Atlas General Availability - <AUTHOR> https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/atlas-general-availability.html <comment><USER2> We use Vagrant for dev and Consul in our deployment and I still have no real idea of what Atlas is.

<comment><USER3> Great feedback. We've heard this and we've been making strides to improve it. For the most part, this is largely our own doing: we didn't do a good job at all of marketing Atlas to the open source community. There are various reasons for this, including not wanting the community to feel we were pushing commercializing onto them. Another reason is that as Atlas was in tech preview, we wanted to build more features and stabilize on the features we had. But we're carefully learning what the boundaries are and are spreading them a bit more.

If you're an open source user, the first thing that you can do is just go to atlas.hashicorp.com and see the features we add on top of the project you're already using. We now break down features by project being augmented.

Example: Vagrant augmentation: [https://atlas.hashicorp.com/learn/vagrant](https://atlas.hashicorp.com/learn/vagrant)

We have pages like that for all our tools.

We'll continue to improve this! Thanks for the feedback.

EDIT: Sorry, I was answering "why don't I know what Atlas is" versus the answer that was expected for "what is Atlas". The best answer for that is to use the homepage and click on the product (Vagrant, Packer, etc.) you use the most! [http://atlas.hashicorp.com](http://atlas.hashicorp.com)

<comment><USER2> I'm interested but still not clear on what this is. And: I'm one of those people that periodically makes a point of reloading your website to see if you're doing something else interesting. I've seen "Atlas" for awhile. Still no idea what it is.

So is Atlas the "Pro" versions of your core offerings?

Or is it something else, a single coherent product that changes the way I'd interact with Vagrant, &c? Is it like Packer As A Service? Does it _host_ images I make with Packer? Is it a centralized Consul repository?

I think it's the "managed nodes" pricing model (which is fine, don't get me wrong) that makes me confused about what the offering is.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, let me answer that.

Atlas is two things: enhancements to individual open source projects ("pro" version if that helps), and a unification between our projects to give a full dev to prod pipeline.

Per open source project we have, it adds features on top of it we felt didn't fit within the scope of the open source project itself. Example: Vagrant box hosting, Vagrant share (requires a server), Packer builds, Packer artifact hosting, Consul UI, Consul alerts, Consul alert history, Terraform collaboration, Terraform state storage, Terraform run locks, GitHub triggering Terraform, etc. These are all features that enhance an individual HashiCorp project. I'm not going to explain each here, since they're explained in the blog post and of course expect an understanding of that individual project.

Then, Atlas unifies them: code push (Git, CI, etc.) triggers an automatic Packer build which triggers a Terraform plan which triggers a Slack message asking for approval to deploy which can then be deployed with a single button which then causes the Consul UI to update with the latest info.

You can do this with our open source, purely, and many do. This was the inspiration behind Atlas: the companies adopting our open source projects want a complete story, and they're building it on their own, but they'd rather buy it from us. Atlas is us delivering that full dev to prod story.

If you're a HashiCorp user, Atlas is valuable if you're using an indivual project OR if you're looking for a complete deployment solution.

I hope this helps a lot more.

<comment><USER2> Yup. Neato!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For any of us who have watched this team's output and quality and wondered _Why isn't this team being acquired?_, here is Hashicorp's play. Congrats to team on shipping. It will be interesting to see how all this plays out.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've never used any of Hashicorps stuff (thought consul did arrive on my radar theother day..). Any recommendations? We use the Atlassian stack here (stash, bamboo, etc) and deploy to AWS (regular AMIs rather than any of that fancy docker stuff). Anything here we should look into?

<comment><USER6> Vagrant has completely changed my development workflow.

So much so that I created a FOSS that uses it and Puppet: [https://puphpet.com](https://puphpet.com)

<comment><USER7> That's an awesome project you've got there. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Kudos to the team though, love the projects and will continue to support it as it continues to mature.

There's still some pretty significant pain points, bit surprised they released already. Hope they get piles of cash to roll in for all their hard work.

</comment><comment><USER9> One question I have; with general availability, it seems they indicate packer builds inside of Atlas are free now? It was my understanding that this would be a paid product, so I have my workflow for the OSS vagrant boxes I build all local.

If I can switch my workflow to build and store all the box versions inside of Atlas, that would save some time and effort...

<comment><USER10> The Packer builds, Vagrant boxes, and Vagrant share are free

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> $40 per node!

<comment><AUTHOR> thought the same!

Pricing seems a bit Atlassian: almost free if you're small, very expensive if you are not.

<comment><USER12> That sounds more like Github's Enterprise product, which used to be a cliff of a few thousand bucks to fall off, where private Bitbucket is a $1/user/month. Maybe Github's pricing is less unusual now.

<comment><USER13> Github is still incredibly expensive, for both Enterprise and Github.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Huzzah! Excited to use Atlas on my current project. We're supposed to come onsite to talk with Kevin next week. Looking forward!

</comment><comment><USER15> Congrats Mitchell + Anand + Kevin + team!

Now send someone to softwarecircus.io to talk about it!</comment>


Looking to build internal SMS API - <AUTHOR> Looking to build a system internally where we can initiate transaction SMS directly from our end without having to break the bank. We do not want to rely on SMS API because we are expecting a huge volume of these SMSs generated and won't be able to sustain the high cost atm. Any idea how to get this done? <comment><USER2> Consider using email-to-SMS gateways. Just make sure that the email server you set up to send out the emails/SMS's has a fixed IP and isn't perceived as a spammer.</comment>


Students Rush to Web Classes, but Profits May Be Much Later - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/education/massive-open-online-courses-prove-popular-if-not-lucrative-yet.html

<comment><USER2> I think asking money for certificates of completion is disingenious, as is charging for textbooks.

It says in the article that the founders see education as a right, that means it should be absolutely free. 'exploit-the-students' kind of money can be an arbitrarily low amount, depending on the circumstances of the students, who could be in fugitive camps in somalia for all anyone knows.

Instead, the obvious way to make money is to make it where the money is, the industry. This is how student organisations in The Netherlands make money, and I bet it's like that elsewhere too.

Why not sell information about what student has what capabilities, or even contact with the student in the form of job adverts or whatever? I can see that as a nearly unbounded source of revenue, and in the process hurting noone and helping everyone.

<comment><AUTHOR> "... has begun to charge corporate employers, including Facebook and Twitter, for access to high-performing students, starting with those studying software engineering."

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How about making money from textbooks?

I don't mean exploit-the-students kind of money, but still make money none the less. The teacher could sell the lecture notes++ as a printed book for 5$ per 100 pages.

A small textbook could cost 15$.

Imagine yourself taking the course -- I mean //really// taking it: spending lots of time watching the lectures, doing the exercises and trying to get into the subject.

If you want to print out the lecture notes and slides for the course (think SELECT _.pdf FROM /course/name | print | bind) it would cost you about 300 pages_ 5c/page = $15 to get this printed at a local copy shop + $5 for spiral binding.

For the same price, you get a perfect-bound soft-cover textbook delivered to your front door (an extra $5 for S/H).

I am telling you guys, this P-o-D stuff is crazy!

<comment><AUTHOR> It mentions they're already making some money from the Amazon affiliate links to textbooks. For a lot of courses the material is not confined to one single textbook, but supplemented with other books, video materials and papers one has to get online.

<comment><USER4> I would pay for access to course notes that have guarunteed permanence. Because if I ever want to look up an algorithm I learned, and I remember "oh, I remember that from that one class," I typically look back through my course notes. It'd be awesome to have those notes permanently, without my having to write them up. I know for my school's intro sequence, we post the notes online, but each year the notes change a little, and, if the course is in progress, or just about to start, then only the notes for the course up to the point it's at are available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I may be dumb, but why not try to charge for the courses upfront? You offer a preview for free and charge a small fee for the full course(15$ for example). Once the videos are recorded, the costs for coursera and the professor should be very low, and the number attendees of every class are in the thousands. Couldn't be profitable that way?

If 15$ is still too much for some(someone who already has access to a decent computer and broadband internet), they could create a system of grants. Most people wouldn't lie just for saving such a small quantity.

</comment><comment><USER6> They could ask for donations at the end of the course. Set it at a reasonable level and people who could afford it would feel obligated to do so but it would still allow access for low-income users.

I suspect with the right message they could get very high conversion rate.

<comment><USER7> I remember a time where "donation" wasn't a synonym to "pay for a job I did for free". The teachers offer their valuable time and knowledge, they shouldn't ask for "donation", they should ask for rightful pay for their time and the amount of value they create their students.

<comment><USER8> They do also get the recognition from teaching the class. Andrew Ng is now universally renowned as a machine learning expert (I imagine the consulting fees he could charge to businesses could be immense). Martin Odersky's excellent class on functional programming graduated 10,000 new Scala programmers, which can only help his company Typesafe.

Come to think of it though I actually would send a donation if a large portion of it went to the professor, although 'to advance the field' and 'because it's my passion' as reasons for teaching do make for better classes.

<comment><USER7> Your points are of course valid. I was just saying there are many things one can offer the teacher, and donations shouldn't be one of them.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Do skinny people have faster metabolisms? Not really - <AUTHOR> https://lite.cnn.io/en/article/h_3e344d84da57725f238732a13e161847 <comment><USER2> Ugh. The article completely contradicts the click-bait headline. Yeah, NEAT is a thing, and it's basically what people mean by "faster metabolisms".</comment>


Ready for a twyst? Early invitations available. - <AUTHOR> http://twy.st

<comment><USER2> Seems like a major security risk to put your email address into a form for a site that gives no indication of what it is. Pass.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are a startup. We need to get enough people interested to be able to have a successful launch. We have no intention of using your email for anything but our launch. If you use gmail, you can add a "+twyst" and know it is from us and block us easily.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We can't say too much about the company except that it will be a twyst on what you are used to.

Visit us at <http://twy.st> and sign up we will let you know what we can as soon as possible though.

<comment><USER3> >too much

Gutsy to ask for a bunch of HN emails when you have karma=1 and provide an iota of information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pardon me for asking but: what the heck is this? You may want to have certain mystic allure for the general public, but you should explain more if you're posting to HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> fair enough ... we will update the homepage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://samfind.com/other-stuff/>

as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> That is another one of our companies. Along with our add-on for Firefox, samfind Bookmarks Bar. So, you can see that we actually do develop apps. [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/samfind- bookm...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/samfind-bookmarks- bar/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll take a chance for twyst.</comment>


Why Travel Makes You Smarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2010/mar/14/why-travel-makes-you-smarter

<comment><USER2> Single page version:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2010/mar/14/why-travel- make...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2010/mar/14/why-travel-makes-you- smarter?page=all)</comment>


Is Silicon Valley Actively Biased Against Certain Viewpoints? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/six-four-six-nine/is-silicon-valley-actively-biased-against-certain-viewpoints-b45efcfb9340 <comment><USER2> A survey on a self-selected group is kind of worthless. Eg, their results show a plurality of libertarians, which may be the case in reality but is much more likely to be an effect of libertarians being more likely to take the time to fill out the form.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a valid criticism. However self-selected group surveys can show important trends.

For instance, if they said that "as a whole, 25% of Silicon Valley believes that they are discriminated against," that could clearly be an invalid interpretation.

However, if they said, "150 people who identified as libertarians took this survey, and among them, 45% felt like their productivity was inhibited because of perceived viewpoint bias, whereas of the 100 self-identified liberals who took it, only 10% felt the same," that would be a very telling statement. [these numbers are made up for illustrative purposes only]

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ofcourse. That's a basic feature of humans. Group think, don't want to stand out from the crowd, a sense of belonging. We're social animals. We adapt.

</comment><comment><USER4> Utterly unsurprising as the majority of SV employees are in a demographic that leans heavily left and has been shown (over and over) to brook no dissent. Duh.

Yeah, Trump supporters, libertarions, social conservatives and all others who are not lock-step mainstream liberals have a hard time when they expose themselves in a work environment mostly staffed by liberal millenials. This is not a surprise nor something even worthy of discussion.

Don't talk politics at work or at Thanksgiving dinner. It's not that hard.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to see the swing of the valley — from military-industrial tech to consumer tech. Did the beat movement of the 1960s and onward stoke the anything-goes (burning man style) attitudes that seems to have have led to today's tech companies? What might come next, as a reaction to the modern culturally Marxist SF monoculture?

</comment><comment><USER6> Is (small place with intense concentration of a single demographic) actively biased against X?

This and more shocking click bait next time on Hacker News!

Interesting topic, but a bit off putting with the disgusting clickbaitery.

<comment><USER7> Didn't even click because it was so obvious. Why ask such a silly question when everyone can just nod their head, say 'yes' to themselves, and move on?</comment></comment>


XX Combinator - <AUTHOR> http://terezan.tumblr.com/post/816358389/xx-combinator <comment><USER3> I'm sympathetic to a cause here, but I can't help but think that things like this might do more to promote sexism than not.

I think the idea that women are somehow less capable of doing the "3-months in Silicon Valley" is harmful. I think that the (not directly) implied idea that it would be easier for men (men with families even) to do the startup dance on a string budget is harmful.

I think the idea that women just don't mature into people who are ready to tackle a startup until their 40s is harmful. I think that the idea that men are much more ready to tackle a startup in their 20s is harmful.

This whole article smacks of the idea that there is something _fundamentally_ different about men and women and their capabilities at different points in their adult life. I think this idea is harmful.

I think these things are harmful, because I'd like to see the eradication of gender inequality as a social norm.

I suspect that while said differences may exist at this point in time, that they are cultural rather than physical in nature, and that if the goal is social equality, things like this do little more than reinforce cultural stereotypes about women and men.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very aware of the skew towards males in the tech world. There are a lot of reasons for that, almost all -- if not all -- of them cultural.

I assume that while only 7 founders have been female, that this isn't happening with 50% of applicants being female.

Perhaps doing a Y-Combinator style seed-funding ramen-profitable thing is only really appealing to _people_ who are young. Perhaps we could use something like that for _people_ who are older and have families and can't do the "drop everything for a few months in pursuit of this idea".

Perhaps.

<comment><USER4> Damn, you started out strong and then things fell apart a bit. That's what I get for voting without reading all the way through.

 _This whole article smacks of the idea that there is something fundamentally different about men and women and their capabilities at different points in their adult life_

Men and women _are_ fundamentally different, and research from a wide variety of fields continues to support that. I find it ridiculous to believe that even though evolution has so completely obviously shaped our bodies differently, the male and female minds are the same, despite mounds of evidence to the contrary, both scientific and experiential. A researcher would be mocked for making the claim that men and women have the exact same _body_ , but since the mind is murkier and not as well understood, it's fine to claim that they're the same. This seems analogous to religious claims of miraculous healing, which always seem to affect something like cancer or headaches or something we can't see or touch. They never restore lost limbs or raise the dead. It's always in intangible areas we don't fully understand, and it seems for now that the belief that men and women aren't fundamentally different in their mental and psychological processes can enjoy the same safe haven.

Sorry for the rant, but it's always just struck me as the perfect example of starting with your conclusion (driven by political correctness), and then trying in vain to make the evidence fit the theory. I don't see how any honest researcher could just follow the evidence and determine that men and women are "fundamentally" the same.

Now, I agree that the eradication of gender inequality (in the sense of value) as a social norm is a worthy goal, but starting from the foundation of falsehood is the wrong approach.

<comment><USER3> Could you point me at some studies that suggest that there are _intrinsic_ things about men and women that would make it more likely for women to not be capable of participating in a startup in their 20s?

I don't claim that the male and female mind are the same. I suspect that the differences between them have more to do with culture and pattern-recognition than biology, even though there is some overlap there. I'm also not anything more than an armchair neuroscientist, so if you'd like to point me at this "mounds of evidence to the contrary", please go ahead. (Edit: This sentence sounds a bit more snarky than I intended it to)

As far as I know, we're still in a big grey area as far as how much evidence points to the majority of someone's _mind_ being nature, and how much nurture, and how those interact. I'm working with the assumption that people's mindsets are almost entirely a blank slate at (or a bit before) birth, and that the vast majority of what they think about the world and all the stuff that comes with that is created via pattern-recognition over the course of their lives, with patterns they're exposed to frequently when young being more strongly ingrained than others. Am I wrong here?

That is, I'm saying that I think that if you took a baby female, and raised it in an environment where the only exposure she had to what a "female" was and how a "female" differs from a "male" were manufactured (reversed even), that she would have _those_ ideas about being a female instead of the ones in common usage.

My conclusion isn't driven by political correctness either, although I can see how you would make that assumption. I don't give a shit about political correctness.

<comment><USER5> Look I am intersexed and I have dealt with such stuff all of my life. The one thing I have learnt is that we aren't blank slates, but we aren't mentally engineered either. It is true that environment plays a huge role in the development of a child, but please understand this.

Gender is something that is innate to your mind. Be it through proprioception or something more complex than that. It is etched in you in the womb and the way it expresses itself is something that is acquired in tandem with the environment. Now understand this too, gender is a _spectrum_. What most talks center around are the peaks of the two bell curves, but there are lots of folks on either sides. There are kind, sensitive men and abusive, viscous women. The truth is just like skin color gender isn't exactly something to go on when dealing with another human being. Some people tend to conform, but a lot of folks don't and those are the interesting ones.

I feel like laughing my head off each time I read such things. It is true that it sucks to be a woman, but it sucks to be a man too. I will say this again and again, when you see the spaces society creates as an outsider then you begin to understand that things aren't absolute. I am sub-human to most people, and my right to access a lot of spaces that most readers of this thread take for granted is fought out in courts around the world. To most people I am a freak, but they don't understand. They've been taught to see a world that can fit in neat boxes, only that nature doesn't really care. [edit: This sounds really mean and rude when I read it again before going to sleep. To any reader I assure you this was not my intention. I am sorry if I came across like that to you.]

What I am trying to say is that don't create women only spaces, or LGBTI friendly spaces, or anything like that. Create human friendly spaces. Embrace and accept the differences in others and only then can you see that the world is far more complex than any label we can slap on top of it.

[edit: forgot grammar and spell check. Sorry.]

<comment><USER3> I'm on the same page regarding gender and the need for an effort for "human friendly spaces". I've been phrasing things in a binary-gender manner because gender being a spectrum is a bit tangential and distracting to the point here, and is something that a much lower percentage of the population seems to have waken up to.

FWIW, I've spent a fair amount of time explaining that it doesn't just suck to be a woman, or a man, or a whatever to people. I think it's very hard for people to see how much assumptions about the way people are supposed to act based on their appearances or physical features really affect peoples day-to- day lives. Whether that's avoidable or not is another discussion.

Anyhow, I wish you luck.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. I really wish that more people like you existed in this world.

Can I ask you something? How did you get interested in this? If you don't mind can you please drop me a line at yesthisisananonymousid [at] google mail?

Thank you.

[edit: This might sound weird to you, but I would really love to talk to you. All of my life I have to fake being a boy for the benefit of my parents. I have to talk differently, walk differently, gesture differently, adjust my posture differently, look at things differently. The lines were drawn in my childhood; I was either a boy or it was the streets for me. Of course, I doubt it that my parents would have acted on that threat, but growing up with such stuff changed me. It's like someone stole my childhood from me. I don't know what it is like to have a normal life anymore. It's something really profound to meet someone who just gets it without saying. Please do indulge me with that.

Oh and my parents aren't monsters they just followed the status quo. I love them and I shall continue to love them no matter what.]

<comment><USER3> I'd be glad to. I'll email you either tonight or tomorrow, probably tonight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Being a techie and the father of a daughter, I'm sympathetic to the cause. But stuff like

 _It would be scheduled and located so that women with families could actively do it. No "3-months in Silicon Valley"._

always rubs me the wrong way, whether it "should" or not. I'm a man with a family — in a "coparenting relationship" (kids spend a week with me then a week with mom, repeat) — and am exactly as likely to be able to move to Silicon Valley for a few months as a woman in the same situation would be (i.e. it's impossible).

Not that our field doesn't need more diversity; Lord knows it does.

EDIT: I want to add that I'm not in any way disparaging this project and I wish it the very best. Just wanted to throw in another perspective. As a straight white male born in the USA I've done quite well in the birth lottery, through no special work or talent of my own. But I think it's important and valuable (for all participants) as we move to a relationship/parenting model of each-couple-works-it-out-for-themselves shared responsibility that we recognize the implications and adapt appropriately. Easier said than done.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, if that's an accommodation worth making for women with families, it surely is for men, too, given that they're increasingly sharing parenting responsibilities.

<comment><USER8> Of course - which is why I would see it makes sense for differentiating between people with children.

It is somehow of more consequence that a mother misses 3 months of a child's life than a father?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What I read is this, "I want a Y-combinator, except where I live, aimed at my gender and with a schedule I can accept. Oh, and please supply the tech talent I need. If things work out I can reward the coders with salary and possibly a CTO position down the road."

Need I explain what is wrong with that picture?

If you don't see the problems, you might start by reading [http://blog.wepay.com/2010/03/5-things-i-%E2%80%9Cknew%E2%80...](http://blog.wepay.com/2010/03/5-things-i-%E2%80%9Cknew%E2%80%9D-or- should-have-known-before-starting-a-company-but-didnt-fully-understand-until- now/) and seeing how many critical pieces don't work. Starting with the whole supply/demand issue around technical and non-technical co-founders.

<comment><USER10> I disagree, I think it's a perfectly legitimate request. I know Tereza personally, and I also went through YC, so trust me when I say that she is definitely more talented than the average YC founder. That being said, she would still benefit greatly from having some additional resources, a community, and a push in the right direction, but the resources and community that YC provides don't quite fit her needs.

Don't get me wrong, moving out to silicon valley and eating ramen for three months is a lot of fun. But at the end of the day, YC is still kind of an existential solution to a monetary problem. Which is great, and it's the best thing for a lot of people including me, but there are other people with other needs who are just as capable of being successful given the right environment for them.

<comment><USER9> I am not saying anything against Tereza personally, and she may be incredibly talented. But every single thing I said in my summary can be backed up with quotes from her article. Here is the summary I gave, with quotes from Tereza interspersed.

"I want a Y-combinator..." - _I want a Y Combinator..._

"...except where I live..." - _I'd love to New York be home to the world's first XX Combinator, and I'd love to be in it._

"...aimed at my gender..." - _I want a Y Combinator for women. Let's call it the XX Combinator._

"...and with a schedule I can accept." - _It would be scheduled and located so that women with families could actively do it._

"Oh, and please supply the tech talent I need." - _Benevolent hackers would work side-by-side with them to build it..._

"If things work out I can reward the coders with salary and possibly a CTO position down the road." - _...for equity and possibly paid salaries by sponsors and can convert into CTO positions._

There is no part of that list which is likely to happen any time soon. Y-combinator itself found out the hard way that it is easier to get startups going in Silicon Valley. People who are investing money generally care more about return on investment than targeting women. Startups naturally don't stay within convenient schedules. The rate-limiting ingredient to starting tech startups is available good tech talent, so there is no supply of "benevolent hackers", particularly not ones who are willing to work the necessary hours with a random person they were partnered with. And given the amount of work it takes, plus the supply/demand issue, the reward the tech people need cannot be an afterthought "if things work out".

Oh, and I disagree with the claim that YC is just an existential solution to a monetary problem. If you're young, single, and capable, it isn't hard to save more money than YC offers. But that won't get you, for instance, the feedback and networking benefits that YC gives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If 7 female founder is reflective of the Y Combinator applicant pool, and the only thing YC is doing to structurally to "keep women out" is to favor founders who have coding skills, then the issue appears to be that there aren't enough competent female coders.

Rather than a band-aid solution (e.g., creating a separate model of startup incubator that plays the types of jobs women currently do), if we want true gender equality in the tech space we should hit at the root: getting more women interested in tech. So instead of "XX Combinator," how about more programs designed to get young girls interested in science, math, coding, and entrepreneurism -- the supposed ingredients of a successful YC applicant.

That is, it seems to me that funding a whole bunch of startups run by people who may not be technically qualified to succeed simply because they're women isn't a great idea. Instead, the better solution is to devise ways to get more women interested in the things necessary to succeed (in this case coding and design skills+) and help them develop those skills.

+If you believe the apparent YC philosophy that technically adept founders are better positioned to succeed.

<comment><USER3> I think that what needs to be addressed is the cultural idea that math and programming and "science stuff" is a _male_ thing.

On a more abstract level, I think what needs to be addressed is the cultural idea that $FOO or $BAR are a $GENDER thing, especially considering what we're discovering about gender and sexuality. There's plenty of examples of women being pressured to not do X and men being pressured to not do Y because X or Y fall out of what are considered to be normal social behavior for their respective gender or sex.

How to address it? I don't know exactly, other than stressing the point, and making a point of not performing that type of implied discrimination yourself.

I'm a big fan of meritocracy in this regards -- if I'm looking for coders (or dancers, or drivers, or artists, or bakers, or whatever), I care about what they can and have accomplished, not what they look like or what their sex is. If I ever start my own company, I very well might make the application process (as) entirely anonymous (as possible) to enforce this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really don't think that equality in genders means that 50% of YC applicants (or any particular career choice) should be women (or men).

"I want a Y Combinator for women" is an incredibly ignorant comment. First, it suggests that YC somehow is not suited to women which is insulting to both parties. Secondly it is suggesting that a woman only YC is a step forward - <USER2> see it as a leap backwards.

And then she goes to speak for women everywhere with statements like

"Y Combinator participants are for the most part very young — in their early 20's. This is not when women would be most inclined. Women who start businesses like to know what they're doing, and be trained and experienced in it.".

That is so ridiculous I feel ignorant for responding to this post.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't think any of the reasons mentioned here for _keeping women out_ is gender specific. It's more hacker vs "idea person" or how I prefer to think of it, those who can code vs those who can't code.

This is more about "Y Combinator for non coders" than it is about "Y Combinator for women". This is something I see a lot of - people with some experience that want to start a tech startup but want to hire out some developers to build it for them. Not that there is something inherently wrong with that - there just isn't anything gender specific about it either.

The problem, as the author mentioned, is primarily that the number of women taking up coding is disproportionate to the number of men that take up coding. Y Combinator's heavily male population is a reflection of the problem, not a cause.

<comment><USER13> The 35-year old cut-off could be considered gender-specific.

I'm a 30-year old female entrepreneur and software developer. I would love to do Y-combinator or other incubator program. I also want to start a family. If I wait for years to have kids, there is a statistically higher risk of infertility. This isn't the case for men. I think the author is correct that women may be more ready to launch a start-up when they're 40.

<comment><USER14> "I think the author is correct that women may be more ready to launch a start- up when they're 40" I think this is a valid statement.

However, the argument then becomes, 'Is it a good business strategy to invest and nurture a pool of 40 year old entrepreneurs?'

<comment><USER15> That is a good question; but as the life expectency of our population increases while the prospect of any of us getting social security decreases, the fact is we may be at a point where retirement doesn't happen until one is at least 70 or even older. A 45-year old entrepreneur with, let's say, 20 years experience in the field who doesn't plan on retiring until 65 or 70 still has at least 20 years to invest in the company; additionally, think of what you at 18 or 20 could have learned from an internship with someone like that. I think our culture is continually redefining what is and isn't "old"; I for one don't think 40 is truly all that old.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why are entrepreneurs mostly male?

I believe this deserves another look: <http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm>

TDLR: "For women throughout history (and prehistory), the odds of reproducing have been pretty good. Later in this talk we will ponder things like, why was it so rare for a hundred women to get together and build a ship and sail off to explore unknown regions, whereas men have fairly regularly done such things? But taking chances like that would be stupid, from the perspective of a biological organism seeking to reproduce. They might drown or be killed by savages or catch a disease. For women, the optimal thing to do is go along with the crowd, be nice, play it safe. The odds are good that men will come along and offer sex and you'll be able to have babies. All that matters is choosing the best offer. We're descended from women who played it safe.

For men, the outlook was radically different. If you go along with the crowd and play it safe, the odds are you won't have children. Most men who ever lived did not have descendants who are alive today. Their lines were dead ends. Hence it was necessary to take chances, try new things, be creative, explore other possibilities."

</comment><comment><USER17> The more I watched the Milan fashion show, the more troubled I became that 0% of the models on the catwalks were men. I realized that the men in the IT industry compose a vast, under-served market for high fashion that is being actively and sexually discriminated against by structural factors.

Factors which we can overcome with wishful thinking.

We need a fashion show. In Silicon Valley. For men. In their thirties and forties. Who can code. On nights and weekends so as not to disturb their working hours.

Benevolent designers and fashion models will work with the coders to make this happen in return for equity and possibly paid salaries by sponsors and can convert into CFO (Chief Fashion Officer) positions.

</comment><comment><USER18> There is already a y combinator for your gender: y combinator. If the problem is that women don't know how to code, then we should start empowering them to code, not give them money to start a tech business despite that.

</comment><comment><USER19> <http://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=W8lZDdBoHf>

</comment><comment><USER20> It's worth trying; I hope somebody does.

</comment><comment><USER21> this old debate

memo to the planet: males and females are different

stop thinking, open your eyes and ears and get out in the world. do this for say 20+ years so you get exposed to a lot of reality, enough to overwhelm your theories/thinking, then revisit the issue.

one last point: I think universities and colleges are the main vectors for this "males and females are the same with exact same potential, desires, talents, predilections -- but mean old Society is oppressing/distorting them" idea. can't wait to see it die out.</comment>


Graphing the history of philosophy - <AUTHOR> http://drunks-and-lampposts.com/2012/06/13/graphing-the-history-of-philosophy/ <comment><USER2> A striking graph, but ultimately nothing more than a popularity index, isn't it? Since there's no allowance for whether someone was augmenting or criticizing or what have you. And placement of nodes seems more or less arbitrary as well, or rather they had to choose between grouping by connections or grouping by theme, and it's rather difficult to accurately place hundreds of philosophers on some kind of 4-axis graph. But that is in fact what I was hoping for. X axis is time perhaps and Y axis is power, as measured by longevity and frequency of reference from that time forward?</comment>


Glitch by Fog Creek - <AUTHOR> https://glitch.com/ <comment><USER2> The domain is recycled from a former game site. Its shut down announcement might be worth reading along with the HN discussion:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20121117004246/http://www.glitch...](https://web.archive.org/web/20121117004246/http://www.glitch.com/closing/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4786514](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4786514)

<comment><USER3> Wow, so when he says "We have developed some unique messaging technology with applications outside of the gaming world and a smaller core team will be working to develop new products." he's talking about Slack..?

<comment><USER4> > Wow, so when he says [...]

Wrong thread? Not clear what you're referring to?

<comment><USER5> He's referring to a comment [0] in the above-linked HN thread [1].

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4786931](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4786931)

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4786514](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4786514)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am using Glitch as a learning tool and it is great! It is great to see in real time the consequences of what I am typing. The faster the feedback the faster you learn. I know if something broke or work as I intended immediatelly.

I am creating my portfolio there btw: [https://rodrigo- pontes.glitch.me](https://rodrigo-pontes.glitch.me)

</comment><comment><USER7> Some discussion yesterday from blog post announcing the change in product name [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13860603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13860603)

</comment><comment><USER8> I can already tell this is more "heavy weight" than JS fiddle but also similar.

Is there a reason I can't make something private to view? Is that a paid feature that will come later?

Sometimes I just want to play around and don't want people to know how silly my code is and then hold it against me as a person.

<comment><USER9> Yes, you can make your code Private through the advanced options menu :) This option is only visible if you sign in though.

<comment><USER8> I noticed that the private option only prevents people from editing. It doesn't prevent people from viewing it. Is that right?

<comment><USER10> That's right - can't edit or view the code when private (unless you're a member of the project) but you can always see the published project. But of course, you can implement whatever access controls you want in your app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is this the same product previously named "Gomix" that Anil Dash was building at Fog Creek?

<comment><USER12> [https://medium.com/glitch/welcome-to-glitch- fe161d0fc39b#.ef...](https://medium.com/glitch/welcome-to-glitch- fe161d0fc39b#.eft7qcam2)

"Why did we change the name (again)? Well, we heard from some members of our community that the old name evokes a hurtful slur in some Russian communities, and given our deep commitment to building an inclusive service, that didn't sit right with us, even though people understand we didn't mean to be hurtful."

<comment><USER13> I would be intrigued to see a database of, say, the top 10 or 25 languages in the world, and all their potentially offensive phrases. It would be useful to help avoid this sort of thing, and probably have some interesting things to say about linguistics and psychology.

<comment><USER14> [http://wordsafety.com](http://wordsafety.com) was posted on HN a couple of years ago.

It doesn't detect "gomix" though, which is odd, as I submitted it when gomix.com was launched and the naming snafu was mentioned here.

Edit: having tried variations on some common English words, I can see why not - the phonetic matching seems pretty poor. I wonder what algorithm they're using?

<comment><USER13> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks like auth via GitHub requires access to private repositories :-(

<comment><USER16> Yup, which means I won't be logging in right away. It looks neat, but I don't think I want to leak private info just because something is shiny.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, we're looking into a better way to allow folks to export to private repos (which is something people asked for) while not having to ask all users for everything. Stay tuned.

You don't need an account to try it out, only to keep your projects around for more than a few days and Facebook login is another option to consider.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The video in [https://glitch.com/about/](https://glitch.com/about/) does a good job of quickly explaining what this is.

</comment><comment><USER18> Weird timing - the latest JSJ podcast[0], released this morning, is titled "Gomix with Daniel X Moore". In it Daniel hints at some coming changes, but I didn't think it was as fundamental as a brand change.

[0][https://devchat.tv/js-jabber/gomix-with-daniel-x- moore](https://devchat.tv/js-jabber/gomix-with-daniel-x-moore)

</comment><comment><USER19> We used gomix (now glitch) successfully in our coding bootcamp. Students really loved building mock and real backends with it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Probably coincidental but the fish iconography reminded me immediately of David Siegel's "Creating Killer Web Sites" "follow the fish" navigation:

[http://www.killersites.com/killerSites/core.html](http://www.killersites.com/killerSites/core.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> How _do_ they find the time...

That said, from a quick perusal of the landing page, I have precious little idea what this is for, and equally little inclination to watch a two minute introductory video.

<comment><USER22> Instant gratification modern stack web (frontend/backend) programming. Ok for playing around, but for anything serious it doesn't seem to add much imho. Maybe I am missing something. If you could install it on your own company servers it would be better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Glitch is a great name, gotta wonder how much they paid Slack for it

</comment><comment><USER24> This does not load for me. Just shows white. I'm on the latest Android.

</comment><comment><USER25> Did they purchase this domain from the Slack/Tiny Speck folks?</comment>


Airbourne: Eastbourne International Airshow 13th – 16th August 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://www.eastbourneairshow.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a free event and the last Vulcan will be flying for the final season.</comment>


Ask HN: Did financial crisis ever hold you back to release your product? - <AUTHOR>

I am just thinking out loud. I have been struggling to come up with own idea/product/site. Out of many reasons, one of the reasons that always held me back was that I always thought about my family.
I quit 9-5 slavery a year back, till then I have been working as a freelancer, providing consultancy and working with pals in their company. As it's expected there were some tough days during the course. I had to think about my family first rather than dreaming about my next big idea.
To cut long story short, how did you cope up this situation beside getting investment from a VC(Being a resident of a non-US country its not easy either)? Does this mean I can never be an entrepreneur ?
Your thoughts please? <comment><USER2> If you want to start a business but your appetite for risk is low (you have a family to support), you should look into a lifestyle business. It's like a startup, but instead of swinging for the fences and seeking VC investment and looking to be aquired or IPO, you seek to maintain a certain level of income to support your lifestyle. This may be easier for you in Pakistan than in a more expensive country.

Take me, for example. I make $100k+ as a software engineer, so if I wanted to quit my job and start a business, I'd need $9k per month to support my current lifestyle (pretty difficult to do). Maybe in Pakistan I would only need $1k per month (a little easier).

Ideas for businesses to make $1k per month include selling stock photography, WordPress templates, simple iOS/Android apps, etc. If you want something with more potential (but with more effort), try something like Skype tutoring, being a virtual assistant, or a content writer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your valuable comment. In short you're saying to juggle so many balls at once but it does make sense. What I guess it also requires good at marketing which I am not.

In past few year I did try to work on different technologies and could not restrict myself to a few but I still could not develop skills to _sell_ myself or my skills. Being a developer it's pretty hard but not impossible.</comment></comment>


Cloudpin – Share anything with a zoom-like pin code - <AUTHOR> https://cloudpin.it <comment><USER2> Looks great.</comment>


Attacking hardened Linux systems with kernel JIT spraying (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://mainisusuallyafunction.blogspot.com/2012/11/attacking-hardened-linux-systems-with.html <comment><USER2> > A bad guess will likely oops the kernel and kill the current process.

Why doesn't jumping to a random address panic the kernel instead of just killing the current process?

Also, I wonder if you can protect against this by XORing constants with a key before writing the instruction stream and then undoing that with later (properly aligned) instructions so the BPF code doesn't break.

</comment><comment><USER3> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4802381](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4802381).

<comment><USER4> > Luckily pax anticipated that attack when releasing the KERNEXEC patch and > fixed it a while ago.

Naturally.

<comment><USER5> So, I'm wondering why it's not upstream in mainline.

<comment><USER6> Politics.

<comment><USER5> That applies to everything - it's not a reason, it's an excuse. More specifically, I meant - what was the technical rationale for its exclusion?

<comment><USER6> None. It is all politics.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Subdomains versus Directories? - <AUTHOR> I want to start a blog (and a number of projects). Which is better, domain.com/blog or blog.domain.com and why? <comment><USER2> There are security implications to this decision.

JavaScript uses a security model called the same-origin policy. There are differences in the implementation between different browsers but here's the gist: JS may modify the DOM if-and-only-if the domain containing the script shares the domain of the DOM. Loosely, the check is done by comparing _document.domain_ strings. If the strings match, everything is kosher.

You can truncate _document.domain_ by lopping off period delimited prefixes. Even if you lop foo.com down to the TLDs, you won't be able to do the same trick and cut bar.com down and get scripts to run in the same context.

If you're hosting content on blog.example.com and example.com, an attack on blog.example.com could truncate the document.domain down to 'example.com' and execute malicious script on the primary domain.

I would recommend using blog.example.com and www.example.com, but never example.com.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like to think of it this way: left of the "/" is for systems/operations, right of the "/" is for code/content/development. So if you're going to put something on a separate subdomain it should be for mechanical reasons, such as using a different cdn or a different hosting stack. Think of it from a workflow perspective. To add /blog to your site goes through your existing code publishing workflow. To add blog.domain.com to your site means involving server configuration or a third party web interface, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> pro on subdomain because:

* a lot of blogging apps/readers etc. look for feeds at standard endpoint urls such as /feed.xml /xmlrpc etc. all the plugin urls etc. will also be at the standard urls

* you can set auth cookies for the subdomain so you can isolate logged in commenters etc. (you can have path=/blog on cookies but most blogging apps don't support it).

* sep analytics (also possible on sub-dirs but you can visitor track and x-ref between domains).

pro on folder because:

* SEO counts to your main domain (see : [http://www.christonium.com/SearchEngineMarketing/subdomain-d...](http://www.christonium.com/SearchEngineMarketing/subdomain-directory-seo))

<comment><USER5> i don't think you can say SEO counts to your main domain in the same way as subfolder - at least there's no empirical evidence in the link above that subdomains are better or even the same as subfolders in terms of backlink value.

if my clients are REALLY worried about SEO, i always recommend subfolder. if they don't care or don't expect tons of backlinks to their blog, subdomain is generally easier to manage so i recommend that.

<comment><USER4> to clarify, I said 'pro on subfolder', meaning an advantage of being in a subfolder is that you get the SEO.

I was listing the benefits of subdomain/subfolder and on subfolder seo is the only one I could think of

<comment><USER5> oh, sorry about that. well then we're in total agreement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Subdomains are the way to go.

After 5 years of trying to house web applications within subdirectories of subdirectories of sites for our university, we've grown tired of the endless configuration nightmares that many apps require. Sticking a new folder of static pages somewhere is trivial, but configuring Rails apps, forums, third party services, and other things we purchase to work properly at the subdirectory level is so much more painful. It often involves reverse proxy settings and content rewriting, which doesn't always play nice if the directory structure is uneven.

So now we have subdomains. We have a wildcard set up that forwards to our app servers, we have scripts that create the vhost file and tap Apache to restart, and no proxies need to be modified to allow /foo/bar/baz to go to server1.foo.com.

When I managed a handful of apps, subfolders were nice Everything under www was great for SEO and everything else. But the fact is that users don't care about URLs, our sites on subdomains get found by search engines because we link to them, and if we need to move foobarapp to another more powerful box (or to the cloud) it's WAY easier.

</comment><comment><USER7> Directory please, because it makes the URLs nice and hackable. I can hit Cmd+L, right, alt-backspace to remove the 'blog' part of the URL instead of screwing around trying to select the subdomain (and dot!) to get back to your main site.

I hate this even more for sites like GitHub pages, which use <http://name.github.com/project/> for the pages and <http://github.com/name/project/> for the repo. Trying to rewrite the URL to get from one to the other is an exercise in fiddly copypasting.

<comment><USER8> Or you could just click the links.

<comment><USER9> Most blogs make this difficult by not having an easily-discoverable link back to the main site. They link back to the root of the blog and maybe have a link back to the main site hidden away somewhere, which takes more time to find than editing the URL by hand.

It's frustrating but could be solved regardless or sub-domain/sub-directory preference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A big pro for using a subdomain is it's easier to host it on a separate server, or even on Tumblr or the like (by pointing the record to them). This could be key if you have a webapp with a custom server configurarion running on your main domain. It could also mean your blog stays up if your main site goes down - ideal for status updates, etc.

</comment><comment><USER11> I prefer the subdomain method. It keeps things separate. In our case it allows me to run our custom CMS for our website and separate Wordpress instance for our blog...no interdependencies of any type.

YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER12> I just moved all my users over from directories to subdomains for my project AppRabbit and I think it's done a lot in terms of ease of use. They used to have to type apps.apprabbit.com/myapp/ but now they can just go to myapp.apprabbit.com. It's the same thing, but different, and it just feels much better. Setup was a little tricky to figure out, but in the end it's pretty much the same thing, as far as the app code is concerned, apache handles all the heavy lifting. It actually made things easier on a few fronts because before I had to inject the user's app name into the path for things like redirecting to the login page, etc, so this change made things like that easier.

One thing that I don't get now, or at least I'll have to work for it, is sharding my setup, when I get to that point. Before I figured I could just move people to app1.apprabbit.com, app2.apprabbit.com, etc, but now I will have to handle the redirecting in my configs when I get to the point where I need to split things out for performance. On the other hand, this makes it that much easier to move a big customer off of a shared host and give them their own server without changing anything public facing.

In the end it definitely has it's perks and drawbacks, but I wanted subdomains, and so far I haven't had any problems with them.

</comment><comment><USER13> From my viewpoint it comes down to manageability. I've got scripts that make it take < 2 minutes to set up a new domain or subdomain on my server, and each one of those is in it's own directory so it can be copied, backed up, or moved to another server easily. If, on the other hand, you're using somebody else's hosting system, subdomains could be a big pain.

For one project of mine, I'm keeping my images on a separate domain so I can switch to a different system for hosting images... For instance, host them on a single-threaded web server or move them to S3/CloudFront.

Similarly, if a project involves different technology than the main site or if it may involve different technology in the future, that's a good reason for a subdomain. If you might want to host it differently, that's a good reason for a subdomain.

I don't know what to tell you about S.E.O.; a few years ago there were some people who made subdomains by the hundred because they thought they got S.E.O. advantages from that -- S.E.'s like keywords in the domain. My understanding is that keywords in subdomains used to be unreasonably powerful, people exploited them, and now there's not so great. S.E.'s also appear to have depth limits on the crawls they do a single host, so multiple hosts might also be a way to get more pages indexed. On the other hand, there are powerful ways to get monolithic sites indexed too. Other people think it's better to put all your eggs in one basket so you can get a higher score on one host.

The truth is that people outside the S.E.'s don't know what the real rules are, and the S.E.'s will change them next year.

</comment><comment><USER14> \- Domain.com/blog might be better for seo, but it's probably not a big deal unless you are hoping to get lots of seo juice via your blog.

\- blog.domain.com is easier to manage (easier to use third party service, easier to keep code updates separate, ...).

</comment><comment><USER15> The rule that I use:

\- everything user-generated that you have little control over (for example, forums or blogs with badly moderated comment section) goes to subdomains.

\- everything you control goes to subfolders.

Thus, if you can keep your blog free of spam, it should go to subfolder.

</comment><comment><USER16> Subdomain. An advantage that I didn't see below is that you can change the DNS to point the subdomain to a different server.

So, you could use domain.com for your projects, and point blog.domain.com to a hosted service (Posterous?)

</comment><comment><USER17> Personally, I prefer subdomains, because I often type URLs into the bar. People who google everything wouldn't know the difference anyway.

Over the last 2 years, every big organization switched to folders (it used to be mail.google.com and finance.google.com, and now it's www.google.com/mail and www.google.com/finance; the only google exception I'm aware of is news.google.com). I remember reading an article about that having something to do with ease of geobalancing or something.

</comment><comment><USER18> more aimed towards building web apps than deciding where to put your blog, but someone from wuffoo strongly recommended against subdomains

[http://particletree.com/notebook/subdomains-development- suck...](http://particletree.com/notebook/subdomains-development-sucks/)

<comment><USER19> Reason #2 really isn't a good one. It's pretty simple to setup subdomains locally (just use your hosts file to configure something like dev.whatever.yourdomain.com to point to localhost). Every webserver I know of supports name based virtualhosts, so it's not even like you need multiple IP's

<comment><USER18> you cant use wildcards within your hosts file, so you have to manually edit your hosts file for every new subdomain you want to use, I have had a huge hassle doing the same. particularly when you want 1. dynamically generated sub domains, 2. to test a lot of subdomains.

Unless you want to run bind of course

<comment><USER20> just have your regular DNS use localhost as a wildcard subdomain, say *.development.mysite.com

<comment><USER18> I think its pretty important for most people development setups to work offline

<comment><USER20> Well, then setup bind. It's not the end of the world :). That, or just use /etc/hosts, it's more of a pain, but for testing you just need a handful of URLs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Whichever is easiest with your setup. The important thing is to actually write - don't get too caught up in the technical details.

</comment><comment><USER22> Hypothetically, if I have my blog at "example.com/journal", how can I host it on Posterous/Tumblr/etc?</comment>


Show HN: Migra, like diff but for PostgreSQL schemas - <AUTHOR> https://migra.readthedocs.io/ <comment><USER2> Not sure about the naming... Would Spanish speakers call it La Migra? Might discourage usage from that populace.

<comment><USER3> "La migra" means "immigration" according to google translate. What's the problem with that? Is it also vulgar slang of some sort?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For a moment I thought this was the tool I always wanted to build: something that read 2 files with schema declarations on them and calculated the commands that would be necessary to execute to go from one to the other.

I guess this is just too hard and won't pay.

<comment><AUTHOR> This tool does calculate necessary changes to move from one schema to another, in what respects does it not work the way you want?

<comment><USER4> It doesn't parse my text files with "CREATE TABLE" declarations in them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have found that the best parser of text files with create table declarations in them is an SQL database.

What's wrong with just loading the files temporarily into a database to compare their schemas?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The power of lonely: What we do better without other people around - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/03/06/the_power_of_lonely/?page=full <comment><USER3> As someone who spends a good deal of time alone because I enjoy solitary pursuits, I disagree with the article when it claims that alone time is a form of "liberation", "freedom", and gaining "control". It's been my experience that people who use terms like these to describe their solitude don't actually really enjoy it much at all and tend to only seek this alone time as a manifestation of an avoidant personality. In other words, they don't feel happy during this time by themselves, but they seek it as a way to demonstrate autonomy within their life. They like the _idea_ of being alone, but not the alone time itself.

On the other hand, people who describe their alone time as "relaxing", "exciting", or "interesting" truly seem to enjoy that period without social interaction.

<comment><USER4> That's pretty insightful. What I hear you saying, and I agree with what I hear, is that some look at alone time as a means of accomplishing a goal (freedom, et. al.) rather than pursing the solitary activity. Contrast that with myself (and I gather you as well) where I pursue a solitary activity for the sake of the activity, and the solitude is a side effect.

When I'm riding a motorcycle to a far away destination or running a trail on some mountain, I'm doing it to ride a motorcycle or to go for a run. I don't mind being alone, most likely even enjoy it, but that's not what I'm out there for. The exception could be sitting on a meditation cushion, but to me aloneness (EDIT: in the case of meditation) is more of a requirement than a goal.

With all that said, I do have a teensy nit to pick with the title: alone != lonely. Sometimes the two intersect, but not as a rule.

<comment><USER5> As a raging introvert who is also a bit of an extrovert at times - yes and no.

Sometimes I take up a solitary activity that I don't enjoy quite that much just for the sake of being alone. Going for a run in the morning somehow feels less weird than just sitting in my room staring at the wall. It also gets me away from the internet.

Now I _could_ just be alone and away from the internet. But the mind is hyperactive and it craves distraction. That's when you have to trick it into accepting aloneness and nointernetness by giving it something better to do. Or simply forcing it to accept its fate.

<comment><USER4> > Going for a run in the morning somehow feels less weird than just sitting in > my room staring at the wall.

It's all about branding. In most settings, yeah, it'd be labelled as weird. But if we call "sitting and staring at the wall" something like "meditation" it becomes all cool and esoteric. :-) (I say this as one who spends at least 30 minutes a day sitting and staring at a wall.)

Point taken, though. I guess I have enough solitary activities that I regularly partake in that I never gave thought to those that might need to actively seek out such activities.

<comment><USER5> > I guess I have enough solitary activities that I regularly partake in that I > never gave thought to those that might need to actively seek out such > activities.

I actually have to remind myself to partake in activities that involve other people (unless I'm currently working for a client on site). The bigger issue is true aloneness without that pesky internet. It's a powerful addiction.

Honestly, I feel more alone when I'm in the gym actively boxing with people than I do sitting at home where I can't help but check my messages ever couple of minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting side note on the history of the US Forest Service and its interest in the study of loneliness:

In the 1930s and 1940s (and probably later, too) the US Forest Service employed something like fire-watchers, men who would hike out on their own with little equipment into the forests to their station, which was a single fire lookout tower in the wilderness [1].

There they would sit on their own and scan the horizon for fires until their replacement arrived, usually after a few months. If they would see smoke, they had to walk (again, on their own) to the smoke and try to put out the fire with the little equipment they had.

If they couldn't put out the fire they had to go get help - quite an undertaking since the towers often were not connected to any telephone network.

Norman Borlaug, the father of the green revolution, did exactly that to support his BSc in forestry from 1935 to 1938, always sitting alone in the forest, usually not seeing anyone for months at a time.

Source: Vietmeyer's 'Our Daily Bread, The Essential Norman Borlaug'

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_lookout_tower](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_lookout_tower)

<comment><USER6> Well, today I learned that the US government rents out these fire lookout towers to campers:

[http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/r2/recreation/?cid=stelprdb534...](http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/r2/recreation/?cid=stelprdb5342115)

Now I want to travel to the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know about everyone else, but I do my best work alone. Of course, there does need to be a balance, and reference to others, and having others show up to confirm or criticize the work helps.

Personally I think there is way to much "social" stuff going on in our society and this is detrimental to real work and innovation taking place. But then again, the choice between bad company and no company is often real the dilemma, and the logical pick is a no-brainer in my opinion.

<comment><USER8> >and having others show up to confirm or criticize the work helps.

I actually had a rather interesting experience last night where an "outsider's perspective" ended up being the exact insight I needed.

My roommate stepped outside to socialize with me while I was repairing my Mustang: which has been having intermittent ignition problems since we replaced the ignition control module 6 months ago.

\---

To set the stage: this module bolts to a plate on the intake manifold. One of the bolts is used as an electrical ground. Unfortunately we had broken this bolt in removing the original module.

Furthermore the back of the unit uses the manifold as a sort of heatsink. So that missing bolt was preventing good thermal conductivity as well!

We had come up with temporary measures to restore the ground -- but clearly these measures were inadequate.

The factory mount is in a very inaccessible spot: there's simply not enough room to drill out the remains of an automotive grade bolt and re-tap the hole.

A friend and I had fabricated a "mounting adapter" and were toying with the idea of remote mounting the module. However we couldn't find a suitable spot on the car that would provide a clean electrical ground. (Without stressing the factory wiring harness.)

My roommate, a machinist and most certainly not a car guy, points to a flat surface and asks if it's "solid enough" to bolt the adapter plate to.

What he had pointed to was the power steering pump. Which for obvious reasons we could not drill into.

\---

However that suggestion ended up being the catalyst I needed to solve the problem. It was as if the whole engine bay became a puzzle.

You see: power steering pumps are made to be removed far more frequently than an intake manifold.

Initially I had thought the only way to repair the factory mount was to remove the intake manifold, which is an arduous task that involves removing many delicate assemblies for emissions and fueling.

Removing the power steering pump, though, was a considerably easier task! This would open up plenty of room in the engine bay; we could even use a typical cordless drill.

\---

Inspiration sometimes comes from the oddest places.

How to act on the proper solution (repairing the factory mounting plate) had eluded me for six months.

An absolutely bonkers suggestion ended up leading me down a much simpler path to success.

<comment><USER9> Reminds me of the rubber duck debugging, only tangentially, but in the same spirit.

<comment><USER8> I'm surprised how effective this sort of 'debugging' can be. I'd love to know more about the mechanisms which make this sort of "verbal problem solving" tick.

I wonder if it's as simple as mapping the problem onto parts of your brain which aren't often tasked with this type of critical thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anecdotally, most people I know do better with a mix of social and alone time. Given that it's now possible to almost never be conscious and effectively alone, it will be interesting to see the long term mental health impact.

Also, being alone is clearly so distressing to many people that they would rather shock themselves than be alone - [http://news.sciencemag.org/brain- behavior/2014/07/people-wou...](http://news.sciencemag.org/brain- behavior/2014/07/people-would-rather-be-electrically-shocked-left-alone-their- thoughts)

<comment><USER11> It's an interesting article but I feel like the study draws the completely wrong conclusion. I would draw the conclusion that humans when offered an experiment they have control of that offers a new or interesting experience will participate even if it causes them pain. If I participated in the experiment I would definitely shock myself since I've rarely been shocked in the situation, then I might spend the rest of the time analyzing my behavior and trying to see the influence of evolutionary drives as a motivator and enjoy that even more. It's basically the same thing as putting ANY button in a room with the warning "Do not press this button".

<comment><USER12> It wasn't new by the time they sat in the room: they had already been shocked and all had said they were willing to pay money to avoid being shocked again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just a side note, as someone that works at home a lot, physically by myself. Others can treat you with suspicion.

A few neighbours have colluded and perceive me to be a monster. I am male, and my partner (female) travels to work. I think they just don't get self- employment / working from home, and what looks like a role reversal.

I'm quite a friendly guy but their hostility (they have been quite mean) is starting to make me feel isolated and quite unwelcome in my own house and garden. When I'm actually quite happy to be on my own (providing I have enough external stimulous).

</comment><comment><USER14> I think we should define 'being lonely' better. At age of internet, computer games and social network it is very relative. Perhaps better term is 'distraction free environment'.

<comment><USER15> "solitude" might be more appropriate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> First, is there a tl;dr version of the article?

To me it seems that the balance of social and alone should be to result in inner peace. This is to ultimately increase productivity in doing what you find satisfying in life.

I write code a lot at work and we plan it out in a group then move our own ways to write it with occasional instant messaging about this or that. But sometimes when I am writing I can't focus or have trouble getting myself into the problem. And from there I find that reading or talking to someone at the office can help put me at peace and ultimately help me focus on the work I have to do.

Like right now I am at work and writing this - I have a task to do to document some things but I hardly remember them and I need to do something that is going to interest me. Am I alone while doing this? Well, sure, I am available for other people to approach but I am not trying to talk to anyone.

I think the term alone is relative to our sense of privacy. If I was in a room with the door closed would I feel more alone than if I am sitting in an open office? Probably. But if I can get to a peaceful state it will probably produce similar results in my work ethic/productivity.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm going to plug my related research on Pinterest. [http://ecologylab.net/research/publications/everyday_ideatio...](http://ecologylab.net/research/publications/everyday_ideation_pinterest.pdf) [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2557273](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2557273)

One interesting thing about Pinterest users is that they feel "alone" and unwatched, even though actions are public. In Teresa Amabile's concept of creativity, anticipating an evaluation can be detrimental to creativity.

<comment><USER18> I wonder if the same may hold true for other public networks like Twitter, Instagram etc., although [unlike Pinterest] they have a higher abandonment rate.

<comment><USER17> In the paper, Pinterest users say social networks like Twitter and Facebook are for promoting one's self to others.

<comment><USER19> This is a taboo thing to say, because social media implies connection (however weak).

I limit my use of Twitter/FB for this reason alone. It becomes nauseating to constantly consume a stream of self-promotional blurbs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think when people emphasize their ability to spend an inordinate amount of time alone, they are looking at it as a unique "quality," something that sets them apart from others.

We all need our alone time, and a few aspects of personality development occur when we are reflecting on the social interactions, encounters and relationships we've had. But too much time alone, I think, eventually leads to feelings of despair and helplessness. Either that, or a numbness to the reality of the state of isolation.

<comment><USER21> A suprising number of people have real difficulty of being alone with their thoughts. There being alone I mean not being only physicall alone, bet being also free from other forms of disctraction and communication.

<comment><USER22> Which is probably the reason why when faced with a (say) 10 minute wait, people feel the need to be distracted. Facebook, Twitter, Hacker News, Reddit... ANYTHING to DO. Even bringing a book or iPod on a train. Some people feel extremely uncomfortable just sitting doing nothing. Being "bored" so to speak.

However boredom is GOOD for you, for adults and especially for children. It fosters creative thought as well as has other positive aspects. Introspective thought and sometimes problem solving comes from boredom. Think about it - where do your best ideas come to you? In the shower.

That's why I get so depressed with how I see kids behaving these days. They have a zillion toys, DVDs, computers, iPods, tablets because (GOD FORBID) they don't have anything to do for a second.

They bring their toys outside of the house. I never once in my life brought a toy with me outside of the house. If I had to wait someone I just (gasp!) waited. They are watching movies in the car (!!!) and this is considered a positive to keep them occupied (and presumably just quiet). I was at a (somewhat snoody) restaurant and I saw two kids who were like 8-10 years old who brought several coloring books and crayons with them and they were all splayed out on the table like it was a child's play place. The concept seemed to be HORRIBLE for them to not have something to do in the time frame between ordering and eating! A full 10-15 minutes!

Well in my opinion it is setting the children up for failure. They aren't interacting with their environment, engaging in conversation, asking questions, or even just learning at some point you have to learn to sit down with nothing to do. Or even learning to find something to do when they are "bored." Kids used to be good at that. Games like "I spy," hand clapping games, pretend and make believe, doing each other's hair, inventing games, singing, trying to find license plates from every state, creating dance routines, cops and robbers (and the politically incorrect version - <USER2> and Indians), etc, etc. My friends and I even wrote, memorized, and performed an entire play when were were children.

I remember going to a really boring after school program for poor kids. There was basically nothing to do for hours other than a small playground that I was way way too old for. So I created a whole world in my head. I was out in the woods. I had to collect firewood and build a fire. I collected sticks, dug a small hole, arranged the sticks as I would if building a fire and arranged rocks around it. Bundled more sticks to make a torch, etc.

I have preteen cousins. When they visit family they don't interact with the family at all. They are on their phones the ENTIRE time at Christmas. I don't even know them at all except for what their parents tell me. I didn't hear a single word from either of them.

Nowadays distractions aren't even enough, people seem to be distracted from their distractions.

Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) wrote a really good article about it.

[http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCYQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Fnews%2Farticles%2FSB10001424053111903454504576486412642177904&ei=2JW- U_6_ItOmyASQooDYDw&usg=AFQjCNEw68MHEZDy8bp9unUS0mA6iiZg3A&sig2=iM4N5rPKmEAsJux7elJ_2A&bvm=bv.70138588,d.aWw)

Might also be of interest

[http://www.the-exponent.com/in-defense-of-boredom/](http://www.the- exponent.com/in-defense-of-boredom/)

I bring a book with my traveling sometimes but usually I don't even take it out, I just sit there with my thoughts and I feel no anxiety about it. I feel really sorry for those who seem to have anxiety about sitting around with nothing to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's really hard for me to stay motivated without other people around. But I am always more productive alone. A mix of with and without people is best for me.

</comment><comment><USER24> I enjoy plenty of 'me' time and found the comments about seeing a movie alone interesting - I don't mind at all being solo when I see a movie.

</comment><comment><USER25> from Grothendieck's _Récoltes et Semailles_ :

        In those critical years I learned how to be alone. [But even] this
        formulation doesn't really capture my meaning. I didn't, in any
        literal sense, learn to be alone, for the simple reason that this
        knowledge had never been unlearned during my childhood. It is a basic
        capacity in all of us from the day of our birth. However these three
        years of work in isolation [1945-1948], when I was thrown onto my own
        resources, following guidelines which I myself had spontaneously
        invented, instilled in me a strong degree of confidence, unassuming
        yet enduring in my ability to do mathematics, which owes nothing to
        any consensus or to the fashions which pass as law. By this I mean
        to say: to reach out in my own way to the things I wished to learn,
        rather than relying on the notions of the consensus, overt or tacit,
        coming from a more or less extended clan of which I found myself a
        member, or which for any other reason laid claim to be taken as an
        authority. This silent consensus had informed me both at the lycee
        and at the university, that one shouldn't bother worrying about
        what was really meant when using a term like "volume" which
        was "obviously self-evident", "generally known," "in
        problematic" etc... it is in this gesture of "going beyond to be
        in oneself rather than the pawn of a consensus, the refusal to stay
        within a rigid circle that others have drawn around one -- it is in
        this solitary act that one finds true creativity. All others things
        follow as a matter of course.

        Since then I've had the chance in the world of mathematics that
        bid me welcome, to meet quite a number of people, both among my
        "elders" and among young people in my general age group who were
        more brilliant, much more 'gifted' than I was. I admired the
        facility with which they picked up, as if at play, new ideas, juggling
        them as if familiar with them from the cradle -- while for myself I
        felt clumsy, even oafish, wandering painfully up an arduous track,
        like a dumb ox faced with an amorphous mountain of things I had to
        learn (so I was assured) things I felt incapable of understanding
        the essentials or following through to the end. Indeed, there was
        little about me that identified the kind of bright student who wins
        at prestigious competitions or assimilates almost by sleight of hand,
        the most forbidding subjects.

        In fact, most of these comrades who I gauged to be more brilliant
        than I have gone on to become distinguished mathematicians. Still
        from the perspective of thirty or thirty five years, I can state
        that their imprint upon the mathematics of our time has not been
        very profound. They've done all things, often beautiful things in
        a context that was already set out before them, which they had no
        inclination to disturb. Without being aware of it, they've remained
        prisoners of those invisible and despotic circles which delimit the
        universe of a certain milieu in a given era. To have broken these
        bounds they would have to rediscover in themselves that capability
        which was their birthright, as it was mine: The capacity to be alone.

<comment><USER26> Grothendieck is a German / French mathematician, for those of us who haven't run across his name before.

Also, Wikipedia says he currently lives in isolation from human society in the Pyrenees. And that he was stateless for much of his life.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Grothendieck](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Grothendieck)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have a lot of friends but really enjoy being alone. Unfortunately people can't accept that as a reason for not joining them on an activity so I constantly have to come up with excuses. I do like hanging out with people as well but being alone is just as fun and rewarding, and is never tiresome.

</comment><comment><USER28> > People make this error, thinking that being alone means being lonely, and > not being alone means being with other people

Loneliness isn't solitude, it's isolation. That's why one can feel so lonely sometimes even with thousands of people around.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, and you can feel isolated even with close friends and family.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Meanwhile.. [http://www.iflscience.com/brain/people-would-rather- experien...](http://www.iflscience.com/brain/people-would-rather-experience- electric-shock-be-alone-their-thoughts)

</comment><comment><USER30> reminded me this ... "isolation is the gift" ? [http://youtu.be/tlXJIawiPE0?t=1m30s](http://youtu.be/tlXJIawiPE0?t=1m30s)

</comment><comment><USER31> >The leaders of the world's great religions — Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Moses — all had crucial revelations during periods of solitude.

They're fictional persons and stories. It doesn't make sense to reference them in a topic like this.

</comment><comment><USER32> "Without great solitude no serious work is possible." \- Pablo Picasso, [http://zenhabits.net/creative-habit](http://zenhabits.net/creative-habit)

<comment><USER33> Nice site... Solitude is in fact a Zen habit... I've been introduced to Zen and practicing it lately and has been a great experience so far.

I reckon solitude is good for both: creative work, and self-awareness...

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Another study that tells us what everybody already knows.

</comment><comment><USER35> "social loafing"!

</comment><comment><USER36> Yo, I read HN. I got this.</comment>