San Francisco Wants to Require Permits Before Rolling Out 'Emerging Technology' - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2019/10/10/san-francisco-wants-to-require-companies-to-get-permits-before-rolling-out-emerging-technology/?amp&__twitter_impression=true <comment><USER2> The motivation behind the idea seems reasonable enough but, as always, the devil will be in the details. Obtaining one of these permits could be as simple as posting a cleanup bond for the case your company fails. Or it could be a giant bureaucratic maze of red tape. Or it could be a ban by another name.

There's also the question of identifying what is and isn't "emerging technology". Arguably the scooter companies could already be liable under well-crafted littering or public nuisance laws[1], or maybe something like incitement to litter. Uber relied on differential rules for street hailing vs. pre-ordered rides to avoid buying taxi medallions in the early days, using only already-licensed car services. Tech companies' private bus services were/are controversial, and use no new technology at all: just internal combustion, human drivers, fixed routes, and a regular timetable. Which of these would have needed one of the new permits, and would they be able obtain one?

1) I have no idea if today's version of these laws is capable of this or not.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds somewhat reasonable actually. Companies shouldn't be free to just dump their scooters or robots or whatever in public spaces without approval.

<comment><USER4> The laws should be agnostic to whether the technology is emerging or traditional. For example, parking private property on public space should need to be done responsibly whether it's part of a WiFi connected emerging technology startup or not.

And the laws should restrict only the offending behaviour, not all behavior subject to approval.

Centralized permissioning is a terrible way to structure an industry:

1\. It encourages rent-seeking by those in and close to the regulatory- body/political-leadership. It's not a coincidence that the region of the US that has seen the fastest income growth over theast 40 years is the suburbs of Washington D.C. and that the wealthiest counties in the US surround Washington DC. The phenomenon of the revolving door between government and highly regulated private industries is a manifestation of rent seeking.

2\. It does an enormous amount of collateral damage in the form of onerous barriers to embarking on entirely responsible business initiatives.

3\. It reduces accountability for regulators by flipping the burden of proof to the party facing restrictions, and wanting them to be lifted, instead of the regulator wanting to impose the restriction.

<comment><USER5> > laws should be agnostic to whether the technology is emerging or traditional

In a world where everyone can anticipate the consequences of everything, this would be correct. However, such a world does not exist.

Traditional technology has the benefit of having known social cost/benefit consequences. Emerging technology has no track record, and there is not enough data to perform a proper cost benefit analysis.

A relevant example: Cities have a lot of experience regulating taxis and analyzing how they affect traffic, transportation, public safety, and cost of living. In contrast, the consequences of adding scooters to the streets are unclear. They likely improve transportation options, but they may also slow down vehicular traffic, create public safety hazards, and siphon money away from public transportation systems. A comprehensive cost-benefit analysis may eventually show scooters are a net positive or a net negative. However, because it's an emerging technology, there is not enough data to do such an analysis.

When there is less confidence and data, it's entirely reasonable to take that uncertainty into account when drafting policy. Some localities may choose to be faster adopters, a higher risk tolerance for risk in exchange for faster innovation. Others may have a lower tolerance for risk, preferring to value stability over quick improvements.

Reasonable people can disagree on the appropriate risk tolerance, but regardless, risk of the unknown is still a legitimate factor to weigh when crafting policy.

<comment><USER4> >>In a world where everyone can anticipate the consequences of everything, this would be correct. However, such a world does not exist.

That's the wrong way to approach the issue of what laws to craft. The action itself should be judged on its own merit, in its cost to society, independent of its connection to other factors that may have negative or positive impacts on society.

The cost to society of an object being place in a pedestrian path way should be measured, regardless of whether that object is a scooter that improves transportation options or a rock that doesn't.

If those imposing negative externalities are made to stop, or made to pay for them, then only those activities that have a net positive impact on society will be economically sustainable.

With the scooter example, if the benefits scooters provide in increasing mobility outweigh the charges levied on scooter rental companies for the costs of increased sidewalk congestion, then the business model will be viable. The cost-benefit analysis should be done by entrepeneurs, not by one set of regulators making all decisions. The regulator's job should be to calculate the negative externalities each action imposes and ensure entrepeneurs pay for them. That in turn will align the financial success of entrepreneurs with the social good.

Each party confining itself to its own role is a more scalable way to organize society than the state attempting to model every factor as part of a large- scale cost-benefit analysis and effectively make business decisions that should be made by numerous private investors with their own capital on the line for their respective business. Central economic planning is not an effective way to organize and run society.

>>Cities have a lot of experience regulating taxis and analyzing how they affect traffic, transportation, public safety, and cost of living.

If cities knew what they were doing, there wouldn't be so many poorly run regulated taxi services.

<comment><USER5> > The action itself should be judged on its own merit, in its cost to society, > independent of its connection to other factors that may have negative or > positive impacts on society.

I think you're missing my point. I agree that many policies should largely be measured with an objective cost benefit analysis. However, for emerging technologies, it can be very difficult to accurately perform such a cost benefit analysis. There is less data, and confidence levels are lower.

It's much easier to evaluate the cost/benefit of taxis than scooters simply because there is far more historical data.

<comment><USER4> My point is that it should not be the job of regulators to do cost-benefit analyses on product categories. It should be to simply measure the cost of a negative externality, in a technology/product agnostic way, and make sure entrepeneurs pay that cost.

The cost-benefit analysis is then done by private parties, in order to avoid losses and maximize profits.

<comment><USER5> > The cost-benefit analysis is then done by private parties, in order to avoid > losses and maximize profits.

This is such a theoretical statements that ignores so many realities. Uber wants to enter a new city. The city has an established taxi industry and policies in place to manage pollution, congestion, housing, and new development. What "private parties" are supposed to do the cost-benefit analysis here? Obviously it's in Uber's interest to move in, but what if that increases pollution or the livability of the city to the existing residents? There are no private parties that are in a position to do a credible and representative analysis of the costs and benefits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233245](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233245)

<comment><USER7> Better article and more readable site this time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like this idea but I know the NIMBYism+cronyism of the SF city council will screw it up.

</comment><comment><USER9> Given the 5 or 6 brands of (mutually incompatible) scooters littering Bay area streets right now this is not such a terrible idea. They weren't declared a public nuisance by heartless bureaucrats (indeed this didn't happen at al where I live): they just started taking up street space and getting in the way of disabled people, people with kids, and anyone needing to push a cart on a sidewalk. I've lost count of the times I've had to move one or more of the things out of the way to get where I was going, where's my check?

<comment><USER10> _I 've lost count of the times I've had to move one or more of the things out of the way to get where I was going, where's my check?_

[https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/san-diego-startup- imp...](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/san-diego-startup-impounds- wayward-e-scooters-n973841)

<comment><USER9> That was unexpectedly entertaining.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Self taught/no degree freelancer.. What salary can I get? - fe-throwaway Based on my skillset, what salary can I get?
I've been freelancing/consulting/contracting for about 5 years and I'm looking into getting a full time frontend dev position.
I have no degree and everywhere I've worked I was the only developer. I feel like I've worked with alot of different things but my portfolio looks like shit since most of the businesses I worked with don't exit anymore or they moved on with different developers. All my personal projects are still major works in progress.
I think explaining my backstory in depth would clear up alot of things but I'll try to keep it brief since I probably wouldn't have time to explain everything in an actual interview.
Languages I've worked with PHP: 2009-2013 Javascript: 2011-Current Ruby: 2014-Current
JS Frameworks Ember: Late 2014-Current React: 2015-Current
Ruby Frameworks Rails/rails-api Sinatra
Databases: MySQL, Postgres, Redis
Random Sysadmin stuff: Haven't touched any of this since 2011(paas's ftw) so if someone asks me a question about it, I probably wont remember. nginx, Apache, Varnish
Stuff I'm currently learning or used recently but I'm still a noob: Elixir(phoenix framework), Go, and about to check out Clojure.. I really want to get more in depth with functional programming
Design: Photoshop: 2007-Current Illustrator: 2009-Current Sketch: 2014-Current
PPC/Ads Managed a 20k ad spend for a client from 2011-2014. I only do PPC for one of my own businesses now that has a 2k per month ad spend with a 800% return on ad spend. <comment><AUTHOR> So salary wise you should be able to pull a competitive salary. The fact that many of the companies are out of business isn't an issue, when asked describe what you have developed and be able to back up the technical details to prove you know your stuff. Other than that, there isn't anything you have to prove as far as the companies go. I don't have a tech degree and it has never gotten in my way, in fact I even removed my degree from my resume back when I was applying for jobs. Even now in consulting when they ask for Founder/key staff details, we leave off my education unless the company is in the health care industry which is where my education is.

Some companies do like to see a GitHub profile, if you have anything great, but if not, it is what it is. The answer I find acceptable to that when I talk to a developer is something along the lines of "the code I worked on was for people in the business of making money and they weren't open sourcing anything so I can't publish it". I have gotten variations of this answer and as long as it lines up with the resume (e.g. I don't see an open source company etc) then it is plausible enough, and I don't expect people to write code 24/7 so the fact they put it all into their employment and didn't write extra stuff and publish it in GitHub is fine by me, long as they are competent.

As for your side business, if you are spending 2k/month in ads and getting 800% return, then you are pulling in revenue of around 16k a month. If as you said in one of your follow up comments your margins are great then you would be pulling down probably at least $6k/month in net income. If all that is true, and you just don't have a passion for the business (which happens) then sell it, let someone else grow it and you get a job. Selling that business could net you a nice little sum of money, you won't get rich, but it is one hell of a start on a nice savings or retirement account.

</comment><comment><USER2> Sounds like you could command a relatively decent salary, if you can prove your claims via portfolio or testing, but that would also depend on your location, presumably. Where are you based? SV, London, Nowhereville have massive differences in average salary levels.

What I'm really interested in though is how your PPC campaign manages an 800% return. Ideally you'd tell me in detail about the business but of course understand you can't. Some general info might be nice though?

<comment> fe-throwaway I'm located in Los Angeles but I'm open to moving anywhere.

Yeah wouldn't be too smart for me to out all the details on here but it's a niche ecommerce store for a type of product that has gotten extremely popular over the past year or two.

IMO there's several reasons to why I'm getting 800%.

I believe conversion rate optimization will only get you so far. Focusing on developing the product(getting better prices, reducing freight costs, figuring out different angles to sell/market the product) is where you'll see the best results IMO.

My prices are way lower than the competition.. Sometimes up to 40% cheaper. I can't divulge too much here but I move more volume than a majority of my competition so I can either get better prices from the manufacturer or just settle for lower margins.

My competition is all mom & pop shops.. None of these shops have the luxury of having development work done without any costs so all these sites are poorly made. They're all pretty much stuck using 2008 technology and with no design/branding work done.

I'm always optimizing the mobile experience. I probably push a commit up at least once a week for this alone. Mobile accounts for 75% of my total revenue.

I think the big thing here is I just got in at the right time. I started this store right before these types of products started blowing up. So when it did start getting really popular, I already had the infrastructure in place.

I think this luck mixed in with the domain knowledge I've gained from working with PPC over the years is how I'm hitting that number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Found this on monster

Ruby on Rails Developer Los Angeles, CAFull-Time $80,000 - $110,000 Job Details

If you are a Full Stack Developer with experience, please read on! (Located in Los Angeles, CA)

We are building one of the largest communities that the world has ever seen. We are a venture-backed, fast growing and having fun. Top Reasons to Work with Us Competitive Pay ($80- 110K) Significant Equity PTO Paid Benefits

</comment><comment><USER4> Possibly not within the topic of your question but why would you want to do permament job if you sound quite successful with your own business? All successful people I know got so high because they were owning businesses rather than working for somebody else...

<comment> fe-throwaway I have absolutely no interest in the product. I really just saw it as a opportunity to make money. The business is pretty automated at this point and I'm happy with where it's at. I think I've hit a point where I can't grow this any further without my life revolving around it, which I do not want to do at all.

I really enjoy development and want to experience being in a very development focused environment. Sometimes I'm working on the business and all I'm thinking about is how much I want to just code lol.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: MobileOrg seems to be dead. Why is that and how to possibly revive it - <AUTHOR>

MobileOrg is Emacs org mode for mobile. Both MobileOrg applications for Android https://github.com/matburt/mobileorg-android and for iOS https://github.com/mobileorg/mobileorg seem to be quite inactive for a long time(approximately two years counting latest releases and the majority of issues/PR). I can't even build MobileOrg for Android now because apparently the Gradle version used was way too old and not supported in the current Android Studio, and making changes is tricky. It seems barely credible given how superior org mode is compared with other note-taking solutions out there. Why the lack of interest in these projects? Could it be said that the mobile app community has less of an open-source spirit than other communities? Or do people just generally consider other alternatives to note-taking on mobile more convenient than org mode now? I would like to unify my note-taking experience across all platforms with org mode. But while I can contribute a few pull requests, just by myself I can hardly see enough time/energy to implement all the necessary revamps on the MobileOrg project. If one would like to try to revive a seemingly interesting project and call attention to it, what would be a common way to do it. <comment><AUTHOR> So apparently there is an Android application called Orgzly [http://www.orgzly.com/](http://www.orgzly.com/) They are in beta stage and are not open source. But it seems to do a decent job so I'll use it at the moment.</comment>


Yale study finds twice as many undocumented immigrants as previous estimates - <AUTHOR> https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/yale-study-finds-twice-as-many-undocumented-immigrants-as-previous-estimates <comment><USER2> Anyone else get annoyed by term "undocumented". There is all kinds of documentation on all immigrants, from facebook, google, the cell phone companies to the irs to the nsa. Some cities even have drivers licenses / id cards for "undocumented" immigrants. I'd prefer a term like non-visa holding non-citizen immigrants. But I guess that's too long... undocumented it is...

<comment><USER3> You could call them illegal aliens.</comment></comment>


LessAccounting Turned Down Acquisition from "Low Moral Fiber" GoDaddy - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/20/lessaccounting-claims-they-turned-down-acquisition-offer-from-low-moral-fiber-godaddy/ <comment><USER2> I know these guys personally and they are everything you would want them to be, simply great guys.</comment>


Who Is Afraid of Nuclear Power? - <AUTHOR> https://www.aier.org/article/who-afraid-nuclear-power <comment><USER2> The problem with nuclear is that is not really improved by market forces. The failure mode is pretty catastrophic so insurance is underwritten by the state.

No company can simply try a different operational regime and go under if they do it badly. Thua any nuclear project is by default a government project. I am much more hopeful for fusion in this regard. Letting a fusion company fail doesn't seem very dangerous so if the basic science can be tamed, gradual economic improvement could actually acrue by market forces.

Contrast that to nuclear where each new plant is getting more expensive per GWH delivered.

<comment><USER3> Nuclear plants are _uninsurable._ No insurance company will touch them. Fusion is an impossible dream and completely pointless.

The dirty secret of the industry is that we need nuclear plants in order to make nuclear bombs. It's where we get the enriched plutonium to blow things up. They never mention that, do they? The entire industry is an offshoot of Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" mandate. The world was so horrified by Hiroshima that we had to make up peacetime uses of radioactivity in order to keep rational people from stopping the entire experiment. Fusion is just the latest of these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The most persuasive argument against nuclear power today is the economic one, and I find it odd that this article doesn't even mention it.

While the global energy industry is moving towards distributed, flexible generation, nuclear power represents centralized generation that requires the accurate projection of energy use 40 years in the future.

Furthermore, the total levelized cost of nuclear is already higher than that of utility-scale wind and solar. Recent nuclear plant construction has been plagued by 100%+ cost overruns, and those costs always seem to be rate-based meaning the consumers, rather than the utility companies, pay for the overruns.

You can argue both sides of the safety issue, but its pretty hard to make an economic case for building new nuclear power plants.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. He does allude to the cost problem but buries it. Another post on HN a few days ago claimed that no new nuke plants will ever be built (after Sumpter) in the US because the economics make no sense. Let's hope he's right.

Of course, the elephant in the room is that costs are out of control _because of the safety issue_. When nuke plants are broken, as they all are, Very Bad Stuff happens. It's the attempts to mitigate this that send costs through the roof.

<comment><USER3> See what I mean? Someone down voted this post which is entirely factual.

Every plant has leaks and safety violations. They're all publicly documented. The uneconomic nature of the industry stems from the attempts to make something safe which is inherently unsafe. Why would someone downvote those facts unless they were trolling?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm sure I'll get down voted for contradicting this post, but here goes.

First, a correction. Three Mile Island did indeed experience a core meltdown which the power company suppressed. Don't ask my sources; just look it up yourself.

The biggest problem with nuclear is that all of its problems are unfixable. Cost is out of control, as the OP says. Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island can never be cleaned up. Never. And those are only the household name accidents. The history of nuclear power is littered (literally) with accidents, screw ups, and permanently contaminated sites -- one of which is where the latest PG&E wildfire started. Again, don't ask me how I know this. I spent years doing my homework. But even a cursory review of nuclear power's history will show that it's full of plants gone wrong. Poke around.

The most common unfixable problem of nuclear power is the waste. No one has ever figured out how to deal with plutonium's 200,000 year half life of fatal radiation output. It's a problem at a scale that humans simply cannot address. And don't lecture me about breeder reactors or what they do with waste in France. Do more research and you'll find that I'm correct. There is no working storage or recycling solution anywhere in the world and we're 60 years into the problem.

The OP says it's not so bad because "nobody died," but that's not true either. Again, a little more digging will show that nuclear mining, waste, leaks, and even normal operations affect cancer numbers everywhere they're found.

Who's afraid of nuclear power? The people who sell it. They're afraid the world has figured out their massively subsidized boondoggle and is backing away, which indeed many countries are doing.

A terrific resource if you want more than Facebook-level facts is Helen Caldicott's book, Nuclear Power is Not the Answer. That's a good place to start.

As Einstein said, "It's one hell of a way to boil water!"

<comment><USER5> Almost every one of your paragraphs had some form of "don't ask me, look it up".

Doesn't make a very compelling argument.

<comment><USER3> I'm writing a book about nuclear power bit this isn't it. I'm tired of HN folks whining "Where is that from?" A modicum of Google will bear out everything I've said.

<comment><USER6> I'm sensible to these issues but I find most people have already strongly held opinions about the topic and very thick filter bubbles.

How do you intend to approach your book so that it's read by anyone not already convinced?

<comment><USER3> You're right. Also, there are industry trolls who do stuff like derail online conversations and downvote logical arguments.

My book is a scathing exposé about the entire con job of nukes, from the promise of "power too cheap to meter" (that was a good one, huh?) to "radiation might be safe" and other nonsense.

One reason I get so pissed off at these trolls is that I've accumulated over 250,000 pages of documents, some of them from my own Freedom of Information Act requests. It's taken an enormous amount of work to be sure that I had original souce materials for everything I write, and I don't mean a Wikipedia article. One unique facet of the book is that every single claim I make is backed up by full and original quotes with sources, many of them from the industry itself.

Have you ever noticed that a post like mine will immediately be slammed with "show me sources!" but the original poster's outrageous claims like "nobody died" are met with blanket acceptance? How can the person who wrote that article say there was no meltdown at Three Mile Island? Jesus, even Wikipedia has that right. Yet no one questions them. This is trolling at it's finest.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


You Shouldn't Believe Network Speed Tests - <AUTHOR> http://www.circleid.com/posts/20200712-why-you-shouldnt-believe-network-speed-tests/ <comment><USER2> I wonder why this page doesn't support TLS 1.2?</comment>


E-cigarettes linked to heart attacks, coronary artery disease and depression - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190307103111.htm <comment><USER2> If this lines up with a previous study, the effects are most likely due to flavorings. Nicotine might also be linked but that is unknown at this point.</comment>


The joys of maintenance programming - <AUTHOR> http://typicalprogrammer.com/?p=122

<comment><USER4> Nice article but

"Your work won't be off-shored .. "

This is simply not true. A large fraction of the code outsourced to India consists of ancient code-wrecks in "musty languages",( to quote the author, nice turn of phrase by the way!) no one in the West wants to touch any more, while green field development with the latest cool tech stays in the US.

I've known of COBOL, RPG, PowerBuilder etc code bases maintained (well) for years in India. Infosys and co make large chunks of money this way. And anyway outsourcing (relatively) low value/cost work makes some sense. I am not saying it is a good or bad thing. Just the way it is.

</comment><comment><USER5> _Clients will appreciate everything you do_

I am by nature an optimist, but this does not match my experience, particularly with regards to improvements that the client cannot easily perceive. (Some days I wish apps had an XP bar so I could award a few points for e.g. "Won't die if the school gets about two dozen Chinese students who prefer English to Japanese - actual bug, by the way.)

<comment><USER6> Well, there's a trick to it. You have to let them know you are fixing things. It's even better if they know everything that's broken and can prioritize what they want fixed first.

I went through a lot of pain before I realized I needed to toot my own horn more. After that, suddenly they were very grateful that I was fixing bugs in their application. (To be fair, they were very grateful at first, too, when the bugs were really obvious and costing them money daily.)

There's no harm in letting them know exactly how much you've improved their system. They really will appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been doing what amounts to maintenance programming for eleven years now, mostly in C and FORTRAN.

Over that time, my attitude has changed greatly. In the early days, all code looked like crap to me. I thought I could do so much better, and in some cases I could. But when I finally got to building my own systems, I ran into lots of compromises and loose ends - sometimes unavoidably. And under the pressure of deadlines, I can't say that I always documented clearly from whence came my spaghetti.

I've gained a certain respect for a system that _works_, no matter how ugly. Only time can shake most of the bugs out, and once they're gone, you try not to put any back in. Sometimes you have no choice but to rewrite; but the tendency to napalm everything must be resisted.

Disclaimer: nobody knows what testing means in this industry.

</comment><comment><USER8> My experience is quite similar. I also got to start out as junior maintainer. I got to work on two of THE crappiest pieces of software in house. I learned a lot, rewrote both of them (at least the shitty parts) - one piece by piece, the other in a month of crunch time. And made them into two of least problematic pieces of code in house.

The experience I gained helped my career incredibly. But then something changed - I kept being transfered from one battlefield to another (thats what happens when you're the best for solving crappy situations). That might be fine and dandy, if your solutions stick. But in my situation juniors were doing greenfield work (since they weren't capable of doing maintaining after themselves - which is kinda ironic) and I got to clean up the mess that I could of easily prevented by getting to apply the experience and knowledge I got solving mess day after day. This kind of situation wears you out pretty fast and so I quit.

So if I got asked how to become really good at doing software. Look for work nobody wants to do and say "Bring it on!". Learn to love the crappy work, then toot your horn and demand fair compensation. But be weary of burn out and thus be prepared to bail out when you start hating what you do. This strategy has many good aspects to it: Customers appreciation levels are way higher - <USER2> at greenfield level work everybody expects latest and greatest of impeccable quality in contrast when maintaining - any improvement is considered minor miracle. Plus if you get any good at this kind of work, even if you act out a diva now and then, no one will hold it against you :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Initially I balked at the thought of maintenance programming but I think this author does a good job explaining the upside.

However, the giant downside to maintenance programming is the sheer amount of frustration possible when trying to fix it, even when the programmer you want to kill is your former self.

I think if you say to yourself "this system makes money", no matter how bad it is, maybe you can see the silver lining.

<comment><USER10> _I think if you say to yourself "this system makes money"_

The sad truth is that if the system makes money then very likely for someone else...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think it's much healthier to work in maintenance mode. Your mind is singly pointed almost meditatively. My personal favorite is troubleshooting. I'm always happy when someone comes to me with an urgent problem. It's such a joy to jump on it and help! Compared to that the process of new design and development is painful.

<comment><USER12> I would like to disagree here - in my experience, maintenance coding means working on pieces within existing overall architecture. And if that arhitecture sucks, well, too bad - not often you can allot the time necessary for proper fixes when working on what appear to be minor bugs. And when you are writing workarounds instead of the beautiful code floating in your mind, it's a long way from meditation.

The challenge in decelopment coding is "how can we make this happen?" - <USER3> coding skill and creativity involved. The challenge in maintenance coding is "how can we get this to work without breaking everything else" - lot less creativity, lot more patching of a leaky boat.

<comment><USER13> On the other hand, when you can do the equivalent of rebuilding a wing of the castle by putting a band-aid in exactly the right spot, it can feel pretty crafty.

A good _reliable_ bugfix can require a lot of creativity, sometimes more than for writing new code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I got _into_ programming because of some code maintenance I did for a hobby project. After dabbling with it at uni I'd rejected programming because I just couldn't picture myself doing the 'boring janitorial' bits.

Turns out it is kind of fun to do, particularly if the programmer who went before you was kind of bad, because then there is this puzzle solving aspect to it, of figuring out:

(a) what it is that the code _actually_ does

(b) what it is that the bad programmer _intended_ it to do

(c) how to reconcile (a) with (b)

On the other hand, doing maintenance work professionally is terrible, because most clients put you in this catch-22 situation:

(1) the code is running in prod (with various kludges and workarounds to get around the broken bits)

(2) because of #1 they don't actually want you to make any changes because they might break the system

(3) any fix involves change

(4) hence you cannot fix anything without the client freaking out, even though you are specifically hired to fix things

Maintenance work in that kind of scenario sucks big time.

Disclaimer: I can actually design code properly, so unlike the author my green-fields projects don't turn into unmitigated disasters.

<comment><USER15> i came here to post about the catch-22 situation. like the author, i actually enjoy bugfixing and improving old, crappy code - but when i have to fix one very specific bug because they can't find a workaround for it, but be careful not to touch anything else, because of the whole network of workarounds and kludges in place, things just get depressing.

<comment><USER14> It's a trust thing. Also a "better the devil you know than the devil you don't".

The most depressing thing I've ever seen in maintenance was a project that got sent into prod with 300+ known defects, they hired other people to fix the defects, when the defect count got below ~50 they bought back the same guy who had screwed up phase 1 so badly to do phase 2 for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is so true.

Most of the best practices I've picked up were working on existing established code bases at Match.com and TI. I work mostly with startups where you have a lot of freedom but the experience I picked up at those big companies has really stuck with me and my code is probably 10x more maintainable because of it.

<comment><USER13> I have to admit that working on a real-world software project (2 million line code base) did force me to unlearn a number of "bad habits" they taught me at university.

For example, I had to unlearn to use clever algorithms and optimized data structures. Stupidly simple code is more maintainable, because the sad but true reality is that for a dozen different reasons the next guy who will be working on it doesn't have their head in the game.

Another thing I found hard to accept was that you don't touch code that is fully functional, not even if it's horribly ugly, not even to fix that one little line of awkwardness. Ugly code that works is always better than clean code with a bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It all comes down to whether one likes to _create_ or to _fix_... Though I used to work with a guy who really liked to _ship_ things and didn't care much for the process or the quality. To each his own as they say.

<comment><USER18> A well rounded software developer needs both. You need to know how to design, get that design to work, and after that submit your code to a test team and later clients, take their feedback and correct or enhance the code accordingly. You cannot do much with a guy who is only willing to create, as his code will eventually have bugs. A guy who only wants to fix though will probably be able to find a place in service or customer support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm in a maintenance role right now and it's really getting to me. I should quit, but I'm reasonably well paid (so I can save plenty to quit when I've had enough), and I feel some kind of duty to the fellow members of my team.

What gets me is that the original developers get the praise and recognition that comes with releasing something, and are then moved onto new projects. They never have to deal with fixing the bugs they've created, so they have little idea what a pain in the ass it is to maintain their code and do the same shit on the next project (which we'll have to maintain soon enough).

When I do a good job of fixing bugs it makes it look like their shitty code works, but when I fail to fix a critical one in a timely it reflects badly on my abilities (even though it's primarily due to a poorly written and poorly documented code in the first place) and makes my team and the company look bad.

Anyway, I suppose I've not really contributed much to the discussion but maybe this rant will take the sting out of going into work tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER20> Software maintenance is a sign of a successful project. People are _using_ the software and they want bugs fixed so they can continue using it in the _future_. That can be very satisfying for a programmer, even if the application itself is "boring" or not "sexy".

I have worked plenty of late nights and weekends on "cool" projects that never shipped. A project gets canceled. A startup runs out of money. No user would enjoy the fruit of my labor. My code gathers dust in some archived copy of the source repository.

</comment><comment><USER21> _Not_ my experience. I despise maintenance programming. I dread the thought that I may have to inherit some maintenance programming as part of a gig.

The only thing I ever learned from maintenance programming was what not to do.

Over the years, I have maintained the work of hundreds, maybe even thousands of programmers on everything from clearly rushed fixes to large scale commercial software packages. And almost everything I ever encountered sucked. I bet I've seen the work of less the a dozen really good programmers.

Maybe it's selction bias...perhaps the work of the best programmers needs less maintenance, so it's much less likely that I'll ever get to see it. But thanks to the bell curve and the infancy of our industry, 99% of all programmers I've ever followed have significant shortcomings in the work...

I hate not instantly knowing what a variable stands for.

I hate 4 different variables for the same thing.

I hate program variables that don't match the file variable.

I hate the same line of code twice.

I hate 100 lines of code when 5 lines would have sufficed if the programmer only had a clue.

I hate steady violations of pre-agreed upon standards (whatever they are).

I hate spaghetti code. Especially where touching one little thing breaks everything because no previous programmer anticipated any of the 42 likely things that would happen in the life of this program.

I know that the rewrite debate comes up often, but once I reach a certain subjective tolerance threshold, a rewrite is a certainty. I like to think that:

a. This horrible shit will be banished forever.

b. This will finally work the way _I think_ was originally intended.

c. This will finally look like it should have in the first place.

d. I'll be the last one who ever suffered maintaining this module.

Don't believe me? Just hit "View Source" on any random web page to reveal the mountain of shit that's about to fall out upon you.

Joy? I'd rather chew razor blades.

<comment><USER22> Another thing I hate with pure maintenance programming is that you're generally told to touch as little code as possible. If it 'works', don't change it.

Sometimes you'd love to refactor a bit of 10 year old C code to be more readable, or less bug-prone. But you can't because it's not a bug.

In some cases it's even worse and you can't even fix bugs that you find. Only bugs reported by customers count as bugs. Of course, a customer will eventually stumble on it, but heh.

I don't mind maintaining code as long as it's focused on structural improvement, not on manouvring through the code very carefully hoping the whole thing won't collapse.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is code that really needs to be rewritten. If it's so creaky that you can't make any change without breaking other things, and you aren't allowed to refactor, that's trouble. I don't take on projects like that. But in my experience it's more common with web applications to find code that has lots of room for improvement, but isn't really falling apart. Most freelance developers/consultants immediately go to "we have to rewrite it," which the business can't afford right now, and therefore deprive themselves of the maintenance business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> i didn't rtfa too carefully, but from what i've heard, all newly-hired developers at Facebook go through a 6-week 'boot camp' where they fix bugs and do maintenance to get up to speed with the code base ...

[http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/01/business/la-fi- faceb...](http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/01/business/la-fi-facebook- bootcamp-20100801)

<comment><AUTHOR> Six weeks to get up to speed, with what must be an enormous code base? That's not maintenance programming.

<comment><USER16> Yeah. Six weeks is barely enough time to pick up on on all the architectural and subtle design decisions in the code base. You still probably won't be really comfortable making big changes for at least another 6 weeks after that with any significant code base. Maintenance programming implies deep understanding of the existing code really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Where there's muck, there's brass.</comment>


With Tablet, Microsoft Takes Aim at Hardware Missteps - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/technology/companies/with-tablet-microsoft-takes-aim-at-hardware-missteps.html?hp <comment><USER2> Surface is already irrelevant, because Microsoft has decided that to placate Windows OEMs it won't be sold in retail stores. It doesn't matter that Microsoft may have scoured the earth for the purest metals with which to craft its case if the average person is never going to encounter one in the real world. Microsoft's real problem that Windows OEMs are incapable of building a decent tablet. Surface does nothing to incentivize OEMs to build better tablets, and crippling the sales campaign ensures it won't marginalize the OEMs either. For their part, the OEMs have already scoffed at Surface and promised to go on with business as usual.

<comment><USER3> Irrelevant because it's not sold in retail stores?

Companies don't walk into Best Buy to purchase computers for their employees.

From the time I bought my first Commodore until the present day, I've never purchased a computer anywhere other than online.

While I'm sure there are lots of exceptions, calling it irrelevant because it's not sold in retail stores is a bit of a stretch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there a fire risk with MS building the cases out of magnesium? Magnesium fires are intense and difficult to put out.

I can't imagine MS is going to put out a product that oxidizes violently, so how will they prevent it? Can MgO retain the look (everything I've seen of MgO is a white powder)?

<comment><USER5> I bet the temperature to get magnesium to ignite is much higher than the devices would naturally produce or be exposed to. The only burning magnesium I've ever witnessed was either ground into a powder or in thin strips. It probably wouldn't burn so well in bulk.

This was the first thing that popped into my mind on Monday, though. The original NeXT cubes were built out of magnesium, and after NeXT left the hardware business someone famously burned an old cube. If I recall correctly, it took quite a lot of effort to get it burning.

The tale of the burning incident is here:

<http://simson.net/hacks/cubefire.html>

 _As you know, years ago, when NeXT first contemplated making computers, Steve Jobs decided that machines should be in the shape of a cube, and that they should be built from cast magnesium. Although magnesium is a relatively expensive metal, it is remarkably strong and lightweight. No doubt, this let NeXT save on shipping expenses, although the added handling and manufacturing costs was one of the factors which led to the cube's high cost. At the time that NeXT brought their system to market, the only other company to incorporate a magnesium case was Grid, which was making a portable computer. (I am told that Apple also uses magnesium for the inside case of its Duo computers, but I haven't been able to verify this fact..._

<comment><USER4> Thank you for that link. It was a very entertaining read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This quote jumped out at me:

"..., Apple has proved that there are significant advantages to designing hardware and software together."

I'm assuming the NYT is referring to "design" in its high-level context, as used by graphic designers, etc. and not its low-level context, as used by engineers?

Apple has proved is that there are significant advantages to reusing other people's low-level designs, in the form of open-source software, such as BSD, but taking advantage of the source availability to control the high-level design. In this case, the low-level design has not been done in tandem with the hardware, since it preexisted the hardware.

<comment><USER7> There's more to design than just "how it looks" and "it's based on BSD". Apple's software is not just a bunch of open source stuff glued together as your post implies. The iOS kernel, for example, is substantially proprietary and heavily customized for Apple's iOS hardware. You don't get any lower-level than that, and that was definitely developed alongside the hardware.

<comment><USER6> That wasn't meant to be the implication. If I had my time again, I'd add the word "mostly" to the last sentence, but apart from that I'll just clarify.

The point I was trying to make is that using open-source, in the way Apple has, allows the customisation to go beyond the mere gluing together of black boxes. The thing Apple has woken up to is that 95% of the black box is reusable commodity stuff and it's that customised 5% that makes it "sing" with your hardware.

This level of integration just isn't possible without the source code. You can try writing everything yourself, but that blows time to market, and required development resources, out big time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This demonstrates everything that is wrong with Microsoft. They identified a problem, they couldn't get their products up to par with existing processes. So they go out of their way to copy their competitors.

By following this methodology they'll always be worse or the same as their competitors. Eventually they'll find a way to lock them out, and then the market will suffer from stagnation.

This to me is far more evil than anything Apple has ever done. As long as Microsoft has this culture I can't respect them as a company.

<comment><USER9> I came here to write basically this. Additionally, I think that Microsoft is making a mistake with this Surface tablet. Consumers want a device that will be easy and fun to use, and that has good access to a lot of content. Maybe the iPad will eventually transition into more of a productivity device, but right now consumers (and Apple) don't view the iPad as a PC replacement.

Microsoft's approach (one OS for tablets and PCs) was a poor choice; the two devices have different needs, and require different UIs and feature sets. They have done so much work on Windows 8 in order to be a competitor in the "tablet market" but I fear that there is no such market. People don't want tablets as MS invisions them. People want iPads.

In my view, the Surface is a step between a laptop and an iPad. Does Microsoft intend for this to unify and replace these? They have produced a product inferior to both an iPad and a laptop, and thus I imagine the Surface will replace neither for most people.

<comment><USER10> >People don't want tablets as MS invisions them. People want iPads.

How do you know this? What about corporate users and for company owned devices?

>They have produced a product inferior to both an iPad and a laptop, and thus I imagine the Surface will replace neither for most people.

It can do more than the iPad because you can type on it much more comfortably and has Office and it's better than a laptop because it's much more portable. It's a device with different tradeoffs.

<comment><USER11> Actually I find Surface keyboard a joke. I sometimes use my netbook in positions I don't imagine using Surface in.

Another point: keyboard and Office for iPad is not problem. Here is keyboard <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsIJUiTlrGI> and here is Pages [http://www.apple.com/ipad/from-the-app-store/apps-by- apple/p...](http://www.apple.com/ipad/from-the-app-store/apps-by- apple/pages.html).

The only thing that is cool in Surface is pen and again its value is questionable. There are multiple pen solutions for iPad if you really need to.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Slides Review: Create Awesome Animated Websites - <AUTHOR> https://davidwalsh.name/slides <comment><USER2> This framework use it's own code or it's based on Bootstrap?

<comment><USER3> Nope, it's not bootstrap based framework. It has the clean code without frameworks integrations.</comment></comment>


How to make money on youtube QUICKLY by uploading television programs - <AUTHOR> http://evrotone.blogspot.com/

<comment><USER2> What the hell is this? It starts nowhere, it goes nowhere, it stops but never ends. And it has NOTHING to do with YouTube or television or money. Why is this here?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> k</comment>


How the Tax Burden Has Changed - Interactive Graphic - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/30/us/tax-burden.html

<comment><USER2> Credit to nyt for separating the top 1% from the top 20%, but they still failed to separate the top 0.1% who have substantially different income/tax situation.

Also, in many or most places, property tax is a function of the levy target, not housing prices. The "rate" is derived from the levy amount, not vice versa. Prices only affect relative burden (alpha) not the total amount collected (beta)</comment>


Ask HN: Partners and Expenses - <AUTHOR>

Hackers of all fields...
I've been running a small software development business with a partner for about a year now, we haven't yet withdrawn any money from the business, but we would like to be able to "expense" our different major purchases, such as necessary laptops and other equipment.  One problem we've been trying to address is how to purchase different equipment at different prices, and maintain "50%" equity in the company.  One idea we've had is to put in equal amounts of up-front re-investment, and reimbursing each of us from these "investments" at year end.  The problem there is that there may be a "surplus" from the partner who did not use their whole "hardware" investment...
Thoughts?
Jeff <comment><USER2> 1) Consider it company hardware such that if one of you leaves they must give up the hardware.

2) Each of you has to sign off on the other's purchase, that way neither of you can spend too extravagantly. You should trust each other enough not to work to game the system, and this should put a good enough check in place to prevent it (again assuming some amount of trust).

<comment><AUTHOR> Great points, we do approve each others purchases now and do not have a problem with trust. I should clarify my question is to identify how to handle "nice to have" purchases which each of us agree are not essential but would improve our "personal experiences". Ultimately, we would purchase these items on a "personal" level, but we would like to be able to expense these items as they are helpful tools for our company and to stay up-to-date with latest technologies and trends...

One such instance of this was the "purchase" of personal iPhones/iTouches which were not "essential" for developing our experimental iPhone App, but they did help the process along...</comment></comment>


Mono 3.0 is out - <AUTHOR> http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Oct-22.html

<comment><USER3> There's also plenty of Server Frameworks with First class support for Mono:

I'm apart of the core team that delivers <http://www.servicestack.net> (A REST, RPC, SOAP + MQ Service framework) which we've been hosting for years on Linux, initially on CentOS and we're now on a Hetzner Ubuntu vServer which worked out to be 11x cheaper than a lower speced instance on Azure!:

[https://speakerdeck.com/mythz/what-is-the- servicestack?slide...](https://speakerdeck.com/mythz/what-is-the- servicestack?slide=48)

We've gotten great up-time with Linux where our last server reached 480+ days up-time before we switched hosts: <http://www.servicestack.net/mythz_blog/?p=838>

There are other traditional Windows/.NET companies exploring deploying on Linux/Mono since it allows them to scale at $0 licensing cost, here's a post from 7digital showing how they deploy on Nginx/FastCgiMono using Capistrano: [http://blogs.7digital.com/dev/2012/09/25/atomic-mono- deploym...](http://blogs.7digital.com/dev/2012/09/25/atomic-mono-deployment- with-capistrano-and-nginx-under-debian/)

NancyFx (<http://nancyfx.org>) and SignalR (<http://signalr.net>) are other great .NET frameworks with Mono CI builds and first-class Linux Support.

<comment><USER4> I'm going to throw a possibly unpopular view on the table here: sticking all this on Linux is purely about cutting costs but saves nothing.

The administrative overhead of deploying all this stuff is incredible as are the disparate infrastructure and software models. You might be saving 11x on an Azure instance, but your ops time and staffing requirements will cost more than that. Throwing something on Azure is really cheap with respect to time and effort. If you need to scale past that or cost becomes a limitation, you might as well fish out for a Rackspace or other dedicated package.

We're at the £50k hosting budget a month mark now (1x production DC, 1x hot spare DC, 2x packed 42U racks in each) and 2 meat based products to manage it all. Not much of that cost is software licenses.

Note: I have nothing against servicestack - in fact it's rather good (we use servicestack.text)

For ref, I turned down a position at 7digital a couple of years ago as I though they were smoking crack when stuff like this was mentioned.

<comment><USER5> A UK .NET developer? A rarity on here... are you looking to hire anyone?

<comment><USER4> We're a pretty quiet bunch. There are lots of us - if not thousands. We're not hiring at the minute unfortunately. I've got your email address - will drop you an email if an opportunity comes up.

<comment><USER5> Can you e-mail me where you work - I'd just be interested to see what you're doing...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> With the craziness that's leading to WPF / Silverlight being deprecated in favour of a sand-boxed Metro UI, it seems like MonoMac is looking like the best place to create full-featured Desktop apps with.

Played with MonoMac on the weekend, it was super easy to get going and the bindings are nicely polished in idiomatic C# (uses same technology as used in MonoTouch). The bindings end up a close match to the official Obj-C APIs. Easy to translate Cocoa docs to C# APIs (which end up being nicer IMHO). It was also seamless to create UIs in XCode and access them in C#.

<comment><USER6> Word, monomac isn't too bad, as long as you remember to do all your work within monodevelop (notably modifying xib's / setting up outlets - <USER2> impressively sets up a fake project to 'sync' changes with xcode 4).

Ideally I'd expect to see more CAD/Drawing/Creation-focused apps using monomac. I actually keep wondering if rhino3d is using it since that's a .net- based application.

In case you burn to use Qt, qyoto (qt-c# bindings) is also being actively maintained (although I tend to recommend just going native for interfaces). recently wrote a post on it: [http://vivekgani.com/blog/2012/09/17/setting-up- qyoto-on-osx...](http://vivekgani.com/blog/2012/09/17/setting-up-qyoto-on-osx- lion/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mono seems to be becoming what Java could have been if Sun had been sensible-- a VM-based garbage collected system with a lot of high level portable libraries that gives you a lot of cross platform capability, BUT that is happy to let you write a Windows program or a Mac program or a Linux program if that's what you want.

<comment><USER8> > BUT that is happy to let you write a Windows program or a Mac program or a > Linux program if that's what you want.

Care to explain the last bit ? Because Java also lets you invoke native code (and hence platform specific) if you want to.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps the distinction is that the Mono devs favor wrapping native UI kits instead of inventing a platform independent abstraction.

<comment><USER10> Also the difference between using .NET's P/Invoke (DllImport) interface versus Java's JNI is about as big as can be in terms of developer pain and overhead.

<comment><USER11> Have a look at JNA. It's about as easy to use as P/Invoke.

Of course Java's days on the desktop are kind of numbered with the various browser and OS vendors getting visibly concerned about the security of the JRE, but that's a different matter.

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately it's still a huge pain to use JNA with stuff that returns unions (or a pointer to different type depending on the usage context). That makes things like X libraries wrappers really difficult to write in a clean way.

P/Invoke is still much more flexible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> At last week's MonkeySpace I sat in an awesome demo of Don Syme (Mr F#) show casing F#'s 3.0 type providers support in Mono on OSX! MonoDevelop had run- time intelli-sense of Type Providers and he was running code inside the built- in F# REPL in MonoDevelop.

<comment><USER13> MonkeySpace was great! Especially that thing that was demoed that we can't talk about. You know... _wink_ _wink_ , _secret hand shake_...

Awesome things are coming!

I've been working with Mono for going on 8 years, I'm so glad to see that they were able to pull away from Novell.

<comment><USER3> Yep, I'm definitely looking forward to the exiting happenings in Mono/Xamarin land launching early next year :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Extremely happy that Mono is doing so great recently.

Politics aside, the MSR people did a beautiful job designing the system and it's very saddening how it's currently misused by the mother corporation. It's good that it gets a chance to thrive beyond their suffocating grasp.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is anybody using MonoTouch to create cross-platform apps for iOS and Android? What's the experience like?

<comment><USER16> Yes, and it's cool, but not as awesome as the demos make it seem.

There are basically three major downsides:

1) It's another at least $399 x 2 as a single developer to use (but you can develop against it for free and only buy the license when you want to deploy). Professional licenses are more expensive than that.

2) The runtime can take a long time to load. 3-5 seconds for some apps. You can create a splash screen to mitigate this, but it's a __*t experience when you do an a/b comparison on a native app and a mono app (this time is basically while it loads the runtime).

3) 3rd party library support sucks. It just doesn't really exist; if you're used to pulling nunit, ninject, shouldly, nhibernate, nsubstitute, etc. into your project, forget it. A handful of libraries have been ported to the touch and android runtimes, but most of things you'll look at either won't work or you'll have to recompile manually (to be fair there are a fair few that are easy drop ins; Dapper works like a charm for example).

That said, you get some pretty cool stuff: you can separate your core application logic, including database access into its own library and share the code between your various projects. Fix once, fix everywhere.

You can have common unit tests that you can run on a non-windows server.

It's vastly more productive (than writing two code bases in objective c and java).

You can develop without using visual studio~ <3 (some people see this as a downside; it's not to me. VS2010 is rubbish as far as I'm concerned; it crashes, freezes, loses my work all of the time. For all that I love resharper, I'll take monodevelop in a second thanks).

Overall; if you can afford it, do it.

<comment><USER17> You said Dapper works on MonoTouch—did you make any changes to it? I've read[1] there are quite a few problems with it so I had to choose Sqlite over it. I also found this[2], not sure if it helps. What's your experience with Dapper/MT?

[1]: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8223837/using-dapper- in-m...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8223837/using-dapper-in-monotouch)

[2]: <https://gist.github.com/1115206>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm impressed by how quickly they've been able to add much of the significant features of C# 5.0 and .NET 4.5 -- in particular, async/await. Visual Studio 2012 has only been out for one month.

<comment><USER19> The C# Language Specification for Asynchronous Functions ([http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=2375...](http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=23753)) is available for download since 4/13/2011, and they have been many drafts before that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Mono is excellent as a drop-in replacement of Visual Studio's command-line compiler.

<comment><USER21> What advantages does it bring in that role?

<comment><USER22> The advantage is it runs on linux so you can get it right next to your redis or whatever else.

I really hope 3.0 addresses missing SqlDbTypes like Date, Structured etc.

<comment><USER23> I've been using Node.js more and more for simple services, scripts etc.. and that's on Windows. Have some data migration process scripts in Node.js because going from a flat structure across many database tables (with weird joins etc), to a hierarchical object structure was far easier in Node.js. The output was dumping to .json.gz files to be called from a simple service, in addition to a statuslist.json file... the partner wanted a filter... was faster/lighter to re-use the node.js implemented parts, and re-implement the 4 api calls in node using ARR as a reverse proxy from IIS.. works great, and now handles the edge cases better... Was under 3 hours of work.

I know this isn't Mono, of which I've been a big fan, and it's my first go-to for building certain applications cross platform, but have to admit that Node.js seems to be a better workflow, when you want to get a small task done. No spooling up a new project in VS, with build efforts. It just works.

<comment><USER22> Yeah I've been doing the same actually heh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It appears that libgdiplus 3.0 isn't currently available at

<http://download.mono-project.com/sources/libgdiplus/>

Would be nice to have it there :)

<comment><USER25> libgdiplus is fairly stable - you can find use the latest zip from github if you need a source release:

[https://github.com/mono/libgdiplus/commit/3ddf7ff28e0876dc39...](https://github.com/mono/libgdiplus/commit/3ddf7ff28e0876dc395368f11c0dd141199338f0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Where can I download the Windows installer for 3.0? The download page still has the 2.10 release.

</comment><comment><USER27> Now if only more people would use Mono and more community .NET projects. Everyone who wants to use .NET feels that if it's not Entity Framework, SQL Server(Azure), Windows Azure, .NET 4.5 that it's not worth even considering.

</comment><comment><USER28> We recently switched to PostgresSQL after we had some very disturbing performance issues using floppy drives with MongoD... oh... Mono 3.0.. uh, nevermind.</comment>


Lockheed takes next step in moving F-16 production to India - <AUTHOR> http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2016/10/21/lockheed-takes-next-step-in-moving-f-16-production.html <comment><USER2> All that outsourcing business is working very well for the senators and congressmen who receive campaign funds and other perks from Lockheed :)

[http://www.opensecrets.org/usearch/?q=lockheed](http://www.opensecrets.org/usearch/?q=lockheed)</comment>


The erosion of America's middle class - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,712496,00.html

<comment><USER2> This is a messy subject, tied into globalization. Yeah, it's nice having cheaper stuff at Wal-Mart, but you need a job to be able to consume. I worry we've gone past the balance point, with too many lost jobs/customers.

Things tend to be cyclical, but that doesn't mean the next few months/years will be easy.</comment>


Existing freelancing boards suck! Sign-up to support a better service. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.outsourcing.io/what-were-doing

<comment><USER2> I like this idea, I had it myself. I was even discussing this yesterday with a friend of mine. Two years ago I even put together a prototype and started experimenting with it.

Our conclusions? Yes, freelance sites suck. Do providers want something else? Hell yeah! Do buyers want something else? Hell no! Simply put; being able to first try to get your project done for $100 while you know the real price is at least $20k+ is compelling apparently. I know companies who had stuff we quoted for $50k done for $1k. And it didn't even suck too badly. Why? Because there is SO much competition on those sites that 'newer' providers have to compete on price to get anywhere. So you can get occasional solid work for 1/50th of the price. Especially if you know what to look for.

Then if it doesn't work you just go 5x that, doing it for $5k and most likely you'll have your $50k project done nicely. Note that most companies under $10k price point are willing to go no-cure-no-pay, meaning if it failed so far, you didn't pay a cent yet.

If you get farther than this, yes a different method would be better, however, most don't get to that online or they already have their preferred teams, meaning this won't help them. I already know that if I pay a Ukraine team with 400 5 star projects $50k I WILL have high quality; why do I need these moderators?

I'm not against this at all mind you; like I said, we thought about this seriously ourselves but we just didn't see enough interest from companies. Basically most companies on freelance sites who want to buy something still suffer from that Elance-Digg-syndrome; pay very little for top-notch stuff. And often you do get that.

Also for that $50k the site is worth, you can for instance put 6 teams for $5k on it, having a quite high (from experience) chance of success in at least 1 or 2 of them and banking $20k 'profit'.

I wish you luck but it's a very much uphill battle!

<comment><USER3> You have too many generalizations in your post with no mention of the countless variables which make a project a success or not. Dollar figures are almost meaningless as this is just one small part of the whole picture.

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever heard regarding offering development services is that the technical skills are easy to pick up, it's the people skills which are difficult. It's the people skills that buyers are willing to pay for if they have the budget. These cheap developers aren't able to connect with the people skills, so they aren't able to break out of their low cost offerings. Instead, they might work for a middle-man who handles the client for a mint and hands off the work for cheap.

Also, if developers on Odesk racking up 5 star ratings are so great, then why don't companies such as Github and 37Signals with mostly remote teams just go snap up all the 5 star developers they can find on Odesk? The reason is that there is a big gap between A-level developers and C-level developers and that gap is measured in ROI. Dollar amounts mean nothing, ROI is the most important number. A 5 star developer working cheaply on Odesk might get the job done with passable code, but the A-level developer who isn't on Odesk (no need because this person has no problem finding work) will deliver a much higher ROI.

Sure, the A-level developer won't be a good fit for every situation (maybe you really just need someone really cheap to get the job done ugly) but this person doesn't have much competition.

As for the service from the OP goes, just get going. You never know until you at least start the initial probing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Scoop: Contractors will not be quantified by 400 tasks each worth $5.

Contractors will be able to include their stackoverflow profile, github, blogs, articles written, personal or paid projects, endorsements, along with usual reviews. This provides a much better assessment on the type of person, and yes, communication and people skills.

I've spoken with countless people complaining that they tried going with a freelance and they gave up when the individual disappeared. This is the problem we have to fix and I'm willing to bet there are enough buyers looking to buy real service for their money.</comment></comment></comment>


Rothenberg Says Ad Blocking Is a War Against Diversity and Freedom of Expression - <AUTHOR> http://www.iab.com/news/rothenberg-says-ad-blocking-is-a-war-against-diversity-and-freedom-of-expression/ <comment><USER2> First of all, him being the "president and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau" renders any potential discussion based on that statement invalid anyhow.

Secondly, what is there to discuss in the first place? He certainly is free not to use any adblockers, just as everyone else is free to use (or not use) them as well.

Whats next? Discussing the use of black vs dark blue socks? Unless OF COURSE, he is suggesting to ban, block, "outlaw" adblockers. THAT would be a completely different issue and an actual war/attack on free choice, the very thing is appears to criticise.

</comment><comment><USER3> Freedom of expression, diversity, freedom of speech aren't top items on advertiser's agenda. The only item is to put consumption above all else through huge sums of money.

Why is that in advertising, it is usually a woman that is depicted as

\- a servant of men and children that reacts to the demands and complaints of her loved ones with a bad conscience and the promise for immediate improvement (wash, food)

\- a sexual or emotional play toy for the self-affirmation of men

\- a technically totally clueless being that can only manage a childproof operation

\- female expert, but stereotype from the fields of fashion, cosmetics, food or at the most, medicine

\- as ultra thin

\- doing ground-work for others, e.g. serving coffee while a journalist interviews a politician

That's just one stereotype example of this big experiment, probably the biggest psychological experiment undertaken by the human race that only a few care about its consequences.

<comment><USER4> The reason that advertising and consumerism are necessary is that we have a system in place for people to coerce other people to do things, it's called the economy. What if people really did not need that much out of other people? Well then there would be unemployment. The psychological experiment is a socialization experiment to give everyone something to do, so that the system can run and distribute resources... more to some and less to others, depending on how much what they do is valued by other people.

Compare that to other systems, whether people are not working for stuff other people want. Everything is very expensive, and everyone is very poor. The system creates a certain order through this psychological experiment. Is that order good or bad depends on what outcomes you are looking for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> And in other news... the president of the National Society of Wolves says that border collies are immoral and hate you for your freedom.

</comment><comment><USER6> I love the mental gymnastics people like this perform to convince themselves of their own rhetoric.

It reminds me of the guy from the MPAA who not long ago said that BitTorrent (the protocol, and the company) and The Pirate Bay were _' an assault on on our human rights and civil liberties'_.

Right. I wonder how many people he convinced by that utter manure.

</comment><comment><USER7> Adorable how clearly the biases are written. Though I guess when you're preaching to a choir, that's the point. Isn't it?

 _>...They are the future of consumption. They are the future of advertising and media. They are your childrens' classmates, your in-laws, the parents of your future grandchildren_

"These people are close to you. You should care about them!"

 _> Now, you may be aware of a kerfuffle that began about 10 days ago, when an unethical, immoral, mendacious coven of techie wannabes at a for-profit German company called AdBlock-Plus_

It's good to see that a few techie _wannabes_ can kick their asses so hard (with technology) they have to go into a safe space to whine about them.

 _> The latest ad-blocking company is a Web browser startup called "Brave." It was launched by former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, whose last major investment was in banning gay marriage in California. _

Ah yes, let's bring something up from 10 years ago to try and discredit and slander against Eich. Brendan, when's the book about these events coming out? Your last post about it said you might write one in 18 months time. :) I'm sure a half-hearted statement with no intention to follow through, but I think it would be nice to hear your take on it rather than constantly hearing about it in a way meant to discredit everything you do.

 _> Surveys repeatedly show that upwards of 75% of consumers prefer ad- supported Internet sites where the content is free over ad-free sites where they would pay fees for content. Fewer than 10% of consumers want to pay for content. By driving digital publishers, including some of the most prestigious news organizations in the world, to impose fees on consumers in order to continue to support their business and content-development objectives, the ad- block profiteers are subverting the will of consumers._

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. If 10% of the consumers running ad-block are fucking you over so hard, something is wrong. If those 75% of ad-supporting consumers are supporting the companies via ads like they claim. What the hell is the problem? 10% does not a problem make.

 _> Remember that those users represent all races and creeds, and that their happiness success means your success and happiness, too._

Pander harder to the current ideological trend. Build yourself up as someone working for "the cause". I'll grab the popcorn for when you inevitably fuck up in a few years and the hoards come for your job and your head. As has happened to most every other crusader. I'm sure there is some dirty laundry airing out somewhere that someone will uncover.

It's a sad thing when noble causes get coopted for nefarious purposes by narcissists.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ad Blocking is wearing a condom while being raped by a pimp.</comment>


Show HN: Wrote a Child Friendly OS for Kids to Learn Linux - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sugarlabs/sugar/blob/master/README.md <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, HN! This is Sugar, a child friendly OS that was created to enable learning through computers.

Used python GTK, and have activities that enhances interactive and constructive learning among kids.

Kids are able to tweak the code and play with the operating systems themselves.

It's all open source.

Regards, Sumit

Sugar Labs</comment>


Temperature and Latitude to Predict Potential Spread and Seasonality for COVID19 - <AUTHOR> https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3550308 <comment><USER2> PSA: There's a "download without registration" link on the bottom right of the page, just in-case anyone missed it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hard to know the extent to which likelihood to test for COVID-19 varies by latitude. Still, apriori knowledge of these types of viruses makes this a pretty good guess. Summer can't come fast enough.

<comment><USER4> That depends. The thing that seems to be worrying public health professionals is the potential for a second, larger resurgence in the autumn. If that hits at the same time as an even moderately bad flu season, things will get really ugly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Africa and India seem to be proving this.

But it does mean countries coming into Winter should be worried.

Personally I think they should have been letting is spread before hand and burning out as many paths in the network as possible while it's somewhat containable.

I wouldn't want to be going into Winter.

That graph with the two lines one peaked the other flattened does leave out the capacity of hospitals goes to very very low in flu season. It's designed that way.

</comment><comment><USER6> Apropos of this -- summer brings more UV light, which breaks a fair variety of molecular bonds. But I've yet to come across any data on whether UV deactivates coronavirus. Anyone?

<comment><USER7> Are there _any_ viruses not deactivated by UV pretty quickly?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Their March-April visualization shows Italy as being outside of the predicted at-risk zone.

It's March 10th and Italy just announced a nation-wide quarantine, how does this square with the model as predicted? Is it just too early to see? Will we know by April if this model is useless if Italy continues to have covid-19 spreading?

</comment><comment><USER9> The paper has Iran in the wrong zone.

</comment><comment><USER10> Tldr: 10 - 15 degrees Celsius seems to be the hotspot.

<comment><USER3> but also humidity is important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hope they're right but I worry these conclusions are premature.

There's evidence of community transmission in Singapore which currently has rather warm and humid weather.

Honestly just look at the current world map[0] - it seems the statistics in this paper may be out of date. Not to mention were starting to see early spread in third world countries like India which are unlikely to comprehensively test for it, at least not in the short term. The data in this paper may be biased.

Given the relatively slow progression of the outbreaks, if Italy is any model, India and South America are about to have a bad time in the next 3-6 weeks. Let's hope otherwise.

0\. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_outbreak_by_country_and_territory)

<comment><USER10> I've read a theory that the reason Singapore has so many is because of air conditioning being used so much.

<comment><USER12> What do you mean by "so many"? Singapore appears to be an amazing success story in containing C19.

They are using aggressive contact tracing as part of that, so if it were spreading like wildfire through A/C vents surely that wouldn't be effective and they would have a much faster growth rate of cases.

<comment><USER13> I don't think the assertion is that it's spreading through vents, just that spending time in a very air conditioned room mimics some of attributes of winter that make the spread of respiratory viruses more likely (dry air, dry nasal passages)

<comment><USER14> There may be something to this. If you look at the actual cases in Singapore, they seem to be clustered around two specific locations, one company and a single event which I would presume was held inside a single big hall.

I'm in Singapore, and life here goes on pretty much as it always has. Except for a larger than normal number of people wearing masks, you can't really tell that this is ongoing.

That said, the government is doing a lot to keep it that way. There is intensive contact tracing, and companies register people going in and out of their offices (to help tracing), if you're sick you're supposed to stay at home, and so on.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A closer look at glassdoor's top 50 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.buzzhero.io/a-closer-look-at-glassdoors-top-50/ <comment><USER2> Glass Door is great. I especially love some of the more recent updates they've made - ie [https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/CarVal-Investors- Reviews-E...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/CarVal-Investors- Reviews-E240967.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting data</comment>


The mindset of a programmer - <AUTHOR> http://prognst.tumblr.com/post/148195526630/the-mindset-of-a-programmer <comment><USER2> >If you teach programming, realize that your students most likely won't have the correct mindset and you need to teach that mindset to them. No matter how much you explain what a snippet does and how it works, your students won't get it if they don't realize to think about what those statements actually do and what the big picture is.

Purely awful advice. There is nothing more of a turn-off to a person learning programming for the first time than, "You can't just drop in this jQuery module that solves this one issue for you and move on to the fun part! You have to stop here and delve deep to understand exactly what's going on before you can move forwards."

I would say that's the _opposite_ of the essence of programming. If you can understand what a line of code does from a black-box high level, that's often good enough to move on and complete your project.

<comment><USER3> Exactly right. The "big picture" argument is nonsense. The whole reason abstractions exist is so you can focus on solving problems with a minimal understanding of the minutia. That's how a "real programmer" does it, so making a novice do the opposite is baffling.

Showing people how to build stuff with black boxes builds confidence. Forcing them to understand every little detail is overwhelming and makes them feel dumb.

<comment><USER4> I like the bottom-up approach more than the top-down. Begin with a simpler form of a system. Show how abstractions are built on top of it, and allow you to handle increased complexity with a similar cognitive load. That's easy to extend to using someone else's black box code, with the added benefit that when you find the holes in the abstraction, you're equipped to dig into its implementation and find a way around the shortcoming.

Showing people how to build stuff with black boxes builds confidence, until the abstraction fails, or something in the black box doesn't work the way they expected (and they don't have the experience to look inside and figure out the problem). They ask about the problem, and in the short term, the best case scenario is that they're handed some more black box code that fixes their current problem.

It's true that you can't just throw a student in the deep end (forcing them to understand every little detail of a complex, layered system). You'll discourage them. On the other hand, the most discouraging thought I've _ever_ had while working on a project was "I don't know what's wrong, and I don't know how to find out".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems obvious, programming is very much a way of thinking, so of course you have to develop that mindset to do well.</comment>


A Gentle Introduction To Learning Calculus - <AUTHOR> http://betterexplained.com/articles/a-gentle-introduction-to-learning-calculus/ <comment><USER2> It's unfortunate that most of the comments so far only engage either with the title of the piece, or with it's (acknowledged) debt to "A Mathematician's Lament".

I think the author's main point-- that most teaching of mathematics tends to undervalue the "aha!" types of insights that connect various pieces-- is a good one, and it looks like he has some concrete ideas about how to go about it.

I, for one, look forward to seeing the author follow through with additional concrete examples.

<comment><USER3> Thanks :). I don't know what it is, but for a field concerned with abstraction people miss the forest for the trees.

I try to catalog insights right as they happen, and try to capture the before- and-after: what, exactly, was the turning point that made it click? Unfortunately that makes articles slow coming, but I think they can be more genuine than explaining something after you're already an expert. Most of us can't remember what it was like trying to learn to read, for example -- it's too hard to relate to that problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author is obviously under the delusion that an introduction to calculus should be gentle and soothing, like slipping into a warm bubble bath. It should not. It should be swift and shocking, like jumping into a river in early Spring.

Mathematics requires an exact and expert hand. They are EMTs. This of your Calc 1 mid-term: "Quick, you have two minutes, resuscitate this equation!"

<comment><USER5> Rarely do math and science instructors teach material the way it is discovered. Also, math and science courses are typically taught the way history or English is taught--you have some topics, you have things to memorize, you're given questions that are very similar to those you've seen in school or on your homework. I can imagine that only top schools teach this material in terms of tools and knowledge, versus learning and writing down the right equations on a test.

<comment><USER3> That's exactly it. We show math as this complete and perfect system, whereas it was discovered, often times, through trial-and-error. Retracing the steps can help show why certain decisions were made.

For example, why does C have a separate short and long data types, but javascript just has "var"? Because when C was made, memory was at a premium. When javascript was invented, everything could be a 4-byte value.

<comment> a-priori Actually, the reason was more that C was designed for systems programming, and that sort of code often has to interface with hardware devices through memory- mapped registers. To do this, you need to be able to write code that uses variables of the correct width. This is why C has all the various sized variables in signed and unsigned variants.

<comment><USER3> Good point -- C was designed to interface with hardware ("high level assembly") whereas javascript was designed to interface with web pages & browsers. Either way, the history helps understand the design decisions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> this is copying the message and style of A Mathematician's Lament

<comment><USER3> I was definitely enjoyed that essay and want to spread its message; it's why I linked to it and quoted from it :).

However, I've been writing about these concepts in this way since 2001, way before I ever heard of the essay (here's my earlier website from school, which was the the precursor to this blog: <http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~kazad/resources.htm>).

<comment><USER6> oh, thought you were just another me too blog.

good on you then. :)

<comment><USER3> Hey, no prob -- I dislike me-too posts as much as the next guy :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I stopped reading here: _How does an equation grow and shrink? Accumulate over time?_

Equations, don't grow or shrink. Maybe he was confusing equations with functions.

<comment><USER3> I used the term loosely. But to most people, I think y = x^2 is an "equation".

<comment><USER8> True and it's good if people understand it better that way. Nonetheless, I'd advice on introducing a correct grammar as soon as possible.</comment></comment></comment>


Steve Jobs Never Actually Wore A Black Turtleneck - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1199211118708678656 <comment><USER2> As the replies demonstrate, he did. Turns out.</comment>


Only For "STARTUPreneurs" in Altanta.  - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'm in as well but you know there is a meetup group in Atlanta called Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs? <http://web.meetup.com/32/> hopefully that link works, if not just search it on meetup.com. I think the meetings do have some fee though, like $10 or something (maybe that was a special meeting, not sure).

It would be nice to just have a very casual time and place to hang out and discuss wisdom of crowds, python vs. ruby, turbogears vs. rails, Mochikit, etc... and see what each other is working on, no fee, no requirements, just meet at Carribou at Perimeter Mall (Abernathy) on Thursday evenings? you will be recognized by your Mac book and a Rage Against the Machine t-shirt :)

<comment><AUTHOR> PS. John. C cool que tu parles francais. On devrait vraiment se rencontrer ASAP.

<comment><USER2> Je parle français un peu :) There is a French language meetup group that hopefully is going to move their normal meetup location to the Le Madelaine on Abernathy soon, their fee is only a $1 donation and it's pretty difficult to find people interested in speaking French in these parts so probably worth it. Soon everything will be attainable on Abernathy! C'est vrai!

<comment><USER2> Ok it looks like this ycombinator thing doesn't handle French characters very well, or maybe I'm doing something wrong

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Add me to the list. I'd also be curious to know where in the metro area everyone lives. That might suggest the most convenient meetup location.

<http://www.blursoft.com/devFarm/gmeetup/index.php?m=33>

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm in a startup with azsromej, so count me in as well.

As far as having meet n greets, I'd propose somewhere in Midtown. Thats where Tech is, its where Technology Square is, its where all the growth is. The Perimeter area is just full of old established insurance companies, marketing and spamming companies -- the "old school" suits. Midtown is where all the young professionals and visionaries are, plus its literally the only place centralized to all of the metro atlanta area instead of just the northern edge like Perimeter would be.

Just my two cents ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> What's up. That sounds ok. Guys can you all send in your email addresses so we can round up. Your profile does not show your email addresses. Or everybody can just throw in a place to meet and time and we vote for the best. That way no one will spam noone in the future.

<comment><USER4> Send in our email addresses to whom? We need to elect one person to be the organizer of all of this or something.

Just as a note, we (azsromej and I) registered the domain startup20.com a few months ago. Never really did anything with it except put up a logo. I'd be happy to put a wiki or something just to keep track of meet up dates / locations.

The ATL entrepreneurs link that was already posted would have worked but they are charging $10? Whats up with that? Just meet somewhere and have some sushi or drinks or something.

I have a friend who is originally from brazil who has a lot of VC contacts down there, and according to him they are all itching to get their claws into some american startups, because there's simply not much entrepreneuriship going on in brazil outside of banana stands. He lives in tennessee though, but he said he is very very interested in coming down for some of these meet n greets with atlanta area startups. So I'll see if I can get him to tag along to one or two.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's up Brian. I posted this thread. Send us (our team) an email at email@example.com and we can make sure that the round up works for all of us. You can also leave your address and we will send you an email.

<comment><USER4> Done and done, sent it off. Put it in my profile as well.

Want to post up a compiled list so far?

<comment><AUTHOR> So far we got contacts from Brian, Matt and Nandan.

<comment><USER5> I'll have two other cofounders interested, and I know a few other folks who'd be interested in starting a group. Let's have the first meeting (somewhere near Tech for sure) and then see where it leads us.

Thanks for doing this!

<comment><AUTHOR> No Matt, Thank you, as well as everyone else, for participating. Anyone could have said "forget this guys". I think that if we get it done right, we will all benefit from it. I am not sure if one can find a missing element of their startup, but I know that being around people who have a similar goal cannot hurt.

<comment><USER4> I really think Atlanta could be primed to become the next hot spot ala the bay area. The east coast needs a central magnet for stuff like this, and I think the ATL should be it :)

There's actually a pretty large population of angels and VC's in atlanta already, but they've traditionally invested in normal startups ... just need to get enough steam going to grab their attention.

<comment><USER6> absolutely brian. :) "Atlanta could be primed to become the next hot spot..." - lets make that a self fulfilling prophecy ;) i have been lamenting over how there is not enough traction in atlanta on startups for a while now. i even found myself eagerly trying to find atlanta in most of the "top-ten cities for startups" lists, only to be continually disappointed. lets make all that change! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I still think Perimeter or maybe Buckhead is the most central to where the majority of people in the Atlanta tech industry live and work but I'm up for any location at least once. If I have to sit in hours of traffic to get there though you guys better be really f'in interesting and visionary.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am totally in. I'm in the buckhead area, but meeting location doesn't matter. email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER5> Sure, good idea. My email address is in my profile here.

</comment><comment><USER6> Count me in. :) My email address is also in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's up Nandan. I can't see it. Email me at firstname.lastname@example.com. We can set something up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm in as well. -- Calvin (cyu at mynextdive.com)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Update. Nate from Wamily is IN. That's what's up.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi everybody. I am sneaking this comment while on my boss time. Man I hope he truly the last one I ll have. We are getting a good response. Now meeting up is only a matter of making sure everyone make s it. So far most of you want to meet sometimes next week (frankly I am so exited that I would do it tonight, but it would not work for the rest of us). Most of us are suggesting midtown. That is fine. As soon as we know the best time and date for all we will email and put another post on yc news. PS. Everybody seems to have dbe some work with RoR. Well I hate to say it but I am not a coder(please don't be mad), although I like to learn about coding languages. Well maybe this group will throw in some help. LOL. Can't wait to meet you guys.

<comment><USER5> NOT A CODER?! Ok, we're gonna fix that immediately.

<comment><USER6> LOL :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Nandan. That is a very nice way to start helping. (lol)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Update. On top of our team, we got Brian (and friends), Matt(and friends), Azromej, Nandan, and Jonesmc ( si on peut te joindre, sinon je ferrais une update avec la date et le lieu )

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Watch out PG. here comes the Acombinator.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you are working on a startup and you live in Atlanta, we should all get together, talk about our ventures and help each other. Three entrepreneurs so far.</comment>