Ask HN: Learning about funding basics - <AUTHOR>

Hello, I'm a young hacker with a few ideas I've been working on and developing over the last few years and am considering going full time with a certain promising one.
I've been reading HN for about a year now and am pretty familiar with many of the concepts of web startups, but one that I wish I had a much firmer understand of is that of funding.
Could anyone on HN list sites, ebooks, or physical books I could read on the basics and more in-depth reading on funding, the terminology and how the whole finacial side of startups and in particular, web startups work? I don't want to miss anything and want to be naturally know the whole picture.
pg's "How to fund a startup" <http://paulgraham.com/startupfunding.html> is a good start, but I was wondering if there were any other important/good resources you all could point me and others too.
tl;dr: Got any good -- preferably online -- resources to learn about startup funding, seed cycles and the like? <comment><USER2> High Tech Startup is a fantastic book that takes you from the kitchen table to IPO.

[http://www.amazon.com/High-Tech-Start-Revised- Updated/dp/068...](http://www.amazon.com/High-Tech-Start-Revised- Updated/dp/068487170X)

</comment><comment><USER3> smarter ventures is a good read on fund raising, given from the lawyers perspective

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Smarter-Ventures-Survivors- Venture-C...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Smarter-Ventures-Survivors-Venture- Capital/dp/0273654039)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the recommendation, Dale. The legal perspective is of course a very important part of the whole VC/funding process.</comment></comment>


Margins on website development are shrinking - <AUTHOR> http://www.chrishardie.com/2013/05/end-of-website-development/ <comment><USER2> I've had the same experience the past few years with car maintenance.

\- I can find any owner's manual online.

\- I can find detailed instructions for any type of repair in written form or in a Youtube video.

\- There are free online courses for anything from changing a tire to becoming a full-fledged mechanic.

\- I can find and order any part of my car at wholesale prices.

\- The same diagnostic software that repair shops use can be downloaded for free. I can hook up my iPad to my car through a simple USB cable and find out exactly what's wrong with it.

And I still take my car to the local auto repair shop, because I'm not a mechanic.

<comment><USER3> That metaphor doesn't work for two reasons. First, over time a car has grown MORE complex, while the tools to create a website have grown LESS complex. At the same time, improved quality in engines, motor oil, and service technology has made routine maintenance not only easier, but also less expensive. Second, auto repair, like most skilled trades, is a great example where specialization of workers gets involved. It's not that you can't spend the time to learn how to repair a car, it's that you consider your time worth more. But in many cases, the cost of building a website has come down so rapidly that it doesn't require a big time commitment for many people.

There will always be room at the high end to solve problems that are complicated, large, or rare. But at the low end, things that were new 20 years ago just aren't anymore. Website development is becoming less like a mechanic and more like pumping gas.

<comment><USER4> \- Websites have become much more complex. It just appears that they are simpler. WP makes it seem like nothing to press a button and upgrade. Behind the scenes thousands of lines of code are doing work. When those lines of code break and you come to me to fix them. Fuck you for thinking I am going to charge you $100. You are going to pay me $1000 or you can do it yourself.

\- If you want to use a theme exactly as it is then fine use it exactly as it is. If you want me to make changes to it, fuck you for thinking I am going to do it for $100.

\- Websites are complicated as ever (with tools that don't match their behind the scenes complexity), they appear to be much simpler because a lot of stupid people have spent thousands and thousands of hours providing services for free through modules and themes. But when those things break down or don't work the way you want them to, you will pay for my 15 years of experience or you can just do without.

<comment><USER5> Out of curiosity (not being snarky), how's that working out for you, and how long do you think it will be viable to charge that amount?

Web dev, as I see it, is undergoing a race to the bottom. As you say, "the stupid people" are generating good content for free. Yes, there are 1000s of lines of code behind WP.. but those 1000s of lines of code exist just so that the end user doesn't have to mess with them. Do people really pay 1000 to adjust a word press theme?

<comment><USER4> > generating good content for free

They are not generating it for free. They sell themes at $50 pop to at least 100 people. They make their $5,000. They also charge $100/hr for support.

> those 1000s of lines of code exist just so that the end user doesn't have to > mess with the

Until things break. The developer goes away, etc.

> Do people really pay 1000 to adjust a word press theme?

Depends on what level of adjustment. If I charge them $1000 they will get $1,000 worth of services. But I am not willing to engage a client unless they are at least willing to spend that much. Not worth my time.

<comment><USER6> When things break ... but websites for SMBs break less and less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> All the tools mentioned in the article are mainly useful to the bottom of the market; low-budget customers can now put together something half-decent on their own.

If anything, this is GREAT for us as web developers. We've taken to pointing prospects to ThemeForest if we don't think a custom site would add significant value to their company. It keeps us from having to do boring & repetitive work, so we can focus on the fun, high-impact stuff.

<comment><USER6> The fun high-impact stuff rarely drives the customer's bottom line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Judging by the amount of people in my office who can't handle something as simple as formatting a Wordpress post correctly...I think it's a bit pre- mature.

Yes, most things have been made far easier, but good design and code skills still trump most of the out of the box systems out there and those themes he mentions are a form of web development, just not the ones making the author any money.

The good web developers are generalist developers at heart and will always be looking at the next bleeding edge system/project/new shiny to work on and deliver the new and shiny to customers.

</comment><comment><USER9> The title should be "the margins on bottomfeeding are shrinking".

I consider this a good thing. Now if only these companies could stop calling themselves "developers" altogether, and maybe we wouldn't have to explain so often to potential clients why our software development is so much more expensive than their so-called "web development".

<comment><USER10> It's the starter-kit Walmart hobbyism. I can buy a bike at Walmart for ~$100. The bike will get me to where I want to go with reasonably light usage. Anything outside the first time, light usage model is a ever deepening pool of cost/value.

Walmart is great if I'm poor and my son needs a bike that he can crash (since he's just learning) and he will grow out of in the next 2 years; he probably couldn't put enough miles on the bike to break it within then.

If I want a bike to ride five miles to work everyday, I'm looking at $500 (used) to $1500 for something nice and dependable.

The Walmart model isn't bad as long as everybody understands the metrics involved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here is the trick:

All of the technologies that your customers supposedly now use to replace the services you used to offer them, can also be used by YOU... to replace the services you used to offer with better services in much less time.

Proper use of today's tools will make your customers think you have somehow gained super powers as you deliver them better results, faster, and with much less effort than when you had to spend time custom coding solutions that are now implemented as easily as pasting some javascript code onto your customer's website.

<comment><USER12> This can work if you get in on the new tools and technologies quickly before everyone else.

Eventually the expectation of price will go down due to competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hi, original article author here. Thanks for the great comments and feedback. I just appended my post to say:

I probably should have used a question mark in my post title instead of an asterisk. I don't claim to know the future and I get that I'm talking about an industry and an area of tech that's unpredictable. I've no need to be "right" about this and am just glad to have started some conversations.

I probably also should have referred to something like "generalist retail website development for the masses" instead of just "website development." One part of my current company that is still going strong is a business unit that's performing hundreds of hours per month of custom software development, database management and consulting for a client pioneering a unique problem space where no off-the-shelf tool is going to do the trick. We just had challenges replicating that scale of project within our company, but that's been more about roadblocks to growing the way we wanted to than it has to do with the nature of the industry overall. I fully agree with the commenters who note that at the higher end of client and project requirements when it comes to creativity and complexity, there's still a great need for professional service providers with a broad range of experience and deep knowledge. As I tried to say in my post, I think the folks working with bigger budget clients and projects will have plenty of work for the foreseeable future, even if under a different name from "website developers."

Thanks for reading.

<comment><USER6> I disagree somewhat because lots of people I know have a broad range of experience and deep knowledge but the market for it is shrinking. They do get calls when things go wrong but other than that, there's not much going on. Some made the jump to app development but the market's just not there anymore. That may sound strange to those living in the valley but that's just the way it is. Some are now teaching others and that seems to be profitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This happens in every services industry, not just website development. A combination of new technology, experience, and the dispersion of knowledge drive down costs and margins. Nobody hires accountants to do their adding and subtracting, but there's still demand for experts in new regulations or the eccentricities of the tax code.

The same thing is happening in website development (and really, all sorts of technology related services businesses). Over time, the low hanging fruit gets automated, and margins get compressed.

As your firm evolves, you find margin in one of two ways. You either stay at the high end, and continuously learn new technologies and how to solve higher level problems for clients. You are continuously jettisoning your old bread- and-butter projects to work on the latest and greatest thing, solving new problems that didn't exist a short time ago.

Or you follow the work down-market and focus on scale and efficiency. You figure out that you can get profit from process and automation, you turn your toolkit into an offering that you can sell at a high margin.

Either approach works, but firms tend to get in trouble when they try to straddle the middle, and just sort of hope that clients will still pay big margins for work that's become routinized.

<comment><USER12> Very true, though I would suggest that if you live in a western economy and you intend to go low end you should make sure you are scaling in such a way that your marginal labour costs are insignificant. For example, rather than construct websites build tools for building/hosting websites.

It will be impossible to compete on price with elancers if you like eating food.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've had no shortage of people looking for custom websites. Having a fully- customized identity throughout, warranted or not, is still very important to a lot of clients. You still integrate with third-party services, whether it's social media sites, blogs, or e-commerce--but even then, these clients want it to feel like their own, not some generic, off-the-shelf product.

Also, I've shown clients pre-baked themes to save time & money and they've been quite offended, or agreed to use one, but then ended up changing the theme so much, it was hardly worth the effort.

<comment><USER6> They feel offended ? When they buy a new car, how does that make them feel ? It's very similar, imo. You can buy a car as is or you can customize it somewhat but you never start from scratch. You start from an existing design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This article takes a fairly narrow-minded look at the work done by lots of "website developer" professionals, and an even narrower look at what clients want from a website, app, etc.. It's like saying that Graphic Design will cease to be a profession because there's free photo manipulation tools.

There's a valid point that, sooner or later, CMS/app farming isn't a valid long-term business. But, thankfully, what you don't typically find at these shops, or on free/cheap online tools is the creativity that many clients demand.

The author does bring up "Marketing and branding consulting" as one of the two continuing successful business models. Ok, halfway there. However, anyone that's worked in marketing or branding knows that ideas are just a fraction of a successful campaign. A great idea will fail if it's not executed well.

</comment><comment><USER16> Before I got into web development, I spent 4 or 5 years as a recording engineer. And people were constantly predicting the "end of recording studios".

Certainly, there was a big shift. Pro Tools got cheap, companies like Behringer started making affordable large-diaphragm condenser mics that sort of looked like the nice ones. Line6 and Amplitube were making reasonably convincing guitar amp simulators. And some studios did close.

But there is absolutely still a market for for experienced recording engineers and big studios. The difference is that now there are DIY alternatives at the low end of the spectrum.

This article makes the mistake of predicting the end of web development, when in reality, all that's happening is that people with simpler needs are finally starting to see alternatives. Just need a basic home page? Go to Squarespace. Need a high-performance single-page web app? Still need a real developer. I don't see that changing soon.

<comment><USER17> Exactly this. I've made a similar transition and I'll say one thing: we web people at least don't have to deal with declining customer incomes. The worst part about being in the audio (live and recorded) biz was not only the bottom up effect, but the fact that the ROI of the average recording was plummeting (at least from where I was sitting, for the artists I was working with).

People/Clients still make money on the internet, even off $50-100k plus builds. $50k on a pro studio album would be damn near impossible to recoup these days, from what I've seen.

<comment><USER17> How did I say anything worth being downvoted here?

<comment><USER16> Weird. Mine got downvoted a couple times too.

It would be great if people would take the time to point out whatever it was that they found to be objectionable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I recall similar observations being made roughly 15 years ago in response to the growth of FrontPage / Dreamweaver and the presence of Angelfire.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think part of the issue is that many businesses have presence on the "mega sites" (facebook/youtube/twitter etc) and unless they are going to spend a lot of money marketing a website their presence on the mega-site is likely to be getting more exposure (higher up on google , more engagement).

<comment><USER19> Very true, which is why I was expecting to hear them mention that they are turning into a digital marketing agency, which is what a lot of firms become. That way they can probably keep charging the prices they are used to while web development will be part of the package (placed on one of the hosted services they mentioned or outsourced to another firm/freelancer).

<comment><USER12> True, although "digital marketing" is a somewhat different skillset than web development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Instead of having us create an administrative interface for updating your web content, you could just install Joomla, WordPress or Drupal and do it yourself."

hahaha who? Is your client Stephen Hawking?

<comment><USER6> True. But you're competing with Foursquare and GoDaddy websites for $ 1 / month. I don't recommend people use those services but in the end that's what you're competing with. Compare that to setting up a website with Drupal.

<comment><USER20> So you're either severely constrained by a cookie cutter CMS, or completely overwhelmed by a more flexible platform like Drupal. Ultimately I'm not hearing anything convincing about why web development has become obsolete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think the most valuable thing this is pointing out is that the nature of the problem is shifting to an integration challenge - how to hook together the 5 or 6 services that I will need to get everything up and running. Most web driven businesses are going to need some combination of different technologies at some point - the people who can orchestrate that well are in a good position.

</comment><comment><USER22> I understand some of the points the author is making, and will have to give it a closer read when I'm not at work. But I reject the thesis at a glance. Most clients don't have time to deal with everything related to their web presence, custom or not. If you're solving business problems, not training them to use WordPress, you can charge a premium.

<comment><USER23> Posts like this strike me as comment and controversy bait (more specific than linkbait). An underinformed post whose points are stated too emphatically about a large topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think this is a lot of perception and to be perfectly blunt, complete bullshit.

People who think that just because tasks have become easier for experts in that field that they are easier for everyone are just plain wrong. I know this through personal experience. If you are just making static websites for small businesses and trying to compete with 1&1, then sure, you're going to have a hard time getting rich. But _that's always been the case._

You will never make a lot of money selling services to people or businesses that are highly price-sensitive or just don't need (or see a need) for a more sophisticated product. I wasted a lot of time selling services to these types of customers and I can tell you it's a mistake. Choose your customers wisely and go for one's that have money to spend. That type do not want to spend any time splitting hairs to get a shitty product. They want something that is great and will pay handsomely for it. The challenge in that is proving your worth, but as I said before that's always been the case and there's nothing new about that.

EDIT: I realize that is a little vague, so let me add some hard numbers. On my first large web dev contract I built a custom website (not incredibly complex) for a guy who had a $250k budget. I met him through the local Chamber of Commerce. I went back-and-forth about how much to charge him for the specs we discussed and in the end went to him with a quote of $15k (quite a lot of money for a single project for me at the time) and his response was something along the lines of "Okay, that sounds great!"

Fuck me for not realizing that I could have charged more. Moral of the story is one that is becoming trite at this point: people who know how to code and sell are rare but for some reason seem to undervalue themselves a great deal. That's a huge advantage for those that do not.

<comment><USER25> You seem to have missed the part where they were successfully running a web development business from 1997 to about 2008, when things started to change.

The point about choosing your customers wisely is certainly true, and I'd expect the OP would agree with you on that, but it doesn't invalidate the rest of what he's saying.

<comment><USER24> I see so from 1997 - 2008 things were awesome, then they sucked, but now they're great again!

Do you honestly think web development technologies have hit some inflection point after which everyone can build their own web applications? People have been saying that about technology for hundreds of years (that it can't possibly improve) and they are always wrong. If you are trying to sell your services and you are competing with commodity web developers as the author plainly implied is now the case Im afraid I have some bad news for you: you suck at selling and should work to improve that before learning the next hot technology. There will always be more work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Automation has eliminated a lot of jobs in manufacturing, I don't know why one would think that it was gonna be different for web development.

<comment><USER27> There is still a lot of creativity in creating a website. You can put up a quick website using a theme and get online for pennies, but would you really want your online presence to be a theme?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Clients understand the value of design, but the development costs are an overhead. They expect the finished site to be delivered as soon as the design has been finalized. Meanwhile, the front end developer is sitting there typing away, converting a photoshop document into HTML/CSS one tweak at a time. It's archaic, and I truly hope that it will become obsolete.

</comment><comment><USER29> I agree with the premise of this article, but I was disappointed to see that none of the suggestions included focusing on web _application_ development instead of web _site_ development. I started Brightbit (<http://brightbit.com>) 2 years ago with 2 other co-founders, and we have always focused 100% on custom web and mobile applications, and have referred 100% of the smaller websites to local CMS/WordPress shops around us who serve them.

With our focus on building more complex high-end web apps and startups, we have had no shortage of work or shrinking margins, and have in fact experienced the exact opposite. We have been raising our rates, and have continued to experience strong growth and have had very happy clients.

Long story short, there is another path away from general web development with pretty good margins if you're willing to learn more and do more programming work instead of frontend theming/customization work.

</comment><comment><USER30> I've been seeing things differently. Between myself and my friends/former coworkers, some of whom are contractors, some in agencies, some internal teams in non-web companies. Across the board, we've all been rather overwhelmed lately. It's a constant struggle to keep up, let alone get ahead of the backlog. Who isn't hiring, subcontracting, or both, just to keep from falling too far behind? The story the recruiters have been giving us as they try to lure us away is that it's a developer's market.

I would imagine that using custom development to compete with Geocities or MySpace style 'build your own page' services is probably not doing as well. But that market was already thin many years ago. Those services didn't kill web development as a profession then, and they're not killing it now.

The bit about people who've grown up with this stuff coming into power is certainly a wildcard, but I like to think it'll be a positive one, not a negative one that kills the industry.

<comment><USER31> > is that it's a developer's market.

Interesting. I've found 2013 much tougher than 2012 - or 2011. All the agencies round here are recruiting good developers, but the rates for freelancers have gone down.

I both subcontract and work direct for clients, and work has been distinctly quiet since February. Mind you, the last 2 years have been amazing, which was when all the local agencies were laying off staff (or folding). Not sure what I'm doing differently to make me go in the opposite direction!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I can can recall numerous instances when I opposed to clients idea about the website. And most of the time it turned out I was right.

People will make sloppy decisions without good advice. I can buy a kitchen blender, assemble it, make it chop my vegies. But I will never know if it is any good. Unless it breaks.

</comment><comment><USER33> So do we need more work visas or not?

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't agree with this article. A canned solution can never compare to a custom built project. I think that building on top of things like Wordpress and Joomla is cool but not for a professional developer. Systems like that make the developer jump through so many conceptual hoops that only exist so that the lamen can use it. A developer is better of building a custom suite of tools that are upgraded through time and iteration.

I do agree that end users are utilizing more services online but I don't think that equates to the death of the developer. I actually think that this makes good developers worth more.

</comment><comment><USER35> This overstates was the vast majority of clients are capable of. The very low- end is definitely eroding though and it's a good thing.

I've used a ton of CMSs and blogging engines and think Squarespace is the future of where this is headed.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm in the high-end web consulting biz and there is no shortage of customers looking for fork over millions for an end-to-end solution. Even at the low-end that he is bemoaning, the plethora of off-the-shelf tools is coupled with a massive explosion is the number of businesses requiring a web presence. Now they can all get a decent looking site up for cheap or even just a Facebook page for nothing, but the next frontier will be differentiating themselves from their competitors which will require professional services.

</comment><comment><USER37> I wish that the article was true and no one needed to do all this web development work. I truly do not enjoy working with forms and xml.

As many others have commented, its true that the easiest and hastiest form of web development is now "done" through pre-made tools. Sadly, everything else isn't as easy. Building a rest api for cool new stuff X is not very easy, nor is it to present such API on a easy to use designed site. Nor is turning a horror of an XML standard to a useable form and presenting such things to end users.

</comment><comment><USER38> Web agencies that aren't able to differentiate themselves in the market will have a difficult time giving the right advice to customers about their branding...

</comment><comment><USER39> This article forgets that using Microsoft Excel skillfully is all it takes to net a middle-class salary in much of America.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is exactly why I enrolled in a Rails developer bootcamp. Its hard out there for a Wordpress Pimp.

<comment><USER6> That makes sense, if there's a market for it. It depends on where you live.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> C'mon, I can't be the only one who thought the OP was talking about CSS when reading the title :) . Since the advent of Twitter Bootstrap and the kind of layouts it inspired, shrinking CSS margins would've be surprising to me.

</comment><comment><USER42> lol I don't buy this, just take a look at pretty much every CMS (hosted or otherwise) and weep if you think as a complete amateur you're going to create a site with their wysiwyg content editable that actually looks half way decent.

Website design isn't just about being able to create a site without touching html, it's actually about it looking like a grown up made it. As soon as you're a few hours into your new creation you're going to want to tweak it (a lot), good luck sifting through the html soup the editor created for you.

</comment><comment><USER43> You know what can replace you. Your clients do not. Most of your clients don't even know what they need. What solutions are available or what problems they have or will have.</comment>


We just took over the former Zynga offices in Dallas - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/a/vgVen

<comment><USER2> Curious what you paid for it if you don't mind disclosing.

Edit: How much for the dog?

Edit again: Baffles me how many chairs they left. That's a couple bucks just sitting there.

<comment><AUTHOR> I probably should have used this link. I found it on Reddit.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1xgams/we_just_took_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1xgams/we_just_took_over_the_former_zynga_offices_in/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> WRT the "Each one of those chairs cost $1,500 (USD) new." whats the productivity cost of those open plan desks? Thats the really expensive part of that pix.

<comment><USER4> It depends on the kind of work they do.</comment></comment>


First health app to accept Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://www.firstderm.com/first-derm-welcomes-bitcoin/

<comment><USER2> Awesome stuff. I wonder if this the beginnings of a new age of anonymity in health care.

</comment><comment><USER3> How does apple feel about it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for asking. I think apple re-thinked their previous policy on Bitcoin. We did not have an issue to release the app. It actually only took us 3 days to update the app in the app store. 70% of our paid users are still using apple in-app purchase.</comment></comment>


Darwin Was a Slacker and You Should Be Too - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us//issue/46/balance/darwin-was-a-slacker-and-you-should-be-too <comment><USER2> I'll get to it, eventually.</comment>


First Look: RePhone, an Open-Source, Modular DIY Cellphone from SeeedStudio - <AUTHOR> http://makezine.com/2015/09/22/seeed-studio-rephone-modular-cell-phone/ <comment><USER2> Bet you $100 this doesn't make it, even if it's cheap and reliable. Having user-controlled hardware in cell phones will give Phone Companies the willies. Also makes FBI/NSA surveillance much harder.

This hardware will make it to market, but mysteriously, the FCC will drag its feet on any certification, VZW and at&t will take a long time looking into supporting it, and ultimately, it will Be Out of Their Hands, They Just Can't Support It.</comment>


Photo site Shutterfly goes mobile, acquires Tiny Pictures for $1.3M - <AUTHOR> http://digital.venturebeat.com/2009/09/13/photo-site-shutterfly-goes-mobile-acquires-tiny-pictures-for-13m/

<comment><USER2> _"The deal is a loss for investors, who had pumped in a whopping $12.2 million into the company"_

That's quite a loss...Their $7.2M Series B just happened in Feb '08. What did they do with all that money?

<comment><USER3> It's possible they simply gave it back.</comment></comment>


The Unemployment Rate for People Like You - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/06/business/economy/unemployment-lines.html?hp <comment><USER3> I've said it before and I'll say it again: I can't stand them editorially speaking but the NYT is hands-down the best paper in the world at taking advantage of modern web technology.

This shows, in almost painful detail, the bifurcation of the economy I was talking about earlier. Those of us who are college educated with a few years of experience could be excused for not knowing we are in a recession (4.3%). New graduates have it tougher (8.X%). Folks without high school diplomas are in total crisis.

(The highest unemployment rate, to the surprise of essentially no one: black men 15-24 with no degree. Its 8.5%... sorry, missed a digit, 48.5%.)

<comment><USER4> If you are a black man between 15-24 with no high school diploma, changing the color of your skin (to white) has more positive impact than getting that high school diploma.

<comment><USER5> What's even more interesting is that changing your race to Hispanic has an almost identically positive impact as changing to white.

Are we actually that much more discriminatory (as a society) against blacks as compared to hispanics? Is this purely racism, or is something else at work? Perhaps it has to do with the ratio of passport/green card holders between the two ethnicities, and the economic advantages of hiring non-citizens in low-end jobs?

The results are clear though:

White men 15-24, no highschool: Unemployment 25.6% Black men 15-24, no highschool: Unemployment 48.5% Hispanic men 15-24, no highschool: Unemployment 25.8%

<comment><USER6> I think you are right that the difference is immigration. A lot of hispanics at that age range and with no high school education are migratory farm workers that come to the US with jobs. Bad jobs but nevertheless jobs.

And of course nobody will hire black people for those jobs. Those jobs are so hard and badly paid that they can only be performed by impoverished scared immigrants.

And as far as racism goes I think there is a difference between the way hispanic and black men are treated. Racists usually fear young black men and consider them all violent criminals, so they would not give them jobs. As far as hispanics, the usual racist stereotype of the hispanic male is somebody that is good for a low wage menial job. So racism does not really prevent hispanics from getting jobs, just good jobs.

<comment><USER7> Racism is a sketchy explanation. As of a year ago, native-born black americans had 50% more unemployment than foreign-born blacks.

These racists make very fine distinctions: "I don't like African Americans. Nigerians and Jamaicans are ok, though. So I'll interview black people, but if they don't have a foreign accent..." [makes a 'get out of here' motion]

<http://www.bls.gov/news.release/forbrn.t01.htm>

<comment><USER8> Uhh . . . dude. That's what you want.

I'm not trying to keep Americans out of jobs here, but isn't it good to require that foreign born people have jobs before they come here? I mean, I assume you are talking about immigrants. Why would you not want them to have some sort of employment related Visa before they get on the plane to come here and live?

This statistic, to me, says that the government is doing something right. Again, not trying to open up an immigration discussion, just saying that this statistic is a good thing. In general you want native unemployment to be higher than foreign born unemployment or you have a problem with your immigration program. In America Native unemployment is higher across every demographic, which is excellent in my opinion.

Just my two cents. I'm not an immigration expert or anything, but I am smart enough to know that I want the employable immigrants.

<comment><USER7> Uh, dude, I'm not making any immigration-related argument. All I'm saying is that those racist employers seem to have a really narrow kind of racism: "we hate black americans, but not black haitians or senegalese."

<comment><USER9> It's probably not racism then, but, umm, culturalism.

We don't have good vocabulary yet for distinguishing between race, culture and nationality because for most of history, these were very strongly correlated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> White female college graduates between 25 and 44 have the lowest unemployment rate of any demographic group.

<comment><USER10> I think that women are more likely to leave the workforce when it is difficult to get a job & enter it when it is particularly attractive. Extended maternity breaks, home makers etc. Leaving the workforce is leaving the graph, neither employed or unemployed.

<comment><USER11> Maybe, or perhaps or is because they are white and college educated. After all, white male college graduates between 25 and 44 have the next lowest unemployment rate of any demographic group.

<comment><USER10> Certainly that is the greater effect.

My comment is to describe the remaining discrepancy: Women consistently have a lower unemployment rate across demographics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks like in 1 year time (when I'm 25) I'll double my chances of getting a job.

</comment><comment><USER13> I question the definition of "people like me".

If i could pick a few attributes about which I felt least influenced my character, race, age, education level would definitely be right up at the top.

<comment><USER9> You are not a precious and unique snowflake, and neither am I.

<comment><USER13> Be that as it may, do you seriously think if you were the exact same person, simply hadn't finished high school and/or were a different race, you'd be a different person?

I just don't see how race affects anything at all, maybe this is more a specifically American thing? Official education likewise seemed a giant waste of time to me.

<comment><USER9> In education, yes, of course I would. I'm not an incredibly motivated, dynamic person who could make stuff happen whatever the circumstance, those people are incredibly rare, that's why they're famous, like Richard Branson. I worked hard at school, went to a top college, went to work in high tech, fairly typical "geek" life. Would I be the same person now if I'd been stuck in the small town I grew up in, working a dead-end job, surrounded by people who were going nowhere?

I don't think my race has disadvantaged me professionally, but it certainly had an effect in that small town when there was at most one non-white kid in every class... My education got me out of that world and I've never looked back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> you also need to take things like underemployement into the equation, the main reason there aren't any jobs for people without a college degree, is because people with college degree are taking jobs at 7-8 bucks an hour just to put food on the table

<comment><USER15> That is probably tied into immigration and welfare policies. An illegal worker from Mexico will pick potatoes for $4/hour, while a poor black person who is a US citizen will probably refuse the same job even at $8/hour (or whatever the minimum wage is these days). A black person will probably rely on welfare. An illegal worker does not have access to the same level of welfare.

<comment><USER8> The people with the highest rate of unemployment however, black men 15 - <USER2> without high school diplomas, are not eligible for welfare. In all 50 states, welfare is only given to care givers. That is, to people who have custody of children. In most cases, women.

That data kind of blows the, 'blacks will just use welfare' theory out of the water. Unless you meant, 'black women with children will just use welfare'. Which, come to think of it, is probably what you meant. But it just seems that the serious unemployment is borne by and large by black men.

<comment><USER7> Actually, people of all races in that age group tend to have very high unemployment rates.

The ability to live with your mom is (from an economic perspective) provides the same disincentives to work as welfare.

<comment><USER16> And if you use the extra time to learn some programming, so much the better, perhaps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Another interesting factoid: if you select people 25-44 with college degree, you can improve your score by selecting women instead of men.

Who would have thought? Educated women are doing better than educated men? I like it.

<comment><USER18> Time to start hunting for a sugar mama :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Tufte would be proud of this.

</comment><comment><USER20> Thats a pretty cool interface to present all that data.

</comment><comment><USER21> From my own observations, unemployment amongst software engineers seems to be high.

</comment><comment><USER22> Although this is depressing, it's also a good learning tool.

</comment><comment><USER23> Unless I am missing something, they contradicted themselves.

The graph shows that the recession IS affecting everyone in all the groups equally.

They are all a few percentage higher than last September, but the ratio is the same as last September.

Instead of doing this by age, gender, race and education they should have shown this by TYPE of job.

Then it would be very uneven.

They should do this kind of graph for health care coverage.

<comment><USER15> They should have also broken it down by the income level.

> They should do this kind of graph for health care coverage.

Some topics are not appropriate for public discourse as far as large media corporations are concerned. We are not supposed to discuss the number of bankruptcies / year due to health care costs, or how health insurance is linked to employment and since there is a high un-employment, there is probably a large number of un-insured individuals as well. And how on the first accident any one of those uninsured will probably blow through their life savings, credit card accounts and eventually declare bankruptcy.

<comment><USER24> > They should have also broken it down by the income level.

Don't most unemployed people have an income of 0, or whatever their unemployment checks are?

<comment><USER25> Yes, but I would propose breaking it down by their level of median annual income over the last 5-10 years. This would give a number, for any given individual, would tend to change gradually over a lifetime and would not be significantly affected by a year or two of unemployment.

This would show how much of the unemployment was affecting only those who were already losing in the employment game.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


NPAPI Plugins in Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/10/08/npapi-plugins-in-firefox/ <comment><USER2> I want to applaud this but all that has really changed is the definition of "plugin". It has been politicized. EME requires platform-specific proprietary.... components? extensions? Let's just not call them what they are, plugins.

So the issue is, was the problem with plugins NPAPI? If so I guess we're doing better.

<comment><USER3> Most NPAPI plugins are not sandboxed or auto-updated to track the plugin's latest security fixes. Adobe does have an auto-updater and sandbox for Flash. The sandbox (called Protected Mode) is only available for 32-bit Windows, so Mozilla has developed its own Flash sandbox for Win64 Firefox: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1185532](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1185532)

Firefox sandboxes EME "plugins", called Content Decryption Modules (CDMs), and hard codes a list of trusted and signed CDM DLLs. (Currently, this list is just Adobe's Primetime CDM.)

Also, because plugins are system libraries, other applications can side-load random plugins into your browser. For example, OS X installs a plugin called "Default Browser Helper" that allows Safari to snoop on your default browser choice and know when Firefox is run: [https://twitter.com/dougturner/status/650575548918296580](https://twitter.com/dougturner/status/650575548918296580)

<comment><USER4> The "Default Browser" plug-in is not responsible for the notification mentioned in that tweet. The plug-in has no opportunity to execute code when Firefox is launched, only when instantiated by a web page.

Besides, there's no need for a browser plug-in to detect when Firefox is run: the LaunchServices framework responsible for launching applications on OS X can simply check whether the application it is launching appears to be a web browser.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the correction. The only analysis I have found is this blog post from someone at Opera (Published: 2014-04-07, Updated: 2015-08-26). Do you know when the "Default Browser Helper" plug-in is instantiated? It was shipped in OS X 10.9, so it may no longer be relevant.

[https://www.aeyoun.com/technote/default-browser- plugin.html](https://www.aeyoun.com/technote/default-browser-plugin.html)

<comment><USER4> The plug-in provides a scripting interface that's only available to pages hosted via HTTPS on apple.com. The scripting interface exposes whether Safari is the default browser, and allows for prompting the user to change their default browser. To my knowledge the only place this was used was a "Welcome to OS X Mavericks" page that was shown shortly after installation of that version of OS X. I doubt that it's been used since.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How about Java? Currently FireFox is the only way to use older versions of the Java plugin on OS X.

The way things are going I'm going to have to keep a WinXP IE6 VM for managing all these switches, printers, UPSs, and everything else with an embedded management platform.

<comment><USER6> The article links to Java web start, which is what Oracle seems to recommend: [https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform- group/entry/java_web_...](https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform- group/entry/java_web_start_in_or)

But yes, VM sounds like a better solution. Why risk the security of your desktop/laptop with unmaintained legacy applications?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Instead of moving from their old NPAPI to the newer and safer PPAPI, which would work better for e10s, they simply chose to drop plugin support entirely (except for Flash). I think that's pretty lazy of them.

<comment><USER8> PPAPI is Chromium-specific and unspecified. It is the result of Google going their own way with the creation of a new API after rejecting the proposals made by the other browser vendors on the plugin-futures mailing list [1].

[1]: [https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/plugin- futures/2010-April...](https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/plugin- futures/2010-April/000088.html)

<comment><USER9> This is always Mozilla's excuse. It's not as if Google hasn't published their source code or their documentation:

[https://developer.chrome.com/native- client/c-api](https://developer.chrome.com/native-client/c-api)

It's not as if Google isn't willing to work with other browser vendors to translate this into a formal spec.

It's not as if you even need to have a formal spec for the plugin API! The previous standard, "NPAPI", is the __Netscape __Plugin API, which was informally specified for Netscape, and then adopted by other browser vendors.

How is that any different than PPAPI?

<comment><USER8> Please read the mailing list thread I linked. It isn't a long thread.

The problem is not just that PPAPI is unspecified, although that is a problem. The problem is that the consensus is/was that PPAPI is the wrong approach entirely, because we already have the Web APIs. Inventing parallel APIs instead of providing a way for native code to call Web APIs just adds a lot of complexity to the platform for no reason.

> It's not as if you even need to have a formal spec for the plugin API! The > previous standard, "NPAPI", is the Netscape Plugin API, which was informally > specified for Netscape, and then adopted by other browser vendors.

Nobody's happy with NPAPI. That's why it's being dropped. "Just as good as NPAPI" is not the bar we want to meet in 2015.

<comment><USER9> What made NPAPI something nobody is happy with has little to do with standardization approaches.

Web APIs aren't a replacement for a plugin mechanism, and never will be, because they live _below_ the browser instead of as a peer of the browser.

Your dedication to a two-tier system of platform-level code access would be less hypocritical if you imposed the same restrictions on yourself -- but of course, if you did that, you couldn't actually ship a working, high-performing browser.

<comment><USER8> > Web APIs aren't a replacement for a plugin mechanism, and never will be, > because they live below the browser instead of as a peer of the browser.

NPAPI is mostly below the browser nowadays. And PPAPI is completely "below the browser". In fact, that's its entire reason for existing.

> Your dedication to a two-tier system of platform-level code access would be > less hypocritical if you imposed the same restrictions on yourself -- but of > course, if you did that, you couldn't actually ship a working, high- > performing browser.

I would love to implement more and more of the Web platform using the Web APIs, and there has been continuous motion in that direction for a long time.

<comment><USER9> Continuous motion, maybe. Continuous _forward_ motion, not so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Now it would be the time for a new browser to rise with the exactly opposite direction then the current ones: More exactly a browser with maximum developer support, allowing as much existing technologies as possible under a well designed control (allowing the user to easily configure allowed functionalities, apps, interfaces, API's and as much sandboxing as possible). I think that such a movement would have a good traction right now.

Hey developers: go and fork firefox and give us a useful browser!

<comment><USER11> There are such projects already, even started long before the NPAPI discussion:

[http://kmeleonbrowser.org/](http://kmeleonbrowser.org/)

[http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/](http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/)

[http://www.seamonkey-project.org/](http://www.seamonkey-project.org/)

All based on the Gecko engine. I wonder what their standpoint is about NPAPI, though.

I use kmeleon and I am quite happy with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> When will I be able to watch Netflix in Firefox 64? What's the timeline for this to work and who has to make the changes, Netflix or Mozilla?

<comment><USER3> Netflix will use EME video in 64-bit Firefox. Mozilla is working with Adobe and Netflix now. EME for 32-bit Firefox is available in Firefox's pre-release channels. 64-bit should be available in the next couple days.

<comment><USER2> This will be for all operating systems?

<comment><USER3> Yes. Mozilla and Adobe are focusing on the most popular platform first (Windows Vista and later). Once we get it right there, support for OS X, Linux, and Windows XP will follow.

<comment><USER2> BSD?

<comment><USER13> If you want the Adobe binary blob stuff to work, you can probably use the Linux layer in {Free,Net}BSD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Typical "follow, not lead" mentality from Mozilla. Anybody who remembers the _very_ early days of the project, back when releases were named M1, M2 and so on, will remember the many fights over various aspects of the browser that ended with "We must do this because Internet Explorer does it" or "We can't do that because Internet Explorer doesn't do that."

Now, in 2015, it's more of the same, following Google Chrome instead of having a vision, sticking to it, and just implementing it.

 _Plugins are a source of performance problems, crashes, and security incidents for Web users._

They're also a source of cutting-edge and/or specialized functionality that isn't part of the browser and may never be.

 _Websites and publishers which currently use plugins such as Silverlight or Java should accelerate their transition to Web technologies_

I'm having a hard time coming up with a definition of "web technology" that doesn't include Java, outside of "things that are baked into the browser out the box" which is awfully narrow.

 _The Web platform is powerful and can usually do everything that a plugin can do. In the rare cases where a site needs to extend Web technologies, the recommended solution is to develop the additional features as a Firefox add- on._

Why should it be rare? Innovation will always outrace the ability (or willingness) of browser vendors to incorporate new technologies. I mean, there's a reason plugins exist and I don't see that anything has changed to negate that. They're a place to try out new stuff, or things that aren't widely used enough (or supported by a company with enough money) to get incorporated into the browsers.

OTOH, maybe this is a win. We need to get away from this whole "The browser is a poor man's operating system" model anyway. Let the browser do a great job of browsing hypermedia and then hand off to specialized programs when we want to do something outside that paradigm. In this regard, JWS is a great approach that should probably be more widely used.

<comment><USER15> The native api isn't only necessary for accessing operating system resources or running natively compiled code. It's also to interact with the browser at a fundamental level. It's extremely useful for things that modify the user interface or need to interact with the dom, like _vimperator_ , _ublock_ , _tab mix plus_ , etc...

I think one of the bigger problems with a non-native plugin api is that doing anything non-trivial could become either unnecessarily complex or possibly even intractable. I'd be curious how they are planning to support extensions like _vimperator_ or even _no-script_.

<comment><USER16> Well, the folks behind Vimperator sound optimistic at least.

[https://github.com/vimperator/vimperator- labs/issues/264](https://github.com/vimperator/vimperator-labs/issues/264)

<comment><USER17> The creator of noscript also seems optimistic: [https://hackademix.net/2015/08/22/webextensions-api- noscript...](https://hackademix.net/2015/08/22/webextensions-api-noscript/)

<comment><USER15> _native.js_ looks interesting. It almost seems like it's recreating micro- kernel type interaction within the browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Mozilla has been steadily improving the Web platform to support features that were once only available via NPAPI plugins.

Does this mean we'll get pre-emption and blocking I/O in JavaScript?

You can do that in a plugin.

<comment><USER19> The fact that you can do that in a plugin is one of the main reasons plugins are being dropped. It turns out that blocking I/O on the main thread is not a good thing.

Oh, and you can in fact do blocking I/O in JavaScript in a worker, if you're not talking about doing it on the main thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> So I assume that Flash will still internally use NPAPI?

<comment><USER21> Yes.</comment></comment>


Ballerina – concurrent, typed language with textual and graphical syntax - <AUTHOR> https://ballerinalang.org/ <comment><USER2> This actually does look great.

There's real value here. In a world being overrun with services what's desperately needed is an orchestration language. Such a language is severely focused on consuming services/messages, converting data, and then uploading data/messages. This is the next Unix shell; a tool whose only purpose would be to stitch together services, pipe data, schedule execution, and display results. An integration dsl.

But it's not clear ballerina that can really do that. Would love to see a more real world example that demonstrates it really solves the integration/scripting problem.

<comment><USER3> Ballerina is designed exactly for that; to be the Unix shell of the Internet basically. Deep understanding of JSON, XML, MIME, SQL etc., networked execution naturally, parallelism naturally, resiliency, etc..

Only time will tell whether we get the mix right.

<comment><USER4> The built in JSON type is a real killer feature for me: [https://github.com/ballerinalang/ballerina/blob/master/docs/...](https://github.com/ballerinalang/ballerina/blob/master/docs/specification/typesandvar.md)

Dealing with JSON objects in Java has been a pain which often caused me to pick Node.js. I always wanted another typed language that supports JSON literals...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's looking to be a lot of value in visual languages - this isn't the first one to hit the FP in the last few weeks. We're probably beginning to appreciate the limits of text-based programming, and hopefully enough work goes into something different to create a tool with real productivity using visual code. The only trouble I can see is that there isn't a lot of speed at the moment in dragging and dropping to create graphs.

<comment><USER6> I currently have the "pleasure" of building a SharePoint workflow, which is done by clicking together building blocks in a graphical builder (running as part of Visual Studio).

Maybe I am generalizing to hastily, but I absolutely despise the experience. In theory it sounds like a nice concept, in practice it tends to make trivial tasks exceedingly complicated[1]. And what would be a screen of code is several screens full of a block diagram. It is possible to zoom out, but text gets unreadable fairly quickly.

[1] To be fair, I think that is probably more of SharePoint problem, whose complexity would be hilarious if I did not have to deal with it.

<comment><USER7> You'd probably appreciate the movie Zero Theorem. The hero, a coder, is doing the same procedure...it's by the Monty Python people.

<comment><USER6> Thank you!

Terry Gilliam has made some _great_ movies (although I found Tideland too intense to watch). This one is now on the top of my to-watch list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems to be fairly mature for something I've just heard of. It's crazy how many languages we have now. It's mostly a good thing, but I always wonder how nice it would be to have these immensely talented designers focusing on libraries for existing languages...etc. What is ballerina's performance? I assume it is alright being on the JVM?

<comment><USER9> It is compiled and output is bytecode. Currently bytecode interpreter is in Java. In the future, it can run on other languages (go?) or using something like LLVM with we write an interpreter for the bytecode. However, to do that we need to port the connectors, which is some work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Ballerina, TCL with a quazi-Golang syntax"

<comment><USER11> I'm curious to know why you think there is a tcl connection? Not saying there isn't, just don't see it myself

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> check the latest [https://github.com/ballerinalang/ballerina/releases](https://github.com/ballerinalang/ballerina/releases)

</comment><comment><USER13> Does this language do animations to elucidate the flow of data?

<comment><USER3> Not yet .. but we have a design for tracing the execution flow of every run at near zero cost and then playing back the execution trace. That's not saving all intermediate state but if you save the input (usually an HTTP request; so its saved in the logs) then you can easily debug production issues with it.

If you meant debugging type stuff yes there's debugging already, including from the Idea plugin.

<comment><USER13> Could one eventually build a TCP in Ballerina where the animated diagram _is_ the program?

<comment><USER3> I missed replying to this .. yes one could easily.

Making that perform at the same level as a TCP driver written in C could be a bit challenging .. but not impossible.

In fact, expressing network interaction protocols is one motivation for the sequence diagram approach, but the expectation was higher level stuff like OpenID or SAML type interactions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This looks great, the visual representation may be a killer feature, but the website could use a little more color.

Also, it seems to be written in Java (run in the JVM?), so I will not touch it, but I hope others will.

<comment><USER3> JVM is not exposed _at all_. We plan to include OpenJDK in final distros so it runs totally self container.

Absolutely no Java semantics or concepts are leaked to the language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> is this webpage really slow and hard to scroll for anyone else?

<comment><USER16> Yes, it's awful for me on Chrome 58. While I do need to update my browser, I tried on a couple of others and it seems much smoother on Firefox:

Chrome 58 OSX: extremely janky, but I do have lots of tabs open.

Chrome 61 Canary OSX: a little janky, but mostly ok. It's the only open tab.

Firefox 54 OSX: smooth scrolling. It's the only open tab.</comment></comment>


TSA Accepting Public Comments On Whole Body Airport Screening - <AUTHOR> http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/04/21/0220218/tsa-accepting-public-comments-on-whole-body-airport-screening

<comment><USER2> (English is not my native language)

I am very surprised by the very large amount of statism that seems to be present in USA in general and on hacker news in particular.

The high level of support for GWOT and all the side dishes like TSA, mass surveillance etc is very surprising.

Each and one of all the things that have been done in the post 9/11 world may partially or completely be justifiable on it's own.

But please, take a step back and paint a picture of where we have come from and were we are going if this trend continues.

If I may help you...

<http://i.imgur.com/tfPY1y0.jpg> , here is a picture of the subway in New York in the 80's, dirty and full of graffiti - with drugs and violence present and by all means also music, food vendors and a lot of people going to their jobs.

<http://i.imgur.com/AxWRPgl.jpg> , here is the Moscow subway from the same time. Clean, spotless and no one behaves disorderly without the police arresting them quickly, police officers with none of the ridiculous limitations that the western police had in their code of conduct at that time.

In which of those two subways would you prefer to ride to work every day?

With every new alfabet law designed to protect us that passes through the parliaments, with every new government agency we move closer to a society that looks more like the Moscow subway station.

Not to long ago we were prepared for thermonuclear war to defend our ways.

Today we are giving up our open and free society with a cheer so we can stay safe. Step by step, piece by piece.

Why can't the otherwise so intelligent and educated crowd of hacker news see that our society is heading in the direction of a police state? We are not there yet, but it is where we will end up if we don't turn around soon.

<comment><USER3> The American people are resourceful, well armed and have a strong distrust of government, any attempted police state would last about five minutes and result in impeachment.

<comment><USER4> HAHAHAHAHHAHHAHA. Oh, jeez. /me wipes a tear. Good one.

Say that, verbatim, to the face of a TSA agent during a patdown after removing your shoes, throwing away a half-empty bottle of water and making damn sure a nail clipper rides in your baggage. But be sure to keep your voice down and avoid an eye contact, lest you want to end up on a no-fly list.

<comment><USER2> About ten years ago some guys from Saudi Arabia made it their goal to strike terror into US of A.

I would say that they have done a pretty good job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can also opt out of the scan when you travel which registers your opinion. On average this adds about 3 minutes to the security time, though sometimes longer (up to 7) if other people are getting patdowns. In SFO they log reasons and include health concerns and privacy concerns.

<comment><USER6> I did this about 4 times so far but then the last time it now up in my face by adding 1 hour to my screening time and while I philosophically wasn't too keep opting out I have to wonder if I can keep justifying it pragmatically.

<comment><USER7> How did it add an hour to your screening?

<comment><USER8> As netnichols stated above, "I had to wait about 15 minutes for 'the agent' to show up that would conduct the pat-down." I'm guessing that this is the reason.

I've successfully opted out once. In that instance, an agent performed a pat- down with no wait. I tried again more recently and, after fruitlessly waiting 5-10 minutes for the special pat-down agent to arrive, gave up and reluctantly went through the backscatter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The comments seem to have a vastly negative sentiment - which is a good sign - but its probably the vocal minority. People who don't care (the majority) wont even bother commenting.

On last count - I have opted out a dozen times, and I have never stepped foot in one of these machines.

12 is a small sample size but on average it took 15 minutes longer than a metal detector (with a couple outliers of course).

The experience with agents has varied. One of them purposefully stuck me in front of an air-conditioner and I froze for a good 10 minutes while he went off and did something else. On a separate occasion a younger agent barely touched me and waved me by (he seemed less enthusiastic the pat-down than I was!).

I will continue to opt out until either the machines are scrapped or I no longer have a choice. I just add the extra time to my journey knowing that I will most likely be waiting longer.

<comment><USER10> I have always opted out as well. Recently the agents have started informing me that the new machines are safe, but they rarely answer my follow up question satisfactorily ("Great! Where did you get your degree in biophysics?").

<comment><USER11> A TSA agent was once similarly telling me how it "emits less radiation than a cell phone" after I opted out. I of course couldn't care as opposed to how invasive it is. I think as a public we tend to value our health, almost unhealthily; but when it comes to civil rights or privacy, we don't care as long as we're not effected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The one genius thing about the body scanners is that the TSA have persuaded people who don't like them that they can protest by opting out.

Opting out isn't a protest. I have no idea why people think it is. You're given a manual search that is just as invasive as a body scan.

If you want to register your discontent with the searches at airports, don't delude yourselves that opting out does anything. No one notices. No one writes it down. No one cares.

<comment><USER13> Sure it is. Enough people opting out bogs down the system for all. Think of it as a form of malicious compliance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Which will be promptly ignored.

<comment><USER4> Or, TSA has already decided to take the scanners down, and so now they are just looking to pick up free goodwill since it's bloody obvious what the public would say on the matter.

<comment><USER15> The are certainly not taking the scanners down.

They are only changing the technological method of scanning.

If anything they are trying to get scanners in more places outside of airports.

If I remember reading correctly, the old scanners are still going to be in use at like courthouses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ah, what timing</comment>


GIMP 2.9.6 Released - <AUTHOR> https://www.gimp.org/news/2017/08/24/gimp-2-9-6-released/ <comment><USER2> If you're a developer and want to help out, there's a list of GIMP bugs for newcomers here: [1]

More info on how to participate (including not only development of GIMP itself but also filing bug reports or creating web content): [2]

[1] - [https://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=UNCONFIRME...](https://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&keywords=newcomers&product=GIMP)

[2] - [https://www.gimp.org/develop/](https://www.gimp.org/develop/)

</comment><comment><USER3> The maintainer and lead developer of GIMPs, Øyvind Kolås, is on Patreon : [https://www.patreon.com/pippin](https://www.patreon.com/pippin)

If you use GIMP, even a little, don't hesitate to make a donation :)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been very impressed with Gimp lately - there was a time that it was clunky and crashy, Windows builds were difficult to find, and usually out of date, and I often felt like I was only persevering with it on principle. In recent years though, it's been wholly solid. Was there a change in project leadership, or something - maybe just a new development workflow? I've known plenty of seemingly-moribund projects spring to life just from someone spending a few days knocking up better build scripts...

<comment><USER5> I have always advocated for Gimp but people esp designers want to stick to photoshop. Hope they understand the power of this open source

<comment><USER6> Can GIMP load psd files correctly? I seem to remember that there was some trouble loading psd files, but I don't remember exactly what.

Edit to add: I ask because if GIMP cannot handle the de facto standard image file type without too much fiddling, people won't touch it. It is the same problem LibreOffice has, actually.

<comment><USER7> Never heard of PSD until your comment. Not so standard.

Wikipedia: "A .PSD file is a layered image file used in Adobe PhotoShop."

Oh, that's what you mean by "standard".

Not "standard" as in, I can put onto a server, point a web page's IMG at it, and be confident it displays on everyone's browser.

Or "standard" as in, documented in some RFC or other standard document.

How well does Photoshop open the "standard" GIMP .xcf files?

<comment><USER8> Anybody in graphics design for more than 5 minutes any time in the last 25 years knows what a PSD file is. Because you are not familiar with a (defacto) industry standard doesn't make it non-standard.

The Adobe PSD file format is documented in painful detail here [https://www.adobe.com/devnet- apps/photoshop/fileformatashtml...](https://www.adobe.com/devnet- apps/photoshop/fileformatashtml/)

The format is binary and extremely convoluted, in part because it attempts to maintain compatibility with 20 years of versions of Photoshop. Because of this complexity, I am unaware of any program that can read or write a PSD file that supports all features of Photoshop. I am in fact aware of no non-Adobe program that will read and write a Photoshop file with editable text layers (including Gimp).

<comment><USER7> > _Anybody in graphics design for more than 5 minutes any time in the last 25 > years knows what a PSD file is. Because you are not familiar with a > (defacto) industry standard doesn 't make it non-standard._

True. I haven't used any program for image editing other than GIMP since 1996 (which I first installed on a GNU/Linux system running on a Sun Sparcstation 20!)

> _I am in fact aware of no non-Adobe program that will read and write a > Photoshop file with editable text layers (including Gimp)._

That's just a consequence of being so incredibly standard.

<comment><USER9> PSD is an industry standard.

<comment><USER7> Sure; if you can say "industry" in reference to a bunch of people whose employability is hinged to a single PC/Mac application.

<comment><USER10> Not merely a single application, the entire network of Adobe applications, and the interoperability between them, which doesn't just mean still images, but audio and visual effects in commercials, film, video games, physical print, professional photography. Almost any visual media outside of the browser at some point interacts with Adobe and PSD files.

And someone whose employability is probably tied to a specific OS, toolchain or software stack really shouldn't throw stones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Still no official macOS 2.9 build

[https://download.gimp.org/mirror/pub/gimp/v2.9/](https://download.gimp.org/mirror/pub/gimp/v2.9/)

<comment><USER12> So I'll just add this:

[https://artplusmarketing.com/gimp-and-inkscape-on-retina- mac...](https://artplusmarketing.com/gimp-and-inkscape-on-retina-macs-do-not- work-9601c3052e86)

Long story short; if you're on retina screens (which most Macs have) there are bigger issues than just missing macOS builds.

It's really not usable on Macs at all.

<comment><USER13> Probably sounds silly, but I absolutely love Gimp and Inkscape, and use them both everyday. Their poor support on Mac was one of the reason I switched back to Windows.

It's odd, because I've read all the arguments about how OSX is a unix, etc., but in the real world I've found better success running user facing open source application on Windows.

<comment><USER12> It's true for anything with a GUI using GTK or similar. For cmdline, macOS is generally a lot better. WSL is getting really good as well, so cmdline on Windows (well, it's actually Linux, but running on Windows) is getting really good. Other open source things (like Emacs) has macOS and Windows native GUI support built in and mostly works great on all platforms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I curious as to who is using GIMP for serious work. I have tried it numerous time in the past but always end up going back to PS. As of late I been making a switch to Affinity Photo but have always been pulling for GIMP.

<comment><USER15> This is the first I've heard of Affinity Photo. The feature list looks very complete, for what I use on a regular basis. Are you a long-time Photoshop user? How does it compare?

<comment><USER16> Affinity Photo is excellent. It's a way yet from parity with Photoshop, but is certainly competitive. And it's subscription free!

If you're into vector illustration, Affinity Designer is a straight replacement for Adobe Illustrator.

Also consider awesome software such as Studio Artist ([https://synthetik.com/](https://synthetik.com/)), and Escape Motions offerings ([https://www.escapemotions.com/](https://www.escapemotions.com/)).

Any conscientious artist should evaluate and consider these alternatives, if only to break up the industry's idiotic enslavement to Adobe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Occasionally using it on a Mac. Most of the time I force quit it, though, because it loads fonts forever. It's not a "quickly open and edit a file" tool for me.

<comment><USER18> Not sure where this is stored on Mac, but on Windows, clear the _fontconfig_ directory in the AppData folder.

<comment><USER19> That's not really likely to help. The main issue appears to be that since fontconfig (a lib used by GIMP) is only "native" to Linux, for it to know about the TTF files, it has to scan them all and build it's cache at startup. For people with hundreds of fonts installed it can be a real PITA.

I avoid it by being careful to not exit GIMP entirely (simply closing all the editing windows) until I am sure I won't need it again for awhile.

<comment><USER18> It fixed the font loading forever for me on Windows.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, you most likely got rid of an existing cache, which couldn't be updated due to file locking. That issue is fixed in recent versions of the fontconfig library.

A fairly current one is shipped with the 2.9.6 installer, so many of the infamous issues should be gone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Good to know is that odd minor releases by GIMP are, like GNOME's, considered unstable. In other words, 2.9.x could be seen as beta releases for 2.10 (which is why things like the parallel stuff might explode in your face).

</comment><comment><USER22> Ooooh! I'll have to give this a go when I get home. HiDPI changes became my favorite kind of application update after I got a 4k screen :P

I'll have to start reading the source at some point, I'd love to see how the code changes in canvas interaction look internally.

Keep doing what you do gimp devs! I'm ever grateful.

</comment><comment><USER23> GIMP doesn't support Smart Objects. This alone makes it not usable for professional work, when compared to Photoshop. The cost of the latter is nothing if you are getting paid for your work.

[https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/10-things-you-need- to-...](https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/10-things-you-need-to-know- about-smart-objects-in-photoshop--cms-20268)

<comment><USER24> Non-destructive is where GIMP is heading as a whole. The GEGL port needs to be completed first for many of the sub-features to be reasonably implemented.

GIMP Roadmap with "smart objects" listed: [https://wiki.gimp.org/index.php/Roadmap](https://wiki.gimp.org/index.php/Roadmap)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> As a casual user on a Mac, I've long since abandoned GIMP for Pixelmator + Imagemagick.

Has GIMP improved in usability in the past few years?

<comment><USER26> I recently installed a fresh version of GIMP (for the purpose of running the exporter script so I can import the layers from photoshop files into the Spine animation tool). I'm only using it as an elaborate runtime for that script, but my impressions are that the UI is basically the same as I remember it from 15 years ago. So, while it's features may have improved, the UI does not seem like it's improved at all.

<comment><USER27> > So, while it's features may have improved, the UI does not seem like it's > improved at all.

That's actually a bonus point in my book. If it ain't broke don't fix it. I like that when I start Gimp anywhere I can just start using it. I am not a designer though.

<comment><USER26> Many people would argue that it is broken and needs fixing ;-)

I used to love GIMP and didn't have any huge problems with it (although, at the time, I liked the multi window layout because I was using a tiling window manager), but then I tried photoshop and the photoshop UI was simply much easier for me to navigate. Now I use GIMP only because its free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If GIMP is pushing to multi-threading I wounder what's the motivation to stick to C as a main language.

</comment><comment><USER29> wasn't able to find the download link

<comment><USER20> ... and now [https://www.gimp.org/downloads/devel/](https://www.gimp.org/downloads/devel/)</comment></comment>


The Jacob's Ladder of Coding - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/the-jacob-s-ladder-of-coding-4b12477a26c1 <comment><USER2> Creative coding, as in, producing visuals and audio with code is what drew me into programming initially.

I wish that like the author I could devote 100% of my working time to this, but I am still lucky to be able to do a bit of it in my spare time.

Some of the people in this space that I admire:

[http://www.iquilezles.org](http://www.iquilezles.org)

[http://www.mine-control.com](http://www.mine-control.com)

<comment><USER3> Awesome! Creative coding is how I got into programming, too ([http://cenizal.com/projects/vfx_portfolio/](http://cenizal.com/projects/vfx_portfolio/))

<comment><USER4> Cool website! But your scroll is super messed up. On my macbook scrolling up and down has no effect, but pinch and depinch with scroll the page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How to bring back the creative atmosphere of old school computing?, Is it possible?

I feel that the abundance of choice and tools is what is having a negative impact on creativity. Somehow the non-ending stream of new tools/techniques/languages/frameworks is limiting our ability to create. It should be the other way but it's not. It seems like right now we are chasing the (non existent) perfect toolchain, and people are jumping from one tech stack to another without really producing valuable things.

The big problem is the short attention span that is caused by abundance of choice. When people jump to a new technology it will be fun because of the novelty, but the possibility of mastery is lost because everytime one has to ditch a lot of the knowledge that was starting to accumulate. This is specially bad in Web development, but it affects most of the computing areas.

We don't feel confortable embracing limitations and sadly that's a key ingredient of creativity. We prefer to spend long hours researching another tools. How can we "simulate" the lack of options that old school computing had? Is it possible anymore?

<comment><USER6> I've only skimmed the article (it's in my Pocket for later), but I think the author gives the answer: embedded programming. You can make your environment as constrained as you want then.

<comment><USER7> Or demo programming. Program for the C64 ([http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=66646](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=66646)), use max 1K for the executable ([http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=66619](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=66619)) et.al.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Boy, I relate directly to this. I grew up essentially in the ghettos of Baltimore, and my first computer was a Vic-20. I had only a single ripped up 6502 manual, and one of Vic Games programming. I had no datasette in the beginning, and so I started with graph paper, coloring in squares, and computing graphics. I PEEK'ed and POKE'ed stuff directly until I got some primitive stuff going. Later, by reading magazines, I was able to enter by hand, the code for my first machine language monitor, from there things got much better, although I had to be extremely careful not to crash my machine or turn it off, until I could afford a datasette.

Eventually, I got a C64, learned cracking, demo programming, NTSC fixing, and that was pretty much my gateway out of a bad neighborhood into the comfortable spot at Google I have today.

Here's an old compilation I made of some crack/intro screens I made for various groups in the 80s.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aViXXbUg_yU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aViXXbUg_yU)

<comment><USER2> I grew up in a similar environment, saw lots of friends and family destroy their lives out of boredom and general bad company.

One of the reasons I hold so much affection for my childhood computers ( Atari 800XL, C64 and the Amiga ) are because they probably saved me from a sad destiny and gave me the opportunity to have a nice profession.

If it wasn't for those machines I might not have been where I am today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Lesson learned: Language skills, natural and coded ones, are gateways, > opening paths not just for more expression, but also to paths in life.

This is a fantastic quote. I lived in Tokyo for 3 years and while I picked up some of the language and had a phenomenal time, I saw friends who were fluent in Japanese and the experiences and interactions they had and was and am still extremely jealous.

<comment><USER10> A goodly number of Japanese people are over the moon to see a gaikokujin learning their language and would readily supply help.

I think I gained a few levels in Japanese by spending two weeks in Osaka, getting drunk and chatting with locals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As someone learning lisp for fun, with no expectations, this article was inspirational and reinforced my faith that I am undertaking a worthwhile endeavor, if only to change the way I think about programming.

<comment><USER12> Did that last year :-) Let me tell you, it's absolutely worth it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The first six paragraphs made me a bit teary. I can't relate my own coming of age in computing with having to deal with the socio-political implications of the Berlin Wall.

</comment><comment><USER14> Author shows a broad knowledge of what programming entails and what it can offer, not limited to writing programs. Inspirational.</comment>


China Is Hording Masks - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/business/masks-china-coronavirus.html <comment><USER2> It gets worse. There is a phenomenon among Chinese expats known as Daigou[0]. It is a common problem in Australia[1], for example. Groups of expats will swarm a store, circumventing per person limits, buy out an entire shelf of a "luxury" good (videos of baby formula for example are on YouTube), load up their trucks, then drive over to the next town.

They've likely been doing the same in the US. Masks have been totally sold out since January (when I started looking for them) while the vast majority of Americans were still totally unaware of the virus.

0\. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigou](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigou)

1\. [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tSjeDH22njk](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tSjeDH22njk)

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you for the info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Shouldn't the title be "hoarding"?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes you are right, don't know how to fix it</comment></comment>