Hacker News Job Board? - <AUTHOR>

Where do people that visit Hacker News go to search for jobs?
I realize we're in a community of entrepreneurs but better access to the talent that hangs out around here would be a tremendous resource for hiring managers.
Written out of frustration after spending 2 weeks sifting through bad resumes and monotonous interviews. <comment><USER2> Oh, my: it's the fourth time in less than a month that I'm going to talk about my site, <http://job4dev.com>

It's free to post listings, provided you give enough information about the company and a good job description.

This site has been online for three years now, but it was only focused on the Brazilian market. Just recently we put a international version. We are working on new features that we hope will make the hiring process smarter, less of a trial-and-error approach.

Even without those features, I'd say without doubt that job4dev is where Brazilian hackers and qualified developers find out about job opportunities, when they can't find them through regular networking.

We want to make the same thing for all of the world, now. We need to break out of the chicken-and-egg problem, and I guess that HN is good place for that.

Please, take a look at the site: feel free to put your listing there, and feedback would be much appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly I think most of us end up finding jobs via word of mouth.

You just have to get 1 really awesome developer who hacks for fun. Then when you have to hire after that, you go to him (or her) first and ask them if any of their friends are looking for work. If you've got a good place, it will make recruiting way easier. If not... I've had surprisingly good luck with Craigslist.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point - most of the best folks we've hired have been through personal referral but this time around we're looking to hire in a satellite office so much of it has had to be digital.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On LinkUp, we put together a search engine that searches job openings with all YC companies (<http://www.linkup.com/lists/Y_Combinator_Startups>). LinkUp only searches company websites for job openings (purpose being to keep out duplicates and scams), we use RPXNow to let people login and UserVoice to get feedback from our community.

Beyond use, jobseekers are hanging out on Craigslist, Dice and Indeed. They should be spending as much time on LinkedIn, because its the networking that lands 70% of all new hires.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm only a student, so take my words with a grain of salt.

I don't mean to advertise for StackOverflow, but it struck me that an their job board would be the biggest competitor to a potential HN job board.

I find that jobs.stackoverflow.com is clean and seems to have consistently interesting postings. On the other hand, I'm not sure how many conversions they get, and the UI is rather basic.

They've also recently launched careers.stackoverflow.com, which integrates with StackOverflow accounts. The theory is that employers can scope out an applicant's know-how by glancing at his reputation and postings.

Anyway, as someone seeking employment, I echo your interest in finding a good solution. Good post.

<comment><AUTHOR> The first question on our interview form is "do you use stack overflow, and if so what's your profile".

Yet, I never knew they had a job board, til now <smacks forehead>

Great tip, thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I run the Hackers and Founders meetup in Silicon Valley, and people often come up to me looking for devs. I don't send jobs out in our emails, but I do pass the word around if I know someone is hiring. Feel free to ping me with available gigs. Feel free to post gigs on our message board. That gets some traffic.

When people come to me asking for specific programming language experience, I usually point them to that technology specific meetup group here in Silicon Valley. I also point them to Craigslist. There's a ton of hiring that gets done via Craigstlist here.

I also know the other guys who host the HN/ Hackers and Founders meetups in Indianapolis, NY and Tel Aviv. I should ask them how they're approaching this problem. I'll ask them and post a response here.

I do have a friend who is currently looking for iPhone contract work, if that's what you need, definitely ping me.

BTW, I don't make a cent off this. I just like to help friends out if I can.

</comment><comment><USER7> I will pay money to post my job openings on a Hacker News job board. Are there any YComb job companies? If not, I'd pitch one fast for the next round. Seems like an easy path towards distribution.

</comment><comment><USER8> Finding a good developer/designer is always a hard task, and if someone reads Hacker News it is definitely a plus, but

1\. I think it will be hard to find developer in the region you need. For this you better really visit your local group meeting(like JimBastard advised) or some educational institution to find some graduating students.

2.Someone reading Hacker News won't be a good developer/designer every time.

</comment><comment><USER9> It has crossed my mind that there's a need for a "hacker gigs" sort of job board. It would handle both contract gigs and full-time jobs for hackers, designers and the like, with an emphasis on attracting the sort of people who hang out here.

Quick survey: would you use something like that? To find jobs? To advertise jobs?

<comment><USER8> I'd definitely used this kind of board, but I think there are web sites like e-lance or RAC for this, although level of the bigger part of devs there is low, but most of the companies hang there and everyone know that if you want to post job you must go there. In opposition I don't think a big number of job providers visits boards like this one.

<comment><USER9> A big number would not be a goal; people we would enjoy working with is the goal. So many project posted on other sites want code designed to run on $5/month shared hosting and offer to pay $100 for several hours, if not days of work.

What I have in mind would be low-volume, but high S/N ratio.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Feel free to use Hacker News as your own personal job board. Just submit a link to your resume and/or portfolio as a link. A catchy headline might help.

Only YC companies are allowed to post under the jobs tab but anyone else can post that they are hiring or looking for a job.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd certainly be interested in this. I'm currently looking for work, and my normal connections aren't turning up much of anything.

(My profile has a link to a post I wrote up about looking for work, if anyone's looking for a contractor. </shameless-plug>)

</comment><comment><USER12> Am I eating crazy pills? I have a jobs board in my menu bar..

and i think there's some website where you can pitch a job idea and they'll give you $ to start a company.

<comment><USER13> That's limited to job postings by YC companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> hey i was wondering if anyone would like to contact me about a large hacking/cracking project that im trying to get running , i need a couple of peoples help but the more the better and easier. if you are interested then email me at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER15> I share the frustration. We've been looking for people since roughly September. I've probably done 50 or so interviews and gone through five times as many resumes. Where is everybody? And why is there such a reluctance to structure data in communities like this? If people at least put their names, e-mail addresses, web sites, and skills or interests in their profiles, it would be a huge help.

</comment><comment><USER16> go to local meetup groups for some of the technologies you are looking for.

if there aren't any local meetup groups start one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea to find local talent with the right passion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> 37 signals' job board is quite nice and has some interesting jobs.

</comment><comment><USER18> Just letting you know, hiring managers can already target this audience:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs>

<comment><USER19> That's only for YC-funded companies; no one else can post jobs there.</comment></comment>


With a watch called Time and Kickstarter return, Pebble's not backing down - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/backchannel/time-bandit-pebble-s-new-weapon-in-its-battle-with-apple-and-android-watches-6e6f4cc6d372

<comment><USER2> "Those ordering early will have an opportunity to upgrade their purchases if they prefer whatever deluxe versions may appear in the coming few weeks."

A Steel version?</comment>


7 CRM Alternatives That Won't Break the Bank - <AUTHOR> http://blog.piesync.com/7-crm-alternatives/

<comment><USER2> I'll throw my solution into the ring I'm the founder of [https://touchingbase.io](https://touchingbase.io) and while we're not a CRM per say, we do help consultants and sales people land four or five figure deals by automating the parts of follow up that need to be automated and letting you personalise the parts that need to be personal. It integrates into your Gmail workflow so there's nothing new to learn or spend part of your day doing. We're against complete marketing automation and for helping you build long-term, trustworthy business relationships.</comment>


Woman's call to end video game misogyny sparks vicious online attacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/womans-call-to-end-video-game-misogyny-sparks-vicious-online-attacks/article4405585/ <comment><USER2> Linked article is scant on details. This all appears to concern this Kickstarter project, which is to create a series of videos that survey common themes to how women are represented in video games: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/566429325/tropes-vs- wome...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/566429325/tropes-vs-women-in- video-games)

Here is the author's blog, which has a lot of updates about the harassment she has received as a result of it: <http://www.feministfrequency.com/>

There are some truly shocking and disturbing things in here, like the screenshots from the "game" someone made where you can beat up a photo of her face: [http://www.feministfrequency.com/2012/07/image-based- harassm...](http://www.feministfrequency.com/2012/07/image-based-harassment- and-visual-misogyny/#more-3085)

<comment><USER3> > the screenshots from the "game" someone made

One person. They're obviously troubled. Are we really going to let the actions of one person change the frame of the whole discussion?

A game allowing you to beat up a woman is, I hope, repulsive to any HN reader. But its existence, especially when it's so easy these days, means nothing in and of itself. You could probably feed in any picture you like, man or woman. It's not a weighty factor in a discussion.

<comment><USER4> The game was made by one person, yes. But it's a little misleading to emphasize that this was "one person" when they were representative of the massive amounts of anti-feminist sentiment that was sent her way. If you look through the random sampling of comments her video garnered, it's hard to claim that the video game "changed the frame of the discussion" that was already well underway.

<comment><USER5> You aren't seeing a random sampling though, she deletes any comments that are critical of her work or her funding method. She only leaves comments that are supportive, and ones that are abusive trolling.

<comment> mkr-hn Do you have any evidence to back this up?

edit: papsosouid was unwilling to provide evidence. You can skip this subtree and not miss anything.

<comment><USER5> Not really, just first hand experience having her remove my post. You could consider the fact that there are no polite yet critical comments to her as evidence, but that could also be explained by there being absolutely no people who disagree with her and are polite.

<comment> mkr-hn That's not evidence. For all I know you posted a hateful screed and it deserved to be deleted.

<comment><USER5> I know it is not evidence. Which is why I said "not really". You are welcome to believe that there are no people in the world who disagree with her and are polite if you think that is a more likely explanation for the complete lack of polite criticism on channels she controls even though such polite criticism clearly does exist on channels she doesn't control. You are also welcome to believe that I posted a "hateful screed" and it was deleted, despite the obvious fact that she doesn't delete those, they are all still there to view right now, and she revels in them and uses them for publicity and sympathy.

<comment> mkr-hn "You are welcome to believe that there are no people in the world who disagree with her and are polite"

I did not say this.

"You are also welcome to believe that I posted a "hateful screed" and it was deleted"

I did not say this.

I asked for evidence. You're trying to divert attention from your failure to back a claim up.

<comment><USER5> I have tried to be polite, but you are being deliberately obtuse. Which part of "not really" is difficult to understand? I did not claim to have evidence, quite the contrary I told you clearly I do not have evidence. And I know you didn't say those things, but you would have to believe those things in order to explain the state of every communication channel she controls. Look up "implication" in the dictionary.

I am not trying to back up a claim for you. I do not care what you believe, you are not required to be rational. Believe whatever you like. But do try to at least be constructive if you wish to converse. Deliberately ignoring the words of the person you are responding to, and responding to the opposite of what they said is not productive.

<comment> mkr-hn You can start a blog if you want to make a serious accusation of censorship without backing it up. That sort of thing is usually discouraged in places where people try to discuss things intelligently.

<comment><USER5> Or I can share my personal experiences here on a forum for discussing our opinions. If I feel that I need your approval to speak in the future I'll be sure to ask.

<comment><USER6> You could simply show us what you wrote. More important than mere opinion on this forum is an actual _contribution_ to the to the overall discussion. A claim without support is not a significant contribution.

<comment><USER5> Do you save a copy of every comment you write anywhere in case it is rejected by the moderator and then someone randomly insists you must be a liar? I'm not sure if that is common, but it hasn't been a habit of mine. And what exactly would that accomplish? Would you actually believe me that my post was not approved, or would you and the other troll insist that I am just making it all up? I don't have proof remember?

This entire thread of "prove the sky is blue" has not been a contribution to the discussion, your post included. So, why continue it? I simply pointed out that looking at the comments that were allowed through does not necessarily reflect on what comments were posted. This is incredibly obvious, and it is rather sad that "durrr prove it" is the level of hypocritical non-discourse here.

Anyone (yourself included) can look at how there is rational, polite criticism of her work on independent channels like twitter. And anyone (yourself included still) can look at how there is no such criticism on channels she controls. So painting the response to her work as being only trolling bullshit by pointing only at the channels that have been wiped of other responses is dishonest.

<comment> mkr-hn You could have said "I have no examples and didn't think to keep a copy of mine." Everyone would have realized you were basing your claim of censorship on circumstantial evidence and a lone anecdote. This whole subthread could have been avoided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The kids on ebaum and 4chan love exploiting the mainstream worlds extreme sensitivity and political correctness with these "raids".

The fact that it was a post about misogyny that sparked it was probably just incidental. It's the fact that she demonstrated sensitivity to language and had an online presence made her the perfect target for such an attack.

Mainly because the most that these kids _can do_ in a raid is posting offensive things on web sites.

<comment><USER8> I don't really believe this. I've seen too much of the average gamer's opinions on women; this shouldn't be dismissed as a bunch of 4channers being 4channers. There are deep problems in the community and they need to be acknowledged and fought.

If you want to see how pervasive the problem is, there's a subreddit called ShitRedditSays which records horrible (and highly upvoted) submissions and comments. This is a real problem with real attitudes.

Edit: Ah yes, I should have known that mentioning SRS would garner such a reaction... people really don't seem to like being called out on their crappiness.

<comment><USER9> You're proving the parent's point. ShitRedditSays is a troll subreddit created by SomethingAwful forums. It's purpose is to parody the extreme outrage that occurs anytime something un-PC is said. The fact it has attracted some people who are actually serious is like how The Colbert Report has a conservative following.

<comment><USER10> Could you provide some background on that? I was under the impression that ShitRedditSays is an outgrowth of the attempt to embarass reddit into getting rid of the child porn subforum on their site.

<comment><USER11> Well, the obvious starting point is this[1] SA Thread that directly led to the Reddit-embarassing that resulted in the dropping of the pedo boards. You may or may not be able to view it, but the short version is that they created a "Reddit bomb"[2] and sent it to a number of news agencies. There is a followup thread which confirms that several goons were the some of the first SRS subreddit mods, but with the exception of the thread below, most Reddit threads end up getting shitcanned because of the eventual devolution of the thread. I'm hunting through the archives, but I'm unsure if the thread even exists anymore, as the search can't find it.

Edit: It doesn't exist in my post history anymore, so I'm pretty sure that entire thread was purged.

[1][http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=346...](http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3466025&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1)

[2]<http://pastebin.com/PenXAGz7>

<comment><USER10> A humanitarian mission from the Something Awful forums to combat the omnipresent misogyny on reddit to follow up on the successful removal of child porn might be ironic, unprecedented and doomed to fail, but I don't see why it's necessarily in bad faith or "trolls"?

<comment><USER9> Just an aside, it wasn't child porn, but the collation of _public photos_ of under-dressed minors. The witch-hunt associated was basically a witch-hunt against thoughtcrimes (the horror of someone wanking it to a minor), not against actual child abuse.

I feel this is important because I've used Reddit for years and I don't think it's fair to associate them with child porn, because they have _never_ tolerated child porn.

<comment><USER12> Actually, most of the images were swiped from girls' Facebook and Photobucket accounts without their permission. These were definitely not meant to be spread around for wanking material.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Off Topic:

It's rather interesting to note that as a society we have advanced enough to the point that we can donate the resources to support roughly 3 average size families for a year to a "pop culture critic" to study _video games_.

No condemnations or moral objections, just merely stating an interesting observation.

<comment><USER14> > we can donate the resources to support roughly 3 average size families for a > year to a "pop culture critic"

At least she is attempting to advance society. If you want to feel depressed, 209 _million_ USD was spent on <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship_(film)>.

209 million.

<comment><USER15> In another light, society, using pricing as a communication signal, has determined that its value is worth 100 million USD more than its cost. I'm not sure whether that's less or more depressing.

> The film has earned $64,372,300 in North America, as of July 9, 2012, and > $236,650,220 in other countries, as of June 28, 2012, for a worldwide total > of $301,022,520.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I find it humorous that someone claiming the throne of righteousness and correctness about rising above the evil men dominating the world of video games has reacted to criticism by posting a drawing branding men (and ONLY men) as "trolls" (accompanied with a 'hss' sound effect, even! [1],) yet somehow has the unmitigated temerity to complain about sexism. Plank in your eye and all that.

[1]: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/566429325/tropes-vs- wome...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/566429325/tropes-vs-women-in- video-games/posts/247064)

<comment><USER17> > criticism

There's a line between criticism and what happened to her. Are you seriously comparing a cartoon mocking non-specific trolls* to sustained abusive material (and doxing) aimed directly at an individual target?

*One of the trolls in that picture is most likely male, the others (smaller ones) are really non-descript and genderless. Are you sure this isn't just a case of you using "male" as the default gender for an androgynous picture?

<comment><USER18> Hey, merely comparing two things does not mean anyone is implying they're equivalent in weight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd like to make a point of clarification with the article.

 _The woman, Californian blogger Anita Sarkeesian, had her Wikipedia page locked after it was hacked repeatedly with profanity, lies and pornography_

You can't "hack" a Wikipedia page. Anyone can edit Wikipedia, and the actions described above are vandalism, not hacking.

</comment><comment><USER20> Any call to end any kind of specific artistic expression is (rightly) going to be met with resistance and derision. Whether that be sex, swearing, misogyny, what have you.

Attacks are of course going too far, but not expecting _some_ form of legitimate resistance is naive, at best. Combine that with the outrage the internet tends to generate, and this behavior, while reprehensible, shouldn't come as a surprise.

Morals never have, never do, and never will dictate art. The sooner people recognize that the answer to something offending your sensibilities is to move on from that particular thing, rather than writing screeds which will be ignored by the perpetrators at best and heckled at worst, the happier we'll all be.

*edit Guess that's what I get for not reading the link. Site's being websense'd, so I can't actually see it. Thanks for the editorialized, BS headline, submitter > : (

<comment><USER21> Has Sarkeesian made a "call to end any kind of specific artistic expression", though? Last I heard, she just wants to make a documentary or two exploring the treatment of women in video games.

If she's trying to highlight a disgusting trend of misogyny in gaming culture, I would say she is doing an excellent job.

<comment><USER22> It will probably just end up like her last Tropes vs Women series where she banned all movies and television and forcibly castrated every male director and screenwriter. How do we keep letting her get away with this stuff? /s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is her cause any different from those, who want to portrait video games as glorify violence and concluding therefore that they makes grownups more violent?

Sure, she wants to just "research" it, but by the position taking in the proposal the outcome seems already quite "expectable".

<comment><USER24> Her cause is different because her documentary wants to explore stereotypes of female characters in popular video games. It's not about how this leads to ... whatever you think she claims this to leads to.

The outcome of her exploration is 'expectable' because it's self-evident. I'm an avid gamer. To put it mildly, in comparison to video games, Isaac Asimov's portrayal of female characters had more depth, grace and truth in them.

Considering how abysmal Asimov was in this matter...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is one of those situations where one should be very careful with concluding anything.

As I read and understood it the misogyny in effect is for instance female players being sent pictures of mens penises. Not that different from what we know from the chat roulette experiment.

Now that is obviously bad style but it's definitely not something that only exist in games and media and thus treating it as if it's something specific to media or games is probably what created the outcry (not defending it just explaining it). Try and go to a disco and see the hot ladies being hit on from all sides.

In some countries they suppress this behavior by forcing the women to wear vails so no one can see them and stoning them to death for adultery.

Whether receiving "dick shots" is the other side of men and woman having equal rights I am not sure, but calling an end to misogony is like calling and end men.

I wish her luck.

<comment><USER26> I'm a man and somehow I manage not to send women photographs of my member. So no, it is not like calling for an end to men. If all the men you know are like that, you need to meet some better men.

<comment><USER25> Do you know this expression?

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Well personally I'm disappointed at you internet. You should be getting mad at things that make sense, not someone who wants to educate people and make a documentary...

</comment><comment><USER28> As of right now (an hour after the story was submitted), there is not a single top level comment here sympathetic to the woman in question. Interesting.

<comment><USER29> I don't think this is necessarily a reflection of HN's biases.

Rather, there is simply little new to be said about this in a vacuum: yes, there is a problem with sexism and yes, the reaction to her project is disgusting (regardless of your stance on the issue) but all that is clear from the article. What more to say about it? I suppose people could offer sympathy --certainly a nice gesture--but not with much substance. Since she probably does not read HN, those types comments would not be very useful at all.

So most of the people agreeing with the article do not really have a good reason to post at the top level. On the other hand, they have plenty of reason to respond to other people. So the sympathetic posts are all framed as responses to others' comments largely because there isn't much to respond to in the article.

<comment><USER30> It follows the trend of other Hacker News threads. Other threads on SRS/reddit have gone the same way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Since we're in the mood to call an end to unrealistic portrayals of people's fantasies, I think it's about time we demanded an end to romance novels.

</comment><comment><USER32> Her project is funded at 2600%. Why bother with internet trolls? They certainly won't go away because you appeal to them with facts or pleas. The only response is to ignore them.

<comment><USER5> The trolls are why it was funded to 2600%. She didn't ignore them, she didn't delete their posts. She used them to drum up publicity and sympathy. She doesn't want to ignore them, they are her best ally. That's why the "after 4chan stopped trolling her, she got some people to keep reposting the troll comments anyways" conspiracy theory is so popular.

<comment><USER33> Are you seriously suggesting that someone who is the target of a campaign of harassment is "using" the aggressors as a way to boost their visibility? The reason why this project blew up is because other people saw what was happening and decided to donate to the Kickstarter project.

Further, these people are not anyone's ally, least of all the person who is being attacked. You are very deliberately saying that she deserves what she gets and that it is her fault that she is being attacked and doxed. This is 100% victim blaming and you yourself are not only siding with the mysoginistic aggressors, but being one.

<comment><USER5> >Are you seriously suggesting that someone who is the target of a campaign of harassment is "using" the aggressors as a way to boost their visibility?

Yes. And you agree in your next sentence, the reason it blew up is because of all the trolling.

>You are very deliberately saying that she deserves what she gets and that it is her fault that she is being attacked and doxed.

I said nothing of the sort, what on earth are you talking about? I said she doesn't ignore the trolls as the parent poster suggested, because the trolls are how she got so over funded, and how she is trying to further this event into a career. How exactly is "she is being smart and taking advantage of the trolls, so it is not in her best interests to ignore them" blaming her for being attacked? Glad you can tell I hate women from your imagined version of me saying things that don't even vaguely resemble anything I said though.

<comment><USER34> What proof do you have to support your claims that she's milking this?

<comment><USER5> The fact that she approaches media outlets with the story? The fact that her funding didn't happen until she did this? The fact that she didn't delete the comments, or ignore the comments, but rather focused all of her efforts on talking about those comments? Even to the exclusion of talking about the actual project itself that she was trying to get funded.

Why do you seem to think it is some kind of sinister plot? If you were trying to get funding, and someone threw a golden opportunity to generate a ton more publicity and exposure into your lap, wouldn't you take advantage of it?

<comment><USER34> The question is: Why do YOU think it's some kind of plot?

If someone who is embarking on a project to expose and discuss misogyny suddenly finds themselves on the receiving end of vicious misogynous attacks, would it not make sense to bring that to the fore? After all, the sheer viciousness of the attacks only serves to prove that misogyny is alive and well, and most importantly, damaging.

Bringing inconvenient truths to light goes to the very heart of journalism.

<comment><USER5> >would it not make sense to bring that to the fore

My entire post was exactly that, that it _does_ makes sense. Again, why do you think this is something sinister?

<comment><USER34> I hadn't noticed your other trolling comments in this thread. I won't waste any more time on you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> She was interviewed on CBC radio recently: <http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/The+Current/ID/2252831223/>

The piece has a lot more details plus interviews with women working in the gaming industry.

</comment><comment><USER36> Women are portrayed in video games the same way and for the same reasons they are portrayed on TV and in magazines. This is ridiculous.

<comment><USER37> So nothing should change ? And when asking to change how women are represented in TV ... what if they say : "Hey, women are portrayed in TV the same way and for the same reasons they are portrayed on video games and in magazines. This is ridiculous."

Your argument, is a fallacy.

<comment><USER36> Well, they didn't say that, you did.

<comment><USER38> You can imply something without saying it directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> How did this story already get buried to the second page of HN, when there are half a dozen of stories with roughly the same age and votes in the first half of the first page? I can even see a 4h older post with the exact same number of votes, still in the first page. I don't like to be cynical but it's hard not to notice the exceptionally angry comments against this topic and the oddly low position of this thread.

<comment><AUTHOR> If I may be permitted:

If you try to talk about misogyny on a forum that is 98% male, you're going to have a bad time.

<comment><USER30> It's a Hacker News things. There are forums that fortunately are perfectly able to have a level-headed discussion about this.

You need to narrow it down to more than "a forum that is 98% male" - but I'll grant you that the sample size is really, really small.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> full disclosure: i'm a kickstarter backer of this project, however...

the article title is exaggerated linkbait: Sarkeesian's project is a sociological exploration of the representation of women in video games, NOT a call to end videogame misogyny. while i'm sure that she'd like 'end video game misogyny', that's not the immediate point of this project

</comment><comment><USER5> Why is this suddenly a big deal now? These "punch random annoying celebrity X" flash games have been around since the 90s. I don't see Justin Bieber desperately trying to drum up more media attention even though a dozen people have made the same game out of his face. But of course, it is a horrible crime to do it to a "feminist", that's totally different right?

Also, it is sad and ironic that losttrap (the guy who made the game) has gotten just as much abuse from the feminists as Anita got in the first place. They thought it was terrible when it happened to Anita, but are perfectly happy to do the same thing themselves. It is especially bad to see how much of their abuse has focused on his sexuality.

<comment><USER39> _Why is this suddenly a big deal now?_

What do you mean it's a "big deal"? Is it a "big deal" because people are talking about it? Are you not cool with that?

Someone is doing a cultural study and is getting attacked for it. Some of us think that's worthy of our attention.

You've written 11% of the comments of this thread (13 comments out of 117), and they are mostly angry/poisonous. If you don't agree that this has importance, why don't you move somewhere else? You'd do a favor to this thread and trust me, yourself.

<comment><USER5> Yes, in this context a "big deal" refers to media coverage of a non-event. Are you not cool with that?

There is no cultural study involved here, someone is making a series of videos where she reads tvtropes pages. You are correct, she was attacked for it, but that's not what this article is about. This is about the "game" that was made of hitting her, which was not in response to her making videos, but rather a response to her (quite successful) attempts to portray everyone critical of her as a lunatic. The "if I am going to get accused of being crazy, I am going to act like" approach. Not a very effective approach I don't think, but characterizing it as an attack on her for doing a study is inaccurate.

None of my comments are angry or poisonous, one is frustrated with the strawman repeating troll. While you are counting and categorizing my comments in this thread, perhaps you noticed how many are responses to people directly asking me questions? If you want me to post less, why did you also directly ask me questions? Do you not want me to answer them?

I'm not sure why you are so upset that I don't share your opinion on something, so much so that you would like me to just go away so you aren't inconvenienced by my presence. But your arrogance and condescension is very impressive, I am pleased to know that you have my best interests at heart and know what is best for me. I will be sure to refrain from sharing my opinion in the future before consulting you on its correctness.

<comment><USER39> _media coverage of a non-event_

 _There is no cultural study involved here, someone is making a series of videos where she reads tvtropes pages._

That's what I meant. You clearly don't care about this study (yes, it's a cultural study) or about its author.

Beats me how someone who doesn't care about something can be so invested on it, and I usually don't try to give advice to strangers, thing is, I'm tired of seeing people like you hijacking debates about misogyny, by completely missing the point from the top of a pedestal of "I'm beyond all this" yet injecting negativity in the discussion with a disproportionate amount of energy.

Maybe I'm projecting a way too big and way too ugly pattern on you, which might be unfair. But then, tough luck man. You're all over this thread (17 comments, you must be going for the record) basically pounding the same key.

 _If you want me to post less, why did you also directly ask me questions?_

You might find it liberating to not reply to every reply, even if they contain critiques and/or question marks.

<comment><USER5> >Beats me how someone who doesn't care about something can be so invested on it

Why do you think that because I don't find her as valuable as you do, that I have no interest in the reaction to the kickstarter, and the reaction to the "game" this article was about?

>Maybe I'm projecting a way too big and way too ugly pattern on you

It is interesting that you are aware of it, yet continue to do it. And again, hypocritically trying to shame me into silence because you don't like my opinion, while also being "all over this thread" saying the same thing. Oh no! Contrary opinions! Save me!

>You might find it liberating to not reply to every reply, even if they contain critiques and/or question marks.

I don't find conversation to be stressful or otherwise detrimental to my well being. It is actually quite a common phenomenon, and really nothing to be concerned about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I find it interesting that a feminist would rather invest her time studying social phenomenons involving videogames and legos in detriment of issues such as women being forced to marry their rapists or even killed because of them. Additionally, I'm not sure why she needs backing for this project. She clearly has a high quality camera and the means to produce high quality video footage, as presented in the kickstarter page.

<comment><USER42> Don't hold her up to a standard that even you can't live up to. I don't agree with a lot of her bullshit but she's onto something that needs to be talked about and discussed. Rather than asking "why doens't she do X instead of Y, Y is so much more important". Why don't YOU do X or Y? If we stand for internet freedom why aren't we all protesting or campaigning or working on an alliance instead of browing HN all day?</comment></comment>


Why renewables are 'safer and cheaper' than nuclear power - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12960655

<comment><USER2> BUT: 1) Renewable don't allow CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels to be retired. 2) Growing plants to burn will stress an already stressed agricultural system. 3) The "dangers" of nuclear power are overstated. Many more people die in the generation of electricity from coal than in the generation of electricity from nuclear fuel. And those numbers generally ignore the costs of global warming.

<comment><AUTHOR> Growing plants to burn? What?

They're talking about things like solar power, or wind farms.

Where do you get growing plants to burn from that?

And, as for the deaths from nuclear power:

 _"Nearly one million people around the world died from exposure to radiation released by the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl reactor, finds a new book from the New York Academy of Sciences published today on the 24th anniversary of the meltdown at the Soviet facility."_

<http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/04/26>

Excerpts from the book here:

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.2009.1181.is...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.2009.1181.issue-1/issuetoc)

<comment><USER2> Growing plants to burn is a renewable energy source (or can be). The plants grow, using energy from sunlight to convert CO2 from the atmosphere into burnable material and oxygen. This burnable material, can later be burned to generate energy. Fossil fuels release CO2, the carbon for which which has been sequestered from a previous era. Since CO2 levels have been rising, it is clear that the ability of the plants to re-sequester the carbon from the released CO2 has been exceeded.

When comparing the costs of nuclear versus other energy sources, it helps to consider the cost per kilowatt from each source and to include all of the impacts. For example, what is the cost of coal fired electricity generation? What is the cost, in human lives, of acid rain? of decreased fisheries, of pollution, of global warming, and so forth. I believe, when you consider all of the costs--economic and social--that nuclear power comes out pretty well compared to conventional fossil fuel generation. I also believe that many of the so-called sustainable renewable energy sources, when critically examined over their full lifetime, do not fare well against convention sources.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Working at digital agency company vs. startup - <AUTHOR> I've been working at the start-up for little more than three years after graduating. And had a question what would be the life in working at digital agency. If I work at the digital agency, will I be learning less than working at start-up? <comment><USER2> Things you learn at an agency:

1) How to work with clients and help them launch new ideas.

2) How to work quickly and efficiently to launch quickly, with no real responsibility for long term maintenance.

3) Lots of new technologies, based on what clients want and what helps you accomplish #2 quickly.

4) A healthy network of well rounded and skilled individuals in sales, design, and project management.

Now, here's what you won't learn at an agency:

1) How to scale fast growing systems efficiently.

2) Real systems engineering that makes things last.

3) Growth hacking techniques or anything else related to user acquisition.

4) How to hire and manage highly skilled individuals that can do all of the above.

In short, you'll learn different skills, some complimentary, some not. I think agency work is great for learning how to start a startup or a new venture, but it likely won't give you the skills you need to keep a company running and growing.

<comment><USER3> This is a great list. I couldn't agree more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's hard to generalize. In the same way that not all startups are created equal, this is even truer for digital agencies. And even different offices within the agency network.

There's a lot of great work coming from agencies [1][2]. But there's also several agencies that are just doing busy work, making a living by getting basic digital production work done.

If you have an offer from a digital agency, I'd look carefully at:

1) the type of work you'll be doing (and, more specifically, which clients)

2) to whom you'll report to, and the experience of your peers

3) what this agency has done in the past, that you think would add value to your career.

Good luck! If you need help assessing your options, feel free to drop me a note. Email on my profile.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinder_(programming_library)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinder_\(programming_library\))

[2] [http://www.compositeframework.io/](http://www.compositeframework.io/)

EDIT: having said that, there's good things to learn on both. A startup teaches you to be flexible, and to move fast, be lean, focus on the product. Agencies teach you to scale things, to get the work done in teams, to work with enterprise clients.

</comment><comment><USER5> The basic difference (and of course it depends to some degree) will likely be:

\- at a startup you learn how to make users happy.

\- at an agency you will learn how to make clients happy.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think it would come down to the people you work with and the companies themselves. In some ways you're comparing apples to oranges.</comment>


Solving pocket Rubik's cube (2*2*2) using Z3 and SAT solver - <AUTHOR> https://yurichev.com/blog/rubik/ <comment><USER2> This is pretty cool. I tried a while back to make it a bit easier to solve these types of problems where you have a start state, end state, and possible transitions and restrictions, and want to determine the transitions needed to get from start to end using a CNF solver. Here's the Rubik's cube example [1]. Currently uses MiniSat on the backend. It's pretty domain specific as languages go, but for certain problems it works well.

[1] [http://sabrlang.org/rubik/](http://sabrlang.org/rubik/)

[2] [http://sabrlang.org/code/rubik/source.txt](http://sabrlang.org/code/rubik/source.txt)

[3] [https://github.com/dbunker/SABR](https://github.com/dbunker/SABR)

<comment><USER3> I was just looking for a DSL for instruction set selection and load/store optimization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Though the "define center colors" approach sounds reasonable, a R/L' turn (and T/B' and F/R') are effectively equal, leaving you with {R; T; F; R'; T'; F'; 2R; 2T; 2F} = 9 possibilities by having the bottom-rear-left cubelet at a constant position. (31 billion nodes when the graph is not trimmed whatsoever by removing redundant moves.)

<comment><USER5> In the same vein, it seems like evaluating the positions of the "cubelets" instead of "facelets" would reduce computation time a fair amount (8 values to keep track of instead of 24).

<comment><USER4> Shouldn't that be 8*2 values since the rotation of the cubelets is also important? (I haven't done much research on graph-trimming rubik's cubes, so I'm not quite sure about this.)

<comment><USER6> It turns out that the orientation of the cutlets is enough to define the entire state. This is also true of the 3x3x3 cube. Each one can have one of 24 orientations, and the position can be determined by the orientation. To prove to yourself that this is true, consider a completed cube centered at the origin and define each pieces geometry in world coordinates. All cube manipulations consist of rotations around one of the 3 axis, there are no translations. There are 24 orientations possible.

Given that, the 2x2x2 cube can be encoded as 8 orientations with 24 value for each. This results in a maximum of 24^8 cube positions or about 100 billion, many of which are not actually valid. So one could start with the solved cube and do a breadth first exploration of the entire space. You'd scan an array of 100B positions for any one that has a known solution (the complete cube is initially the only one). For each position with a known solution, make all possible moves from there and record the move required to solve the cube at any new positions reached. Repeat until no new positions can be reached.

Someone said the 2x2x2 cube can always be solved in 11 moves or less, so 11 scans across a 100B possible positions will be sufficient to create a database of optimal moves to solve from any position. This should be reasonable to do.

As I think about this, on the small cube turning one face has the same effect as turning the opposite one the other direction. So we could start by picking one corner and turn the entire cube so that corner is in final position. From that point, only 4 faces could be turned either CW or CCW, so encoding a move would require 3 or 4 bits, and there would be 1/24 as many positions because the one cubelet is not movable. This would be about 4-5 billions positions which would fit in RAM on a lot of modern laptops or a DVD.

<comment><USER4> I had expected something like this knowing that it's impossible to solve a 3x3x3 after assembling it with a corner rotated incorrectly. Thanks for this insight!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is an interesting approach, but remark that the 2x2x2 cube can be simply brute-forced (which does not quite work well for 3x3x3) ...

E.g. using Java:

      import java.util.*;

      /* usage: javac R222.java && java R222 >db.txt */
      public class R222 {
        private final static String SOLVED = "RRRRYYYYBBBBOOOOWWWWGGGG";

        private final static int op0[] = {1,3,0,2,21,20,6,7,4,5,10,11,12,13,14,15,9,8,18,19,16,17,22,23};
        private final static int op1[] = {0,1,8,10,5,7,4,6,15,9,14,11,12,13,20,22,16,17,18,19,3,21,2,23};
        private final static int op2[] = {0,19,2,17,4,1,6,3,9,11,8,10,12,7,14,5,16,13,18,15,20,21,22,23};

        private static String update(String cfg, int op) {
            char new_cfg[] = new char[24];
            int targets[] = op == 0 ? op0 : (op == 1 ? op1 : op2);

            for (int i=0; i<24; i++)
                new_cfg[i] = cfg.charAt(targets[i]);

            return new String(new_cfg);
        }

        private static void makeDB() {
            Map<String, String> tree = new HashMap<String, String>();
            Map<String, String> tmp_tree = new HashMap<String, String>();

            tree.put(SOLVED, "");
            tmp_tree.put(SOLVED, "");

            while (tmp_tree.size() > 0) {
                Map<String, String> new_tree = new HashMap<String, String>();

                for (Map.Entry<String,String> entry : tmp_tree.entrySet()) {
                    String cfg = entry.getKey();
                    String ops = entry.getValue();

                    for (int op=0; op<3; op++) {
                        String new_cfg = update(cfg, op);
                        if (!tree.containsKey(new_cfg)) {
                            tree.put(new_cfg, ops + op);
                            new_tree.put(new_cfg, ops + op);
                        }
                    }
                }

                tmp_tree = new_tree;
            }

            for (Map.Entry<String,String> entry : tree.entrySet())
                System.out.println(entry.getKey() + ": '" + entry.getValue() + "'");
        }

        public static void main(String[] args) {
            makeDB();
        }
      }

We get 3674160 configurations and it takes just ~20 seconds (and most of the time is spent doing IO anyway).

      $ java R222 | wc -l
      3674160

This might be useful to evaluate the number of moves (remark that we do "half- turns" here and in the case of 2x2x2 there are just 3 operations).

//edit: TreeMap -> HashMap

</comment><comment><USER8> You might be interested to also look at how computational group theory software tackles the problem. AFAICT, it can't search for minimal solution, but it find solutions quite quickly. I think group theory captures more (all?) of the structure of the problem than SAT.

[https://www.gap-system.org/Doc/Examples/rubik.html](https://www.gap- system.org/Doc/Examples/rubik.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how good A-star would be at solving something like this? The hard part would be figuring out a good heuristic, but I bet with some experimentation you could come up with something (number of correct facelets, or cubelets, or number of moves to correctly place all cubelets if they moved independently...).

Probably hard to make the heuristic admissable though, so the solution wont be optimal.

<comment><USER10> For larger Rubik's cubes, a naive A* won't cut it, as it still has exponential growth. Iterative deepening A* built atop a pattern database has worked well though. This paper from 1997 also discusses heuristics -

[https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall06/cos402/p...](https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall06/cos402/papers/korfrubik.pdf)

And since I'm pulling from Udacity's AI course anyway, might as well provide this; the 3x3 has been fully solved. Depending on the metric -

[http://www.cube20.org/](http://www.cube20.org/) or [http://www.cube20.org/qtm](http://www.cube20.org/qtm)

<comment><USER9> The point with having a good heuristic is to avoid having to walk the vast majority of the search space, so I wouldn't have thought the exponential growth was that big of a problem. But I guess it's harder than I thought.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Uh oh, that Rubik's cube at the bottom doesn't look correctly solved; I think you might have an issue there.

<comment><USER12> I can not see a better way than this comment to prove that one did not read the article.

<comment><USER13> _" However, you can use 3.3.3 cube to play, because it can act as 2.2.2 cube: just use corners and ignore edge and center cubes. Here is mine I used, you can see that corners are correctly solved:"_</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you use a "git for data"? - sha1-1b141e Dear HN:
Let's say there was a thing that gave you the full git workflow (branch, sync, push, pull, merge, revert, etc) efficiently for large-scale structured data.
Would such a thing be valuable? Would you use it? Would you pay for it?
Asking for a friend. <comment><AUTHOR> What sort of structured data are we talking about?

If you format an XML or JSON file with one field per line (or just use YAML) git itself should fit the bill perfectly.

Now, I do see lots of room for a git-like tool targeted at specific existing binary file formats. Microsoft Office and Photoshop files come to mind off the top of my head. (I believe that such tools already exist for those particular formats, but they're expensive and currently have low adoption.)

<comment> sha1-1b141e Any kind. JSON or XML could be input. Or things like SQL or protobufs.

Git itself doesn't work well for large-scale data ([https://help.github.com/articles/what-is-my-disk- quota/](https://help.github.com/articles/what-is-my-disk-quota/)). I'm thinking terabyte or petabyte datasets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Relevant: GitHub Large File Storage [https://git-lfs.github.com/](https://git- lfs.github.com/)

On paying for this. When data operations are built around pipelines, it's often easier to re-run the pipeline or restore a snapshot. Which requires a good server, but not a service. So before paying, I'd check why the new tool is better.

<comment> sha1-1b141e Yeah, except that this is not really built into Git. You can't get detailed differences or merge differences in these large files. They are basically opaque blobs as far as Git is concerned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> From my experience in enterprise business intelligence, absolutely yes but more for the tracking rather than the ability to roll back changes. Data lineage is an important concept and is extremely valuable from a compliance perspective. The key would be can your system integrate with existing data sources?

You'll also likely be going up against Informatica if you want to play in the Enterprise space. That said, I'm also interested in a solution like yours as we're rolling out our own automation system but need to keep track of things for compliance reasons.

Would be happy to have a chat.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would use it for storing and tracking specifications if this is a possible usage. In regulatory compliance, there is always a need to know what the specification was at some point in time.

However, any system would have to be available on a private internal network for most places.

</comment><comment><USER5> 'dat jawn: git for tabular data': [https://github.com/CfABrigadePhiladelphia/jawn](https://github.com/CfABrigadePhiladelphia/jawn)

</comment><comment><USER6> What advantage would this have over using something like a log table? Or a few SQL(or whatever) commands?

<comment><USER7> Or something like Datomic ([http://www.datomic.com/](http://www.datomic.com/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Dat project?...</comment>


Stein – Use Google Sheets as your no-setup database - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/SteinHQ/Stein <comment><USER2> I like the concept because db tables are really just files. And big data is just working w actual files (parquet) that are big.

</comment><comment><USER2> Would a queryset be performed here on the data object?

`.then(data`</comment>


Google to Open Project Fi to iPhone, Samsung, and OnePlus This Week - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/27/18114662/google-project-fi-apple-iphone-samsung-oneplus-rumor <comment><USER2> Hmmm... I'm curious, would provider-switching still work with those phones? or would those phones be stuck on a single provider?

<comment><USER3> Even if it doesn't, T-Mobile only wouldn't bother me (as a current T-Mobile user). The pricing is great and the international roaming works a lot better than T-Mobile's own slow but unlimited solution.

<comment><USER4> You can already do that AFAIK. I don't think you need anything special if you just want to use t-mo all the time.</comment></comment></comment>


Netflix Will Charge One Dollar More for Its Standard Plan - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/10/netflix-will-charge-one-dollar-standard-plan/ <comment><USER2> Streaming become more popular media channels and Netflix is becoming one of the most popular streaming media in the US. People will still pay the extra $1 because they still have the desire to continue watching their favorite TV shows unless there are cheaper streaming media available. With the new package, two people can share the service so it is not really the bad thing when Netflix increase $1 more.

</comment><comment><USER3> Darn, right when I was contemplating resubscribing. I guess I'll make do with Amazon Prime for a while longer.</comment>


Foxconn buys Belkin for $866M - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/26/foxconn-buys-peripheral-maker-belkin-for-866m/ <comment><USER3> > You probably know Belkin for its various lines of accessories, peripherals, > and assorted consumer electronics; Linksys, surely the most recognizable > router brand, is a subsidiary.

Apparently Cisco sold Linksys to Belkin in 2013. That's news to me.

<comment><USER4> Cisco had money burning a hole in their pocket and bought a some consumer stuff and then had no idea what to do with it ... so they sold most of it off, or simply discontinued it (like flip video).

<comment><USER5> they discontinued flip video because after the acquisition they didn't really understand the consumer and then GoPro came and they got wreckt

<comment><USER6> I think the bigger problem was cellphones, especially the iPhone, gaining the ability to record decent video.

Flip filled a convenient niche for a few years until the 3GS came along with video support, after which it was useless for many consumers. This was the only reason I bought a Flip, and the only reason anyone else I know with one did.

Similarly, I think the first mainstream smartphones to record HD video wasn't until 2010. Again flip had a small window with their HD models before cellphones killed them again.

At least GoPro have (had?) a good story around their mounts and waterproofing, there was nothing in my opinion a Flip did that cellphones didn't very quickly do better.

<comment><USER5> This is true. I think the iPhone did the same thing to Garmin GPS and other single-purpose hardware companies. They all lost so much of their market.

Apple already knew people were buying and would continue to buy these things, and their innovation was just putting it all into one device. So you could buy a Garmin GPS and a Flip video camera, and end up spending $300-$500 total and carry 2 devices around, or you could just buy an iPhone 3GS for $199 and also make phone calls with it.

I'm still trying to figure out the $1,000 price tag of an iPhone nowadays however. Where is the substance behind that price? (And I own an iPhone, apple watch, iPad Pro, a Macbook Pro, and a Macbook air, so I really doo appreciate a good product, just can't comprehend the value proposition of a $1000 iPhone.)

<comment><USER7> You do realize that no iPhone ever has cost $199 and that the price was subsidized right?

<comment><USER5> The 16GB iPhone 3GS debuted for $199 with a contract from AT&T.

People were still going to have mobile phone contracts. The smartphone replaced their cell phone just like it replaced their Garmin GPS and their Flip video camera and their pocket planner. It was a compelling proposition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The only good Belkin product I have ever seen is their 12 outlet power strip. As a network engineer everything they make with an Ethernet/wifi interface is complete shit. But this is not really news, D-Link, Netgear, many of their competitors are also junk.

<comment><USER9> Do you have any recommendations for alternatives?

<comment><USER8> Separate the function of wifi and router. My home office, which is bottlenecked by the docsis3.0 last mile, is on a Ubiquiti edgerouter-x ($46) router. And then a single ubnt UAP-AC 2X2 MIMO, dual band 802.11ac AP ($79).

The OS on the ubnt edgerouter series is a fork of vyatta, which is Debian based.

Also for people who know what they are doing, a mikrotik rb3011 would be a good choice.

<comment><USER10> I've generally found the Ubiquiti hardware to be a fair bit better than Mikrotik stuff (way better forwarding speeds with the accelerated Cavium processors in the EdgeRouters - except the ER-X, which doesn't have the hardware offload but is still useful). I find their web UI far less confusing too. I know some guys who have used Mikrotiks a lot and swear by it, but unless you're already experienced with Mikrotik interfaces I'd recommend the Ubiquiti.

They also have a really good command line interface - which is lucky, because the biggest downside with the Ubiquitis is that some (generally more obscure and advanced) features can't be configured through the web UI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Damn, I didn't know Foxconn was the 4th larges IT company with 726k employees: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_informatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_information_technology_companies)

<comment><USER12> 726k is _4th_ ?

<comment><USER13> ranked by revenue. By employee count, it is the largest

<comment><USER5> that's how you know it's heavily inflated by manual labor / factory staff

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It is a little disconcerting that Foxconn (subject to deep Chinese government overreach) will now own Linksys

<comment><USER15> Foxconn is Taiwanese like Asus, Acer, Gigabyte, MSI, MediaTek, D-Link, and HTC. Both Asus and D-Link are major router makers as well.

Also fun fact, nearly all routers use the same chips from Boardcom. The majority of differences between routers is just firmware and packaging, the guts are all the same.

<comment><USER16> It's a RoC

<comment><USER15> Taiwan and China are quite distinct. It is not at all like Hong Kong and China.

Details: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross- Strait_relations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Strait_relations)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just today I contacted Belkin live support for a usb-c gigabit Ethernet adapter that stopped working 1 month in. They are shipping me a replacement.

My previous experience was with a router that would occasionally fail under load (e.g., torrents), requiring a restart. They sent a replacement for that, too, but I never found a use for an unreliable router.

</comment><comment><USER15> Neat. Belkin was pretty crap about 7 years or so ago but they raised their game I find in the last couple years. They are pretty solid with decent prices now.

I think there is a pretty good market for smart home accessories, various wifi enabled devices like powerstrips, lights, cameras, locks, alarm systems, etc. With Belkin's Walmart distribution network and their low costs, I think it may be something they could target well.

<comment><USER18> last belkin items I had were:

* an outlet multipler/usb charging thing - <USER2>

* lighting cables of various lengths - all died

maybe I have bad luck, but it seems to me like they are still making garbage.

<comment><USER8> If you want good quality third party chargers and USB cables - buy Anker

<comment><USER19> If Anker is so great, why don't they have TÜV/CCC/UL certified power supplies?

<comment><USER20> Process of certification is heavy on cash, need some weird certifications? Price of products will increase and customers will be hurt as a result (just to make some minor portion of customers happy).

<comment><USER19> I don't buy it. As long as their products aren't certified, I won't buy them. Besides when you look at the reviews on Amazon, some of their chargers allegedly catch fire or start to smell like burning plastic...

<comment><USER20> Their products are obviously CE certified and some of them are PSE certified. Good enough for me.

Edit: Needless to say, certifications are bullshit anyway, it's just a waiver for lawyers - Samsung Galaxy Note 7 had all possible certification, yet it was as more dangerous than any Anker product.

<comment><USER21> CE isn't a certification. It is a standard that suppliers claim to adhere to. It relies entirely on their word, but is not verified at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Was it Foxconn that was blocked from acquiring an American company earlier this month? Is this acquisition a order of magnitude smaller?

Is it strange that this wasn't blocked as well?

<comment><USER23> I think you're referring to Broadcom trying to acquire Qualcomm. Very different situation. This is a good breakdown of why that was blocked: [https://stratechery.com/2018/qualcomm-national-security- and-...](https://stratechery.com/2018/qualcomm-national-security-and-patents/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16684316](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16684316)

</comment><comment><USER25> According to sources, Foxconn really didn't want to buy Belkin but that's all they had at the store.

</comment><comment><USER26> foxconn makes routers for all the vendors I think, e.g. dlink.netgear,belkin...now Belkin might push its competitors away from Foxconn's assembly lines

</comment><comment><USER27> Just confirmed with my relative who works ta Belkin, Dubai. They just finished call with them.. and news is already leaked.

</comment><comment><USER28> i honestly would think that Belkin would be worth something in the billions. they are the qtip of computer cables.

</comment><comment><USER29> Hm. I wonder what will happen to Linksys supporting open source WiFi drivers now for their WRT/ACS routers.

<comment><USER30> Did they ever make meaningful contributions? I recall when they first revived the WRT branding, they promised open-source support for the Marvell chipsets they were now using, but it took an extremely long time for any code to show up, and it was far from being in a state to upstream. I haven't paid close attention since then, but I don't recall running across any mention that Linksys was directly helping improve the open-source Marvell drivers.

<comment><USER29> It's not upstreamed, but it's regularly updated: [https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi](https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi)

I think @yuhhaurlin works for Linksys, but I'm not sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Does Belkin own Kensington and former joystick brand Gravis too?

</comment><comment> a-fried-egg Good thing for Netgear

</comment><comment><USER32> > best known for manufacturing practically everything in the world

Huh? I thought they manufacture iPhone chips and that's it. Now they buy peripherals because iphone itself won't make enough profit growth anymore to give top management the multi-million-dollar bonuses they are used to.</comment>


If you are not a user ,you are probably not going to build anything great. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/f9a77d6b3461

<comment><USER2> I agree with the premise of the article but I don't get the India comparison. Sure they might not be a consumerist society, but then maybe services work better there? You can't say the replica fails just because they aren't consumers. It's more like they shouldn't be trying to replicate Silicon Valley but rather build a culture that fits their own society better.</comment>


China Escalates Crackdown on Cryptocurrency Trading - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-15/china-is-said-to-escalate-crackdown-on-cryptocurrency-trading <comment><USER2> After 4 years of this back and forth Chinese crypto news, I'm starting to think China is shorting and buying based on their announcements.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a 15 day old article. I'm pretty sure there are a few other threads covering the same Bloomberg info.</comment>


Introducing Guesstimate, a Spreadsheet for Things That Aren't Certain - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/guesstimate-blog/introducing-guesstimate-a-spreadsheet-for-things-that-aren-t-certain-2fa54aa9340#.ojn0vwxac <comment><USER2> A few months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10816563](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10816563)</comment>


Aliens more likely to live on moons than planets - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/21/exomoons_better_than_rubbish_planets/ <comment><USER2> Headline inaccurate.

What Kaltenegger is actually saying is that _of the planets we're likely to be able to detect in the near future_ , life is more likely on moons of gas giants than planets. This is because the detection technology is still at a stage where the only Earth-sized planets we're likely to see will probably all be so close-in as to be tidally locked to their stars, which is most probably going to be bad from life's point of view.

As for whether life is more common throughout the universe on moons than planets, we really have no idea at this stage.

I do like the way that every science story from Britain appears to include the word "boffin" at least twice.

<comment><USER3> There probably are more inhabitable moons than planets simply because there are more moons than planets.</comment></comment>


What to do with the one-shot scripts - <AUTHOR> http://blog.balazspocze.me/?p=235 <comment><USER2> If potential employers rate my skill based on one-off scripts I should probably stay away anyway.

Just add a README that the repo contains that kind of stuff.

We have a tools repo at work with this kind of random stuff. We use internal gits but if we're using public repository I would put it up there without blinking..

<comment><USER3> Exactly. I'd comb the script a bit (since it will probably share some traits with the rest of them), but other than that, don't worry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Yes, I know, civilized people don't use 'sleep', because that is a waste of > CPU

I'm not sure what language the example is in and don't really understand the script.

That being said: In most languages sleep just is a wrapper around the system call with the same name. Again for most current and common operating systems this doesn't waste CPU cycles because it just puts your thread of process in an inactive state. Other threads or processes can use the CPU during that time.

That doesn't mean calling sleep with a small argument repeatedly is a good idea because it causes two context switches per call which might be an indirect waste of CPU cycles.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, you have right ([https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17075788/python-is- time-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17075788/python-is-time-sleepn- cpu-intensive)), but this was only an example.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am really curious what is your solution?</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg reflecting on Facebook's 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10105865715850211 <comment><USER2> delete this.

<comment><USER3> Please don't do this here.

<comment><USER2> I understand the community effect here. It's just the natural reaction. So much negative, non-accounted behavior deliberately taken and yet the world stage belongs to him. Wrong normal people do destroys their lives, whereas the wrong that company does lead by his direction is celebrated.

<comment><USER3> For a forum like HN not to regress to the internet mean is unnatural, so we need users to control some of their natural reactions here. I know it isn't easy!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER2> I appreciate it for sure. I can see how it impacts my Karma score. Note to self. Be nice.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introducing Kindle Support for Readability - <AUTHOR> http://blog.readability.com/2011/06/introducing-kindle-support-for-readability/ <comment><USER2> If you are using Chrome this extension does the same thing without signing up for anything:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ipkfnchcgalnafehpg...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ipkfnchcgalnafehpglfbommidgmalan)

I have been using it for weeks. It does an excellent job and costs nothing.

<comment><USER3> Agreed! If you've tried it before note that it also includes images from the page now.

<comment><USER4> Fantastic. This feature is killer. It's missing from instapaper and I really miss those images. Especially for tech articles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know if this can be used for free? All I'm getting is a $5/mo subscription minimum when trying to configure it.

EDIT: Never mind, it looks like you can just add a username. Oddly, it tried to get me to log in/sign up when I tried it earlier, I have no idea why.

</comment><comment><USER6> These guys' attention to detail makes every one else (myself included) look bad. Superb work.

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone know the pros and cons of using Readability over Instapaper?

<comment><USER8> Readability pays the authors, based on what you pay them.</comment></comment>


GCC 9.1 was Released - <AUTHOR> https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-9/changes.html <comment><USER2> Great to see support for D. Albeit DMD and LDC are freely available, official recognition for D in GCC is a huge win for the community. Kudos to Iain Buclaw for his persistence.</comment>


Top 10 Lies of Venture Capitalists - Guy Kawasaki - <AUTHOR> http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/the_top_ten_lie.html <comment><USER2> Nice. I like the followup even more ( http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/the_top_ten_lie_1.html ). I'm sure all of these are just as applicable now as when he wrote them. It all boils down to genuine confidence in your product. If you're truly confident (not just optimistic, which we should be also) you won't get strung along by the VC's- you'll do your work, make a level pitch and move on until you find the one that matches well. Similarly you will be more honest with your pitch. This kind of confidence you only get with real business experience and/or real customers really using your product.

When you land a VC deal and get $4mil, are you going to dance around with euphoria and say "we did it! we did it!" or are you going to say "well, that'll be 2 years to capture x percent of the market instead of 7 years- I hope it was worth giving up x percent of the company." If only the former, then you can take that as a clue right now that your business isn't quite ready probably.

(I'm being a little facetious- of course you'll celebrate regardless).

</comment><comment><USER3> We need more models of successful companies done without VC funding.

At too many startup conferences I've been to, the message (explicit or implied) was "you need VC funding".

I'm sure it's not always true.

<comment><USER4> Many startups begin without VC funding and then take it as a mezzanine round before the IPO. They don't need the cash at that point; oftentimes, they're already profitable. But the VCs have connections to investment banks that can smooth the IPO process.

Microsoft is the best example of this. I think ViaWeb may have done something similar before its acquisition.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Advice for writing a book - <AUTHOR>

I am thinking of writing a book. I'm been pondering the ideas that will make up the book for the past few months. I already have a 150 line outline with 5 chapters. I think I have enough already for a whole book, but I'm not sure.
The book is about how software companies do such a terrible job of hiring developers, and how they can do a better job. My thesis is that what makes a good team is a balance between nerdy introverted, non-communicative geniuses and extroverted well-networked less intelligent blogger-coders. Both types are important for a well balanced, well-oiled team, but many companies often end up only hiring one stereotype or the other.
A few questions:
1. I want this to be published in a paper book. Which publisher will best suit the subject matter?
2. I have never written a book before. Will this make it hard for me to get the attention of publishers? If I already have the book written before I approach publishers, will this help me?
3. I want to interview lead interviewers for various tech companies. Will such interviews be difficult as a first-time writer? What are some tips on how to get in touch with these people. I live in Ohio, so I will have to do everything over the phone.
4. If I have to end up self-publishing, how should I go about finding an editor? How much should I pay them?
5. How long should my book be before I can call it a book? How many words? <comment><USER3> YMMV, but my gut reaction to your five points is:

1a) Why do you want it to be paper? And do you mean paper only? If so, my view is that you'd be looking at much lower revenue than if you were open to ebook versions (instead or as well). Don't overrate the prestige of paper these days. I'd rather 10,000 Kindle/PDF readers over 1000 paper-book readers.

1b) I've not dealt directly with traditional/print publishers as an on-the- books author (have never found a commission that pays enough to make the time+deadline worthwhile), but experience from dealing with them as a journalist (my previous life) is that there can be some really great people out there at publishers, but you need to find a good 'personality' match between you and the firm. What publishers whose books you have read seem most closely aligned with where your book is "at", culturally? If you can't think of any publishers because you haven't read any such books, get reading. If you can't think of any because there doesn't feel like there's a match, you've got a tougher challenge on your hands - self publishing may be the way forward.

2) The lack of a track record will make it harder to get publisher attention. Not impossible, but definitely harder. (This is partly why self-publishing is rising in popularity.) You'll need at least a couple of representative sample chapters and a solid synopsis of where this is going for them to get an idea of whether you're a) saying something worth reading and b) capable of expressing it well enough to work as a book. If you've got some kind of pedigree/relevant background/expertise/credibility that will help a lot, but only if you can write well. It may sound cynical, but these are all factors that help mitigate the publisher's risk in taking you on, and that's what really decides whether something gets published or not.

You'll also have to see whether the publisher you have in mind accepts unsolicited submissions. Not all of them do.

3) "Will such interviews be difficult for a first-time writer?" Have you interviewed anyone at all before? If not, practise on friends/family, interviewing them about anything (don't worry about writing/recording - <USER2> get used to the interplay.) Experience really helps you think on your feet and change what could be a pro-forma Q&A into a proper, interesting, interview. Doing it on the phone is good for that natural flow, but doing it over email may also work, depending on your question set and how you're planning to write it up.

If you're doing it over the phone, record it and transcribe it fully before writing it up. Keep the recordings and that paper record safe. They are your defence if someone challenges what you've written about them. Decide ahead whether you're going to let your interviewees read the resulting copy -- you don't have to, but for this kind of book I think it could be good to avoid inadvertent altered meanings during the write-up and the related fallout, if you're new to this.

4) Finding an independent editor is basically hiring a freelancer - lots of options if you google, variable quality unless you're careful [or lucky]. Look at how much money you think you might make from the book (depending on how you choose to publish), then halve that (because every writer over-estimates how much they'll really make) and then see how much of that you want to hand over to an editor, if you can still afford one.

You can save yourself some cash by doing as much prep and polish as you can: plan ahead for the structure of your book and its sections, get real friends to read it (not your parents - you need someone totally objective) and suggest changes. Be structured in your 'bug tracking' and keep polishing up to a pre- set number of revisions (else you'll go insane). If someone says your book is truly perfect, they're lying. But at least they're being nice.

5) I've bought 30-page things that call themselves books. I've also got a 600+ page hardback sitting here, waiting to be read. Don't sweat the number of words - focus on making whatever you're writing as useful and engaging as possible.

And, along with what danso says about writing a blog to get you started (which sounds like v good advice for someone who sounds relatively inexperienced in all this), check out leanpub.com, which is the most friction-free way to publish I've yet come across, with royalties that are far, far better than any print-book commission I was ever offered.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the great thoughts. The main reason why I'm going this is to get 'cred' so to speak. At my last job, we hired a guy who had co-written a peper- published book on the framework we were using. My company basically threw themselves at him because he was a published author. He wasn't a particular talented or hard working developer. They pretty much hired him on the spot simply because he had written a book.

I have another friend who is the lead developer of a popular open source python library, and he can pretty much walk into any company he wants and they'll offer him a job. The guy isn't even that much of a brilliant developer (its not that he 'sucks', he just isn't all that exceptional compared to a lot of other people I've worked with). Ironically, this is one of the topics I'm going to touch on in the book.

Self publishing is not as 'prestigious' as being paper published. I personally don't care about readership, nor do I care how many people read my book.

<comment><USER4> Can I politely suggest _not_ writing a book? Writing takes time, effort and self-sacrifice - a lack of which any publisher will be able to spot a mile off. If you don't care how many people read the book, publishers probably won't care that you wrote the book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"The book is about how software companies do such a terrible job of hiring developers."_

Some editorial thoughts for which my only qualifications are a keyboard and WiFi connection:

This sounds more argumentative than investigatory, and it puts you at odds with those you wish to interview. Absent relevant metrics and data what qualifies your expertise as comparable to that of leading interviewers or specialized HR consultants?

While it may be possible to interview the leaders, it will be unlikely if they work for large corporations due to those corporations' press policies. A thesis hostile to those corporations' hiring practices makes access more unlikely.

That said, write the book anyway. Or put it down and write a different related book. Or write an unrelated one. Or start blogging and perhaps later publish a collection of blog posts as a book.

Or do all of them. Or a memoir.

Writer's write. A trashcan full of wadded sheets torn from the typewriter is what the process produces. Books are a side effect.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER6> I am just getting started with writing my first book too.

I recommend reading these articles. [http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/28/why- every-entrepreneur-shou...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/28/why-every- entrepreneur-should-self-publish-a-book/) [http://scottberkun.com/2007/how-to- write-a-book-the-short-ho...](http://scottberkun.com/2007/how-to-write-a-book- the-short-honest-truth/)

Createspace is a recommended resource, although you should look into similar sources.

Other sources: lightning source writersmarket.com bookbaby.com

\- Bharad (star at bharad dottt net)

</comment><comment><USER7> Check out the Writer's Market books. There is a large list of publishers both large and small as well as articles on the writing process itself and how to contact publishers.

My guess? The target market for your book is too small for traditional publishers and you will have to end up self-publishing. This isn't my type of book so I will defer to others on whether print or e-book is better. A friend of mine just self-published on Amazon using CreateSpace and it has been a good experience for her. Her book is available in both print and kindle form.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would start a blog and start posting some of your initial thoughts, the kind of stuff that would make up your introduction or analysis. If you don't have any other books under your belt, it'll be useful to have a site put up to convince interviewees of your interest and angle on the topic.

<comment><USER5> A collection of blog posts is a common book format these days. Serialization in magazines was common in the past, but blogs are probably better for an aspiring author because they provide direct feedback from the audience. In addition there is no editor as gatekeeper between the aspiring author and publication.</comment></comment>