Is-negative - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kevva/is-negative

<comment><USER2> This is an amusing joke poking fun at the sheer number of npm packages, but the linked packages for detecting positive[1] and negative[2] zero were at least a little interesting:

[1]: [https://github.com/sindresorhus/positive- zero](https://github.com/sindresorhus/positive-zero)

[2]: [https://github.com/sindresorhus/negative- zero](https://github.com/sindresorhus/negative-zero)

</comment><comment><USER3> Doubt it's a joke. see [https://github.com/kevva/calc- percent](https://github.com/kevva/calc-percent)

it seems to be a plot towards a full modular universe

</comment><comment><USER4> There are also more advanced packages:

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-noop](https://www.npmjs.com/package/node- noop) [https://www.npmjs.com/package/lodash.noop](https://www.npmjs.com/package/lodash.noop)

</comment><comment><USER5> Is it a joke? I sure hope so.

</comment><comment><USER6> I had a chuckle.</comment>


Ask HN: SuSE Studio and similar apps - <AUTHOR>

I recently got an invitation to beta test SuSE Studio, and after a few searches I found that there are several similar apps out there (one for Ubuntu, a few no-name ones, etc...). Basically the idea is a simple point-and-click method for creating a customized linux distro ("or appliance")
I'm waiting for it to finish building my first quick attempt before I really put some attempt into it. I was wandering if anyone here has any thoughts on the app? Have you used others before? What was your experience? I've had a goal of custom-designing my own distro for a while, and intended to do it from scratch, but if this is half decent, I might just use this.
Any thoughts or advice? <comment><USER2> I tried slax custom distro service. <http://www.slax.org>

I was never patient enough to finish the task anyway :).</comment>


Why do so many terrorists have engineering degrees? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2240157/pagenum/all/ <comment><USER2> This isn't the first article to suggest that engineers and scientists have some specific, roughly opposite traits -- scientists are exploring, querying, doing research, and engineers (note that they mostly mention mechanical engineers here, so ignore your computer science background for a moment) are usually applying established results rather than exploring the problem space.

I can see how an application-focused, problem-solving discipline would be attractive to more rigid people with an interest in applying their principles to the world to "fix" it, and how such people might also be more likely to be terrorists.

Computer engineers seem to be somewhat less represented by this article (again, all they actually mention are mechanical and architectural engineers), and I'll bet that holds up even in the west -- being a computer "engineer" isn't like being a mechanical engineer, in that we just don't know enough about our discipline to do much rote applying of well-known principles.

That may change when and if Moore's Law stops doing its thing and we can start getting a good feel for the relative balance of computer resources and human resources in terms of cost. As long as that changes by a factor of two every eighteen months I don't see us settling into any well-established principles of work balance between people and computers, ever.

</comment><comment><USER3> _"How should one put the balance right?" - recent Nigerian terrorist_

I think this is the key point - the conflict muslims feel between the western lifestyle and the islamic lifestyle. This conflict is not just between cultures. Even in muslim lands, some muslims feel a conflict between the earthly life and the life after death. I suppose most muslims deal with this conflict in a healthy way. But my experience as a muslim in the west, is that there are many more who struggle with this. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Islam does not provide a central theological authority (like the pope) to address these issues.

Muslims are left to their own soul-searching/research or the local imams. The local imams are either not trained to address such issues or offer solutions that dont work in real life.

One institution that is trying to address this problem is Zaytuna College (<http://www.zaytunacollege.org/>). It is the first American Muslim college. They are trying to create Muslim imams that are trained in both the islamic laws but also in the broader western philosophies and ideas. Presumably, this training will enable them to address such spiritual conflicts.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interestingly, creationists with advanced degrees often turn out to be engineers: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_hypothesis>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I hadn't heard of this before!

Perhaps learning how things work makes you more sympathetic to the idea of a creator, or suspicious of complex things occurring spontaneously, or seeing how complex systems can arise from a few well chosen first principles.

I've found that the more I learn about society, neurology, human psychology, and organizing principles of systems, it makes me more confident of two things. First, that the world could definitely and logically be the product of a certain kind of Creator (not all visions or ideas of God apply). Second, that such a Creator is not necessary if you believe in infinite universes.

The thing that bothers me about #2 is that if you believe in infinite universes, shouldn't there be a universe with a God in it?

<comment><USER5> Which infinity? If you believe in infinite rational numbers, shouldn't there be a rational number equal to the ratio of a circle's radius to its circumference?

(I don't believe in God or infinite universes. Standard Model FTW!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The writings of Mircea Eliade need to make their way into the Muslim world. The need to separate the "sacred" from the "profane" will greatly benefit Muslims to experience transcendental views internally instead of imposing superficial ideals externally.

It is difficult to have a transcendental experience without an appreciation for the sacred, and these two things are not mutually exclusive or only reserved to those who follow a religion. I don't think anybody here can argue that witnessing the birth of a child is anything but a sacred moment; perhaps for some achieving some level of success in their profession may translate into a sacred moment; even something as mundane as sipping a fine brew of tea can be sacred. (These are things that don't require you believe in a "higher power" or even a religion - but it could mean something to you and to you alone; when it happens in the presence of somebody else and they feel it positively at the same time, you could call that "bonding", and that too is sacred.) It really doesn't matter what the worldly manifestation is, but rather how it may positively affect you internally on a purely human level. The point is that "sacred" is internally directed and brings peace to your being. For me, defining "profane" or that which is worldly is a bit easier to define: anything that is not sacred.

The mixture of technical problem solving and "religiosity" is a perversion of the highest degree because then there is no distinction between _x_ and _y_ and to simply delete one of these variables becomes a technicality without emotion, insight, or appreciation for one another or even oneself. In my experience, this is happening in the Muslim world because there are schools of thought (such as engineering or science) that solve problems wonderfully and in a methodical way to give excellent results in the real world; when combined with the uneducated view of treating every word in scripture as fact then these two things can be intermingled without distinction: religious views are explained through logic (sans sacred/transcendental experience) and wordly methodologies that otherwise benefit humanity enable actions to be carried out in the name of "religion".

If only this simple distinction of "sacred" and "profane" can find their ways into the hearts of all people from all walks of life, I think we will be a step closer to relating to one primarily as human beings. It is a universal and even human understanding that anybody from any belief system can appreciate. Anybody who mixes sacred with profane and proclaims that they understand the belief system they adhere to is either fooling themselves or is a flat out liar.

If you are Muslim and reading this, please reflect upon what I mean by this distinction and discuss it at your next Halaqa, if that's your thing.

</comment><comment><USER7> It seems a bit of a stretch to apply data from American engineers (who very rarely attempt to blow up civilians) to Islamic terrorists. My school also had conservatives disproportionately represented on the faculty -- i.e. they were almost within a stone's throw of their representation in the general population, not the smallest minority on campus like they were in ArtSci. As a conservative with degrees in both making stuff and making stuff up, I always figured this was because nobody at the engineering school ever said, in as many words, "You're a Republican? Who let you in here?"

<comment><USER8> Sometimes you have to use the data you have and not the data that you wish you had.

They included the American data set because it was the best data set available on the question of political leanings of engineers. They sanity checked the result of that data set against available data sets in other countries and places, including a 1948 data set from Egypt, and the other data sources were consistent with the American one. When you add the other lines of evidence they had there strongly suggestive evidence that engineers broadly tend towards right wing conservative politics across multiple countries and cultures.

And having right wing conservative politics within the Muslim world is likely to make you sympathetic towards al qaeda and related organizations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's an exceptionally good hypotheses explaining why western educated Muslims tend to be radicalists:

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/18b/reason_as_memetic_immune_disorde...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/18b/reason_as_memetic_immune_disorder/)

<comment><USER10> I think it would be helpful to summarize:

"Western education forces lifelong Muslims to more thoroughly analyze their beliefs, which until that point they just accepted without questioning. They then go to one extreme or the other: either they reject those beliefs, or take them to their logical conclusion and decide to convert/kill infidels."

It's interesting, but it doesn't address why this would happen to engineers in particular, rather than just all western educated Muslims.

<comment><AUTHOR> Presumably because engineers are trained to be analytical and to trust their analysis, so they are more likely to follow through on the outcome of their soul searching.

<comment><USER11> Or presumably, as in another post here, that engineers tend to be more educated in the west and work more in the west than those in other disciplines, and so have more exposure to the west.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> An article I read some time back explored why many terrorists of the Islamic bent seemed to be well-educated, had spent some time in American/European universities, and often had established careers in "the west". The speculation was that __some __of those who came to "the west" and tried to stay longer term had a hard time adapting. This portion tended to become radicalized. The article further speculated that if they had stayed in their country of origin they would have been happy and not been radicalized.

Of all career paths someone in the middle east might choose, the one their societies/families deem most worthy of the extra expense of a western education is engineering. Engineering + Islam might not be the key to radicalization, rather it's Exposure-to-West + Islam that seems to be the stimulus for radicalization. And Engineering students from the middle east have a much higher Exposure-to-West level than, say, art historians or geographers.

</comment><comment><USER12> As Oriental philosophy said "Stupid questions bring stupid answers". I propose new questions:

Why do so many terrorist have black or brown hair?. Why do so many terrorist are men? Why do so many terrorist are young? Why do so many terrorist are raised out of USA?.

Extracting conclusions from over generalizations is not only usefulness, it's dangerous.

HN is becoming more and more like reddit this days.

<comment><USER13> Putting aside the egregious spelling and grammar errors (I assume English is not your native language), I fail to see your point.

 _Why [are so many terrorists male]? Why [are so many terrorists younger than average]?_

These questions in particular seem to be fine. Questioning the pathology and psychology of dangerous radicalism is an interesting and worthwhile question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> <http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0912/09122601>

The Pantsbomber (or whatever we're calling him) graduated from my old department! Ermm... This won't do anything for our reputation as being halfway competent engineers :-/

</comment><comment><USER15> Is it surprising that terror plots requiring larger cash outlays, improvisation and greater precision tend to be staffed with better- trained/smarter operatives?

It's not like they're sending architectural engineers to die in pedestrian human-bomb attacks. They just do it in the cases where the operative needs to understand/learn how to package, nitrate and detonate a crude explosive under stress, or _learn to fly a plane_.

Only through selective reporting do engineers appear over-represented.

<comment><USER8> You obviously have not read the paper that they are summarizing. Else you'd not have brought up a point that they addressed directly and came up with strong evidence against.

In different times and places there have been many terrorist organizations who are supporting different kinds of causes. Engineers are significantly overrepresented in right wing religious ones, and are virtually nonexistent in various left wing ones.

Were it a simple case of selective reporting and economics then you would not see a correlation between the profession involved in the terrorist organization and the cause that organization is for. But there is a strong correlation, and therefore something deeper is happening than us noticing engineers because their skills and economic status make them useful to terrorists.

<comment><USER15> I hadn't read the whole paper, no.

The article went only as far as suggesting that right-wing ideologies appealed more to the engineering mindset. And I'm hardly convinced that any given extremist ideology is more, or less, seeking to bring order and unambiguity to the world. That the summary went on to note that fundamentalist extremists were _actively recruiting_ engineers didn't exactly help the argument that the over-representation is a natural result of mind-sets.

All things being equal, perhaps there _are_ more engineers willing to kill for Allah than ELF. But the summary in that article is so unconvincing that I'm not particularly motivated to spend time with the paper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is all summarized from a paper they say was posted "this summer". That's poor fact checking because if you follow the link to [http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/gambetta/Engineers%20of%20Jih...](http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/gambetta/Engineers%20of%20Jihad.pdf) you'll see a big fat 2007 on the title page for a reason.

That said it is an interesting paper, and I recommend that people read it. I certainly learned something when I ran into it a couple of years ago.

</comment><comment><USER16> Engineers are smart enough to see how fucked up everything is; their lack of social skills make it easy for them to justify its violent destruction.

</comment><comment><USER17> [http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/04/intercourse-and- intelligenc...](http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/04/intercourse-and- intelligence.php)

 _Depending on the specific age and gender, an adolescent with an IQ of 100 was 1.5 to 5 times more likely to have had intercourse than a teen with a score of 120 or 130. Each additional point of IQ increased the odds of virginity by 2.7% for males and 1.7% for females._

<comment><USER18> What does this have to do with the article? How did you get so many upvotes? Are you that creepy guy who was banned for bringing up "casual sex" in every other thread?

edit - seriously though... did I miss something? I didn't see the word sex mentioned in the original article, or the word terrorism mentioned in the second article...

<comment><USER19> He's trying to make a tenuous leap to suggest that engineers are smart, smart people are sexually repressed, and sexually repressed people are more likely to be violent. I understand what he's saying, but I don't buy it. Claiming that terrorists' grievances are based in deeply-rooted sexual problems is juvenile, and doesn't respect the gravity or history of the situation, IMHO.

<comment><USER20> Especially as (e.g.) there doesn't seem to be any similar terroristic tendency among physicists, who are also very smart (anecdotally I'd say: slightly smarter on average) and smart in broadly similar ways.

(Note: "on average" means just that; I know some very, very smart engineers.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> because engineers don't get laid enough - everybody knows this! ;-)

</comment><comment><USER22> Ok I've heard this before.. Let's look at other subjects.. for example philosophy: What about the great Philosopher Dr Joseph Goebbels or Karl Marx? The discussion is quite ridiculous.</comment>


Statement concerning the arrest of Dmitry Bogatov - <AUTHOR> https://www.debian.org/News/2017/20170417 <comment><USER2> This is the Google Translate of the news link in Russian: [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fzona.media%2Fonline%2F2017%2F10%2F04%2Fbogatov-3&edit- text=)

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a relevant discussion about his arrest from five days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14096625](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14096625)

</comment><comment><USER4> Did he run a Tor exit node?

<comment><USER5> That is what I have read on this topic, yes.</comment></comment>


Apple Pencil Review Written with an Apple Pencil - <AUTHOR> http://s3.amazonaws.com/asymco.pixxa.com/asymco-apple-pencil-review.png <comment><USER2> > "Thank you Steve"

I thought Steve Jobs hated the idea of a stylus for iPad, and thought nobody would ever want that when you could just use a finger..

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice idea but calling it a "review" of the Apple Pencil is stretching it a bit. More like a paean to the lost art of handwriting

</comment><comment><USER4> Me reading cursive involves a lot of guessing letters..</comment>


Elias Burstein, Pioneer in Semiconductors, has died - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/25/science/elias-burstein-dies-physicist.html <comment><USER2> Integer overflow? It is sad, how badly human hardware designed

</comment><comment><USER3> Can we get a black bar for this guy?</comment>


The End of Privacy: academic research on AI targeting ad demographics [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUwBcTgzbtU <comment><USER2> An extraordinarily provocative and informative presentation. Attribute leakage from facial images alone are remarkable.

Though I disagree vehemently with Kosinski's conclusion. Privacy isn't killed by technology, but rather, privacy is an emergent response to invasions of personal expectations and norms on information sharing caused by information technology advances. Warren and Brandeis's "The Right to Privacy" was a direct response to the invasions made possible by the first generation of analogue recording and replication, transmission, and reproduction technology: photophraphy, telegraphy, and rotary web presses.

[https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~shmat/courses/cs5436/warren- bran...](https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~shmat/courses/cs5436/warren-brandeis.pdf)

Privacy is the ability todefine, communicate, and enforce limitations on the spread of personal information -- and the inferences based on it. Kosinski's talk was interesting, but he completely lost me at the point of portraying China's social credit scoring system as a good thing and empowering to the individual. It is anything but either.

In reality, it explicitly discriminates against already oppressed ethnic minorities and bars millions from air and rail travel:

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/24/chinas-social- cr...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/24/chinas-social-credit- system-bans-millions-travelling/)

[https://apnews.com/9d43f4b74260411797043ddd391c13d8](https://apnews.com/9d43f4b74260411797043ddd391c13d8)</comment>


StackNotes - <AUTHOR> http://www.stacknotes.io/ <comment><USER2> Hmm, the signup page at [http://www.stacknotes.io/sign_up](http://www.stacknotes.io/sign_up) uses http, as does the submit action from the signup form.

Trying [https://www.stacknotes.io/sign_up](https://www.stacknotes.io/sign_up) results in a certificate error, stating that their cert was issued for *.herokuapp.com. :-(

</comment><comment><USER3> Agreed. If this was open sourced I'd be more comfortable. Investing that much effort to document everything in a new product is, well, scary.

Few idea's:

\- Add social logins via Github

\- Github repo integration, so you can add notes per repo as well as down to the file level if you wish.

\- Pull in gists. I'd rather store code in gists then use this tool to help organize them with tags/labels, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yesterday I thought about this... I picking up Rails using the 'Agile rails 4' book (by DHH). I have done many Sinatra applications using the MVC model so I'm quite familiar with most concepts, all I have to do is memorise and get a better grasp of Rails structure and _rails approach_ to problem-solving.

So I used a hack to create an easy 'note' solution adding this to my .zshrc:

n() { # $EDITOR ~/.mynotes/"$ _".md open ~/.mynotes/"$_".md }

nls() { ls -c ~/.mynotes/ | grep "$*" }

Then I just "mkdir ~/.mynotes". I keep mostly 'rake' and 'rails' commands and a short explanation in 'md' format. It works like a charm because most of the times, I just open the note and leave it open using MacDown (an MD editor with preview mode) + it can be synced via Dropbox and you could even add encryption if you wanted too. But I'm not sure it would work for teams, while StackNotes apparently seems to me extremely well suited for teams.

Good luck with everything!

</comment><comment><USER5> "This is 100% free at the moment so jump in and give it a go." from [https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/32bjsx/a_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/32bjsx/a_few_weeks_ago_i_posted_about_a_note_taking_app/)

I'd like to commit to it, but seeing that you might suddenly add a pricing tier (which might be imcompatible with our needs) adds a psychological barrier.

Perhaps you can add a pricing so I know it will

a) be sustainable b) know how much to expect to pay

<comment><USER6> I feel thats a fair statement and had another user post on there the exact same thing. I changed that statement to read 100% free. Thanks for your feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey guys, site owner here like to thank the op for sharing this, was wondering why my sign ups doubled. If you guys have any questions don't hesitate to ask!

<comment><USER8> Typo just under the first screenshot on the homepage: devlopers -> developers :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not sure I see the point... My IDE already lets me keep notes, contextualised to source file, project, project directory,... whatever. Why would I want to keep random notes in my browser? (Honest question; not trolling. After a couple of minutes playing with the site I just failed to see a value proposition. Perhaps I'm just too old/dumb/curmudgeonly.)

<comment><USER7> Hey thanks for your input. My main aim was to make a platform for developers to create formatted notes easily and be able to access them from anywhere. It sounds like your IDE already does this which may mean it isn't right for you - however, some features I am working on is the ability to share notes and view/vote on other users notes and then save them to your own notes collection. Again, thanks for the message!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks good! I have a suggestion and a question:

Suggestion: Make the description field for notes optional. I think in most cases the title should be pretty much self explanatory (for me at least)

Question: Is there any kind of server-side encryption? Just to keep eventually sensitive notes secret in case of a server breach? Better yet, some kind of client-side encryption would be good on a folder level. Everything should then get encrypted/decrypted on client side (yes I got really paranoid during the last months, and I'm not putting anything that is even remotely sensitive on any server that I have no control of.)

I guess some people might use this to document their server/network infrastructure, and (god beware) they might even put sensitive passwords there. Maybe you could sell then this kind of encryption as a "pro" feature ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> For keeping my own code notes I use TiddlyWiki [[http://tiddlywiki.com/](http://tiddlywiki.com/)]

Syntax highlighting, markdown plugins, stored locally and a mature polished product.

</comment><comment> V-2 Overall it's quite nice, but so rudimentary that in its current form, I can see no advantage whatsoever over some general-purpose, well established alternative such as Evernote.

If it's primarily targetted for (learning) developers, it'd better have some specialized, dedicated features - eg. easy management of code excerpts, with syntax highlighting etc.

Regarding the UX, I also can't grasp why the dashboard seems to fetishize statistics so much. "Average Daily Notes", "Notes Breakdown" (and the pie chart), why on Earth would I care?

<comment><USER6> Hey thanks for the reply and feedback! The site is still new and in beta and not all the features are out yet for what I want to be the official release. In regards to code highlighting and excerpts I feel the site already does this (check out the support link) however if you had some other feature in mind I'd love to hear it. With the UX and dashboard statistics, I put them in there as a way to engage the user more and make it more of a fun process to always actively be adding notes, however I would love to hear what you think should be in it's place. Thanks again for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My question is what assurance do I have that I'll be able to pull my notes out if/when StackNotes goes under or gets acquired? I've been burned a few times by services provided by startups (or not even startups, like Google Reader) going under, and I've learned to be careful of what I trust to a third party service.

More specifically, my question is why I should use StackNotes instead of an emacs org-mode file stored in a git repository?

<comment><USER7> Good and very fair question. Firstly, I don't understand why a company would not allow you to pull your data out before closing/be acquired but rest assured if that ever happens to stacknotes (i don't plan on it), I will provide a way to pull your notes out. If enough users wanted it, I might even provide a way to 'backup' or download your notes collection at will. Secondly, i can't answer that question as I haven't really used emacs org-mode (didn't know about it until then) but my main reason would be because of the features which we plan to implement (note sharing, voting etc. [https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/32bjsx/a_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/32bjsx/a_few_weeks_ago_i_posted_about_a_note_taking_app/)) which I feel will be make us a great alternative.

Again thanks for your message! If you have any other questions don't hesitate to ask!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks nice.

The "Relevant to" dropdown should be sorted alphabetically, and in my opinion, default to "General".

I also don't see why description shouldn't be allowed to be left blank.

I added a tag to a note, but if I search for that tag, there are no results.

I think "favourite notes" and "favourite folders" should be given higher priority than the rather meaningless statistics on the dashboard.

<comment><USER6> Hey thanks for your feedback. I have implemented those changes you suggested and its live again check it out. Cheers

</comment></comment><comment> V-2 It's a pity that I can't add, bookmark, my own "learning resources" (eg. some tutorials that I found).

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks good. Methinks you should change the 3-char minimum password length to 8 minimum for typical security reasons.

</comment><comment><USER15> If the proliferation of nanoservices like this goes on unfettered, I will have to be signed into 173.58 services before the first window on my desktop opens. What am I saying, "desktop" has of course been replaced by "browser", unless I also subscribed to a "desktop" service.

</comment><comment><USER16> Looks awesome! A few suggestions:

1\. Preview markdown result (get inspiration from GitHub).

2\. Where do I add more "relevant to"? The ones you have are grossly inadequate. Possibly just make that a text field.

3\. Use a code editor for the markdown editor, or even just change the font to monospace for now.

</comment><comment><USER17> Look to reduce friction wherever possible. Create a folder for me to start with, start me at a blank note... Let me name it later. Compare your flow to creating a Gist on Github. Every click and decision I must make takes an increasing toll.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the tip, did exactly that, new users get redirected to page with blank note and a temp folder

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've been using the GistBox app ([http://www.gistboxapp.com/](http://www.gistboxapp.com/)) which ties in nicely with Github gists and that's served me quite well so far.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is simply fantastic.

We have a 3 people dev team and are usually squandering around finding some function that we previously wrote but did not document. Going to go ahead and register and start using this.

Is this going to be free ?

<comment><USER7> Hey thanks for the feedback! Yes at this stage I plan for it to be free. Hope you enjoy it! If you want to see some upcoming features check out: [https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/32bjsx/a_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/32bjsx/a_few_weeks_ago_i_posted_about_a_note_taking_app/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Are there some sort of plugins that link the source with the notes? If there's no direct link between these, how do you remember you made some notes on a particular snippet?

<comment><USER7> Just to clarify, are you asking if there is a way to search through the sources attached to notes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Simple and fast alternative to evernote I use right now for quick notes and links to gists and stuff. Will use it! Thanks for building this.

</comment><comment><USER22> what advantages does this hold over using a central git repository or gists via github.</comment>


Introducing a new, advanced Visual C++ code optimizer - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2016/05/04/new-code-optimizer/ <comment><USER2> Undefined behavior notice:

      > Historically, Visual C++ did not take advantage of the
      > fact that the C and C++ standards consider the result
      > of overflowing signed operations undefined. Other
      > compilers are very aggressive in this regard, which
      > motivated the decision to implement some patterns which
      > take advantage of undefined integer overflow behavior.
      > We implemented the ones we thought were safe and didn't
      > impose any unnecessary security risks in generated code.

      > A new undocumented compiler flag has been added to
      > disable these optimizations, in case an application
      > that is not standard-conformant fails:
      > -d2SSAOptimizerUndefinedIntOverflow-. Due to security
      > concerns, we have seen cases where these patterns
      > should not be optimized, even though following the C
      > and C++ standards allows us to [...]

It sounds like they're not doing anything that GCC/Clang aren't already, but if you've only ever compiled with MSVC then be careful not to overlook this.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. Can anybody explain in a few sentences (if this is possible), why we have undefined behaviour in the first place? I know there are optimization reasons, but do we have data that confirms that turning on stricter flags (I think all major compilers let you avoid undefined behaviour) breaks lots of software?

<comment><USER4> (Not guaranteed to be correct)

Long story short: historical accident. Modern safe systems languages like Rust and Ada¹ avoid undefined behavior unless you explicitly ask for unsafe code, and even then there aren't many _undefined_ things you can do (violate strict aliasing I guess).

Most undefined behavior could be implementation-defined, but the edge cases from porting C+Unix from the PDP-11 (which I understand to have been... quirky) to many other systems happened before the spec, then the spec authors had to make the Ideal C Machine a sort of subset of all the existing behaviors. Thus, some things that could've been implementation-defined ended up totally undefined (god knows what computers did on signed overflow back then—the compiler may not have been able to guarantee anything: hence undefined) and we've kinda stuck that way ever since.

That said, the people who shame the compiler writers for "exploiting undefined behavior to optimize microbenchmarks and look good" annoy me to no end. That's just how the spec turned out, put up or shut up (or use a nicer language that isn't trying to stab you in the back as soon as you let down your vigilance...).

Here's a fun history of C: [http://pastebin.com/UAQaWuWG](http://pastebin.com/UAQaWuWG)

¹ Strictly speaking, I recall the Ada spec has some wording similar to undefined behavior, but it's not something you hit often.

<comment><USER2>
      > even then there aren't many _undefined_ things you can do

There's actually plenty of things you can do in an `unsafe` block in Rust that counts as undefined behavior (I don't know how you "explicitly ask for unsafe code" in Ada, but I'm confident the same is true there as well). Some of this falls out of the fact that Rust compiles down to LLVM IR, which itself has undefined behavior, but others are inherent (like demanding the preservation of the aliasing guarantees, as you mentioned).

For anyone curious about seriously using unsafe code in Rust (which is to say, using unsafe code in Rust at all, in any capacity), I recommend reading through the Rustonomicon: [http://doc.rust- lang.org/nightly/nomicon/](http://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nomicon/)

<comment><USER5> > I don't know how you "explicitly ask for unsafe code" in Ada

You need to import a virtual package and some times also make use of specific pragmas.

Ada, and Modula-3 are very much "into your face" in what concerns unsafe code.

For example, if you intend to do a conversion between data types without guarantee that the target can can hold a valid data representation, you need to import Ada.Unchecked_Conversion.

And do something like this:

[http://www.adaic.org/resources/add_content/docs/95style/html...](http://www.adaic.org/resources/add_content/docs/95style/html/sec_5/5-9-1.html)

Same applies to everything else deemed unsafe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So they finally got SSA? Neat, right up there with LLVM and GCC.

It also sounds like they have something like LLVM's InstCombine pass, it'll be interesting to compare which cases they handle. Despite it being a peephole pass, InstCombine is actually one of the most important scalar optimizations in LLVM's arsenal.

I also wonder if they form SSA in the face of C++ and/or SEH exceptions.

Like if you have something like:

      bool f() {
        int x = 2;
        try {
          throw 0;
        } catch (...) {
          x = 4;
        }
        return x & 1;
      }

Will they insert a PHI of 2 and 4? The MSVC of today cannot optimize the return to a constant.

<comment><USER7> First time I'm hearing about SSA. Is it something me as a coder should be thinking about while writing code, or is it purely a compiler phase ? Thanks.

<comment><USER6> This is not something you should think about writing code. Unless that code comprises a compiler :)

SSA is a program representation which is easy for compilers to analyze and optimize. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_single_assignment_form](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_single_assignment_form) for more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thumbs up to Microsoft for investing that much into their C/C++ toolchain.

<comment><USER9> I believe it is just a C++ toolchain and the C part is neglected. Has something changed?

<comment><USER10> Since VS2013 some useful and popular C99 language features are supported. And then there's Clang/C2 but it can't be used via command-line yet.

Their standard library (besides being intentionally not fully compliant) is missing some C11 features though. I guess we have to wait at least for C++17:

[http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2016/p006...](http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2016/p0063r2.html)

<comment><USER11> Not all of them, and today is 2016, important C11 feature, like _Generic still not supported. And it would be awesome, if MSVC will support GNU extensions, like Clang does. For now I recommend to use clang-cl wrapper: [http://clang.llvm.org/docs/MSVCCompatibility.html](http://clang.llvm.org/docs/MSVCCompatibility.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I believe the Bit Estimator example could be better:

      int test(unsigned char a) {
        short b = a;    // b: 00000000________, a: ________
        b <<= 4;        // b: 0000________0000
        b |= 3;         // b: 0000________0011
        return b != 0;  // -> return true
      }

The analyzer doesn't need any information about the two low bits of b to know b != 0. Had it been b ^= 3 instead of b |= 3, it would be a different matter.

<comment><USER13> I tried to have a simple example, maybe it was too simple. You are right, an OR with a constant is enough to know it is not zero. For this case the Bit Estimator also knows b = [3, 4083], writing something that takes advantage of this info would have been more interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The tl;dr of this seems to be:

        * Visual C++ now has very aggressive SSA-based optimization rules.

        * One of these optimizations is the bit estimator, which tracks the state of each bit of local variables.

I'm not aware of LLVM/GCC or other compilers using a bit estimator. I found some hits in the CS literature but I'm not aware of any other compilers using it, and it seems like a pretty potent optimization!

<comment><USER15> LLVM has had the same thing for a very long time, under the name SimplifyDemandedBits

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Love the a % 2 != 0 ? 4 : 2; optimization. This used to be one of my favorite interview questions for low-level positions - conditional assignment without branches.

<comment><USER17> Nice question, I had to think for a while. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It bothers me that they say implementing SSA eliminates the need for "complicated" data-flow analysis. Data-flow has a really nice theory behind it and enables a lot of optimizations. For example, dead-code elimination. But otherwise, kudos to MS!

<comment><USER19> Except they are exactly right!

<comment><USER19> I should add more context here. A data-flow analysis framework has significant overlap with an SSA-based analysis framework, except that the SSA-based one leads to simpler analyses which are more powerful.

A good comparison is CCP (conditional copy propagation) vs SCCP (sparse CCP) - the SCCP version is naturally flow-sensitive (that's a property of SSA form), so it can eliminate entire branches, leading to more dead code being eliminated.

<comment><USER20> Aren't SSA analyses generally only "kinda flow-sensitive" since values are only renamed where control flow merges, not where it splits? E.g.

      int x = ...
      if(x > 0) {
        use(x)
      else {
        use(x)
      }

In a DFA where you track information about each variable at each program point, you could push the constraint implied by the condition into each branch. If you do a sparse analysis on SSA form, that doesn't come naturally, right?

<comment><USER21> To handle this case some SSA implementations add a concept of "pi" nodes, which are used to artificially split variables on branches that establish some useful data flow property.

        x1 = ...
        if (x1 > 0) {
            x2 = pi(x1 & RANGE[1..])
            use(x2)
        } else {
            x3 = pi(x1 & RANGE[..0])
            use(x3)
        }
        x4 = phi(x2, x3) // if used

I have placed the pi nodes in the blocks, but semantically they are placed along the control edge.

Ref e.g. e-SSA in the ABCD value range inference algorithm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder what is the level of .NET's CLR optimization in comparison to this new optimizer for C++. I hope they will reuse some of those ideas to make .NET better.

<comment><USER23> Hopefully, they will just recompile the binaries, and the CLR will just get faster...

<comment><USER24> That's not really the way it works. The CLR compiles .NET code to native machine code (either at runtime or ahead of time), which means you need to implement these optimizations at the code generation layer of the CLR. You can make the CLR implementation itself faster, but that's negligible compared to the run time of the generated code.

<comment><USER23> Are you saying the "code generation layer" of the CLR isn't itself written in c++?

All of this stuff trickles down without a doubt. I realize it isn't going to magically optimize the bytecode, however, the thing that runs the bytecode will be faster.

<comment><USER25> The CLR doesn't have any bytecode interpreter that could get faster with this change. It's a JIT compiler that compiles the bytecode to native code.

<comment><USER23> Interpreter or not, the JIT compiler will certainly get faster with the c++ optimizations. The libraries that are linked against will get faster. The underlying OS components will get faster. Since .NET assemblies are mostly just glue code between framework code, which is mostly c++, everything should get a speedup out of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why do they call it "Visual C++", What does the term "Visual" mean to them? Also, is their compiler standard compliant? (c++11, c++98)

<comment><USER27> _Visual C++_ is just the product name, it's branding. It has no functional meaning beyond that.

As for the standards, there's pretty good partial support for C++11/14/17\. One fairly recent blog post by them has some tables. [1]

[1] [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2016/01/22/vs-2015-u...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2016/01/22/vs-2015-update-2s-stl- is-c17-so-far-feature-complete/)

<comment><USER28> Fun fact: the compiler's version (19) is larger than the IDE's version (14) because the compiler predated the addition of "Visual" to the branding. (And the IDE skipped 13, while the compiler didn't.)</comment></comment></comment>


[Show] A parallel text version of Candide - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2014563144/release-a-parallel-text-version-of-candide

<comment><USER2> Bilingual books are quite common in France, since may people want to speak better English. I was surprised that no bilingual edition of Candide, on of the most known works of French litterature, isn't available. Turns out it is: [http://www.amazon.com/Candide-Bilingual-Edition-English- Fren...](http://www.amazon.com/Candide-Bilingual-Edition-English-French- Voltaire/dp/0984679871)</comment>


Ideas for a New Elliptic Curve Library - <AUTHOR> https://briansmith.org/GFp-0 <comment><AUTHOR> In which Brian Smith proposes that instead of coding each of the specific curves a TLS library has to support in independent but closely coupled C libraries, we instead invent a DSL for expressing curve routines and a compiler to compile it down directly to C or assembly.

<comment><USER2> Quite nice, but how about the need for key functions to be constant-time to thwart time-based attacks? It's probably quite hard to express and requires low-level per-platform tweaking.

<comment><USER3> The idea is that the DSL compiler would be responsible for ensuring constant- timeness. Note that C, C++, and Rust offer no guarantee of constant-timeness. Even processors don't offer constant-timeness guarantees and some instructions (often division) are not constant-time. See also [http://blog.erratasec.com/2015/03/x86-is-high-level- language...](http://blog.erratasec.com/2015/03/x86-is-high-level- language.html).

I wrote the paper mostly in the context of implementing signature verification, which doesn't require side-channel protection since there are no secrets in verification. But, I think the DSL approach is even more important for ECDH and signing, where side-channel protection is important.

Finally, given that processors don't even promise us that any instruction is constant-time, and given that other types of attacks are possible where constant-timesness doesn't help so much (e.g. power analysis), I think it is worth considering other approaches to side-channel protection (e.g. blinding). For many applications, constant-timeness isn't sufficient and I'd love to learn that it isn't necessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does he mean doing what Galois did [1][2] with tools like CRYPTOL [3][4]? Or something more like this [5] with EasyCrypt and CompCert? Or something simpler like Altran's SPARK crypto [6]? And maybe with protocol-level verification like miTLS [7]?

I don't think there's a question about whether the goals can be met so much as a lack of uptake of methods and tools that meet them. Uptake and improvement on their capabilities, that is. So go for it people. :)

[1] [https://www.acsac.org/2012/workshops/law/pdf/Launchbury.pdf](https://www.acsac.org/2012/workshops/law/pdf/Launchbury.pdf)

[2] [https://galois.com/blog/2012/03/verifying-ecc- implementation...](https://galois.com/blog/2012/03/verifying-ecc- implementations/)

[3] [http://www.cps-vo.org/file/19230/download/59388](http://www.cps- vo.org/file/19230/download/59388)

[4] [http://www.cryptol.net/](http://www.cryptol.net/)

[5] [https://www.easycrypt.info/trac/raw- attachment/wiki/BibTex/C...](https://www.easycrypt.info/trac/raw- attachment/wiki/BibTex/CCS.ABBD13.pdf)

[6] [http://www.adacore.com/press/spark- skein/](http://www.adacore.com/press/spark-skein/)

[7] [https://www.mitls.org:2443/downloads/miTLS- report.pdf](https://www.mitls.org:2443/downloads/miTLS-report.pdf)

<comment><USER3> > Does he mean doing what Galois did [1][2] with tools like CRYPTOL [3][4]? Or > something more like this [5] with EasyCrypt and CompCert? Or something > simpler like Altran's SPARK crypto [6]? And maybe with protocol-level > verification like miTLS [7]?

Yes.

> I don't think there's a question about whether the goals can be met so much > as a lack of uptake of methods and tools that meet them.

I agree. And, that's a big part of the reason I didn't spend a lot of time on formal verification when I wrote what I wrote. The target audience of my writing is people think that the result must be as fast as the fastest implementation, but that only think that formal verification of correctness is nice to have and/or impractical to the point of not being worth trying. That isn't my own personal prioritization, but I think that actually describes the prioritization of almost everybody deploying open source crypto software today.

Anyway, I hope to have more to say about formal verification of ECC implementations later.

<comment><USER4> Well, best response I've seen to a post like this. The audience you refer to might be best served with a SPARK, Frama-C, etc. implementation decomposed as much as possible with experts doing the DbC annotations or VCC's.

More likely an informal method. In the distant past, my method was to use a language with compile-time macro's to decompose the overall algorithm into simplest functions. In dev mode, I could manually run checks to hopefully ensure my assumptions were correct. Each module was simple enough to extensively test and spot coding defects. If necessary, I could do it at ASM level while wrapping low-level stuff in HLL calls w/ checks. In production mode, it compiled to straight-forward, high-performance, low-level code.

So, two routes with different levels of formality and optimization. The 2nd method is more likely to get adopted. Just not sure how many weird corner cases can be prevented that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really enjoyed this part of the plan:

 _The profiling mode would generate a random seed, generate the code, compile the code, run a program that measures the performance of the code, and compares the execution time to the previously-known best execution time. Then we would just let it run until we run out of development time, take the best seed the program output, update the build system so that the new seed is used for production builds, and say we're done. We could call our ridiculous compiler the "super dumb compiler" and hope that people confuse it for a superoptimizing compiler. To scale this incredibly inefficient optimization strategy, we could mint a new cryptocurrency, Superdumbcompilercoin, where we trick people into running the super dumb compiler on their computers, cross- certifying each others' results, and sending us increasingly better optimization seeds in return for plausible delusions of becoming rich._</comment>


Good enough is better than perfection - Lucy Kellaway on Jiro's sushi - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/faa9c9f0-f83d-11e1-bec8-00144feabdc0.html

<comment><USER2> Can't read it unless you are a registered user.</comment>


Debugging Optimized Code–New in Visual Studio 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://randomascii.wordpress.com/2013/09/11/debugging-optimized-codenew-in-visual-studio-2012/

<comment><USER2> As I recently had to debug a nasty issue that only occurred in release builds in VS2010 I would definitely have liked to know about this earlier. Almost all the variables that were important in that case were inaccessible in the debugger which made finding out the root of the issue quite difficult.

<comment><USER3> Once upon a time back when Visual C++ 5 was the latest version, I had to convert a small application from C++ back to C, due to debugger issues.

The generated code made the debugger bork, and I really needed it for the type of project we were doing, in terms of productivity.

So after the effort it took me to convince our teacher to deliver the project in C++, I ended up doing it in C like everyone else in class.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can globally enable this option without changing .vcxproj by adding it in the CL or _CL_ environment variables (the former prepends options, the latter appends)

Thanks to Geoff Chapel for it, there are plenty more undocumented options on his site too: [http://www.geoffchappell.com/studies/msvc/cl/cl/options/](http://www.geoffchappell.com/studies/msvc/cl/cl/options/)</comment>


The secret life of DNS packets: investigating complex networks - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/gb/blog/secret-life-of-dns <comment><USER2> Very cool. This is engineering at its best.</comment>


"The Lean Startup" Author Eric Ries On Entrepreneur Being A Job Title - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3003146/lean-startup-author-eric-ries-entrepreneur-being-job-title <comment><USER2> If I understand it correctly Eric is saying startup teams should have a management guy, who will be responsible for keep things on tracks while the rest of the team is building the product?</comment>


Ask HN: living and working in US - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone,
I wanted to ask for your comments. I'll try to keep this as short as I can.
I'm a 26yo enterprise Java dev and the sole provider for my little family (wife and toddler). We're EU citizens. We spent the last 8 years in UK, and have recently moved to Belgium looking for a change. And change we got, but not the good kind. So want to move again. My wife keeps saying we should move to US, perhaps California. She thinks we'll finally have some sunshine, lots of affordable fresh food, perhaps live in a house with garden, beautiful nature close enough to actually go camping for the weekends, and friendly and approachable people. And she's probably right about these, but I'm a little scared about what we'd be giving up. Namely,
40h workweek 5 weeks of holiday a year free/cheap health insurance free/cheap education up to university level for our daughter.
Am I being paranoid? I hear stories from both ends of the spectrum. Some say they've been working 60h/week with no holiday for 5 years, in which case all that sunshine and nature have as much value as a travel brochure. But others claim that US is developer's paradise. And while health insurance is expensive, some get it from their companies or it's offset by the substantially higher salary. Some claim that public education system is also underrated.
What's your opinion/experience with this? What would you expect re: work/life balance & health insurance in a decent (choose your own definition) company? Any comments on school education? General cost of living?
Also, I do realize US is huge, but California is the only state I get to hear about - please give a shout for your favorite place!
Thanks a lot for comments, they are important to us. <comment><USER4> > She thinks we'll finally have some sunshine, lots of affordable fresh food, > perhaps live in a house with garden, beautiful nature close enough to > actually go camping for the weekends, and friendly and approachable people.

That sounds kind of like Italy. Maybe not as much sunshine as California here up north, but it's certainly better than the UK or Belgium from that point of view.

Of course, the economy is in the tank, but maybe you can work remotely or something.

Going to the US is not easy: you'll have to find a company willing to hire you.

That said, if it's what you want, don't let the naysayers get in your way - <USER2> on a vacation there, travel around some, meet people, see what day to day life is like, and then go for it! It's not perfect, but there's a lot of good stuff there - much more than some of the haters here give it credit for.

Some people work crazy hours, many people don't. As someone who is likely to have a good job, you'll have decent health care, even if the system is a bit screwy.

Edit: a few other places to check out might be:

* Colorado (Boulder, Denver, Ft. Collins). Snowy, but still quite a bit of sun. If I ever went back to the US, this is high on my list of places to check out.

* Austin, Texas. I don't know much about it, but it's supposed to be a nice place, and definitely sunny/hot.

* Bend or Ashland in Oregon. Not as sunny as California, and cold in the winters. Not as many jobs either, but nice smallish towns.

<comment><USER5> Since you mentioned it, I'll throw a shameless plug for Fort Collins (and Colorado in general). We do get snow from about November-March but its generally sporadic, however, there's usually 2-3 big snows a year. Despite this, we still get (on average) 300 days of sunshine a year [0].

For work, Foco has offices for Hewlett Packard, Intel, AMD, Avago, National Semiconductor, LSI, and Wolf Robotics. If the start-up scene is more your taste, Fort Collins-Loveland was rated 2nd in the "Top 10 Metro Areas for High-Tech Startup Density" in the United States (with Boulder at #1) in 2013 [1], and is also home to a start-up incubator called Rocky Mountain Innosphere [2].

There are miles of bike trails [3] all over the city and many places to hike nearby as well [4]. Needless to say lots of people are out and about being physically active around here and biking is often the preferred mode of transportion.

Other than that I just personally enjoy the atmosphere out here. Since we have a university in town there are tons of little hole-in-the-wall coffee shops open 24/7 (or close to it) and lots of specialty food in the form of restaurants, food trucks, food carts, ect. Old Town area is the main social scene and is always bustling whether people are out getting a bite to eat, walking around, or there are often various festivals taking place. Micro-brew Beer is also a huge part of the culture around here (at least in my circles), as fort collins is home to New Belgium, Odell, and many other micro-breweries and holds a huge beer festival called New West Fest every year. In all, it's a quirky little city that I quite enjoy.

Disclaimer: I've lived in the Loveland/Ft. Collins area for 6 years now and just finished my CS degree at Colorado State University.

[0] - [http://www.fcgov.com/visitor/fcfacts.php](http://www.fcgov.com/visitor/fcfacts.php)

[1] - [http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/2013/08/young-hightech- firm...](http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/2013/08/young-hightech-firms- outpace-private-sector-job-creation)

[2] - [http://www.innosphere.org/](http://www.innosphere.org/)

[3] - [http://www.fcgov.com/bicycling/pdf/bike-map- front.pdf](http://www.fcgov.com/bicycling/pdf/bike-map-front.pdf)

[4] - [http://alltrails.com/us/colorado/fort- collins?ref=header](http://alltrails.com/us/colorado/fort-collins?ref=header)

edit: formatting

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just sharing my bookmarks that were previously discussed on HN. Hope you can find some useful info in them. Best of luck for your journey.

1\. What's the best place in the U.S. to live and work cheaply? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6702111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6702111)

2\. What's the best place in Europe to live and work cheaply? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6703058](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6703058)

3\. Where can I move cheaply to work by myself for a year? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6700531](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6700531)

4\. A "Hacker's" Guide to the Bay Area [http://islandofatlas.net/2013/10/04/a-hackers-guide-to- the-b...](http://islandofatlas.net/2013/10/04/a-hackers-guide-to-the-bay- area.html) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6502430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6502430)

</comment><comment><USER7> "And change we got, but not the good kind."

This raises a bit of red flag, because lots of people migrate with a vague idea of "the grass is greener" without knowing what they're getting into. Since Belgium is not a bad place to live, I'm wondering what it is you're running away from.

And since you put a work/life balance, cheap health insurance and cheap education top of your priorities (all things Belgium already offers) and don't seem to know very much about the US, I wonder why you're not considering the much less complicated and safer option of another EU country? (Also, of all continental European countries, Belgium is probably most like the UK with it's post-industrial similarities.)

What is it that makes you think you and your family be happy in the US?

I'm getting a strong sense you don't really have a clear picture of that, and are just looking to flee to a magical land far away from your current troubles. I live in a place with lots of expats, and that scenario usually doesn't work out well.

</comment><comment><USER8> My all time favourite place in North America is Europe.

I am a European. I lived in US for two years, I lived in Canada for 15. I also lived in Sweden and Japan. States are good because it's just one big Walmart - everything is ridiculously cheap, but what it gets in quantity it tends to lose in quality. Canada in this respect is somewhat better, but it has the same problem - it feels ... I don't know ... diluted? Too much stuff, too little substance. It is nice, it is comfortable and affordable, but - and I am dumbing it down considerably - you can't get a decent croissant, because nobody simply gives a shit about getting them right.

On the other hand, the grass is always greener on the other side. If you move, you will have at least a couple of years of excitement and novelty.

PS. And generally working too much and not enjoying life _is_ in fact the biggest lifestyle issue in States and Canada. No better manifested by the fact that most of the restaurants are there for _eating_ and not for socializing.

<comment><USER4> > what it gets in quantity it tends to lose in quality

To some degree, yes, but I feel that's something that has been changing some. In the town of 150K people I'm from, you can now get a decent variety of food products from Italy. They're expensive, but at least you can get them. 20 years ago, there's no way you could have even found that stuff. So I think some people are starting to 'get it'.

As another example, when my parents moved to Oregon in the 70ies, you could count the number of wineries on one hand. Now there are plenty of them, and some of them produce some decent wine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just out of curiosity (as a UK resident), how would you plan on moving to the states from a legal standpoint? As far as I'm aware, if you don't have immediate family who are US-citizens, $500k-$1M to invest in a business, marry a US citizen or take employment on a H1-B (not easy), it's not possible?

<comment><USER10> I'm an EU citizen as well and I have to agree with you, aside from all you've mentioned plus winning a green card - moving to US is anything but trivial.

<comment><USER11> The Diversity Visa Lottery will be likely repealed in the near future by the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 so that won't be an option for very long.

<comment><USER9> Plus, the United Kingdom aren't eligible for the lottery anyway. So I guess it depends where OP is from.

<comment><USER12> The Diversity Visa Lottery can be granted on the basis of your birthplace, not your current place of residence or current nationality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If there's one place you'll find a 40 hour work week, it's enterprise Java. Most of the glorified 80 hour work weeks occur in the startup realm. I'm generalizing significantly here, but enterprise is stereotypically a "clock in, check out" type of job at larger companies, and securing something that pays well without sucking up your whole life is very easily doable.

Are those 5 weeks of holiday paid? If so, that is not a common benefit in America.

Without citizenship, your healthcare coverage is likely to be either costly or limited.

Scholarships and grants exist, but a free ride through college is also rare.

If you were already a US citizen, this move would be possible (but even for the majority of Americans, what you ask for is off the table), but since you're not, I say move to Canada.

Specifically, Toronto. As metropolitan as any American city (with a sufficiently large job market), numerous strong immigrant communities, better healthcare, great food. Nice and clean, fairly safe - I'd have no qualms bringing up a kid there. The surrounding suburbs are very mellow.

<comment><USER14> What about sunshine? But seriously ... we moved to TO after SF and NYC - <USER3> that happy with the move. There is a startup scene but not as many choices as the cities we came from. The salaries are also quite a bit lower, stuff is expensive and there are generally more regulations to do with it seems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What countries are you from originally?

Plan a holiday to the US, look things over and then make a budget (emigration is far from cheap), save and then decide to back out or bite the bullet. Don't do anything permanent until your visa is in the bag for you, your spouse and your child. Hollywood and anecdotes are not good inputs to a life determining decision like this, consider it a huge project and devote resources accordingly.

Why is Belgium disappointing you?

The US is definitely not paradise but it may give you chances that are hard to replicate elsewhere. At the same time, I know plenty of people that are successful in the EU. It usually boils down to the people, not the place.

<comment><USER16> _Why is Belgium disappointing you?_

Well, given that his wife longs for "finally have some sunshine, lots of affordable fresh food, perhaps live in a house with garden, beautiful nature close enough to actually go camping for the weekends, and friendly and approachable people."

I'm going to guess: high housing prices, population density killing nature & unfriendly people. Given that this is HN, I'd add "government and population actively hostile to entrepreneurship" on top of it.

You should talk to other people who emigrated, though. One of my friends did, and they found for example that they could hardly afford child daycare because that isn't subsidized in the States, unlike Belgium. There are probably multiple such small surprises lurking.

<comment><USER15> When I read that I thought: South of France, Spain, Portugal, Italy. Any one of those would solve the majority of those wishes, and would be a lot easier to get into than the US.

The problem is that no country is perfect. You can't get 'free daycare', 'good weather', 'affordable fresh food', 'beautiful nature close by', 'free healthcare', 'friendly and approachable people', '5 weeks of holiday' and 'free education' all in one serving. (Though I believe strongly that friendly and approachable people can be found anywhere, it's a bit of a reflection on how you are usually.)

I say that as someone that has lived in a lot of different countries. (.nl, .pl, .ca, .ro and a bunch of others besides but too short to consider relevant in this context).

<comment><USER17> South of Portugal and Spain fit most if not all of that, except jobs. In Portugal there are some dev jobs in Faro (but then you have either a long commute or live in an apartment in the city and pay is quite low to be a one provider kind of family) and in Spain Malaga does have good dev jobs around (not sure about Java but iOS/Ruby can get a decent salary there) and there are some places around that fit the bill that are within commuting distance to Malaga companies.

For better pay, there is Gibraltar and living in the South side of Spain. Sometimes you have to endure a long border cross, but the pay in Gib compared to cost of living in Spain may be worth it (and there are a few well paid of java/php jobs in Gibraltar in the betting companies)

If you want more info about the area, companies or plan/think moving here, shoot me an email (profile).

<comment><USER15> The good bit for the OP is that he might be able to work remote, and spend local. That's the best of both worlds.

<comment><USER17> I agree that would be ideal, but having been through a kind of similar search myself recently, I didn't see many java remote jobs available (a lot of ruby ones), and getting one is hard (unless you are an outstanding well-known candidate, you are competing with the whole world for a remote job, and in most cases, you will get someone from eastern europe or phillipines that is as talented as you, but requiring half of what you require (living in Belgium or event Portugal or Spain).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sorry if this doesn't sound as much but... do your research. _Ex ante_ it appears you and your wife are under a lot of misapprehensions and, if I may say, grass-is-greener media/cultural European clichés about the US --too many, perhaps, to disabuse in a single "Ask HN" thread.

Like others said below, a good idea would be to come live in the US for, say, a summer or so under a short-term tourist or student visa ( _eg_ maybe for a career-related summer course or unpaid internship) and see for yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, well, this is part of research :-) I agree that staying for a while would be ideal, but it's very nearly impossible at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Unfortunately you don't just "go and work" in the US, it doesn't work like the EU. Unless you're a hot commodity and you can convince Google et al to pay for your visa ($tens of thousands) and then winning the H-1B visa lottery, you will have a tough time.

</comment><comment><USER20> I faced this question at the age of 29 (late 90's) when I got an interesting offer to work in Florida (I live in Austria).

In the end, I decided against it. At the (2-day) job interview, people who worked there pointed out that the biggest benefit over Europe was the perceived freedom, the feeling that noone would bother them about their private business (this is probably no longer the case / general feeling today). I found the poverty in urban areas most shocking (loitering people, obvious racial inequality).

In the end it boils down to whether having your "dream job" (for me it was game programming) is worth both getting ripped out of your surroundings and coping with lower standards in many areas in the US over Europe (well, depends on whether you live in a poor EU country), as well as other issues like the harsher environment (floods, earthquakes). 50-60 hours was a given in the 90's, perhaps it is no longer the case now that Google/FB set the bar higher for job quality. For me it was better to stay, although nowdays I sometimes ponder moving to Switzerland, Norway or perhaps Australia (for different reasons, none involving career perspectives).

</comment><comment><USER21> May I ask what your bad experience in Belgium entailed? I'm curious, being belgian and a programmer... Although IT management here ranks very low in my humble opinion, it's not bad working here in the IT sector ( unless you work for banks and financial institutions, those are jerks :-) )

</comment><comment><USER22> Not to put too fine a point on it, but just saying California isn't really even enough to narrow things down. Remember that California is about the size of Spain, but in many ways with more geographic, population and economic diversity.

The cost of living, job opportunities, weather, and life style varies dramatically from San Diego, Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Sacremento, and San Francisco.

I'd recommend a trip to see. That said, California is the last place I'd move if I were a tech worker right now. You can get many of the same benefits (except possible access to VC money) in lots of other places. The Research Triangle NC and Austin TX for instance both offer much of what you are asking for at a much more affordable price.

</comment><comment><USER23> Emigration is going to be difficult, isn't it? Companies seem to rarely sponsor immigrants unless they're total rockstars or aqui-hires because in- sourcers like TCS can bring "average" IT workers in cheaper.

It looks like the days of Google et. al. recruiting from far-afield are over, unless you're CTO of an early-stage startup someone like Google might buy, or at least have some kick-ass side projects you can point to that will make you irresistibly attractive enough for someone to deal with all of the associated immigration headache, perhaps being better / worse off from a lifestyle perspective is a bit of a moot point?

Sorry to be a downer but... cart before horse, etc. etc.

</comment><comment><USER24> Novelty and the feeling of doing something different are very good reasons to move.

Salaries will be higher in the US but without a doubt you will lose in term of vacations and free time. Everything you wife mention, you can have in Europe. Food wise, I think you're better off in Europe if you like fresh inexpensive food.

The nature on the west coast is incredible. The national parks there are among the most impressive places I've seen. However, with 2 weeks vacations, you may not have much time to visit them. You can't really go to the grand canyon for a weekend for instance. You'll have more time to go there on vacation while you work in Europe!

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm lucky to work for a Boston shop where work/life balance is good relative to my perception of the average American software company, specifically, close to 40 hour work weeks, "death marches" strongly discouraged by upper management because they get how bad they are for turnover, 3 weeks vacation at start, then one more week after every 3 years.

One thing about vacations in US is that no matter how much time one gets on paper, I found the company cultures to look down on taking time off. It's almost like people are ashamed to take their vacation time.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm a 25yo Java developer from Russia. My gf and I don't like (almost hate) our country and we want out.

We choose between USA, Netherlands, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

I'm not a well-known software engineer, not an outstanding genius (yes, I'm not very confident about my skills) - that is why it seems very difficult for me to get a job outside Russia.

But I love programming, I try to learn something new every day, improve my skills and knowledge. And I hope we will get out someday (hope dies last :) ).

I wish you good luck - don't worry, everything would be alright!

<comment><USER27> We would love to have you in the USA. The other countries you listed are fantastic places to live but if your passion is in programming then the USA is an excellent place to be. There are plenty of immigrant success stories here. Look at recent news, Jan Koum moved here from Ukraine, created a mobile application, and is now worth over $6,000,000,000 thanks to the Facebook acquisition!

<comment><USER26> Thank you! But where should I start from?

<comment><USER28> I doubt that life quality is better in USA. But the money is better -- and your local social environment is what decides if you like living somewhere, anyway. (Tell me if you like it. :-) )

A suggested plan, with small steps:

Try the waters with Scandinavia/EU? If you travel by Finland from St Petersburg, you can get an EU VISA, right? Then you can do interviews etc in place. But maybe not for Britain? I think it is easier to move to the EU if a company wants to hire you, than getting a Green Card (disclaimer: I only really know about Sweden and Finland for non-EU migrants). If you don't like it, try USA.

(I would offer you to stay at my place and look for jobs, but I'm not in the North right now.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> 26 yo that used to live in California, but lives in NY now.

You don't get sunshine everywhere in California.

I personally hated the weather in San Francisco, but a bit to the south (Mountain View) is already much nicer.

Now I'll go through your requirements:

40h workweek: Yes easy to find

5 weeks of holiday a year: That is almost impossible to find in my experience, except if you are willing to get 3 weeks out of your pocket. (meaning you are actually deducting your pay)

free/cheap health insurance: Find a company with health insurance, and then you should be able to have one for your family, and only pay an extra of 200 to 600$ / month (yes that is cheap in the US)

free/cheap education up to university level for our daughter: that's not possible, you will have to pay for college. I think you can get one cheaper if you live more than 6 months in that state, and then send your daughter to a state college. Here is an example of a university near me (starts at 4000$ / year):

[http://www.stonybrook.edu/bursar/tuition/tuition-and-fee- rat...](http://www.stonybrook.edu/bursar/tuition/tuition-and-fee-rates.shtml)

<comment><USER29> PS: there is a way to get your college paid for, and that is scholarships, if your child is extremely good in school, he/she can get any college paid for. But you can't count on it as it is something very hard to do.

But my cousin got 8+ years of medical schools paid for, and also her rent was paid for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I moved to America six years ago. I have lived in California, Texas and now live in New York.

> My wife keeps saying we should move to US, perhaps California. She thinks > we'll finally have some sunshine, lots of affordable fresh food, perhaps > live in a house with garden, beautiful nature close enough to actually go > camping for the weekends, and friendly and approachable people

Sure, if you lived in Nor Cal, somewhere close to Marin or in the East Bay, you could probably get that. It is kind of puzzling to me that you would go all the way to America for this though. Wouldn't you prefer to live in the EU closer to a community ?

> 40h workweek 5 weeks of holiday a year free/cheap health insurance > free/cheap education up to university level for our daughter.

You are not going to get a 40 hour work week in America. It might be close to 60 hours. At least 50. Again, depends on the place. If you work for a big company like Google, things will be reasonably. Early stage startup. Miserable. Vacation is 2 weeks - 4 weeks. Health insurance has always been paid for me by my employer. Schools, I can't comment. I don't have offspring.

Someone mentioned other regions. Let me give you a quick run through considering that long term, America is my home but I don't know whether I want to live in a city.

Austin, Texas. Too small, too hot. Still too Texan.

New York. I love NYC. But it is not what your wife would want. It is a Megapolis.

Colorado. I fucking love Colorado. Boulder is amazing, it is a great college town with all those beautiful girls. Great opportunities for hiking. It has a great and upcoming tech scene. Honestly, if I were ever to buy a summer home or move elsewhere in the U.S., it would be Colorado.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm going to add something from the experience of being the kid that was dragged around Germany and the USA from the age of 3 to the age of 12 moving every 2 years.

Positives: \- I was put into the german school system learning german almost like a 'native' and I still have it. (Massive positive) \- Luckily I had 2 brothers. We'd move somewhere new, clump up as a gang, then slowly get to know people and get our own set of friends. \- I still find it easy to make friends.

Negatives: \- Become good friends with somebody, move on. \- Making new friends all the time. \- I found my memories of Germany 3-10 better than the USA (10-12) but in Germany we were thrown on to our bikes and rode off into the countryside for the day (we lived in villages). In the USA we were driven everywhere although we did have a pool (Florida). \- When we finally came back to the UK I found it slightly odd. Culturally I'd missed out on a lot.

Schools were much of a muchness. Of note we were in public school and then quickly moved to private school in the USA (this was 1980).

</comment><comment><USER32> Some random thoughts:

\- The most important thing for me: EU states are social states and US is not.

\- You are not going to get a free health insurance or cheap but quality education for your daughter like in Europe. (Not saying she won't get quality education, just saying it won't be cheap as we are used to in Europe.)

\- US is not a developer's paradise but it's a paradise of possibilities and opportunities.

\- [http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/CA/house,condo,mobile,l...](http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/CA/house,condo,mobile,land,townhouse_type/9_rid/1-_beds/42.617791,-110.302734,31.821565,-128.29834_rect/5_zm/) In that link there is a list of houses with a garden that you can buy to give you the idea. For the places that you would think you could afford, there is a possibility of living without a job. (Find remote work and it all works out?) But I think they are better houses than houses in most of the Europe.

\- You can think of Austin, Boston or Chicago instead of California cities.

\- Wait, there's another possibility: You can move to Berlin, Vienna, Istanbul, Mugla, Izmir or Aydin. You'd work remotely most of the time except for Istanbul, Berlin and Vienna.

\- Food in Europe is a lot better than in the US and by food I mean real food, not the cereals, cookies or things they eat thinking they're having breakfast. :) (At least in SF)

\- I tend to think that startups are not for people that are married and with children. They are demanding and consuming. Unless it's your own because only then it'd be worth to your efforts and time. We all know that.

Wish you all the luck for whatever you decide and let me tell you one more thing. You should absolutely be grateful for the wife of yours. Mine is not moving a centimetre..

</comment><comment><USER33> The cost of living in the tech-scene areas are outrageous and skyrocketing, those are the facts. The sun-shine California lifestyle can be quite nice you'll need to be prepared to pay out the wazoo. Don't believe it ? Prove me wrong, start looking at the Bay Area rental market.

</comment><comment><USER27> We would love to have you and your family. The USA is so large and diverse that practically any living scenario is possible. If you want to live near nature with sunshine, fresh affordable food, and a home with a garden then I would suggest checking out more rural parts of northern California. There are many employers that will allow you to work onsite part-time (one day a week, month, or quarter) and the rest of your time at home, assuming your output is acceptable and you are available during working hours. Special arrangements such as this are more difficult in the beginning but are very easy to setup if you have proven yourself to be a productive programmer.

I would suggest checking out areas such as Redding, CA. If you make over $100k a year you could get yourself setup with a nice place such as the link below.

[http://sacramento.craigslist.org/reb/4450341909.html](http://sacramento.craigslist.org/reb/4450341909.html)

More properties in that area: [http://sacramento.craigslist.org/search/rea?query=acre&sale_...](http://sacramento.craigslist.org/search/rea?query=acre&sale_date=-&housing_type=6&hasPic=1)

Note: Life can be wonderful in the USA but our healthcare and education system need work. Healthcare is fantastic if you get good insurance, but that will cost you each month. Being a programmer, it is likely your employer will provide health insurance. Our Universities are some of the best in the world (ex. MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Carnegie Mellon, etc), but our elementary and high school education system is inefficient so you may want to consider one of the many private school options in your area. This too will be costly. Basically expect to pay 10-15% of your salary towards making up for our deficiencies in these areas. Work/life balance is entirely possible here although many European countries structure their national policies around promoting such ideas while the USA pretty much leaves it up to the individual to organize their life in the way they see fit. This is why we have so many people living on the extremes, from super-star entrepreneurs to homeless individuals and everyone else in-between.

</comment><comment><USER34> California is a double-edged sword. I've lived here for over 15 years and it's definitely the place I intend on staying for quite a while.

If you plan on being near either Bay Area or the greater Los Angeles area, you have to be ready for the housing prices. A good, safe area with good schools will cost you. A short commute on top of that will cost you double.

That said, if you do your research, you can find very solid public schools (school districts) and University is doable, unless you go private.

As far as neighbors, it's a mixed bag - there are plenty of great people and there also many fake, greedy, etc. Just like any big city. Culturally, Americans seem to be more predisposed to welcoming people than not.

Back to the finances, with the costs of housing, it's not likely that you will be able to be the sole breadwinner. I've been trying to solve this puzzle for a while, but on a single income things just don't pencil...

Now the upside - California lifestyle is something else. You have all 4 seasons at your disposal with only a drive or a short flight year round. This opens up a lot of possibilities for enjoying nature/sports. If you are more into just quiet enjoyment, the state offers magnificent areas like Big Sur, that are also surrounded by awesome hotels, camping grounds and wine country. California wine is great and very inexpensive.

You also have the beach (really cold water though) and great weather most days out of the year.

Downside of Los Angeles is traffic and lack of public transit. In SF, you trade public transit for huge cost of living increase.

Never having lived in Belgium, I can't compare. My only experience has been a very short (6 months) stint in the UK and Moscow. I would not come back to either voluntarily after California.

If you are not afraid of a little rain, I would strongly recommend you consider Seattle - reasonable weather (I like rain) and not too much cold, great nature and friendly people (by my standards of visiting and working with a few great folks), no state income tax (CA works out to an extra 10% for me), a lot lower cost of living with similar level of education offered by the local school system.

</comment><comment><USER35> Australia dude, best country ever. Salary as high as in California. It has all the good things that the U.S. has, without the bad things.

</comment><comment><USER36> Do not underestimate the cost (time & $$$) of immigrating and the in(s)anity of US immigration law. Winning the H1b lottery is probably the easiest way. Getting a green card requires a pretty dedicated sponsor willing to spend $5-10K, not to mention the >1 year wait (this is assuming best case: EU citizen with "US equivalent" of a Masters).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about the formatting.

* 40h workweek

* 5 weeks of holiday a year

* free/cheap health insurance

* free/cheap education up to university level for our daughter.

<comment><USER37> Out of the 4 things listed here, in the US the only one that's "normal" is a 40h workweek.

5 weeks of vacation is a lot unless you are really senior or pulled a lot of strings. 2weeks is the average "base" here.

Solid health insurance is usually expensive.

Public schools are "free" but you are going to have to pay for college. I don't know of any completely free colleges anywhere in the country. (Not saying there aren't any, but I've never heard anyone talk about a _good_ one.)

<comment><USER38> He can always send the daughter (and any other kids) back to Europe for college, it's (mostly) free (for citizens) here.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was the cunning plan :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> You look for sunshine, sea, jobs and an european location? Have you considered Sophia Antipolis, on the French cote d'Azur? I live and work there and it's quite nice, and you'll surly find a lot of java jobs.

</comment><comment><USER40> A 3rd Generation US born Citizen turns his back on the USA:living the American dream in Vienna, Austria:

Lived in Silicon Valley for 20 years founding 4 companies in the process. I am an honest and decent person who was raped each and every time by my co- founders/investors. Only the soulless/ruthless succeed in Silicon Valley. SILICON VALLEY IS A TRAP! Everything is dried out and dead, including the people. Everything is about money, and everybody including your employer has their hands in your wallet. Child care is hideous. People are shallow and self centered. Homeless camps are everywhere, and there is no empathy/compassion for these older "former heroes of high tech" fucked over by the Vulture Crapitalists masters. Work weeks of 80 hours are the norm. Your company owns your soul. Schools are 3rd world. You have no life. Three hours sitting in traffic to get to the beach. No Culture. East Palo Alto is being bought up and the people tossed out on the street. Crime rate is now "off the scale" in both Menlo Park and Palo Alto (Facebook paid to construct and operate a Menlo Park Police Station just to protect its corporate HQ campus).

Lived in Boulder Colorado for 3 years. Closest thing one can find to living in Europe in North America. Fell in love with mountain climbing. Primary reason I chose to move my wife and 3 young children to Vienna Austria 11 years ago (easy access to the Alps).

I am giving up my US Citizenship this year to become an Austrian. I was back visiting my family in San Jose last year and could not believe how bad the quality of life in the US had sunk to.

Vienna Austria:Everything that the US was while I was growing up in the 1970s. Absolute heaven on earth! Those days are over in the USA. Amazing 5 weeks of vacation time. Founded my own GmbH 7 years ago. Government here is more involved with business: Austria has a high hurdle to start a business. 35,000 euros in startup capital, and avg 7 months approval time. This is actually a good thing as it eliminates much of the fraud in US where anybody can become a founder in 20 minutes and 20 dollars. Virtually no crime. Vienna is the best city in the world for 5 years in a row.

WELCOME TO THE USA: NOW BEND OVER:You have no credit history so be prepared to pay dearly for everything! Credit Card: 30% interest rate. Apartment: 6 months rent as deposit. Car loan: 40 percent. Power/Gas 600 dollar deposit.

Americans are impossible to develop deep long term and meaningful relationships with. They sure are polite, but all relationships are shallow. Everyone is waiting for you to fuck them over, so no one trusts anymore.

Austrians are cautious at the beginning, but after a time they are the most trusting people I have ever met. I have never had as many good neighbors and made true friends as I have in Austria.

Austrian education system is far superior to the USA! They invest in their peoples future with free higher education and apprentice training programs with the result of the lowest unemployment rate in the world.

Austrians, and most Europeans are "social" in "people before profit". As a lifelong capitalist pig, I had no idea that "American Capitalism" is pure theft. Socialists are not communists. Republicanism (US Representative form of government) is not Democracy, and the wealthy minority are protected at the expense of the majority. The Republican form of world government is 4 Oligarchs (US, RUSSIA, INDIA, CHINA) fighting over a lamb (the people).

George Carlin was right! George Carlin ~ The American Dream You have to be asleep to believe it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q)

Advice:Stay in Europe! You do not appreciate how good you have it! Do not be suckered into the fraud known as the American dream of getting rich, or of ever owning your own home (bought and paid for).

<comment><USER41> Wow, that's one heck of an anti-American diatribe! Maybe SV is like that (I can't say), but "Americans are impossible to develop deep long term and meaningful relationships with" is a bit of an overstatement, no? You're talking about 300M people! I'm sorry you had a bad experience but I don't think you can make accurate statements like that about America based on SV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Remote work from Spain?

</comment><comment><USER43> Come to Switzerland! You'll love it and as an enterprise java dev you'll find a job. Maybe I can help you here in Zürich, silvan.spross[at]gmail.com

</comment><comment><USER44> The only way to figure out if you like it is to try it out. Unless this was a bash US starter, in which case, carry on.

</comment><comment><USER45> Go live in Brazil!

</comment><comment><USER46> > we'll finally have some sunshine

You will and you'll also have the chance to discover the difference between excess and moderation.

> lots of affordable fresh food

The food is either affordable or good.

> live in a house with garden

More like a house with a mandatory lawn in a region hit by a very serious drought. You might also want to ask about the rules imposed by the homeowners association and whoever rents you the house.

> beautiful nature close enough to actually go camping for the weekends

Yes, if you like deserts and you want to live in SoCal. Note that "close" has a different meaning on that side of the pond.

> friendly and approachable people

Maybe at first. With time you realize that the friendliness is a form of politeness that hides fear, distrust and greed.

<comment><USER47> Wow, so negative.

> Maybe at first. With time you realize that the friendliness is a form of > politeness that hides fear, distrust and greed.

This is not my experience at all. Maybe in Cali (I've only visited), but the rest of the US is not as cynical or distrustful as you make it out to be.

> Yes, if you like deserts and you want to live in SoCal. Note that "close" > has a different meaning on that side of the pond.

The definition of close enough for a weekend camping trip for me would probably be 200-300 miles. Within that range, no matter where you are in the US, you'll find nice areas for this purpose.

> The food is either affordable or good.

In restaurants, yes. If you cook your own food, no. There are lots of farmers' markets, local grocery stores, etc., that are no more expensive than buying processed food.

> More like a house with a mandatory lawn in a region hit by a very serious > drought. You might also want to ask about the rules imposed by the > homeowners association and whoever rents you the house.

Only in suburbia. If you're out in the country, or in a city, there are (usually) no HOAs and only local zoning laws prevent what you can and can't do. The only requirement (usually) is to keep your grass trimmed to a reasonable height. I agree though, that HOAs are a bad idea and promote cookie-cutter neighborhoods.

<comment><USER30> > This is not my experience at all. Maybe in Cali (I've only visited), but the > rest of the US is not as cynical or distrustful as you make it out to be.

Likewise. I mean there are fearful, greedy and distrustful people everywhere. People are civil to you in America. You will eventually make friends if people want to be friends with you. It is a two-way street.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> For the sake of your child you should probably stay in Europe. The education system in the u.s. is terrible. 100% of my European friend couples have moved back to Europe as soon as they've gotten pregnant or gave birth in order to provide a better education for their children.

<comment><USER4> 100% of European couples probably also want to be around the child's grandparents, ensure the child learns their own language, and so on. My wife would find it tough to leave Italy for this reason, for instance. Also, as a parent, I think you want to feel somewhere that feels like 'home' \- or maybe that's just me. Without kids, I would feel pretty comfortable in a lot of places, but now that we have them, I think I would be less comfortable going somewhere completely new.

The educational system isn't that bad in the US if you're in the right place. It varies a lot from state to state and between towns or even areas in a town.

<comment><USER16> _100% of European couples probably also want to be around the child 's grandparents, ensure the child learns their own language, and so on._

We're both arguing without hard data here, but I'll just give an outright "nope" to the above.

<comment><USER4> These rankings are a bit dubious, but in this one, for instance, the US does not do great, but does do better than Belgium, where the poster wants to move away from:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27314075](http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27314075)

I want my own kids to have a good education, and would feel comfortable moving back to the US from that point of view. My biggest doubt from that point of view is that I want them to be bilingual in Italian and English, and there is no Italian language education in the US, so it'd be up to my wife and I.

<comment><USER16> I was arguing against the "grandparents and language" argument, not the general education argument. It's easy to argue against because I'm a counterexample myself. (...and my Italian still sucks after 30 years)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> You didn't mention the visa thing at all.

You said you are EU citizens. It's ok for you moving around EU but moving to the US is going to create immigration problems for you.

One of you will need to get sponsored for a long-term working visa not the temporary one. Then still I think according to US laws your Wife won't be able to work until you get a Green Card. I heard that they are trying to change that law but still.

Sorry to break it down to you like that, you can still try and make it, but its not an easy thing to move to the States especially having a family with you.

I'd suggest you apply to 20 companies+ and try schedule them all within a week. So you and your family can go there for a week do your interviews and see if you can get someone to sponsor you.

It's not like you said I am just going to move there... If you say that to the officers in the airport asking you the reason for your visit they are definitely not going to let you in.</comment>