Depressed and need advice - <AUTHOR>

I'm an active HN poster under a different name, but I'm posting this anonymously. I'm dealing with some situational depression and need advice.
I've been on a gap year from an Ivy League school after having a bad freshman year (I did well academically, but I had social and personal problems that I was dealing with). I took a gap year with the possibility of dropping out.
I've done pretty well over the gap year. I worked at a programming job and also did some contracting, and managed to save about 18k. I was also able to work through some of the future computer science classes by myself (learned C, graphs, trees, and basic algorithms).
The problem is, I come from an Asian family and am dealing with expectations that I return to school (from both friends and family). I don't feel ready to return, and I feel like I'm becoming depressed and anxious again.
I know this seems like a first world problem, but I just need some perspective and advice. I feel like if I drop out, I'll be okay emotionally and health wise. I think I'll be able to continue self teaching (I'm decently smart, scored 2330 on the SAT and did well in multivariable calc freshman year).
Thanks for any advice. I've just been very depressed and unhappy about the prospect of going back to school, and I'm starting to think it's the wrong decision. <comment><USER4> You should see a doctor.

Its very unlikely that you are getting depressed at the prospect of going to university. It's more likely that you _are_ suffering from depression, that the prospect of going back to uni is making you anxious, which in turn causes stress and people who are depressed have a _very_ different response to stress than people who are not. Also, think of depression as a hole, and stress like this huge bulldozer that digs into it, and you are always at the bottom of the hole, and it just gets deeper and deeper. Eventually it can get too deep.

People who are not depressed can't _understand_ the way stress feels for someone who is depressed, though.

Depression can have roots in some emotional problems, but it's also common for it to be a _purely physical condition_ , too. I am depressed (it's being treated) and I can't guarantee you whether you are depressed or not (if you are, it sounds like a light/mild cases, which is good I believe), but the way you described your situation makes me think that you might be, and a doctor could definitely help you. If not with the depression, then at least with your anxiety and "social" problems.

The problem with depression is that it just gets worse and worse, and there is no stopping it on your own.

You can also develop depression at any stage in your life.

Disclaimer: I have a very bad case of Major Depressive Disorder, I suspect since I was a kid, which almost ruined my life before a friend made me treat it. So I researched a lot about it, but I'm by no means an expert!

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I might be slightly depressed, but the prospect of going back to college is making me unhappy (I think I'm pretty certain of this, but I don't want to go through all the reasons). I did well academically freshman year despite my depression, and at this point I'm mostly wondering how bad dropping out would be for me career wise (and maybe socially).

I feel confident that I can make friends outside of school, and while I'm worried about my parent's and friend's reactions to my dropping out, I feel like that shouldn't be the deciding factor.

<comment><USER4> Of course it shouldn't!

If you believe it makes you unhappy, and not simply causing you stress, then you shouldn't go back. I realise your parents and friends might disapprove at first, but you should change their minds by showing them you can do what makes you happy _and_ be successful.

It shouldn't make any difference in you social life, because if someone cares that much, they are probably snobby as fuck.

However, it might make a difference to you in later life. Russell Tovey (British actor) said he always feels ashamed for not having a degree in acting (or whatever it's called, I honestly forgot the term... Drama?) when people talked about which schools they went to. Your parents are probably just scared that you might develop self esteem issues like these.

I am not sure if it will limit your career choices, but you can always compensate with a kickass portfolio!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not worried about developing self esteem issues because of my lack of a degree.

I am somewhat worried about how it could impact my career, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's where I'm coming from: a student of psychology, sociology, anthropology, and history. Worked in the Helping Professions for 5+ years, lived in South Korea for over a hear, traveled to China a few times, and as such have made friends with several Asians back home in America. I think I can understand what the pressures are like from your friends and family, and I think I can understand why they feel the need to pressure you, at least to some small extent. However, I may be wildly off, in which case please ignore my ramblings, and I hope not to cause any more frustration for you.

Here's my real concern: not that you make money, or that you make your parents happy (or even that you make yourself happy), but that you are able to identify what is happening at the root of all this, and that you are able to navigate it. When that happens, you will become happy, and you will provide the time, the reason, and the opportunity for your parents to become happy about you, though whether or not they choose to is ultimately up to them, not you.

Here are my questions: What is the problem with your situation? (I can assume from what you've typed, but it isn't explicitly stated, and I hate assuming) Where does the problem come from? Where does your sense of identify originate?

My suspicion: there is an identity issue at the root of this (or at least near the root). We all get our identity from somewhere. We were all meant to get a healthy identify from our parents, though not all of us can. Many of us have parents who were not given their own healthy identity from their own parents, which makes it difficult to pass on a healthy sense of identity to us. Where there's a lack of identify (or unhealthy identity, these are essentially the same things with different terminology), poor boundaries are set in place. I highly recommend the book Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend <[http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search- alias%3Dap...](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search- alias%3Daps&field-keywords=boundaries>).

Your hesitancy to return to school may be wrapped up in the bad stuff you experienced there. That does not mean you should just go back and tough it out; it means that you have not healed from whatever happened. If you can heal from that (and without knowing what it is, I don't know where to point you), you may find yourself wanting to go back to school. (This imagination technique does not provide solid answers, just hints about what is going on in you. Take it with a grain of salt) Take a few minutes to imagine that you are 100%, completely healed from whatever bad stuff happened your freshmen year. Really let it sink in. Everything is fixed, and none of that stuff can ever happen again. If you are able to imagine that and let it go to the core of your being, do you still want to stay away from school?

If what I'm saying seems to fit so far, get that book. It is a pretty dry read, but the ideas are amazing. If what I'm saying does not fit, I apologize for taking your time. I'd really like to see you get through this, healed of any issues that could cause depression ever again for you.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you feel confident you'd be happy as a developer or an entrepreneur, and given how you feel I think you should drop out. The real world will teach you much more than school. Developers can and are judged on what they've DONE (not by all companies but by many, and certainly enough) and entrepreneurs are judged only by what they've done. The degree doesn't matter imho. Background: I dropped out (data point of one, I know!) of comp sci after first year, ~18 years ago, and have never looked back. Caveat: If you would be a developer, you'd have to be willing to live in a large/progressive city to find the (many!) companies happy to hire you based on what you've done. Go build stuff. School isn't for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER7> You should come to New Mexico Tech. We have a great CS program which is essentially throwing you in the deep end and seeing if you can swim. We are far, far away from your overbearing family and whatever horrifying social situation at your old school, over here in Socorro, New Mexico. Even if you got _no_ financial assistance at all, you could pay for two or three years just with the 18K you have saved up now, and that's out-of-state tuition. In reality, with a decent GPA they would probably pay half and in a year you would qualify for in-state tuition cutting it in half again. The students here are mellow and have nothing to do but study. A low key environment, you would be a big fish in a small pond.

Worked for me. :)

<comment><USER8> Your math seems off. I looked at the New Mexico Tech website, and it estimates that the costs per semester are around $15,000.

[http://www.nmt.edu/tuition-and-fees](http://www.nmt.edu/tuition-and-fees)

<comment><USER7> Tuition seems to have gone up since I last looked.

$4K of that cost is based on staying in the dorms. You can rent a house for $800-1000/month in Socorro, split 2 to 4 ways, and there are studio apartments in the area for as low as $250. Still, these costs are essentially for your first year; after that it goes down considerably, and if you have a 3.25 or 3.5 you're eligible for a $4/5K/year transfer scholarship.

I have no idea where they got that $1600 "travel" cost estimate from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd recommend going back to school. When you go:

* Join some exercise or sports club. Martial arts, ultimate frisbee, swimming -- anything.

* Ask a few women on dates. If you're at all like I was, you will make an awkward mess of it and get rejected. This is a good thing. It will make you dread failure less.

* Some Saturday, when you really should be working, take the day off and explore whatever city you live in. Don't go to the standard tourist locations. Walk around all day and explore at random. Walk into businesses you might not otherwise walk into. Approach strangers and ask random questions. They'll probably think you're weird -- that's okay, you'll never see them again.

(This might not apply directly if your town is small and/or unsafe.)

* Find some off-campus activity to go and join for a day. The more ridiculous the better. Country line dancing?

* Take some class in some subject that really interests you, but will be useful for nothing. Shakespeare, music theory, some obscure foreign language, ... anything.

* Do reasonably well in your classes. But don't be afraid to get a few B's. Disappoint your family slightly, not totally.

* Read Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Wonderfully insightful and funny, and based on what you say I imagine the story she tells will be familiar as hell.

* Tell all of this to your family. IMHO, you will be very, very glad you did so no matter how they react.

Good luck to you!

</comment><comment><USER10> My advice is to go back to school. And not because you are being pressured to but because it will broaden you in ways you can't anticipate. You'll be in an environment that is unpredictable and stimulating and you don't know where future inspiration will come from because of it.

Jobs found inspiration after dropping out but -- and this is the important bit -- _while still on the campus_ :

>>>"The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting," he said. Among them was a calligraphy class that appealed to him after he saw posters on campus that were beautifully drawn. "I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating."

\-- from the Isaacson bio

Listen, you can always make money later. But you are young only _once_ and if you pass up the chance for serendipity when you're young, you'll regret it later in life because by then you'll understand you've trapped yourself in a bubble for years.

I hope this helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response. Several people have advised me to go back for the overall experience, but I feel like I'm not likely to enjoy it if I'm unhappy or depressed there.

I'm wondering how bad dropping out would be. I have about a year and a half of experience as an employed programmer, and I know several languages and frameworks.

Would the lack of a degree become a serious problem in the future?

<comment><USER11> I entered the professional field after some minor community college experience right during the .com bubble (1997). It was very difficult to get my foot in any doors, largely due to the lack of a degree.

After 5 years of experience that went away, partly from the changes in the tech environment and also my experience.

It is competitive when you are starting out, but developers are high in demand. As someone now more in an employer role (which I'm not hiring now), I would look at Open Source work over a degree. If you have a github account with a maintained project or two, especially with a few stars, I'll think you are more qualified than if you have just a BS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm smart and dropped out, but regretted it later on both pragmatic and personal bases. Is there a possibility to switch schools, or live off-campus and avoid some of the social stuff? Also, consider taking some of your savings and chatting to a psychologist psychiatrist, one that relates to you as an adult individual instead of a student.

If you do drop out your parents will get over it, eventually, but being tagged as a failure is unpleasant in the short term and burdensome in the long term. At least come up with a plan B (for yourself, not for them) to finish your education on your own terms at your own pace. Also, have you considered the possibility that your vocation doesn't necessarily have to line up with your education? If you're doing well as a self-taught programmer and so forth, perhaps you'd be happier studying something quite different from whatever you started with - medieval history or astrobiology or philosophy, say.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you be more specific about why you've regretted dropping out? If you're a programmer, how much has it hurt your career? I unfortunately don't think switching schools is an option for me.

<comment><USER12> Three reasons.

One, practical: I'm European, and found that my options for living in other countries were narrowed by not having a degree. I would probably have moved to Japan for several years if I had had one, since it's a prerequisite for getting a work visa in that country and (obviously) being a westerner in that country causes you to stick out like a sore thumb and they're super- bureaucratic about this. I'm just personally interested in Japan and Japanese culture, so I regret foreclosing that option for myself.

Two, socioeconomic: although a bit of an introvert, I think there's enormous value to the personal networks you can build up in college, in terms of meeting potential mentors, colleagues and so forth. Now, I think there's (pan-)social downsides to that system, and somewhat disapprove of the whole 'Greek system.' But overall I think college provides access to considerable social capital, whose utility may not be apparent in the short term but which makes a huge difference for most people over the longer term. Most of us are not Bill Gates, and the fact is that Gates inherited a lot of social capital from his parents.

Three, intellectual: Although I enjoy being a self-directed learner and feel pretty confident about my smarts, I do go through deep and horrible abysses of self-doubt, and often feel ashamed of not having fulfilled my intellectual potential by completing and exploiting a degree. I'm just shy of 43 now; whereas in my 20s I felt very proud of my ability to learn, navigate life, and make a living sans degree (and still do in many respects; I've built an impressive resume as a high-level film technician over the last decade despite never having taken a film class), these days I hate admitting that I don't have a degree and feel that my career overall has stalled for lack of direction and focus. True, people often tout their degree as a substitute for actual skill and experience, and an excess focus on credentialism is a negative aspect of our society and economy. But at the same time, I am sick to the back teeth of explaining why I don't have a degree, having to sell myself from scratch every time instead of simply saying 'oh yes, I have a BS in Economics from Berkeley' or whatever. Also, I struggle with a nagging feeling of being a dilettante and lacking a solci intellectual focus, so when I'm down in the dumps I don't feel like a smart guy who has a decent life in defiance of the odds, but a bullshit artist whose run of relative good luck could end at any time. Having to regularly re-sell yourself to yourself on your own merits is just as tiresome as having to sell yourself to others. It's a large and omnipresent confidence drain.

<comment><USER12> PS you can email me if you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you do decide to go back to school, I recommend taking advantage of the free and confidential counseling clinic that they almost certainly have. Don't tell your family about it unless you want to - it can be felt as a betrayal. See someone on a weekly basis to sort through what's going on. It just helps to talk, and counselors are trained to listen and empathize. Psychiatrists and other medical doctors are generally not trained like this, they will instead try to diagnose you with a disorder, so you might want to rely on them just for medication if you go that route. There's lots and lots of free high quality support on a university campus so don't be shy about taking advantage of it. On the other hand, if counseling or therapy in your hometown is an option for you if you drop out, that could help you figure things out too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. I think the depression would probably go away if I drop out (unless I can't find a programming job at all). I have contract work for the next year at least, so I'm not too worried.

If I go back, I'll definitely try out your suggestion of talking to counselor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is surface advice, which addresses the high level problem at hand. You got into an ivy league - make the most of it. Learn CS, math, philosophy and whatever else interests you.

Then there is the root problem, which is depression. There is no rational advice about "suck it up and go back to school" that will help here. Your problem is uniquely yours, but you are not the only one to feel it. It is a chemicals in the brain problem, not a willpower issue. Depression hits smart people more than dumb people. (Shouldn't it be the other way around?) If you can't go to your parents, do be aware that most Ivy League caliber schools do have strong support networks if you look around.

If you want to talk, create and post a dummy email address and I'll shoot you my contact info.

</comment><comment><USER15> If it's not going to make you kill yourself, go back to school. In American society, a degree from an elite university is a skeleton key to opportunity. It's a clear signifier for 'upper-class' in a society that likes to pretend there's no such thing as class. They could teach you nothing except what wine goes with the fish for four years straight, and it'd still be worth the price of tuition.

I have a history degree from Stanford, and it's given me ridiculously unfair advantages in areas _completely unrelated to history_. I can't even imagine the easy mode my life would be set on if my degree was in something related to what I do for a living. Giving up that kind of advantage because you're temporarily depressed seems pretty foolish to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I talked to several programmers, and they mostly said that a prestigious degree only helps out with the first few jobs (though they said that no degree at all is a slight to moderate negative). I'm not sure how accurate their perceptions are, and I think the tech industry might also be unique in caring less about prestigious credentials.

These programmers also said that a prestigious degree does help significantly in other areas, like finance and law.

What areas has your Stanford degree helped you in?

<comment><USER15> When many people hear you have a degree from a prestigious school, they automatically assume you're smart and talented and right about whatever you're talking about, even if it's unrelated to your degree. This is a general effect that goes far beyond individual fields like science or law. Just being aware of your school will cause many people to unconsciously defer to your opinions and automatically treat you like their social superior.

This effect is so pronounced, some people try to _avoid_ saying where they went to school, instead saying things like 'I went to school in the Bay Area' or 'I went to school in Boston'. They find the automatic obseqious treatment they get awkward, so they only mention their school when they _need_ to use it for something they want.

In practice, this general 'we automatically respect your opinions and assume you're right' effect makes getting all kinds of opportunities easier. Jobs, promotions, meetings with and mentorship from powerful people, etc. It can also help with petty bureaucrats, law enforcement, medical doctors - <USER2> much everywhere.

It doesn't surprise me that programmers _say_ a prestigious degree doesn't matter - this is America, after all, and automatically treating someone as your better seems profoundly undemocratic. But saying you don't care about prestigious degrees is kind of like saying 'advertising doesn't work on me'. People who _actually_ don't care about and react positively to prestigious degrees are very rare.

I'll add that I didn't know this effect existed when I was going to school - <USER3> just wanted to be a history professor! I only noticed it later, when I realized the game board of life was oddly slanted to favor me. But I bet your _parents_ are very well aware of this, and that's why they want you to stay in your school.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the informative response. Based on your experience with people from prestigious schools, do you think this automatic deference is justified?

<comment><USER15> Not really, no. A person with a degree from a prestigious school is likely to be smarter than a person selected at random from the population, sure. But that doesn't mean they should be deferred to in areas where they lack knowledge and experience, and never automatically.

That said, we all get to deal with the world as it is, not as it should be, and an Ivy degree is a pretty nice perk. It seems a shame to toss it away if there are other ways to deal with your depression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My advice is to ignore thoughts about what you don't want to do.

Focus on thoughts about what you do want to do. Figure it out, what your idea of success is over the next 1-5 years (probably part of a plan of success for your lifetime). Measure success in your own terms, not those of your parents, peers, or anyone else.

Boil your 1-5 year down to some basic actions, and move to complete those actions.

It's not easy to ignore outside pressures, but I think it's important to make an attempt at being truly happy. Some people's measure of success might be to make their parents proud, and so they should follow a course that makes that happen.

<comment><USER11> If the idea of success over a year at a time is interesting, I recommend reading 18 Minutes by Peter Bregman. It's a very practical guide to this approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does your family know why you took a gap year despite good academic performance? If they don't know the reasons or only have a vague notion of why you took a year off, it might be good to have one of those honest vulnerable conversations and make sure they understand both the situational issues and how it has impacted you emotionally.

I am a parent with a 19 year old at university. Despite my ambitions that she proceed full speed ahead, I know that I value her mental health more than a speedy completion of studies. You might find your parents more understanding than you imagine if they know all the details.

<comment><AUTHOR> My parents are aware that I was depressed. I've also told them that I think dropping out would be the better choice for my mental health.

They disagree and seem to think that I don't have enough wisdom (I think this is what many Asian parents believe about twenty year olds).

They're not going to kick me out though if I drop out. And even if they do, I've saved 18k and have contracting work for at least the next year. I think I should be okay. I'm just asking for perspective and to see if I'm making any serious mistakes in my reasoning.

<comment><USER12> Most parents, not just Asian ones, believe this about 20 year olds. Unfortunately, they're right.

The problem is that parents/society tends to say to 20 year olds 'you just don't know, go ahead and do the conventional thing even if you don't feel good about it, you'll be glad later when it comes to getting a better job/finding a mate/buying your own home.' The benefits of a complete education seem so obvious to them that anyone who doesn't want one appears obtuse, so they don't make much effort to _sell_ the notion, any more than you or I would seriously entertain a kid's stated willingness to be illiterate or innumerate.

If I could invent a time machine ('and if I had gone to college, maybe I could...' \- nagging doubt like that hangs around :-) ), then I'd go back and tell my youthful self that there's a bunch of cool stuff I'm missing out on, even if if I have to go through a few false starts within the tertiary education system before finding the right path.

It's _obviously_ not true that you can't get an education except by going to college, because any smart person can educate themselves to a great degree, and often at considerable speed. But proof of education is a valuable asset, and access to a large social network and intellectual depth in an environment devoted to rewarding your curiosity it a huge huge benefit.

What sort of things do you want to do in your life? Obviously it's nice too be financially independent and so on right now, but that's practical stuff. Look beyond your immediate needs, and assume for a minute that you'll probably be able to enjoy a pleasant lifestyle and reasonable financial security because you were lucky enough to get born where and when you did etc.. What would you like to work on that you can't possibly do right now, but could imagine doing one day? Astronaut? Tycoon? Philosopher? Dentist? (I presume _some_ people must enjoy dentistry rather than just doing it because it pays well)

Give your imagination some time to operate. There must be _something_ that you're interested in that would be an awful lot easier to achieve with an Ivy- league education. Don't be too quick to rule out wacky possibilities because they seem wacky. If you secretly dream of being Indiana Jones, then you'll need an archaeology degree. Never mind just now how many jobs there are for archaeologists, that's just a matter of competition which can come later. Likewise, programming as you're doing now is an excellent means of making a living and you could become $uper rich. The question is whether being a computer programmer is the most awesome and desirable thing you can imagine wanting to do with your life, or whether you're just doing it because it's cool and you're good at it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the problem is that my parents seem to feel that college is a necessity for a good life, which I think I disagree with. There seem to be plenty of programmers without degrees.

The things I'm really interested in doing beyond practical needs don't require a college degree, and in some ways I think three years in the real world would be more valuable. I'm interested in entrepreneurship and non-fiction / fiction writing, and both of those seem to benefit heavily from real world experience.

<comment><USER12> Well, it helps. And don't make the mistake of thinking that college is not real life, just because it's curated. Think of it like an intellectual shopping mall :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> See if there's a way that you can hang on to some option to return and finish your degree, even if you are away for a few years. It sounds like you are not interested in going back right now, but it would be good to have the option if you ever change your mind.

Whatever you decide to do, keep your options open.

</comment><comment><USER11> Are you more motivated to conquer your depression or to sidestep the situation?

From an opportunity standpoint, this could be a chance to overcome a difficult personal challenge (depression) while also being able to do something many don't (go to university).

I hope that you find your answer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. I'm not sure if I want to try and conquer my depression right now, but I'm definitely thinking about the choice ahead.

<comment><USER11> Oh, one more thing, spend an hour watching this: [http://thisweekinstartups.com/thisweekin-startups/jerry- colo...](http://thisweekinstartups.com/thisweekin-startups/jerry-colonna- independent-lifebusiness-coach-former-vc/)

Jerry Colonna was at the top of the business world, partnered with Fred Wilson, and couldn't out run his depression. How he solved it isn't going to work for you, but he tells a wonderful story and really talks about what can be at the core of our desires.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Getting into an Ivy League program is pretty hard. Unless you're starting Microsoft or Facebook it seems like a wasted opportunity if you didn't follow through with it. It really opens up a lot of doors you wouldn't have without the degree, or even with a degree from a 2nd tier school.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't have any advice that's not been said, but wanted to wish you luck whatever path you take.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>


What I Learned From Opening a Bookstore - <AUTHOR> http://open.salon.com/blog/jlsathre/2012/01/11/25_things_i_learned_from_opening_a_bookstore <comment><USER2> When people make lists like that, they usually come up with an odd number, like 8, and then think "Hey, if I think of two more I can make a list of 10". That's one of many reasons why such lists usually aren't reading.

With this list, I get the impression that instead she crossed off a few less worthy items to get the round number because it's pretty hard to find any fluff.

<comment><USER3> In which number system is 8 odd?

<comment> mkr-hn Probably odd as in weird.

<comment><USER2> odd as in "not-round". But agreed, poor choice of words. You'll notice later that I used "round" as the inverse. But what word should I have used? "not- round" is awkward.

<comment> mkr-hn Use odd and hope you give it enough context for most people to understand. And be glad natural language is infinitely flexible. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Turns out mild loathing towards users isn't unique to software.

<comment><USER5> I suspect that, in retailing, it's one of these things where 95% of the customers are fine, but that last 5% take up a disproportionate amount of your time and mental energy, whether because they're clueless or morons or whatever. That's how I think jaded teachers / professors develop: most of their students are okay, but that small percentage of "story" students create all kinds of artificial barriers and special exceptions and so on that make the teacher / professor not real pleasant.

<comment><USER6> The same is true of video game retailing. The 20 minutes I spent arguing with someone who'd bought a game, torn open the CD sleeve with the serial on it (THROUGH the serial), spilt coffee on another CD sleeve, and then demanded that I let him return it because it didn't support LAN play is time I will never get back. And that was hardly one of the worst customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _People are getting rid of bookshelves. Treat the money you budgeted for shelving as found money. Go to garage sales and cruise the curbs._

I found this amusing as the first bullet point, since it pretty much screams, "Don't open a bookstore."

<comment><USER8> Which, to be fair, is her second bullet point.

<comment><USER7> Heh, wow. I read the article and managed to miss that sentence completely. Thank you for pointing it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Having just come in to work at an independent bookstore, I find most of it accurate, particularly the part about checks. We have an abnormally high- quality customer in that regard.

The one gripe I have is the thought that when people ask for historical- fiction they want romance, that's hardly the case here. That probably comes with the fact we're primarily a niche store focused on the sale of West Virgina History, and related, and West Virginian Authors. We rarely carry supply of Best-Seller list titles, with the exception of children's titles, because Amazon has severely undercut that business. We handle special-orders in this case, which take on average about 4 days.

<comment><USER10> Check out "West Virginia Historical Atlas" 2010, by WV Univ Press. I did the maps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This was much fun too read. What I really would like to know is how book stores will look in 20 years? It seems the author sees her store more as a hobby and is not really concerned about the future?

<comment><USER12> Independent brick bookstores are going to look a lot like what's described here: some new books, but mostly used. Run on a very-slightly-profitable basis, in the cheapest commercial rental space available. One proprietor, who does most of the work, and occasional after-school or summer help. All the inventory will be on the web, thanks to a phone app that turns a picture of a book's cover into a full catalog listing. Prices will be depressed to rock- bottom, and some variant of the EBay "1 cent plus shipping" scheme will be the rule for anything not currently in demand.

In twenty years, your average $50 ebook reader will have a 300 dpi full-color full-motion transflective screen, readable in sunlight or with a backlight. Most of the weight will be battery. It will have a tiny CPU and a relatively studly GPU, a small amount of permanent storage (less than a terabyte) and a short distance wireless network link, which will feed your headphones if you want sound, or connect to your phone or your house networks.

There will be a secondary screen on the back which displays the book's cover. You will have the option of changing that to anything else you want to display.

Many people will not bother to buy them, because they already carry a phone that can do all that, just with a smaller screen.

<comment><USER13> I find this very sad. I do nearly all of my reading with dead tree books (I simply don't find e-readers nearly as satisfying), and if I want a book the first place I check is the used bookstore up the road. I tend to accumulate books faster than I have time to read them, and by the end of my first semester at college I had filled the woefully tiny (1 meter square) bookcase I brought with me and begun to overflow onto the windowsill and my desk.

Surely there are other people who are the same way?

<comment><USER14> I'm the same way. It began when I was an undergraduate: the sight of crowded bookshelves in a professor's office – one actually sagging under its load – flipped the crazy switch in my brain. After I got my first real job, the project of accumulation began. Having a large home library is not without its problems, but it's also a real source of joy. My only regret is not taking the time to learn some basic carpentry skills.

I would hate to do serious research in a world of ebooks – and any sufficiently serious reader becomes a researcher – but for general use, they probably are a good technology for most readers. Defenders of the paper book need to remember that mass reading of paper books is a historically recent phenomenon, for some values of "recent".

<comment><USER15> Whereas my brain boggles at how big a pain it must have been to do a literature review pre-JSTOR/Web of Science/pdfs in general.

I am a voracious reader (generally 2-5 novels/equivalent per week, depending) and love ebooks. Carry 5 long novels, 3 YA series, 4 non-fiction books, my work literature, and an assortment of my favorite comfort/pickmeup novels/short stories/essays with me constantly and instantly searchable? Yes please.

<comment><USER16> I suspect that part of the secret to that one is called Librarians.

Well, that and it's likely that when doing a literature review is hard and time consuming, people aren't quite as concerned about it's completeness as well it's easy and quick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _8\. If you put free books outside, someone will walk in every week and ask if they're really free, no matter how many signs you put out ._

That's because the book has a physical existence. It's made of paper and ink, has a cover, etc. Adults understand it costs money to make such things, so it's better to put an inexpensive price on it, like $0.50, than to try to give it away.

It's odd that the opposite is true of e-books and e-media. The low cost of frictionless delivery gets confused with the true cost of production.

Kids will always go for free gum btw. That's in chapter 3 of the "being a kid" handbook.

<comment><USER18> Maybe, but its not so rare to see physical things for free that an adult would be in disbelief at the very idea. I think that it's no trouble to me to ask "are these really free?", but it's a lot of troble to me to have you running down the road after me shouting "stop thief!", then shouting at me so I feel like a fool, then making me unwelcome to come bsck in future. Maybe you only mean some books, or a bit of the sign blew away, or I misunderstand the context, maybe someone put the sign there as a joke, maybe all sorts of awkward misunderstandings.

<comment><USER17> I'd yell "Stop Thief!" if you stole the sign and were running down the street chewing gum with a free book in your hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Great morning read, I'll have to be more careful about my fly...

</comment><comment><USER20> This was a funny and somewhat insightful read; however, it misses some interesting points. Opening a bookshop (much better name than a bookstore, and if you think "what's the big deal about naming" you probably shouldn't even attempt to open one).

Allow me to offer my own list:

1\. Opening a bookstore is very much like starting a startup in that a _really high_ percentage of the attempts will fail. The big difference is that if you do succeed, you won't get rich.

2\. If you think (1) is a sad consequence of today's soulless dominance of Amazon, people not reading, etc., then read Stuart Trent's _The Seven Stairs_ where he chronicles his adventures in opening a bookshop in Chicago after WWII, where he details pretty much the same difficulties as today's bookshops face.

3\. In order to succeed, you _have_ to have a specialty, e.g. maps and map making, the classics, books on New York, etc. Stock a very good collection on the topic (or two) of your choosing and strive to be the best source of information and books in your state, than in the US for that topic.

4\. Of course, in addition to (3) you have to have generalities, throw-away popular fiction, cookbooks, travel books, etc. But that it let dilute your niche.

5\. Your store should have a unique atmosphere. Additional points if this correlates with your chosen topic niche.

6\. Know and love your customers, even when they're weird (you'll encounter these much more frequently than would be expected from a normal distribution) and their flies are open. You have to earn their respect with your knowledge and collection. Again, refer to _The Seven Stairs_ for a wonderful example of how this is done.

7\. In case you skipped 1: remember that the wonderful Stuart Brent also failed (I had a chance to see his store on Michigan Ave in 1996, ran by his son, I believe; it was reduced to a standard B&N type of store and was closed in the late 90s).

8\. Reread 6! If someone with a classical bent asks for historical fiction and you take them to the romance section they will _never_ come back. If you don't have even a small collection of timeless classics, say Aurelius' _Meditations_ , Khayyam's poetry, _Ulysses_ (and, of course, _Odysseus_ ) yours is not a bookshop.

9\. Learn how to use the Internet! Understand that probably a good percentage (if not the majority) of your sales will come through the Web, so have Web presence as good as your store. Put useful information on your web page.

10\. Lastly, you just have to _love_ books, this is no endeavour that a truly sane or financially dependent person should attempt. If reading _Parnassus on Wheels_ doesn't truly move you (to tears), you are in the wrong business.

<comment><USER21> I agree with #1 the most. I really love hanging out in a bookstore, but I can't say that I often buy anything more expensive than a magazine. These days I only seem to have time to read programming books, and if I didn't buy them from amazon I wouldn't be able to afford them for very long.

Bookstores also have to deal with the fact that millions of people are switching over to ereaders. I myself prefer physical books, but there are plenty of situations where I find it more convenient to use my kindle.

<comment><USER22> Maybe there could be a bookstore with a bunch of Kindles laying around instead of physical books? Combine this with some kind of café and it might just work.

Of course, it would be hard to charge any kind of margin on the e-books as the customers can just whip out their own Kindle and buy the e-book directly from Amazon. And I don't know if it's even possible to become an e-book reseller like that. (Ie buy the right to re-sell a certain e-book 1000 times or whatever).

<comment><USER23> If I were to tackle the book business, I'd like to try something like that: ebooks plus an on-demand printing service for those that like their physical books :) .

I don't know if there's a good binder for such a service, but I've been demoed some very impressive printers at very cheap per-page prices on loan.

The real problem, of course, is securing the copyrights and the right to print or resell the books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm suprised bookstores are still viable business. I can not come up with any real benefit of buying books in a store.

The only reason that comes to my mind is the joy of browsing, maybe buying something you've seen somewhere recommended before. Are impulse buyers a huge part of the market?

I've been to a local private bookstore twice and the only customers I've seen there are people who probably prefer face-to-face and resent the distant and modern way of buying things, where the only social interaction is saying hello to the mailman.

Could the bookstore provide me with anything amazon couldn't? Books that were unavailable to amazon were unavailable to them. Imports took even longer and due to not living in an english speaking country, 99% of the books on the shelves were translations which I don't want to read. Which is even more of a problem in bookstore chains. We have one with four large floors and a café. How many shelves of Twilight in German the day on release? About 10. How many shelves constantly filled with english literature? 1. Out of a number that probably goes in the hundreds.

<comment><USER25> I do believe that there is a market for physical bookstores that can manage to fill a particular niche. Case in point, have you been to many technical bookstores? I know of two that I love: Powell's Technical in Portland, OR and Ada's in Seattle.

The advantage of these stores is that, as a nerd, I'm pretty much at least vaguely interested in every book they have there, so the serendipity in browsing is high. Also, these places have used copies co-shelved, which just increases the odds that I will pick something up randomly.

btw, across the street from powell's tech is the flagship powell's, which has 1 million books and like a whole room full of english lit: <http://www.powells.com/pdf/burnside_map_2011.pdf>

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> One thing I do is keep old books in the trunk of my car. Whatever a store won't buy I put back in my trunk. Every couple of weeks I add some newer books and try again. Sometimes books that were rejected the first time are bought later. A few months ago I was on a short road trip and tried to sell my stuff in another town. They bought everything I had, even some old pc games.

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if these smaller, indie bookshops would benefit by being a bookshop+cafe . A place you could grab a coffee and snack while catching up on reading or news. There was this very nice place back where I went to grad school. Old used books, good coffee and snacks. I really miss having such a place where I live now.

<comment><USER28> To misquote the elders: If you have a bookshop and use a cafe to solve a problem, now you have two problems.

Good article from 2005 on opening a coffee shop, also from Slate: [http://www.slate.com/articles/life/a_fine_whine/2005/12/bitt...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/a_fine_whine/2005/12/bitter_brew.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> in my country, the biggest sections in bookstores are self-help and "how you get rich [really really fast]"

<comment><USER30> That sounds like chain bookstores where I'm from (the US). Independent bookstores are usually different.

This also reminds me of an old joke from a friend: You know the bookstore is bad if the Philosophy section is filled with copies of _The Tao of Pooh_.

<comment><USER31> I bought a copy on audio tape and listen to it every couple of months. I find "pooh-tao" (as my wife and I call it) very entertaining.

And easier to pick up at any point in the work than Castaneda, Hitchens, Socrates, etc. Good for driving background audio, in my opinion...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I saw the Salon domain and made a point of grabbing a beverage before settling in and clicking the link, hoping to read an engaging, well written, lengthy article.

While I was initially disappointed to see that this wasn't at all what I was expecting, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the list _was_ engaging and well written, even if it wasn't a lengthy magazine article.

This is a rare case where the HN headline would be better, to me, if the "25 Things" was left in the title, even if that is technically against the submission rules.

</comment><comment><USER33> "people do in fact buy books based on the color of the binding"

Come on, tell us which colors sell better than others?

</comment><comment><USER22> I asked this on her blog:

As a programmer who's always looking for new projects, this made me curious.

What is a piece of software that would make your life as a used book store owner easier?

What is a piece of software that would help your customers?

Please give me some ideas if you have any :)

</comment><comment><USER34> _"... What I really would like to know is how book stores will look in 20 years? ..."_ @sunnysideup ~ <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3518193>

This is really the most insightful question here. What would a book store look like? I'll have a stab.

Eighteen years ago the Internet existed but the Web was just being born. I come from Melbourne. Melbourne really is a book city with bookshops catering for different interests. Those who liked comics, science fiction or books on artwork gravitated towards Minotaur in Swanston St, classics or first editions One Tree Hill on Collins, old books and out of print first editions a small shop at the top of Swanston St. The general public might go to a chain bookshop like "Collins" or "Angus or Robinsons". But if it was anything technical, you turned to McGills.

McGills was a second home to people needed fast access to very specific information. You would probably buy the source of the information if you needed it in a hurry or read it if out of interest. Remember the Web was in its infancy. To gain access to technical information to build things (software) there was no other choice. McGills was a hub for nerds. You'd find programmers, engineers and scientists who would pop in, look for a particular reference book at lunch time. As the afternoon wore on it would fill up with students too poor to buy monthly subscriptions to Wired, Game programmer or the latest Dr.Dobbs. The era at this time was disconnected but strangely connected.

Now we have seen what's happened in the last 20 years. The publishing industry is changing their distribution technology from print to electronic displays. The demise of the bookshop and books. Even so, the prices are similiar.

What might happen in the next 20?

Discoverability

        Everyone has a little Nancy Drew in them.  Stock
        up on the mysteries.

        It is both true and sad that some people do in fact
        buy books based on the color of the binding.

We used to go to book shops to find books but the next 20 years is going to get more frustrating when choosing. Twiddling your thumbs over the "next" button is the new walking down the isle looking for one particular book. You want the google equivalent of book finding. It might be by colour, author, a quote, a film reference, music or voice of a character that played it on the successor of Hollywood. Companies are still working on this hard problem. How to see the product readers want from millions of titles on one small device.

Location

        If you open a store in a college town, and maybe even
        if you don't, you will find yourself as the main human
        contact for some strange and very socially awkward men
        who were science and math majors way back when.  Be nice
        and talk to them, and ignore that their fly is open.

Books have a social element. Instead of going to a bookshop you now go to your favourite cafe who have installed a new WIFI gadget. It's only found in particular cafe's catering for the intersection of coffee lovers and technical book readers. It has all the latest Open Source manuals, blog articles collected into books. We dropped the ePub or electronic reference to books years ago. This place is "hacker friendly" so you can chat to other hackers. Specialist WIFI gadgets are appearing all around the place in food outlets catering for particular audiences. The social aspect of books hasn't disappeared, just morphed.

Sharing

        If you put free books outside, cookbooks will be gone
        in the first hour

Sharing is now a problem. There are free books and restricted books. If you can't afford a book you can book it at the library to download it. It ceremoniously burns on your machine when the time to hand it back has passed. Another person can now borrow a digital copy. The concept of digital ownership becomes a political one. Book owners don't take up the "Cloud" concept after the great cloud hack in 2028. Millions of books are electronically burnt on owners devices as rouge elements of "Anonymous" take their "Library of Alexandria" action too far. All in the name of freer access to live news feeds. We still hook up to bookshops; glorified websites with sparse text and images of book titles and a google like search engines with predictive analysis software. Sharing of books is difficult. The hardware detects who is using the book. Sharing is not impossible but difficult and risky. Hacks for reader devices are there, if you want to risk being detected and black banned from device sellers. There is always the black market. One of the unintended consequences in ownership restrictions, is if you move from one area to another your book becomes locked and you can't read it unless you pay a regional fee.

Information

        No one buys  self help books in a store where there's
        a high likelihood of  personal interaction when paying.

The price of certain types of "information of value" skyrockets. Value is dependent on information usage in the market. There are market indexes for everything. Even childrens books like Dr.Suess. Censorship is rife but regional. You can't access certain types of information in books in certain areas. Old printed books that contain this information go up in price if they can be found. Information is bought and sold on ones ability to locate valuable information in private libraries. Enterprising companies that use software to mine old or cheap information and repackaging it as specialist books thrive. Software companies specialising in producing software to extract the essence of book classics like Shakespeare and write alternative scripts for media-vision networks. There's the Chinese version of "Macbeth" portraying the past regime and a portrayal of the Steinbeck classic, "Grapes of Wrath". Recast to the present show the migration of Californians moving east to escape the water crisis bought on by severe temperatures and drought. New publishing empires are formed.

Cost

        You will have no trouble getting books, the problem is
        selling them.

        There's also no need to perpetuate the myth by pricing
        your signed Patricia Cornwell higher than the non-signed
        one.

The economics of book production change. The cost is now reflected in popularity, the sophistication of the language, translation, region and censorship restrictions. Books that have been simplified are now more expensive than complicated books. The cost of books fluctuates as the numbers of people who buy it increases or decreases. Books that are popular in certain areas of restricted information become expensive. Some people set up companies to monitor the costs and allow customers to purchase books at their lowest cost.

Display

        People are getting rid of bookshelves.

The display is the new bookshelf. People spend lots of money to purchase the latest hardware. When at home, bookshelves are projected on the TV screen to show what you might want to read. The constraint of the reader is size. Large screens solve this problem scanning personal readers and the network feed then showing a physical representation of the book on the screen for users to see and pick.

Psychologists work out that humans are still optomised to scan for titles laid out in physical space. Humans can't interface directly with the reading devices yet. That invention happens 10 years in the future.

</comment><comment><USER35> After trying to run an ebook marketplace, I can empathize with #14.

</comment><comment><USER36> I thought this was great, and rather humorous. Funny thing is, unlike #1, I just bought a bookshelf less than two weeks ago.

</comment><comment><USER37> Reading her list reminds me of when I worked in a record store back when I was a teenager.

One thing I quickly learned is when a grandma asked what album/artist do I recommend for her grandson, she wasn't asking for MY recommendation (i.e. Zodiak Mindwarp and the Love Machine or whatever the heck I was listening to).

The correct answer was almost always Rick Astley.

</comment><comment><USER38> WONDERFUL!</comment>


Ask HN: Is a CS Master's Degree worth it? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a junior CS major at an average 4-yr university. I'm trying to decide whether the advantages of a master's degree outweigh the costs (time & money). Right now, Georgia Tech would top my list b/c its a top-tier CS school & is a few hrs away from where I live. I have 3 options after I graduate:
1. Currently, I run an EdTech company that I co-founded 3 yrs ago. My partner & I work ~25 hours/wk on the company & have a few employees. Our profits are growing & we're working on new products that should provide additional growth. As it stands, the company wouldn't be able to support us full-time but we are hoping it'll be able to when we graduate. With this option, I would work full-time for my company.
2. Given the company isn't at a place where it can support us, I'd find a job in industry (ideally at a startup).
3. Attend grad school to get my MS in CS. This can be broken down into 2 types of schools:
a. My current school has an accelerated master's program where in an extra yr (for little cost) I'd come out w/ my ME in CS. The school's program is average (just inside Top100).
b. Attend a high-caliber school like GTech (Top10). This program would take 2 yrs & cost ~$45k (if no scholarships or aid). However, it has a larger range of classes including ones focused on Web/Mobile Dev, EdTech, data viz & UI design (all interests of mine). I could also seek stronger internships in Atlanta than where I currently live.
After grad school, I'd work for my company or search for a job. Ultimately, my goal is to run my own business whether it's my current one or one I start after gaining experience thru school/work.
Would knowledge gained from a grad program be advantageous for building a startup and/or working in industry? Is it worth the extra money/time to go to a high-caliber school instead of an average one?
What are your thoughts/experiences with this? <comment><USER2> Another option to consider is the Georgia Tech online masters program, just introduced this past year. See: [http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/announcement/](http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/announcement/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I saw that when looking at their program. Do you think the program will be recognized on an equivalent level with a standard master degree by hiring businesses? My other concern with the online program is that the class selection is somewhat limited currently, but I'm sure it will grow as the program ages.

The cool thing about the online program is that the classes will be offered for free to all (not for credit). [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/education/masters- degree-i...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/education/masters-degree-is- new-frontier-of-study-online.html)</comment></comment>


The architecture of declarative configuration management - <AUTHOR> https://blog.nelhage.com/post/declarative-configuration-management/ <comment><USER2> Building your own version of something is surely self indulgent wheel reinventing, but that's what I'm currently doing with distributed configuration management.

It's certainly been helpful in terms of understanding the boundaries between parts of the system, as this post also describes. The desire to auto configure everything is strong — one day you'll have a VLAN hard coded into the config, but the next day you'll be trying to programmatically distribute VLAN ids based on function instead. The day after that VLANs themselves are a artifact generated from a higher level separation in your human readable config. What was once a list of hosts with an attached VLAN id is now a group of hosts with a declared function that _just happens_ to be programmatically assigned a VLAN id, but only as an implementation detail.

The same happens with IP address management — your root configuration moves closer and closer to being a document describing what you want to do, and less about how to go about doing it (which is implemented in your custom augmentations to the engine instead.)

When you can justify it as an exercise in understanding a system, and you have time for it, building your own tool chain is incredibly rewarding.

</comment><comment><USER3> > We could imagine resolving this tension if Terraform had two different > convergence engines...The "create a new environment" engine, which always > creates from scratch every resource it was given. This would excel at > spinning up fresh environments as quickly as possible, since it would have > to perform a minimum of introspection or logic and would just issue a series > of "Create()" calls.

This just doesn't make sense; introspection usually allows you apply changes _more_ quickly. For example, it takes seconds to describe and update an existing AWS ELB; it takes minutes to delete and create a new one.

If you really want to forgo analysis and reuse of existing infrastructure, just do

        terraform destroy
        terraform apply

> Importantly, however, it by design will never issue a destructive operation, > and will error out on changes that cannot be executed non-disruptively.

The notion of a "destructive operation" is not clear cut. Is it destructive to remove a file from S3? To update a file in S3? To delete a tag on an S3 bucket? To update a tag on an S3 bucket?

You can just manage this with permissions; that way you can specify exactly what is and isn't an allowable operation. In fact, this is best practice as it protects against bugs or misuse of the tool. Since Terraform already defaults to non-destructive, adding infrastructure-level permissions would cause it to work exactly as described.

A better example of customizable convergence would be the lifecycle management options Terraform already has, such as create_before_destroy which ensures the new resource exists before the old one is deleted.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm working on something called mgmt: [https://github.com/purpleidea/mgmt/](https://github.com/purpleidea/mgmt/)

It runs as a distributed system, and is reactive to events, both in the engine and in the language (a FRP DSL) which allows you to build really fast, cool, closed-loop systems.

Have a look!

</comment><comment><USER5> Seems odd to talk about declarative configuration management and not mention NIX or GUIX.

<comment><USER6> I was going to comment the same thing. On the NixOS About Page[0], the first main section is "Declarative system configuration model"

[0] [https://nixos.org/nixos/about.html](https://nixos.org/nixos/about.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It sounds like you want something closer to a prolog language in which you could specify the rules for the engines to respect...

<comment><USER8> Exactly, and structural and functional constraints over properties and rules.

I understand the need to reinvent the wheel, but most of these efforts feel to me like customizations that most declarative languages can provide, albeit possibly in a non-intuitive syntax.

<comment><USER7> yeah. I think the syntax and the fit of the syntax with the domain matter. Tooling too.

I want to spend time building something like that, but i have doubt there is really a market need/want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Salt, for some reason, is not discussed in the article. It's declarative.

</comment><comment><USER10> He's spot on about separating "configuration generation" from convergence. There is no reason for the two to be the same system, the same tool. As he says, Kubernetes is only concerned with the latter, whereas Puppet, Chef, and Terraform conflate the two (insofar as it uses HCL).

And for all the talk of "declarative", there is no reason why the configuration generation stage cannot be imperative, a la Pulumi. It is the desired end state - the catalog that's being generated - that is declarative.

<comment><USER11> I mostly agree, with the caveat that in my experience, if the configuration generation stage is entirely imperative it is harder to reason about it. That might not be a problem for low-complexity setups, but can get quite important (and bad) in some more involved cases.

<comment><USER12> I suppose that functional languages might be a good fit this problem, then. Nix and Guix come to mind.

<comment><USER11> Yes, agreed. I don't think Nix nor Guix are there yet, in terms of usability (not that most current alternatives are much better, mind). But I could see a wrapping layer on top of either of them working quite well. It's difficult to come up with abstractions for the kind of complexities we're dealing with nowadays. I'm hopeful someone will eventually, though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The "pluggable convergence engines" is what we've built in Gyro[1] for this very reason. We wanted to have more control over how changes are made in production.

An example is doing blue/green deployments where you want to build a new web/application layer, pause to validate it (or run some external validation), then switch to that layer and deleted the old layer. All while having the ability to quickly roll back at any stage. In Gyro, we allow for this with workflows[2].

There are many other areas we allow to be extended. The language itself can be extended with directives[3]. In fact, some of the core features like loops[4] and conditionals are just that, extensions.

It's also possible to implement the articles concept of "non-destructive prod" by implementing a plugin that hooks into the convergence engines (we call it the diff engine) events and prevents deletions[5].

We envision folks using all these extension points to do creative things. For example, it's possible to write a directive such as "@protect: true" that can be applied to any resource and would prevent it from ever being destroyed using the extension points described above.

[1] [https://github.com/perfectsense/gyro](https://github.com/perfectsense/gyro) [2] [https://gyro.dev/guides/workflows](https://gyro.dev/guides/workflows) [3] [https://gyro.dev/extending/directive/](https://gyro.dev/extending/directive/) [4] [https://gyro.dev/guides/language/control- structures.html](https://gyro.dev/guides/language/control-structures.html) [5] [https://github.com/perfectsense/gyro/blob/master/core/src/ma...](https://github.com/perfectsense/gyro/blob/master/core/src/main/java/gyro/core/diff/ChangeProcessor.java)

</comment><comment><USER14> That is why immutable infra becomes popular. You could easily destroy and rebuild the whole thing.

And for Prod env, what are discussing sounds like update behavior for me. In cloudformation, you could choose the different update policies.

Comparing with each cloud's provisioning engine, cloudformation/gcloud deployment manager/azure resource manager, terraform is lacking a lot of features. So unless you are dealing with a private cloud, using cloud default provisioning service is a no-brainer.

<comment><USER15> Cloud formation is after lacking support for resources that are new or less popular. Terraform is much better in this, supports most of the resources from the start as far as I know

<comment><USER14> In cloudformation, you could customize your resource types with aws lambda. It is like creating the providers in terraform.

Plus, cloudformation is free and managed service. You do not need to maintain and it is wrong, you could yell at AWS. Unless you bought terraform enterprise, it is still a pain to maintain another possible failure point in your system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My experience is that the production operations engine is hard to get right because your target environment can drift from the desired configurations for reasons that you did not anticipate.</comment>


Employee 1: Yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://www.themacro.com/articles/2016/06/tim-brady-interview/ <comment><USER3> Excellent article; I thought the section copy-pasted below to be a rather non- trivial, unintuitive, and meaningful lesson:

> Craig : How was it to ride that wave, especially when the bottom fell out in > 2000?

> Tim : When things are going well and you're in a growth industry, you don't > have to deal with many difficult issues. It's the old cliche, winning solves > everything.

> Craig : For sure.

> Tim : It's really true. It solves everything… or maybe better said, it masks > all your mistakes. A lot of the mistakes you make get masked because you > receive almost no negative feedback.

> But then the bottom fell out and the board let Tim Koogle go. The upper > ranks of management emptied out pretty quick, except for me and the CTO who > stuck around. We got a new CEO and set of peers in upper management. Let me > just say, I learned a whole lot more about business on the way down than I > did on the way up.

<comment><USER4> I don't know if it's apropos to talk sports, but in a very real way this is what happened to the Warriors. They had an historic, record-breaking season that allowed them all sorts of bad habits. In the Finals when they are on the verge of reaching their goal, those bad habits showed and contributed to their falling short. Coach Steve Kerr talked about recognizing those mistakes during the season but it is hard to correct those things when you are winning. Perhaps a good lesson.

[http://blogs.mercurynews.com/kawakami/2016/06/24/steve- kerr-...](http://blogs.mercurynews.com/kawakami/2016/06/24/steve-kerr-on/)

<comment><USER5> Or maybe we are just making up narratives to explain regression toward the mean?

<comment><USER4> The relevant bit was: during the season coach Kerr recognized faults that he found difficult to correct. Not in hindsight. The discussion is about what happens when you are winning. No one is making excuses for losing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I went there with a positive attitude. The work was interesting. It was rewarding and intellectually challenging. But after a few months, I remember looking at my boss and my boss' boss, and my boss' boss' boss, and saying to myself, "You know what? I don't want any of their jobs." I saw how they spent their time and didn't find it interesting or very rewarding. They spent their time managing meetings and office politics."

Exactly my sentiment.

<comment><USER7> I think it's fine to decide you don't want their jobs, but it's a mistake to frame it as "bullshit" which he does after the section you quote. Human nature isn't bullshit, and any endeavor which requires a large number of people to accomplish requires the management of human nature.

<comment><USER6> No, sitting in meetings all day, essentially accomplishing nothing really is bullshit. Granted, there are some super productive management teams out there, but the majority of time is spent dealing with nonsense politics, and having meetings to schedule meetings. Stereotypes have basis in reality.

<comment><USER8> Having held a few of those jobs, I understand the sentiment, but that doesn't mean those positions are unnecessary, especially as organizations get beyond a certain size. I understood his take on it to be that it just wasn't for him since he likes to be able to see something he has built in a fairly short timeframe, and at a place like Motorola in the '90s, middle management and probably many of the executives wouldn't get that kind of feedback.

From my experience managing managers in big corporations, a lot of the bullshit is created by people who want their own way after a decision has been made. They tend to be the reason meetings are called in the first place, since someone has to make the effort to get everyone moving in the same direction. They are also the most likely to walk around calling bullshit on everything that's happening in the place.

There's no need to denigrate the work of the people who spend more of their time than they'd like in meetings trying to get a big company of individuals to cooperate on goals that are set by executives.

As an aside, there are people who enjoy the kind of work that doesn't necessarily provide instant feedback. Teachers come to mind. Sure, there are little victories and defeats every day, but at the end of the year, there are times when they sigh and wonder what good it did. Try going to a good teacher's retirement party or funeral sometime and mingle with those who come to pay their respects. You'll often hear things like, "He changed my life" or "I'd probably be in prison now if she hadn't been so patient with me." Similarly, the people who make big organizations actually work have an impact on many lives and on the direction of companies, the effects of which are not always visible for years or decades.

<comment><USER6> I think the point was that he was emphasizing the bosses bosses bosses boss. Many levels of nonsense, leading to politics. Managers do need to exist, and I agree they have a purpose, but often times, even in the company I work for currently. There is more management than there is workers.

<comment><USER9> Well somebody has to manage the managers!

The whole flat org with minimal managers "ideal" has been tried lots of places and always failed. I think even Google tried it at some point. Let me tell you a few things that happen when your org gets flatter:

1\. Decisions get bottlenecked

Typically, the "flat org" thing gets tried without empowering the rank-and- file to make big decisions. So decisions that would normally get resolved one or two levels up the chain all get bottlenecked at the GM or CEO, who (now having 100 reports) does not have the knowledge or context to always make the right call.

2\. Extreme micromanagement

A counter to #1 is if those decisions actually DON'T get bottlenecked: If you think it sucks to have your manager nit-picking over every little engineering decision you make, imagine how bad it is having the CEO do it, and feel he has to because he has no other managers to make those decisions. Let me tell you from experience: It sucks.

3\. You get less time with your boss

When your boss has 4-5 direct reports, they can spend time with you weekly to chat about current challenges, help you with career development, give you pointers on things, etc. When he/she has 20-30 directs, good luck getting any airtime at all.

4\. Shit rains down on you

A great manager shields his reports from 95% of the shit that gets rained down on him by the higher-ups. Uninformed complaints, decision churn and flip- flopping, "strategic enterprise synergy workshops", requests for perpetual motion machines and features that defy mathematics: If your boss is good, he doesn't let any of this crap get down to you. Without management, you as 3rd engineer from the left on WhatsitApp Project, get a firehouse of this in your face every day.

5\. No career advancement

Granted, this is not important to everyone, but if your boss is the CEO or if his/her boss is the CEO, you're unlikely to get promoted at all during your tenure at that company, or you're going to have to wait for one of them to quit. Whereas if you're manager #6 down, there will be plenty of opportunities to find a #5 level manager position to move up to at some point.

<comment><USER10> I have been thinking about how to solve this problem and have been wondering what AI can do to help. There must be a way of using AI to help empower workers to act in a co-ordinated way to run the business effectively.

<comment><USER11> Most of the "sharing" or "on-demand" economy is based on this value proposition. Replace a manager's job with software and suddenly your taxi drivers, hotel workers, cooks, delivery drivers, administrative assistants, artists, visual designers, computer programmers, etc. can report to software instead of a person.

You could argue that the reason Uber etc. have found success recruiting workers for pretty shitty wages is because people are willing to give up that much money to not have to deal with a boss.

This trend also has a long way to go: for one, wearables will open up electronic coordination to people whose jobs normally require having their hands full, and two, improved AI will allow the automation of increasingly complex managerial tasks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I do always love the underdog stories, but then you get to "I had to explain to my parents, who were paying my way through [Harvard] Business School". I realize a lot of people here had their educations paid for or at least got some hereditary assistance. Not sour grapes here - I'm happy with where I am from what I've had. I do hope people see how many more options become open to people though with parental support.

</comment><comment><USER13> I like how he closes. That there are important roles for non-founders who jump in after seeing that an idea is a good thing.

 _On one hand, I guess it could be seen as a lack of confidence to not do your own thing. But on the other hand, it could be seen as not letting your ego get in the way of recognizing a good idea. I can see both sides and honestly, I don't know where the truth lies.

For me, my sweet spot is when I can say, "That's a great idea. It's just getting started. Count me in."_

</comment><comment><USER14> >> Come out to Silicon Valley and get a regular 9 to 5 at a place like at SGI [Silicon Graphics], and then you can moonlight with us. And we'll see where it goes.

That sounds so absurd. Today that would be like, "hey come out here and get a job at Instagram, and them after-hours we'll work on our own thing"

<comment><USER15> Interesting that SGI would have to be explained. Once upon a time in computing that was as well known as SUN, Apollo, Commodore and Data-General.

<comment><USER16> A decent chunk of people on HN were born way past after Apollo's, Commodore's and Data-General's heyday.

And even for SUN, a 20 year programmer today was only 14 or so when the company was sold to Oracle and probably didn't follow the tech industry.

<comment><USER17> Good spaghetti monster, if you don't recognize Sun or C64, you really need to study the history of your industry a little better.

I am not that old, that I remember Java before it was mostly abandoned by Oracle.

<comment><USER18> I'm familiar with what a C64 is, but I have never seen one in my life. The majority of my fellow undergrad students know next to nothing about the history of computing. But in reality, that's just fine. If our goals are to become functioning software engineers, all that really matters is what's in use now. Provided, a little historical context can help us make some better decisions, but you don't see people coding in ed just so they appreciate their IDE.

<comment><USER15> > But in reality, that's just fine. If our goals are to become functioning > software engineers, all that really matters is what's in use now.

I used to agree with you, but I've come a full 180 on this. I now believe that 'functioning software engineers' need a thorough understanding of what has already been done in the past to avoid endless re-invention of that past (but usually worse). The amount of resources that is squandered because present day engineers have no idea of how we got where we are today easily weighs up against the extra cost of requiring a class in computer history prior to becoming a functioning engineer.

If we don't do that we'll be stuck forever at the present 'local maximum', which is essentially mostly a rehash of old ideas but with some eye candy thrown in and usually more latency and waste. I suspect that we can do a lot better with our current hardware than we are really doing.

<comment><USER19> Kind of like the, what ever programmer should know about memory paper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "On one hand, I guess it could be seen as a lack of confidence to not do your own thing. But on the other hand, it could be seen as not letting your ego get in the way of recognizing a good idea. I can see both sides and honestly, I don't know where the truth lies."

Thats an interesting distinction he makes between the type of person it takes to be an early employee vs a founder. Both take on huge risks but as described here its a very different profile.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is cool, but beware of enormous success becoming too salient - <USER2> employee #1's will have a less successful ride...

<comment><USER22> I was thinking the same thing. Some statistics about early employees vs founders might be interesting too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Step 1: Go to a good school where you cultivate great connections.

<comment><USER12> Step 2: Have parents to pay for that school, that you quit a large company to go to. Granted, he got into stanford fine. He went to high school in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Michigan. Easy to take risks if you already have little to worry about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> He nailed it in these few sentences

> I remember looking at my boss and my boss' boss, and my boss' boss' boss, > and saying to myself, "You know what? I don't want any of their jobs." I saw > how they spent their time and didn't find it interesting or very rewarding. > They spent their time managing meetings and office politics.

> This wasn't my vision of what work was. To me, work was doing and making > things and being able to see the fruits of that labor. At the end of the day > or at least after a short period of time, I need to point to something and > say to myself 'that's what I've been building.'

</comment><comment><USER25>
        > [...] the internet was used exclusively for the
        > non-commercial sharing of information at the time. The idea
        > of commercializing the internet wasn't accepted by the very
        > people using the internet. Of course, the number of people
        > and the demographics of those people were rapidly changing.

        --Tim Brady, about the creation of the first f*^#&*! banner ad

</comment><comment><USER26> I miss the old yahoo in its heyday. I remember hearing their radio commercials .. yahoooo! Sounds like a great ride.

</comment><comment><USER27> It is get to my heart

>I need to point to something and say to myself 'that's what I've been building.'

But then reality kick in. You want money, you want good work/life balance. Well, it is hard to have them all sometime, imho.

</comment><comment><USER28> Would be interesting to hear how much equity he got as employee #1? What was the vesting schedule and terms?

</comment><comment><USER29> Please do audio/podcast of this if possible

</comment><comment><USER30> >"Craig : Hahaha."

What is the point of including this?

<comment><USER31> Off topic, but interesting question I think.

I personally liked its addition. If you read it again, the "Hahaha." adds an extra pause that makes the ridiculousness of waiting for the ticker to come on screen sink in. The same way someone telling that story in person would pause. It makes it feel more like a real conversation. Without it the reader would have moved on to the next paragraph too quickly.</comment></comment>


Feds bust through huge Tor-hidden child porn site using questionable malware - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/feds-bust-through-huge-tor-hidden-child-porn-site-using-questionable-malware/ <comment><USER2> _...the defense expert investigators wrote that they "do not consider the NIT to be 'hacking'" because the NIT "exploited a configuration setting that did not require offensive-based actions."_

But you'll get maliciously prosecuted for guessing a sequential URL and typing it into your address bar thanks to CFAA...

<comment><USER3> Wait, so my grocery store posts their add every week and as I get to the last page and I want to jump back to the front, I usually change the .../16.html to a .../1.html. I could go to prison for that?

TF!? When are lawmakers going to learn how the web works?

<comment><USER4> The relevant part of the CFAA, chopped up for readability:

> Whoever ... intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or > exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains ... information from any > protected computer ... shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of > this section.

That requires both intent and access in excess of authorization. So since 1.html is a public page, you're authorized to read it. If 1.html was the personal information of the customer with ID #1, as in the AT&T case, that would violate CFAA.

Also notable is the definition of a "protected computer." It's any computer "which is used in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce or communication," which is every computer connected to the Internet.

<comment><USER5> The pages containing personal information of AT&T customers _were_ publicly available though. We have already seen that an overzealous prosecutor will construe regular access as "without authorization or exceeds authorized access" whenever convenient.

<comment><USER6> As with everything in law, intent is key. Just because something _can_ be accessed by the public, does not mean it is _intended_ to be accessed by the public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is reminiscent of the 2013 takedown of Freedom Hosting.[0,1] Exploiting a JavaScript vulnerability in Firefox, compromised sites dropped a Windows executable ("Magneto") which phoned home (bypassing Tor) with the user's MAC address and hostname. Gareth Owen identified it as EgotisticalGiraffe,[1] which is an NSA tool.[2]

[0] [http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/fbi-tor- exploit/](http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/fbi-tor-exploit/)

[1] [https://ghowen.me/fbi-tor-malware-analysis/](https://ghowen.me/fbi-tor- malware-analysis/)

[2] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/04/ego...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/04/egotistical- giraffe-nsa-tor-document)

Edit: Rereading, I see:

>The NIT exploit bypassed Tor by creating a direct socket connection that eschews Tor's routing—in this particular case, by using a Flash component. This functionality, the experts noted, was identical to Metasploit's decloaking code.

Anonymous used the Metasploit code in a previous attack on Freedom Hosting. Both vulnerabilities used against Freedom Hosting have long been patched. I wonder what vulnerability this takedown exploited. One of the Hacking Team ones, maybe?

<comment><USER8> Er, no, since the whole HT leak happened within the last two weeks and this operation took place mostly between 2014 and early 2015.

You give the Government wayyyy too much credit if you think it can go from leaked exploit to arrests generated from said leaked exploit within a two week period. The process, like all processes quagmired in bureaucracy, takes _months_.

<comment><USER7> Maybe the FBI and Hacking Team had overlapping sets of exploits. Is there double selling by exploit dealers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "The setup was seized in February 2015, but law enforcement allowed it to run for two additional weeks as a way to monitor its nearly 215,000 users."

So the FBI was serving child porn for over 2 weeks to hundreds of thousands of users?

<comment><USER10> Isn't this similar to allowing small time drug dealers to operate to get to the people at the top?

<comment><USER11> While I'm sure that's the rationale, I wonder if there is a difference. If the FBI seized drugs and then continued to sell them, isn't that against the law? If the FBI seized a computer and used to to distribute child porn wouldn't that also be against the law? I can see _not_ seizing it and allowing the original operators to continue for 2 weeks.

Does the FBI operate under different laws? For example, if I know my neighbour is hosting child porn on their computer and I wait 2 weeks to report them, probably I'm safe. If take his computer and host the files on the same machine for 2 weeks before handing it over to the police, I'm pretty sure I'd be arrested. What law is different for the FBI to be able to do that (if they did)?

<comment><USER12> I think there is a pretty strong case that those are different.

In the case of selling drugs (assuming that drugs are harmful, and so on, which is obviously debatable), then selling and delivering the drugs to users causes tangible harm that wouldn't happen without the sale of the drug.

In the case of child porn, the child porn has presumably already been created - they're not filming new child porn and distributing that, I presume. So the bulk of the harm is already done. The direct harm from pedophiles downloading that porn and viewing it is minimal. The problem with the child porn is that it needs to be filmed/created in the first place, which involves child abuse, a direct and immediate harm, and that people who enjoy child porn are asserted to eventually graduate to abusing children themselves (a more distant and hypothetical harm, which is negated by arresting those people after having identified them).

So, whilst I also dislike the police's actions in corrupting tools useful for free speech, I don't see that letting the server run for another two weeks to identify more users, and actively selling and distributing drugs for two weeks, are equivalent.

<comment><USER13> You're right that it may not be morally equivalent, but that's not really relevant to the legal analysis. Possessing and distributing child porn is a crime, regardless of whether you believe it directly causes harm. So the grandparent's question remains: _Does the FBI operate under different laws?_

<comment><USER14> Should a cop get a ticket for chasing a speeder?

<comment><USER15> Yes. If the speeder is endangering people by driving fast so is the cop.

<comment><USER12> I see, so in that case I guess prison guards should be sent to jail for kidnapping and holding people against their will. I mean, if you're going to take your reasoning to its natural conclusion...

Hint: violence is not illegal per aw, it's only illegal when done by someone other than the state, in a way that violates the laws of the land. To exist, a state must maintain a monopoly on violence - and in order to maintain that monopoly it must from time to time use or at least threaten violence. At least, that's how it works today. Perhaps in the future that will change...

<comment><USER16> It is in the interests of society that its police be held to the same rule of law as everyone else, or to an even higher standard.

But in this case, it is equally legal for a prison guard to hold a duly convicted criminal against his will as a private citizen, because the criminal's right to roam free was suspended by judicial order in the sentencing phase of his trial.

The logical standard for permitting police to engage a fleeing suspect with a high-speed chase is by determining that the suspect would present a greater threat to the public if allowed to escape than the damage that could occur during the pursuit.

Since innocents have been killed in the past by both fleeing suspects and police pursuit vehicles, one might suspect that police would only start a hot pursuit for known-violent murder suspects, and for everyone else, radio in a description of the vehicle and its passengers so that other cops further ahead of it can block traffic or throw down spike strips. Unfortunately, this is often trumped by the de facto "adrenaline standard".

The fact of the matter is, cops who speed _can_ be ticketed for it. But then the cop who issued that ticket to another cop is overwhelmingly harassed by her peers as a "traitor" to the cop culture. (search: florida "donna watts" "fausto lopez" 2011) The net result is that police are held to a _lower_ standard of law than everyone else, and that creates a culture of corruption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm both thrilled that child-porn distributors are standing trial, and utterly dismayed that people use Flash on Tor.

<comment><USER18> Freaks don't automatically become cyber crime experts. Otherwise they'll likely be using browser inside VM that only have access to TOR proxy and no connection to real internet.

<comment><USER17> The Tor Browser Bundle is plainly and loudly advertised on the Tor homepage as being the Right Way of internetting anonymously.

You don't have to be a cyber crime expert to get this particular thing right.

<comment><USER7> It's not that simple. Using the Tor browser bundle, there is no protection against phone-home exploits outside the browser. Firewall rules would prevent them, but that's up to users. Far better is to use Whonix Tor gateway and workstation VMs in VirtualBox. The workstation VM has no Internet connectivity except via Tor running in the gateway.

Using the Tor browser bundle in Windows is especially risky. The FBI has relied on Firefox bugs and dropped Windows executables. In the Freedom Hosting case, the FBI used a Firefox vulnerability that had just been patched in Tor browser a week or so before.

<comment><USER17> >Using the Tor browser bundle, there is no protection

Of course not, which is precisely why running Flash is ludicrously stupid.

Nobody is claiming that the "victims" of these other exploits are stupid -- just the ones who installed and used Flash (and probably had to deactivate noscript in the process).

And more to the point, any remotely reasonable person will RTFM (at least superficially) before using a tool to do something highly illegal. Not doing so is the very definition of stupid.

<comment><USER19> it's pedophiles, not tech experts or even users. I would guess a lot of them don't significantly use their computers, and only got someone to show them the whole tor thing, or watched a youtube video on it or something.

<comment><USER20> I guess you missed this: [https://web.archive.org/web/20130119025623/http://dee.su/upl...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130119025623/http://dee.su/uploads/baal.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If one were to take a look in the long run, what does it mean to the software industry as a whole that bugs are being exploited by script kiddies to mess around, protesters who want to block access in order to raise awareness, criminals that want to steal money or trade illegal content, police that want to catch criminals, secret police that want to keep track of everything a population does, spies that want to keep track of everyone, and military that simply want to break things and take down the bad guys. Each and everyone depends on the same software bugs being unpatched and kept a secret.

</comment><comment><USER22> Regardless of the cause, is anyone else considered with the legal precedents they are setting to catch pedophiles and drug dealers?

Legally, there is no real difference between doing this to catch those sorts of people and doing it to de-anonymize whistleblowers under the guise of "National Security" who use Tor to relay such information to the press. :/

<comment><USER8> You're absolutely right. Legally there is absolutely no difference between busting pedophiles on Tor and busting "whistleblowers" talking to the press, legally speaking. No difference. It's legally the exact same.

<comment><USER22> The mechanism used to justify seizing Lavabit's SSL keys and this is the same, despite your sarcastic comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Semi-related question: If I write a spider for Tor and my spider collects CP (NOT by design but just in the course of spidering) how responsible am I for:

* Having that data in my DB

* Showing said site in search results

I assume the answer is something like: "You're not as long as when you do notice it you report it and then delete it off your servers (Maybe also blacklist the Tor URL so it doesn't get re-spidered/indexed).

I haven't written anything to do this but the concept is extremely interesting to me but I'd hate to write something, let it run, forget about it (keeping it running or just holding on to the data if I ever want to do something with it), and then getting in trouble down the line for having CP or other illegal material. I've tried googling for this but couldn't find anything good.

TL;DR: Are search engines (On the web or Tor) responsible for the content of the sites they index

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm glad they busted them but hopeful that using the technology to stop clearly bad guys does not lead to abuse of the ability to use the technology on a wider basis. It probably will though eventually. It would be great if use required the consensus of at least three courts and one of them federal.</comment>


10 Successful Web Startups founded by HEC Alumni - <AUTHOR> http://www.rudebaguette.com/2013/05/08/10-successful-web-startups-founded-by-hec-alumni/

<comment><USER2> Looks a lot like the other thousands of other startup and agency websites out there. I stopped listening 2 minutes in when he tried for the grid layout gotcha.</comment>