trust job descriptions and supposedly open positions. H1-B visas, political advantages from complaining about a "training gap," etc.

Maybe job postings should be bonded. Put up $20k per position and forfeit it if you have not filled the position in X months.

<comment><USER24> Thats a good point, I have known a number of startup companies that have many "open positions" listed not because they're hiring but because of how it appeared to potential VCs . They want to appear to be a growing, valid, healthy company ...

<comment><USER37> I could see a two-track system: Bonded postings that get counted in official statistics, and "informal" postings that amount to wishes. horses, etc.

Bonding agents would drive down the cost of binding to a pretty small amount and/or enable bonding requirements to rise so that it is prohibitive to lie about open positions.

<comment><USER38> I would not be surprised if higher percenrage of bonded postings will be fake because all postings required for visa/greencard will be bonded and useless.

<comment><USER37> The idea behind bonding is to make it very expensive to post fake requirements. The natural result of forfeiting a bond is for your bonding costs to go way up. An H-1B is for jobs that can't be filled. If they go unfilled, the bond is lost.

Losing a bond of some tens of thousands of dollars is only justifiable for truly high-value positions, and that's what H1-B is supposed to be for, not phalaxes of warm bodies for contract shops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Is any of the stuff he mentions different from how it was pre-2008?

In one sense the reason we still have unemployment is simple - we never had a classical recovery from the recession, we just had a return to normal growth. If you look at almost any historical recession you'll see a spike in unemployment, a dive into negative GDP growth, and a dive in inflation. Then, during the recovery you'll see a spike in GDP growth, a spike in inflation, and the employment level recovering to what it was pre-crash. This recession didn't have peaks in growth and inflation, just a return to normal. If you just looked at the GDP and inflation charts (or a combined NGDP chart) you'd expect that we'd still be having high but falling unemployment right now.

And I could get into a big, long discussion of why this happened involving IOR, and the Fed relying on indicators that are always months out of date, and zero bounds, and certain _coughdallascough_ Fed regional bank presidents being idiots. But whether or not there are supply side problems contributing to high unemployment in the US now, the demand side indicators show we should be having high unemployment now so there's no need to go "WTF".

<comment><USER40> Not to mention quantitative easing..

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> "Stop begging for jobs" is an approach that requires a level of privilege most people don't possess

</comment><comment><USER42> Many places with large numbers of job openings also have very low local unemployment (the Bay Area for instance). We like to report on numbers at the national level, but worker mobility is at a 40 year low [1]. That certainly isn't helping anything.

[1] - [http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p20-567.pdf](http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p20-567.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER43> The hiring system we live with today–resumes, jobs descriptions, recruiters, HR interviews, and the rest–is massively antiquated. In the past 50 years only distribution has improved.

A communications gap exists: resumes don't speak to candidates' wants and desires, and job descriptions don't accurately depict a day in the life on the job. Today, recruiters, both internal and external, work to overcome this communications deficit. However, their presence and business models introduce agency problems.

My company, Mighty Spring, is an effort to bridge this communication gap in a scalable way, putting candidates and employers in direct contact. We provide candidates a platform to be transparent about their interests and needs without risk (utilizing anonymity), and help employers communicate the finer points of their jobs better than the walls of text they produce today.

This is Mighty Spring ([https://www.mightyspring.com](https://www.mightyspring.com)) — the easiest way to find new opportunities with startups.

</comment><comment><USER44> There was a time when a company would hire you if you showed that you were smart, able to solve problems, and had some years of experience working in some other companies. They did NOT expect you to already know the job. Employers were willing to work with employees, to guide them, train them, build them into what was needed.

</comment><comment><USER45> More like people are not learning the right skills to be useful. Economic restructuring used to happen much more slowly but with the advancement in technology these days it happens significantly more rapidly.

</comment><comment><USER46> Just spitballin' here, but it seems to be that a lot of it comes down to the terrible incentive programs in place at the most successful companies. First of all, the shareholder is not always right and short term self interest does not make for long term good decision making.

So, if the people at each level are basically just angling for their own short term self interest, be it a promotion or a raise/bonus/performance incentive, they will do what they must to hit whatever those incentives are, even if they harm the long term health of the business.

In short, instead of investing profits, companies are scaling back to look good and hit their profitability or stock price targets. It's short sighted and will end up hurting a lot of companies in the middle to long term because they are inevitably cutting plenty of good people along with those who are less good at what they do.

I really don't think that the goal of business should be to hire a ton of people for the sake of hiring people. A business exists to make a profit, but sustaining profitability requires great people, great operations, great products, great sales/marketing, and great service. When a company stops investing in those things, they get worse. When entire industries/countries do this, it doesn't take long for some upstart to take the lead.

</comment><comment><USER47> The automatic matching BS is why my resume is chock full of bullshit with a skills matrix. I would rather they look at my overall experience and try to match me to a relevant job.

</comment><comment><USER48> This is an ad.

</comment><comment><USER49> Does this post not concern tech jobs. I recently graduated from a smaller local college and had no problem getting interviews or offers. In fact almost every job I applied for called me back within a day to do an interview. None of them outsourced their hiring either.

</comment><comment><USER50> "Recent phenomenon is cause of ancient problem"

Give me a break. there are a lot of interesting points and valuable insights. I won't say there isn't a real problem there, but the core message is wrong IMO.

Comfortable people make far too little effort to find work. Talk to job seekers about how far they will go for a job... this is why I will always have one. People seem to think they are somehow entitled to a convenient job on their doorstep.

<comment><USER51> I think the issue is that there are million unfilled jobs out there, and there are qualified people who are ready to fill them. By putting a giant recruiting company between the two, you are filtering a lot of good people out of the equation. I've lost out on a lot of interviews by not having a github account. But if you think about it, thats a lot like asking a doctor to give a public record of lives that he has saved while off duty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Nick's (first) book is hands down the best resource on job-hunting and interviewing I have ever found.

</comment><comment><USER53> Not everyone is complaining...

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UREepszk7I&feature=player_em...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UREepszk7I&feature=player_embedded)

</comment><comment><USER54> Sorry, employment data is classified for national security reasons.

</comment><comment><USER55> AMEN

</comment><comment><USER56> LinkedIn is great :)

<comment><USER57> LinkedIn is terrible, but if you get a job through a linkedin connection you're likely to think it's fantastic.

If every employer was using myspace for the same purpose many people would probably think it was great too.</comment></comment>


BackTrack successor Kali Linux launched - <AUTHOR> http://www.scmagazine.com.au/News/336420,backtrack-successor-kali-launched.aspx

<comment><USER3> Where's the distro? It doesn't seem to be up at <http://www.backtrack- linux.org> yet.

<comment><USER3> Ah, ha! <http://www.kali.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To be honest, I still don't see the need for such a distribution to exist, as all the packages I ever needed during pentesting were available on Gentoo's Portage. When I've tested it, the mental overhead of having to run it on a VM, or even dual-boot it was quite annoying.

<comment><USER5> It was my understanding that you often need kernel patches to sniff traffic over ethernet or wifi. Backtrack solves this problem by having a custom kernel such that if you buy laptop with chipset A you can sniff traffic without serious work.

My knowledge on this stuff is a little old, is this not the case anymore?

<comment><USER4> Not really much of a problem with the chipsets that I used (ralink ones) - <USER2> stock kernel drivers work fine. But I do remember that there used to be some problems with that.

The fact that I use a distro which allows me to painlessly integrate a custom kernel into my system also helps - any sane patches could have been applied without any problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is pen testing as fun as it seems like it'd be? I want to get into it but seems like a dangerous pool to jump into on your own.

<comment><USER7> It's dangerous if you start running against production sites, or sites that aren't fully owned by you. If you broke into Microsoft.com, for example, expect a lawsuit. However, if you pair two machines together and run Backtrack/Kali on one and something along the lines of Damn Vulnerable Linux on the other and just attacked your own local network, it's fun, safe, and informative.

I would actually encourage developers to learn about pen testing. If you know how people are going to misuse your application, you know what to watch out for when you're designing it. And trying to break your own app gives you some new insight into what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong. You can feel a sense of pride and accomplishment for every attack that fails to break something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks pretty sweet! I'll be digging in tonight.

Looks like there's even an official build for the ODroid U2! Sweet deal, I happen to own two.

</comment><comment><USER9> Grabbed the torrent. The md5sum of the ISO doesn't match the one listed in the included txt file. This concerns me a little.

<comment><USER10> did the same, also got a mismatch.

then I realized, that the hash in the txtfile is also _longer_ than the md5 sum, and facepalmed a little. with 40 hexdigits long, makes 160 bits, so it's probably SHA1.

(crunch, crunch) ... and it matches. would've been nice if they'd mentioned which algorithm they used so I didn't have to digest a 2GB file twice. we can't be the only people that don't immediately eyeball the difference between a 32 and 40 digit random hex code :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Time to slap in in VirtualBox tonight and start to tinker with it.

</comment><comment><USER12> With the ARM/Raspberry PI support I fully expect to see this get productized in to a low cost "pentest in a box".

<comment><USER13> yeah it would be great to see a low cost version of the products offered by pwnie express such as <http://pwnieexpress.com/products/pwnplug-wireless>

<comment><USER14> That is OffSec's goal with this. They were on a recent infosec podcast and specifically mentioned providing a low cost alternative to the PwnPlug using hardware like the RaspPi.</comment></comment></comment>


Speed Comparison of Python, Numba, and C++ for Wolfram Models - <AUTHOR> https://murillogroupmsu.com/numba-versus-c/ <comment><USER2> They are not really comparing implementations of the same algorithm, as there are two differences between C++ version's update rule and the other two versions'. First, from the image in the article, rule 30 should map 111, 110, 101, 000 to 0 and the other four possibilities to 1 (the Python and Numba versions are indeed doing this), but this is not what the C++ version does. Now this should NOT affect the program's speed, but the second difference does favour Python and Numba: the array is cyclic in the C++ version but not in the other two versions.</comment>


US Manufacturing Isn't Dead, But its Jobs Are - <AUTHOR> http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010020825/no-virginia-us-manufacturing-isnt-dead

<comment><USER2> Former Manufacturing Engineer here. One plant I worked for is gone. All 1000+ jobs are in China now. Another I worked at is half its former size locally, with the other half of the jobs shifted to Mexico. A third was a smaller plant, with only a few hundred workers but 5 unions. They still have an operation locally but shifted their growth operations to a right to work state.

You could make all the charts you want that show some vague correlation and dismiss my statements as anecdotal, but in some areas the jobs have just gone and the anecdotes represent the lives of real people.

The site linked to (ourfuture.org) is a progressive site, so I'll link to a conservative piece as a counter-argument. There has a been a significant difference in the manufacturing growth in right to work states vs forced unionization states: [http://www.americansforprosperity.org/021909-right-work- and-...](http://www.americansforprosperity.org/021909-right-work-and- productivity-numbers)

While the site I linked to tries to make a single issue of it, there has been a large scale shift from the rust belt to the sun belt in the last few decades. Right to work vs forced unionization is one issue, but I'm sure that state taxes and regulatory policies played a hand as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> With the industrial revolution, there was a massive shift among the lower/lower-middle classes from farming to manufacturing. Where will this large group of people who lost their jobs in the recent productivity surge go now? I don't think everyone enjoys or is cut out for computer based or intellectual work and there should be a viable option for 'hands-on' people to earn a livable wage.

I spoke to an American businessman that did some work in China and he mentioned that if you invented a new technology that was highly productive and removed the need for a lot of manpower, you'd have a tough time getting that pass the government. For them, having jobs for the 1+ billion Chinese is a top priority, even if they have to sacrifice some productivity to get there.

Productivity shouldn't be pursued at all expenses. Sometimes inefficiencies are good (see the U.S. political system of checks and balances, redundant systems in engineering). When the car industry/steel industry was bustling in the U.S., many of those lower-middle class workers bought homes, cars, televisions and created a market for financial and high-tech products. If this segment of society can't be integrated into the economy, I fear there will be long term negative impact on the demand for products that many of us here build.

<comment><USER4> > Sometimes inefficiencies are good (see the U.S. political system of checks > and balances, redundant systems in engineering).

Those aren't good analogies. The "inefficiencies" in the US political system aren't actually inefficiencies in the long run. They remove the need for revolutions/coups to depose autocratic rulers. Same thing with redundant systems in engineering - in the long run, they are the most efficient approach to the problem, as they reduce rates of catastrophic failure.

However, indefinitely preventing technology from advancing civilization is the exact opposite. For the short term "efficiency" of allowing those workers to keep their jobs, we are tolerating the permanent inefficiency of clinging to old technology.

I don't believe that there needs to be "a viable option for 'hands-on' people to earn a livable wage." Our ancestors all used to be hunter-gatherers, but we have somehow managed to survive in a world where hunting/gathering is nonexistent. It is the remarkable adaptability of the human race that has brought it so much success, and I believe we can continue to adapt to whatever new technology we discover.

<comment><USER3> > The "inefficiencies" in the US political system aren't actually > inefficiencies in the long run

I agree, and I could argue the same thing for maintaining manufacturing/vocational jobs. As I said in my first post, giving reasonable wages to the lower/middle class means they have more disposable income and consume more. I think this is a net positive economic effect. If a high net- worth person makes 10x the average wage, that doesn't mean she will buy 10 times as many televisions, ipods, or cars. She may purchase HIGHER QUALITY goods/services, but overall consumption from 10 workers making 40k per year and 1 high net worth person making 400k per year are not equivalent. This consumer demand from the lower-middle class ultimately creates markets and creates long-term efficiencies.

>However, indefinitely preventing technology from advancing civilization is the exact opposite

I don't want to cling to the past. But as our society progresses we must find ways to integrate hard working people that aren't the type to sit in a office all day. I think Germany is a good model. In high school, students are separated into a vocational track or an academic track. Because of this, Germany has a very highly skilled manufacturing workforce today.

>I don't believe that there needs to be "a viable option for 'hands-on' people to earn a livable wage

I disagree very strongly with this statement. There are more 'hands-on' people than 'intellectual' people in this country. If those 'hands-on' people can earn $25 per hour, then you can make your apps and devices and they will have enough money to buy it.

<comment><USER4> Your entire argument is predicated on the belief that people cannot adapt to their circumstances. History has demonstrated time and time again that people are able to do so when they are forced to.

> There are more 'hands-on' people than 'intellectual' people in this country.

And once upon a time, there were more artisans than 'hands-on' people. When the Industrial Revolution occurred and a lot of artisan jobs were replaced by factory jobs, people made arguments similar to yours. But people have somehow managed to adapt, haven't they?

> I think Germany is a good model. In high school, students are separated into > a vocational track or an academic track. Because of this, Germany has a very > highly skilled manufacturing workforce today.

But because of their specialized training, the German workforce is relatively inflexible and has failed large portions of the population. There was an article in this week's Economist about this[0]:

> Even so, the system has flaws. Some worry, for example, that a stronger > general education is needed to equip young Germans to change trades should > demand for their specific expertise dry up.

> A bigger concern is that early selection fails children from poor and > immigrant families, who are likeliest to attend the least academic schools > and to miss out on apprenticeships. Partly for this reason, there is a large > group of students at the bottom of the rankings—which explains why the > German average is still below par. "It is a schooling system that has left a > large fraction of students behind," says Andreas Schleicher of the OECD.

0: <http://www.economist.com/node/18061710>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Shouldn't the title read "its" instead of "it's"?

Sorry if it seems like nitpicking, but as a non-native English speaker I find it weird how often this issue comes up. If any native speaker here has any idea why this particular mistake is so prevalent, I'd be very interested.

<comment><USER6> You are correct, in the case of "it's" the apostrophe doesn't indicate possession, but rather a contraction of 'it is'. I think it is a confusing edge case, which English has many of.

<comment><USER7> Yes, it's one of English's many confusing edge cases, as normally an apostrophe _does_ indicate posession - you would say "David's book", or "Sarah's pc" - so this catches many people out (including me, quite often).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> These are pretty graphs, but without a discussion of how the data was collected and what it _means_ , i find it somewhat difficult to determine if the blog author's analysis is correct.

Even hitting the original homepage for the data isn't very helpful (at a cursory glance): <http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/INDPRO>

What counts as being manufactured in America? Does US assembly of parts made in other locales count?

Because if it were to be the case that automated assembly of things made in China count, then productivity/efficiency could be seen as increasing, even though the majority of a product was created and built elsewhere.

Anybody know?

<comment><USER9> Your link doesn't point to the original homepage of the data. Click "Release" then "Link", then "Documentation", you get the answer.

<http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What this post also misses is the declining socio-political power of manufacturing jobs. Two more charts are necessary: 1) the declining share of the total workforce made up by industrial labor, and 2) the declining share of unionized labor.

Even if the absolute numbers of manufacturing jobs had remained steady from the 1950s to the present, the stagnation in absolute numbers would simply be hiding a rather large relative decline.

<comment><USER9> Assuming I don't consider manufacturing unions to be my political cronies (which I don't), why should I care about the declining political power of manufacturing unions?

<comment><USER10> I'm not particularly pro-union either. But, the article's author attempts to distinguish between two things: U.S. manufacturing output (its productivity in terms of the value of goods made); and, the absolute number of manufacturing jobs. By doing so, he's trying to counter some of the popular perception that "U.S. manufacturing is gone."

We are still a manufacturing powerhouse, but we are no longer adding manufacturing jobs. In fact we can make the same or greater amount of goods (by value) with the same amount or fewer manufacturing employees.

So the perception is that U.S. manufacturing is in decline, because the number of manufacturing jobs stagnated from the 1950s to the 2000s. But those are only absolute numbers. The real story is that by the 1970s already U.S. manufacturing was perceived as being in decline. I'm speculating that we could understand the provenance of that perception by looking at two more graphs: percentage of workforce in manufacturing, and percentage of workforce in (industrial) unions.

Why do these two graphs serve as good indicators of the nation-wide perception of manufacturing decline? The first because the relative share of jobs held in manufacturing is just as important as the absolute numbers in terms of social weight, clout, and awareness. The union chart more specifically would show the decline in political-economic clout held by people in the manufacturing sector, most precipitously (I would speculate) in the 1980s. Without fresh members, closed shops, local chapters, and substantial union bloc voting, the socio-political place of unions in the day-to-day fabric of American life begins to fade into the background.

So, whatever one's politics toward organized labor (present or historical), I think such a chart would be illustrative of why there is a popular perception that "U.S. manufacturing is gone."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Steel production in the US is one tenth the level of steel production in China ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_prod...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_production)). Perhaps I'm naive, but I'm inclined to believe that their industrial manufacturing level now vastly outstrips our own.

<comment><USER12> ... And there are a lot more planes made in the US than China. Neither of these things have much to do with which country has a larger total manufacturing base.

<comment><USER13> With the commercial airline plant opening in Shanghai, I see this too changing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is an extremely cogent article on the unemployment issue. It appears the US needs to seriously start considering the structural unemployment that results from accelerating efficiency gains brought on by technological progress. Although I am a huge proponent of free markets, I've always worried what would happen when the radical pace of technological change outpaced the average person's marketable skills.

My take on this is that human abilities are normally distributed, and the average employable person lies right at the mean in ability. Technology, on the other hand, started at the far left of the ability curve and slowly began automating the most menial tasks. Over the last century, the mean technological ability line has inched ever closer to the mean human ability line, eliminating otherwise employable people from the market along the way.

You don't have to be a Singularitarian to see that this line has already caught up to the mean human ability, as evidenced by the blue collar recession we have experienced recently. The problem is that about 68% of the human population lie within one standard deviation of the average. If you look at the income gap data, it appears there is a divergence occurring in job demand, where only the high skilled and certain non-automated low skilled jobs are in demand. The big fat middle of the distribution appears to have been automated, hence the lack of demand for blue collar jobs and the structural unemployment we see today.

I would be curious to hear HN's opinions on how to deal with this issue. I am at a loss, as the foundation of the issue is based on the non-malleable human ability distribution and the ever accelerating pace of technological efficiency.

<comment><USER15> There is a demand for medium skilled jobs. E.g., I see lots of ads for careers in "medical billing and coding", which is not the sort of work that requires a bachelor's degree, but you can't just hire someone off the street to do, either.</comment></comment>


Headed To College? Design Your Dorm Lets You Build Your Pad In 3D - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/05/headed-to-college-design-your-dorm-lets-you-build-your-pad-in-3d/

<comment><USER2> This is neat but I'd like to be able to try it out before having to register. The register popup should be when you wanna save or print the mockup maybe.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you handle credit card robocalls from Karen, Gretchen, Rachel? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I have come to believe that wasting the robocaller's resources are the most valuable option. To that goal, I keep the phone listening to the entire recorded spiel. This is worthwhile sometimes. At least twice, I've gotten a call from "Barbara" in a distinctly male voice. Hilarity abounds! If you don't at least listen to the recording, you're pawning the problem off on someone else. After that, I always press 1 or 9 or whatever to get to a human operator. I try to consume as much of the human operator's time as possible. I ask them to repeat things, I hem and haw while answering. I actually have an expired gift Visa card in my wallet to give out as a "valid" credit card number. I will also note that you can transpose any two odd-position or even- position digits except the last digit (which is a checksum) and the first 6 (Issuing Institution Number). That should yield a wrong credit card number that passes the checksum and IIN lookups.

I have had a full bladder when I've received a call from "Rachel" or "Ann" a couple of times. I've taken this as a sign to let the human operator listen to the cheerful tinkle of urination, and the gloomy finality of a flush.

I believe that the robocallers and the human operators are from different organizations/crime families. If you listen to the robocall all the way through, you've consumed resources of one pack of assholes. I imagine the robocallers get paid on the handoff to the boiler room full of dickweed "operators"/fraudsters. So you should probably try to get through to a human, and then waste their time, as that is time they're not spending defrauding someone a bit simpler or more trusting.

In conclusion: Cardholder Services delenda est!

<comment><USER2> Why the downvotes? Are you voting against my idea (we all cooperate to consume the robocalling organization's resources) or my style, or the fact that I have treated the human operators very cruelly, or are the downvoters employed by or own Cardholder Services? Be honest. I can change my mind even if you can't. Leave a comment when you downvote.</comment></comment>


CRUD with Flutter and SQLite - <AUTHOR> https://levelup.gitconnected.com/crud-with-flutter-and-sqlite-de3a68759531?source=friends_link&sk=f37cb28a9c373f0b0ed61fcca883886d <comment><AUTHOR> Are you looking for a way to use the mobile device storage as a database in your Flutter project? Just integrating a SQLite package will do it for you. This article will provide a complete guide to CRUD operations with SQLite and Flutter.</comment>


That Little Lawsuit Against Uber Just Got Bigger - <AUTHOR> https://news.vice.com/article/that-little-lawsuit-against-uber-just-got-bigger-and-could-take-down-the-sharing-economy <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10928913](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10928913)</comment>


Acoustic cryptanalysis 2004 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~tromer/acoustic/ec04rump/ <comment><USER2> Why is this very old version here, when the latest results have been submitted recently?

Substantial discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6927905](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6927905) (tau.ac.il) (92 comments)

Other submissions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6940827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6940827) (theregister.co.uk)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6938536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6938536) (dailymail.co.uk)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6935289](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6935289) (tau.ac.il)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6933255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6933255) (slashdot.org)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6932445](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6932445) (slideshare.net)

There are probably more.

I'm not saying that this historical page is completely without interest, it's just that it would be nice to know why it's being submitted.</comment>