Data Structures Reference - <AUTHOR> https://www.interviewcake.com/data-structures-reference <comment><USER2> I recently got double slammed with 2 graph questions during an interview after having navigated for years without getting a graph question. It's wholly irrelevant to my day-to-day work but I do hobby game development sometimes which involves more needs for graphing. Still, I can't do much of anything with a graph on a whiteboard. Puzzled as to why it's so important to some companies to grill on this stuff, expecting it to be top-of-mind, even for front end roles.

<comment><USER3> When faced with questions that have answers I could obviously discern by writing and running two lines of code, I willfully shrug, answer by intuition, hoping that's the trap for the wrong answer, and wait for a facial expression.

Today I was asked a question about inheritance and references within a constructor, in which the answer was an either/or for the parent or child class.

I threw up my hands and deliberately said " _I dunno parent, no wait! Child!_ " because honestly who cares, when you can figure something like that out without even googling for it.

A question like that is like asking someone what might they expect a _Hello World!_ program to print.

Waste my time, and I waste yours right back. I could care less what you think about me.

<comment><USER4> I don't really agree with these kinds of questions, but to be honest I find your response to be pretty childish. In my opinion it would be better to be honest and say you don't really know, but that you believe you could quickly find out. But your response indicates that you have the potential to be passive aggressive and uncooperative when presented with a question you disagree with.

Now from the interviewer's perspective, they don't know you're absolutely fed up with the culture of tech interviews. They can't see the full interiority of your thoughts. So they can't know why you're reacting like this, all they can see is your behavior. Keep in mind that you're most likely punishing an interviewer who has either been given a mandate for these questions or who doesn't know any better. From your perspective this could be a teachable moment or a way to showcase your thinking.

Even though that might have been a poor question to ask, doing what you did doesn't demonstrate that your time is important. It demonstrates you might have problems being professional and communicating effectively. It signals that you _think_ your time is so important that you're willing to potentially burn an interview to spite someone asking you a question you feel is beneath you.

It's not a good look. Don't give people reasons to write you off.

<comment><USER3> Sympathy for the interviewer. Well guess what, you're not going to find much luck pulling this yarn.

Some interviewers get the fist. And that's just the way it goes.

If I'm supposed to play toady to this dog and pony show we're trying put on together, don't step in front of me with some condescending question, that we both know is cherry-picked trivia. You design questions to stump people, knock them off balance, introduce a choke, and project a facade of superiority, when we both know that's not fair play, and you expect something other than contempt?

I'm not reciting all the state capitals, every U.S. holiday on the calendar, and every county in the state of California for you. Try your luck with the next applicant.

You can't expect me to roll over as subordinate, when I'm looking right at you, and you and I both know that the canned question you just asked is total bullshit. Sorry, now I know you're a follower, not a leader, and I won't be led by you. Interview over.

And besides, do you really believe that passive aggression, as a personality trait, isn't a possibility, simply because it wasn't on display during that particular interview. Most smart people _do_ have a passive aggressive mean streak, because it's a tactic, not a personality trait. It's in everyone's tool kit, and smart people use it in anger. If it gets used on you, especially when everyone in the room was trying to make a good first impression, maybe you did something to provoke that.

<comment><USER4> So I can tell you're pretty upset about being treated this way, and I can sympathize with the frustration. But maybe my point will be better received if I clarify it to make it more concise. In essence:

1\. You are responding to these kinds of interviews as though the interviewers are malicious, self-aware of their biases and intentionally trying to personally offend you. But it's not personal and not all interviewers are trying to conspire like this. Consider that what you're feeling and perceiving may not be intended by the interviewers.

2\. As a corollary, your relationship and responses to these interviewers are retributional and deconstructive instead of educational and constructive. You're writing off companies because their interviewers offend your sensibilities. But just as interviewers don't have enough information to know why you're reacting the way you are, you don't know if they're trying to be as demeaning as you feel they're being.

In other words, not all companies with suboptimal interviewing methods are shitty companies. Probably most are not! Given that, the way you're reacting isn't just a sensitivity to personal offense, it's _getting in your own way professionally._

<comment><USER5> It's on the person holding all the cards to display their power judiciously. Something designed to provoke undue stress is either glib or provocative, by default.

Don't forget, in this card game, you may be the dealer and the asymetric equation may be tipped in your favor, but play fair or some of the players might surprise you by throwing the game.

As "The Boss" you better not only know more, but also consider how put that on display. If you're actually in possession of gifted, multi-faceted intelligence, you won't need to read minds, so much as place yourselves in the shoes of the candidate, as you probe for awareness of facts, and exposure to subject matter.

It's often enough, to understand the conceptual interplay of known processes, before worrying about which color Teletubbie was the "funny" one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Founder of Interview Cake here. Thanks for the post!

Down to chat about coding interviews and answer questions here!

<comment><USER7> Hi. I got an interview question a little while ago that the interviewer said "was not a datasteuctures/algorithm question" because it was too specific. I call bullshit, but I don't actually know what the algorithm would be called.

Problem:

A tree of resources that you can get granted access rights to. When you get access to a node in the tree, you inherit rights to children transitivley. You can also have rights explicitly blocked. The ordering is important. An example, you start of as head of IT and have all the IT stuff granted, but explicitly no access to the IT security department. Then you make CEO and are granted right to everything, so that should overrule your previous restriction for the IT security department.

<comment><USER6> Hmmm. Can't get in your interviewer's head, but here's my guess: this might be one of those questions where the bulk of the discussion is supposed to be about weighing tradeoffs of different choices for the data model.

For example: how do you store the explicit blocks? More specifically, how do you articulate that head of IT is blocked from this subtree, but the CEO isn't? Some options:

\- store the block as pairwise (individual, subtree)

\- same idea, but instead of blocks you store explicit /allowances/ (and allow a tree node to have a flag set of "ignore the tree-based permission system here, and just lock everyone out who doesn't have an explicit permission")

\- instead of blocking individuals, you could add an abstraction layer, e.g. user_groups, and assign permissions to /groups/.. You could also add an abstraction layer on top of the treenodes themselves (object_permission_groups?). Different tradeoffs with these options.

Again, hard to know exactly where your interviewer was trying to steer the conversation. But that'd be my guess!

<comment><USER8> The more I think about it, the less I understand why you'd ever need to explicitly block permissions. Permission groups are a good idea, but since the interviewer said it's not a data structure or algorithm question, I think it's trying to elicit problem analysis from the interviewee. What are the use-cases for blocking permissions? Why can't you just refactor the tree so that all assignments are allow? Using a mix of allow and deny is convoluted.

It seems like a trick question designed to see if the candidate is willing to question assumptions.

<comment><USER9> It seems pretty similar to how aws access controls work. By default everything is disallowed. Then you can gain more permissions explicitly. But an explicity deny overrides all explicit allows

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Hashtable: like an array but instead of an index you can set arbitrary keys for each value."

This sounds like a gross over simplification of what a Hashtable really is underneath the covers.

Any candidate that shows up with that definition better be ready to dive in on what it really is and when you'd want to use it.

<comment> cup-of-tea That doesn't even describe a hash table, it describes an associative array, or map. A hash table as one way to implement that, the other main one being self- balancing binary trees.

<comment><USER11> Or more broadly, self-balancing trees (the best performing balanced tree, the B-tree, is not generally a binary tree). And then there is the skip list.

<comment> cup-of-tea Yes, quite right. Is a B-tree worth it when the structure is fully in memory, though? I would say that when talking about maps people are thinking of in memory structures.

<comment><USER11> It absolutely is! You get significantly better cache utilization with a B-tree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It just amazes me that employers ask complicated CS-type questions for ordinary programming jobs. I've been out of the game for 20 years, and only did a few interviews anyway (as the interviewer), so what would I know! But FWIW, here's the kind of question I'd ask.

"I'm going to write a few lines of code on the whiteboard, tell me what you think of them." The code would be something like this:

      If f(a,b) then
        X=6
      Elseif flag1 then
        X=8
      Endif

My bet is, people would fall into one of three camps.

(1) The Bemused :-)

These people would have no idea what to say. That would be fine for a new developer, I'd just prod them in the right direction. For example, "what do you think about inline constants?" But if an experienced developer had nothing to say about that code, that would be a big red flag for me.

(2) The Defiant!

These folk would say, "Gee that looks like very old code, I'm really more interested in functional languages, do you guys do any Haskell?" This would also be a big red flag. First, he's saying that he has no interest in my priorities as the interviewer, he'll just ignore my questions and substitute his own. Second, he shows that he's _not_ really interested in code _as such_. It's like a guy who says he likes cars, you take him around the corner and show him your one-off Porsche EVO hybrid, and he says "Wow, an infinity pool! What did that cost?" Fail.

(3) What I'd Expect

Here's what I'd expect from an experienced developer, off the top of his/her head:

"Ok, I see in-line constants, and short variable and function names. Those are often undesirable, I can talk about that more if you like.

But the more interesting thing, is that X is only set if one of the two conditions is true. If neither condition is true, X does not get set to anything.

That might be a bug: the programmer meant to initialise X before the first test, but forgot. Or perhaps X is initialised much higher up. But if that was the case, I'd like to refactor the code to bring that initialisation closer to the code on the whiteboard; and/or rename X to something less likely to be used by mistake in the middle; or at least, add a comment saying "X initialised above". Or you could just add an else branch to the code on the whiteboard, to ensure that X gets set even when both conditions are false.

Another slight possibility is that when the first condition is false, the second condition is necessarily true, and the developer has written in the second condition as a form of comment. But in that case, I'd rather make it more explicit, by changing "Elseif flag1 then", to "Else /* flag1 must be true */"; or even asserting that, just to be sure.

Also, if the code in question is really complex, or just messy from years of maintenance, there might still be cases where X does not get set at all. In that case you could initialise it to an impossible value, say NULL, right at the start, then assert not null at the end. Or you could even re-write the code in truth table style, which I can talk about more if you'd like."

Me: "The truth table approach sounds good. How would you do that? What kind of data structures would you use?"

And so on.

Does everyone really use CS-type questions these days? Does anyone take the different approach displayed above?

<comment><USER13> I have to agree with Veedrac and idontpost.

My first thought is, "This looks like a snippet of code completely made up or taken out of context and then anonymized by renaming variables. I have no idea what it's supposed to do, I have no idea why I'm looking at it, and I have no fucking idea what the interviewer wants form me, and I don't play guess-the- rules type of games." If this were real code, I'd have context. Not just a snippet. I'd see the things I don't see in the snippet, and I'd know why I'm looking at it and what I'm looking for. In real work, there is always a motivation for everything you do. In this case, there is none. You might as well show a sequence of bits. "What do you think of these bits?"

So by your prejudice, you'd probably categorize me in the first camp. Congrats, you probably turned down someone who's been coding for 20 years. Then again, if this really is the kind of line of business code you regularly deal with, maybe it's for the (my) best.

This is a pattern I see all the time. Interviewers come up with their games with their arbitrary rules and a bunch of prejudice about how a good or bad candidate should react. They think they came up with something clever, they always do. They have no idea.

I get the impression that good people get regularly turned down because they didn't guess the rules of the game right, or they don't even play because they got an offer at some place that doesn't play these silly games. Then there is so much complaining about talent shortage, and complaining about terrible interview practices, and complaining about having to deal with a stack of 1000 job applications.

<comment><USER12> I'm truly bemused by your response.

First, if you truly believe that the code I showed is "a snippet of code completely made up or taken out of context and then anonymized by renaming variables", I can only say that I don't believe you've ever worked on large codebases. There are millions of lines of code, in hundreds of thousands of application, in dozens of different languages, all over the world, precisely like the snipped I showed. If you've been coding for 20 years, as you say you have, and haven't seen snippets like that on a thousand occasions, you must have worked in very strange environments. If you really want me to, I'll spend 5 minutes and give you multiple links to exactly similar snippets in various large open source projects.

Second, I'm mystified by your comments regarding my trivially simple code question. that "Interviewers come up with their games with their arbitrary rules and a bunch of prejudice about how a good or bad candidate should react".

Wut? Let's make the question even simpler:

        X := Y / Z

Would you not expect an applicant to say, "What if Z is zero?" ? Would you actually expect the candidate to say - quoting you:

"This looks like a snippet of code completely made up or taken out of context and then anonymized by renaming variables. I have no idea what it's supposed to do, I have no idea why I'm looking at it, and I have no fucking idea what you want from me, and I don't play guess-the-rules type of games."

Are you seriously telling me that you'd hire a candidate who said that? Over one who said, "What if Z is zero?" ?

I think one of us is missing something...

<comment><USER13> Once again you posted a snippet without context or meaning. Once again it's like "what do you think of these bits?" Except that you didn't even ask a question. You just posted something that is presumably code.

So it's hard to engage meaningfully. Give me motivation. Tell me what I'm doing or why I'm looking at this code in the first place. Show me the context and maybe I will see whether I should care about Z possibly being zero or not. Tell me what the language is or how it handles divide by zero (does it have exceptions?) and I might figure out that we don't give a fuck about divide by zero because it's handled elsewhere or not at all relevant to this snippet. I regularly write divisions without zero check because I know the divisor is a positive compile time constant. Here, I just see a snippet out of context; again my thought is "what the hell does this guy want from me?" Show me real code with real context and a real purpose so we can talk real talk.

What's wrong with my x /= z;? Nothing, it's doing the perspective divide just right. And you don't go about checking for divide by zero because I've already clipped my primitives. There's nothing wrong with the names either.

Sure the snippet you posted could be a snippet from some real codebase but without context it is nothing. What do you think of 100101010100000100010001000110? Sorry, wrong answer! Next guy please. That's also real binary from a real file and it's easy to figure out what it says but hard to say what I want from you. Try it!

> I can only say that I don't believe you've ever worked on large codebases.

I don't suppose the operating systems and web browsers I've worked on are the largest of them all but damn. You can keep your religion though.

<comment><USER12> > it's hard to engage meaningfully

There we agree!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well, both types of trees mentioned in the article are just subtypes of graph, which has numerous other subtypes.

I love this sentence from the technical docs of the NetworkX library, for pure surrealism: A lobster is a tree that reduces to a caterpillar when pruning all leaves.

<comment><USER15> By that logic, lists are just trees with one child per node. Except graphs are just 2d lists if you define them via an adjacency matrix. So we've come full circle.

But we both know they are not very much alike in practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This could benefit greatly from specifying what operations are available for each structure.

</comment><comment><USER17> Damn. Too many javascripts on this page, including Facebook's. I guess I'll pass.

</comment><comment><USER18> Off topic. I really got turned off by the "firstname.lastname@example.com" placeholder in the signup form at the bottom of the page. So I decided not to sign up.

Email != Gmail. It's one of the last decentralized systems holding up. Please don't stick one more dagger into it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Good one but this is even more comprehensive: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17427190](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17427190)</comment>


Tell HN: Phishing Scheme for Cracked Passwords - <AUTHOR> I just received an email whose subject was a password I used to use several years ago and had an attached PDF with the password as the filename. I assume they got the password from the adobe breach since I used it for my password there until it was disclosed that there was a security breach.
Since that breach was in 2013 and my relatively short (8 chars) but random password was just emailed to me in plaintext, I'm wondering if there has been a long-term effort to crack everything, and if this matters much. I'm sure most assumed this is what was happening. If it took six years to crack my password or it was cracked earlier and just became available to someone, I don't know.
I'm posting this here because I don't follow this sort of thing closely, I stopped using this password in 2013, and I'm just curious if the possibility of some possibly harder-to-crack passwords now becoming exposed (if that's actually what is happening here) has any significance.
It could be someone cracked my password years ago, but the plain text only became available to some would-be extortionist recently.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I never use a password, but I do use a passphrase like something similar to the one used in XKCD 936[0]. There's a few open source diceware[1] generators on Github that you should look at.

[0] [https://www.xkcd.com/936/](https://www.xkcd.com/936/)

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diceware](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diceware)</comment>


How to make a winning pitch deck - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/how-to-make-a-winning-pitch-deck-slide-by-slide-guide-on-how-to-make-your-pitch-deck-what-vcs-want-6bb19c945916 <comment><USER2> Yet another unclosable pop-up window.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean? I didn't see any popup, that's just medium... what do you see?</comment></comment>


Scientists Claim to Have Solved the Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/zmkyp8/scientists-claim-to-have-solved-the-mystery-of-the-bermuda-triangle <comment><USER2> It seems kind of buried at the bottom of this article that, in fact, there aren't an unusually large number of disappearances of planes or ships in the region in question, compared to the traffic across it. It's easy to solve a mystery when it doesn't actually exist.</comment>


Sam Altman on Angel Investing - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-4QqHHE16s <comment><AUTHOR> I just randomly stumbled again upon this video from 2018 (from Startup Investor School), densely packed and interesting for angels as well as founders.

and yet it has less than 23k views (!)</comment>


Show HN: A crime map using open data and user reported data - <AUTHOR> http://snitches.co/san-francisco-oakland.html

<comment><USER2> Very cool, but I can only see San Francisco. I want other places.

Also, I tried to log in with Google, but I get a message saying that this email is already registered. It was probably me, as I remember registering at this website in the past, but why can't I log in?</comment>


Opioid crisis: The letter that started it all - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40136881 <comment><AUTHOR> The original letter is pretty clear that it's talking about short term (acute) pain in hospital settings.

It's surprising to see this being used to support long term use, for long term (chronic) pain, outside hospital settings, but that's what the VA did with their "pain is the 5th vital sign" campaign.</comment>


Feds Arrest Alleged Top Silk Road Drug Seller - <AUTHOR> https://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/10/feds-arrest-alleged-top-silk-road-drug-seller/

<comment><USER2> So the top seller on SR sold 2kg of coke, 0,5kg of heroin and 100g of meth in nearly half a year? You can imagine all the Tony Montanas of this world lifting their eyes up from their coffers each filled with 100 times that amount of drugs, before erupting with maniacal laughter and proceeding to bribe more politicians into perpetuating the digital arm of this war.

<comment><USER3> 2 kg cocaine = 2000 grams x 100$/gram = 200,000$

500 grams heroin x 200$/gram = 100,000$

100 grams meth x 200$/gram = 20,000$

320,000$ revenue in 5 months is not bad, considering that dealers of hard drugs at least double up on their investment. I can also think of vendors on SR that were moving a lot more weight than this, just based on their public feedback. Plus keep in mind that some of the largest vendors were not publicly listed.

Over 1 1/2 years ago, the vendor tony76 made off with over 100,000$ in a single week in one of the largest SR scams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _" According to the government, NOD had 1,400 reviews for individual sales/purchases of small amounts of drugs, including: 2,269.5 grams of cocaine, 593 grams of heroin and 105 grams of meth."_

I may be naive, but is 2 kilos of cocaine really a "small amount of drugs"? Isn't that an amount that a drug dealer would buy, as opposed to a user?

According to this reference[1], a kilo of cocaine generally costs anywhere from $12,000 to $35,000.

[1] [http://www.sethson.com/how-much-does-a-gram-of-cocaine- cost-...](http://www.sethson.com/how-much-does-a-gram-of-cocaine-cost-on-the- street)

<comment><USER5> That is the cumulative amounts that he sold I believe, which means that through 1,400 reviews the actual amount per sale is quite small (as they note, individual amounts per sale not bulk sales).

If you're talking about the course of a year or two of sales, sales in the 10s and even 100s of thousands isn't all that much if you consider the profit margin. What kind of volume do you think an eBay or Amazon seller does in a year to make $100k?

<comment><USER6>
        The complaint notes that these amounts don't count sales
        going back more than five months prior to the investigation

The volume estimated is only for a 5 month period, not the defendants' entire careers. Drug dealers have much higher margins than eBay sellers, according to one source earning a 200% markup (66% profit margin) splitting up kilos of cocaine [1]

[1] [http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-08-13/soon-be- disr...](http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-08-13/soon-be-disrupted- industry-enjoys-margins-multiples-cocaine-dealers)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looking at the reddit thread [0] referenced in the article I am really suprised about how openly those redditors are talking about illegal drug purchases (incl. personal experiences, etc). Aren't they worried that they might be investigated?

[0] [http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/1b6hmh/nod/](http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/1b6hmh/nod/)

<comment><USER8> I'm not. Police don't usually go after small time users. Any good city cop can find a trap house and pinpoint the crack heads going in and out. It's a waste of resources to arrest them though, they want the distributors.

BUT I also never thought they would bust SR dealers...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is anyone still convinced that prohibition is the best way to reduce drug abuse?

<comment><USER10> Reducing drug abuse was once the goal, but not anymore. It's all about punishing people now.

<comment><USER11> >It's all about punishing people now.

I'll quibble: It is all about controlling people. Punishment is one, of many, forms of control used in modern society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Who would have guessed that sending eachother drug through the mail would get you caught by law enforcement.

Great way to get people back on the street, selling face to face, maybe get stabbed a litte. Much safer.

<comment><USER13> > Who would have guessed that sending eachother drug through the mail would > get you caught by law enforcement.

Illegal drug dealing is ... illegal.But you did not know that did you...

<comment><USER14> Drugs are bad, because drugs are bad, m'kay?

<comment><USER15> No drugs are bad because they're addictive and have negative health effects.

<comment><USER16> Please, can you post me an article about the addicitive nature, and the negative health effect of LSD ?

<comment><USER15> Point taken.

BTW, I did find this[1] graph very interesting.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Drug_danger_and_dependenc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Drug_danger_and_dependence.svg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Article shows a "Thor Data Center" in Iceland. This looked awfully familiar and it turned out to be owned by Advania: [http://www.advania.com/datacentres](http://www.advania.com/datacentres)

Found via: [http://www.datacentermap.com/iceland/reykjavik/thor-data- cen...](http://www.datacentermap.com/iceland/reykjavik/thor-data-center.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> Seems a misconfiguration error, which occurred in May, revealed that one of the dedicated servers used to run SR was owned by GigaTux.

[http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/10177/anyone-use- gigatux](http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/10177/anyone-use-gigatux)

</comment><comment><USER19> What this doesn't say, is how they tracked the guy after the intercept. My guess is that they somehow cracked more of the security than we have been lead to believe...

<comment><USER20> Read the complaint PDF. Basically when they started finding stuff in the mail, they noticed most packages looked pretty similar. Went down to the post office where some of them were being shipped from, told them to keep an eye out for similar packages. Didn't take them long to track down a couple of people who were posting them, etc, etc.

Even if the buyer had been strongarmed by the feds into cooperating for a deal, I don't think they'd have much useful information to catch the seller with, apart from an account that the seller trusted that they could use to order more packages, and they would have used his testimony to link the activities of Sadler/White to the NOD account.

edit: yeah, read the whole thing. it's actually pretty simple policework.

<comment><USER19> I guess that means they found several packages from this one guy, which means the intercept rate is above 0.1% (I guess not too hard to sniff drugs in the mail) - that shows that buying is not a very safe activity (especially regularly!). I find the whole thing fascinating, learning lots about security and police etc. Where's the link to the complaint PDF?

<comment><USER18> [http://cryptome.org/2013/10/sadler-white- complaint.pdf](http://cryptome.org/2013/10/sadler-white-complaint.pdf)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Windows laptop with Apple-like hardware? - <AUTHOR>

My dad loves the hardware on my Macbook Pro but continues to be a hardcore Windows person. Any suggestion on what new laptop he should get? <comment><USER2> You would need to get him a Macbook Pro, you can run Windows on a Macbook Pro using Bootcamp or install it on a VM using one of the many virtualization clients that have some very nice optional integration abilities into OS X.

If he really likes the Macbook Pro, it is best to get him a Macbook Pro, he might become a hybrid fan. Either way with him having a Mac and running OS X he will be able to increase his knowledge base by adding experience overtime with OS X and maybe adding Linux later down the line.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've thought about this. Does anyone have experience running Windows as the primary OS on a Mac?

<comment><USER3> Yes, I mostly run Win8.1 on a rMBP via bootcamp, and have no problems with it (took me a few hours to setup, you'll need a 16GB USB stick and a non-upgrade Windows 8 key to do it). The trackpad support is not as good as in OS X, but still infinitely better than any trackpad I've used on a pure Windows machine.

It is definitely better than my previous Carbon X1. High res is beautiful (though there are many Windows options for that these days).

<comment><USER4> > The trackpad support is not as good as in OS X, but still infinitely better > than any trackpad I've used on a pure Windows machine.

Does it support precise scrolling (per-pixel instead of per-line?) The trackpads in Windows 8 ultrabooks support this, but I've heard that the Windows drivers for the MBP trackpad don't.

<comment><USER3> No, but the accompanying jitter would not be very usable for what I do (coding mostly). The ultrabook trackpads seem to have more features, just none of them done very well :(

Edit:

There are things you can do to tune scrolling that are quite nice; see [http://waded.org/2013/01/15/perfecting-trackpad-scrolling- in...](http://waded.org/2013/01/15/perfecting-trackpad-scrolling-in- windows-8-on-a-macbook-air/)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, you're right about that. My trackpad has a bunch of features that are so useless, I just leave them switched off. The scrolling is nice though. I've always wondered if I could switch to an MBP for Windows stuff, but if I did, I'd need to keep precise/inertial scrolling. Maybe those Trackpad++ drivers would be best for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What hardware (specifically) is your dad enamored with? Just the generally durable build quality (aluminum frame, etc)? the big trackpad? Chiclet keys?

I've had luck with some Asus models that are clearly aping Apple's design style. They aren't quite up to the level of a MBP in terms of build quality but they can cost half as much for similar specs.

I picked one up this summer with an i7, 16GB RAM, nVidia GTX 760M, and a 1920x1080 display. Strong points are the aluminum frame, Apple-like multitouch trackpad, backlit chiclet keyboard, and fairly high specs for a $1k laptop.

Weaknesses compared to a MBP are that the bottom of the laptop is not aluminum (but does offer easy access to RAM slots and battery), the display is inferior to Apple's in terms of viewing angles, and the aluminum top is fairly thin so you can see it dimple slightly if you push on it with a decent amount of force.

For my uses, I was fine with sacrificing a slight amount of durability and viewing angle to get that level of components for under a grand but your dad may or may not find it worth the sacrifice. They had updated the model last time I was at Microcenter but still keep that $900-1000 price range, just an updated CPU and GPU as far as I can tell.

edit: this is the sort of thing I'm talking about - [http://www.microcenter.com/product/438186/N551JK- MH71_156_La...](http://www.microcenter.com/product/438186/N551JK- MH71_156_Laptop_Computer_-_Gray_Aluminum)

Also, I forgot to mention, the other "con" is it comes with a HDD instead of a SSD. For the things I do on this laptop, it was a sacrifice I was willing to make and I believe I can add one later if I so choose. Your results may vary and the list of things I considered small "cons" might be things your dad really doesn't want to do without and may be willing to pay another $1500 for in a MBP.

<comment><USER6> The ASUS Zenbook line is probably the closest thing to Apple hardware you can get on the windows side of things. They have fairly powerful ultrabooks with similar style/form factor to Macs that you can get with SSDs and dedicated graphics.

I personally have a UX32VD that came with Windows 8 that I run linux on. The machine is primarily aluminum, and is slightly thicker and heavier than a Macbook air. It has backlit chiclet style keys with an almost identical to Macbook layour, and a single button, multi-touch trackpad. It has a 1080p IPS screen in a 13" form factor, which means pixel density and colors are pretty good. The build quality is not as high as Apple, but its better than most PC manufacturers and I have been happy with the machine. I bought it a couple years ago, and I was able to get an i7 processor, a 256GB SSD, 12GB RAM, and dedicated nVidia graphics for ~$1300. The one con is battery life. I get about 4 hours, but this could probably be improved with a less intensive newer generation processor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Razer Blade 2104 [http://www.amazon.com/Razer-Blade-Touchscreen-Gaming- Laptop/...](http://www.amazon.com/Razer-Blade-Touchscreen-Gaming- Laptop/dp/B00J06F4T2)

It's basically a macbook but PC/Win + Black

<comment><USER8> Q) what's worse than compromise-ridden, consumer-hostile design (reflective screens, no splash guards, fixed batteries, non-upgradable drives and RAM, etc. etc.?).

A) third-party clones of same

... assuming that it is, as you say, basically a Macbook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm running a 2014 15" MBP as a Windows machine with bootcamp. It's not bad, but would not have been my first choice (Company issued) My personal beef is the keyboard layout sucks (for a Windows guy). Other than that it's a perfectly capable Windows machine.

Having said that, my first choice is the Dell XPS 15 ([http://www.dell.com/au/p/xps-15-9530/pd](http://www.dell.com/au/p/xps-15-9530/pd))

Otherwise the Lenovo Carbon or Yoga Pro 2/3 are also great depending on what you're looking for.

</comment><comment><USER10> You can run Windows on Apple hardware natively.

[https://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/](https://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Lenovo ThinkPad carbon is more like the MacBook Air but otherwise see [http://www.notebookcheck.net/Notebookcheck-s- Top-10-Ultraboo...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Notebookcheck-s- Top-10-Ultrabooks.91067.0.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> My family is no stranger to Lenovos. It's our go-to, but thanks for that link.

<comment><USER11> OK! You could also look at the 15.6in HP Envy range. They look rather like Mac laptops (and have very similar keyboards), feel solid, and are cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Look at a Surface Pro 3. And definitely not a Macbook Pro like people are recommending -- for a variety of reasons: driver quality, needless frustration with Apple software, etc etc.

</comment><comment><USER8> Question for those on here loving the Apple trackpads for coding: what exactly are you doing, as a coder, that requires a nice trackpad? I hardly use mine. I lost a bunch of trackpad functionality when switching from Linux to FreeBSD, and hardly miss it at all (mostly when in Firefox).

</comment><comment><USER8> Depends what he loves about the Apple hardware. Can you tell us what features he particularly likes?

<comment><AUTHOR> The trackpad and the keyboard. But I think the overall sturdiness is what impresses him.

<comment><USER8> Suggest he try one of the better Lenovo ThinkPad models (maybe an L or W?).

In my experience the keyboard is better, the trackpad comparable, and the anti-reflective screen is much better for almost all purposes in almost all circumstances.

Anecdotal experience suggests they're more robust than Apple hardware too. A colleague killed her MacBook Air with a spilled drink; my L520 has a splash- proof keyboard that has resisted a few good spills.

Likewise, I've cracked the glass on a MacBook Pro (runs right to the edge of the screen; easy to close on a plug or cable) but never so much as scratched the screen on any of my ThinkPads (I've owned a few).

Oh, and the ThinkPad is designed to be user-serviceable too; I wore out the space bar on my L520 and replaced it courtesy a site that sells individual keys for that purpose.

<comment><USER13> I've got to say, the liquid-catch-drain system Lenovo uses is pretty damned handy. It's one of those features you don't use very often (hopefully), but it's fantastic when you do need it.

<comment><USER8> From what I saw when my colleague spilled a drink on a MacBook Air, Apple has a similar system. It's just that the Apple design uses the motherboard, which must be replaced afterwards ;)

<comment><USER13> Hah, yup, definitely lost a Macbook Pro to that (luckily it was only a 13"). I was 4 days away from a big demo with a client, so I turned it off, walked across the street and bought another one, went home and pulled the hard drive out of the coffee-enhanced one, and carried on.

In the aftermath, Apple wanted somewhere around $700 to fix it (motherboard, keyboard, trackpad). I ended up giving it to my very-handy-and-can't-see-any- hardware-die uncle, who found a company that specializes in repairing liquid soaked equipment. Only ended up costing him about $200 to fix it, but many hours of research and re-assembly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Samsung Series 9. I have one and it's probably the closest thing to Apple that you will get.

</comment><comment><USER15> take look at Asus Zenbook series [http://www.asus.com/zenbook/](http://www.asus.com/zenbook/)

</comment><comment><USER16> How about a surface pro 3?</comment>


Anti-Portfolio of Bessemer Venture Partners - <AUTHOR> https://www.bvp.com/portfolio/antiportfolio <comment><USER2> David Cowan, Bessemer Venture Partners, writes infreqently at [http://whohastimeforthis.blogspot.com/](http://whohastimeforthis.blogspot.com/) , but it's always a good read and in a voice consistent with Bessemer maintaining an anti-portfolio.

</comment><comment><USER3> it's very strange how risk-averse they seem, don't they (well, their customers) get tax breaks for taking risks? Is that even legal to invest in "Dick's Sporting Goods" with detaxed money?

<comment><USER4> A VC's job is not to take every risk they can find, it's to find the risks worth taking. I see plenty of risks in the more recent years here:

[http://www.bvp.com/portfolio](http://www.bvp.com/portfolio)</comment></comment>


Create a simple reactive store for Angular 2 - <AUTHOR> https://angularclass.com/blog/create-a-simple-reactive-store-for-angular-2/ <comment><AUTHOR> wrote a post about created a simple but powerful reactive store for your angular 2 applications using RxJs</comment>


Jeopardy The IBM Challenge Day 1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLdkJpAtt1I

<comment><AUTHOR> For someone like me who's not really into chess nor Jeopardy, I find this much more exciting than Deep Thought's matches. Here, without ever really thinking about strategies for Jeopardy before, I can easily spot Watson's. Eg. it tried to "kill off" Daily Doubles early on by picking bottom up (and boy did it got lucky) so the humans won't have a chance to double up later to re-coupe or take a huge lead. After it found the Daily Double, it keeps picking low value tiles. I think the strategy is that if time runs out (time can run out for a round back when I was watching the game like 10 years ago), high value tiles which are more dangerous to Watson then lower value ones may be skipped.

</comment><comment><USER2> part 1 is mostly intro and no play, part 2 for the impatient: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFe2pJETNuw>

<comment><AUTHOR> The link to part 2 is on the screen, hence I didn't post it. Also, the intro is good for those who don't quite know how Watson "works".</comment></comment>


Why a statement by the banking authority might make Germany the crypto valley - <AUTHOR> https://blog.neufund.org/german-financial-supervisory-authority-bafin-on-icos-and-cryptocurrencies-2fc9bfa3f85b <comment><USER2> Here is the link to the original statement of the BaFin: [https://www.bafin.de/SharedDocs/Veroeffentlichungen/EN/Facha...](https://www.bafin.de/SharedDocs/Veroeffentlichungen/EN/Fachartikel/2017/fa_bj_1711_ICO_en.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> So the difference is as follows:

\- USA: crypto tokens are securities (under US law)

\- Germany: crypto tokens are units of account (Kreditwesengesetz)

The question is whether "units of account" are like normal food sold in supermarkets or financial instruments.

<comment><USER4> Are units of account, and might fall in further categories:

> _Based on the specific formulation of the contract for each ICO, BaFin > decides on a case-by-case basis whether the offeror is required to obtain > authorisation pursuant to the German Banking Act (Kreditwesengesetz – KWG), > Investment Code (Kapitalanlagegesetzbuch – KAGB), Payment Services > Supervision Act (Zahlungsdiensteaufsichtsgesetz – ZAG) or Insurance > Supervision Act (Versicherungsaufsichtsgesetz – VAG) and whether they must > fulfil prospectus requirements._

So your ICO might require further paperwork if it looks to much like an investment vehicle, an insurance policy, ...

Looking at the German text in comparison "unit of account" is translated from Rechnungseinheiten. Those are a type of financial instrument that contains private or artifical currencies and are treated similarly to holdings of foreign money. Offering them to the public or commercial trade in them requires permission (as the article already notes).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love the spirit of Berlin and German regulators

</comment><comment><USER6> That was unexpected...</comment>


Ask HN: Audiobooks for Learning C++ - <AUTHOR> Any recommendations for quality books on C++, specifically in audiobook format?
Target audience being: no formal CS education, 3+ years of programming exp w/ object-oriented languages (javascript, python), also new to C/C++ and compiled languages.
Related: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/95876/audiobooks-for-programmers <comment><USER2> I doubt that audiobooks is a good idea to learn how to program , specially C++ which is pretty complex compared to other languages. I suggest you should listen to podcast regarding 'ideas' about programming, design, discussion of frameworks etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Like the other commenters before me, I am highly sceptical whether this is a good idea. How are you going to learn a programming language without being able to see its constructs?

Just imagine somebody trying to read a C++ Hello World out loud:

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main() { cout << "Hello World" << endl; }

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't plan on learning exclusively from audio, but I have a newborn baby, thus something passively consumed / handsfree is key.

<comment><USER3> OK, that is an understandable motivation. However, I still think that a programming language isn't something you can learn from an audiobook. Like fourierhero6 said, you'd probably be better off with a book about programming itself, not about a language per se. Especially if you have no formal CS background, something like that might turn out to be really useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dont know about books, but there's

[http://cppcast.com/](http://cppcast.com/).

Also,

Rusty Radio and New Rustacean if you want to explore Rust.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is crazy. Get a real book, an audiobook will be a complete waste of time.

<comment><USER6> Are you kidding me? I've created a startup around this concept.

<comment><USER3> Care to share a link for the benefit of the OP?</comment></comment></comment>


AcidXmail - Send emails that disappear (like Snapchat for email) - <AUTHOR> http://www.acidxmail.com

<comment><USER2> I don't understand how these emails disappear... isn't it still present on the recipients POP/IMAP?

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks interesting - looking forward to see the source and see how did you achieve the deletion exactly.</comment>


Don't wake up the programmer  - <AUTHOR> http://alexthunder.livejournal.com/309815.html

<comment><USER2> There is something distinctively Russian about this delirium. I'm pretty sure I've never seen a Dostoevskian programming blog post before.

</comment><comment> d-rock This reminds me of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's TED talk on flow.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_o...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.html)</comment></comment>


Former Google CIO: LimeWire Pirates Were iTunes' Best Customers - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/former-google-cio-limewire-pirates-were-itunes-best-customers-110726/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torrentfreak+%28Torrentfreak%29

<comment><USER2> There's a balance to be had.

On one hand, you need to get your song in front of as many people as possible.

On the other hand, you need to get as many of those people to pay for the song as possible.

Making it clear that taking the song without paying is bad is necessary, but at the same time you want to encourage people to try new songs risk-free. The radio used to do that. (And still does, to an extent... For the most promoted artists.)

I think a constant campaign of artists talking about about supporting them by buying their music would work much better than lawsuits. Everyone thinks the lawsuit won't get them. Many more people will react to an emotional call to action.

But that's my opinion, and isn't based on any facts that I can prove.

</comment><comment><USER3> While I think it's likely that many file-sharers are in the "try-before-you- buy" camp, I also expect this is mostly just a correlation. I spend more than most of my friends on media, and I also download/share more for free than most of them. If I couldn't download (or stream... thanks spotify!), I would certainly spend more, rather than less.

<comment><USER2> I would spend more as well... In the short term. But I know from experience that I would eventually become jaded and purchase a lot less.

Story time - Back in college, there was a song on the radio that I really liked. I listened to it so much that I bought the CD. When the CD finally arrived (via mail) I listen to it. Every song on the CD was crap. Even the one I loved so much on the radio! Yes, there was apparently a radio version that was different from the CD version.

After being burned like that, I didn't buy CDs for a long, long time. It wasn't even the first... It was just so unfair that I decided I'd rather not take the chance any more. Ever again.

Movies, games, books... They've all done this to me in some form. I would have just given up and quit buying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm sorry but this "study" doesn't exist because it isn't true. The best purchasers and moviegoers may also be pirates, but overall the movie and music industry would be making more money if it weren't for rampant pirating.

I read a thread in Reddit the other day about this topic and there were a few people who thought pirating has caused them to make extra purchases (try before you buy). However, many more of the responses were opposite and some had completely stopped buying CDs, renting DVDs and going to the theater. So if one person rents a DVD every week and now pirates, there would have to be someone who rented 50 MORE DVDs (or purchased) than they would have had there been no pirating options.

I agree there probably is a correlation between people who pirate heavily and people who purchase (because they're probably fanatics). However, I don't believe that they're heavy purchasers BECAUSE of pirating but would probably purchase even more if they didn't have the option to pirate.

<comment><USER5> > _"overall the movie and music industry would be making more money if it > weren't for rampant pirating."_

That's as unsupported an assertion as "pirates are their best customers".

<comment><USER4> I guess that's my point. My study is off of Reddit (and common sense) while their study which has unexpected results isn't being published.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love how logical fallacies get promoted as fact as a method of self justification.</comment>


AT&T Archives: The Unix Operating System - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0 <comment><USER2> Kernighan, Ritchie, Thompson, Aho, Johnson, and other seminal figures at Bell Labs explain why they invented Unix. If I had watched this classic film in 1982, it might have altered the direction of my work in software development.</comment>


Mapping Poverty in America - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/01/05/poverty-map/ <comment><USER2> This map should be filtered or adjusted for universities/students somehow. If you zoom in on my city (San Luis Obispo, CA), you'd think 30% of the entire city lived below the poverty line. This isn't true (our median home price is approaching $600K) so I can only imagine it's skewed by Cal Poly students.

I'm no expert in statistics but the picture this map paints is misleading IMO.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it is. Those poor students affect the environment and life in that region just like everybody else.

<comment><USER4> Students are _very_ different than working poor. The working poor's income is close to their expenditures. Most Student's 'income' will be reported as near zero. However, their expenditures into the economy are above that, through tuition payments and lodging. Also, they are likely to have additional spending money that is outside of reported income.

<comment><USER5> Much of their expenditure goes to the University though, and to my knowledge little of that flows back to the city. The University often winds up sequestering large amounts of wealth even as the city around begins to deteriorate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Mapping poverty is an inherently challenging activity. There are a huge number of edge cases where the calculations start to make things misleading. The poverty line itself is a point of significant contention among nonprofits and foundations. There's a federal line, but the higher cost of living in cities often means that you can live at 110% of the poverty line and be truly struggling to get by. There are efforts to calculate state-level or even city- level poverty lines. Not sure this map adjusts for that.

However, I don't want to put this map down simply because it tries to simplify something very complicated. I do think there are a few very valuable messages here. Particularly for folks who live in a bit of a bubble, and may not realize how close they live to people living in poverty.

<comment><USER7> > the higher cost of living in cities often means that you can live at 110% of > the poverty line and be truly struggling to get by.

I think it's important to make a distinction between "poor" and "poverty" though. Struggling to get by infers that they're getting by and could be called "poor".

Poverty, I think, implies they're not getting by in the local socio-economic area they're in. It's easy to move between categories. Poverty vs. poor could be as much as $20 to make rent this month.

Having grown up pretty poor, and having relatives shift in and out of poverty (American style), there's a qualitative difference I think.

<comment><USER8> What does it mean to be "not getting by" vs "getting by".

<comment><USER9> I'll list a few examples, but please remember each person's situation is unique and "not getting by" could just mean facing a mental health issue (bipolar comes to mind). I guess what I'm saying is, even this attempt to enumerate some financial examples clearly misses the bigger picture of physical health (and associated costs), mental health (and associated costs), social problems, etc.

1\. Guy just got fired from his job because he told his boss to stop altering time sheets, removing hours worked thus lower wages. When he went to the Dept of Labor they "couldn't help him" because he hadn't come to them first before getting fired.

So he got a lawyer but that just burned through his cash reserve; when the cash ran out the lawyer walked out. He's now living out of his car even though he got another job. He's probably blacklisted by a lot of the jobs he's used to. When his current job pays him in 2 weeks, he can make a deposit on a place and maybe start renting again. In the meantime he struggles to find a place to shower each day.

2\. Girl finally emancipated herself from a bad adoptive parent situation. She's 16 and emotionally mature enough to live on her own. She's currently at a women's shelter but they are working with her to secure an apartment. Apartment managers refuse to consider her because "she doesn't have a parent's signature." She has a job at a pizza place but keeps getting turned down for better paying jobs because she's still in high school. How is she going to make rent for the next 2 years? Making pizzas?

3\. Guy splitting rent with some friends who get into drugs and stop paying him. Since the apartment is technically in his name, he gets thrown in county jail for a few days when the cops bust the drug thing. He is clean so they let him go but the apartment insists he move out, like, yesterday. So technically he's homeless even though he has a stable job. When he goes to get another apartment they all want to know where he has stayed for the last 2 years (standard apartment procedure) and when they talk to the apartments where he was, they always get enough of an earful from the previous manager that they decide he's not worth it. Financially he's making it through all this but imagine if he were just barely making it... could be enough to push him out onto the street.

Sleeping in your car is particularly bad because a lot of local law enforcement will ticket you or throw you in jail for a night. They really don't want you sleeping in your car around here. The risk is that they might impound your car after enough tickets. Now you're really "not getting by."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It looks like the map measures poverty by income in dollars without any cost- of-living adjustments. So it may be more of a map of regional cost-of-living than anything else.

<comment><USER11> Exactly. That's why some of the rural areas (Alaska, Dakotas) look so bad and some of the bigger urban areas (New York) don't.

<comment><USER12> The worst-off counties in South Dakota match up pretty well with Indian reservations, and it should be a surprise to nobody (and a shame to everybody) how poor the people are there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A great guide for which neighborhoods to not live in. I know it's sad. But I also know I'm not the only person who thought this.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think I've seen this map before...

[http://xkcd.com/1138/](http://xkcd.com/1138/)

As in, was this normalized, both for population density, and cost of living: read look at alaska..

<comment><USER15> Absolutely not applicable when brought down to the census tract level in large cities. Compare, for example, the percentage living below poverty line in Manhattan (density of 27,227.1/km2) with the percentage living below poverty line in Brooklyn (density of 14,037/km2).

<comment><USER14> > when brought down to the census tract level in large cities

Which is exactly the same with any population heat map when you go down to the census tract level in large cities.

In other words, it is completely applicable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This map is more detailed: [http://www.city-data.com/poverty/poverty-San- Francisco-Calif...](http://www.city-data.com/poverty/poverty-San-Francisco- California.html#mapOSM?mapOSM\[zl\]=9&mapOSM\[c1\]=37.780483978703025&mapOSM\[c2\]=-121.73538208007811&mapOSM\[s\]=3&mapOSM\[fs\]=true) (down to the block group level) and it has additional information, such as change since the year 2000.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just to calibrate: anything above 30% is considered a high-poverty area by foundations.

</comment><comment><USER17> A bizarre use of a 'heat map', where the brighter colour means the lesser value. It kind've almost double-negatives itself semantically, but I had to reorient myself as to what was going on.

<comment><USER15> Higher saturation, perhaps, but definitely not brighter.

Being that the intention of this map is to bring attention to census tracts with higher percentages of poverty (instead of bringing attention to census tracts with a lower percentage of poverty), a cooler color (associative with 'lower') with saturation increases (associative with 'pay attention to this') seems to be the way to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> An interesting point to note is that a large majority, though not all, of the areas with the highest poverty rates seem to overlap with indian reservations.

</comment><comment><USER19> Why Stanford CA is so poor? It's in middle of Palo Alto!

<comment><USER10> Students.

<comment><USER20> Professors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Kinda strange how the most-impoverished states are the ones that vote Republican all the time. It's odd how they've gotten poor voters to act against their own best interests by electing the party most likely to screw them over.

<comment><USER22> This is a trite and stupid meme that needs to die. Let's look at Alabama, for example. You see those darkest counties? They overwhelmingly vote for Democrats at the national level. The same is true for Mississippi and other southern states. (I'd have to look at data for outside the region since I'm less acquainted with the politics & demographics of other parts of the country.)

Now click the other map that shows absolute numbers of people living below the poverty line and you will find the majority of people in poverty live in either so-called blue states or Democrat strongholds within "red" states.

Now crawl back to Reddit with your sanctimonious and paternalistic drivel.

<comment><USER21> Funny how two brand new accounts were created just to downvote and insult me.

Didn't know the GOP was astroturfing HN now, too.

<comment><USER22> You could [1] see it as a testament to the idiocy of your remark that two lurkers were finally roused to register in order to rebut it.

1\. But of course you wouldn't.

<comment><USER21> Nah, I'll see it for what it is: two imbeciles (or, more than likely, one individual imbecile who registered two accounts) nitpicking.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Where Are the Tech Zillionaires? San Francisco Faces the IPO Fizzle - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/19/technology/tech-IPO-san-francisco.html <comment><USER2> Who are all these tech workers who want private parties and yachts and pent houses and sommeliers in their apartment?

Everyone I've worked with up to director levels at FAANG are mostly content with just investing their riches and maybe thinking about retirement or sending their kids to private schools. I haven't seen any extravagant displays of wealth - some BMWs / Teslas in the garage but never a Ferrari for instance.

<comment><USER3> You've been living a sheltered life.

While most workers are trying to get by, the wealth and opportunity has attracted all kinds of people, which is fine.

I've noticed that anywhere in America where there is money to be made, there are clusters of people who are willing to also spend all of it.

<comment><USER4> Where are those people? How does one come into contact with them?

<comment><USER5> They're around. They cluster, as you might expect. I worked at one a16z-funded startup where probably 1/3 of the engineering department were big spenders. I expect the cluster was a result of the CTO being an extremely big spender, and very loud at broadcasting that fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As someone who owns shares at a company preparing to IPO, all I can say is I'm at least fortunate to have a stake in the massive asset bubble. The last thing I'll be doing is buying a house in the Bay Area though.

<comment><USER7> Exactly. Why exchange one inflated asset for another inflated asset when you can cash out and keep them in T-bills (or even a broad ETF), instead.

<comment><USER6> Plus I figure the majority of people who have significant gains likely vested around 2011-13 and are closer to middle age now like myself and are thinking about family and retirement, not wine cellars and penthouses.

<comment><USER8> wine cellars and penthouses can definitely be part of retirement :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've never heard of Yondr before but, wow, what a delightful little technological window into today's burgeoning economic disparity. An entire company whose business model revolves around helping rich people hide their recreation from public view because they don't want the shame of their consumption being a little too conspicuous.

I assume the next natural evolution is a photo-sharing social network that only ultra-high-net wealth individuals are allowed to enter. That way you can still "Instagram" your life, but just to the other ultra-rich tech bros and Saudi royalty at your economic level. Now that I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised if this already exists.

<comment><USER10> I don't think that's an accurate description of why Yondr exists. The impetus for solutions like that were to allow for things like phone free concerts. You don't have to be rich to be annoyed with someone blocking your view holding their phone in the air.

<comment><USER9> Sure, I think that's a valid good use case. But I honestly have a hard time believing there's enough demand for that to support an actual _enforced technological_ solution.

Maybe I'm wrong but I find it hard to believe stand-up comedians and musicians who want the audience to be in the moment are enough to keep this business afloat. I think it's more likely for things like:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-clint-lorance- mathew-g...](https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-clint-lorance-mathew- goldsteyn-florida-statesman-dinner-miami-herald-2019-12)

<comment><USER10> The startup economy is all about forcing a technological solution whether theres demand for it or not. VC funding can make up for a lot.

Its much more likely they're another zombie tech company than part of a sinister plot for rich people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Public equities investing is severely underrated. I've been following the "big will get bigger" mantra for several years and it's paid off big time.

Apple all time highs (2x'd in a year!) Microsoft all time high Adobe all time high Salesforce near all time high

List goes on.

<comment><USER3> Not underrated at all. Most investments are in public equities today. I have a theory that the long boom is because we've wised up to investing most of our wealth in index funds and thus making it hard for any one company's failure to bring down the rest of the economy.

<comment><USER11> I mean in Silicon Valley.

Everyone thinks you have to be employee #10 at a future unicorn to get "rich" but you could've made a very average salary and just invested your savings in tech stocks over the last 10 years and probably be well ahead of 99% of people trying to be the former.

<comment><USER3> I think it's not just the money. There is something about going against all odds and coming out ahead in the end that many (especially younger) people find tantalizing. There's also the fact that many people that work for startups have a very individualistic, creative streak and resist the corporate neutering that happens at most bigger companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article didn't mention how holders can be extra hurt by tanking IPOs due to taxes. Many companies release their RSUs at IPO (often withholding too little tax) and then you are locked up, as the price may fall.

You can't write off the capital loss occurred during the lockup against the ordinary income from the RSU release, meaning take home is even less than price would suggest.

No idea why companies don't wait until end of lockup to release the RSUs.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is how startups kinda work. It's really hard to make money from an ipo even if you joined early.

<comment><USER7> That wasn't how things were 10-15 years ago. What changed over the last decade was the pumping up of private valuations such that by the time the startups finally hit a liquidity event, they were overvalued.

<comment><USER14> This. The bulk of the returns and growth now happens pre-IPO. Then the price at IPO is disconnected from public market expectations. But you're also at the top of the growth S curve so growth is decelerating.

<comment><USER15> But as a early employee, when you join before valuation goes up... You still make only scraps, because you're not getting that many shares to start with and "common stock" aren't worth as much as "preferred stock".

<comment><USER6> Common and preferred shares start to converge as a company approaches IPO. An employees gains are likely to exceed those of VCs in such an event. When companies are acquired and when liquidation preference comes into play is when employees get screwed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "We are excited by any resetting of Bay Area rents that bring them down from > their artificially inflated high," said Fred Sherburn-Zimmer, the executive > director of Housing Rights Committee, which fights against evictions. > "Eventually all bubbles burst."

What a typical Bay Area NIMBY. Instead of fucking building more housing, he's just sitting there hoping for a bubble burst to reduce rents.

<comment><USER16> The credits on the YIMBY protest photo in this article are given to Housing Rights Committee:

[https://shelterforce.org/2019/02/19/yimbys-friend-foe-or- cha...](https://shelterforce.org/2019/02/19/yimbys-friend-foe-or-chaos-agent/)

You may wish to do more research on their alignment before declaring them NIMBY.

<comment><USER17> My understanding is that HRC broadly opposes the construction of any higher- end housing. Effectively that's a NIMBY position. In American history new housing construction has almost always been "high-end".

The way housing becomes affordable is that high-end new construction displaces demand for yesteryear's construction turning it into mid-end housing. Which then in turn displaces demand for the previous mid-tier which now becomes low- tier affordable housing.

In effect rich consumers subsidize poor consumers by insisting on continuously replenishing the housing supply with new modern housing conforming to the latest hip trends in architecture and design. The car market is a very good example of how this works absent arbitrary supply constraints. Arguably the used car market is the biggest single vector of wealth redistribution in America. The poor benefit from a massive oversupply of cheap but reliable used cars, because the rich insist on getting a new car every two years.

HRC refuses to acknowledge this dynamic. So they may be "YIMBY" in the sense of having some sort of vision about new construction. But that vision, mass construction of new affordable housing, is completely unviable. That makes them YIMBY in principles, but NIMBY for all practical intents and purposes

<comment><USER18> >In American history new housing construction has almost always been "high- end".

Anecdotally this is the case right now here in central Indiana. Fiance and I are starting to look for a house, we can get something 20-50 years old for 150-180k or the new construction physically across the street with the same square footage (and much smaller yards) is starting around 200k headed well past 300k (because, apparently, fancy counter tops and stainless appliances are worth an extra 100k _eyeroll_ ).

There's a half dozen new additions going in where we're looking and the cost for a tiny 1 bedroom house will get you 2-3 bedroom house with 0.25-0.5 acres within a 1/2 mile drive door to door purely because of all of the 'features' which are almost entirely cosmetic.</comment></comment></comment></comment>