What Can You Do If a Coder Cons You? - <AUTHOR>

I met a coder (via Twitter) when I was looking for someone to help me with some stuff. He had a great resume with buckets of experience listed on it. He was approx 35 so I believed the resume and he "talked the talk" as well as any coder I've ever met. As it turned out, he never did any work with me... but... an old friend of mine was looking for someone to help with his new site.
The site was a simple points/wallet system that you can earn points by filling out surveys and then download games using those points.
So, without thinking too much of it, I put the new coder buddy I had met via Twitter in touch with my old friend. My friend interviewed him and agreed that he looked like a great guy with lots of experience.
Anyway, he quoted 7 days work at a cost of $2k to do the job.
Everything was fine, and he delivered about 80% of the site. Then my friend made the mistake of paying him the final 50% because he was happy with the work to date.
After this, the developer stopped work.
After which point, each time he was sent an email asking when the next 20% would arrive, he would send back an email saying that he only had a couple of hours left and he would complete the site within the next day or so.
This went on for 6 weeks. Which of course drove my friend nuts, who finally contacted me to get involved.
My gut reaction was that my friend was over dramatizing and that I would be able to resolve the issue. So I spoke to the developer and he assured me that there was only few hours work left and he would get it done in a few days.
So, I set up a bug tracker and I checked in the exiting code to svn to make it a bit more track-able and easy to sign off the final 20% - after all there was only 5 small issues.
So, now what happened was, every few days I would send this guy an email saying hows it going, and he said I've finished everything. I'm going to commit it tonight.
This went on for two weeks.
At which point I realised that he was never actually going to do the work. So I had to apologize to my friend and find another trusted resource to finish it.
Then, after cutting this developer off by changing all the passwords etc, I decided to have a closer inspection of the code he'd written.
Well, let me just say that he had used a code generator to build many active record style classes that loaded rows from the db with insert/update etc... Not a problem right? But the code was so bad!
For example, there was zero use of a database abstraction layer, and each of these code generated classes had the full mysql declarations inside the objects.
He then tied up these classes with some verrrry questionable procedural logic.
NONE of the db queries anywhere were escaped. Even for form input. So not only could you easily perform SQL injections, but any one who typed a ' into an HTML form would break the system.
What amazes me is, how could you write a code generation tool that generated such bad code. Surely during the course of his career he woudl have noticed that the most basic of bugs was present in all the SQL. Wouldn't you think, after years of using the same code generation tool to re-factor it?
I can tell he's been using the same tool for a while because it's using PHP4 style constructors rather than __construct.
Anyyyyway.
The question I have for you is... What can be done about con artist coders like this? Is there anything? Should there be some kind of "con artist coder" registry?
It doesn't seem right that this guy will be working for other clients, when he is clearly not going to have their best interests at heart.
All thoughts, much appreciated. <comment><USER2> The problem is that you're starting from the assumption that things can be made "fair", by "punishing the offender". Consider that the legal system (which is designed to make the fairest decisions possible) takes forever and is not necessarily accurate. For starters, you need to admit the possibility that a fair resolution != convenient resolution.

A "con artist coder" registry isn't fair. It's error-prone at best and exploitable at worst. Sure, those "registries" might make you _feel_ safer, but they don't really accomplish anything useful. (See the no-fly list, for example)

The logical thing to do (imho) would be to take the loss as a lesson and move on. (Paying the full amount only after completion sounds like the glaring lesson here. Also, getting second opinions before choosing a freelancer and having a written contract are no-brainers)

<comment><USER3> Agree. It's an expensive lesson to learn but it's not going to help you trying to get back at him.

Next time make sure to do some code review early on, start with a simple task (not a whole project) and look into using an escrow service or hire through a outsourcing website which offers good protection against poor work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How are we supposed to police our fellow hackers? In my mind there's no way to ensure that this "blacklist" stays objective, and people don't abuse it for their own advantage (or for mischief!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I have to agree it would be used for no good ;)

Hmm, maybe I'll just send him a link to this thread so that he can see that his behaviour does actually effect people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This might be of questionable ethics, but if you put his twitter handle here, anyone googling for him will without a doubt come across your description. Google loves HN. Mention it on another high-traffic web site?

Send him an email warning him before with a chance to come clean or repair the damage he's done. Also, don't threaten; just write "I will post this on date X, and I'd like to hear your side of the story before then."

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is he's incredibly eloquent and it's hard to believe that he's anything other than a decent bloke. It's only by personally experiencing the promise of "I'll check in the completed work tonight" for two weeks that I actually believed my friend.

Also, If I was to in any way publicly denounce another person it would probably have more negative effect on me than them :)

<comment><USER5> Very fair point and I'm sure my advice is only reasonable in quite extreme situations. Did you try approaching him directly and ask what was up? Also, were completion dates mentioned at all when he was being hired? Maybe he technically didn't do anything wrong from his perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, the way I solved a similar problem with a sales person was to send him a mail in which I made clear that I was about to contact his ex-employers to investigate, and ask questions like "I intend to follow legal channels and I was wondering if you had similar experience working with X". After all, paying for unfinished job is at least reason for a trial, and good pre-trial strategy is to look for a pattern.

Of course, you don't have to actually do this (though I was prepared to at the time), but hopefully you won't need to.

</comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps the fundamental thing to do is to not pay the final 50% until mutually agreed-upon criteria were met.

And for something like this there clearly needs to be a periodic code inspection, or specific guidelines such as anti-sql injection and the like.

Blacklisting this fellow wouldn't necessarily do the job. The hard thing is that you often don't really know if someone is any good unless you work with them, which makes this very hard.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is called "tortuous interference". Your friend can meticulous call the guy out, getting the details correct, but you shouldn't.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> @yan I had a number of conversations with him, in all of which which he seemed like a really nice guy and perfectly reasonable. Each time he assured me that he had every intention of finishing the work, and there was only a few hours left.

He knew very well that the work was meant to have been completed in seven days. He explained to me that the project had overrun because my friend supplied the artwork late. Which was a perfectly valid explanation for 1 week of overrun. The other 6 weeks, however, are not so clear...

<comment><USER9> He probably has another (better paying) client, and intends to do your work, but something else always gets in the way, so he doesn't have enough time.

Most people are not deliberately evil, they want to do the right thing, but find excuses.

If you are still interesting in him doing the work, find a way to increase the urgency - for example tell him if we don't launch really soon it will fail, etc, etc.

As far as the bad code, nothing you can do about that.</comment></comment>


The Nature Of Work - <AUTHOR> http://www2.halifaxtoday.co.uk/calderheritage/halifaxworkingconditions.htm

<comment><USER2> And people today say kids should learn more practical skills in school. The world comes full circle, I tell ya.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it wrong to contact people via their blogs? - <AUTHOR>

My city is not such a big one and there are no meetup groups that I know of and rarely any programming event is organized. So when I find some interesting blogger from my city, I usually find their email address and try to contact them to meet or have some chat.<p>Out of 3 times that I have tried to contact three people, no one replied. This makes me feel that I am being really stupid and pesky but my only intention is to meet new people. <comment><USER2> Sometimes I take one week to answer emails. If I see the matter isn't important at all, it can take forever to answer. Maybe some mail goes lost, can't tell.

But answering your question, no, it is not a problem to write someone if they publicly post their email addresses on their websites.</comment>


How Journalists Covered the Rise of Mussolini and Hitler - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-journalists-covered-rise-mussolini-hitler-180961407/?no-ist <comment><USER2> The wishful search for normalcy seems to be a common phenomenon in the rise of dictators. In addition to the way the media covered Hitler and Mussolini, as described in the article, consider:

* In somewhat popular recent article (and probably the most important thing I've read on the subject; I can't recommend it strongly enough), "Autocracy: Rules for Survival",[0] a Russian author warns us: _Rule #2:_ Do not be taken in by small signs of normality. _Consider the financial markets this week, which, having tanked overnight, rebounded following the Clinton and Obama [conciliatory, cooperative] speeches. Confronted with political volatility, the markets become suckers for calming rhetoric from authority figures. So do people. Panic can be neutralized by falsely reassuring words about how the world as we know it has not ended. It is a fact that the world did not end on November 8 nor at any previous time in history. Yet history has seen many catastrophes, and most of them unfolded over time. That time included periods of relative calm._

* I saw a documentary recently about Hitler. At the time, before WWII started, there were periods of "normalcy" as the above article described - remember that people didn't know a massive war was coming, just as we don't know what is coming. Hitler repeatedly promised that he just needed to protect some ethnic Germans, or that he was 'satisfied' and didn't need to expand further. From the above-mentioned article:[0] _... the Jewish historian Simon Dubnow, breathed a sigh of relief in early October 1939: he had moved from Berlin to Latvia, and he wrote to his friends that he was certain that the tiny country wedged between two tyrannies would retain its sovereignty and Dubnow himself would be safe. Shortly after that, Latvia was occupied by the Soviets, then by the Germans, then by the Soviets again—but by that time Dubnow had been killed. Dubnow was well aware that he was living through a catastrophic period in history—it's just that he thought he had managed to find a pocket of normality within it._

* The most famous example: Winston Churchill before the war advocated strongly and loudly for action against Hitler, and was a political outcast. Neville Chamberlain was Prime Minister, partly on the basis that people agreed he could negotiate a deal with Hitler (which including abandoning entire nations to his mercies), and famously claimed to have made a deal he called "peace in our time" \- i.e., normalcy.

\----

[0] _Autocracy: Rules for Survival_ by Masha Gessen

[http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election- autoc...](http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-autocracy- rules-for-survival/) \- Highly recommended!</comment>


Amazon sales soar as pandemic fuels online shopping - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/30/amazon-amzn-earnings-q2-2020.html <comment><USER2> At the beginning of the pandemic I definitely was doing more online shopping. But my wife and I have definitely shifted into the 'bunker down and be prepared' mentality. We're stashing cash and loading up on canned goods. We both have good reliable jobs, but between an unexpected tax bill and worry over how the COVID situation is being handled we're bracing for bad weather.

<comment><USER3> I'm the complete opposite, I've buying more things online than ever. I guess I'm buying things in order to make up for the fact that I can't go out and do things.

<comment><USER2> Thats how I was at the beginning. I'm an extrovert and my wife is an introvert. I think I was buying a bunch of stuff for time wasting projects (HD bird cam with live streaming from a RasPi, tons and tons of LEGO sets) to keep my mind off of being stuck at home. But as I've settled into this new normal (and not gonna lie, the tax bill helped) our spending has massively shrunk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> All the benefits of brick and mortar retail shopping basically disappear when you add all the friction and hassle of wearing masks, standing apart from people, avoiding contact, etc. The shopping experience of going to a mall, trying on clothes, etc or a chatting it up with a clerk at a video game store is not matched by ecommerce, but in the current situation, buying online saves even more trouble or time than it normally would. It's very unfortunate. I fear that so many businesses will never recover.

<comment><USER5> I don't think, I'll ever go back to the grocery store after using Prime now from last 4 months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was thinking to pick up some Amazon stocks yesterday but the stock seemed too expensive.</comment>


Un/Marshall DynamoDB JSON Online - <AUTHOR> https://dangerfarms.github.io/unmarshall-dynamodb-json/ <comment><USER2> I could see this being useful. Suggestion: some link to a python/js/whatever module on GitHub</comment>


You Probably Can't Jailbreak This Tablet Made for America's Prisoners - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/14/you-probably-cant-jailbreak-this-tablet-made-for-americas-prisoners/

<comment><USER2> I spent over 10 years in prison and I would have loved to have this to use.</comment>


SoftBank Next 30-Year Vision (2010) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://cdn.group.softbank/en/corp/set/data/irinfo/presentations/vod/2010/pdf/press_20100625_01.pdf <comment><USER2> Slide 43: Contention that Transistors are comparable to cells. This crazy talk is continued throughout the presentation.

Slide 44: Contends that Moore's law will continue for the next 300 years.

Slide 58: A fantastic butchering of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Slide 61: Unsubstantiated (probably wrong) claim life expectancy is going to linearly increase for the next 300 years.

Slide 73: Contention that storage scales at the same rate as number of transistors on a CPU and apparently conflates that with the power of a CPU.

Slide 82-85: Contention that we'll acheive VR in... 2040.

I mean this presentation is just laughably shit. It's like it's written by someone who has no interest or understanding of the complexity of the things they're meant to be talking about. You would have thought that people would see some of the absurd things that are just obviously rubbish and have it damage the credibility of the presentation, but apparently not.

<comment><USER3> This is the company that manages $285,000,000,000 worth of assets.

<comment><USER4> more like mismanages, based on performance of their investments.

<comment><USER5> Actually it's amazing they don't lose even more money seeing how poorly designed their whole vision of the future is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On one slide, there's a mention that in 2300, computers will have 10^60 elements in them.

However, there's only 10^50 atoms on Earth.

<comment><USER7> It's even worse. That slide compares number of computer elements vs. number of cells in human brain. The graph starts at 1x the amount (CPU == brain), and ends 10^60x the amount.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 500 bil operating income, won't hire graphic designer to create a slideshow.

<comment><USER9> In their defence: [https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/](https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/)

<comment><USER10> That's the website of a company with nothing to prove.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "The simplest way to view SoftBank is as an indebted holding company that owns a basket of assets, which are of mixed quality and often themselves indebted".

For more context on Mr. Son and the fragility of SoftBank's model, below recent Economist article is a good read

[https://www.economist.com/business/2019/11/07/hard-times- for...](https://www.economist.com/business/2019/11/07/hard-times-for-softbank)

</comment><comment><USER12> Has anyone written about the earliest origins of Softbank's massive war chest?

You'd on occasion hear about Softbank in the late aughts but nothing worthy of note. And then suddenly just like that it was everywhere.

They hired Nikesh Arora who was let go just as swiftly as they hired him.

      As President & Chief Operating Officer of SoftBank Corp.
      Arora received over $200 million in compensation over the
      last two years" while at the head of Softbank's operations.
      This pay package made him world's highest paid executive.[1]

Is there a rhyme to any of the stuff they do? Or is it on the whims and fancies of Masayoshi Son?

Is there an exhaustive read somewhere, on all of this?

[1]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikesh_Arora#SoftBank_Corp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikesh_Arora#SoftBank_Corp).

<comment><USER13> They got lucky by investing in Alibaba and cashed out. Made 100bil that way and suddenly everyone thought Masa was a genius. Saudi princes started giving him free money and the rest is history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> 300 year plan. No wonder they fell for WeWork.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21297789](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21297789)

Adam Neumann: _"It's important that one day, maybe in 100 years, maybe in 300 years, a great-great-granddaughter of mine will walk into that room and say, 'Hey, you don't know me; I actually control the place. The way you're acting is not how we built it, '" he said."_

<comment><USER2> I don't think they fell for We Work, they are the same as We Work. They're doing exactly the same thing We Work did - talk so abstractly and grandly about their vision that people miss the fact that nothing actually works. We Work was a great tool for Softbank to push the exact same con as We Work. You can't say CPUs with more transistors than atoms on the earth and then actually invest in a semi-conductor company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Oh, all of Masa Son's "visionary" presentations are instant classics. Telepathic banking is my fav from his 300 year plan.

</comment><comment><USER16> The scope of a 30 years vision I would be happy with would encompass the channeling of capital away from old fat clown bankers, toward its efficient distribution to young hungry minds.

<comment><USER17> Young hungry minds like the WeWork guy? It seems to me the money might be largely staying in the circus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If this wasn't hosted by SoftBank, I would have thought its a parody created by someone with MS Paint and a poor grasp of English

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this for real? Whoever made the slides was smoking some good stuff.

</comment><comment><USER20> This looks like 133 startup memes rolled into a PDF.

</comment><comment><USER21> Unfortunately the 30-year vision will take longer than the projected 30 years due to a slight miscalculation: the number of human brain cells is not 30B as it should for a 30year plan but is actually a bit larger. Number of neurons alone is 80+B therefore using the softbank-linear-interpolation-method, the targeted cloud-downloadable-happiness-rate of 30 EH (exa-happinesses) will not be realized in 30 years and takes least 80.

</comment><comment><USER22> This deck doesn't seem real.

<comment><USER3> I would fire the intern who did this presentation.

<comment><USER23> Honestly Its so bad, I don't think any intern would dare to produce this as a final result.

On the other hand I have seen plenty of times when nobody had balls to tell higher up that what they produced is piece of crap

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The director needs to take a break from Final Fantasy style RPGs.

</comment><comment><USER25> "Zero speed network"

Tricky but doable.

<comment><USER23> Unplug the cable ? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Quick tip if hangs: Zoom out a lot and then scroll

</comment><comment><USER27> Then why did they invest in WeWork [/s]

<comment><USER18> Jokes aside, anyone who solves the loneliness problem for remote workers (something that WeWork attempts to solve) will benefit itself and society a great deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Think til our brains crush"</comment>


Creating spritesheet animations in React Native - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/adhbh/rn-sprite <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the info buddy. I have reposted this as showhn</comment></comment>


How to Write Functional Specs; Spec Spectrum: Elevator Pitch to Production Code - <AUTHOR> https://blog.beeminder.com/specs/ <comment><AUTHOR> I think the thing I'm least sure of in this post is the difference between a functional spec and a technical spec and when and why you'd want one vs the other.

(And whether the whole concept of generalizing those to a whole continuum is useful. I like it conceptually/intellectually but don't know how actually useful it is.)</comment>


An epic treatise on scheduling, bug tracking, and triage - <AUTHOR> http://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201712 <comment><USER2> I'm the author of the article. I apologize for its massive length but wasn't able to make it shorter without losing my favourite bits :) I'm happy to answer any questions people have here.

<comment><USER3> I disagree strongly with your take on story points:

First, if story points are an indirect measure of time, then the "psychological game" you're playing will be immediately revealed if your engineers are as smart as claimed. There is no reason for me to point something a 2 over a 3 unless you're measuring the time it takes to deliver software based off those measurements. On the opposite end of the spectrum, my confidence in whether a story is an 8 or a 13 becomes significantly weaker as the numbers get bigger.

Using numbers, specifically, is a hint that whomever is handling process just wants to predict when the project will be done. Numbers trick you into thinking they can be added, margins of error are not additive. My go-to question in these situations is why don't we just estimate with abstract sizes? (Small, Medium, Large, etc) Surprisingly I'm often met with resistance.

Second, if story points are not an indirect measure of time, then why are you pointing stories? What does the pointing gain your team other than fluff? If you say it's for prioritization then you're just invalidating the premise and we're back to an indirect measure of time.

Finally, I have not seen, and you have not presented, evidence that engineers are good at estimating. In fact all that I have read seems to indicate the exact opposite, that engineers are very bad at estimating (in fact that they are largely too optimistic). One could argue that this can be trained, or that you'll get better at estimating as you gain more experience. Which I will concede that you will get faster and better at estimating and implementing the same exact feature, but that is not what we do. We implement new features, things we likely haven't done before.

<comment><USER4> So what? Even though engineers realize that, as long as you're talking abstract points, and not holding me to a deadline, I have no reason to modify my estimate. And even if I -do- modify my estimate, as long as I continue with that new estimation mechanism for some period of time, velocity will change accordingly and the PO can -still- make accurate determinations of when something will be delivered. If I consistently under or over estimate things, I am predictable. The more constistent I am, the less time it takes to be uniform, and thus predictable. By not pinning it to time, the PO can determine the average velocity, the current estimations, and have a largely accurate idea of when things will be done. The only time this ever breaks is when I have a reason to change my estimation strategy, which only happens when you start applying incentives for me to change it. Every time my incentives change, my estimates will change; don't change my incentives. Don't give me a date or a deadline.

We could do this with hours except hours actually translate directly to time. From them I can determine when you think I should be done and thus the implied goal; points I can't. Because of that, I have incentive to overestimate when it comes to hours, to give myself extra time 'just in case'. With points I don't; they don't imply an end time. Even if the PO's estimates are wrong, they can't get onto me, because I never had a due date. Because of that, my estimates tend to be consistent (even if inaccurate), and consistency = predictability. That's the goal, making it predictable when things will be finished (within a given tolerance; hours never give us that). Whether points are big, or small, the PO can determine "This team has an average velocity of 20 points, whatever size those points may be. That means I can expect around 20 points per sprint in terms of stories. I have 50 points I need to get done for this next release, that means I can expect it in three more sprints". All done without the engineers ever having a goal they are trying to make, no incentive to change their estimates, and literally the best predictability (not accuracy; you don't need accuracy) you can achieve, which, it turns out, is actually pretty damn good in practice.

I think you're missing the fact that points only matter relative to each other. There is no absolute meaning. The author hints at that but I don't think is explicit about it, assuming you already know that. As such, a team tends to be consistent with them, even if not objectively accurate. And their mistakes average out into something predictable, even if not accurate. Because there is no incentive, conscious or unconscious, to massage it.

Some people -do- decide to use t-shirt sizes for sizing, rather than points. It still works. This is generally equivalent to 3, 5, and 8 using points (fibonacci). Most people who use points say anything less than a 3 is wrong (make it a three), and anything larger than an 8 should be broken up because otherwise it's difficult to estimate (with -maybe- a 13). So use whichever you like. S, M, L, and maybe XL, if you want to map to four options, as you have with points. Though you need a way to aggregate them to determine a velocity; how many S = 1M, etc. That's why people tend to use points.

Basically, the author said, flat out, it's a psychology game. AND IT IS. What a PO needs from a dev is consistency in how they estimate, not accuracy. From that you can measure the actual work completed over time, and get a measure of velocity, which can be used to accurately predict the delivery of future stories, within a pretty good tolerance. Ensure the psychology for that consistency is there. Points are part of it. No goals, milestones, deadlines, etc, are part of it.

<comment><USER3> You're missing my point.

My point is that no story points need to exist. If you want to average the amount of work done over a period of time then just count bugs and stories completed. The Central Limit theorem applies equally well to stories over the long term, so just collect data. Automatic.

We add story points, presumably because we don't want to wait to gather enough data on stories, but the neutral position is to not use them because they incur a cost (meetings, training to get consistency right, etc). So why have them? I have not seen a convincing argument.

<comment><USER4> Sure, we could treat all stories as being of a single size and rely on the central limit theorem, but that takes far, far longer to converge. On the order of years, I suspect, not weeks or months, which is what you get out of pointing. "We should have this done sometime between now and 2022" is not a useful metric for a PO.

We add story points because given consistent incentives, estimates tend to be consistent. Maybe consistently under or consistently over, and obviously there's a bit of wiggle room from estimate to estimate, but they tend to converge quite quickly, and to within a week or two's uncertainty of what we'll have done at any given point within the next six months, and within 6 weeks within the next year. Quite a far cry from not using them.

Meetings? Some, sure; you'd have them anyway just defining what it is you're doing, the additional burden to assign points takes up maybe half an hour per person per week or two. Training to get consistency right? There's no training involved. The hardest thing is to get people accustomed to picking a number, relative to the others. But that's not that hard either; we basically just took the first sprint's stories, organized them into a line (much like his rectangles) going from least to most complex, then discussed where to draw three vertical lines, separating them into four distinct sizes, 3s, 5s, 8s, and 13s. We then made sure the largest didn't feel too large compared with the other 13s (or else it might actually be a 21, just compared to what we had agreed a 13 was, and so we had to split it up), and from there we always had 'reference stories' to decide whether it felt more like a 5 or an 8, say. And while we sometimes differed, we could always hash out why we differed and come to an agreement on exactly how large the story was. Again, per the OP, so long as you are consistent with how you address those discrepancies, your overall estimates will be consistent, and give you predictability.

One half hour per week or two is hardly a huge cost to pay when it gives the business the ability to accurately predict when we'll have something delivered.

I don't care if the argument is convincing. I've seen it work. You're free to do whatever you want; I know what I've seen work, and what I've seen not work. I've yet to find something that works so well.

<comment><USER3> Your claims are outrageous with no supporting evidence.

If you just want to throw out anecdotes I'll give you my own. I collected data on all the pointed stories at one previous job for three years and found a negative correlation between story point and time from a story being started to being completed.

Sure, you might claim that it all averages out in the end, except that our velocities were wildly in flux for that entire span as well. But we were just "doing it wrong" right?

<comment><USER4> Outrageous? Seriously? Hyperbole much?

I doubt that you did, if I understand you. Because it sounds like you're saying that overall 3 pointed stories took the most amount of time, and 13 (or whatever your max) took the least.

But let's say it did. I'd look to see why your estimates fluctuated all over the place. Or whether stories were being closed when they were actually finished (i.e., being accurately reported). Did you have deadlines? Did you have delivery pressures? Because that right there is a good reason; as you near a deadline you start padding estimates more. Did you keep having things come up that broke the sprint? Etc. All manner of things can cause estimates to be wrong. But not negatively correlated, -especially- with velocities constantly in flux (and I mean seriously in flux; you take an average because it can and will vary, especially if there's unexpected stuff, like someone getting sick, that you didn't account for when planning); that to me, yes, definitely sounds like you were doing something very, very wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting article, I have a few comments/questions

Story points - there is a lot in theory I like about these and you hit on those points. But in practice where my teams have struggled is still in the definition of a point. People understand the relative sizing concept but they still want a definition of what one point means and that invariably winds up being some kind of a time unit, which means all points get thought of in time units. What techniques have you used to solve this problem?

Defects - some good points were made but you never really discussed how these are managed as work. Stories and defects are getting worked on at the same time, but how exactly? Are defects just lumped in with stories and the PM prioritizes them? I do not think so, but you are not clear in this area. If a PM prioritizes a story but the team spends all of its time resolving defects then how is value being delivered as expected? You seem to have left this out completely, or I missed it.

Finally, also on defects, while your points on not estimating them makes some sense, someone has to decide what to work on, and generally you need some idea how long things will take to make that decision. Even in your wording, you acknowledge some defects take a long time to fix, where as others are super- quick and in the end they all average out. Still, someone in the organization still cares about dates and delivery. It made a lot of sense to me where you indicated that the story point estimate can be valuable to the PM in terms of prioritizing. When they see a story with a high estimate that might cause them to lower its priority compared to other stories they can get delivered quicker. But seemingly defect fixing would have to factor into this somewhere too, and then wouldn't the same concept apply? If defects are not estimated, how can the time it will take to resolve the defect inform the decision making process?

<comment><USER6> I actually reject the idea of story points as a unit-less number, mostly because people can't help but think about them in terms of time anyway (whether they want to or not) [1].

Rather, I like to use a discrete list of story point values as scalar value that represents a probability distribution for how long the task might take. As the story point gets bigger, not only does the mean time get bigger, but the variance grows as well.

For example, a 1 is 2-4 hours, but a 13 is 2-3 weeks, and a 40 is 1-2 months. The idea is that not only do more complex tasks take more time, but the precision of our estimates goes down.

This makes engineers happy because they get to be more honest about estimates, and it makes managers happy because they only have to deal with one number.

[1] Unit-less measures might be easier in an environment that is more concerned with true productivity than with deadlines, but that is not most environments.

<comment><USER5> Thanks and interesting. If you have written up your full system anywhere I would be interested to read more.

<comment><USER6> In terms of mapping story points to time ranges, here's the full list:

1 point -> 2-4 hours

2 points -> 4-8 hours (1 day or less)

3 points -> 1-2 days

5 points -> 3-5 days (up to one week)

8 points -> 5-9 days (up to one two-week sprint[0])

13 points -> 2-3 weeks (1-1.5 sprints)

20 points -> 3-4 weeks (up to two sprints)

40 points -> 1-2 months

Anything beyond 40 needs to be aggressively analyzed broken down into steps, even if those steps are not deliverable features per se.

[0]For a two-week sprint, you have to account for at least one day each sprint for demos, retrospective, and planning. Thus, you have at most 9 days for implementation and testing.

EDIT: Fixed formatting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > What doesn't work is deciding when you're going to get there.

That would be an ETA, which is quite useful in many cases.

> Or telling salespeople they need to sell 10% more next quarter.

That's a minimum quota. Also useful.

> Or telling school teachers they need to improve their standardized test > scores.

Which is not so much a 'goal' as it is a response to the need for kids to actually learn information. It's a goal in the sense that "you should be doing your job to a minimum degree of proficiency" is a goal.

> Or telling engineers they need to launch their project at Whatever > Conference (and not a day sooner or a day later).

Which is absolutely an arbitrary goal that doesn't have anything to do with the product, but is also good business sense.

Sometimes you need stupid goals.

<comment><USER2> What all these wrong-goal examples have in common is that people have tried them over and over, and they never work the way you want. The reason they never work is that they don't specify the method. As one of my favourite Deming quotes says, "If you can accomplish a [numerical quality/goal] goal without a [new] method, then why were you not doing it last year? There is only one possible answer: you were goofing off."

What ends up happening is that people will cheat the system so they can hit the target you enforced, while sacrificing some other critical thing you forgot to enforce. In the educational system, for example, what happens is "teach to the test," which causes improved standardized test scores at the expense of actually learning things. And, of course, you get schools that outright cheat when scoring the tests: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer- sheet/wp/2015/04/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer- sheet/wp/2015/04/01/how-and-why-convicted-atlanta-teachers-cheated-on- standardized-tests/)

Re: ETAs, those are predictions, not goals. Predictions are good. Most of the article is about the difference between the two.

<comment><USER7> The goal is not the problem. The method is not the problem. The problem is the problem.

You will have to increase the educational system's budget. You will have to raise taxes. You will have to build more classrooms. You will have to hire more teachers. You will even have to feed the damned kids, and improve their home life.

There is no "method" that avoids having to do these things. These are the problems you have to solve to reach the intended goal. How you go about solving these problems _does not matter_.

Use whatever method you want. Sweet talk them. Bribe them. Hire a guy named Vito with a baseball bat. The method doesn't matter. _Just solve the problems._

<comment><USER2> I think we agree here, except on definitions. To me, potential "methods" are the list of things you describe: taxes, classrooms, teachers, home life, baseball bats. And also the ones I described: teach to the test, fraudulent scoring.

A manager that just says "teachers will be evaluated based on their students' standardized test scores" will get nothing useful, because they did not provide a method, and the teachers aren't empowered to solve their problems in a productive way.

<comment><USER7> > A manager that just says "teachers will be evaluated based on their > students' standardized test scores" will get nothing useful, because they > did not provide a method

There is no method for a teacher to solve those problems. It's a systemic issue.

<comment><USER8> He didn't say anything that was contrary to that. Note that it's the "manager" that didn't "provide a method" in his framing, and note that "manager" is a shorthand for "the teacher's boss, the school board that created the policies the teacher's boss follows, the federal/state governing bodies that created the legislation that governs the school board's decisions, etc etc"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "They're sure they can get done in that amount of time, so they take it easy for the first half. Then they get progressively more panicked as the deadline approaches, and they're late anyway, and/or you ship on time ..."

I found that the more experienced/older I am, the less this happens. We even finished multiple such tasks sooner then was required - of course contributing factor was that deadlines were sane. I somewhat used to have this tendency when I was younger. Experience makes you better at managing time risks. It is actually one issue I have with cookie cutter agile. Everyone is so micromanaged by the system, that they don't get to get experience needed to learn the above.

There are also contributing cultural factors. In many companies, people who stay late last week tend to be praised and rewarded over those who work in predictable speed and kept eye on the deadline from day one (not in my current team). Incentives matter and finishing tasks at the last moment at cost of evenings/weekends makes you a hero.

I personally know people, including leads of agile teams, who believe that last moment desperate effort is somehow necessary. Like you are lazy if you dont. That means there will be last moment effort, whether it was needed or not. So if the team is going to be on time, an additional work is found to be done - or more often possible logical steps to make the deadline are not taken (a feature the customer explicitly said is not necessary is done anyway etc). I wish this would be a joke or exaggeration, but I have seen it multiple times already. While details were each time different, it really did boiled down to techies essentially organizing that desperate effort for themselves.

It does not matter what the process is, how exactly you estimate etc. As long as not doing the responsible thing is rewarded, people will do that.

</comment><comment><USER10> I really enjoyed reading this, despite its length! It makes some great points about scheduling that resonated with me, backed up by interesting thought experiments.

</comment><comment><USER11> TL;DR: Agile is silly but has some lessons to teach. Most people do it wrong though. Make decisions early and stick to them. Talk about effort not time. Make stories about users. Treat bugs differently to stories (they are on average all the same size, are written from a different perspective, etc.). Abandon stand-ups, steal things from SCRUM and Kanban, and don't talk about deadlines, ever.

<comment><USER12> So .. what is the _business_ substitute for deadlines? Unless you're genuinely a startup with unlimited funding and total freedom, eventually people are going to ask the question "so what are you going to deliver and when?"

<comment><USER13> That is often the first question I get asked when trying to explain these concepts to business owners.

My answer is that you can plan for work to be done on a deadline but you can't negotiate when it will be done with the people doing the work. It's going to take as long as it takes. It's poor management that sets unrealistic expectations and demands results.

You can plan for work by using data. You get data by tracking effort estimated versus completed and triaging bugs. You prioritize goals instead of setting deadlines. You measure and refine.

It sounds counter-intuitive to business people who think in terms of, _I just sold customer X the product and they need it delivered by Y so that we can get the team paid by Z_. This is where poor management decisions can sink your team. If _Y_ is decided by the sales or management team with the customer and they didn't consult their engineering team... then they're working on another planet. The goal of processes like this are not to eliminate _Y_ but to set reasonable expectations and objectives.

As I like to remind my business owners: you can have something that works -- it may not be the whole kit -- or you can have nothing at all. Winning is about prioritizing objectives.

One book I've read recently that taught me a lot about management is _Extreme Ownership_ [0]. I think there's a lot of cross-over from this book into Agile methodologies that I think non-technical stakeholders can really understand.

[0] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23848190-extreme- ownersh...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23848190-extreme-ownership)

<comment><USER14> _> It's going to take as long as it takes. [...] it may not be the whole kit _

If I'm interpreting that fragment right, your essay is treating "programmers development time" as a fixed rate of progress (the _" 9 women can't have a baby in 1 month"_ meme) so one answer to meet a deadline is to _remove features_ until the deadline can be met.

<comment><USER13> Precisely.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How/when/where do you work best? - <AUTHOR>

Do you work with headphones at a coffee shop after 2am with a pint in hand?<p>I'm curious to know how everyone works. So far I've failed miserably at figuring this out for myself and I'm really keen to be as productive as I can.
So, how do you work? <comment><USER2> It depends on what I am doing. I prefer working at night between 10pm and 3am. This is the most quiet and solitary part of my day. Of course there are tradeoffs for fatigue but beer tends to make it all better. You have to try different things to find out what works for you. It just takes time.

</comment><comment><USER3> A diner or bar drinking soda water. Definitely NOT a coffee shop. I don't know why, although I suspect it's the background noise of motion. In any care, it just works out that way for me.</comment>


Deep-Q Learning Pong with Tensorflow and PyGame - <AUTHOR> http://www.danielslater.net/2016/03/deep-q-learning-pong-with-tensorflow.html <comment><USER2> My friend just did a similar thing, but for the Space Invaders: [http://maciejjaskowski.github.io/2016/03/09/space- invaders.h...](http://maciejjaskowski.github.io/2016/03/09/space- invaders.html), at the Recurse Center.

EDIT: It got here as well: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11282797](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11282797)

</comment><comment><USER3> How bizarre! I just spent the weekend doing the exact same thing except with MonoGame and Neon.

<comment><USER4> It steam engines when it's steam engine time.</comment></comment>


Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/12/upshot/heres-why-stealing-cars-went-out-of-fashion.html <comment><USER2> I wish bicycle theft was tackled in a similar fashion. A combination of factors seems to be at play here: Photo ID required to sell the car and technological hurdles that are too hard to overcome for small criminals. With embedded computer chips being so cheap nowadays, surely it should be possible to embed some sort of tracking system in bicycle frames.

<comment><USER3> If you want to reduce bicycle theft in the US, the solution is simple: drastically increase the penalties for perpetrators. Get caught stealing a bike? One year in jail. Adjust until the level of theft is where you want it to be.

Stealing a bike is not just taking $300 or whatever from the owner. It's robbing that cyclist and would-be cyclists of the confidence to use their preferred mode of transportation, and deteriorating their health in the long term. This is a lot more damaging than non-cyclists often intuit, and insurance cannot cover it. The penalty for stealing bicycles should be closer to the penalty for stealing a car and intentionally injuring someone. Currently it's close to zero.

<comment><USER4> I understand the motivation behind what you're suggesting but I don't think jail time is a fair deterrent.

I think (this is anecdata from some bike theft victims, including myself) that there are folks who steal bikes to ride them, potentially for transportation to work/school, and those who steal bikes to sell them elsewhere.

We should find a way to deter both groups but putting someone in jail for a $300 (let's say $600 to cover some of the unintended effects you mention) probably won't stop the commercial thieves as they'll find other lackeys to do the theft.

On a more important note, I feel uncomfortable having someone locked up, costing taxpayer money, for committing a non-violent crime whose damages are less than two weeks' pay at minimum wage.

<comment><USER5> I had a bike stolen from me, when someone broke into my back yard(breaking down the gate), sawed off the railing the bike was attached to and took the bike together with the railing(the bike was attached with a Kryptonite lock, which I guess was a lot harder to break than the railing itself). Yeah you're right, the crime was not violent, and the bike was worth 2x the minimum wage where I come from, which is not a lot(~800 USD). The gate was also fairly easy to fix, as was the railing.

But it's not the violence or the financial damage. It was the fact that I stopped feeling safe in my own house. That the area that I once though was friendly and safe is now filling me with dread and I was so worried about living there that year later I had to move out. That every time I heard noises in the back yard I had to get out of my bed and look out of the window. I shrugged off the financial loss of my bike very easily - but the physiological damage was much greater. Now if you asked me if I want the bike thieves to be put in prison, I would say - absolutely, positively yes. I hate and despise people who steal and I understand how deeply theft can affect a well being of a person, regardless of the value of stolen goods.

<comment><USER3> I felt exactly the same way after a gang stole a camera lens from my bag while it was strapped onto my body in Russia. They (3-5 people) surrounded me on a street in broad daylight, shoved me in various directions, separated my $1000 lens from myself, and ran off. I had a new lens shipped to me in a week, but the psychological change has lasted for years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _" Stealing cars is harder than it used to be, less lucrative and more likely to land you in jail. As such, people have found other things to do."_

Interesting. I wonder if there are any studies on what the other things are. What do perpetrators do when the crime they specialize in no longer pays?

<comment><USER7> I doubt most people desire being a criminal as an end in itself. Presumably car thieves either went onto the next best job, whether that be a crime (where "best" considers costs, like the risk of being punished, and benefits), or a legal job.

<comment><USER8> Or stayed at home and claimed unemployment, if the marginal gain from working ceased to be worth the cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I did a ride-along with a cop outside of Boston about 12 years ago. His car had a laptop attached to the dashboard, an innovation that only started appearing in the 1990s. One thing that he was able to do was instantly look up the plate on a vehicle without having to radio it in -- and the lookup interfaced with what I assume was an updated database of stolen cars.

Another technological innovation he mentioned was the positive effect of the Lo-Jack stolen vehicle recovery system ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoJack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoJack)). It not only instantly sends stolen vehicle information to police systems, but also activates a beacon on the stolen vehicle which specially equipped cruisers can detect and follow.

I imagine innovations such as these impacted the theft rate over the past 25 years, and also helped law enforcement agencies identify and arrest serial offenders responsible for large numbers of thefts. Didn't see it mentioned in the NYT article, though.

<comment><USER10> I believe police cars in the UK have cameras with automatic number plate recognition. They drive around and it scans for stolen/uninsured cars.

<comment><USER3> Likewise in America and elsewhere: [http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2012/09/your-car-tracked-...](http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2012/09/your-car-tracked-the-rapid-rise-of-license-plate-readers/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not sure it made much of a difference to insurance premiums, unless you didn't have an immobilizer in which case you premium would go up.

I expect the insurance industry benefited most from this.

<comment><USER12> I don't know why you're only considering insurance premiums. Surely, people benefit from not having their car stolen. It's a lot of work to replace a car, even if insurance pays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why go to all the trouble of breaking into a car and then trying to start it? Sadly Detroit leads the new trend of car jacking - they even coined the term:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/23/detroit- carjacking_...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/23/detroit- carjacking_n_5378508.html)

<comment><USER14> Probably because the former used to be a relatively simple one-man job that required just a screwdriver and some basic car mechanic skills to do; the latter requires some more organisation, a truck, multiple people, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> That's interesting because there's been a rise recently in London where people plug a computer into a car to disable the alarm and start the engine..

[http://www.motors.co.uk/news/security/electronic-car- theft-o...](http://www.motors.co.uk/news/security/electronic-car-theft-on-the- rise)

<comment><USER16> Immobilisers have absolutely slaughtered car theft (this is not news, I referenced this trend in a talk I gave a couple of years ago), but this makes them VERY vulnerable to being hacked. What's more most immobiliser systems are poorly engineered from a cryptographic perspective, for example, some can be overridden by simply telling the ECU to start up via a plugin cable, others are simply broadcasting static repeating codes meaning you can gather the codes with a fixed receiver in a car park and then go collect them later.

When a sufficiently smart criminal starts making kits that let you hack immobilisers, theft of those models shoots up dramatically. BMW has suffered from this effect badly. Their engine security sucked and owners became magnets for car theft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> All these crime is down articles make me think there is something more fundamental at play. That whilst technology has helped, that perhaps the real answer is economic.

Crime was a way of getting something that you wanted with little effort but high risk. However with consumerism we can have what we want with medium effort and low risk. There is a lower barrier to getting what you want with anything of material worth.

<comment><USER18> Lead was a major contributing factor.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/01/03/how-lead- ca...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/01/03/how-lead-caused- americas-violent-crime-epidemic/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Another thing the article doesn't mention but I've heard is now a common (sorry, nothing to cite) way of stealing cars is to take the keys.

Perhaps it's time for manufacturers to start with 2-factor authentication, perhaps the key and then a PIN that you have to enter? Is anybody doing this?

<comment><USER20> I remember an aftermarket immobiliser which required a PIN to be entered, this was in the Netherlands in the 1990's though, haven't seen it since...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interesting that the Honda Accord and Honda Civic are (or rather, were) the two most stolen cars. Is that because Hondas are more reliable (so there's more old Hondas on the road) or because they're easier to steal?

<comment><USER22> They are stolen for the marketability of their parts.

<comment><USER23> That still begs the question. Why are their parts better?

<comment><USER24> Hondas are known for their reliability. If you don't crash it or trade it in, a Honda can easily go 200-300,000 miles and last for 20+ years. #3 and #4 on the "most stolen cars list" are the Toyota Camry and Corolla, which are the other cars most known for their reliability.

If you're looking to steal a car built before 1997 (17 years ago), there are relatively few other makes that are still on the road. Cars from American automakers rarely make it past 100,000 miles (about 10 years of normal driving) in workable condition; there are simply fewer cars out there to steal.

<comment><USER25> That sounds awfully low for American automakers. What exactly happens at 100,000 miles?

Generally cars will go through their first big part replacement cycle between 60-100k, these are wearing parts that come to an end at that age. That can cost a couple of thousands but that's just part of normal maintenance and will be 10x cheaper than buying a new car. These Hondas and Corollas sure as hell go through this phase and the next replacement cycle happens maybe another 100k later.

It's my impression that even these cheap little cars in Europe (such as Fiat Punto) can easily go 200,000 miles if only serviced so 100k sounds a bit odd. I've also assumed that the appeal to American cars with their big blocks is because they're built to last and eat hundreds of thousands of miles; this assumption might be outdated, however.

<comment><USER26> The 100,000 mile cliff is disappearing now. Build quality of American cars rose rapidly in the mid-2000s - for example, Ford repair rate declined nearly 50 percent between 2004 and 2009[1].

I remember reading somewhere that this was driven by accounting improvements that arose from the Enron scandal but I can't find the source now.

[1] [http://www.leftlanenews.com/ford-reduces-warranty-costs- by-1...](http://www.leftlanenews.com/ford-reduces-warranty-costs-by-12b.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Car theifs might now be busy stealing smartphones. Easier done with better insentives maybe.

</comment><comment><USER28> Funny - it's pretty easy to steal new BMW's these days!

</comment><comment><USER29> In Dublin Ireland it's actually getting way more popular.

<comment><USER30> More popular or more visible?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Damn I need to lock up my 1996 Honda Accord!

</comment><comment><USER32> 30x less stolen cars in New York? Im sure Police car crime department got reduced in size, right?

RIGHT?

<comment><USER33> Didn't actually read the article, did you?

"And the decline in thefts has freed up the 85 detectives and supervisors of New York's auto crime division to focus on stopping organized car theft rings, the sorts of operations that actually have the ability to make coded keys for newer cars."

<comment><USER34> So those 85 detectives and supervisors, formerly working on auto crime, now work on auto crime -- a subset of auto crime to be precise.

The grandparent's comment has merit. Government has stayed exactly the same size.

<comment><USER33> ...while working on something with larger impact, apparently. Is the _size_ of the government the only indicator of efficiency?

<comment><USER35> The point is that if previously they had, say, 85 people with 30 working on organized car theft rings and 55 on random single thefts; then a reasonable result of a tenfold decrease in random thefts would NOT be 80 people on organized car theft rings and 5 on random single thefts but instead 40 on the organized crime (if it has increased), 5 on the random thefts, and 40 people moved away from the car crime, either to something different within the police or laid off to make budget for other useful things such as medicine or public transportation.

Demand for various niches of gov't service will change, that's a given. When it's not enough, bad stuff is visible, voters complain and service gets increased. What happens when the demand falls, as it has in this case? We need an ability to reduce the size as well.

<comment><USER33> Fair point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> 'You wouldn't download a car' <\- hell yes I would!

</comment><comment><USER37> Is this native advertising?

> One of the factors that keeps car theft going in the United States is the > reliability of old Hondas. Eventually, mid-1990s sedans should become too > old to be worth stealing at all, but that hasn't happened yet. "They keep > running," said Mr. Morris, and therefore they keep being stolen.

<comment><USER14> To be honest, "our cars are very reliable but they're likely to get stolen" isn't very good advertising, :p.

<comment><USER38> But "our cars are very reliable and no longer very likely to get stolen" is.</comment></comment></comment>


Why there are mysterious giant barcodes across the US [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMe-xF2sRd4 <comment><USER2> "Aerial camera calibration targets".

Saved you a click.

<comment> half-kh-hacker Thanks - I despise this format of "let's explain a two-paragraph concept in a five-minute long video" where the text is ungodly slow to change and there's random highlighting of words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The Google Earth imagery is really smooth. Really impressed with how far its come.

<comment><USER4> I wish it had a satilite only mode though. Satalite data is updated /way/ more often (twice a month or so for many places.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> [audio unnecessary] -- in case that helps to watch it (it often does for me).

But /u/_jamesA_ has the right of it: the TL;DR is "aerial camera calibration targets".</comment>


Google Walkout Organizers Explain Their Demands - <AUTHOR> https://www.thecut.com/2018/11/google-walkout-organizers-explain-demands.html <comment><USER2> Primary discussion here- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18352275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18352275)

</comment><comment><USER3> Farcical</comment>


Where Have the Great Programmers Gone? - <AUTHOR> http://vanemden.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/where-have-all-the-great-programmers-gone/

<comment><USER2> In any discussion of this sort, I am reminded of an essay by Stephen Jay Gould on baseball. His question, in essence, was "Where Have the Great Players Gone?"

His answer was that in the beginning there was a huge range of skills between players, so those with the best skill easily stood out. But over time, as the game matured, the variation diminished. There were more and more really good people, so the difference between them and the best in the field diminished.

Gould's explanation can be applied to any complex new field which undergoes maturation. For example, it also answers the question "Who is the Einstein of our time", by saying there are many people who are better at physics than Einstein; so many that they don't stand out.

The author of this essay conjectures "the current educational environment militates against the discovery and nurturing of programming talent." I disagree. The 'current educational environment' means there are so many well- trained people that the exceptional and self-taught people do not stand out so much.

As supporting evidence, the teaching of mathematical physics and of baseball have not seriously changed in the last 50 years, so the author's hypothesis cannot apply to those fields, while Gould's hypothesis does. Hence Gould's has more explanatory power.

It may be that the 'current educational environment' is at fault, but there is insufficient evidence for that hypothesis in the essay.

<comment><USER2> Here's Gould describing "The Disappearance of 0.400 Hitting" - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZBh2ZbEo0I></comment></comment>


Fidelity strikes back at view that passive index funds beat active managers - <AUTHOR> http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/03/23/fidelity-strikes-back-view-that-passive-index-funds-best-active-managers/LymmN1HtKaMA1InLFVmUzO/story.html <comment><USER2> So, which one do I pick to that it will beat the index fund after fees going forward? Oh, wait. it's not obvious. guess I'm back to index funds.</comment>


Help, I'm Trapped in Facebook's Absurd Pseudonym Purgatory - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/06/facebook-real-name-policy-problems/ <comment><USER2> I support people leaving Facebook forever. Facebook is selling you as the product, and does not care about making your life easier or better, or making it easier to connect with friends and family.

I agree with the article's stance on how Facebook enables stalkers to stalk their victims, and the very nature of Facebook makes it easy for them to do that.

If you are at risk of such things, please do not have a Facebook account. With the example of being homosexual in a country where the punishment is death, foreign governments may be able to use Facebook to find you due to any number of security issues that have existed, exist currently, and will exist in the future, so please, just stay off Facebook altogether.

<comment><USER3> People who say this don't have a lot of friends, or don't care about their friends. Participating in facebook's quagmire is the only way to keep in touch with some people.

It sucks, but it's true. You can argue with the ideological purity of it all you want, but it boils down to the fact that you must choose between purity, and staying in touch. Period.

<comment><USER4> I deactivated my facebook account and I manage to keep in touch with my family and close friends from school and college using Whatsapp alone. I don't pretend like I won't miss out on some cool interactions, or miss out on important updates but for the most part it works pretty ok.

<comment><USER5> That just exchanging the kettle for the pot. Hell, whatsapp IS owned by Facebook...

<comment><USER4> That's true, but I think of it like this. Computers are much better at processing metadata rather than data - its easy to draw inferences when you press a "like" button or click a link.

With Whatsapp, they have data (text of conversations) and some metadata (who I'm talking to often) but its much harder to draw inferences from that. I don't see any ads, and my behaviour isn't tracked. With Android M, I'll strip it of all extra permissions like location and microphone, further boosting my privacy.

tldr - Its a lot harder to monetise me on Whatsapp.

<comment><USER5> It is much easier.to get intelligence on you though (ok, same as if you used Facebook messages). Likes are random and nothing consistent. Your communication with peers can reveal everything though.

<comment><USER4> You're thinking from the perspective of a government operative (or another human) snooping through your data, in which case messages are more important. But most of our privacy is destroyed by computers sifting through the mountain of data that companies collect on us.

Your cellphone constantly broadcasts your location to your carrier and to Facebook and other apps, if you have them installed. If you analyse this data, it is possible to make out where you work, where your home is, where you like to hang out (and with who), and where you take vacations. Further, it is possible to identify a person uniquely from just 4 points of location data if you have a database of everyone's location data. As former NSA general counsel Stewart Baker said, "Metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody's life. If you have enough meta data you don't really need content."

For more uncomfortable and scary revelations like this, I recommend checking out Data and Goliath by Bruce Schneier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure why the author thinks Facebook should let her know who flagged the account.

After going on about how stalking and protection from stalkers is important, surely she should be able to realise that protecting the reporter's privacy is important to prevent any sort of retaliation (not saying the author would do this, however it should be a cornerstone of any reporting/flagging policy to keep the flagger/reporter confidential).

Besides, it might not have even been anyone she knows or knows well. 'Nads' is a pretty common slang term for male genitals so I can see why some random person might flag it as a fake name.

<comment><USER7> > I'm not sure why the author thinks Facebook should let her know who flagged > the account.

Isn't that Facebook's whole argument thought? You should be accountable for your actions in real life by using your real name on facebook? If pseudonyms are against their philosophy, being fully anonymous should be even worse.

<comment><USER8> I dont think so. Just like when you contact the feds to report something, they know who you are but you re sin anonymous to the person you're reporting.

And in any event, like it or not, anyone with tos can pretty much establish whatever tos they want within the bounds of the law. But again, I don't see a discrepancy.

On the other hand, as others will say, treat everything you say and do on fb as if it's broadcast and permanent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When this happened to me I just provided a fake (photoshopped) ID with my pseudonym and they accepted it.

<comment><USER10> Depending on your jurisdiction that is a criminal offence that carries a prison sentence.

<comment><USER11> Why are fake IDs criminal when the business is not legally required to check for identity? Is it because it's a government document? I'm just curious.

<comment><USER12> Arguably faking a government identification in any context is damaging to the credibility of that ID in any context. I still don't think it should be illegal, but the argument can be made rationally.

<comment><USER10> It's not uniquely illegal (at least in Germany). It's illegal for the same reason forging any document (for fraudulent purposes -- i.e. in 99% of all cases) is illegal: it misrepresents an authoritative claim.

It's not entirely unlike having a friend show up in a fake police uniform to vouch for you.

There are edge cases like art or educational purposes, but using a fake ID to prove your identity to a third party is definitely fraudulent: you're saying "this authority attests that this is my identity" when the authority in question does nothing of the sort and the document claiming it does is forged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I share this problem. They locked me out until I changed it or proved it.

In The UK names are legally fluid. To the police you must tell them "the name by which you are known" not your birth certificate. So I can go to prison with less ID than I can post on Facebook.

I had used my old family name: McNutty and Facebook don't like that. Our family name was changed to Nutty and then Nutt as being Irish was a negative (the Mc) and then Nutty was slang for crazy. But I have gone back to our roots.

So I changed it to an even faker name, similar in tone to Mike Hunt, in order to log in that day. But after I pressed "yes I'm sure" they said "thank you, please note: you will never be able to change it" so I am stuck with a stupid name. Hahaha joke's on them.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Our speech right (...) is expansive and it doesn't stop at (...) a website's > login page.

You don't have free speech rights in a private venue. If you invite me to dinner at your house and I insult your mother, you have every right to kick me out.

<comment><USER15> If the site is having a monopoly due to driving competitors illegally out of business (compare internet.org, 0.facebook.com), then the site is automatically treated like a governmental monopoly, meaning it can be legally forced to secure people's rights similar to a governmental institution.

Same reason why the EU can have such strict laws about Google.

The author should just go to the EU, here the author would have a better chance at succeeding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've just had a similar problem with Quora. My surname is "Wildgoose". It happens to be one of the oldest English surnames from when people were given names after animal attributes. Geese were guard animals, and I have an ancestor known for his wariness.

And so Quora demanded I stop using "David Wildgoose" and insisted I use my real name. Which it is, of course.

Appeals pointing out that animal names were common and giving well known examples like Ryan Gosling and Michael J. Fox got me nowhere and so I told them to delete my account.

Only then did they relent and accept I was using my real name.

</comment><comment><USER17> The article critique Facebook on free speech grounds, and yet when people on the political right bring up free speech, they are direct to this [0] cartoon. So which is it? Are big companies going to be bound be free speech requirements that allow right wing free speech, or are we going to define a new notion of freedom that includes the right to be transgender but excludes the right to express right wing opinions.

[0] [https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)

<comment><USER11> If I understand what you're saying, that's an interesting point. With a smaller government and less regulation, corporations tend to have more influence over your day to day freedoms. When there isn't much choice or variety when it comes to picking corporations - such as your choice of online social network - then sometimes it doesn't mean very much that in theory the governments grant you much more freedom.

<comment><USER17> Yes, that was one part of the point I was making. The other is that the left want to have it both ways. They want to argue that because of the point you made, corporations have a duty to provide the same kind of freedoms that governments are required to allow in public forums. On the other hand, when right wingers are censored by corporations, they deny that there is any duty for a private corporation to provide a venue for people to express speech that the corporation doesn't allow.

EDIT: e.g. jjaredsimpson's downvoted comment would probably not be downvoted if this article was about a "racist" post being removed from facebook.

<comment><USER11> I don't really think "the left" and "the right" are useful categories, unless you want to talk about people who don't think for themselves, which granted is a lot of people. I think it's perfectly acceptable to demand that some kinds of speech be allowed on Facebook and the rest prohibited - Hacker News functions well enough with restrictions on speech - but it's a total misunderstanding of the legal system in the US to demand it under the first amendment. And to say that the first amendment applies in one case but not the other is hypocritical, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Personally, I agree that real name policies are not a good idea. Fixing the problems with using real names is a better idea, though often not easy.

</comment><comment><USER19> Anyone can use as many pseudonymous Facebook accounts as they want, if they're willing to spend enough money. Most simply, they can pay employees, consultants, homeless people, etc, etc. Or they can buy fake identities wholesale, including documentation. And those are the folks who arguably do the most damage on Facebook: spammers, scammers, etc, etc. Funny, isn't it?

</comment><comment><USER20> My girlfriend can't use her real name on Facebook that is because she is trying to hide from her crazy father in law and his rapist son, who raped her when she was 3! This is crazy, she can't feel safe on Facebook because of there stupid real name requirement crap! Now NO accounts can be made without an ID being required to be submitted.

</comment><comment><USER21> I have opened so many fake accounts on facebook (to test things in apps) and had no problems that I can't believe they care very much about fake accounts. It seems like: its ok to have a fake account to juice traffic, but please don't be obvious about it.

</comment><comment><USER22> Remember kids, if you're not paying for the product, you _are_ the product.

</comment><comment><USER23> Eh, you want to use a free service and get mad when they dictate terms.

This is why I don't use Facebook as a primary online presence. I don't give them all my data, and locations, and relationships, and baby pictures, etc.

Author is just making a play at getting special treatment if her whiny article goes viral.

Don't depend on things you don't control.

<comment><USER24> If people didn't depend on things they didn't control, the economy would probably collapse and we'd all be hunters and gatherers again.

<comment><USER11> Well said. Also, there would be no interpersonal relationships.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've never used my real name on Facebook. I suspect most people have at least one fake name account.

<comment><USER26> I don't think _most_ people have multiple Facebook accounts.

<comment><USER11> I don't think most people have even one Facebook account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't think FB is infallible in its policies and service implementation; for example, I think Eric Meyer was 100% on point with his (very calm and empathetic) essay, "Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty" [1]

That said, while I don't think the OP is wrong to feel upset or worried, but what she wants can be done without equal unintended negative consequence. A couple things stuck out:

1\. _When Facebook took one user's pseudonym away, an abuser showed up to events that person had RSVP'd to before the name was changed_

2\. _Perhaps the most frustrating part of this is that the person who flags your account is afforded more privacy than you are. Even when it's a matter of personal safety, Facebook will not reveal the accuser._

\</comment><comment>-----

1\. This is easy: don't RSVP for public events. Or don't do so in such a way that requires Facebook. Though I concede that there _may_ be some events that logistically require Facebook login (through some 3rd party service, like Eventbrite)...I guess, don't go to those? Or privately call the event? Either way, the OP describes a drastic situation in which a stalker is so committed that he/she kept searching for the victim, even after early searches returned no results (because the victim had a pseudonym). OK, besides the possibility that, just maybe, the situation has elevated to the point where police should be involved...the more disturbing part is that the victim thinks a pseudonym is sufficient security-through-obscurity. No. Just _no_. If you have a pseudonym, and you insist on using a recognizable photo, and just a few of your friends have their profile public enough to show listed friends...then a committed stalker has everything they need to find you.

2\. And this is an easier objection to rebut: the OP sees no downside to Facebook exposing the identities of accusers? _Really?_

[1] [http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2014/12/24/inadvertent- alg...](http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2014/12/24/inadvertent-algorithmic- cruelty/)</comment>


Justice Dept wants NSA phone records kept longer - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/justice-dept-wants-to-keep-phone-records-longer/2014/02/26/d5bf3eb2-9f22-11e3-878c-65222df220eb_story.html

<comment><USER2> using NSA in the title on HN submissions will make sure your post will never take off and gain traction: [http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news- ranking-really...](http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking- really-works.html)</comment>


Autism and Asperger's Syndrome: The 'Little Professors' (2008) - <AUTHOR> https://h2g2.com/edited_entry/A10450694 <comment><USER2> If you like this, then you may be interested in Pathological Demand Avoidance, an autism profile characterised by better social skills relative to other people with autism but a lot of anxiety around the everyday demands of life.

It's increasingly being recognised in the UK, but is only just beginning to spread abroad. (I haven't yet been diagnosed, but I believe that this describes me exceptionally well.)

Article: [https://www.autism.org.uk/about/what- is/pda.aspx](https://www.autism.org.uk/about/what-is/pda.aspx) Book: [http://amzn.eu/d/fPCq5LU](http://amzn.eu/d/fPCq5LU)

<comment><USER3> Genuine question and not a dismissal - what makes this a form of _autism_ , of all things? Plenty of people who are generally considered NT are indeed anxious, sometimes to an extreme and pathological extent. And it's only natural for anxiety to center on demands of some sort that may have been placed on the individual.

<comment><USER2> A very reasonable question, and there is still some controversy over that in the medical community.

For me, it's because it comes with a whole host of classically autistic symptoms like struggling with eye contact, overload from sensory processing, difficulty understanding social norms, etc, but only at times when I'm stressed or otherwise in a low energy mood. I also had to put a lot of effort into learning other people's social norms - my intuitive ones were different in ways which seem similar to other people on the autism spectrum - but unlike some forms of autism, I have been able to learn the rules of neurotypical people to the point that you probably wouldn't be able to tell I was autistic if you met me. I still find a lot of these rules utterly bizarre.

<comment><USER4> > I still find a lot of these rules utterly bizarre.

Like what?

<comment><USER5> Not the person you replied to, but his description resonates with me too, so I can help explain.

One of the ones that bothers me constantly is the "buffer" of small talk that (particularly American) culture forces on us.

For instance: We work together. You have a pencil sharpener. I need to sharpen my pencil.

My preferred way of handling this situation: Hey Mike, can I borrow your pencil sharpener for a minute?

Now, this is OK in American culture, but ONLY IF you've spoken to each other recently. (I had to learn this the hard way.)

If you haven't, the conversation has to go like this:

Me: Hey Mike. Got a minute?

You: Sure. What's up?

Me: I was wondering, could I borrow your pencil sharpener really quick? I have this pencil I need to sharpen.

(And you should always insert a reason there; see [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain- wise/201310/th...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain- wise/201310/the-power-the-word-because-get-people-do-stuff))

If you don't insert this social "fluff", you come across as rude.

Where this social buffer comes naturally to most people, I get frustrated and annoyed by it. I just want to borrow the dang pencil sharpener and get back to work!

I have come to understand I don't resemble neurotypicals when it comes to this interaction (and it is likely that many others here on HN are not neurotypical either.) NTs enjoy this fluff, and it helps them feel connected to each other. When I don't play by their rules, I'm viewed as cold and callous.

So...I play by their rules, because even though I'm not NT in this way, I still have basic human needs of wanting to feel loved and desired, and I don't want to upset other people.

<comment><USER3> > If you don't insert this social "fluff", you come across as rude.

Isn't this a bit overstated? I'm pretty sure that you could _also_ use bog- standard politeness markers (like, "could you please", "I would really appreciate it", "sorry about asking") and so on and so forth. (You might then come across as being a bit formal and old-fashioned, but certainly not rude!) The underlying motivation in both cases is that you need to make it very clear that you're _not_ issuing an outright _demand_ \- and you do this by making it easy for Mike to say no (for any reason or no reason!) and providing plausible deniability. There are things that are closer to "fluff" in other contexts, but even they have their own explanation.

<comment><USER2> I think you might be right. But autistic people may find it difficult to determine these underlying motivations, I think because neurotypical people only intuit them because their instinctive preferences happen to line up with other peoples. If an autistic persons instincts don't give them the same reaction, then it will not be obvious to them that other people will have that reaction (unless they have learnt that this is a common reaction that people have). It can be easy to end up with an overzealous rule, to be on the safe side.

If the justification for something is stated in terms of something that also isn't important to or felt by the autistic person (for example politness), then it can be difficult to be sure what does or does not transgress the social rule.

<comment><USER3> It's more about culture than neurotype. There's nothing in human nature itself or in human instincts that says "people will feel uncomfortable when refusing something that a stranger of _equal_ social rank is asking of them, _unless_ they have been provided with plausible deniability". It's a feature of our current (Western) culture. And since autism tends to come with issues relating to general intercultural competence, it's no wonder that someone who's autistic would have trouble picking this up. But so would any non-native in the relevant cultural context!

<comment><USER2> This seems like a reasonable interpretation. People from other cultures may also be excused from cultural norms to some extent as people understand that they don't have the context. And I've definitely gotten very good at politely diffusing situations where I've accidentally crossed social boundaries (I have more problems when I take moral issue with the social norm, and thus am unwilling to go along with it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm somewhat familiar with 'homeschooling', and I wonder if a lot of the problems described in the article re: social integration could be mitigated with a one-on-one education where a parent is working with the child. Since it seems like a lot of the issues described came out of a (for the child) hostile learning environment.

(yes, I know this is not always practical)

<comment><USER7> Isolating that "weird kid" with homeschooling is not going to have any kind of positive effect on their social integration.

How do you expect someone to even hope to learn about social norms if they aren't exposed to them? Especially when most of these wishy washy, unspoken social rules are learned entirely through observation and practice?

Yes, you need coaching, but the bottom line is that no one is going to pick up on social norms to the point of "passing" without being exposed to them regularly. Unfortunately that means lots of fruitless anxiety in those of us who cannot learn such norms, but one must understand that avoidance is not a valid solution to the core problem of social difficulty.

<comment><USER8> "Isolating that "weird kid" with homeschooling is not going to have any kind of positive effect on their social integration."

I think the image in your head is that home schooling means the person is completely separated from the society.

Which probably is not the case. I mean, you can have hobbies, go to shopping, the library, etc. You just don't need to follow the school program which might be a really painful daily experience. Bullying is not unheard of - this is something which a normal person really does not need to suffer outside of school. In normal life you can just avoid the person, so learning to suffer bullying and being the victim is not helpfull at all.

The mental anguish a non-neurotypical person can have in a school without any attention to his or her special needs is a consideration as well.

If the environment is supportive, and the kid seems to handle it ok, then sure, regular school is just fine.

But aspie kids can be so different (my sons teacher said she had never met a kid like this) that they really are hard to understand.

Basically school is programmed so that the kids exhibit certain neurotypical behaviour patterns. The most important of these is the inborn need for social cohesion - which asperger kids can totally lack. Hence, when they should do X, and everyone else is doing it, they don't understand why they should do something just because. And then they get negative feedback, which lead to stress.

They can have sensory sensitivity for light, sounds or touch, which can put them on the edge. Social pressure and unexpected events can the push them over the edge leading to meltdown, which is a total shitshow for all relative parties.

There are so many things that normal kids take for granted that can be so difficult with a child on the asperger spectrum.

My son is such a person - he is on the fifth grade, the school has adapted, but boy has it been challenging occasionally. I don't question at all if parents decide to homeschool their asperger kids.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's been a while since I've read something this good

<comment><USER9> Yes, it's a surprisingly good article. Dredging through the "conversations" at the bottom, I was surprised to find that the author _disclaimed_ that it was all based on personal experience.

I also found mention of the original title: "The Little Professors: A vibrant hue in the Autistic rainbow". Not that it should be changed to this (apparently it was very shortlived) but it's a nice image.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> [2006]

<comment><USER11> Do you dismiss the General Theory of Relativity because [1915]?

edit: my apologies, I read this as a dismissal but it looks to be an HNism - carry on good sir!

<comment><USER10> No worries. They updated to choose the revised 2008 date instead, which is good enough. It's also interesting to note that it's easy to ascribe negative intent to entirely [helpful and] descriptive statements. I've done this before too. A Jerry Springer Learning moment, perhaps! This is quite a common ape attribute that it is worth practising not doing. Instead: 'if in doubt, assume good and helpful intent' makes for a useful rule of thumb.

<comment><USER11> Hear, hear - lesson learned!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A five-million-acre alien world - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20160630-like-nowhere-else-on-the-planet <comment><USER2> ___Help BBC Worldwide (International Site) We 're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly- owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital activities at www.bbcworldwide.com.

Do you need further help? If you need help with something else, please see our fully searchable FAQs. If you can't find what you're looking for, you'll be able to contact us from there._ __

And we have most absurd DRM award winner ever. And no way to see the article at all. That is even worse than a paywall.

<comment><USER3> The article is 10 photos taken in/of Oregon.

This is the first photo [http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/1600_900/images/l...](http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/1600_900/images/live/p0/40/mk/p040mk2n.jpg)</comment></comment>


Show HN: A UI for headless Chrome, works like Browser, runs in Docker - <AUTHOR> https://hub.docker.com/repository/docker/dosyago/browsergapce <comment><AUTHOR> This has been updated to now run on Docker.

For original discussion, see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21561613](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21561613)</comment>


Ask HN: JavaScript Proposal – Algebraic Effects? - <AUTHOR> Hey guys, I'm writing a Babel plugin to be able to use algebraic effects in JS https://github.com/macabeus/js-proposal-algebraic-effects
No more function color! Yes one-shot delimited continuation!
What the hell?! Well... I really recommend that you read this blog post by Dan Abramov explaining algebraic effects - and how it could be very useful on our JavaScript code: https://overreacted.io/algebraic-effects-for-the-rest-of-us/
This project is a runnable POC with a Babel's "plugin", so you could write some code and taste this new concept in JavaScript. Its features, syntax, and goals are very inspired by Dan Abramov's blog post mentioned above. In short, with algebraic effects, you could separate what from the how and have fewer refactors.
What do you think? Would that be a good feature for JS? <comment><USER2> So instead of requiring the callee to be async or not you have to make sure your caller is executing in the right effect handler context? Sounds like we replaced the coloring problem with another one? I can see how it benefits the language designer because you could implement try catch and async with this but how does it benefit the user?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. We need to ensure that we have a handler to catch the effect (there is an issue about that: [https://github.com/macabeus/js-proposal-algebraic- effects/is...](https://github.com/macabeus/js-proposal-algebraic- effects/issues/8))

For user, it could be useful to separate _what_ from the _how_. For example, we could have a function that launches effects to manipulate the file system, and for test/mock purpose we could catch this effects with handlers that mock the file system.

I know that the pattern dependency injection solve the same problem, but with effects you could do it with a more natural code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Since JS lacks a static type system, isn't it a bit misleading to call these "algebraic" effects, when algebraic is referring to the type system? I'm still not clear where the "algebraic" part comes in here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe the name "algebraic effect" isn't good enough... What name you think that could fit better?

<comment><USER4> I think this is just a (limited) version of Lisp's conditions and restarts ([https://wiki.c2.com/?CommonLispConditionSystem](https://wiki.c2.com/?CommonLispConditionSystem), [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule)).

So, I would call these conditions and restarts.</comment></comment></comment>


Symbology, APL, and Chinese Python - <AUTHOR> http://clouddbs.blogspot.com/2010/09/symbology-apl-and-chinese-python.html

<comment><USER2> Python only has about 30 keywords, and the English meaning only helps on some of them. Words like 'lambda' or 'raise' are not immediately intuitive. Translations of function names like raw_input are nice, but you can do that no matter what the base language's keywords look like, and I challenge you to find simple symbols for every built in function, like divmod, help, oct, memoryview, unicode, buffer, delattr.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes doing the keywords is one thing, the built-ins another, and harder as well. But given the success logic and mathematics has had with remaining largely symbolic, and the mathematical nature of python, it might be at least an interesting exercise.</comment></comment>


The percentage of open source code in proprietary apps is rising - <AUTHOR> https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2018/05/22/open-source-code-security-risk/ <comment><USER2> At first I thought they were looking at signatures of compiled code looking for signs it was written in open source.</comment>


Man lands job with $6 Google campaign - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/05/14/google.job/index.html?hpt=Sbin

<comment><USER2> I think that the idea behind his ad campaign was brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER3> Direct link to his site with video:

<http://www.alecbrownstein.com/project.php?cat=3>

<comment><USER4> Am I reading that correctly?

Did this guy previously write and direct a Superbowl ad (the "Doritos" link on that page)? And he still had to resort to this kind of trick to get an interview? It's a clever trick, but how many people have something like that on their resume?

Perhaps that ad didn't really run on the Superbowl broadcast but just a concept? Production values are lower in that video than most Superbowl ads.

<comment><USER5> I believe Doritos takes entries from a bunch of amateur producers for their Superbowl ads, and then shows the ones that get the most votes.

So that ad may not have actually ever aired.</comment></comment></comment>