Why you cannot outsource technology if you are not technical - <AUTHOR> http://muratny.posterous.com/why-you-cannot-outsource-technology-if-you-ar

<comment><USER2> A better and more concise statement:

If a technology is critical to your success, then you must either thoroughly understand it, or you need to maintain a _tight_ professional, and preferably also social, connection to those who do.</comment>


Remember the $400k/year parrot ebook? Here's sales figures for another similar site. - <AUTHOR> http://marketplace.sitepoint.com/auctions/60429

<comment><USER2> > _The current owner will provide written instructions on how he earned $100K > in a year to the new owner._

LIMITED OFFER: Buy snake oil instructions for growing your own snake oil business.

<comment><USER3> Its fairly typical of the sites that are sold through Sitepoint and the like. The business peaked in 2006 and revenues fell for two years running - so it started declining before the owner fell ill.

It looks like it is recovering in the first two months of 2009, but it could also be a spike.

It also looks like it needs a fair amount of work to make that much money. So you pay somewhere between $120,000 and $160,000, give up your current job, take the risks entailed, work hard and you might make $100,000+ a year in revenues (not profits!). That does not sound like such a good deal.

In general, the difficulty of verifying the profitability of small sites means that no one will risk paying a high multiple for them. No one with a decent site will sell it at a low multiple, so if it is for sale, expect it to have poor prospects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think I'm going to try something like this. I've always felt dirty when entertaining ideas of _information marketing_ 'businesses', but if it works, it works. I'll see if I can do it all with outsourcing (minus the actual site), so, outsource the marketing copy, the product design, the customer service, the order fulfillment (or automate it), the marketing/selling.

It looks like the only trick is to A: automate it, B: get a targeted, under served niche, and C: get a good marketing copy made and an affiliate system. It will be an interesting experiment.

I'll report back after I'm making > $10k/month and living in Fiji.

<comment><USER5> _(This isn't entirely directed at you, but is more for general consumption. Just picking up on a feeling I got from your post, though.)_

You seem, to me, to feel that this is primarily a dirty sort of business. It's not (even though there _are_ dirty players) and it's becoming a lot less dirty all the time, since people are becoming smarter at what to buy and not.

If you have specialized knowledge and can help people solve a problem or learn something they really want to learn, you can honestly and sincerely produce a product, an e-book, a real book, a video course - whatever - and sell it for a profit. Nothing dirty about that, and the more sincere you are nowadays, the better you'll do.

The "information" business is no more dirty than any other business. Do the majority of sysadmins do it other than for the money? (No) Do the majority of journalists write pro bono on the side? (Nah) Selling information is no dirtier than selling your time and, heck, I've seen just as many passionate and decent people in the info game than elsewhere.

Oh, and don't outsource the "marketing copy." It's your personal voice and the personal connection your potential customers will feel for you that will "sell" your product. You don't want to be wasting time "convincing" people to buy - you want to seem authoritative enough and so trustworthy that people are begging to see more of what you have.

P.S. You might enjoy looking into something called the "underachiever method." It'll provide one of the best ways to establish what it is you should be producing. It was a course once upon a time but you can get all the core ideas for free with a bit of Googling :)

<comment><USER6> I Googled a bit and the "underachiever method" seems to be

1.) Pick niche

2.) Put up survey finding out what questions people most want answered in niche.

3.) Use Adwords to bring people to survey.

4.) After you've collected results, write eBook that answers questions most asked.

5.) Sell eBook

6.) Profit!!! :)

Do you have experience with this method, Peter? Does this actually work? It seems that the recommended sample size of the survey I saw (50-100 responses) would be too small.

Also, how could you be sure that just because people say they want answers to these problems that they'd be willing to pay to get them?

I'm fascinated by this whole info-marketing thing in that I can't believe it actually works yet a lot of folks seem to be doing it profitably. I'd be interested in any insight you have on this.

<comment><USER5> I _was_ surprised once, but I think that's a natural reaction for geeks. It's hard to really get a feel for the general economy and what the average Joe wants.

Just because _I_ don't buy anything from spam, would never buy food from a roadside stall, click on banner ads all day, or go do drugs or whatever.. doesn't mean the majority of the world isn't doing all that stuff each day :) Once realized, it's a pretty powerful thing.. yes, you can produce some really odd stuff and it will still sell!

The underachiever method is really just a market research technique that someone gave a name and made money from. As a market research technique, though, it works. It's just a variation of asking people what they like and then providing that.

It's better, though, because you've actually picked up people from Google who, in the main, were _ready_ to buy! (Or at least read what you had to say about a product.) The opinions of these people are far more important than just general opinions from the market. These are folks with problems who are ready to put down cash to read stuff that will help them out.

The number of responses is small in a classical market research sense, but that's why it's usually done in a very small niche. 50-100 responses to, say, "Why do you want to learn French?" are going to provide enough of an indication of the general market groups.. expats living in France who want jobs, kids at home doing homework, rich guys wanting to pick up chicks in Monaco, etc. These answers can then significantly direct your product.

The alternative is to just build a product then hope the people clicking on your ad want to buy it. Doing even basic market research with something like the underachiever method will put you streets ahead of that point by at least giving you an indicator of what even a small group is definitely going to want to buy.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate your insight on this. I've found a copy of "The Underachiever Method" online and plan on checking it out.

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> In the right sidebar there are screenshots of traffic stats, accurate sales figures. Found this very interesting after wondering if a parrot book site could really make that much.

<comment><USER7> I wonder if there are more parrot owners or oil painters? And which group requires the most help?

using <https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal>, 'parrot help' reported 58 searches in february and a search volume of 320.

'oil painting help' was also search 58 times in February, but only had a search volume of 73.

Based on those numbers, I'd assume that the parrot site is a bigger niche and should make more money.

<comment><USER8> oil painting techniques: 9,900 oil painting technique: 1,900 painting techniques: 74,000

I think people would search for 'help' when their parrot is misbehaving, but 'techniques' when they want to learn how to paint.

Also, beginning/intermediate painters may very well be interested in becoming good enough to sell their work. As such, they might invest in lessons/ebooks, which could garner better conversion rate.</comment></comment></comment>


Nicereply turns your email into a customer service feedback system - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apps/2010/08/04/nicereply-turns-your-email-into-a-customer-service-feedback-system/ <comment><USER3> I am not sure how much I want to bother clients by rating my responses. It's a faff, and provides no real reward for them. There's too much junk at the bottom of emails anyway. I'd also not want to apply it to all emails - <USER2> there's a fuzzy line (where I work) between clients, providers, and random other contacts.

Having said that, I do love it when someone responds with a "Thank You". Or, in the case of one memorable client, poems praising how quickly the problem has been solved. <3 those.

</comment><comment><USER4> $20 a month seems steep for something so simple. It's a good idea, although I'm not sure as a customer if I'd want to take the trouble to rate a reply.

For $20 a month you could sign up with an integrated feedback system which, if nicereply gains any traction, would soon integrate a similar feature anyway.</comment>


'Features-as-a-service' is changing the game for app makers - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/03/06/features-as-a-service-is-changing-the-game-for-app-makers/ <comment><USER2> "Why do I need a wife when the man next door has one?" -Furry Lewis, blues singer. "Why do I need to code social functions when TapGlue has it already." -app developer</comment>


Tech Titans Are Busy Privatising Our Data – Evgeny Morozov - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/24/the-new-feudalism-silicon-valley-overlords-advertising-necessary-evil <comment><AUTHOR>
        In fact, the latter is likely to result in the hyper-modern
        form of feudalism, whereby those of us caught up in
        their infrastructure will have to pay – at least it will
        be as easy as tapping your Oyster card! – for access to
        anything with a screen or a button.

For those not familiar, Oyster cards are the contactless transit cards used in London, UK.</comment>


Britain is world's 7th most stable and prosperous nation - US 22nd - <AUTHOR> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3613926.ece <comment><USER2> Yet another GIGO ranking of nations according to arbitrary criteria.

The flow of immigration between e.g. the US and the UK is the opposite of what this ranking predicts. Are they proposing the immigrants don't know enough to act in their own interest?

In my experience, immigration patterns of educated workers are the best indication of all of what countries are desirable to live in. The costs of moving to a new country are so high that people have to be really sure before they'll do it.

If people move to Silicon Valley despite the proliferation of small arms in the US or the flow of drugs from Mexico, it's not a sign that they're stupid, but that the weighting of components in this study was wrong.

<comment><USER3> _If people move to Silicon Valley despite the proliferation of small arms in the US or the flow of drugs from Mexico, it's not a sign that they're stupid, but that the weighting of components in this study was wrong._

... or, more likely, that the people who move to Silicon Valley have different priorities from most people.

<comment><USER2> We moved to Pittsburgh, and we weren't troubled by the proliferation of small arms or drugs from Mexico there either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The top ten comprise also the Vatican, Sweden, Luxembourg, Monaco, Gibraltar, San Marino, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands and the Irish Republic. "

Nice list! They compare the Vatican to the US? It's a joke...

<comment><USER3> If you want a stable government, the Vatican is the place to be. About the only disadvantage it has in terms of governmental stability is that every head of state since it was formed in 1929 has died while in office. :-)</comment></comment>


The Wolfram Language will soon be integrated into Unity - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/212709/The_Wolfram_Language_will_soon_be_integrated_into_Unity.php

<comment><USER2> Well that is an interesting development. Looks like Wolfram has more planned with this than just education.</comment>


Google Interview University - n-s-f https://github.com/jwasham/google-interview-university/graphs/contributors <comment><AUTHOR> Wow! That's an exceptional collection of resources. Of course the real trick is actually studying all of them. Anyone who gets through all of that would have a pretty serious foundation.</comment>


Describing Chinese Characters with Recursive Radical Packing Language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/LingDong-/rrpl <comment><USER3> This is so cool!

Perhaps two decades ago ago I had the idea, what if ASCII/Unicode were eventually replaced with a system where the codepoints actually encoded the basic "strokes" of a character, much like this, then with additional context about the character (e.g. render as Latin uppercase, as Arabic, as a geometric symbol).

And then even if you didn't have the necessary font installed, there would still be enough information to render something close enough to be meaningful, even if it wouldn't necessarily be pretty. And that the bits and bytes in a text document wouldn't be arbitrary codepoints, but inherently meaningful.

And that it would solve, especially, the case of all these old Chinese characters that still aren't in Unicode.

I never decided to pursue it, and these days universal fonts already exist... but I love so much to see someone trying it, and the idea of associating it with a neural network to actually render in each style is _really_ clever. It makes me wonder how feasible it would be to design a system using NN's that could take, say, any Latin-1 font and automatically produce an equivalent style in any other script, based on how existing semi-universal fonts have done the same.

<comment><USER4> Have a look at the Unicode "Ideographic Description Characters " approach ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideographic_Description_Charac...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideographic_Description_Characters_\(Unicode_block\))), or WenLin's Character Description Language ([https://wenlin.com/cdl](https://wenlin.com/cdl)).

They're similar, but I'd argue that IDC is better at capturing the compositionality, and CDL is infinitely better at generating things "that actually look good". Using IDC, 犬 is ⿺大㇔ and 夲 is ⿱大木. However, for typesetting that (just like RRPL) is too crude, so CDL is really where you want to be: a more complex descriptor system that places components based on a grid location paired with scaling information, so that 大 and ㇔ can be positioned in a way that looks right. Especially when you hit things like 器 where the easthetics of the relative placement makes the difference between "looks right" and "were you drunk when you wrote this?" makes CDL a more appealing choice than RRPL or IDC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's similar to this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cangjie_input_method#Early_Can...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cangjie_input_method#Early_Cangjie_system)

 _A particular "feature" of this early system is that if you send random lowercase words to the character generator, it will attempt to construct Chinese characters according to the Cangjie decomposition rules, sometimes causing strange, unknown characters to appear._

<comment><USER6> It is really impressive. I had some fun with Chu's original DOS implementation [1]; for example, what does happen if you repeat a same letter up to five times? Even you don't know Chinese characters, you can easily see that some subcomponents are specialized while others remain fully general [2]. For example 骨 (BBB) is made of three 月s (B), but it gets reused in BBBBB (presumably ⿰骨骨). Careful decomposition and specialization made Cangjie extremely concise and still usable.

[1] [http://www.cbflabs.com/down/show.php?id=62](http://www.cbflabs.com/down/show.php?id=62)

[2] [https://p.mearie.org/gOHG.png](https://p.mearie.org/gOHG.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is neat.

>Potential fields for usage include font design and machine learning.

Am I correct that this scheme doesn't capture stroke info? I think that would be needed for fonts / handwriting recognition. Fonts have serifs / varying brush widths depending on stroke order and direction. Hand-drawn characters can also look quite different from the printed form (angles of strokes, two consecutive strokes being drawn without lifting the pen even though the printed form has two separate lines, etc).

Edit: As an example, 人 is defined as 257 which is certainly how it appears in print. However it is usually hand-written as something closer to 357, with 37 being the first stroke and 5 being the second. [https://www.tanoshiijapanese.com/dictionary/stroke_order_det...](https://www.tanoshiijapanese.com/dictionary/stroke_order_details.cfm?entry_id=56003)

<comment><USER8> For stroke-level information, you'll probably want something like [https://github.com/skishore/makemeahanzi](https://github.com/skishore/makemeahanzi) (for Chinese) or [https://github.com/kanjivg/kanjivg](https://github.com/kanjivg/kanjivg) (for Japanese).

<comment><USER9> The "Inkstone Chinese" writing app by this same author seems useful for when I am riding someplace and can't pull out my notebook to practice on paper. [https://www.skishore.me/inkstone/](https://www.skishore.me/inkstone/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is very useful. I already have some ideas how this can help me out. One thing to keep in mind is that it is 'traditional' Chinese, not 'simplified'.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is cool! I like how it makes a natural link between how characters are composed of semantic parts ( radicals ), and how the non-semantic RRPL maps / abstracts that, maybe exposing the semantic structure with a language that doesn't have to be aware of semantics. Very cool.

If the author is reading / or if I just missed it in the docs, were these 5000+ descriptions generated automatically somehow or by hand? Either way it's impressive

<comment><USER7> In issue #1 the author says they did it by hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I tried drawing a Koch-like fractal by starting with

        48-83-14-48
         ^  ^ ^  ^

And then replacing the marked numbers with the whole string to get

        4(48-83-14-48)-8(48-83-14-48)-(48-83-14-48)4-(48-83-14-48)8

and iterating from there. Unfortunately the renderer doesn't seem to like it, and in any case a proper Koch curve has lines at all angles, whereas here they must point in one of the eight directions.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps try a Hilbert curve instead?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice work; I like how it can all be brought back to numbers. I wonder if a new keyboard input method could use those codes.

The standard way to describe Hanzi is IDC codes. Those are used in Unicode proposals, and in the Unihan database.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideographic_Description_Charac...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideographic_Description_Characters_\(Unicode_block\))

I added IDC lookup to Pingtype's keyboard, which normally searches the radicals in a decomposition database. It's crude, but lets me input a traditional character when I can only recognise half of it.

[https://pingtype.github.io](https://pingtype.github.io)

</comment><comment><USER14> My immediate thought is this could help out Mayan orthography, which is notably "computer proof", even though it's a mixed logography. (Mayan would need a 3rd marker for depth order, and marker(s?) for occlusion info.)

<comment><USER8> Based on this presentation I found [1] it appears that even just encoding the character composition would be more difficult than for Chinese, and the level of artistic freedom demonstrated in the examples on slide 9 makes me doubtful that it could be replicated by just a few simple rules.

On the other hand, people are working on it, so Mayan will probably at some point end up included in Unicode.

[1] [http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/sei/assets/unlocking- the...](http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/sei/assets/unlocking-the-mayan- rev6-latest-sept2016.pdf)

<comment><USER14> I'd distinguish between glyph and ligature variants, i.e., leopard- vs man- headed characters, U-selection etc., and simply representing the entire word, itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> That's really nice and has potential practical applications, but I was hoping for more of a narrative description, like "the little man in the big house with the sea in front of it" or something similar (very unfortunately I don't know Chinese, or its writing system, so I just made that one up).

I don't think that something like that has been done before, but I think it's within the reach of the current state of the art for character recognition and image captioning.

<comment><USER16> The Han system isn't mostly pictures of things (ideograms), so your narrative descriptions aren't really practical.

The system is at heart logographic (so each squiggle means roughly one word, like "house" or "person") but you can't really do that at scale, it's too unwieldy (consider how many English words you use or are somewhat confident you would recognise if others used them), so you end up using two or three squiggles to make all but the most common words in modern Chinese writing.

The individual logograms are often related to a pictogram, but that's also true of the Latin characters you used to write this. The letter A is probably distantly related to a drawing of the head of an ox.

Han logograms also incorporate entirely abstract (ie they were never attempting to be a picture "of" anything) indications of how they should sound or what the general topic is, as hints to a reader. These would not translate to your narrative description.

<comment><USER15> Thank you for the clarification. Like I say, I don't know anything about Chinese writing.

I'm aware of course of the pictographic character of the originally Phoenician alphabet. The thing is, I remember when I was learning to write, adults using visual metaphors to help me learn: "now draw a little cane" (for the Greek letter ιώτα), "now a little ring" etc. This was not always possible - <USER2> example, "A" was never described to me as a "plow" (I think that's what it actually stands for).

But, visual metaphor doesn't have to pre-exist. A new, arbitrary one can be invented. I mean, a certain brush stroke doesn't have to have a concrete and universally agreed-upon pictographic meaning. If one can be found that happens to work, then that'll do.

But that _may_ be well beyond the state of the art for statistical machine learning algorithms, currently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't know why I did this, but your welcome. 'Murica.

(((1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357)|(1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357)|(1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357)|(1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357)|(1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357-1357))-(48|48|48))|(48|48|48)

</comment><comment><USER18> This is beautiful.</comment>


It came from Redmond: Windows Server 2016 could rattle the competition (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/hands-on-with-windows-server-2016-the-os-with-its-foot-in-everything/ <comment><USER2> "Windows was then infused with the DNA of OS/2 and became Windows NT" !? I think not. Windows was infused with the DNA of VAX VMS thanks to Dave Cutler.</comment>


ACM signs letter opposing free distribution of peer-reviewed journal articles - <AUTHOR> https://newsroom.publishers.org/researchers-and-publishers-oppose-immediate-free-distribution-of-peer-reviewed-journal-articles <comment><USER2> You can look at this two ways:

1\. It's a good reason to _not_ join/support organizations like the ACM, IEEE, etc.

or

2\. It's a good reason _to_ join ACM, IEEE, etc., and try to reform those organizations to adopt more reasonable positions.

<comment><USER3> I did stay a member of the IEEE Computer Society because my feeling is that the IEEE is more responsive to the working engineer.

For instance I like the position of the IEEE on H-1B visas because it is nuanced, and it represents the position of working engineers (U.S. born or not) and not that of their employers. The ACM has been "all-in" on "H-1B is great!"

Unfortunately the ACM shows little concern for the practitioner, even though it was founded to be a bridge between computer science academia and industry. The problem that is carped about in CACM the most over time is the roller- coaster enrollment of CS undergraduate programs.

Part of that roller-coastering is that many people enter the field because they think it is in demand, but after a few years their careers hit a kind of "glass ceiling". If the ACM was more attentive to the problems people have after they graduate, they might solve their own problems, but that would involve breaking with the large employers, which they won't do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Makes me glad I canceled my ACM membership.</comment>


How to Sell a $300 Chocolate Bar - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/expensive-chocolate-ecuador-toak <comment><USER2> THe article suggests that Toth is pricing the product at such a high price point because it's very laboe intensive production (or at least, Toth claims it is), so one wonders how much of that money is actually going back to Ecuador.</comment>


Classic Mathematics Books for Lifelong Learners - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/however-mathematics/13-classic-mathematics-books-for-lifelong-learners-7ec2759142da <comment><USER2> These sorts of books can be interesting as a sort of 'history of science', but I find they are very misleading, and can't help but end up as exaggerated dramatizations of a handful of the personalities involved with virtually no scientific or mathematical content. I understand that this is probably the best the authors can do, since actual content would require years of academic preparation and near full time study on the audience's part to be able to start to approach most of these topics, but that should be a huge clue that the essence can't really be boiled down.

If any of the core ideas of these subjects were accessible in any significant way via just reading a book with no real prerequisites or preparation, people wouldn't have to spend 4 years of full time study just to get to the point that _some_ of them are considered to be prepared to start to study them in a serious way.

There may be some value to science in that these popularizations increase support for science funding by creating 'fans of science', the people that read them are no better off or more educated than if they had just read a romance novel or a western.

TLDR; you aren't learning anything when you read these books, other than a exaggerated biography (with largely invented stories of conflict and drama) of some of the scientists.

<comment><USER3> Did you read the book What Is Mathematics? It is certainly not "an exaggerated biography for some of the scientists".

And the mentioned books, at least some of them, serve different purposes: they aim to inspire, to motivate, and to offer historical context and intuition. The last is especially important, as they show people how abstract concepts emerged from historically concrete endeavors.

When it comes to learning math, you can't take an elite's view. Not everyone is born Bourbaki dudes or Galois or people like them. Ordinary people like me don't just fall in love with maths. I was certainly not interested in number theory as I thought it was too fundamental for me to spend serious time on. And I'm still not. I was certainly puzzled on why my professors introduced the concept of functional in linear algebra or quotient groups in algebra or lattice equations in program analysis or category theory in model checking or probability space in probability. After all, all I wanted was to learn how to model the world to be a better programmer. And I was _not_ able to grasp the abstractions without serious effort. I _needed_ historical context and motivations to plow through those topics and to enjoy math.

Yes, the elites will love and excel at math for no particular reason. Yet it is the middle majority like me who will greatly benefit from the mentioned books and biographies and what not.

<comment><USER2> I did a rough calculation, and far less than 1% of high school graduates in the US will be introduced to quotient groups at any point. While you might be in the middle majority of the people you interact with every day, you are quite elite compared to the general population, and in no way in any 'middle majority', and if anything you are doing what I was suggesting is necessary to appreciate these topics. If you enjoy reading popularizations on top of that, that's great!

<comment><USER3> Middle majority among those who pursue STEM in college. Not everyone is or should be in STEM, after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Many of the list are pop-maths rather than fundamental texts.

I do see many in software field recommend Chrystal:Algebra an Elementary Textbook.

I also find Don Knuth, 'Concrete Mathematics' a interesting book for software people.

<comment><USER5> Any good recommendations on books that are more than pop-fluff but lighter than an academic text?

<comment><USER6> I really liked Introduction to Graph Theory by Trudeau. No upper level math required, but it got rigorous and fun at times. Mostly spatial reasoning.

David Foster Wallace wrote Everything and More which included a lot of math history, while driving into transfinite numbers and set theory. Kindle typesetting is generally terrible for math, but was completely readable in this case. The forward by Neal Stephenson really sets the mood.

<comment><USER7> > David Foster Wallace wrote Everything and More

This is far and away my favorite math book. The way DFW can seamlessly transition from discussing a serious mathematical concept, to the nature of insanity, to the philosophy of abstraction all within a few pages is astounding. He somehow manages to do it while maintaining a conversational, two-folks-at-a-bar tone, teaching me dozens of new word, and being insightful/funny. Like an English professor sneaked into the math dept.

I didn't know it was available on Kindle. Guess I'm buying it again...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Likely listed elsewhere, from the article for convenience:

Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea - Charles Seife

Measurement - Paul Lockhart

Prelude to Mathematics - W. W. Sawyer

Proofs from The Book - Aigner and Ziegler

The Joy of x - Steven Strogatz

Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension - Matt Parker

What is Mathematics? - Courant and Robbins

A History of PI - Petr Beckmann

An Imaginary Tale - Paul Nahin

e: The Story of a Number - Eli Maor

Imagining Numbers - Barry Mazur

Journey Through Genius - William Dunham

Prime Obsession - John Derbyshire

</comment><comment><USER9> The Courant-Robbins book is good but I wouldn't actually suggest it for beginners, it's harder than necessary in many topics.

Concrete mathematics is great but not something you could suggest to, for example, a biologist or medical doctor that wants a deeper understanding of some aspect of mathematics. It's (explicitly) meant for computer science.

<comment><USER10> I've read it in high school and was truly fascinated with which elegance and simplicity the book approached some of the most complex math problems. Of course it just scratched the surface but partially because of this book I chose the Math Department. And our school teacher recommended Courant-Robbins to all the students in a class, many of which actually joined Math Dept too. So, it might be not just me. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For anyone with an undergrad maths background, I'd recommend 'Fearless Symmetry' and 'Elliptic Tales'. They would be tough going for someone without a maths background, but they give a view to the forefront of some active areas of research in maths.

</comment><comment><USER12> Before buying a copy of _Prime Obsession_ , please learn more about the author: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Derbyshire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Derbyshire)

I bought and read his book some time ago, and now I regret supporting him with my purchase.

<comment><USER13> > There have of course been some blots on the record, but I don't see how it > can be denied that net-net, white Europeans have made a better job of > running fair and stable societies than has any other group.

If colonialism, WW2 and USSR are 'blots' he might have to reexamine his definition of 'blot'.

White supremacists hold themselves up as people willing to speak difficult truths. But their logic tends to be pretty question begging. It's like atheists who claim religion is the root of violence, all the while ignoring the genocidal atheists regimes of the 20th and 21st centuries.

<comment><USER14> Which group did better than white Europeans?

<comment><USER13> The groups that didn't start global wars or genocidal regimes that wiped out hundreds of millions of people?

Another odd thing is that these white supremacists act like Judeo-Christian culture (which is what they are really praising) sprang fully formed from the Caucasian race. However, the white Europeans were just warring tribes until they were colonized by the Romans. And, Judeo-Christian culture was founded by Jews (Jesus was a Jew), whom the white supremacists tend to dislike. It'd be interesting if they could name some significant aspect of Judeo-Christian culture that came entirely from white Europeans. White supremacists come off as bumbling ethnocentric historical revisionists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can recommend [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Created_the_Integers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Created_the_Integers)

"God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History is an anthology, edited by Stephen Hawking, of "excerpts from thirty-one of the most important works in the history of mathematics.""

</comment><comment><USER16> I would recommend "Fermat's Enigma" by Simon Singh. It's is book that goes into the heart of how mathematics is sometimes elusive to the most sincere pursuit and at the same time yields itself to a creative mind that chases it with passion.

</comment><comment><USER17> Any books on how to do proofs, that also includes solutions?

<comment><USER18> How to Solve It by Polya.

<comment><USER19> This.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _Proofs from the Book_ looks superb but does anyone know of another introduction to proofs or compendium of simple proofs suitable for young mathematicians?

<comment><USER21> I'm a big fan of Art and Craft of Problem Solving by Zeitz.

The main downside is that there isn't an official solution manual, so checking your work takes a little more work. But one of the main upsides is that there isn't an official solution manual, so you actually have to work through the problems. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> As a primary guide to the subject, I would recommend "The Road to Reality" by Roger Penrose.

</comment><comment><USER23> Better read Euclid's Elements and then you'll know if you like maths or not.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why not The Princeton Companion to Mathematics?

</comment><comment><USER25> Some suggestions, aiming for books that will teach you some interesting math rather than teach you _about_ some interesting math like most of the books on that list do (except for "Proofs From the Book" and "What is Mathematics?", which would be on my list below if they weren't already in the submitted list). The following range all over the place in prerequisites, from things you could probably do with just middle school algebra to things that probably need early college level.

"Challenging Mathematical Problems with Elementary Solutions" by Yaglom and Yaglom, Volume 1 and 2.

Volume 1 contains 100 problems from probability and combinatorics. Volume 2 contains 74 problems from a variety of areas including points and lines, lattices of points in the plane, topology, convex polygons, distribution of objects, nondecimal counting, theory of primes. Complete solutions are included for each problems, as well as hints.

Available from Dover so relatively inexpensive but good quality. Here are the Dover links, but of course they are available from Amazon and the other usual places. I'm linking to Dover because that will have the most complete description.

[http://store.doverpublications.com/0486655369.html](http://store.doverpublications.com/0486655369.html)

[http://store.doverpublications.com/0486655377.html](http://store.doverpublications.com/0486655377.html)

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

"Three Pearls of Number Theory" by Khinchin. One of Khinchin's former students was seriously wounded in WWII, and to pass the time during his long recovery in the hospital he wrote to his old professor and asked if he had anything mathematical to study to pass the time.

Khinchin wrote back with three problems in elementary number theory that had recently been solved by people who were not a "great number theorist". Khinchin gave his former student the proofs along with guidance, examples, clarifications, and notes to help understand them.

Dover link: [http://store.doverpublications.com/0486400263.html](http://store.doverpublications.com/0486400263.html)

Review at MAA: [https://www.maa.org/press/maa-reviews/three-pearls-of- number...](https://www.maa.org/press/maa-reviews/three-pearls-of-number- theory)

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

"The Enjoyment of Math" by Rademacher and Toeplitz. The MAA review has a good summary:

> This is a serious math book that has minimal prerequisites: geometry and > college algebra, but no trig or calculus. It contains 28 largely independent > chapters that solve a variety of famous and difficult math problems, mostly > in the areas of plane geometry and number theory. The problems include: > Fermat's last theorem for exponent 4, unique factorization in number fields, > a number of geometrical maximization problems including several versions of > the isoperimetric problem, some transfinite numbers, the 5-color map > coloring theorem, and the arithmetic mean - geometric mean inequality. > There's no analysis per se in the book, but several topics depend on the > analytic ideas of continuity and variation.

> This book was first published in German in 1930 and in English in 1957 as > The Enjoyment of Mathematics, and is still in print today in both languages. > This implies that there is still an audience for it, but it is hard to > imagine exactly what this audience is. The book was developed out of a > series of public lectures and was intended as a "popular math" book. While > it is very clear and well-written, the reasoning in all the chapters is very > intricate (especially in the geometric problems), and the book is much more > difficult than anything that appears in popular math books being written > today. It's also too difficult for a math appreciation text. The modern > (2000) Preface to the German edition suggests that the book is suited for > bright high-school students who are hungry for learning, and maybe this is > its real audience today

[https://www.maa.org/press/maa-reviews/the-enjoyment-of- math](https://www.maa.org/press/maa-reviews/the-enjoyment-of-math)

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DMWX5FC/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DMWX5FC/)

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

Anneli Lax New Mathematical Library is a whole series of books described thusly at the AMS site:

> Featuring fresh approaches and broad coverage of topics especially suitable > for high school and the first two years of college, the volumes in this > series are an excellent source of enrichment material for teachers and > students. Good mathematical reading with lively exposition.

[https://bookstore.ams.org/nml](https://bookstore.ams.org/nml)

I read "Ingenuity in Mathematics" by Honsberger in high school and it was good. Kind of like "The Enjoyment of Mathematics" but a lot easier.

A lot of books in this series can be good stepping stones to more advances books. For example, Olds "Continued Fractions" could be a reasonable read before then reading Khinchin's "Continued Fractions". The latter is available from Dover and is about 1/3 the price of the Olds book, so personally I'd start with Khinchin, and if it turns out a simpler intro is needed then I'd get Olds.

This is a good point to toss in a note about Dover. They like to take older books, often out of print, get the rights to them, and publish a relatively inexpensive but high quality paperback edition. The difficulty level ranges from classic elementary intro texts to advanced material for practicing mathematicians. (And not just math...they do this for physics, chemistry, and various other fields of science and engineering).

If you are interested on some math topic and want a book on it, it is usually a good idea to have a look at the Dover catalog to see if they have something about that at the level you are looking for.

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

"A Book of Abstract Algebra" by Pinter, available as a Dover edition.

[http://store.doverpublications.com/0486474178.html](http://store.doverpublications.com/0486474178.html)

The usual undergraduate abstract algebra stuff: groups, rings, fields, the impossibility of the classic Greek duplicating the cube and trisecting the angle problem, Galois theory and solvability by radicals.

What sets this book apart is that although it is rigorous and proves nearly everything, it takes things in smaller steps than a lot of other books, and has a lot of well chosen exercises that further cement the material, often by applying it to some interesting practical area. The exercises are grouped into sections, each of which focuses on a particular concept from the chapter, or develops and proves interesting things. One or two exercises from each of these sections usually has a solution given.

Only about $12 at Amazon. If you haven't done much proof-based math before this could be a good first proof-based book.

</comment><comment><USER26> Behind paywall</comment>


Japanese Scientists Levitate, Move Objects in Mid-Air Using Sound Waves - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2014/01/07/japanese-scientists-levitate-move-objects-in-mid-air-using-sound-waves/ <comment><USER2> What do you get if you mate the ultrasonic technology of a sonoluminescence setup, with the ideas behind a paul and/or penning trap (sorta kinda, also they're usually electromagnetically based)

I always wanted to build a penning trap and levitate a dust spec in a vacuum chamber and then using an interferometer and some DSP make a hell of a seismograph. I'd probably just end up electrocuted, dust spec penning traps run a couple hundred volts...</comment>


The Challenge of Crafting Intelligible Intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2019/6/237004-the-challenge-of-crafting-intelligible-intelligence/fulltext <comment><AUTHOR> Related paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.04263](https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.04263)</comment>


Two Little Words That Will Help You Sell More - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/two-little-words-that-will-help-you-sell-more.html

<comment><USER2> I'm working with our SaaS customer service and good support guys are always natural on using these two words when a customer is looking for an affirmation.

Just think that this is a good metric to add and see how specific words help conversions and upsells for non-customers. Hopefully there's something more automated that I can use to measure, though.</comment>


Ask HN: Why can't webapps agree on unacceptable unsername characters? - why-el

For instance, some webapps I sign up for accept dashes, some others don't. I was wondering whether there are factors that affect or play a role in these decisions. <comment><AUTHOR> Which alphabet - English, Cryllic, Katakana, or Hebrew?

Sometimes I've accepted only valid base-64 characters for transport reasons - RFC 4648. Other times only email characters - RFC 5322. A couple of times I was limited to the restrictions of the underlying OS or platform. Some runtimes are ascii-centric and require extra care dealing with unicode or extended characters. IBM mainframes / gateways can have endian issues.

And sometimes it's just trivial - reusing a regex from a previous project - for example.

EDIT: wrong word in first line.

</comment><comment><USER2> The same reason they don't agree on much else: They're made by different people for different people with different purposes using different technologies.

For perspective: Graphical PCs have been in common use for about two decades now and we still can't even agree on what to call the quit or preferences commands _or_ where to put them.</comment>


Ask HN: Is There Really a Coder Shortage? - <AUTHOR> I'm considering a career change, but the job market for software development has me confused.
On the one hand, it's very common to hear about some supposed shortage of programmers. Yet on the other, few companies seem to have more than a couple openings at any point in time. And it seems every CS uni student or bootcamp grad complains about having to send out 300+ applications in hopes of landing 2-3 interviews.
WTF? That's easily an order of magnitude worse odds than when I applied to medical schools. How can it be that hard to land a job if the market is supposedly desperate for talent?
Or is it only _experienced_ coders that are in demand? Are employers just lamenting how the majority of applicants have barely any experience and little depth of knowledge?
If that's the case, encouraging people to go into the field on the pretense of a "hot job market" seems disingenuous. I don't want to spend years of my life and who knows how much money learning a new skillset only to discover I've joined an ocean of low-skilled coders who won't have any serious job prospects for 5+ more years. :/ <comment><USER3> There seems to be an over saturation of inexperienced/low-skilled applicants. A lot of people are trying to break into the field right now, which puts pressure on the entry level job market.

It's possible to get in, but you need to be above-average in both technical and personal skills. Luckily, in my experience, the average level of both for the lowest level job seekers are not that high of a barrier to overcome.

>encouraging people to go into the field on the pretense of a "hot job market" seems disingenuous.

Take anyone who doles out this advice with a grain of salt. They likely stand to benefit in some way.

>I don't want to spend years of my life and who knows how much money learning a new skillset only to discover I've joined an ocean of low-skilled coders who won't have any serious job prospects for 5+ more years.

Be honest with your self about why you want to switch careers. If it's just for a quick salary bump, there's probably smarter ways to do so. If you really are interested in the field, then start self-teaching and go from there. Spending money on boot-camps or a second undergrad degree is a poor investment right now imo.

I believe that if you have a) decent real-life work experience in any industry, b) the ability to self teach well, c) patience, and d) realistic expectations (e.g. not 100k off the bat in a big-n), there's still a good chance you can break into the field.

<comment><USER4> It took me about 5 years of grinding to get my foot in the door and earn enough experience to prove myself. It was a lot of hard work but I managed to do it, and now I'm paid really well and do more interesting work. It definitely takes time and effort, but it can be done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There does seem to be a massive shortage of highly skilled labor willing to work uncompensated overtime in terrible work environments for drastically below-market wages.

Companies are very eager to do anything to address this shortage, short of increasing pay, expanding benefits, or improving working conditions.

There is also a shortage of cheap new graduates with many years of specialized work experience. Companies are willing to do anything in their power to address this shortage, short of training new or existing employees or hiring people with more experience.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes there is a huge shortage for good coders. But just completing a coding bootcamp alone does not qualify you as a coder.

Furthermore many graduates from coding bootcamps are not really good coders - they are just there for the money. Once you are able to demonstrate that you are a level or two above the bootcamp-graduate group, then yes it is a very "hot job market".

So while it may be the case that bootcamp grads have to send out 300 application, for developers with 3+ years of experience it is an entirely different horizon. Many job postings that ask for 3+ years experience get less than 10 job applications on job sites. There are very few other industries where having just 3 years experience puts you on such a high level.

EDIT: The way break into coding as a career, is not only to do a bootcamp but demonstrate you are capable of coding without having your hand held. A couple options are: contribute meaningful code to open source projects, do low-wage freelance projects on sites like upwork.com - you might not make much money but you'll have demonstrated you're capable of doing real-world commercial development. Once you get your first job, stay there for about 2 years, after 2 years try applying to other jobs, it will be WAY easier this time round and if you get offers you can either move to a better pay/company or demand your current company matches that rate.

EDIT2: Pick a stack and stick with it. It might be stupid but many employers ask "how many years experience with framework X" do you have? If you change tech stack a lot in your career it will be harder to be reach a "senior" level.

</comment><comment><USER7> > Or is it only _experienced_ coders that are in demand? Are employers just > lamenting how the majority of applicants have barely any experience and > little depth of knowledge?

The tech industry projects a 'talent shortage' of senior software engineers that these companies are unable to find. But instead they get 100+ junior level applicants which are ignored by them.

The problem is that companies are reluctant to provide training for juniors or entry level applicants as they prefer to hire one experienced senior developer just to do the work of 20 junior developers with a $100k salary + stock. However, most companies are unable to afford this and they simply complain that there is a 'talent shortage' of these specific developers.

Even if a junior gets to the onsite interview, they are asked to write a series of algorithm tasks on a whiteboard to prove that they are qualified. Simply having a 1st class CS degree is not good enough for any candidate. So the actual 'talent' they are looking for are developers who are at FAANG companies. If they do find them, they are directly hired (No tech interviews) which is rare.

> I don't want to spend years of my life and who knows how much money learning > a new skillset only to discover I've joined an ocean of low-skilled coders > who won't have any serious job prospects for 5+ more years. :/

The point here is that if you are applying for a junior/graduate or entry level job, you now need to further differentiate yourself from the other candidates and programming is simply not enough. If you were to switch careers into this one, you have to be prepared to show what you have done to convince the hiring manager to take you on, since they can just either hire a senior or an internal applicant* to take the role instead.

* Some companies hire candidates internally and prefer them over external ones due to their connections to the company.

<comment><USER8> > The tech industry projects a 'talent shortage' of senior software engineers > which companies are unable to find.

Why do you assume that? Oversupply of developers applies to senior developers as well, not to the same degree of course, but enough to have a luxury to treat them just as badly from first contact, as companies expect to be able to find somebody else.

<comment><USER6> Not trying to be harsh but, do we live on the same planet? I'm not even based in a major tech hub (I'm in Northern England) but in my experience a developer with 3+ years experience can walk out of one job and into another the same day. Plus every company I've worked for has had trouble finding good programmers and I've never once known a developer who had trouble finding work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Typical shortages are really: We cannot find anyone who will do it for minimum wage ... cry cry cry.

This is usually followed by comments: <country of choice> people are just unwilling to do this job ... cry cry cry

Both cases are 'For your cheap pay they are not'.

One good question for the western world, why are so few people studying CS [https://danwang.co/why-so-few-computer-science- majors/](https://danwang.co/why-so-few-computer-science-majors/)

I suspect it is the working conditions.

Of course I find it interesting I have a dozen head hunters asking me if I am interested in a job that does not match my skill set. Ok I am a techie, but I am not a ... All I can figure is these companies have some H1B visa thing coming up and they need to prove no American will do the job. Last time I was actively looking was 2009. So they are going back 10 years to prove there cheating statistics.

I found it 'Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act' is going to import more techies from India. So they need to prove that a C# back end developer will not take a javascript job doing web pages.

</comment><comment><USER10> Problem is finding people who have enough experience and skillset that matches with that experience. One of the places I worked at, I interviewed 4 candidates, but they couldn't even explain the stuff that they wrote on their resume or answer basic technical questions, questions related to simple data structures or questions about their primary programming language.

We literally gave up on the position and after two years the position is still not filled.

There isn't dearth of candidates, just the competent ones.

</comment><comment><USER11> Which areas of expertise are you looking at? What languages are you looking at for job openings? Where are you looking geographically?

It's hard to generalize to just geo-agnostic "coders", I think.

> _encouraging people to go into the field on the pretense of a "hot job > market" seems disingenuous._

FWIW I think this is true no matter the program. By the time it trickles down to those thinking about enrolling and those people start graduating, the market becomes saturated from all of the graduates (who were already in the pipeline) and all of the people who made career shifts to the in-demand X.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mostly JS and its bucket of related architectures and connections, since that seems to have the widest applicability. Also considering C++ and Java since I already have some experience in those.

My parents are bordering on elderly and need more and more help, so I'm probably limited to the Rocky Mountain or southwest regions of the US. Although in this early stage when I'm just trying to get a feel for the market, I've not been limiting my searches to any specific region (other than US-based).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is hard to get your foot in the door. I had the same troubles when i started out 7 years ago. Once you hit a couple years of experience (5 i think for most), then you get a lot more interviews which you can convert into jobs. I'm not sure why employers are lamenting, it is the classic "want someone highly skilled but don't want to pay them enough" paradigm with most employers.

</comment><comment><USER13> When I looked for junior jobs in 2013 I had people knocking down my door to hire me. Back then it just wasnt as trendy to get into development.now that I have 7 or 8 years of experience it's still not a problem to find new work.

The problem is that opposite of 2013 there are way more people wanting to get into the industry than people willing to hire juniors.

This leads to a situation where there are simultaneously huge excesses of generic junior web developers and huge shortfalls of experienced people in targeted domains.

It is still possible to break though that initial barrier to entry but you better be ready to fight for it.

</comment><comment><USER14> There is a shortage in qualified senior developers. Right now in Bay Area / Silicon Valley there is an abundant of junior / bootcamp grads trying to find work as a developer. I'm personally helping a new college grad and a bootcamp grad and they both are having problems getting their foot in the door in the industry. The common theme from these two though is their lack of technical ability right now. If you enjoy this field and can demonstrate competency and recall of programming fundamentals (Data Structures and Algorithms), you will find a job.

</comment><comment><USER15> i think you hit it on the nail, its the "experienced" bit that is the problem, if you look at a lot of the postings at leat here in the UK they will say things like "Min 3 years in a similar role"

the problem is no one wants to train anyone, at all, nor are they willing to take a chance even if its a slight one. people dont hire staff for the long term these days so they put minimal effort into vetting of applicants and you can bet that no matter how good you are if you have no former relevant experience theres an extremely high chance your CV will be binned instantly

</comment><comment><USER16> This situation to me exemplifies the short-sightedness of millennial parents shoehorning their 5 year olds into wanting to be programmers because it was a meal ticket 2 years ago

<comment><USER17> I'm a said millennial parent, although my son really took to programming mostly on his own after I gave him some scratch lessons. He made a simple social network in php and became pretty popular in his 6th grade class for it. He's taught himself Java and loves working on games. While I'm encouraged at his career prospects, I understand the world may change around us and the role of a developer is certain to not look the same in 10-15 year's time. I think its a wonderful hobby that is teaching him to be logical, creative, and resourceful at problem-solving. What's wrong with that?

<comment><USER18> Absolutely nothing. Well except Java. (Just kidding, Java is fine!).

<comment><USER17> I'm sort of against it, but Notch got the Minecraft generation hooked on it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As stated by others, the market for good engineers is thin. There's another driving force worth noting: we are steadily automating and abstracting ourselves away. Depending on how you look at it, it's either the best (you know how to put it all together and do work that would have taken 30 engineers just 5 years ago) or worst (you suck) time to be in software engineering.

</comment><comment><USER20> I agree with your points.

It's like no company wants to train anyone (internal nor external candidate) and expect you to start working on their production system/code almost immediately.

Self training and really outstanding portfolio is the way go.

<comment><USER18> The problem can be addressed by removing the "employee mindset" from potential programmers.

If you do it for the money, well, you will neither get very good, nor will you enjoy the money, assuming you become good enough to get any.

Companies that have rubbish HR practices eventually lose out to firms that appreciate that the Japanese hiring system: hire someone who has shown excellence in any field, and they are bound to repeat it.

Simply fishing for talent in existing companies is a failed and flawed strategy. Yes, you will end up with a senior developer doing 5 juniors' work, for less than half of their pay--until another firm offers him more money and he leaves, leaving you out in the open again.

By contrast, hiring a junior and teaching them the ropes on condition of their not leaving for n years is a better and an all around win strategy.

Another word: I have seen most CS program curriculums and with certain exceptions, most are not teaching what would make them marketable employees.

For instance, SICP should be a must in any CS program, but in some, it is not. How can they afford not to teach from the best CS text in the world?

You get a developer with a resume. And a degree. Big deal. How about one with a remarkable portfolio of projects demonstrating real understanding and passion?

I doubt if a company would bin the resumes of someone with interesting projects to their credit. Simply a degree with a few nominal github repos is not going to cut it.

<comment><USER6> > The problem can be addressed by removing the "employee mindset" from > potential programmers.

This is very true and a nice way of explaining it. Also the people who got hired 5-10 years ago with no college degree are the ones who taught themselves PHP in high school and built sites with it. Then they taught themselves Java/Ruby/Python/Javascript etc. Most coders like that think "I want to learn coding to built X" and they go ahead and do that, employers can see that kind of initiative and drive.

Which is a very different mindset from "I want to pay $X amount to get trained to be a web dev because I want a job as a web dev".

<comment><USER18> Thank you. There is a well-known sociological theory that things that matter cannot be gotten directly because you think they matter; rather because you want them, aside from their importance, then you can get them. Say you want to date a hot girl. You cannot say: "I want to be your boyfriend, because you are hot."

You acquire something important because you like it, you want it for intrinsic reasons.

You will go far in any field if you like it and want to excel in it. The ugliest man with the right amount of passion and intrinsic liking, and enough preparation can melt a beautiful girl's heart.

Taken to a logical extreme, someone very good at nothing, is notable, because he is "very good" first. In other words, the most boring person can also be interesting because of being "most boring".

The future of CS work increasingly looks like truly passionate programmers building things (like at YC). Companies have a shortage because of this, in the main, since the pay and conditions for real programmers is not good enough, and a real programmer can earn (by building stuff) even without doing a 9to5.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In my current experience, it depends on so many factors that it's hard to say whether it's simply down to a shortage in experienced developers.

If I wanted to get a senior-level job in my local area, I can do this pretty easily. I have experience with the .NET framework, so those jobs have been available to me for years, and usually an interview is a week away from an initial application, or from one of the many recruitment emails I get. The same goes for Ruby jobs, since I have been using Ruby for about a year with public projects I can refer to.

Now, let's move that to larger companies outside of my local area. I've recently been looking at roles in London for larger companies, since I would like to move to NYC in the not-so-distant future. If I apply for a role at a big tech company I'm almost guaranteed to be rejected (FAANG, Twitter, IBM, Oracle, Adobe). If I apply for a role at a larger multinational company - <USER2> likes of JP Morgan, Bloomberg, Buzzfeed, Deliveroo, WorkDay, any investment bank based in London, IBM, Squarespace, the list goes on - and I'll be rejected. In fact, in the last month I can count over thirty rejections. This is for a developer with ten years experience, albeit at startups and agencies, but someone that has put time in.

IMO, it boils down to a handful of things:

1\. Companies want to hire developers that match their criteria perfectly. I can apply for a Java role with recent, but limited, Java experience, and be rejected. This is because I'm not a Java developer. The same goes for Python, despite the fact that I've worked with Python and Django on a project last year. I'd be rejected by most companies because I'm not a Python developer, despite...you know, knowing enough Python to get up to speed quickly.

2\. Companies would rather interview someone nearby. Bear in mind that I can get to London by 9 if I get the first train in from Bristol, so travel isn't a huge issue, but in my experience a lot of companies would rather interview someone that can interview on-site in a week, and usually someone a few hours away will want time to arrange something.

3\. Somewhat against the first point, many companies will happily hire a less experienced person because they are cheaper. If they cannot get someone that matches the first criteria, they'll get the cheapest person.

4\. Most posts on job boards are bullshit. Out of the thirty rejections this month, a few of them were for companies hiring in my exact stack, while also saying they sponsor visas. Those ads are still up on Stack Overflow Jobs, or have been renewed, but they weren't interested in me - even when my stack and experience almost perfectly align with theirs.

If you were to ask me a few months ago whether I thought finding another job as an experienced developer would be hard, I'd say no, because I am in demand in a reasonably big tech city in my country, but after the last month I'm not so sure. Many of these roles obviously get filled, so either there's something about my specific experience that turns people off, or this experienced developer shortage is down to companies wanting one (or more) of the above criteria to be met before considering a hire.

<comment><USER22> If you put a job spec out in London for anything technical you can easily get 1000s of CVs coming back. Location is super easy to filter on.

If you apply for a job, the experience you list should match the tech stack in the job spec. Don't list roles that aren't relevant (i.e. no .net if it's a Python role).

I helped hire a DS this week. Their CV was among 20 excellent candidates all in London with their latest role matching most of the tech stack we're looking for. All the candidates are in London. This is what you're competing against.

<comment><USER21> How is that possible if you have any professional experience? Do I list my CS degree from a decade ago and only my most recent job? Similarly if I am applying for a .NET role (which I've got eight years of consecutive experience in) - do I just focus on those years and have a two year gap in time?

While I appreciate that there's a need to filter candidates, surely it proves that there is either no shortage of experienced developers out there, or that companies would rather hire less experienced devs with more relevant experience? If the latter is true, then companies shouldn't moan about a shortage in talent when there is obviously demand for more senior roles.

<comment><USER22> Its fine to leave gaps, the latest role is the most important. The .net work doesn't add much to a DS role so there isn't much weight in mentioning it and it shows you spent less than 100% of your focus on DS. If there aren't other candidates then that's fine but there are 10s of candidates that are more or less DS-only on paper.

If candidates could see the other applicant's CVs it would kick off an arms race.

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure what you mean by DS, but I would strongly disagree that work in one stack is irrelevant to work in another.

Two years ago, I took a role in a tech stack I've never used before, and in less than a month I was productive in Node and Rails. I work with half a dozen developers that switched from one stack to another, and regularly do so to use the best tool for the job, and it's not as hard as some companies make it out to be.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fermi Paradox Points To Fewer Than Ten ET Civilisations - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23832/

<comment><USER2> It's laughable, really. To presume alien technology will in any way resemble ours is just arrogant. It's like the green DOS screens you see on "computers of the future" in 80s movies, except worse because it's trying to predict technology that's not 20 years ahead, but /millions/, and not invented by human engineers but /aliens/. Seriously?

<comment><USER3> It doesn't seem to me that they're predicting all _that_ much.

1) Aliens will be interested in spreading themselves. This isn't such a stretch, but at any rate we're only interested in ETs that DO spread. Insular societies will be basically impossible to find, and so for the purposes of this discussion may as well not exist.

2) When they do, we'll be able to tell. A little bit more of a stretch, but not totally crazy. Sure, we can't know what they'd invent, or what principles they'd work on. Maybe they go places in stable wormholes and do absolutely nothing when they arrive. But it makes sense to think that _someone_ went for the low-hanging fruit and built a big-assed fusion drive armada. And we'd see that, I think.

<comment><USER4> _But it makes sense to think that someone went for the low-hanging fruit and built a big-assed fusion drive armada. And we'd see that, I think._

Maybe they built a big-ass gamma-drive armada. Which would explain all the gamma ray bursts.

<comment><USER5> Is this in jest, or should we take it seriously? I mean the generalized version of this, of course: are there any astronomical phenomena we currently see as natural that could in fact plausibly artifacts of artificial processes?

<comment><USER3> we've had terrific success explaining the things we see in the sky with simple, "dead" processes. I think that gamma bursts specifically haven't been explained though?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's saying that _even with_ probes that last 50 millions years, and visible from Earth for 1 million years, there could still be 1000 civilizations out there, and we wouldn't have heard from any of them. IOW:

Space is big.

<comment><USER5> Space isn't that big at all, actually. In a couple of thousand years we would be able to expand at a rate of almost the speed of light: go to a neighbouring star, build a colony in about a century, go to the next star. You'd spread out over a significant portion of the galaxy in only a few aeons.

It's not the gulfs of space that are huge, it's the gulfs of time that separate us. Stars' ages differ in billions of years. Maybe the total lifetime of the galaxy will harbour millions of civilizations all at some point, but rarely any at the same point in time?

<comment><USER6> Time is big.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems to me that they are making way too many crazy assumputions. They are assuming that a civilization that can make a probe that lasts 50 million years would only send out 8 probes? That seems to be the wrong mentality. I would rather think that the probes would last a shorter amount of time but they send out thousands. Also what kind of evidence would these probes leave behind that would last 1 million to 100 million years? More likely they would buzz by taking pictures and radio readings of a system and then just keep going.

<comment><USER8> I would send out von neuman probes that build more of themselves.

<comment><USER9> This will end in nothing good, I can assure you.

<comment><USER10> My favorite negative outcome from self replicating probes is the kind that are sent out to investigate the universe, and report back to a location some millions of years later to report. Except too many of them have been built, and when they show up, gravity is too much, and they form a black hole.

For whatever reason, that's just funny to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps WE are the evidence that a probe visited the solar system. As we still don't know exactly how life begun, we can't ignore that posibility

<comment><USER12> _We_ are the evidence we are looking for! How clever. +1 clever points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> An interesting counter to the Fermi paradox: <http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3aa.html#killingstar>

<comment><USER13> Thanks, interesting link. The book in question goes for insane prices (used) on amazon. I don't understand why in these cases the publisher doesn't do another printing. Clearly there is demand for it if the used book prices are hitting $100/copy.

<comment><USER14> Nah, not really. That can just mean a few collectors/completists and a drastically limited supply. I am the author of a book that fetches high second hand prices (<http://bit.ly/VdMUB>) but this is not due to any especial brilliance on my part, it's just that it's part of a set which had a limited print run and some people like collecting the set.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As WE are the only civilisation we know of is it not sensible to presume that we are the average. In which case there could be lots of civilisations out there.

When we actually come into contact with one then perhaps it is time to refactor the theory.

otherwise it just sounds like meaningless projections that will probably be wrong.

<comment><USER16> Do we have any reason to think we are either above or below average?

Assuming other life forms exist so we can't claim 'existance' as an exceptional characteristic, isn't it more likely that we are somewhere in the middle of any given range than that we are an outlier?

<comment><USER17> Outlier, if you accept the Rare Earth argument.

[http://www.wikinfo.org/index.php/Rare_Earth_hypothesis_accor...](http://www.wikinfo.org/index.php/Rare_Earth_hypothesis_according_to_Wikipedia)

Interesting book...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Their calculations all seem to depend on (much) slower than light speed travel.

Is it beyond the realm of imagination that if a civilization reached a sufficient level of sophistication to being "colonizing the galaxy" they would know how to travel at least faster than 1/10th the speed of light (the number mentioned in the article)?

<comment><USER8> we can already build a ship that would go 3-5% the speed of light (Orion). Assuming that a civilization with a million year head start could only double/triple this performance is laughable.

<comment><USER19> True, I think that their ships would go at least _a hundred times_ as fast. Oh wait...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Do you think that if they could travel at 1/10th the speed of light, they'd be able to figure out how to visit us undetected?

<comment><USER3> do you think they'd care?</comment></comment>


Comparison of the effects of e-cigarette vapor ... indoor air quality. - <AUTHOR> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23033998 Full Paper Located Here: http://www.vaporwebvending.com/docs/studytwo.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Full text of the study here. [http://www.vaporwebvending.com/docs/studytwo.pdf](http://www.vaporwebvending.com/docs/studytwo.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER2> I should forward this to everyone in my office inquiring about my ecig puffing...</comment>


Guy builds his own instrument and does amazing things with it - <AUTHOR> http://www.wimp.com/buildsinstrument/

<comment><USER2> I see you took the same link directly off of reddit, which made a very good argument on why you should have linked directly to his youtube page.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D2o8F2MOuI>

</comment><comment><USER3> was great until the Mario theme came on...then I clicked away.

Call me pedantic but the Mario theme has become ridiculously cliché.</comment>