Apple Featured My Game, Here's Why I Changed It - <AUTHOR> http://zervaas.com.au/blog/hexiled-feature.html <comment><USER2> A user being able to give a negative review for a game not supporting language X when the game, like every single app in the app store, lists exactly what languages it supports on the download page devalues legitimate reviews and is the sign of a broken app review process.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree. Even the ability to respond as on we can on Google Play would be a massive improvement (or even up/down vote like on HN)

<comment><USER3> I think there is a down/up vote mechanism in iTunes ("Was this review helpful? Yes/No"). But I'm not sure if that's visible on actual devices.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh right. Very rarely do I view the App Store in iTunes. The only legitimately useful reason I have for doing so is to quickly see rankings in a specific country's store (but doing so removes all Genius & iTunes Match data, so is pretty annoying also).

Before Google switched over to Wallet and allowed responses to reviews, you could get a fair bit of info about each sale (for a paid app), including often their email address.

I would often email people seeking clarification when they would review "XYZ doesn't work for me" in a bid to fix it.

On one hand it might seem a bit creepy, but on the other hand, they were my customer and I was provided with information about them. I never asked for a better review, just for information to improve the product.

They rarely replied.

<comment><USER3> I think giving customer emails to app developers is plain wrong. I'd be creeped out if a developer emailed me after I reviewed his or her app.

Developers shouldn't be so concerned with reviews. Reviews are for other customers, not for developers to read. I say this as a developer who has received reviews that contain misinformation about my product (lying that it's going to be pulled from the App Store, for example). I made a decision to stop reading reviews and just focus on building something I'm proud of. This has paid off for me.

I also make it easy for customers to email me directly in my apps. I get a lot of good feedback this way — and I can send a response that is actually solicited.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed on the first point. I'm glad they removed it. But we had so few tools at our disposal, and the reviews can mean so much.

I'm the same though, completely averse when it comes to looking at reviews, good and bad. I hate it.

Your last point is really good, I've always thought there should be super easy mechanisms like this (although I'm often guilty of not providing, aside from email address or Twitter handles).

The Google Maps feedback mechanism works really well - includes a screenshot and a bunch of diagnostics info. The only thing I don't like about it is you need to shake to trigger it, meaning most people don't know about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm Quentin's co-creator on Hexiled. If you're interested, we had a woefully unsuccessful Show HN the other day: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8088223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8088223)

And note that at the end of Quentin's blog entry, there's a link to our blog series about creating the game. We've been talking to friends about the general aspects of the game so always keen to chat with other game developers and entrepreneurs about specific challenges.

</comment><comment><USER5> Complaining about the review process is complaining about human nature. Is a normal user going to find you site, find your contact form, and then send a nice email to you asking for their language? No. There are things that Apple could change, that may or may not help. Adding the ability to respond to reviews might help the developer feel better.

What developers need to do is make it easier for a user to give feedback, than it is for a user to leave a review. Give them a way to vent to you, and they might not vent in a review.

Is this easy? No. Does it work? Yes.

</comment><comment><USER6> From the title I inferred that you changed your game because apple featured it, as a way of implying that you didn't like the exposure. The post revealed something completely different of this.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's more so that the feature gave us such a huge amount of data early on in our game's lifetime that we noticed some things we needed to quickly iterate on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Didn't you do any usability testing? It seems to me that most of the problems you encountered would have been caught if you had.

<comment><USER8> Usability testing is a bit of a luxury for a two-man team...

<comment><USER4> Especially when we are running our existing businesses/clients concurrently. In my case, my sole employee is overseas for four months so it was a pretty intense period juggling things. Quentin handled the lion's share with the programming side.

That said, we would pay a lot more attention to the on-boarding next game. I was quite happy with our tutorial so it's frustrating we left holes and fell short.

As Quentin said in another reply, one big mistake we made was that a lot of testing was with a beta group that had played the game dozens of times before the tutorial was fully fleshed out. Huge mistake! Another mistake was watching someone play it for the first time where we were in a position to coach them. We should've been silent and seen what they did. Easy to spot the issues in hindsight!

<comment><USER7> It's a big misconception that user testing is luxury, even for very small or one person teams. Applying some of the most basic principals can save you a ton of wasted effort. In nearly every case it will make you much more productive / efficient. The earlier you catch the mistakes, the easier to fix them.

Check out the 'discount usability' movement. Much of it is written for web / mobile development but the principles are pretty much universal and can be applied to both game design and/or interactive learning aids (in your case the tutorial).

If nothing else read up on how to run a usability test. Without even being an expert it will help you get much more out of your testing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here, if you have any questions about the game or blog post, I'll be here for a while.

<comment><USER9> This is interesting, especially the bit about getting featured right off the bat, because I'm just getting started with mobile game development and had for long time an idea for a pretty similar game. Similar in the sense that it was a hex-tiled spelling game where you need to string together words to get somewhere.

However, my partner and I are looking at a different game right now.

Also, I know there are worse reviewers than this, but man ...

"The vocab in this game needs a serious update, I have no idea which words to go for due to the fact that it does not have some retry basic words built in. Not toention the selection process needs a tad bit rethink. Overall it is a pretty great idea, it just needs to be fully realized. I would give it more stars but I'm a pass or fail kinda guy, and this did not pass... Not yet anyway :)"

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, it can be confronting reading reviews.

There's over 250,000 words in our dictionary (that's not to say you can necessarily make all of them in the game).

Most people just query "Zen" not being in there though ;)

<comment><USER9> Are you using SOWPODS? I had thought to stick with TWL being somewhat of an old school Scrabble player. Also, little technical question if I may: what sort of data structure do you use for your dictionary?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're using CSW12.

It's stored in a single-table Sqlite database with some techniques to make word lookup really fast. I believe it could be faster still, but this is likely beyond my technical expertise.

Next problem is to scale the game to multiple languages without bloating the download size of the game too much. Haven't decided what's best yet for this: either compressing the dictionaries for distribution (and decompressing on first launch), or an in-game download (this seems like so much effort though and just adds more friction)

<comment><USER9> I wasn't aware of CSW but from the size I guess it's similar to SOWPODS.

An Sqlite db sounds like the sweet spot of performance and easy of use.

Couldn't you automate the in-game download? I.e.: If the user selects another language download it on the spot with a little popup telling the reason for the delay?

<comment><AUTHOR> All options are being considered. I like that idea in theory but it just adds to the complexity:

\- More technical debt \- More points of failure \- Need to host the data somewhere (plus pay for it... the App Store is basically a free CDN)

Off the top of my head, it may be possible to do a Free IAP where Apple hosts the content, but I may be totally wrong on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am curious about the Apple process for a feature. Did you write to Apple pitching your game?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't definitively know what caused it, but I did notify my local Apple dev relations team while it was pending review.

<comment><USER10> any tips on how to get in touch with the Apple dev relations team? We generally send emails to firstname.lastname@example.com around launches, but they don't seem to get any response.

<comment><AUTHOR> Go to WWDC if you can and there's a range of people you can meet. I'm not even sure if my emails had any effect

<comment><USER10> I do plan on going next year. I decided to skip this year as I was not sure how valuable it will be, but now I feel I was wrong about that. Good luck with continued success for this and future games.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely go if you can. I went in 2013. I wish somebody told me ahead of time how important / valuable the one-on-one sessions with Apple engineers are though.

I realised though only during Day 3 and barely had any time with them. The sessions are a small part of the week (I mean, you can watch those online at any time).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Heartbleed attacks seen in March 23rd server logs - wc- https://www.seacat.mobi/blog/heartbleed

<comment> wc- Blog seems to be down for me now, cached entry here: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:y92P5i...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:y92P5ipeQ3cJ:www.seacat.mobi/blog/heartbleed+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Checked a few of (the owners of) those IPs:

* LeaseWeb (VPS host)

* Amazon (presumably EC2)

* China Telecom (!)</comment>


What is better – a happy life or a meaningful one? – Roy F Baumeister - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/what-is-better-a-happy-life-or-a-meaningful-one <comment><USER2> The traditional Zen answer is... "Don't enter the caves of Satan (meaning bliss meditation) because you may never come out."

A meaningful life has plenty of happiness (post-meditation, so you know what's useful as opposed to egocentric actions that leave a heavy karmic wake) but you also get things done. Not just for yourself, but others. So for the Zen guys, the question says "is it better to hit two birds with one stone, or just one bird?"</comment>


Rook v1.0 – A Major Milestone - <AUTHOR> https://blog.rook.io/rook-v1-0-a-major-milestone-689ca4c75508 <comment><AUTHOR> Rook is "cloud-native" storage using a Kubernetes operator to run Ceph in a cluster. Also integrations with Cassandra, CockroachDB and Minio.</comment>


Do Cell Phones Prevent Alzheimer's? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=3666

<comment><AUTHOR> Any news article about a new medical research finding should be read with Peter Norvig's advice on interpreting research studies at hand.

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

The autnor of the submitted article (Harriet Hall) is well aware of such issues, and raises many of them in this blog post. Her longer presentation on interpreting medical research

<http://www.skepticstoolbox.org/hall/>

is well worth a read.</comment>


Downtime Alert – sends you an email if your site is down - <AUTHOR> https://script.google.com/a/project-a.com/d/1pXQa3A3dQ8lAeJaEySMWBlKd7Hkqw-UU3WoTlAxTF-LzWPZrNW5GkQUi/edit?usp=drive_web <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, this script checks a list of URLs every 5 minutes and send you an email in case any of them don't deliver a 200 status code. The motivation was to have a free (as in free beer) downtime alert that I could easily use against all my sites.

I still need to include a 1 sec delay between crawls to avoid server issues.

I would appreciate any feedback regarding how to extend the functionality without increasing complexity to the final user.</comment>


Some Popular Myths in Software Development - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-popular-myths-in-software-development

<comment><USER2> _That writing software is a good profession for people who lack people skills._

Compared to most other professions, it is. Of course having good social skills will be a significant benefit, but it's quite possible to be below average in that area and still be a successful developer.</comment>


Photos: Sun's James Gosling shows what Java can do - <AUTHOR> http://news.com.com/2300-1012_3-6183339.html?tag=nefd.top <comment><USER2> It's amazing !</comment>


Everyone claims they are following "agile methods" but few actually do - <AUTHOR> https://work.qz.com/1201384/everyone-claims-they-are-following-agile-methods-but-few-actually-do/ <comment><USER2> The big problems I see are this:

1\. Talking about "Agile" like it's a "thing" you can adopt (it's not). Agile is a _description_ of a _family_ of methodologies. Or, to be more precise, it's a _set of principles and ideals_ which a large set of methodologies claim to incorporate and emphasize (and do so to varying degrees). Anyway, you don't adopt "Agile" you adopt Scrum, or Crystal, or AgileUP, or XP, or SAFE, etc. And yes, this matters, because people say "Agile says you do X" where this statement is basically incorrect for almost every value of X. "Agile" is _not_ some heavyweight, prescriptive methodology that dictates a Jira workflow, blah, etc. It's your shitty implementation of Scrum, SAFE, etc. that dictates these things. But people get to use the excuse "this is Agile" if you argue against any part of the current process.

2\. Completely missing sight of how the Agile Manifesto says "favor individuals and interactions over processes and tools" and implementing some highly prescriptive, top-down, command-and-control process. And thinking that "we're Agile" because we have daily scrums, use Jira (or Rally), and work in "sprints". Basically, people adopt the _ceremony_ and some of the _language_ used by some agile-family methodologies, but completely avoid the _principles and ideals_ of Agile (and articulated in the Agile Manifesto).

3\. Impedance mismatch between the way developers expect to work in an "Agile" environment, and what management wants. Basically, somebody in management read an HBR article or something that said "Agile lets you move faster" and misinterpreted that as "If we implement Agile, my developers will crank out more code faster, and I don't have to change anything else about how this company works".

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, yes and yes!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> At my workplace we're semi-agile but it's been mostly in response to middle and upper managers, who want to claim to be agile. Our practices haven't changed all that much, to be honest. Initially we were aiming for full-blown agile but it felt like too much of a straight jacket and there was a lot of resentment against being micromanaged.

<comment><USER2> _Initially we were aiming for full-blown agile but it felt like too much of a straight jacket and there was a lot of resentment against being micromanaged._

There is no such thing as "agile". Were they talking about Scrum, SAFE, XP, Crystal, AgileUP or what? And in either case, if what was being pitched involved a lot of micromanagement and felt like a "straight jacket" then you can pretty much say that, by definition, it was not a valid implementation of the principles of the Agile Manifesto. Unless your comparing to a complete "cowboy coding" environment with no process at all, in which case even the most lightweight process might feel constraining...

<comment><AUTHOR> In our case Scrum was the favored methodology. I'm not arguing against Agile or even Scrum, by the way. I've been following and dreaming about working in a team like they described on the Extreme Programming pages on c2.com years before Agile was a twinkle in our managers' eyes.

However, in our case implementing something closer to the pure ideal of the Agile Manifesto proved too challenging:

\- In internal SW projects it's difficult to find a customer that's willing to put in the time required to drive the development.

\- Everyone has multiple jobs, some include ME and EE that are hard to agilify

\- Managers don't really want to turn over scheduling authority to the team

\- Exploratory and learning takes a backseat to knocking items off the backlog

<comment><USER2> _Everyone has multiple jobs, some include ME and EE that are hard to agilify_

 _\- Managers don 't really want to turn over scheduling authority to the team_

 _\- Exploratory and learning takes a backseat to knocking items off the backlog_

Yeah, that's usually what happens. It's a shame too. :-(</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mayday.us - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/mayday <comment><USER2> If a user used Stripe "the chance that a visitor would abandon their donation at the Checkout step halved from 22% to 10%"

You can see even in Stripe's earliest UX the desire to dramatically limit the "pain" that goes into entering CC details online.

When they added the "remember me" button I said to myself this is going to wind up being the "billion dollar checkbox" once merchants really understand the power of not forcing people to re-enter their CC details.

It's still somewhat mind-boggling to me how badly browser "auto-fill" solutions fail at this incredibly valuable problem.

Amazon and Apple, IMO, basically hold onto their dominating positions in physical & digital content respectively because their hold so many CC's and it's just so much damn easier to not have to re-authorize, re-input, etc etc.

<comment><USER3> When I see that "remember me" checkbox I thought about how they were storing that information. There's usually no obvious indicator someone is using stripe, you just see a form asking for credit card input. I tend to never check such a box and in fact prefer it if there's a payment option with a company that already has my credit card info, like paypal or amazon, so that I have less surface area for having that information stolen and less places to update once I have to renew or replace a card.

<comment><USER4> Your CC is probably insured anyways and if you have good bank they will deal with any fraud in matter of days releasing you from any responsibility.

If not - change a bank.

<comment><USER3> Yeah that is true but I could just not expose my credit cards and not worry about catching fraud in time to avoid having to deal with problems. These days you have to read your credit card report carefully to see if you've been victimized. I didn't realize I was until I saw a $29.99 charge every month for someone else's credit report. I didn't think it was a mistake until I canceled mine and still saw that charge there months later. It's not enough to be covered by your bank, at least not for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do we know how MayDay is performing in this election? I was disappointed not to hear any mentions of it on the news leading up to the election? Have they actually upset any elections.

<comment><USER6> We were in two primaries, and our candidate won in one of them, in another he moved from 9% to 24 or so of the vote.

Today is the day we learn more. Hopefully some of our candidates will win. Another important factor to keep in mind is that this an experiment. The knowledge we generate about what it takes to move elections on this issue, and the attention we have brought to the issue of money in politics are an important part of our goals.

(Disclaimer: I work for Mayday)

<comment><USER5> That's interesting, thanks for the response. I've been getting the email updates and it's hard to get the big picture from those.

So the biggest goal of this process is learning how to move elections?

I shouldn't be concerned that the media isn't mentioning MayDay as a factor in the elections or control of congress?

<comment><USER6> More specifically, the experiment is about how to sway voters on the issue of money in politics. I particularly like this page for the big picture: [https://mayday.us/the-plan/](https://mayday.us/the-plan/)

Looking back, thinking about where we've come from against this plan from May 1st I'm pretty amazed. But of course, there is a lot more work ahead.

A lot of the media narrative around the election is "which party controls the senate" and so they would not necessarily cover non-partisan Mayday.

But we have gotten a LOT of media coverage.

This is a blog post I happen to really like: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-foster/the-impact- inves...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-foster/the-impact-investor-a- mod_b_6083244.html)

And here is an in-depth example of analysis of a race Mayday is involved in: [http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/is-michigan-s- most-p...](http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/is-michigan-s-most- powerful-republican-really-in-political-danger-20141021)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a bit concerning that this page doesn't really reference the order of magnitude of data that they're working with, statistical significance, or anything to indicate that the difference between the two percentages they're comparing is something that's actually worth comparing, and not something that can or is likely to be explained away due to small sample size.

<comment><USER8> From the downloadable dataset of donations, the current total amount of donations is 62,769 donations with 50,802 unique donators, which is a healthy amount.

However, that doesn't indicate how many users fell into the "had a Stripe account already" bucket. (I'd wager not many.)

(Off topic aside about data integrity: the downloadable data, from October onward, has donation dates from 2018.)

<comment><USER9> This is Mario from Mayday PAC. Yeah, our last release had those 2018 issues. The data actually comes from several different vendors and we plan on normalizing it all better post election. The 2018 data should have been registered as 2014. (Obviously not 2018)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's amazing how much goes to line the pockets of politicians and their cronies, and with the flimsiest of expected outcomes on the part of those who give, in an age in which creating actually worthwhile things, new technologies and scientific progress, is cheaper than ever.

Watching this sort of thing, knowing that the researchers behind many very worthwhile lines of medical research that might bring great benefit to hundreds of millions struggle to raise a tenth of this amount over the course of years, is ever eye-opening.

We're not a very rational species.

<comment><USER6> Yep. This is precisely what Mayday.US is fighting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >> But on the last day of the campaign, mobile use doubled: 32% of donors donated from their phones or tablets instead of waiting to get to their laptops

This is to me a killer insight. I just sent my first invoice from my mobile phone. I have always always assumed I could not use my mobile for a complex website but it was relatively painless - and 1000 times more convenient (at work, not on clients network etc)

I only did it because I "had to", and it worked because the company (freeagent) has put enough effort in. Now I can do more accounts on my mobile - and all those who donated above will be likely to donate earlier me time than the last day because it worked this time round.

</comment><comment><USER12>
      Looking at repeat donations prompted us to ask: do people donate more or less
      their second time? On average, the answer is roughly 50% more. While first
      donations had a mean of $88 and a median of *$30*, repeat donations had a mean
      of $114 and a median of *$50*.

      Average doesn't mean typical, however. If you look at each repeat donor one by one,
      it turns out they're split almost exactly into thirds: 33% donate less the second time
      (most commonly half), 35% donate more (most commonly double), and 32% donate
      exactly the same. The averages get pushed up because doubling (and the
      occasional tripling or even quadrupling) makes a bigger difference overall
      than halving does.

that's odd. wouldn't you expect the median to stay about the same if 1/3 donated less, 1/3 donated the same, and 1/3 donated more?

<comment><USER12> ah, no, I was wrong - the median only stays the same if only people in the lower half beforehand gave less, and only people in the upper half gave more.

if people cross the old median, this is perfectly possible. although initially counter-intuitive ...

<comment><USER13> Not just if they cross the median, the median might cross them - for example what if the only people to come back to donate a second time were above the median in their first donation, then even if they all donated the same amount the second time, the median of second-donations would still go up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If I understand Checkout correctly, a user on Site A enters her card details, and then when she's on Site B, her details are shown back (with some obfuscations). Does this ever alarm users? I'm sure the goal is that it would be a seamless experience, but I'd be curious if anyone here has used Checkout and heard positive / negative feedback from users.

<comment><USER6> From our users, the most feedback we have heard about this functionality is: "I want to change my card details, but it keeps bringing up my old card"

The solution is to put the cursor in the card number box and hit delete, but this is not obvious in the UI.

I am not aware of Mayday users raising the concern that their details have been saved.

<comment><USER6> Overall, we have mostly positive feedback about Stripe, and have been happy with the usability for our users as well as on the back end. It's been especially great for mobile.

Our audience is heavily from the tech community, and people like seeing the latest technology used on a site. I remember at least one email coming in to that effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> i appreciate the value of excellent UX and kudos to stripe for sharing this but personally, i've never been so fickle about a donation or purchase that the UX was the difference between me completing the transaction vs. not.

there have been times i've had to 'abandon' a checkout step and return later, but i can't recall any times that a financial transaction was important enough to make but not important enough to return to, e.g. if i didn't have a particular card with me.

stripe sees things differently--and probably for good reason--but i wonder if they might be inferring user intent from user behavior too directly.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you start your morning? - <AUTHOR> It'd be interesting to know HNers' morning routines, both in terms of exercise and also reading, listening to a podcast, or whatever else.<p>How do you start your day, and why? <comment><USER2> I wake up to the sun, get in line for shower, food, etc. after my son who catches the school bus.

If I have to I can go straight to work and have an early meeting at a time which is good for Europe, India, and early risers towards the east.

I usually have a tablet left by the bed which I can use to start surfing early, check HN, etc.

Every other day I go to Planet Fitness and do a long cardio and circuit training workout. I bring my tablet there and read documentation, there is WiFi but I also load it with PDF files -- I have bought and/or downloaded a number of O'Reilly books, academic papers.

Other days I probably hike for an hour.

I put exercise in front because it helps with physical and mental health, resilience to stress, cognition, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Badly.</comment>


The Hobo Ethical Code of 1889: A Self-Reliant, Honest and Compassionate Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.openculture.com/2016/11/the-hobo-ethical-code-of-1889.html <comment><USER2> Go to this link [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__eqoTpOL8w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__eqoTpOL8w) And please subscribe my youtube channel</comment>


Not a humblebrag- why I hide the fact that I went to elite schools (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://mommacommaphd.wordpress.com/2014/06/02/not-a-humblebrag-why-people-from-elite-schools-hide-it/ <comment><USER2> Except this person DOES sound pretty snooty and self absorbed

<comment><USER3> Any style or substance signal(s) in particular, i.e., lots of personal pronouns?

<comment><USER2> The sheer length of the post, for one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No one cares you went to Yale, they're just being polite and trying to be engaging. If you make it weird, you're making it weird not them. E.i: If someone asks what school you went to, tell them and ask where they went and try to find common experiences. Not hard, just regular social skills and psychology 101 -- the more you make someone talk about thenlm the less you're talking about you.

I get it, I grew up in France and people always latched on to that fact when meeting me. Frankly I found it bizarre when I moved here (who cares where you grew up, and France isn't that exotic anyways imho.) What I realized is that most of the time they don't want to talk about my France -- they want to talk about their European experiences traveling/studying

<comment><USER5> > No one cares you went to Yale

This is not entirely true. People from Yale care (generally speaking). You _can_ actually leverage connections with people who went to the same school and who think that it made a difference to them.

Speaking as someone who came from an obscure school this surprised me when I noticed it.

<comment><USER4> absolutely -- that's the 'finding common experiences' part of social skills I was referring to. If two people went to different schools but were both on the fencing team you can leverage that in the same way you can leverage that you went to the same alma mater.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What strikes me most about this article is how the author only sees these comments as personal slights and not as the social hooks they are (probably mostly) intended to be. It's a common way to strike up a conversation by latching on to an interesting fact and instead of responding with humor or grace.

Saying a "school in New England" might solve the temporary problem of awkwardness, but it really throws away a chance to connect with people or to stand out positively for something rightfully earned. This is a lack of deft social skills and being uncomfortable in your own skin.</comment>


Offer HN: Ex-Ivy League admission officer will review your college application - <AUTHOR> I'm a former Princeton admissions officer.  I did that job for two years from 2004-2006.  During that time I read probably 2500 applications, spoke at about 80 high schools, and physically voted on whether or not to admit about 5,000 applicants.
I believe applying to elite schools is a total crapshoot unless you satisfy an instutional need of the university (minority, athlete, rich person, super elite academic/artist/entrepreneur).  That said, it's incredibly important to make sure that there's nothing WRONG with your application before you send it off.
A good college application (like a good movie according to Siskel) has 2-3 good qualities and no bad ones.
That's where I can help.
Many applicants are deep-sixed simply because no one told them not to include X in their application.  I suspect HNers would be a crowd that might have this problem.
In the spirit of this week's Offer HN spree, I will give 15-minute reviews to college applications from Hacker News members who reach out to me through my profile info.
I will not make edits or write anything on your app.  I will look for red flags and inform you of any you find and my general impression of your strengths as an applicant.
Note: My experience is 100% in undergrad admissions.  I have no experience with grad school applications and any advice I give on those must be taken with a grain of salt. <comment><USER2> What an incredible offering. Not all of us have Ivy League applications as readily available as our CVs and startup web pages. After you have reviewed a few applications, would it be possible to summarize some of your findings and advice in this thread?

<comment><USER3> Summary and examples for public will be much more helpful than individual consulting. Then make a webpage/book for yourself--pretty much everyone wants to understand this information.

If you want to get wonky, read "Homo Academicus" by Bourdieu. Educators (or other gatekeepers, e.g. job interviewers) apply implicit categories of judgment to applicants. If the applicant matches the class/cultural background of the gatekeeper, there's a higher probability that the applicant has naturally acquired and presented the things the gatekeeper is looking for. (Else, the applicant will come in without having anything to offer that the gatekeeper cares about.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I respect the intention of this idea, but I'm not in the business of giving general advice about the admissions process to people. I don't think there's much in the way of general advice to give, for one. Also, there's a whole industry based around that, and it's full of charlatans and snake-oil salesmen. A few years back, I started a site where families can post user reviews of consultants they hired, <http://collegeconsultantreviews.com>

Right now I run a social news site for Chicago and received seed funding to launch a new advertising startup that will help save newspapers. I'm happy with my life and excited about these challenges.

One day, if I do decide to come back into admissions, it will be to disrupt the system and hopefully destroy all these awful know-nothing consultants and quacks, rather than to add my voice to their chorus.

So I'm happy to look at applications. Pulling general advice from them is really less useful than you'd imagine. Everyone's different. Everyone's red flags are different.

If you want one piece of general advice though: don't mention video games, gaming, Magic Cards, Dungeons and Dragons, Pokeman, Anime, poker, Comic books, or anything like that on your application. You will automatically be cast into the "misapplied intelligence" pile. I've played my share of video games in life (My Civ III skills are pretty impressive), but at the end of the day, that's time that could have been better spent. My experience in admissions showed that POV to be pretty widespread. No, you won't impress them with your poker winnings or TF2 pro tour success. They think that you are not creating real value with these pursuits for the world, or yourself.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't challenge your general advice, as I am just one data point... but just to underscore what a crapshoot this all is, I actually got into to college on the basis of an interview in which my primary schtick concerned why Dungeons and Dragons made me smart.

(How do I know? The head of admissions, who interviewed me, told me so a year later. It was a small school, I was applying for January admission, and she basically made the decision herself. I had nothing on paper to recommend me above anyone else -- she just loved the interview.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recall speaking years ago with the head of admissions at Caltech, who had previously had a similar job at MIT. On his desk was a newspaper clipping about legacy admissions, so I asked him for his opinion. He was a very polite man, but you could see the fire in his eyes: he was not happy with it, and rather emphatic in declaring that neither Caltech nor MIT would do such a thing. (This is definitely consistent with my experience at Caltech. I know of one Caltech student who was the grandson of a big-time donor, but he was also one of the best in his class, and clearly had what it takes to get in anyway.)

I find it very interesting how you describe applying to Ivy League schools as a "total crapshoot." I wonder what your opinion is about high-end science/engineering schools (not just Caltech and MIT, but also CMU, Cornell, Harvey Mudd, etc.) Is their admissions process just as flawed? Or are they more predictable?

<comment><AUTHOR> From a libertarian/utilitarian POV, the processes at those schools are "less wrong" in that they are more likely to admit a student with perfect test scores, incredible grades, and little if any extracurricular activity outside of modding xBoxes and lan parties. Those schools are looking for raw smarts and technical aptitude...

<Ivy League Douchebag>...which is why so many M.I.T. grads end up working for Princeton/Harvard/Yale grads.</Ivy League Douchebag>

At the Ivies, lots of kids apply with perfect grades and scores. Those schools have the luxury of passing on most of those kids in order to select the ones who are truly interesting and/or clearly hell-bent on changing the world for the better.

In my own case, I was applying from a small public high school in a resort town in Western Michigan. Having gone back and pulled my files once I got the admissions job, my read on why I was admitted was because "kid is being doing more with what's available to him in this odd part of Michigan than the other kids we see in his state, he also sounds pretty cool and fun and everyone likes the guy. Plus he's in the top 1% of his class."

So I was admitted to bring in some color and culture, despite being a white male. Despite being "the smart guy" in every social situation growing up, that wasn't even a factor in why I was admitted. My credentials put me squarely in the middle of the pack academically unbeknownst to me. That's humbling but also great self-knowledge to have about oneself. Sometimes I think students at these schools should be told why they were admitted. I probably would have felt better about being the president of half a dozen clubs and playing in the most popular band on campus had I know that's why they brought me there to begin with. :)

<comment><USER6> Pretty good story =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Harvard used to get a lot of flack for legacy preferences. A writer named Dan Golden documented some of the "Z-List" rule-bending in his 2006 book, 'The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges -- and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates'. Here's what the Boston Globe reviewer ([http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/09/04/...](http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/09/04/harvards_admissions_of_gilt/)) had to say about the book when it came out:

 _Golden's book is a well-reported critique of what amounts to affirmative action for rich people, who enjoy a panoply of preferences in the college admission process that outsiders could never dream of. The best-known examples are ``legacy" admissions for alumni children; scholarships reserved for upper- class sports, such as rowing; and the ultimate preference: dough. When you read how Harvard treats the children of its fat - cat Committee on University Resources -- who enjoy such perks as sit-downs with the director of admissions, personal campus tours, and access to the coveted ``Z-list" of deferred applicants -- suddenly real affirmative action for people who need it doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

The most egregious example of pay-for-Crimson - play is that of Jared Kushner , now the youthful owner of The New York Observer. While Jared was applying to colleges, his dad, New Jersey billionaire developer Charles Kushner , pledged $2.5 million to Harvard, to be paid in installments. (Kushner pere pleaded guilty to tax evasion and other counts in 2004 and recently completed a prison sentence.) An official at Kushner's high school told Golden: ``There was no way anybody in . . . the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard. His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought, for sure, there was no way this was going to happen." Kushner graduated from Harvard in 2003._

I'd be curious to know if this is still an issue at Harvard, or any of the other Ivy League schools. Maybe the OP can talk about what happened/didn't happen at Princeton?

<comment><USER8> I know Jacky chan donated a large amount and his son didn't get in.

<comment><USER9> source?

<comment><USER8> I read it on Wikipedia, but apparently it may have been fake: [http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard- university/91141...](http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard- university/911418-can-u-buy-ur-place-harvard.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I guess what goes around comes around #. As, now, I am the one who needs help.

I have a really messed up college app and I need a lot of guidance in it. Sure, I can nail the writing and communication, but I don't exactly have a bright past and I don't know what to do with it. Is disclosure appropriate? Or is buttoning up about it the best way forward? I want to be honest, but I really don't know what's it like at ground zero. So, my app has been languishing in edit hell for a while now. What's worse is that I really don't have any clue whom to turn to.

Do you mind if I start a conversation with you?

*# <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1826828>

P.S. - I am willing to say it again and again this community really is awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, drop me an e-mail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Don't know if you saw this article: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1816141>

The writer claims you can potentially backdoor the admissions process by simply starting to take classes at the school you want to attend. Would be curious to know if you think this has any merit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, this is all doable. One of the most elegant social hacks out there today is to go to one of the hundreds of 12-month degree-mill graduate programs that "top" schools have launched in the last 20 years, get a degree in "Public Speaking and Elocution" for $30-50,000 and then be able to put "School X" on your CV and resume for the rest of your life.

In truth, most of these programs will admit almost anyone who sounds like they won't embarrass them or flunk out. They don't have to worry about their ability to pay the ever-climbing tuition for these programs because the students have been lulled into thinking it's a good investment to take out loans to get that name as a brand they can wear for the rest of your life.

I am very, very proud to have done my undergrad studies at a place, Princeton, that has resisted the urge to offer programs like this so far. To put on my "Ivy League Douchebag" hat for a second, if you meet someone "who went to Harvard" it could mean all sorts of things, same with Columbia, UPenn, Cornell, etc. If you meet someone who "went to Princeton" then they went there as an undergrad, which means they survived one of the toughest admissions criteria on the planet, or they did PhD work there, which is even tougher to get into. The only other program Princeton has is a 1-2 year (I forget) master's in public policy that I believe was secretly created because Uncle Sam wants a fancy school to send future generals to so they can class up their resumes and learn with some of the sharpest people around. Princeton is one of the few elite schools that actively welcomes these soldiers too. The one's I met while there as a student were incredibly smart. They were tough enough to do the military stuff, and sharp enough to hang with the faculty at the Wilson school. I feel pretty good about that one program. Those are the only two ways anyone gets to "go to Princeton." and I think that's awesome.

Meanwhile, there's a plethora of ways to "go to" a lot of the other elite schools. Anyone want a master's in higher education?

</completed a 12-month master's degree in Journalism at Northwestern, which offers a lot of other programs that>

<comment><USER12> Well...I earned a degree at Harvard via the extension program. Despite the Ivy-League douche-bag opinion of the program, it's been a big win for me socially and career-wise.

I ended up writing off school after leaving a different Ivy-League program to go chase my millions during the Internet boom. When that plan didn't pan out, I found that most of the programs offered during the times I had available were just flat...out...bad.

At least at Harvard Extension I could take a ton of classes from actual Harvard professors (not just moonlighting professionals looking to pick up some teaching cred) without all of the drama of trying to game the admissions process. At 35, I really didn't see myself living in a dorm with the other Harvard undergraduates.

You might make the case that it's not really a "Harvard" degree, but I'm willing to bet that my record of accomplishment since then would say otherwise.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's certainly a Harvard degree. My comment was aimed at pointing out that phrase is pretty malleable at most schools. I have friends who went to other programs there. You all have "Harvard degrees." Each of you had very, very different experiences and learned different things. It's an interesting hack that to the average person, that distinction doesn't mean much.

Congrats on your success!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "I believe applying to elite schools is a total crapshoot unless you satisfy an instutional need of the university"

As an ex-Ivy leaguer, that is the most truthful statement in your offer. ATTN APPLICANTS: remember this and don't get discouraged.

<comment><USER14> Alternatively, remember this and go about satisfying some need. This really shouldn't take more than two years assuming you have a decent level of diligence. Two years is really enough time to become pretty much the best at any sport, instrument, or other activity you can think of, at least at the high school level.

<comment><USER15> Egads, you're kidding me. If you are applying to the Ivies and are not black, your competition had a violin in her hands at the age of 6 months, has played in Carnegie Hall, was the valedictorian of her high school class and had test scores in the 99th percentile, and will _still_ be rejected with the words "Another smart Asian girl... meh."

<comment><USER14> That's a vast exaggeration of how hard it is. If you want to be guaranteed to get into a specific Ivy then you're probably right. But if you just want to get into any Ivy and you don't care which then all you really need 1250 SATs and no Cs. And even these are negotiable if you're really good.

Also, if you get recruited then they send your applications to admissions and tell if you're likely to get in or not before you even apply. And if you're not likely to get in then they'll tell you to go talk to folks at the other colleges because they don't want a bad reputation for future years. Because of this there will usually be at least one Ivy who needs what you have badly enough to pull some strings to get you in.

As for the violin, don't choose something like violin, gymnastics, or soccer where people start at age 3. Just choose some obscure instrument and you're pretty much guaranteed to at least be one of the best in your state in a couple years if you practice enough and get lessons. It's not like you need to be the absolute best, assuming each school takes on average 8 of X then you only need to be in the top 80. And remember that there will be a handful of those who are completely ineligible because of outright terrible grades or SATs, or else they just don't want to go to an Ivy, so really it's more like you only need to be in the top 96 or so.

Also there are a whole bunch of tricks. For example US News doesn't count the grades of people who come from Canada, so every year Harvard will recruit a whole bunch of folks from up there to round out whatever they need when if there aren't enough qualified US applicants. And plus most of these schools run massive direct mail campaigns encouraging every one to apply no mater how unqualified they are in order to make themselves appear more selective, so it's actually a ton easier to get in than it looks. Again you still need to be reasonably hard working and maybe a little lucky, but it's not so difficulty that you need to be obscenely lucky or genetically talented or whatever.

<comment><AUTHOR> Citation needed.

<comment><USER14> As far as I know the only one who has written anything about this is me. I wrote this essay five years ago visiting every Ivy league school and learning about their admission processes:

<http://alexkrupp.com/pirate.html>

I'm pretty sure the book The Game of Life talks about the admissions process of athletes and other students with special talents as well, but I haven't read it so I'm not sure how much detail they go into or how accurate it is. It's also worth understanding how the Academic Index works, since that's very important for getting into an Ivy. I don't think there is anything official written about it, but if you do some sleuthing you can find a bunch of stuff. For example a quick Google search turned up this:

<http://home.comcast.net/~charles517/ivyai.html>

It's only officially used for football, but I get the impression that it's often used unofficially as a ballpark for students with special talents in other areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "A good college application (like a good movie according to Siskel) has 2-3 good qualities and no bad ones."

Can you please share the qualities you look for, as well as what kind of red flags you would spot?

</comment><comment><USER17> I am way past this point (just finished grad school), but am just wondering what are some of the typical red flags in a college application?

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow, this is fantastic. I wish I had an application ready, but I will apply next year.

I do have couple of questions though.

a. Does work experience help (or deter) admissions?

b. How often colleges give admissions on graduate seats when the undergraduate studies have been in different discipline? (I am an electrical engineering graduate, hoping to get admit in a CS course next year.)

<comment><USER19> For academic graduate studies, work experience rarely helps, since PhD programs are intended for professorships. One key exception is when the professor/PI in whose lab you are most interested in has hopped in and out of the industry, admissions into that lab often place a positive value on related work experience.

One key assumption underlying my answer is that labs and individual professors have more sway on graduate admissions than the centralized admissions office compared to undergrad admissions.

EE and CS often have significant overlap at many schools, like Stanford. At more theoretical schools, like Caltech, Math and CS have more overlap. Just justify your graduate study with respect to your undergrad work in your statement of purpose essay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I would like to take you up on your offer, but I'm incredibly nervous about applying to colleges because (despite taking honors classes) I screwed around 9-11th grades, and my GPA isn't 3.0 or higher.

</comment><comment><USER21> My wife leads service projects for/with high school kids. They often list these service projects on their college applications.

How much does it matter if a student has planned or led a project versus just going along and working? Is there specific wording that might be more appealing, e.g. mission trip, service project, or work camp?

<comment><AUTHOR> Huge difference between the planner and the attendee.

The fact of the matter is that the Ivies get applicants who didn't plan service trips, they created non-profits, funded them, and now are providing clothing and education for orphans in Africa.

And that kid will probably get rejected...because there's 100 other kids with similar stories.

So if the student is just attending service events and doesn't have an awesome leadership story that makes them sound awesome because of it, it's not really going to help their cause.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Only mentioning this as it is relevant:

Some friends (3 Harvard, 2 UTexas founders) recently launched a startup called <http://MentMe.com> that aims to partner prospective students with those currently at or that have graduated from universities they wish to attend.

</comment><comment><USER23> I sent you an email with my application attached. If you respond I will post or summarize it on my blog with a link here. After seeing those web copy slides the other day, I believe this advice can help anyone.

</comment><comment><USER24> Very cool - I wish I had someone to do this back when I was applying!

</comment><comment><USER25> Thanks for the help.

I do get your point regarding the application. Do you want me to send you my SOP ? or do you want me to provide my profile(similar to a CV) and you review it ?

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm also past this, but would being of "middle eastern descent" also fulfill an institutional need of an ivy league university?

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm applying to transfer and would love your input. Will contact.

</comment><comment><USER28> just curious, what do you do now? what brought you to HN?

</comment><comment><USER29> Which institutional need did you satisfy?

<comment><USER30> Good article.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you organise PDFs/eBooks? - <AUTHOR> I try to obtain a digital copy of every physical book I buy, and I have quite a lot of books in digital format only; recently I decided to try and organise the mess.
I practically live in the terminal, and I use very few GUI programs these days, so I'm reluctant to use something like Calibre which I think is too bloated for my purposes. Essentially my requirements are a system that allows for hierarchical categorisation of books, and is easily navigable from the terminal.
The solution I've come up with is to use the filesystem as a "category tree" (so I might have "./Computer Science/Abstract Interpretation/...", or "./Mathematics/Mathematical Logic/...") with softlinks to directories in a hidden "store" which actually contain the books as the leaf nodes; this way I can have the same book in multiple categories, and I find it very easy to find whatever I'm looking for. I've found this works particularly well when combined with a terminal file manager such as ranger, and a fuzzy searcher such as fzf.
I've written a small tool which parses YAML metadata files inside the store and automatically generates the library structure based on the categories I assign.
I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has come up with a solution to this problem, or is aware of a pre-existing solution? <comment><USER2> I practically live in the terminal too. Most of my virtual desktops have at least two xterms, and usually more.

But I recognise that calibre does such a good job that I wouldn't be without it.

These are my calibre libraries:

       1.5G    amazon_bought
       1.9G    calibre_library
       9.6M    calibre_porn
       4.0K    comics
       2.8G    computing
       4.3G    fiction_collection
       7.4G    julie_books
       1.2G    pdf_books

</comment><comment><USER3> Why not a terminal interface to calibre?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm really quite reluctant to touch it at all; on my Arch machine the installation will take up 366.38 MiB (including dependencies), which feels horribly bloated; my understanding is that it "does everything", but I prefer to subscribe to the UNIX philosophy.

Does Calibre come with a fully fledged command line interface? I wasn't able to find much in the documentation, and I'm reluctant to touch the codebase having heard various horror stories.

<comment><USER3> It does have a cli calibredb BUT it really isn't designed for interactive use and comes with a few caveats.

You need to pass --for-machine to get json output.

It keeps all its data in a sqlite database. Its built in cli refuses to interact with the database even for read only operations when calibre is running. You CAN pass a flag to interact with the running instance but THAT will fail if it isn't running so you basically have to see if its running to see how you ought to talk to it.

Talking to the running instance over localhost is subject to the same limitations as talking to a remote instance. In particular it returns $format in place of /path/to/book.$format a limitation the author says is for security.

Since the naming structure is consistent you can replace format with /path/to/library/ _/_ /.format when talking to the running instance.

Realistically worrying about 400MB for an app when 1TB ssds are cheap seems a contextually odd choice. Calibre does a LOT and actually does it pretty well. Replicating even just the most important functions would appear to be a fair bit of work.</comment></comment></comment>


jStat: a JavaScript statistical library - <AUTHOR> http://www.jstat.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> Via Functionn - Open Source Resources For Web Developers & Designers: [http://functionn.blogspot.com/2012/11/jstat-javascript- stati...](http://functionn.blogspot.com/2012/11/jstat-javascript-statistical- library.html)

P.S. Functionn contains a whole lot more of awesome resources like jStat. There only a fraction of them I can post here at a time. Take a look if you're interested, and subscribe:

<http://functionn.blogspot.com>

</comment><comment><USER2> A solid JS library for statistical computing is definitely long overdue. After skimming through it, JStat seems to only show some trivial examples, and it doesn't seem to be designed for being extended.

What I would _really_ like to see some day is a JS library that extends D3 for graphics and controlling DOM events, that has a good standard library for common statistics (and that is easy to extend), and ideally a possibility to delegate computationally intensive tasks to C (perhaps FFI through Node.js?)

<comment><USER3> Jason Davies (frequent D3 contributor) started a standalone stats library: <https://github.com/jasondavies/science.js/>

Originally intended to be part of D3, he's now set it up as its own library.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's weird that one can't easily find any links to their github page from the site. Here it is:

<https://github.com/jstat/jstat>

I almost thought they weren't on GitHub.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for posting the link to the Github page...additionally for those interested, the library is by John Resig. Put it in the title earlier, got moderated out.

The library is also funded by the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (<http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/home_en.html>).

<comment><USER5> I didn't edit the title, but I also don't see anywhere that this is by John Resig. See <https://raw.github.com/jstat/jstat/master/AUTHORS>

The authors merely use some code that he published on his blog a while back at <http://ejohn.org/blog/simple-javascript-inheritance/> and that's why they cite his name in the code file.

<comment><AUTHOR> ahhhh, my bad! thanks for pointing this out too :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems promising, but it also seems like an inactive project, according to the commit dates on the GitHub page linked in the other comment.

Also, there is a sizable amount of dependencies for this library, all due to the use of flot. Since most of the code doesn't use any of the dependencies, I wonder if they would consider releasing any future versions as two parts, jstat.js (containing the number crunching methods) and jstat-flot.js (containing the plotting wrapper methods).

<comment><USER6> I've been really busy the last several months. The project definitely isn't dead. I check it every day for pull requests and bugs. Just haven't had the time to extend it myself.

The most recent documentation is here: <http://jstat.github.com/>

Mailing list is here: [https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/jstat- dis...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/jstat-discuss)</comment></comment>


USB-C is still a mess - <AUTHOR> https://www.androidauthority.com/state-of-usb-c-870996/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23435805](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23435805).

</comment><comment><USER3> Odd, I usually dont have too many cable issues with USBC. Perhaps I'm blessed by always going with Startech or QVS for cables. Paying a little more has always been worth it in less frustration.

</comment><comment><USER4> And if your charger breaks. when you buy a replacement at 90euros the usb-c cable doesn't come with it.

Mine is in a pretty poor shape after two chargers.

They cost 20eur separately

</comment><comment><USER5> (2021)</comment>


On Quitting Vim - <AUTHOR> https://thoughtbot.com/blog/on-quitting-vim <comment><USER2> There is a micro howto (video) in spanish language [https://youtu.be/0hMmdXetxXM](https://youtu.be/0hMmdXetxXM)

</comment><comment><USER3> My mnemonic for ZZ is putting Vim to sleep, that said I didn't know about ZQ, also for quitting Vim, there's this invaluable resource.

[https://github.com/hakluke/how-to-exit-vim](https://github.com/hakluke/how- to-exit-vim)</comment>


Ask HN: How to Break the Isolation? - <AUTHOR> I fell into the trap of doing freelance development. The money is good, but not having a fixed workplace or workmates you talk to in person is killing me. The friends I had in school and such have gradually drifted away.
I live in a moderately small town (pop 100k) in West Europe, so developer meetups are right out. Never been very good at forming relationships with people either.
How do you fix this? Where do you meet people? It seems like whenever I casually talk to people, the whole thing just falls apart like a house of cards when they ask you what you do in your spare time or such. Why, yes, I work and I discuss work-related stuff with strangers on the Internet. <comment><USER2> I too find it hard to talk to strangers. What works for me is to encourage people to talk more about themselves and by remembering details use that in future conversations with others.

If you are a native to the town, then surely you know other people and have some "history". If not, then you can ask about things that you notice and share contrasts with where you originally came from.

When I go shopping, I talk with other shoppers. Chat with the shopkeeper. When taking a walk, I say hello to others. Comment on their dog if they are walking with one.

Yes, it does take effort, especially when you are introverted. But each little success provides incentive to try again. It is rather like debugging a program in a language you are learning. You try this, then that. Observing and understanding as you go.

Think of other people as microservices with undocumented API. You start with doing what has worked in the past and then experiment with new approaches.

</comment><comment><USER3> Social groups don't spring up out of nothing. They are formed by shared interests, goals or experiences. This is why you had friends in school, and also why they are drifting away now.

Volunteering is a great way to gain that interaction around a shared goal.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is GitHub not considered distributed? - <AUTHOR>

I have been using GitHub since the past few months, but could not connect the points on the distributed part of it.  Recent GitHub outage raised many questions about it not being distributed.  Someone quoted 'There is no d in GitHub'....Please enlighten me. <comment><USER2>
       Github != Git

There is a type mismatch. Github is a webservice with a RESTful API. Git is a tool for building distributed databases with an emphasis on availability rather than consistency.

If you have a project under Git source control and the only version is on Github then the project uses a remote repository but is not distributed. If you have a local repository in addition to one on Github then your project is distributed and in the event of a network partition (for example if Github goes down or your ISP goes offline) then the Git database is still available because you have access to the local repository.

Now suppose you have six developers on the project and each has a local repository and uses the repository on Github as a remote repository. If Github goes down, then the network is partitioned in a way that keeps the developers from seeing each other's work...though each developer still has their local repository available. The important point is that Git doesn't require a hub and spoke configuration. The six developers can each have access to the five repositories of the other developers plus Github. Though it could be a bit messy for systematic merging to achieve reasonable consistency, such a configuration would be robust in the face of partition.

A perhaps more practical possibility is to have a nearby Git server as a remote repository as well as Github and perhaps another server out on the interwebs...say on AWS...to provide redundancy against partition.

There are really two strong features of Github which Git facilitates. Internally, it provides a team with a remote backup. Externally, it provides an organization with content distribution. However Github's centralized nature [it even has the word "hub" in it] makes it something less than a content distribution network and when it goes down it serves to illuminate the reasons that large long running open source projects mirror their content.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the detailed explanation, @brudgers. It helped!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Github is a central server, it is not distributed at all, things like issue tracking and the wiki won't work if the server goes down. Git on the otherhand, is distributed because the central server is not required for most git operations to work if you have alternate methods of sending patches to eachother.

The fact that git works even when Github is down works in Github's favor really nicely and makes server outages less noticeable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, that makes sense? Can we pull, push from different machines running git without a git server?

<comment><USER3> You can test this pretty easily by just running ssh on your own machine and doing git clone ssh://sidcool@localhost:/home/sidcool/myrepo

<comment><AUTHOR> Do I need to expose any SSH keys for that? (Sorry if a noob question, I am new to Mac (and Unix)). Thanks!

<comment><USER3> Just give it a test and see what errors you get. You can even play with just cloning local repositories without ssh.

"git clone /path/to/localrepo newclone". You should be able to push and pull between local git repo's on your system too. It will help to learn about setting up remotes too.

"git remote add otherfolder /path/to/other/repo" "git pull otherfolder"

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, will give it a try. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> GitHub is a code hosting provider, that happens to use git (which is distributed), but the service they provide is run centrally and hence when their infrastructure fails, the service in not available (searching, tickets etc)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, rdc12! What would an ideal Git service provider be like? Are there distributed alternatives? Is GitLab distributed?

<comment><USER4> Well ideal is subjective, GitLab appears to also be a centralized model, but with an option to self-host.

For a distributed solution, with similar features and purpose. You would probably be looking at a federated model.

<comment><USER5> Most people self-host GitLab. We would love an option to federate [http://feedback.gitlab.com/forums/176466-general/suggestions...](http://feedback.gitlab.com/forums/176466-general/suggestions/5097708-implement- cross-server-federated-merge-requests) merge requests welcome</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is anyone using IfByPhone or Grasshopper? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking at virtual phone systems, and either these two are very new or they both hired Don Draper clones and suddenly are appearing in lots of ads on my favorite websites.<p>Is anyone here using a virtual phone system such as IfByPhone, Grasshopper or another?  If so, what are the pros and cons for your company having moved from a physical PBX&/IVR infrastructure? <comment><USER2> I've used IfByPhone and Twilio for a little more than a year for building telephony apps that integrate with software products to improve workflows. You are looking for feedback on their virtual phone system offering which I haven't used first hand.

If your team is tech savvy, OpenVBX from Twilio (<http://www.twilio.com/api/openvbx>) might be a good option.

You might want to check www.phonebooth.com as well.

Good luck!

<comment><USER3> @awaz - What was your business use case for Ifbyphone?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What exactly are your business needs?

If you need an IVR or virtual call center, the ability to measure response rates from ads, or the ability to automate notification calls to your customers, then Ifbyphone would be an excellent fit. Tell us more about your business and your needs, and we can help you figure our what makes the most sense for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm actually not a customer. I'm a competitor. Pleasure :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really wanted to like RingCentral since the price was pretty good, it has lots of features and the UI was pretty easy. But the reliability was marginal (once monthly extended outages; random call drops). This was over a year ago so it's distinctly possible that reliability has improved.</comment>


Universal Basic Income is 'best way to distribute equity stake in productivity' - <AUTHOR> https://sociable.co/business/universal-basic-income-is-the-best-way-to-distribute-an-equity-stake-in-productivity-james-felton-keith/ <comment><USER2> I liked this phrase form JFK: "There's nothing wrong with CEOs making more than their employees, but that there's something wrong when the head of a failing company is making hundreds of times as much money as their employees..."

</comment><comment><USER3> It's just never going to happen. The Howard Jarvis crowd will never let people get something for nothing. Everybody has to suffer like them.

</comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps this thinking on UBI isn't bulletproof, but when you recognise the distribution of wealth is so concentrated, at the very least this is a great beginning to start thinking outside of the box in terms of how we approach Human Rights.

</comment><comment><USER5> Andrew Yang is getting a lot of traction with UBI in the Presidential race. It'll be interesting to see if more candidates run on this platform for the Senate & Congress.

<comment><USER6> I absolutely love Andrew Yang's calm, "common-sense" demeanor. I got into him thanks to the Sam Harris podcast. His platform is hard to ignore for someone who's been around the block both in the bay tech communities and rural America.

I really hope this is the start of a long and vibrant career in politics for him!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> regardless of other arguments for ubi this piece is full of flawed thinking.

> Universal Basic Income means that we can create a universal ownership stake > in productivity,

There is already a term for that, it's called communism.

> At any point that they publish evidence that they are leveraging knowledge > or information from an individual, be it an employee or a consumer, they owe > us a piece

They owe a piece to the government and military that ensure the infrastructure safety and fairness of the economic environment they work in. They pay that (and should pay that) through taxes. It doesn't make sense to say that every time there is an economic transaction both parties should pay back to each other because they somehow "we owe us" . That's just confused logic.

> am interested in raising income, so I can give people more humanity, more > dignity, more piece of mind to really uncover what their callings might be, > so they can be more effective and more contributive in their communities

What you 're giving them is more money to gamble/spend on drugs/ be just as irresponsible as before. People dont suddenly become productive because you throw them a bone. Welfare is MUCH better at identifying peoples needs and filling the gaps rather than expecting that "they ll just figure it out themselves". UBI is more inhumane than welfare.

> At no point does automation mean that jobs go away,"

I mean, yes it does. by definition, and saying it doesnt doesnt magically fix it

> So, whatever cool comes from that culture, they owe me and people like me

hmm. i stop here. cant read further

</comment><comment><USER8> Just imagine if Hacker News gave a monthly 'points' stipend to every user. You wouldn't have to earn up-votes or make popular submissions-- the upvote 'points' would be equitably distributed among all readers.

What would that do to the discussions? Would it encourage more free dialogue? Would it help promote more civil discourse?

Serious question. It seems like a close model to UBI. Is there a point- counting-forum that has tried this?

<comment><USER9> That's almost how slashdot works - a fixed number of upvotes per article. I also can't see the relevance to UBI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _Value, like energy, can neither be created nor destroyed, but it can change > form._

This is both false and unproductive. Value is unlocked and created all the time. People are much wealthier and better off than their ancestors, despite our far larger population. Hello technology! They didn't have refrigerators, microwaves, the internet, smart phones, modern medicine and so on. Today we're increasingly concerned with overeating vs starvation.

As for UBI, I'm not sure if it's the best answer or not, but Andrew Yang makes the strongest case for it that I've seen:

[https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-ubi/](https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-ubi/)

Also branding it as a Freedom Dividend is smart.

<comment><USER11> Yeah. Chips made out of silicon are more valuable than silicon is. I mean, how disconnected from reality does your view have to be to not see that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are some really interesting comments in this thread, but I wonder what people think: Where does value come from?

<comment><USER13> I might not understand what you are getting at, but all value originates from desire (demand) and scarcity (supply).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> UBI smells like a trojan horse for privatization of what remains of social security, disability, unemployment, etc. I would much rather have a robust national pension system than "Uber, but for retirement."

<comment><USER14> How would it lead to privatization of those things?

<comment><USER15> Many UBI advocates explicitly say that UBI should replace all existing welfare programs and people should use their UBI to purchase any services (e.g. insurance) they need from private companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> UBI is not politically feasible in America, realistically I can only see it working in a very homogeneous country (religious, ethnic, language, etc.).

Those who want UBI in America should redirect their focus on an expansion of the Earned Income and Child Tax Credits. I think eliminating the phase in period of EITC and increasing the benefits (by absorbing other forms of welfare) is the way to go.

<comment><USER17> I hear this suggested often - why would homogeneity make a difference? Being too stupid bigotted to benefit yourself if it might help "the other"?

<comment><USER18> > why would homogeneity make a difference?

Two things I can think of off the top of my head.

People more easily help people that are similar to themselves, simply because they can easily see themselves in their shoes.

You'd have similar productivity throughout the population, i.e. you won't have some distinct part of the population do most of the work while other distinct parts of the population are primarily taking but not contributing. Having cemented net transfers where, say, protestants to all of the work and catholics sit around collecting welfare will make for unhappy protestants (and you need those to be happy, because they do the work).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't get what UBI solves vs the existing social safety net programs

>James Felton Keith, tells The Sociable that a Universal Basic Income is the best way to distribute an equity stake in productivity — thus creating an "asset holder class."

US already provides a tremendous amount of value to its residents vs the rest of the world - doesn't that count as a stake in productivity ?

<comment><USER20> The cost of administration of the social safety net programs disappears when you stop caring if the benefits are used to buy cigarettes instead of milk, validating that a Section 8 domicile is worth the payments to the owner, or verifying an individual on unemployment is actively trying to return to work. Everyone gets $X.

<comment><USER19> I guess, but don't you lose the safety net too?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm against the agism in the article but the rest of it is sound.

Right now we means test shareholders on the basis of whether they have capital to invest in a company, which is discriminatory in a society like ours where wealth inequality is the highest it's been in the history of the world. If half the country has no upward mobility and an impoverished quality of life that takes everything they got just to survive, then wealth is an inherited trait just like cultural identity.

I think it's time to question the rationality of people who are against UBI. Their failures in big picture thinking and long term planning, whether in basic economic principles like opportunity cost or tragedy of the commons, or in more existential philosophical matters like whether it's ok to subsist on the toil of others, shouldn't take precedence over our self- governance/determination.

What I'm saying is that we're approaching a day when one person owns the entire discretionary spending of each country, and has effectively corrupted government to the point where propaganda informs our beliefs more than ethics. Are we there yet? Maybe not quite. 10 or 20 years away? Perhaps - look who's president.

UBI threatens the status quo (specifically crony and vulture capitalism) more than almost any concept I can think of. So for that reason alone, I'm strongly for it.

<comment><USER19> >If half the country has no upward mobility and an impoverished quality of life that takes everything they got just to survive, then wealth is an inherited trait just like cultural identity.

I question whether half the country has no upward mobility and an impoverished way of life.

Furthermore wealth is inherited, and we have an inheritance tax for it.

Still don't get how UBI creates wealth

<comment><USER21> It's not a question. We passed the point where children have less than a 50% chance of being wealthier than their parents sometime around 1980:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/aparnamathur/2018/07/16/the- u-s...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/aparnamathur/2018/07/16/the-u-s-does- poorly-on-yet-another-metric-of-economic-mobility)

Countless studies show it's basically impossible to live on minimum wage jobs anywhere in the US now. I'm more than 50% confident that a quick internet search will show them so I won't bother listing them here.

The inheritance tax is low and in constant danger of being eliminated by the Republican party. All income should be taxed the same way (meaning we should eliminate capital gains tax and other unearned income taxes) and income brackets need to be shifted to account for inflation. Payments shouldn't begin until around the $30k/yr threshold, the average career job at $60-80k should pay about 25% tax, and the top income tax should be near 50% above about $125k. The social security tax cap at $132,900 should be eliminated. This is my mathematical optimum, you might have your own, but a fact of life today is that current tax policy is anything but fair or ideal. It's been coopted by lobbyists and special interests and only works for millionaires.

UBI creates wealth because currently we have no "human potential" gross national product (GNP) metric. The majority of jobs today are a waste of human resources. For example, is a human life worth more than its potential to flip burgers? The answer is self-evidently yes, so that means that the fast food industry subsidizes its profits by under-employing its workers and depending on government handouts in the form of food stamps and welfare. We can repeat that analysis for pretty much every industry and see that underemployment is one of the great problems of our time.

Even if we use the conservative measure of part time workers who want full time work, it tends to hover between 12 and 18% in the US:

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/205240/us- underemploymen...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/205240/us- underemployment-rate/)

But I'd argue that it's really much higher than than. Is anyone really more than 6 hours productive in an 8 hour workday? That puts underemployment at more like 25%. If we count all the people with degrees working at non-career jobs, or hackers/makers/inventors valued only for their ability to make money for their employers, then I think it's around 50%.

UBI gives workers a lifeline out of underemployment. Then they can start their own businesses, which leads to more employment and productivity. If our GNP is $20 trillion, then I would expect UBI to gradually raise that to perhaps $40 trillion (in today's dollars) and beyond over a decade or two if underemployment is 50%.

I tried to keep this brief but truthfully I could go on indefinitely. My personal underemployment hovers near 100% because I've never gotten ahead of the curve enough to make any of the inventions I'd like to. I spent many years of my life thinking about how to automate the jobs like painting houses and moving furniture I held that paid above minimum wage but had no upward mobility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I like the idea but I doubt this will be sustainable long-term. There is already a lot of pressure to reduce the social safety net and to have more tax cuts for the "job creators". Why would this be any different with UBI? The people who work full-time jobs will complain about the slackers who do nothing. Maybe once almost everything is automated there is a better chance to do this.

Personally I think it would be better to reduce working hours.

<comment><USER13> I think many people view UBI as transformative (as you suggest), though they don't always talk about it in those terms. Increasingly, production and services will be automated leaving fewer and fewer jobs for people. In a far off dystopian future, there will be some Ubercorp that does everything, controls all production and services leaving no paid work for people. UBI is simply a means for smoothing out the transition for people to new careers or a world where fewer jobs exist. Obviously, as things become more automated, taxes on these corps will have to increase. There has to be a cash flow cycle, otherwise money will pool at the top among the shareholders of the companies that won the automation race. Thus, as long as there is cash flowing from the bottom to the top (thanks to UBI) it is sustainable. Otherwise, the economy will be broken; it already is for some now.

<comment><USER22> " Otherwise, the economy will be broken; it already is for some now."

If we introduce UBI it would probably be one of the first times in history that society addresses major changes without war, revolution or other upheaval. My prediction is that inequality will grow, a lot of people will lose their jobs, but nothing will change fundamentally without a major conflict.

We see that already with climate change. There clearly is no will to really address the issues. We'll have sea levels rising, millions of refugees and somehow deal with that. We will not prevent that.

<comment><USER13> I think you are correct. Typically, there needs to be pain before there is action that is human nature. That pain traditionally has come in the form of epidemics, famine, and war.

A large part of climate change denial is driven by economic forces. The oil and transportation industries have built an economy that relies on fossil fuels. As soon as alternatives are cheaper, there will be a transition. We are seeing that in the energy sector now where solar has gotten cheaper than coal. Power companies are starting to make the transition to wind and solar. IMO, the best thing we can do to solve the climate crisis is to make the economics of non-fossil fuel energy sources impossible to compete with OR close the loop on CO and CO2 emissions (converting atmospheric carbon back into fuel).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nobody can ever answer the question of "What happens when someone blows their UBI and cant afford to eat?" Will we let them starve? You'd almost have to from the government side of things.

How about 5 years after when someone introduces another entitlement program to help single mothers/seniors/etc and then criticizes everyone else as heartless for not supporting it? Will we just end up where we are now with even more entitlements?

>"I know Jeff Bezos is probably worth $50 million. I know for a fact that he's not worth $150 billion. The rest of that money is mine.

Yeah that says it all right there. This guy feels entitled to someone else's money.

<comment><USER24> I've asked this elsewhere recently but here it goes again.

Im sure Im wrong, but wouldnt it make sense to start with like "all rice, bean, potatoes, and broccoli consumption at the personal level is free" and start with a food stamp / ebt that buys unlimited of something very specific? It wouldnt be a currency thats worth trading to other people, landlords couldnt collect ebt credits in lieu of rent, because everyone would already have unlimited.

I guess I dont understand why UBI proponents think CASH is the best idea, compared to more specific tiers like "600 for healthy food, 100 to treat yourself, 300 for xxxxx." I guess I also find it confusing why it has to be nothing or 100% without any sort of gradual experimentation. Why does the program have to immediately ramp up to the full plan?

<comment><USER25> Destroying the value of rice, beans, potatoes, and broccoli would signal to producers that they should grow something more valuable.

The next inclination would naturally be to say "Well, you just force the growing of rice, beans, potatoes, and broccoli." You have now landed on a planned economy, which doesn't work very well.

So healthy staples can't actually be "free for all". I do think that providing the food directly for people who need it would be a better idea, but you get associated issues of government price-fixing and dumping of lower quality food-stuffs.

Federalism is all about experimentation. One of the features is to permit the autonomy for local governments to attempt local solutions to the specifics of the problem as it is faced locally. There may be something to be said for a central (federal) facilitation of local programs, but this almost always takes the form of funding.

<comment><USER24> Why would the value of those plummet? Wouldnt the opposite happen? Did insurance prices fall, did insurance stock prices fall, when the government mandated insurance purchases? Do college prices fall when easy access to loans become more available? I dont follow how a free subsidy would lead to less of a crop? Do corn subsidies lead to less corn? The government would be paying rice producers for all the rice people choose to consume. The loser in that scenario is the tax payer who pays a lot and doesnt eat rice.

If anything, the argument against it would be picking and choosing industry winners: pistachio, avocado, cheese, meat markets would find it unfair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> UBI will never replace welfare. People are not going to agree to cut off current welfare programs.

And it will not stay at a $1000. It will go up. Not long after implementation, a politician will soon say that $1000 is not a livable wage and that it needs to be $2000. The next politician will say that it needs to be $5000. Basically this opens the door to socialism where we will just be haggling on the amount of wealth redistribution. Wealth redistribution doesn't work and never has.

<comment><USER22> All Western countries (including the US) do some kind of wealth distribution and it clearly works. Societies without any form of wealth distribution don't work. Or do you have an example? I can't think of any.

<comment><USER6> It's a pretty horrible argument unless they come back through to actually explain what they mean.

> Wealth redistribution doesn't work and never has.

Is a HUGE sweeping generalization that has literally zero substance in a discussion - and technically it's false off-the-bat because I'm certain almost anyone can think of at least ONE example where the "redistribution of wealth" has worked to lessen human suffering. Also, don't let someone come through here and try to redefine what they meant by those words - they mean that they don't believe in wealth re-distribution plain and simple.

When you see binary arguments like that it's a flag to run for the hills.

<comment><USER26> Try responding to the logic of my argument rather than phrase 'wealth redistribution.' What's to stop this universal income from being pushed higher and higher to the point where it is a large fraction of income for most people rather than a small fraction of income? Do you really think that UBI will replace welfare?

<comment><USER6> > Try responding to the logic of my argument rather than phrase 'wealth > redistribution.'

When y'all land it with "Wealth redistribution doesn't work and never has" as the last sentence, I'm left to think that may have been your overall point!

Respectfully, I'm not going to respond to the rest of it because I do not think we would be able to effectively communicate on the topic.

<comment><USER26> Exactly. You have no response to my arguments.

<comment><USER22> You have stated no arguments.

<comment><USER6> That's the point - they won't respond to the "Western society" common sense because they'll just ignore facts and move the goalpost. Which is pretty convenient when you want to win an argument!

In their eyes, they've won because I won't engage them further when in all reality no one wins because no one is willing to give up their stance.

You can't nail these folks down on anything - they argue in almost pure logical fallacy, and the last thing they want is to concede to how the world _actually_ works... That's why the "fake news" thing was so incredibly damaging - if anything it signal virtues to everyone to just make up their own narrative =(</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introducing Private Packagist – Composer Package Archive as a Service for PHP - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/packagist/introducing-private-packagist-492553d10660 <comment><USER2> Good idea, bit pricey for just a speed pop though..</comment>


Video Proof Showing No Planes Hit The WTC On 9/11? I'm Confused. - <AUTHOR> http://gama1.mobilelikez.com/world-news/ex-cia-pilot-gives-sworn-testimony-that-no-planes-hit-the-twin-towers/?uid=gama1&skyid=579

<comment><USER2> And yet those planes disappeared simultaneously with the explosions in the twin towers. Where did they go? Beware of "proofs" that don't pass the simplest test.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there an original version of this video where we can double check his claims?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XELamUnF0EU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XELamUnF0EU)

<comment><USER3> Wow....thank you for posting. I must agree - even independently I see the same "CGI" like effect as described in the NN video. I just had a major "wow" moment....

<comment><USER4> The planes had to go somewhere. It's known that they took off, they flew towards to towers, and there is no trace of them afterwards.

This person is claiming that their calculations show that planes flown into the towers wouldn't do what these planes allegedly did. I am suspicious of people who make claims like that in the light of simple tests like those above.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tech Workers Are Hard to Find. H-1B Visa Suspension Just Made Recruiting Harder - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/gadlevanon/2020/06/26/tech-workers-were-already-hard-to-find-the-h-1b-visa-suspension-just-made-recruiting-them-even-harder/#3f7044935878 <comment><USER2> I knew a guy, who started his career as a backup tape boy at Bell labs, right after his high school. As he started to learn more about computers, he became a system administrator at Bell labs. Later, he became a developer at AT&T research labs, Florham Park, NJ. His boss, who is a MIT Ph.D, encouraged him to get some online undergrad degree so that he can be bumped to the right salary level. I believe, he still works for AT&T labs in Middletown, NJ.

These are the old days, where managers encourage people to learn and give them opportunities. Now we have a different set of managers, whose only aim to tick off credentials, leetcode questions, pedigrees, pleasing upper management, etc.

<comment><USER3> Oh boy I wish I couldn't relate to the last part but dangit you just get me

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't doubt some are hard to recruit.

But as someone who was trying to break into one area (web development) of tech from another area (networking)....I felt like the whole industrial complex of hiring and getting ghosted by recruiters was there to keep me from talking with anyone actually technical... and only after randomly getting through those hoops (often just alphabet soup matching games) did get job offers.

I just seems that if places are so desperate, it would be easier to get a job....

In the meantime some engineers at my old job told me I should apply for a job at the company that bought the piece of the company that I worked at for nearly two decades. They're desperate they said and they referred me....I got a call two months+ later and was told that my old job "data center networking support", now required a CS degree and I didn't have one.

<comment><USER5> Try not to fall into a contract worker trap.

CS degree? They dont value experience?

Good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The should pivot to recruiting Canadians, Mexicans, Singaporeans and Chileans who are still eligible to work in the US.</comment>


Why the March for Science Is a Bad Idea - <AUTHOR> http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2017/04/why-march-for-science-is-bad-idea.html <comment><USER2> Because we are in April and March is already gone.</comment>


Dprof – Distributed System Profiling and Tracing [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.scs.stanford.edu/14au-cs244b/labs/projects/manish_pandey.pdf <comment><USER2> Distributed system tracing:

[http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/erlang.html#trace-3](http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/erlang.html#trace-3)

Distributed system profiling:

[http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/cprof.html](http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/cprof.html)

[http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/eprof.html](http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/eprof.html)

[http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/fprof.html](http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/fprof.html)

Nice higher level abstractions of both:

[https://github.com/massemanet/eper](https://github.com/massemanet/eper)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a nice set of links. I've been building a set of Mesos frameworks lately, and having tools to see the shape of the distributed work would be wonderful. Definitely some ideas here to copy!</comment></comment>