Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328501.600-zap-your-brain-into-the-zone-fast-track-to-pure-focus.html <comment><USER2> I'm really trying to get a grip on trans-cranial electric stimulation. The specificity of effects claimed from from such a general manipulation (enhanced learning, better mathematical skills) is a little unbelievable.

Statements like "warns me that if I remove an electrode and break the connection, the voltage passing through my brain will blind me for a good few seconds." which may be a misreporting, don't help to bolster credibility. It may indeed blind you due to some neurophysiological effect, but breaking the connection of a direct current circuit will simply stop the current (unless there is a huge inductor in the circuit somewhere, in which case there will be a spark to your scalp as the SAME current tries to keep flowing).

<comment><AUTHOR> "Statements like "warns me that if I remove an electrode and break the connection, the voltage passing through my brain will blind me for a good few seconds." which may be a misreporting"

Could be, could be what the fella actually said - if someone did say that to me I'd be less inclined to allow them apply electrodes to me... and that's the professional.

The amateurs (as linked from the article) are burning themselves...

From <http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=7943>

"it actually burnt though the skin and left bruise marks. i hope it's gonna go after few days coz i look really silly"

Yeah, I think I'll give it a miss, thanks.

<comment><USER3> seems like they used copper coins and no resistor, not surprised that they would burn themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know it's probably harmless, but this is one of those things that I rather wait before trying it out. You never know, there could be very small hidden side effects. The brain is so complex and poorly understood that I rather not mess with it in this way.

Examples: maybe this will make you likelier to have a brain seizure when you are just 60 years old, maybe after prolonged use one region of your brain is more active making you behave differently (could be positive or negative), maybe it will make you more susceptible to Parkinson, Alzheimer, etc...

That being said, if everyone was as coward as I am, we would have missed on lots of inventions.

<comment><USER5> Applying electrical current DIRECTLY to the brain: what could possibly go wrong?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find it frustrating and depressing: this stuff just never seems to get operationalized in a way that's accessible to folks outside university labs.

Where are the startups? Where are the hobbyist groups?

<comment><USER7> I was just thinking how awesome it would be to have a graph of my brain waves so I could tune them to alpha waves while coding. :)

<comment><USER7> Holy crap,...just bought this.

<http://www.plxwave.com/>

<comment><USER8> I tested a very similar device for the company I used to work at, the UI looked identical at least. There was very little relationship between my actual mental state, and the state of the display. The device I used had an API, so I wrote my own visualizer to make sure they weren't just blurring out the data -- long story short, I was never impressed with it. Blinking or moving your head triggered a larger reaction than any thought impulse.

Maybe the tech has gotten better, but I wouldn't hold your breath for anything that costs $100.

<comment><USER9> "Blinking or moving your head triggered a larger reaction than any thought impulse."

No surprise there, the muscles of the head will have a stronger signal than the brain, if you're using electrodes outside the skull.

There might be some way of filtering those out, perhaps using additional electrodes directly on the relevant muscles. Subtract the signal on those electrodes from the signal on the other electrodes.

<comment><USER10> Also, based on the geometry of the xwave headset it looks like the electrode(s) are very rostral, so I would imagine that it picks up a lot of EOG from the eyes and EMG from the frontalis and corrugator supercilii (eyebrow muscles).

The ground, again from what I can tell from the photo, is on the earlobe. This is not a terrible place for a ground (there are no muscles there) but it's not ideal for removing EMG artifacts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> And there was me expecting one of those motivational self-help articles. Christ, things are getting strange.

<comment><USER12> Indeed. Let's hope it's not just strange, or our lives will resemble the Borges line:

> "He died in exile: as with all men, it was his lot to live in bad times."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just read this article in what felt like 5 seconds, then I looked up at the clock and 5 minutes had gone by. I looked at my girlfriend and said, "How many of the words did I just read?" and she said, "All of them".

<comment><USER14> Love it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how much of the documented improvement is placebo effect?

Even if it didn't directly improve focus it seems like it would be a great placebo. Nine volt batteries are probably commonly perceived as being powerful. They are used in stun guns, for example. You also experience unusual side effects after it's applied, further removing any doubt that something unique is happening to you.

<comment><USER12> > I wonder how much of the documented improvement is placebo effect?

I'm sure they controlled for that, as it is stupendously obvious and common to control for, and easy to do - just don't turn on the battery, or measure the effects of the current direction reversed (damages performance according to the other article).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "He sticks the anode - the positive pole of the battery - to my temple, and the cathode to my left arm"

Does this even make sense physically? I mean, wouldn't the skull work a bit like a Faraday cage, not allowing any currents into the brain?

I am highly sceptic of this new hype.

<comment><USER17> I have no idea about the placements on the temple and left arm, but left- temple / right-temple placements are basically how electroconvulsive ("electroshock") therapy works (in that case, the current is used to generate seizures).

I'm not a doctor, but as far as I understand, the human body is highly conductive -- and there are a number of "wires" and conductive fluids running into and out of the brain. The entire nervous system is, in a very rough sense, electrochemical circuitry.

<comment><USER18> Modern ECT would be performed on only the right side of your brain, with one electrode on the temple and one slightly offcenter at the top of your head.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Link to full article: [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328501.600-zap- your-...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328501.600-zap-your-brain- into-the-zone-fast-track-to-pure-focus.html?full=true)

</comment><comment><USER20> Around 6th grade I decided to take up roller hockey, but was pretty bummed out when I tried to learn how to move around in rollerskates. I couldn't make much progress for the life of me, until one day, I stumbled across the solid advice of learning to skate _with_ a hockey stick while chasing a tennis ball. I was skating as fluid as a twelve year old could within one week. I had always attributed the accelerated learning to that tennis ball and the subsequent "desire" to chase after it out of necessity, but now I see that focusing on the tennis ball was helpful because it muted my prefrontal cortex activity. Neato.

</comment><comment><USER21> Someone, please make some kits for this and sell online. :)

<comment><USER22> Before I strap electrodes to my skull, I am going to need more convincing than "An article online said...". I am surprised at how many smart people are willing to try this despite the lack of evidence / research.

If I wanted to increase my productivity, I would start by not surfing hackernews. Eventually, I might move on to "home made electric chair I bought off ebay", but I think I will exhaust other possibilities first.

But, hey, that's me. :-)

<comment><USER23> There's a fair bit of research on this subject. For example [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811910...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811910014667)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I read a neat book that partially covered this topic, called "Click" : [http://books.google.ca/books?id=RK3OHBGj2SkC&printsec=fr...](http://books.google.ca/books?id=RK3OHBGj2SkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=0385529058&hl=en&sa=X&ei=d-MvT5SbHIin0AHAk6nwCg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false)

The book talks about how interactions between people/things/events work. The author talks about how we can feel more connected based on vulnerability, proximity, flow, similarity, and environment.

The part on flow discussed how a champion racecar driver gets "in the zone" or "flow". As someone who's done programming competitions in the past (in a room where others are writing code against you) I could absolutely relate, time outside just washes out of sight, the curly braces become an extension of you, it's a down-right magical feeling.

There's another concept I feel is related to this, and I don't want to jump the shark here but, if you think about how we reach mastery of things we know (or, in other words, you can read sheet music, but can't play the guitar like a pro because every few notes you make a small pause and think about the next few notes), we're focusing on our impulses, or rather, eliminating them. This TED video does a much more fun/elegant explanation of impulses: [http://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passio...](http://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion.html)

I find it interesting that when I'm personally in a state of "flow", I'm working without any "impulses". To me it appears like the two are related: you need to be able to work without impulses in any given skill before you can enter flow (otherwise, you break out of flow). Now, this isn't enough, and I feel this is where we get back into the "connections" or "relationships" discussed in Click. To me it appears we as programmers have a better predisposition simply because the computer can create for us a synthetic reality free of normal distractions, we can tweak our proximity to a machine should we need to (mod your PC case and feel proud, love your mac book, set up your desktop just the way you like it), we know how vulnerable it can be to different things (viruses, long running programs, leaky memory), we experience it enough that it's very familiar and similar to things we've experienced before (try switching editors or color themes for a day, you'll understand how your similarity impacts your ability to get into flow), we can control almost all of the environment. In this synthetic universe we are better predisposed to making all the mental connections we need to feel like we're using an extension of ourselves rather than a machine.

This goes back to what we've long known: programmers need to know their stuff in and out, and need to work in an environment they have control over.

<comment><USER25> The excellent motorcycle magazine MCN (American one, not the low-quality British one) had a series of articles by a psychologist on flow and how to attain it. According to the series, attaining flow boils down to:

1) Familiarity. You must be doing something at which you are competent.

2) Stress. You must have a moderate challenge. Imagine Notch building his _n_ th dungeon game, and this time he's trying to do it in ten minutes less than his previous best time.

3) No distress. Distress comes from too great a challenge, such that it pulls you out of your flow state (what you call impulses, I believe). Imagine making Notch do his development in C# on .Net, since he's a Java guru (he may well be a .Net guru, too, but let's assume he's a noob for the sake of this example).

Another example of something which causes distress and an inability to reach a flow state would be tackling an integration using a new API which has a non- intuitive interface and lousy documentation.

To build on your example of changing editors or color schemes, I think this explains why we developers are so sensitive about working on other people's code base. It's not simply that it's ugly, or not architected correctly, but that every tiny, unfamiliar element compounds the inability to attain flow. We chastise one another for being self-centered and dismissing others' work as incompetent without objective reason, but within our own brains there's a very real reason. I suppose it _is_ self-centered by definition, though. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> [http://www.sott.net/articles/show/216086-Mental-muscle- six-w...](http://www.sott.net/articles/show/216086-Mental-muscle-six-ways-to- boost-your-brain)

the above talks about TDCS, but also meditation, bright lights, playing music. Good read

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if the part about removing critical thoughts and going into flow would be good for people with poor social skills? Perhaps it would be a way to "get into state", as it's known in the PUA world.

</comment><comment><USER27> Reading around one paper's abstract on testing the after effects of prolonged tDCS, suggest there might be a migraine risk, I dunno, I never have much headaches, so it could be a risk I would not want to take.

</comment><comment><USER28> Did anyone else think of Larry Niven's "wireheads" when reading this and other recent articles about it?

<comment><USER29> Actually, it makes me think of Bruce Sterling's wireheads.

<comment><USER30> It made me think of Focus, as depicted in "A deepness in the Sky" by Vernor Vinge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Shouldn't it be that getting into the zone and becoming an expert are two different things? I've definitely been able to get into the zone as a programmer, have been for a long time, but I'm far cry from anywhere near expert level. So why do they couple those in the article?

>Yet you don't have to be a pro to experience it - some people report the same ability to focus at a far earlier stage in their training, suggesting they are more naturally predisposed to the flow state than others.

Or maybe flow is what happens when your brain is concentrating, regardless of your knowledge/experience level.

<comment><USER32> I agree with you. I can achieve flow while programming sometimes that when I look back wonder how I managed to accomplish certain things in the time I had. Often the code has to be reworked to hash out bugs or inconsistancies but that doesn't mean the state of mind didn't exist.

A more accurate way to display it is -- bare with me -- watching replays in Starcraft 2. I've played the original for years and the sequal since its beta release and I am fairly aware of my limitations, but just once in a while I am able to lock in and accomplish much more intense output than what I'm typically capable of (replays back this up too). I'm not a pro, I still have much to learn but it doesn't mean I can't "lock in".

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> We're getting closer and closer to The Matrix. Before you know it, you're going to be able to upload knowledge straight to your brain.</comment>


Amazon Releases Elastic Beanstalk!... What? - <AUTHOR>

I was using my AWS console a few minutes ago and a new tab popped up featuring the odd title "Elastic Beanstalk". I tried to sign up for the service and access the documentation, but got nowhere.
http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/7673/elastic.jpg
Google turns up elasticbeanstalk.com which redirects to AWS.
Ideas? Is it an ever expanding farm of Minecraft servers? Or maybe unlimited storage for hosting for leaked Scientology documents? Or is it just the public page for their long rumored agro-business venture? <comment><AUTHOR> I'm so impatient!

From: [http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/gs...](http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/gsg/)

AWS Elastic Beanstalk enables developers to quickly deploy and manage applications in the AWS cloud without having to worry about the infrastructure that runs those applications. AWS Elastic Beanstalk is designed to reduce management complexity without restricting choice or control. You simply upload your application and AWS Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring. AWS Elastic Beanstalk uses highly reliable and scalable services such as Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon Simple Notification Service, Elastic Load Balancing, and Auto Scaling to deploy your application within minutes. You can also perform most deployment tasks such as changing the fleet size or monitoring your application directly from the AWS Elastic Beanstalk web interface

<comment><USER2> Applications must be written in Java (or anything you can put into a .war and make Tomcat run) [1]

[1] [http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/gs...](http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/gsg/Redeploy.html)

<comment><USER3> ...which would cover jruby apps packaged with warbler, unless there's something I'm missing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, it's Amazon's response to Google App Engine. I like their increasingly silly naming. :-)

<http://aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Is it only me to confuse this with beanstalkd (opensource queuing service) in the first place?

<comment><USER6> same here. the name had me confused for a moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just to assist with cross-referencing, there's another, slightly more recent discussion of this here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119104>

</comment><comment><USER8> AWS blog entry (Introducing AWS Elastic Beanstalk):

[http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/01/introducing-elastic- beans...](http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/01/introducing-elastic- beanstalk.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Because they don't really say this until you get to the 3rd or 4th page: This is a way that they can deploy your Java applications (packaged as a WAR) for you.

</comment><comment><USER10> You can find more information at <http://aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/>

</comment><comment><USER11> the beanstalk programming model: [http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/01/aws- beanstalk-programming...](http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/01/aws-beanstalk- programming-model.html)

This is pretty cool, but for people targeting it because of no-hassle infiniscale, it must be noted that you either use SimpleDB or good old MySQL for storage.

So AppEngine is still winner in that area, imvho, but it's great to see competition.

<comment><USER12> You can specify any JDBC connection string. Thus, you can point to any type of DB storage technology you want. The article is just highlighting the AWS DB offerings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anyone found out anything about prices? Would be great with something that competed with Google App engine.

<comment><USER14> You don't pay anything extra for Elastic Beanstalk (you pay for whatever underlying services you use - EC2/S3/SDB/RDS/SQS/SNS etc.)

Edit: paredit :)

<comment><USER15> Is it so that EB automatically provisions new services underneath it? Isn't that a bit of a risk?

<comment><USER16> Pay-by-use has always been a risk and people have been using the API + third party libs to automatically provision resources for some time now.

Nothing new here, except that they're squeezing Heroku and GAE now.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Official Looking Mailings Continue (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.mouseprint.org/2018/11/05/official-looking-mailings-continue/ <comment><USER2> I get this crap for domain name renewal notices. Warns about the deadline coming up and it's time to renew a few months before the actual date.

But they're very obscure that it's not your current registrar and you're changing companies.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to own a boat, a USCG documented vessel. Every year I'd get an official looking letter to renew my documentation. They used a logo that looked somewhat like the Coast Guard logo, and nowhere in the letter or website did they make it clear this was not official. For a $75 charge, they would renew your $25 documentation (above the fee, of course). When I notified the Coast Guard, they replied that there is nothing wrong with companies providing this sort of "service". I realized it for what it was, but I wonder how many people get taken by this borderline scam.

<comment><USER4> There is a company that does this with trademark renewals. Really sleazy.

<comment><USER5> There are many companies that do this with trademark renewals. The same orgs usually "help" with registering international trademarks too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> this has been going on since forever. I remember my dad talking to me about it when I was young. He basically threw straight into the trash anything that wasn't first class mail. Just look at the postage. If it's a bulk rate letter, it's nothing you need to worry about.

</comment><comment><USER7> You have laws against impersonating a police officer, and laws against infringing trade marks. Why not a law against impersonating official institutions?

</comment><comment><USER8> Comcast is the absolute worst about this. The number of mailings I get from them that look like paystubs or official tax forms is absolutely ridiculous. It enrages me every time.

</comment><comment><USER9> What's funny is that when a credit card company mails you your new card, they tend to send it in the most boring nondescript envelopes ever.

</comment><comment><USER10> gross. i got a letter that looked like the bill for the record of a deed. but you can get the deed for free from the town. i wish consumer protection agency would do something about these scam companies.</comment>


Groupon Poised to Strike a Deal With Chinese Internet Giant Tencent - <AUTHOR> http://kara.allthingsd.com/20110116/groupon-poised-to-strike-partnership-with-chinas-tencent-in-key-global-expansion-move/?mod=tweet <comment><AUTHOR> We operate a daily deal site here in New York City (Scoop St.) but we've been closely examining mainland China from my co-founder's roots in China. The backstory to this potential deal is quite interesting. Tencent invested in DST's last fund which then invested in the market leader for local deals.

Also of interest here is that Tencent usually "builds" rather than "buys" in their strategy. Tencent has already been testing their own local deals in select markets under Tuan QQ for a few months now: <http://tuan.qq.com/>

<comment><USER2> I too find that partnership interesting. Mainly because of the fact I can't quite figure out what could Groupon bring to the table for Tencent if they already have Tuan QQ? Am I missing something?

<comment><AUTHOR> Tencent is largely an engineering driven company. This deal would bring a salesforce into the company while bringing local revenue throughout mainland.</comment></comment></comment>


How to code a sine scroll on Amiga - <AUTHOR> http://www.stashofcode.com/how-to-code-a-sine-scroll-on-amiga-5/ <comment><USER2> "So, it should be considered mandatory to read the documentation of a technology to masterize this technology. By documentation, I mean the reference manual, not a popularized version. The authors who popularize documentation often treat it loosely, using shortcuts that lead to a dead end, misleading talent and flattering mediocrity."

</comment><comment><USER3> I made one of these in JS a while ago - [https://codepen.io/onion2k/pen/zPQvrv](https://codepen.io/onion2k/pen/zPQvrv)

And a nicer 2D wobble - [https://codepen.io/onion2k/pen/rYgxdJ](https://codepen.io/onion2k/pen/rYgxdJ)

Porting old demo effects to browsers is a lot of fun.

</comment><comment><USER4> > _And it is far more easy to remember the contents of this stack than the > contents of 13 registers._

Get a macro assembler, or at least a preprocessor; then give the registers names.

<comment><USER5> i think they mean its more about remembering which variables are in which registers. i dont think macros can keep track of which registers are available for new use.

<comment><USER4> Macros help remember which variables are in which registers by giving alias names to registers. I didn't think this requires explanation.

If a register is used for more than one purpose and there are multiple macros aliasing for it which look like distinct variable, that could be a problem. If there are enough registers so that a function can avoid this, then it isn't a problem.

<comment><USER5> i'm curious if you've written optimized code for these platforms...

it's not about remembering the registers within a routine. it's about maximizing register use across several routines.

E.g. You call "circle" which uses registers d0-d3. Then it calls "line" which uses d4 and d5. Then you _want_ to call "draw_point" which uses d3 and d7, but you realize you don't want to stomp on d3, so you write an alternate version of draw_point which uses d6 and d7 instead.

The OP is that platforms with few registers, such as x86, rely on the stack and don't have this problem. Macros won't help either, bc it's not about naming, it's about resource allocation. A good C compiler could do it well, but OP was talking about programming in Assembly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I drop my CS major to pursue being a self-taught web dev? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone, and thanks for clicking. I'm currently enrolled as a music/CS double major at a liberal arts university. I've just finished a summer of doing freelance web development, and I enjoy it a lot, though it can be frustrating at times. But as the beginning of my fall semester looms, I'm realizing that what I'm learning in my CS education is far less relevant to what I actually want to do than what I learn from just starting a new project and googling my way through it.
I took two intro classes, one on Python and one on Java and data structures, and I found those to be great. My class on computer structure, and that was fascinating. But moving forward, I feel like I'm heading towards the wrong niche—when I look at course titles like "Automata theory" or "Design of programming languages," they're things that I would love to learn, but I just picture myself working my ass off on some proof wondering why I let myself get so off track from something that I enjoy and can already make money doing.
Am I being naïve, or am I just starting to figure out why so many people say that college is unnecessary? I'd appreciate hearing anything about your real-world experiences that can give me some insight on which direction I should head.
Thanks!
EDIT: I had to shorten my title and I left out an important detail: I'm NOT thinking of dropping out of my university, merely doing a Music major instead of a Music/CS double major. I would likely still take CS classes—there's one on databases that seems very interesting. <comment><USER2> On the one hand, I haven't used a resume since my college internships (5 years founding startups, then freelancing through the network built up during the startups).

On the other, I still think it's worth the time. Being forced to write big, gnarly programs (like a compiler or collaborative text editor or puzzle AI) will give you experience that you'll never get from tutorials online about dealing with big, scary codebases. Or working in teams. Or whatever else.

If you learn as you go, each of those problems will get you fired when you hit it, because they're not exactly intuitive to deal with and you won't notice it until shit has already hit the fan.

There's not a 1:1 mapping between academic and real world problems, but I guess I'm saying it's still going to help. It also puts some extra items in your toolbox in case you want to do something other than vanilla web dev.

That being said, I have no way of evaluating the financial or chronological opportunity costs, as those are unique to you. It also depends how keen you are to get involved w/ your professors and students.

Plus, universities are where co-founders live!

<comment><AUTHOR> You commented before my edit, but everything you've said is still very relevant. Thanks.

The thing about the big, gnarly programs thing is that I don't think that's what happens at our CS department. The older kids in the department always talk about how the teachers can't actually code too far beyond the level required to teach the intro classes because the focus in the higher level classes is not on programming but on abstraction and theory.

I once brought a web app to my CS advisor that I'd spent a great deal of time on, testing over and over again and polishing it so that anyone who saw it would recognize it not as some sketchy work in progress but something that could actually be a finished project. His response? "I don't know anything about this kind of programming." Not "what sorts of challenges did you face?" or "what are your next steps, what are you planning on doing from here?", just that comment, some disinterested staring, and "this looks nice." I was later told by a senior in the program that any other professor would only be less interested.

I want to build things that people actually use, and that really doesn't seem to be the focus of the program. At all.

<comment><USER3> You seem to have a misunderstanding about what an undergrad CS degree is about. It's not vocational training. If you want that, you can probably find something better at a community college.

If you want to "build things that people actually use," do it. No one's stopping you, and there's not a college major for that - you just do it. Most bright CS majors learn programming on their own time. Completing a CS degree will give you skills and knowledge that will help with your goal but building web apps is not the focus and it's not supposed to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I went to one of those schools. Course quality in the CS department can be very hit or miss. You are right in that the instructors often have no actual programming experience. In this situation, the opposite of what you are thinking is true: automata theory is probably a better class than databases, because you don't need to be a good programmer to teach automata theory. A database class taught by a guy who doesn't program databases all the time is going to be lightweight at best and wrong at worst.

Advice is hard because it's very situation dependent. Do the courses use good books? Are the assignments worthwhile? For example of what I mean: At my school there was a prof who invented a cheap weather radar expansion board for PCs back when weather radar systems were standalone and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The hardware course and networking course taught by him were great. There was another guy who came back to teach after working in industry for 15 years. His courses were programming intensive and were also pretty good. In contrast the intro courses taught by the guys who went straight from grad school to teaching were weak sauce and a waste of time. HOWEVER, the automata theory class taught by one of those guys was good and was actually one of my favorite classes. Ultimately, I had a couple too many dud CS classes so switched over to a math major.

Thus, you'll have to examine the course offerings closely to see if you can piece together a reasonable major. If not it may be a better use of your time to just get a minor and take good classes from other departments. I have never regretted strengthening my math skills in lieu of taking half-assed CS courses. It was pretty easy to develop half-assed CS skills on my own.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would totally go for a minor if my school offered them, but they don't, instead making it slightly easier to double major (about a third of students do so).

I've yet to have an assignment that was too far beyond a proof of concept. Students who wish to pursue such projects are encourage to do so during the summer as extracurricular projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have been there. The last semester I enrolled at was fall 2010, about 6 months ago. I did not find any value in pursuing a degree that contained subjects I had no interest in whatsoever (my major was Information and communication technology), I chose not to enroll during the spring semester in favor of attaining professional certifications (Cisco CCIE) as I had taken an interest in them and attained "lower level certs" before that. (The CCIE is considered the holy grail of networking.

Lately however, I have fallen in love with programming and software development, and I have been studying with a passion. This has led me to conclude that throughout the length of my career, I will be involved with different technologies and perhaps even disciplines. Technology is full of uncertainty, you do not know where you will be in 2 years (let alone 5), what if you get a referral for that dream job but it requires a degree? Or if you decide to build a startup and it tanks--you would have to consider employment to regain at least some of the money you have lost.

There are countless other scenarios in which you may regret not having completed your degree. However, the most important thing to consider is that once you quit, you would lose out on opportunities--what they exactly are, you will never find out.

EDIT: This is in response to your edit indicating that you are not dropping out of school. That is good. But if anything, you should drop the music major.

<comment><USER6> Like ziyadb, I was also last enrolled fall 2010 as a CS major. I have a rather odd record of my collegiate career as I have been skipping semesters, sometimes a whole year in order to pursue freelance web/software development, and start-ups. It started in 2006 when I started a web development firm with my room mate. (Disclosure: Partnerships are hard.) We had a couple of clients then things were shaky. This lasted until 2007 in which he enrolled back in school and I followed suite. Personally, it took me a while to get into school as the intro classes held such little interest to me, could have been the teachers, to me they moved at a slow pace.

Then in 2008 after completing two years of my undergrad, I landed upon an interactive agency (start-up) through my connections I made with my own company earlier (Never underestimate the power of networking.) I invested in the company and we had a very nice office and great client database. That was certainly a peak time for me and were fruits of my freelance labor.

I cut out some of the rough times I have had, as they were certainly there, being a freelancer or being involved with a start-up is a lot of grunt work. Sometimes it was bill collecting or having to deal with unrealistic demands from clients, etc.

It all really depends what you want out of life. Do you want a structured and not so shaky career path? Are you will to take risks? Is anyone financially dependent on you? If you have a good deal of freedom then I say go for it, because those times will change and you can always go back to school.

I also agree with ziyadb, if anything drop the music. You can program a computer to play music anyway. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's the thing. Everywhere you go you should be learning. If you drop out of college and start to do stuff on your own you will lose access to the resources currently at hand, and you will no longer be forced/encouraged to do things outside your immediate interest.

If you start working on your own ventures you will make money - probably/maybe - and that will be cool. More, you can just work on the stuff you want to - maybe - but to earn money you may end up having to do a lot of grunt work that's not really enjoyable, not creative, and certainly neither stretches nor teaches you.

Do you really think you can make it on your own? Then do it now _while still working on your degree._ Having a startup is incredibly hard work. If you work that hard then you can do your degree and learn all this weird, wild-ass stuff that you otherwise wouldn't, and at the same time build something cool.

No, I wouldn't drop out. If you really have the drive you can make the most of this chance. It won't come again.

Just my $0.02, YMWV.

       #include <std_disclaimer.h>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the note. I certainly don't think I can make it on my own - I don't really feel prepared for "the real world" (as if you've never heard a 20 year old say that) - but the classes that remain to be taken in the CS program, especially the required ones (Real analysis? Sure, okay) don't seem like what I need to get myself there.

Also, I left out an important piece of information in my post—I'm not dropping out, just becoming a single major (music) instead of double.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd suggest moving forward with your degree. A degree looks good on any resume, and pushing forward with your degree will give you more flexibility in choosing jobs in the future. And, who knows? You may actually find you really like some of those niche topics.

</comment><comment><USER9> Your CS major is like learning the scales, progression of chords, elements of harmony, etc. Some of the subjects may not appear relevant, but they form the foundations for the future. The best employers will not hire candidates without suitable qualifications AND suitable experience.

On a slightly different note (ha ha) have you looked at LiveCoding and other real-time fusion of programming and musical performance?

<comment><AUTHOR> A little! I've really wanted to get into Supercollider but... haven't had the time. Do you have any suggestions for other resources/software I should look into?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My anecdote:

I have a H.BSc. in Biomedical Sciences and my only university course was Intro to Programming.

I've worked as a programmer at start-up in Waterloo, won a series of international programming competitions that had a decent number of CS competitors and done a fair bit of contract programming for some decent sized organizations.

</comment><comment><USER11> My philosophy is pretty simple: Don't major in things that teach you "How" something is done, go to school for majors in "Why" things are done the way they are (exception: degrees that give certification to practice or a license - like CPA or MD etc.).

I started with a business degree, and noticed we were being taught processes like how to create a balance sheet etc, things I could learn myself by looking it up online or reading the textbook, no added value from schooling, so 2 semesters later I switched to Economics, which talks about why people do this over that, why governments do that over this etc. Then I decided to major in CS, and started a new bachelor's degree, noticed again I could learn everything they were teaching me myself and it was far too much theory that would be useful "later", so I switched to Electrical and Computer Engineering which was focused more on building stuff in teams – which was why I got into a tech major in the first place.

Ask yourself what you want out of it – seems like you want to build stuff – universities don't focus on that, vocational and technical institutes do.

<comment><USER3> This seems backwards - you didn't like business because it "taught you how to build things" (i.e. balance sheets) and liked econ for the theory...then you didn't like CS for the theory and switched to ECE to learn to build things.

<comment><USER11> I didn't like business because it taught processes (the programming equivalent of this would be memorizing syntax), economics looks at setting up systems that incorporate those processes (building a mock economy and simulating the effects of pulling various economic strings isn't very different than building a robot). Hope this helps.</comment></comment></comment>


Use of a personal safety signal may diminish anxiety - <AUTHOR> https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/12/09/1910481116 <comment><USER2> This is like Linus with his security blanket?

<comment><AUTHOR> Precisely!</comment></comment>


Kim Dotcom seeks damages as prosecutors acted in 'illegal' way after ruling - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/23/kim-dotcom-megaupload-extradition-court-case-seeks-damages-prosecutors-acted-in-illegal-way.html <comment><USER2> I hope he takes them to the cleaners. NZ executive authorities acted really badly in this saga, playing action cops along their US friends with no respect for the rule of law in their own country.

Dotcom might not be a pleasant character, but being an asshole is not a crime in NZ. If they don't like their own laws they should change them, not wave guns around because some cowboy tells them to.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Dotcom's legal team will are now also looking to unfreeze Dotcom's assets in > Hong Kong and also seek "remedy" for the raid of the internet entrepreneur's > house.

As long as the U.S. (FBI specifically) have him on their radar, I don't think this is very likely.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I donno how the NZ Court is going to convince Hong Kong to unfreeze everything.

More interested to see if he gets compensated by the government when he sues for damages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Link is not very useful unless you disable your adblocker.

<comment><USER5> There was a button that said "Continue using adblocker" that removed the popup and let me read the article.</comment></comment>


Who sits in the 41st chair? - <AUTHOR> http://scottbot.net/who-sits-in-the-41st-chair/ <comment><AUTHOR> Particularly interesting is the section, "Popular Music":

" _The authors go on:_

" _' experts fail to predict success not because they are incompetent judges or misinformed about the preferences of others, but because when individual decisions are subject to social influence, markets do not simply aggregate pre-existing individual preferences.'_

" _In short, quality is a necessary but insufficient criteria for ultimate success. Social influence, timing, randomness, and other non-qualitative features of music are what turn a good piece of music into an off-the-charts hit._ "

Scott's point is that (a) this applies anywhere social influence is strong, and (b) social influence is strong in a lot of places.</comment>


Show HN: zhaodaoAI – Chinese Version Product Hunt,with AI-Powered Recommendation - <AUTHOR> https://zhaodao.ai/ <comment><USER2> Looks good. Congrats on launching!

A few suggestions:

\- In the sharing menu, when you 'copy URL', it would be better if you also copied some descriptive text. Because the zhaodaoAI URL contains zero information about the page content. So my friend might not even open the link.

\- If you are targeting Chinese users, it's worth optimising the site for mobile, or at least making it minimally responsive. Right now, the site requires horizontal scrolling when viewed on my phone, both in Chrome (when opened directly) and in the WeChat browser (after scanning the QR code).

\- Apart from including a link to the official site (官网) it would be worth linking to a Chinese version of the docs, or a Chinese forum discussion, or to the 百度知道 page. e.g. if I'm a Chinese user on the Kubernetes page, clicking on the 官网 link might lead me somewhere that I find hard/slow to understand.

\- If I click on 推荐 or 关注, instead of showing me a flash message suggesting I register, maybe just show a popup registration box, saving me a click.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, we will consider your suggestions,especially mobile optimization:)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, This is Ray from zhaodaoAI, "找到AI" (zhaodaoAI) means "Find the one you love" in Chinese, it's an AI-powered product recommendation engine based on your behavioral preferences and people like you. zhaodaoAI is constantly learning to improve to help you find the next lovely product ; ) Right now we only support Chinese, the English version is scheduled to be released.</comment>


This For That  - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2014/01/this-for-that.html <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6866938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6866938)

<comment><USER3> He's talking about startups that try to be x for y for no reason besides that x and y are in fashion. His two counterexamples support your point.

<comment><USER4> No he's not. He doesn't talk about that subset of the "this for thats" until the last graf of the article. The balance of the article is spent explaining the concept of "this for that", suggesting that "this for thats" have a harder time getting funded, and acknowledging that several USV investments can easily be described as "this for thats".

I found the article hard to follow, not least because it's hard to find a startup that can't be described as "this for that". Every startup is "for" something. And very few startups are _sui generis_.

<comment><USER3> Only the fourth paragraph talks about what you just mentioned. From the other paragraphs my takeaway was that startups have to start at a problem, and then happen to make something that can retrospectively be described as x for y, like Edmodo's and SoundCloud's founders did. This as opposed to trying to be x for y just because x or y is hot.

I'm not saying the article was good, just pointing out what it said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If "this for that" is the raison d'etre of the startup, that's a red flag.

Most of the time it's just the best way of describing a startup in 3 words or so. Our startup, [http://clara.io/](http://clara.io/), is "google docs for 3D animation". It's not a great explanation of what we do or why, but it's about as good as you can get in a very short sentence.

</comment><comment><USER6> The something of somewhere is the nothing of nowhere - Peter Thiel</comment>


StartCom launches a new service – StartEncrypt - <AUTHOR> https://startssl.com/NewsDetails?date=20160606 <comment><USER2> Okay, there's a lot that's dubious about this.

Firstly, they've completely ignored the existing standards effort of ACME, which Let's Encrypt has cooperated with to develop, and created their own API. This detracts from the effort to standardise this, to no real end. Use Let's Encrypt and you can avail yourself of the entire ecosystem of ACME clients, of which there are many (I develop one). It's likely there will be other CAs supporting ACME in time as well. Whereas this is a CA-specific API with, presently, one implementation.

Secondly, they're still carrying out the dubious practice of charging for revocations.

Thirdly, they claim "Not just for one domain, but up to 120 domains with wildcard support", but this is under their 'Pro' offering, yet Let's Encrypt supports up to 100 SANs per certificate for free. Their free service is limited to 5 SANs.

The only apparent benefit of their free certificates over LE certificates is the one year expiry time. But the whole point of the LE 90 day expiry time is to motivate automation, which is a gain in the long term.

Fourthly, their website is full of broken English, which is impressively amateurish for a CA and the high barriers to entry you generally expect that to imply.

<comment><USER3> Bit late, but an R&D contact from StartCom told me that they will be supporting IETF ACME with StartEncrypt, with the possibility of open source as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a StartSSL customer, I've just had the email in my inbox telling me all about this.

I know people don't like them, but before LetsEncrypt, StartSSL were one of the few providers of basic certs that were free. All I needed for my home setup was a cert for my Exchange server, and they've been providing me one for about 5 years now, and I've never had a problem, and every client trusted it[1]. Granted, their website is a bit weird, but once you work it out, it's fairly easy to renew a free cert.

Obviously, next renewal I'll be jumping ship to LetsEncrypt (now that the ACME clients for Windows have matured), so I am left struggling to see what benefit StartEcrypt has over LetsEncrypt.

\--

[1] Coincidently, BB10 on Blackberrys does not trust the CA chain for LetsEncrypt certs, and it's unlikely Blackberry will ever fix this.

</comment><comment><USER5> It also apparently supports Flock, a browser that hasn't existed for 5 years: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flock_(web_browser)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flock_\(web_browser\))

<comment><USER6> Finally. Us Flock users are tired of being the second class citizens of the internet! /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Are they saying they're doing EV certs for free or is the page just badly worded?

<comment><USER8> They are free, you just seem to need a paid account (as before)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> ./install: 16: ./install: chkconfig: not found

install over, thanks !

Terrific - so Linux 64bit is actually only RedHat flavours - save your time if on a Debian distro

</comment><comment><USER10> Binary client. Uhm. Yeah... nope. Wasn't StartSSL (haha. SSL) the CA that also offered to create the key on your behalf? Sketchy!</comment>


Ask HN: What worries you when selecting a remote worker? - <AUTHOR> In order to increase my chances to get my ideal remote job I am trying to anticipate and solve the common concerns the employer may have. I have listed some like "Is the timezone compatible?", "Does this person have a history of working remotely successfully?". Which others concerns/screeners am I missing? <comment><USER2> I just went through a remote-only job search and the most common question was "have you worked remotely before?" (I have, for the past 3 years). Know the challenges of working remote (schedule, communication, distractions, etc.) and how to address them. Get familiar with the various videoconference apps (gotomeeting, zoom, hangouts, etc.) and have them installed and tested before any interviews. It makes you look more experienced if you can say "sure let's jump on a zoom/gtm right now" versus "hang on I don't have the plugin installed".

Another thing to be aware of is that there are different kinds of remote jobs. One is a central office with a few remote workers, and the other is a distributed team. The first kind will ask you things like what hours can you overlap with the office and if you're nearby, can you come to the office occasionally. I avoided these companies. The second kind is where everyone is remote. These have more flexible hours generally, especially if the team is international.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your answer, byoung2. I have been working remotely a similar number of years so I hope I can sort that filter.

Thanks too for the tip as I have not considered it. I did not know about gotomeeting. I am going to install and test after I click the reply button.

I share the "being a remote-first company" screener too and I expect to dodge that "bullet" :). I have the concept of what kind of company I want to join very clear... what really worries me is passing their filters. I have no problem with the initial screening in my country... but this is the first time that I face global competition!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good at working independently and managing their own time.

Excellent communication skills, especially via text-based media.

Proactive about communicating status, progress, and blockers; and about reaching out when they need clarification on goals and requirements.

Takes ownership of a project instead of acting as a contractor who requires a detailed spec and will implement it without thinking it through.

Easy to get hold of and diligent about indicating when they won't be available.

Able to collaborate effectively without physical proximity.

For overseas workers there are also concerns about language barriers and cultural barriers.

Edited to add: these qualities are also important in people who work face to face in an office. But people who are in-office, if they're missing a couple of these qualities, can be still be highly effective with a bit more supervision. Remotely, any one of them can spiral into a major problem much more quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, cimmanom, this list is definitely helpful. I noticed that you mentioned communication twice! I will work harder on improving my communication skills meanwhile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you think being "under german law" complicates things? Workers rights and social taxes are both quite strong here and I think a foreign company has to obey these terms to hire me when I live here (right?).

(btw: I'm looking for a remote product manager job, maybe someone of you knows something)

<comment><USER5> They only have to "obey" if you are an actual employee. In my experience, it is more likely that you will be a contractor and need to be self-employed in Germany and pay your own taxes.

I'm an Australian living in Germany and working for US companies for 6 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When we hire I am worried about these things, in no particular order:

1) Can't communicate.

Particularly in written form. Should be easy to show/confirm, but still.

Why it matters? In an office I can walk over and communication will be much easier. We do video calls instantly—but located together you can still compensate for a bigger gap.

What you can do: Make it a point to communicate well (precisely, concisely, verifying your assumptions).

2) Ego

Not open to feedback. Or assuming that other are evil, or stupid or both. Or not interest in changing. It takes many forms, but at the heart it destroys communication and improvement. Let's say I give feedback, calmly and fact- based, add some humor, really work hard and show it that I mean no evil—and the other person gets all emotional and then jumps of the call and doesn't react anymore. Or, a colleague writes a mail, which could be read as sarcastic (or not), and someone else jumps at it.

Why it matters? When located together, there is no running away. (Technically there is, but then it's quite bad.) You also bump into each other, which helps in casually addressing things. When remote, communication is never happening by accident, only intentional. Again, when co-located the wiggle room for immaturity is bigger.

What you can do: depends on your ego ;)

3) No drive / ownership / bias to action

Why it matters? No social pressure from office mates to keep you going during the day. If you're going to surf FB half the day at home, you're quite free to do so. You're also not going to get anything done.

What you can do: First, know yourself. If it's a problem, first make it a point to find the /times/ when you're super productive and protect them against everyone and everything. Second, prioritization, goal setting, read up. Third, if you need social pressure, that's fine—but then it's your job to get it. For example, make it a point to grab a work buddy for a few afternoons.

4) Can't get organized

Things get overwhelming, your own life, work todos. And _then_ there is a stressful day. Some people then turn into headless chicken.

Why it matters? When remote it's both harder for me (as team lead) to notice a headless chicken—some people are very good at maintaining an "all's alright" image—and even when I do it's way harder to reassure someone.

You'll be aware how you fare on those topics after a while—that's why employers prefer experience. To be sure, the above concerns can be addressed with talking, and that's simply harder remote—or more precisely most people are not yet used to or skilled at communicating remotely. An eagerness to communicate, particularly for problems will help you make a success out of your remote work.

Here's not a worry, but might be something to consider for you: For a professional first impression and only _IF_ you're not used to doing video calls I'd recommend you becoming aware of how you are perceived over video. Do a call with someone elsewhere and have them record it.

* Audio: Is your hamster wheel in the background being picked up—you never thought _that_ would be a problem? Is the street way louder than you thought, your microphone much less crisp than advertised?

* Video: Where is the camera? (Are people staring up your nose?) What are your video habits? (Is your face constantly disappearing?)

Long blah blah—but I hope it helps you. Let me know in the remote case (pun intended) that you have any questions. Good luck, have fun! :)

edit: formatting</comment>


Using GoAccess for self-hosted web analytics - <AUTHOR> https://b4d.sablun.org/blog/2019-12-23-own-your-website-stats/ <comment><USER2> While I do like GoAccess and I like owning my own data, there's still a huge difference between what tools like GoAccess offer and what the elephant in the room, Google Analytics, offers.

It's not just the data available by default, it's also the very advanced user interface allowing even somewhat non-technical people to produce their own reports and dashboards.

Yes, you only co-own the data together with Google, but at least you _have_ the data compared to using a home-grown solution which will either not provide your product managers with what they need or which will consume all of your life as you slowly re-implement your own Google Analytics which will never be as good and/or featureful as the original.

Of course, if it's just about your personal blog and if you're willing to spend some time on the tooling itself, then yes, tools like these don't have the privacy issues otherwise accompanying third-party analytics.

<comment><USER3> For me, the problem with GA (or Matomo or any JS analytics) is that it's not accurate with the people visiting your website.

You lose all the ones with a blocker, all the ones with JS turned of.

Of course it's not the biggest percentage, but still.

So you're right, it depends of what the website is. It's easier to follow individuals with a JS solution.

<comment><USER4> GA does support using Google Tag Manager and a NOSCRIPT iframe for recording visits from people with JavaScript disabled.

You can also either proxy GA through your own domain, or use server side APIs to track those with blockers. Both support passing the browser IP as a parameter.

Also, fwiw, just noting both are technically possible. I'm not speaking to whether either is okay ethically.

<comment><USER5> I think a big problem with Google Analytics is accuracy, especially with the now so popular adblockers. Log analysis such as GoAccess should be able to track these down fine since it works at the server level.

I believe tracking visitors at the client level deflates the actual number of visitors. On the other hand, server-side tracking gives you a more accurate number at the cost of not knowing for sure if the client is a human behind a browser.

<comment><USER4> You can programmatically send hits to GA from your server, and get the benefit of the nice UI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you're hosting a static site on shared infrastructure (e.g. github pages, S3) where access logs are hard to come by, you can achieve some level of statistics gathering using a 1x1 pixel GIF and putting a CDN in front of it, then putting the CDN logs through GoAccess.

EDIT: this was a blog I loosely followed [https://benhoyt.com/writings/replacing-google- analytics/](https://benhoyt.com/writings/replacing-google-analytics/) \- one detail I forgot to mention is you have to do some post processing on the log files to get them into a format amenable for use by GoAccess etc, but it's not too difficult

<comment> awinter-py yeah, sharing logs for shared hosting is a small but interesting & unsolved problem

it's still weird to me that we rely on the frontend to manage access logging

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I personally run Fathom[0] for my very simple needs and it's pretty good as well. Not quite as simple to deploy as GoAccess, but it's got a nice UI as well.

I used to use Matomo[1] (which is a lot closer to a full analytics suite) but stopped using it since it felt heavier than what I needed.

[0]: [https://github.com/usefathom/fathom](https://github.com/usefathom/fathom)

[1]: [https://matomo.org/](https://matomo.org/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Like the other solutions I've seen, this assumes you have access to your web- server's logfiles. For many (most?) low-end web-hosting this is likely not true afaik. I suspect that this is precisely the window-of-opportunity that enabled the dominance of Google Analytics and similar solutions.

</comment><comment><USER9> GoAccess is great and all, but static log analyzation =/= Google Analytics. You can only get so much data via log analysis, and if you have a SPA, or even just alot of client side stuff, static log analyzation just cannot provide you with the same type of data you get from client side.

If you really want to replace Google Analytics and have the same level of features and tracking you need a client side system - Matomo is the closest I've seen to that.

All that being said, I've used GoAccess, I like it, but I haven't quite mastered the log format to enable my more robust AWStats logs with GoAccess. I have a bunch of subdomains all as VHosts, and I loved the feature in GoAccess that rolls it all up into a VHost table/chart. However I haven't figured out the log parser settings to get both AWstats and GoAccess to like it with the %v_host field in the logs. Any thoughts/help there?

<comment><USER5> Google Analytics keeps track of visitors using cookies, so if a browser has cookies or JavaScript disabled, then it won't keep track of it. This includes the now so popular adblockers and bots as well. Log analysis such as GoAccess should be able to track these down fine since it works at the server level.

I believe tracking visitors at the client level deflates the actual number of visitors (due to reason listed on #2). On the other hand, server-side tracking gives you a more accurate number at the cost of not knowing for sure if the client is a human behind a browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone else work on a relatively large internal web project in a global corp where GA for obvious reasons is forbidden to use internally? How do you do statistics? Which statistics do you capture and why?

</comment><comment><USER11> Yeah, good luck integrating this with Adwords, YouTube, Facebook, etc. I understand why this is good for personal projects, but if you are spending lots of money on advertising (which probably goes mostly toward Google anyway), Google Analytics is the way to go.

<comment><USER12> Sadly.

It would be nice if there was a way to do conversion attribution without the tracking cookies.

One idea I've been thinking about lately:

* in server-side access logs, include visitor's fingerprint as hash(client_ip + user_agent + maybe_salt)

* Look for access log entries with ad campaign specific Referrer values. Call these "Set A".

* Look for access log entries with the conversion event (user signs up, user upgrades to paid plan, user makes purchase, ...). Call these "Set B"

If any given visitor's fingerprint appears in both the Set A and the Set B, we can assume they came from an ad campaign and converted.

Of course, user's IP can change, and many users can have the same IP. So this would be imprecise. But could be better than nothing. And, IMO at least, better than having the tracking cookies, cookie warnings, consent screens, extra sections in privacy policies etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks awesome for a personal/portfolio site. I use matomo for mine and it's sort of overkill. You have to set up your own lamp/lemp stack just to get analytics and I use maybe 1% of the features.

<comment><USER14> Matomo unfortunately is unnecessarily difficult to setup for reading web- server access-log files.

<comment><USER15> Isn't the primary goal of Matomo to be a replacement for Google Analytics?

<comment><USER14> Yes I think so, which means comparing it with GoAccess is a bit apple&oranges.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


As being designer when to say, no more changes plz.. - <AUTHOR>

As being designer all of us sometime came across to painful situation of getting more and more changes from client and start feeling what I should do to stop this non-ending cycle of iterations in design. So when do you think that's enough and how do you say to your client, no more changes plz. <comment><USER2> I actually have a number of revisions built into the contract that they sign. Once those revisions are used up that means the work is complete and further changes cost more. Obviously you have to use your own judgement sometimes but this usually prevents frivolity.

<comment><USER3> That's a good idea. I realize more and more how important it is to be really clear about everything. Or else, I end up being frustrated and the work suffers.</comment></comment>


Please review our startup - the easiest way to manage rental listings - <AUTHOR> http://www.realtywarp.com

<comment><USER2> I'm sure I will come back and post a most substantiated comment later after I continue to go through your website, however, as an immediate feedback, I still don't know exactly what it is that you provide.

My startup is a Holiday Rental platform, which aggregates rental listings, and consolidates them from dozens of sites, pulls them in to a central platform then churns them out to other agent sites... (I have no intention of hijacking your thread I just wanted to provide background information that would show that I am somewhat familiar with the market (albeit it not domestic rentals)).

Anyway, from looking at several pages now, I'm still struggling to know exactly how you can help! You need to summarise things better. Try and summarise your copy more, and also reduce all of the walls of text.

The first think I notice when I browse most of your pages is that you don't have a unified call to action. You should be _screaming_ out to me, and trying to funnel me down some predefined path that you want me to go down...

Also having "Products" and "Services" is a little redundant. Take me as an example, I want to know what it is that you do immediately.. you should have a single product which you can explain succinctly and then tell me about all of the additional features that it has whcih will make my life even easier.

And "Services" sounds like you do tasks rather than provide a product.

As a tip, your comment in this thread provides greater insight into your product than your website does.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the review. We are definitely going to be making some improvements based upon your review. What is the name of your website?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This looks like a great start. The first suggestion I would make is listing the features down the page instead of across. I think that will make it significantly easier for visitors to see what your platform has to offer.

Also, I would expand some of the sections. For example, under Listings Distribution Network -

Landlords and Managers: List your properties for free

Agents and Brokers: Save time by quickly searching for quality properties that match your desired criteria

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We're a small bootstrapped team based out of Boston, MA. Our platform allows real estate agents and property management firms to manage and syndicate their rental listings to various websites. Our platform can be considered as a more user friendly version of postlets in addition to the ability to manage clients and receive listings from various landlords.

Thank you for your anticipated feedback.</comment>


The Truth About Tamiflu: Has the US wasted $1.5 billion on an ineffective drug? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912u/tamiflu <comment><USER2> When I read this article to my wife (a physician) she was not the least bit surprised. She asked me why it was even news. She has spent the last several months trying to convince patients that Tamiflu isn't indicated for people who are otherwise healthy because the benefit vs. risk is not really favorable. Many become very irate when presented with this information and demand the medicine anyway, on the grounds that "other doctors" are giving it out to everyone.

<comment><USER3> So did she prescribe the drug anyway?

Doctors are pressured by patients to prescribe pain killers, anit-biotics, etc. But isn't it up to the doctor to say yes or no?

<comment><USER4> If it does no harm and the patient is paying for it, why not say yes?

Note the "if the patient is paying" clause. MDs shouldn't be doing cost- benefit tradeoffs - patients should.

Politicians shouldn't be doing cost-benefit tradeoffs either. (That's a statement against interest - my demographic group has way more say than other groups, so we'll be subsidized by politicians. And no, it won't be different this time.)

<comment><USER5> You're thinking of a pharmacist.

MDs and politicians should _absolutely_ be doing cost-benefit tradeoffs. I'd go so far as to say that's basically their job. I go to a doctor because they have skills and knowledge I don't possess.

That doctors (being experts) so often don't apply their judgment, and politicians (often being charismatic amateurs) so often do is lamentable. Politicians should be required to be experts. Doctors should be (aren't they?) required to exhibit judgment on behalf of their patients.

Expecting everyone to be able to exhibit the judgment of a professional in every field is so wildly implausible that I've obviously mistaken your meaning.

<comment><USER6> In my experience there's a difference between European and American doctors. I guess it has something to do with how much American doctors get sued, or how much American patients expect to be "in charge", or something like that.

My wife and I are both from Europe originally, and going to the doctor in the US is sometimes really frustrating for us. We go with the idea that we're consulting an expert for their advice, but sometimes find them quite unwilling to make any kind of judgment call. Sometimes they just offer a bunch of options and say "pick one". When pressed for an opinion, they'll sometimes just _hint_ in one direction or another. Compared to a British doctor, who will almost always confidently tell you exactly what he or she thinks should be done, it can be quite an unnerving experience.

<comment><USER7> Doctors are taught in American medical schools that they are supposed to provide all options to their patients and explain to them the cost benefits and not try to make or even bias their decision.

I'm not sure if it's simply for fear of lawsuits or if it's coded in the law itself (although I think I read that it's the latter somewhere).

<comment><USER8> It is coded in the ethical principle of autonomy, which some would say is more important than either the fear of lawsuits or the laws of any particular country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As-yet unseen endings of the "someone is wrong on the Internet" <http://xkcd.com/386/> ...

\- commercial interests. \- advertising. \- religious beliefs. \- political party affiliations. \- market transparency. \- peer pressure \- etc.

That there are marginal drugs has long been an issue; how many of us read the available studies? In some cases, you'll find a commercially-successful drug is little better than placebo, or little better than a generic.

The most reliable approach toward truth and knowledge in a capitalism-based society? Follow the revenues. Find and then follow what the folks involved value. Often monetary profit or status within the group.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is pretty much par for the course for new drugs and goes a long way toward explaining why we're such an overmedicalized society:

<http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17244>

<comment><USER3> Again, the DOCTOR prescribe the medicine not the patient. Why would the doctor prescribe unneeded/unnecessary medicine?

I understand the social pressure etc. However, when I go to a doctor I expect him/her to prescribe something that is necessary not just write a script to get me out of the office.

Can much of health care problems be pinned directly on the doctors? I know its unpopular to criticize doctors, but I'm beginning to think that we can only address the health issue by directly confronting the MD's.

<comment><USER11> Also consider that doctors get kickbacks from the pharmas for prescribing certain medicines, in addition to lots of perks like swag, vacations, etc piled on them by marketing reps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _A 2006 Cochrane review of Tamiflu came to similar conclusions -- based largely on a paper that looked at ten studies, all of them funded by the company [Roche]._

This kind of reporting annoys me. It's a logical fallacy that having a stake in the outcome makes your research invalid. And who else is going to fund a study? Nobody without a stake is going to foot the bill.

 _If the drug is going to be used to prevent death, it seems reasonable to ask whether or not its potentially deadly side effects are outweighed_

Quite the opposite. If the patient is likely to die anyway, then side effects be damned. It's time for a "Hail Mary" play. Get the patients past the immediate danger, and sort the rest out later.

 _The answer may lie in the politics of disease._

Sorry to be political here, but this is exactly what you'll be getting more of when the government starts to dictate how much will be spent on what kind of healthcare. When lobbyists or constituents are pushing for something to be covered, even though they're ignorant or are just interested in profits, the politicians will tilt the rules toward the squeaky wheel rather than rational science.

</comment><comment><USER13> A more nuanced view is available on the Effect Measure blog ([http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2009/12/the_tamiflu_do...](http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2009/12/the_tamiflu_doesnt_work_non- st.php#c2138915)).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a useful perspective, but I often get the sense from 'revere' (at Effect Measure) that he's shading his analysis to promote "the message" he thinks the public needs to hear.

For example, in the link you provided he impugns the motives of the publishers of this latest analysis, and says about the their acceptance of the paper: "I don't think it served the public purpose or the public health."

A couple places, he emphasizes "during a pandemic, no less" or "here we are in the middle of a pandemic" as factors that should weigh against raising doubts about Tamiflu's effectiveness at this time.

That kind of political calculation applied to scientific or medical results creeps me out -- and often backfires on the officials who try it.

<comment><USER14> Yet, it is a pandemic. That fact does change the calculus of whether to recommend treatment. Do you say, "I don't have enough evidence yet to recommend it?" Or do you say, "Based on the evidence we have, it is a good idea?" There is no right answer until post-pandemic studies.

<comment><USER15> No it is not a pandemic:

# epidemic over a wide geographical area; "a pandemic outbreak of malaria"

# an epidemic that is geographically widespread; occurring throughout a region or even throughout the world

# existing everywhere; "pandemic fear of nuclear war"

wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

the first hit searching define"pandemic on Google

<comment><USER14> Um, your first two definitions describe H1N1, the third is irrelevant. Besides, it's a settled question if the WHO calls it a pandemic. <http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/en/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hypothesis: Democratic governments make bad decisions in the face of popular panic. Hypothesis 2: Interested actors often try to stoke popular panic to get governments to make rash decisions that benefit themselves.

</comment><comment><USER17> Shocking ... and yet not so shocking, when you consider the other marketing activities pharma companies get into.

Viagra is probably the best example for heavy marketing of a drug (at least in the US): TV ads, NASCAR sponsorship, etc.

<comment><USER18> Yes, but Pfizer isn't engaging in large-scale deception that costs billions of dollars and risks millions of lives when they show a car smashing through a billboard that says "Erectile Dysfunction" on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> [http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo...](http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect)

</comment><comment><USER20> FYI: Tamiflu is not related to the H1N1 vaccines.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've known this for a year or so and thought everyone else did, too. Only recently did I see stories about this again and was quite surprised.

</comment><comment><USER22> And once again I ask, how are you supposed to make an informed decision about health issues when there's a good chance the CDC is lying about the data:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=894903>

<comment><USER23> The only lies about autism and vaccines are coming from the people who fear vaccines. Autism is definitely not something for which risk increases if people are vaccinated. That is about as replicated a finding as medical science has.

<http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=2962>

<comment><USER22> Who said anything about autism?

<comment><USER23> The link

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=894903>

you submitted earlier and just linked back to above.

<comment><USER22> Right, I don't believe nor have I ever believed that vaccines cause autism. What I do believe is that the systemic design of the CDC makes it impossible to trust what they say for various reasons.

<comment><USER24> While gesturing at an article that claims childhood vaccines cause autism. I have difficulty accepting someone's analysis of a federal organization when they also clearly do not understand how science works.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Data Hunter-Gatherer - <AUTHOR> https://dataecosystem.substack.com/p/data-hunter-gatherer <comment><USER2> I dunno.

Data can easily miss a whole lot of subtlety. Subject knowledge, theory, and intuition can capture much more of that subtlety, at the cost of being more vulnerable to bias. Making decisions purely based on data misses out a lot. And can still lead to bias, not caused by the decision maker, but by the data gathering process.

In my mind, data exists to detect bias, and illuminate interesting phenomena. But decisions should ultimately be based on in depth knowledge and theory. And leeway should be given for those to be somewhat misaligned to data.

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw a documentary last year on YouTube about how F1 teams are using data (ML) to make decisions on each aspect of the race. On the last lap, they decide to trust their experience and intuition rather than listening to the ML suggestions, which costs them a couple of positions. Maybe not today, but we are not far away from the time when the F1 drivers stop listening to "humans" ;)

<comment><USER2> Link? That sounds pretty interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't remember the episode number but it's one of these: [https://youtu.be/UwsrzCVZAb8](https://youtu.be/UwsrzCVZAb8)

<comment><USER2> Its episode 3 around 14 minutes, and it seems to be about Nascar not F1

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This!

When companies try to become more data-driven, something that I find very often is the tendency to just follow the initial gut feeling process but this time find some supporting data without actually be open and objective.

But I also acknowledge the fact that data is what it is: A pile of information trying to gather via imperfect processes and imperfect representations.

I constantly get back to something I did hear around the topic of marketing attribution couple of years ago: "The new right is the less wrong".

Clearly you can make many mistakes gathering and analyzing data. But your domain knowledge should also help you identify clear mistakes and improve on them. Which then leads to a better data quality (hopefully you stayed objective enough to not create large biased data points).

But for me the most fundamental advantage remains:

Bringing data makes it easy to test and verify assumptions. You are bringing the full package to the table instead of a hard to qualify able / quantifiable feeling that often times is not easy to communicate.

The last element on this Data vs Human input: The limit quite often for algorithms to work perfectly is having all the information available. That is in many situations a real challenge, so the domain knowledge helps to fill in gaps.</comment>


How Electronic Arts changed the way it worked - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnet.com/news/how-electronic-arts-stopped-being-the-worst-company-in-america/ <comment><USER2> This article reads like a PR piece. The reality is that in order for EA to truly change, it needs to go private. Until it does, it will always be forced to make big sacrifices for short term profits to meet quarterly projections whereas companies like Valve don't have this weakness. They can act for the long term.

<comment><USER3> Not necessarily. I think certain public companies like Costco or Target (which have been focusing on increasing wages and training opportunities) are doing very good long-term thinking.

Furthermore, the valuation of Amazon proves that investors are patient (at least in some industries). Amazon's profits are absolutely awful, but the stock price continues to rise year-after-year.

<comment><USER2> Well retail is different from entertainment where good customer service isn't enough. If you don't produce hit after consecutive hit that makes analyst financial projections every quarter your stock plummets. EA actually tried to do right a few years back by taking a big gamble on two new IPs (Mirror's Edge and Dead Space) but sales weren't enough and they couldn't beat back pressure from the street. If it were privately held with the same results, it wouldn't have had that problem and it could have continued to focus on the long term (both new IPs were profitable, just not profitable enough for analysts on the street). The end result is that the EAs of the world hate risk and they just end up producing sequel after sequel, or buy up a smaller studio with proven hits. The industry landscape has changed as well. Free to play is a huge force now and app stores rule with cheaper distribution paired with cheaper prices for games.

EA also no longer has a charismatic CEO like a Bezos to charm investors. They lost Trip Hawkins a long time ago.

<comment><USER3> Point.

But I think it is important to note that "Shareholders" cannot be generalized. At best, you can argue that EA's (current) shareholders are short-sighted... but shareholders "in general" have different opinions and expectations from company to company.

The huge variation on PE ratios should be proof of that. _No one_ judges a company purely on last-quarter's profits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This was clearly a PR piece. EA has a long way to go before it claws its way out of the hole it dug itself into.

They've killed Maxis for instance. I don't know a single gamer who "trusts" Origin (Good Ol' Games Galaxy already seems more successful already).

But as the major Japanese companies implode from self-inflicted wounds... Konami's loss of Kojima (Metal Gear) and Koji Igarashi(Castlevania)... Konami's tilt towards mobile, Capcom's tilt to DLC, the loss of Keiji Inafune (Mega Man)... Square Enix's tilt to Mobile...

EA has some room to rise up as the other companies make similar mistakes. At very least, EA's mistakes this year are not even close to the worst mistakes in the industry.

</comment><comment><USER4> How is EA to work for nowadays? Long ago, I heard that they had a pretty awful burnout culture, since every year, there's a new crop of novices who want to make games for a living.

<comment><USER5> I wondered this too - none of the resolutions mentioned fostering a better company culture that involved properly valuing their employees, as I would imagine doing so would lead to better quality games.

<comment><USER6> I've worked at EA before, during, and after the transition discussed in the article. The culture at the company has improved during that time, but it wasn't starting from a poor place, especially relative to the perception of EA or the video gaming industry generally. Issues like poor work/life balance and "crunch" culture are openly talked about internally and there is a lot of momentum around improving it. That extends from the highest levels of leadership - evident in delaying games to let teams hit a higher quality bar without killing themselves in the process - to studio/team level managers who see overtime as a failure. Some EA studios are even recruiting on the basis of the very positive cultures they've created: [http://careers.ea.com/our- locations/los-angeles-eala](http://careers.ea.com/our-locations/los-angeles- eala).

All of that is to say nothing about the many positives of working at EA: industry leading technology, storied franchises in a diverse array of genres, internal mobility both geographically and in role, and more. It can be hard to talk about "EA" as an entity because the individual development studios that make it up are quite different, but in general I've found it a positive place to work and one of the best places to have a longer term career in the video game industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> i haven't played a lot of EA games in recent years, but I do play Fifa. The gameplay for FIFA 15 is one if the worst in the history of the franchise. The good players are like gods who make the defenders do silly things. It's clear that they put way too much effort into turning the game into Candy Crush with Fifa Ultimate Team and too little effort into making a good soccer game.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand you comment.

Are you saying that good players are too good for average players to play against? (if this is good or bad it's another thing). And then you say it's simplified (Candy Crush).

I'm really curious. I don't play sports games, and don't really understand what changes in their year-to-year iterations (besides the teams).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's amazing how loud gamers are. The economist points out that the other contender for worst company was Bank of America.

Just as a comparison, if EA does the nasty, you lose a two-digit number of dollars, and a few hours of your life. If Bank of America does the nasty, you lose your home.

I always thought that these 'worst company' awards were for worst to work at - in which case I understand EA getting the guernsey, as they live and breathe 'staff turnover'. But if it's consumer confidence, what the hell is a company that shills relatively low-priced entertainment doing in top spot? Their titles cost less than a room in a cheapish hotel for one night. Crazy. Bread and circuses, I guess?</comment>


Solving the Pipeline Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2012/11/solving-pipeline-problem.html

<comment><USER2> I'll be attending the conference, and I'm really looking forward to it.

I especially like their honesty here that their first attempt to get a broad applicant pool failed, and that they were willing to work to rectify that.</comment>


How many people will actually die this week because of Daylight Savings Time? - <AUTHOR> http://sangaline.com/post/deaths-caused-by-daylight-savings-time/ <comment><USER2> I agree that standard time sucks.</comment>