Ask HN: When to quit company with bad engineering practices? - <AUTHOR> I've joined a company 6 months ago and I'm having a hard time adjusting.
They are not a startup, they're well funded but everyone just do their own thing when it comes to code reviews, infrastructure architecture, etc. The infrastructure is really a mess and the code base isn't much different.
Teams spend most of their time doing manual things over and over and don't seem to understand how to find root causes, do problem management, etc.
I've focused on clarifying the reasons behind certain things so I could help to develop some standards, more documentation, etc. To at least avoid creating even more tech debt. People are drowning and doing adhoc fixes all the time.
Well, I've found it's really hard to get information out of the old timers. There's a huge focus on saving face, job security and not much concern about technical things.
I consider myself to be very polite and civil in discussions. I've worked with jerks before and I try not to be like that because I know people have feelings, etc... But I got some feedback that I should be "happier" in my emails.
Things are hard already and management is more worried about keeping the status quo. That's not what I was sold in the job interviews.
I'm close to saying enough is enough but I'm afraid this will be a mistakes, that I can still turn this boat around, etc.
How do you find out if you had enough? <comment><USER2> "I can still turn this boat around" \-- my limited perspective here is if you're getting 'feedback' regarding your tone on emails, then maybe you are being warned that people don't want to steer the boat in the direction you want to.

Sounds like this is a team/environment where technical acumen isn't valued or incentivized. That is, you are in a place where technical acumen is not relevant to your success there. That's pretty common in my experience. I also wouldn't be so quick to say that's good or bad -- it just is. Instead, what you've got is a highly political environment I would guess. Here's a great quote I found on HN:

"There are basically three levers of power in any organization - relationship, expert, and role. In that order of importance. " — [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20749147](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20749147)

The 'expert' lever has no power where you currently work. No one cares. (Except in terms of tribal knowledge, which you don't really have yet there).

In the grand scheme of things, it's just a job. Why pick battles that don't matter? Unless you're curing cancer or studying climate patterns, it most likely that whatever this company does simply does not matter at all. So, focus on your own career and do what's best for you, not the organization (which is good to do in general, regardless of the organization/mission). If you aren't facing undue stress, then you can stay and play the game (and try to practice resume-driven programming as well, to the extent you can). However, truly incompetent teams can be stressful due to the disorganizaton and firefighting become very draining; I don't know if that's what you're facing or not. Up to you if you want to stay or not, but be honest with yourself about what kind of place it is, rather than wishing it were something else.

<comment><AUTHOR> This was really insightful, thank you.

Yes, it's just a job and I should internalize that more. I just love what I do and want to do my best... And I look around and I don't see the same enthusiasm. Ive been in this industry for 18 years now and I still don't know how to handle these differences when working with other people.

One thing I thought about was leading by example. My PRs will follow best practices, my projects will have proper docs, I'll consult others about design decisions and incorporate user feedback etc. But I'm pressured to deliver as fast as possible... which is one of the reasons that the infrastructure is the way it's.

Anyway thanks again, this gave me a lot of food for thought and I really appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Quit as fast as you can. If your company is fostering bad engineering practices and historically keeps failing doing so, then look for another job. ASAP.

</comment><comment><USER4> When you have secured new employment.</comment>


4chan.org creator sends a cease & desist letter to moot.it - <AUTHOR> Creator of the image board 4chan, Christopher Poole aka "m00t", sends a cease & desist letter to Moot Inc., a company offering free discussion forums & commenting for websites, claiming ownership for his pseudonym.
Definitions of the word "moot" from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/moot:
1. open to discussion or debate; debatable; doubtful: a moot point. 4. to present or introduce (any point, subject, project, etc.) for discussion 8. an argument or discussion, especially of a hypothetical legal case. 9. Obsolete. a debate, argument, or discussion.
Moot's website: http://moot.it <comment><USER2> This sounds more like a publicity stunt by moot.it than anything else.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is absurd -- "moot" is a common word, not a trademark or copyrightable property.

[http://fairuse.stanford.edu/commentary_and_analysis/2003_09_...](http://fairuse.stanford.edu/commentary_and_analysis/2003_09_stim.html)

A quote: "Copyright laws disfavor protection for short phrases. Such claims are viewed with suspicion by the Copyright Office, whose circulars state that, '... slogans, and other short phrases or expressions cannot be copyrighted.'"

<comment><USER4> Paris Hilton disagrees [http://gawker.com/5648787/paris-hilton-owns-the- phrase-thats...](http://gawker.com/5648787/paris-hilton-owns-the-phrase-thats- hot-and-other-revelations-that-could-ruin-the-weather-channel)

No matter how absurd, anything is possible. Welcome to 2012

<comment><USER3> > Paris Hilton disagrees

That's not a good example. Consider "Sun Microsystems". Can "Sun" be protected? No. Can "Microsystems" be protected? No again. Can both together be protected? Yes, of course.

<comment><USER5> > Can "Sun" be protected?

Yes. Why do you think it can't?

Recall that Apple has successfully gained and defended its trademark on the word "apple", easily as common a word as "sun", in the relevant industries it operates. "Time" is trademarked by TIME Magazine, and "caterpillar" by Caterpilllar Inc., the construction equipment company.

Feel free to check yourself. Federally registered trademarks are publicly searchable on the USPTO website. You'll find not only the registration for the word APPLE, but if you do a design mark search, you'll find quite a few drawings of the sun are registered trademarks as well.

<comment><USER3> >> Can "Sun" be protected?

> Yes. Why do you think it can't?

Because it cannot be protected, not that an agency won't issue a document to that effect. A company that expects to use a common word as a trademark can expect to have a public-relations nightmare on their their hands as they try to keep people from using the "protected" word for any other purpose. Examples abound -- even words that aren't everyday words lose protection over time. How successful has Xerox been in getting people to say "dry electrostatic copy"? How successful has Johnson & Johnson been in getting people to say "adhesive compress" instead of "Band-Aid?

This isn't about law, it's about reality. Reality trumps law. The present controversy over software patents shows the degree to which people in the legal profession think they can prevail over reality. They can't -- not for long, anyway.

<comment><USER5> I gave you three examples of single common word marks that are currently protected and have been defended without courts declaring them generic words, which is the danger you're hinting at. How can you seriously write this response while ignoring three counterexamples already given?

Do you know of any companies successfully selling their products under the Xerox and Band-Aid brands other than Xerox and J&J? In 'reality', as you put it, both companies have successfully had law enforcement intercept, destroy and file charges against counterfeiters of their products. A mark is effective 'in reality' as long as the courts are willing to defend it, and unlike those few high-profile software patent cases, a totally different area of law, these marks have all been upheld in court.

It's really non-constructive to compare trademarks to software patents, too. There are no "trademark trolls", as a mark cannot exist without continual use in commerce. There are no uses of trademarks as proxy wars for attaining licensing agreements without running afoul of antitrust laws as the mobile phone industry is doing with patents right now.

<comment><USER3> > I gave you three examples

You're missing the point. The only way a party holding a trademarked word can prevent its use for another purpose is if they can show that the use would hinder the first party's ability to conduct his business. Clearly not true here.

That, by the way, was why Apple Computer and Apple Music coexisted so long without any kerfuffle -- different businesses, no chance for public confusion.

Your argument is that people have defended single words used as trademarks. But that's a different issue. The present discussion is whether someone's successful use of "moot" as a trademark (one apparently not registered) will be interfered with by another party's use of the same word. A trademarked word is only a starting point -- the plaintiff must then show that another use of the trademarked term hurts his business and/or misleads the public. In a case like this, the burden is most definitely on the plaintiff.

> How can you seriously write this response while ignoring three > counterexamples already given?

Because you haven't thought your position through and your examples aren't germane. The fact that single words have been defended as trademarks is not the issue. The issue is why, and under what circumstances, and whether those examples are germane to this case -- one in which the "plaintiff" hasn't even bothered to register the word as fair warning to others of his proprietary interest in it.

<comment><USER5> My examples were germane to the comment I was replying to, which was about whether "sun" could be protected, which in turn was a reply to discussion of Paris Hilton. We're far removed from the specifics of moot's claim... why you thought that was the topic of my reply is beyond me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://betabeat.com/2012/11/4chan-founder-moot-sends- cease-d...](http://betabeat.com/2012/11/4chan-founder-moot-sends-cease-desist- letter-to-startup-moot-it/)

</comment><comment><USER7> All due respect, how do you know this C&D is real? What law firm claims to have issued it? What mailserver sent the headers? Is it an SPF match?

This sounds like something /b/ would do as a prank.

<comment><USER6> Well considering we got the notice via overnight courier from his law firm (LEASON ELLIS) I think we can rule out /b/

<comment><USER7> I'd be surprised if moot actually got a law firm to try to enforce a trademark on moot as he has registered no trademark under moot or m00t with the USPTO.

Have you confirmed with the attorney listed on the letter that the address is legitimate? Again, all due respect, but I've had fedex letters with a fake return address before. Paying for overnight shipping is kind of stupid for a prank, but could be done (in my case, a party was trying to get information from me that I declined to give earlier, and tried to get me to give it under false pretense).

If he did actually send that (it's legitimate), as per earlier comments, I'm baffled because with no trademark over a dictionary word, I just don't see it carrying any real weight.

<comment><USER6> It is a legitimate request. Honestly we were quite surprised/baffled to receive it as well.

<comment><USER7> That's utterly unenforceable (not a lawyer though).

The users on his site are asking him for comment (via email), usually rowdiness about lawyers and him being greedy (or whatever) is floating around. Curious to see if he acknowledges it.

Without a registered mark though it's really just kind of huffing and puffing...making a case on moot being recognizable and moot.it hurting his name is ludicrous (in my opinion).

Ludicrous stuff like this happens all the time, like the C&D against Zen Magnets by Buckyballs a while back. Completely baseless but they sent it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is now on BBC: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20408037>

</comment><comment><USER8> this is funny, Christopher Poole is wasting his time.... and wasting the time of the guys at moot Inc</comment>


Hire for culture fit first - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/1-minute-startup-advice/hire-for-culture-fit-first-e69138e4cbe3#.bb7edu1sd <comment><USER2> I've worked at startups for close to 10 years now (not in SF), and seriously, this obsession with "culture" is just tiring. What is "culture" even? Most companies I've worked at (some very successful) all had the same culture/values: "customers first", "collaboration", "ownership and commitment". Al the usual suspects that you put on your office wall.

And for the most part, these were all just that: words on a wall/blackboard. They were not applied day to day.

I've never been a founder, but seriously, I would favor somebody who knows how to get stuff done over someone who "is passionate about the mission".</comment>


Show HN: A better way to monitor web apps - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys,
We're excited to reach Beta milestone with our web app monitoring service. By posting here, we're seeking to get some feedback from you.
So, why QABot? Why another monitoring service?
We believe in Continuous Regression Testing. We are sure that continuous app validation reduces downtime and helps avoid disasters. QABot uses real browser and gets the monitoring as close as possible to real usage. At it's core, QABot is based on Selenium, an open source web browser automation tool. When we say monitoring, we mean more than checking http statuses and response times, we mean Continuous Validation of web apps, of rules defined by you using Selenium IDE.
To get started you need an account and a valid Selenium IDE test case (*.html file). Once it's uploaded we'll run it for you and notify if anything goes wrong.
URL: http://qabot.net
Thank you. <comment><USER2> Registering now, will check back with my input.

Edit 1* I'm unsure of what a selenium test is (clearly an issue of my ignorance). Do you have to have those to check the health of your web app?

Edit 2* Do I have to wait an hour before the first run? Maybe it could run a primary run the first time I add the app?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes and Yes (or sooner).

Your experience and questions made us think a bit and we're putting together a list of changes to address some concerns:

1\. By default it will add a simple Selenium test, which should be enough to get started, later though it will be possible (as it is now) to add more and more complex. 2\. Prioritize or manually trigger 1st test run. Our main concern here is to avoid overloading server when new apps are added, right now the 60min interval is picked to spread the load.

Thanks for trying.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for your reply! I saw that you sent an email out last night, which is great. I was thinking the same thing. "I added my site and it says everything is OK on the dashboard... but no tests have been run."

Anyhow, thank you for taking my advice into consideration. I will take a look at the selenium tutorial you linked in that email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks useful - I might use it.

The key point is: you run Selenium test cases on a schedule. It might be better to make this more prominent. It's currently below the fold and a title, slogan and two headings.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good catch, I think we had some discussions about this, but was left out for some reason...

Thanks for your input!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Linkified URL: <http://qabot.net></comment>


Linux vs FreeBSD - <AUTHOR>

Linux is the de-facto OS on servers and mobile devices these days — but i was wondering about why it is so far ahead of other OSes like FreeBSD. As far as i know, FreeBSD has equal(better in some cases) performance, matches linux feature for feature, and has some of the greatest technologies : dtrace and ZFS. Why then, is Linux deployed on almost all servers, when other operating systems are a very compelling alternative? <comment><USER2> I think there are several reasons. First home use, Linux has a (comparatively) good desktop experience. PCBSD is relatively new, rough around the edges, and is perhaps the most important thing for the healthy future of FreeBSD. It gets people exposed to the OS. If I have used Linux before and I am going to set up a server I am much more likely to pick Linux for that server than I am FreeBSD.

Second strong corporate support, IBM and several other big corporations are behind Linux development and help get it in to the field. FreeBSD doesn't have a large IT services company installing Linux on servers as a part of their consulting business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this really a chicken and egg kind of situation? Linux is more widely used because it's more popular because BigCorp supports it? If so, i find the situation a bit depressing. After all, it should be the merits of a software that warrant it's success, not the other way around.

<comment><USER2> It is but that is not the problem I describe. Basically the problem as I see it is there is no good way for me, the home user, to play around with FreeBSD. The PCBSD installer crashes, and I haven't quite figured out how to configure everything with a vanilla FreeBSD install. I didn't spend long trying because I know Ubuntu just works, and while I would like to try FreeBSD out I don't care enough to figure out all of the hoops I have to jump through to get it to work.

So now when I go to look for a server I am going look for a Linux server because I have had better\more experience with it. Basically that which is easiest to use by people without experience will come to dominate. Not through network effects or anything hard to reverse like that but by simple fact that people will start using the tool that makes their job easy. After they have experience with that tool they are less likely to change to a harder to use tool even if it is better(the Mysql effect as it were.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Lots of servers run FreeBSD. You don't hear about them as much because the servers:sysadmin ratio is higher.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there any info about the percentage of servers running FreeBSD? I think FreeBSD provides better software management (ports/packages) than most linux distros, along with dtrace+ZFS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The same reason people don't enjoy using Solaris?

For me, the _default_ command-line tools are not a joy to use.</comment>


Majority of Americans use drugs or alcohol to fall asleep - <AUTHOR> https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/the-majority-of-americans-use-drugs-or-alcohol-to-fall-asleep <comment><USER2> And when they wake up, they reach for coffee and red bull.</comment>


Ask HN: What Ad network do you use to buy traffic to your site? - <AUTHOR>

I am new to the world of online advertising. I would like to buy traffic to my site with high conversion ratios. What ad networks would you suggest? Adsense? Adbrite? Adchaps? <comment><USER2> I have used adwords and its good if you only show ads for google searches and take out syndication. I tried facebook ads and textlinkads but wouldn't recommend either.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you've got the money, The Deck and Fusion both boast very high conversion rates - provided your product is within their niches' interests.</comment>


How to Solve Tabs vs. Spaces Forever - <AUTHOR> http://inessential.com/2015/12/21/how_to_solve_tabs_vs_spaces_forever <comment><USER2> Some discussion previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10774180](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10774180)</comment>


Silicon Valley Is Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-h-1b_us_5890d86ce4b0522c7d3d84af <comment><USER2> The problem with suggesting that the salary bar be set at the median of the lifetime salary, is that it does mean closing the door to current international students in the U.S., and to recent graduates recruited from universities abroad. The _minimum_ bar for an immigrant should not be that they are better than half the people already employed here in their field, regardless of their stage in life. And, of course, most people immigrate when they are young and without kids.

If you truly believe that H-1B should exist only for truly extraordinary talent, not available in the U.S. at any salary, this might be a reasonable proposal. But the thing is, there is already a program for extraordinary talent, the O-1 and EB-1 categories. If you instead believe that it should be possible for companies to get the best talent, regardless of where they happen to have been born, and for people to work abroad from their nations of birth, then the H-1B program can't be quite that stringent. It is a skilled workers program, and H-1B workers _are_ skilled. It is not a genius engineer only program.

Now, if your proposal is to change green card process so that employers can't hold people hostage over it, or to institute controls that companies can't underpay H1-B workers on average, that's one thing. But in the current political climate the suggestions seems to be "all foreigners must go! exceptions made for super stars". If the U.S. is truly becoming that closed, I genuinely think that, over time, it will find the best technology being developed elsewhere (maybe not at the research lab level if it keeps the O-1/EB-1 programs, but at the industrial/software innovation level for sure). Either in the countries that welcome immigration of skilled professionals (e.g. Canada, Germany, Singapore) or those with large pools of human capital to being with (e.g. China and India).

<comment><USER3> You're ignoring the fact the US already produces a _surplus_ of skilled and qualified STEM professionals. Freedom of labor movement is a nice–to–have, but not some ideological priority that must be placed above all other considerations. The size of the pool of human capital is irrelevant if there simply aren't enough jobs on offer.

The government of a country should be first and foremost advocates for, and protectors of, the welfare of its own citizens. If a large number of those citizens are being encouraged to accumulate massive debts gaining an education that them leaves them unable to find a job, then that is a social problem that needs a solution. And if the government can help the situation by putting reasonable restrictions on the number of foreign workers competing for those jobs, then they absolutely should do that.

I really do not understand how so many people came to view these kind of theoretical, free-market niceties as more important than the practical wellbeing of their fellow citizens, but it's an incredibly dangerous attitude. If you support free-markets and globalisation, then you should want them implemented in a way that doesn't cause major social damage that ends up creating hostility to them. Otherwise, you end up with the kinds of populist movements we're seeing now, which feed upon the resentments of people who've watched successive governments refuse to place their own citizen's welfare above that of an ideology that harms them.

<comment><USER4> Why are people born inside the imaginary lines of my country more important to help than those born outside of it? Someone from Bangladesh or Mexico is not a fellow citizen of my country, but they are a fellow citizen of my world. Why should the smaller and more arbitrary geographical division come first?

You can talk about culture, but I'm sure I have more in common culturally with a phd student or entrepreneur in Dhaka than a Christian fundamentalist in Kansas.

I understand that there is a lot of complexity in these issues, but it's hard for me to see nationalism as anything more than a form of widely accepted bigotry.

<comment><USER5> Because being born inside those imaginary lines means people pay ($ + other) and therefore expect the group they contribute to to put them ahead of an outsider.

<comment><USER6> That doesn't follow. My friends who are not US citizens and are here on H-1B visas (and have similar jobs as I do) pay significantly more in taxes than I do. And many of the programs those taxes pay into (like Social Security) are closed to them because they're non-citizens.

Given that many US citizens don't start paying much if anything in the way of taxes until post-education (18-22), a non-citizen coming to the US right after college will be paying roughly the same.

But ok, let's say that's not persuasive. I was born in New Jersey, and grew up in Maryland. I moved to California when I was 23 to start working. My family had of course never paid CA state taxes. Should CA have placed artificial "preferences" on workers who were born in CA, preferences that would have put me at the bottom of the hiring pile? Should I have been excluded from a job because other Californians were unemployed at the time? If that sounds ridiculous, then applying the same reasoning to a non-citizen sounds just about as ridiculous.

<comment><USER5> Re: H1-B friends

They pay taxes because now they are here within the imaginary lines and even if they don't get Social security, etc they are still benefitting from being here where they have all the other niceties of being here.

Re: citizens don't start paying until 18.

Their parents paid for them.

Re: California

Still part of a larger imaginary piece where everyone contribute.

You're stuck thinking in terms of just $. And no one is saying no one should be able to come here. You simply asked why do people think negatively about H1-B and I explained it to you. What company wouldn't hire workers that cost them significantly less and can't easily leave over someone local, and hence the position against. It's not difficult.

<comment><USER6> >> Re: citizens don't start paying until 18.

> Their parents paid for them.

Quite the opposite. Their parents got a tax deduction simply because their children exist.

>> Re: California

> Still part of a larger imaginary piece where everyone contribute.

Exactly! Just as the entire world is part of a still larger imaginary piece! Borders are just squiggly lines drawn on a map. I have more in common with an engineering student in India than with most people in middle America: socially, culturally, etc.

> You're stuck thinking in terms of just $.

I was replying to a post of yours wherein you were making an argument about solely $.

<comment><USER5> Negative. You can very easily go back to my posts and see where I explicitly say $ + other and mention the H1-Bs benefiting by being here even if they don't qualify for SS. Trying to frame what I said that way is just disingenuous.

Parents absolutely pay into the system when they have children even if they get a federal tax credit. The extra food they buy is more sales tax, etc. just think about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Okay, so obviously, an employment based visa program does create conflicts of interest and in general, is not good for the immigrant employee, compared to a non employment based visa.

However, the claim that immigrant employees are somehow not as good as their American counterparts is based on shoddy logic.

The criteria he uses in his paper to measure this:

\- high salary \- high rate of patent production \- Ph.D. dissertation awards \- doctorate earned at a top-ranked university \- employment in R&D

Because of issues with the employment based visa, he himself argues earlier in the article that immigrant employees end up with a lower salary.

Top ranked universities don't always admit people based on merit. Being in the country when applying to school and speaking the language have huge advantages. A lot of graduate admissions are on a case by case basis, and getting an in person meeting with the professor can make all the difference. Also, top graduate schools tend to be a lot more expensive.

Employment is R&D is also hampered by the fact that immigrants don't have comparatively fewer choices when looking for a job, again because of issues with employment based visas. This is especially true is you want to do research in aerospace or materials because of security clearances.

Overall, this doesn't give me a lot of confidence in his other analyses.

Disclaimer: I'm an immigrant, so I'm not without my biases here.

<comment><USER8> The argument isn't that they're not as good as their American peers. The argument is that they're not exceptionally better than their American peers. The stated purpose of the visa program is to bring people in who can do work nobody else can do. But what happens is that companies bring in tons of perfectly ordinary people to do perfectly ordinary work because they want people who are cheaper, younger, and easier to abuse.

<comment><USER2> But is the H1-B really for "exceptionally better than"? Isn't that what O-1 is for? H1-B is for "highly skilled workers in an area in which there is strong demand for highly skilled workers". Where, at the time the program was created, highly skilled probably meant anyone with a college degree on the same area as their work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As usual, these rants treat "Silicon Valley" as a single entity.

[http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa- Sponsor.aspx](http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx)

There are some companies that underpay, while other pay quite well. Conflating the two is like throwing out the baby with the bath water.

<comment><USER10> The statistical expectation from the dataset that you link to is $86,328.67 [1]. I no nothing about US salaries, but I don't consider this value a competitive salary. Therefore, I believe the premise of the article is statically correct. Citing a few example with large salaries (Apple, Google, ...) is misleading.

1- [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f0iZ7VZkA7Th2dCE6rgD...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f0iZ7VZkA7Th2dCE6rgDdStoo0qC_DDCrfHJa_YV4hs/edit?usp=sharing)

<comment><USER11> 86K may not be a competitive salary in heart of SV but it's damn competitive in the US, and around the world.

Unless you are living in NYC/SV your cost of living in the US is lower, you tax burden is lower. 86K$ is more than the vast majority of highly paid developers in Europe get.

I don't understand why Amazon/Google paying 50-60K Euros in Germany or even lower than that in other EU countries with a tax burden of nearly 50% of income is fine by some guy from India coming and working for 85K+ in the US is somehow exploitation.

Do companies take advantage of the fact that they relocate people from effectively developing nations and pay them below market rates, sure, that's business but honestly do you think anyone complains? The average indian developer with 5-10 years of experience earns between 350-500K RS a year, with the 350-400K being more common this is about 5500-6000$.

If you think that the cost of living in India is so low that it can offset the discrepancy in income then you clearly haven't spent much time in India.

Some employers might abuse H1B too much, some might even do illegal things with it, but that's the case those things are illegal, just offering a lower than average salary isn't illegal, it's not even amoral.

<comment><USER10> The point is not that is 86K is low. In fact it is an interesting salary if you consider all salaries in the US among all jobs. The point is that it is lower than US software engineer average salary. This leads to wage compression for the local population whom or their parent have been paying taxes hence the prosperity and attractiveness of the US.

Nobody says that the fault is with the Visa holder who happily work for less than average wage. The problem is with companies exploiting this law which was designed to attract best talents who wouldn't work for less than average because they know their worth.

As a foreigner, I say this is not fair to local population (including those immigrant after they obtain their permanent residency) whose wages are kept low by companies who abuse these laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As headlines go, this one elicits a "Duh."

However, the HN version of the headline omits "Trump is Right:", which I suppose _is_ attention grabbing, especially from an outlet like HuffPo.

<comment><USER13> > As headlines go, this one elicits a "Duh."

Well, whenever something isn't being done about X, that implies headlines saying "X!" probably aren't quite "duh" enough.

<comment><USER12> Not really...

 _" It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"_ \-- Upton Sinclair

And also...

 _" News Flash: Water is Wet! Government Has No Plan To Deal With Issue, Forms Committee."_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Matloff has written about this in many other places over the years, [http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1bwritings.html](http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1bwritings.html).

He was my CS professor as an undergrad.

</comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone else consider immigration a significant part of US foreign policy? Wouldn't offering visas to "rising" countries allow us to pick off much of their best talent, thus boosting the US and lowering the other countries? The global power struggles of today, I believe, will be won by countries who can dictate the technology that refocuses which resources are needed.

<comment><USER16> > Wouldn't offering visas to "rising" countries allow us to pick off much of > their best talent, thus boosting the US and lowering the other countries?

I haven't seen H1B visa's used like this in my personal experience. At the last company I worked for they were mostly used to fill our testing team with people from India.

Maybe they were all guinness, the problem was all but one of them could speak/write english fluently.

I can also look at my boyfriend's current employer who recently took a trip to india in order to hire a team of indians "on the cheap" only to fire all but 1 within a month after they didn't really get anything productive done.

<comment><USER17> Guinness? Are you calling them stout? :)

Anyway, the point should be you want to get people who are skilled. Maybe/maybe not that means English fluency. But, that's another matter.

It seems most abuse[0] happens due to random Indian body-shops. Since Trump is so carte-blanche maybe he can just blacklist the ones we know to be obvious abusers.

Maybe a better answer is to require all H1-Bs be actual full-time employees of the company, rather than being under contract through a third party?

[0]I define abuse as using H1-Bs primarily for cheap labor vs skilled labor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's a bit weird that the article takes several paragraphs at the start explaining how H1-B visas are a problem largely because they prevent job mobility, but says nothing about how this is supposed to be addressed by the executive order.

</comment><comment><USER19> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13579226](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13579226)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm glad that here the comments section is not full of Trump trolls like it is in huffingtonpost. First it's true that HB1 visa holder are not free agent and can't contest for the best wages. But I trully don't understand how can ANYBODY say that, tech in general is NOT in shortage of ingineers. Median wage in SF for dev is around 110 000. But even outside SF buble it's around 70 000$. With no downward pressure, How can you complain that foreign worker is taking your job?

<comment><USER21> The median salary for a dental hygienist in San Francisco is also about $110,000 a year. That salary level qualifies for direct housing subsidies for a family of 4 in San Francisco. So why are we taking claims of a desperate shortage of developers more seriously than claims of a desperate shortage of dental hygienists?

Just to be clear, immigrants should be welcome to become devs. And dental hygienists, drywall installers, real estate agents, and sandwich shop owners. What I don't welcome is a program that specifically uses the immigration system to increase the number of developers relative to other professions. That should be left to the market and freedom of choice for the individuals who participate in it.

I just see absolutely no reason whatsoever to give tech employers the power to determine who is allowed to come to the US, what jobs they are allowed to work, and the circumstances under which they are allowed to remain in the US. This is immensely harmful, and doesn't have much to do with immigration. It has to do with corporate control over the immigration system.

<comment><USER20> I agree with you, i think immigration should be controled more by communities, neither central government or companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Feel like many think this is the only use of H-1B. They don't ever hear about how the best employees at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are also H-1B's.

<comment><USER23> > Feel like many think this is the only use of H-1B. They don't ever hear > about how the best employees at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are also > H-1B's.

Because H-1B visa is broken. Just cause there's a good side to it doesn't mean we can ignore the broken parts.

Take the good parts and fix the bad one.

Worker exploitation is not going to help native workers nor helped international workers.

> They don't ever hear about how the best employees at Microsoft, Google, and > Facebook are also H-1B's.

Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc.. have caught colluded in wages before.

<comment><USER24> > Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc.. have caught colluded in wages before.

Nitpick - if you meant the "no cold call agreement" case, the defendants were Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay. Microsoft was not accused.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is it really bad? Usually immigrants anyway get much better wages than in their hometown and escape from repressive regimes.

<comment><USER26> Yes, it is bad. It lowers the wages of Americans and makes finding an entry level tech position for Americans a lot harder. The purpose of the H-1B visa program was to bring highly specialized workers to the US, not cheap labor.

<comment><USER27> At least you still have a job. What stops companies get jobs outsourced to other countries?

<comment><USER26> Not much currently. Most jobs that could be outsourced have been.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The numbers you're seeing maybe somewhat inflated because of how the average salary is calculated for this report:

      Sometimes the visa sponsors(employers) does not enter a specific salary, but a salary range.
      Our algorithm uses the middle point of the range to calculate the average salary.

</comment><comment><USER29> if companies was only after cheap labor, why not move software production overseas? it's not like officespace is cheaper in the valley than in ex. India.....don't think this article makes a whole lot of sense tbh

<comment><USER30> Because being in the Valley is magical for your company, or something.

<comment> aaron-lebo They want to have their cake and eat it, too. Or: live in California, hire from Calcutta.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra My co-workers raised a note that H1B no longer relevant so much for the purpose described in headline.

It's much easier to bring workers on L visa - they have even less opportunity to skip jobs or aruge for a raise than H1B holders, and there's no lottery and no limits. Just bring as much people on L as possible.

As far as I know, Microsoft did this with Canada long ago. They hire you and relocate to Canada, then after a year they make L visa for you and toss over the border to Redmond.

<comment><USER9> Don't forget the TN visa. Those Canadians are stealing American jobs. Really surprised that everyone likes to complain about the H1B/L1 but not the TN visa.

<comment><USER24> Or the E-3 visa [1], which give citizens of Australia 10,500 _indefinitely renewable_ visas each year.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-3_visa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-3_visa)</comment></comment></comment>


Indeed's stats show people look for jobs in new year - oldschool infographic - <AUTHOR> http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?&w=400&h=220&o=f&c=1&y=r&b=ffffff&n=666666&r=2y&u=indeed.com&

<comment><USER2> Looks like it might not be a new-year effect. A lot of search terms decline over the holidays.

If you ignore the dip, it looks like it might be nothing at all or just a "backlog" of would-be searchers from Christmas.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's another one: <http://www.google.com/trends/?q=jobs></comment>


Ask HN: Remote work just doesn't work? - <AUTHOR> This is something that I hear a lot. I live in Finland and I work as a developer. Many companies, co-workers and colleagues repeat the same thing "remote work just doesn't work". I'm sick of hearing this. It is extremely hard to find work as a developer with remote option in Finland. Common case is that remote work has been experienced in the company before and one person exploited it badly. Because of that one person, one single bad experience now no one is privileged to do any work as remote.
I really want to hear what experiences of remote work you guys have, does it work? And how to make it work? Next time some one makes that claim, I want to be prepared!
ps: I'm mainly talking about 100% remote work, not only 1-3 days in a week. <comment><USER2> My current start-up doesn't have an office. A bunch of us tend to meet about 1 day per week (because there are some things which face-to-face helps with). Two of us are tens of miles apart and others are in another country and indeed travelling.

My previous start-up had a biggish remote office thousands of miles away, which I intermittently managed, but not really a fixed base for me.

In fact, I haven't really had a paid separate 'office' for about 20 years, and I seem to be doing OK as are my businesses.

So, to claim that remote working does not work is wrong.

Note: I've also worked with charlatans in two companies who were nominally 'in the office' but ripping off the employer. One had the misfortune to apply to work full time (and be accepted) for two of my clients and end up sat next to me at both. That didn't last long! The point is that 'not remote' is no guarantee of success either!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your answer! That's quite true that 'not remote' isn't guarantee of anyhting either.

What I have been talking with ppl, there is few other questions in the air about remote working. How do you track that everyone does their job, or dont. How you can know they actually do something and doesn't outsource it. If job is testing or research how can you track that job is really done. And the most common question is "how can you know that they actually do 8 hours per day?"

Do you have anything to share on these question? Tools or good practices?

<comment><USER2> Making sure that work is being done remotely is not much different than in the office, unless it's something physical like making pies which you can see. I can see updates in a repo as easily 1000 miles away as sitting next to the person doing the work.

I also don't care about 8 hours per day, I care about outcomes. I also am happy to pay by the hour or the day or whatever is appropriate.

In fact I am nominally the only person in my current business nominally doing 8h per day, and it really doesn't matter as long as the right goals are achieved.

<comment><AUTHOR> Words of wisdom! That's very true that repos are good way to know if someone is doing anything or not. Also I like the idea that the result counts, not only hours spent itself. I'm afraid that most of the companies in Finland are too conservative for this new way of thinking..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've just returned from a charity programming event and there are many companies I know of from there and elsewhere who successfully have fully or partially built remote teams.

In my experience as a remote developer it works out well, but the one draw back is it takes much more time to develop good rapport with people when you're not communicating in person.

My biggest suggestion is trusted referrals. People will trust a remote developer more if the person they were referred by is already some one they trust. I was hired to program in a language I'd never heard of because of a glowing referral from an old friend and that ended up working out well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the answer!

Trusted referrals sound good, but I think it works only if company is already open minded for remote work. In the other hand if developer is so good and good referrals it might work.

Can you share was there remote workers in the company before you?

<comment><USER3> In that specific case it was contract work. I'm unaware of others there.

I have 3 to 4 companies lined up now for a position that prefer remote work. One is a government contractor company as well so clearly they find that as an acceptable option. These opportunities were made possible by employees of the companies at the charity programming event being there to recruit more employees.</comment></comment></comment>


A Startup Coworking Tour of Asia - <AUTHOR> http://pitchpigeon.com/blog/a-startup-coworking-tour-of-asia.html

<comment><AUTHOR> If any HN users have specific questions about the countries, ask away!

I've lived in Japan and Singapore, spent time in the rest. And I'm sure other HN-ers can chime in too!</comment>


Show HN: ExpanDrive for Linux - <AUTHOR> https://www.expandrive.com/expandrive-for-linux/ <comment><USER2> What is it? This links to installation instructions. As such mildly useless for this audience.

<comment><USER3> "Your files live in the Cloud, Stay connected to them.

Browse and transfer from within Finder or Explorer. Open and edit remote files from within any application."

That doesn't help either, because I'm pretty sure every cloud storage provider allows for that natively.

The only thing that I could glean from the screenshots is that maybe it unifies the locations of multiple cloud providers somehow?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a network filesystem that can connect to a huge array of cloud storage services

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've used ExpanDrive for Windows and Mac. It hasn't been a bad product, although I feel like there are times it is buggy on Mac and times it is more stable. A Linux version is welcome for me.</comment>


A basic guide to SEO, by analogy with Jerry Seinfeld - <AUTHOR> http://afatefulhaven.com/2012/12/a-basic-guide-to-seo-by-jerry-seinfeld/

<comment><USER2> SEO: Making lousy content slightly more prominent for a short period, and charging a surprising amount of money to customers who dont understand technology.</comment>


Top 100 Best Software Engineering Books, Ever - <AUTHOR> http://knol.google.com/k/jurgen-appelo/top-100-best-software-engineering-books/z7e4mx2g6lir/3# <comment><USER2> Not my list. This list is derived from the SWEBOK project, an IEEE Computer Society list. It is a very process oriented list. Seven books on UML. I don't know anyone who uses UML. I've never worked at a company that actually used it. At least as many books on Agile Programming; how many do you need? A book on CORBA. Really! Knuth is there; I guess he is mandatory. No other good books on algorithms, but lots on patterns.

The author said that he explicitly left out books on technology. Sure there is a lot of technology cruft out there, but surely there a few language specific books that a good software engineer should read. Or maybe I'm just a hacker.

<comment><USER3> why the UML hate? Sequence and class diagrams and such can come in pretty handy as a design or reverse engineering aid.

<comment><USER4> I've been tempted to read _one_ book on UML. But seven? Surely at least four or five of them are redundant?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Imagine what you'd get if you used the same technique to find the "best novels ever."

<comment><USER6> Modern Library held a "top books of the century" thing, using both critics and popular vote to make two lists.

<http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html>

The critics one is decent, if a bit off (Ulysses 1: yes, Great Gatsby 2: hardly), but the Ayn-Rand-meets-L-Ron-Hubbard on the other side always makes me laugh, even though I'm a fan of Rand.

<comment><USER5> Their popular list suggests they didn't have any technology for discounting the effects of voting blocs. I wonder if to this day they believe they had a representative sample of popular opinion.

<comment><USER6> If they did, they'd have to be pretty seriously deluded. Atlas Shrugged I can see as #1 popular - there was the poll that said it was second only to the Bible for average Americans - but Hubbard's stuff is incredibly derided. I don't know anybody who's read a single book of his.

I'm sure they released a result more to gain popularity through controversy than they did to get a truly accurate reading. And it worked, since theirs is always the one I've heard named when people discuss "great books," and it always gets people angry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems to be rather American-centric, and extremely topheavy with recent fads, which isn't surprising, given the ridiculous method used to compile it. No Dijkstra, no Wirth, no Hoare, no Brinch Hansen. No compilers, no Lisp (although SICP might qualify). Totally absurd.

</comment><comment><USER8> There are books on here that I think are worthwhile, that could be called classics, given the attention they've received. But not the whole list.

Generally, they are the ones that are specifically tied to the act of software development, of making things and getting good at doing that well, rather than the process and other roles surrounding it.

But then it seems that, given the definition from SWEBOK and others like <http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?SoftwareEngineer>, software engineering is more about the process than the product. So this list may be correct, and the reason I don't hear about some of these titles so much is because I'm not as much a part of the process crowd.

</comment><comment><USER9> For people who are looking for a shorter list: 1\. <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html> 2\. [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/SixEssentialLanguageAgnosticPr...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/SixEssentialLanguageAgnosticProgrammingBooks.aspx) 3\. <http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000020.html>

</comment><comment><USER10> Not inherently bad, but... I can think of a least a 100 things I'd rather do than read 100 books on the same topic.

</comment><comment><USER11> Very interesting for sure. Just wonder how much the 'school factor' influences rating. How many reviews and Googlings are due to students forced to read an 'arbitrary' title? Which titles are in fact professors favorites? I think Applying UML and Patterns could be one.

</comment><comment><USER12> Holy god, "Head First Design Patterns" is #2? That's written at a 9th grade level. The illustrations are written at a 4th grade level.

</comment><comment><USER13> Knuth all the way down at 16? Tisk.

<comment><USER10> You don't _read_ Knuth. You put him on your nicest bookshelf and check out a page or two for emotional support when working on Java Enterprise Application #431404.</comment></comment>


The complete guide to set up your own Ashley Madison database - <AUTHOR> http://gtwy.net/am.txt

<comment><USER2> I chuckled when he installed MySQL just to dump the files to CSV to put it in PostgreSQL.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought it was the cleanest way to go about it. I didn't want all the data, just some of it. What would you have done? I spent a long time trying to find the best way to convert a MySQL dump to PostgreSQL but ultimately decided upon going the CSV route.

<comment><USER2> Just funny that MySQL couldn't cut it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> 404</comment>


Ketrew: Keep Track of Experimental Workflows - <AUTHOR> http://seb.mondet.org/software/ketrew/doc.2.0.0/index.html <comment><USER2> Since this project doesn't seem to have had any attention on HN yet, we changed the url from [http://www.hammerlab.org/2015/11/27/ketrew-industries- two-hu...](http://www.hammerlab.org/2015/11/27/ketrew-industries-two- hundred/), which is a new version announcement that points to this.</comment>


Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged: a paean to American liberty - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/17/ayn-rand-atlast-shrugged-paean-american-liberty

<comment><USER2> The article goes a bit odd at the end, since America leads the world in charitable giving and foreign aid. It could have contrasted voluntary donations with state welfare.</comment>


Scale of the universe interactive game - <AUTHOR> http://scaleofuniverse.com <comment><USER2> Flash :(</comment>


A gentle intro to assembly with Rust - <AUTHOR> https://lfn3.net/2020/08/03/a-gentle-intro-to-assembly-with-rust/ <comment><USER2> Looking at the output of a compiler is a great way to quickly learn the basics of assembly coding for a particular platform, but learning the principles of programming in assembler and machine architecture is an entirely different story. Knuth's 1st volume remains the best in that regard.

<comment><USER3> TAOCP?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > And indeed, inside main we can see push rax - saving the value in the > register rax to the stack, then a call to our add function, then we pop rax > off the stack. The push call pop sequence is to preserve whatever values are > in the registers used in add.

There's really no need to save rax here; I know that optimizations are off but I'm still curious why rustc thinks this is necessary…

<comment><USER5> The compiler is using push and pop here just for their side effect of adjusting the stack pointer, to keep the stack pointer 16-byte aligned.

<comment><USER4> Shouldn't the C runtime do that before calling main?

<comment><USER5> It does; the stack pointer starts out aligned, but then the function does a call, and the call instruction adjusts the stack pointer by 8 bytes to push the return address, which would cause it to be misaligned. The push pushes an extra 8 bytes so that the stack pointer is aligned in the callee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> But there is a missing feature: how do you generate assembly at runtime?

<comment><USER7> You need to use an external code generator library like llvm or cranelift, just like in any other language.

<comment><USER8> Not quite. Some languages bundle their compiler and code generated as part of the language runtime. Common Lisp is the one that comes to mind first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Assemble learnt via high level language would encounter a lot of issues as the language provide a lot of feature.

Stacks, stack frames .bss, heap etc. And variable scoping and where doesn't it store hence.

And interesting issues like interrupt, memory mapped io (volitile ) etc.

Plus many low end features like CAN ...

Only do c and assembly (ignore 370) and the mapping is not easy.

<comment><USER10> You are correct, Sir, but application-level people are happy to write a few lines of funny looking mnemonics to optimize their boring sort functions and then brag on LinkedIn. Also, if you are still in "_hk", please stop wasting time and get your friends and family out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why setb-test-jne? Couldn't you just do jc?

<comment><USER12> Yeah, it's just being built without optimizations in that case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I didn't know Rust was an assembler.</comment>


Is it time to return to the medieval way of life on college campuses?  - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/article/Getting-Medieval-on-Higher/126008/ <comment><USER4> I think there's some merit to this proposal, but it's too riddled with an infatuation with a certain brand of Christian monasticism for me to separate out what is good and what is bad.

 _"As we all know, for the virtuous student, college life has become a variation on The Temptation of Saint Anthony—a never-ending assault by the demons of gluttony, envy, sloth, lust, and pride."_

That's confusing "virtue" with something actually relevant to academic involvement. I agree there's a lot wrong with the current system, but it's not that students are having too much sex and sleeping in on.

 _"Members should cultivate nonviolence, humility, and ungrudging obedience to just authority. Speech should be used in moderation, and only for some purpose. Instead of gossiping at meals, edifying books are read aloud. There are no private possessions, only two meals a day, and vegetarianism is the norm. Clothing is simple, utilitarian, and uniform."_

That's not going to happen. Once again, we have some confusion between this weird form of self-denial with caring about education. It's perfectly possible to be committed to learning/research/etc. while still wanting to talk to your friends during dinner.

This isn't even getting at the daily ritualistic prayer, the claim the current academic zeitgeist is "decadent", the fact that a lot of research requires expensive equipment, something unaccounted for under this scheme, the suggested "withdrawal" from the rest of the world, etc.

EDIT: Not to mention, there's the problem of people with families. Does the rest of the family have to join in also? What about children? If they don't, how does the member provide for them? Are only single people allowed to join? What?

<comment><USER5> _I agree there's a lot wrong with the current system, but it's not that students are having too much sex_

From what I saw, it's not that students were having too much sex. It's the combination of a lot of undirected lost souls who are not committed so something substantive (like learning/research) with a pervasive atmosphere of bacchanalia. I saw people go through many emotional wringers in school.

 _Once again, we have some confusion between this weird form of self-denial with caring about education._

I agree. I think it's perfectly possible to have an atmosphere which is contemplative without going towards asceticism. What's really needed is a shift in emphasis.

 _the fact that a lot of research requires expensive equipment, something unaccounted for under this scheme_

There's a lot of research and substantive work that doesn't require expensive equipment. For one thing, I would love some monasteries to become hosts for Google Summer of Code work.

<comment><USER6> The positive aspect of asceticism: such a place would have far less overhead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> ...good luck?

Engineering school makes even the most dedicated student wonder why they're even bothering at times. And now you'll take away getting laid, fucking off, bitching, and Starcraft. And you'll have them do additional manual labor on top of that.

I think part of the reason these monasteries have such sterling reputations is cause we never hear about the failures. No one really bothered recording the number of people who joined, and then ran away, or even the number of successful for which monastic life was actually an improvement. I mean sure, you gotta read all these books, and plow a field, but at least you have a bed (albeit hard) and roof, and the lord isn't out to tax you all the time.

<comment><USER8> "What would it be like if college students felt that they were called to a vocation rather than simply getting their tickets stamped so they can get middle-class jobs, if they are lucky?" You're not going to spawn Zuckberg, Obama, or the next cure for cancer and you'll fall behind China and India, while your kids wonder why they never got a shot at being the world leaders of tomorrow.

Now I don't mean to say that there isn't value in learning for it's own sake- there is. You don't need to reshape education to do that though. Every student today has the ability to make these choices- like icegreentea said, they choose not to because they don't think it's valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think that a more ascetic way of life would be good for many people, myself included -- when I get away from everything, it gives me time to think and refresh myself.

On the other hand, the article seems to be going in a more insular direction, which I absolutely cannot agree with. Universities and colleges need to teach as a part of the world, not from ivory towers. The biggest problem with my alma mater is that it's very isolated geographically and that created a "bubble" where outside events didn't really penetrate beyond sports or a few political interest groups.

<comment><USER10> I think the ideal solution would be to adopt the deep springs model, where students do two years of monastic liberal arts education as described, and then finish off at a research university. I would have greatly preferred this over the actual college experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem>

<comment><USER12> One thing that the Cartasian maths did in Anathem was to effectively provide a civilization insurance policy by preserving knowledge, and a scientific mindset, through extended dark ages.

In you look around and wonder what would happen if there was a general collapse of civil society you do have to wonder who and where the bodies of knowledge that we have collected over the last few thousand years would be preserved (right back to things like the Homeric epics - which have made it through two long dark ages).

<comment><USER13> It reminds me of Hillis' observation that relics like the Dead Sea Scrolls are safe while lost but endangered by being found and put in a museum.

<http://longnow.org/essays/millennium-clock/>

<comment><USER14> Well, of course the relics _that we've discovered_ were safe while they were lost. Because otherwise we wouldn't have discovered them. That doesn't mean that being lost is safer than being in a museum. (Perhaps it _is_ , but where's the evidence?)

<comment><USER15> >(Perhaps it is, but where's the evidence?)

The relics that were safe through social meltdowns and other problems are the evidence.

There are pretty safe assumptions that lead to that position too - <USER2> will get destroyed just as other municipal buildings would in a period of societal collapse. Imagine you're uneducated, living in what was a museum and need to build a fire ...

If the artefacts are still safely ensconced in a not yet rediscovered cave then they're relatively safe.

We get a lot of our historic information from ceramic and stone artifacts - <USER3> wonder what durable items we might pass down through the millenia?

<comment><USER16> "If the artefacts are still safely ensconced in a not yet rediscovered cave then they're relatively safe."

His point is that if a colony of insects happened into that cave a month after they were "safely ensconced" 500 years ago, then they wouldn't be there for us to find. Basically you're falling for survivorship bias.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias>

<comment><USER15> >Basically you're falling for survivorship bias.

Yes some artifacts will be destroyed in caves. But we also know that artifacts won't be preserved in museums. Hence I said relatively safe. Clearly not all artifacts survive but we're sure that no artifacts remain in the Library of Alexandria (whether scrolls from there were saved or not, they weren't saved in the library).

Yes I see that you can also argue that items in caves/other caches are also eventually removed or destroyed in situ but it is the preservation against rampaging hordes and systematic destruction that I was targetting.

>That doesn't mean that being lost is safer than being in a museum. (Perhaps it is, but where's the evidence?)

Obviously this is circumstantial evidence but I think that museums are simply too obvious to protect against certain things like looting in war or social collapse scenarios.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think we can all agree at least that the current 'college experience' goes a little to far in the other extreme. I'd argue that at this point its actually a step backward from adulthood.

High school student:

-Wakes up at 6am, Juggles school, extracurriculars, home responsibilities, social life, holds a part-time job

college student:

-Doesn't change out of pajamas until it's time to go to the bar.

<comment><USER12> Actually for me university was exactly where I learned self discipline because the opportunities to go off the rails were just so available - after coming with a hair's breadth of being thrown out I turned myself around and ended up with excellent marks and a first. In some ways the very availability of distractions is part of the strengths of a traditional university education.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> When would I have had _time_ for significant manual labor in college? Ask a grad student working 72 hours a week in the lab to grow their own food instead of snarfing down ramen at their desk, and see how much research gets done. :/

<comment><USER19> Part of his proposal is that people would never be forced to leave. I suspect that many grad students would trade a year or two longer researching at a more relaxed pace, combined with some less intellectually intense manual labor, for how things work now.

<comment><USER18> Ah yes. Five to eight years of phd and another three of postdoc was just getting me to the nonexistent job market for scientists _too darn fast_. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _Another corrupting influence—anxiety over college costs—could be removed entirely by making our institutions self-sustaining through productive labor._

The author is ignoring a significant advantage that actual monasteries and convents have on this point: they are exempt from taxes by law and longstanding tradition. It's not clear that an institution lacking this advantage could really become economically self-sufficient.

<comment><USER21> Colleges and universities are also exempt from taxation. Harvard University pays no tax on its endowment gains or property.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Springs_College>

<comment><USER23> I got a mailing from them way back when I was graduating high school. I looked at it over and over, but was never bold enough to actually apply to such a non-traditional school. I think that was a big mistake on my part. Still think about that choice on a regular basis, many years later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have, on occasion, wanted to start a monastic order of really well dressed physicists. So many scientists are so poorly dressed, I just want to start an order where you _must_ be impeccably dressed in an expensive suit and tie at all times.

<comment><USER15> >you must be impeccably dressed in an expensive suit and tie at all times

Why? What is it about this attire that makes you want to do that.

All I can see is that such dress is an attempt to feel superior over others and that your belonging to such a group would allow for the feeling of superiority without the effort of intellectual advancement?

<comment><USER24> Not really, I just like nice clothes. And I like to wear nice clothes. And I feel silly wearing nice clothes when surrounded by others who aren't wearing nice clothes.

One could, however, think of it as a discipline thing. If you wear a perfectly pressed suit you're less likely to slouch. And if you're less likely to slouch, maybe you're less likely to be sloppy in your thoughts, so your research might be better.

Then again, maybe your research would wind up being worse because a suit feels so conformist. Who knows? But it would be a worthwhile experiment.

<comment><USER15> >Then again, maybe your research would wind up being worse because a suit feels so conformist. Who knows? But it would be a worthwhile experiment.

Or maybe it wouldn't matter because you're just you with different textiles covering (or not) your naked body.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This whole thing feels like a solution to a problem that's already been solved. If students want to decide where to go to school based on academic strength rather than the gym facilities and sports teams, they are already free to do so. I know a lot of students who would rather stay home and read than party all night, so that's what they do. Attaining the mind-oriented domestic life described later is mostly a matter of finding the right people to live with.

</comment><comment><USER20> _...college life has become a variation on The Temptation of Saint Anthony—a never-ending assault by the demons of gluttony, envy, sloth, lust, and pride._

Hell, I thought everybody already understood that this was actually the point of college, but I will defer to Frank Zappa on this one: _If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library._

</comment><comment><USER26> Are we talking about the nominal regulations, or the way things actually ran? Cf. Chaucer, Rabelais, and the Goliardic poems for some information on the latter. Gutenberg's version of Rabelais is a very old translation, but I append a sample anyway:

Going from Bourges, he came to Orleans, where he found store of swaggering scholars that made him great entertainment at his coming, and with whom he learned to play at tennis so well that he was a master at that game. For the students of the said place make a prime exercise of it; and sometimes they carried him unto Cupid's houses of commerce (in that city termed islands, because of their being most ordinarily environed with other houses, and not contiguous to any), there to recreate his person at the sport of poussavant, which the wenches of London call the ferkers in and in. As for breaking his head with over-much study, he had an especial care not to do it in any case, for fear of spoiling his eyes. Which he the rather observed, for that it was told him by one of his teachers, there called regents, that the pain of the eyes was the most hurtful thing of any to the sight. For this cause, when he one day was made a licentiate, or graduate in law, one of the scholars of his acquaintance, who of learning had not much more than his burden, though instead of that he could dance very well and play at tennis, made the blazon and device of the licentiates in the said university, saying,

      So you have in your hand a racket,
      A tennis-ball in your cod-placket,
      A Pandect law in your cap's tippet,
      And that you have the skill to trip it
      In a low dance, you will b' allowed
      The grant of the licentiate's hood.

<comment><USER27> Very good point. This article fits quite well in the category of "nostalgia for a simpler age that never really existed."

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I studied in a JNV (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawahar_Navodaya_Vidyalaya>), from class 6th till class 12th; those were the best days of my life. All that I am today, is because of my stay in the vidyalaya. I guess the article linked above speaks of a similar life in an institute, but for higher education.

Such a model would only work if the students in that place are of such ideological disposition that they do not find all the fancy stuff fun.

I was once asked what I'd do if I had a 100 million, by some sheer luck or something. My answer was that I would anonymously buy a huge stretch of land in a remote area somewhere near the Western Ghats/Himalayas (India) and start a zen monastery type of institute for sciences; frugal(with Internet/infrastructure) in nature but strict in admissions, with no age limit for members. No fee whatsoever for the students, boarding and lodging included. A centre for higher education in science and technology, modeled after JNVs. And I would try joining that institute as a student, taking admission tests.

</comment><comment><USER29> _Bring together a core group of serious-minded but underemployed academics—who already have adopted a life of poverty ... instead of preparing students to leave the institution, we encouraged some of them to stay, joining us in work and reflection._

Sounds like a typical grad school.

</comment><comment><USER30> Why would anybody want to copy an education system that arguably set Europe back 1000 years?

<comment><USER31> Well, how about the one that preserved knowledge through the dark ages then?

<comment><USER32> Isn't a lot of modern academic opinion turning against the idea of any kind of significant 'dark age' actually having occurred in Europe?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages>

<comment><USER12> They seem to be avoiding the term "Dark Age" but there is no doubt that there was a huge collapse in the infrastructure of civil society and technology after the Western Empire ended.

Note that there was also an earlier Bronze Age "Dark Age" in Eastern Europe:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age_collapse></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I find nearby hackathons? - <AUTHOR>

No interest in sparking this debate again, but as background, I am teaching myself to code. I've been at it a couple months and would like to meet people more experienced than I and see what a hackathon is like. The trouble is, I'm struggling to find good resources on where any are. I'm in the Bay Area, so I know they're around, I just don't have a go-to site that keeps a good listing. Does such a thing exist?<p>Any help on finding some good Bay Area hackathons would be most appreciated. <comment><USER2> Here are couple options. 1) Check schedule at HackerDojo, they have hackathons every weekend afternoons. 2) Search for meetups in your area.

[http://www.meetup.com/Hackternoon/events/62716612/?a=me2.1_g...](http://www.meetup.com/Hackternoon/events/62716612/?a=me2.1_grp&rv=me2.1&_af_eid=62716612&_af=event)

</comment><comment><USER3> Programmable Web creates these lists every so often. Their most recent one was from late April: [http://blog.programmableweb.com/2012/04/26/49-upcoming- hacka...](http://blog.programmableweb.com/2012/04/26/49-upcoming-hackathons- local-mongodb-music-science-and-big-data/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - I saw that. Was hoping there was something more recent. I'll keep an eye on them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Try meetup.com</comment>


Ask HN: When will AWS S3 which support append? - <AUTHOR> It's 2018 and it still doesn't support append.<p>Do you know any other service which supports append? <comment><USER2> Azure Blob storage supports append blob: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/rest/api/storageservices/un...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/rest/api/storageservices/understanding-block-blobs--append-blobs--and-page- blobs#about-append-blobs)</comment>


Ask YC: To my fellow YC Summer Applicants who slipped through the cracks, what is your next move? - <AUTHOR>

As the email said, the process is fraught with errors. What is your next move?
Mine is to launch by the end of next week after four months of work.
Also, don't forget that the Google Android deadline is this coming monday! =) <comment><USER2> We've been developing parallel plans so the 'no' just means we take plan B now. We've already got a 4-city tour planned to showcase the app this summer, a promo video with a local new media/technology group, and lots of press planned, among other things. We're still preparing the online 'blogosphere' and podcast marketing strategy too. And we'll probably try to hold off on VC as long as possible anyway, build a profitable business, then talk to them when we have something to show for ourselves.

<comment><AUTHOR> It would have been incredible to get into the YC program and be able to bounce ideas off of all those brilliant people, but on the positive side I don't have to worry about moving to Boston. I really dig SF =).

So the plan still is make something people want and ship!

How hard can it be?

<comment><USER3> > _I don't have to worry about moving to Boston. I really dig SF =)_

If you're already there then you're pretty well off and with some networking your chances are good. The Boston groups move to SV afterward anyway because the investors there move quicker and are less risk-averse.

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't had a chance to do much networking with other startup folk in the area, tho I did bump into one of the core PostgreSQL guys last week.

Where do these startupshingdigs happen, should I be reading Valleywag more?

Right now I'm bootstrapped, but I have friends in the area who work with VC/Angels when the time is ready. Needing advice more than money right now.

<comment><USER4> Valleywag is a surprisingly good resource for networking events, yes. It's not gonna get you rubbing shoulders with VC's, for the most part, but folks in the valley show up for stuff. Unfortunately, most of the really good parties only get written up after they happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Probably get back in shape, rebuild social life, find money, reassess the best path.

<comment><USER6> I'm with you on this one, I get to start swimming again tomorrow.

Huzzah, nothing like a couple of my guy friends doing it alongside me to get me moving.

I seem to have a competitive streak...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Try and go friends and family. Do what it takes to get the money. Build something compelling, and find the right people to spread the buzz.

You just find the trail as you go.

</comment><comment><USER8> "It would have been incredible to get into the YC program and be able to bounce ideas off of all those brilliant people"

I think that's the right way to think about it. So far everyone here has a great attitude, that's great. But, how many folks needed YC for the money? will not having financial backing stop anyone from moving forward?

</comment><comment><USER6> This just means that I have to do actual 9 to 5ish work while launching this summer, that's all. In the end though, ALL the rewards will be mine, so I'm not too worried about it.

</comment><comment><USER9> 1) Network, network, network.

2) Present to VCs.

3) ???

4) Exit.

Just kidding about the "???" part, by the way. We have at least two of those question marks figured out.

<comment><USER9> Humor helps, I figure. My serious answer is that we continue as planned. From the moment we realized we'd have to set 'badness' to 'yes', we made sure we were doing things as we would if we weren't going to be a part of YC.

For us in particular, that does mean looking for opportunities to interest venture capital funds. As our time-to-market(s) decreases, our profit- potential increases correspondingly.

One of the main things we're going to do is get early reactions from potential customers. Letting them know what we're trying to build, and what it would offer them, should be a great way to get good guidance, and possibly even some proof of value we can take to investors.

Other than that, we're building, iterating, and talking. #startups on irc.freenode.net is a great place to find smart people with similar interests, in YC and out. Hope to see you there!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> We will continue to develop and push our app forward.

To me, the overwhelming benefit of getting into YCombinator would have been the interaction among other founders and advisors. It is less about the money and publicity as it is the access to experience and ideas. I do believe, though, that the community on news.ycomb serves this same role in a less direct way.

</comment><comment><USER11> will keep in touch, continue work and wrap up another investment offer we have on the platter. release within three months, and and see how things span out 8 )

</comment><comment><USER12> Prove them wrong ;-).</comment>


The Benefits of Solitude - <AUTHOR> https://thewalrus.ca/the-benefits-of-solitude/ <comment><USER2> I haven't spent 5 months in Antarctic solitude like Byrd, but I did live on a bicycle for a year while circling North America. I'd go multiple days without seeing anyone else, sometimes in the desert and sometimes in the forest. It changed my life, in ways that's hard to communicate to people who haven't spent time in actual solitude.

These days I live in a fairly remote part of Alaska, but we have good cell coverage here now. It's different being in wilderness while still having the possibility of being connected. I feel different when I get into a valley where there's no coverage. I'm tempted to get a satellite device for emergencies, but part of me relishes the impossibility of contact with the outside world for a time. That's a good issue to wrestle with.

If you haven't experienced true solitude yet, go find some. It's pretty grounding.

<comment><USER3> A few years ago, I did a solo hike around midnight to a spot in Bryce Canyon hoping to get a glimpse of the night skies. I had my camera situated on an outcropping taking pictures at set intervals while i was laying down staring at the night sky and the canyon below. I felt a strange and comforting sensation... Goosebumps and everything. I was in this vast wilderness in the middle of the night and yet i felt "cozy" like i'm in a small place. Like this is it, I'm home. I was miles away from civilization but felt i was still a part of something much bigger at that particular moment. I imagined that's what a lot of old explorers must have felt when being out on their journeys. I live in Colorado and play in the mountains quite a bit and while I don't want to sound like a crazy hippy but that experience and a few others like it have really showed me that people (maybe not all but some) are tethered to nature on some subconscious level. It's mysterious and almost magical. But these are the experiences i cherish when I'm out alone in the wilderness.

<comment><USER4> Another hypothesis might be that people know on some subconscious level that the real threat in the world is other people. I don't mean threat in the sense that you'll be killed but in society there is constantly a power struggle, as a man you try to climb the dominance hierarchy or if you don't try to climb it you feel weak because you know deep down that you're not top dog and there's a lot of consequences to that status etc.

Where as if you go somewhere where you're certain there's no other people around then you're free of all that, free to express yourself without worrying even a little about other people judging your every little movement, every behaviour.

<comment><USER5> In a somewhat different way, this is the same reason I prefer to work at night. I can get an 8-10 hour stretch with no distractions!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article is really more about the need to experience nature, and wild environments (non-urban), than it is about the "benefits" of solitude. In fact, it does more to point out the negatives of solitude (potential death from frostbite) than it does to highlight positives.

Based on my own experience some solitude is healthy and positive, even necessary for deep work. But too much is quite dangerous for one's mental health. So while I whole heartedly agree that we could all benefit from experiencing more natural environments, I don't think solitude is the answer. We are social animals, even those of us who don't identify with being so.

<comment><USER7> The "wild environments" offer concrete examples of the benefits of solitude. They're reduced anxiety, not being on pills, boosts to your the immune system, etc. Solitude generally accompanies the wilderness, and wilderness is the tangible gateway to the insight and humility you might gain from solitude.

But of course the wilderness doesn't strictly mean not socializing. Talk to anyone who's thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail or similar and you'll hear about how social of an experience it was, between the times of solitude. The thing is that there is _no_ solitude in heavily populated environments, where things like _work_ are what you're supposed to do. This is the point of the article: in cities, in society, you're not able to focus on the simple joy of your existence, as Byrd was. In solitude you're free from the urban burdens and obligations that stress us, despite how well we've adapted to them.

<comment><USER8> The Appalachian Trail isn't wilderness. I recall reading somewhere that by some definition related to road building (if memory serves) there is no true wilderness in the lower 48. Alaska is it for the US, at least by that particular definition. Sorry, no citation.

Of course, Canada is handily next door.

<comment><USER9> You have to go into some parts of the Rockies for what wilderness remains in the lower 48. I've fished some alpine lakes that likely hadn't seen any human in a year, if even.

The road rule is actually part of why certain groups push to build roads on public lands, because it reduces the land's environmental status and access to protections from exploitation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _A study from the University of London, for example, found that members of the remote cattle-herding Himba tribe in Namibia, who spend their lives in the open bush, had greater attention spans and a greater sense of contentment than urbanized Britons and, when those same tribe members moved into urban centres, their attention spans and levels of contentment dropped to match their British counterparts._

This should be the study:

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235002874_Urbanizat...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235002874_Urbanization_Decreases_Attentional_Engagement)

<comment><USER11> That same team did the most remarkable (in my eyes) experiment with the same tribe too.

They basically controlled for everything, if you read the paper, except for the language used for colours, and showed how a colour that's incredibly distinct for us, is incredibly hard to distinguish for them and vice-versa.

Go here: [https://vimeo.com/120808489](https://vimeo.com/120808489) You need to find the odd colour out in the rings at: 5:40 (easy for them, hard for us) 6:30 (so easy for us that it's hard to imagine it being hard for anybody)

<comment><USER12> That is an awesome video. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are there jobs like this out there that you can do for months at a time without being too skilled?

He was manning the Antarctic station - that sounds like it involves routine work that anyone can do (absolutely no offense), are there jobmarkets out there for these sort of gigs?

Just curious really.

<comment><USER14> I enjoyed reading some of the blog posts on here awhile back: [http://www.gdargaud.net/Antarctica/index.html](http://www.gdargaud.net/Antarctica/index.html).

The author spent a number of seasons, including winter, in Antartica. From what I remember he was a "techie" who would run/maintain experiments for European universities; outdoor experience & knowledge on how to operate a LIDAR were his qualifications for the job. The tasks may sound mundane however even running an ethernet cable by -70c is more challenging than it sounds.

There is also an American station but it's rather crowded so I doubt you'd get to enjoy solitude there. The British station is less crowded but I heard it smells terrible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Since most of the comments (and TFA) is about solitude, but more in nature, I want to chime in about solitude in an urban setting. For the 18 months I was a digital nomad (while waiting for a US visa to move back near my cofounders), About 6 months were spent in cities where I didn't know anyone when I arrived, and roughly about 3 months were spent in "city solitude", the first couple weeks in each new city I went to.

During this time I wouldn't really have any directed conversation with humans. I'd thank a store clerk, make an order at a cafe or restaurant, that's it. Mostly because I didn't know the local languages in some of these countries (Asia), but sometimes even where I did. I was incredibly lonely the first time it happened due to the former (language), but towards the end of my nomadism it meant something else. I began to seek that time, and use it to commune with the place, the city, and to think truly independently without disrupting my lifestyle. These are big bustling people-filled places I'm talking about -- Seoul, Tokyo, Taipei, Osaka, Bangkok. I can speak Japanese fluently, yet every other week I spent in Tokyo I'd avoid personal interactions, while still going out regularly for dinner, or a run, or to a cafe. You start to see the place as a friend, and understand it more.

Ironically, you begin to be able to understand humans better from this time not being a part of their society. It's stepping away from individuals (friends/family/coworkers/date) you focus on, and suddenly you can observe the humanity around you with an even emphasis. You can see which things they take for granted, how they prioritize life, what makes them tick. You see things, learn things, understand the guiding fabric of their society (and to some extent the global one) from a third-person perspective, which is very different from what I saw while an active part of it.

This same perspective also makes you feel a great deal of freedom from those social rules, yet acute awareness of them (much like with a friend, you don't have to deal with their lifestyle if you don't want to, you can look at their life more objectively than if they were your partner or family). You think about things, try things, plan things, make choices very differently than if you are being socially influenced directly by those around you. Being a foreigner/outsider in those places probably accentuated it, but likely is a prerequisite to feel that way in a city.

I really feel like it permanently changed the way I see the role of society, places, and my human relationships to be a completely different perspective.

</comment><comment><USER16> There are moderate ways to experience nature and escape the cities. I try to get outside for walks every day, and out to the desert or the mountains once or twice a month. And I set my home office up with a window looking out at a large mountain. Small efforts like this do add up.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't believe the author did much of a job in selling the benefits of solitude, but it has once again stoked the embers currently within me to get away from everything connected to a socket, and from everyone (or almost everyone) connected to one another through a device.

Given the consistency at which articles of this nature appear on HN and other tech communities, it appears to be either a common residual feeling or one that is on the rise amongst us in the tech world?

<comment><USER18> It strikes me as the simple intersection of the fact that tech people as a group are significantly more introverted and solitude-seeking than the population at large, and that solitude is most easily achieved away from civilization.

(Not to imply any judgement. I unashamedly fit the stereotype in this respect to a T.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Translation for metric units users:

−57 °F ≈ −49 °C

</comment><comment><USER20> "consider stationing employees who need to concentrate outside the city"

This reminds me of the Bell Lab's old Holmdel research complex. A ton of early microwave research was done there in the 50s when it was basically just a farm. It wasn't till later that they built the facility that now stands there.

<comment><USER21> Cray Research was similar. Business org in the city, R&D on a purpose built farm in Chippewa. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Cray#Cray_Research](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Cray#Cray_Research)

<comment><USER22> It's true that hardware engineering and manufacturing were in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, while the corporate HQ and software people were various suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota (first Bloomington, then Mendota Heights and downtown Minneapolis, then Eagan, then back to Mendota Heights, &c...). But that's mostly because Control Data had set Seymour up with a lab in Chippewa Falls, and he just stayed in place in '72 when he quit.

<comment><USER23> True, but that wasn't accidental. Cray helped start Control Data, and he placed the lab in Chippewa Falls in order to do R&D away from nuisances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Turn off your cell phone. Go take a long walk in nature, away from a city and the related noise and distractions. Try to make it a regular habit. You will benefit and find it enjoyable.

The Santa Cruz mountains, redwoods, Point Reyes, etc, are all great for this right in the bay area.

</comment><comment><USER25> Worth reposting, one of the best essays on this topic is William Deresiewicz's _Solitude and Leadership_ , previously discussed at HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10073663](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10073663)

</comment><comment><USER26> Firewatch is an excellent indie game that deals with themes of solitude and escape.</comment>


Erdös and the Quantum Method - <AUTHOR> http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/erds-and-the-quantum-method/

<comment><USER2> This blog has quickly become one of my favorites - it's a good review of the topics in TCS.</comment>


A better way to debug Wayland - <AUTHOR> https://community.ubuntu.com/t/a-better-way-to-debug-wayland/9176 <comment><USER2> Neat! It's like xtrace ([https://github.com/yuq/xtrace](https://github.com/yuq/xtrace)), but for Wayland.

Many years ago I wrote [https://x11vis.org/](https://x11vis.org/) (it's not that well-maintained, but works for me). It offers interactive filtering and a bunch of smarts that come in handy for debugging X11 wire protocol. Think Wireshark, but purpose-built for X11.

<comment><USER3> Note that as opposed to xtrace and Wireshark, it isn't a proxy. It either parses libwayland's output or is a GDB plugin that integrates with libwayland.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish people would use something like LTTng, or some other solution that could "industrialize" logging/tracing, because every module or program, independant of language, potentially needs to be debugged/monitored, eventually.

</comment><comment><USER3> List of other tools to debug Wayland (scroll down to "Debugging tools"): [https://wayland.freedesktop.org/extras.html](https://wayland.freedesktop.org/extras.html)</comment>


Why skin is a better lens than glass - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128193.800-why-skin-is-a-better-lens-than-glass.html <comment><USER2> > In May, they imaged gold nanoparticles at a resolution of just 97 > nanometres, to show that scattering lenses can image below the 200-nanometre > limit of conventional optical lenses >They used a 450-micrometre-thick slice > of fresh rat skin as a lens.

wow!</comment>


Show HN: Cliperado – Automatically take screenshots of your whole service - <AUTHOR> Cliperado (https://cliperado.com) is an online tool to automatically take screenshots of your service and keep the shots up-to-date in your help guides.
The idea for Cliperado came when we were creating visual step by step guides, to reduce our support volume, for an other service. We needed about 200 clips for each language. It took so much time to create just a few. I was pulling my hair out. Especially with the thought of having to check all the clips for changes in a month from now, manually.
You've probably seen a few online tutorials with outdated and confusing screenshots. You probably have a some outdated screenshot in your own manuals. I get that, it is just too much work to keep these updated manually.
So we created Cliperado, to automate this.
How Cliperado works. Cliperado takes full page retina screenshots of your online service. It can take screenshots of pages behind a login screen as well, by filling out forms, clicking on buttons or hover over menus, etc , etc. You can crop a screenshot, add arrows or highlights, to create clips for step-by-step guides. Cliperado hosts these clips online.
You can schedule Cliperado to refresh the screenshots weekly. Changed screenshots are highlighted in the visual sitemap, so you don't have to hunt down changes. When you expect a screenshot to change with every refresh, you can mask certain areas, to exclude these from comparison.
We hope you want to give Cliperado a try. We are looking forward to your feedback. <comment><USER2> This looks pretty cool! It feels like it might work as well/even better as a UI testing tool.

We built a network-based (not UI/headless-browser-based) testing/scraping tool that was a bit like this at [https://wrapapi.com](https://wrapapi.com) back in the day, but the design on this new site looks really good

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

You can use it for testing as well. Cliperado runs headless chrome for the refreshes.

For Cliperado we run a full screenshot refresh before every deploy. We've caught various bugs that way. After the deploy, a full refresh and screenshot update for the site and docs takes maybe 5 minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> While I don't need this, this is one of the projects that "click" . I totally see how useful the could be.</comment>


The Seven Qualities of World-Class SaaS Companies - <AUTHOR> https://blog.percolate.com/2015/10/the-seven-qualities-of-world-class-saas-companies/?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=distribution&utm_campaign=10153_hackernews_4q2015 <comment><AUTHOR> Workday's first product manager, now VP Product at Percolate, reflects on what makes the best SaaS companies.

It's the powerful combination of great product, innovation-centric philosophy, and culture. Please leave your thoughts in the comments — what are some other factors crucial to building a great SaaS company?</comment>


Which is the best hosting platform? - <AUTHOR> Which is the best hosting platform for hosting a sample survey question website? Thanks, Devansh Chaurasiya <comment><USER2> Your question is both two ill-defined and specific. 'Best' doesn't mean anything without specifying criteria. And 'sample survey question' doesn't convey any requirements I can guess, so it just reads: what's the best platform for hosting a website?</comment>