Here's The Evidence That The Tech Sector Is In A Massive Bubble - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/evidence-that-tech-sector-is-in-a-bubble-2013-11 <comment><USER2> I was in university during the late 90's .com boom and the current situation does not feel the same. While some of the high prices being paid for startups and talent in silicon valley point to some possible over heating it does not seem to be affecting the wider tech world in the way that .com boom did.

In 1999 and early 2000 every investing show on TV would constantly be talking about the new highs that Microsoft, Cisco, Nortel hit or the latest up and comers and the massive amounts of money being poured into it all. It wasn't the normal speal, it was like watching a cheer leading squad cheer on the the never ending boom. I don't know quite how to describe it, it was kind of eerie and surreal. And it wasn't just the investing shows that were doing it, it was being talked about all over the place, even outlets that would not normally talk about anything money or stock related.

The current situation does not seem much like that to me. Sure there are several cases of companies with sky high valuations and questionable future revenue but it's not industry wide like 1999.

<comment><USER3> The eternal claim of bubble-deniers is "This time it's different!"

This does not prove or disprove anything, of course. But it does make "This time it's different!" an insufficient proof of something not being a bubble.

<comment><USER4> And that is in turn the eternal claim of bubble believers, usually delivered as reflexively as above.

[https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=%22this+t...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=%22this+time+it's+different%22&start=0)

Is d4vlx mistaken? If so tell us how.

<comment><USER3> I do not claim to have some proof towards either "side" of bubblism or non- bubblism. I was merely trying to point out that d4vlx's comment essentially only said "This time it's different!", and I wanted to explain that this does _not_ prove it's not a bubble, since every bubble is different than the last one.

My comment does not show that it is a bubble, nor was I trying to do so. The most that could be claimed is that I was trying to show that the possibility that it is a bubble still exists.

<comment><USER5> You aren't doing justice to d4vlx's comment. What he said is that this bubble has not permeated the community outside of tech, whereas the .com bubble did (and I would add the housing bubble, and the per-depression bubble). A larger bubble is always producing a larger bust, with non-linear effect.

"This time is different" is normally referring to "tech is changing the world, we don't need he profits, it will grow forever, this time it's different" or "they don't make any more land, housing prices will grow forever, this time it's different". It's not at all the same things to point out that the scale of the bubble is much smaller. Lumping the two together produces a strong impression that your comment is disingenuous.

<comment><USER3> So, this could simply be a smaller bubble. "This time it's smaller!" is an equally non-persuasive argument.

<comment><USER2> What is the difference between a "market correction" and a "bubble"? Do you think there is a risk of the entire web industry imploding like it did in 2000?

<comment><USER3> The risk of anything happening very much like the last time is always low.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So much technical analysis, and so little actually valuable information.

The thing is, anyone can draw a sawtooth over these kinds of things. The catch is, how wide is the sawtooth? Why would the market crash _now_ and not in for example, 2 years, or 5, or 10? You can't predict that with simple technical analysis, you need actual indicators.

What are the indicators they suggest? Anecdotal evidence that _some_ companies have _some_ investments in businesses that don't seem like they're worth it.

So what if AH stopped investing in early stage B2C startups? Perhaps they've just looked at their portfolio and determined their risk to be saturated? And what does the valuation of B2C have to do with the overall valuation of the tech industry?

Why is no one showing the numbers, how much money is in B2C tech startups right now? How much is in B2B tech? How much revenue are these sectors generating? How can we be expected to make a judgement over if we're in a bubble or not if instead of useful numbers they give us a bunch of anecdotes?

Articles like these are FUD, I don't know what the motivation is.

Please note that I'm not saying we're _not_ in a bubble. I'm just saying this article is not helping us deciding if we're in one.

</comment><comment><USER7> The following is false, confusing the short-term financing available under QE3 with the cost of financing business investments:

> Interest rates are basically at zero and have been for some time. When > borrowers are paying close to zero interest on loans, that makes money cheap > to get.

> People with money generally have a choice: save it in interest-paying, risk- > free bank accounts or invest it in riskier assets that may pay more money > over time. When interest is at zero, virtually any other kind of investment > is likely to pay more because the risk-free alternative is so lousy. So > investment asset bubbles get created. Stocks tend to go up.

QE3 consists of a series of very short-term loans (initially they were 1-day loans) that keep being redeemed and reissued, with the promise that the money injected into the system in this way will be taken out in the medium term. (This death sentence on the QE3 money is the reason why the money injected into the economy has not had the inflationary impact predicted by gold bugs).

Such very short-term loans are very valuable for financial institutions: they can finance short-term speculative investments and can be used as a partial basis to create longer-term financing. However, they do not provide the kind of investment Business Insider claims. For this kind of investment, you need financing over a period of years. 10-year treasuries, which provide a basline for the cost of longer-term financing, are relatively cheap, at 3.4% interest, but they are most certainly not interest free.

Every venture capitalist understands this, I am sure. A competent journalist who covers business financing will understand this too.

</comment><comment><USER8> The fundamental difference between the valuations today and those in the 2000 is that most tech companies are actually operationally solvent. That is not true for all of them, but if a crisis hit valuations and investors lost all confidence, companies with operational solvency will care very little and will not close down.

There is something similar to a bubble that plagues the sector and its those B2C companies that insistently build themselves to capture users and get their value from selling out to the big boys without ever making a decent profit.

</comment><comment><USER9> If it's a bubble as a programmer is there anything I can do about it or do differently? I don't have any shares.

<comment><USER10> General advice:

1\. Settle your debts soon. Losing your job does not mean losing your debts.

2\. If you have no debts, save your money with low-risk investments (or a bank account, but then you are probably losing to inflation). If you lose your job you will still need to have some money available.

<comment><USER11> What's the best way for an average person to invest? Can and should ones buy index fund, or just lower-risk hedge funds?

<comment><USER12> 1\. Figure out your risk profile--if you're young and won't need to use your savings for a while, you can take a lot more risks.

2\. Your risk profile determines the ratio of stocks to bonds that you want to invest in. Stocks are higher risk, but they've historically given _much_ higher returns than bonds. One bit of classic investment advice is "put {your age}% in bonds, everything else in stocks."

3\. Buy index funds or ETFs. For longer term, ETFs are a better deal, and while supposedly less "convenient," it really isn't hard to open an account with an online broker and buy ETFs. You have a lot of options here, but the S&P500 is the standard. You could put some percentage into emerging markets, small-caps, etc. The nice thing about ETF's, or index funds for that matter, is that they're partially diversified by nature, so unless you really try you're not going to get a portfolio that's highly susceptible to one particular type of risk. Remember that every time you trade you're probably paying a brokerage fee, though--if you pay an $8 fee on a $1000 investment, that's almost 1% gone--a few months of expected returns!

4\. Repeat as you save money.

5\. Ignore all market advice, news that "X is a bubble," "Y is about to crash," "Z is about to take off," etc. People who are consistently right about this sort of thing are making billions in the stock market, not writing blog posts or newspaper columns. And even if they are working on Wall St, it's difficult to tell the difference between luck and acumen. If returns were purely random, with nothing called "skill," we'd be statistically quite likely to see someone like Warren Buffett--who has beaten the market consistently-- just like we're statistically quite likely to see someone win the lottery. Buy and hold, only sell to spend. That's the _only strategy you follow_!

6\. Exception to 5: if you like to gamble. :) There's nothing wrong with having a "fun" investment or two, as long as you know that they're a consumption good and don't really count on keeping them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I couldn't agree more only I would say there are now hundreds of small bubbles that will pop at random and continuously. I'm talking about the startups that have no real value besides the fact that someone has invested in them. These businesses are propped up and made to look successful while in reality, they are nothing more than a localized bubble. Now don't get me wrong, there are startups with real services and long term value but most are just a show. It seems like the goal of many major investors is to prop up a startup make it look successful, offer stocks publicly, cash out and repeat. These people are not creating lasting wealth. They are mining money from the general public.

<comment><USER14> There will be collateral damage also. When the tide goes out, companies that derive their revenue from failing companies will suffer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My memories of the 90's bubble:

* Extended friends and family, none of whom worked in tech, were all considering investing in tech stocks.

* For that matter: everyone I knew was investing in equities.

* Largely profitless Internet brands bought up most of the Superbowl ad inventory

* Startups were funded whose business models were dominated by inventory and logistics costs

* Startup marketing (not just promotion, but all of marketing) was focused on epic launch events

* Companies with no profits routinely had public offerings

* Seemingly hopeless capital-intensive ideas (like 1 hour free delivery of candy bars) were kept afloat for years by investment dollars

* Most American consumers had limited access to the network, and nobody had ubiquitous mobile access

* You could close your eyes and fall backwards into an A-round (for instance: we managed to do it), which was the de facto standard first financing vehicle for startups

* The major investment banks not only fought over tech IPOs, but housed famous talking heads who spoke on TV and wrote op-eds cheerleading specific tech startups

* To get a web app launched, you bought several Sun servers and a 3-4RU Cisco router, each of which cost mid-5-figures. Oracle was your database.

* Cisco would "sell" you routers in exchange for company equity, and book the sale as revenue

* Totally reasonable for a startup to write its whole deployment stack, including application logic, in C

* Virtually all software development was done waterfall-style, frequently with an MBA calling the shots

* Just-formed startups had 5+ person "marketing" teams and 2-3 person "bizdev" teams

* $100k+ logos, $75k/yr to PR/branding firms

* Startups promoted themselves with print ads in magazines. That was a normal thing to do.

This is just a random list; I'm sure others here have better points. Writing it, I'm struck by how much worse startups and startup business practices were while generating so much more interest from the broader market than they do now.

I have a hard time believing that anyone who thinks we're in another dot-com bubble was actually working during the dot-com bubble.

The article itself is almost offensively bad. The fed funds rate was over 5% during the dot-com bubble. Stocks are doing well now, but so is everything else, and the notable tech stocks helping drive the market are drowning in cash that they're generating directly from consumers. "We're due for a downturn"? What does that even mean? Buy puts? Salaries are high? Maybe we're having an easier time paying engineers now that we're not using that money to buy TV ads or pay MBAs to "monetize eyeballs with brand equity". The rest of the article seems to be a critique of how big companies are choosing to spend their money --- but whether or not you think Yahoo should buy Tumblr or Twitter should be giving VP/Engs 10MM in stock, companies making decisions with their own money isn't what characterizes a stock bubble.

Obviously, what this article is _really_ trying to do is to make a prose slideshow with links to other Business Insider articles, because its author had nothing better to write today. Jose, you're not dumb. You can find better articles than this. Unless this submission was sarcastic, in which case, well played.

<comment><USER16> > * Startups were funded whose business models were dominated by inventory and > logistics costs

Wouldn't that describe the whole flash sale industry and hence its recent decline?

Although I don't think that any 1 point makes a bubble, it is interesting how some of them are recurring now.

<comment><USER15> Aren't Fab.com's costs dominated by headcount and marketing? Do you understand what I mean by "dominated by inventory and logistics costs"? I mean companies who owned multiple warehouses full of inventory, and who assumed direct responsibility for getting that stuff to customers.

<comment><USER16> I was thinking more like Gilt since I believe there were some articles a year or two ago about how they were sitting on a ton of unsold inventory. Although Fab did come to mind, does Fab not take any inventory risk on their products? Or would you not include either of those in that category since they don't do the actual delivery to the customers as WebVan did?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think OP is probably right.

But the quote at the end from the New Yorker article omits the next part where Draper himself does -not- believe there's a dip or crash coming -- although the author thinks Draper's evidence points there, Draper does not, he thinks we're at the part of his graph where the next thing is a boom, not a crash.

The very next sentence:

> _I asked him what he thought the next dip would look like, and he frowned. > The coast was socked in, and the Ritz golf course seemed kind of scraggly. > "Well, first we need a boom," he said._

My gut feeling is to agree with the OP, but the OP is a bit sloppy with it's evidence.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is not a fucking bubble. I was working for a startup when I was 14 back in actual bubble days. There is no way that investment money is flowing from mom and pop investors to startups. None. Back then there was, because VCs could unload a company with ZERO product onto the stock exchange "we're building the online parking ticket payment platform of the future" 300 million dollar valuation, no revenue, no deals, just a broken half finished application and every mom and pop doing back of the napkin math as to how much they would be worth once NYC and Toronto jumped on board their platform.

Do you know why Pinterest is worth a crap ton of money? Because they own women online. Just like Facebook owned twentysomethings online. When you control how a demographic shares information, it is trivially easy to generate revenue. Before you even both getting distracted by revenue, you focus on how far you can build out your base before you make money off of it.

I've been saying we're not in a bubble for the past 5 years, and we still arn't. If I've had a 7 digit exit for a machine learning company and I can't just walk into a VC firm and raise money for my next thing, then we arn't in a bubble.

<comment><USER19> _There is no way that investment money is flowing from mom and pop investors to startups_

It is tho'. QE -> inflation -> erosion of life savings. The difference is, this time these guys don't get a choice.

<comment><USER15> Inflation is lower today than it was in the middle of the housing bubble.

<comment><USER19> It is certainly reported as such. But when energy[1], travel[2] and food[3] are all going up "faster than inflation" then the official number is misleading, no? And interest rates on savings - because there is so much money sloshing around - are at historic lows.

[1] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24716146](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24716146) [2] [http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/dec/20/rail-fares- rise](http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/dec/20/rail-fares-rise) [3] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2463143/The-cost- liv...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2463143/The-cost-living- rising-faster-UK-Europe-soaring-food-energy-bills.html)

Deliberately linked to both the Graun and the Mail there so no political bias.

<comment><USER15> Inflation is _significantly_ lower than it was _during the middle of the housing bubble_. The factors you bring up would need to be distorting the numbers wildly and incredibly in order to make today's inflation levels a proxy for what tech stocks did to retail investors in the 1990s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I could care less if the bubble pops. In fact, it would probably be a good thing. Everyone who is in tech for the wrong reasons would have to find something else to do. San Francisco might go back to being a liveable city. And the real hackers, the ones working on real problems (instead of novel ways to share pictures of cats online) would suddenly find themselves back in an environment that closer resembles reality.

</comment><comment><USER21> What's a good resource for learning about the web bubble of the 90's? I would assume that a large portion of the HN audience (including myself) didn't actually live or work during this time, so it's hard to compare to today's tech industry. Is it worth knowing the details behind it?

</comment><comment><USER22> The question was never whether we are in a bubble or not. It has always been _when_ it would pop.

</comment><comment><USER23> The prices of acquisitions, despite their possible justifications, is becoming a bubble because of all the recent revelations about the value of ("big") data, and of users' time spent online (i.e., a land-grab). Investors are learning that data and user acquisition (regardless of how much money is made per user) is really valuable, but it's hard to value both, since the monetization of both has proven inconsistent and, in some cases. For instance, Facebook has a lot of users and even more data. Their current valuation in the open market puts their market capitalization at 94 times what they currently earn (net profit) in a quarter. That's about 4 times what is "normal" for a popular investment, and about 7 times more than Apple (which is currently the most valuable company on the planet).

Now, the bubble doesn't have to burst. Assuming companies like EMC, IBM, and the hundreds of smaller companies with data analysis offerings can come up with increasingly efficient and offerings that increase revenue per user/data- point. The best that most user/data-centric start-ups can currently get (without loads of capital) is affiliate commissions or "data-driven" ads (from Google, et al). This is rapidly changing, and if it can keep pace with the demands, there's no reason the current bubble can't turn into a profit center.

Another thing worth noting is that, while user/data-centric start-up valuations are (very much) on the high end, other, unrelated software and hardware/IaaS companies are thriving in sectors that aim at replacing human workers in various fields (ecommerce, marketing, accounting, medical [you name it], etc.) with machines. This is intrinsically valuable and cannot be described as a bubble any more than replacing manual gas pumps/attendants with automatic ones can. It's just the fruition of efficient ideas, coupled with readily available technology at prices that the SMB market can afford.

TL;DR

The bubble in user/data-centric start-up valuation doesn't reflect the rest of the technology sector, and user/data-centric start-ups are quickly learning how to turn the aforementioned into a profit.

<comment><USER24> >> 7 times more than Apple (which is currently the most valuable company on the planet).

Something is missing in that sentence. The most "valuable publicly traded tech company"? Or is it another definition of valuable? or of company? At around 400bn it's less valuable than Saudi Aramco (with a value around $2 - $5 trillion USD, PetroChina (1Tn) or Pemex (also about 400bn!).

[http://blogs.mccombs.utexas.edu/titman/2010/03/01/more- thoug...](http://blogs.mccombs.utexas.edu/titman/2010/03/01/more-thoughts-on- the-value-of-saudi-aramco/) [http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aA1jw...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aA1jwRD9tCuA) [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/5de6ef96-8b95-11db-a61f-0000779e23...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/5de6ef96-8b95-11db-a61f-0000779e2340.html#axzz2jcPMMnkj)

<comment><USER23> Oops, I meant in the US, not the planet. Also, AAPL is at 467.25B.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Are a few firms overvalued right now? Of course. But that's nothing new. Healthy markets have a mix of overvalued and undervalued stocks.

The main difference today is that most rational investors understand the diversity of software firms. The business model and drivers of a company like Facebook differ wildly from a company like Workday. But back in the 90s, they both would have been lumped in together as "tech stocks".

The only common ground between tech firms today is that they often compete for the same talent and investment. But that seems to be changing slowly as the industry matures.

</comment><comment><USER26> will be interesting to see whether the drive to get people to learn programming survives this bubble

<comment><USER27> I don't believe it will. It dipped considerably after 2000. I believe the "learn to program" mantra has been pushed by A) Companies making money on this space B) Companies whose tech labor costs are too high. Pair this with the fact that I have a CS degree and know about 8 languages

<comment><USER26> _> Pair this with the fact that I have a CS degree and know about 8 languages_

i don't follow. what happens when we pair a and b with this fact?

<comment><USER27> I guess I was trying to gramtically incorrectly say that I wasn't some "MBA without insight into engineering" stating the opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is it just me, or does it feel like the tech sector can't do well without someone crying bubble?

This article in particular starts off with some relatively good data, but the rest of it is just anecdotal hogwash. Particularly the wage issue.

</comment><comment><USER29> Are the first two points made in the article really legitimate? Central banks decrease interest rates in crises, so I wouldn't expect lower interest rates to be correlated with (or to be reason to increase your credence in) a bubble. And the past stock market prices alone being evidence for future prices? Doesn't that _assume_ that the random-walk hypothesis (and the efficient- market hypothesis) are wrong?

</comment><comment><USER30> _"The thought was that well-fed developers could create value better than the stock market."_

And amen to that. I can't believe the quote above was meant to be a snarky comment instead of a blunt dose of realism.

</comment><comment><USER31> The author lost all credibility with. "Guess which way this line is likely to go next."

Past performance is not indicative of future results.

<comment><USER19> The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

<comment><USER27> Great quote and very true!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Assume the stock market follows the theory of supply and demand. The amount of stocks is mostly constant, so if the stock prices increases then the demand must also have increased. Why has the demand increased? Because more people want to put more money there. Why do they want that? Because they have more money and the only reasonable thing to do with that money is to buy stocks. Why do they have more money? Tax cuts for the rich. There is only so many yachts and cars you can buy, the rest of the unallocated capital has to be invested somehow.

Will the demand for stock continue to grow? Perhaps if there are more tax cuts or if more money is "freed" so it can be put in stocks.

<comment><USER33> It isn't "tax cuts", it is QE3, with the government pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the securities markets.

<comment><USER32> It was tax cuts during Bush's years. But yes, the end result is basically the same though.</comment></comment></comment>


A new collaborative problem solving platform - <AUTHOR> http://startups.fm/2013/05/13/skibb-a-new-collaborative-problem-solving-platform-revolutinizing-the-way-you-discover-answers-to-any-question.html#more-1533

<comment><USER2> I thought about creating something very similar for years but never began actually working on it.

Chances are, many people were thinking about building such a platform during the last couple of years. It is weird reading about my "own" idea for the first time, though.

I can't wait to see how Skibb will turn out!</comment>


A Debian bug caused by Playboy - <AUTHOR> https://lintian.debian.org/tags/license-problem-non-free-img-lenna.html <comment><USER2> That image (cropped to be SFW) has been ubiquitous in the electronic imaging industry for at least three decades. It was selected for its color and contrast diversity, not because it is a picture of a playboy model. Most people who have seen it have not seen the full un-cropped original image, so they may not even be aware of the nudity/history/source.

</comment><comment><USER3> the classic instance of "men know better what women could possibly want"

so let us men remove the image of a woman without even consulting her of whether she minds being on this picture

> "At the conference, she was busy signing autographs, posing for pictures, > and giving a presentation about herself. Lenna commented to the Wired > reporter: "They must be so tired of me ... looking at the same picture for > all these years!"

<comment> GuB-42 The argument about sexism is, I think silly. That's unless there is a peer reviewed paper showing otherwise, this is science after all.

But the copyright argument makes sense. Debian is very strict in that regard. Going as far as to rename Firefox to Iceweasel to avoid issues with the brand and logo. I wonder why it is back to Firefox btw, did the license change?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wikipedia has information about it: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna)</comment>


Building data science capabilities: the six functions of data teams - <AUTHOR> https://stochasticfutures.com/functions-of-data-teams <comment><AUTHOR> Author here -- I'm very keen to ensure I haven't missed any important functions. Any feedback is very welcome!</comment>


Ask HN: Has your social live taken a downward trend since you started coding - <AUTHOR> It seems i am starting to get socially stunted, I tend to forget basic social cues required to really get conversations going with people, and I generally seem to prefer staying indoors nowadays, its not really bad yet though but I am beginning to worry, have you gotten worse socially so far since you started coding. <comment><USER4> This isn't just something developers/engineers go through many office workers suffer from this same issue when there job has fuzzy endings, e.g. Marketing, Business Development etc.

So you aren't alone, I think most everyone goes through some form of work based isolation essentially if they do knowledge work (or have fuzzy endings). The key is to have a few activities you do outside of work that are scheduled and you enjoy. This forces you to do two things, one cut off work, and two interact with other humans doing something non-work focused. For me, I have found coaching youth sports is a great outlet that checks a lot of the boxes, e.g. people interaction, not work related and something I enjoy myself which forces me to be active too. I also love the water, just put me on or in water (pool, ocean, boat etc) and I can nearly instantly relax and enjoy myself.

Being outside is healthy, you need a "healthy" amount of sun time as our bodies use it for more than just Vitamin D, just don't cook yourself that doesn't do anyone good. I can seriously tell a difference in my mood and behavior even after just a week if I have been inside too much or we have non- stop rain where I don't get any sun.

* edit a couple of words

</comment><comment><USER5> Having done management, entrepreneurship and sales, I think coding has the best social life.

Entrepreneurship - it's literally part of your job to 'network'. But a lot of the people you meet are there to get something from others. It's vapid socializing, sort of like getting full with junk food or catching sleep at the back of a car.

Management is similar. You meet people as work. It makes meeting people not very fun especially when there's arguments and uncomfortable conversations. Some of us used to take vacations off after a week of meetings because we just want to get away from people.

Sales - you meet a lot of people who may or may not want to meet you. Some are really nice but because it's part of your job, you end up entertaining conversations you don't want to be a part of.

So by contrast, developers have the best social life. You can make node_modules meme and someone gets it. You can talk about fun theories - <USER2> too difficult like in academia, but the conversations aren't shallow either. You have acquaintances who sincerely enjoy your company, and not because they need something out of you.

</comment><comment><USER6> To an extent, yes, but I'm pretty confident that it's not actually the _coding_ that's the issue, in that I can work solo on something (even something exciting and all-consuming) and context-switch into social or family mode with only a few minutes of transition time. The "software is a team sport" aspect of a lot of professional programming is much more wearing, though.

My model for this is that I seem to have a fixed budget of sociability that I can either spend on meeting at work or on friends and family. It's pretty frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes , it's a danger to look out for . Definitely try to balance it out with tech meet ups and other activities if you don't see yourself doing anything else in life as a job —— for me , now when people issue dumb statements lik 'I cant imagine how they're do that!!!' I take it literally like it's code world and explain to them how .... "jeez man it's just an expresaion, you know what I mean!" Brain can't help it. The more of whatever we do influences us and each year it's harder to change paths as we grow firmer in our habits

</comment><comment><USER8> How many hours a day are you coding without human interaction? Are you taking breaks?

The main problem is that we can't switch modes or switch off - <USER3> temporarily. This happens to me often. I have been somewhat of a remote worker for the past 18 months, and I agree with you that out of frustration you are likely to choose to remain reclusive and indoors thereby making social (integration) matters worse if you don't do something to realign yourself.

Here are my known effective antidotes:

1\. When you talk with others, make eye contact. Smile. You don't have to say much. I find that I have to actively force myself to look at the people I'm talking to. There is a lot of "communication" that takes place and cues from the eyes.

2\. Make new friends or just acquaintances. I spend 4-5 days per week at the gym at exactly the same time in the day (10:30 am). This is probably the only social interaction I get on an average day outside of my family. By choosing a set time for the gym, I get to meet my own regulars who I've gotten to know over several months. The banter after friendly smiles is as important as a thorough workout for me.

2\. Read fiction. I spend 1 hour a day reading well-written fiction. Away from the keyboard. Grab a nice cup of coffee, sit somewhere quiet and read. Choose a book of interest where the writer has full command over his/her language. I am currently reading an English translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's "Wind, Sand and Stars". I find reading the non-computer world helps to rewire my mind, now a specialised one-trick pony, back to a general conversational state.

Take care.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's a dangerous path of introvert freelancer. At some point it becomes easier to type than to speak. And, damn, coding is addictive.

<comment><USER10> Coding is addictive? It's something I can barely compel myself to do anymore when I'm paid roughly the same to do customer service.

<comment><USER11> Not the OP, but the coding I find additive is not the coding I get paid for. E.g. playing around with a new language or framework because its fun.

<comment><USER10> Even coding my fun projects becomes a hassle and annoying when the precise vision I have is not easily and quickly built with the available tools.

These days I get an infinite amount of pleasure from chopping onions, carefully cooking them until they caramelize, salting/spicing them ever so slightly, and watching the smiles on my friends faces. It's a definite and immediate payoff, and a visceral one at that :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> No...?

But then, if i'm on the computer i'm coding or doing something productive.

I don't read the news and I don't have facebook.

I'm i'm not "doing something" \- i.e something that requires thinking, i'm out and about and exploring.

I don't watch tv either...i'm probably more sociable than most people to be fair...

I get depressed and demotivated...and stop learning if I don't get enough stimulation...

</comment><comment><USER13> Depends on whether you join 'the collective' and spend your time there. Otherwise you could choose the hermetic lifestyle and live on your own terms with your own rules. It's up to you. People have a hard time choosing between the two however and this ties into your identity and The Self; or who you actually are fundamentally.

</comment><comment><USER11> I find after a day of just doing coding in an open office environment, I can barely speak to anyone because its so draining.

</comment><comment><USER14> What social life? It barely existed before I started coding, and coding hasn't exactly made it any 'worse'. In that sense, it's not really done anything that writing, game development or running internet sites had probably done already.

Being introverted and not being too sociable was probably a factor in me becoming a programmer to begin with.

But hey, it can definitely hurt your ability to socialise as well, especially if you don't have anything else to do outside of work/computer related activities.

That said</comment>


Mir – Ubuntu's new display server - <AUTHOR> http://fridge.ubuntu.com/2013/03/04/mir-an-outpost-envisioned-as-a-new-home/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ubuntu-news+%28Ubuntu+News%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

<comment><USER2> Yay more "not invented here". The list of OS's is going to be: MacOS X, windows, Linux and completely separately Ubuntu by time they've replaced everything.

Canonical are turning into a 1990's style Unix vendor. We haven't forgotten that crock of shit yet.

<comment><USER3> "We haven't forgotten that crock of shit yet."

Ahahaha. That's great.

I was coming here to post the same thing as a question... Because I feel like they're on a mission to replace all the core components for the look and feel.

Is this a stated mission? Have they replaced anything else "major" other than the window manager?

<comment><AUTHOR> I, as an end user, care about what I see and interact with. Why should I care about what's behind the scenes? If replacing the X is what it takes to reach the goal so be it.

Of course, if it turns into something designed to takes away my freedoms, then I have to worry.

<comment><USER2> The thing is that you are sacrificing your freedom to it. You're being slowly locked into another incompatible platform.

One of the great freedoms of open source software is to go "fuck you disty, I'm off to another one". When all your stuff is coded against Mir, Upstart and Unity, you no longer have that luxury.

Also, beauty is only skin deep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >Tailored towards an EGL/GL(ES) world.

Oh no. Enabling compositing in metacity lets my accu die one hole hour earlier (about 30% earlier). In the age of mobile you __please __stop assuming "There is enough GPU/CPU power anyway"? Yes there is, but it consumes electricity.

On the other hand I'm looking forward to a x11 replacement. A display server in the spirit of x11 with lots of features thrown out. Fonts are rendered in the program anyway today. And less network round-trips. And allow me the change the output server or even just the display of a running program.

<comment><USER5> Don't Windows, OS X, and all phones get fine battery life with compositing?

<comment><USER2> Only by turning the display and controller off after 20-30 seconds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> (OFF TOPIC: OP here. Mir is my family/last name. My friend sent me the link with subject line - "You are Ubuntu's new display server".)

<comment><USER6> That's a classic. You should print out that email and frame it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> " _a beautiful and lean user experience_ "

Yes please! Especially the lean bit. Saves all those older laptops and PCs filling up the landfill. Do I really need something more powerful than a Cray 1 to run a noddy spreadsheet or an R script?

" _Tightly integrated with the Unity shell, fulfilling the shell's requirements while at the same time not dictating any sort of semantics up the stack._ "

Does that mean that Linux graphical applications will 'just work' on the Unity/MIR platform?

" _we wanted to decouple the way the shell works on top of the display server from the application-facing protocol_ "

That sounds like what I was asking above. E.g. LibreOffice will 'just work'

" _We are in active conversations with GPU vendors to enable Mir on those drivers/GPUs, too_ "

oh-oh; nvidia not on board so back to Debian from the one after Wheezy...

It will be fun to watch... possibly on the sidelines if they don't sort nvidia drivers

</comment><comment><USER8> I wince at the choice of name. Mir, the space station, didn't help anyone get to the Moon. It was eventually crashed into the ocean, on purpose.

<comment><USER9> Мир(Mir), in Russian, is either "world", or "peace", not merely the name given to the space station.

<comment><USER8> From the post: "The project was born and we decided to name it Mir (as in the space station), as it would be our outpost that finally enables us to reach our goal of arriving at the moon, providing a seamless and beautiful user experience spanning multiple form-factors."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> More comments are available on this HN thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5319434>

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting that they decided to "reimplement" stuff again. Nice to see them going with Qt though.

<comment><USER12> People on the Linux Desktop have been talking about getting rid of X for years, literally. Everyone agrees that X was designed in a very different world from today, and with its client/server architecture it's pulling back the Linux Desktop more that anything else. But nothing ever comes out of it.

In the mean time: * MacOSX used a Unix kernel but they didn't use a line of X11 * Android is based on Linux but again, no X.

Ubuntu is the first distro with a clear plan to actually get rid of that crap. And now people are bashing them? What do you think they should do, start discussing with Debian, Fedora and the others about the best think to do? But people have been talking about getting rid of X for years already!

Here is how it works: 1\. Get shit done 2\. If other people find it useful/interesting, they'll use it and maybe work with you to improve it.

Never try to do 2. before 1. in Open Source, it doesn't work.

<comment><USER13> People get things done - Wayland. Comes along Canonical and creates their own stuff just because Wayland is not controlled by them. Must be so fun to fragment Linux even more.

<comment><USER14> To be fair, they give other reasons for dropping Wayland. You might not believe them, but you're hardly giving them much of an argument.

<comment><USER13> Their reasons don't sound convincing, and Wayland developers refuted them also pointing out that Canonical didn't even engage in any dialog with them whatsoever. They just created their own thing silently in secret. Such kind of approach doesn't add to credibility of their reasoning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Perhaps this will make it easier to handle multi touch?

</comment><comment><USER16> So, where does GNOME fit into this? Unity is still very much layered on top of GNOME services. With Unity Next heavily utilizing Qt5/QML2, I'm very curious if they want to remove their dependence on GNOME for other system services.

THAT is something I'd love to see someone work on. Switching between KDE/GNOME is frustrating because there is so insanely much duplicated between the two with slightly different feature sets.

Mir, meh. I'm guessing it has most to do with being able to target existing Android devices. Most of the design rationale applies to Wayland as well, (including the things they seem to mark against Wayland, strangely)</comment>


Artificial Morality - how-about-this http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/provocations/artificial-morality/ <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting read, and some of it rings true for me, but the article is a little bland.

A parallel observation: In the "old days" of the internet, the shining new capability of connecting computers, sharing documents, web pages, software, messages, opinions, and, of course, pornography, the feeling of the day was one of betterment. The network would allow for up-turning out-dated businesses and processes of the past, and we will all be better for it. Information wants to be free!

Yeah, sure.

Information wants to be free? Well, if you consider my click-stream, search history, and probably every keystroke I enter, then yes, _that_ information has certainly been freed. I can even search this treasure trove of information, if I'm just willing to share every piece of personal information about me, from my contact list, to my personal emails, to my phone's location, my calendar and my purchase history.

I no more trust the AI "morality" pundits than I trust the (well meaning, but mis-guided, IMO) visionaries of the internet's early days (and, yes, you can count me among those ranks).

<comment><USER2> I personally think "information wants to be free" (as in no money) is a major cause for why the Internet went so bad in so many ways. Since everything has to be free, the only possible business models are those that revolve around monetizing the user or are otherwise deceptive and indirect.

This created and bootstrapped the whole surveillance capitalism and "adtech" industry. Instead of paying for information we have people paying to manipulate us via free media built to be addictive.

I'm sure some of this would have happened had the Internet possessed a payment mechanism and people willing to pay for stuff, but it would not have become the dominant model for everything nor as pervasive.

<comment><USER3> I wonder how "pay to view" Internet would've worked. How do you know if the page/site you're going to open will be worth the 0.05 cents? There are/were kids in Macedonia who made fake news sites to make money from Google ads: [https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake- news/](https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/) , imagine that sort of behavior minus the G-middleman.

Could they have built an Internet where there was a system to claim refunds, with a "judge" who would decide? Could there have been a rating system ("90 out of 154 visitors said the information on this page was worth the money"), and how could that have been abused?

<comment><USER4> The model would be similar to telco pay per kB, as any other way would be unfeasible - for public sites, like public TV. And similar to cable networks where you would get a set of sites available for a monthly installment, with some options similar to Netflix.

The internet would be much smaller and much more centralized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article's underlying thesis seems to be summarized by

> The practitioners of AI are not up-front about the genuine allure of their > enterprise, which is all about the old-school Steve-Jobsian charisma of > denting the universe while becoming insanely great.

But that... doesn't seem true? Most modern AI practitioners, especially the prominent ones, profess that their work is going to change the world forever and that's why they want to do it. So I'm not sure what the author is really proposing that AI practitioners should do. Work on less important problems? Play it by ear instead of trying to develop moral principles preemptively?

<comment><USER6> _> I'm not sure what the author is really proposing that AI practitioners should do._

If he wants us to work for our moral betterment ('Nobody does AI for our moral betterment') he's asking us become like old-fashioned saints or modern-day activists. But they are not problem-solvers per se. They act like they _already have_ the solutions to our problems.

The irony is that, whatever the intentions of its creators, AGI probably will lead to our moral betterment by giving us a clearer understanding of what it means to be human.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my experience, the AI Safety people are less concerned with a nebulous "morality", and more concerned with practical things like making AI self- improve slowly enough that we can catch it before it's a runaway process; or making AI not think in ways where it imagining torturing people means there's an actual ephemeral consciousness experiencing the qualia of being tortured. Engineering stuff, that happens to interact with morality... in about the same way that genetic engineering could be said to interact with the morality of the resulting organism.

</comment><comment><USER8> > Technological proliferation is not a list of principles. It is a deep, > multivalent historical process with many radically different stakeholders > over many different time-scales. People who invent technology never get to > set the rules for what is done with it

Well said. Pessimism is a reasonable reaction to this sweeping line, but I offer a quick summary of what I hope is non-naive optimism:

1) Problem: When we think technology is neutral, we miss how it creates _niches_ outside our intended design and social/political constraints, since the environment of economics thwarts all. We have agency as individuals, yes, but the environment rewards and select for _any_ uses of the technology which yield advantage. "If you incentivize something, it will happen."

2) Solution?: Nobody fucking knows. But "Game ~B" is what people are calling a nascent research effort to identify what attributes a more cohesive civilization must have to allow better collective "sense-making" and "choice- making" so we may become capable of directing technology instead of leaving it to the emergent dynamics of hapless competition. What's also interesting are the considerations for employing antifragile, transitionary social structures that can thrive in our current entrenched "Game A" dynamics to plant said attributes. Gotta change the underlying rules instead of designing atop those which are broken.

3) Future Ethics: I've also seen some excitement about a so-called non- relativistic ethical framework within Game~B, called The Immanent Metaphysics. It claims to be commensurable with — but not derivable from — science, rigorously formalizing intuitive ethical principles, to at least create a consistent grounding for making effective ethical choices.[1] The hope is to better inform (but not determine) our use of technology after we step into a more coherent phase of civilization. Tech can NOT be put back in the bag, so we _must_ develop our wisdom to carefully wield the godlike powers they give, which we are currently making a mess of.

[1] only a few people currently understand the dense framework, but I'm currently working through it and may be able to offer a summary of what I know so far here. neat stuff

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://bioethics.georgetown.edu/2016/02/oxford-uehiro- prize...](https://bioethics.georgetown.edu/2016/02/oxford-uehiro-prize-in- practical-ethics-should-we-take-moral-advice-from-our-computers-written-by- mahmoud-ghanem/)

^ This is a link to a relevant article containing an important counterpoint: it argues based on a few assumptions that we should let computers write our moral codes and not the other way around.

</comment><comment><USER10> If morality is derived from a belief in God, then a nihilist could argue any form of morality is essentially artificial.</comment>


Show HN: Algomatic – An Artificial Intelligence Trading Platform - s-hood Algomatic is a code-free platform where you can design and test AI and quantitative trading strategies. We're just getting started and would love some early feedback. What's stopping you from using this now? Check it out here: algomatic.co <comment><AUTHOR> Can you explain how this is different from backtesting on Finviz?

<comment> s-hood The primary value add over platforms like FinViz is the ability to use machine learning models on top of standard and customisable quantitative algorithms.</comment></comment>


Watch me control my Tesla with Amazon Echo - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/27/how-i-hacked-my-tesla-with-amazon-echo/ <comment><USER2> "Our friends at Tesla should work with the burgeoning developer community to open a fully supported and safe public API."

Wholeheartedly agree! with some caveats/concerns.

Are there any API calls that will not function while the car is in motion, such as "open the falcon doors"?

My other concern is even with two-factor authentication, say you are driving and your phone starts getting spammed with authentication requests from someone trying to use your account/api key - that could be quite distracting.</comment>


Mitch McConnell Moves to Allow Warrantless Collection of Browsing&Search History - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/mitch-mcconnell-moves-to-expand-bill-barrs-surveillance-powers?via=twitter_page <comment><USER2> > Section 215 of the 2001 Patriot Act mandates records providers turn over > "tangible things" "relevant" to an ongoing investigation–which McConnell's > amendment would extend to web-browsing and search-history records

This is the strong issue I have with passing regulations when people are afraid and weak because of a short and near term disruption.

The ability to think logically and clearly is impacted during such times and paranoia kick in.

The 2001 Patriot Act is now 20 years old.

It was meant to be _temporary_ but children were born when it was passed and are past the age of drinking for how long it has carried over.

The SARS-COV2 is leading us down the same road of employing invasive tracking and surveillance in the viel of "good for people"!

Osama is dead a long time. His legacy lives on! He won. We lost.

It does not have to be that way.

Don't just wait for it to expire - repeal it!

> "Under the McConnell amendment, Barr gets to look through the web browsing > history of any American—including journalists, politicians, and political > rivals—without a warrant, just by saying it is relevant to an > investigation," said Wyden, who has been trying to ban warrantless > surveillance on such records.

Unacceptable!

Vote and rally against this.

Please. I am surprised every-time I have to make an argument for individual freedom - it's one thing that can be lost so easily never to be ever gained again.

<comment><USER3> I don't have much hope of Congress acting responsibly. At least the past 3 presidents haven't encouraged following constitutional procedures. Clearly Justin Amash shines here - pretty much the only congressperson to very clearly call for Congress to eschew party commands and become a body of debate and discourse for representing the American people.

Right now it's a pipeline for captive congresspeople to vote however the party leadership decides (usually by the direction of the sitting president). It's madness.

<comment><USER2> > I don't have much hope of Congress acting responsibly. At least the past 3 > presidents haven't encouraged following constitutional procedures

I completely get where you are coming from but in this sentence I am getting the sense that "someone out there" will make things right and we just have to "complain enough" to get their attention.

NO.

I don't think so.

You and I have to take the action.

There's no angel looking out for us. Elbow grease and blood.

Constitutional procedures not being followed?

Take them to court!

It's more work than hoping and praying but that's how this country was founded.

On action.

<comment><USER4> Well put. Far too many people have fallen prey to learned helplessness in the US.

We have to change the government ourselves, no one else can or will.

<comment><USER3> I think the only way to reform Congress is through voting and (indirectly) through changing minds. Even though Biden, Bernie and Trump are atrocious candidates - from a certain perspective (I expect most people disagree) they're very similar. I think they're evidence that the establishment parties are on the decline and people recognize that. Congress is a different matter, but in terms of broad indicators of electoral politics - the presidential elections are reflecting a change. Oddly this trends globally, so I think it's related to the leveling of power in communication and news that came with the internet.

<comment><USER2> > Oddly this trends globally, so I think it's related to the leveling of power > in communication and news that came with the internet

An astute observation.

People on HN live in a bubble. That does include myself. We are pretty isolated from reality given the rich life we live.

The person scrubbing floors at the gas station during COVID-19 infections have a very different view of life.

In my bubble, I try my best to gain that view and inject it back here on HN.

> they're very similar.

Amen.

People like you are the reason why I continue commenting on HN.

There's strong distaste for differing opinions on here but input like yours make all the hate worth this experience.

PS: We exchanged notes earlier on a health insurance topic here where I was championing for repealing employer provided health insurance which is a vestige from WW2 wage regulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not the first time they've tried.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national- security/fbi-w...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi- wants-access-to-internet-browser-history-without-a-warrant-in-terrorism-and- spy-cases/2016/06/06/2d257328-2c0d-11e6-9de3-6e6e7a14000c_story.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Which Congresspeople have stood up in support of repealing the PATRIOT Act? It's been 2 decades years; time to sunset it.

<comment><USER7> The Republicans regurlarly vote no to the Patriot act. There is no need to repeal it because it expired earlier this year. The democrats tried to renew it but it failed. And then covid happened. I don't have any idea how NSA handles the expiration of the act, but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't even notice or care.

<comment><USER8> Where do you get the idea that Republicans are against the Patriot Act? A majority of them vote to reauthorize it every time it comes up. Yes, some Democrats like Feinstein are for it, too, but that doesn't mean they all are. [https://twitter.com/SenateGOP/status/1261002222772551681](https://twitter.com/SenateGOP/status/1261002222772551681)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ok, let's see McConnell's history.

<comment><USER10>
      Facebook
      pron
      porn
      Inspirational speeches by Emperor Palpatine
      ...</comment></comment>


Structural Pattern Matching in Java - <AUTHOR> http://apocalisp.wordpress.com/2009/08/21/structural-pattern-matching-in-java/ <comment><USER2> Perhaps I'm a bad software engineer, but I don't see anything terribly wrong with the instanceof solution. I'd certainly much rather read that 6 months later than "public abstract <T> T match(F<Empty, T> a, F<Leaf, T> b, F<Node, T> c)".</comment>


Show HN: Mailer – our in-house tool for sending email from the command line - <AUTHOR> https://www.dirwiz.com/news/284 <comment><USER2> No provided source code? Is this 1990?

<comment><USER3> Complaining when getting something for free? Is this 2015?

<comment><USER4> Considering what it does, the consequent benefits to it being open source, and that there are already open source tools to do this out there, it does not seem like an unfair criticism.

<comment><USER3> Having it open source is undoubtedly better, however one can simply ask for the source as often people do. Snark just leads to people not bothering at all.

<comment><USER4> As the old expression goes, "open source is more than just source code".

Honestly --and I'm not trying to be snarky here-- in this case, I'm not sure I understand how "not bothering at all" would actually be worse. Maybe I don't understand something about the value.

<comment><USER3> There are people making comments asking for help on OSX so they might have a different opinion than you, but beyond that we also have to consider other members seeing these kinds of comments may decide not to bother. So yes, you don't care about this project, but you might care about other projects that may never see the light of day as a consequence.

<comment><USER4> Those people should:

        brew install sendemail

or

        brew install swacks

or just send up their local SMTP daemon as a delivery only daemon and then use simple mail or mailx to send messages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Direct link to tool: [https://www.dirwiz.com/mailer/](https://www.dirwiz.com/mailer/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here.. Thanks. After re-reading the post the link was buried in the article and not that obvious..

<comment><USER6> Have you considered Open Sourcing this? I'd like to use it and I like the syntax. But I'd feel more comfortable if I could check out the source.

<comment><USER7> Seems crazy that it's not being open sourced even though they make sure to state they use open source tools on their site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >> It runs on every platform we can think of (Windows 64bit, Linux 32 & 64 Bit, Raspberry Pi!)

How would I go about running the binary on OS X? I assume it's possible? Thanks...

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. If we can figure out OS X in VirtualBox we should have a good shot at getting a build for Mac working.. Stay tuned...

<comment><USER9> Just curious what it's written in?

<comment><AUTHOR> Plain 'ol C using gcc to compile and UPX to shrink the size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In a similar vein but open source is ssmtp. It's a simple MTA that hands off the dirty work of sending e-mail to a real mailserver, and can be configured to use your existing SMTP server as a bounce point, or if you're running a personal server, your gmail account.

<comment><USER11> I personally use msmtp [0].

[0]: [http://msmtp.sourceforge.net/](http://msmtp.sourceforge.net/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not clear as to why anyone thought this tool was needed or was any more complex than a simple script. This functionality is built in to most platforms.

</comment><comment><USER12> I prefer swaks

<comment><USER11> Thanks for posting! It looks nice!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who Is Hiring Remote Workers? (March 2011 Edition) - <AUTHOR>

Similar to the "Who is Hiring" thread but, please remote positions only. <comment><USER2> We make the Sooloos line of products. They compose a music management solution that currently sells in the high end market (luxury, hifi, audiophile, etc..)

Our product is far too expensive right now for most people. We are in the middle of executing a plan to create a budget appliance and a free piece of software to expand past our current markets. This requires some additional features that must be implemented to ensure success (social features, offline mobile players, more 'remote control' on devices people already own, etc..).

When we started, it was not possible to bring our product to the masses because the computer resources required to create a great experience were not common place. Thats why we built an appliance. The last 2 generations of hardware have been capable, so it's now possible to bring our vision to the masses.

We are hiring 4 developers, and here are some of the things we would like to see in developers:

c# (msft on windows & mono on osx, linux) opengl (windows and osx) c/c++ linux social networking experience server side experience client app experience ui sensibilities design sense iphone/ipad android a passion for music

The above are nice to haves, and not requirements. Smart, experienced, and passionate development history is more important.

Our work environment is very focused on fast execution, while providing a great lifestyle. Our team is spread out over the globe (NYC, SF, Bangkok, UK) and tiny (3 developers + 2 designers). We live inside the Meridian Audio umbrella, but we are responsible for the Sooloos line. You would work wherever you wanted to live. We have a small concentration in NYC, but NYC is not a requirement. Our management style is very relaxed and it will require you to be great while not being micromanaged. You must be a great communicator (in English), especially online. Fast typing and familiarity with online communication mechanisms is required.

We will also hire consultants to do a few projects we have been able to isolate as good for short term consultancy work.

You can read about our existing products in many reviews on the internet. Here are a few:

mainstream press: [http://www.esquire.com/the-side/tech-therapist/enter-the- soo...](http://www.esquire.com/the-side/tech-therapist/enter-the-sooloos)

and in the hifi market: <http://www.stereophile.com/mediaservers/908sooloos/>

and then, an update from a few months ago: [http://www.stereophile.com/mediaservers/908sooloos/index10.h...](http://www.stereophile.com/mediaservers/908sooloos/index10.html)

and another: [http://www.hometheatermag.com/mediaservers/meridian_sooloos_...](http://www.hometheatermag.com/mediaservers/meridian_sooloos_control_10_media_server/)

<comment><USER3> What's the best way to contact you?

<comment><USER2> danny [ at ] sooloos.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's not March yet. I think a lot of people wait until the first of the month to read and post to these type of threads so jumping the gun might limit the reach.

<comment><USER5> This post is promoted prematurely, I guess. But for some people in Australia, it's March already.

<comment><USER4> Fair point indeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> San Diego, CA. Remote ok. Klatu Networks (www.klatunetworks.com): A wireless sensor networking startup that focuses in biotech monitoring. We are a small, bootstrapped, profitable start up. We are very selective on our hiring so you will only be working with other great engineers.

The most important requirements is to be passionate about creating software and be able to quickly grasp new technologies. Other requirements include strong knowledge of Javacript, experience with Ruby, Java, SQL, Git.

Contact me directly if you are interested, email is in my profile.

<comment><USER7> Are you looking for a full-time, yet remote employee or would you be amenable to someone doing this in addition to a full-time job? I have a child on the way and can't drop or switch my insurance at this stage, but this sounds interesting and lines up with my academic background far more than most of the work I do.

<comment><USER6> We are pretty flexible if the fit is good. I sent you an email to dig into it a little more.

<comment><USER7> All right - I'll get back to you this evening. Thanks for the heads up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We're looking for:

      + perl backend developers http://jobs.perl.org/job/13680
      + javascript front end developers http://peter.michaux.ca/articles/wanted-javascript-developer

The job ad says you're required to be eligible to work in Canada but that's just a nice to have for us. If you're qualified you can work from anywhere you want.

</comment><comment><USER9> We are: <http://sucuri.net>

Looking for an entry-level (junior) support person to help us out. Great way to get experience and work with some cool security projects (dealing with all types of malware, infected sites, etc).

What we are looking for? Someone that learns fast, loves to automate boring tasks, knows Linux / PHP (or shell scripting) and is fun to work with. Experience with WordPres/ Joomla/ Wiki and other popular web apps is a plus.

Email me email@example.com if interested.

</comment><comment><USER4> An accounting consultant I've worked with in the past is looking for someone to subcontract work to. It mostly involves SQL Server administration, SSRS report writing, and some SSIS work.

You need to be really good at SQL, and stored procedures. Also some background in accounting would be helpful but isn't required.

I don't think this would be full time. I'm guessing it would be between 10-20 hours/week.

Email me if you're interested. If you seem to fit what he's looking for I'll pass your info along.

</comment><comment> benji-york I work at Canonical which continuing to grow. Most of the technical positions are remote. It's a great place to work. Tell them Benji sent you. <http://webapps.ubuntu.com/employment/>

<comment><USER10> I applied there a few days ago, I feel extremely qualified for the position but all I got was a "sorry, you were rejected" form email. Not the best experience, sadly.

<comment><USER11> They have been advertising the same jobs for many months... I suspect they are just collecting resumes.

<comment><USER10> Hmm, what purpose would that serve, though?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Blue Gecko - Seattle, WA (remote from anywhere)

<http://www.bluegecko.net>

Blue Gecko is a remote DBA services company. We're looking for intermediate to expert MySQL DBAs with a strong Linux SA background. Although our headquarters is in Seattle, many of our DBAs work at home full time, and our corporate culture is configured to accommodate remote workers. Since we operate 24/7 we need folks in every timezone.

Drop me a line if you're interested, my email address is in my profile.

Complete job description at: <http://pastebin.com/YRYiZPqZ>

</comment><comment><USER13> Are there any node.js based remote jobs?

</comment><comment><USER14> Here is a RSS feed for this thread's parent comments (which are mainly job postings):

<http://whoishiring.heroku.com/rss/2270791>

Thanks to Ronnie Roller (<http://ronnieroller.com/>) for Hacker News API.

</comment><comment><USER15> We are looking for high-scalability data processing, machine learning, ETL, and/or browser-internals/javascript experts. Contract or contract to hire. Remote or local to Santa Monica, CA. Typical startup environment.

Send your resume with a cover letter to anthonyu at ucla dot edu and mention hacker news.

</comment><comment><USER16> .NET Developer, remote position (anywhere in the world)

We are developing a black-box web application security scanner (Netsparker). Also posted to: <http://remote-jobs.com/jobs/34_Senior__NET_Developer>

<comment><USER17> Winforms? Yikes. Good luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Currently looking for a Front-End Developer and Designer for our startup in NYC. Remote work is fine by us.

Ambitious product, joyful work, good people to work with. stylewok dot com (info at).

<comment><USER19> Just tried visiting your site at stylewok.com and seems like it's parked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looking for talented front-end developer:

* HTML / CSS * Javascript * Flex / Flash

Fit the bill? Let me know: datasieve at gmail

</comment><comment><USER21> iPhone developer looking for iPhone app designer/artist (the latter more important than the former) for some part time remote work.

<comment><USER22> I'm a designer, I also do development.

<comment><USER21> Could you stick an email in your profile (both fields, I can't see the one that's most natural) or send email to the address in mine?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is anyone looking for front end developers?

</comment><comment><USER11> Currently looking for a PHP developer (Magento & Drupal experience is a plus), email email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER24> I guess remote-jobs.com petered out?

</comment><comment><USER25> I know this thread sorta died already, but I'm always looking for part-timers to help with web development projects on the side. My gigs vary widely, so shoot me an email at email@example.com with a portfolio or resume and we'll talk (:

</comment><comment><USER26> Bump is hiring interns. <http://bu.mp>

Python, Design, iOS, Android, redis, analytics, Scala, Haskell.

</comment><comment><USER27> Pen.io is

<comment><USER28> Interested about finding out more, too

<comment><USER27> email firstname.lastname@example.com - currently looking for a php developer.</comment></comment></comment>


Recommended programming books of all-time - <AUTHOR> https://www.daolf.com/posts/best-programming-books/ <comment><USER2> Yet another artificial list of Amazon affiliate links (tag=daolf-20). This one's seventh submit in less than 3 weeks.</comment>


Why Most Product Launches Fail - <AUTHOR> http://hbr.org/2011/04/why-most-product-launches-fail/ar/1

<comment><USER2> Note than when HBR says "fail", they really mean (direct quote) "fail to earn even $7.5 million during their first year".

If you're an established business sinking millions into product development, earning $5 million in the first year of a new product is a disaster. From the startup perspective, earning $5 million in the first year is not a bad outcome. So some of the advice in this (especially the part about launching late) is a lot less applicable.

Other pieces of advice, like making sure the product is actually usable and communicating to your customers what it does and why they want it, and even scaling to meet demand are classic startup issues.

</comment><comment><USER3> HBR has some other great new articles in its "Failure Issue" <http://hbr.org/special-collections/spotlights/2011/apr>

</comment><comment><USER4> All pages link: <http://hbr.org/2011/04/why-most-product-launches-fail/ar/pr> (for Instapaper users)

</comment><comment><USER5> I really would like to know more! There are over 1 million patents waiting to go through the U.S. Patent office and into production.... What does this mean for all the inventors out there? Especially those really making revolutionary products... if you know it is guaranteed to reach a certain standard deviation of sales, then you can watch your expenses and costs and try to allocate them more properly to reach other parts of the sales spectrum...</comment>


Show HN: Weekend project in response to findhisporn.com - <AUTHOR>

After seeing the ReadWriteWeb article on findhisporn.com (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/find_his_porn_evil_website_of_the_week.php), my instant reaction was to build something to counter that. I spent the weekend building the app, but had to wait another week to get my payment system set up.
The site is http://www.hideyourporn.net/ (completely safe for work site) as well as a more generic http://www.personallocker.net/ which is what the app is branded at.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated - just keep in mind - HN is obviously not my target audience. <comment><USER2> clickables: [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/find_his_porn_evil_webs...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/find_his_porn_evil_website_of_the_week.php)

<http://www.hideyourporn.net/>

<http://www.personallocker.net/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems pretty awesome, I would promote it if you have an affiliate program.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love HN for that kind of reactions :).

Also, it's a great example of how you can create value (and earn money) by just combining few free tools into a useful utility for general audience.

</comment><comment><USER5> I like that you link to the open source software involved.

</comment><comment><USER6> how is this different (hidden encrypted partition) from say truecrypt?

</comment><comment><USER7> are you bundling free software ?</comment>


Ask HN: Where is the best place to learn Java? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I know you're asking about "place", but ...

Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates' "Head First Java" book.

Her SCJP book is also pretty good, but it's more skewed towards the certification exam.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll look into it.</comment></comment>


Austrialia censors 90% of web censorship plan to avoid "unnecessary debate" - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/no-minister-90-of-web-snoop-document-censored-to-stop--premature-unnecessary-debate-20100722-10mxo.html

<comment><USER2> The meta-issues (how the plan is being negotiated and managed) are almost as bad as the actual issue (censorship, privacy invasion) here. There are a lot of people who _can_ come to terms with the idea that there is at least some kind of content that might, in some circumstances, be worth blocking or monitoring on the internet (I'm not saying this is my position). But not this plan, not the way it is being done - zero transparency, zero accountability, zero consultation, zero acknowledgement of real criticisms by honest well intentioned people. If the government wants to do this then they need to be at their _most_ open and transparent, their most considerate of well reasoned objections.

<comment><USER3> i love how they're openly stating it's confusing and controversial so they're going to keep it secret so no one can object before it's completely finished. this will become a barbara streisand pretty quick.

<comment><USER4> > they're

luv how "they" are a friken bureaucrat... like it's any of their business what is and is not debated and discussed in democracy.

have spent many years in commonwealth and state bureaucracies and have never heard anyone even entertain the idea that silencing debate (although in my view that is often the point) would be used as the publicly stated reason for censoring or denying an FOI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a European citizen, I've lived in China for a number of years behind the "Great Firewall" which is easily circumvented.

The last thing I expected when I moved to Australia was to be behind the "Great Barrier Firewall".

Not sure if many reading this realize that there is an election coming up in the coming weeks, the current government probably does not want to give ammunition to the opposition about this whole sordid affair.

Stephen Conroys office has spent an obscene amount on why he thinks the Australian filter is a good thing. Any kind of back-down or debate on the issue would just go against the current regime.

My only hope is that if the party goes back into power after August that this firewall business will die a slow death.

<comment><USER6> Sorry you're mistaken, the Great Firewall of China USED to be easily circumvented, now the only method is with a paid VPN connection (or a very kind person to share their bandwidth).

Even Tor's been taken down.

<comment><USER5> @DublinClontarf, yeah, I used to use TOR hosted on a private slice, but thats also insecure. I'd use a paid VPN to buy pass it these days.

Btw, I used to live in Clontarf for quite a while..

<comment><USER6> Was it East point business park that you worked?

<comment><USER5> Yeah, for about a year...then moved over here to Oz.

Catch me on twitter @beilabs

<comment><USER6> Yeah everyone who can is leaving, theres nothing happening there now(Ireland not Oz, stayed in Oz for a couple of months with my aunt, great place, love the poisonous animals). Will do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is the Australian government's political rational behind implementing this plan? I highly doubt Australia has a contingent of voters who demand Internet censorship, and unlike China it's not like there's some sort of regime that needs to purge unfriendly ideas from circulating. This whole endeavor seems completely unnecessary. Any Australians know what the heck is behind this?

<comment><USER8> It's a hung parliament with the balance of power held by a small group of bible thumping right wingers. They wish to show to their voters that they are doing something to fight the waves of terrorism and filth that are warping the tiny minds of vunerable australian children.

And to distract anyone from finding out about their affairs, dodgy real estate deals and child abuse.

<comment><USER9> That is an entirely inaccurate description of Australian politics. Bible thumping rarely appears in Australian political life. The current Prime Minister is a declared aetheist, and they can get just about any laws through with the support of the left-wing Green party.

<comment><USER8> The communications minister in charge of the filtering is a follower of the famous Jewish zombie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Note that this document and story are actually about a recent EU-style data retention proposal, not the internet filtering / web censorship policy (which has been bumbling along for quite a while now).

</comment><comment><USER11> The citizens of Australia should obviously skip straight to the Molotov Cocktails to avoid more "unnecessary debate"!

</comment><comment><USER12> I often wonder what is at the heart of massive snooping/censorship schemes like these. I'm still waiting on the data that supports a link between violent media and violent people, sexually explicit pictures and acts of sexual violence, and transparency sponsoring open debate leading to anarchy.

<comment><USER13> Exactly. I'm pretty sure Hitler had exposure to neither video games or the Internet and yet look what he went on to do.

<comment><USER14> Godwin's Law, never fails.

<comment><USER15> Actually I was going to suggest Genghis Khan to circumvent Godwin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well, as an Aussie myself, I'd certainly like to see this issue raised a little more, especially with the election coming round on 21st Aug.

Let's hope movements like Election Wire <http://www.youtube.com/youthscape> will change things.

<comment><USER17> Upvoted.

Seems like a positive way make dent on the incumbent censor-happy morons.

Good luck Australia!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm curious as to how the elections are going to change this policy. As suggested in the thread, they are trying to keep things quiet until the elections.

However what happens if the Labor party loses. Is the opposition going to support this as well?

</comment><comment><USER15> The filter can't be about anything other than shoring up political support. Hopefully the incumbents pick up a few seats in the election and they'll be able to drop the legislation.

We love to call politicians stupid, but they're not _that_ dumb. It's been pointed out ad-nauseum that the filter wont achieve the stated purpose (eradication of online child porn). The rationale has moved to making sure kiddies don't 'stumble' upon the internet nasties.

More sensible legislation would be to mandate that ISPs offer filtered & unfiltered connections. Individual households could then make their own choices.

</comment><comment><USER19> Who keeps making these rules?

<comment><USER4> the ALP.

the real question is who has their ear, for internet censorship i would say it's the christian lobby, for this logging crap would say both state and commonwealth law enforcement agencies (chiefly AFP???).

the latter certainly have form (e.g. [http://www.theage.com.au/national/investigations/private- spi...](http://www.theage.com.au/national/investigations/private-spies-hired- by-police-20081125-6hh7.html))

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> bye bye democracy, it was nice to have known you...

<comment><USER4> we get what we vote for. do something... anything... stand up for yourself.

<comment><USER20> We get to vote for either dictator 1, dictator 2 or dictator 3. There are no democratic flavors left.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Australia, is turning into an e-Tibet ... Get ready for millions of innocent websites dying at the hands of OberFuhrer Robert McClelland.

Yeah, that statement may sound over-hyped today, but come talk to me a year after that thing gets signed into law.

Aussies have gone soft, in the balls (they were already soft in the head -- which was the only good thing keeping democracy alive in Australia until now).

edit: an attempt at preventing godwin's law invocation and a visit from the anti-defamation league. ;-)

<comment><USER21> I think you will understand how offensive and unnecessary your first statement is after looking at this photo: [http://www.hollow- hill.com/sabina/images/auschwitz-corpses.j...](http://www.hollow- hill.com/sabina/images/auschwitz-corpses.jpg)

<comment><USER8> Yes Australians had the decency to slowly wipe out the indigenous people out of sight over a century rather than being all teutonic and efficient about it.

<comment><USER22> Yes, Americans had the decency to slowly wipe out the indigenous people...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which blogging software do you use, other than WP? - <AUTHOR>

Preferably something that supports:
1. Live JS (to embed live highcharts graphs, for example)
2. comments - without using third party systems like disqus
3. self hosted
4. preferably static? not sure about this one <comment><USER2> I am not sure about Live JS, but I have used Anchor CMS / [http://anchorcms.com](http://anchorcms.com) / and I have been pretty happy with it, with a few exceptions. It is small and lightweight, can easily be self-hosted and has a nice selection of themes/ [http://anchorthemes.com](http://anchorthemes.com) / and you can easily make your own design. It powers my own personal blog and visiting anchorshowcase.com will show you some more blogs powered by it.

The thing about it that I don't like that much are : 1\. Really weak plugin ecosystem. If you want something specific, you will probably have to make it yourself, as the CMS doesn't even have a plugin support, you have to edit things in the code. 2\. Written in PHP. I know Python, not PHP so making changes for me is especially hard so anything complex for me is a no no. 3\. It has been in development for a bit and the development has slowed while they are trying to build the 1.0 version.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wrote my own. They're actually pretty simple in concept, but can be time- consuming to get right.

I'm currently working on a CMS for PHP 7 that emphasizes security by default (expected to release in December).

</comment><comment><USER4> Hugo ( [http://gohugo.io](http://gohugo.io) ) is pretty swell. It builds static sites a lot faster than Jekyll and has built-in support for disqus comments.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ghost ([https://ghost.org/](https://ghost.org/)). They have a self-hosted option, and it looks elegant out of the box.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ghost only supports SQLite, correct? No official support for other databases?

<comment><USER5> I'm running mine on Postgresql. No issues so far, although it's not officially supported.

I think MySQL is officially supported though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh ok, will check it out, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://github.com/SpontaneousCMS/spontaneous](https://github.com/SpontaneousCMS/spontaneous)

</comment><comment><USER7> I use Concrete5. Its not really meant for blogs, but it doe have blog functionality as well. You can make some really beautiful sites with it with not a ton of effort.

</comment><comment><USER8> Jekyll

<comment><AUTHOR> Does it allow live JS, commenting?

<comment><USER9> You can add comments to static sites via your own self-hosted disqus alternative.

e.g. Mine: [https://github.com/skx/e-comments/](https://github.com/skx/e-comments/)

FWIW my blog comes from a static compiler, which has comments which are received via HTTP-posts and folded into the next time the blog is built, but there's no real live-JS.</comment></comment></comment>


Ex-Chief Returns, Luring Talent From Bailed-Out AIG - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/business/27aig.html?_r=1&ref=business&pagewanted=print

<comment><USER2> It's an interesting A/B test. A is a big insurance company, owned by the taxpayers; B is a small insurance company, owned by one super-ambitious, super-greedy guy. I'm willing to bet that B will be paying more in income taxes (corporate and individual) than A pays in interest on its government debt.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I hesitated to post because it might be considered "political." However, I thought HN-ers would be interested in the economics of market self-correction.</comment>


AI bias happens–and why it's so hard to fix - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612876/this-is-how-ai-bias-really-happensand-why-its-so-hard-to-fix/ <comment><AUTHOR> Outline:

[https://outline.com/UxAEdH](https://outline.com/UxAEdH)</comment>


GopherCon 2015 – Talks Announced - <AUTHOR> http://gophercon.com/talks/

<comment><USER2> Disappointed that this isn't about a gathering of the few grognards who still champion the Gopher protocol.</comment>


Code Poetry - <AUTHOR> http://code-poetry.com/ <comment><USER2> This is really impressive. I check out code poems occasionally and I don't think I've ever seen ones where executing them actually draws images related to the subject matter of the text itself. Love the piet one sort of doing it in reverse especially. Thank you for sharing.

Here's another old famous example of these for anyone interested, "Black Perl" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Perl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Perl))

        BEFOREHAND: close door, each window & exit; wait until time.
            open spellbook, study, read (scan, select, tell us);
        write it, print the hex while each watches,
            reverse its length, write again;
            kill spiders, pop them, chop, split, kill them.
                unlink arms, shift, wait & listen (listening, wait),
        sort the flock (then, warn the "goats" & kill the "sheep");
            kill them, dump qualms, shift moralities,
            values aside, each one;
                die sheep! die to reverse the system
                you accept (reject, respect);
        next step,
            kill the next sacrifice, each sacrifice,
            wait, redo ritual until "all the spirits are pleased";
            do it ("as they say").
        do it(*everyone***must***participate***in***forbidden**s*e*x*).
        return last victim; package body;
            exit crypt (time, times & "half a time") & close it,
            select (quickly) & warn your next victim;
        AFTERWARDS: tell nobody.
            wait, wait until time;
            wait until next year, next decade;
                sleep, sleep, die yourself,
                die at last
        # Larry Wall</comment>