Facebook staff reject female engineers' code more often, former employee claims - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/2/15517302/facebook-female-engineers-gender-bias-studies-report <comment><USER3> Basically a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14247221](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14247221)

The Verge is using the WSJ as the source.

</comment><comment><USER4> Creating a throwaway since I've taken part of this internal discussion at Facebook. Once normalized for skill level (i.e. junior engineer, engineer, senior engineer) the level of rejection between genders is the same.

<comment><USER5> Why is your username green?

<comment><USER6> Why is parent being downvoted for asking a simple question?

<comment><USER7> Facebook. See my comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> tldr This article is terrible.

Maybe this is a "Facebook rejects..." story. Maybe it's a story about how bad Facebook is.

But if you keep reading past the introduction it sure sounds a lot more like a "male engineers reject..." story.

And then if you keep reading some more it sure sounds like a "code is rejected proportionally to engineer seniority..." story, which is not a story.

And then at the very very end, you finally get to the only part of this terrible article that makes any sense:

> _the current representation of senior female engineers both at Facebook and > across the industry is nowhere near where it needs to be._

Facebook talking about itself is the only honestly presented thing on the page.

<comment><USER9> That part doesn't make much sense either because gender representation isn't a legitimate concept. Individuals have different strengths which may help them succeed if their pursuits use those strengths. This results in uneven gender distributions within industries and there's nothing wrong with that.

Unless you think there is some sort of overt discrimination happening that's stopping females becoming senior engineers, in which case you'll need to define it.

<comment><USER10> Can you provide evidence for the specific claim that women, in particular, are statistically-significantly less strong at the software engineering industry, in particular?

(I buy the argument that there are statistically-significant differences in _some_ strengths that apply in _some_ industries, yes. I'm curious to see how this applies to software engineering in particular.)

<comment><USER11> Let's assume for a moment, that engineering requires intelligence, and to be a top engineer you need to be in the top X% percentile of the population.

As it turns out the distribution of IQ in men and women is different[0][1][2][3], with men having more variation (more extremely dumb men and more extremely smart men), and an ever so slightly higher median (men have slightly higher IQ on average). These small differences lead to huge difference in representation of _exceptionally_ smart people, because of how normal distribution works. These differences manifest themselves in tasks requiring high intelligence, such as chess, go, engineering and software development.

I say this as a scientific statement, with zero sexism implied. I believe that people should not be afraid to state scientific truths, no matter how controversial they may seem.

[0] [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289606...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289606001115)

[1] [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886911...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886911002212)

[2] [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289606...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289606000250)

[3] [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289604...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289604000492)

<comment><USER12> As it turns out women have barely had any time at all being afforded the same privileges as men[0], and that's just the United States, there remain cultures that are extremely oppressive to women. It also turns out we still tell women from a young age that "they can't".[1] It also turns out there are a ton of biases pushing women out of STEM[2][3][4][5].

So when you cite evidence that says men are smarter than women conducted by men standing on the shoulders of a society built for men, you can't be shocked when people question it.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_women_in_the_United...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_women_in_the_United_States)

[1] [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6323/389](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6323/389)

[2] [http://www.uchastings.edu/news/articles/2015/01/double- jeopa...](http://www.uchastings.edu/news/articles/2015/01/double-jeopardy- report.pdf)

[3] [http://www.pnas.org/content/111/12/4403.full](http://www.pnas.org/content/111/12/4403.full)

[4] [http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full](http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full)

<comment><USER11> I understand that there are biases against women in our society, and I don't argue with that.

I argue that there are biological differences between men and women, and these differences are causing different representation in STEM fields.

I would also say that today, we're living in the most equal opportunity society than ever before. Let the free market sort itself out. If you try to _artificially_ increase the proportion of women in STEM fields, you will decrease the quality of engineers. I'm sorry, but that's how it is.

> So when you cite evidence that says men are smarter than women conducted by > men standing on the shoulders of a society built for men, you can't be > shocked when people question it.

So, did they use a flawed methodology? Were these studies sexist? Could you point in which way these studies are sexist? Do you disagree that males often have higher variance in different traits in many species? Do you disagree that men have higher variance in IQ?

<comment><USER8> > _I argue that there are biological differences between men and women, and > these differences are causing different representation in STEM fields._

I argue that you don't actually have any reason to believe that the differences are biological instead of social. Certainly, while extremely interesting (I mean that. Not sarcasm.), none of your links demonstrate it. Your links claim to show a difference, but they do not claim to explain the cause of said difference.

> _I would also say that today, we 're living in the most equal opportunity > society than ever before._

You could say all kinds of things and more. But, and I'm not agreeing here that it is actually true, because I'm not fully convinced that it is, even if it _is_ true, being better-than isn't the same as being good.

> _Let the free market sort itself out._

Only a properly regulated market ever sorts itself out. Otherwise you end up with natural monopolies, because barriers to entry are historically compounded. This has always been true of marketplaces.

> _So, did they use a flawed methodology? Were these studies sexist?_

Well, one flaw is that your conclusions don't follow from the studies.

<comment><USER11> > I argue that you don't actually have any reason to believe that the > differences are biological instead of social.

I could provide studies on how IQ development is set by genetics and very early childhood. So yes, I _do_ have a reason to believe IQ is biological.

> Only a properly regulated market ever sorts itself out.

This _is_ true, but "we must hire women otherwise people think we're sexist" is _not_ a properly regulated market.

> Well, one flaw is that your conclusions don't follow from the studies.

But my conclusions _do_ follow from studies. If you take top 2% of people by IQ from a random population sample, you expect to have more men. The same would be true if you took the bottom 2%, but that doesn't interest anyone.

<comment><USER8> > _I could provide..._

Well _I_ could provide a tortoise that speaks seven different languages. Saying what you _could_ provide is fairly bad form.

> _and very early childhood._

Wait, how early? Which part of childhood is the genetic part? Heck, what about the potential for non-uniform distribution of teratogens? Has that even been studied?

> _but "we must hire women otherwise people think we're sexist" is not a > properly regulated market_

"We should prefer to choose an equally qualified woman because not only is she presently equally qualified, but she has achieved being equally qualified in an environment that in-many-small-ways-collectively-and-constantly tries to prevent it" is, though. There is no shortage of well-qualified individuals in the world. And if you don't agree, then we must first begin another conversation on what exactly you think qualifies someone to develop software.

> _But my conclusions do follow from studies._

They certainly don't follow from the ones you linked, even though you said they would. I know that because I read the studies you linked. So maybe these other ones also don't support your conclusions any better?

> _If you take top 2% of people by IQ from a random population sample, you > expect to have more men._

Maybe. Now tell me the part of the study that says why. And further tell me the part that indicates a positive correlation with success in computer software production. And then tell me the part that indicates positive correlation with representation in the field. And then tell me the part that indicates...heck, maybe that indicates that g is even a useful measurement to begin with.

Because you said, and I quote, "[biological] differences are causing different representation in STEM fields", which is an unsupported conclusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A couple of standout points from this article:

* the data itself hasn't been released so no one outside of Facebook has in any way analyzed it, we're relying on their analysis and reportage of that analysis to be correct

* the rejection rate is not just higher for female engineers, it's a lot higher: 35%

* Facebook is confident that the effect is not due to gender bias (scrutinizing female workers' code more closely) but that it's due to a confounding effect of engineering rank (females tend to be lower rank, and lower ranks tend to have more rejections through some mechanism)

In other words, we definitely need more study in the area before I would be confident drawing any important conclusions. It is a fascinating step forward though.

<comment><USER14> > through some mechanism

It is hardly surprising or novel that junior/less experienced developers will write code that has more problems and thus gets rejected more often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> these articles are sensationalist garbage and just do a disservice to anyone having actual injustice

<comment><USER16> That's why I usually open HN comment section first. I try not to give my precious clicks to this kind of articles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> With someone like Sheryl Sandberg heading up Facebook's operations, it would be hard to believe that there weren't mandates to achieve gender parity starting from the top.

That Facebook hasn't achieved gender parity yet would suggest to me that the world hasn't yet caught up with supplying the demand for female employees at various levels of the corporate ladder without it impacting their business operations.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've heard that the opposite of this suggested bias ought to be consciously corrected.

If the stereotype for a senior engineer is a balding white male with glasses, and you have two prospective engineers with otherwise identical resumes and work histories: one balding white male with glasses and even a pocket protector on his white shirt, and one black woman with a wild T-shirt, which would you hire? The answer I'd heard before was that you should hire the non- conformist, because they've risen to identical positions and accomplishments despite the bias against them at each step, while the stereotypical engineer was probably assumed to belong in the positions they attained. So you should choose the stuttering surgeon and the messy lawyer when given the opportunity.

(No idea where I heard it or what the phenomenon is called, though - <USER2> remember this?)

<comment><USER19> [https://medium.com/incerto/surgeons-should-notlook-like- surg...](https://medium.com/incerto/surgeons-should-notlook-like- surgeons-23b0e2cf6d52)

Taleb - Surgeons Should Not Look Like Surgeons

<comment><USER18> That's it, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the industry is suffering from the cobra effect right now [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect)

<comment><USER21> Care to elaborate on how the cobra effect relates here?

<comment><USER22> Facebook took heat for not having a 50/50 male/female workforce, when that is not the ratio of male to female devs available. They hire more females, based on the fact they are female. The code quality of some of these hires was not good, because they were not hired on merit, and they've created a code quality problem.

<comment><USER21> You're making a lot of assumptions there. Do you have any evidence that they lowered the bar? Also, aren't they hiring kids straight out of college in droves? How do you go about properly assessing "merit"? Isn't that a bit of an unsolved problem in hiring?

To me the whole thing just raises a bunch of questions that don't have any satisfying answers.

<comment><USER23> You can still lower the bar below "hiring straight out of college in droves".

Hiring more self taught and bootcamp people is often advocated as a way to increase diversity, and a lot of roles don't require a college degree (plus a lot of self taught and bootcamp folks are very good). However, on a large enough dataset, they will be weaker candidates. So if you use those sources to improve diversity, you'll end up with a correlation between diverse hires and more junior devs. Which screws up with every other metrics you'll look at.

<comment><USER24> I'm not sure you're going to correct the perceived gender/racial/whatever imbalances if you start hiring self-taught programmers and bootcamp grads in droves, just looking at the typical demographics of the people that self- select into those cohorts.

<comment><USER23> there's actually quite a few bootcamps and social programs to help minorities break into the field, actually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Can't read the linked article. Did the study look further into the gender bias assumptions beyond the simple female vs male statistic (e.g by anonymizing code submissions)?

<comment><USER26> > Facebook, alarmed by this data, commissioned a second study by Jay Parikh, > its head of infrastructure, to investigate any potential issues. Parikh's > findings suggested that the code rejections were due to engineering rank, > not gender. However, Facebook employees now speculate that Parikh's findings > mean female engineers might not be rising in the ranks as fast as male > counterparts who joined the company at the same time, or perhaps that female > engineers are leaving the company more often before being promoted.

<comment><USER27> I'd love to see a distribution of level, age and years in industry, salary by age. If Fb has put more effort into hiring female engineers directly from college, then they will probably skew junior. The answer is probably not that simple and as you mentioned, all women are probably being challenged more than their male counterparts.

The general tone of this recent article on HN [1] I think was quite negative towards the OP, more so than the median. I have seen similar behavior in code and architecture reviews, interviews, etc for women at companies I have worked. Everything literally turns into a qual. Everything they do is judged to much higher standard. Or even non-sensical standard. It is still the case, that when I come across a woman in dev, she is most likely a freak'n bad ass and has a really thick skin. To me, this shows that we have not yet achieved equality, otherwise there would be more _average_ programmers who are women.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14227892](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14227892)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm very torn on these kinds of studies. In my field we see a lot of studies looking at gender and racial disparities in healthcare offered (e.g. what kinds of _______ therapy are prescribed to various racial groups). While such disparities are probably important in some cases, the "why" is generally not addressed in the study outcome, and rather the results are open to all sorts of interpretations based on our biases.

And then of course any disparities, properly normalized for alternative factors (or not), have to be corrected. Very messy science. It's also easy and politically expedient science - these days we're obsessed with inequality, and if you just comb around you're bound to find some statistically significant disparities and that gets everyone's attention. If researchers were trying to investigate population-level thoughtcrime, this is what it might look like.

</comment><comment><USER29> If anything, they should check the rejected code and verify that it was not worthy of rejection, that is, it really was likely the gender of the submitter that caused the rejection.

If higher rank of coder would make rejection less likely, it would also not bear well on the code reviews.

</comment><comment><USER30> Several other sources for this story were flagged out yesterday, even though this is very clearly a topic of interest on hacker news. This one is also currently showing up as flagged. Curious who doesn't want to grapple with an evidence-based look at bias in a tech leader.

Given that the engineer-lead study found this impact when controlling for seniority at FB while the suit-lead one didn't for rank, it certainly raises the question of why women have a lower rank for a given seniority. Charitably maybe men have more experience coming in, but if that was truly the case they could have used that as their input variable to avoid the obvious follow up concerns.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've seen this before. I've also seen plenty code written from developers at higher levels that really should have been reviewed with far more scrutiny - but because of politics, was practically rubber stamped with hardly a comment. IOW, developers at higher levels don't necessarily write better code, often it is worse.

I think this could be improved by a system of code review anonymization that sends code reviews out - company wide - without identifying author info.

</comment><comment><USER32> Seems to me a case of Simpson's Paradox, already proven to be the cause of wrong conclusions in the past in similar stories: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox)

</comment><comment><USER33> Just embarrassingly stupid. The playing field is not at all equal yet, and until then a meaningful comparison will not take place. /2c

</comment><comment><USER34> I think to understand gender discrimination we need to understand what hazing is all about. A basic definition may be "An unpleasant experience to gate access". At first, I thought it was about building bonds but what I believe hazing actually does is solidify the boundary between in-group and out-group via a specific and unique obstacle.

The enphasis of this boundary creates a space for privileged information amongst the network. those internal to the network have access to resources others do not, most often in the form of people and the information in their head. The actual quality of information amongst groups is probably roughly the same, but with in-network information, there is more willingness to be open about this information. This is because information can be infinitely duplicated. Giving out information reduces your competitive advantage just as teaching someone everything you know would as well.

Take away the concept of groups and you remove overt hazing. However, individuals exist along with their gated information. This information includes their deepest secrets and fears, their de-facto model of the organization, as well as the secrets to their strengths. Regarding this last one, if you have a high enough gated privilege, he may just give you a link to the resource he used. If you don't, he may just try and explain it himself. And if you have low privilege, he'll be too busy.

Most organizational skills are NOT generic skills learned in school. They are often tips about organizational management, who to ask about what as well as the hidden mental models that keep the legacy code running.

Take this potential acenario: If a women asks a man how the fuck the shitty legacy code works, there is a threat. The woman who is fresh from school has some ivory tower ideas and the man is threatened because he knew he took some shortcuts. This manifests itself as arrogance when explaining, perhaps even just telling the woman to just figure it out as some sort of hazing test. One she is jaded enough by organizational existence will no longer be a threat.

So there is a constant dynamic of men needing to orove themselves to other men and women. When women are involved, the need is higher, creating more arrogance and a higher power distance. Many woman know this, which is why they are more likely to say: "I heard you were the expert in this area, could you give me a few pointers? I'm SOOO bad at this stuff. " while other men might "What the fuck is this shit?!"

Men basically have 2 choices to extract information. Playing the mentee, or playing a high status individual that the other person has to prove themselves to. Women often only have the first because culturally they are socially punished for aggressive behavior.

One root cultural stem is that a man mist be in some eay superior to a woman to "deserve" her. Gender roles have the man playing the hero. This imperative prevents men seeking help from women but also systematically prevents women from reaching high status without overt and obvious superiority in an aspect.

This last part is very important. The issue is NOT about actual skill. Out society is set up fairly well in that it is still mostly a meritocracy. The best rise to the top, and this includes women.

The issue is that your ability is determined by your access to experience and attitudes. (No longer knowledge, e.g. Blacks being banned from libraries or similar) This can create a headwind or tailwind for you in different directions.

Also, in places where measuring skill is flawed and has huge variance, women often have to doubly prove themselves because their "scores" are artificially deflated while an extroverted tall white males might be inflated. From an organizational standpoint this is in some ways even "good" because the org may bot be sexist, but it sure as hell wants its ICs to fall in line. That entails a manager or leader that can utilize aggression and status.

So, to sum up, culturally women are often forced to play a low status role, and men are forced into high status and often more high pressure roles. From a romantic but somewhat chauvanistic view, this is "protecting our daughters and wives". In reality, you fake it till you make it. Men have the paths to power opened for them while women are stuck having to out on fake smiles. (Though often self imposed due to fear. But then again, that fear is another cultural manifestation of boys being taught to face their fears to protect the girls who aren't expected to do anythinf)</comment>


E.B. White on the meaning of democracy - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/books/double-take/e-b-white-on-the-meaning-of-democracy <comment><AUTHOR> Short, sweet and packs a mighty punch.</comment>


No Alcohol, No Coffee for 27 Months (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.vanschneider.com/no-alcohol-no-coffee-for-15-months-this-is-what-happened <comment><USER3> > In the summer I now drink ice tea, in the winter regular tea.

Is the OP aware that tea also contains caffeine, right? Regular black tea has generally much less than espresso, but it's still a caffeinated beverage.

<comment> jerome-jh I can drink much coffee and feel almost no effect (although I usually stick to two coffees a day).

When I drink tea, I have shaking hands, especially with the bottled ice tea from the supermarket.

Let's say I wanted to change from coffee to another hot but not sweet beverage: which one?

<comment><USER4> Have you considered the shaking hands might actually be caffeine _withdrawal_?

<comment> jerome-jh Certainly it is not the case. It occurs specifically when drinking tea. I can spend a day with only my morning coffee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I did the same thing, giving up coffee, alcohol and also sugar for about 2 years. I expected to feel superhuman but the truth is I felt basically the same, still often a bit tired on the morning - but I did get quite skinny.

<comment><USER6> I always envy people who have these dramatic effects. I went vegetarian a few years ago and I don't feel any better or worse. Same when I take marijuana. I feel a little heavy and dizzy but that's it. Sometimes I wish I would find that thing that totally changes my life like other people claim to have found.

<comment><USER7> I guess you can experiment, for me chelated magnesium and sometimes l-tyrosine does the trick.

<comment><USER8> I hear you on magnesium, that thing is like a flip-switch on an overactive brain if you get the right type of it.

What do you use l-tyrosine for?

<comment><USER7> I don't know exactly why it works, may be related to vaping or something else, but for days when I'm lazy-brain dead-not motivated taking l-tyrosine on empty stomach seems to make me normal/productive again.

<comment><USER8> ahhh brain fog, cool I'm going to give it a try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I also went without alcohol for 25 months and my expererience couldn't be more different.

I never stopped going out for drinks. I always kept enjoying being with other people, it has never been about the alcohol going out. When going out for drinks, in the first couple of months I would simply order non alcoholic beverages. After a while I realized that it was unnecessarily expensive and I simply stopped ordering drinks. On this the author is right, this led to huge savings. I just got out for the fun of being with other people. As the author himself explains, the drinks are just an excuse to go out and do stuff. Unless of course someone has a problem with alcohol.

I think that the only thing that I can really relate in the article is the difficulty of explaining why I was not drinking. But even that I think is something I did very differently from the author. After a few months in which I tried to explain myself, which got the kind of arguments the author mentions, I started saying that I just didn't like to drink. That's a pretty short answer and mostly no one investigates that.

So in the end in my experience my social life was not affected in any negative way by not drinking. To be honest, if anything, I think it increased my social skills, as I was more focused and "awake" by not drinking. And this is a experience that still has positive impacts on my personality. The only reason I started to drink again is because I actually like the taste of most alcoholic beverages (wine, beer etc), so I was missing a good glass of wine with my dinner.

On the contrary, the experience of the author reminds me of someone that has made alcohol a requirement of his/her social life. Which is looking troublesome because it denotes a poor relationship with alcohol. The author should focus on what's funny in going out without alcohol, which is what matters. Alcohol should not be what makes going out funny.

I would suggest to everyone to go at least 1 year without alcohol while still going out and having a very active social life in a context where everyone else is drinking. This is a great way to better know yourself.

<comment><USER10> > I never stopped going out for drinks. I always kept enjoying being with > other people, it has never been about the alcohol going out.

The author writes the same about coffee: "I found out that "Going for a coffee" turned out to be more of a social activity than the actual craving for coffee. Keep the social habit, replace coffee with something else."

They seem to be saying that they can't stand "gossip" in one setting (in a bar) but do enjoy it in another (in a coffee place). Maybe the author's acquaintances are really all terrible drunks, but maybe the author is just contradicting themselves to justify to themselves that alcohol is bad.

I congratulate the author on stopping drinking, but article does wade a bit too deep into "I'm virtuous, you are all phonies" territory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Society has been duped in thinking they need coffee to stay awake. People need good sleep, occasional naps and that's it.

<comment><USER12> I think most people know this, but naps aren't accepted in the workplace.

I function much better on 6h at night and nap after lunch than 8h at night, but society forces me to stay awake after lunch. I've even thought about looking for remote jobs, just to be able to have an afternoon nap.

<comment><USER11> As the boss of my own company, I've made naps acceptable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Some might think that this is heavy alcoholism, but trust me when I say that > having 1–2 drinks everyday in New York is more than normal.

Maybe not heavy, but that sounds still pretty bad. Just because that's possibly normal does not really make that better. I don't even think I'd be able to function properly with that much alcohol, and I'm not a light drinker. That's more than what I drank in University.

> But removing coffee from my diet helped me become more relaxed. Coffee > always made me stressed out.

For those who have this problem but don't want to skip coffee, I can recommend looking into L-Theanine [0] supplements. It's a part of tea (mainly in green IIRC) and in combination with caffeine helps concentration and wakefulness without producing coffee jitters.

[0]: [https://examine.com/supplements/theanine/](https://examine.com/supplements/theanine/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't drink alcohol, but I do drink two cups of coffee a day - one in the morning, and a second after lunch. The first cup is to wake me up in the morning and it makes me highly productive. The second is to avoid the food coma.

If I ever feel stressed, I know I can go for a walk to exercise off the coffee. But most times I'm not.

<comment><USER15> This is the trap many people (including myself, for years) fall into... You develop dependency on coffee and then you claim _it_ is what makes you focused and productive. But if you never had a cup of coffee in your life (or if you stop and let your body adjust), you'd be as focused and as productive without ever feeling like you're missing it.

<comment><USER14> I drank no coffee up through university and my productivity was sound - <USER2> ended up getting good grades. I started drinking coffee after I got a full- time job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Problem is society exactly as the author describes. There is so much pressure on having drinks when going out. This is due to people trying to suppress their insecurity.

Start with yourself: If a sober person is in your round, help him by not let other's in the group mob him. Do not say things like "ohhh why the fuck you not drink?" \- just say "cool you don't drink, I respect that" and still do conversations although you do have a drink yourself.

If your group does understand, that there are people who do not need a drink every time, it will help yourself also to "survive" in that group so it becomes more easy to go out sober.

Me myself find it very hard to not drink - but I like to drink and I like to be slightly drunk every now and then. I know that and I live with it. Chances are that some day this might change :) good luck everyone with whatever helps you to feel better

<comment><USER17> There are a lot of non-alcoholic (and sometimes non-caffeinated) drinks you can order at bars and restaurants, many people would not even know are non- alcoholic - just ask the bartender.

If the people you are hanging out with are judging you for your life choices then they are assholes and you should honestly call them out on it and disassociate with them.

<comment><USER18> Remove alcohol, caffeine and sugar though and your drink choices are slim to none.

<comment><USER19> That's why god invented tonic water with a lime

<comment><USER20> Tonic has a ton of sugar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was like $1,000 a month on coffee!? Then I saw that it's cocktails every day.

"Some people may call that heavy drinking". Ya think?

Also, here in Ireland, even we call $1,000 a month on alcohol pissing your money up a wall.

It's crass, but based on a large body of evidence from our history.

</comment><comment><USER22> How does he know the sleep effects were due to the alcohol and not the caffeine?

I rarely consume either, but when I do, caffeine is by far the most disruptive to my sleep and will derail my routine for days.

<comment><USER23> My experience is anecdotal but I drink both. I've found that once you're a heavy caffeine drinker that you hardly notice it's effects on things like sleep. Alcohol is different. 8 drinks before bed and I wake up tired, despite my usual bedtime. I drink way more caffeine than I do alcohol, yet alcohol is the only substance that has ever seemed disruptive.

<comment><USER3> Yes, after a while your body gets addicted to caffeine and adjusts to the amount you are ingesting, so you need to increase how much you're taking in order to keep feeling the high you expect from coffee.

If you suddenly stopped assuming caffeine, you'll start suffering from withdrawal symptoms such as headaches and drowsiness; this is because your brain adenosine receptors are accustomed to a certain amount of caffeine (which is itself an adenosine antagonist). Your brain receptors recalibrate themselves after a while if you stop drinking coffee/tea, or if reduce your intake of caffeine to a smaller amount.

<comment><USER22> Not sure why you're getting downvoted.

The withdrawal symptoms for caffeine are brutal in my experience. It's really surprising every time I dabble with having an espresso a few times a week when I'm in a cafe-frequenting mode. Even just one week of having a double espresso every other day will leave me with 1-2 days of terrible headaches and nausea beginning 1-2 days after completely stopping.

No other drug I've experienced so quickly establishes such miserable withdrawal conditions. And I've been around the block in this neighborhood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Assume that I have 2–3 cocktails every other day"

Ehhh what, sorry but my friends that have 2-3 every other day I would tell them they have a problem. Is it some shock to the author that this is unhealthy and expensive?

<comment><USER25> Depending how strong the cocktails are, 2 cocktails every other day doesn't seem to be much, if at all, over the NHS advice for regular drinking [1], for example. Would you really call out your friend as having a 'problem' based on that?

[1] [https://www.nhs.uk/news/food-and-diet/new-alcohol-advice- iss...](https://www.nhs.uk/news/food-and-diet/new-alcohol-advice-issued/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > > Some might think that this is heavy alcoholism, but trust me when I say > that having 1–2 drinks everyday in New York is more than normal.

It is alcholism, maybe not heavy, but alcoholism nonetheless.

<comment><USER27> I don't agree.

Drinking 1-2 cans of coke doesn't make you dependent on coke as an example. You can simply enjoy coke even though you don't need it.

<comment><USER15> If you feel upset/unhappy (even mildly) any day you can't have your 2 cokes, that's a dependency.

<comment><USER27> Perhaps, but that's my point with regard to the parents claim that 1-2 per day is definitely alcoholism. It _may_ be for some people. Someone drinks 2 large vodka drinks, they are alcoholic. 1-2 glasses of wine, probably not.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: When do you use HN? - <AUTHOR> <comment> chupa-chups Yeah (spending karma on a nonse reply to a nonsense question which should be flagged)</comment>


Helping people in a crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.blog.google/products/search/helping-people-crisis/ <comment><USER2> The Techmeme headline for this is: _Google adds SOS Alerts in Search and Maps to provide users with information in a crisis_ , which is more explanatory yet not click-bait.</comment>


America's Leading Employers Commit to Pay Different in the Wake of Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.dailypay.com/press/ <comment><AUTHOR> AMERICA'S LEADING EMPLOYERS COMMIT TO

PAY DIFFERENT IN THE WAKE OF COVID-19

Taco Bell, G4S and BrightSpring Health among the hundreds of leading businesses that have joined forces with DailyPay to change the antiquated way people are paid

NEW YORK, May 5, 2020 /PRNewswire/ \-- DailyPay, the leading fintech platform and premier provider of the daily pay benefit, today announced the launch of a new comprehensive campaign, "Pay Different."

The COVID-19 pandemic has shattered the workplace as we knew it. Every business has had to embrace engaging and connecting with their employees in a smarter, more efficient way. As companies re-emerge, normalcy will look different in many ways - including how employees are paid.

DailyPay is already defining and revolutionizing the on-demand pay experience for the post-COVID-19 world and is at the forefront of the movement to "pay different."

"In an instant, our entire business changed like never before as the COVID-19 crisis unfolded," said Pinny Faska, Chief Operating Officer at Rockaway Home Care. "Every single company workflow or process we relied on was thrown into upheaval. That is, except one - DailyPay. We feel fortunate to have been partners beforehand because, without it, many members of our incredible staff would have been in an insecure position during a crisis."

The Pay Different campaign is anchored by the new PayEx platform which comprises a series of premier capabilities that, for the first time, enable the entire workforce to experience payday on their own terms. It provides a unique approach to pay that enriches and differentiates a company's employee experience at every stage of the employee lifecycle, from onboarding to departure. The majority of DailyPay's large companies that are launching this month, including OSL Retail and Jernigan Oil, have asked us to accelerate launches in response to economic and employee needs.</comment>


Ask HN: How to start freelancing while working in corporate? - <AUTHOR> I've been working at software companies my whole career. Every single one has an IP assignment agreement and insanely broad non-competes, even startups.
Software has been my favorite hobby since I was a kid, not being able to work on things in my own time is soul crushing. I've wanted to start a business for many years but I know it won't make enough to sustain me as long as my savings will hold out.
Have any of you managed to get a dev position without a crazy non-compete and IP assignment agreement? In my state they're quite enforceable. I'm considering contracting but I've never met a contractor and the companies I've worked at don't hire them. It seems an independent streak like "freelancer" or "contractor" makes you less employable in BigCo's so I would prefer going directly from a regular full time role into owning my own business.
I know people usually just say "freelance" but I've tried that and it's far from that simple. Going from zero clients to anything reasonable takes months. Anyone found a better way to deal with this? <comment><USER2> I've bootstrapped consulting work by turning my current gig into a consulting gig -- I decide to leave a company, but they really can't find one (or two or three) people to replace me in two weeks, so I volunteer to consult for them to fill the gap.

I then charge double and work half while they drag their feet for 3 months trying to hire a replacement -- by then, I've had time to line up another gig and bank some cash. If you're nice about it and do a clean handoff to the next person, everyone is happy -- they don't even generally care about the money, they care about continuity of service.

Not doable for everyone, but it's worked out for me a couple times.

<comment><AUTHOR> That won't work for me because I'm pretty low on the chain. Its hard to show your value when you're treated like a piece of machinery.

I think I just need to make a rainy day fund then go straight into contracting. If I can line up a couple 6 month contracts with no IP assignment clauses I should be good to go</comment></comment>


Why MS Office has not created any new tech for well over a decade - bra-ket http://np.reddit.com/r/windowsphone/comments/2re2gr/how_can_independentunknown_developers_make_better/cnf6ed0

<comment><AUTHOR> I recommend reading the follow up comments on Reddit. There are some real gems in there from current and ex MS employees.

</comment><comment><USER2> The core lesson is a good one for startups: don't let the PMs run your technology development. A good engineering idea attracts customers, once customers are on board they want fixes, changes, new features. That's all fine, as long as they make sense within the technology direction. Once the customers start asking for ponies and unicorns and the PMs start _listening_ to them for direction, the product gets stuck.

</comment><comment><USER3> _" I hope, I deeply hope, that the computing power of mobile devices increases to the point that we see another PC-like shift toward decentralization. When every mobile phone can hold terabytes of storage, when networking links are > 1Gb/s between phones, will we move away from carriers running the show, and move back toward giving users control again?"_

I hope the industry will find the right path between the horrors of the closed ecosystems on one side and the horror of the JS-is-actually-not-bad-since-we- have-no-choice "open" Web.</comment>


My GDPR-Inspired Rant: Privacy, WTF - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.gartner.com/anton-chuvakin/2018/05/25/my-gdpr-inspired-rant-privacy-wtf/ <comment><USER2> > Look, my name is Anton Chuvakin (oh, no, nooo, nooo…this is "pee-ai-ai" leak > … nooo!!!) , and I had my main email on my website

The key here being you voluntarily disclosed this.

> For god's sake, have these privacy crusaders heard of phone books?

You can have an unlisted number.

>Similarly, if my hospital wants to share my health data with a pharma company and they pool it and then use it to develop cancer cure and make billions – you know, I am OK with that.

Great. Then the hospital can ask you for permission before they use your data.

> I am OK with being profiled online and seeing well-targeted ads.

I'm not

> some of it may feel creepy (uncommon, unexpected, weird, etc), but there is > no harm to you and there is definitely value for you.

The value is "more relevant ads." You know what? I hate all ads. I don't care if they're relevant.

The harm is, some company has a list of everywhere I go on the internet. They say it's anonymized, but it's not really. They say it won't be shared with anyone, but they have crappy security so someone could steal that information. They say it will only be used to help target ads, but how can they prevent an abusive government from accessing all that data? The best thing to do is just not collect the data in the first place. (Unless it's absolutely necessary for the service, and you consent to it in an obvious way.)

This shouldn't be on gartner, and shouldn't be on hacker news. This guy's argument is a joke. He completely misunderstands, or is ignorant of, the privacy issues that led to the creation of the GDPR.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was agreeing with everything until this:

>>Please, don't be stupid, PRIVACY IS NOT A HUMAN RIGHT. Privacy is at best a preference of some people; at worst, a luxury for spoiled neurotics.

I believe privacy is a human right, but the problem here is that the EU bureaucrats who formulated the GDPR regime are conflating the collection of voluntarily disclosed PII with a violation of privacy rights.

Warrantless searches are violations of privacy rights. So are income disclosure laws and the misnamed anti-money-laundering laws. In all these cases, non-compliance to what is essentially a morally unjustifiable invasion of one's private sphere means imprisonment or worse.

A company collecting data that you choose to disclose to it when you browse the website it serves you is not. It's qualitatively no different than someone remembering PII you disclosed to them when you went out for a walk, or went to their house, or had a conversation with them.

Others should not be forced to treat your actions and words as privileged information when they have never consented to entering into a privileged relationship with you.

</comment><comment><USER4> When you're in the bathroom stall, I know you're shitting, and you know I know you're shitting. But you still close and lock the door. That's privacy.

</comment><comment><USER5> A strange style of writing for an analyst at Gartner. It left me more with an impression of some Reddit rant.

On another note, I am fine with him wanting to publish his data everywhere and perpetually (if his insurance premiums rise, will he still be ok with that?). But don't impose that on me; I want my data shared with as few as possible.

<comment><USER6> You obviously hold Gartner to a higher standard than I do. You'd be better off ignoring their "Magic Quadrants" and looking for IT recommendations on Reddit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've all ways found the premise that "targeted ads make your life better" utter BS. It is predicated on the premise that the advertised products would improve the consumer's life more than if they had not been exposed to the ad and more than the cost of the product. Increasing the efficiency of your money extracting engine does not make the world a better place, it just means you are more efficient at finding victims.

</comment><comment><USER8> I will limit my comments on the writing style (it's crap), and the arguments about the potential benefits of invasive surveillance.

The overriding point is that you don't get to decide my behaviour or the rules that I want imposed on myself (the laws I will vote for).

Also, as a separate note, this person is not good at making a convincing argument.

</comment><comment><USER9> t. some guy frustrated by the time he spent in the trenches preparing for May 25

</comment><comment><USER10> The only one of his point's I'll agree with is that strawman that GPDR would protect against a holocaust. This is similar to the gun-rights fetishists who claim that absolute rights to personal firearms ownership will prevent the next dictatorship. (your handgun will be useless against a Predator drone)

Both are anachronistic. If you live in an advanced democracy, the primary threats to loss of privacy are criminal (identity theft), and discriminatory (banks, insurance companies, employers) using personal, private information to discriminate against you.

Interjecting dire scenarios of SkyNet or Holocausts is not really helpful to the debate _in developed countries_.

Ok, I'll bring up another point. Obsession with health record privacy actually will kill people. Being able to correlate medical histories with diseases and outcomes would go a long way to developing cured or diagnostic tests. If you live in a country with guaranteed healthcare, and don't pay private insurance, it seems a ridiculous fear. I'll list my medical conditions right here: Gout, Acid Reflux, Prehypertension, abnormal liver enzymes, Gall Stones. Does it bother me one iota that any entity knows this? Not in the least. But I'll acknowledge, at least in the US, with discrimination against pre-existing conditions, or private insurance policies, this is a risky proposition. But the solution is to get single-payer healthcare in the US, not fight private insurance evils by walling off medical data that could save lives. (I'm talking about "anonymized" records of course, even though we know with sufficient effort, you can deanonymize data)</comment>


How the Manhattan Project's Nuclear Suburb Stayed Secret - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-to-build-secret-nuclear-city <comment><USER2> If you're interested in atomic history and the Manhattan Project, a great book is Richard Rhodes' _The making of the atomic bomb_ (ISBN: 1451677618). It's ~900 pages of history, from the personalities of the scientists involved, to the sites of Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Hanford, and the first uses. I enjoyed reading it while interning at ORNL and Sandia in the summers during undergrad.

The weapons are horrifying in their destructive power, but the Project is a testament to what we can accomplish in science and engineering if we apply virtually unlimited resources toward R&D to solve a problem. Beyond the obvious product of the Project, it led to the creation of the DOE national laboratory system, which has since served as a means of maintaining an able technical workforce in the US, with physicists, mathematicians, chemists, biologists, and computer scientists, among others, all working in the public interest (and on things beyond weapons). Investing in science can pay dividends well into the future.

For some perspective, the cost of the Manhattan Project was on the same order of magnitude as the Apollo Program in terms of inflation-adjusted cost, about $22-26 billion in 2016 dollars. Of course that amount does not include the environmental cost still being felt in Hanford and elsewhere, or the human cost.

Knowing the cost of those two programs really makes you question some other efforts, like the program to develop the F-35 aircraft, estimated to cost $380 billion before even considering the additional $1.1 trillion in operational cost. For comparison there, the Interstate Highway system cost about $500 billion to construct.

<comment><USER3> I read somewhere that the Manhattan Project was at one point consuming 1/7 of ALL electricity generated in USA. And this is when all factories (and many newly built ones) were running at full capacity. Truly mind boggling.

<comment><USER4> The other mind-boggling info about the project is that they needed copper for the Y-12 electromagnetic separation magnets. But because there was a war on, they couldn't get it. So they went to the US Treasury and borrowed 14,700 tons of silver.

Daniel Bell, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, supposedly said:

"Young man, you may think of silver in tons, but the Treasury will always think of silver in Troy Ounces"

(turned out to be 400 million Troy Ounces)

[https://phys.org/news/2010-01-silver-crucial- wwii.html](https://phys.org/news/2010-01-silver-crucial-wwii.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I grew up in Oak Ridge (ORHS class of '82). It's an interesting little town. It's in the deep south, but at the time, it had the highest concentration of Ph.D.'s anywhere in the country (or so we were told growing up, I never actually verified this. But it seems plausible.)

If you ever visit there, be sure to go to the graphite reactor. It's the closest you will ever come to the business end of a real (though now decommissioned) nuclear reactor. The Museum of Science and Energy (originally called the Museum of Nuclear Energy, but that was changed because political correctness) is also worth visiting. (I got my very first programming job there in 1980, writing code in BASIC for exhibits running on Commodore PETs. One of my duties was to go around the museum and re-load the software on all the exhibits from cassette tapes. Ah, those were the days!)

<comment><USER6> >political correctness

Huh? How in the hell is that politically incorrect? It's not like the Museum of Nuclear Science in Albuquerque changed its name.

<comment><USER5> In the late 1970s, nuclear energy was very much out of favor. It's no coincidence that The China Syndrome was made in 1979.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oak Ridge is a pretty awesome little city (very beautiful too). I live nearby in Knoxville and did a lot of work on the Titan supercomputer and spallation neutron source at ORNL while in grad school. Interestingly, Oak Ridge was rated the safest city in the U.S. in 2017 ([https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.realtor.com/news/trends/saf...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.realtor.com/news/trends/safest- and-most-dangerous-us-cities.amp/)).

<comment><USER8> > One of its major summer events is the Secret City Festival—a weekend of > parades, concerts, and tours of the federal facilities. "It's the only time > during the year that the public can gain access," Smith says.

From the article. This sounds like it's not publicly accessible 51 weeks of the year. Shouldn't that explain it? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I especially liked how the article looked closely at the architected, pre-fab housing and showed how easy that problem is to solve when there's a will to do it.

Houses like that could solve a lot of today's problems. In the same way, in the span of a few months, with ownership perpetually limited to low-income families.

<comment><USER10> Where would you put them? E.g. in the bay area, where you're not allowed to build regular housing and regular apartments to meet the demand, why would they let you build tiny prefab houses?

The problem isn't an inability to construct housing, it's the regulatory capture in the form of bad zoning by home and land owners that prevents the increase of housing supply. We desperately need to fix that, sadly we probably won't until things get much much worse.

<comment><USER9> Sadly, I think you're right. NIMBY is an asinine reality. 'We got ours. Get outta here.'

And it's spreading. In today's news: [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/housing-crisis-small- ci...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/housing-crisis-small-cities- boise_us_5ae878f7e4b055fd7fcfcee0)

There's a lot of empty land in the US ... so, like Oak Ridge and Hanford, there'd have to be new communities, capable of attracting small businesses ... enough to employ the new residents. Some of the first low-cost pre-fabs could be preferentially doled out to people who have have, or want to start a new, small business.

Also ... and I'm thinking of Olympia, WA for example ... government business seems to be fairly stable, and seems to resist recessions quite well. Nice quiet place, for people into that sort of thing.

Nineteenth-century railroads were built in the space of months, if there was a billion feet of wood to be 'harvested'. They didn't cost $10M per mile either. Replace the wood with access to a city 15 or 20 miles away.

It was doable before, and it's just that much more doable.

<comment><USER10> Even places like Olympia have gotten much much more expensive over the past decade. But we should definitely be doing more to spread the load. As you say railroads are key - Olympia to Seattle on a modern train would be a one hour commute, perfectly within the realm for many people especially those that don't have to be in the office every day.

But railroads in the US are my biggest pet peeve, we just can't do them right here. If I had my druthers I'd essentially nationalize the railroads and then hire the Swiss to run them.

<comment><USER9> That one Oly to Seattle Amtrak that went too fast around the corner makes me sure you're right about our RRs.

Looking back (I'm not much of a rail historian, but) from what I do know, the US rail system was built-out to serve resource exploitation (including populating the mid-continent), not passengers. So personal autos got a leg up on them, in the mid-20s, before they could afford better passenger routes (outside of major inter-city corridors).

I'd guess that if it wasn't for WW2, US passenger rail would have croaked much sooner than it did. The Interstate system didn't help either. AND THEN they were allowed to rip up the old tracks. Ay yay. So clearly some interests were aligned against the RR's. And our atmosphere has and is paying the price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is where my grandparents met. My grandfather was a chemist. My great grandfather was a machine operator for one of the construction companies commissioned to build the town. He brought his daughter along with him and she ran away with a scientist (my grandfather). They are passed away now but their stories of Oak Ridge were so fascinating.

My grandfather always maintained some secrecy as to what his responsibilities at Oak Ridge were, but his expertise in uranium was well-known. He gave many talks at universities, etc. on the topic. He continued working for the Nuclear Energy Commission for the rest of his career. His next job was working at a facility in Waverly, OH which was disguised as a Goodyear plant. My mother and her siblings thought their father worked at a tire factor for most of their childhood. They insist this secret went more or less unquestioned.

</comment><comment><USER12> > the government approached the families that lived there—some of whom had > owned their farmsteads for generations—and "summarily evicted" them. [.. > They described the project as a "demolition range," so any possible holdouts > could be scared off with the threat of near-constant explosions.

I'm curious how this was done legally in the US, given the strong property rights there and especially given it was the south? Sounds like a very soviet style beginning.

But I guess they bought some land or had some existing public property, then scared the other nearby landowners away by saying it would be used for 'demolitions'... with offers of money for their property?

Or was it a straight up legal order / eviction that the federal government has some ultimate power to do?

<comment><USER13> Federal and state government have the right of eminent domain, though it does not sound like it was used here. Just sounds like they offered to buy the land, and told any potential hold outs that their land would lose value if they refused.

Though, in 1943 the "ultimate power" of the military and Federal government was virtually limitless.

<comment><USER14> The article did not say that owners were compensated. The wikipedia page (if you trust it) for Oak Ridge makes mention of the fact that not everyone was compensated: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Ridge,_Tennessee#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Ridge,_Tennessee#History)

<comment><USER15> "Forced out before receiving compensation" just means it was done quickly; it doesn't necessarily (or even likely) mean they weren't paid. Not paying would lead to far higher risk of security compromise for the site (from legal challenges, etc.), so it seems unlikely they wouldn't pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Minor claim to fame here - my great-grandfather was one of the engineers who initially surveyed and selected the Oak Ridge site. Sadly he died when I was about 6 months old, so I was never able to ask him about it.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have read about all this, of course. Am currently re-reading the Rhodes book after many years. But I hadn't seen _pictures_ before. That plant was truly _massive_.

Also (and yes, I know they're probably poster shots), take a look at the better of those houses. Then look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn't give your right arm to live in them.

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow, I find this fascinating, the government effectively used a large-scale project to seed a town/city. There was another HN post a few weeks back that was asking about if governments should create more cities. This story provides an interesting case study on the efficacy of the federal government to do so.

<comment><USER19> There's lots of towns that grew up around military bases.

Washington DC is a federally planned city.

A less drastic measure than trying to start new cities is to move services to existing cities that have lots of housing (or a clear path to expanding housing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm not sure how much new housing was built specifically for Hanford, since the existing tri-cities (Richland, Pasco, Kennewick) were nearby and within commuting range.

<comment><USER21> Plenty --- Richland is still filled with "alphabet houses" built by the government. The Tri-Cities really weren't very developed when the feds first came to town.

"Richland was a small farm town until the US Army purchased 1660 km² (640 sq mi) along the Columbia River for the war effort, evicting the 300 residents of Richland as well as those of the now vanished towns of White Bluffs and Hanford just upriver. The army turned it into a bedroom community for the workers on its Manhattan Project facility at the nearby Hanford Engineering Works (now the Hanford site). The population increased from 300 in July and August 1943 to 25,000 by the end of World War II in August 1945. Richland became a closed city (federally controlled Atomic Energy community), with access restricted to residents and others authorized by the U.S. Army. All land and buildings were owned by the government. Housing was assigned to residents and token rent was collected; families were assigned to houses or duplexes; single people were placed in apartments or barracks.

"Much of the city was planned by Spokane architect Albin Pherson in conjunction with the Army Corps of Engineers.[2] While there were dormitories and barracks built at the time, prefabricated duplexes and single family homes are all that survive today. Because homes were allocated based on family size and need, there were a number of floorplans available. These were each identified by a letter of the alphabet, and so came to be known as alphabet houses." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Coast_Historic_District_(...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Coast_Historic_District_\(Richland,_Washington\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It didn't?

The only potential adversary that mattered, the soviet union, knew what was going on the entire time and essentially had full access to the oak ridge facility</comment>


Apple broke a lot of its developer reference urls... again. - <AUTHOR> http://renesd.blogspot.com/2009/08/apple-broke-lot-of-its-developer.html

<comment><USER2> I notice Microsoft regularly breaks its own developer URLs as well... even the links from within Visual Studio's help system to their online content. It's sad that the most reliable way to find documentation is through Google.

<comment><USER3> Incidentally, Google tends to break CPAN's documentation a lot. If I visit the "canonical URL" for a module, something like <http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Foo::Bar>, it always works. If I google for Foo::Bar, though, sometimes I get linked to <http://search.cpan.org/dist/Foo- Bar-0.17>, which is 404 because the author deleted version 0.17 and uploaded 0.18.

Amusing that other people have the opposite problem.

<comment><USER4> You can't delete anything from CPAN.

I've never experienced what you describe.

<comment><USER5> You can actually. I can't find a link now, but I'm pretty sure it's actively encouraged so as not to clutter up the CPAN with obsolete versions of modules.

That's why we have things like <http://backpan.perl.org/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not like this is even exclusive to the documentation—every new release of OS X takes over /macosx (or whatever it is).

It seems like somebody involved feels that there's no use for the past.

<comment><USER7> That would be Steve "we don't need no stinkin' floppies" himself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yeah, I've seen this several times. I don't know how they put the site together, but it doesn't sound like it would be a hard problem to solve.

As weird as it is on the web, it's even weirder in their developer tools. I kid you not, there are HTML files in "/Developer/Documentation/DocSets/com.apple.ADC_Reference_Library.CoreReference.docset/Contents/Resources/Documents/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/ApplicationKit/Classes/NSApplication_Class". Whereas, if they'd hired me to do it, I would have probably called it "/Developer/Documentation/Cocoa".

<comment><USER9> While absurdly long, that path actually does (mostly) make sense. If you were to do it, it would be an organizational mess when looking for something.

/Developer is the standard install path. Documentation/ for docs, DocSets for the actual docs (as opposed to sample code), com.apple.ADC_Reference_library to say its an ADC reference library (as opposed to installing your own docsets, which some libraries have), CoreReference.docset to say which docset it is exactly (leopard vs snow leopard, for example), Contents/ is pretty standard for OS X bundles, Resources/ since docs are technically resources, Documents/ (again, there are other files here: sample code, tech notes, etc), documentation/ for the documents themselves, Cocoa/ for which framework you're looking at (It could also be Carbon, Webkit's CSS, Darwin, Java, etc), and, well, thats the end of the chain on my system. But to continue it based on a guess, Reference/, possibly redundant, but its nice for organizational purposes, ApplicationKit/ - you _are_ looking up something in AppKit, but there are other *Kit's that can be used as well, Classes/ instead of headers, maybe, and then NSApplication_Class for the class that you want.

<comment><USER8> The structure is consistent with other bundles. But the question is, are bundles really the logical way to handle documentation? I don't think so.

If you look in places like "/Library/Application Support", everything is basically broken down by product or vendor. It is hard to imagine having so much documentation installed that similar naming wouldn't suffice for DocSets.

Apple has also used saner documentation layouts elsewhere (and oddly, in places that are probably not meant to be "public" documentation). For instance, there's a /Library/Documentation, and its layout is very easy to follow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In my more paranoid moments I think Apple is actively trying to make it difficult to develop for their products. I know how crazy it sounds but it's not entirely irrational.

I mean, how can a company that puts so much effort into perfectionism do something like this by mistake?

<comment><USER11> It's a culture thing. Steve created a much more ambivalent relationship to external developers than the usual love affair most tech companies strive for.

Microsoft has always been about the ecosystem, for Apple third-parties are always a threat to a smooth user experience. When the video driver on your mom's PC crashes, does she blame Nvidia who wrote the code or Windows?

<comment><USER12> You make an excellent point. Given the low quality of the driver ecosystem, I'm amazed that most Windows machines function at all. ATI, Creative, and Silicon Image are at fault for 90% of the BSODs I've ever experienced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You can Search for anything in the Developer Documentation (installed with XCode).

<comment><USER14> This isn't about that. I link to Apple's documents in my blog posts, manual, mailing list replies, tickets, etc.

It is extremely frustrating that these links break with time, not made any better when then users write _me_ to tell that my links are broken.</comment></comment>


Show HN: oh my giraffe – An iOS and Android game I made to learn programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.ohmygiraffe.com

<comment><USER2> This is really cool ! do you have you code on Git or somewhere ? I tried building a small game with pygame .. and wasn't too bad.

<comment><AUTHOR> The source will end up on GitHub when I get the chance to tidy things a little! For now, you could dig into the .love (which is just a renamed zip archive) that is available for the Linux preview. But you definitely shouldn't because I'll be pretty embarrassed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Congrats on shipping! And looks like a really nice game. What framework did you use for cross-platform development?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I used LÖVE ([https://love2d.org](https://love2d.org)), which began to support iOS and Android roughly six months ago through two community ports.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What kind of programming techniques did you learn?

<comment><AUTHOR> Lua is very multi-paradigm so it certainly made for an interesting place to start. The most valuable thing I learned is profiling before optimizing. The way Lua tables work also helped me understand the advantages of different data structures, because if you don't, the flexibility is fairly treacherous. Lua also convinced me that static typing is very useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh this looks really cute and great job!</comment>


David Byrne: "Google is Evil" - <AUTHOR> http://davidbyrne.com/google-is-evil

<comment><AUTHOR> In the past the little displeasure like this I've heard expressed has been related to ebook readers. I imagine this response to device/software creators will slowly grow as it happens to individual people one at a time, on their phones or tablets or Steam or whatever Microsoft is selling these days or...</comment>


How to bet on the bubble? (with list of 2010/11 YC startup hosting providers) - <AUTHOR> http://www.gilesthomas.com/?p=480

<comment><USER2> I am sorry but this article gets it all wrong, while we may be in a bubble the reasons for choosing AWS are obvious and the reason startups are choosing are even more obvious. Startups have not technical debt and start from a clean slate, AWS and other cloud providers, for the first time allow companies whose focus is software, the ability to offload infrastructure to an organization that can provide first class service at a manageable cost.

Other organizations will slowly follow suite but it will be the startups that hone these systems as they are naturally the early adopters. I personally would never consider owning my own infrastructure again, I just cant provide the level of maturity that Amazon or others can at the price they do it at.

Bubble or no bubble AWS provides some clear cut business advantages. Ignoring them does not prove that a bubble exists.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there -- article author here. Not sure why what you say (which is correct as far as it goes) makes the article wrong. All I said was that AWS is popular among startups (with proof points), but buying Amazon stock is a poor way to capitalise on that because AWS is a small part of their business.

<comment><USER2> I apologize if that was not the message that you where trying to convey and I did get the latter point out of it, but I also got the inference out of the article that because all these startups use AWS there is a bubble. It may not have been your intent but it does seem to imply it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, I don't get that even on rereading -- but yup, you're certainly right that that would be a crazy thing to allege :-) I actually do think that there is a bubble, but that's more to do with crazy valuations like the recent Color.com investment than anything to do with AWS.

<comment><USER2> My interpretations are probably wrong more than they are right so take it with a grain of salt. It just seemed to me to infer that. I think there is a bubble as well, but this one is going to last a long time. The fact of the mater is we have inflated everything else and popped it so now the only thing we can do is re-inflate tech which has to stay inflated for some years to come until the real estate and stock bubbles are forgotten then we can again shift into them.

<comment><AUTHOR> You may be right. People were talking about a bubble for several years back in the late 90s before it finally burst in 2000, so there's no reason to assume this one will be any faster.

That's actually why I was looking at investing in Amazon AWS; I don't have enough money to invest in startups, but I was hoping that I could buy some stock in something that would grow as startups do; the old metaphor of buying the company that sells shovels to gold prospectors. That's why I was a bit disappointed that AWS is such a small part of Amazon's service, because it meant that I couldn't use them that way -- and because they're such a massively dominant player in the hosting market, there seemed to be little point in investing in (eg.) Rackspace instead.

Still, my investment track record is kind of spotty, so I may well be totally wrong with that strategy anyway.

<comment><USER2> If you want to invest in this bubble, commodities is where it is at, more direct and they are the only other item left that had not been hyper inflated, the trick as with all bubbles is to time your exit. Find a commodity, any commodity that has not already hyper inflated and get it, it will inflate, the commodities pop is going to be worse than any of the bubbles before them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Imperial College London's table of disruptive tech - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/imperial-college-london-table-of-disruptive-tech-will-blow-your-mind-2018-7 <comment><USER2> > The table was created by Richard Watson and Anna Cupani after reading a dry > list of emerging technologies on Wikipedia. They spoke to experts to shape > the table and produced a number of drafts using Post-it notes for each > element before agreeing on a final version...

This methodology has put Smart Nappies, Wireless Energy Transfer and Autonomous Vehicles into the same 'happening now' category. Compared with them, Peer-to-peer energy trading & transmission and Automated knowledge discovery are considered 'experimental'. I'm not convinced the results are robust and they certainly don't indicate the degree of disruption that we should be expecting.

> Maria Jeansson, who worked on the project, said it was designed as a visual > conversation starter.

I don't think it will be a very long conversation.

<comment><USER3> Results were never meant to be robust, just clickbaity, one of the main authors is a "Stakeholder Engagement Manager" whatever that means.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The direct link:

[https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial- college/administra...](https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial- college/administration-and-support-services/enterprise-office/public/Table-of- Disruptive-Technologies.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> 58 Nm - New Materials. 20 Years Hence. Citation: Vanta Black by Surrey Nanosystems.

So it's going to be 20 YEARS before we have any new materials. And when we have those new materials they're going to be a material that a company in Surrey is already selling today. Wat.

Imperial is my Alma Mater and frankly it's embarrassing when they do stupid publicity stunts like this.

<comment><USER6> > 58 Nm

* 48 Nm

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like how "Self writing software" is very soon and only medium impact. Once we have self writing software, everything else on the grid comes for free! Step one would be to automatically write a better automatic software writer.

<comment><USER8> Pipe a quine into a compiler, run the output.

Bow before my might simple mortals.

\--

For fun a while back I was playing with the concept of self modifying bash.

A bash script that duplicates and modifies a random character/ adds a character in a random location, or deletes a character.

Then running the output and the original file.

Obviously I got a lot of broken scripts, my point is self writing software is possible, automated, well thought out edits are a long way off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Placing asteroid mining in the farthest category seems a bit misplaced to me. If even politicians started to lay down law for space ownership, it can't be that uncertain or far fetched.

<comment><USER10> It doesn't seem economical in any reasonable time frame given the relative cheapness of mining what's already on earth.

<comment><USER11> Wonder if the economics may change if stricter laws were implemented to help with climate change. It's crazy I know, but maybe in future that could end up forcing heavy industry off Earth and onto places/planets/asteroids/whatever where no one needs to care about the environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Balloon powered internet"

I know this one is referring to Google's Project Loon, which uses balloons as relays to bring internet to remote areas, but I'd really like to see an Internet actually running on balloon power.

</comment><comment><USER13> If Smart Nappies were not on the list, I might take this more seriously.

<comment><USER14> Also Telepathy, although they cite organisations that are researching these 'wonderful, weird (and possibly worrying) ways the world might change in the foreseeable future', which is more worrying!

<comment><USER15> Startup headed by an ex-Facebook/Oculus exec, [https://www.cnet.com/news/telepathy-openwater-mary-lou- jepse...](https://www.cnet.com/news/telepathy-openwater-mary-lou-jepsen-mri- mind-reading-mri-wearable-facebook/)

 _" I think we're talking about less than a decade, probably eight years until telepathy." The details of exactly how all this will work are a little murky, and Openwater says it needs to file for patents before it will publish a peer reviewed proof of feasibility and eventually launch a product. But Jepsen, who has also spent time at Google X, MIT and Intel, says the basic idea is to shrink down the huge MRI machines found in medical hospitals into flexible LCDs that can be embedded in a ski hat and use infrared light to see what's going on in your brain. "Literally a thinking cap," Jepsen explains."_</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any Android users interested in beta testing an app? - <AUTHOR>

Mobimity is a location based mobile social network that encourages new friendships.
The Mobimity Android app is in public beta and available for download at http://mobimity.com.
With the Mobimity app, you can browse for other users in close proximity, search for people anywhere on the system, and keep up with your friends as well. Mobimity never announces your exact location; it only informs other users of your distance from them.
Explore your world. Discover new people.
-jason <comment><USER2> I'll test it. Contact info is in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks a lot!</comment></comment>