AWS IAM is having issues again - <AUTHOR> https://status.aws.amazon.com/# <comment><USER2> Nobody got fired for buying AWS! I would be axed in two seconds if my home grown, self hosted IAM solution crashed for 2 minutes

<comment><USER3> Presumably the problems you are solving are different from the problems that are being solved with this thing. I have never worked at a place where I'd be fired for downtime (even customer-visible downtime) of two minutes. I don't think I ever will.

<comment><USER2> Hehe. It's a good management team you have there then :) My current shop is as political as can be-- flush with money but still cutthroat as ever

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Discussion in earlier post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24498678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24498678)</comment>


Baltimore police face changes after blistering report - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/08/10/baltimore-police-face-changes-after-blistering-report/88508492/ <comment><AUTHOR> From another article, 410 individuals with black skin were controlled more than 10 times in 5 years, while no other color of skin was controlled more than 12 times. In 26 out of 27 cases, it didn't lead to any further investigation.</comment>


SmugMug: Investing in a speedy site pays off for users - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/2007/05/15/speed-matters/ <comment><USER2> """I can do a follow-up post on lots of the tricks we use to get there."""

Hey, that would be great.</comment>


Ethereal Email – A fake SMTP service - <AUTHOR> https://ethereal.email/ <comment><USER2> Not trolling, but why would any developer need a service like this? Isn't that what Mocking frameworks and Interfaces (Interface driven design) are for?

Ex: I would create an interface called IMailService with the operations like Send etc, and once my application is ready, just swap the concrete implementation of the MailService class with the one that talks to the real mail service using Dependency Injection.

If it's not for developers, who would use something like this?

<comment><USER3> We use mailcatcher[0] on our sandbox server so that product and QA can test email features in a live environment. Mailcatcher was a drop in replacement with our existing codebase. No need to add in additional business logic specific for testing or have to write our own interface to expose the "sent" emails.

[0] [https://mailcatcher.me/](https://mailcatcher.me/)

<comment><USER4> Yep. Mailhog is another good one.

For staging environments I like Mailtrap.io because it's a cleaner interface for non-devs.

<comment><USER3> You get what you pay for :). mailcatcher is OSS and self hosted. Mailhog definitely looks prettier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you are using /usr/sbin/sendmail style delivery, for example via the built- in postfix implementation on macOS and many linux-like systems, it's fairly easy to configure postfix to rewrite absolutely everything to go to your own email address. This can be quite helpful during development, because not only do you get to see the emails as they are delivered, but you can also worry less about sending development emails out to random addresses around the world. (Look into "recipient_canonical_maps")

<comment><USER6> You need the destination address to not run dkim spf or dmarc on the forwarded emails with rewritten destinations.

I came across this when forwarding everything to gmail. Gmail is smart enough to accept this for mail originally destined for an address you enabled as "send from". However, mail sent to e.g. firstname.lastname@example.com will fail the checks and never be delivered.

<comment><AUTHOR> Gmail is great for an occasional test email but it starts rate limiting pretty fast when trying to send many messages to a single account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My team uses mailcatcher, also, but (partly) for reasons I've not yet seen mentioned:

Our primary application allows us to safely import recent dumps of the production databases into select CI systems, of which some tables have user records with real email addresses for report sending, etc.

In the case that the code which sanitizes these records misfires or otherwise fails to do its job, at least we won't send random emails to actual customers. I know we've all gotten those from a vendor at one time or another and it's a corporate level face-palm that's worth the extra effort to avoid. Belts & suspenders, defense-in-depth, and all that.

</comment><comment><USER8> We always use MailTrap for our projects. It's a fake SMTP server with a webbased inbox. Nothing to install, you just have to configure some SMTP credentials in your applications. [https://mailtrap.io/](https://mailtrap.io/)

</comment><comment><USER9> If the developer is reading: you probably shouldn't tell your users to click banner ads, if I recall correctly that's grounds for termination:

"8. How is this sustainable Ethereal Email service is funded by the ads displayed on Nodemailer.com. So don't forget to click on these banners!"

</comment><comment><USER10> Funny. Just today I needed a locally hosted version of this and came across: [https://mailcatcher.me](https://mailcatcher.me)

So far my experience has been good. I get to work on some email sending code on a wifi-less airplane.

</comment><comment><USER11> I recently learned of MailDev

[http://danfarrelly.nyc/MailDev/](http://danfarrelly.nyc/MailDev/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I also recommend MailHog[0]. I've had nothing but good experiences with it, and it was dirt simple to install.

[0] [https://github.com/mailhog/MailHog](https://github.com/mailhog/MailHog)

<comment><USER13> Dirt simple? You must be dead poor. :-P

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like Papercut better. It runs on your own machine and you can configure forwarding rules in case you want to test e-mail on other clients like Outlook or GMail. The interface is simple and clean.

</comment><comment><USER15> Big fan of [https://mailtrap.io](https://mailtrap.io)

</comment><comment><USER16> I want to know if there are any httperf/seige like tools for email. I would love to blast my server with 100k valid & invalid emails and see how it does.

</comment><comment><USER17> There's also Mailinator - Web & API [https://www.mailinator.com](https://www.mailinator.com)

</comment><comment><USER18> Also [https://letterb.in](https://letterb.in) which also has an API if it's handy to anyone.

</comment><comment><USER19> How is this better than using smtp-sink that comes with postfix?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ethereal allows to generate new testing accounts via an API. Every account is a full featured IMAP/POP3 mail store with the condition that all emails expire after 7 days from the account.

<comment><USER19> Fair enough. I only ask because email testing should be able to run in an isolated test network. Perhaps dovcot+postfix in a container may be too much work for some folks.</comment></comment></comment>


My favorite regex of all time - <AUTHOR> http://www.catonmat.net/blog/my-favorite-regex/ <comment><USER2> As someone who makes much of his living rehabilitating old perl scripts, please, if you must use such things, use them like this:

[ -~] #match only printable characters

It takes 5 seconds longer and with regexes, just knowing what the damn thing is trying to do is half the battle. When you use a regex, use a comment. Its the civil thing to do.

<comment><USER3> Google is by far the best "comment"

<comment><USER4> Are you saying people should google regular expressions? in my experience (correct me if I'm wrong) that doesn't work, I've never been able to get google to return relevant results even with quotation marks.

<comment><USER3> I'm saying that usually comments are either wrong or out of date, developers code one regex, comment it, then fix a bug later and don't, then there's a discrepancy between the comment and the code. It's nearly always easier to just google the code and see what it does, if (as in this case) it's not obvious.

<comment><USER5> Your response doesn't address what citricsquid said, googling for a regex will almost never return helpful results.

<comment><USER3> Google regex and you'll find plenty of resources including tools to testing patterns. You won't find much for any specific pattern but read the docs and it will be apparent what this regex does. Familiariy and competence with regex is a basic component of being a developer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This will not only miss non-ascii printing characters, but it's not even much shorter than typing

      [[:print:]]

to use the explicit character class.

<comment><USER7> The [[:print:]] will match any printable characters like åä, while the [ -~] will not.

I used this once as another safeguard against pushing binary data into the database. It was a poor system to begin with where you even have that possibility... and it happened at least once before the fix and my safeguard was in place.

<comment><USER8> "å" is perfectly valid text input in my locale.

<comment><USER9> There will be situations where you need to check specifically for 7-bit ASCII printable characters only. I've worked with APIs that require everything outside that range to be escaped/encoded into it.

Email could be an example, I guess, although I haven't worked with it enough to know whether the whole "7-bits only" thing is still an issue these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit Jeepers... cut the guy some slack. He didn't say this is the bullet proof way of doing everything YOU want to do in all situations, every time, forever. He said "I thought I'd share my favorite regex of all time". And then explained what it does. Why does everyone have to poop on his favorite thing?

</comment><comment><USER10> My favorite regex is the following,

/^1?$|^(11+?)\1+$/

Which finds prime numbers. Although, I can't for the life of me think of a reason for using it.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3296050/how-does-this- reg...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3296050/how-does-this-regex-find- primes)

<comment><USER11> I do dislike people calling that expression a "regex", because it isn't: regular expressions cannot contain backreferences, and must be computable in linear time, whereas primality tests are polynomial.

<comment><USER12> I'm not a big fan of your explanation. To be more precise, true "regular expressions" are computationally equivalent to deterministic finite automata, which indeed can test an n-character string in O(n) time.

<comment><USER13> NFAs and DFAs both recognise the regular languages (and only them).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are people seriously still deliberately using ASCII-reliant code?

<comment><USER15> Every time I've had to deal with Unicode and internationalization, it's been a problem.

For example, a few years ago I grabbed a source tarball from somewhere, I forget what or where. It had the author's name in a comment, which included an O with dots over it. That was the only non-ASCII character in the source code. No matter what I did, both Eclipse and command-line javac refused to compile the source.

Finally I wrote a script to delete his name from every source file manually. It compiled flawlessly.

Then there's the time I found some text files with two characters of binary junk at the beginning, followed by completely normal text. Again, I forget what I was doing, but some program was refusing to process them correctly. It was something internationalization-related called the BOM. Eventually I ended up writing a script to walk a directory and remove the first two bytes of every file. (This can probably be done with dd and xargs on UNIX, but I was using Windows at the time, which means that something like this will require spending an hour or so in your favorite programming language.)

These experiences lead me to believe that, for bootstrapped USA startups at least, you shouldn't worry about a market outside the English-speaking world.

If you need to worry about junk like accented characters or moon runes (Chinese/Japanese/Korean characters), it means you're big enough to afford to hire someone specifically to address the problem.

<comment><USER8> I assume this is a not very subtle troll? Java source is unicode? (The offhand reference to dd and xargs is a bit too much).

How do you define "English-speaking world", btw? Those too ignorant to have heard of non-ascii-characters (ie: excluding Canada, as anyone doing business there should at least have heard of French)?

Anyway, for anyone actually burnt by something similar on a GNU system try looking up recode(1).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's clever, but it's also completely unreadable for anyone who didn't read this article. Regexes have serious maintainability issues as it is; let's not make it worse by putting clever tricks in them.

<comment><USER17> I don't understand why this is "completely unreadable".

What else could this have been besides match the character range from space to tilde?

<comment><USER18> Most people would have to check an ASCII table to know what that range is, though.

<comment><USER19> Which takes for granted the fact that your input stream is even ASCII to begin with. I'm too lazy to check, but I'm pretty sure this isn't going to catch all printable Unicode characters, for example - and then you're left scratching your head over what the hell the original author was trying to achieve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My favourite is this one: <http://www.ex-parrot.com/pdw/Mail- RFC822-Address.html>

<comment><USER21> Ah, this is my favorite also. If seeing this doesn't make you second guess using a RegExp when a parser is more appropriate, well...you might be a Perl programmer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This seems to be a T-shirt advert, why am I reading this on HN?

<comment><USER23> I'm sorry that it sounds like it. It's really not. I commented about it on this thread <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4775100>.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I suppose a single regex can be both "favorite" and "worst" at the same time... it's only slightly interesting to know where ~ appears in the ASCII character set, and while someone might recall that space is kinda near the beginning but after the control characters, is it the first helpful printable character? Who knows?

<comment><USER25> > I suppose a single regex can be both "favorite" and "worst" at the same > time...

We definitely aren't the only ones who appreciate horrible things.

INTERCAL comes to mind here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> My favourite regex is actually:

[^ -~]

Not to be used in a serious program, but only in an editor (or maybe one-shot data massage perl scripts), to find possible errors or unexpected stuff.

<comment><USER27> Also it's more interesting to put unprintable characters on a t-shirt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This works for ASCII only, use unicode character classes instead.

<comment><USER15> That only matters if you need to process Unicode.

See my comments [1] [2] [3] for why Unicode / internationalization should be avoided.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4369323>

[2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4541039>

[3] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4775440>

<comment><USER29> So, do you propose that u.s. bootstrapped startups have a disclaimer on the registration page saying: "you cannot put foreign characters anywhere in our system"?

Even if you focus on u.s., you will have problems. If you're doing a CRM, even u.s. users will put in foreign names from time to time. If you're building a CMS, users may want to put in a quotation in french, or will simply use copy&paste from Word, which replaces "-" with "—"...

I honestly have a hard time finding a u.s. centric startup which could afford to ignore unicode. The support requests, the fires caused by errors, and the disclaimer that you'd have to put on the registration page, would cost much more than simply learning how to code the f'n utf.

Building MVP is good practice in Lean. Saying "I'm bootstrapping hence I don't have the time to learn the programming tools" is just ignorance and incompetence. It's not like Unicode gives you extra work, it just requires you to learn a few basic concepts. If you try to build a site which doesn't support Unicode, you'll have to put a lots of safeguards everywhere to cover up for your incompetence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I like to use a variation of this in vim to quickly see if an html doc I'm working on contains weird characters that I might want to replace with &html; entities:

      /[^ -~]

</comment><comment><USER31> [\p{L&}] <\- unicode version, in case you were wondering.

<comment><USER8> No, you don't need '[' and ']' ? Also you don't need the '&' to get the equivalent of the above, but might have to add support for spaces?

      > \p{L} or \p{Letter}: any kind of letter from any language.

vs

      > \p{L&} or \p{Letter&}: a letter that exists in lowercase and uppercase variants (combination of Ll, Lu and Lt).

Along with:

      > \p{Z} or \p{Separator}: any kind of whitespace or invisible separator.

Considering the op matches everything printable, including whitespace (or actually just space, not tab), numbers and punctation, I think the equivalent would be "\X" ?

All this based on glancing at:

       http://www.regular-expressions.info/unicode.html

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wouldn't it be smarter, in that case, match something like [\x20-\x7F] (unsure if that's valid regex, but you get the point), it's more explicit that way, being very obvious about what characters are included, as well as immediately being clear (to me) about the intention of the character class. "0x20 to 0x7F" triggers the idea of "Printable ASCII" a lot sooner than <space> to <tilde>.

</comment><comment><USER33> what a plug - obviously the only real purpose of this was to sell those t-shirts.

<comment><USER23> I'm sorry that was not the purpose. I just wanted to share this regex trick that I had in my mind. I added the shirts only later when I saw that the article is getting very popular. People really seemed to like my previous tees and it's great to make a little extra money and continue doing what I love - coding and writing blog posts.

<comment><USER34> well obviously people are interested in it. Can't fault you for trying to make a little scratch

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Not all strings are ASCII! :-(

</comment><comment><USER36> Can anyone explain how this regex [- ~] matches ASCII characters ?

<comment><USER10> It's pretty simple. Assuming you know regex... Im going to assume you don't since you are asking.

The bracket expression [ ] defines single characters to match, however you can have more then 1 character inside which all will match.

      [a] matches a
      [ab] matches either a or b
      [abc] matches either a or b or c
      [a-c] matches either a or b or c.

The - allows us to define the range. You can just as easily use [abc] but for long sequences such as [a-z] consider it short hand.

In this case [ -~] it means every character between <space> and <tilde>, which just happens to be all the ASCII printable characters (see chart in the article). The only bit you need to keep in mind is that <space> is a character as well, and hence you can match on it.

You could rewrite the regex like so (note I haven't escaped or anything in this so its probably not valid)

      [ !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~]

but that's not quite as clever or neat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I don't want to be "that guy" and it's probably just my own stupidity, but what's so special about this for it to frontpage HN?</comment>


Mary livecodes a drum machine - <AUTHOR> http://drum-machine.maryrosecook.com <comment><USER2> Wow, this is great!</comment>


An Investor Wanted to Give Me $50,000. Here's Why I Said No - <AUTHOR> http://gutsybroads.com/2015/02/investor-wanted-give-50000-heres-said-no/ <comment><USER2> It might be hard for guys to believe that men would do something like this (except in the movies) but consider this:

Do you believe the stories of how many people fail the "fizzbuzz" test in interviews? Yes, as wild as the idea is, the phenomena is very real.

Not being an interviewer and not having any incompetent programmer friends it blew my mind that someone could be a developer for years and still not know how to code.

I've don't remember seeing sexism any place I've worked but being married to a female software developer opens your eyes - it's very real.

Just because as guys, we haven't experienced it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

<comment><USER3> I reread your post a few time but I'm a bit puzzled. Can you explain the connection between the fizzbuzz test, being a real developer, sexism and the article?

<comment><USER4> He's saying that just because you don't have first-hand experience with something, or can't fathom how something is possible, doesn't mean it can't happen.

<comment><USER2> Thank you ssharp, that's exactly what I was trying to convey.

<comment><USER5> Huh. I read your comment more as "you can be perceived as an expert in your trade and still suck at it." Groping a potential client's boobs is a clear sign of sucking at being a VC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _the next day, I sat down and wrote the investor an email. I told him that while we appreciated the offer, we were being very strategic about which investors to partner with. It felt pretty gutsy at the time..._

This doesn't seem gutsy to me; it seems downright timid. Now, I'm writing this from the position of not needing or wanting investment in my startup; but if you've decided to turn down an investor because he's a creep (which makes perfect sense to me), why not call him out on his behaviour?

Sending a polite reply about being strategic in how you select investors sends the message that you've selected against this guy because he's not a useful angel investor; the message he needs to receive is that you're selecting against him because he's _a crappy human being_.

<comment><USER7> It is not her job to fix him. Her job is making payroll.

<comment><USER6> I think it's _everybody 's_ job to take reasonable steps to prevent anyone else from experiencing the type of assault she describes.

<comment><USER7> In that spirit, let me take it upon myself to remind you not to heap additional responsibilities on victims of harassment. She wrote it up, which is already more than she owed the world.

<comment><USER6> I'm not trying to heap _additional_ responsibilities on victims of harassment. I'm just saying that I think there are certain responsibilities everybody has, whether they're victims or not. If one of her co-founders had been writing that email, I would have exactly the same comment.

<comment><USER7> None of her responsibilities involve sending "the message he needs to receive". _His needs_ are not material to the conversation. It is not her job to fix him.

<comment><USER6> I think we'll have to agree to disagree here. I have a more expansive view of "duty to society" than you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In a professional relationship, even the one-armed hug is crossing the line.

We have ritual patterns for opening business relationships. You can perform a symmetrical handclasp, pump twice, and release. You can do equal-depth bows, with hands at your sides, and then do a business card exchange ceremony. You can do the namaste gesture. You can, with the right sort of business, even pull off a fist bump.

But even adding another hand to the handshake is overly familiar, in my opinion.

If you're looking for a different sort of hook-up at an investment meet-up, you perhaps need to be pulled aside and informed that the dating events are held on a different night of the week. Just turning down the money is not sufficient.

It should be clear, "We decided to refuse your generous offer of investment because our company has a clear policy against sexual harassment, and it wasn't clear whether you wished to buy a portion of the business or a portion of a founder."

$50000 is not enough to hire an engineer when it comes from someone lacking basic business ethics. Professional employees do care where the money comes from, and if they figure out that the bankroll originates from assholes, the salary expectations will go up, your equity offers will be valued at zero, and their resume will never be removed from circulation. (Not that it would for a startup, anyway, but there's a difference between just keeping your eyes open and pre-planning the exit strategy.)

<comment><USER9> >it wasn't clear whether you wished to buy a portion of the business or a portion of a founder.

This is pretty unprofessional and unnecessarily aggressive. The email could simply say "We appreciated your offer, but you made one of our founders uncomfortable with your physical touching and we don't believe we'd have a productive professional relationship that started off in this manner. We understand if the touching was unintentional, but we must decline regardless."

It makes the same point, doesn't accuse him of doing anything intentionally, and is hopefully actually conducive to making him not do it in the future.

<comment><USER8> How much unprofessional and unnecessarily aggressive behavior would be necessary to warrant a response in kind?

An overly diplomatic response would only allow him to rationalize his own behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's worth noting that Dating Ring is YC W14, which is significant in light of Y Combinator's public stance on sexual harassment. ([http://blog.ycombinator.com/a-reminder-to- investors](http://blog.ycombinator.com/a-reminder-to-investors))

</comment><comment><USER11> This reminds me of my first ever job interview. I was enrolled in tech+management program at a decent university and as a part of the curriculum you're required to do an internship over summer. Our career counselor advised us to get informational interviews with people working in organizations we liked. Excited to learn about a particular organization and how they function , My class mate and I decided to schedule some time with a person in the senior management . After a few email exchanges We set a time for 3pm in the afternoon on a weekday. On said day my friend and I were waiting outside his lobby by 5 minutes to three to create a sincere impression. He wasn't in his office. As we waited for him to come , we chatted about how it would go and asked each other about a list of questions we had for him . I was slighty nervous as it was my first ever interview. He walked the corridor towards his office and As soon as the three of us made eye contact I introduced myself and my friend. The first thing immediately after that he said to me was "you reminded me of my ex wife Alicia, the mistake I almost made and how his current wife wouldn't like him telling me this". My mind was like what the hell is going on? Is this normal small talk. I was studying abroad so wasn't sure about the culture and it being my first interview in life didn't help either. I just let his comment slide and brought back the focus to his organization. He did end up offering us internships but i decided to work with someone else. He is since promoted to a more senior position in that organization. I just don't get why grown adult men behave in such ways.

</comment><comment><USER12> My wife is constantly getting comments at the hospital where she works about her looks. Mostly, these are from men, and mostly they are in the form of "Well, aren't you a pretty young thing." Now, most of them (though by no means all) are, it seems, trying to be nice. She works in cardiology, so she sees an older population so this behavior is not exactly surprising.

Now, yes it may be a compliment, but it is an unwelcome one because it does two things. First, it puts her on the spot. How do you respond to that in an appropriate and professional manner? What if they are straight up inappropriate? [1]. What if they are addressing another person in the room and not you directly? ("Wow doc, you have such pretty ladies taking care of me here!"). This is an extremely uncomfortable position to be in, and one that most men never experience.

Second, this diminishes her professional qualities. With more or less clarity, lots of these men say things like "you are so pretty, do you even know any medicine?". Some basically, say that straight up.

And the biggest problem with all this? These are incidental occurrences. If your boss pinches your bottom every day, you go to HR, complain and your boss gets to take sexual harassment training or gets fired. When patients make you uncomfortable, it's always a question of whether it's worth it to try to correct their behavior at the risk of being unprofessional. Remember, the patient can easily complain that you were rude to them. Make a habit of it, and like it or not but your job will be affected. This is especially bad since most of the people that make these comments don't even realize that they are making her uncomfortable, so to call them out on it would be even more of a shock.

[1] One particularly bad incident was when she asked a patient about his sexual function and he responded with "Well if you were my girlfriend, I wouldn't have any issues, trust me."

</comment><comment><USER13> Meta question, but why is pitch events located in bars? It is a place associated with dating, mixed with free booze, and apparently used as a place for professionalism and critical business decisions?

<comment><USER7> Professionals can go to an event in a bar (and, yes, even consume a drink in a bar) without sexually harassing people. The problem here isn't the environment. The problem is the culture.

<comment><USER13> There will always be people who commit crimes. However, people under the influence tend to do act slightly less professional than others, and as such, professional work place tend to have a ban against it. Drinking on the job is the firing offense in most place, and for a good reason.

A few conferences ago, I walk passed a drunk woman who turned around and hit me out of the blue. I could attribute that to conference culture, or I could attribute this to a woman who was so drunk she could barely stand and was talking to herself. If this had been at the work place, I would react very different, as in this case I just continued walking.

Bars and free alcohol is not something I associate with a place of professionalism. I am not sure why so many people try to combine the two, which is why I ask.

<comment><USER14> There's a marked difference between "drinking" and "being drunk". It's perfectly acceptable where I work to "have a beer", but I would fully expect to be, at least, reprimanded for anything more than that.

EDIT: It's a context thing. If I was in the middle of a difficult problem and wanted a little "mental lubricant", I don't think anyone would question it. Drinking for no reason, or when being even slightly tipsy could affect performance, makes for perfect grounds for punishment.

I understand the professionalism argument, but we're all adults here. If having a drink completely obliterates your sensitivities, you didn't have very many in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Honest question, but as a male, what can we do to stop this? I've seen much more subtle things in previous jobs that drive me nuts (men overtalking women in meetings, assigning lower tasks, etc..). It's usually not very overt and when I pick up on it, I usually try to help, but never know how far to go.

I'm sorry if I'm derailing the main topic, but after dating a female developer for a while now, I see things in a much different light. This stuff makes me sick; We always talk about how this is a collective industry problem.. but I'm left wondering what I can do about it personally when I see it.

<comment><USER8> As a male, nothing. I can no more end sexual discrimination at work than I can lower the deductible on the health insurance plan, or increase the match on the 401k. You need leverage to make change happen, and simply being male does not provide any.

The culture will not change without some form of advocacy group, such as a professional association or labor union. What you can do alone, as an individual, is to seek alternative employment in a better working environment. Or you could scuttle your career by filing a lawsuit for hostile working environment against your employer.

Edit: I can't quite tell if this post is being down-voted for being pro-union or anti-whiteknight, so to be clear, I intended it to be pro-union. Noble intentions are always praiseworthy, even if they are ultimately useless due to a lack of coordination with like-minded individuals.

<comment><USER16> I'm not quite sure how a professional association (which typically has little or no bargaining power with employers) or a labor union (which as a primary or secondary effect, makes it _harder_ to fire people, even shit people) would have helped here.

<comment><USER8> Can you explain how uncoordinated individuals could have helped, given that they have even less bargaining power, and many of them are "at-will" employees and can be fired for any reason, including having an opinion or being married to someone with an opinion?

The tactic does not have to be objectively good. It just has to be subjectively better than the status quo. If you can think of something that would be both, please share it.

<comment><USER16> I never said it would have helped, I'm simply saying I don't see how either of your two suggested solutions (a professional association or a union) could have.

I honestly don't see how at-will employment status has anything to do with a VC sexually assaulting a startup founder.

<comment><USER8> Ancestor post explicitly apologized for being slightly off topic in asking how an individual could effect change within the workplace.

Both professional associations and labor unions have historically been successful at influencing workplace conditions within their industries. While that does not guarantee a change for the better with respect to this particular issue, it does imply that such a change is possible. It seems odd to me that an apparent majority of employees agree that sexual harassment/discrimination is unacceptable behavior, and the industry still has a problem with it occurring. I suggest that is because those who oppose it lack the power to enforce their will upon their employers.

The other historically effective solution is lobbying for government legislation, but the bad behavior is already illegal when certain lines are crossed, and uniform enforcement is by no means guaranteed.

When a person with no money and no power elects to fight someone with both, he will lose, unless he can convince a lot of friends to stand with him. Employers and investors alike have the money advantage. How else would you counter that advantage, if not with superior numbers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not really sure why hugs would be given at an investor/pitching session, so maybe this is kinda moot, but I've certainly given a couple of half-hearted one armed hugs which turned into sideboob grazing and I definitely wasn't trying to feel the other person up. It's kind of like when you go to shake another person's hand and they grab your fingers instead of your palm and then it becomes a totally awkward handshake because you didn't get your hand in there far enough.

Anyway, I have no idea if this was the case, but you probably don't want to pillory someone unless you're absolutely sure the guy is a complete d-nozzle.

</comment><comment><USER18> These type of guys need to be named and shamed so they don't think they can simply get away with this behavior

<comment><USER19> I would definitely have given this an enthusiastic Yes a few weeks ago, but after reading the details of the Justine Sacco incident ([http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid- tw...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined- justine-saccos-life.html)) I am more reticent to start off with public outing. Of course what he did was unequivocally wrong; not saying anything else here. It would certainly have been appropriate to let the event organizers know, if not YC (if they weren't the same).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "while most one-armed hugs result in a hand resting politely on your ribcage"

I'm sorry? I would expect that any unsolicited hugs like thT could only result in a polite end to the conversation, rather than making a difference between ribcage and boob. In which world is it OK to hug someone you're supposed to have a business relationship with?

<comment><USER21> I've lived and worked in latinamerica for years now and I cannot imagine a scenario where one would hug or side hug a potential business partner. An existing business partner alright sure -- but one you're just meeting? I just can't picture it.

I mention this because latinamerica is much more relaxed socially than the US.

<comment><USER22> US male here. I've been hugged by many women I've just met at multiple events and conferences. I'm no male model, nor would I initiate a hug with someone I'd just met (or generally in a business context unless I knew them extremely well), however there seem to be a large number of women who are "huggers" and hug instead of a handshake.

Just saying this isn't a male-on-female only thing. Women do this on a pretty regular basis in my experience.

EDIT - In NO way defending groping, by any gender.

<comment><USER20> "Just saying this isn't a male-on-female only thing."

My point exactly -- I can't imagine myself allowing any potential business partner, male or female, giving me unsolicited hugs unless we knew each other for years. Note, this includes people I find attractive and might otherwise be interested in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Pretty screwed up but the NO is totally deserved -- nobody wants an investor like that.

(And there I was, prepared to discuss the benefits of VC vs bootstrapping)

</comment><comment><USER24> :(

Bugs me that this is a story in 2014/15\. You guys are awesome and shouldn't have to deal with this nonsense.

<comment><USER25> Nobody should have to deal with this nonsense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> News flash: all it takes to be an investor is money and time spent hanging around in the right crowds. You don't have to be particularly smart, savvy or even a good person.

It shouldn't shock people that any random scumbag with a few hundred grand in the bank can style themselves as an "angel" and get fawned over by the best and brightest entrepreneurs in the country. This type of dynamic will attract unpleasant types of people who pull these kinds of stunts. As an industry we should be more realistic about fund raising, and perhaps slightly more cynical about the types of people we're trying to pitch ideas to.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is a very sensitive issue, but frankly men will always try to hit on women. However, right now this is completely ignored. It looks like everyone is trying to sweep this under the carpet and hopes this way, sexism in tech will go away. It won't.

A major reason for that is, because right now, men are only told what is NOT okay, without telling them what IS okay. This makes a lot of men behave very strangely in towards women. Firstly, because they don't want to appear sexist for the woman's sake and secondly, because they don't want to be accused of sexual harassment. Women feel this and for that reason feel unwelcome in tech. It seems like no one tries to reference any gender study researxh even though this is such a huge problem in tech and is holding up our industry.

A way to solve this, would be starting to create an open culture about how men and women can work together in tech, NOT leaving out the whole dating aspect.

A first step into this direction would be to clarify what IS okay and not only what is NOT okay.

For instance, telling a woman she is gorgeous without asking for anything in return is okay. Then the woman can make up her mind if she is interested or not. This is how it works and it will happen anHowever, basing a business transaction on sexual favours is not tolerated.

This has to be more specific of course, however, the only guideline being "inappropriate behaviour won't be tolerated" is just not enough to solve sexism in tech and to get more women into tech.

<comment><USER9> >without telling them what IS okay

This issue I would have, if I weren't married and didn't have to worry about this, is that if you talk to enough women about "what is ok" you come to learn that nothing is. Talking to or interacting with a woman in any way, as a man, is not acceptable unless that interaction is wanted by the woman. And there's no way to know whether it is wanted since you can't read minds. Many women claim that they should have the right to be left alone and not talked to, even if someone is attempting to do it 100% out of friendliness because the woman has no way of knowing he's only being friendly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is not a way to change the industry or the world, and shows a lot of the courage she has (which is nothing).

There should be zero tolerance for these kind of things if we actually care about them, but see how she pretty much protects this person just because he has money.

You guys (people in power) make me sick.

</comment><comment><USER29> Great to hear you turned him down.

$50,000 for big a share? TBH $50,000 doesn't sound like that much money. I guess that doesn't even pay for one engineer year in NY?

<comment><USER30> Aren't investors supposed to be investing millions? Or are those "angel investors"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> For any man wondering what he can do about this: Keep your eyes and ears open.

I think a broken windows theory applies. Small comments can signify larger issues. Addressing small, offhand comments can help create a culture that doesn't tolerate this stuff.

I work alone, so I don't get many opportunities to have any impact on this kind of thing. But if you're in a group culture, you may be in daily contact with men who treat women poorly.

</comment><comment><USER32> That was the right decision. Not only because of the grotesque incident itself, but because it reflects very poorly on that guy's personality. One can only imagine how badly future interactions might have turned out, or what he would have done in retaliation if he encountered resistance.

</comment><comment><USER33> _People do this because (unfortunately for some) it works._

I am going to advance something here, but before I do this and offend many, let me first state clearly that this type of behavior is absolutely impolite.

Now the problem is not the investor, it is society in general. No man is going around dropping their pants hoping to be liked simply because it has never worked. That is to say if a man or woman touches another in a certain way, it is very likely that it is something that has worked in the past, and that continues to work for many.

I am just stating a fact here, and again apologies for offending anyone: you can go out nowadays meet people and sleep with them within hours of your very first interaction. I am not talking about a bar, I am talking about anywhere.

It goes further, many people who are in committed relationships (and I am not judging anyone) are openly flirtatious with co-workers.

The list goes on and on. So people see this, and follow accordingly.

When people see these things and do not stop to think is this right or wrong, they just follow suit.

In short men and women act this way because many other men and women allow it, and it works, and unfortunately those who do not like it end up being the offended.

Specifically to women: the mistake many make (at work) is to think they can act a certain with one person, and not expect other men to follow with their attempts.

My little advice is to behave in a way that tells everybody that this kind of behavior is not acceptable from the get go. Have your SAME limits set for everyone.

It is very sad that you have to do this, and unacceptable, but until both men and women understand what lines should not be crossed, you have to look out for yourself.

</comment><comment><USER34> Kudos to Emma for being brave enough to speak out. I'm a guy, and never used to understand why I hear so many stories of victims keeping silent and doing nothing to prevent this kind of abuse from happening to others.

But something similar happened to me, and I was shamed and pressured to keep quiet. And this happened to me when I worked at Google, which probably has a better culture and environment than most other places.

I wasn't sexually harassed, but I was mistreated by my boss in many other ways. On several occasions, he asked me to fabricate data when he was under a deadline or wanted to impress someone, he pressured me to write glowing reviews for him and negative reviews for people he didn't like, and he told me I was acting "like a pussy" when I said no. He also threatened me with negative performance reviews if I didn't comply, and banned me from meetings where I presented my work.

What hurt even more was what happened when I tried to get help.

I talked to my coworkers. A few of them had similar things happen to them, but were afraid of looking like tattletales and what would happen if our boss found out. A few said this hadn't happened to them, but although they believed it given other experiences with him, he was our boss so I should suck it up. Another person said he had already spoken to my boss's boss about it, and that boss had told my boss what he had said.

I tried talking to my VP. I asked for a meeting in an email, and explained the situation. My VP said he was busy for the next month, but we could meet later... When we eventually met one month later, he said I should talk to my boss's boss about this instead of him, and immediately asked if I had anything else to discuss.

I talked to HR. The HR representative said she would look into it by talking to some of my coworkers discreetly. When I talked to her again a month later, she said she'd had the chance to work with my boss on some projects, he'd happened to mention his "intuitive sense as a leader" about issues in my life and that I hadn't been performing well recently, and she asked if I was sure I wasn't retaliating for other reasons? She told me that if I was unhappy, I should leave the company. (I asked my coworkers, she hadn't talked to any of them.)

Other people I talked to were skeptical that this could happen, despite concrete evidence I had of my boss's abuse. (I heard responses like "maybe there's a reason for it we don't see.") I can understand caution around my claims (we should all be "innocent until proven guilty"), but that I was so blatantly ignored and met with distrust made for a dark time.

I see a few people in this thread accusing Emma of not doing even more. Given what's happened to me and how it's only hurt my career (I get questions when interviewing for new positions about why I left Google, and while I could tell the truth, I'm pretty sure it would only make me look like a paranoid troublemaker), and how I've seen others remain silent, it's far more than I and most people ever will.

</comment><comment><USER35> kudos to you for sharing this and standing your ground. This behaviour is simply unacceptable on all counts and we should collectively check this here. I wonder if the OP is open to naming this investor.

</comment><comment><USER36> if you are physically assaulted but do not involve the police immediately, I have very little sympathy. clearly you want some level of emotional vengeance, not justice, and I have no interest in listening to you complain. direct your energies properly.

<comment><USER37> You're obviously unfamiliar with gutsybroads.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think you overlooked the benefits beyond $50,000

<comment><USER39> Like unsolicited groping?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> That site has as much credibility as Brian Williams. I'll take a drubbing for this but her story has zero proof and is completely one-sided.

</comment><comment><USER40> _Yeah, but it's not a big deal. I mean, it was only the side. $50,000!! That's a lot of money!_

When did $50K become a "lot" of money? I live in a country which has a 1/10 of the US gdp per capita, and $50K is certainly a nice amount but not really a "lot" of money. Is a 0 or 00 missing here?

</comment><comment><USER41> So the question then is why not name names? Or better yet why not confront the person (in writing) to see what there reaction is to what they did?

</comment><comment><USER42> Her coinvestors/partners were portrayed as completely apathetic to her being groped. Some of you wanted the groper named and shamed, which she didn't, but then she turns around and publicly casts a bad light on her _partners_ (who i suppose are known)? I think that's crummy.

<comment><USER7> That's a pretty gymnastic attempt at victim-blaming. 9.4 from the East German judges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> For someone identifying as a 'gutsy broad', I'm not sure why there wasn't a mention in the email about the specifics as to why the money was being turned down. I know there's loads of potential reasons, but the ones I can think of tend to center on timidity/boatrocking, not being gutsy.

</comment><comment><USER44> The reaction was very reasonable (generous, in fact): A bit of denial followed by a very discreet "no thanks."

The unfortunate thing is that the conclusion was "we probably just shouldn't take the money." For someone who clearly considers herself proactive and professional on matters of sexuality, this a rather profound failure in terms of sexual equality.

Don't get me wrong: This is exactly what I'd do. But it's _not_ what I'd expect from someone selling a brand called "gutsy broads" and boasting credentials including "sexuality specialist."

Standing up to sexism isn't easy. But this isn't even an attempt, from someone who should at very least be making an attempt, not selling anecdotes that do little more than pat the author on the back for... what, exactly? This is very tepid commentary on what would otherwise be a fairly significant incident to someone in such a position.

<comment><USER45> You call her out for not "making a stand"[1] but don't say much about the actual problem: some sleazy guy sexually assaulting her.

That kind of attitude is sub-optimal.

[1] A move that could be considerably negative for her.

<comment><USER31> Agreed. And as an another commentor noted above, hopefully she was able to privately name this investor to YC. They're well positioned to take effective action in a way that doesn't put the author at risk.

We've unfortunately seen far too many cases where "being a woman on the internet" has led to harassment. Posting about this publicly and putting her name on it is already plenty gutsy.</comment></comment></comment>


Circuit building: stop using antique parts (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://sensitiveresearch.com/elec/DoNotTIP/index.html <comment><USER4> Sigh.

I like FETs as much as the next engineer but if you're going to write about them, try to not make things worse.

In particular, this made me sad: _the 10K resistor to ground isn 't strictly necessary, but it ensures that the MOSFET remains OFF if the arduino is disconnected or it's pin is not an OUTPUT._

I was helping a high school student with a transistor project and he was complaining that "half the FETs he bought were 'bad'". And they weren't really bad, but they were destroyed. They were destroyed because, like our author, the student had no understanding of how the FET worked and so didn't realize that when you exceed the maximum Gate voltage on a FET it generally causes a current to "jump the gap" to the source and that permanently breaks it. What is even more, since the gate is essentially a capacitor, you can just touch the gate with your finger and pass enough charge (without feeling a shock or anything) to greatly exceed the gate voltage. Pick up the FET without being grounded and "boom!" dead FET.

Now there is almost no way to generate enough current by touching a Bipolar transistor to kill it, and so they continue to work for a long time while plugging them in and out of breadboards.

Do they dissipate more power? Absolutely. Are they difficult to run in parallel? Sure. But they are pretty robust parts. Sort of like the difference between alkaline batteries and LiON rechargeable batteries. Sure the latter are a "better" choice, you can recharge them after all, but if you use them wrong they catch on fire, if you short an alkaline battery it gets hot but doesn't go ballistic on you.

So those "antique" parts are generally very cost effective, very robust, and easy to get. So they make excellent tools to teach you the basics. Do you want to stay with them as you get more advanced? Probably not, but you're probably not skiing on the same skis you learned on either.

/endrant

<comment><USER5> Yep. It is indeed easy to ruin a FET with minuscule amount of static charge. That is, unless there is a zener (or two, back-to-back) connecting gate to source. Many modern FETs have this built right in. E.g. ATP214 [1].

[1] [http://www.onsemi.com/pub/Collateral/ENA1712-D.PDF](http://www.onsemi.com/pub/Collateral/ENA1712-D.PDF)

<comment><USER6> That does sound like a very useful part for learning purposes, as well as general robustness, but they don't appear to be particularly common. I get no results on eBay, nor can I find through-hole packages.

Do you know of anything available like that?

<comment><USER7> NXP makes a version of the popular 2N7002 with ESD protection: [http://www.nxp.com/documents/data_sheet/2N7002CK.pdf](http://www.nxp.com/documents/data_sheet/2N7002CK.pdf)

Surface mount only (like most modern transistors), but SOT-23 isn't too hard to hand solder. There are lots of breakout boards for surface mount packages available for prototyping, or you could even solder some mod wire directly to each pin and put some hot melt glue on it to keep it in place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I build a lot of guitar effects, and that community is even worse when it comes to attachement to obsolete components. The discontinuation of J201 JFETs (in TO-92 through hole package at least) by Fairchild has caused a lot of upset. My perspective, not widely shared, is that JFETs in general have been made obsolete by depletion-mode MOSFETs, at least in audio circuits.

Part of the reason, I think, is that a lot of "designers" of guitar pedals don't understand the math that determines component values for a particular transistor in a particular circuit so they don't know how to either select a modern transistor to replace an obsolete one based on datasheet parameters or to change the collector / emitter / source / drain / etc resistor values to work right with a new part.

<comment><USER9> Guitar d00ds having obscure, nonsensical reasons for things because "mah tones!"? Say it ain't so.

I mean, nearly every tube head on the market has an essentially pointless standby/bypass switch because of the mistaken belief that you need to warm up your tubes for some arbitrary amount of time in a modern amp and keep them warm.

I forget which manufacturer it was that dropped the switch on one model and saw sales plummet and got freaked out support calls asking why the switch wasn't there. Next iteration had the switch back.

<comment><USER10> If I ever made analog audio equipment professionally, I would add an entire series of switches and dials that weren't wired up to anything.

<comment><USER11> You could label them like "warmth", "aggressiveness", "heart", and have people go apeshit trying to figure out the best setting for their song.

<comment><USER8> "Girth"

<comment><USER10> Zest, Ennui, Anticipation

<comment><USER12> Frobulator on iOS has "orbit", "vexity", "doubt".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is nothing wrong with bipolar transistors. They aren't antiquated. FETs have definitely overtaken them in power applications (for good reason) but it seems hard to displace them for small signal applications. Small signal FETs just aren't that plentiful or cheap. There are many instances where a small signal FET makes sense (level translators, etc) but the cost doesn't justify its use. Using a 2n2222 and the like is appropriate.

On top of that, BJTs excel in many analog applications. There is a good reason why many analog IC companies make parts using a BiCMOS process. If you are doing a discrete analog design (generally for performance reasons) you often need the performance of BJTs or JFETs.

<comment><USER14> The article seems mostly right when it's about interfacing logic circuits with loads that require even moderate currents. FET is king in this field.

I've a little aquarium and I've noticed how fish always get scared when lights turn suddenly on or off. So I took an Arduino and wrote a timer app for it, using PWM to slowly drive the output up over 60 minutes (sunrise), keep it at max for a few hours, then drive it down slowly over 60 minutes (sunset). I used a MOS-FET to drive the power LEDs directly from the Arduino. Works fantastic, and the FET is cold at all times. A 2N3055 would have been pretty hot most of the time.

I've been playing with electronics for a few decades now, so I can't be accused of change for the sake of change. The old stuff still works, sure, but there are new toys which are better in some cases.

<comment><USER5> There is a purpose-designed Chinese chip exactly for your situation - <USER2> brightness of a LED strip based on PWM input. Compared to a bare MOSFET, this chip gives you higher efficiency, current-controlled (i.e. flicker-free) output and ability to drive LEDs directly (without current-limiting resistors).

PT4115, pretty cheap on ebay and other usual places.

<comment><USER14> Well, the LED strip I use is a black box (from an electrical perspective). It just needs 12V, no external resistors.

So I just hooked it up to 12V via the MOS-FET. The PWM signal from the Arduino (plugged into the MOS-FET) does the job of changing the apparent brightness.

No need for magic chips in this context.

<comment><USER15> Your ledstrip probably also consumes about 15 watts per meter since integrated current limiting resistors dissipate most of the energy; a black box with the efficiency of a lightbulb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you want to switch power, MOSFETs are the way to go today. Voltage drop is near zero. Digi-Key has over a thousand MOSFETs in TO-220 packages. Here's one of the cheapest with a low gate threshold.[1] Probably good enough for most Arduino on/off applications.

MOSFETs do have some problems. They can draw large gate currents for the first few nanoseconds of turn-on, which can overload whatever is driving them. The gate input is very vulnerable to electrostatic discharge during handling. Device failure tends to be into the ON state.

I just went through a big struggle with MOSFET selection for a special purpose switching power supply. The big through-hole parts have too much gate capacitance and need too much drive at turn-on. Only in surface-mount could I get something that would work.

That's the real problem with antique parts. The new stuff is surface-mount only.

[1] [https://www.fairchildsemi.com/datasheets/FQ/FQP4N20L.pdf](https://www.fairchildsemi.com/datasheets/FQ/FQP4N20L.pdf)

<comment><USER17> I would love to see something on digikey or mouser that allowed me to search for MOSFETs in a way that was less painful.

Let's say you wanted to do a special purpose switching power supply. Digikey doesn't have a column for gate capacitance (for the mosfet), or Q (for the inductor). All that manual work to read datasheets is terrible, especially if your design takes a little while to perfect and some of the components go end- of-life, so you have to replace them.

I personally like to graph the cost-efficiency curve so I actually have to tabulate lots of mosfets, inductors, and caps, then simulate them in a spreadsheet.

I know about the specialized design tools done by each manufacturer that will recommend parts and do a design for you based on your criteria. I want something that does a much broader search for parts though.

Maybe I should write one. :)

<comment> TD-Linux Digikey does have the gate capacitance, just specified in a weird way - <USER3> charge @ voltage. Most higher power FETs are always specified @ 10V gate, so it's directly equivalent.

<comment><USER17> Thanks! I wasn't able to figure out if it really was directly equivalent. (Thanks also to sibling comment pointing out Mouser has the same.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The irony is that the MOSFET he suggests to use, the NTD4906N, is listed as obsolete on Digikey.

Which is why I pointed out. A lot of reasons people use antiquated components is probably because documentation and reference schematics are easy to find and have probably been refined to be very reliable.

<comment><USER19> Also what you have on hand. 20 years ago I bought about 100 LM324's for a dirt cheap price. I drag one out whenever I need a non-precision amp or comparator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've recently gotten back into hobby electronics, trying to revive all that EE knowledge I haven't used in 15 years, and one thing I sorely lack is knowledge of common components to use.

Online electronics stores are no help because of the overload of possible components.

Is there some sort of Cookbook out there I could refer to for up-to-date examples of common circuits and electronic tasks? I mean, I otherwise totally would've used a 2N2222 transistor for some tasks, because I wouldn't know better.

<comment> TD-Linux A lot of manufacturers have parts designed as drop in replacements for older parts, sometimes even with similar looking part numbers. Another thing that I often do is use Digikey's search and check their stock quantity to find out what's "popular". For example, if I want an op amp, I'll go to that category on Digikey and then first enter a quantity and sort by price. Then I'll start adding constraints - for example, for a 324 replacement, I might want it to be through hole (I nearly always do SMD designs though). From that, I unsurprisingly find the LM324 (it's still one of the cheapest!). But I also find the MCP6002, which is lower voltage but has rail to rail inputs and is designed for a capacitive load - perfect for driving a microcontroller ADC.

The truth though is that it's not like the old parts got any worse, and are still often the cheapest choice. You have to add additional constraints (I want lower loss, better performance etc) for something else to be "better".

<comment><USER8> I'm using the MCP6002 to drive the ADC of an ATTiny85 for a guitar pedal that replicates Game Boy sounds. It's got both rail to rail input and output and it all works happily on 3.3v.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mechanical relays are not obsolete. They can have lower resistance and capacitance than solid state equivalents. A good relay is a very close approximation to a plain wire when closed. Relays are still commonly used for RF switching.

<comment><USER21> I use mechanical relays to switch AC power for pumps and similar AC motor loads using DC signals from Arduinos and similar.

I have very very little experience with electrical engineering (I'm in the Lego mindset of I plug things in according to things I find online until they work), but is there something I should be using instead with 120V ~3-5 A loads?

<comment><USER22> You could use an opto-coupled triac but honestly for a hobby project a relay is a lot simpler.

[http://www.electronics- tutorials.ws/blog/optocoupler.html](http://www.electronics- tutorials.ws/blog/optocoupler.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The response referenced by Hackaday: [http://hackaday.com/2015/08/17/you-can- have-my-tips-when-you...](http://hackaday.com/2015/08/17/you-can-have-my-tips- when-you-pry-them-from-my-cold-dead-hands/)

</comment><comment><USER24> There's not much of substance to this article. The world of electronics is a bigger place than turning a load full on or full off with a Mosfet. A couple exercises if you want to see why having some BJT's around is handy: Try to find a Mosfet that turns on at 0.6 Vgs. Compare the leakage Ids leakage of a Mosfet to the Ice leakage of a comparable BJT. I also take issue with the idea that "all that extra stuff" is drawn in the Mosfet symbol for "no reason". The body diode alone is an important factor to consider EVERY time you use a Mosfet. When you read schematics every day, you're trained to recognize when diodes will forward conduct in your circuit and having that drawn in the Mosfet symbol helps you immediately see problems that would otherwise make it into your final circuit.

</comment><comment><USER25> Don't tell me that a LM386 is bad without telling me why and what to replace it with. If you don't, then you're not actually helping me at all, but rather it just sounds like you're spreading FUD.

<comment><USER26> About the only thing "bad" with the LM386 is how finicky it is with component selection and layout. It's a great little amp when it works well, but sometimes it will go dopey on you just looking at it sideways. It actually works better in a PCB situation (breadboarding is where it can be wonky in operation - ymmv).

As far as a replacement part? I don't think there are many alternatives there (at least with the same size, and easy to configure - there are a few stereo ICs I've seen used for class-D amps, but they weren't as simple to use or as small).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The obsolete part I'd really like to see everyone get away from is the 741 operational amplifier.

The 741 was introduced in the late 1960s. It's completely outclassed by modern general-purpose op-amps; there is absolutely no reason to still be using it today.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there a good reference for potential upgrades to old, obsolete-ish parts? I definitely understand that many of the old logic ICs, transistors, and op-amps have been displaced by better parts, but I don't always know how to identify them short of a parametric search on digikey and hoping there's not some sharp corner I missed. I'd find a lot of value in a page that had some recommendations for "Are you using <OLD PART> for <PURPOSE>? Consider <NEW PART>!"

<comment><USER29> Not really, because as so many commenters have pointed out, the choice to use "antique" parts is more of a value judgement than a violation of natural law.

When in doubt, your best move is probably to see what Horowitz and Hill have to say. AoE3 has a _lot_ of specific component recommendations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> MOSFETs driving motors or large coils without spike protection? Good luck with that. Have a fire extinguisher handy.

</comment><comment><USER31> There's still plenty of reason to use discontinued components in DIY. And that reason is the form of the component's package.

This is a problem for me when building high end audio circuits. A lot of the modern components are only available in surface mount forms. I find this with matched transistor packages. Like a matched quad. There are modern components, like AD's MAT14 [1], but if you are building your own circuits and using through hole components your ONLY choice is discontinued components. They simply are not made in a through hole package anymore.

At some point I'll be forced to move to surface mount, but at the moment getting old components is a lot easier. And those old components are as good as the new ones. Just different packages.

If anyone knows of a modern precision matched quad like the MAT14, but in a traditional package, please reply with the component!

[1] [http://www.analog.com/media/en/technical- documentation/data-...](http://www.analog.com/media/en/technical- documentation/data-sheets/MAT14.pdf)

<comment><USER32> I disagree. Using a stencil and paste with a cheap toaster oven is easier to make high quality boards than with PTH and an iron. It's fast and almost always comes out great.

<comment><USER31> "easier". Just pull apart a toaster oven. Reconfigure it. Rewire it. Get some paste. Make a stencil. You know. Easy peasy. Get the software. Learn how to use it. Get the stencils printing. Easy. Oh, you've got registration problems. Come on! Its easy! So much easier than spending one minute ordering a through hole component.

You see, its not actually "easier". Its "easier" to _you_ because you already have the equipment and are already doing it. Hey! I already know this! This is easy!

<comment><USER33> Hey, I teach SMD soldering to absolute beginners, many of whom have never done ANY electronics. Within an hour and a half they have a working board with "advanced" components like QFNs and 0402 passives attached. Nobody goes without a working board. Only equipment needed is a pair of tweezers, a metal squeegee for paste deposition and a plain off-the-shelf $10 hotplate. No fancy anything. It's not a setup you'd use for high-volume production, but who gives a shit, it's enabling technology for hobbyists to use modern parts. I call it "surface mount electronics assembly for terrified beginners". If you can make it to an event I'm teaching at, I'll give you a free class, as you're EXACTLY the kind of person who would benefit most from seeing that there's a middle way between relying on increasingly unobtainium components and having to have a pile of fancy expensive stuff to be able to work at all.

<comment><USER34> How do you make the solder paste stencil? How do you make the PCB traces?

<comment><USER33> You can get PCBs made very cheaply these days (dirtypcbs are an example of how cheap), and for $20-$30 you can have a sheetful of stencils lasered for you so this is mostly academic, but:

PCBs: You can make PCBs by toner transfer, phototransfer, or milling, just like you'd make PCBs for through hole designs, except you don't need the precision drilling you'd need for through hole parts. The transfer methods need an etch stage, which you can do at home with fairly safe chemicals these days, see for instance [http://quinndunki.com/blondihacks/?p=835](http://quinndunki.com/blondihacks/?p=835) for a very detailed tutorial. With a bit of care you can do double layer this way, but if you need lots of layer interconnections it's better to outsource PCB production. It's WAY easier to make PCBs for surface-mount designs at home because there is a lot less drilling involved.

Stencils: If you have a laser cutter available, cut them from construction paper. They'll only work once, but you can make a bunch. If you have one of those label cutting machines, those work too. If you're etching your PCBs, you can etch stencils from thin copper sheet, using the same method. Another excellent material that is already the correct thickness is the wall of an aluminium beverage can. Toner transfer works well for these and can give excellent detail. Remember most have a plastic coating on both sides, so file the outside with the image until you get naked metal (check with a multimeter), transfer on that and then etch. You can get presensitized sheets of various metals for phototransfer as well. If you only have a handful of pads you can also plop bits of solder paste on with a toothpick.

What about breadboards? The most common surface mount packages have breadboard adapter boards available. If there isn't one for the one you want, etch a board with a bunch of 2.54mm pitch pads along the edge (no holes, you want the board vertical so you have lots of breadboard space available). Stick any decoupling caps and pullup/pulldown resistors straight on the PCB so you don't clutter your breadboard with them, solder a bunch of header pins sideways, and there you go. You can put a label for the kind of part it is right into the copper.

Again, unless you're in a hurry or the board is very simple you probably want to outsource PCB production. If you do that, get a stencil made as well. If you can combine a bunch of stencils into one file, they probably won't charge you any extra for a stencil the size of 5 boards compared to one the size of one, so with a bit of planning you can get stencils EXTREMELY cheaply. And you can do tens to hundreds of boards with a single stencil if you take good care of it.

For alignment between stencil and board, if you're getting both manufactured for you, place two holes on opposite corners of the PCB that are exactly 3mm in size, and two identical holes in your stencil. Then you can use normal M3 bolts and nuts to fix them together, and it's super-easy to fine-tune alignment with the bolts in place but not yet tightened. There are pre-made stencils you can buy which have a selection of component footprints, so if you have say a little breakout board with just one difficult component you can apply paste to that with the stencil and do the others with the toothpick method or with a syringe dispenser (safety note: NEVER put solder paste in glass syringes, only use plastic ones).

My point in all this? If you can make through-hole stuff you can make surface- mount stuff, and probably with less effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Although I am on board with OP's reccomendation, I think many folks using arduino are in the milliamp range; they are not driving amps of current. So the 'constant factor' of obtaining less well known parts from digikey is significant.

Do you really want to provide any more disincentive for budding hobbyists?

</comment><comment><USER36> > _40% of the power is pissed away as heat in the stupid TIP120!!! wtf!_

You can find a BJT about just as antiquated with a lower VCE(sat).

Also, maybe don't run a motor off 5V and then complain that the transistor is eating too much of that voltage.

</comment><comment><USER37> The irony here is that the NTD4096N is discontinued/NLA. (There are other suitable parts in the price range, though.)

</comment><comment><USER38> Page author is Tom Jennings, the creator of FIDONet, the BBS network that pre- saged the internet.

[https://youtu.be/_Cm6EFYktRQ?t=2m32s](https://youtu.be/_Cm6EFYktRQ?t=2m32s)

</comment><comment><USER39> You can have my 2N2222's when you pry them from my cold dead hands.

<comment><USER40> Did you mean "your hot dead hands", heated by all that dissipated power? ;)

<comment><USER37> If it's an application where you can+do use 1k resistors for current limiting, there's no way they're gonna heat up!

(also, 2n2222's are like $3.49 for 50 on eBay US, via US sellers)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm an electronics amateur, got a question here:

I use a PN2222 [1] transistor to switch a 5V supply through an infrared LED from a microcontroller. It works, but should I be using something better/smaller/more cost effective/more appropriate for the circuit [2]?

[1] [https://blog.bschwind.com/2016/05/29/sending-infrared- comman...](https://blog.bschwind.com/2016/05/29/sending-infrared-commands- from-a-raspberry-pi-without-lirc/images/transistorPackCloseup.jpg)

[2] [https://blog.bschwind.com/2016/05/29/sending-infrared- comman...](https://blog.bschwind.com/2016/05/29/sending-infrared-commands- from-a-raspberry-pi-without-lirc/images/breadboardCircuit.jpg)

(the resistor in the photo is 680 ohms)

<comment> TD-Linux No, in fact in that circuit the PN2222 is the only thing limiting current to your LED. If you switch that to a MOSFET you'll blow up your LED unless you add a series resistor. (are you sure you aren't already giving too much current to your LED?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I think the author describes my point of view and defuses many of his own points at the very bottom of the page:

        also, you are likely making one circuit, not planning
        on mass-producing 1,000,000,000 of whatever it is; who
        cares if you spend a buck where a dime might do? you
        want it to work first time every time, right? this is
        art not technology (eg. industrial capitalism); we
        have different design criteria here.

That's exactly right. I'm usually making one circuit, and not mass-producing them. My inefficiencies will likely be limited in scale to no more than cents per month on the electricity bill. If I were mass-producing, then of course I'll reach for the low-power switching FETs.

</comment><comment><USER43> IGBTs, although very expensive, are also interesting alternatives to MOSFETs and relays where large voltages need to be switched where speed isn't critical.

<comment><USER43> Here's an example of a very large module for 4.5kV and 1.2kA

[https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/power/igbt/igbt- modu...](https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/power/igbt/igbt-module/igbt- module-4500v-6500v/channel.html?channel=ff80808112ab681d0112ab69f8450396)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> While we are on the topic of using more modern parts, if you are controlling a motor as shown in the example, why not use an H-Bridge chip ?

<comment> TD-Linux You might only need to spin the motor in one direction.

<comment><USER44> Yes, but even so, they also have half bridge chips, all the biasing and compensation, the correct diodes etc. The point is, a motor controller chip is more modern way that the old transistor or MOSFET way. unless you are designing some cheapo thing that will be produced in the millions and have to scrape every penny out of the design, it is better and easier to simply use a motor controller chip in my view.

<comment><USER45> Maybe you have a box full of transistors and diodes in the closet, because they're kinda needed for everything or at least very useful to have around. You can start building yesterday.

If you want that special bridge chip, you start looking through online stores and datasheets (what a chore, why do they have to suck so hard?), trying to find the chip that has the availability, a reasonable price, the right specs and appropriate package for your use. Then you pay the shipping cost on top of the component, which might be more than the component itself. Then you wait a week or two for the thing to arrive. Then you pray it is intact and you can maybe start building. Hope you ordered the right part and didn't make a mistake in reading the specs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'll keep on using 6502's for fun

</comment><comment><USER47> Why use a 120 in todays modern age? Because that thing you're repairing was Woz'd to the point that that VCE plays an important part in the circuit's operation.

Keep your TIPS, you might not necessarily use them for that brand new design of yours, but you'll probably use them for _something_.

</comment><comment><USER48> For anyone interested, I can highly recommend the course "Structured Electronic Design", [1].

[1] [https://ocw.tudelft.nl/courses/structured-electronic- design/](https://ocw.tudelft.nl/courses/structured-electronic-design/)

</comment><comment><USER49> Now if only we can get people to stop antique computer languages from 1972. (yeah, yeah, I know, special cases. In fact I'm current working on a project using C on three different microcontrollers).

</comment><comment><USER50> Also: the LM317!

Case in point: [https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=lm317+hot](https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=lm317+hot)

</comment><comment><USER51> > relays

Can't be taken seriously if he's going to malign the utility of an entire class of components.

</comment><comment><USER52> Any similar thoughts on the 2N390X series? (Datasheets are a PITA)

</comment><comment><USER53> Vce Sat is closer to .2V (rather than 2v) as I recall.

</comment><comment><USER54> Dark green text on a light green background??

</comment><comment><USER55> nah, why wasting all this parts? just the production created a huge pollution and then it was all for nothing,..no no.

</comment><comment><USER56> that's funny really, because MOSFETs were around in the 70's

<comment><USER57> The author addressed exactly this fact. They were rarer and pricier (they're still pricier)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> The page colors are terrible, but he does make a good point. Bipolars out, FETs in!

</comment><comment><USER59> Good luck building a BFO metal detector using MOSFETs without a ton of additional useless circuitry.</comment>


How to Make Phone Calls from the Command Line - <AUTHOR> http://labs.twilio.com/bash/

<comment><USER2> Note to self: next time you're debugging a twilio script, use their free test accounts.

The only thing worse than 2 days of debugging is knowing you have been bleeding cash as well. I had a broken asterisk script rape-dial my toll-free twilio account :-(

Having said that, the service is PERFECT. They nailed every aspect of it down.

<comment><AUTHOR> Bummer, sad to hear that happened. Here is a promo code for you (and everyone on that thread) to get $10 in Twilio credit:

HNCLDIAL

To redeem it, log in to your Twilio account and go to: <https://www.twilio.com/user/billing/add-funds>

Click the "I have a promo code line" and voila!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, never heard of Twilio before. Good to know something like this exists. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice. Sometimes I am tempted to reply to the voicemail transcriptions I get from Google Voice, in the hopes that a robotic voice will call the person back and read my message.

<comment><USER2> If you're doing this in Common Lisp, cl-who generates perfect XML to feed to twilio :-) I might have a cheesy, one-page cl-twilio package lying around actually :-)

<comment><USER4> Somewhat off-topic now... but I am not a big fan of cl-who; I prefer cxml with the cxml-stp DOM. I started porting my Perl sugar layer over the XML DOM to CL:

<http://github.com/jrockway/cl-template-refine>

I think I got distracted by something and didn't finish it, though. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great way to get geeks to try your service.

(One problem: my MacPorts Perl installation didn't come with URI::Escape. Switching to /usr/bin/perl fixed it)

<comment><USER6> mine didn't either, but you can just:

cpan[1]> install URI::Escape

and you're done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like to use Flowroute and write my apps with FreeSWITCH. It allows you to write quite advanced applications that do lots of cool, geeky, useful things.</comment>


Sorry, Employers: You're Not Getting My Salary History - e-sushi https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sorry-employers-youre-getting-my-salary-history-liz-ryan?trk=pulse-det-nav_art <comment><AUTHOR> Instead of asking for a prospective employee's salary history, I think that an ethical employer should disclose the anticipated salary range for a position, and confirm that it would be acceptable if an offer were to result from the interview process. Any other approach is about creating a negotiating advantage for the employer.

</comment><comment><USER2> I just always put a 0 or 1, if the company considers my answer a disqualifying response, it clearly indicates I wouldn't want to work for them.</comment>


Twenty-Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Revival_of_interest <comment><USER2> The response by Congress was to pass a law that they get a "cost of living" increase unless they vote against it.

So, they wait until the "vote by" date passes, then vote against the increase. That way, they get the increase, but can claim they voted against it.</comment>


New Redis Cluster meta-data handling - <AUTHOR> http://antirez.com/news/62 <comment><USER2> Newb question: how would Cluster and Sentinel interact in a typical deployment? I thought I understood Sentinel's operation, but I'm at a loss as to how Cluster fits into the picture of Sentinel I have in my head.</comment>


On Structural Regexes – the theory behind multi-editing - <AUTHOR> http://lubutu.com/idea/on-structural-regexes

<comment><USER2> The e text editor implements a modern version of structural regexes. There is a blog post about it here: <http://e-texteditor.com/blog/2010/beyond-vi>

It is actually really cool how you can interactively move into regexes and refine your searches. I wonder why no other editor (as far as I know) have implemented something similar.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, this is the first I've heard of this, thanks!

I take it from that blog post they don't have equivalents to the commands [XYGV!] I talked about, in e? Still, awesome stuff.</comment></comment>


Should you Rust in embedded yet? - <AUTHOR> https://kazlauskas.me/entries/rust-embedded-ready.html <comment><USER2> Embedded developer here, ARM Cortex-M4 microcontrollers. I've been keeping an eye on Rust for the embedded space and although there has been a lot of movement in that area--particularly in the last couple of months--I'm not sure the value proposition fits the microcontroller market, where of course C is king.

While Rust has much to offer as a programming paradigm in general, the main value is in the borrow-checker (the linked transcript cites 'memory bugs' as the most common class of bugs). Embedded software practitioners long ago abandoned dynamic memory allocation and with it the 'use-after-free' and 'out- of-bounds access' bugs, instead re-defining the problem as one of latency (e.g. you'll need to process that static buffer before it gets re-used by your UART interrupt). Take away the borrow-checker, and Rust looks less compelling.

In time, Rust will find its niche in the embedded space, most likely occupying the high-level RPi/BBB/iMX SoC layer and perhaps working its way down to microcontrollers. As wiremine points out, it will require vendor support-- moving away from your vendor's toolchain is a world of hurt that seasoned embedded developers just won't even consider. Pragmatism reigns: time-to- market and a cheap BoM are the main metrics, programming language a distant 10th.

<comment><USER3> Why is C king? Why not C++? The difference is just a compiler, and you can use C in C++.

<comment><USER4> I'm not an embedded developer, but my guess is that if they're not even using dynamic memory, I doubt they need or want anything that C++ has to offer.

<comment><USER5> That's more a matter of experience and attitude -- even simple things like reference types are nice. Also, templates offer a lot of abstraction power that can be used to model the hardware nicely, without sacrificing efficiency.

Many embedded programmers come from a background that doesn't expose them to those sorts of ideas though.

<comment><USER6> Can confirm, C++ has some nice features which I'd even like without malloc. OTOH I'm already horrified at the code quality problems pretty much every embedded shop faces. C++ would only make this matter worse.

As a software inclined embedded guy I also often think of what would be possible if we switched to C++. But then I think of what's probable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If anyone out there is an embedded developer curious about how Rust works in this space in practice, or a non-embedded developer curious about how to develop on embedded, there's a really fantastic (and free) ebook, "Discover the world of microcontrollers through Rust" ([https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/80doqg/discovery_disc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/80doqg/discovery_discover_the_world_of_microcontrollers/) ), by Jorge Aparicio (the premier guru of embedded Rust development), and recently updated for 2018.

</comment><comment><USER8> Having Rust support embedded is only half the story: we need to lobby/advocate for chip makers to support Rust. The article doesn't directly call this out, but I think it's important for Rust to truly succeed in this space.

Most embedded systems are fairly closed ecosystems built on vendor-specific stacks, and most professional embedded engineers wouldn't want to use Rust until the vendors support it.

This isn't to say the hobby world (ala Arduino/Raspberry Pi) wouldn't benefit from Rust, but I think the long-term viability depends on the ARMs, STs, TIs and Renesas' of the world starting to embrace Rust. To date I haven't seen this happen (although I'd love to be proven wrong!)

Edit: just noticed the recommendation to use a Blue Pill for Rust dev. They're cheap on eBay (just picked up 2 a few days ago)

[https://www.ebay.com/itm/STM32F103C8T6-ARM-STM32-Minimum- Sys...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/STM32F103C8T6-ARM-STM32-Minimum-System- Development-Board-Module-For-Arduino-/201529768817)

Looks like here is a supported Rust BSP, too:

[https://github.com/japaric/stm32f103xx- hal](https://github.com/japaric/stm32f103xx-hal)

Anybody have any experience with this?

<comment><USER9> Time to start lobbying Arm. For instance, I think we already missed a big opportunity to have Arm develop its Firmware-M in Rust. That firmware is going to be used by _billions_ of IoT devices in the future. Although I'm sure Arm is trying to make the C code as safe as possible, at that scale there will be plenty of bugs, especially since OEMs will get to use customized versions of it, too.

[https://developer.arm.com/products/architecture/platform- sec...](https://developer.arm.com/products/architecture/platform-security- architecture)

<comment><USER6> The last time I used ARM supplied drivers they were nice to get things started quickly, but they were of terrible quality (at least for the smaller Cortex M microcontrollers).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm completely in this boat at the moment. We are doing a hardware refresh of our embedded platform and I'm looking at the feasability of using Rust.

I'm at the point where I think it is close to being viable, but seems very young. Most likely we will go with a platform that can support rust, and write the low level modules with the intent of using rust, but not use Rust just yet, but do a side project to asseses the viability of doing as much of the software in Rust as we can. ( and get the devs learning Rust ). I am what I like to call a multi stack developer, so I'm super comfortable with a lot of languages and platforms, but the embedded devs I work with are microcontroller focused C devs and it will take some time to be convinced, conceptually they like the idea, but as soon as they try and write something serious they are going to feel frustrated and likely make a mess.

But Rust has a LOT to offer the embedded world.

<comment><USER11> Keep in mind that at some level, something has to be unsafe, unless you've got hard mathematical proofs that your code works as compiled.

<comment><USER12> Doesn't mean you shouldn't try to lessen the amount of code that's unsafe. That way you have at least a fighting chance at getting your unsafe code bugfree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One definition of "embedded" is: does the user treat it like an appliance or like a computer? If it's the former, it's 'embedded' even if it uses a reasonably powerful processor or does not have hard real time requirements.

I use Erlang for that kind of thing and it works well. Rust is, I think, more performant, so if that works for you and what you need, go for it.

<comment><USER14> what do you think of nerves?

<comment><USER13> I recall hearing about it a while back; looks like it has made progress? Seems worth a look!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Any progress with ti's c2000 series in rust?

<comment><USER16> Oh, ti c/c+ compiler is such a joke, not event c99 supported. I was thinking about rust to C compiler [1], but thats require c11 support.

1\. [https://github.com/thepowersgang/mrustc](https://github.com/thepowersgang/mrustc)

<comment><USER15> C99 is supported but it is not the default.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I hate, hate, HATE papers or talks or anything of this nature that begin by justifying the obvious to the knowledgeable! In this case, "Why does embedded matter?" Sheesh.

Then there is that law of titles with a question where the answer is always, "no".

>Yes. As long as it supports your hardware and you are willing to put up with a less stable toolchain and less nature ecosystem in exchange for the safety guarantees.</comment>


"Don't Worry About Money, Just Travel" Is Bad Advice - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/human-parts/why-don-t-worry-about-money-just-travel-is-the-worst-advice-of-all-time-72d065fb186b

<comment><USER2> There are other options. You could teach English. I was able to live in Japan for 3 years doing this. Not only was I able to support myself, but traveling to other parts of Asia (and even Australia) were much less that it would have been if I flew from the US.

After I got sick of teaching, I found some remote jobs online and did that till I decided to come back to the US.

I came back with no debt or gaps in my resume. For the remote jobs, future employers didn't even know I was out of the country.

Most people don't want to do this though. Many of the people I met along the way would rather just party every night and do nothing until they run out of money and are forced to go home.</comment>


Notes on the Hawaii false alarm, one year later - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2019/01/13/notes-on-the-hawaii-false-alarm-one-year-later/ <comment><USER2> I found the fact that they're backing away from missile warnings and that Massachusetts has no provision at all for nuclear emergency response (see the footnotes) quite worrying.

</comment><comment> HI-EMA-hack I'm trying to make a relevant comment but it keeps getting flagged. Why? Why does my comment need to disappear?

<comment><USER3> Looking at the text of your flagged comments, they read like unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, not something relevant that would contribute to substantive discussion on the topic.

<comment> HI-EMA-hack 1) I received duplicate alerts as did many others. Timing of mine is suspicious; something a skilled hacker would do

2) military looking couple decided to goad me about my suicide bag that evening.

3) many others received duplicates

4) reports of duplicates, relevant at least to a technical malfunction (no conspiracy theory) didn't make it into any official reports despite having occurred

Flagging a theory — that it was a hack or otherwise intentional — which explains why i would receive a duplicate suspiciously timed and then harassed about a suicide bag — isn't helpful to the discussion. Makes it look like sweeping under the rug, even if that wasn't the reason for flagging.

<comment><USER4> Re: 2. You say that happened at coffee gallery, why would strangers at a coffee shop be aware of your suicide bag? I feel like I'm missing something as to how this would occur, or why it would be relevant.

Regarding duplicates; when I've reciever campus alerts from various institutions, I have on occasion reciever duplicates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> HI-EMA-hack Please allow me to rephrase so my comment does not get flagged.

The Hawaii false missile alert was quite likely a coordinated hack combined with a bumbling cover-up. I have evidence suggesting this to be a likely explanation.

Of note is that the EMA story changed and was rather opaque. There was no discussion about the duplicate alerts that many people received, including me.

No explanation as to why a military looking couple was goading me that evening at coffee gallery about my suicide bag.

At a minimum, since people sporadically received duplicates hours later, this should have been part of some official public report, as this would indicate a notable technical malfunction. No such report exists.</comment>