A VC: Anatomy Of A Pirate - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/02/anatomy-of-a-pirate.html <comment><USER2> This is certainly nothing new. The reason why this is interesting is because Fred is actually trying to buy something off the UK and can't because he's an american, and typically the opposite is true (people outside the US being shown road-blocks and random impediments to actually spending their money in US-based services).

To give you a practical example: I steal just about every TV series I watch, because being back in Europe, I can't use Hulu, can't grab them off iTunes, and generally TV stations delay broadcasting for about 1 season (probably to keep prices down). Grabbing them off of torrents is as simple as waiting for the episodes to show up on my "downloads-tv" folder, thanks to RSS and a torrent client. This usually happens about 20 minutes after the original broadcast in the east coast - I just have go about my life and wait for them to be ready to watch.

Back to the topic: these legal hurdles that force you to buy things locally will eventually go away (they're already gone for a few things). That's the one true problem here. Some people will always pirate, and some people will pirate because it's _convenient_. It's certainly easier than using proxies, faking an address somewhere and generally lying about you because you want to give someone money. This whole deal boggles the mind.

 _TL;DR:_ Some people pirate things because it's more convenient. Companies should make it more convenient to actually purchase music/tv/movies/games online.

<comment><AUTHOR> Same here, I download every tv show I watch.

But I would argue that I am _not_ pirating tv shows. I paid for them by watching the same product placement as my american counterparts.

Remember, with tv shows _you_ are the product, not the tv show. Therefore they are essentially unstealable because every time you "steal" a tv show, you're adding one more product to the content owner's roster.

<comment><USER3> And do Geico and Home Depot get much possible value from your viewing their adverts?

I'm not wholly against you on this; the current media market setup is patently flawed in the Internet age and I'm becoming increasingly convinced that so's the broadcast content model for anything but inherently live content such as sports and _maybe_ rolling news. _But_ , that content is paid for by advertisers trying to reach prospective customers. Overseas viewers are, almost without exception, not prospective customers of the advertisers so they're not interested in paying to talk to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't watch the adverts.

Funny thing, though, is that 90% of the product placement happening in US shows are things I can buy right here at home. Or I can buy some sister product the same umbrella corporation produces.

Furthermore, it is increasingly the case that product placement is happening for online products. I've especially noticed this with The Big Bang Theory (possibly because it's a geek show)

Hell, just take this for example: The only reason I went to the Cheesecake Factory on my US visit last year was because I saw it mentioned on a tv show I pirated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >But if you put enough hurdles in front of them, they will become pirates. As I did this morning.

People are seriously re-prioritizing their "needs". There's a prayer about having enough so you're not tempted to steal. It's supposed to be about food and daily necessities.

Apparently some people need music so much that it's worth stealing for. Can't you just move on with your life, and decide to not listen to that music?

Relevant discussion was "don't make me steal": <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2176804>

<comment><USER5> I don't see how it would have helped anyone if he had just moved on with his life and not downloaded the album. Isn't the usual justification for intellectual property that it rewards the creator? If you compare the "download the album" and the "move on and don't listen to the album at all" alternatives, the creator gets no reward either way, so it seems ethically neutral--- contrary to the case where he could've paid the creator and instead chose not to, where the creator actually loses out on a sale.

Now perhaps you could say that it's unethical because if he hadn't downloaded this album, he would've paid for someone else's, so he's not stealing from the creator of _this_ album, but indirectly from the creators of other albums that he didn't buy instead. But that seems like an argument that proves too much; in that scenario, is it also unethical to listen to CC-licensed music, because doing so steals business from non-CC-licensed music?

<comment><USER6> So what if you don't see what the motivations are of the people who own the content or the distribution network? Can you imagine a world in which those people are making decisions whose justification they don't wish to share with you?

Maybe they've done A/B testing on the way to release content to maximize their profit or some other good that they value and think that revealing the results to you would affect the outcome.

<comment><USER5> I suppose I don't see that as part of the copyright social contract, though some people do argue for a complete ability to control (for a temporary period of time) the use of a work. The model of copyright that makes sense to me is intended to provide a mechanism for creators to be compensated for _published_ work, i.e. to prevent readers/listeners/etc. from bypassing the paid distribution channel. The justification is that if everyone is funneled towards the paid distribution channel, that will provide funds and encouragement for more such work to be created and published.

But if the work isn't being published (or isn't being published to a particular audience), then that side of the social contract isn't being upheld, so the purpose of copyright (to encourage such material to be produced and made available) isn't being fulfilled, and therefore I don't see copyright as ethically applicable (or ethically applicable to that audience).

I guess a shorter version of the obligation I feel users of a work have is: _Compensate the creator, if they'll take your money_.

<comment><USER6> Invoking copyright just obfuscates the straightforward moral question. Someone has produced something which they wish to sell on whatever terms they make up. The decision of a potential consumer is to agree to the terms or not.

If you and the musician are face-to-face and she says you can have an MP3 of her music for $1000, it's not right to take it if you think it's too expensive.

<comment><USER5> I disagree; I don't believe there is any moral right to "sell on whatever terms they make up". I do think copyright is justified in an ethical sense, as a social contract that encourages the production of more creative works. (I was speaking in the ethical sense; my comment was certainly not accurate as a _legal_ analysis of current U.S. copyright law.)

But I think the proper way to analyze ethical issues involving creative works is, therefore, to see who is upholding or violating the social contract that we call "copyright". I don't think there's any separate moral issue, and it certainly isn't a form of property (due to being non-rivalrous).

<comment><USER6> What do you mean by "non-rivalrous"?

<comment><USER7> It is a fairly common economic term. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics)>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a same with TV shows, which persist with ridiculous region based rules, what chance does legit content have when you go there wallet open and it won't let you buy. I guess in the short term they are getting more money from the overseas networks they are syndicating to, but eventually that money won't be there because nobody bothered to wait till they got around to showing it.

<comment><USER9> As a particularly ludicrous example, I pay for subscription sports channels and then have to use low grade foreign streams to watch any Premier League football match kicking off at 3pm (FA rules: they're worried that wider UK TV access to all top division games will reduce attendances at lower league games played simultaneously). Is it really unethical to violate copyright laws when the copyright holders _refuse to take my money_?

From the point of view of the consumer, international price discrimination for digital goods also appears no more ethically justifiable than piracy.

<comment><USER8> Yeah for AFL here we have probably 3 free to air games a week which are screened delayed in an attempt to improve attendances, I would happily pay to watch live for some of these games but the option just isn't there.

At least with cricket they have given up on showing only half the play if the match was in your city. Attendances are as good as ever...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "It was listed on Amazon US as an import that would be available on Feb 15th, but only in CD form. I'm not buying plastic just to rip the files and throw it out."

What a hurdle indeed.

<comment><USER11> Ha. Try living in Uruguay (South America).

I can't buy most of the stuff I'd like legally, even though I wouldn't mind paying for it (even if I do buy it from, say, Amazon US, it's still illegal !!!). (Edit, fredolivera beat me to it and has a better argument here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2192699> )

I'll lobby for a change in laws, but the music, movie and software* distribution industries need to change as well (* by software I mean big software like Microsoft, Oracle et al, which have pernicious software licensing agreements which vary by country, etc.).

<comment><USER10> Try reading the article. The author lives in the US and refuses to buy from Amazon US. In short, he (and many other people in this thread) are complete hypocrites.

<comment><USER11> Well, it is true that he has a legal avenue to acquire the files (as long as he waits for the delay imposed by Amazon US).

But I wouldn't call them complete hypocrites. Globalization has made us desire stuff we then can't acquire - very often artificially, in the case of entertainment, by way of publicity, positive reviews like in this case, etc.

Hypocrite: "a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion. 2. : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings"

The author is rationalizing (as I often do as well), but I wouldn't say he's an hypocrite, unless he refuses to pay at the time when he has a legal avenue to do so. (BTW, I did read the article - I might have taken the wrong conclusions, but still)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've experienced this with Disney's Fantasia some years ago, looking for a copy generally for me but specifically to show a friend a particular sequence. I searched high and low for a legal DVD copy and only found second hand dealers and other traders who wanted an extortionate amount, people the other side of the Atlantic which would have made postage+duty similarly expensive and a few VHS copies. So I downloaded the thing from a disreputable source (there being no real legitimate download sources for this sort of thing back then).

Maybe it is available now. Maybe I'll search later and consider buying a copy if it is officially available as a DVD or via download in a good quality format. Though my interest has dropped off considerably in the intervening years.

On other occasions I've hit the "we can't show you this in your country" thing. My reaction has always been "fair enough, there is an Internet awash with other things I can watch and I have plenty of other things to distract myself with at home too". A couple of times the restricted item has been a film trailer/preview - those productions may have lost the chance to garner my interest in paying to see them when they are released over here.

This isn't quite the same problem as the linked article discusses - this was an older item that was effectively out-of-print rather than a new item that wasn't available in all territories. The entertainment industry does shoot itself in the foot quite often with staged roll-outs though - either because people who might buy if they could easily obtain the content by other means or because people have a chance to happen upon negative reviews that put them off or have a chance to be distracted by other things and forget about this particular thing. While it can be excused to a certain extent with physical mediums (manufacturing and distribution logistics could make a coordinated global release difficult to manage, and a risky undertaking if initial demand for the product is not easy to judge) it simply makes no sense with content that is being distributed digitally.

Oh, and on a point of pettyness... Hello Mr In The US And Can't Get Content That Is Available to UKians Waaa Waaa Waaa. Welcome to what the rest of the world often experiences!

</comment><comment><USER13> So if something is too much work to acquire, we are allowed to obtain content illegally? I'm a little surprised Fred is openly admitting that he committed a crime. Isn't this enough for the authorities to pursue legal action?

The fact that the content is more expensive or harder to get is all the more reason to give up. This is not a moment of failure. It is a warning and a notice that hurdles have been set to prevent acquisition.

<comment><USER14> > Isn't this enough for the authorities to pursue legal action?

Where's the actual evidence? You'd have to actually find his IP address downloading something from somewhere.

<comment><USER13> How about having enough evidence to pursue a warrant? Taking a big name to trial over something like this might actually be worth their effort.

<comment><USER14> Assuming he used Bittorrent, how are you going to find the logs? Where was the torrent from? Nobody observed him actually doing it...

I'm pretty sure that the evidence would be lost in the aether by now, but I'm no security expert...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Exactly the same story currently exists in reverse for the album 'Kaputt' by Destroyer.

It (used to be!) available to stream in full at <http://hypem.com/#%21/artist/Destroyer>. It's available to download at Amazon's US MP3 store for $5.99. It's not available to download from the UK MP3 store, and Amazon UK are charging £22 for a CD copy. That's _6 times_ the price!

I think I'll just torrent it and get it in lossless format, thanks very much.

<comment><USER16> great record. Kaputt and Computer and Blues are my two favorites so far this year

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Same thing is happening (has happened?) to video online - just try watching Hulu Plus on Roku or your iPad - no It's Always Sunny, no Top Chef and many, many other popular shows are missing. Apparently that's 'web only' content.

Didn't know I'd left the Web.

<comment><USER3> It's this sort of thing (among others) that's why I have a PC hooked up to my TV for streaming media. As far as every provider is concerned it's Just Another PC so I don't have to worry about compatibility or this sort of silly artificial restriction.

Works very nicely BTW, I'd recommend it to anyone.

<comment><USER17> Agreed. I've done it myself, but my main problem with it is simply that it's just not fun to use. It's clunky, having a keyboard and mouse on the couch or having to bounce between the couch and my computer desk. Roku and Apple TV on the other hand are, generally, very nice and actually fun to browse with. They've honestly changed the way I think about TV.

Plus the prices (and form factors) are awesome. $69 (Roku) for a plug and play box that can sit on the shelf with my other components.

But I guess the point here is: If I can hook a computer up to a TV, why do networks try and differentiate between 'computer,' 'tv,' and even 'tablet?'

<comment><USER3> Wireless keyboard with integrated trackpad :-) Worked very nicely as a remote control until it broke, but that's another story.

In fairness, I don't use this machine just as a media player; it's also a file and print server for me, and where my backups run, so it being a full computer has other fringe benefits for me. That said, I'm still not sure I'd choose an Apple TV over it; I like the added functionality of it being a real, normal computer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Same thing happens with every TV show produced in US if you do not live in the US yourself.

<comment><USER19> Been having the same problem.

Seems like a decent startup idea if you can get the content contracts.

<comment><USER20> Consider that the selection of US TV shows on iTunes UK is mediocre. If _Apple_ can't do it with all their money and clout, what hope does a startup have?

<comment><USER19> True -- however it might also be because iTunes is global that they want to go after the global market rather than really focussing on a specific country.

For example, if you look at the way Spotify operates, they negotiate rights and open up their service on a per country basis. A system like that might be more feasible for a startup.

Licensing content for a couple of EU countries might take less time and be cheaper than for the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The IFPI came out with a staggering statistic in 2009 that 95% of all downloads were done "illegally." Yet, (if I'm not mistaken) that 95% amounted to something like $4,700,000,000. Just imagine if that 5% illegally consumed was doubled -- we're talking $10bil!!

As we say in our promo cards at <http://gorankem.com> , we want to help you find the songs you were always meant to hear. Not only is so much music not paid for at the moment, but so much great music is completely lost in the shuffle. If our crowdsourced resource can help others more easily find the hidden gems, that consumption pie will expand even further...and maybe, just maybe, the labels will start to realize what direction to take the variable pricing model (i.e. not $1.29...)

</comment><comment><USER22> In some other countries in Central/South America you'll see pirated cam recordings of anything that came out in the US within days. It's cheaper to buy a DVD like this from a stall at the metro than it is to go to the cinema, so it's a matter of economics. If I am waiting to see a film I am really anticipating to see at the theatre I have to ask friends not to talk about it in front of me, as they've all seen it from a pirated (and not-great-copy) DVD. 3-4 months later the film comes out and the theatres aren't full except for the big 3D films. A different economic issue for sure, and it's interesting to see here because the internet isn't widely adopted to where most people can download a film or TV show so they look out for it at their local bootleggers.

</comment><comment><USER23> Subscription models, vanity lists and social networks should be provided in an app store as a service that gives the digital content more meaning.

Steam is doing it. I pirate everything I see but since Steam I'd rather buy some games simply because they are then in my "Steam games list".

I would easily give up piracy on music if Spotify became legal here in Belgium, but it hasn't so I combine my LastFM subscription with rapidshare account.

Same for TV shows and Movies, I don't see the point in owning it, but I would pay for a Netflix account in a heartbeat.

</comment><comment><USER14> Oh man, this stuff is frustrating. Two stories:

A girl and I wanted to watch a movie on a spare evening. We had been talking a few days before about how we'd never seen Scott Pilgrim[1], and so we decided to actually go down to Blockbuster, because it'd be quaint. I was surprised it was still around...

Anyway, so we get there, and we wander around, looking for it. We didn't see it, but we did see that they had 35 new copies of some other release, which seemed kind of ridiculous. So we ended up asking the people who worked there, and they said that it came out on DVD the next day. So we just went home, and about 15 minutes later, we were watching it in full high def. "Well, we tried to do it the right way, and all it did was waste an hour." Silly rules about waiting on physical products meant that they missed out on my $2.

Last week, I was with some friends. I mentioned how I'd just seen the premier of Archer[2], and how I was surprised it was as good as Season 1. My friends hadn't seen it, but were interested. So I told them to bring up Netflix, because all of Season 1 was on it. So we looked... and now that Season 2 was on TV, Season 1 was back to 'DVD only.' Ten minutes later, the first episode was torrented, and by the time we'd finished watching episode 1, the entire rest of the season was done. I was specifically trying to get my friends hooked on their product, yet they wanted to make it harder for me to do so. It's so dumb.

99% of my media consumption is legal, because most of the time, I don't mind what I'm watching or listening to. But when I'm trying to find something specific, it always seems really hard to actually get, and there's also this[3]. But torrents have everything, and it's fast, and no-bullshit.

1: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446029/>

2: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1486217/>

3: [http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4085/5008519733_757bc53e18_z....](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4085/5008519733_757bc53e18_z.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER24> I like reading Fred's stuff, but I must say I'm a bit surprised that he's just discovering this problem now. I thought he read this site.

<comment><USER16> i've been writing about this issue since i started the AVC blog in 2003. it really frustrates me that nothing has really changed in the music business

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So pirate it and when it IS available pay for it. It's what everyone else who wants to pay for music does.

<comment><USER16> that is what i said i was going to do in my post

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Nobody likes the record labels, so they are always a convenient bogeyman for these arguments. However, what if the artists themselves dictate distribution terms you don't like? Is it still 'ethical' to pirate their material?

</comment><comment><USER27> i don't understand. the West taught my country that IP is the same as physical property, and it would be stealing to violate IP.

now an owner of a property decided to release the album in the UK on 4th of February, and in the US only on the CDs 10 days later.

 _what else is the evidence of having rights on the intangible property, if not a right to make such decisions?_

i'm confused :)

</comment><comment><USER28> Never listened to The Streets before. Downloading to see what they sound like.

</comment><comment><USER29> Boring, another overly-entitled whiny consumer.

</comment><comment><USER30> Rip from SoundClound.

<comment><USER31> Gotta love Download Helper.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Pubbit, Managed Ghost hosting for everyone - <AUTHOR> https://pubbit.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey all,

This idea started when someone I knew wanted to start blogging. We looked through all the available options, but something just didn't seem right. My brother found the same problem among his friends: unless you want to learn all the developing tools, people usually have to settle for either ads, subpar themes or larger costs. We wanted to help those who don't want to do all the technological set up.

Seeing as there were no alternatives for simple fully-managed blogging, we sought to make that alternative. We think it's important that people try new forms of expression. And I've always wanted to see more personal content creation.

Right now, we have our MVP ready of having your own site. We're looking forward to working and solving additional problems that comes with wanting to get a blog up and running.

We are eager to hear your feedback! Cheers

</comment><comment><USER2> Hey! nice service. Interested in discussing it further, we run our blog with Ghost Pro. Just reached out via your hello email. Looking forward to connecting :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Certainly :-) Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> was just thinking of doing something like this. thought about licensing issues with ghost pro. isnt there a issue there?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ghost is open source under MIT license [0], so I think there are no issues. There are others hosting Ghost; some are active on the Ghost forums. I am not aware of any licenses from their GhostPro hosting platform. Hope this helps

[0][https://ghost.org/license/](https://ghost.org/license/)</comment></comment>


Change to Bios will make for PCs that boot in seconds - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11430069

<comment><USER2> The fact that it takes seconds to probe and initialize the hardware is totally unnecessary, because any modern OS worth its salt ('BSD, Linux, Mac OS, Windows) will probably do it itself. It is still so because PC hardware manufacturers prefer to retain status quo and not fix what is not broken. This is so with many other things in PC architecture, as well. I.e. take the ATX power connections: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATX>. We could be using just one voltage (+12V or other) going to the motherboard long ago. It would simplify electrical design, thereby improving efficiency, thereby simplifying cooling and lowering noise; and lowering costs in the process. But the manufacturers are content with the status quo. If nothing else, the hint that it is the right thing to do is that Google does it: <http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10209580-92.html>, search for "Gigabyte".

<comment><USER3> Really sorry to nitpick, but this one irks me to no end.

i.e., from Latin id est, means "that is" or "namely." e.g., from Latin exempli gratia, means "for example."

<comment><USER2> thanks for education! I thought i.e is "in example"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Macs use EFI, don't they? My MBP cold boots fairly quickly, but nothing to write home about.

<comment><USER5> The good part is holding the option key and getting a reasonable environment to choose a startup disk.

My mac is the only computer I've ever had that can boot off a clone of my internal disk stored on a USB extrenal disk. This has saved my ass more than once.

"Target disk mode" is also reasonably awesome.

<comment><USER6> Booting to a USB drive is something any decent bios has been able to do for the past 5+ years.

<comment><USER7> Can stock Windows boot from a USB drive? That'd be super convenient.

<comment><USER8> It just depends on the BIOS. Nothing to do with windows. Virtually all computers sold in the last 5 years or so can boot off of USB drives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I cant tell you how many years I've been hearing this. Wasnt Vista supposed to be almost instant?

<comment><USER10> The only thing I've found to be "almost instant" is waking up my mac from sleep mode.

<comment><USER11> I've got a Dell Vostro 1510 w/ Vista sitting in front of me, and coming out of sleep is "almost instant."

<comment><USER10> I know plenty of people are happy with Windows 7 and Vista but with me Windows has such a bad history of crashing/hanging while coming out of sleep/hibernation that I can't trust it.

<comment><USER12> I don't think it's an issue anymore -- every modern machine I have right now (even a netbook running XP) is flawless coming out of sleep/hibernation. From my experience, the vast majority of windows laptop users almost never shutdown their computers.

<comment><USER10> I've had two machines: an HP DV5000 (AMD/ATI) model and a Macbook Pro. Both of them have not been reliable with sleep mode using a stock Windows XP/Vista install (plus drivers/updates). I haven't tried Windows 7 in sleep mode yet but it's not worth my time to risk losing work. I've only had OSX fail once due to a crash* in sleep mode in 2 years (and over a thousand sleep/wake cycles).

* I've had four failures to wake from sleep due to low battery in a 2 month span I was dealing with an old battery that was failing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Solid state drives can boost boot time quite a bit, and there are plenty of metrics online to prove it. I suppose a bios upgrade could improve the time it takes to go from POST to the intial OS bootstrapping, but once you get to the OS loading, I don't see where the bios can make a difference? The OS load time seems to be the biggest bottleneck to me, which is where the solid state fast access times get their big wins.

<comment><USER14> My Ubuntu boots in 5 seconds off an SSD, but the BIOS takes 15 seconds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me of a Science Fiction novel I read, where one of the characters was a starship based super-AI. At the bottom-most layer of software was an emulation of MS-DOS. In software, in the name of backwards-compatibility, our worse mistakes (almost) never die .

<comment><USER16> One of the more disturbing things in Portal is that GLaDOS stands for "Genetic Life-form and Disk Operating System." The whole plot of the game revolves around a malevolent and extremely advanced form of DOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I particularly like the floppy disk clip art.

<comment><USER2> Well, BIOS is floppy disk's peer (same age), and it contains code for accessing floppy drive, and in many cases is most easily updated via floppy disk; so this part makes sense.

Though today if one is using floppy disk at all, it will most likely be a 3.5" 1.44 MB High Density version, which is much younger than original model that is BIOS peer (maybe it would be more exact to show older 5.25" floppy?) But in general, they belong to the same age.

<comment><USER18> Off topic, but the Microsoft Office 2010 Save icon is _still_ a floppy disk. Crazy.

[http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/ukschools/WindowsLiveWriter/...](http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/ukschools/WindowsLiveWriter/Top10reasonsOffice2010isgoodforschools_E4DD/image_2.png)

<comment><USER19> I doubt it will ever change.

There's a generation of kids growing up right now who think that's an icon which means "save" - they've never seen a floppy.

<comment><USER20> I wonder how many phrases/icons are there that apply to obsolete technology?

One that I can think of off the top of my head: The phrase "you left your phone off the hook" to describe a phone that hasn't been turned off.

<comment><USER21> "dial tone"

"punch a clock"

<comment><USER22> Clock punching still happens some places.

<comment><USER17> Every morning at 4:45am in my house.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Some PC and laptop makers are already using UEFI

Who? I'd be a lot less skeptical about widespread use, if I knew a Dell or an HP were on board with this.

<comment><USER10> Doesn't apple use this already? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Firmware_Interface>

<comment><USER24> Yeah, Apple has used EFI for quite a while. My laptop still doesn't boot that fast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Caveat Lector. Misleading title. This is not talking about OS boot speeds. This is is talking about the time from flipping the switch until the OS begins to load.

<comment><USER26> I'm still excited by this. Since I installed an SSD boot drive, the bios startup time is half of my boot time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> My friend's desktop computer is halfway through bringing up Win 7 before the monitor even warms up... then again he boots off a PCI SSD.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is cool, though I think it might be late to the party. Doesn't everyone just suspend/resume these days? Not that it's zero value, but it would have been _really_ noteworthy 5-10 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER29> UEFI demo on a thinkpad t400: <http://lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=560>

</comment><comment><USER30> Anyone got some kind of listing of machines using UEFI already ? I checked Wikipedia, but it's quite scarce on concrete info.

<comment><USER31> All recent IBM x86 servers use UEFI.</comment></comment>


Tesla, Elon Musk found to have engaged in unfair labor practices - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tesla-elon-musk-found-to-have-engaged-in-unfair-labor-practices-with-rules-and-tweet-2019-09-27 <comment><USER2> Wow, I had no idea spoken notices were a thing.</comment>


Netflix Caves to Warner Brothers - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/07/netflix-hollywood-deal/ <comment><USER3> I don't understand the anguish over a 28 day delay. Actually I don't even understand the interest, beyond how it relates to the eventual take-over by streaming.

You had a chance to see the movie in theaters. You either saw it or you didn't. The DVD comes out for sale. You either buy it or you don't. 28 days later the movie is available for rental, however long after the theatrical release. It just increases the wait time from the theatrical release by 28 days. ?

By the author's own definition, if you're renting at all instead of buying, it's crap. It's OK to wait 28 more days for crap. I may have even said this to my 12 year old in another context.

It's an amazing amount of text for such a trivial issue. What am I missing?

[Edit: added 2nd to last paragraph; the "crap" paragraph.]

<comment><USER4> I totally agree . . . I really don't pay any attention to DVD for-sale dates, and only pay attention to the date it's available according to my Netflix queue. It's already the case that the time from theatrical release to DVD seems to vary pretty widely and arbitrarily between films, so an extra 28 day delay wouldn't register on my radar in the slightest. If I hadn't read about this deal, I never would have noticed any sort of delay.

<comment><USER5> The variation is a function of how well the film does on release. The faster it goes to DVD, the less it has made at the box office. There isn't an exact formula but there are a lot of rules-of-thumb. For example, the best time to launch a horror movie is in early October (because of Halloween), and then you'll get it to DVD pronto because most horror movies have a short shelf life so you want the fans to buy it for themselves for Christmas. Animations and action thrillers are timed for summer and winter holidays. Screwball comedies are timed for spring break (youth) or thanksgiving (romantic). Arty dramas release near Christmas partly because of holiday viewers but also to meet the deadline for consideration during the q1 awards season without spending too much on pre-marketing; the DVD will be held back until after the nominations and awards ceremonies have taken place, because an Oscar or a Golden Globe will increase sales.

The film sales markets (where producers sell to distributors) also take place in Q1, so if your goal is to make the hit horror for 2011 you start planning now to shoot in summer so you can be done editing by fall and sell it in winter so you can market it during summer for people to see during fall and buy during winter. Whew!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"More importantly, they'll have more streaming rights for the content from these studios under this deal."_

28 days is a small price to pay for an improved streaming selection. Especially with Warner Brothers who has a massive catalog of titles. If you're not seeing it in the theater, not buying the DVD, chances are you really don't _absolutely need to_ see it in the first 28 days either. Pretty good deal by Netflix.

<comment><USER7> On the flip side - this just opened up a _huge_ opportunity for a Netflix competitor to start offering DVDs that are recently released but not available from Netflix.

People like new things. Netflix will no longer be offering new things. That smells like market opportunity to me.

<comment><USER5> As I said to pg, if the studios don't want to sell to Netflix because it would cannibalize their DVD sales, what makes you think they'd want to sell to 'newflix'? If you try buying films and renting them out on the first day of the DVD release, you'll get slammed for copyright violation about 5 minutes after you ship to your first rental customer. Consumer DVDs are not licensed for public performance or rental.

<comment><USER8> simply not true - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine>

<comment><USER5> Please see my reply to your similar post below, where I explain in detail why I dispute the accuracy of this particular wiki article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ah, okay, so during those 28 days, people who don't want to go out to the store and buy a DVD of the movie will simply torrent it.

<comment><USER10> It's amazing to me that big media still doesn't understand that competing on convenience is how they will turn casual thieves into happy customers.

Making your products as easy or easier to consume by legal means than not is how to win.

<comment><USER11> Seems to me like they probably did some kind of cost-benefit calculation that factored this in. They probably looked at it and said, "Rentals of DVDs that might otherwise have been bought are hurting us more than piracy that could be avoided by the earlier rentals." And, given how few pirates are likely to ever be paying customers (as piracy advocates frequently trumpet when studios issue bloated piracy cost numbers), I can see how this analysis might turn out to favor their current course of action.

<comment><USER12> > _And, given how few pirates are likely to ever be paying customers (as > piracy advocates frequently trumpet when studios issue bloated piracy cost > numbers)_

The argument is more of "1 download != 1 lost sale" because I can download and watch more movies for free than I could afford to watch at all but the lowest of prices. And even then "1 download != 1 watched movie" because I might be someone that is compulsively downloading as much as I can. In that case, the amount of movies that I can download is only limited by the bandwidth available to me (and the access to downloadable pirated movies). I could easily be downloading more movies than I could afford to buy/rent at _any_ price. Therefore saying that each movie I've download is a 'lost sale' is disingenuous because converting me to a paying customer would only net you a revenue for a fraction of the amount of movies I've downloaded.

The people that are compulsively 'hoarding' movies are not likely to become paying customers, but what percentage of downloaders/pirates are they? The studios don't have the answers to these questions as much as they might like to seem like they do. They only trot out the raw numbers for shock value, though I wager that behind closed doors they might have a better understanding that these numbers are bunk.

<comment><USER11> > though I wager that behind closed doors they might have a better > understanding that these numbers are bunk.

The sentiment behind that wager is why I think this deal with Netflix is calculated, and that the outcome will be favorable (short run, long run all bets are off) for both the studios and Netflix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was trying to think of the properly inflammatory headline when I submitted [http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/01/netflix-and- warner...](http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/01/netflix-and-warner-bros- have.ars) (a far better writeup). I should leave it to pros like TechCrunch.

</comment><comment><USER14> Netflix's on-demand selection does need drastic improvement.. One can find some gems here and there but overall it doesn't touch their DVD selection and we all know that's b/c of the studios.

Yes it is too much work to walk down to my mailbox and wait 2 days for my damn DVD when the technology is there to deliver it straight to my TV in seconds.

Of course this all would have to come at a price but I would gladly pay 20 or 30 and possibly even 40 bucks a month to have unlimited access to their full DVD collection on-demand.

Shelling out 20 bucks for something you'll end up watching once or twice 95% of the time is throwing away your money. So until they (the studios) stop attempting to rip us off like the greedy bastards we know they are then I'll get the new releases elsewhere for free.

There is an ideal price to be set on the curve where everyone wins it's just that the aging execs in charge can't change fast enough to keep pace with their consumers changing preferences. Time to get someone new in charge..

<comment><USER4> Keep in mind that it's not _just_ because of the studios: it's also because of the various TV networks that the studios have signed exclusive re-broadcast deals with. That's why Netflix sublicensed the Starz's rebroadcast rights, and why those movies rotate in and out of being available to play on demand (since the rebroadcast rights are all windowed to specific periods of time, with different broadcasters getting the rights at different points in time).

So it's all a very complicated problem. Movies that already have the rebroadcast rights sold off would be tough without the sort of cross-licensing Netflix does with Starz; the studios don't really have further control until those deals expire, since they're legally-binding, exclusive contracts. Rentals don't conflict with those exclusive rights, which is why the studios can license Amazon or iTunes to offer the movies for a fee, but can't license Netflix to stream them.

What they could do is to stop doing those sorts of exclusive deals, but those deals bring in a fair amount of money, so someone like Netflix would need to pony up enough cash on their end to make up for the loss of revenue that would come with either the total loss of those broadcast deals or with the loss of exclusivity on those broadcast deals. But I'm sure that even renegotiating non-exclusive contracts to use in the future deals with existing broadcasters would take a pretty long time once they've decided to do it; those sorts of legal maneuverings take a long time.

So certainly the studios could start trying to do something about it, but it's not a simple problem that they could just change their minds about and make go away instantly.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. And those re-broadcast and rental contracts are part of the surety that producers must assemble in order to persuade investors to put in the money for production. The consumer-facing distributors pay in arrears, but production expenses have to be paid in time or in advance, and marketing is also paid in advance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For me, not that I use netflix, the 28 days doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me. If I really want to see a new release it will be in the cinema which is a much better viewing experience unless you happen to have an expensive home theater, if I didn't see something while I was at the cinema your already waiting a couple of months, I just couldn't see to many situations where I have no interest in the movie at the cinema but could wait the extra 28 days.

I don't know if this increases piracy because most of the time you will be able to get a DVD quality download before it's even been released to rent and buy.

</comment><comment><USER16> "More importantly, they'll have more streaming rights for the content from these studios under this deal. This is the key."

Um, I'm not currently a netflix customer because of how small their streaming selection is.

I'm going to say, the fact you can't get new releases anyway ("long wait"), means they're basically vastly increasing their offering of streamed movies....something they have unlimited capacity to do, while decreasing a service that sucked anyhow and was virtually useless.

I don't see why they're doing something bad here.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'd gladly trade 28-days on new releases for more streaming content.

With Watch Instantly on Netflix, I rarely bother with physical media anymore.

<comment><USER18> With Bittorrent and Usenet, I rarely bother with Netflix Instant anymore.

<comment><USER19> sshhh..remember the first rule of usenet

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> iTunes proved that people are willing to pay rather than pirate if you make purchasing more convenient than pirating. The movie studios seem almost to be begging their customers to steal content.

</comment><comment><USER21> This could be an opening for a startup.

<comment><USER5> I seriously doubt it, Paul. DVDs bought by consumers are saddled with extremely restrictive license terms. When Netflix or any other rental business buys DVDs, they don't just buy the same copy you and I do, but a rental version with different licensing terms which costs considerably more - <USER2> forget how much, but I think's around $80 per disc, though that's probably gone down somewhat. The content is (almost always) identical but the product code is different.

How can you provide a rental service to people during the 28-day DVD sales window without breaking the license terms? That's basically pay-per-view, and PPV is dead from the distributor's standpoint, there is almost no money in it now.

Part of the problem (for the distributors) is not that netflix rents to everyone, but that they don't charge any late fees. for years the video business made profit in 2 ways: new hit films that everyone wanted to watch but couldn't buy yet, and late fees - both of which subsidized all the other movies that didn't attract such a big audience but still took up shelf space. Well Netflix's business model depends on massive volume and warehousing, and it turns out consumers are willing to wait the 2-3 days required for postal transfer. And since there's no late fees, if there's a movie you really love you could just keep it out for a month and watch it 20 times until you're sick of it, whereas previously you'd rent it, go crazy about it, and then buy the DVD because that was much more economical than keeping it or wasting time at the video store waiting for it to go back on the shelf so you could rent it again.

So the problem is _not_ that most movies are crap, because only a very small number of movies appeal to almost everybody; most people only like a narrow range of genres and actors and find others uninteresting. Furthermore, we've only been able to rent videos/DVDs for about a single generation; before that the only way to see great old movies was in art theaters and on TV. Now you can fit the 100 greatest movies of all time onto an IPod, goddamn. It's easy to be sniffy about what's on at the theater when you can hire a comfy chair for the price of a few lattes and pull a century of movie greats out of your pocket or laptop bag.

Obviously the answer is 'make something awesome' and people will throw money at you. But this is quite hard to do. I'm in the middle of making a somewhat awesome little movie right now (today is a day off) and we're doing it in a very hacker-ish way with a tiny budget in the 5 figure range. But in the movie business you can't iterate, you have to commit and ultimately we, the makers, only have our own feedback and critical skill to judge the project on while we're making it - so in startup terms, you are stuck with a very high burn rate, and you have to deliver a lot of (entertainment) functionality in your first release - you don't get to do a public beta, nor can you make any money by releasing a fabulous film that's only 5 minutes long. When people want to watch a movie, they're expecting 80 minutes minimum, and the bare minimum length of time/money to go from concept to delivery is 6 months and $25,000. You do hear bout people doing it for less...as part of a marketing campaign. No matter how passionate you are or how fast you work, writing, editing and shooting take up time during which you still need food, a place to sleep and a moderately fast computer. In short, we lie about these things in a desperate attempt to engage your attention :-)

If you begin with a decent-sized budget, then you can presell into overseas markets, but to do so you'll need famous names, which generally don't come cheap.

On any size budget, you also have to invest a lot in marketing (like 50-60% of said budget for optimal results) so you can open well in theaters, because for most films, the theatrical release _is not profitable_. You only hear about the big grossers - and in any case, the bulk of that money stays with the theater owner. Most films lose money or barely break even at the box office. The dirty secret of the movie business (for those thinking of getting into it) is that the theatrical release is just a giant advert for the DVD. You spend this huge amount of money on marketing in order to establish your film in the public mind as 'a real movie', and to provide a moment of recognition when they see your DVD available for rent or purchase - 'oh yeah, I never went to see that! What the hell, I'll watch it now'. It's incredibly hard to get people to even rent your film if they've never heard of it or seen an advert for it.

And all that goes times ten for getting people to _buy_ it, which is where you have the potential to make some decent profit. If that isn't there, then investors are less likely to put money into films because the (significantly high) risk isn't justified by the (comparatively low) rental profits, unless the film is a relatively sure thing due to the combination of spectacle and star power - but as people often complain, such films tend toward the bland, with obvious stories and pg-13 ratings.

I have to say I'm rather with Warner Brothers on this one, and hope the other studios back them up. Partly because I can see benefits as a film consumer in studios having a more stable profit model, but also because as an indie filmmaker, a 28 day DVD sales window at least gives up-and-coming filmmakers a month to sit on shelves and be seen by consumers, who might later spend money on renting the film because the title is vaguely familiar from a previous visit to a store.

Excuse the rambling explanation. I just get irritated by people like this TechCrunch writer who have no idea wht goes into making and selling a film and seems to think they pop out of a machine like bubblegum.

<comment><USER8> "When Netflix or any other rental business buys DVDs, they don't just buy the same copy you and I do, but a rental version with different licensing terms which costs considerably more"

Not true. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine>

<comment><USER5> I love Wikipedia, but surely you've noticed the _[citation needed]_ tag on this assertion. I strongly dispute the assertions of the Wikipedia editor about what this case meant.

Here are before-and-after articles about the lawsuit from _Video Business_ , the trade publication for the video rental industry:

<http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6398859.html>

<http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6461951.html?q=nebg>

NEBG, a retailers' association, sought to prevent Genius group, a distributor, from including an 800 pritned on the front of discs along with the message 'for sale only, call if you suspect piracy', arguaing that including this on DVDs would damage their members' businesses by implying criminal activity on their part. The case was dismissed since the labeling never took place, and so no harm had actually occurred. they were particularly annoyed because an exclusive rental distribution agreement existed between the distributor and Blockbuster, such that NEBG members had no way to obtain rental copies to offer to their customers.

They _assert_ it is legal for them to do so under the first sale doctrine, but this has never actually been tested in court, so it would be more accurate to say it has not so far been forbidden. It is _not_ established case law, and in this sense the Wikipedia article is incorrect.

 _If_ the studeios and distributors establish a 28 day sale window with Netflix's agreement, and _if_ they make rental copies freely available to wholesale buyers, then there may well be a test case brought against anyone who sell consumer copies for rental, brought by both the distributors and very possibly Netflix themselves.

IANAL, but I am an industry professional, so that's my humble opinion.

<comment><USER8> I work for netflix.

I also know that redbox is buying retail dvds ([http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct- redbox4-2009dec04,0...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct- redbox4-2009dec04,0,2713370.story))

netflix used retail dvds for years. AFAIK netflix stil does for certain low volume titles.

<comment><USER5> Which was fine when the DVD retail window took place after the rental window, as it did for years. Of course movie studios and distributors like the long tail but once they've recovered enough of the life time revenues they were content to let that slide.

Please see the copyright Act s109.b.1.A, which states (in part - software- specific verbiage removed): _unless authorized by the owners of copyright in the sound recording ... neither the owner of a particular phonorecord ... may, for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage, dispose of, or authorize the disposal of, the possession of that phonorecord ... by rental, lease, or lending, or by any other act or practice in the nature of rental, lease, or lending._

[http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/usc_sec_17_00000109----...](http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/usc_sec_17_00000109 ----000-.html)

I mean look, it's pretty clear that you can not rent audio recordings without permission (there's an exception for libraries). It's just not allowed. Now if the film industry's back is against the wall and they either make a case or lobby Congress to extend the same protection to movies, they can make two parallel arguments:

1\. it's ridiculous and unfair that you should be able to prevent the rental of a movie's soundtrack on CD but not have the same control over the movie itself on DVD; and

2\. while there is an explicit distinction between phonorecordgs and audiovisual works such as motion pictures (so that it can be argued the above simply does not apply), there exists a compulsory license for phonorecords - ie you can license a piece of published music for distribution whether or not the copyright holder wishes to sell it to you \- hence all those awful compilation records - but there is no such right for motion pictures, and thus a distributor of same is perfectly at liberty to refuse to sell to someone, and impose contractual conditions to that effect, which is the path that Universal appears to be taking (See s.115 of the copyright act). In short you don't have an automatic right to be able to obtain a copy.

Incidentally, since you work for Netflix, and I presume your presence here means you're probably programming for them, the main complaint that I hear from distributors about Netflix is opacity - they really want better metrics, of the kind Apple supplies to their content providers. They like the checks but find it very hard to track the performance of the individual films they distribute, which in turn frustrates producers.

<comment><USER8> I have zero interest in speculating on potential future actions by the movie studios and distributors. I don't have a working crystal ball.

Yes. I write software for netflix.

Do you honestly believe that Apple has any choice as to how much data they provide? Do you think apple give detailed metrics because they're warm and kind business partners?

I'm pretty certain apple provides very detailed data because they sell digital ownership rights and PPV contracts. Their contracts/agreements with the distributors would mandate detailed reporting of each sale.

Netflix does not sell digital movie nor do they offer PPV.

<comment><USER5> _I have zero interest in speculating on potential future actions by the movie studios and distributors._

Fine, but my point about the First Sale Doctrine stands - it is not the settled legal situation Wikipedia (and thus you) claim it to be, and I've shown why. You can take or leave my other opinions as you see fit.

 _Do you honestly believe that Apple has any choice as to how much data they provide? Do you think apple give detailed metrics because they're warm and kind business partners?_

It's part of their offer, not a matter of compulsion. I'm just pointing out that distributors would love to have similar information from Netflix, so you could, you know, make more money by trading it for a small reduction in your wholesale costs.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Positive turnarounds dont get as much attention as failure on HN? - <AUTHOR> Zenefits recently held a user conference called Z2 and explained about how they are solving their regulatory problems and how the company is moving forward with their newly redesigned product. There has been a lot of press coverage around this too but I hardly see any article on HN making it to the front-page.
In comparison an article about how Theranos is halting its lab tests easily gets to the front-page without breaking a sweat.
Why does this bias exist amongst HN audience? Are we inherently biased towards seeing companies fail? <comment><USER2> This is general. Almost all the air time goes to bad news, almost nothing to good news.

[https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired- success/201411/wh...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired- success/201411/why-we-love-bad-news-more-good-news)

However any post on HN about a new technology can be counted as good or neutral news. We've got plenty of them.</comment>


Show HN: WhatPulse – all you need to know everything about your computing habits - <AUTHOR> https://whatpulse.org/ <comment><USER2> Nice, a more robust version of mousotron.</comment>


Show HN: Cloud Migration – Migrate Between Dropbox, OneDrive, GoogleDrive, etc. - <AUTHOR> https://community.couchdrop.io/hc/en-us/articles/360001297056-Couchdrop-Releases-Move-BETA <comment><USER2> This is awesome. After years of being a dedicated Dropbox customer, I changed my cloud to Google Drive last year. The migration alone took more than a week, and I've been miserable ever since.

The Google Drive sync product is a third-class citizen compared to Dropbox, and I no longer view personal cloud storage as commodities, as was the original reason I switched over.

<comment><USER3> I attempted to migrate to Google Drive a while back, and had the same experience as you - I was plagued with issues with the sync client, it kept crashing when trying to upload 600gb of data.

Tried to resolve it a few times and gave up in the end, the customer service was fairly useless - figured it was a sign that I should stick with Dropbox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> At any time during the transfer, do my unencrypted files end up on your machines? There is no such thing as _free_ anymore ;)

<comment><USER2> Great question -- I'd also like to know this

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How are you paying the costs?</comment>


Self-control improves your prospects, but it may harm your health - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21657768-self-control-improves-your-prospects-it-may-harm-your-health-no-good-deed <comment><USER2> reading the first comment from the article, exactly my thoughts:

"The trends for advantaged and disadvantaged subjects are taken from a line fit to the data points on the chart. A line fitting routing will always produce a line, even to the random shot pattern of shotgun blast, but it takes human judgment to decide if the slope actually means anything. Team, look carefully at the data clouds. They are both shaped like flattened spheres and are approximately symmetrical. The line fitting routing produces a line anyway, and from this, articles are published and careers are made. Sorry, but there is no meaning here, as much as the researcher would like it to be otherwise. The distributions are nearly the same. The observation and explanation go out the window."

It would be great to look at the original publication.

<comment><USER3> Publish or perish produces a lot of these "conclusions" in my experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Article is based on _Self-control forecasts better psychosocial outcomes but faster epigenetic aging in low-SES youth_ ([http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/07/08/1505063112.full...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/07/08/1505063112.full.pdf)), someone with access who can check N and the significance of change of the groups?

<comment><USER5> Given the data found on this chart [http://cdn.static- economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecac...](http://cdn.static- economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/images/print- edition/20150718_STC096.png) (which shows more than a hundred of points, quite good compared to the size of the sample : "almost 300 black American teenagers"), I'm really sceptical about the relevance of the results …

<comment><USER6> I think it's The Economist's visualization that is confusing, not the data. I read the paper, they have 292 subjects. Here's the Tukey plot (which to me, is less confusing than the scatter plot) from the paper on age in low and high self-control groups: [http://imgur.com/ijL6nrp](http://imgur.com/ijL6nrp)

Also, according to the authors, 'skin-deep' metrics improved: [http://imgur.com/lXD3f2L](http://imgur.com/lXD3f2L)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'll take that self-control over worse health any day. Health is something you can at least throw your money at, especially the money you got thanks to self- control. Knowing you are using only 10% of your potential because of lack of self-control is depressing.

<comment><USER8> Health is absolutely not something you can throw money at. I don't understand where this attitude comes from. And nothing kills your earning potential like a long-term health condition.

<comment><USER7> In many cases, it absolutely is. A lot of long-term health improving strategies, like good diet, going to the gym, ensuring enough sleep, regular checkups, etc. are much more available when you have the money. So if lack of self-control prevents you from getting enough money, it also restricts your ability to take advantage of the above means.

<comment><USER9> I had a relatively good diet, a regular fitness routine, slept well, visited my doctor, and still ended up unable to walk for 6 months with back pain. That was with access to private medical insurance, in Europe. Even with theoretically unlimited money behind my problem, I was unable to get it sorted quickly. 18 months on and I'm not in bad shape, but I still can't walk for more than a few hours, and have trouble sleeping sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I admit I'm not a researcher but this is seems shotty. First, the abstract does a better job - [http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/07/08/1505063112.shor...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/07/08/1505063112.short).

Second, as some other have pointed out, what exactly is self control? What exactly do you do with that self control? This seems to me a little like saying that workers who take 10min breaks from work all have shorter life spans. Only to forget those 10min breaks are to smoke cigarettes. (I believe this contrived example is from Naked Statistics).

What's next, "Diet and exercise forecast better physical outcomes but faster epigenetic aging in low-SES youth"?

The results are interesting, sure, but warrant a lot more research before an article like this makes any sense.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER6> > Second, as some other have pointed out, what exactly is self control? What > exactly do you do with that self control?

That is a simplistic criticism. The way you answer this question for yourself is to (1) look at the paper and how they define self-control (and cellular aging!), (2) follow the references that they cite for measuring self-control, (3) review the literature and critique it. Else, your suggestion is that people in the field of self-control haven't bothered asking your question, which is unlikely since they are specializing in the study of self-control!

<comment><USER10> I see this but there was another sentence you left out of your quote that I was leading to. I'm not criticizing the research - I'm positive I bring no new line of questioning. What I do want more information on is what happens if your self control leads you to diet and exercise (which plenty of study shows improves cellular aging)?

And I would love to read further in detail but I can't afford the access. If someone has it and can easily answer - please do!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Could you paste the article on pastebin? I'm getting a paywall.

<comment><USER12> Bookmark this:

javascript:location.href='[https://www.google.com/webhp?#q='](https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=') \+ encodeURIComponent(location.href) + '&btnI=I'

Instant de-paywall-ification.

<comment><USER11> Will try, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Could the obesity be related to the fact that they were better at optimizing for candy intake? Would the same results be there if the reward was something else?

</comment><comment><USER14> Why is this called "self-control" when what it actually tests is giving up one's own agency to an authority?

When framed that way it seems less puzzling why it might not be healthy.

(Just to clarify: the experiment involves the subjects doing something they don't want to do in order to comply with the experimenter)

<comment><USER15> Did you read the PNAS article? If so, what is that order exactly? Was it the marshmallow test?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm sorry but that graph is just too funny. Let's see, what slope do we want the red line to have? Here, that fits the conclusion we want to promote. And the blue line? The inverse of that slope, of course!

Too funny.

</comment><comment><USER17> Self control of what?

<comment><USER18> That's a good question. I don't know why you are being downvote. How does self control correlates to obesity? That can only be the case if we are talking about a narrow way of self control.

Anyway, the article is doubtful at best.

<comment><USER19> > How does self control correlates to obesity?

Controlling how much you eat and what you can't eat.

<comment><USER18> In the context of the article.... self control correlates with an increase in obesity.

<comment><USER20> Wasn't the metric for calculating self control was how long you were willing to wait for an additional marshmallow? Seems like a proxy for measuring self control that would be biased towards people with a propensity for obesity.

<comment><USER18> Those greedy kids and their marshmallows.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fleye – Your Personal Flying Camera - <AUTHOR> http://gofleye.com/blog/fleye-personal-flying-camera/

<comment><USER2> amazing product and video... just waiting for more ! ;)</comment>


How do I restrict what can be shared with me? - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/drive/thread/5207602?hl=en <comment><AUTHOR> I have some NSFW pdf that are shared forcefully to me and pop on my screen : [https://imgur.com/a/abyatTH](https://imgur.com/a/abyatTH)

That's not very professionnal ...</comment>


How an 11-Year-Old Boy Invented the Popsicle - <AUTHOR> http://kuow.org/post/how-11-year-old-boy-invented-popsicle

<comment><USER2> I haven't had a popsicle since I was 12

<comment><USER3> What about a fudgcicle or something like that?

I had one in the last few months I think.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: DevOps Career Advice for an Oldy - <AUTHOR> Hello,
I'm a late 30's devops / SRE guy who previously worked as a sysadmin in financial services. Suddenly, the jobs in my area seem to ask for only 5 years of experience of Python, AWS, Kubernetes, Docker and CICD, my salary demands are too high and I'm being interviewed by people in their 20's who think I'm an idiot. I'm struggling with the whole process I have several paths and I was hoping you could pick what YOU would do:
A) Continue learning more Python - I'm good but I don't know the math and sorting questions I'm getting asked. Continue with AWS. Take a lower-paying job with folks 15 years younger just so I can pick up Docker, Kubernetes, etc. That's a 30-40K pay decrease in New York.
Downside:   I have grey hair and I think I'm competing with cheaper people.
B) Go independent contractor. I have done this but I am very bad with marketing myself, and my network isn't wide enough to score jobs, so I'm stuck with recruiters. I like this the most but I'm also struggling.
Downside: Everything else is perfect, but my marketing skills are 0 after all these years.
C) Go management. I've already been a manager on the infra side. I shied away in future roles thinking I preferred hands-on (even though I got accolades as a people person and a well-organized improver of infrastructure).
Downside:  Narrow job listings to choose from, also weak at marketing.
What would you do and why? <comment><USER2> I'm a systems engineer in WA state in my early 40s and this is exactly why I gave up trying to find a "real" DevOps job. I know Python, Puppet, Docker, Azure, etc. very well, have a liberal arts BA as well as a good chunk of a CS degree, but found that I couldn't get an offer no matter how well the interviews went. I eventually chalked it up to my age, especially after I was made fun of during a team lunch portion of an interview, and decided to just stay in the public sector. I've gotten to the point where it just doesn't matter to me anymore. My kids are well cared for, my wife is happy, and I have a life outside of work I love. What else do I need? For me, chasing a career is a fool's errand.

<comment><USER3> that is depressing. early 40s isn't even that old. are your salary demands outrageous, or do you just think it's outright ageism?

<comment><USER2> I make at least 30% less than any systems related industry job out there, so no I don't think my salary demands are outrageous. I think it's a combination of ageism, having a family - hence not being willing to put in insane hours, and the idea that someone coming from the public sector cannot succeed anywhere else.

<comment><USER4> Consider throwing your extra time into a side project. You'll come out ahead regardless. You'll get a nice chunk of passive income, you'll replace your day gig income and have a lot more flexibility, or you could turn it into a demo to show during interviews.

<comment><USER5> simonswords82 in this discussion claims that the side project SaaS passive income is now a thing of the past.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19164389](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19164389)

 _you could turn it into a demo to show during interviews._

That is my plan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To me it seems like you've hit a point in your career where you need to learn some new skills. That _doesn 't_ mean your old skills are now worthless, it means you need to learn some new ones to go with them.

I'm younger than you (25), but I already flip-flop between higher paid jobs that use the skills I already have, and slightly less well paid ones that give me the opportunity to learn new skills. I figure that's just the price of staying competitive in the job market.

I come from more of a dev background, and I've looked into learning devops stuff. I think you'll find that your more traditional ops background transfers quite well to the new cloud environments. There's definitely a whole load of stuff around networking and stuff like that that I have no clue about.

I suspect if you put a bit of effort (a month or two even) into learning the new shiny AWS/kubernetes/whatever stuff, then you'll suddenly go from someone who sounds like they don't know anything (because you don't know the acronyms, etc), to a someone who can impress everyone because their knowledge of the new shiny stuff is backed by years of experience in a similar domain that most people don't have.

<comment><USER7> I'm almost 42: you never hit a point where you don't need to learn new skills. There will be periods of time when you can sit on your hands and just coast, but those periods ALWAYS come to an end. I've seen it happen multiple times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Your question is how can you continue to be compensated highly in this fast changing industry that already compensates very well. It's a tough question and I don't think anyone has a magic bullet for you.

Here's some general tips from the business side:

\- When you are struggling to compete, differentiate yourself and find a smaller, more specialized audience. Don't attempt to compete head on unless you believe you have an upper hand.

\- There are skillset that are always subject to the whims of the day but there are also skillsets that do not: among them are (1) the ability to sell yourself and (2) the ability to manage and motivate others. These two skills have stood the test of time and if you commit yourself to at least getting better at them, so will you.

I'm a developer in my 30s who retrained after being a lawyer. I flat out tell people I'm not that great a developer. I have never gotten a job from having to prove my technical skill and have not yet needed to. I rely on my network, find a specialized niche market (startups that have just figured out how to make money but don't yet have a product orientated tech leader), and I impress upon them non-coding abilities (I ask them a load of questions about their business and operations and talk about strategy, product, organization challenges - things they don't get from a typical developer candidate). You should not adopt the same strategy but maybe think about what non-technical skills makes you differentiated and where those skills might be needed most.

<comment><USER9> I'm sure your previous lawyer skills were looked upon favorably by companies you've been hired by? I'm curious -- do companies think they're getting a "two for one" e.g. a developer who knows some law if/when they need to ask someone in-house a quick question? Do you market that ability during interviews, or do you explicitly say you're not looking to offer legal advice?

FWIW I'm a self-taught developer who used to teach HS math before making the switch. I've found that both of my developer offers were partially to heavily influenced by my previous career. One company is ed-tech (heavily influenced) the other not so much, but enough of a ed-focused mission that they found those previous skills of mine useful.

I share this because I think previous experience is one of the differentiating factors for folks looking to land their first developer role, and should be something they consider how to best leverage when looking for opportunities (which is somewhat off-topic from OPs question).

<comment><USER8> I wasn't hired for my legal skills or experience and the companies I worked at had their own outside counsel that they paid for. I was sometimes asked to get involved in legal issues but that was less than 1% of my work. The founders understood that my value was far higher on technical and product than on legal. But I also tried hard to set myself apart and to bring a different mindset to product and tech that might have been influenced by my time in law.

The main point is still to leverage experience and skills that are valuable outside of technical ability that might be out of fashion in a few years. It doesn't matter if that experience is in teaching, legal or just being an extremely likable person.

I routinely see a lot of articles that are over 10 years old making it to the front page of Hacker News. Do this mental exercise: Imagine writing a long form blog article about what you are currently working on / improving about yourself. Imagine posting that blog article on Hacker News in 10 years time. Would it get a good amount of upvotes?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Late 30's? Get off my lawn, youngster . . .

I have had several conversations this year with project manager- or dev team manager-types that lead me to believe that non-software companies are beginning a mass move into cloud services.

I hear AWS and Azure mentioned much more than Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Job search platforms seem to return job posting result counts that match that ( AWS >> Azure >>>> GCP ).

I have also been surprised to have hiring managers refer to Java/C# programmers as a pure commodity in non-software companies. In one case, a project manager for technical dev in a nationally (US) large insurance company said that they mostly just ask one of the large body shops for three resumes and pick one almost at random.

Based on the above and your financial services experience, I would stay in financial services to leverage your industry knowledge. I would try to shift into AWS (or Azure if you think financial services companies would prefer Microsoft to Amazon) and Kubernete/Docker and get deep experience in effectively using those techs. Try to avoid taking a lower paying job unless you have to?

I'm really torn about programming advice. I love coding and just writing software, but I think non-software companies see coders as low-value employees. Of course, that is a total over-generalization. I don't think having some magic number of years in Python is particularly game-changing.

I have discovered that in my region that tech managers are making salaries at least 25% more than programmers and often 50% more. Personally, I am having some second thoughts about spending the last few years as an individual contributor rather than making the jump to management. Also, the highest, most surprising salaries I have heard all belong to technical managers. In some cases, I have confirmed manager base salaries that approach 3X what developers are earning. Mind blown. However, I will also say that the few folks I know in this position were reasonably successful software engineers that moved into systems architecture and with some consulting background. So part of what made the salary happen was understanding how to make a value-proposition pitch to a specific industry need that was acceptable to hiring orgs. Meaning, patio11 is again right - charge more.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have a few questions to ask you, which will hopefully help you find a more satisfying answer to your conundrum.

1) What is motivating this change? Are you currently unemployed, looking for new work or rather concerned about ensuring your employability over time? Are you looking to earn a higher salary?

2) In an ideal world, would you want to learn this new technology or would you rather stick with building your existing skills / working with tools you are familiar with? Are you willing / interested in learning these tools outside of work, or would do you have other engagements that take precedence (family, non tech hobbies, etc).

3) How much risk are you willing tolerate? Do you have a big enough safety net if the independent contractor thing doesn't work? Maybe plan out this scenario on paper, and do some rough math if possible.

4) You are well within your right to avoid management roles (or anything that doesn't serve you). What are your goals with work, pay the bills even if the work is tedious, emotionally challenging?

My apologies if these questions aren't helpful for you. I'm just yet another obnoxious 20 something in tech.

<comment><AUTHOR> Makes sense!

1 - Contract is ending soon and I'm scouring for a new one or FTE role while wading through strange interviews and lots of recruiters. This sort of gives me a sense.

2 - Outside of work is fine! I already spend 3-4 hours a week on personal tech reading. The issue is, you can read Docker all you want - companies want to see it in production. What do they ask?

"How many years of experience do you have _in production_ with AWS/Docker/Kubernetes"

3 - A fair amount of risk

4 - Pay the bills! For the next 5-10 years.

No, it's helpful. Thank you.

<comment><USER12> "in production" can mean different things to different people and it's about marketing yourself. Build a side project, find the cheapest method to running kunbernetes, run it there for a while. Try to itterate. Do the CI/CD thing. If it's publicly accessible, it's in production. Check out k3s for a minimal experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Old? You're hardly even middle age! Someone who is _actually_ on the later stage of their working life might take issue with you calling yourself old.

I'm sorry that the jobs you've hit up made you feel old, but please keep in mind that that is more a property of the places where you've interviewed rather than a property of you. Plenty of places will have interviewers in their 40s or 50s if that's what you're after. Maybe start looking at more established organizations rather than the nimble upstarts?

It's probably expected that any sysadmin style role knows their way around Python and the other stuff you mention, but nobody is an expert on everything. It's probably more likely that you are priced out rather than skilled out if you've done this for a while. That's not strange in itself. Experience breeds specialization, and the more specialized you are the longer you will have to look.

The answer is never to sell yourself cheap. Find out what your specialization looks like and find someone who might find it valuable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Regarding it's a property of the places I'm interviewing at..

.. there's a startup boom in NYC. And I think startups prefer young, dynamic types on the cheap? A buddy of mine from California says this is the Silicon Valley mindset creeping in. I'm not so sure, but there is something about startups and not hiring too many older folks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My path started as Systems Admin -> DevOps/SRE -> Management.

Double down on your programming skills, cloud management and brush up on the infrastructure components. Your age / experience should actually add to your value. Subnetting, firewalls, routing, security baselines are things that are often overlooked by new people starting DevOps roles. This option also lends to doing consulting and contracting. You day job might earn you a bit less, but you'll be building out your skillset to use.

One of my biggest struggles as a manager is the ability to let go and stop trying to solve problems on my own. I had to work hard to realign the things about my role that are gratifying. If you measure your value by the code you ship, the tickets you close or the technical problems you solve then the move to management might be tough.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking about going back to management.

Do you find roles through old-fashioned recruiters or business networks?

<comment><USER14> I found my last two management roles through the local tech community. Meetups, panels and conferences have done wonders for getting connected. Word of mouth has gone a really long way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also late 30s, moved from DevOps to security. I went from ~$15k below DevOps national market rate to very roughly double that in a few weeks changing roles. I highly recommend the transition for all ops/infra/devops folks. The market for security engineers and architects is on fire right now.

Businesses want DevOps, no one wants to pay for it (as you point out, "Take a lower-paying job with folks 15 years younger just so I can pick up Docker, Kubernetes, etc. That's a 30-40K pay decrease in New York."). The market has spoken, go where the dollars are (and the on-call rotation and fire drills aren't). Get paid for what you know, not selling each hour of writing code or infrastructure via DSL and the PagerDuty rotation.

OP: I'm happy to connect you with some NY specific recruiters for the job type I mention.

<comment><USER15> What type of security job did you switch to? Are you auditing code for security flaws? Are you creating organizational security policies? Is it a management position?

<comment><USER4> Email in profile, happy to answer your questions.

<comment><USER16> I sent you an email as well. Interested in the same type of switch. Thanks for posting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've noticed in "DevOps" you will be forced to basically learn an entire new way of doing things every year. There is something about it being so close to the business oriented people that they make demands closer to the specific tech rather than just requiring a solution to the problem.

I think this contributes to the obsession with tools by my peers rather than obsession with the goal and why I hope to move into a more SRE-like role at some point.

</comment><comment><USER18> Also mid-late 30s, work in finance / NYC, hit a bit of a plateau salary + skills-wise that I am trying to work through, also hoping to avoid management, here are my thoughts.

* Staying focused on long-lived, core technologies, C++/Java/Python. I'm not too interested in chasing AWS/docker/Kubernetes or anything with a half-life approaching that of a js framework.

* Need to add new skills. For me, coming up to speed with kdb+/q. I realize that while I have gained breadth / experience with my skills, it had been too long since I have added an entire new "bullet point" / category to my resume.

<comment><USER3> docker & kubernetes maybe. but i dont see AWS going anywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Late 30s? You're not old, kiddo. :-)

Joking aside, as others have mentioned, you'll need to differentiate yourself, and for each person, that's different. For me, I found that I took really well to Docker and using Python to talk to APIs and AWS. I then started showing the world how well I knew those things by building a series of open source projects which leverage that technology. And--this is the fun part--each project was an iteration that built upon some of the things which I learned in the last project. For example, I built these over the course of several months:

\- [https://github.com/dmuth/splunk-network-health- check](https://github.com/dmuth/splunk-network-health-check) (Uses Docker and Splunk to graph your network quality)

\- [https://github.com/dmuth/twitter-sentiment- analysis](https://github.com/dmuth/twitter-sentiment-analysis) (Uses Docker, Splunk, and AWS to graph Twitter sentiment)

\- [https://github.com/dmuth/splunk-lab](https://github.com/dmuth/splunk-lab) (Uses Docker and Splunk to stand up a generic log ingestion platform which is highly configurable)

So maybe Splunk isn't your thing and Twitter isn't your thing. Maybe you're more a fan of ELK and the Facebook API. That's fine. The trick is to carve out some kind of interesting problem to solve, solve it, and publish your results upon GitHub. Don't worry if others have solved this before, it's more about YOU solving it, and showing the world that you can solve it. Then take it into an interview and show it off--people will LOVE that, especially if you have a README with really slick looking screenshots (presentation matters).

My email is my username AT my username DOT org. Feel free to hit me up if you'd like to chat further, OP. (Or anyone else in a similar position)

</comment><comment><USER20> I used to work in financial and it's pretty easy to get frozen in time technology-wise.

It would do some good to learn modern CICD. Take a look at CircleCI and see if you can wrap your head around it. These days the tolerance for a developer that can't build/deploy their own code is getting low.

Also while it's a good idea to learn Docker/Kubernetes, its primary use-case will become making older applications easier to manage on cloud providers. The demand for people who know Kubernetes is still increasing however the skillset is becoming a commodity.

The current trajectory for new development work is leaning towards solutions like App Engine and other cloud-specific solutions. As a python developer I'd pick up any python-centric offering from AWS and GCP and make a weekend project out of it.

</comment><comment><USER21> Advertise yourself as an infrastructure architect and aim for jobs that value your many years of experience.

Learning kubernetes is good, but it doesn't replace understand the many ways a database migration is going to fail.

</comment><comment><USER22> Similar question, I'm a developer in his early 30s, also in nyc. I'm finding I don't particularly like management, though I seem to be decently good at it. However, posts like the above seem to be what I'm seeing in the market, and I'm starting to wonder if I need to transition as well in order to stay viable long term? I think I would rather go back to a team lead or even senior developer position, but I don't want to end up writing a post like OP's above in 5+ years?

<comment><USER18> I'd be pretty keen to correspond with you, OP, or other "senior" / experienced (30s, 10+ years) developers in NYC trying to skill up and get into higher salary positions, or at least share some experiences and intel. email is in my profile.

<comment><USER23> Didn't see your email there.

I'm in my 40s with 20 years experience in NYC. Applied to a handful of positions, but was politely turned away. I suspect age is a factor, but of course no way to prove it. I'm considering shaving 10 years off my resume and see how that goes. I've done management successfully but it was stressful, and I went back to development.

To beef up my list of skills, I'm starting to expand into areas that are natural progressions from my current set. For example, I use C# and Asp.Net for backend work, so I began using .Net Core; I use React on the front end, will add Redux; MySql/SqlServer for the database, will start working with Postgres; AWS for the cloud, will research Azure.

I'm not sure if I should be adding a whole new bullet point, such as learning Erlang/Elixir, Python/Django, Ruby/Rails, or something completely different.

<comment><USER18> Oops, sorry, added it now.

Right, I am revising my resume currently, and for the first time I'm considering dropping off my earliest jobs - both because they were a long time ago, and because what I was doing then is more or less completely irrelevant to what I would want to be doing next.

My thought, looking at the senior developers around me, is that adding whole new bullet points is good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> wow you sound just like me a year ago. late 30s, had to job transition, and found the tech stack had wildly changed from what I was used to. I'm full stack, but with a focus on backend, so I do a lot of sysop stuff. kubernetes and docker was everywhere, and all these new deploy tools I've never heard of. since when did "automation" (CICD) become its own thing??

anyway, my advice: don't settle. you are a senior. find a job that is willing to accept you as a senior and acknowledge your ability to learn quickly and adapt. demand a high salary (higher than what you're making now) with confidence.

it may take you a couple months to get up to speed, but you have seen it all before. you know what to look out for. you can smell the bullshit out there and you are responsible enough to have autonomy. you don't get this with newbies. this is what a company is really paying you for.

in the meantime, start building environments using these tools you are unfamiliar with. show you have initiative and can talk about these tools for when you get interviews. it may take a month or two until you find the right job. it's hard, but be patient.

as for management, well that's up to you. I tried it once and sucked at it, so I'm fine just being an engineer :) p.s. also check out terraform

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd spend a year or 2 consulting with your current skills while you tool up your cloudops. A good place to look at is Codementor.io. I'd probably get an AWS cert or two while you do this (while certs can be a vanity metric, they are a very useful, and objective, benchmark)

I wouldn't take a lower pay job, and I wouldn't move into management. In your shoes, I'd rather take the pay cut while consulting over carving a new title on my resume that may influence the rest of my career.

Take time to shore up your finances. Get out of debt and/or reduce expenses if possible. The lack of freedom in this area is what causes people to do things in their career that makes them unhappy.

Once you get past this, don't stop learning. Don't be afraid to expand outside of your immediate focus - the market decides what is valuable, not you. (for reference, I'll be 42 next month)

Don't be afraid of onerous job requirements. They always are, and they're often BS. Kubernetes was announced in mid-2014, and didn't pick up steam for a couple of years, so it's virtually impossible for someone to have five years of experience. Docker isn't much older.

</comment><comment><USER25> I would do two things.

First, I would get credentialed. Credentials are a time-proven barrier against unfair discrimination whether on sex, race, age, or sexual orientation. The AWS Dev Ops Engineer Professional credential certainly says that you have areasonably up to date, reasonably modern knowledge base that fits well into the AWS stack. It answer the competency question without it even be asked.

Second, I would definitely improve your strength at marketing. In any job, at some point you will be judged on your ability to drive the bottom line growth of the firm (yours, others, etc.). Showing that you can bring in business for yourselves, others, etc. is more compelling than being able to execute at a low cost point.

And in particular as a late 30's devops fellow becomes a late 50's practitioner, being able to generate your own income becomes important to your survival. Divert extra cash from the next job on learning how to tell your story and create value for customers / partners/ employers on both revenue and cost side.

No one fires someone who beats quota every year.

</comment><comment><USER26> Get an account at acloud.guru (I'm not affiliated with them). Pound through their AWS certification prep videos and get certified. They have a pretty good course on Docker as well, that I've been going through. I'm worried about ageism too, as I get older. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER27> Use your skills to your advantage. In an interview, don't settle for crappy coding challenges. Ask the company what version of linux they're running in their docker containers (and when it was updated/patched) If they can't even tell you, prove value by telling them why (security, perf) and how (either newer canonical images or custom) My point here is the game hasn't really changed, it's just gotten wrapped in two more layers of abstraction. My learning advice: \- Skip python, unless you want to become a coder or get into data science \- Learn how to launch a basic app using docker (think of a dockerfile like a shell script) \- Learn the 4 basic things you need to launch a basic app on kube (pod, deployment, service, ingress)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

What's tricky is combining what you've learned at home with what you didn't do in production at work. In finance, most places are only beginning to use cloud services and barely tickling Docker (at least unless you are in cutting edge groups). And yet hiring managers want to see 5 years of experience in AWS, Docker...

It's not an issue to learn it, I already have started.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Are you currently in a situation where you immediately need to find another job? Can you spend a few months learning AWS, Python, etc?

What tools are you using in your current devops position?

What type of jobs are asking math and sorting questions to a devops person? Also maybe find an algorithms book and brush up on those skills.

And maybe spend a few hours a week working on creating some sort of environment on AWS that demonstrates your ability to use the tools that are in-demand. You could probably even have that as a portfolio item to show off during your next interview.

I don't think you need to take a lower-paying job for a few years just to pick up those tools. Going through a couple of books should be all that it takes especially if you're already in a devops position.

</comment><comment><USER28> If you have time, learn more python, aws, kubenertes, etc.

Then showcase you are deeply familiar with these technologies. If you already have yrs of production level experience with configuring + managing VMs, kubenertes isn't tooooo much more complicated after you know basics of docker.

And if you aren't familiar with Docker, it is is something an experienced dev should be able to read about + toy with and feel pretty comfortable in in a few weeks.

Then once you feel confident in that all these tools are just all have analogies to the tools you're working with, showcase those analogies in your interviews and you should be good (e.g. "I haven't used kubernetes, but I have worked on tooling to deploy applications on VMs")

</comment><comment><USER29> If it were me, I would bite the bullet and learn the new tech. In this game you gotta keep moving forward. If you can afford a temporary pay cut this should hopefully be temporary until you get some new skills under your belt.

</comment><comment><USER30> Where are you based? If you're in the UK I know someone who might be good to chat with.

<comment><AUTHOR> New York City, but thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I would like to coach you at no charge. Contact info in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER32> From what you list, you need to go management.</comment>


Show us a better way than collecting metadata, NSA director says to critics - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/internet/387170/show-us-better-way-collecting-metadata-nsa-director-says-critics

<comment><USER2> From the article, "Given that the threat is growing, I believe that is an unacceptable risk to our country."

Citation needed, Mr. Alexander. How is the threat measured? Sounds like FUD to me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Its easy. You want to improve public perception of your illegal acts? Halve your budget. You'd be surprised what a lean and seemingly innocuous agency can get away with as opposed to a sprawling power-money-manpower hungry behemoth.</comment>