Loneliness is contributing to our increasingly tribal politics - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/89f16688-fb15-11e7-a492-2c9be7f3120a <comment><AUTHOR> _Online, each tribe inhabits its own filter bubble of partisan news. To blame this only on Facebook is unfair. If people wanted a range of views, they could install both rightwing and leftwing feeds on their Facebook pages — The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian, say. Most people choose not to, partly because they like living in their tribe. It makes them feel less lonely._

<comment><USER2> That made me think of being adrift at sea with no drinking water, you're very likely going to be tempted to drink some of that is available around you, except sea water will dehydrate you even faster. Facebook seems to make lonely people feel lonelier, the sad thing is, if making people feel lonelier makes them use the platform more then there's an incentive to keep making people feel that way. So even if that's not Facebook's intention and the only thing they do is follow metrics then you can picture an evolutionary path that reinforces the same problems Facebook was initially trying to improve.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think Zuckerberg has recognized the problem without really saying exactly what it is. He's trying to fix it because it goes against his core mission of connecting people in a better way. I give him some credit for this.

<comment><USER3> "They 'trust me.' Dumb fucks" \- Mark Zuckerberg, 2004. Facebook is not going to fix the problems they're leveraging to make billions of dollars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any non-walled links perchance?</comment>


Ask HN: Why is it difficult to achieve a FAANG-level salary while self-employed? - <AUTHOR> As a software engineer at a FAANG company, it is easy to earn $200k to $300k with just a few years of experience. At the same time, it is non-trivial to get to a similar level of salary while self-employed.<p>My assumption would be that a company always has to pay engineers less than the value they generate. How is it then that a FAANG-engineer would struggle to achieve a similar salary on his own? <comment><USER2> If you consider the work output of an engineer to be a proxy for value, then working for a machine that has extensive and significant capability for distributing value will result in more value creation (for you and them) than working for yourself would. If what you are building impacts 1B people who are paying in some way for what is being created, the value creation is way higher. The same applies to anything, more distribution power means more potential value creation and more value created. In a sense, you're more useful to a FAANG than you are alone.

<comment><USER3> Thats not all. FAANG companies also have higher revenue per user than competitors. Network effects and all

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/01/facebook-towers-over- rivals-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/01/facebook-towers-over-rivals-in- the-critical-metric-of-revenue-per-user.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One reason is leverage. Large company engineers are able to focus more on the work they do and let the rest of the company deal with the other stuff. Also, bigger companies have lots more work to do so the engineers can focus on only a few things.

Think about it in these terms; a custom car maker can only make a few cars but a factory can make so many more at a lower cost and higher total profit simply because of the number of cars they can make.

<comment><USER5> That's a great point...working on your own (e.g. as a freelance engineer) you will spend a nontrivial amount of time on advertising, billing, etc., that cuts into billable time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > it is easy to earn $200k to $300k with just a few years of experience

I think this part shows that whether it's easier to make more as an employee or self-employed is highly regional. In large, competitive tech centers, where FAANG companies are, the demand and competition for talent is high and fierce, driving salaries significantly higher than what you might normally expect. The cost of living in such places also tends to be astronomical.

In other places, say medium-sized cities that are not known as tech centers, that dynamic doesn't exist. In my experience, this means that the income you can achieve as a self-employed (and often remote) software engineer far exceeds the general salary "ceiling" of that local region (and I'm talking about North America here, not far-off places). So you may not quite achieve FAANG level compensation (although I'm sure some do), but relative to the cost-of-living you're doing quite well if not better.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think your assumption is wrong.

Making $200-300k as a self-employed software engineer requires a completely different skillset than getting and maintaining a job at a FAANG. The roles have very little carry over.

I made ~$400k last year (in cash) as a self-employed engineer. I work maybe 20 hours a week. I would hardly say that getting here was non trivial, but I'd hardly say it's trivial to get a job at a FAANG either.

<comment><USER8> That's pretty impressive! Can you elaborate some more in what you do and how you got there? I imagine you don't want to give too many specifics, but I'm just curious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9>
        My assumption would be that a company always has to pay engineers
        less than the value they generate.

For FAANG companies, I'd guess that a nonzero amount of that value is "keep this person from contributing at our competitors".

</comment><comment><USER10> Great points being made. There are other considerations though too.

One example, that there are only so many engineers at that skill level and employee churn is high at FAANG companies - so paying a premium for talent makes sense since money isn't an issue and the engineers leave to go elsewhere after a brief stint getting FAANG on their resume. Higher salaries keep the recruiting funnels full, and allow FAANG companies to keep a high level of talent

Another important aspect is competition. Sometimes its not just important to get talent, but also important that your competition doesn't get talent.

</comment><comment><USER11> In addition to all the other good answers here.

Economies of scale:

[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economiesofscale.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economiesofscale.asp)

</comment><comment><USER12> Because alone you can't leverage a network effect. If you decided to start a new venture and persuaded 9 colleagues to join you, you'd probably make more than 10x the income.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is hard for me to imagine how ten engineers would easily get a new venture to $3M yearly revenue within a short timespan.

<comment><USER12> That would be a very lucky outcome, I agree. But it's not so hard to imagine that 10 engineers could produce something that looked impressive enough to investors to throw $25 million at the idea and tell them to pay themselves $3m a year and hire 20 more at a somewhat lesser sum, in the expectation that they would be very profitable a few years later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's not.

It just depends on who your clients are. Are your clients FAANG-level companies or SMBs?

</comment><comment><USER3> Economies of scale due to monopolistic domination of markets.

The question is how to fix this</comment>


Vesta Open Source Hosting Control Panel - <AUTHOR> http://vestacp.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, I just wanted to mention that we just rolled out our biggest update yet! Here's a list of some of the biggest changes:

\- Nginx + PHP software stack support \- SFTP Chroot plugin \- Web File Manager plugin \- RHEL 7, CentOS 7, Debian 8, Ubuntu 15.10 support

Why I post this here? 1\. we are young startup at its' initial stages 2\. our product can help you with your startup. You can use Vesta not only as control panel but also as an API for common server management tasks (create user, domains, databases, etc).

Please let me know what You think about new version. Thanks</comment>


The original sources of MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0 are Open Source now - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/microsoft/ms-dos <comment><USER2> Discussed yesterday at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18097661](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18097661)

</comment><comment><USER3> Latest commit: 13 Aug 1983

Looks like they manually backdated that for effect, as there are only 3 commits in the repo.

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure they'd have had to backdate that, since git didn't exist until 2005. :-)

Or a CVS importer applied the appropriate date, perhaps.

<comment><USER5> CVS still didn't exist. Which makes me wonder how the MS-DOS source code was managed in the early days.

<comment><USER6> SCCS or RCS?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Could KGB Archiver Be the Best Compression Tool Available? Or Just the Slowest? - <AUTHOR> https://www.howtogeek.com/135326/could-kgb-archiver-be-the-best-compression-tool-available-or-just-the-slowest/ <comment><USER2> A 5-year-old article about program that's been abandoned for over a decade.

The only resource you need for compression comparison is [http://mattmahoney.net/dc/text.html](http://mattmahoney.net/dc/text.html)

The author of that website, incidentally, started the PAQ algorithm that KGB archiver uses.</comment>


Apple.com now uses the HTML5 video tag - <AUTHOR> http://ajaxian.com/archives/apple-html5-video

<comment><USER2> I saw this yesterday after their product launches and had to take a look at the source. I'm actually really excited about this.

In Apple style they really made the presentation awesome. I had to do a double take because the video looked as if it was playing in Quicktime X within the browser.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone have a link to any example? There is none in the article and all the videos I can find on the Apple.com site are Quicktime videos.

<comment><USER4> <http://www.apple.com/magicmouse/> (scroll down)

<comment><USER5> I get a "download quicktime" message and a link to the QuickTime download for "Mac and PC". Then on the download page the options are OSX Tiger or Leopard (or later; <http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/>) ... no link for other platforms. No mention of Linux.

I'll bet by PC they mean MS Windows anyway?

Rubbish.

<comment><USER6> Same here, even though I'm using Chromium on Linux with the chromium-codecs- ffmpeg-nonfree package installed (so it should support all HTML5 video formats that Safari does).

There don't seem to be any VIDEO elements on the page, so I guess they're only sending them to a limited set of "supported" browsers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I actually saw this yesterday when I was trying to download the video for later watching when I was offline. It surprised me a little to see it on a production website, but I was thrilled to see it. It even has that "Quicktime X" look in Leopard, too.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yet they also have odd junk like this in their page:

                <b></b></comment>


Game of Torrents and Data leaks - <AUTHOR> https://blog.binaryedge.io/2016/04/29/game-of-torrents-and-data-leaks/ <comment><USER2> "Don't forget on a Peer to Peer Network usually if you can see them, they can see you."

True, many seem to forget that.</comment>


Show HN: Summarise – A personal, talking wake-up alarm for iOS - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/app/id986735499

<comment><USER2> Great app, I am going to make it my default alarm for a few days to test. 2 suggestions:

\- wouldn't it be great to have the option to start reading automatically, instead of having to slide up? I couldn't find this option. By not doing so, I am afraid I am just going to snooze, like I do with my current alarm clock

\- Would be nice to have some basic interactions for the News channel: say "yes" to read the article into details, instead of just reading the titles. Or maybe read the article by default?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions. I'm taking those on board for updates. And thanks for trying it out.

For the News channel - I tried to get the right mix of being enough, but not too much. Maybe even allowing the user to set the density might be a good idea!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A friend of mine has made a similar thing, although it can be used as a general purpose audio stream, not only as an alarm: Capsule.fm [1].

[1] [https://appsto.re/us/Ik18T.i](https://appsto.re/us/Ik18T.i)

</comment><comment><USER4> Great idea. Reminds me of a sci-fi movie (which one?).

<comment><AUTHOR> It's inspired by Jarvis from Iron Man. :)</comment></comment>


Evidence Mount That Free Music is Unfeasible - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/11/music-too-expensive-to-be-free-too-free-to-be-expensive/ <comment><USER2> That's a very misleading title, giving away music from the big labels trying to make money on it through a different route and keeping up your royalty payments is tough.

But 'free music' is definitely feasible, it just won't be 'big label' music.

<comment><USER3> How's thesixtyone.com doing? For indie bands looking to reach an audience, it seems like free music could work out very well.

<comment><USER2> they look to be doing pretty good:

<http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/thesixtyone.com>

Maybe IUMA has finally found a valid successor. If IUMA was started today I think it would have a much better chance at survival, bandwidth now costs a very small fraction of what it was in their heydays.

What a waste the way that ended by the way.

<comment><USER4> They don't look so good compared to imeem.com, mog.com, last.fm, ilike.com though. I don't see flocks of people giving up on mainstream music.

Your point that free music is feasible for some music is valid, but I'm not sure it's that important if it's relegated to niche status.

<comment><USER2> Imeem.com peaked over a year ago and has since just been declining, last.fm is pretty steady.

Mog.com is relatively steady and ilike is going up fairly fast but that may have to do with their recent acquisition.

The fact that thesixtyone is doing this under their own power and with indie music is very impressive, of course it could be that they will never be as big as their 'big label' brothers but so far they've been doing pretty good.

And 400% growth per year essentially without marketing is not too bad either. They've got about 60,000 uniques daily now, I would not be surprised if they manage to push that to a quarter million by the end of next year.

And why would people have to give up on mainstream music in order to listen to indie music, there is plenty of room for both.

<comment><USER4> I'm not out to knock thesixtyone.com -- my point was just that I don't see a big change in consumer preferences occurring when it comes to music. thesixtyone.com and others might be able to be successful as a niche product, but most consumers are looking to access major label content. Even if every new song from here on out was released in a threesixtyone.com model there is still a lot of demand for older content.

That puts music startups in a tricky situation. Either you don't provide access to that mainstream content, provide it legally w/ label deals that hopefully don't cripple your business, or you offer it illegally. According to the wired article the ad supported streams model seems to be dying, which means music subs must be coming back for companies that choose the legal model.

I'm personally not excited about this and hope they so do badly labels give ad supported another try.

<comment><USER2> I think it is going to be a similar pattern as open source vs closed source, it will take time to get momentum, but I think that in the long term it's going to be unstoppable.

As soon as people figure out a way to do a 'redhat' with music it will accelerate a lot. So far most of those efforts have fizzled, but with so many people trying to start fires it is only a matter of time before someone will succeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm fine with paying for music, but I consider ~$20 for a CD outrageous, and $1 for an MP3 on the high side. :) Lala.com lets me listen for 10c/song; that's a price I'm willing to pay.

I like the lala.com model the best. 10 cents to stream a song an unlimited number of times. No fixed monthly fees. Joined a couple of weeks ago; so far, I'm loving it. (If you want to "own your bits", you can get a DRM-free MP3 for an additional 79c).

</comment><comment><USER6> Free music is infeasible? Tell that to people jamming with their friends, or buskers, or radio.

Is it feasible for free music to make big money for the majors? Different question, but we know the answer: "who cares?"

<comment><USER7> _Free music is infeasible? Tell that to people jamming with their friends_

Yes, absolutely. Would be nice if more people made their own music.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems the only unfeasible thing here is the amount the labels charge for the streaming companies to license the music.

</comment><comment><USER9> First of all, Great Post!

Free music is totally feasible, it only depends on the artist's approach to pursuing revnue (ie: freeing themselves from the lables.) Another thing is ad- supported alone is not feasible; neither is selling T-shirts...As long as people still want to store mp3 files on their music players, there's no reason why people won't want to pay for them. (Only if their demands are met)

To mikebo: "I don't see flocks of people giving up on mainstream music."

Music is music, mainstream music is no sweeter than indie music; they just have more marketing behind them. If the same marketing opportunities that are provided to mainstream music can be accessed by indie musicians, people will discover that Indie music is actually worth listening to.

</comment><comment><USER10> Tsk tsk, Wired. You should have consulted Z., from your own Geek Dad column, when this article was being written.</comment>


Stop telling parents to save for college, stop the madness - <AUTHOR>

Recently I posted a rant about the ridiculousness of making paying for college a parental responsibility: http://colabopad.blogspot.com/2010/09/who-should-pay-for-college.html
Anyway I was just reading slate (http://www.slate.com/id/2267997/) and here's an exchange between the columnist and a reader. Notice how the college fund comment is plugged into the response as if it is a given! What is the HN opinion on paying for college?
Q. Biological Clock vs. Financial Reality: My husband and I have very different views on when we should start trying to conceive. My feeling is there's no time like the present, while he feels that we're not ready yet. We both feel ready emotionally, but we both feel, quite frankly, poor. (We're both graduate students—we make less than 20,000 and after this May have no guaranteed income.) But I'm of the "simple life" mind-set anyway. Infants don't need much beyond onesies and diapers; no matter how well-off we are, we wouldn't be doing diaper genies and such. And mostly, I feel, we can always get money, but we can't get these years back. (We're fairly young—in our late 20s—but we want to have lots of kids.) I'm having a really hard time waiting; I break into tears every time I see a baby. We've discussed this ad nauseam. He says it's not just up to me, so we should wait. But it's not just up to him, either. I guess my question comes down to this: Who's the default decider?
A: Among the devastation this bad economy is bringing is the situation you are in: People who would otherwise be starting their families are too financially afraid to do so. There's no default decider here—this has to be a decision the two of you make. Your husband is right that having a baby requires more than onesies and love. But you're also right that you can't put this off indefinitely while you wait for the economy to improve. In any case, however bad the economy is now, eventually it will recover—<b>perhaps in time for you to make a dent in a college fund.</b> I think you two should talk to some trusted outsiders about this. Not necessarily a marriage counselor, but maybe some older relatives who started families in the late 1970s or early '80s, when the economy was also in the dumper. Or perhaps you should consult with someone who does long-term financial planning, so that your husband can feel more confident about making the decision that now is the time for you both to start adding future wage earners to the workforce. <comment><USER2> People needs concrete goals to set themselves. Given that the couple are both graduate students, it would seem likely that they would, by default, instill in their children the urge to go to college.

I think (no proof or statistics to back this up) that the majority of wage- earners hold a college or university degree. Social proof is a strong motivator when people are in uncertain situations. Education seems to be one of the most widely held beliefs that has a high probability of leading to better economic conditions. From there, the leap is that most people are better off paying to attend a post-secondary institution.

If you have the money to pay for college, and if it could benefit you in the future, why not?

If, on the other hand, the person in question believes they can strike out on their own and start a startup, then that would probably be the preferred HN opinion, given the audience that frequent the site.

</comment><comment><USER3> I made it through college on my own and had no expectation that my parents would or could pay for it. I do not understand how it is the parents' responsibility, and having done it myself, I know it is not necessary. I had to find my own grants, scholarships, and loans, and I had to find jobs. I went to a college that was nowhere near where my folks or family lived, so I was quite alone.

Was I envious of others? Sure. Did I wish I had money? You bet. Parents would have been a wonderfully convenient source of money. But they were never my crutch, my expectation. I learned self-discipline, independence, responsibility, and money management. I also kept up with my classwork and never failed a class.</comment>


Live status dashboard for Nasa's Deep Space Network - <AUTHOR> http://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Would be nice if this included a brief description of the mission of each spacecraft.

<comment><USER2> ... or a link to the mission's URL. Aside from that, this is a really slick interface. I almost feel like I'm seeing secret internal stuff I shouldn't be seeing, though I'm sure that feeling is mistaken.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Every morning get an inspiring video to your mail to motivate you - <AUTHOR> http://1ztl6ul0.launchrock.co <comment><USER2> Not even an archive? Nor a sample? No confidentiality? In my mind, it is just another mail stealing site.</comment>


Ask HN: How to spot a bully during an interview? - <AUTHOR> Do you look out for bullies during an interview?
If so, how do you do it?
I am speaking as an interviewee than as an interviewer. <comment><USER2> I watch out for people who repeatedly ask the same question without adding any clue or context even when I state I do not understand the question or do not have experience with the thing they are asking about. They won't let you move forward and discuss the things you do have experience with.

Watch out for interviewers who spend a lot of time talking about themselves and their accomplishments.

Watch out for interviewers who make negative comments about your current or past employer.

<comment><USER3> > Watch out for interviewers who spend a lot of time talking about themselves > and their accomplishments.

I've learned recently that this is a very good tell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For me, this is quite difficult. One thing you could look for is their response to any hint that they were incorrect or ignorant on something. Good people will become curious and drill down, hoping to discover something new. Bad people will become defensive or stonewall.

More importantly, though, you should have a plan for gracefully leaving the company within the first month or six, should you discover that your boss is a bully. Don't put yourself in the position of being "stuck" financially (or in other ways).

</comment><comment><USER5> If they ask loaded questions / trick questions that are irrelevant to the interview and the job description.

Some friend of mine was interviewing for a junior position at some startup in London and he noticed one of the interviewers secretly recording him while asking a strange whiteboard question all from memory which they don't use in production at all. The interviewers ridiculed and belittled him straight through the interview with the recording and he told me he found the place very unwelcoming.

The thing is, it is usually the self proclaimed 'senior engineers' who have less than 4 years of experience at a single company who have also been bullied that are most likely to be this arrogant and cannot ask the right questions, thus cannot interview juniors properly; only to feel better about themselves afterwards.

After this he told me that the company in question raised two series rounds in less than 5 months; a statment that they're haemoraging cash. I'd say he dodged an unprofitable bad egg anyway.

</comment><comment><USER6> Irrelevant and sometimes technically incorrect questions asked repeatedly or asking a question again that you failed to answer to their satisfaction. I only had it happen to me once in what was meant to be the non-technical interview part of a long interview process by a clueless CTO. In the previous technical section of the interview he had asked a very strange question regarding a solution I had presented and was corrected by a member of his own dev team, I think from that point on he took a dislike to me.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've had many interviews, but only one I would label a bully. His tone of voice and body language came off as angry, hostile, and annoyed. He also kept making phone calls during the interview. At the time, I was still a fresh undergrad without any experience so I just tolerated his attitude, but in hindsight it was obvious that he was being disrespectful and I should have just excused myself.</comment>


Hard Times For The Venture Capital And Seed Founding Industry - <AUTHOR> http://metaman.tumblr.com/post/841759647/hard-times-for-the-venture-capital-and-seed-founding

<comment><USER2> eehh... perhaps hard times for vc

but NOT hard times for seed funds

seed funding is where the action is

there is NO bubble yet -- it'll take quite some time before there's a bubble in seed funding. we're still early on in the curve / market cycle.</comment>


What's it like to have Google and Amazon try to kill your startup? - <AUTHOR> http://fusion.net/story/119202/q-and-a-whats-it-like-to-have-google-and-amazon-try-to-kill-your-start-up/

<comment><USER2> What I hope actually kills all these products is a decentralized p2p open source system which lets humans find and rate other humans for whatever goods or services they may be selling.

The payment system is getting there (e.g. Bitcoin). The consensus algorithms are being worked out, the distributed trust systems are coming into place (e.g. Stellar). The scalable p2p discovery and mesh is pretty much already working (e.g. BitTorrent).

Why do we need to pay a 10% tax to companies to do this? I mean, as a civilization. To think the algorithms could never exist that would let me find a professional ______ near me which is, a) an actual person, b) someone who actually does this work for a living, and c) has real-life honest reviews from people who have actually paid that person to provide that service... it just doesn't seem like an intractable problem.

If you add up all the expert help, trusted reviews, on-demand this, cloud assistant that, we're talking what, at least 100 billion dollars of rent seeking?

Whether or not such a system has an optional secure anonymity layer (a la OpenBazaar) is just a matter of how you want to boot-strap the initial user base. Needless to say, "50% of the world's drug trade also happens to be conducted on the same code-base" may or may not be a great answer to the "how did you hack this system" question.

I think the "1099 Economy" is actually a great thing, I just think we could do without the gatekeepers.

<comment><USER3> If you want to see the non-rent-seeking version of a local marketplace, look at Craigslist. Their service is completely free to most participants.

Craigslist has a lot of things going for it, but the "rent seekers" are able to create other advantages that Craigslist can't. They can staff people to bring businesses onboard, get everyone's metadata formatted in the right way, take business photos, handle payment disputes, etc., that they wouldn't have the resources to do without charging a fee on the transaction.

For some, Craigslist is better, for others, the Thumbtack experience is better.

<comment><USER4> plus I don't trust Craigslist, but I won't give a moments thought to purchasing anything from Amazon or from a 3rd party _through_ amazon.

And yes, paying an extra 10% is ABSOLUTELY. FUCKING. WORTH IT.

It's exactly like paying for insurance. Insurance is peace of mind.

<comment><USER2> Amazon is an incredibly powerful band, and brands can do that. But there's also no reason a distributed system can't also have a brand which evokes the same level of trust. In many ways, distributed trust can be stronger and more resilient than centralized trust.

<comment><USER5> I'm curious, what do you mean by "distributed trust"? A big reason why I find a brand trustworthy is exactly because my trust is consolidated in one entity that produces repeatable, desired results.

Taking Craigslist as an example, Craigslist isn't trustworthy to me precisely because its trust system is distributed. It doesn't police the interactions, moving trust into the realm of peer-to-peer, where definitions of trustworthiness tend to vary greatly. Craigslist in effect has built a well- known brand with overtones of "buyer beware!" because of this distribution of trust.

<comment><USER2> So then you would have the same level of trust that the system works to produce repeatable desired results. E.g. With Bitcoin, if you do trust it, you are trusting that the _system_ works to produce repeatable desired results. The fact that it works through (in theory) a resilient distributed consensus algorithm is an implementation detail.

Amazon happens to achieve their consistent experience through top-down hegemony. I believe that in time a distributed software system will provide an even more reliable and consistent experience in many cases.

For example, Amazon's warehouses and level of automation are often regarded as a key competitive advantage. But when you're buying a good or service from a neighbor who lives within a couple square miles, distribution doesn't get much more local (and scalable) than that!

Craiglist pushes the problem under the rug, they wash their hands of it and say "buyer beware". That was the only possible solution in 1995. 20 years later we are starting to figure out, you can actually do a heck of a lot better, even without a central authority or billions of dollars of infrastructure.

I think that's the hidden message in the nascent "sharing economy". Not only can individuals successfully monetize their assets or go to work for themselves, but once the tech catches up, they can do it _directly_ and in fact way more efficiently than any centralized system could ever dream of.

By the way, I'm not saying there's no place in the world for Amazon. But in particular making connections to qualified service providers are low-hanging fruit for a p2p distributed system, and longer term much, much more.

<comment><USER5> I don't understand enough about the details of how Bitcoin works to evaluate how apt that is of an analogy it is here. I've heard some very positive as well as a large enough number of surprisingly negative experiences with it making it hard for me to evaluate and thus hard to trust.

I'm having a hard time following your argument about the sharing economy showing us that distributed trust systems work more efficiently. Many of the major players in the sharing economy I've seen (Uber [0], AirBnB[1]) have all moved from open-ended, less regulated distributed trust systems to tightening and more strongly imposing rules as a centralized authority to rebuild damage to their trust due to bad actors.

To avoid thoughts that I'm cherry-picking companies with controversies, my broader point is that the sharing economy isn't really built differently than Amazon or any other marketplace model. Central authorities (TaskRabbit, Exec, AirBnB, Homejoy, etc) inject trust into p2p marketplaces because without their centralized authority, p2p marketplaces wind up like Craigslist or, even worse, Silk Road.

[0] [http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/18/technology/uber- background-c...](http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/18/technology/uber-background- checks/) [1] [http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Airbnb-hosts-must- app...](http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Airbnb-hosts-must-appear-in- person-to-comply-with-6025767.php)

edit: minor wording correction

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> crappy website that throws up a "like me on facebook" popup that I have to dismiss before I get to read the article. guess what, I didn't even read the article. I certainly won't be pre-emptively liking anything on Facebook. seriously, can you at least let me read the damn thing before begging for social media help?

<comment><USER7> Are you on your phone?

Coz it's working here on my desktop and I have Ad Block installed on the machine

<comment><USER6> desktop machine (an iMac), using Chrome, with Ad Block Plus installed. it got through to me.

I shouldn't need browser extensions to read an article without getting harassed. this kind of user hostile behavior is like a throw back to the bad old days of javascript popup hell.

<comment><USER7> FF Dev edition on Win 7 and just one click in the body region and the modal box is gone!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Having been one of the people who built Thumbtack (and a shareholder), this would have been much more of a concern 2 or 3 years ago. At this point Thumbtack (and other companies like Homejoy) are big enough to be able to compete against huge companies.

It isn't like the big guys can just jump into the market and undercut everybody on price. Most people who hire service professionals are looking for a high quality experience at a good value. Actually finding those high quality professionals and facilitating the experience with a customer is really really hard. You can't just underprice everybody, you can't just find the cheapest service providers.

And having previously worked at Google, local services is like 10x higher touch than any other business Google has. Maybe they bite the bullet and try to do it, but this isn't a very Google-like business.

<comment><USER9> What about Google's documented history of pushing competitors lower in search rankings?

<comment><USER8> They already do. Search for "Los Angeles House Cleaning" (or many similar types of searches). There is a 'Google places' block of results pushing down people like Thumbtack and Homejoy. Having used both services, I can guarantee you Thumbtack or Homejoy is a much better result than the 'Google places' results linking to random house cleaners. For example, on my SERP this sparse, unhelpful page ([https://plus.google.com/116731524137013411814/about?hl=en](https://plus.google.com/116731524137013411814/about?hl=en)) ranks above both Thumbtack and Homejoy.

Once you are big enough you don't need to worry about Google anymore. When I want to buy a product, I don't search on Google and then go to Amazon; I go to Amazon directly. Whoever "wins" the local services space is likely to be similar. People will just go to that site and skip Google completely.

<comment><USER10> If this behavior is intentional, there's one other possible motive to consider - Adwords.

I've learned to understand Google's actions by how such actions affect its ability to sell Ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I upvoted this and now I feel ashamed. This article has a provocative title but in the end all it does is try to make a dramatic situation where there is none. I will be reading fusion.net articles with increased suspicion in the future.

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands I wouldn't worry about either for a couple of reasons.

Google has the worst customer service ever. When they come into your market, all you have to is hammer their customer service, in advertising if necessary. If you have great customer service, nobody will take a chance with them because their track record of customer service is so horrendous and well documented.

With Amazon, as stated in the article, it's not their niche. As soon as they started in your market, start running promotions for discounts for Amazon Prime customers. Pretty sure once they can't sustain their growth, they'll bail out of your markets.

Both companies have fatal flaws and are just being opportunistic. If this guy hangs in there, it won't take much to deal with them properly.

<comment><USER12> I think that's an optimistic view. If their scale means that they can offer the same product at half the price, people are going to be very forgiving of customer service snafus.

<comment><USER13> How on earth are they going to do it for "half price"? These are already very competitive industries where the pricing is largely based on time (and estimations thereof). And the estimating is based on stuff that's going to be hard to capture in an algorithm that doesn't involve a physical person going to $wherever and punching in a bunch of estimates of various things into a web form for processing. At which point your algorithm isn't a tremendous advantage since the trip cost is what dominates the equation, not if it takes the estimator 5 minutes or 15 minutes to come up with a price.

The only way it might succeed is if Google or Amazon can squeeze people harder than Homejoy or whoever already does. And that's a recipe for disaster, no matter if they're employees or independent contractors. If people can't make a living through your service, they simply won't participate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Angie's List and Craig's List not Google and Amazon

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't know about Google, I do know about one project manager there, who felt that it wasn't good that I finished his pet project about six months ahead of him.

Then I told him that my stuff is all OSS and he was welcome to crib from it.

At a robotics society meeting in Palo Alto in 2010, he told me that I was just a hobbyist and my project didn't exist. My 'bot had just run circles round his when his stopped working, in front of people.

So I put one of my production logic boards in his hands. It had through-hole parts and was spiky. Then I squeezed his hand around it. Hard.

"So, if it doesn't exist, how is it making you bleed?"

(My American friends told me that I did not handle that well. My Italian friends told me that I handled that masterfully. I tell this story to highlight differences in culture.)

<comment><USER16> > "So, if it doesn't exist, how is it making you bleed?"

> (My American friends told me that I did not handle that well. My Italian > friends told me that I handled that masterfully.)

That's a great story, and thank you for sharing it. Though at the risk of getting downvoted, I think I know why your [American] friends were telling you that you didn't handle it well.

Aside from the lawsuit potential (which is real), it doesn't really advance the situation in a way that helps anybody - either you _or_ him. Clearly he feels intimidated by you, and that's why he's mentally unwilling to acknowledge you and/or your project. But after you assaulting him[0], he's not going to suddenly change his mind and acknowledge that you beat him. Rather, he's going to double-down, and now have even more reason to believe that you're unstable/immature/unprofessional, or whatever he needs in order to convince himself that you're not worth paying attention to.

As for you, it makes you feel better, but it also doesn't really get you what you ultimately want (him admitting that he was wrong). You win the battle, but the "war" goes on, with both sides even more emotionally entrenched in their existing positions.

[0] yes, this would qualify as assault

<comment><USER17> Yeah, that guy sounds like an asshole, but the GP sounds like an unstable violent person. Bringing it up now to apparently brag about the situation doesn't help but reinforce that...

You just beat the crap out of his robot. I don't see how trying to stab him with solder spikes is handling anything "masterfully".

<comment><USER15> I did not beat the crap out of his robot, we both demoed the same thing (Android-brained tank bot) and mine worked properly, while his didn't. He became angry, and insulted me and my work.

I am not a violent person by Mediterranean standards - maybe by Anglosaxon standards. The last time I started a fight, I was nine years old. I got such a thrashing by my old man that I never did again. But he always said, hit second, hit last.

<comment><USER17> > _I did not beat the crap out of his robot, we both demoed the same thing > (Android-brained tank bot) and mine worked properly, while his didn 't._

Sorry, I meant in terms of the competition, not physically.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scribd web traffic higher than its YC peers (based on alexa data) - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/scribd.com?site0=reddit.com&site1=scribd.com&site2=loopt.com&site3=justin.tv&site4=weebly.com&y=r&z=3&h=300&w=610&u%5B%5D=reddit.com&u%5B%5D=scribd.com&u%5B%5D=loopt.com&u%5B%5D=justin.tv&u%5B%5D=weebly.com&x=2008-04-17T20%3A30%3A49.000Z&check=www.alexa.com&signature=WyZq9KwNca%2FLk9rz92ZBplUyHiM%3D&range=max&size=Medium

<comment><USER2> 1) alexa? c'mon.

2) scribd is much more search engine friendly than almost any other application i know. i find results for them all the time on random crap i search for. to note, it almost never actually helps me with the information i'm searching on, but it does get me to view their page.

3) reddit is more meta-oriented and niche. loopt is cell phone stuff. weebly is a service provider, if you don't want their service you won't hit their page. justin.tv is competing with giants. scribd has a sweet spot almost designed for traffic generation.

</comment><comment><USER3> Loopt is a cell phone application. People don't use it by going to the web site.

<comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't think of a 4th YC startup with traffic close to scribd's. We hear about loopt a lot, so I just thought I would add it for comparison.

This wasn't intended to be a comparison of the popularity of the services. I posted the link because I hadn't before realized how large scribd's web presence is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like Compete.com better than Alexa.

[http://siteanalytics.compete.com/scribd.com+weebly.com+reddi...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/scribd.com+weebly.com+reddit.com/?metric=uv)

It tells a different story but the outcome is still the same. For Scribd to have higher traffic than Reddit is pretty impressive.

<comment><USER4> Compete also shows Yellowpages.com with much higher traffic than Scribd, but they do beat twitter.

[http://siteanalytics.compete.com/scribd.com+twitter.com+yell...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/scribd.com+twitter.com+yellowpages.com/?metric=uv)

<comment><USER5> Interesting about Twitter going from 500 to 1,900 on Alexa. It's compete ranking and now its most current alexa ranking match up, as compete ranks it 2K.

Though were sure to see it's ranking go back up to 500 and beyond. It's the next huge thing, just like MySpace and Facebook!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> i hate scribd. the reason it gets traffic is deceptive search engine rankings. I refuse to ever go there again after being falsely sent to a page that did not have the information it ranked for multiple times.</comment>


2013 H1B Visa Supply Nearly Exhausted - <AUTHOR> http://it.slashdot.org/story/12/06/12/0149237/2013-h-1b-visa-supply-nearly-exhausted?utm_source=slashdot <comment><USER2> And another type. Canadians with TN-1 status (and Mexicans with TN-2) will typically switch to an H-1B in order to apply for a greencard. I worked in the US for about 8 years on TN-1 status, and then switched to an H-1B for the 6 months it took to go through the accelerated greencard process.

The xenophobia also seems a little over the top on this issue. With the rather broken American education system, is it so unbelievable to people that there may actually be quite a few non-Americans that are simply better qualified for these jobs?

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure that it's so much "xenophobia" as the fact that companies are pretty well-known to be abusing the H1-B process right now to avoid hiring qualified Americans. The advantages for employers are quite strong, not least because H1-B holders have far less mobility and are essentially at the mercy of the employer.

<comment><USER4> There are not nearly enough qualified and affordable senior level programmers in the country. We tried to hire them. Most candidates, that are senior on paper, do suck, they can't solve even medium complexity problems.

Unless you have a crazy budget, you will spend a loooong time interviewing and going through one shitty candidate after another. We've interviewed close to 60 people, hired 3 (NYC). One of the 3 turned out to be a rat who delegated all the work to other developers, and had to be let go.

In cities like NYC or SF, you need a very high salary to attract true talent.

<comment><USER5> Whats the going rate for a competent senior dev in NYC/SF ?

<comment><USER4> $150-200K among my friends.

Actually, there's no upper limit. We've seen some crazy examples:

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/google-offers-staff- enginee...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/google-offers-staff- engineer-3-5-million-to-turn-down-facebook-offer/)

<comment><USER6> LOL

If companies actually paid "$150-200K" there'd be an applicant line visible from space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Don't forget H-1B isn't the only VISA you can hire people under.

If you want to hire from Australia, there is a VISA that is roughly equivalent called the E-3. It has a cap of 10K, of which less than 3K are filled yearly. This is the VISA I have.

Not saying you will necessarily find the people you need down under (if you cannot find them in the US), but it is possible :)

<comment><USER8> Do you have any tips for recruiting Australians?

<comment><USER7> I was recruited from the companies own conference they held in Australia. 'Cletus' was recruited from his StackOverflow iirc.

General rules: Be friendly, polite and sell the positives of being state-side (larger tech community, more user groups, conferences, etc)

<comment><USER8> Would Australians in general have strong preferences about parts of the US? It would seem like the "stronger tech community" argument works IFF you're in Silicon Valley, not so much if you're in North Dakota....

<comment><USER9> Yes. Almost all Australians I know have ended up in New York or Silicon Valley. Some have ended up in minor hubs, e.g. Seattle, Boston, Boulder, etc.

<comment><USER8> Which locations in Australia are the best to visit for recruiting (specifically for network/infrastructure/security types, not so much mobile apps/social media.)

<comment><USER10> The big cities: Melbourne and Sydney. You might get some joy from one of the other state capitals (Perth, Adelaide, Hobart, Darwin, Brisbane), but your best bet would be the big two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a former H1B, I would like to point out that there are two types of H1B candidates: ones who got a degree here or are switching a job from an outsourcing company and seeking a American employer and the ones who are placed as a part of a larger team by an outsourcing company. The former are a part of a self-selected pool of risk takers. If you are a running a start-up, you are better off with the them as they have the mental toughness to withstand risk.

<comment><USER12> Err, and then there are the people from outside the US that have applied for a job with an American company in the usual manner, have been selected as the best candidate for the position, then need a way to legally relocate to the USA and do the job...

<comment><USER13> That's usually not how it works. I can only tell from my experience on what happens in Inida, but you usually apply for a "consulting" company which is basically a front for a shop that takes 30-50% cut in the developer pay by sponsoring them a H1 and sending them out to companies that need developers. A part of this is faking the number of years of experience they have on their resume, completely faking the technical expertise etc.

US govt. has kinda caught up to this and is rejecting many H1Bs that were sponsored by consulting companies now. So make of that what you will.

<comment><USER12> I don't have any evidence that you're not correct in general, but that's _certainly_ not how it always works. I (British) worked for six years for Apple under the program (2001-2007), and there H1 holders - from all over the world - were treated (and hired) in exactly the same way as US employees. They just want to hire the best candidate.

Go after the abuses of the program, yes, but it's not fair to many good, valuable people in the USA on visas like this to imply (and you may not be trying to imply this, but it's the impression many people come away with) that it's all abuse.

<comment><USER14> I've come to the conclusion that the H1B operates in two parallel universes that have almost nothing to do with each other. On one side, you have companies like Apple and Google, trying to hire very talented people, often graduates of top American universities. They see it as absurd that the US would keep these workers out, and they have a point. I also believe that these companies treat their H1B workers more or less the same way they treat their US Citizen workers. There is a slight difference, of course, in that the greater restrictions on mobility _do_ have an influence on wage negotiations and so forth, even when both parties are acting in "good faith." But all in all, when you look at this first universe, you wonder why people are complaining about the visa - in fact, it's so baffling that you start to wonder if the complainers are just "xenophobes".

On the other extreme, you have extremely abusive "body shops" where employers think nothing of threatening to revoke a visa to manipulate a worker. I think that many people who work for the first universe were a little shocked to discover that the biggest recipients of the H1B visa are generally overseas outsourcing companies.

<http://www.businessweek.com/table/08/0305_h1b.htm>

If you're interested in reading more about serious abuses of the system, I'd recommend reading some of Ron Hira's work (a public policy professor at Rochester) - he did an interview on NPR a while back where he discussed some of the really outrageous cases (some H1B recipients were paid less than $9/hr and met the "prevailing wage" requirement... how on earth can this be happening with a visa designed to remedy shortages of "critical, highly skilled and educated workers"? And how is it that google is running out of visas when we're allocating them to companies paying such low wages!)

It's fubar. The US badly needs a solution, but there are so many competing interests that it's difficult to find a common ground. There is some outright xenophobia. There are people who don't really like immigration, and want to limit it wherever they can. There are companies that want to lay off their entire IT department and replace it with non-citizen workers who can't negotiate their wages. There are engineers who feel positive about immigration in general but resent a specific program specifically brings in more engineer, on the grounds that there is no greater a "shortage" in engineering than any other field, at least when you consider wage growth. There are people who support very liberal immigration policies and figure more is better. There are people who think it's crazy to tell graduates of top STEM programs that they aren't allowed to stay. Some people say that we should staple a green card to every graduate degree in a STEM field (but interesting, not to every law degree or MBA, degrees that are more popular with Americans...)

Unfortunately, the result is stalemate and a program that nobody likes, but everyone uses, because how else are you going to do this You work with the system you have.

My own opinion is that we should make every effort to keep and attract top talent to the US in all fields, but we also need to be aware that the market distortions of visas targeting specific types of workers can, if we're not careful, end up deterring Americans from entering specific fields (creating a self-enforcing cycle of "shortages"). I think we can balance this with good legislation (and the countries that "solve" it will have a big competitive advantage over everyone else), but it's a tall order considering the many angry and conflicting interests around this issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I hope Congress realizes that restricting the immigration of highly qualified tech workers has unintended consequences.

If I can't hire good programmers in America I'll be tempted to open an office in India. Once I open an office in India, I have even less of an incentive to hire people in America. With less employees in America, my company is spending less on services in America. My employees are buying less things. The people I didn't hire in America don't need houses in America. Real estate prices suffer.

Silicon Valley is an amazing place. Immigration restrictions are unnecessary friction. They are protectionism for college graduates who should be able to compete on their own (if they can't, wtf were they learning in college?). If you gunk up Silicon Valley you are basically priming the ground for the emergence of rivals. That seems unthinkable now, but only because we are all sitting in Silicon Valley and we aren't watching what is happening abroad.

Programmers can grow up anywhere. They can learn anywhere and with AWS, App Engine, etc. they can deploy their services cheaply from anywhere. Soon kids won't need VCs to launch companies. The proximity to Silicon Valley for funding's sake will be irrelevant. It'll be the tech community that will be the draw. If the best people aren't in Silicon Valley because immigration rules stopped them at the border, then there will be competing communities in other nations. Where living costs might be cheaper. Where the weather might be better. Where the abundance of beautiful women (and men) might be higher.

What happens to Silicon Valley real estate when tech work moves to other locales?

</comment><comment><USER16> I've been thinking of moving to the Bay area for a while from the UK. Everyone I follow / engage with seems to be there so it seems like a good place to go.

One thing I'm hearing though is that companies are not that interested in hiring H1B candidates (at least for design) - I'm surprised that the increase in take-up is due to tech companies. Any Bay area companies able to comment on this?

<comment><USER17> I really did not feel that. I just graduated in the UK and will move to the Bay area in fall (when H1B starts). All the companies I talked to were totally ok with H1B.

<comment> excuse-me Then they are either $BILLION mega corps with a big legal dept or they have no idea about H1B.

Essentially if you aren't Intel/MSFT/IBM you don't stand a chance of getting an H1B application through

<comment><USER18> This is just plain wrong in my experience. Even small companies (< 15 employees) can easily get an H1B petition approved if they apply before the cap is filled and pay a lawyer ~$2k.

<comment><USER19> Does anyone have any good reference links for H1B positions or a list of companies that are open to them.

I'd quite happily pay the immigration fees myself to get into the states (currently in the UK also).

<comment><USER20> The monthly whoishiring thread [1] has some jobs with H1B, although I haven't had much luck with them.

Also, employers cannot make you pay the immigration fees, it's illegal.

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4053076>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As someone on H1B in Silicon Valley because of a rare, hard to find set of skills, I find it deeply insulting that every time this discussion comes up, it's always about money. But for people who just aren't sharp enoughs, I guess blaming something else than themselves is a convenient exit.

Stop complaining and sharpen up your skills folks, we're living in a global world with global competition on all levels. American companies can't afford to hire B talent just because they're "americans" (whatever that means, many americans I know are immigrants 1-4 generations back).

<comment><USER22> Meh. I have an H1B who makes about 25% more than the rest of his team in the same office because the prevailing wage is higher than my company's standard wage. It cuts both ways, depending where you are and what industry you're in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Lots of People don't know that applying for H1B Visa is not getting the work permit/Visa to enter the country. Tech Companies like Microsoft file the Petitions even if they don't really utilize/invite people in the current year. This is just to keep a pool of extra workers on stand-by. Out of the 65k ,how many will get approved by the USCIS and how many really qualify in the Visa interview ?. How many enter the US in the current year? Remember your visa is valid for 6 years so they can utilize it in the future.

<comment><USER24> Slight correction - The visa is _not_ valid for 6 years. The H1B visa that is granted to you at a US consulate abroad is usually valid for up to three years. (sometimes two) i.e. you have till that expiry date to enter the US.

Once in the US, you can extend your H1B status for up to 6 years (and more if you have a pending 'green card' process)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> In my team(at a company in SF bay area), We have tried to hire an entry level engineer and also a senior level engineer who can tackle software development. We've not been able to fill any position with qualified candidates.

Only reason is that the supply of jobs is abundant. Though there could be a huge number of american engineers, it simply doesn't match the demand at present. There is nothing terribly wrong in education system in the USA. The way you can solve this problem is by telling every freshman to major in Computer Science (However, many tech jobs don't require CS degree), which is not possible.

<comment><USER14> Would you be willing to post the salary you are offering, along with some information about what you consider to be a qualified candidate? Absolutely fine if you want to keep it general, I'm just curious about what people mean when they say they can't find a qualified candidate.

One big problem I have with the H1B visa is that it was created in response to an alleged "shortage". I'm very enthusiastic about creating a general skilled immigration under a points program (like Australia or Canada), but I'm far less enthusiastic about specific visa programs designed to remedy shortages in a particular and narrow segment of the economy. As you can probably tell, I'm one of those people who doesn't really believe that "shortages" of workers exist in a properly functioning market. I wouldn't rule it out completely, as we don't have a true free market and there are externalities to consider, but in general, I think most companies talking about shortages are really just having trouble hiring at the rate they want to pay.

Double or triple that salary, and you'll get your engineers. If that's too expensive, then maybe the talent you seek has just found higher value things to work on. One extremely regrettable aspect of the H1B is that it restricts mobility. Yes, changing jobs in related fields is possible and common, but an H1B holder can't stay on that visa to go to med or law school, start a new company, or respond rationally to all kinds of market signals they way free people in a free economy would be able to... and the ugly truth is that this is part of the appeal of this visa to some companies - a captive engineering workforce with all the market distortions that brings.

<comment><USER25> FYI, we could not hire anyone. Finally, we lost those open reqs because management decided so. Most smart engineer we interviewed, ended up having multiple offers from more cool companies.

it would have been 85k-95k for an entry level. In short, it was up to the standards in bay area for skills and experience.

<comment><USER14> What kind of salary were you offering for the more senior position?

Do you think you would have been more successful hiring a Jr dev at a much higher salary? Say, 120K? That would still low for a graduate of a top law school.

I know this will cause sticker shock, but that may be what it takes.

<comment><USER25> Honestly, I do not have salary data. However, for sure, the salaries were in average or above range. You should check some salary stats. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3141716>

<comment><USER14> It seems to me that there is a disconnect here. You mentioned that you were losing out on "smart engineers" with "multiple offers from cool companies". Then you discuss how your company is offering salaries in the "average or above range." It sounds to me like your company is experiencing exactly the outcome you'd expect.

<comment><USER25> There is no disconnect. I am just saying that how much harder it is to hire when your company is not Google, Facebook, Dropbox etc..

<comment><USER14> The part where I see a disconnect is when you mentioned "Though there could be a huge number of american engineers, it simply doesn't match the demand at present."

I see this as a function of supply and demand. I haven't studied economics formally (beyond the examples in my math classes), but I understand that economists talk of a demand curve and supply curve. At lower prices, consumers tends to demand more of a product or service but producers supply less. At higher prices, produces have an incentive to supply more but consumers tend to demand less. The point where the supply and demand curves meet is considered the market equilibrium.

Right now, it sounds like prices (salaries) for engineers haven't hit equilibrium. 80-90k may sound like a lot, but clearly the economy is demanding more engineers at this level than the market will supply. I don't know where that equilibrium point will be, but considering the number of very lucrative career paths smart people have available to them, I suspect it's going to be quite a bit higher.

<comment><USER25> "but clearly the economy is demanding more engineers at this level than the market will supply"

Exactly, that was my original point.

<comment><USER14> Well, this debate is getting a little stale over a few days. The disconnect is in the phrase "at this level".

You can _always_ find a salary point at which any good or service will appear to be in "shortage". And you can always find a salary at which there will appear to be a glut. Sounds like there's a big shortage of 80k/yr engineers, but absolutely no shortage of 160k/yr engineers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Good. H1Bs are abused by employers who refuse to pay the prevailing wage and lie to the government that they "can't find anyone at the prevailing wage."

The IEEE had it right when H1Bs were first expanded: don't give H1Bs at all. Instead, give greencards so that if the wages are below market the employee can immediately jump to a company paying the actual prevailing wage.

</comment><comment><USER27> My H1B expires in 2013 (first 3 years). Does anyone know if this affects my ability to renew my H1B for another 3 years?

<comment><USER28> As far as I know, it doesn't. Extension of an H1-B is not subject to the annual caps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> funny comment in page "Maybe the visa numbers are stored in an unsigned short and can't go above 65535 anyway"

</comment><comment><USER30> Anyone here working on an O-1?

<comment><USER30> I have a roommate who just missed the deadline and is trying to figure out what her options are (background is in image processing/medical imaging)--she had an offer, but the process is rather long going from J-1 to H1...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So what if the supply is exhausted. It's a synthetic shortfall driven by a smoke and mirrors view presented by companies that don't want to pay decent wages.

There's no shortage of quality tech talent, never has been. Now go show me a quality company.

</comment><comment><USER31> Luckily there's no unemployment problem in the U.S., because if there was, the H1B program would just be a way for companies to hire employees at well below market wages, further depressing the U.S. economy.

[http://www.google.ca/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&#...</a>

<comment><USER32> These aren't liberal arts majors here. The recession doubled unemployment among programmers and electrical engineers, but that means that they're up to 2.4% and 1.6% now. The US demand for STEM majors has been growing steadily, but the number of people graduating in STEM majors has been decreasing steadily over the last decade.

<comment><USER33> Degree is not necessary in tech business. Ellison, Gates, Jobs all dropped out of college. The people that teach themselves and have a "go get 'em" attitude tend to do the best. Perhaps a little on the job training is all we need to compensate for the "steady decline".

<comment><USER34> And there lies one of the cruxes of the issue.

Companies want to recruit 'unicorns', people who are absolutely perfect for the job. People that they don't have to train and can be parachuted into a position and be 100% productive from day one. They want an XXX or YYY developer, not a good general purpose software engineer who can learn new things quickly.

Such 'unicorns' either don't exist or are rare enough that they can command a premium in salary that most companies don't want to pay.

So instead of recruiting someone who is competent but needs some training (say recruiting a good Java/C developer and sending them on a training course to learn Ruby), they would rather whine that there is a shortage of software developers and petition for more H1Bs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez's tweets translation from last night - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/anonymous/5917093 <comment><USER2> I've said it since early in Correa's campaign, and I'll say it again: that guy is a really special politician. He's his country's Bismark, but he's done it all democratically. I've been living down here 9 months per year for the last 7 years and it's been an interesting time.

Check out his Enlace Ciudadanos on their youtube channel. [http://www.youtube.com/user/PresidenciaEc](http://www.youtube.com/user/PresidenciaEc) and you'll see how he goes way beyond the stump speech. He's spending 2 or 3 hours every week personally articulating the government's policy at the town- hall level.

Yeah, like every politician everywhere who wants to consolidate support, he uses the US as a punching bag. And the one genuinely messed-up thing he's done are his media laws, which make it hard for any large independent media companies to flourish. But he's no Hugo Chavez. He's too smart, and too good of a politician, to need to be.

<comment><USER3> Yep, I used to think he was just another regional populist, but he really is not. He's something else entirely.

<comment><USER4> Goes to show... I had branded him as another populist too, but I haven't researched much.

I'll have to look things up :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >This is a reference to the President's years-long struggle against preventative injunctions put in place by Argentine courts against her efforts to break up the big Argentine media trusts that are her strongest local political enemies.

The preventative injunction are in place to put the measures on hold while the court decides if the made-to-order laws she comes up with twice a week are constitutional or not.

For those unfamiliar with Argentinian politics: don't be too impressed with Mrs Kirchner. This Us vs Them is her bread and butter and a perfect opportunity for her to leverage for some cheap points. She's not really that communicative in real life. To put it in perspective, if Mrs. Kirchner was in Obama's spot right now facing spying accusation her response to the reports would be to totally ignore them and instruct her subordinates to mention that Snowden is a liar, all the documents are forged and everything is a plot by the enemies of the American people.

<comment><USER6> ...as you can see, Argentine politics are somewhat polarized.

<comment><USER7> As a political satirist has said about argentinian politics:

"You can neither explain it or understand it, you just endure it." — Enrique Pinti, Pingo Argentino

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For people who don't know about Argentinian politics it's important to emphasize that Cristina Fernandez has her own NSA project: [http://www.argentinaindependent.com/currentaffairs/newsfroma...](http://www.argentinaindependent.com/currentaffairs/newsfromargentina/security- minister-elaborates-on-project-x/)

Not only that, Cristina's Government anticipates Obama using the local IRS against the opposition and individuals speaking against the government in the press.

Finally... a few days ago Assange said: "Argentina has most aggressive surveillance system in Latin America" [http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/06/29/311375/assange- argen...](http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/06/29/311375/assange-argentina- has-most-aggressive-surveillance-system-in-latin-america/)

<comment><USER9> Well, that assertion by Assange is somewhat out of context. What he said is that of the medium sized Latin American countries, Argentina's surveillance was the most aggressive. He also said it was nothing compared with what's being done in the USA, the UK or China. So calling it "her own NSA" seems a bit disingenuous, at least from this perspective.

Link to the interview: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If7MbOvuEbg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If7MbOvuEbg)

<comment><USER8> You can't compare the NSA with the Argentinian intelligence agencies because the countries are in a very different scale.

<comment><USER10> Indeed, Argentina lacks the ability or manpower to launch a worldwide program like PRISM but it has more than enough to do similar things to its <40MM population.

That and a set of laws that allow the government to make life a living hell to any dissidents: had Snowden been Argentine getting his passport cancelled would be the least of his problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Regarding the wording used, "buddy" is an affective way of referring to one another between left-oriented political movements here. Extremely common in peronism but also used in several other countries from South America.

> He has the advantage of thousands of years of civilization over me. [Not > sure I understood that sentence correctly.]

It refers to the bolivian/peruvian aboriginal culture from which Morales' is considered a representative so the translation is correct. It's just a political compliment, nothing more than that.

<comment><USER6> Thanks! I thought that might be what she meant, but I wasn't sure.

I'm not really sure if "buddy" is a good translation of "compañer@", but it seemed about right. "Comrade" might be an equally good translation if you wanted to prejudice people in the US against her.

<comment><USER12> "Buddy" sounds really silly. "Comrade" is closer, but at least in Portuguese that would be "camarada", which carries a rather old-style socialist nuance, not "companheiro".

"Fellow", "brother" or even "mate" sound better in this context.

<comment><USER10> Indeed the word is "companero", but its not as formal as comrade which also exists as "camarada", in this context its actually more like _partner_ (in a professional sense) but not as informal as brother or pal in english.

Peron put that word _en vogue_ around here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Kirchner is a flake, and Argentina is in serious economic trouble, including faking their inflation figures.

TBH I'm surprised she didn't mention the Falklands as well.

</comment><comment><USER14> This article should be flagged for containing Argentinean government propaganda.

<comment><USER15> Welcome to the new HN.

The rate of political stories after datagate broke has skyrocketed, and I don't think the genie will go quietly back in the bottle.

You can downvote me all you want: I have a shitload of this useless karma stuff that I built up on the old HN.

<comment><USER16> It's a social site. HN members find those stories relevant.

Perhaps some people (including, you, I presume) don't care about surveillance, privacy, freedom of information and the like enough to want to highlight those issues on HN.

They'd rather talk about Google buying some company, how someone learned Golang and Node.js all day.

But I wouldn't call those people "hackers".

Not in the traditional cultural sense.

<comment><USER15> I don't understand the mental processes that lead you and others to think that if I don't enjoy politics taking over this site, then I must not care about the issues in question.

Another site I read often is www.cyclingnews.com - they have great coverage of professional bicycle racing, which I love to read about and watch.

You know what, though? I find politics annoying there too.

You know where I like to read about politics? The Economist is pretty good. www.corriere.it is pretty good for local stories. And there are other sources I read from time to time.

This site is a great place to talk about startups and tech. There aren't many of those. There are approximately 343244329165 sites where people can have inane discussions about things like whether the US is really "exactly like China and Russia".

<comment><USER16> > _I don 't understand the mental processes that lead you and others to think > that if I don't enjoy politics taking over this site, then I must not care > about the issues in question._

It's a very simple process.

People that like sites like this "segmented" and "pure" are mostly apolitical and don't care about the issues they want to expunge from them in the first place. I've seen such people in lots of other places.

Hackers tend to be all over the place. They tend to appreciate tech, science, politics, philosophy, Star Wars, startups, what have you, and to want to discuss it at the same time.

Kind of like PG discusses tons of things in his essays, not just tech or startups all the time.

> _You know where I like to read about politics? The Economist is pretty > good._

Not really the outlet for a hacker interested in politics, and especially the stuff we're discussing here. Actually, it's as far away from the traditional hacker culture as you can get -- and quite far from caring about privacy, surveillance, and the whole EFF spirit too.

It's basically a status quo rag for rich folks and middle class wannabes.

<comment><USER15> So you presume to know what I think and to judge me "not really a hacker" because of what I read? That's certainly the kind of open-minded thinking I'm a fan of.

 _PLONK_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Seems like this content would have been a great fit for [http://storify.com](http://storify.com).

</comment><comment><USER18> What happens if the plane would have continued flying through airspace claiming its political immunity? WWIII?

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm surprise not many people read her blog instead of her tweets stream. The full article (in Spanish) was published there [http://www.cfkargentina.com/evo-morales-detenido-en- europa/](http://www.cfkargentina.com/evo-morales-detenido-en-europa/)

</comment><comment><USER20> One could only hope these types of strong arm tactics against a diplomatic mission would lead to repercussions serious enough to make future incidents much less likely.

However, since it seems there is nothing more to be gained by continuing to hold the plane, what will actually happen is that high ranking politicians in the involved countries will apologise profusely, claim this was done by some low ranking bureaucrat that will be appropriately disciplined (sounding familiar?), and everything will go back to normal since no one wants to risk major economic repercussions over a minor incident.

I wonder if this could have a long term impact on how the South Americans view Europe ideologically though.

</comment><comment><USER6> Did I get it right in the part where she's talking about "thousands of years of civilization"?

<comment><USER21> Yes, she is definitely playing with the fact that Evo is acting very calmly and being polite with her despite the situation, and at the same time making a reference to his aymaran descent. Cristina is not known for being frugal in speech nor calm when in adverse situations.

<comment><USER22> I have spent a lot of time in Argentina. Argentinian people are very into being cute and intimate, even with people they don't know that well. There is a refreshing lack of excessive seriousness in that culture. If you know Spanish and have seen Kirschner speak she almost comes off as a goofball the way she cracks jokes and makes "cute" references to things, but it's really just a reflection of Argentine culture more than anything else.

<comment><USER23> Argentine here, CFK's way of speaking is a reflection of insanity, not Argentine culture. True, we take many things lightly but CFK goes way over the top, especially for a President.

In any case, the deep-rooted corruption of her administration (and practically all others decades before it) is a symbol of Argentine culture.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can you private message peeps on Hacker News? - <AUTHOR> Can you private message peeps on Hacker News? <comment><USER2> No, IIRC pg asked once and some people said they didn't want yet another messaging system to check.

Personally I think it would be great because a) not everybody remembers to leave contact information and b) you get the instant context and can forgo the "hey, I'm not a stalker but I thought you wrote something interesting on HN"

<comment><USER3> Having my news.yc and reddit lives linked to email would be chaos. The additional messaging system to check would be _more_ convenient -- not inconvenient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Those who want to be contacted should probably just leave their email address or preferred method of contact. It takes just as much effort to use an email client as does using a messaging system; the only difference is one would be checked on a regular basis, the other, not so much. Plus, as mentioned, people don't want yet another inbox to check. For those who don't drop a link to their homepage or list their email address, I just assume they're not interested in communication.

<comment><USER5> I would add my email address to my profile if there was some way to build in spam protection such as re-Captcha's mail hide tool:

<http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/>

<comment><USER6> My primary email address and several secondary addresses are public in easy to find spots on the web, including my HN profile. All these addresses use gmail and I am not having a problem with spam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would really like it, especially if it defaulted to "off", and you could set certain account age, karma, or karma-per-last-timeperiod thresholds for people to contact you. Even if messages just got forwarded on to email vs. a mailbox on the site.

<comment><USER8> The road to BBcode and smileys is paved with site-specific messaging and karmic business rules engines.

Just add an email address to your profile, like everyone else who is interested in meeting new people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Something like this would be really nice, even if it's just something like how Wikipedia does it: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:EmailUser/Jimbo_Wales> (You'll need an account to visit that page.)

It sends an email on behalf of the user, and the recipient can reply back to the user via email (the sender's email address appears in the From: field.)

It works pretty well there, and there could be a karma threshold and a setting to disable it here on HN if it were to be implemented.

</comment><comment><USER10> No need for a private message area.

But it would be nice if yc would email people on your behalf. Most people do not think of adding their email address to the profile area.

<comment><USER11> So, how would YC magically come up with that email address to use if you didn't put one in your profile ?

<comment><USER12> I think he means the "About" section, which is publicly viewable as opposed to the "Email" field, which only the admins can see.

<comment><USER10> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Put your contact info in your profile, check the profiles of people you want to talk to, and get on with your life. =)

</comment><comment><USER14> YC peeps can message each other, not open to everyone.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't think so. Some people put emails or websites in their profile.

</comment><comment><USER16> I would personally not like to see this. Let's not.

</comment><comment><USER17> email</comment>