Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry? - <AUTHOR> Pays well and everything but what are the things that make you dislike the industry. <comment><USER4> Being on call and in a constant state of readiness to troubleshoot problems is tiresome. Even if problems rarely occur, the constant awareness of potential responsibility can quickly lead to burn out. The medical field has known this for a long time, and as a result, physicians get paid a lot of money to take extra call coverage. This is a very neglected topic of discussion within software development.

<comment><USER5> Former ops engineer here. Get out of ops. In the current climate, it is rare you'll find a role that compensates you for being on call frequently and the toll it takes on you.

<comment><USER6> This a thousand times. Ops is undervalued and expected to deliver a lot in today's workforce. You get better respect and compensation for SWE. I wouldn't reccomend this career unless you're unable to do software engineering.

<comment><USER7> A fair number of places have engineers do ops. It's bad in the long run for many reasons, but rarely do I see people ask about it at interview-time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is an expectation and honestly a need to keep up with changes to the industry that I haven't seen in other fields. Any older dev has had to transition at least 1-2 languages and it's not an easy step. That doesn't even start covering how fast javascript frameworks are moving. Oh, hey you learned Angular, that's so 3 years ago we don't do that here. We use Vue.js which is better because _________. Vue will be replaced and you'll have to learn something else. If you don't like constantly learning then you'll burn out. On TOP of that most jobs expect you to work and learn this on your own. Which leads to a ton of 9-5 developers who refuse, or other developers who make sacrifices to stay on top of things.

It can also lead to franken-apps which have angular -> react -> vue all in one. (Pause to take a breath) I love developing, but there is a lot to learn. I only stay on top of the industry for about 6 months out of every year. It works for me.

<comment><USER9> Are you a veteran who has experienced this? Because this sounds completely wrong to me.

An experienced developer typically has no problem picking up new languages/frameworks/tools/etc. There isn't much value in familiarising oneself with arbitrary and invented things, of which there are many in our industry, and they are ephemeral.

No, the real value is in knowing and understanding the _discovered_ things. And since they are discovered and not invented, they do not change.

There's still plenty to learn, but you have more than a lifetime's worth of learning ahead of you even if you steer clear of the shiny baubles that are React/Angular(v[1..n])/Vue/Whatever.

<comment><USER10> I think a lot of the frustration comes not from the new languages/frameworks themselves, but all the endlessly re-invented support tools that surround them.

For example, learning React itself is great because you can pretty quickly see how it cleans up your UI layer. It doesn't take that long and adds real value to your projects.

Oh, but now you need to learn all the corner-cases of NPM, and now you need a new test framework, and now you need to figure out the incantations to get webpack x.y.z outputting just the right way. Oops now hot-reloading is broken. And the chrome inspector is lagging for some reason.

None of these are interesting or fun problems to solve, but they are a pretty substantial part of getting any new technology into production.

<comment><USER11> Our profession consistently ignores operation and maintenance in favor of building a new thing, despite the former being at least as important.

How many people post negatively about Java in terms of productivity and cite boilerplate as a productivity-killer, despite the massive advantages a JVM stack brings?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Being viewed as a cost center rather than a revenue generator if you're not in a tech centric company.

Having best practice and common sense ignored by management in the name of expediency and then being blamed for the results (going over budget, building something the client doesn't want, being late on delivery)

<comment><USER8> I had someone call us the Expense team. I put an end to that pretty quickly. It is an easy wedge to drive between sales and engineering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Creative license: the trend i have seen at startups is moving more in the direction of product and designer control over the things a company creates. For developers seeking control over their creations, this can be a frustrating thing to be a part of. Even at small startups, the value of designers and product managers is pretty obvious. It can be tough to find the right balance of control there.

Sexism: this is a tough topic. I worry that the people who care are not part of the problem, yet they tend to beat themselves up about it more than those who arguably should. I want more of everyone in tech, but to a large extent my ability to affect change in this area is crippled insofar as i have a job at a startup which requires lots of hours.

Hours/Appreciation: I've been a part of a few startups where employees, especially engineers, care more than they arguably should. High senses of responsibility are amazing assets for a company, but they rarely get appreciated as much as they deserve. When leaders see lagging growth or declining numbers, they try to incite urgency in the ranks. Those working the hardest often take that urgency to heart the most, which can leave them feeling really disheartened that their above-and-beyond efforts to this point have gone unrecognized.

I'll close on a positive by saying that i love the tech and startup industries. They provide so many people opportunities they wouldn't have had otherwise. Like every industry, there are problems. Picking the size and culture of the company you work at changes the landscape of those problems, so be conscious which you are sensitive to and choose accordingly. If you are happy to trade reduction in control for stability, bigger companies probably your jam, for instance.

<comment><USER14> Product and design should own products most of the time. I think most startups would be better off outsourcing their builds.

<comment><USER15> Any particular reasons you think this? Does it apply to or exclude specific industries?

<comment><USER14> I don't understand why you ever would. Your product is your product. It's defined by what it does, not how it does it. It's all about customer experience. Product market fit. That can and should be determined by market research, user experience design testing and prototyping. Developers are there to build with quality and to appropriate scale based on business strategy.

If you open a restaurant, is the menu written by a chef or by the guy who built the oven? Are movie scripts written by the camera operators? What industry asks it's technicians to decide what to create?

I actually just quit a job because developers were running the show way too much. Nothing was ever delivered to expectations or satisfied user needs. It was extremely frustrating for me to just be throwing code over the wall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think there's a few things about the software industry that make it really easy to become depressed, cynical, and jaded. We spend quite a lot of time being pedantic, fixating on all kinds of specific details, and especially, thinking about many different ways our applications can go wrong. In the context of writing robust software, that's a good thing, but it can also be really difficult to turn it off in the other parts of your life.

</comment><comment><USER17> The closer you get to the bleeding edge of the technology industry, the more detached you get from "real life", generally.

<comment><USER18> Nicely put!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> In the Silicon Valley there's this feeling of monotony - that everyone is doing the same thing. Given the price of housing you can make a pretty good guess everyone is trying to either save up to move out or pay off a house here. Everyone is either trying to come up with a way to enter the hottest trendiest startup idea or doing indie games. Most of the meetups are tech/work-related and even the non-tech meetups are flooded with male, glasses, 20-30 something engineers. It's almost like everywhere you go you can't escape the pressure of work.

Personally it almost seems like the whole interview process was made to continue the whole tradition of getting high SAT or GRE scores for college, this time swapping college with the FAANG companies. We basically took all the problems with a standardized test-based education system and moved it to jobs.

</comment><comment><USER20> The growing divide between the haves and have-nots. I have found that people in tech are generally completely oblivious to the massive amounts of impoverished people around them and have no idea how to help them. Also the technical advancements that we are seeing nowadays mostly seem to help people who are already well off. It is difficult to find good tech companies that have a high social good output.

<comment><USER21> Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, it was strange to see 22 year old recent graduates arriving and immediately making six figure salaries while constantly complaining about homeless people and describing certain areas with large black and Latino populations as "sketchy"/"ghetto"/"unsafe".

It was very surreal (and sad) watching the demographics become much more homogenous in the little corner store in the Castro I worked in. Our customer base was once incredibly diverse, lots of LGBTQ folks, and also lots of families. Slowly it became predominantly white and East/South Asian, young, single, and affluent. We went from seeing EBT card usage drop from about 4-5 customers a day ($200 daily average) to one (literally) every 3 and half weeks by the end of 2016.

In a similar vein: every tech company I've known whose product involves manual labor (think: delivery, cleaning, retrieving scooters, packing/receiving, food preparation, etc) treats and thinks about the workers doing the manual labor very differently than the creatives, engineers, product folks, sales leads, etc. The employees doing the manual labor are held to very different standards of productivity and timeliness, often don't get benefits, definitely don't get equity, and generally enjoy little room for advancement, and often they will be employees in all but name and rights (1099).

Some of this is understandable to a point as their work is mission critical -- if your cooks show up late constantly and your product is "Uber but for tapas", then your customer experience is going to suffer. But a tendency I've observed personally and heard from friends in those jobs is that it seems acceptable for manual workers to be shouted at, threatened, and generally be treated abusively, while the same certainly wouldn't be ok if directed at someone making salary. Meanwhile as an engineer if I have a zero day, no one says a word to me, or if they do they're very polite about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> A lot of issues have already been discussed, but one I haven't seen is the constant reminder that people and the Internet are terrible. Ignoring people that censor beheadings on YouTube and the Dark Web, I am very vividly aware of things Goatse, Blue Waffle, 1 Guy 1 Jar, Ogrish, early 4chan's \b\ and those mental images are very much burned into my brain.

Maybe its not every aspect in the tech industry or maybe its changing with the next generation or maybe I just got into tech at a very impressionable age, but I'm sure I'm not the only one that was exposed to that stuff early on.

I think that's a dark side. There's some generally fucked up shit out there and someone has to be aware of it to keep it far, far away.

<comment><USER11> The tech industry idolizes and encourages terrible behavior, and it ends up being self-reinforcing. Efforts to counteract that get pushback. How many people will get upset if you suggest that Steve Jobs was not a good person and probably shouldn't be idolized? Or that Linus's email habits are not a good thing to emulate?

We will tell ourselves fun stories about how people being jerks just means they are no bullshit people who care about getting things done.

<comment><USER22> I don't entirely agree with respect to my original post and that your use of Jobs and Torvalds don't correctly align to my post.

I don't think the majority of people idolize stuff that makes everyone gag or grimace in disgust. A small subset of internet trolls idolize and encourage this behavior. Tech is only associated because it also shares the loner basement dweller stereotype.

There are entire organizations designed to counteract underage pornography and sex trafficking, everyone agrees this is a terrible thing. However, it still persists despite opposition and tech is heavily involved in the process. This gets back to my point that to be in tech requires an unavoidable knowledge of the cruelty of man.

Someone's email habits pales in comparison.

<comment><USER11> Yeah I misread your post, sorry about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> \- any interesting/impactful work is immediately crowded by tons of other people willing to sacrifice more than you to own it. They usually win.

\- the prevalent engineering management culture is a form of psychological manipulation to turn engineers into cogs and make you feel like you are always behind and stressed. It emphasizes weekly bandaid fixes to long running problems.

\- you have to work hard to be promoted, progress your career and make more money; but higher positions generally have much greater stress, workload and painful non-technical work (sales, politics)

\- the bay area becomes a nightmare in middle age. the local governments love capitalizing tech income in the form of taxes or housing prices, but won't change a thing to improve the your life. leading a normal middle class life with kids in a safe area with good schools (e.g. peninsula, or Marin) will completely exhaust a 2x200k dual income. Commutes are awful. Unless you win the startup lottery, you'll be working your brains out and hardly find time to enjoy life.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't like the idea that tech comes first and people last. That is often the case when the automation is simply meant to replace inefficient humans, without really thinking to the consequences. I'm of course pro-automation as I think it's an improvement for humanity, but I'm always worried about the end result.

Also I don't like that most companies have this kind of double-speak when they say that they are working to improve everyone lives while they simply want to automate work away, avoid rules (simply because Internet is not regulated as the rest of the economy) to make more money than in other ways.

</comment><comment><USER25> I find the nearly infinite (and seemingly exponentially increasing) number of ways things can go wrong, and the frequently arcane knowledge required to fix them, incredibly mentally taxing. That's not what I want to fill up my mind with.

If this were all in the service of healing the world in some way, it might be worth it. But work is feeling increasingly disconnected from genuine human problems.

<comment><USER26> The systems are too damned complicated and poorly architected. Can't just work on mastering any single piece in isolation.. has to be verticals!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Always Be Coding" \-- people who spend their time on work/passion project/open source projects are somehow valued more than those who spend their time on work/non-technical pursuits.

<comment><USER28> It's truly awful that this is expected in tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Developers that build a new thing are disproportionately valued over developers who improve or maintain old things. The formers will be the wunderkinds of the organization and referred to as "rock stars" and "10x-ers" despite the quality of the work that they put out. The latter will have to fight for promotions and be denigrated as "1x-ers". They will have to hear that they are not as valuable because they are not innovators.

This leads to developers being biased towards building and working with new things, and is a lot of the reason that we see flavor-of-the-week style platforms and libraries that add very little value.

<comment><USER26> I hate seeing people reinvent things without learning the lessons that the maintainers are all so painfully aware of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The interview process for developer/engineering roles.

<comment><USER30> It's not so much the process itself but the overall fact that your ability to get hired ultimately hinges on things that are trivial and shallow. In general I believe that skill and talent get rewarded, but everyone has a story about a job they landed out of sheer luck - they knew some obscure tool or framework that forced a hiring decision in their favor. Very few hiring managers are genuinely talented at spotting talent. Most rely on some level of cargo-cult knowledge, tribal shibboleths, and technical hazing rituals. Or they just hire lazily and optimistically, and then you have to work with those people because now you're one of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> [https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/17/open-offices-have- driven-p...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/17/open-offices-have-driven- panasonic-to-make-horse-blinders-for-humans/)

<comment><USER32> HA I got written up once for putting poster board on the sides of my desk to form a wall. Could of used these then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Separate point : tech industry tends to make one delusional about ones abilities (usually overestimation of intelligence)

</comment><comment><USER33> Having to build technology that attempts to manipulate humans and call it "Deep Learning".

</comment><comment><USER34> Companies/organisations that expect you to behave more like cult members than employees.

</comment><comment><USER35> There's an under-appreciation of the psychological toll that content moderators face.

</comment><comment><USER18> Long hours in the name of passion / customer obsession

</comment><comment><USER36> Companies have very poor development processes and scheduling which is what makes coding, in any language or framework, difficult because half the time you don't even know what you should be writing. Even worse, asking others is often hit and miss because some co-workers, who should know, don't make an effort to define what's meant by certain requirements specific to a problem domain. This often leads to shipping incomplete products that you have to "fix" after deployment because you didn't have enough time to implement features, didn't know features were needed, or the features weren't well defined. In the meantime, project management thinks the project is done and is piling more projects on you while you play catch up. I haven't figured out a good system to handle this and even if I could, it requires buy in at multiple levels and consistent application. If you've ever done group work in college, doing this is almost impossible.

In short, work is just like college group work. One person does 90% of the work while the others do about 10%.

</comment><comment><USER37> Intentional dehumanization in the name of delivery/progress/development.

<comment><USER18> Well put.. strong words. I sometimes wonder if this happens only in the tech industry or has this virus spread from tech to other industries as well.

<comment><USER38> Dehumanization isn't just the tech industry. It isn't even _just_ industry. Our philosophy has dehumanized us.

Yes, the tech industry can be dehumanizing. (So can technology.) Yes, _industry_ can be dehumanizing, as they try to wring every last cent out of you without concern for what it does to you as a human. But I think the problem runs deeper than that. It's basically a question of who we think we are.

As a society, we no longer believe in God. We believe in the physical universe - in matter and the laws of physics. That means that all we can be is matter that obeys the laws of physics. That's _all_ we can be, because there is nothing else.

In particular, we can't have any free will or any ability to make a real choice. Matter that obeys the laws of physics doesn't choose anything - <USER2> just obeys the laws of physics. We're just machines made of atoms obeying the laws of quantm electrodynamics, which make up biochemicals obeying the laws of biochemistry, which make up neurons obeying the laws of neurology - <USER3> _nothing_ more.

We can't love in the real sense of the word - choosing what's best for the one we love - because we can't choose anything. Even the lesser flavors of love are just a matter of biochemicals and neurons just doing their thing.

There's no real beauty in any objective sense - there's just certain things happen to hit our neurons in a certain way.

For that matter, there's no truth, either, and not just in the postmodern sense. If our brains were built by evolution, they were built to give a good enough answer fast enough. They were not built to find actual truth, even were such a thing to exist.

So in this view, free will, love, beauty, and truth - everything we thought of as making us human - are dead. We're just machines, just like the computers on our desks. As more and more people believe this (and start to act like it), it becomes more and more rare to be treated in a genuinely human way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> \- Alpha male posturing

\- People expect you to care about your job.

<comment><USER40> > \- People expect you to care about your job.

What I think is funny about this is that the actual expoiting slave driver bosses will accept sometimes that you do what you get paid for and then go home. They won't tell you so, but if you are able to read faces you can see them smile a little with respect if you refuse to get exploited. But some of the engineering colleagues will never accept that. 24/7 is the requirement. Even if nobody, not even them, gets anything out of it.

<comment><USER39> Up to a point, yeah.

However, if it impacts them negatively in any way (i.e. They overpromised) you will find that respect doesn't help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The undeniable urge to solve all problems in life with a new app

<comment><USER42> Is there an app to cure that urge?

<comment><USER41> Nah, just Hacker News and Reddit to distract us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> You like to think you are adding value to the world. Many times you will end up transferring it instead.

<comment><USER44> If you have a job, you are adding value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm inside most of the daylight hours. This isn't so bad when it's nasty weather outside (for me this is when it is hot and sunny, apparently there are actually people who like that kind of weather so YMMV), but when it is nice outside and I'm stuck inside...

</comment><comment><USER46> Your business model is probably not going to be providing something useful to an end user. The tool will be a pretext so you get incidental access to data your surveillance system will exfiltrate.

\--

The term "Tech" is malleable to mean both a business vertical, or the software-related division within any a company in any business domain. Expect strategic equivocation between the two.

Any bad action or decision from the non-technical people in a "tech" company is suddenly the fault of the nerds, they'll feel the heat and are expected to fix it (even if the problem is by definition not their problem to fix). Credit flows in the opposite direction, regardless of where it belongs.

</comment><comment><USER47> Constant worry about ageism, discrimination, and making a living once you to get to late 30s/early 40s. In particular SV but this is a concern everywhere.

What can you do then if you love programming and don't want to be a manager? It's just terrifying.

</comment><comment><USER48> I never feel good enough. Ever. Part of that is my personality - I'm very hard on myself. But especially on HN (for better or worse) it seems like everyday I see someone who is making more money or building a better business or someone who just is an amazing programmer and I still have so much to learn.

It can be a positive motivator for continuous improvement but at the same time it can be overwhelming to feel like there is always so much to learn and you'll never learn it all.

<comment><USER49> I agree with this sentiment--I mainly read HN/SSC and find the depth of knowledge extremely humbling. You really have to try hard to look at your status as absolute (or "compare yourself to yourself a week ago"), especially because it looks like we are wired to see relative status as more important (i.e. happiness derived from comparison to "peers").

It is a roller coaster of "I think I'm pretty good at this" to "jesus--I understand 10% of what these HN comments are talking about." It helps if I think about the alternative universe where I tried to do something with my political science minor. That usually does the trick. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Day-to-day annoyances: slow builds, flaky tests, debugging horrible code (especially if it's yours), open offices, certain coworkers

Psychological issues: on-call stress, unhealthy work-hours expectations, impostor syndrome, family-unfriendly policies and social environment

Cultural issues: affluenza and general entitlement, discrimination, moral posturing, people slamming your company and your product (rightly or wrongly - both hurt)

</comment><comment><USER51> This is changing, but the lack of focus on physical health is a major problem that is literally shortening the lifespans of young developers. Getting up, moving around, stretching, and taking physical breaks throughout the day will prevent all kinds of physical problems down the road, but unfortunately, because young people can sit and grind for 8+ hours, we don't do this.

</comment><comment><USER52> There are limited truly impactful things to work on at any place. In places under the limelight, they would always be taken over by more experienced and smarter people (very few), most of the other work on tech around that which is important but not truly impactful.

</comment><comment><USER53> Everything is over-engineered and at the same time duct taped and zip tied together.

</comment><comment><USER54> Rampant sexism.

</comment><comment><USER55> there is always difficulty of balancing your learning/growth and the work that you have to do for the company

<comment><USER18> I had similar concerns and had reached out to the HN community quite a while ago. Seems like this issue is felt across the industry!

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Bugs always get triaged. Nobody can afford zero tolerance, as much as I would like to work that way.

</comment><comment><USER57> Deadlines

<comment><USER34> "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

— Douglas Adams

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> The sedentary lifestyle.

</comment><comment><USER59> building mvp by working hard then getting replace because you can't put 5 to 8 hard each day.

</comment><comment><USER60> Computers always had an aura of infallibility to me as a kid. But learning to program taught me that they're only as infallible as their creators, programmers, and operators. So to me, the dark side of our field is that you "see how the sausage is made", as they say.

Which could be good or bad, depending on whether you agree with the statement that ignorance is bliss. For instance, if you had asked me 5 years ago whether owning a self-driving car would be awesome, I would have answered with an enthusiastic yes. Now, as a novice-to-journeyman software engineer, if I had to own a car at all, I'd buy one made before computers became a fundamental component inside most vehicles (got my eye on a 1976 Chevy Silverado, but I digress).

Call me paranoid, but I can't help but feel it's only a matter of time before some hacker gains control of a highway full of cars and demands X # of bitcoin from their occupants or he'll drive them all off a bridge.(1) I can't un-see that image in my head, and it terrifies me. Security professionals need to be right every single time in order to be successful at their jobs. Hackers need to be right only once to be successful at theirs. It's a Sisyphean task trying to keep people physically safe in a digital age, let alone keep their privacy intact.

Which brings me to my other point- technology being used by those in power to maintain and expand that power by weakening our expectations of privacy:

-Social media platforms are being co-opted to derive insights about everyday people that even they don't know about themselves, and these insights are being used to manipulate their behavior at the voting booth, at the shopping mall, etc.(2)

-Governments are creating "social credit scores" based on how well a citizen tows the official party line, who they associate with, or the opinions they express. And these scores can affect everything from their job prospects to their ability to get a loan to their very geographic mobility.(3)

-Facial recognition technology is being deployed in traffic cameras and even in wearable technology to make it easier to pick "undesirables" out of a crowd.(4)

I don't mean to single out one single country. If this technology exists, there's a greater-than-zero chance in any country that sooner or later a leader will come along who will seek to use that technology for their own gain.

Sorry to get so dark, I don't mean to sound overly dramatic. I never thought of myself as a tinfoil-hat type of person, and I hate that I'm essentially slowly turning into one. Technology does a lot of good too, I'm just genuinely scared for the future.

Sources:

(1) -[https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep- hig...](https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/)

(2) -[https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how- targ...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target- figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/#62b1bc856668) -[http://business.time.com/2012/07/31/big-data-knows-what- your...](http://business.time.com/2012/07/31/big-data-knows-what-youre-doing- right-now/) -[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook- cambr...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-cambridge- analytica-explained.html)

(3) -[https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-social- credit](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-social-credit) -[https://observer.com/2018/02/america-isnt-far-off-from- china...](https://observer.com/2018/02/america-isnt-far-off-from-chinas- social-credit-score/)

(4) -[https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-police-go-robocop- with-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-police-go-robocop-with-facial- recognition-glasses-1518004353)

</comment><comment><USER61> Have you seen Silicon Valley (the HBO show)?</comment>


Show HN: My personal site - <AUTHOR> https://www.maxleiter.com <comment><USER2> Looks great! That is a very impressive list of projects for any engineer, never mind someone your age. You've got a bright career ahead of you. Best of luck and please don't become a corporate drone.

One piece of advice: Add some details to your work experience. Why do you list details of your OSS projects but not work experience? List your accomplishments at your internships. If you can't say much because of non- disclosure, then at least talk about what technologies you worked with.

I imagine someone like you gets great reviews from your employers. Maybe you should ask one of them for a recommendation you can put on your website and/or linkedin.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure if you'll see this, but I added some job/work descriptions. Thoughts appreciated

<comment><USER2> Looks great!</comment></comment></comment>


Zappos holacracy: Many employees choose to leave instead of work with no boss - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/05/08/zappos_holacracy_many_employees_choose_to_leave_instead_of_work_with_no.html <comment><USER2> It's not clear if the ones leaving are managers who wanted to remain managers. If so, the title is misleading.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the useful parts of agile programming? - <AUTHOR>

It seems like the useful parts are:
1) Build and deploy the smallest useful part first. > Get's the project moving and not canceled.
2) Break request into separate time lines. > Give management choices vs. death marches.
3) When two coders are talking about a problem sit down together at a desktop and fix the code. > Avoid wasting time talking about stuff you don't really understand.
Anything else? <comment><USER2> i think you leave out the usefulness of the focus on building by adding on to and maintaining working software.</comment>


A Dictionary Packed with Stories from Eighteenth-Century Delhi - <AUTHOR> http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/asian-and-african/2016/01/a-dictionary-packed-with-stories-from-eighteenth-century-delhi.html <comment><USER2> I have to admit Hindi muhavare (aphorisms) are pretty awesome. I hadn't heard of the one they quoted but some of my favorites are

ghore bech kar sona - sleep like you sold horses (sleep soundly)

(nak) chana chabwana -to make someone chew chickpeas with their nose (to give someone a (very hard) time)

munh tor ke jawab dena - to break someone's face in answer (to give a fitting/equal reply)

unt ki munh men zira - cumin in a camel's mouth (peanuts, trifling, nothing, in the Zia to Carter sense)

dudh men mengni dalna - to put scat in the milk (poisoning the well (in rhetoric))

bandar kya jane adrak ka swad - What does a monkey know of ginger's taste? (ie. pearls before swine)

Nach na jane aangan terha - Can't dance? Crooked stage. (A poor workman blames his tools)

<comment><USER3> Never expected to be trading Hindi aphorisms on Hacker News of all places. Here's one of my favorites from a book full of them I leafed through one time:

दो-एक गाँव में भोज हुआ और कुत्ते की जान हड़बड़ी में ही चली गई।

My attempt at a translation:

'There were feasts in two villages, and in their running back and forth, the dogs died.'

(A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an amazing article, and now my interest is piqued in the author's work :). Kudos to him for undertaking the task of figuring out more details about that period of Indian history.

<comment><USER5> It really is! though I wish it included more than one example from the dictionary.

And how's this for a parenthetical aside:

 _(The fullest account of Persian lexicography in English remains Henry Blochmann's 1868 article)_

... with a hyperlink to a working version: [https://archive.org/details/contributionstop00blocuoft](https://archive.org/details/contributionstop00blocuoft). There can't be many fields where the fullest account in English remains an 1868 article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I once ran into a French/English dictionary from 1611 that had a bunch of proverbs in it[0], but this Persian thing is way more interesting!

0: [http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/proverbs/](http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/proverbs/)

</comment><comment><USER7> _During war they don 't hand out sweets._

Love that saying.</comment>


Has anyone started a brick & mortar business? - <AUTHOR>

I know this is a tech area but just curious...<p>I personally ran a screen printing shop at our campus that went well and ended up selling it since we're graduating. <comment><USER2> I ran a bike-flipping business in college... not quite brick & mortar, but definitely not high-tech.

My roommate and I went to all the sorority houses around campus and made a deal with the house moms for old bikes. In exchange for cleaning up the bike- parking area of their house, we would get all of the left-over bikes for free from girls who had just graduated.

We then cleaned them up, ran some ads in Craigslist, and sold them to people near the beach. Best part was the bikes were predominantly beach-cruisers, and were in high demand at the beginning of summer when students had graduated.

Process took 10 days, we made about $2000 between the two of us, and it paid for a plane ticket to Europe with some extra cash to spend!

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, the overhead will kill you if you're not careful. I spent $10k setting up a 700 square foot computer training center. Gave up after 6 months and now do on-site computer repair with almost no overhead.

</comment><comment><USER4> I helped my dad set-up a magazine stand in my pre-school. Does that count? It was a good learning on how people buy.

</comment><comment><USER5> I owned a motorcycle store / Harley service shop, a jewelry store and a powersport distribution company (w/ 50 employees). All brick & morter. I started programming out of necessity, which became a competitive advantage. Now I own a software company (my true passion), making iOS apps and web services.

</comment><comment><USER6> A high tech tanning spa. One of the tanning beds cost 30k and looked like a spaceship. I went all out with this thing, using some money from an exit. I re-did the floors, walls, electric, plumping, etc. in the end I was out about 500k after running it for a year. A lot of that money went towards rent and payroll. I had 4 or 5 employees, including a manager, during peak season.

It was difficult to iterate the business, I was locked into a lease, and the equipment was too big to move easily, so I couldn't just pack up and move to a new location when I realized I didn't pick the greatest location.

The worst part was dealing with the local governing agencies for insurance, workman's comp, town, state, federal, permits, etc. They shut me down for a day or two over something trivial and I spent 8 hours driving around to fix it. Felt like the equiv. of my domain being seized and it wasn't worth it for such a thin profit margin.

There was no doubt that I could make it work, but I didn't want to spend the time or money trying to get it right. I have the internet startup stuff down pat; I'll just stick to what I know best.</comment>


Optimizing for pearls, not sand - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/

<comment><USER2> > We now limit users (and IP addresses) to a maximum of 6 questions per day > and 50 questions per month.

StackExchange (especially StackOverflow) usually relaxes restrictions based on reputation, and I feel this would be a perfect place to do that. I find it strange that they've stated this one simply as a universal rule.</comment>


Electric Vehicles on the Road Are Set to Triple in Two Years - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-30/electric-vehicles-on-the-road-are-set-to-triple-in-two-years <comment><USER2> Not surprising: [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/30/electric-vehicles-will- grow-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/30/electric-vehicles-will-grow- from-3-million-to-125-million-by-2030-iea.html)

>The number of electric vehicles on the road around the world will hit 125 million by 2030, the International Energy Agency forecasts.</comment>


Ask HN: What browser tabs do you always have open? - <AUTHOR>

As I settle into more and more of a routine with my daily life working from home, I find that I keep a handful of websites always open in a separate browser window. Right now for me these are:
Hootsuite (sometimes Seesmic now)
Google Docs
Gmail
Evernote
Wordpress backend (for my WP network)
My todo app
Pivotal Tracker
I'm an avid Chrome user, but I find it is easier to have the tabs preloaded rather than opening the default page and clicking to them from there. <comment><USER2> I can tell you what tab I never leave open, anything that requires me to be authenticated with Google. I'm probably being paranoid, but I'm afraid to remain logged in to google in the event that somehow a site would manage to read the google auth cookie and gain access to my email.

</comment><comment><USER3> Gmail + Google Apps for frid.ge (these are normally pinned in that order) HN frid.ge + frid.dev + our staging server assembla (generally the changeset stream + tickets) My wanna.do list (side project of mine, which also serves as my todo list)

Also, I generally have the symfony and doctrine documentation open and sometimes php.net as well

</comment><comment><USER4> Always:

gmail, piwik, dealush (my site)

Usually:

localhost:3000, sugarcrm, redmine, basecamp, facebook, twitter (both for work of course...)

and... HN :D

</comment><comment><USER5> * Gmail

* Google reader

* Company's public forum

* Trac

* Cruise (Continuous Integration)

* Internal wiki

* localhost:8088

</comment><comment><USER6> Usually gmail and facebook, and one blank tab.

I don't know why, but I like to have a blank tab :/

</comment><comment><USER7> Stuff I seem to always have open:

GMail

Hacker News

Reddit

Twitter

localhost:8080

</comment><comment><USER8> Gmail, Workflowy, 30boxes (calendar) -- Those are my staple 3.

</comment><comment><USER9> Facebook, Gmail, Grooveshark and my site, diPoll

</comment><comment><USER10> gmail, news.ycombinator.com, fanvibe.com, localhost:3000, and a million google search results

</comment><comment><USER11> Facebook certainly.

</comment><comment><USER12> phpMyAdmin, GitHub, Google and HN.

</comment><comment><USER13> * localhost:3000

* localhost:9292

* news.ycombinator.com

* mail.steveklabnik.com

* sometimes localhost:8080

I really need to standardize my development ports.

<comment><USER14> vhosts + /etc/hosts ;)

My work projects are blahproject.zg (as I work at a place called ZehnerGroup), personal projects are blahproject.dev.

BTW, for those interested in my stack (thats what she said?) I run uWSGI locally right now for all my django stuff, proxied to Nginx. Back in the day it was apache + mod_python, then apache + mod_wsgi, but I love nginx on my local laptop as it uses almost zero memory.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, or I could just change my config slightly to make them all on the same one. I'm never running more than one at a time, so vhosts seems like a bit of overkill.</comment></comment></comment>


Cheap Talk, Round Numbers, and Signaling Behavior - <AUTHOR> http://www.nber.org/digest/sep15/w21285.html <comment><USER2> Interesting that round numbers mean lower selling prices but that the sales happen quicker.

Steve Tadelis is one of the co-authors and he's done some interesting research from his time at eBay. Last year he published a paper that paid search ads were not really effective and that made the rounds, even getting mentioned in The Economist. Google wrote back to refute the claim, saying eBay is a special website and search ads do work. Here's that study: [http://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/research-news/study- finds-...](http://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/research-news/study-finds-paid- search-ads-dont-always-pay)</comment>


Announcing Start@Spark: Why are we doing this? - <AUTHOR> http://startatspark.tumblr.com/post/89587841/why-are-we-doing-this <comment><USER2> Not a whole lot of concrete detail - just announcing that they are open to entertaining funding seed stage start-ups. They have a WuFoo application form with some good questions you need to be able to answer: <http://www.startatspark.com/start/start-apply-wufoo.html>

What evidence do you have that this is a severe problem or meaningful opportunity?

What's the next best alternative? Who are you competing against and why is there still an opportunity?

<comment><USER3> More detail here: <http://www.startatspark.com/start/start-index.html>

<comment><USER4> Very impressed on a few items here:

1\. Timely turnaround in three weeks. It's clear that Spark values your time and similarly, entrepreneurs value theirs.

2\. Leading legal counsel and open deal structure. Having solid legal advice is something most early-stage companies overlook (not because the advice isn't valued, but rather, it may not be a top priority to building/shipping your product). In addition, Spark allows other investors to participate in the seed round.

3\. Structure of investment. I was surprised to see that Spark was offering the investment in a convertible loan, where the loan will later convert to equity in the event of the company's next round of financing. The issue of valuation or "pegging a company's valuation" is relatively mute with this format.

Overall, this is a great step for innovation in the Northeast. Congratulations Spark!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks like an interesting alternative for what I was going to be applying to YC with during the next round.

Especially with the New York locale, as that was one of the 3 areas I've been thinking about that would have the culture for what I'm attempting.

Interesting prospect that's for sure. I guess I'll have to keep it in mind as we're gearing up to get going.

That being said, is this only financing and nothing else? If so it doesn't look to be as attractive as YC in my personal opinion.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd love to learn more about how convertible debt (like this) works for early stage tech startups.

<comment><USER2> This is a very common structure for angel investments. Instead of trying to determine a value for your company at the seed stage they give you money and call it a loan. When you raise money at the A round the loan converts to a stock purchase at the amount they loaned you plus some percentage - 20% in this case, a little high but they are a brand name not some random angel.

For example they loan you $100k to get started. 6-9 months later you get a VC to invest $1MM at a $1MM pre-money valuation. The VC now owns 50% $1MM/$2MM post money and Spark owns 6% $120k/$2MM

<comment><USER3> But what happens if (especially in this environment) you can't raise money? Are you now legally on the hook to repay the loan?

<comment><USER7> I would assume that if you go out of business, as creditors they get their money back first during asset liquidation. But you aren't personally on the hook. (Part of why it's a good idea to keep your business and personal finances separate!)

Edit (think you were asking a different question) -- as I understand it, convertible bonds usually have a low interest rate and long duration, so you aren't supposed to feel like they need to be repaid immediately. If there's no future financing, but your business starts making money slowly, you'll eventually have to repay it, yeah.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Do these convertible debt-style seed-funders typically take a board seat?

<comment><USER2> Maybe they don't take a board seat but you still have to take their phone call when they have an idea for you</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I use real-time currency data or select a point in the day? - jonathan-kosgei When running an ecommerce store, and handling currency conversions do I use a real-time API of select the day's average rate? <comment><AUTHOR> I think you need to read this article [https://icoreview2018.com/](https://icoreview2018.com/) about currency data! I hope it will be useful for you!

</comment><comment><USER2> Currency hedging comes to mind, when having the need to lock a currency exchange rate e.g. options, futures, forwards, etc. This gives you the ability to know, what the conversion rate will be at settlement time. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_exchange_hedge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_exchange_hedge)

Alternatively, your payment gateway/provider will handle it for you as soon as the transaction is received at their end.</comment>


Ask HN: Growing a Company? - <AUTHOR>

I'm not sure if this falls into a core competency area for HN, but not sure if there is a better place to ask.  One of my friends has a business with about $12 million gross revenues.  He wants to grow it to $60 million revenues within the next several years, and knows that things need to change, but not sure exactly what to do and the order to do them.  I assume there are consultants and coaches to help, but how do you go about finding them?  And what other resources are there? <comment><USER2> Look through back issues of Inc. They do articles on this sort of thing a lot, and it will give your friend a good idea how other people grow their companies. It sounds like he needs a strategy more than a coach.

</comment><comment><USER3> Offtopic, how are your projects working out from 5 months ago?</comment>


Tell HN: YCNYC Feedback - <AUTHOR>

Many thanks to the YC team for putting together the excellent YCNYC event last night.  It was great seeing so many founders that I've only read about until now.  The turnout was also amazing and way beyond my expectations.  The presentations were extremely motivating and, as a native New Yorker, PG's keynote was inspiring in many ways:  (1) It further validates NYC's position as a strong tech/startup hub; (2) I now know that there are many other people in and around NYC with similar interests and complimentary skills; (3) I want to work even harder to prove that NYC can compete with SV (why stop at second place).
Regarding the event, my only suggestions for next time [at YCNYC 2012 ;)] would be to create designated areas based on common interests (e.g. looking for a co-founder, looking for a job, specific technologies, industries, etc.) and give the option of including  company name on your name badge.  With so many attendees, although very exciting, it felt a bit overwhelming when getting started.
It would be interesting to hear feedback from other attendees. <comment><USER2> It was an interesting experience, but several things could have been done better:

1\. Introduce the people. Before PG came to the stage, some very energetic guy gave the introduction. ...wait, that guy started what? REDDIT??? I just found out while reading a blog a few minutes ago! I didn't know who any of the people on the expert panel were.

2\. Make it easy to find people. I would have been interested in people who are working in the financial industry (startups, experts, whatever). There is simply NO way I could have known who did what. They should have had booths or at least a quick "stand up if you are interested in this" type thing.

3\. Setup round tables, like weddings, rather than a thousand chairs facing the stage. For introverts like my self, it was too comforting to eat my slices of pizza and stare straight until the speakers started speaking :) A table where we are forced to look at each other, conversations are more likely to start.

That's all I can think of.

</comment><comment><USER3> Terribly inspiring.

The pizza was ok. The place was big enough. The talks were awesome. The whole thing was really inspiring. The lack of "yes NYC is awesome" but instead honest "NYC can't compete with SF" was refreshing.

ps: I have an evil theory that the "put an X on your card if you're looking for a cofounder" was just a trick to mark people they'd want to avoid talking to.

I would have loved, somehow, to see a list of urls and "X of Y" pitches for all the hundreds of startups there. Maybe on a wall or something?

<comment><USER4> I do wish that there had been an easier forum to speak to startup founders who were looking for developers etc. to join their startups (even a simple sheet/board of paper stating who's looking, and what they're looking for would have been good).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree with this 100%. The talks were wonderful and incredibly inspiring. But oh wow, was the networking overwhelming. It was such a challenge to figure out who to talk to and many people that I did talk to agreed.

Obviously this wasn't something that could be anticipated. But there definitely needs to be a solid system (I like the idea of designated areas) for next time so everyone can use their time as efficiently as possible and talk to the people they need to talk to.

</comment><comment><USER6> had a great time, only comment though is, while I figured it out, it might have made sense to tell people what the color codes on the name tags meant.

<comment><USER7> Agreed, I asked a bunch of people but nobody could tell me. Anyone with a company name was a YC Alum. I wound up just putting my skillset (LAMP +JS + MOBILE DEV) and what I was looking for (DESIGN HELP) on my tag. It helped me to meet a lot of people and for sometimes people would just walk up and intro mid conversation which was cool.</comment></comment>


Set theory in 6 diagrams and 100 symbols - <AUTHOR> https://mathvault.ca/hub/higher-math/math-symbols/set-theory-symbols/ <comment><USER2> If using TOR follow: [https://web.archive.org/web/20200630183012/https://mathvault...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200630183012/https://mathvault.ca/hub/higher- math/math-symbols/set-theory-symbols/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Title is misleading, imo - this is just a list of the symbols used to describe set operations, there's no set theory discussed here.

It's potentially a useful dictionary/cheat sheet, but there's nothing about ZF(C) or other axioms, or much of anything that goes into the mathematics (unless I missed a link?)</comment>


App Development: What Features You Should Build First and Why - <AUTHOR> https://blog.aurity.co/app-development-what-features-you-should-build-first-and-why-c5aa2146a60c <comment><USER2> You should write the feature with the highest risk and most dependencies first.</comment>


Ebola Cases Could Reach 1.4M in 4 Months, C.D.C. Estimates - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/health/ebola-cases-could-reach-14-million-in-4-months-cdc-estimates.html

<comment><USER2> The 'tool' used to generate these results is available for download as an excel spreadsheet here: [http://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/24900](http://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/24900).

Today parameter estimates were published in the NEJM [0] that conflict with the model's default settings. The Eichner incubation distribution, and an infectious duration of maybe 11 days are better inputs, in my opinion.

[0] [http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1411100?query=fea...](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1411100?query=featured_home#results=&t=articleResults)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the link, interesting to play with and hats off the the CDC for being so open with their modeling tools. (also, what people do in Excel just blows me away)

I played with your suggested settings and while they are indeed alarming, I'm curious why you think they are better suited. They don't seem to fit the historical curve quite as well as the default CDC ones.

Do you have more background there?

<comment><USER4> >(also, what people do in Excel just blows me away)

Same. I work in Excel pretty much all day and rock at using it as a swiss army knife. But when people use it to build these hectic models then I'm still thoroughly impressed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "...following its current trajectory..."

"In the best-case model...would be "almost ended" by Jan. 20..."

"The current official case count is 5,843, including 2,803 deaths, according to the World Health Organization."

It would be a very smart investment to contain this outbreak of Ebola and put boots on the ground.

<comment><USER6> Agreed, sending 3000 US personnel to the area is a risky but ultimately a wise move. Some other countries have also sent people (China and the UK IIRC) but in far smaller numbers. I'm very disappointed by the limp EU response - although they've pledged E180m they're only now meeting to coordinate logistics and containment strategies, which seems really irresponsible, notwithstanding the existence of other problems like military conflict in Ukraine and the ME.

<comment><USER7> EU should be concerned the most, they will be hit hardest when Ebola gets out of Africa.

<comment><USER6> exactly. Given that ships regularly cross the mediterranean loaded to the gunwhales with passengers (or overloaded - two ships sank a few days back and about 700 people drowned, sadly), there is a lot of potential for an outbreak to impact Europe. It would probably be containable, but at great expense and would have a terrible impact upon existing immigrant communities regardless of actual infection risk.

Hell, if you listened to some people in the US you'd think the US-Mexican border was one giant hot zone. I shudder to think what would happen if Ebola turned up in France or someplace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice paper (linked in the article) but I see one thing that looks like an error. When comparing different start dates for intervention the have 3 curves on a plot. Then for "under reporting" they have another plot which looks like the same 3 curves multiplied by a constant to compensate for the under reporting.

The problem is that the intervention consists of increasing the percent of patients getting treatment from 10 percent to 70 percent. But with under reporting by 2x that would be an actual increase from 5 percent to 35 percent, which would have a much less significant effect on the total number infected - possibly not even ending the epidemic. Perhaps they assume the intervention will include solving the under reporting problem.

Otherwise a very nice report: [http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su63e0923a1.htm?s_c...](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su63e0923a1.htm?s_cid=su63e0923a1_w)

</comment><comment><USER9> Anything that exhibits exponential growth catches people off guard. Just like the exponential growth of CPU speeds that benefited society, a rapidly spreading disease could reshape our world in a relatively short period of time.

</comment><comment><USER10> That's assuming the current count is accurate which boots on the floor consistently disagree with:

[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/world/africa/23ebola.ht...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/world/africa/23ebola.html?referrer=)

[http://racingheartblog.tumblr.com](http://racingheartblog.tumblr.com)

Considering the doubling rate I would personally increase that number by at least 2-5 doublings...

<comment><USER11> >These figures take into account the fact that many cases go undetected, and estimate that there are actually 2.5 times as many as reported.

<comment><USER10> Even at 2.5, which to me is low, that 1.4x2=2.8 times another half doubling and were looking at 4.2 million. That's quite a difference.

If the under estimation is by a factor of 5 then you're looking at 44.8 million.

The exponential value is really important, especially in the early and end games ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If we don't see a large-scale military-invasion-sized response in the next week or so, I don't think they're going to stop it. Western Africa is _screwed_ , along with other any country that lacks the ability to handle the plague or close its borders.

<comment><USER13> That includes the USA, right?

<comment><USER14> If Ebola sticks with its current mode of transmission, stopping it is straightforward. Isolate patients, find their recent contacts, isolate them. Rinse[1] and repeat. It's easy to track down contacts in the western world: credit cards, post-paid mobile phones, formal employment, etc. It's hard to do so in developing world slums.

The entire developing world might be incapacitated by the Ebola epidemic. The western world, not so much.

[1] with bleach

<comment><USER15> How do you track all the contacts from a million infected people?

<comment><USER16> The NSA has already shown this to be relatively trivial. Don't think for a second the government wouldn't harness that knowledge in an emergency situation such as an Ebola outbreak within the US.

<comment><USER6> The NSA is excellent at tracking communication contacts that establish the existence of relationships (notwithstanding the potential of false positives). And this would also work for tracking someone driving around in a car running errands in specific places.

But if someone arrives in a US city unwittingly carrying Ebola and gets on a crowded bus or subway car, that's not so easy to track. Likewise if the person goes to a nightclub or other crowded place. Suppose it's a returning American who attends a baseball or football game - the NSA may well be able to ID almost everyone who attended the event, but trying to screen/isolate tens of thousands of people who might have come in contact with an infected individual wandering around a stadium is easier said than done.

<comment><USER14> Crowded places aren't currently a significant source of Ebola infections.

<comment><USER6> That could change in short order - don't you remember the Liberian guy who turned up in Lagos? If he had traveled a few days earlier he would still have been infectious but might not have been identified as such on arrival.

[http://news.yahoo.com/liberian-ebola-symptoms-dies- nigeria-o...](http://news.yahoo.com/liberian-ebola-symptoms-dies-nigeria- official-132822550.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The problem with a huge ebola epidemic is that the more people infected, the more of a chance the virus has to mutate. If the virus becomes airborne, rather than infectious via body fluids, the world has an extremely serious problem on its hands.

</comment><comment><USER18> 'Could Reach', what is this Fox news?

<comment><USER19> You are right, it is a bit sensationalized. The 1.4M-by-Jan projection from the CDC is the highest currently and also seems to be the least official. CDC has stated this as a "worst case" scenario with no intervention. It's hard to find the source material from CDC but it has been parroted since last week. I think it may have been a remark from a CDC scientist but not an official release. It's worth considering other estimates

\- WHO says 21,000 by mid January

\- NEJM says ~10,000 by mid January [http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1411100?query=fea...](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1411100?query=featured_ebola#t=articleResults)

<comment><USER20> The article links to the CDC report: [http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su63e0923a1.htm?s_c...](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su63e0923a1.htm?s_cid=su63e0923a1_w)

The CDC report and the article present both worst-case and best-case scenarios for Liberia and Sierra Leone. 1.4M is worst-case (no intervention) and "almost ended" is best-case ("If, by late December 2014, approximately 70% of patients were placed either in ETUs or home or in a community setting such that there is a reduced risk for disease transmission [...] then the epidemic in both countries would almost be ended by January 20, 2015").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> IMO, invading some African countries, searching for sick people and enforcing quarantine would be more useful than getting involved in a new war in Syria/Iraq.

<comment><USER22> That sounds like an excellent plan for containment. Send tens of thousands of troops over to Africa to corral people, bringing them in close contact, then send the troops back to their home countries, nothing could possibly go wrong.

<comment><USER23> _Send tens of thousands of troops over to Africa to corral people,_

How now?

You might want to read an article or two about the proposed Liberia mission -- and about what is actually being proposed as a role for the U.S. troops there; and why this proposal has gotten the support of the World Health Organization, among others -- rather than just put out whatever fanciful speculations that might pop into your head.</comment></comment></comment>


BlinkOn3: State of Google Blink - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1e6Aa9VRu26frCeetPerMTIeWB9ssNosFcQ4xNVLvfwg/edit#slide=id.g40fc1bcf6_00 <comment><USER2> "Blink is the rendering engine used by Chromium." [http://www.chromium.org/blink](http://www.chromium.org/blink)

</comment><comment><USER3> :/

These slides aren't so useful without someone talking about what they mean.

<comment><USER4> The keynote was recorded and will be up at some point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Slide 20: Push notifications from HTML5. Is that what their saying? That would be an interesting feat.

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone know what the Page Transition API is?

<comment><USER4> Here's the description from chromestatus: [https://www.chromestatus.com/features/5169444246519808](https://www.chromestatus.com/features/5169444246519808)

<comment><USER6> Thanks. Surprisingly, I couldn't find any info about that with a Google Search.

Here's the spec:

[https://docs.google.com/a/theillustratedlife.com/document/d/...](https://docs.google.com/a/theillustratedlife.com/document/d/17jg1RRL3RI969cLwbKBIcoGDsPwqaEdBxafGNYGwiY4/edit?pli=1)</comment></comment></comment>


C#'s Greatest Mistakes by Jon Skeet - <AUTHOR> http://oredev.org/2010/sessions/c-s-greatest-mistakes

<comment><USER2> I really wish people would include transcripts if they're going to post a 48-minute long video. There's no way I'm going to sit through something like that without at least a bullet-point text summary.

<comment><USER3> not a transcript but some notes of his wishes and complaints for the language.

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

wish: static interfaces for use in the context of generic type constraints

        static interface ISummable<T>
        {
            T operator +(T arg1, T arg2);
        }

      which then lets you write

        static T Sum<T>(IEnumerabel<T> source) where T : ISummable<T> { }

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

gripe: array covariance (which the designers copied from java even though people knew it was a mistake even when java had it):

        //the following is still valid and will happily compile and run
        string[] strings = new string[5];
        object[] objects = strings;
        objects[0] = new Exception();

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

wish: non-nullable references (ackowledges that it is a hard problem but "it would be nice to have")

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

wish/gripe: c# enums are labels for numbers which let you write things like:

                enum Color {red = 0, green = 1, blue =2}
                Color c = (Color) 5;
                Color c2 = 0.0;

he wants to see java-like enums which enforce the idea that you're dealing with a restricted set of values.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

wish: Read-only keyword for auto-properties

.net 3 made it easy to tack mutable properties onto your class

            string Name{get;set;}

Jon wants to see:

        string Name{ readonly get; }

which tells the world that not only is Name immutable externally to your class, but internally as well.

        string Name { get; private set; }

does not get you there, since the property is still fully mutable within your class.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

wish: sealing/unsealing classes

this was his self-proclaimed controversial point

he either wants to see classes sealed by default and then unsealed with an explicit 'unsealed' keyword or he wants the default class template in Visual Studio to demand that the programmer pick one or the other

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

gripe: object is bloated, cut Equals() and HashCode()

writing equals in a type hierarchy is a pain and gets messy when you drill down into the derived types

let authors "opt in" to equality

want a map of <T>? or a dictionary of <T>? you have to provide an equality comparer

"there doesn't have to be one canonical idea of equality for a type so why is it in object"?

<comment><USER4> Object is bloated? That's an odd complaint. Much like array covariance, object was pretty much directly copied from Java.

I disagree on getting rid of Equals if for no other reason it's implicitly used often (like in collections). And if there is no canonical idea of equality, that's what overriding Equals is for, and what Object.ReferenceEquals is for (return yourself to the base notion of equality when you need it).

<comment><USER5> It's a mistake in Java too. It's often convenient to simply skip implementing equals() and hashCode() because you don't plan to use an object as the key to a map. In that case, attempting to use it as a key should fail to compile, so you know you need to go back and add it.

The Comparable interface shows how it should be done.

(But on the other hand, if you were starting over it would be better to learn from Go's interfaces.)

<comment><USER6> Uh oh, I wouldn't want anyone to copy anything that has to with typesystem from Go before they tell how they are going to have typesafe containers without generics. Haskell typeclasses would be a better source of inspiration IMNSHO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I didn't watch it, but somehow I think I could have digested the information a lot quicker than watching a 48 minute video. A nice webpage or document, maybe with a few code snippets, and it would be much quicker to take in and understand, I'm sure.

<comment><USER8> Sure, but this is a conference presentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "While his day job primarily involves Java code, Jon is a huge C# enthusiast."

Nice. I wonder what he thinks of stab:

<http://code.google.com/p/stab-language/>

So far, stab is a 1-man hobby project, but the guy seems incredibly prolific. Besides the compiler, he recently started work on an Eclipse plugin as well.

<comment><USER10> Who do you expect; he's Jon Skeet the No. 1 contributor on StackOverflow

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I watched the first twenty minutes.

One interesting take-away was "languages should support good habits and make anti-patterns harder" (paraphrased roughly, of course). So it comes down to what one thinks good or bad habits are.

The video further reminded me of C#/.net's ginormous number of classes, interfaces and intermediate classes - it is standard procedure to use three different class-types to get a row of data from a database query. Thus my view would be that c#'s many clever looping and generics patterns actually are enabling tools the anti-pattern of too many classes/excessive indirection.

Thus it seems like Ruby's "Duck-typing", where you pass a single array around even when it's used slightly differently all around, is a general approach which allows you to escape this hell.</comment>


DIY atomic force microscope - <AUTHOR> http://scifabric.com/blog/2016/02/09/atomic-force-microscope.html <comment><USER2> Nanofabrication is an important area of interest for me. Currently, chips are made by a custom-made mask that then imprints the design over a wafer. (simpified version) A few companies make the masks. People interested in reducing odds of subversion of our hardware would like more control over the process. Making the mask ourselves from our design would be pretty cool. Need the tech to do it.

This seems like a step in the right direction. I'm a bit out of my depth so I can't say how far. I'm also ignoring OPC issues for now. The idea is that making at least our own 180-90nm masks could be _really_ useful.

</comment><comment><USER3> The OpenAFM project: [http://openafm.com/home-2/](http://openafm.com/home-2/)</comment>


150 Data Scientists and still no business value? - <AUTHOR> http://dsianalytics.com/business-value-from-data-science/ <comment><AUTHOR> 150 Data Scientists and still no business value? He was intrigued by the title of an articled recently published in the Harvard Business Review: Why You're Not Getting Value from Your Data Science.1 The author, an MIT professor, observed that industry data scientists with whom he works typically seem overwhelmed by the complexity and quantity of data, while business experts, on the other hand, seem underwhelmed by the tangible output of those data scientists.…</comment>


How to Lose 30 Pounds in 24 Hours: The Definitive Guide to Cutting Weight - <AUTHOR> http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/03/18/how-to-cut-weight/ <comment><USER2> Not entrepreneurial. Flagged.</comment>


Can Social Media Have a Structure That Does More Good Than Harm? - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2018/04/12/601951556/can-social-media-have-a-structure-that-does-more-good-than-harm <comment><AUTHOR> "This particular business model, surveillance and targeted advertising, is not compatible with a healthy democracy"

\-- Zeynep Tufekci</comment>


Meet Microsoft's Project Spartan, the New IE6 - <AUTHOR> https://ma.ttias.be/meet-microsofts-project-spartan-new-ie6/

<comment><USER2> Half of me is genuinely curious why Microsoft would take on the thankless task of maintaining yet another rendering engine. The other half is reliving early Trident nightmares and whimpering in a corner.</comment>


Fake Steve Jobs: Microsoft drowning in complexity - <AUTHOR> http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/06/thinking-more-about-microsoft.html <comment><USER2> Ehh.. I don't think you could even trim 50% of the features from Microsoft Word and still have a decent word application, let alone 90%.

<comment><USER3> 90% probably applies to the code, not features. I'd say, MS could have cut 10% of features and 90% of code.

<comment><USER4> Could have, would have, should have.

Let's not even bother with stuffs that we don't know.

People made prediction of how screwed up Redmond is but in reality they're still shipping software plus showing other items like Surface, Photosynth, SeaDragon, DLR.

Not that all the stuffs counted as innovation, but the fact that those new items from Redmond are ready for production should show you how MS still active in the world of software.

Then again the people, who said "MS is screwed up, they should've done this and that", aren't working for MS. How could they know how bad MS screwed up?

The other people who worked for MS and said "MS is screwed up" are less than 100 headcounts compare to 60,000 MS employees. In a company, you cannot achieve 100% level of satisfaction. If you have 1000 headcounts, you have 1000 "wants".

<comment><USER3> I can see how MS is screwed up from the pieces of their code that are open, which can be extrapolated to the pieces of code that are closed.

Unfortunately Adobe follows their path now, and even trying to beat MS in producing bloated code. Photoshop, Dreamweaver and even Acrobat Reader will soon become unmaintainable monsters. Otherwise, how can one explain that a dozen of unimpressive new features in the new version makes the package twice as bigger?

<comment><USER4> Can you come up with a name of a big product that is not bloated?

There are professionals who prefer to pay (and pay big price) and use Photoshop than Snipshot, MS Paint, Paint.NET and others.

<comment><USER5> Bloat is different from complete (or "feature-full"). Bloat means very long installation processes (Microsoft is the champion here), long startup times, slow software, huge memory requirements, crashes, etc.

When you install a typical, cheap consumer device under Windows (anything: a printer, a joystick, etc.) from the vendor's CD-ROM it usually installs megabytes of bullshit, including automatically-started craplets with shiny but useless owner-drawn GUIs, etc. This is bloat. When I plug-in some USB stuff in my OpenBSD laptop, the kernel spits a few lines on the console to tell it has recognized the device and that's all.

edit: the last releases of Acrobat Reader, huge, very slow and buggy are a very good example of bloat.

<comment><USER4> Can you come up with a product that is complete (100% can serve everybody needs in the universe) but not bloat?

Can you come up with a product that starts faster, install faster, requires less memory requirements, and don't crash as much as MS Words but also provides the same amount of features comparable to MS Words?

When I plug my iPod to my Ubuntu version 6.06, Ubuntu crashed my iPod without any informative feedback. When I dmesg-ed, I saw some hex number and some usbX where X is a number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Mmm, maybe Fake Steve Jobs is DHH. :)</comment>


AlloyUI - A Framework Built On Top Of YUI3 To Build Highly Scalable Applications - <AUTHOR> http://liferay.github.com/alloyui.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> via: [http://www.functionn.in/2012/12/alloyui-framework-built- on-t...](http://www.functionn.in/2012/12/alloyui-framework-built-on-top-of- yui3.html)

Seems like some very prominent companies using it. Most notable ones are T-Mobile, Volkswagen and Cisco.

Looks like a mature project.</comment>


Protect your public email with CAPTCHA - <AUTHOR> http://www.mailport.me

<comment><AUTHOR> You can see how the CAPTCHA verificatiton works from the senders' perspective by sending an email to email@example.com</comment>


Go Forth And Conquer - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/02/go-forth-and-conquer/

<comment><USER2> I thought this was going to be an interesting post on an implementation of Forth written in Go with shared characteristics. How disappointing.</comment>


Beginner's Guide to Blockchain Technology - <AUTHOR> http://blockstrap.com/en/a-complete-beginners-guide-to-blockchain-technology/ <comment><USER2> I found the O'Reilly book Mastering Bitcoin excellent.

It's been a while since a tech book gave me such enjoyment. In an age when when word innovation typically is used to mean "I duck-taped these two turds together" it is great to encounter real novelty in tech.

The book makes the wonder of blockchain easily approachable if you have some background in CS and takes some nice excursions to topics like elliptic crypto.

<comment><USER3> an online version lives here: [https://github.com/aantonop/bitcoinbook](https://github.com/aantonop/bitcoinbook)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It doesn't really feel "for beginners" to me. Quite the opposite, difficult (if not slightly boring) to read.

On the other the free ebook Mastering Bitcion by Andreas M. Antonopoulos, available at [http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000001802/index.ht...](http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000001802/index.html) is an absolute pleasure to read imho.

It starts by explaining the core blockchain/bitcoin concepts in humorous layman terms ("nerd money!") and slowly goes deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole while keeping things pleasant.

The chapter that explains cryptographic hashing (SHA1 and all) is a masterpiece at opening the tech to non-technical audience.

<comment><USER5> It's not free.

Edit: It is free. Thanks nnx.

<comment><USER6> How did you get it free? Or you just go the repository from github?

<comment><USER5> It's the github repo and you can also read it free online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone else having trouble reading the slides in Chrome? I'm getting "Uncaught SecurityError: Failed to read the 'localStorage' property from 'Window': Access is denied for this document." in the console. Works fine in Firefox though.

<comment><USER8> I'm also getting those errors - probably because I block third party cookies. A workaround would be to open the slideshare links and view the presentations from their site. In Incognito, so their cookies won't matter :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Privacy Badger blocks the tracking cookie of slideshare.net and linkedin.com. Therefore the slides do not work for me.

Is this content also available without privacy infringement?

<comment><USER8> You could open the slideshare links in Private/Incognito mode.

<comment><USER10> That does not prevent the browser from loading from those domains.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, but the tracking cookies will be worthless. It seems like a good trade-off to me.

<comment><USER11> You could also just switch privacy badger from block to kill cookies mode. Unless those sites are using some sort of super cookie, it should do the job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Shameless plug: If you need an API for multisig checkout Coinkite's over 1,500 startups using it and over 260,000 bitcoins transacted in the last 30 days!

Manage wallets, multisig up to m-of-15, any/all keys can be generated offline, payment processing, Pubnub notifications and much more

\- [https://coinkite.com/startups](https://coinkite.com/startups)

\- [https://docs.coinkite.com/api/index.html](https://docs.coinkite.com/api/index.html)

Ping support on IRC (#coinkite) or email@example.com if you need some Testnet coins to play.

<comment><USER13> Biggest fan of your API uptime, using since last year! Any updates as to when I will be able to chose defrag UTXO per wallet?

<comment><USER12> In the next couple months, we are adding a bunch more features in the next few weeks :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A relevant course: [https://www.coursera.org/course/bitcointech](https://www.coursera.org/course/bitcointech)

</comment><comment><USER15> Hey everyone, Johnny from Blockstrap here. I tweet from @johnnynomics.

This course was presented as a free series of workshops we did around Europe this summer - you can read more about it here - [http://blockstrap.com/en/blog/onboarding- europe/](http://blockstrap.com/en/blog/onboarding-europe/).

These slides make a lot more sense when we talk you through them - we're currently editing the video and will be sharing it on Blockstrap when finished. There's only so much structured learning we could fit in a day, so we thought this presentation was a good starting point for those new to Bitcoin and the underlying tech.

If you're interested in building blockchain applications come check out our stack at [http://blockstrap.com](http://blockstrap.com). We have an API, framework, and several open source starting points. We welcome contributions from the community and we're very open to alternatives to SlideShare.

</comment><comment><USER16> It says these guys do talks. Anyone got a video of one?

<comment><USER15> We actually had this very course recorded in both London and Amsterdam. We'll be sharing the videos on [http://blockstrap.com](http://blockstrap.com) when we've finished editing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wrote about why the Blockchain is important too

[https://blog.safello.com/index.php/2015/07/29/bitcoin- enterp...](https://blog.safello.com/index.php/2015/07/29/bitcoin- enterprise-2/)</comment>


Skynet Today – accessible and informed coverage of AI hype and panic - <AUTHOR> http://www.skynettoday.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Creator here! I and my collaborators are very excited to be doing this project, as AI hype has really gotten out of hand (even right here on HN sometimes). Yann LeCun endorsing us a few days back meant a great deal. Feel free to ask anything!

<comment><USER2> Which direction in AI is most promising towards AGI, in your opinion (regardless of the hype it receives)?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd say a hybrid of reinforcement learning, meta-learning, neural net structure evolution, and Google's sparsely gated outrageously large neural nets ([https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.06538](https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.06538)).

I have a new long essay on RL and meta-learning that addresses some of this coming out soon, keep an eye out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This looks really cool and relevant. Following.</comment>


The Educational Tyranny of the Neurotypicals - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/tyranny-neurotypicals-unschooling-education/ <comment><AUTHOR> The more I think about it, the more I agree with the basic tenets of the neurodiversity movement as presented here by MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito.

The key word in the quote below is "interface":

'Many mental "illnesses" can be "cured" by providing the appropriate interface to learning, living, or interacting...'

We will make more progress by focusing on interfaces between people than by diagnosing and separating all the so-called "not normal" ones.

Disclosure: I'm a former chess prodigy with garden variety anxiety, deeply sensitive to sounds and textures, could easily be labeled and placed on the "spectrum" if I chose, which I don't. I've learned how to connect in new ways thanks to proper interfaces and support and I believe all of us have this capability.

<comment><USER2> > We will make more progress by focusing on interfaces between people than by > diagnosing and separating all the so-called "not normal" ones.

Diagnosing isn't about separating, it's about identifying needs and likely- useful approaches, including what you describe as "interfaces".

(It's true that for some diagnoses, separation is sometimes an intervention, but that's not the _general_ purpose.)</comment></comment>


The Odin Project – Empowering Aspiring Developers to Learn Together - <AUTHOR> http://www.theodinproject.com/

<comment><USER2> Very interesting. I wonder if this project will then make it easier for students to get a job or freelance gig.</comment>


5 steps to speed up your image heavy website - <AUTHOR> https://codeburst.io/5-steps-to-speed-up-your-image-heavy-website-65c874a86966 <comment><USER2> I tried it with my website. It's really a very good tool but the pricing seems a little on the higher side. For example for around 600GB of bandwidth, Cloudfront cost is around $100. But with your tool, the cost would be around $300.</comment>