Ask HN: Is Hacker News GDPR Compliant? - <AUTHOR> Just wondering. <comment><USER2> You could answer this by answering: Does Hacker News store personally identifiable information? Well: 1. Hacker News has no interest in personal information with regards to its news feed, 2. How does having an email address on your account change things?

Things get ambiguous when account names are a persons real name, same for the email address. IP Addresses are also ambigous because of their topical use.

Hacker News may log IP Addresses but there is an argument where these IP Addresses can be "traced". Trouble is an IP Address is PUBLICALLY identifiable information. It can be viewed easily and there are no real correlative relationship between IP and person.

An argument can stand to say "Hang on, I'm sending this message to Hacker News website via my mobile phone, that has an IP Address mapped to my device, therefore indirectly my IMEI device number is mapped to an IP Address where that IMEI number is mapped to an IMSI number on a SIM card which could be linked to subscriber contract details".

Yes true, but that IP Address is from a pool of addresses assigned to that mobile device via the connection provider. It changes based on DHCP Leasing rules.

Passwords are not personally identifiable information. HOWEVER, Hacker News still has a responsibility to protect that information.

</comment><comment><USER3> If it isn't it is pretty close. No JS includes, they use Cloudflare which has gone out of their way to be GDPR compliant, you have full control over your profile and the moderators have so far complied with any reasonable request I have ever made. On top of that there is an easy way to export your data through several services.

What specifically would trigger you to wonder?

<comment><USER4> You don't have full control over your profile. You can't download a copy of your entire posting history, You can't can't edit or delete comments after a certain window, You can't edit your username, and you can't delete your account. Full control over your profile would allow you to do all of those things without needing to contact a moderator or use a third party service.

<comment><USER3> > You don't have full control over your profile.

Well, I do.

> You can't download a copy of your entire posting history

Yes you can.

[http://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?query=author_:krapp](http://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?query=author_:krapp)

> You can't can't edit or delete comments after a certain window

Yes you can, just not automated. You could mail the moderators with a request.

> You can't edit your username

Why would you, that's your HN identity, not your identity in real life. You ascribe more power to the GDPR than it has.

> you can't delete your account

Have you tried mailing the moderators to ask them to delete your account?

> Full control over your profile would allow you to do all of those things > without needing to contact a moderator or use a third party service.

No, the GDPR does not say anything about the company having to automate these things, only that there should be _some_ way to do them. On HN the moderators are in charge of those things. So if you really want to delete your account feel free to contact the moderators. And the GDPR also does not forbid for the company to engage a third party to export the data (though, funny enough, that third party would have to have a DPA with the company).

<comment><USER4> >> You can't download a copy of your entire posting history >Yes you can.

Fair enough - I wasn't aware of that.

>> You can't can't edit or delete comments after a certain window >Yes you can, just not automated. You could mail the moderators with a request.

So... no, _you_ can't. _they_ can, if _they_ decide to honor your request when you ask them, or _they_ might not.

>> You can't edit your username >Why would you, that's your HN identity, not your identity in real life. You ascribe more power to the GDPR than it has.

Some people's usernames are their real names, which makes them personally identifiable information. Other people's usernames appear to be the result of them banging on the keyboard, or a 'throwaway_X' account that they've been using for several years, or a contextual reference for a specific thread that no longer applies to anything. Why should users be forced to keep that arbitrary string in place if everything else can be edited or deleted?

I can change my public facing email, I can change the profile text, I can even change the color of the top bar, I can ask to have comments deleted, why can't I change my username?

>No, the GDPR does not say anything about the company having to automate these things, only that there should be some way to do them.

Fair enough. I think they should be automated, though..

<comment><USER3> > I think they should be automated, though..

I agree. But that's mostly a convenience, and if the number of requests is low enough then you could do it by hand.

With reocities.com I did a hybrid approach, I did allow people to make the deletion requests in an automated way but then I still manually reviewed them. The reason is that there the link between the accounts and the users did not make it when we backed-up as much of Geocities as we could, so to avoid people requesting the deletion of other people's data or pranksters that would request 1000's of accounts to be deleted we needed an extra step for verification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It looks like they updated their privacy policy but I didn't see mention that they assigned an EU representative so. It entirely.

<comment><USER3> I'd be honored to supply that service, for free.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Uh, what's the thin black line across the top? - <AUTHOR> What's the significance of the thin black line across the top of the HN menu bar? <comment><USER2> When someone of great importance to the community passes away, a black line is added to the top bar as a show of respect. In today's case, it is for Marvin Minsky ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Minsky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Minsky)), pioneer of artificial intelligence research.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.</comment></comment>


D-style Mixins in C# - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2012/08/resharper-sdk-adventures-part-5-%E2%80%94-d-style-mixins-in-c/

<comment><USER2> I read the use case mentioned on the article, wikipedia on mixins and a couple of more articles, I didn't follow what is the use case for mixins?

Someone care to take a stab at it or point to a resource?

<comment><USER3> Mix-ins are a style of object-oriented design, in the sense that inheritance, or composition, or generic functions are styles of object-oriented design. They all have the same purpose: logically related pieces of code are co- located and encapsulated, and independent pieces of behavior are decoupled. Ideally, the components of your system should have low interdependency, and be easy to combine.

The idea of Mix-ins is that an object may have several functional components, like say a printer, a logger, maybe some access controls for user privileges, in addition to the actual class bits. Under a mix-in system, you would write a printer mix-in, a logger mix-in, and an access-control mix-in, and then any of your classes can get that functionality just by including them. Adding this functionality is supposed to be literally as easy as adding a decorator in Python, but in order to do this, they usually need programmatic access to the guts of your class in order to insert themselves. That aspect, allowing mix- ins to make programmatic additions and modifications to a class, are what separates them from other styles of OOP like inheritance and composition (those other styles see this as breaking encapsulation, while mix-ins say the components are still functionally independent).

A traditional (inheritance-based) object system probably won't be able to write these services as independent components without meta-programming, and you usually see mix-in libraries written on top of meta-programming systems (a more limited form is also available via multiple-inheritance). They goal is that they provide one of the more common uses of meta-programming, but in a structured and standardized form, since raw meta-programming (and unrestricted multiple-inheritance) has a reputation for going bonkers pretty quickly. Adding it to a stricter language like C# requires extending the language with a tool, not just writing a library.

<comment><USER4> Normally you'd be right, but D co-opts what the rest of the world accepts as having a well-defined meaning pertaining to OOP to instead represent its hare- brained meta-programming paradigm.

<comment><USER5> See Template Mixins. <http://dlang.org/template-mixin.html></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jeff Bezos looks a little too happy piloting a giant mechanical robot - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/20/14979620/jeff-bezos-robot-method-2-mars2017-conference <comment><AUTHOR> It cool, yet at the same time it's a bit... unnerving.</comment>


Scientists Discover a Bone-Deep Risk for Heart Disease - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/health/heart-disease-mutations-stem-cells.html <comment><USER2> I wonder if regular prolonged fasting could reduce the risk of this, or make it worse. Prolonged fasting causes significant changes to the stem cells the article discusses: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4102383/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4102383/) (previous HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8831739](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8831739) )

If CHIP is as serious and common a risk factor as claimed, and there is no known prevention or treatment, then testing anything that could interact with it is very important.

<comment><USER3> I'm not a scientist. But from my surface research, fasting helps to clean up bad and old cells. So if there's a mechanism to detect these stem cells, then they may be vacuumed out too.

Anecdotal evidence. I've had a weird, small bump on my arm. Like a large pimple, but not gross. Got it checked. Dr said it was fine, not a toumor. Just a knot or something like that. Said it's conmon for men over 35. One day I fasted on a bet for 2 days straight. Zero calories. Only water and coffee. The bump went away by 80%. Only a slight dark mark left.

This evidence was enough to convince me that fasting is good. Now intermittent fast every day. I get better focus. I have my first meal around 1-3pm.

<comment><USER4> > _if there's a mechanism to detect these stem cells, then they may be > vacuumed out too_

From the article:

"But others, especially those linked to leukemia, seem to give stem cells a new ability to accumulate in the marrow. The result is a sort of survival of the fittest, or fastest growing, stem cells in the marrow."

One could make reasonable hypotheses that fasting has no effect, or a deleterious effect, on the prevalence of these mutated stem cells.

<comment><USER2> Exactly. Maybe the mutation that helps the stem cells accumulate also helps them survive fasting. But fasting is a cheap and relatively safe way to perturb the cells and see what happens.

I think a good first step would be to track down people who regularly practice prolonged fasting, and then find people who match them as closely as possible on all other biometrics. We could then take blood samples and compare the prevalence of the CHIP mutation in their white blood cells. If there's a significant difference then it would be worth further investigation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is an interesting additional link between cardiovascular disease and bones: calcification (calcium deposits in arteries) also seem to have some link with heart attacks and strokes.

</comment><comment><USER6> To me this reminds me of SENS and is an indication that even though most scientists are not trying to cure aging, their efforts to target specific age- related diseases are gradually aiming towards more fundamental issues. At least to me it seems plausible that some technique found to be successful in addressing mutations in these specific cells may be applicable or at least lead to techniques for other cells.

If you haven't seen the site yet, check it out: [http://www.sens.org](http://www.sens.org)

</comment><comment><USER7> "Perhaps the most extreme example of how this can play out was reported in 2014, when researchers described a 115-year-old woman. Nearly her entire supply of white blood cells was generated by mutated stem cells in her bone marrow."

Erm... Getting to 115 sort of negates the argument doesn't it? She managed to get through decades of 50% heart attack risk. A single counter example isn't evidence, but given with all the given issues this does seem to be anomalous.

</comment><comment><USER8> Another paper about CHIP and cardiovascular diseases [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28636844](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28636844)

same team apparently</comment>


Ask HN: Would you pay $2/month for new job notifications at curated companies? - <AUTHOR> I started HireRemotely as a free service, but as the subscriber count started growing, so did the costs of the service. So, I decided to charge $2/month.
Any thoughts on the service & price?
https://hireremotely.co <comment><USER2> Maybe under the right circumstances, like right out of college.

I'm tired of the corporate BS and feel it's the same everywhere. I no longer have any drive nor any trust in the system.

</comment><comment><USER3> maybe limit to 5 companies for free.</comment>


LAX becomes largest U.S. airport to allow Uber, Lyft pickups - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-uber-legal-lax-20150716-story.html#page=1 <comment><USER2> I used to live in Playa del Rey, which is maybe 10 minutes from LAX. There's a minimum fare for cabs of something like $17, which I was forced to pay. But the worst part was that every freaking time the cab driver would give me attitude for the short fare (ostensibly because they have to wait in that long line). What do you want me to do? Walk an hour home carrying my luggage? Uber and Lyft are a complete blessing.

Despite all these taxi regulations which are supposedly there to protect the consumer, all they did was create an entrenched oligopoly, where taxi companies were complacent because they basically lacked competition and didn't have to increase the quality of their service. But now that people have an alternative and are eschewing cab services in droves, they are crying bloody murder. Stop blaming the consumer, lobby to get rid of the medallion/regulatory model, and get ready to finally compete (or perish)!

<comment><USER3> So is Uber less expensive than the taxi 17usd? Or just polite about it? Or coming in from out of the city to get you ?

I don't get why 17 bucks to an uber driver is worse or better than 17 to taxi? Uber has to wait for their next to surely ?

<comment><USER4> It isn't about the money, it is all about attitude.

I have bags, it is too far to walk, and I just need to get to the hotel. I don't want to feel like an ass for asking for help getting there.

Being in a car where the driver does not want you in it is uncomfortable. Having to pay for that feeling is just as bad. I have had situations where I have been at an airport or a hotel and the cab driver doesn't want to drive me to the location, and there is a doorman or someone else yelling at the driver that they will take me.

Charge me more. I just want to get to my hotel or to the airport.

<comment><USER5> Related, I hate the uncertainty of tipping. I go out of my way to not take cabs because I never know if I tipped enough or overpaid. Just tell me how much to pay and no attitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How to get around Uber Airport bans: Take a taxi ride just outside the airport and from there get an Uber ride. It's still much cheaper.

Perfect Example: Orlando International Airport, is a jail. It has no sidewalks leading in or out of the airport. It's about 1 mile of 60mph road and ramps leading in and out of the airport with NO shoulders and NO sidewalks. Look it up on Google Maps. It's impossible to leave. After 11pm I arrive and the buses are not working, friend can't pick me up. A 6 mile taxi ride is $55 dollars! Uber ride is about $12. I try to hop on the Parking Spot / Rental car shuttles to get just outside the airport ban radius but they've caught on and no one will let me on. I'm not paying $55.

So I just grabbed a taxi and had him drop me off just outside the airport at a Denny's. Cost: $13 for 1 mile. Grabbed an Uber for the remainder of the trip which was $11. Paid $24 instead of $55.

<comment><USER7> > How to get around Uber Airport bans: Take a taxi ride just outside the > airport and from there get an Uber ride. It's still much cheaper.

Free hotel shuttles work just as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My wife had a girls trip in Chicago. She made the error of just getting a "cab" and not using her UBER app. It turns out, what she got into was some kind of cab that didn't have a till. The driver was angry she didn't have cash, drove her around to an ATM, demanded $100, refused to let her have her items out of the trunk. Personally, I am no longer comfortable with her getting into cabs or non-uber black cars - it is becoming unsafe. If that driver decided to do something -- he would be off the grid.

<comment><USER9> What that driver did was illegal. She could have called the police. It sounds like she was taken by some pirate taxi, not one from the taxi stand.

<comment><USER8> Yes. He probably preys on woman.

<comment><USER10> Hello, non sequitur logical fallacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It was already allowed. I took an Uber from LAX a few weeks ago.

The catch was that they had to buy a $5 "temporary taxi license" (that Uber paid for) when they came in for each ride, which delayed them 5 minutes. Now they won't have to stop, which is nice.

<comment><USER12> I would just take the Parking Spot shuttle to the one near the In-N-Out and hail an UberX from there. Tip the driver and it's perfectly fine.

<comment><USER13> Really? They usually check for ur parking permit? If this works for everyone this is a nice hack.

<comment><USER14> You don't even need to go to a parking structure. Pick up the first hotel shuttle that comes by and then Uber from there. I've done this many times with no issues. Obviously it takes longer than getting picked up at the airport directly, but it still beats taking a cab.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm assuming that LAX is the largest U.S. airport to allow _regular_ Uber pickups?

You can request an UberTaxi or Uber Black car at ORD [0], which is the second largest airport in terms of traffic in the world [1].

[0] [https://www.facebook.com/uber/posts/601574873216135](https://www.facebook.com/uber/posts/601574873216135) [1] [http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20140924/BLOGS02/1409...](http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20140924/BLOGS02/140929936/ohare- regains-half-the-crown-as-worlds-busiest)

</comment><comment><USER16> > To work at the airport, drivers cannot have convictions for reckless > driving, hit and run, driving under the influence, sexual crimes or > terrorism

I get that some of these are sort of taxi or driver specific and that the rules are a little odd anyway, but it seems that murder should be on this list too?

<comment><USER17> Recently released full details on the process Uber uses. Looks like murder is covered:

[http://newsroom.uber.com/2015/07/details-on- safety/](http://newsroom.uber.com/2015/07/details-on-safety/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What are the main, reasonable arguments for disallowing paid airport pickups? Safety? Traffic? Control?

<comment><USER19> here is the main argument against uber in general: for taxis to keep their medalions, they must not refuse pickup/drop off on the worst parts of town. or for someone they don't like. and a certain percentage of licenses are given to drivers with vehicles that can accommodate handicapped passengers.

uber is fine when you are a white, able guy living in a good neighborhood.

<comment><USER20> Sorry if I am missing any sarcasm, but this seems totally backwards! Taxis are famous for racial discrimination while Uber drivers accept fares sight unseen.

Also, taxis are well known (at least in San Francisco) for illegally refusing fares to distant neighborhoods. Uber drivers simply can't refuse.

Finally, flagging a taxi is nearly impossible in a remote location, but calling an Uber driver from the app will work pretty much anywhere.

<comment><USER21> > Uber drivers simply can't refuse.

Sure they can; I've had an Uber driver call me after accepting the fare to tell me to cancel and re-request.

<comment><USER22> I had an even sneakier issue on a full fat Uber (not X) fare where the driver called me, asked me where I was going, told me he'd be there soon (location 5 minutes away), and just never came (15 minutes). I didn't know what to do with that as I actually did want to go home so I just cancelled and re-requested.

<comment><USER9> Let Uber's customer service know. They're very pleasant and they want to make sure you're happy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Somewhat off-topic, it's interesting the article lists LAX as the third busiest airport, when I googled to see what the first two were out of curiosity it was shown right in the search results as the second busiest. That data on google appears to come from the wikipedia article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_in_the_United_States) for "Busiest US airports by total passenger boardings". LAX then appears to be listed as fourth busiest in "30 busiest US airports by total passenger traffic". These numbers obviously vary by year and it seems the one google picked up was from preliminary FAA data. No idea why this stuck out to me but for some reason I want to know why the author settled on third busiest here out of the myriad choices.

</comment><comment><USER24> How can they tell the difference between an Uber driver and a friend I called to pick me up?

<comment><USER25> You don't normally ride in the backseat when you friend picks you up. Your friend doesn't have an Uber sign in his front windsheld.

Sure, they could hide that sign and request that you sit in the backseat (I've actually had Uber drivers at LAX request this). But then they would be asking drivers to take steps to knowingly break the law.

<comment><USER26> I don't normally ride in the backseat of an Uber. In fact, I've never done that except when someone else in my party is in the front seat.

<comment><USER27> I always ride in the backseat. It gives the driver his or her personal space, lets them use the front seat for their snack or bag or whatever, and feels more professional/businesslike to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I usually Uber to the airport and taxi back. The latter costs almost 50% more. If this policy goes through, it will be a welcome change.

</comment><comment><USER29> it will be short-lived unless they overturn this ruling: [http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-uber- suspended-2015071...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-uber- suspended-20150715-story.html)

<comment><USER30> That seems to be about failure to file some required reports. I'm sure Uber will comply before they're suspended in California.

> The judge agreed with utility commission staff who said Uber has not filed > all required reports, specifically about how often it provided disabled- > accessible vehicles when requested, places where drivers tend to turn down > ride requests, and the causes of accidents.

[http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/uber- fined-7m-kee...](http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/uber- fined-7m-keeping-info-california-regulators-32479254)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What are the chances that somebody would do LAX to Santa Barbara ?

</comment><comment><USER32> Awesome. Being in LA this is really good news.

</comment><comment><USER33> LAX is the second largest (by passenger boarding) airport in the country. So until ATL allows Uber, I guess this is true.</comment>


Bloomberg News Pays Reporters More If Their Stories Move Markets - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensation-2013-12 <comment><USER2> As a former trader, this doesn't strike me as heinous. "Moves the markets" means "contains new and salient information." That's a good benchmark.

The risk—that reporters will make things up for short-term gains—can be addressed through a tighter-than-usual editorial process.

In the end, Bloomberg makes its money selling terminals. The organisation, as a whole, is strongly incentivised to police against crap. Perhaps too much so. This policy may serve to counterbalance that inbuilt conservatism.

<comment><USER3> No, "move the markets" means that the reporters have convinced readers their article contains new and salient information. That's not quite the same thing. For example, this gives Bloomberg reporters a direct financial incentive to portray their information as more solid and well-founded than it actually is and downplay any hint that it's not in fact new.

<comment><USER4> I'm not convinced. If you only cared about the short term then yes you would do as you described. But both Bloomberg and the author are pursuing long term strategies. If you publish misleading/inaccurate articles consistently, then people will ignore you. The author and Bloomberg will both loose credibility. This is bad for the author who wants people to read what he writes, and is bad for Bloomberg.

<comment><USER5> >> _" If you publish misleading/inaccurate articles consistently, then people will ignore you."_

I can't find it now, but someone made a site to score opinion piece writers and see how many were right. Few were, but they still had jobs. You give people too much credit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There was no editorializing here by the poster of this article, but given recent news I have to suspect it's obliquely a claim that there may be certain incentives at play in the recent reporting of the SuperMicro issue ([https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the- big-h...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how- china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies) and Amazon/Apple/gov't-agency denials).

I don't feel that I know enough to make claims about how justified (or not) that is, just pointing out why a story dated "Dec. 11, 2013" might have been posted.

<comment><USER2> > _just pointing out why a story dated "Dec. 11, 2013" might have been posted_

And in the intervening years, Bloomberg News won itself a Pulitzer [1].

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/company/announcements/bloomberg- wi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/company/announcements/bloomberg- wins-2015-pulitzer-prize/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why is this surprising? Their entire business model for having a news wing is to funnel traders into their terminal. Being the first to break market- relevant stories sounds like a plus, not a negative, even if the incentivization model is potentially encouraging to write stories with a bias towards moving markets.

<comment><USER8> Because the incentives can create stories that are untrue or corrected later.

<comment><USER9> I think this is where editors would come in who (presumably) don't have the same incentives.

<comment><USER10> that's quite a presumption

<comment><USER11> That's a reasonable presumption - Bloomberg makes its money selling access to reliable information, the people buying their services are not reading Bloomberg for entertainment but in order to make financial decisions. The editors know where their paycheck comes from and, unlike most other news sources, have a strong incentive to avoid speculative clickbait.

<comment><USER10> Speculative clickbait is not the same as market-moving stories, and this isn't an article about Bloomberg paying reporters for clickbait. Market-moving stories are the ones valued by traders in making decisions, almost tautologically since trader decisions _are_ the market. I don't see why the editors would have different incentives than the reporters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "move markets" seems highly correlated with juiciness and high view counts which are standard practice. In fact, I can't think of many examples where they're not... have any good ones?

I can also see a finance focused media outlet using that jargon internally to describe the underlying metrics (moving market's isn't really easily measurable directly anyway). To me, this doesn't seem like news. This seems like a bad jab at Bloomberg's credibility, which has been really important recently.

There's probably a discussion to be had about for-profit media and reach optimization. But that's been done many a times over the discussions of public/gov't/nfp news sources.

</comment><comment><USER13> They've stopped this practice, in part due to this article (note the date - 2013). I have friends who were journalists there at the time who told me about it.

<comment><USER14> The Register's article on Super Micro (written a few days ago) mentions this incentive: [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/04/supermicro_bloomber...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/04/supermicro_bloomberg/?page=3)

 _> Bloomberg reporters receive bonuses based indirectly on how much they shift markets with their reporting. This story undoubtedly did that._

<comment><USER15> I guess the bonuses are not handed the day after, so there's time for the response and to see if the story was legit. Otherwise there's a incentive to write "XXXX Co to restate earnings since 2007, major fraud suspected" and to get it past editors one way or another.

Linking the story with market moves can be legitimate, they are a business news org and market is moved by major investigative stories.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Unless the story is really, really bad, it seems headlines barely budge the market these days, possibly due to the market becoming more efficient and an overall strong economic and buy-the-dips backdrop . I stopped paying attention to headlines years ago. volatility is in the toilet. It also depends on how one defines 'move'. A move of 1% can be attributed to other factors, and if 3 or 4 financial outlets are reporting the same story at once, it's hard to attribute it to Bloomberg.

If you look at the example of Walmart they gave, the stock was already down 1.5% when the story broke, so it only fell 1.5% instead of 3%:

[https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/52a755546da811c04aecd...](https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/52a755546da811c04aecdb04-960-720.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER17> If a journalis sells short a company stocks before printing a story that will shock shareholders, is that insider trading? What's the legality of that?

<comment><USER18> If they got information from an insider, it could potentially be insider trading. Something somewhat similar happened when MedSec shorted St. Jude before publishing some security research about some hardware: [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/08/tradi...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/08/trading-in-stock-of-medical-device-paused-after-hackers- team-with-short-seller/)

I don't believe that case was considered insider trading but I may be mistaken.

<comment><USER19> Buying a product, realising it's trash, shorting it, and then telling people why you shorted it isn't insider trading.

The giveaway in this case is that MedSec/Muddy Waters were not in any way insiders, they were simply smart enough to investigate a company and find out it was overvalued before anyone else did, and then pointed it out when they had their financial ducks in a row to benefit from it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Classic article structure, click bait title, two thirds exploring the headline, near the end reveal the click bait headline conned you - and be secure from being sued.

"To say that people are getting a big $5,000 bonus for some market-moving win is completely wrong."

</comment><comment><USER21> Surely this piece of news coming after SuperMicro report by Bloomberg is just a coincidence. Surely Business Insider wrote that piece of news from their own initiative.

<comment><USER22> It's dated 2013. Someone brought this exact article in another thread and now it's been brought up to so doubt about the hacking article.

Seeing situations like these has led me to an intellectual predicament.

In the past year or two I have seen a massive amount of propaganda and now I'm left with a question that I hope others can answer.

How can we have free trade when every trade is weaponized? How can we have a dissemination of information when any single group who wants power uses every post on the internet as a way to insert their own ideas? We make fun of anti vaxxers but then we see that a government used a vaccination program to find their enemies[1]. We make fun of the paranoid, but then a Snowden comes out and we discover that they werent actually paranoid. How does a society function when any given transaction, whether in physical goods and services or information, is used as a weapon against another group?

I dont see how we get out of this without reverting to a super tribalist set of societies that calls out everyone who is different from the default group. Whether that's based on ideology, race, geography, etc we are all losing out because we have reached a point where there is no trust between anyone anymore

[1][https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/02/150227-polio- pak...](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/02/150227-polio-pakistan- vaccination-taliban-osama-bin-laden/)

<comment><USER23> It's a long draw of the bow to go from the US tracking Osama under the guise of a polio campaign to your regular anti science anti vaccine westerner being justified in their pseudoscience.

The answer to your question is the same way trust has always been built (and lost) - micro transactions establishing credibility and mutual trade and dependence, not in paranoia and closing doors, which is sure to only antagonise things

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > recent reports that Bloomberg killed a China story to avoid irritating the > Chinese government

They don't mention which reports. Anyone recall the spiked story?

Search results about Bloomberg and China are pretty crowded, given recent events.

<comment><USER25> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18148037](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18148037)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> So that's how Apple and Amazon plans to discredit Bloomberg?

</comment><comment><USER27> Wait, can Bloomberg get a butterfly spread or put/call option ahead of a story? Or is that insider trading?

</comment><comment><USER28> Is that legal?

<comment><USER29> Paying people more for doing their job well? Yes, it's legal. :)

(I'm sorry if the answer comes off as flippant, but really, there's nothing particularly odd or unsavoury here. Journalists are paid to break stories that get attention or are otherwise important, and this is a perfectly valid metric for "important". Why would it be illegal?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This should instantly decrement Bloomberg's credibility, for all major stories, by at least 50%. I know it does for me.

They are incentivizing sensationalism. This doesn't seem like a good journalistic practice.

<comment><USER31> > They are incentivizing sensationalism.

As opposed to all the other media outlets who aren't?

<comment><USER32> something is not right just because because others also do it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> isn't that just the definition of click bait.

</comment><comment><USER34> Surely, this isn't abused. /s

</comment><comment><USER35> Their hit piece on SuperMicro is a prime example. With zero hard evidence, they posted a multi-page hit-piece on them permanently damaging their brand developed over past 25 years. The stock is down 45%, added some more salt to US-China tension and the authors are happy with their paycheck.

Libel laws need to be improved to hold shoddy reporters accountable for their work.

<comment><USER36> SuperMicro is also embroiled in an accounting scandal that arguably is more important to investors.

<comment><USER37> Did any new information about its accounting irregularities come to light on Wednesday or Thursday? If not, why would they have driven the stock price decrease on those days?</comment></comment></comment>


Boring Flamethrower - <AUTHOR> https://www.boringcompany.com/flamethrower/ <comment><USER2> Someone else noted that this appears to be an off-the-shelf flamethrower coupled with the plastic body of a commercial electric rifle. Total cost of those two items: $170.

Flamethrower: [https://www.amazon.com/Push-Start-Propane-Blow-Torch- Long/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Push-Start-Propane-Blow-Torch- Long/dp/B076QGV1PY?th=1)

Rifle: [https://www.evike.com/products/68300/](https://www.evike.com/products/68300/)

Via [https://taskandpurpose.com/elon-musks-600-flamethrower- will-...](https://taskandpurpose.com/elon-musks-600-flamethrower-will- apparently-released-civilian-market-april/)

<comment><USER3> The hat was just an off-the-shelf black hat combined with length of white embroidery thread.

<comment><USER4> The Tesla Roadster was just an off-the-shelf AC drivetrain system for lithium- ion cars coupled with the body of a commercial sportscar. Total cost of these two items: $267,690.*

AC drivetrain by AC Propulsion: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_Propulsion_tzero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_Propulsion_tzero)

Sportscar body by Lotus: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Elise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Elise)

Via [http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/19/travel/driving-lots-of- zoo...](http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/19/travel/driving-lots-of-zoom-with- batteries.html) *Lotus Elise: $47,690; AC Propulsion AC-150: $25,000; AC Propulsion tzero: $220,000

Flamethrower, hat, roadster –– all share the same pattern… Maybe this is Elon's modus operandi for creating consumer products.

<comment><USER5> OMG guys you are so right even PayPal is just a bunch of off-the-shelf processors coupled together with some sort of digital language. The people there are not even doing real accounting. Wake up, sheeple. You're being ripped off!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was surprised except for California (and maybe another state) owning a flamethrower is legal.

[https://throwflame.com/](https://throwflame.com/)

$1800 "Get Yours Today".

Complete, of course, with a Napalm mix package [https://throwflame.com/products/napalm-mix-fuel-gelling- agen...](https://throwflame.com/products/napalm-mix-fuel-gelling-agents/) "It thickens normal fuel to create a long lasting burn that goes great with your X15 Flamethrower"

These are basically in the same category as WWI/WWII military flamethrowers. It seems these should be very illegal but I guess they are not. That just boggles my mind.

<comment><USER7> Why should they be illegal? Anyone can whack one together with $100 in parts anyway. I wouldn't choose to own one and if I saw someone carrying one I would give then a wide berth but I don't believe everything that makes me nervous should be outlawed.

It's basically a big ditch burner.

<comment> FLUX-YOU >It's basically a big ditch burner.

Surely you don't need a 50 foot range to start a fire.

<comment><USER8> I dunno, have you ever seen someone decide to burn a really dry christmas tree? If I'm lighting a big bonfire I'd definitely prefer to have as much distance as possible between me and the fire.

<comment><USER9> Why would you burn it? At least where I live, old christmas trees are handled by the regular trash collection.

<comment><USER10> Plus there are some people who believe that to light a christmas tree after christmas, that this can in fact be accomplished using a flame slightly shorter than 50 feet.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeiSDF83mXo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeiSDF83mXo)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ahahahahhahhaaa [https://giphy.com/gifs/the-simpsons-hank-scorpio- zqhZB6bo5Fg...](https://giphy.com/gifs/the-simpsons-hank-scorpio- zqhZB6bo5FgoE)

</comment><comment><USER12> I saw this as serving primarily as ironic humor. Tunnels are boring, and a boring company selling flamethrowers... Even if the flamethrowers are real, their purpose is to serve as a joke, not as a flamethrower, hence the justification of the $500 price tag.

Nobody has to buy the flamethrower any more than they had to throw their money into Cards Against Humanity's money pit.

</comment><comment><USER13> For everybody wondering what this is about:

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/940056523304181762](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/940056523304181762)

<comment><USER14> Remember this spaceballs scene [https://m.imgur.com/t/funny/Q13Qr](https://m.imgur.com/t/funny/Q13Qr) ? it cannot be a coincidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I feel like I'm missing some context here as to why this is #1 in HN right now.

<comment><USER16> It's a practical example of how to bootstrap your startup!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In action:

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BeeUSFwgLrM/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BeeUSFwgLrM/)

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BeeYW0NA1HU/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BeeYW0NA1HU/)

<comment><USER18> That's not a real flame thrower.... I used to do something similar to this when I was 10 with a hair-spray can and a lighter

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Maybe this is the "make a favorable impression with rich people at LA parties" PR tactic.

</comment><comment><USER20> Elon demoing (vid) [https://www.instagram.com/p/BeeYW0NA1HU/?utm_source=ig_embed...](https://www.instagram.com/p/BeeYW0NA1HU/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=embed_ufi_control)

He started of selling 50,000 baseball hats for $20 each as a fundraiser and as the Guardian put it:

>Musk, who had earlier, presumably in jest, promised to start selling company- branded flamethrowers once 50,000 hats were purchased, tweeted: "Hats sold out, flamethrowers soon!" [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/31/elon- musk...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/31/elon-musk-tesla- founder-mines-rich-marketing-seam-selling-boring-hats)

</comment><comment><USER21> A comment from Task & Purpose

 _I debuk the flamethrower. . it 's just a Push-Start Propane Blow Torch (Short) 50$ from Amazon monted in the poor gun S.T.A.R. XR-5 Airsoft vaut 112$ start piezo button is inverted and actionned in the hole with finger . you can see the propane walve button on top of the gun , and the Trigger is huts the original Blow Torch curved and cut and you have a propane torch able to burn grass in your garden .. (with the propane bottle attached outside)

the torch

[https://www.amazon.com/Push-Start-Propane-Blow-Torch- Long/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Push-Start-Propane-Blow-Torch- Long/dp/B076QGV1PY?th=1*)

-Eric Descarpentri

<comment><USER22> I don't see how that debunks it -- seems like that legitimizes that it is an actual working flame thrower.

The video makes it quite clear what it is -- no one should be expecting a 50 foot range military flamethrower.

<comment><USER21> A flamethrower is a device which pressurizes a flammable liquid or gel, which is ignited and projected at range. This is not such a device, it's just a propane torch with a toy gun case. You might as well call a lighter with the valve wide open a flamethrower. History of the flamethrower: [http://www.firstworldwar.com/weaponry/flamethrowers.htm](http://www.firstworldwar.com/weaponry/flamethrowers.htm)

<comment><USER22> Where is it defined that a flamethrower needs to use a liquid or gel?

Wikipedia says:

 _A flamethrower is a mechanical incendiary device designed to project a long, controllable stream of fire. They were first used by the Greeks in the 1st century AD...Some flamethrowers project a stream of ignited flammable liquid while some project a long gas flame._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I feel like this is an inside joke that I am not in on. Can someone explain?

<comment><USER24> It's another Spaceballs reference. Like ludicrous speed and the model s ludicrous mode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Elon just tweeted that when the zombie apocalypse (which he is definitely not creating to generate demand for flame throwers) comes, you'll be glad you bought one.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm kindof surprised that you don't get a discount for buying a flamethrower and a fire extinguisher in the same transaction.

<comment><USER27> > _Buy an overpriced Boring Company fire extinguisher! You can definitely buy > one for less elsewhere, but this one comes with a cool sticker and the > button is conveniently riiight above._

They lampshaded that

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's presented as a gag item, but has a legitimate Shopify checkout. (and apparently a $100 price cut from the leak)

<comment><USER29> Has someone tried to go through the checkout process? What happens at the end?

<comment><USER28> Apparently preorders are going through: [https://twitter.com/alharding/status/957415346771652608](https://twitter.com/alharding/status/957415346771652608)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think I will wait for the inevitable mashup between Musk's companies. When Boring Co. and Space X bring out their surface to air anti aircraft missile, then I will open my wallet...

But it will have to be a missile that can come back and land itself if it misses the intended target.

<comment><USER31> Well, there used to be a website about an open-source cruise missile. But I'm not finding it now :(

<comment><USER32> [http://www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile/](http://www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile/)

<comment><USER31> Yes, this is it. Thanks. Now he's selling the content. But hey, why not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "World's Safest Flamethrower"

Where is the fun in that?

<comment><USER34> You could say it's quite boring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Less safe: Take one of these ...

[https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Galvanized-Fire- Smith-5-Gallon...](https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Galvanized-Fire- Smith-5-Gallon/dp/B004DKE8RE)

... filled with lighter fluid, plus one of these ...

[https://www.amazon.com/Flexible-Lighters-bernzomatic- flexibl...](https://www.amazon.com/Flexible-Lighters-bernzomatic-flexible- lighter/dp/B00VJ3C0N2) ...

and some duct tape.

Got that from William S. Burroughs' _The Wild Boys_.

</comment><comment><USER35> You'd expect coders to be a logical bunch. But they flock like sheep behind their idols. A Musk branded flamethrower that's 3X the cost of a similar competitor is #1 on HN.

<comment><USER36> Its all good fun, people like jokes and references to things.

Coders are logical but theyre not robots. My companys desks are full of overpriced merchandise from memes and movies.

Also there's nothing else more interesting on HN today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> So what does a flamethrower have to do with boring tunnels...?

<comment><USER17> Comes handy when you have to fight demons you unleash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Can anybody tell me what were to get the valve between the tank and the hose?

</comment><comment><USER39> Unleashed in April, as in April 1st? This whole April fools jokes thing in the tech world is getting a bit crazy if the joke is pre-announced three months before.

</comment><comment><USER40> ...he wasn't joking.

</comment><comment><USER41> 500 knicker for a flame thrower and 30 for a fire extinguisher.

LOL, ROFL, etc

If you are going to do silly then sort your bloody web site out. FAQ starts with this: "To solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic, roads must go 3D..."

.. which is so boring ...

</comment><comment><USER42> This will certainly liven up parties and gang fracases

</comment><comment><USER36> Up next:

Tesla coil security systems?

</comment><comment><USER43> the world's most lovable defense contractor!

</comment><comment><USER44> Not so boring after all!

</comment><comment><USER45> This is so great <*3

</comment><comment><USER46> This sbumission has turned into a Reddit sub commentary. Anyway.... I will start a competition: very boring famerthrowawayer. Please let me know in the comment section. I will sell the product for free (except you pay for shipping).</comment>


The US should remove foreign language education requirements - <AUTHOR> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/05/foreign-language-education.html <comment><USER3> Completely backwards. Make it effective, don't kill it. The obvious way to do that is to _start early_. The typically US approach is to ignore foreign languages until high school, when the child is well past their best years for acquiring a new language. Why did anyone ever think that was a good idea?

<comment><USER4> I went to a Jewish day school as a child. We had Hebrew classes from preschool through 8th grade (after which point I switched to a secular high school).

At the end of 8th grade, I could still divide my class into two groups: people who cannot speak Hebrew, and people who speak Hebrew at home.

In college, I took 2 semesters of Japanese. Guess which language I am stronger at today. (Still no where near fluent).

We would not devote nearly enough time in school to teach children a second language.

<comment><USER3> It's obviously possible, since lots of countries do it with English. Let's do it right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reasoning sounds silly. There are plenty of people who don't remember much of anything from geography, history, spelling, geometry, algebra, etc, either, so should we simply get rid of 90% of school?

Or is there a purpose served by this stuff even if it doesn't lead to long- term recall?

For instance, exposure to a broad range of things so you can find your interests and speak more intelligently about at least some of them, in the future (even if that just means remembering what to look up that you realize you forgot). Or just learning how to study various different types of things in the first place, so that when you _do_ need to get serious about something, you aren't hopeless.

<comment><USER6> The person being quoted (Bryan Caplan) does actually make similar claims to what you're saying. His claim is that most people use very little of what they learn in school and that the main thing that school does is show you're smart because you were able to graduate. So instead of making kids waste time learning stuff they're just going to forget (or never really learn as in the case of foreign languages), we should strip down the school curriculum and only teach them things relevant to their future life.

<comment><USER5> I think that learning to study stuff - especially when it's not obviously relevant or interesting at first - is incredibly relevant to later in life.

I also don't think we'd be great at predicting the 10% that's "most relevant" for any given person. It's like the "reinventing Excel" problem - <USER2> only uses 10%, but everyone uses a _different_ 10%.

I think we should try to shorten the school curriculum - give some more purpose to people's ages 15-20 years, instead of filling it up with busywork while they're at their most restless and energetic - but not reduce it's breadth at all. Cramming extracurriculurs into every hour of the day to fill up time to tick boxes for a college application is a _much_ bigger problem than foreign language classes, in my mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Starting really early is the key. I am Albanian and grew up watching Italian TV, and learned Italian as a kid. Only took two semesters of Italian classes, yet the language ability (especially reading and comprehension) is still there 30 years later. It takes just a bit longer to kick my speaking abilities into gear. (Usually a couple of days when visiting).

I did take two years of German lessons (High school and college), and unfortunately I forgot it by now.

The key is: 1) Start really early (6 or 7 years old) and 2) Immersion is key. Learn by being immersed int the language (either TV, living in the country, etc).

When I visited Sweden and Denmark, I couldn't find anybody that didn't know English well. Everyone was really good at it, and I suspect is part of the reason that Sacandinavian countries have better living standards than Germany/France/Spain, where it was very often hard to communicate in English.

English is the de-facto business language, and while as an American you can get by without knowing a foreign language, knowing one well is huge asset to your life _.

One pro-tip: the best language to learn is the language from a country that you like the culture. You can really know a language by only being immersed in the culture as well.

_By being an asset I mean it allows you to be able to move to a country with a lot less friction. Eg. knowing German well, it opens your world and ability to do business life locally and live in Germany, Austria and Switzerland without the huge penalty if you didn't know the language.

</comment><comment> post- The problem with this view is that foreign language education isn't about the language per se (although that's a bonus if you manage to get good), it's about providing a vehicle for understanding history and culture in context.

Latin is a favorite punching bag in this discussion, and I don't want to argue about the practical benefit of _speaking_ Latin right now. But learning to _read_ Latin is learning how to deal with long, difficult, and poorly defined problems---skills that translate (no pun intended) to almost any field.

</comment><comment><USER8> The most interesting axiom here is that if something can't be taught well, it shouldn't be taught at all.

I took French (as was required in Canada), which was taught badly. For 2 years we had a teacher who didn't actually speak French, but taught vocabulary out of the textbook. I also took a year of Latin, which was taught well by an inspiring teacher. I'm sure I got more value out of Latin, even though speaking French is occasionally useful.

</comment><comment><USER9> Whoever has learned French can read French literature. It's puzzling that the idea of school exposing the children to culture and broadening their mind never occurs to Alex Tabarrok. Why does everything have to serve the job market?

<comment><USER6> He's not saying that's not a good thing. He's saying it's a waste of time to do it in school because school doesn't teach people to learn languages.

<comment> munk-a So maybe he'd be happy if we just upped the teaching methods to provide more effective learning?

The US is doing pretty terribly in scholarship right now so I can understand the frustration coming from how little the money we do spend tends to effect things, but the conclusion that we need to save that money as well seems pretty wrong-headed.

<comment><USER6> What non-multilingual country (e.g. Switzerland) manages to teach foreign languages (other than English) to a reasonable degree of competence to a substantial portion of its population? I can't name one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> kris-s I was required to take 5 years of Spanish it was a huge drag and I learned next to nothing. I lived in South Korea for one year and my Korean is far far better. Foreign language learning requires immersion and motivation - both of which are absent in a normal high school class.

</comment><comment><USER10> "restriction" is always bad when it comes to education. If it is coming from far away places like DC or Sacramento it is even worse.

These restrictions are particularly bad for the minority and vulnerable groups. That black kid being raised by a single mother doing 3 jobs will do much better if he does not have to learn that extra language which he wont use any ways. His time is better spent on English and Math.

On other hand asians kids can easily learn 2-3 languages. My kid knows English, Spanish, Bangla, Hindi very fluently for her age while she is taking extra classes in Japanese (because her friends are taking it). I have time and money to support her academic ambitions but forcing them on everyone seems highly unjust.

These decisions must be left to local school and parents.

<comment><USER9> _That black kid being raised by a single mother doing 3 jobs will do much better if he does not have to learn that extra language which he wont use any ways_

The counterargument is that the child from underprivileged background is better served by Spanish instruction because he won't have the family support (and Latina nanny) that a child from a wealthy family has.

It's an ongoing problem at my institution. The students, many of whom are first-generation students, are accepted into their science program and a huge number has serious deficiencies in basic algebra! Differential calculus is completely out of the question. If you don't offer the opportunity at school you are cementing in the two-class society.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Most people are responding saying: but knowing a foreign language has lots of benefits. That's true and not the argument being made. The argument being made is almost no one learns a foreign language in school so that time is wasted

<comment><USER11> In all fairness, it appears that people do reasonably learn foreign languages (English in particular) when they start earlier and it's a priority. Of course, in the case of the US, that would require doubling down teaching something that won't have value for a lot of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> We've done this partly in the UK. It's not good, people are lazy and expect everyone to speak Egnlish, which may be the case in business, but not always, and there's always more opprtunities when you can find and speak to clients in their native language.

As others have said, languages are much wider than grammer and vocab books, you learn so much. I've noticed I tend to have diffirent thought patterns and attitudes to things depending on the language I'm speaking or thinking in, it's bizarre and amazing at the same time. And I now know far more about english grammar than I ever learned in english lang classes.

</comment><comment><USER13> I took 1 year of Russian in school and I still know how to read Cyrillic a little, but don't know all the words. And for some reason, I can also make out Greek because of it.

Early immersion is probably best way to teach foreign languages.

<comment><USER14> The Cyrillic script (used in many Slavic languages, including Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Serbian) was developed by a medieval Bulgarian scholar (Clement of Ohrid) as a simplification of the older Glagolitic script and was/is based in part on the Greek alphabet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> People underestimate the value of learning the structure of the process of learning a foreign language as early as possible..

I noticed in university that most high school subjects have about 2 years of daily curriculum that a university can magically squeeze into one semester of 3 hours a week for the students that missed it or failed to learn it.. So maybe university should start at eighth grade? Or maybe what needs to be fixed is more fundamental than foreign language; it's not much worse than the high school teaching of any subject with enough variation that a child doesn't see a social expectation applying to most adults.

Personally, I think mandatory school levels should offer Esperanto, which students can use to survive any European language in university and as a structure to learn later in life when they have a better idea what they want to learn.

</comment><comment><USER16> Without language options in school I would not be a Spanish speaker today. I love speaking spanish. I continued to speak it in college.

Outside of general value, it's also a great tool for life and work. It allows me to appreciate other cultures, travel, and (oh by the way) communicate with a great deal of Americans in a more effective way. I dare say if I was a line manager at most restaurants or in the agricultural field these days it would be a damned-near critical skill. I get not making it mandatory, but to not teach it at all seems like dereliction.

</comment><comment><USER17> Back when I went to school, they still had Latin as well as Greek as options in addition to French and Spanish. Wish I had chosen Latin over Spanish. Back then Chinese wasn't available, unfortch.

That said I agree with author. Foreign langs don't help non native speakers of foreign Lang land jobs. It's virtually useless with job prospects.

<comment><USER18> Something like 9 years of Latin for me, between elementary school and college... The only thing I might have traded it for was Chinese, and even then I'd have liked to take both (ended up doing Japanese instead because there was a class for it) before dropping Latin. I'm saddened to hear "Still had Latin" in the context that schools are dropping it. I'm hard pressed to think of another concentration that benefited me so much later in life. (Across public speaking/oratory skills, Vocabulary/flexibility of speech, and ability to parse/extrapolate novel content in both my own and similar languages)

The article entirely misses the point of why it was beneficial to me. It gave me a framework and practice using said framework for parsing and constructing natural language content, in a way that no english/grammer class ever came close (and we were crammed into those classes for FAR longer than I took latin). Bluntly, I reject their entire hypothesis. The US needs to improve our education system broadly, not axe yet another area in which we already fall behind our international peers. (My wife speaks 2 languages fluently, 2 more near-fluently, I am perpetually embarrassed by my own lack of worldliness next to her.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> We're doing it wrong, alternative languages should be offered throughout school. For me, it was French only in Elementary then only Spanish in middle school. HS has both. What kind of system is that?

</comment><comment><USER14> > Don't make the mistake of arguing that knowing a second language has many > benefits. The point is that foreign language instruction in schools doesn't > teach a second language.

Here he seems to be making the argument that it just doesn't work rather than that it's not worth it. At the same time, Bryan Caplan whom he quotes and seemingly endorses, is arguing that it's not really worth it.

Not quite sure what to make of this other than that both points strike me as equally ridiculous.

Foreign languages absolutely /are/ worth it, even if one is lucky enough to be born in an English-speaking country, and saying that second language education should be dropped because it doesn't work is absurd.

Language education certainly needs to be improved all over the world. There is enough research and anecdotal evidence that clearly shows that the standard language education with a focus on learning grammar and doing 'fill in the missing word' exercises from day one is largely a waste of time as opposed to a focus on listening comprehension and learning whole phrases and sentences in context and with relevant material one has a genuine interest in.

For example I find there's a strong correlation between English movies being subtitled (Netherlands, Nordic countries), as opposed to dubbed (Spain, France), and general English levels in the population.

As for the 'hardly any jobs use foreign languages' argument - that really is quite disturbing, but in a way also very honest at the same time. The goal of school isn't to help children develop into self-determined fully-formed adults but rather to produce economically useful human resources.

Learning different languages enables one to view and conceptualise the world differently. There's a strong indication that being multi-lingual reduces the risk of Alzheimer's and dementia. A second language opens up a whole new world, culture, literature in a way that consuming translated material simply cannot provide.

Last but not least, it seems to me that there's a frighteningly large number of Americans whose worldview is more or less that North America is the cradle of civilisation, Europe is this quaint little village where you can go on holiday and the rest of the world is basically a shithole, to paraphrase our beloved leader of the free world.

In my opinion being exposed to a different culture/world from an early age through an improved language curriculum focusing on immersion in real world material can absolutely have a positive effect on this and in that context also help improve the current political discourse, which, to butcher a quote from John Oliver, mostly boils down to "two people who don't know what they're talking about, being condescending to each other until one of them eventually manages to land a sick burn". Who knows, if more people had a better idea of what the world actually looks like outside of their own borders, it might even become a little harder for the US to keep spreading all that democracy around it.

Sorry about the rant, this sort of thing really gets me going.</comment>


Ask HN: Good strategies for finding jobs with companies in specific fields? - _-___________-_ There are plenty of job/contract-search websites focused on location (or lack thereof), or tech. What are some good strategies for finding jobs in any location, or using any tech, but in specific fields?<p>For example, I have deep passions for travel and aviation, as well as enduring interests in embedded software and telephony. I've typically found that I perform much better in roles that engage at least one of my passions/interests. What are some good strategies for searching for jobs in certain "verticals", i.e. companies involved in specific fields? <comment><AUTHOR> I've done similar things in the past. My two cents:

1) Sign up for a free Crunchbase trial.

2) Search for companies that fit your criteria (Crunchbase can do precise / granular searches)

3) Add names of promising companies to a spreadsheet

4) After the list has a few dozen names, cancel Crunchbase account

5) Google the CEO or CTO of each company

6) Find their email address (try [https://hunter.io/](https://hunter.io/) or just Google the person in depth and you'll often find a public email)

7) Write cold email explaining: your specific skills _and_ 1-2 sentences on why you're passionate about their industry.

8) End email with a specific ask: if you're hiring, would you have 15 minutes to chat next week?

</comment><comment><USER2> Start with researching companies. This will be manual but quality work. I would literally google "companies in travel and aviation" or something like that. Then spend 20-30 mins on each company. Rinse and repeat.</comment>


Upverter - Hardware design tools for the web - <AUTHOR> http://upverter.com/ <comment><USER2> Hmm, love the concept but $19/month if you want to keep up to 3 of your designs 'private'. So that's $228 a year. And no PC layout yet. If you buy something like Proteus [1] for $1000, it has a $250/yr service agreement (which is to say keeps you at the current release, gives you support, etc) and it does PC layouts and you can have unlimited private projects.

So in perspective the product is interesting, a collaborative tool. The pricing model seems a bit broken from an actual use case standpoint. Perhaps they could go to a 'price per private design' kind of thing.

[1] <http://www.labcenter.com/index.cfm>

<comment><USER3> Hey Chuck, Im one of the founders at Upverter.

We based the pricing on our pilot users, and what they were willing to spend to be able to collaborate. We would love to chat if there is a different price you are willing to pay!

And for what its worth, we are working hard on PCB layout right now, and with any luck will be able to launch it in the next few months.

<comment><USER2> Pricing in the ECAD space is weird (you're probably aware) because it goes 'free' -> $1K -> $10K. with very few intermediate points. What is more, the number of people who have been burned by having something 'in the cloud' from a smallish supplier is growing. So having private designs that would be 'gone' if your servers were offline would be an issue. And lastly the biggest thing most people pay for these days is simulation anyway, and that is something easily charged for. You might consider 'free schematics' private or public, but $20 to generate a PCB from one. You could work out a scheme where if I publish a schematic using upverter and someone comes along they can 'buy' a PCB for it and you split the revenue share with the schematic creator. You can work a partnership with one of the PCB houses so that it 'just works' or you can send them a zip file of the various bits (gerbers, drill file, tool file, etc).

Something you might offer for 'free' would be something like Google's ChartServer API but 'schematic server' API. That is something I've been building in my spare time off and on. You are a lot closer than I am and I've yet to figure out if I want to use HTTP POST or a split URL syntax.

Can you imagine something like:

      <img src="http://upverter.com?sch=dropbox.com/chuck/schematics/foo.sch" height=200 width=300>

A way to embed the shared schematic in web pages or blogs, or whatever. Feel free to contact me offline for ideas on ways to monetize this kind of stuff.

<comment><USER3> Agree with you on the pricing, its a hard one. Lets chat sometime! Were totally on the same wavelength.

We are actually working on a transcriber (<https://github.com/upverter/schematic-file-converter>), dropbox integration. And behind the scenes were doing "print" button style manufacturing for our more enterprise users (ie. click print and we get a one-off manufactured and mailed to you)

Every upverter schematic has an embed code and a ton of our traffic is driven from people importing their schematics and sharing them on their blogs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, is there money in this? Doesn't it make more sense to go after the HDL synthesis design flow? I can see a few hobbyists and PCB makers interested in this. But the market for those interested in digital design but not wanting to fork out a fortune to synopsys/cadence is huge, right?

I suspect you can innovate quite a bit on the HDL front and then doing everything server-side should really give you a cost advantage as well. I can also see the open source aspect of this taking off - a high quality of library of plug and play cores that can be seamlessly integrated into your designs might prove to be a significant competitive advantage.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very neat to see this! For the past year, I've been working on a very similar collaborative-design tool in an entirely different field (an aspect of transport planning). Probably won't have anything to show until the summer, but it's reassuring to see others pursuing similar business plans, interaction models, etc. Helps to validate my feeling that the cloud and the browser are fundamentally the future of design.

My own application provides relatively high-level collaborative design functionality, and does not attempt to replicate the functionality of existing tools that are capable of very low-level simulation, analysis, and engineering. I imagine that it's a similar situation for hardware design, although probably with fewer tiers of software -- presumably Upverter users are working at a level that's much closer to the end result of the hardware- production process. Still, there must be existing (offline) design platforms with low-level functionality that you don't want to replicate in its entirety; these are presumably embedded in the workflows of existing hardware design houses in a way that will be difficult to supplant. Have you considered eventually producing plugins for these 3rd-party platforms, which would keep their designs in sync with the cloud-hosted model? This way, high-level design could be done in the browser, and low-level simulation etc. can be done in existing applications, while still taking advantage of Upverter's collaboration functionality.

This, of course, is my own long-range plan, although the web application is very much the initial focus. Just wondering if you've had similar thoughts, and if so, whether you've found such a strategy to have any particular merits or flaws that you'd care to discuss?

</comment><comment><USER6> The schematic is a small part of a full design flow. What hooks does it have to be integrated into a full design flow? Without such hooks it will be limited to rudimentary circuits.

What support is there for hardware description languages? HDL is good for large projects and is more reusable than a schematic.

One suggestion is to have a component library that is shared among all users. Each person adds components as they need them, and the library grows, as a community resource over time. Maybe you have that already? If you do have it, what license covers the library? Is it covered by the same open source license as the schematics of the users that generated the library? In that case, is it free for any user to export and reuse in full? Such a feature would negate some of the "vampire" accusations leveled by the dangerousprototypes review.

What's the advantage over gEDA, gHDL or similar? Most people with the knowledge to design a circuit would also have the knowledge to set up a tool chain and repository. Who's the market?

<comment><USER3> Zak from upverter again...

Our HDL support is non-existant right now. We do have an open file format which can be created from or parsed to HDL. Do you work in HDL right now? I'd love to chat about this with you sometime - we come from the world of very large system design and there is almost no HDL usage at the system design level.

We do have a common library, all community entered and more than half edited by someone different than the creator. The library is free and public. We have a number of users of the library who havent yet adopted the rest of the upverter tool chain.

<comment><USER7> Don't want to discourage you guys, but coming from an EDA background myself, you didn't answer the question: > What's the advantage over gEDA, gHDL or similar?

I think your answer is, "we're focused on design & community." But I wonder if you might reconsider yourselves the "Codecademy of hardware" instead?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> FYI: Editorial: Upverter, another closed source vampire exploits open hardware for ventrue capital, PR, and profit [http://dangerousprototypes.com/2011/09/21/editorial- upverter...](http://dangerousprototypes.com/2011/09/21/editorial-upverter- another-closed-source-vampire-exploits-open-hardware-for-ventrue-capital-pr- and-profit/)

<comment><USER9> While I agree that companies that rely on open source software should give back to the community (new projects, bug fixes to things they're using, etc.), we have to admit maintaining new open source projects costs time and money. When you're a startup trying to get a beta product off the ground, I suspect you'll prioritize having a better product first, and open sourcing things later.

(Note: I'm not in any way, shape or form related to Upverter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> We worked on a similar tool with Digi-Key called Scheme-it. It does not offer RTC, but it's free.

The goal with Scheme-it to be an electrical engineering "Visio" type application.

<http://www.digikey.com/us/en/mkt/scheme-it.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> I have to say, your product is amazing.

one thing though - since you guys are after hobbyists and small design firms and it seems like it's a fairly small market with very little money to be made.

but it's very likely that you guys will be acquired by one of the larger CAD tool companies.

hardware design is not like software design because plenty of companies are already sell hardware building blocks that can be tweaked with software to develop an application. Very rarely you have to redesign hardware from scratch. These companies provide their customers (which include hobbyists/small design firms) with schematics. Their customers may tweak the schematics rather than designing everything from scratch, so collaboration may not be the highest pain point here.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow, looks promising, this would have made team/design projects much more manageable if I knew about it in college.

I wonder though, does Upverter currently support low-level logic/CMOS circuit simulation? I know that's asking a lot out of a web app, but using Cadence for simulation is often overkill for most hobby projects, and I have yet to see a modern web app/startup that serves this niche.

</comment><comment><USER13> I met one of the founders of Upverter this week and was pretty impressed by the polish of the product during his demo. I ended up signing up myself and I've already used it for a couple of my hobbyist electronics projects. I like the product and I'm looking forward to the road ahead with options to layout PCBs and have them printed.

</comment><comment><USER14> if it isn't there, you might think about some way for people to advertise they're looking for a design review. It would be neat to put together a circuit and set a flag for hey, everybody (or anybody), come take a critical look at it please.

<comment><USER15> I like that idea, putting it on the whiteboard. I really thing that having a way to get help from the community would help all designers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> That seems very interesting, and shows the "GitHub" approach to collaboration can work on other realms other than code. I wonder if it could work for product design, too?

</comment><comment><USER17> awesome! very useful. we need a tool like this for general purpose CAD drawings as well!

<comment><USER15> we would love to chat with you about what you need it to do! shoot us an email @ support.

p.s. I am one of the founder of Upverter

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So the market is folks who are technical enough to design electronic hardware, yet not technical enough to swap files over the web? Hmmmm...</comment>


How the GPL Limits Freedom - <AUTHOR> http://eamann.com/tech/gpl-limits-freedom/

<comment><USER2> >Anyone using my GPL-licensed code in their projects must release their subsequent projects under the GPL as well.

Yes, GPL's reason for existing is to grant and preserve rights to end users, which is something it can only do if granting those rights to end users is a condition within the licence.

>These projects were licensed under the terms of the GPL, therefore my ongoing contributions are also licensed under the GPL.

He can also licence his code contributions under any other licence he so chooses alongside with GPL (aka dual licencing), which is something he is either unaware of (which I doubt), or wilfully chooses to ignore here.

>If I could, I'd re-license these projects under a more permission license like MIT, but I'm not permitted to do so by the license under which I received them.

Indeed, he is not allowed to re-licence other people's code, quelle surprise! Again he can offer his own code contributions under MIT or any other licence if he so wishes.

<comment><AUTHOR> What is the point of dual-licensing a patch to a GPL-licensed project? Sure, anyone can use my contribution to do anything they want, but the _project_ that contribution is a part of is still GPL-only.

<comment><USER2> You were the one complaining about how: 'Anyone using my GPL-licensed code in their projects must release their subsequent projects under the GPL as well.'

That was the premise of your blog post. I pointed out that this is not true, since you can dual-licence YOUR GPL-licenced code.

You _choose_ to contribute to a GPL licenced project, your own contributions can be dual-licenced by you at your discretion, what exactly are you making a fuzz about?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me a little of Android's "freedom", which has mainly referred to _OEM 's and carriers'_ freedom, rather than the user's freedoms. If Android was fully GPL'ed, the carriers couldn't lock down their devices. You could say that Android gives the "freedom" to the carriers to do that - but that's not the freedom that really matters. The freedom that matters is that of the _end user_.

By a "free" and truly open Android, I would normally understand an Android that the _user_ can use it however it wants - not necessarily the vendor. Unfortunately, Android isn't GPL, so that freedom is mainly for the OEMs and carriers to do whatever they please with it, which has also become a pain in Google's butt, because they're taking it in all sort of different directions, fragmentating it.

It's also a little like the bill of rights. You're free to do a lot of things, _as long as you don 't harm others_ (generally speaking). You don't have the "freedom" to harm others.

Same with GPL. It doesn't give you the "freedom" to _harm_ that software and its users and close it down any way you like. That's a real strength of GPL, not a weakness.</comment>


Fear of Programming - <AUTHOR> http://rubyconf2008.confreaks.com/fear-of-programming.html

<comment><USER2> All of the fears he mentions are present all of the time when coding - fear of working on the wrong thing, fear of not being able to solve problem X, etc... Those fears are healthy and there for good reason - to enable the planning and execution of software projects from small to large. In fact, a developer who did not have, say, the fear of working on the wrong thing would...spend a lot of time working on the wrong things.

I'm not really sure I buy the idea that any of these fears would be substantial enough to impact the allocation of time on programming unless the person in question had some issues to work out such as procrastination.

Afraid of what others will say? Don't tell them. The practice is still going to be worthwhile.

Afraid of not finishing? Break down the project into small chunks, write tests to make sure the small chunks work properly, and iterate between planning out the next steps and executing the next step in the queue (in theory, any number of subsequent steps can be added, removed, deleted, or re-arranged after executing any single step).

Afraid you won't know how to solve a problem? Which problem? Did you read the Wikipedia article and consult the relevant textbooks?

Afraid you're not working on the right thing? First figure out what the right thing is, and justify why it is right. If you're working on anything else, stop. Now start planning how to approach the right thing. You are now working on the right thing, for a discussion on when to transition to coding, see Code Complete.

<comment><USER3> It's good to be thinking about what the right thing to be working on is. It's bad to feel the emotion of fear as you're doing this, because fear triggers your evolved instinct to stop giving your cerebral cortex cognitive resources and get the hell away from whatever is making you afraid. (If there's a car or wildebeest coming at you contemplating it in depth is not going to help you survive and reproduce.)

Playing strategic computer games like Civilization is a good way to convince yourself that you can make decisions about complicated stuff without feeling the emotion of fear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who's created a number of open source projects, not many of which have even been the slightest bit successful (even though a few have), I can say that just throwing things out there is fine, but I always wonder how much more successful one of the projects would have been if I would have devoted all of that time to it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think that fear is the wrong way of describing it. I might be frustrated or annoyed by undocumented spaghetti code, or be puzzled about some aspect of a project, but I wouldn't describe this in terms of fear. If software development made me frightened I would have given up with it at an early age.

<comment><USER6> What else would you call the emotion that paralizes you into inaction?

Because that's what we're talking about here. The developer is unable to get started or continue because they are unable to take the next step. They are afraid to get it wrong.

The usual solution to this that I've heard is Research. Learn more about what you are trying to do so that you can eliminate the fear.

The solution I used when I was learning to program was to just jump in and start trying things. It's very time-consuming and more than a little stressful, but it works.

At any rate, ANY action is better than inaction when faced with programmer fear.

<comment><USER7> Boredom? When I'm debugging someone else's spaghetti code it's not interesting or rewarding. It's mostly tedious bookkeeping that shouldn't even be necessary. It's the difference between compiling a custom linux kernel for yourself and removing malware for a friend. The former is intellectually engaging, rewarding, and fosters a sense of accomplishment in making something work. The latter is a tedious abomination that should have never happened.

The only times I enjoy spaghetti code is when I have to learn a tool or more about a language or library to debug or understand it. At least then I'm engaged and learning what to avoid and how to fix it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't agree when he says that knowledge is one of the most important things to combat fear. In my case learning just makes me feel better because I think I've done something towards the wrong direction. But often there is fear although you probably know very well what you're dealing with.

By the way, I found the "one fear gets replaced by a bigger fear" theory very interesting. It's a very logical explanation but I never consciously thought about it.

In this case, even though it isn't fun and sometimes very painful, I'd suggest a brute-force approach. Try as many ways as possible and discard all the drafts & don't feel bad about it.

</comment><comment><USER9> It is worth being able to tell between two types of fears - one that is genuinely yours and one that you've picked up from other people. Speaking for myself, I find quite a lot of them are of the second variety, which melt away when I ask this question. That leaves me with the first kind which is truly useful. The second kind seems to go with interested sounding warning phrases like "don't do this" and "be careful".

</comment><comment><USER10> It seems very interesting talk. I guess it will be interesting for researchers in other areas. I will be watching tonight</comment>


Ask HN: Novice developer looking for weekly LAMP dev lessons - <AUTHOR>

I'm a web designer and writer who started a site using open source, off-the-shelf stuff about 8 months ago that's starting to see a little uptake.  We're only getting around 3,000 visitors a day, but they're spending a decent amount of time on site (4 minutes/visit) and telling their friends to check us out.  The site was recently mentioned on a local broadcast after some news broke in one of our discussion areas.  I'm having fun and supporting myself off $3-4,000/month in ad sales to small businesses.  I think this can grow a lot bigger and make even larger waves but there's a big problem.
I have no #(*$ing clue what I'm doing on the tech side.  I've been sneaking by so far, but I don't see any real growth happening without changes to my approach.
For awhile, hosting was an issue until I found a local sysadmin who got me set up on his linode account and helps with some basic admin stuff in return for splitting his hosting costs.
But now my code itself is a problem.  I don't have the php literacy and know-how to make my site do the things my users want it to do.
Example: The system I went with says it has a reputation system that works a lot like the one on this site.  In reality it just doesn't do what it says it does. When someone recommends a story, the score of the person who wrote it doesn't budge.  A look at the issue queue for the component shows someone else noticed this as well.  Unfortunately, the module developer stopped responding to support requests 3 months ago.
I just spent 3 hours staring at the php code for this component.  Something is broken.  I don't know what, and I don't even now how to go about finding it.
I'm not making enough to hire a developer to work with me, but what about a coach?  Is there an experienced LAMP dev out there who could tutor me for an hour each week and help point me in the right direction when I get stumped like this?
If this sounds interesting, drop me an e-mail at email@example.com.  I'm happy to answer questions below.  I really want to learn how to do a lot of this stuff myself, I just need a resource in my corner who can put me on the right path and hit me with some knowledge now and then. <comment><USER2> You are probably better off asking these "nuts and bolts" questions over at stackoverflow than trying to get a mentor.

If you don't know enough php/programming/whatever to know how to ask the right questions at that site then I would start by learning the basics of php via a book or something similar until you have enough "programming literacy" to be able to. It should not take too much to get up to speed on the simpler tasks and php has a ton of tutorial and documentation to learn from. Cheers and good luck.

<comment><USER3> I agree you first need to enlarge your basic knoledge of the language thru a book (there are soo many about php).

btw as far as i can see it seems you mostly need to learn how to test and debug your applications.

If the codebase is becoming unreadable and confusing consider a complete rewrite on your own or by moving to a lightweight framework (I liked code igniter and kohana in my php days) or even a different language (Ruby and Python are nice languages)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are you really interested in learning to program or do you just want to fix the bugs on your site? Also, would you be prepared to pay your tutor an hourly rate? I'm genuinely interested in your answers to these questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> For your first question, I want to learn how to do the things I need to do to fix the bugs and issues I run into.

For the second, I definitely expect to pay for this.

<comment><USER4> OK. This is me: [http://forums.devnetwork.net/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile...](http://forums.devnetwork.net/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=15393) PM me there or DM on Twitter if you're interested in pursuing this idea.</comment></comment></comment>