Bumptop acquired by Google - <AUTHOR> http://bumptop.com/

<comment><USER2> This is quite puzzling to me.

I played around with Bumptop a little bit when it came out but I have to say that I quickly removed it as I found it to add no value what so ever.

If anything this seems more like a talent acquisition than a technology acquisition.

<comment><USER3> (could also an IP Acquisition)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google may be having trouble finding good programmers. The Aardvark acquisition and this one as well may have just been an expensive way to get some good people.

If you look at the HN thread about which companies are hiring, you'll see it's basically every single tech company under the sun right now.

</comment><comment><USER5> For those (like me) that don't know what Bumptop is... [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Rm4jSRB...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Rm4jSRBfissJ:bumptop.com/features.php+site:bumptop.com+bumptop+feature+tour&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us) [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iPF39PX...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iPF39PXvUeYJ:bumptop.com/+bumptop&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER6> In that light, the TED presentation from a couple of years ago is also interesting: [http://www.ted.com/talks/anand_agarawala_demos_his_bumptop_d...](http://www.ted.com/talks/anand_agarawala_demos_his_bumptop_desktop.html)

At least it seemed very entertaining to the TED crowd, they're mostly laughing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A Bumptop-like interface would be pretty sweet on a tablet device running Chrome. This probably more a talent acquisition than a technology one - Bumptops's engineers have spent a lot of time thinking about UI metaphors and testing theories around them.

<comment><USER8> Bumptop on an Android tablet would be sweet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can't figure out why they're not just giving away the BumpTop Pro option. The crippled BumpTop free version is almost pointless with its limit of two sticky notes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, the product has been out just over/under a year, If I'd paid for a digital product and less than a year later I'm told that I've got just a week to download it forever and there will be no further updates, I'd be pretty pissed.

Then to find out something I paid (even just last week) for was then given free to everyone else..

<comment><USER10> Why would that annoy you? I'm always puzzled by that sentiment – it doesn't hurt you in any way if others could download it for free, it doesn't change anything for you. That's pure jealousy, isn't it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Its the same feeling I get when I buy something and the next day its on sale for 50% off or when steam has one of its mega sales when I just bought the damn game..

or pretty much anytime I buy an apple product.

<comment><USER11> I once worked for a product company that started out charging a lot for its product. They began to struggle finding new customers for their product because it cost so much. I said, "Why can't you just decrease the price?"

The reason was because they didn't want to anger their existing customer base who had already paid a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Since we don't know what the price is, Google might have paid a sum for the product that is simply less than it would cost them to rebuild it themselves. Plus, they get the press for the acquisition and a talented, happy new member of the team.

If it would take them 3 engineers and a year to build bumptop and they paid $200,000 for it, then everyone wins.

<comment><USER12> I agree how much they paid is important in evaluating the purchase (the less they paid, the more justifiable it'd be to buy it just for some talent and in the off chance some of the ideas/tech/IP turned out to be useful). But I doubt it's anything as low as $200k, because they had VC funding of a few million, and presumably the VCs wouldn't sign off on selling for a loss. This article estimates $40m, though they may have just pulled that number out of thin air: [http://thenextweb.com/google/2010/05/02/google-purchases- bum...](http://thenextweb.com/google/2010/05/02/google-purchases-bumptop- freeform-desktop-coming-android-os/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _...we've been acquired by Google...For the next week, we're keeping BumpTop Free available for download to give BumpTop fans one last chance to grab a copy._

That is one hell of a great way to get a huge boost in downloads :)

EDIT: link to download page <http://eol.bumptop.com/download.php>

<comment><USER14> The download is really slow right now, does anyone have an alternate download location?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Could the technology become part of the android platform, I find it strange that they've just cut off updating the desktop clients and from next week won't even support / let you download them again..

<comment><USER15> Probably more likely aspects of it are headed to Chrome OS. Recalling the demos, I didn't see anything applicable to wee screens like phones.

<comment><USER16> Agreed.

BumpTop with a touch based interface would be much more appealing than a mouse. Seems like a good fit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hmm, am I the only one that had fleeting thoughts that Bumpits had been bought by google?

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

</comment><comment> Colin-DeVries Does anybody know how much google paid? TheNextWeb says its $40 Milion but that number is unconfirmed.

</comment><comment><USER18> Hrmmm. This strategy sounds dangerously familiar.

Making Money? Who cares... Just buy shit that looks cool.

<comment><USER5> I think its been shown before that Google (and others) often buy for the talent as much as the product.

<comment><USER19> How has that strategy worked out for them?

<comment><USER20> Are you suggesting it hasn't?

<comment><USER19> Mostly they dump bucketloads of money into projects that disappear into blackholes, or morph into other products that are dubiously successful.

As far as talent goes, the Dodgeball founders left, Jaiku founders left, Panoramio, Blogger and Feedburner founders left. That's off the top of my head, there's probably a lot more.

Seems like an expensive and unreliable way to do bulk hires.

<comment><USER12> I don't entirely disagree, but I think some of the ones you mention weren't talent acquisitions. My guess is that, despite the founders leaving, Google is still happy with its Blogger and Feedburner purchases, and they at least sort of integrate into its larger web of services (and data collection).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nice. Chromeos touch UI will be sweet now. I called this while shooting the shit a month ago.</comment>


Boy Scouts introduce videogame badge, other badges ask 'Really?' - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/28/boy-scouts-introduce-videogame-badge-other-badges-ask-really/ <comment><USER2> Just to clarify this isn't a normal merit badge like one that someone would get while working toward their Eagle Scout. Belt loops and pins are the cub scout equivilent so someone getting this badge would likely be in third or fourth grade.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this is a great badge/pin - when done right. It recognizes a massive area of modern childhood while trying to introduce new ideas and sharing (i.e. family involvement,moderation).

Anecdotally; Im a little old for the badge (:P) but teaching my Dad how to play MW2 the other day was a great bonding exercise. I mean, we spend time hacking about on his Spit, so it was like the reverse teaching experience.

I suspect Baden-Powell would fully approve :)

</comment><comment><USER4> As a parent, I approve of the 3 requirements. The idea seems silly on the surface until you read them.

<comment><USER5> It seems likely that parents will always only approve the most fun, exciting games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is not a Boy Scout merit badge, like the new Entrepreneurship merit badge (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1296517>); it's for Cub Scouts -- that is, boys younger than 11 years old.</comment>


Why I wouldn't use Symfony for a new project - <AUTHOR> http://laurent.bachelier.name/2010/07/why-i-wouldnt-use-symfony-for-a-new-project/

<comment><USER2> When I see articles like this, I often wonder why the developers do not look beyond their current language of choice. I can understand it if they are stuck with business restrictions passed down from "on high", but a developer should not limit his choices purely on the basis of his current language preference.

The last time I considered Symfony was a couple years back when I was searching for a decent framework for my own sites. I considered CakePHP as well, and even took it for a spin. But then I decided to broaden my horizons and look at other languages. It was then that I discovered Django, which caught my eye chiefly because of its speed vs. Cake and Symfony. It has served me well for the last couple of years.

Eventually, I will probably move beyond Django. I may even (gasp!) check Rails out again, or look toward Java when the time is right.

</comment><comment><USER3> Comments made for interesting reading on open source projects and their communities

<comment><AUTHOR> Somehow the comments are more interesting than the article itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have exactly the same problem with magento. although they call themselves the leaders in open source e-commerce, the oly thing they have open is the code.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why _i_ wouldn't use Symfony for a new project: <http://lithify.me>

</comment><comment><USER6> Time to switch? Time to _fork_.</comment>


Ask HN: What tool(s) are you using for managing localizations? - <AUTHOR> We are maintaining projects across a variety of platforms and frameworks - ranging from native iOS/Android, Flutter, Node, React to PHP/Symfony e.g. - and need a tool to ease managing localizations across all of them.
Spreadsheets is coming up short and all existing tools seem to be targeted towards a specific platform/framework (and be super expensive).
Maybe we are missing something? <comment><USER2> A colleague of mine wrote and maintains [https://www.localizationkit.com/](https://www.localizationkit.com/)

We use it in a global iOS app and it works pretty well.</comment>


IEEE forced to ban Huawei employees from peer-reviewing papers - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/qian_junhui/status/1133595554905124869 <comment><USER2> Standards bodies, industry associations and the like are multi-country organizations. No single country should be able to prevent others from participating in such organizations. IEEE today and a few days ago the SD card and WiFi alliance banning Huawei seem to ignore the views of the members from the multitude of other countries who are also members of those orgs. Egregious violations of some written or unwritten code of conduct needs to be handled by multi-lateral institutions. For lack of a better organization, some wing of the UN perhaps?

<comment><USER3> Just wanted to add that IEEE is much more than a standards body. Lot's of conferences are held by IEEE.

<comment><USER2> Oh yes. I am an IEEE member of reasonably long standing and this just complicates things for everyone, particularly for IEEE chapters in other countries where Huawei may have a presence and are active participants locally.

<comment><AUTHOR> It gets more complicated when considering Huawei is also a major sponsor to a variety of research conferences, open source projects, etc.

I wonder what is ACM's stand on this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is just ridiculous. This goes way beyond what they originally intended with stopping suspected IP Theft or backdoors by Huawei. This is a black day for academic progress and research in general.

<comment><USER5> Google Scholar or Wikipedia websites has been banned in China for a decade, Do you think this is ridiculous?

<comment><USER4> No, that's not great either. That's the Chinese gov wanting to block knowledge from outside about political events, probably. This is something worse though in my opinion, since it actively halts innovation standardization which shouldn't have anything to do with politics.

<comment><USER6> With all due respect to academics, banning political opposition is far worse. Freedom is more important than new IEEE standards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We need to kill Huawei first, with some collateral damages to others, so that Huawei cannot do bad things to us in the future, even though there is no evidence or court ruling that Huawei is hacking anyone at this moment.

Last time it was Iraq's WMD/washing powder.

<comment><USER8> Then you happy with surveillance by US gov everyday with Apple, Google, Amazon right? We feel happy when accuse others but never think about ourselves and the 'ethical' gov.

<comment><USER9> he's being sarcastic

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If the US intends to rile up the the Chinese population for decades to come, well I guess they're on a good path. Unbelievable.

<comment><USER11> The Chinese government needs no help in portraying this, or any other propionate U.S. response to Chinese trade policy, as an "insult to the Chinese people" and an outrage. Seriously, they've done it with much smaller stuff. It's basically Fox News all the time in mainland Chinese news media, with government scriptwriters.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if Huawei got removed from the. blacklist as part of the ongoing U.S.-China trade negotiations, a la ZTE. Trump has already publicly mentioned this possibility. I hope this comes to pass, as reviewing IEEE papers seems like a fairly harmless activity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> IEEE is just for US, not for humanity. It should be shame of that VISION—"IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity."

<comment><USER13> I can not agree with you more!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's a step too far. What's next, a ban on even talking to Huawei employees? I mean, if you want to be absolutely safe from serious legal troubles right...

</comment><comment><USER9> Shame. And if you google "ieee Huawei", you can still find several news like "celebrating the release of new standard co-operated by Huawei and IEEE" on the first page. Now their version should be changed to "IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization(under the guide of U.S. gov) dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of the U.S." In the past, even physical war accelerates the development of tech(most for weapons tho some could be utilized to daily life), and now politics are forcing tech to go reverse. Wonderful.

</comment><comment><USER15> It seems that Huawei is the US hostage in the China-US trade negotiations. I wonder who the US company will be that China will decides to screw over in retaliation?

<comment><USER16> Apple, most likely. They seem like the easiest target.

<comment><USER17> Actually it's Boeing.

<comment><USER18> By targeting Boeing, they really are targeting FAA power over other national or transnational agencies. Can this cause repercussion on other US agency power? I know that FDA ruling is mostly ignored in western countries, and this do not impact any other US-based agencies, so maybe it won't have any other consequences.

If this only impact Boeing the US should be glad. And Boeing deserve a slap anyway. Their decision killed more than 300 people and the people responsible won't really be impacted (as the marginal utility of the money decrease the more you already have).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't understand, how does a BIS list prevent communication ie IEEE reviews?

</comment><comment><USER13> I am lucky that I have not joined the IEEE as a member. In the future, I will refuse to be a journal article reviewer. I will not do free work for such an organization anymore.

<comment><USER20> I am not even sure they wanted to do this It might be action out caution to avoid legal repercussions. I think it's extreme, but I am not IEEE's lawyers. So let's not jump to conclusions about motivations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> IEEE is registered in USA, so it has to follow the USA's law and rules, so I think it's not an issue of IEEE but an issue of BIS, please try to figure out that.

<comment><USER22> Companies domiciled in the PRC also has to follow PRC's laws and regulations (whether they are compatible with our values is another question). Using the same ridiculous logic we've seen throughout this whole saga, we can also conclude that IEEE is "literally the US government".

<comment><USER21> Whatever literal game, law is law, and my suggestion is to try to figure out why HW is in the BIS list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> ieee should transfer its registration to Switzerland.

<comment><USER24> It's good idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> (Originally posted on dupe; re-posting here)

With the ambient positive mood regarding the significant rise of sci-hub, open publishing commitments from academics and institutions and the correspondingly significant pressure on rent-seeking publishers, perhaps we will see parallel pressure extend to politically partisan or subjugated organizations until an open science free of such politicking emerges?

One solution would be anonymous scientific publication and review. Imagine that: let science stand on _science_ , instead of appeals to authority. The bonus with such an approach is that it simultaneously solves for various "isms".

</comment><comment><USER26> The best practice that proves academic reasearch can not be independent from governor.LOL

</comment><comment><USER27> Source from IEEE. Read the attachments about the policy details.

[http://www.ieee802.org/secmail/msg23427.html](http://www.ieee802.org/secmail/msg23427.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> I can't help but wonder, are educational institutions immune to this? Keep in mind that these are all corporations involved here.

<comment><USER3> I am sure there are academics who are employed by Huawei. Implementing 5G requires academics.

[https://www.huawei.com/en/press-events/news/2018/7/Huawei- Dr...](https://www.huawei.com/en/press-events/news/2018/7/Huawei-Dr-Erdal- Arikan-Polar-Codes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's so sad that academic world is polluted by the politics. Who benefits from this!

</comment><comment><USER30> It's such a shame and you can't even find any news report in English.

</comment><comment><USER31> Politics over academics. Such a dark day of human academic history!

</comment><comment><USER32> Really shame

</comment><comment><USER33> Wow. That is crazy.

</comment><comment> peter-m80 That's insane

</comment><comment><USER34> This is ugly

</comment><comment><USER35> that is a shame

</comment><comment><USER36> IronCurtain V2.0?

<comment><AUTHOR> Or McCarthyism 2.0.

<comment><USER11> Funny thing - McCarthy was right, in a sense: KGB informants were all throughout U.S. government and industry [0]. Unfortunately, he accused and abused lots of innocent people, so this fact is often overlooked.

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/685lp2/was_j...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/685lp2/was_joseph_mccarthy_right/)

<comment><USER37> Ridiculous and a laughable accusation. The page you referred to has nothing substantial. Both Rosenberg and Hiss are proved to be innocent quickly but lots of people became silent because of McCarthy. If you want to go back to the dark ages, go yourself. Do not put your insensible sense to all the knowledgable people here.

<comment><USER11> Are you challenging the fact that the U.S.S.R. had extensive espionage networks in the U.S. during the 1950s, including the Rosenbergs who were in fact guilty of spying for the Soviet Union?

McCarthysim per se was horrible, but the fact remains that the Red Scare was grounded in historical truth.

[https://www.amazon.com/Venona-Decoding-Espionage-America- Com...](https://www.amazon.com/Venona-Decoding-Espionage-America-Communism- ebook/dp/B001PTHYCM/ref=nodl_)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg)

<comment><USER38> If you hunt witches, there will always be witches to burn. If you try hard enough, any American can be a USSR spy.

<comment><USER11> What am I not stating clearly?

Witch hunts are bad, but yes, there was a large spy network. Perhaps it could have even been uprooted with measured counter-intelligence, instead of McCarthyism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> history will remember this day</comment>


How to Make an RPG - <AUTHOR> http://howtomakeanrpg.com/a/how-to-make-an-rpg-release.html <comment><USER2> This looks really cool, I just wish there were a sample chapter... I'd want to look at some sample code to see what kind of stuff I'd be getting into before I made such a time commitment.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, this would benefit from a sample chapter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Over $2500 worth of pixel art (free to use however you like)

I think this sounds kinda fishy. Why isn't it sold for 2500 USD if it's supposed to be worth so much? I guess there are way too many scam sites trying to sell me something at a great discount that I can't help but feel this way.

I'd change this line to something like "over 1000 pixel art graphics free to use however you like".

<comment><USER5> Because If someone contracted them to make these assets they would have charged that person $2500. But here they sell it to you much cheaper in hopes That enough people will buy the book thus making more that the 2500 they could have made.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you just want to make a RPG and don't care about the programming part, you could just use RPG Maker instead...

<comment><USER7> Honestly the screenshots and assets all look like they're ripped from RPGMaker..

<comment><USER8> There's only so much you can do with 16-bit-ish styled RPG graphics.

<comment><USER9> You just say that because you never played a single Super NES RPG.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Risky Click.

I figured I was either about to learn something about gaming, or I was about to end up on a terrorism watch list...

<comment><USER11> There should be nothing wrong with learning how to make a rocket propelled grenade. Knowledge is knowledge, it's only bad when used nefariously.

<comment><USER10> Well, I know how to make a grenade, and I know how to make a rocket. I guess it's not that bad to know how to combine those things.

<comment><USER12> You're definitely on the list now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how it compares with Handmade Hero [https://handmadehero.org/](https://handmadehero.org/)

<comment><USER14> Well, just watch the sheer amount of videos of handmadehero and I don't think he's finished. I'd consider the book if I were you. It's ridiculous [https://www.youtube.com/user/handmadeheroarchive/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/handmadeheroarchive/videos)

<comment><USER13> Certainly following all those videos is an inefficient way to learn. As smoyer said, it's more about the craft of coding, so maybe I made an apples/oranges comparison.

Does anyone know about the depth and structure of the code in "How to Make an RPG"? From the post, it looks like it is focusing specifically on gameplay issues. Handmade Hero is covering quite a range of topics from basic gamepad input and audio output (done early in the series) on up. It is structured so that it's relatively easy to port to non-Windows OS's, and I like the live- coding feature which really shortens the code-compile-test cycle.

I guess it would be nice to see the table of contents and maybe a sample chapter or excerpts.

<comment><USER15> There is a table of contents at the bottom of this page: [https://howtomakeanrpg.com/](https://howtomakeanrpg.com/)

I bought the book. Haven't read it yet but the PDF is 978 pages and the downloads of source/assets was approx. 2GB.

Roughly glancing through the book, there seems to be code examples on most pages. Looks like he's using LUA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love that you wrote your own engine (and your rationale for doing so) and that you used Lua!

This looks like a very fun resource and something I'll be pointing aspiring RPG makers to all the time (perhaps in leiu of my standard "you have no idea what you're getting into, drop the idea and start something much much smaller" spiel).

</comment><comment><USER17> There are a couple of articles I really enjoy on the blog section of the site.

[http://howtomakeanrpg.com/a/sine-of-the- times.html](http://howtomakeanrpg.com/a/sine-of-the-times.html)

[http://howtomakeanrpg.com/a/the-power-of- one.html](http://howtomakeanrpg.com/a/the-power-of-one.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> How different is the C++ engine to love2d? Does it just do enough to let you draw in the screen with lua or does it implement anything more specific for an RPG?

<comment><USER14> I doubt that his engine has a third of Love2D's capability. gamepad, audio, etc.

<comment><USER19> I don't know anything about this engine, but I've tinkered with stuff myself and gamepads, audio etc are all pretty easy to implement. Eg SDL2 has a very easy to use gamepad interface that's similar to XInput (pretends your gamepad is an Xbox controller). I've used SDL_mixer and FMOD in the past for audio and both are really really simple to get going.

My point is that, yes Love2D has been in development for longer and does likely have more capability, but that doesn't mean that this is lagging behind thaaaaat much, certainly not in the areas you mentioned. It might do, but not necessarily. Also, I assume this has more RPG-specific functionality baked in that you'd have to do by yourself in Love2D.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr This is a book about how to make a 2D JRPG in Lua (with a C++ engine). The source code of the engine and the art assets ship with the book.

<comment><USER20> What's the licensing on those?

The project site itself mentions the underlying graphics engine is an Open Source one, but doesn't seem to have info on the licensing for the art/sound assets.

<comment><USER21> There is a bullet point for the pixel art:

* Over $2500 worth of pixel art (free to use however you like)

But I don't see any concrete licensing statements for the art assets besides that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It would be cool if there were resources for just doing the systems and encounter design. Most of graphics and engine programming seems easy enough (just time consuming) and there are plenty of existing engines.

Always wonder how RPGs or or games like civ get balanced and designed. I assume some of it is iterative but that requires at least starting out with something reasonable right? Might pick this book up if it touches on that :)

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting, I've always wanted to make a game but never found the time, now I'm torn between learning Lua or just sticking to the web and try to do something there instead.

Nitpick, there's a little typo: "Hello World exmaple for Mac"

<comment><USER24> I highly recommend giving Lua a try, it's a simple yet powerful little language(metatables, coroutines!) that embeds incredibly easily and has great performance.

Way back on the PSP we use to run our whole game logic with Lua in a 400kb pre-allocated block. You only had 8mb of system ram since 24mb went to texture/audio and it really worked great. Coroutines are also a perfect fit for try-wait-try logic you get in a lot of AI routines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> What are some good current RPG's, in the style of the original Zelda, for PC or mobile today? All I can find is free-to-play.

<comment><USER26> Solarus ([http://www.solarus-games.org/](http://www.solarus-games.org/)) is both a very polished fan sequel to A Link to the Past, and also an engine for building your own action-RPG games in Lua.

<comment><USER27> Wow, this looks great. How are they able to use "The Legend of Zelda" title in their released games?

edit: Getting "Bandwidth or Storage Limit Exceeded" when attempting to download from the Solarus packagecloud.io. Sadface.

<comment><USER28> It's back. I also wonder how they are able to do that. The graphics, sounds and music is all from the SNES Zelda title. How can this survive if you aren't even allowed by Nintendo to upload movies to YouTube?

<comment><USER29> The website owner and lead of the project is not based in the US. If he's received any notice from Nintendo, he's probably just ignored it with no consequence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> About the dinodeck_mac hello world: You have to fix your linker settings.

> dyld: Library not loaded: @rpath/libopenal.1.dylib

> Referenced from: /Users/kyb/Downloads/hello_world_mac/./dinodeck_mac

> Reason: image not found

<comment><USER31> I'm wondering if that was part of the test. To make sure people who start could get this working.

Tip: Copy the dylib to /usr/local/lib/libopenal.1.dylib

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Bought it, went through 1/2 of it in a day, think it is really good. Informative watching the author's design choices and refactoring of the code base as he added new features and builds up the game from "hello world" to pretty full featured. I am a professional programmer and in my opinion this would be tough to understand for someone who wasn't already an experienced programmer, but I've never used Lua or coded games before.

</comment><comment><USER33> This person is waaaayyyyy undercharging. Should be $100 or maybe even more.

<comment><USER32> Agreed. It is worth a couple hundred bucks IMO. I bought it and it is very good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Anyone can suggest similar books/tutorials with Javascript?

<comment><USER35> Phaser.io has a bunch of javascript resources and books.

<comment><USER36> While I really enjoyed Phaser, which in turn made me love TypeScript.

I had some serious issues with performance and trying to maintain 60 frames per second in any 16:9 resolution.

I've been looking into C++ and Java solutions and this book might be the perfect fit.

<comment><USER37> I had the same issues myself until I ended up dropping Phaser and using Pixijs (the rendering code used by Phaser) on its own and then writing a bit of code to only render the game in chunks. It seems like by default Pixijs (and this may have changed since I wrote my code) renders the whole scene no matter how large it is. Since I'm working on dwarf fortress type game, the game world has a lot going on and it crushed my game's performance and brought it to a halt. Since writing that chunking code I haven't had any performance problems that weren't my own doing.

tl;dr I would recommend checking out Pixijs on its own if you still want to use TypeScript (I recently converted my code from es6 to TypeScript a month or two ago and am in love love love).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> is there anything inherent in the Lua Language that makes it a good match for an in-game-engine programming language?

<comment><USER39> Not so much in the language itself (I'm not a fan), but the process of embedding Lua and pushing data into a Lua context and pulling data out of a Lua context is so simple the first time I got it working I thought, "Surely I'm missing something, it can't be this easy." The ease of integration with C or C++ makes it worth strongly considering when you need an embedded scripting language. But, as I alluded to, Lua as a language is pretty awful. Lua's tables are an abomination in my eyes.

A few years ago I started a simple RPG game engine that uses Lua[0] as its scripting language. I never got very far with it but considering I had zero clue how to even begin approaching the problem when I started I'm pretty happy with how far I got before I lost interest.

[0]: [https://github.com/seaneshbaugh/SDL03](https://github.com/seaneshbaugh/SDL03)

<comment><USER40> What do you think is so bad about Lua tables? They have some unintuitive aspects (such as not being able to store `nil`) but in the end being able to use tables for everything considerably simplifies the language. I'd hardly consider that an abomination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is interesting for 2d rpgs, Does anyone know of something similar for a 3d/VR compatible version ?

</comment><comment><USER42> I want to buy this book because it seems perfect for a Love2d project I've been working on.

BTW clicking the "Buy Now" button is sort of jarring in that you first see some text that starts with "Warning" which gets replaced by a credit card dialog after a second or so.

</comment><comment><USER43> My first memory as a kid playing a "Japanese" style RPG was Final Fantasy. Is this what the author was referring to, or was there a game like this that preceded that?

<comment><USER44> I mean, Dragon Quest is basically 1 year older, but I bet they were both in development at the same time. I don't know of anything older than that with the top-down turn-based approach with overworlds, battle screens, inventory, etc.

<comment><USER45> Nothing Japanese, but there were western games before that had major influence on DQ and FF, most notably Ultima and Wizardry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Ah, so many happy memories of playing _Shining Force_...

<comment><USER47> I have bought Shining Force on so many platforms. It seems like there is a great port out for every phone or gaming system you can think of.

<comment><USER48> Same. I have the complete collection now from 8bit to PS3. Such a great game. I hope to create a 2d engine in that style next (in javascript because I'm a crazy mofo)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> dammit... came for RPG ( Rocket Propelled Grenade ) got RPG ( Role Playing Game )

left disappointed

</comment><comment><USER50> wow I have not had my coffee yet. I was thinking you mean rocket propelled grenade

<comment><USER51> I havent seen much about games recently and click bait about contreversial issues often gets on the front page. You are definitely not alone

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> > RPG

Yes, yes of course they mean game.

</comment><comment><USER53> There are spelling mistakes on that page. That does not bode well for the book.

<comment><USER54> Then don't read it. In several years you've made only a couple negative, snarky comments on HN.

If a guy writes an entire book and you don't want to read it because he made a spelling mistake, then don't.

<comment><USER55> I disagree. The presence of several typos on the main page is a big red flag for a technical book.

Having said that, I'm still interested, but the lack of proofreading on the author's release announcement for his book is definitely counterproductive.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Splits Hangouts into Chat and Meet - <AUTHOR> https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/meet-the-new-enterprise-focused-hangouts/ <comment><USER2> Discussion at earlier post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13831996](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13831996)

<comment><USER3> Thanks—moved comments there.</comment></comment>


Pentagon Opens Network to iOS and Android, Dealing Huge Blow to BlackBerry - <AUTHOR> http://www.techvibes.com/blog/pentagon-blackberry-ouch-2012-10-29

<comment><USER2> My understanding is that Android devices with custom images (SELinux-type- stuff compiled into the kernel) have been allowed on their network for some time. This wasn't just contractor-spec custom hardware - employees were allowed to use their personal Android devices provided this stuff had been installed.

So, the big news here is that that's no longer required, and that stock Android devices will now be allowed.

<comment><USER3> Do you have a source on that? I have been following Android news related to the govt and haven't seen that. I am aware of SEAndroid from NSA but not about devices running being allowed on DoD networks.

<comment><USER4> It's entirely possible to run Android on DoD networks, it just takes a lot of work to certify it and the restrictions of what you can do with the device make it almost useless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a bit surprised there is no mention of Windows Phone 8 whatsoever. I would have thought that places like the Pentagon would be an important niche for it.

</comment><comment><USER6> "many US citizens are now embarrassed to own BlackBerrys"

That was unnecessary. Unless the author is shorting RIM.

<comment><USER3> Well if it is an opinion piece I think that is pretty much true. I have a cell phone that is not a 'smart phone'. Just one with a slidy type keyboard. There have multiple times I have been made fun of or heard sarcastic remarks about my phone being outdated. It is funny it is only 2 or 3 years old model. I don't care much but it sort of illustrates what the attitudes out there are.

Also people in charge of making purchasing decisions at Pentagon have iPhones and iPads at home and they see the difference between the device they are supposed to use for work and the ones they use at home. And a lot of it is not that Blackberry is terrible, it does its job, it is just that iPhones and latest Android devices have moved so far ahead and comparatively they look so much better.

<comment><USER7> The best way to handle people like that is to preemptively strike. Try chuckling at them whenever they have to charge their phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hmm... I thought that they would want to limit it to one or the other, for security purposes.

<comment><USER9> It only makes sense to use a single platform if that platform has proven to be more secure than the others. Neither Android nor iOS has proven to be inherently more secure than the other (both have had plenty of in-the-wild exploits... the basis of most jailbreaking is due to such exploits).

If neither platform is provably more secure, it makes more sense to allow both because in a fully homogeneous environment a single new exploit opens all the doors while in a mixed system environment, it only opens a subset of them.</comment></comment>


Physicists have found a metal that conducts electricity but not heat - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-have-found-a-metal-that-conducts-electricity-but-not-heat <comment><USER2> Here is a recent thread about it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13497218](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13497218)</comment>


Working with the Page Visibility API - <AUTHOR> http://code.kojilabs.com/page-visibility-api/

<comment><USER2> The thing about the page visibility API is that it doesn't really tell you if the page is actually visible or not. It just tells you if the page is in a background tab or (I think) minimized, but it won't tell you if the web page is completely hidden by another window.

<comment><AUTHOR> Valid point. It's better than nothing though :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage newsletters? - <AUTHOR> Wondering if someone has a cool way of managing newsletters.
Essentially trying to efficiently organize : - ecommerce marekting promotions - email newsletters - dev list, etc (if you are an open source contributor)
- social notification emails
Some already known ways but would love to have a vote :-
1. seperate email account
2. + option in gmail
3. do nothing just read all
4. Inbox or other email client
5. Other please specify
thanks !! <comment><USER2> I built a newsletter tool that signed up for its members and aggregated the data into singular emails, but be received at a day/time of the users need. On paper it worked very nicely, and beta it worked pretty well. But no funding, no fun, as they say. I still say there is a need out there for something like this.

</comment><comment><USER3> I subscribe to tons of newsletters for my enjoyment. I started using GMail filters and labels for this purpose. I have enough types of newsletters that I filter them further by type into nested sub labels. I don't happen to use Inbox but imagine it might work about as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> Had the same thought the other day, then found: [https://unroll.me/](https://unroll.me/)</comment>


The Gentleperson's Guide to Forum Spies (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm <comment><USER2> Brings to mind the secret psyops JTRIG group (part of the GCHQ), as revealed by Edward Snowden.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Threat_Research_Intellig...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Threat_Research_Intelligence_Group)

Look at the presentation slides from below - scary to think we are subjected to their propaganda on a regular basis

[https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig- manipulation/](https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/)

Very wide breadth and depth of the tooling used by JTRIG

[https://www.schneier.com/gchq-catalog/](https://www.schneier.com/gchq- catalog/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Technique #1 - 'FORUM SLIDING'

If a very sensitive posting of a critical nature has been posted on a forum - it can be quickly removed from public view by 'forum sliding.' In this technique a number of unrelated posts are quietly prepositioned on the forum and allowed to 'age.' Each of these misdirectional forum postings can then be called upon at will to trigger a 'forum slide.' The second requirement is that several fake accounts exist, which can be called upon, to ensure that this technique is not exposed to the public. To trigger a 'forum slide' and 'flush' the critical post out of public view it is simply a matter of logging into each account both real and fake and then 'replying' to prepositined postings with a simple 1 or 2 line comment. This brings the unrelated postings to the top of the forum list, and the critical posting 'slides' down the front page, and quickly out of public view. Although it is difficult or impossible to censor the posting it is now lost in a sea of unrelated and unuseful postings. By this means it becomes effective to keep the readers of the forum reading unrelated and non-issue items.

Technique #2 - 'CONSENSUS CRACKING'

A second highly effective technique (which you can see in operation all the time at www.abovetopsecret.com) is 'consensus cracking.' To develop a consensus crack, the following technique is used. Under the guise of a fake account a posting is made which looks legitimate and is towards the truth is made - but the critical point is that it has a VERY WEAK PREMISE without substantive proof to back the posting. Once this is done then under alternative fake accounts a very strong position in your favour is slowly introduced over the life of the posting. It is IMPERATIVE that both sides are initially presented, so the uninformed reader cannot determine which side is the truth. As postings and replies are made the stronger 'evidence' or disinformation in your favour is slowly 'seeded in.' Thus the uninformed reader will most like develop the same position as you, and if their position is against you their opposition to your posting will be most likely dropped. However in some cases where the forum members are highly educated and can counter your disinformation with real facts and linked postings, you can then 'abort' the consensus cracking by initiating a 'forum slide.'

</comment><comment><USER3> This clearly describes a number of methods that can be used by trolls and bad actors to disrupt a forum. But it surprises me how many people seem to assume an anonymous pastebin written like a post to /x/ is somehow authoritative, as if it were copied directly from a secret FBI handbook.

I mean, FFS it even says one of the signs of a "Disinformationalist" is not believing in conspiracy theories. If you don't believe the CIA killed JFK, you're probably a spook. Come on.

<comment><USER4> So, the reason I've raised awareness of this type of thing is because at the end of the day, it all comes down to capabilities. If there is information that must at all costs be kept secret, it is 100% the case that any sufficiently large organization with sufficient resources will hire a force to make sure that that information drops out of focus as quickly as possible after they've become aware of the breach.

We call them Social Media consultants, or PR crisis management firms in "polite society". They have other names as well.

Anyway, the main point is that oftentimes, no one really stops to think about whether or how this type of thing can be done. This document lays out a blueprint for it. In Engineering, as a rule, if you have a blueprint for the basics, someone will find a way to work it into a system. Awareness that someone has done so changes something fundamental in the pursuit of online information dissemination and discourse. At least I noticed a change when I first ran into it. I began to get a bit more religious about cross-checking sources, and paying attention to moderation patterns, and meta-posting behavior. So even if the original content it is based on is from a dubious source, the change in perception it evokes is still useful enough to warrant the occasional resurrection to the front of the public consciousness.

I'd also like to point out to you your post here, in the MKUltra thread, where you admit to it seeming more reasonable that governments would utilize disinformation campaigns rather than drugs.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21165647](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21165647)

>The goal? Probably not. The means? Probably. I believe it's more effective in modern society to influence people through disinformation campaigns and popular culture, particularly though social media, than attempt to control them like puppets by secretly dosing them with LSD and barbiturates.

I was going to reply there, but I thought it might be poor form seeing as this submission was based off of something I mentioned. Point being; it never hurts to take into consideration there may be a man behind the curtain every once in a while.

Just... Don't let it consume the rest of your life. Either way, I specifically dropped references to it in Hong Kong threads based on some fishy patterns I was noticing in the hopes it might help out a Hong Konger or two develop more resilient strategies to any possible attempts to utilize any of those mentioned controls against them. I don't know if it helped, but I doubt it hurt.

>FFS it even says one of the signs of a "Disinformationalist" is not believing in conspiracy theories...

So you ignored the most important parts (forum sliding, consensus cracking, infiltrating moderation, high level political/press management techniques, etc...) and jumped straight to the most dated, divisive, and clearly dismissable and irrelevant piece?

I didn't think a single contrived example would so effectively neutralize all the other useful information in there.

Anyway, take it or leave it. I'm just interested in people knowing that this stuff can happen, as it seems to me that knowledge that the techniques exist tends to confer some level of resilience against them.

<comment><USER3> >So you ignored the most important parts (forum sliding, consensus cracking, infiltrating moderation, high level political/press management techniques, etc...) and jumped straight to the most dated, divisive, and clearly dismissable and irrelevant piece?

No.. I literally started my comment pointing out that it would be useful for pointing those things out:

 _This clearly describes a number of methods that can be used by trolls and bad actors to disrupt a forum._

What I objected to is its utility in uncovering "disinformation agents," plants, spooks, spies, etc. Most of what's described in it is the normal low bar for any argumentative forum, biases and cognitive fallacies that anyone - particularly those of a paranoid persuasion - might fall prey to, and the result of taking it seriously will be to see bad actors everywhere.

And there's already too much of that sort of baseless paranoia on HN. People accusing each other of being shills or agents, or seeing nefarious motives behind the site's moderation. My point was that people should be just as critical of that as anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A credit to [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=salawat](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=salawat) for mentioning this in a thread.

Resource here features the following lovely topics:

```

1\. COINTELPRO Techniques for dilution, misdirection and control of a internet forum

2\. Twenty-Five Rules of Disinformation

3\. Eight Traits of the Disinformationalist

4\. How to Spot a Spy (Cointelpro Agent)

5\. Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression

```

</comment><comment><USER5> A thread from 2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7329162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7329162)

Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4277278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4277278)

</comment><comment><USER6> What's a 'gentleperson'? You mean 'gentleman'?

<comment><USER7> Merriam Webster:

> Gentleperson -- a gentleman or lady

I wouldn't say it rolls off the tongue well, but it's technically correct usage.

<comment><USER6> Absolutely devilish.</comment></comment></comment>


Why school sucks - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

<comment><USER2> An RSA animation of a talk by Ken Robinson.

AKA: Changing Education Paradigms.

In case this doesn't get much discussion and you're wondering why, many people here on HN will have seen it before. That last substantial discussion was here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1805419>

Some previous submissions, most without comment:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1791749>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1800876>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1802072>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1805419> <\- This has the most comments.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1858254>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1882297>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1886532>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2025766>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2033198>

There are more:

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3A%28...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3A%28changing+education+paradigms%29)</comment>


(Yet another) mini async flow library for CoffeeScript/JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mirek/node-flat-flow

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a proof of concept. I've been using this approach in production CoffeeScript code and it does look very readable.</comment>


IPhone Surpasses Blackberry In Global Smartphone Share, Nokia Still Leading - <AUTHOR> http://gadgetizor.com/iphone-surpasses-blackberry-nokia-still-leading/5841/

<comment><USER2> I wonder why Android powered phones were left out?

Whats truly amazing is that there are a bunch of Blackberry models, a tonne of Nokia phones but only 1 iPhone.

<comment><USER3> Probably because they are talking about phone manufacturers and not platforms. Any single Android manufacturer (with the possible exception of Motorola) likely doesn't have market share anywhere near these numbers. Then there is the complication that companies like HTC sell non-Android phones too, which really muddies the water.</comment></comment>


Software engineers hard to find - <AUTHOR> http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-10-17/business/ct-biz-1017-out-technology-20101017_1_software-engineers-chicago-developers-tech-jobs <comment><USER2> And will continue to be harder and harder as long as utter morons do the screening and hiring.

I made a local-startup an offer that no sane company could afford to refuse. I was a core developer for their main behemoth of a competitor and my non- competes have just expired. They could easily save millions of dollars in marketing, research and development by JUST running decisions by me and having me nod in approval if it sounds good. (I am not exaggerating; it's one of those businesses that require 10k in daily AdWords sacrifices to grok; lead generation)

Instead, they came back to me with the same two questions: do you know Django and do you know Agile development.

You incompetent idiots.

Fast forward to today; it took me 4 hours this morning to go from cold-call to interview at a research-oriented industrial planning company of <10 people minting millions of dollars per year. Within 20 minutes, the guy and I were talking about the history of Prolog, logics and finite-domain constraint solving.

<comment><USER3> I say this as someone who's been accused of having a poor attitude on many an occasion, but when you say the following...

> And will continue to be harder and harder as long as utter morons do the > screening and hiring.

> They could easily save millions of dollars in marketing, research and > development by JUST running decisions by me and having me nod in approval if > it sounds good.

> You incompetent idiots.

I have to ask... Are you 100% sure it was because of django and agile skills?

<comment><USER2> If someone told me they worked for my major, and very successful competitor, I would pause to ask them "doing what".

The guys didn't even bother.

<comment><USER4> Classic case of thinking that being right should be all that matters? With interviews and hiring it all comes down to the first impression...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm an older developer. I was eating lunch at a restaurant near my new workplace. Sitting at the table next to mine, a college senior (at Colorado School of Mines - which is a pretty decent engineering school) was talking with her father about her boyfriend interviewing for a job as a software developer. The BF had a 4 hour long programming test as part of the interview.

Something is very wrong with our industry. Most of the time that articles come out like this, industry executives are trying to get more kids to go into programming in order to lower the cost of employees: they want protection from the free market.

The last company I worked for (for 5 years, and it was a Fortune 100 company) was complaining publicly that they were unable to find developers - yet people who quit over the past 2 years were never replaced, nor were we allowed to interview candidates.

<comment><USER6> I think the secret is that part of good programming is an art, and not only something that can be taught, like accounting, with just logical rules and regulations (apologies to skilled accountants who feel there is an art to their work).

That is probably why big business can't fulfill their desire for a large pool of cheap but good developers. You can't just pour people into the college machinery and churn out developers. At least I hope not.

<comment><USER7> > That is probably why big business can't fulfill their desire for a large > pool of cheap but good developers.

It is interesting, this has been going on for a while. Initially many companies went and got a lot of cheap and mediocre developers (mostly through outsourcing) and replaced a couple good ones with dozens of average ones for the same price. They saw it as a deal. Eventually they are realizing that programming is not like picking potatoes -- "Just hire more for the same price, they all sit and type all day anyway, so just get more for cheaper and we'll get ahead faster". Well it doesn't work like that.

Once mediocrity starts to dominate, even the few good ones who are still hanging around, will leave as their work turns to teaching others and babysitting them full time.

In general it is not possible to replace a highly skilled programmer with an X number of less skilled ones. Many hit that realization and we start seeing lots of these types of articles even as unemployment is above 10%

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "JumpForward interviews three to five engineers a week as it tries to fill four to six technology jobs, but most candidates don't have current skills or they lack the passion to stay on the cutting edge"

In other words, there's no shortage of software engineers, there's a shortage of perfect candidates. If these companies were actually willing to train people, they'd have a lot fewer problems.

The trend seems to be that software development, like a lot of other industries, is becoming increasingly winner-take-all, with huge demand for the very best of the best, and a lot less for anyone else.

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately, it's also very easy for an engineer to jump ship after their training - meaning a very expensive loss of time and effort. Personally, I think the "shortage" has something to do with increases in job-hopping. If there were some guarantee that an engineer were going to stick around for a few years after training, perhaps training new recruits wouldn't seem so unreasonable.

<comment><USER10> > Unfortunately, it's also very easy for an engineer to jump ship after their > training - meaning a very expensive loss of time and effort.

Keeping your employees is your job, not theirs. No relationship lasts when one partner starts neglecting the other and another interested partner comes in.

<comment><USER11> Another reason for job-hobbing, especially among hackers, is that they don't want to be pigeon-holed into a single job for too long. You can become too complacent, too specialized, and too tied down to a specific system. After 5 years of maintaining a legacy ERP application how do you get a job working at the hot new social networking company ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Supply and demand. If you're having trouble finding people with what you're offering, raise your offer.

<comment><USER12> But that raises the false positive rate of unqualified applicants that are only in it for the money. Given that such a programmer may have net negative productivity, underpaying qualified developers migth even be beneficial for the employers, as they can be sure that the remaining pool of applicants will only contain persons with a qualification level commensurate with the offered wages (which can easily be filtered out) and people passionate about programming. They may loose some of the best that way, but they loose all of the duds, too. </cynic>

<comment> brown9-2 I'm not sure I'm following this line of argument but if they're intentionally keeping what they're offering low, they lose the right to complain that they can't find good enough candidates.

Besides the company on the article already claims to be able to seperate duds from stars.

"What you're offering" includes more than just money as well n

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find it dubious someone can just decide to be a "software engineer".

You'd have to already have a personal interest in programming and be doing it on your own as a hobby.

Are there people who seriously just go to college for 4 years and learn coding like accounting and then just do a 9-5 job?

There are thousands of decent hackers out there, maybe just uptrain.

<comment><USER13> There are lots of people who just went to college for four years and then got jobs writing code. I didn't keep a track of many of them but none of the ones I know of turned out to be good at it.

<comment><USER6> I'm jealous of anyone who can just "come home from work" and turn off their brain about coding and do it as a regular job.

I'm constantly thinking of better ways to do something and find myself rewriting code from years ago. I have at least one "regular job" experience that taught me such behavior/attitude doesn't work well in a 9-5 business environment.

<comment><USER13> Do you really want to not care about the work you do? It's nice to be able to come home from work and not worry about work, but I wouldn't want to work on something that I wasn't interested in.

<comment><USER14> Dunno about the OP, but I'm worried about burnout. The road to being "world class" anything is longer than you can imagine, and it'd suck to get 10 years in and suddenly reach the point where I can't do this any more, no matter how much I used to like it, right when I would otherwise be a big success.

It is apparently possible to care about your work and yet still leave it at work - I know a few people that have managed it. I haven't had a whole lot of success myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If your pay is not high enough, or your standards are not low enough, you will find yourself lacking "software engineers". There is no shortage, however, just an unwillingness to pay the right price (either in money or lack of skill).

</comment><comment><USER16> The many trading companies in Chicago also offer software developers interesting problems to solve and attractive compensation.

There's certainly a lot of web work being done in Chicago too, but the trading companies offer developers the chance to focus on enterprise software systems and proprietary high-performance trading applications.

<comment><USER17> I agree, my cousin is a software engineer for a financial company in Chicago. I doubt this other company could afford him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "One good developer can do the work of three or four guys," Annerino said. "Once a company finds them, they don't let them go."

We might get paid double what they do, but not 3x or 4x. Or maybe I'm not that good ;)

<comment><USER19> I am gradually coming to the opinion that many 10X developers really do end up being compensated fairly, but it rarely happens while they are still in the "developer" box.

It doesn't necessarily just happen from taking on extra risk, either, though starting your own company is one way to do it. Personal anecdote (I'm not a 10X developer but I know a few things about a few things): I previously built CRUD apps and made $X, and I turned down a few offers this year to build CRUD apps for [6 * $X, 10 * $X]. The big thing that changed? Improvement in marketing myself and better selection of CRUD app genre. (A/B testing isn't any harder technically than building university registration systems... it is just worth orders of magnitude more revenue.)

There is a really good post on Quora about this, incidentally: [http://www.quora.com/10X-Engineers/Why-are-the-best- programm...](http://www.quora.com/10X-Engineers/Why-are-the-best- programmers-10x-more-productive-than-mediocre-programmers-but-paid-only-3x-as- much-Why-aren-t-they-paid-10x-as-much)

<comment><USER14> That was one of the things that really surprised me about the real world: that big advancement only comes from big lateral jumps. Different companies, different projects, different markets, or different customers.

There's this model of the world we're taught as schoolkids - at least where I grew up - where you work hard at something, do as your told, and slowly but surely you rise up. And maybe at one level it's true, but it's _very_ slow, and you'll never become the sort of success you read about in the paper that way.

Instead, I've found that what usually happens is that you join an organization because you meet some minimum skill baseline that they're looking for. And then as you practice and learn from the people around you, you end up picking up a bunch of other skills and getting better at your job. But the people around you generally won't notice. First impressions usually pigeonhole you into a general category, and then people are blind to gradual changes.

So to reap the rewards of everything you've learned, you have to expose yourself to new people. Jump ship, and suddenly you seem really valuable to them, because all those skills you've picked up which your current organization takes for granted are new and useful.

There's a leverage effect as well: people try to work with others of roughly the same level. If you're diligent about practicing, you'll go from being (hopefully) near the bottom of your team to the top of it. If you then repeat the process, your new teammates better be higher skilled still, and so your team as a whole can tackle more ambitious problems.

<comment><USER20> Good post!

Unfortunately, it also works the other way: somebody works in a company until they recognize how useless that person is, and before he or she gets fired they jump ship to a new company where they are greeted with open arms as the new guy/gal that will fix everything. Lather, rinse, repeat. If they are smart they use the same argument you made to actually rise in the corporate hierarchy with each step. This allows them to beat the Peter principle and rise above their level of incompetence, leading us to totally incompetent people at the top of the hierarchy.

So if you see somebody who changed jobs every couple years, be careful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "The growing use of Ruby on Rails, a Web application framework, in recent years has created developer shortages everywhere, said Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson...Many developers who were trained in Java or PHP simply need to be retrained, he said."

=== "Hmm, PHP and Java are out, so what does someone with vested interests in Rails think I should learn? Hang on, Rails isn't mentioned as out of date by its creator so I'll retrain in that!"

I can't remember the exact articles from HN but there were two recently: one was about a sysadmin that went for an interview at Facebook or Google and was surprised that they wanted knowledge on low-level, performance critical features rather than advanced bash programming; another was an example of why it's often more cost effective to get twice the performance out of one server (by investing more development time i.e. C/C++ over PHP) rather than buying another server.

YMMV but I switched from PHP to C++ for my personal web projects and haven't noticed it taking me exponentially more time to develop.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm not seeing anything like this, or maybe I'm just being forced out of the industry.

I get screened out by HR because I don't have the words "computer science" on my resume, even though I've been programming for the past 25 years, 15 professionally.

If I get this far I get a phone screen where I'm completely fluent in anything they are talking about, but I don't have years of scrum experience, or I didn't come from an "agile" shop, or I prefer the alternatives to Rspec and cucumber, or whatever the new hotness is.

Then I get screened out by the developer interview because I'm not in my 20's and probably can't relate to their hip young "culture" and they don't know what to make of me, especially in the Ruby world - but Perl is not as bad and I'll probably just give up on Ruby and go back to Perl.

Then I get flooded with calls from head hunters, all for the same one or two jobs and its always a complete waste of time.

Its frustrating to read articles like this. Are they true or just compete fabricated bullshit as a prelude to increasing H1B quotas?

</comment><comment><USER23> At most companies the hiring process is severely broken. They are being too careful and are so scared to train the right person.

</comment><comment><USER24> What I can see is that most companies and especially these where software developement is viewed as a necessary evil rather than a business model are very bad at telling bad candidates from the good ones and don't really hire based on merit. They might believe they do, but the outcome of the hiring process is usually erratic as far as it comes to the actual abilities.

However once a developer is hired even a company with a flaky interviewing process tends to recognise the actual worth of a given programmer fairly quickly. Then an intresting thing happens - even though the developers might be explicitly treated as a commodity resource the very same managers would go far beyond the declared rules to retain the best: regularly up the package, give a lot of slack, turn a blind eye on minor "breaches of established rules".

As a result most good programmers I know after about five years in the industry end up enjoying a package far in excess of what is being declared on the job sites.

It's not uncommon for a hiring manager to moan about the lack of good candidates whilst paying the best developers on their team 50% more than they advertise when publishing the same job. What the management don't seem to realise is that just about every other company does that: actually paying more to the existing programmers than the declared range they would be prepared to pay for the new hires.

As a result after a while there is little or no incentive for good developers to put their CV's on a market. They're well above the market rates.

As a workaround sometimes companies hire good programmers as independent contractors and carry on extending the contracts forever - paying double or triple the rate they would pay their permanent staff. It's a funny game when becoming "an independent" consultant with a single customer is one of the few options for an experienced developer to help company management justify paying them the true market worth.

There is no lack of good programmers, they just cost much more than most companies are prepared to admit.

</comment><comment><USER25> So the article says the shortage is of "highly trained" workers only.

And a big problem is you can't lure them away since their current employer might give them a counter offer, and there's apparently no way to deal with that, it's the end of the world.

And the solution to all this is "a six-month retraining program for displaced workers. Participants, who must be unemployed, will come away with skills in one of eight tech-training areas" which trains people with no programming skills how to become "highly skilled" in only six months. So highly skilled that they will kick the butts of the guy with the 15 years useless C, C++, Perl and PHP experience because what we really need is Ruby on Rails.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm a little suspicious when I read a line like this:

""I feel we're at 100 percent employment" for highly qualified software engineers in Chicago, said Zach Kaplan, chief executive at Chicago-based Inventables, an online marketplace for materials and technology. The company gets flooded with applications when it posts nontechnical jobs, but it struggles to find software engineers."

Mr. Kaplan hasn't quite defined a highly qualified software engineer as one who has a job, but he's awfully close to saying that "100% of the software engineers who have jobs, have jobs."

If "highly qualified" software engineers have no trouble finding jobs, I suspect I could make an equally ambiguous argument that "highly desirable" software companies have no trouble finding software engineers. This "shortage" goes both ways.

</comment><comment><USER27> A related question:

What is the current hourly rate that a jr software engineer can expect?

I might be starting to work remotely for a company in the Boston area but have no idea what the current salary situation for freelancers in the US is like

<comment><USER19> All over the map (sorry, bad pun). It depends on where you live, who you work for, what technologies you work in, and (more than any of the above) your skill in marketing yourself to the right clients.

I have personal knowledge of folks who do software development at a range of price points between $25 and $200.

<comment><USER28> I assume that rate is per hour?

For what's it worth, in Western Europe I'd say 75 euros/hour ±50% is what you can expect for usual "Enterprise" fare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if the dismal housing market and the rising demand for software will finally force corporations to figure out how to manage remote developers.

It's not like wages for the common programmer are going to keep skyrocketing until companies are buying your house to relocate your family.

<comment><USER11> Exactly. I get a lot of job offers which insist on me moving to London. Since I have (for a number of personal and practical reasons) no intention of ever moving to London, I won't work for them, period.

On the other hand, I would be readily available as a remote worker - in the same country. So what's exactly stopping these companies ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Only if you persist in looking in the wrong places.

<comment><USER31> Cool. Can you suggest where the right places are? My past searches for decent software developers have been long, arduous and time-consuming, and I'd love to know where all the good developers are hiding.

Out of interest, how many developers have you employed? I'm sure it's not entirely relevant, but I'd be interested to know how you found them.

<comment><USER32> There are plenty of people here on hn who complaint about how hard it is to get people willing to hire them remote. You could start there.

<comment><USER31> There are plenty of software development jobs where remote working simply isn't possible. Just as a single, simple example, there are very few neighborhoods that would tolerate an 18 foot high-speed radar antenna on a roof, and even fewer that would then have suitable objects to watch.

<comment><USER32> I am pretty sure they once said the same thing about people not working in suits. If your company can't make it work, you shouldn't be surprised if you have to look for a new job because your competitors can get people you aren't able to hire.

<comment><USER31> I've come back to this comment several times in the past few hours, trying to write something to help you understand, yet at the same time, not sounding condescending, and I've decided I can't do it. You simply can't connect remotely to the kit we use - you have to be in the office for at least a few days a week.

Other work we do involves data that we are contractually obliged not to allow out of the building, and still other work involves teams of people working together on algorithm design and implementation. We've tried, but the existing on-line tools are simply not up to it. We've even worked at trying to create better on-line tools, and come to the conclusion that it's currently not worth it.

But you're a CS student, so no doubt you'll be working on solving the problems we have, and by the time you're in the work place you'll have the solution ready. We look forward with eager anticipation to being able to have people work remotely. Getting more and better work for the same pay would be a great business opportunity, which is why we still invest around 10% of our annual budget trying to make it happen.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Organic Farming Is Bad for the Environment - <AUTHOR> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/organic-farming-is-bad-for-the-environment/ <comment><USER2> This article is a straw man. The author is attacking conventional mass monoculture farms that meet watered down organic standards.

Innovative organic farmers with polyculture farms using permaculture principles frequently achieve much higher yields per acre with greatly reduced inputs (including pesticides and fertilizers). The downside of these techniques is a larger labor requirement, though despite this these innovative farmers are actually more likely to be profitable than conventional farmers (who receive large subsidies).

</comment><comment><USER3> See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong).</comment>


Foliate – A simple and modern GTK eBook viewer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate <comment><AUTHOR> I'm using Linux and trying to find a e-reader recently. Here is what I tested on Arch:

 _Calibre: Failed to open

_ Okular: Ugly, cannot modify margin

 _bookworm: No two-page view, only scrolling-mode, and scrolling-mode cannot get the reading progress

_ zathura: too simplify resulting in not know how to use

 _lector: cannot recognize epub......

_ Buka: cannot open the book. (I don't get the logic flow, create a list first, then import the book, then crash)

Until I found Foliate, it support two-page view w/ progress bar, it support epub will in different language (I test en_US and zh_TW), fast lookup (gtrans, Wiktionary, Wikipedia), good UI, ...etc

<comment><USER2> > Calibre: Failed to open

Perhaps this says more about Arch than it does Calibre.

<comment><AUTHOR> yep, is because Arch (basically because qt5 upgrade...), and with the issue on it: [https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/63051](https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/63051)

$ calibre

Fatal Python error: PyQt5.QtCore: Unable to embed qt.conf

[1] 13321 abort (core dumped) calibre

At that moment, I didn't have time to workaround on it :(

<comment><USER3> Ah, too bad. It's the crappiest of the bunch UX-wise, but nothing comes close to it feature-wise.

I don't use it to read (I have an e-reader for that purpose), but I'd be lost without Calibre for ebook management.

<comment> crooked-v I really wish there was a practical alternative to Calibre for general ebook organization purposes. It's extra-painful that Books.app on Mac could almost fit that role, except that it doesn't let you edit enough metadata for your own imported files to properly manage series/publisher stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ecosystems are tough. I'd never used meson, so I installed it using apt-get. I tried to build Foliate, and got an error about wrong arguments to `project()`. Searching for the error brought results about a wrong version, so I uninstalled meson and reinstalled it using pip. The installation completed fine. I went to run Foliate (com.github.johnfactotum.Foliate, if that wasn't somehow obvious), and I got an error from GJS (JS ERROR: SyntaxError: invalid property id @ resource:///com/github/johnfactotum/Foliate/js/main.js:57 JS_EvaluateScript() failed).

If it's obvious to anyone else what's wrong here, it's not obvious to me. Isn't one of the advantages of interpreting the code on the target platform supposed to be portability? If so, why is it I so seldom can can get anything written for GJS, or Node, or a Python program not my own, to install and run without a three-hour yak shave?

I'm sure this is a great project, and I mean no disrespect to the author, who did a better job of installation instructions than most — but I'm tired of installation being such a pain. It's almost, but not quite, enough to make a guy run Windows.

<comment><USER5> > Searching for the error brought results about a wrong version

One of the bullet points from the Meson website:

> * fun!

So if I understand correctly, this modern build tool created to replace all the extant time-wasting build tools got memorialized in Debian in a half-baked state where it's not compatible with future versions.

Also-- the fact that you had to leave the hardened bank vault of apt through the screen door of pip... to install a thing _to build other things to run on your system_.

I love it.

> If so, why is it I so seldom can can get anything written for GJS, or Node, > or a Python program not my own, to install and run without a three-hour yak > shave?

... is the question that explains why Electron exists. Every comment on HN about its size, memory usage, and insecurity doubles as a critique of all the problems you just hit with a Linux system.

Electron: "Memory and disk space is cheap enough, but your time will never be."

<comment><USER6> I propose on building native tools that have all relevant libraries statically linked. Yeah, executable will grow in size, but it's the best of both world : portability, speed and not using javascript.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, I didn't see this coming. I always had this problem in Linux to the point I am going to ditch Linux for windows the moment wsl2 becomes stable. But this app is literally _awesome_. I wish Gnome foundation would stop acting stupid as hell and start funding projet like this and make it official Gnome project.

Thank you so much.

<comment><USER8> I think the problem is that funding probably comes from Redhat and/or FSF. One of those is interested in business uses and the other doesn't have a lot of money.

I'm starting to think everyone who can write code should try to contribute what effort they can to an open source project. I'm starting to see how a lot of small individual contributions add up over time. A project still needs a good maintainer and vision though, and that's a lot of work for someone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just looking at the source and finding out it's JavaScript.

Although I'm probably living in a cave and didn't use Linux often on the desktop since years, it is common practice now to write Gtk/Gnome apps in JS? I tought Vala was the cool language for that kind of apps...

<comment><USER10> > I tought Vala was the cool language for that kind of apps...

I think you're about ten years behind the trend.

<comment><USER11> Nope, new applications are commonly being written in Vala.

For example bookworm, a GTK eBook viewer.

<comment><USER10> I didn't say all new applications were being written in JS, did I? So any number of counterexamples does not disprove what I said. We were talking about the trend of what people were looking at using now.

<comment><USER12> Ok, please: what language are people using when they want to create gnome software ? Or the trend of what people are looking at using, if you prefer. Edit: switched two words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm glad to see hyphenation was taken into account, even if it requires some extra packages. On the Android epub readers I've tried it never seemed to work (maybe they only support English if at all?).

</comment><comment><USER14> I like how it gives an option for margin size. It even allows 0 margin! One of the most annoying things about Google Play Books is that it puts pretty big margins to left and right and you have no control over them, so my phone's screen is wasted on a lot of empty space. Amazon Kindle is better because it provides a narrower margin option but I would prefer just 0 margin on my phone.

Also the app itself looks nice and native, good job.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why don't use the compilable language? Nobody think about resources these days.

<comment><USER16> This isnt electron, GJS uses native GTK controls

<comment><USER17> README mentions a dependency on webkit2gtk, probably only for the ebook rendering but it's not far from electron in that case.

<comment><USER18> Yea, webkit2gtk is pretty heavy (or at least it seems that way when trying to compile it), but it might have been the easiest way to render epub files as their render is pretty similar to HTML.

It's all about tradeoffs and I don't think this one is too bad. I'm glad it isn't a pure electron app.

Now we just need decent open hardware for Linux tablets! I'd love to use this program to read books on one of those mythical open source tablets that can run KDE Plasma.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are there any open hardware eink ebook readers?

<comment><USER20> I don't think there are any.

However, you easily can install alternative readers on Kobo ereaders, see here for a list of some hacks:

[https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=295612](https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=295612)

<comment><USER21> There's the BQ Cervantes, which runs FOSS software, but Kobo's open source community seems much more active.

[https://github.com/bq/cervantes](https://github.com/bq/cervantes)

[https://blog.bq.com/es/bq-ereaders-developers- program/](https://blog.bq.com/es/bq-ereaders-developers-program/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This will be great to use on the Librem 5 when it's released! ([https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/))

</comment><comment><USER23> I wanted to give it a try, but attempting to build a Debian package fails.

$ dpkg-buildpackage

...

gpg: skipped "John Factotum <firstname.lastname@example.com>": No secret key gpg: dpkg- sign.LHxm7FS6/com.github.johnfactotum.foliate_1.4.0.dsc: clear-sign failed: No secret key

dpkg-buildpackage: error: failed to sign .dsc file

edit: build does indeed work and I could use the viewer, building a Debian package fails though.

<comment><USER24> I had the same issue and got it to work with dpkg-buildpackage --no-sign

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Any reason why this can't be cross platform? Seems to be mostly using supposedly cross platform libraries like GTK...

<comment><USER26> AFAIK GTK cross platform effort was always secondary. Now from version 3 even more so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I dual boot everyday. I want to have equivalent software for both Linux and windows, to not to change my workflow too much.

I am using Freda in Windows to read ebooks.

I was worried about what to use in Linux. The Calibre viewer simply doesn't have the same quality as Freda.

Foliate is great, and I no longer worry about this. Thanks for the heads up.

</comment><comment><USER28> What makes it "modern"?

<comment><AUTHOR> In my case, the most competitive UI in desktop e-reader

<comment><USER29> It does look pretty and it's probably very usable on a tablet, but on a full- featured computer (i.e. one equipped with keyboard and mouse) it's inefficient and idiotic.

<comment><USER30> Your comment is overly hostile. The author is present, you could give some constructive feedback instead of insulting the design.

I actually disagree with you, the UI seems elegant and very usable on desktop. Maybe smallish window size on screenshots give impression that it's more suitable for tablet?

<comment><USER29> Ok, idiotic was not the right word. I apologise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Could OP or someone else give an overview of how web-based interfaces work on native apps like this, without using something like electron? Is there a full js interpreter, dom, css parser, etc in something like Foliate?

<comment><USER17> In the readme I see:

       The following are runtime requirements:
       gjs (>= 1.52)
       webkit2gtk

So my guess is that it's just using webkit for the html rendering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Looks really nice. I am wondering who is reading eBooks on their computer though. Isn't it annoying to be reading a whole book on your computer?

<comment><USER33> I read programming ebooks on my computer while typing out the programs into Vim. As I learned from Zed in his C book that you _must_ type out the code examples if you're going to learn from them, which I've found extremely useful.

Otherwise for long form reading sections I switch back to my Kindle, tablet, or paper book.

The other times I read on my computer are shorter academic papers, reference, and sampling the first chapter of books before switching them to my Kindle or tablet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Very cool! Lately I rarely see good new GTK applications coming out so this warms my heart. :)

</comment><comment><USER35> Does it support multiple tabs? It doesn't seem to from the screenshot.

<comment><USER36> Currently there's no tabs support. But it does support multiple windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Looks great! I've been looking for a good e-reader for Linux lately.</comment>


I admit it: I like Python's ternary operator - <AUTHOR> https://charemza.name/blog/posts/python/syntax/python-ternary-operator/ <comment><USER2> It's a bit weird that Python -- which in some ways was a trailblazer in popularizing somewhat unconventional syntax choices (indent matters!) -- has become so stuck in its ways that if-elif seems like a reasonable choice of syntax for what is usually a generalized switch[1].

[1]. The MultiWayIf extension for GHC is a great example of how to optimize this idiom for regularity.

<comment><USER3> switch/case was, and still is, considered unnecessary in Python because it can be expressed just as clearly and concisely using if/elif/else. There was discussion about adding it, long ago, but (IIRC) Guido decided against it. It is not obvious what syntax switch/case should have in Python (two levels of indentation?), and its benefits are marginal at best.

Then again, many things that supposedly would "never" make it into the language, have been added over time anyway, including the ternary if. So who knows...

<comment><USER2> > switch/case was, and still is, considered unnecessary in Python because it > can be expressed just as clearly and concisely using if/elif/else

Ah, but it seems that there's some disagreement about this being unnecessary :).

Btw, MultiWayIf is a much more powerful (bad word choice?) than 'switch' because it's more flexible at no additional syntactic cost. FWIW, I mostly just like it because of the extreme syntactic regularity of MWI.

(I have no horse in the race. I just use Python occasionally as a scripting language, but I've been moving over to Haskell+Stack for scripts, so... )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1) If you format your code more nicely it becomes easier to read. I don't think this has anything to do with pythons ternary operator.

2) I also like it. Mostly because it was missing for so long and that has always been very annoying.

</comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of what 'when' is like in VHDL:

        mySignal <= "1111" when some_state = '1' else "0011"

</comment><comment><USER6> Compared to C's ternary operator [1] it seems the Python version operates on 5 items.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_operation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_operation)

<comment><USER7> Isn't it just two nested ternary operators? The equivalent being:

      selected_value =
        condition_1 ?
          value_1 :
          condition_2 ? value_2 : value_3

<comment><USER8> The C (and C++) ternary operator is usually used in a more convenient way to handle multiple cases:

      selected_value =
        condition_1 ? value_1 :
        condition_2 ? value_2 :
            value_3

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> i use this in ruby and thought it was fine at first. but after looking back at older code or code others have written i have changed my mind and think it is usually better to avoid it.

i think it makes it more complicated to think about because it requires some backtracking in thought

<comment><USER10> Ruby's if/elsif/else statement returns a value making it a nice alternative to trenary operators. I have for the world not understood why one would do it otherwise.

Unless you want to use mutation you have to use it in python, and then you end up with ugly chains if you want brevity.

<comment><USER7> If it returns a value then wouldn't it be an if expression, not an if statement?

It certainly sounds like a useful feature, as someone who writes a lot of JavaScript I can see the value (and I believe a form of this is coming to JS in the form of `do` expressions).

<comment><USER11> In Ruby, everything is an expression. I also miss Ruby's unless in many languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find it usually makes lines really long, especially if you avoid usage of \ like a lot of style guides recommend. The longer lines usually end up more difficult to read than a simple regular if statement.

<comment><USER13> You can dispense with the backslashes if you put the entire if-expression in parentheses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> rust solved this itch in a wonderful way via the match operator. match has some powerful semantics that let it select branches beyond just a pure bool in the conditional expression (e.g. value in some range?)

[https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ch06-02-match.html](https://doc.rust- lang.org/book/ch06-02-match.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Hmm, to me it looks confusing however it's broken down, but I'm not a python programmer. Is there no switch/case expression that would be preferable?

</comment><comment><USER16> Rule of thumb: optimize for readability</comment>


$45,000 algorithmic contest - <AUTHOR> http://tunedit.org/challenge/material-classification

<comment><USER2> Sounds like something to build as part of your tricorder and get paid twice :oP [http://www.reghardware.com/2011/05/12/x_prize_foundation_tri...](http://www.reghardware.com/2011/05/12/x_prize_foundation_tricorder/)

Also, that doesn't sound like a lot of money to transfer intellectual property rights for that. I guess they have patents on the hardware side so the algorithm is not easily monetisable by itself.

<comment><USER3> If you view this as a freelance project instead, it is a fixed price $45,000 project where you only get paid if you 1-beat the best result of a team of professionals who have been doing this, 2-are the first to do so, and 3-achieve something that may or may not be possible.

<comment><USER4> The 2nd chapter in Head First Java has a competition for an Aero chair between a procedural programmer and an OO programmer. The narrative describes how the OO programmer dominates the procedural programmer throughout the competition. So, who won the chair? Well, according to the book it was the 3rd programmer neither knew was offered the contract.

Seriously, I guess this would be fun if you and a few buddies were bored and in school. Otherwise, no thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> they want 95% classification done using 16KHz sampling of "passive electromagnetic emission" (i.e. basically noise).

Good luck classifying between me and Pavarotti only by listening to our breath over the phone.

<comment><USER6> For reference, the wavelength of an 8 KiHz electromagnetic wave (the Nyquist frequency at their sampling rate) is over 36 km. (Edit: at the speed of light in vacuum, that is.)

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something, but this would seem to limit the spatial resolution that could be achieved by sampling a single stream of passive voltages at that rate, and I would expect differences between materials to mostly be on the microscale. But they don't say what other constraints might be in effect or what the materials or environment are, either, so…

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 45,000 $CAD, not $USD

<comment><USER8> ergo $46,000 USD

<comment><USER9> before tax.</comment></comment></comment>


Perl on the rise for DevOps - <AUTHOR> https://scalability.org/2017/01/perl-on-the-rise-for-devops/ <comment><USER2> I started perl because of extending nagios in the 200X years.

Then I started to write fast hacks with it (iptables to excel, monitoring to Jira, parsers, cron's, etc) really useful for daily needs at $job.

Then I started to write web dashboards (Catalyst and first Dancer releases, ok the first one was CGI) with EXTjs and jquery frontends. My team mates did find those dashboards useful.

Last years I've work with AWS and other APIs (i.e. vmware apis), doing more modern web applications using perl (and twitter bootstrap, JSON web tokens, Oauth, swagger, etc) and it did the job.

My hobby project is a lottery predictor using perl, sometimes I get more refunds than when I did use random numbers... still not rich :-)

Usually, the language is not the barrier (if it provides standard basic needs, like web frameworks, library bindings and ORMs). The programmer is the barrier.

If you can glue SSH, State, Metrics, DataWareHouse, and HTTP (API and frontend) you can do devops.

This talks about devops and perl, so now I would like to point to Paws!

[https://github.com/pplu/aws-sdk-perl#trying-it- out](https://github.com/pplu/aws-sdk-perl#trying-it-out)

[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/developer/hello-perl- developers...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/developer/hello-perl-developers/)

I can say that at least one person (me) has been successful, bridging operations and developers teams, using perl, until the present.

You just need a couple of frontend and API design skills, and then people doesn't care about your backend, while your service is useful.

Articles about this, always mention TIOBE... I never did care about it, I just put my effort in getting my job done. I care more about teammates congratulations.

</comment><comment><USER3> Perl5 may be making a run, but I think it'll be short-lived. The thing is, you can pick a language like Golang, Python, Ruby, or Javascript now and build your entire backend stack in it. That's a really powerful idea.

Python has become particularly ubiquitous in web frameworks, machine learning, data science, devops, and general scripting and data munging. It may be the one language right now that you can't actually not use it for at least something in your stack.

<comment><USER4> I'd rather build my backend with Perl than do sysadmin stuff with JavaScript, if I really have to stay single language (which I wouldn't, but I can understand the motivation and it basically gave birth to Perl in the first palce). But mileages do vary, of course.</comment></comment>


Uber for Everything - <AUTHOR> How do you feel if a startup will actually make everything you don't want to, for low pricing, and mostly done by unemployed and college students. Can't stop mentioning that all tasks are insured, if not completed with quality all money back guarantee and has actually a laaarge margin (believe me, large) or earnings. Starting in the U.S but can make it to countries like Nigeria, Colombia, Dom Republic to mention a few.
Competitors may be TaskRabbit, Handy, Wag Walker and/or BIZZBIT.
Want to hear your Silicon Valley toughts. And the question will be, will you invest? <comment><USER2> Since you did say _everything_ , how much for a wisdom tooth removal?

<comment><USER3> wisdom tooth removal by un-employed or college students?</comment></comment>