A veteran programmer explains how the stock market became "rigged" - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/04/a-veteran-programmer-explains-how-the-stock-market-became-rigged/ <comment><USER4> Here's an animation showing the SIP vs Direct Feed issue: [http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/4599.html](http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/4599.html)

Much of the games being played no would no longer work if the SIP was the defacto source of "real-time" prices (as specified in Reg NMS). Sure, there would be new games, but we have rules specifying the SIP as the key to Reg NMS. At least there would be a decent audit trail if rules were being followed. People would be able to detect delays (currently obscured by the changing time stamp) and many games would be exposed.

It's helpful to actually read Reg NMS - a link is provided on that animation page.

P.S. I'm the veteran programmer in that article.

<comment><USER5> Can you describe in detail what "games" this enables and how often they actually happen in the data? You claim SIP slowness enables a fictional trade called "latency arb" where HFTs can trade with orders at stale prices, for example:

-A user is pegged to mid at a pool where they think NBBO is bid: 20.01 ask: 20.02

-An HFT with direct feeds sees the market go to 20.02 bid 20.03 ask

-The HFT buys the midpoint order on the dark pool at 20.015

-User regrets trading since they could have sold 20.02

How often does this really happen and how is it really any different from the following scenario:

-A user is pegged to mid at a pool where they think NBBO is bid: 20.01 ask: 20.02

-An HFT with direct feeds sees the market as 20.01 bid for 100000 shares and 20.02 ask for 1 share.

-The HFT predicts the price will move up with near certainty and buys the order for 20.015

-User regrets trading since they could have joined small 20.02 ask and traded quickly

If the user or broker is pegging their order to the midpoint and not adjusting it based on market conditions, they're going to trade at disadvantageous times no matter what. I'm not sure how pricing off the SIP makes a big difference. It's not HFT's fault that the broker sucks and can't trade well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is not a case of the markets being rigged. This is a case of regulators (actually congress) failing to understand the CAP theorem.

But for obvious reasons, an article on WAPO can't use words like "partition tolerance".

The problem is that the SIP must be available and it must be consistent. As a result it sacrifices partition tolerance - high latency (which is equivalent to a network partition) causes things to break sometimes.

So for all the conspiracy theorists out there, here is the fundamental question: which two should be provided for the markets not to be "rigged"?

<comment><USER7> >So for all the conspiracy theorists out there, here is the fundamental question: which two should be provided for the markets not to be "rigged"?

There is no need to make any complicated tradeoff. For it to count as non- rigged, you simply need a system where:

* You cannot pay to gain privileged access.

* Abuse of the system (e.g. quote stuffing) gets you punished.

I find it amusing that you call us 'conspiracy theorists'. These aren't allegations of a government cover-up of alien UFOs - it's mundane criminal behavior with a very minor twist.

<comment><USER6> So everyone needs to pay several thousand/month for direct access? I don't know why it's bad that people who don't need low latency are allowed to not pay for it.

"Quote Stuffing" is not the nefarious activity that Nanex portrays it as. It's generally the result of your algorithm screwing up. It provides no benefit to the trader and exposes him to risk - specifically, an HFT who is quote stuffing will always be at the _bottom_ of the book. As a result, he won't get any retail fills, he'll only trade with informed traders who are buying up the whole book. It also lowers your fill rate, which can result in a trading halt or financial penalties.

As a result, most HFTs put effort into reducing quotes and making their algorithms more stable.

I shouldn't have used the term "conspiracy theorists". I just find this topic frustrating since there are a large number of comments that display a complete misunderstanding of basic market mechanics and a complete unwillingness to be specific. No shortage of moral posturing, however.

<comment><USER8> One of the core complaints about HFT regulation is that the regulators refuse to update their definitions to include HFT activities that follow the letter of the regulation but clearly violate the spirit of the regulation. Therefore arguing that HFT detractors are not relying on precise definitions does more to show that you're not really listening to their argument but rather just finding something to nitpick. It looks like an avoidance strategy, not an honest defense.

<comment><USER6> First off, my quibbles about the definition of front running vs predatory trading are unrelated to my defense. The defense I gave was about price discrimination. It doesn't matter what label you apply to the definition - <USER2> you want to argue against me then say why price discrimination is bad. Or say I'm wrong about price discrimination.

Second, the "spirit of the regulation" about front running is about allowing people to trust their agents. Other regulations in the same spirit are lawyer- client confidentiality and "financial advisers can't take gifts from companies they give advice on" regulations.

There are no "you can't kick people's ass in the stock market" regulations, in letter or spirit. If you play the stock market everyone is trying to take your money. You are trying to take theirs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The exchanges do send the information to the SIP at the same time that they publish it on their own direct feed. NYSE actually got in trouble for not doing this properly. This isn't actually an easy problem, because there is a TCP interconnect with the SIP, and if it gets bogged down, then the SIP packets can be backed up.

The real issue is that since the SIP (CQS/UQDF) are cheap; and big/sophisticated players don't actually use them, no one cares about them. Beyond that the performance is necessarily slower than a direct feed, because if I wanted to learn the price of a NYSE listed-security on NASDAQ the path that the SIP would take is far less direct. Specifically, if I have a machine sitting in Carteret (Nasdaq), listening to the proprietary Nasdaq feed, the data from Nasdaq will be sent to me and the SIP at the same time. But to get it from the SIP it has to go to Mahwah and then back, instead of staying local to the data center.

Nasdaq makes its feed available to everyone, for a cost. Someone who is providing execution services, or market making, needs the direct feeds so they can provide good execution and know when to get out of the way. A small investor looking at a screen doesn't care about the SIP or a direct feed. They are going to submit their order, and their broker is responsible for executing it.

<comment><USER10> What do you think would happen if direct feeds were prohibited and participants had to listen to the consolidated feeds only? This could even include getting one's own fills, if there were a consolidated feed with order IDs included (i.e. you would not know your fills any earlier than anyone else).

<comment><USER5> Then HFTs would still win but pricing would widen out since some liquidity is made available because of ability to hedge in another product. Think about if I'm quoting SPY because I can buy/sell the basket better than my quotes. If the feeds are delayed, I'm less confident in where the basket price really is, so I'm going to demand more compensation in bid-ask spread to put up a price. This wouldn't be a big deal in slow markets but when things really started moving, most derivative liquidity would be pulled entirely.

In single names HFTs mostly use these feeds to protect themselves from other high-speed traders and they want the granularity of information for their models. They're already faster than retail guys and banks and always will be. It's not an "unfair advantage" like people think. They just have to get on it if any competitor gets on it, similar to all the fast lines. If 20 HFT shops get on a new fast line, none of them are making more money from it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think there should be a new kind of logical fallacy: appeal to grandpa.

Today's world is not the same as your grandfathers world, we use computers to do many that they are better at than humans, executing trading stragies in submicrosecond latencies is one of them.

Submitting an order to a market causes the price to change, submitting a large order means that you are likely trading against an informed trader, by making a bid they are disseminating information about price to the market, if you don't adapt to the new information (by raising your price) you are an missing a huge opportunity.

In an ideal market to trade a large block you'd pay a risk premium less than the price of disseminating that information over a longer period and possibly paying more as supply of the stock at a given price evaporated.

Everyone can read the order book to see the market depth for a trade of a given size, if you showing your hand all at once is the same as showing it over a prolonged time as you eat through the depth and the market becomes shallow.

Essentially what the anti-HFT people are saying is that for a public company it's rational to expect to buy the entire stock are the current market value, as anyone who has seen a takeover go down, the purchaser must offer a premium over the current market cap in order for a bid to be successful.

Simply making an offer usually causes the share price of the underlying company rise to a very similar to the offer discounted for likelihood of regulatory approval and the time value of money. HFT is expected market behaviour simply occurring over a time period of nanoseconds rather than minutes and hours.

<comment><USER12> The issue seems to be that, when you want to buy a somewhat-large amount of stock, regulations exist which:

1\. _Force_ you to split up the purchase among multiple exchanges, and

2\. To compensate for this disadvantage to the buyer, are _supposed_ to prevent news of the order causing a price change at the other exchanges by spreading faster than filling of the order, so that you don't have to deal with an artificially-inflated price on top of artificially-imposed split of your order.

But while (1) is enforced, (2) is not. Which means buyers and most sellers have to play by one set of rules while people who want to inject themselves as middlemen get to play by a different set of rules.

At least, that's what seems to be being described here, and I certainly can see problems with it.

(not to mention that that "liquidity" and "efficiency" arguments fall flat -- the types of HFT schemes being described here work only by creating artificial _illiquidity_ , and I don't know of any rigorous argument that creating more middlemen improves efficiency)

<comment><USER6> There is no regulation which forces you to split up your order. People split their order because one venue does not have enough liquidity.

 _To compensate for this disadvantage to the buyer, are supposed to prevent news of the order causing a price change at the other exchanges by spreading faster than filling of the order,_

This is simply incorrect. There is a regulation which requires exchanges to transmit news of price changes to the other exchanges as rapidly as possible. The purpose is to ensure that all fills happen at the NBBO.

In concrete terms, if BATS has a BUY@$20.00 and ARCA has a BUY@$20.01, BATS is forbidden from filling your order.

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

<comment><USER12> If you believe the description is wrong, your issue is with the article.

Direct quote from article:

 _With Reg NMS, it essentially took x amount of available stock at one place, and made it one tenth of that x at ten different places._

If that isn't a regulation forcing large purchases to split up, then it's on you to explain why.

<comment><USER6> The most charitable interpretation of that quote is that after RegNMS, multiple trading venues became legalized. Liquidity providers then _chose_ to spread liquidity out because it was now legal.

Here is RegNMS. Find me a place where it says liquidity must be divided between all possible exchanges: [https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/34-51808.pdf](https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/34-51808.pdf)

<comment><USER12> If you believe the description in the article is wrong, then as I said _your problem is with the article_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A veteran geologist explains how the medical industry became "rigged"

</comment><comment><USER14> Can anyone explain to me what wouldn't be possible without HFT? Is HFT allowing for some useful types of investments/capital?

<comment><USER6> Buying a lot of shares at once. I wrote a blog post explaining how to not trade with HFTs if you don't want to:

[http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/how_to_not_get_ripped...](http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/how_to_not_get_ripped_off_by_hft.html)

Quoth a trader: "Let me tell you this as trader with 15 years direct bank and hedge fund execution experience. Your suggestion of using such algorithms would result in me never getting filled even remotely close to where I wanted to get filled."

tl;dr; He wants to buy 10,000 shares right now and HFTs are the only ones offering that.

<comment><USER14> So its good for the trader who wants to do that. Is there any benefits to the market overall that he wants to do that?

Edit: Can someone explain to me why I am being down voted from asking a question? It seems like every time I get into a discussion with yummyfajitas I am being down voted?

<comment><USER6> Allowing a trader to make large trades makes price discovery happen faster and more accurately. I've written a more detailed explanation on my blog - <USER3> HFT apology 1 and 2.

[http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/tags/high%20frequency%20tr...](http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/tags/high%20frequency%20trading.html)

As for the downvotes, I lead a small cult of traders, rationalists and scala programmers - tptacek is my #2 sycophant.

<comment><USER14> So again the trader not the market/society.

Whats the benefit outside the stock market to society in general? I.e. how is HFT a net profit to other than those involved in HFT?

You are asking people to be specific, can you you?

<comment><USER6> The tutorials I linked to address your questions in detail.

<comment><USER14> You must be able to give examples.

<comment><USER6> An example is provided in part 2 of the tutorial. Are you demanding I copy&paste it here?

<comment><USER14> Yes please

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> " they will signal up to their other machine to say, "Buy everything that's available.""

This sentence is very problematic as it implies that HFT are injecting themselves between 2 intermediaries that don't need the HFT in the first place. What is actually happening is the HFT is not buying or selling anything. They are changing the prices they themselves were offering originally. There is no intermediary involved.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's an interesting counterargument: [http://streetwiseprofessor.com/?p=8333](http://streetwiseprofessor.com/?p=8333)

</comment><comment><USER17> _A direct feed from one exchange could be $10,000 to $60,000 a month._

That's way off the mark. It's more in the $1k - $3k range.

[http://cdn.batstrading.com/resources/regulation/BATS_US_Mark...](http://cdn.batstrading.com/resources/regulation/BATS_US_Market_Data_Price_List.pdf)

[http://www.nyxdata.com/page/1084](http://www.nyxdata.com/page/1084)

[https://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=PriceListTrading...](https://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=PriceListTrading2#itch)

<comment><USER4> This is the SEC filing with proposed fees [http://www.sec.gov/rules/sro/nysemkt/2013/34-70285.pdf](http://www.sec.gov/rules/sro/nysemkt/2013/34-70285.pdf)

<comment><USER18> That's for a full colocation - not just a direct feed. The originally posted links are the correct prices for direct feeds.

<comment><USER4> You are referring to direct feed content, I was explaining (in the interview) direct feed speed and content. Who buys a direct feed for a speed advantage and then doesn't colocate?!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "The market is a pendulum that forever swings between unsustainable optimism and unjustifiable pessimism." \- Benjamin Graham

</comment><comment><USER20> Those Washington Post articles are a pain to read on mobile. I will avoid them like the plague.</comment>


Tell HN: We write the algorithms. We need to understand propaganda - <AUTHOR> Yesterday I learned that George Orwell is again a best selling book. That's good, but probably already read by people around here. What I've been reading are two books to understand the rise of demagoguery and propaganda around the world:
1. https://www.amazon.ca/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747
2. https://www.amazon.ca/World-Will-Representation-Vol/dp/0486217612
I'm only just starting these two[1] but they've already caused a fundamental change in how I perceive propaganda and how I think about what leads a person to have distorted, clearly false views.
The first thing I've learned is that propaganda is measured. That it operates like a business where outcomes are measured and tests run on smaller populations. That most countries do it, but that the most effective propaganda is selectively highlighting the truth so that the source develops trustworthiness.
The other thing I learned is that propaganda isn't about shifting someones opinion, though that is often a useful middle step, it's about driving specific actions, like getting someone to stay home on voting day or getting someone to join the military.
I'm not advocating that all of us here go and buy the same book. What I'm trying to highlight is that propaganda is now in full force online and we're the ones (web developers, designers, data analysts, machine learning developers, sys admins) that have the most amount of power to augment our technical knowledge to push the world towards a peaceful, more prosperous future by fighting falsehood-riddled propaganda.
Lastly, if you're a reputable angel investor interested in fighting back, I'm working on a stealth[2] startup that I think will make a lot of money and really help the world. My email is in my profile.
[1] Really, Schopenhauer is probably too cerebral for most and more focused on philosophy and will not on propaganda itself, so I only really recommend the first.
[2] For obvious reasons. <comment><USER3> I have been noticing something curious for a while.

It feels as if, in various fields, some kind of test is being carried out to "test the waters", to see how much shit one can get away without being called out by people..

In hollywood, this manifest itself as blockbuster movies. Superhero movies, Christopher nolan movies movies like John wick, Madmax fury road etc.

I mean look at this shot from the trailer of a war movie from Nolan

[https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/5ieu3i/the_bombs_in...](https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/5ieu3i/the_bombs_in_dunkirk_required_you_to_throw/)

And another mixup from the same movie

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3732234/One- smi...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3732234/One-smirking- extra-accused-ruining-trailer-WWII-film-Dunkirk.html)

It is unbelievable that this is from a movie from one of the biggest names in Hollywood! This is the continuation of the sound mixing issues of his previous movie..

People did point to these issues, but they gets drowned in a million apologetic voices...

In this cases, the propaganda appears in form of Hype. The hype generation machinery starts working years before the actual release of the movie.

And when it has completely run its course, what you will have is a body of people who will pay to see the movie, and - this is the important part - <USER2> be blown no matter what_ and _will not stop talking about it_. It is as if they are under some spell or something.

And no, I don't think only your average joe is susceptible for this manipulation. Even professional movie reviewers will fall for this.

In programming world, you see this happen with things like git. I am not saying Linus is running a propaganda on purpose. But may be, it just so happened because of his god like status in the minds of the people...

And I think with these recent events, we are seeing how far the rabbit hole goes....

</comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for sharing this. I too strongly feel that a much wider awareness over these topics will be extremely important in the times that are coming. Expecially among the people who are really able to judge these tools, like data scientists and AI developers.

I'm really hoping a healthy and large debate will come on over this topic, and sharing this kind of thoughts is extremely important for this.

</comment><comment><USER5> > What I've been reading are two books to understand the rise of demagoguery > and propaganda around the world

Is it "Yes, we can!" demagogy by your book? If so it didn't rise recently (unless 10+ years are recent by your measurement).

Hackers knowing more about propaganda is a dangerous thing. It was what brought us Facebook and Google changing elections.

<comment><USER6> it also brought us pgp and tor

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you're interested in this read anything you can by Edward Bernays and take a media studies course. Advertising (propaganda) is a huge part of it, even down to the opening sequence of TV programmes, it's an eye opener.</comment>


Obama to Pitch Permanent Research Tax Credit - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/us/politics/05tax.html

<comment><USER2> One reason this is unlikely to pass is that Congress likes renewable tax breaks because 1) It gives Congress an "accomplishment" they can brag about. 2) Members of Congress like being lobbied for tax breaks for businesses because it allows them to extract campaign contributions and other favors. 3) They are a bunch of egotists who like being treated like VIPs by people asking them for things.

</comment><comment><USER3> Talking about Tax policy without talking about spending policy doesn't really work. The government has been running increasing deficits, under each successive administration, from both parties, for my entire lifetime.

While I think that a tax break for research is a great idea-- in fact, make research %100 write-offable and make it permanent-- I think that the increases in all kinds of taxes and fees at other areas and the impact of inflation will overwhelm the effect of this tax break.

Time to address the disease, and stop making hay out of the symptoms.</comment>


Mimir – A Near-Infrared Wide-Field Imager, Spectrometer and Polarimeter - <AUTHOR> http://people.bu.edu/clemens/mimir/ <comment><USER2> I think whoever posted this needs to step in and explain what's interesting or new or relevant about it, 16 years after the instrument had its first light?

<comment><AUTHOR> I found _Mimir_ interesting because its design is "near" completely open- source (except AutoCAD files of mechanical designs).[0]

Actually I'm testing _Astree_ [1] app (FLOSS alternative to _Zemax_ ) using files & docs of _Mimir_ 's optical designs[2].

[0] [http://people.bu.edu/clemens/mimir/engineering.html](http://people.bu.edu/clemens/mimir/engineering.html)

[1] [https://github.com/edeforas/astree](https://github.com/edeforas/astree)

[2] [http://people.bu.edu/clemens/mimir/optical_designs.html](http://people.bu.edu/clemens/mimir/optical_designs.html)</comment></comment>


Online Video: Where's The Money? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/13/online-video-wheres-the-money/ <comment><USER2> The money is in niche sites; instead of trying to cater to every demographic, cater to specific niches.

Suddenly, your ads are worth far, far more, and furthermore you can build an actual community based on specific interests rather than lumping everyone together.

I predict that over the next 5 years or so, online video will branch out to create an enormous "long tail" of niche sites that massively out-traffic the top few (Youtube, etc).

Also, I don't think bandwidth is as big a problem as people make it out to be. Sure, if you pull a Stage6 and solve quality problems by simply letting everyone use bitrates as high as 18 megabits, you'll run out of cash fast. But with modern H.264 video, 500 kilobits is plenty for web-quality SD video.

</comment><comment><USER3> what needs to be created is a bit-torrent type affair for people to consume video over the internet, such that users logged into a network (let's say youtube) download and also share the videos they consume.

this will reduce the overall bandwidth cost for the service a ton. plus it reinforces a community of sharing, people actively downloading and hosting/seeding the videos they enjoy. give premium access to the users that host/seed more.</comment>


Ask HN: Coffee Table Books - <AUTHOR> I'm getting my first apartment out of school and I'm looking for some coffee table books. Ideally, they'd be heavy on the visuals and light on depth. Bonus points if the subject is computer science.<p>Any ideas? <comment><USER2> I recently borrowed Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami from our local library and it is a beautiful, inspiring book filled with jaw dropping examples.

Congratulations on your first apartment.

</comment><comment><USER3> I had a book about proverbs for years. It can be opened up anywhere, put down any time and a great conversation starter upon finding an obscure or funny proverb.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's some books I would like to see on a coffee table.

1\. An illustrated book of bad arguments

2\. Maus by Art Spiegelman

3\. Amano: The Complete Prints of Yoshitaka Amano

4\. Chinese Calligraphy: 50 Characters to Inspire Peace and Calm

5\. My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles by Gardner

6\. The Illustrated Story of Art: The Great Art Movements and the Paintings that Inspired them

7\. The Design of Everyday Things

</comment><comment><USER5> How about Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe?

[https://www.amazon.com/Thing-Explainer-Complicated-Stuff- Sim...](https://www.amazon.com/Thing-Explainer-Complicated-Stuff- Simple/dp/0544668251)

</comment><comment><USER6> Back when I first moved out, I greatly overestimated how many people actually read coffee table books. That said, some of the Star Wars cross section books are really fun to look through.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like "The Computer: An Illustrated History". It's out of print, but available pretty cheaply used. [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1847320139/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1847320139/) for the original or [https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Illustrated-History- Origins-...](https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Illustrated-History-Origins- Present/dp/1780971842) for the reprint edition.

</comment><comment><USER8> How about any of Edward Tufte's books: _The Visual Display of Quantitative Information_ , _Envisioning Information_ , etc?

</comment><comment><USER9> Any large format book on leisure stuff like cigars, scotch, art will do for me...

</comment><comment><USER10> My brother bought me world maps / an atlas (perfect).

In terms of CS, being that it is tough to be an easy read / occasional skim, I would be looking for a book of EE & computing components (e.g. a page per component such as the 555 timer could be interesting)

</comment><comment><USER11> No need to make a shopping list, let the tao guide you. Thrift stores, they'll have coffee table book in spades, and cheap, and quite likely ones that're out of print and no one else knows about.

<comment><USER12> Another option is borrowing from a library. Even cheaper than thrift stores, and as a bonus you don't need to permanently store the book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://www.amazon.com/Blabac-Photo-Art-Skateboarding- Photog...](https://www.amazon.com/Blabac-Photo-Art-Skateboarding- Photography/dp/1576875156)</comment>


Mutable Algorithms in Immutable Languages, Part 2 - <AUTHOR> http://tel.github.io/2014/07/13/mutable_algorithms_in_immutable_languages_part_2/

<comment><USER2> Though I don't really understand it, I'm really enjoying this series so far. Whenever I read functional code from Haskell or Erlang (or some other pure language), I feel like my girlfriend feels when she peers over my shoulder at some python code and her eyes glaze over.

Haskell has been at the top of my `list of languages to learn the basics of` for too long. It's time to fix that. I'm doing a tutorial this week.

<comment><USER3> This is a great place to start then! [https://github.com/bitemyapp/learnhaskell](https://github.com/bitemyapp/learnhaskell)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> what a cliff hanger!</comment>


Information Management: A Proposal (1989) - <AUTHOR> https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html <comment><USER2> I had a good conversation with Tim at the 2016 decentralized web conference. I joked with him that I was one of the many people who had written two books on the semantic web.

Anyway, this article is about his original vision for the web, not the semantic web. When he talks now, I get the feeling that he is disappointed that the SW/linked data did not really take off. That said, from my perspective linked data, the use of standard Ontology's, open knowledge graphs like DBPedia and Wikidata, and some hope for more integration into real AI systems (not just deep learning) is possible.

<comment><USER3> Until machine learning can fill the discipline gap in most groups of people, I don't think we will see much success in those areas outside of specialized niches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If curious see also

2016 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12787644](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12787644)

2009 (just one comment): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=483678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=483678)

Others?

</comment><comment><USER5> counterpoint [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYT2se94eU0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYT2se94eU0)

</comment><comment><USER4> Please don't use the title field to editorialize. This is in the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do so in the comments. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22level%20playing%20field%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

(Submitted title was "Are we any closer to Tim Berners Lee's original vision for information mgmt?")

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the note - won't happen again.</comment></comment>


The Small Business Roller Coaster - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2020/07/10/889918522/the-small-business-roller-coaster <comment><USER2> Wow</comment>


The 'Pedestrian' Who Became One of America's First Black Sports Stars - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/frank-hart-pedestrianism <comment><USER2> We should bring this sport back.

<comment><USER3> Probably most similar to ultra races, some of which are on a short repetitive loop over x time period (24 hour is "common"). Audience is probably closer to dozens of friends/family compared to packed stands of fans/gamblers, though!

<comment><USER4> Also 48 hours and six days are recognized for world records by the IAU. [http://www.iau-ultramarathon.org/](http://www.iau-ultramarathon.org/)

There's also this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self- Transcendence_3100_Mile_R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self- Transcendence_3100_Mile_Race)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am surprised that Hart's card is not highly collectible despite being extremely rare. Can someone shed light on why that would be the case?

<comment><USER6> Lots of things are rare, but not of great interest to collectors. It would make more sense to reverse the question and ask why baseball cards are so collectible.

I expect the card is of interest to some museums and similar institutions that collect historical artefacts. Just not to baseball card collectors.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you promote yourself? - <AUTHOR>

I know that maintaining a developer blog and speaking in conferences buy you a lot of recognition. Is there an alternative way to gain that lime light?
Not many people are fond of speaking or are simply not designed to speak effectively, is there a hope for them (myself included)?
I had this really random idea to teach a small batch of people something new; once in a while, but I'm not really sure that it will help as much. What are your thoughts and experiences? <comment><USER2> 1\. Do cool things.

2\. Tell people about them.

There's a pretty big industry surrounding how to promote yourself effectively, but ultimately, most of those things are secondary concerns. You shouldn't _ignore_ marketing advice - there's often useful insights on what appears impressive to other people - but you'll always get more bang for the buck by actually doing things that _are_ impressive to people rather than trying to make what you're doing _appear_ impressive to others. Actions speak louder than words.

<comment><AUTHOR> It turns out rather hopeless appealing people with skills you don't have.

<comment><USER2> So get skills? That seems much more productive than convincing people that you have skills that you don't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Doesn't that usually involve giving up your passion? Not every skill is worth getting, don't get me wrong though - I am apprehensive at doing things just to please some people.

<comment><USER2> Well, it definitely helps to be passionate about something that other people are impressed by, but unless you're into incredibly obscure areas of academia or work in a bubble, there's probably _somebody_ out there that will be impressed by a job done well.

What are you passionate about?

<comment><AUTHOR> Programming is my passion, you are probably right about the bubble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> In your case I would try and participate in a lot of online communities, then have a link to your twitter and blog for all posts. Make sure you provide quality content for your blog and twitter.Some times when you make a good comment on a post people will check you out if you have a link for them to follow.

That should help out a bit.

</comment><comment><USER4> Since you are comfortable interacting with a small batch of people, attending barcamps/unconferences is a good way to network and promote yourself. If you live in an area with a startup scene there are probably multiple such events a week.

</comment><comment><USER5> Write / join an open source project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, I own few open source projects github.com/niravthaker

I also contribute to Eclipse and other related projects but that seems too time consuming.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Mindscope – essentially Workflowy-meets-Scapple for iPad - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/app/mindscope-mind-mapping-outliner/id901513028?mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> Dev here - this is a project I've been working on during weekends + evenings for the past half a year or so.

Would love to hear from any of you, I value your input. Before you ask, yes - I am working on making it a universal app, which is harder than it might sound since there is far less space on iPhone screens...

Here is the 30-second app store preview video: [http://tinyurl.com/mindscopevideo](http://tinyurl.com/mindscopevideo)

</comment><comment><USER2> first of all, congrats on shipping. Love the minimalist look of the app, let's you focus on your thoughts.

Some mistakes you are doing: The <TITLE> in mindscope is different from the App Store title, it appears nowhere else. You should either reinforce it or drop it.

Another mistake: the app is free, but the CTA is not clear enough, you should make that easier to see.

Congrats.

<comment><AUTHOR> Assuming you're talking about my landing page ([http://www.mindscopeapp.com](http://www.mindscopeapp.com)) - thanks, those are all great points. Will act on them as soon as I get home. :)</comment></comment>


37 Reasons to Love Haskell (playing off the Ruby article) - <AUTHOR> http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/

<comment><USER2> Many of the claims are false: > 1\. It's object oriented. The point refers to OOHaskell, which is a now dead syntactic dialect. So it may not be valid for common Haskell, where inheritance with extension may still need to be worked on... > 17\. It has an advanced Array type. Compare it to even more advanced Array type in R, Matlab, Julia or even NumPy... > 3\. It is a dynamic language. Most people define dynamic language not by capability to dynamically load code, but to code in quick-and-dirty manner with duck typing. > 18\. It is extensible. While it allows macros, it doesn't allow for easy addition of arbitrary syntactic sugar like LISP and SCHEME do.

Others are given without reference or elaboration (like pointers to Dynamic, and -fdefer-type-errors in 3, or TemplateHaskell in 18.)

Overall I would call it a bad journalism :-(. One would have hope that 2007 article would be corrected by 2013, but this one hasn't been...

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure about how widespread Haskell is in the finance industry.

And while the language itself is small, it includes a lot of high-level, rather abstract concepts. Besides, it would really benefit from being larger instead of having several libraries for handling strings, errors and accessing records in a sane way spread all over Hackage.</comment>


Piwik shows Tibet as independent country and Chinese users aren't happy about it - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/piwik/piwik/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=tibet <comment><AUTHOR> And one Piwik fork with Tibet part of China has already over 900 stars: [https://github.com/kinosang/piwik](https://github.com/kinosang/piwik)

<comment><USER2> I wonder if the people starring it are intentionally endorsing the fork or if they are just seeing Piwik for the first time.

I saw Piwik show up on Github's daily trending email today and didn't realize the reason for the fork but the description did look suspicious.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why HN lacks a reply alert feature? - <AUTHOR> I don't know if meta posts are allowed or not. I am quite new to the community. Trying to learn from mistakes here.
Why don't we have a "reply" feature, that alerts on every reply to a comment on any thread?
Its very difficult to check manually by navigating through own comments, especially if there are comments on more than 2 threads in a day.
I don't want to compare, but lobste.rs have implemented such a feauture and I find it very useful. <comment><USER2> This one [0]. Know of this for many years but not sure if still running.

EDIT: Yes, it still works.

[0] [http://hnreplies.com/](http://hnreplies.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks a lot.

>Your e-mail address has been verified. You'll be notified of any new replies to your comments.

however, would still love native feature , YC!

<comment> m-p-3 Push notifications would be nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _Its very difficult to check manually_

It discourages this sort of thing, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24377372](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24377372)

<comment><AUTHOR> I see. So , ignore ?

I am really curious, should I have avoided this comment?

I honestly believed that his reply to the person making "just a point" was more arrorgant and not something that came out intellectually.

<comment><USER3> Did it make Hacker News better?

[https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Personally I like not having alerts. I'm sick of every site having a little bell with a red number on it... It's great to leave comments, and check back every once and a while...

</comment><comment><USER5> I believe its a design choice to discourage flame wars like you get on reddit. Making you go look prevents that (or at least discourages it).

There is also a timer expressly preventing you from replying too quickly to each other.

</comment><comment> Pick-A-Hill2019 Questions like yours that get asked time and time again on HN make me sigh with frustrated rage, especially when posted by someone with a 20 day old nick with 100+ karma. But, to quote one of your own submissions [1]

 _There are many quotes on questions, like "better to ask and be thought a fool for five minutes than to remain a fool forever" and the likes, but to me, there is something deeper than that. Asking questions often reveals a lot more information than just the answer to the question, almost regardless of the situation._

However, it is always worth doing a search before asking questions rather than receiving a spoon-fed answer (or a Dang "discussed Previously At:) comment but - here ya go ... follow the Rabbit Hole of Links to Truly Understand the 'Why'.

Search is your friend when it comes to things like 'why doesn't HN do x or y?'.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21788013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21788013)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23741350](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23741350)

Edit to add forgotten [1] link [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24366538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24366538)

<comment><AUTHOR> [1] : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24366538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24366538)

>There are many quotes on questions, like "better to ask and be thought a fool for five minutes than to remain a fool forever" and the likes, but to me, there is something deeper than that. Asking questions often reveals a lot more information than just the answer to the question, almost regardless of the situation.

Thanks. Explains a lot already.

>make me sigh with frustrated rage

I could've asked "do we render emojis here? ⭐" Or "are ascii emojis downvoted? ಠ_ಠ "

>it is always worth doing a search before asking questions rather than receiving a spoon-fed answer

"meta" question. Not well documented.

>>> I don't know if meta posts are allowed or not. (post) Well rules out searching.

>Search is your friend when it comes to things like 'why doesn't HN do x or y?'

>>>I am quite new to the community. (post)

thanks.

Have a nice day.

<comment> Pick-A-Hill2019 Thank you for taking my comment in the (well intentioned) spirit it was posted in. The 'frustrated rage' was not directed towards you personaly and I thank you for not taking it that way.

Thanks & have a great day :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There used to be one actually at one point in time--I think? It was long enough that I can't remember its name anymore, so I'll have to let others help out with this thread.

Personally, I'm glad it doesn't exist. I don't expect HN to be like every other forum out there.

<comment><AUTHOR> >I don't expect HN to be like every other forum out there.

HN is different and we all love the way it is.

Permanence of posts and accounts, spam filtering/blocking etc.

However, how do you keep track of "replies" ? Or should I ignor...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> When you click on the "threads" link you see all of your conversations</comment>


1 Million Spiders Make Golden Silk for Rare Cloth - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/spider-silk/

<comment><USER2> I remember that species of spider; they're scary as hell, and have killed somewhere around 20 people through fear alone. The good news is that they're not aggressive. I bumped into one of their freakishly strong webs once, and thought I had hit a tree branch (!), but when I looked up I saw an enormous spider cowering above me.

<comment><USER3> > _killed somewhere around 20 people through fear alone._

Do you mean without even biting them? How do the people die? Panic attack/heart attack?

<comment><USER2> They either have a heart attack or walk off a cliff. This is rare, but there are a _lot_ of these spiders. In areas where they live, it's common to see them sitting in giant webs above streets and hiking trails. Waiting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Semi-Dup <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=839231>

</comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of the Human League song 'Being Boiled' about silkworm usage.

Good article!

</comment><comment><USER6> Talk about scalling an operation. How many companies have one million employees?

</comment><comment><USER7> dupe</comment>


Edmunds is closing its open API service for vehicle data (e.g. VIN decoding) - <AUTHOR> http://edmunds.mashery.com/ <comment><USER2> This really sucks, Edmunds was one of the better sources of vehicle data.

In light of this announcement are there any alternative APIs/data sources that you would recommend?

<comment><AUTHOR> Excuse my late reply. Not open and free like Edmunds was. I have used Chrome and Unhaggle and both have very rich data sources, but also very rich subscriptions.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: I just wanted to say: thank you, Hacker News - <AUTHOR> a few years ago i posted a question:
Ask HN: Chances for Restarting a Career in CS @ 30+ ? ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7997624 )
after reading all the answers and recommendations, i decided to study CS in 2015.
it was quite challenging in every sense: time/money management, high drop-out rates (~80% fail or stop studying cs at my university), lack of math skills - school was far far away.
now, i finished it and i can say, i definitely don't regret it. it sharpened my mind and changed my mindset in a positive way. i've got absolutely no problems finding job offers (mainly as consultat or junior software engineers (i.e. IBM)) although i am now in my mid-thirties.
thank you, hn community <comment><USER2> I am finishing my bachelors in CompSci at Harvard Extension and just got hired by Google. And I've got about 20 years on you. So yeah, absolutely, this can work!

It was fun and challenging competing with top computer science students. In the long run, my organizational skills, focus, determination and world experience outweighed their raw brainpower and better memory.

It's an ultramarathon, not a sprint.

<comment><USER3> > just got hired by Google. And I've got about 20 years on you.

As impressive as your achievement is, I'm equally impressed that Google finally started addressing their perceived ageism problem.

<comment><USER2> Google must be doing something right in their candidate triage algorithms. I applied for one job and they suggested another that was a better fit, which I hadn't even considered.

I applied to a bunch of places and only Google seemed to perceive the whole package instead of myopically focusing on my recent education or last job. The whole process was much smarter than any other company in the interview cycle.

<comment><USER4> Do they still weed out candidates who don't have a background in math and algorithms for roles as SRE ones? When I read about your improved triage experience, it's the first question that pops to my mind.

<comment><USER2> I had studied a lot of ML but all the technical questions were focused on traditional algorithms, so this was still a little retro. The math requirement was minimal but I had more than enough from the ML coursework.

Bamberg's Math 23a / 23c is phenomenal set of classes at Harvard. You will work like a dog but learn almost all the math you need for ML.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You did something way bolder but I wanted to share another successful career restart story. I worked in tech startups in business roles (ops & product management) but was always excited about the engineering side. I decided to do a career restart at 32 and taught myself the basics of web development using Udacity and other web tutorials. I then went through a coding bootcamp and joined a mid size company.

It's been a great ride, I've worked for about 3 years on both the front end and back end. I've been promoted twice and have started becoming assigned as lead developer on some projects. Overall, I think I'm about 6 - 12 months away from being promoted to a senior developer. As others mentioned, my strong soft skills (being able to project manage myself, communicate effectively, estimate tasks well and honor my estimates) have made me very attractive in comparison to other candidates who have been programming since they were 12 but are much more difficult to work with. The ability to "get stuff done" is underrated.

Anyways, the main point is I am so happy with my career restart into programming at 32. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

<comment><USER6> I am someone who has been 'programming since they were 12' and I worry about perhaps not being as well-rounded as you describe yourself. What kind of experiences that taught you the soft skills you mentioned would you recommend to someone like myself to become a more attractive engineer?

<comment><USER5> My suggestions would be to:

* take as many opportunities as you can in presenting to others. Public speaking skills are important * refine your skills in creating good product demos of your work * spend time writing concise and well structured documentation * Do some self reflection every time you get into a heated argument with a co-worker. Think about what you could have done better to prevent emotions from flaring up. The best engineers at my company are the ones who are really good at managing discussions * Make sure that any meeting you attend flows well. If people (including yourself) are meandering from the main point of the meeting then lead the group back to the main point. Take good notes. Make sure the meeting has an agenda. If it ends early then tell people they can leave rather so you can give back attendees time. If you have a shy person in the group pro-actively ask their opinion. On the same end if you have a verbose person in the group make sure to end their discussion if they are meandering. * Put yourself in your user's shoes as much as possible. Don't just evaluate a feature from a technical standpoint, but also a user standpoint. Your product manager will be happy that they can trust you to wear a "product manager" hat

<comment><USER7> Really great points here! Really liked the points about public speaking and dealing with meetings and asking questions to shy engineers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this age and sex bias a silicon valley problem?

I am nearly 40 and most of the developers I have worked with in the past 10+ years have always been older than me (aside from college new hires). They have also been 20-40% female. I have spent this time working in the Westlake, Irving, Plano technology corridor of north DFW.

I would like to hear what kind of demographics people encounter by geographic location. I always hear about age and sex bias online, but I simply don't see it in my area.

<comment><USER9> SV skews young due to startups with low seed outlay. The risk and reward tends to attract young men[1], and then the culture that results continues that bias.

Established companies with good work-life balance, solid benefits, and internal advancement opportunities are much closer to your experience.

1 - Edit because I've been hammered for saying this before. Many studies have shown significantly increased financial, business, and physical risk taking in men. That's the type I'm referring to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For all intents and purposes, I "restarted" my software career in 2008 when I was 34. I had been at one company nine years and stop learning in 2001.

When I went back on the market in 2008, I basically had to look for junior developer jobs even though I had 12 years experience on paper - and a degree.

Fortunately(?), by then I waa so underpaid, even junior developers were making more than I was so it was still a slight raise.

It took 10 years, a lot of humility, and a lot of job hopping to get to an architect role and to get to the 50th-60th percentile of lead/senior developer for my local market. (After awhile your experience doesn't mean more pay if you're not a manager)

<comment><USER11> This is my story too. I dropped learning and got laid off. I spent 4 months looking for a job. I joined a team that did j2ee but couldn't handle the complexity of it. Got laid off again. Spent 4 months looking for a job. Now I got production support job. I want to get back in programming but I find all the new technology so hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just a life tip here, make sure you work your way up the ranks. Which means studying and learning how to manage people not learning the obscure computer language. Tech is very tough on old guys. Programmers and CS jobs start to disappear as you get older. The happy stories you'll read here are the exception, not the rule. You need to cover your bases. Good luck.

<comment><USER13> This depends on where you live. I only really read about ageism being a problem in the valley. Locally (US Northwest) I've never seen any sign of it.

<comment><USER14> Same here (I'm in the UK).

It really depends on the age of what you know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Being in a similar situation (before degree), I totally agree that I need a solid CS education.

BUT, given that resources like [https://teachyourselfcs.com/](https://teachyourselfcs.com/) are available for free why should I waste money and time and energy on courses of a probable lesser quality, at least at my local university.

The way I see it the problem is not the education itself but your _credentials_ or _reputation_ in front of a possible employer.

So I noted down 3 ideas for myself:

       - build an Open Source reputation, by own projects and contributions - a stellar github account

       - get good at competitive programming - win kaggle competitions, hackerrank, top coder etc.

       - get a CS degree

To me either one of the first two seem better than a degree (given that I learn CS on my own).

<comment><USER16> That worked for me until I wanted a visa. Now I am getting a CS degree.

<comment><USER13> Was it that you needed any degree or did you specifically need a CS degree for your visa? Which country was the visa for?

<comment><USER16> USA. I'm currently on an L1B (which is difficult to get and renew, and only renews once). To get an H1B I need that degree, and it helps if it's related to the field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> HN is easily one of the most valuable "tools" I have in my toolchest. 20-30 minutes a day of front page browsing and the occasional post is like having a secret weapon in my tech arsenal. The number of times topics (not just tech) have come up in my professional life that I heard about first, and usually only, on HN...and then my ability to engage reasonably intelligently on those topics _because_ of HN is countless.

</comment><comment><USER18> Hi, I'm longtime lurker and was compelled to create a HN account for this topic. I'm in a similar position in my mid thirties; currently struggling with a heavy course load while working full time. Most weeks I seem to get most of my work done on the weekends and a occasional week night, struggling with the math classes though. I think I'm about thirty units away from transferring to the University I work for tuition free as 3rd year student.

As a sysadmin with tons of experience (rhcsa and aws certified by end of year) I'm tempted to just give up my studies and go work remote somewhere in a developing country since I love to travel. Though I remind myself an education is invaluable and that my university alumni is connected and full of prestige, I just imagine myself in Thailand making half of what I make and having a more enjoyable life as opposed to one I here in States.

Most of my lower division classes have been online at my local community college, but the math classes are not online and I have a hard time following the professor's lectures and getting to class early. Youtube lectures helps with some concepts, but I think I need to supplement my college math classes with an online program of some sort or a private math tutor.

Can anyone recommend some math online math courses that cover Algebra to Calculus please? Any tips that help with time management, focus and staying motivated?

<comment><USER19> Please do finish your education... there seems to be an anti-college sentiment on HN, but you've put in so much work, it just makes sense to get it over with, get the damn certificate. It may not seem like much when working for private companies, but when you work with Governments (either on contracts or for immigration etc.) more paper education does matter, alumni networks are helpful. And you can go to thailand even after you get the degree :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting. Here I am trying to figure out what I can do to get out of technology at 40+.

Congrats on finishing school!

<comment><USER21> I have just gone opposite route. I turn 42 this year and just started job in a more technical role having spent 8 years in management. I moved into management because I was a very good developer. I don't think I was a bad manager, my teams did well and won awards. However, I couldn't stomach the endless meetings and admin tasks that came with being a manager. I carried on reading Hacker News trying to keep up with the latest trends instead of moving on to reading management and finance sites. In the end, despite the ageism stories abound I decided to go back to technology. Its been 3 weeks into the new job. I am appreciating the time I have to immerse myself in the technology. Good luck with your quest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> That's awesome, and an inspiration.

And I really encourage you to find a good team (rather than just focusing on salary), it'll really level you up quickly — and set you up for lots of good opportunities as the years go by.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm 35 and have been working in web development since 2007, but I feel like my career has went completely off the tracks since 2015. You see, I have been under-employed or unemployed for three years and I cannot convert any interviews into job offers anymore.

I also have a non-STEM degree and the prospect of going to grad school for CS or Math related courses seems tempting. I don't want to work for local small web shops forever, and prefer to see myself in the long run working at a big semiconductor firm or aerospace firm. However, time and financial issues are holding me back from trying out college again.

If OP's experience is more the norm, where tons of doors open for you simply for having the right degree and preparation, what should I do to make ends meet in the interim? How can I get a job to support myself while I'm attending college, when I can't interview worth a damn? I'm hoping I can get by with a campus job, waive part of my tuition (I've also worked on campus last time I was in college).

<comment><USER7> See my point I added today bait internet interview skills to @ccajas. It is a whole different skill set to learn and not necessarily taught through traditional schooling but worth the effort so that your skill set can be shown in the best light. Good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Glad to hear it worked out for you! I think there's a lot of potential for people who non-traditional students who are capable of focusing on science, math, logic, getting retrained into CS and have a good career. We definitely need more people in the field, and I'm sure you bring a slightly different perspective coming in at a little bit later age.

</comment><comment><USER25> Well done you! Though 30 is not that old, I've never believed that old adage about old dogs. Grit, determination, self belief and a positive outlook are some of the main ingredients required to change course in life. Sacrifice will most likely be required too if the change of course is more than 45 degrees.

</comment><comment><USER26> I love how pure Hacker News is. It's like Digg or Slashdot 10 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER27> > it was quite challenging in every sense: time/money management, high drop- > out rates (~80% fail or stop studying cs at my university), lack of math > skills - school was far far away.

This is where a mentor I believe does a great job. I know people that had a hard time learning because they don't have someone guiding them. Some aspects, like say, async programming or memory management could be hard to grasp by yourself but when someone explains it well, then it everything starts to come together. That's why when I'm teaching I always tell people to understand the concepts first cause you'll only learn it once and it will help you understand the pieces better.

<comment><USER28> Any tips on finding a good mentor?

<comment><USER27> Personally, the best mentor I had was my first manager at my first job. He did really well for himself now and probably could retire (he's in his mid 30's).

But how I found mentors naturally was hang out at a place called Hacker Dojo here in Silicon Valley. Since they often had free JavaScript classes and meetups, I took advantage of that to make connections and eventually found mentors/friends and people in general that help you out.

<comment><USER29> Cool! Hacker Dojo was created by my brother David. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I find it interesting that you are not having a problem finding Jr SWE roles. I co-run a computer science career community (CS Career Hackers) and I often get a lot of complaints by new grads about the lack of Jr roles.

</comment><comment><USER31> Congratulations on your new career.

On a side note, anyone else a bit worried that there being a tech or economic bubble? Reading this thread, I can't help but be reminded of the dotcom bubble when everyone was getting into tech or the "I just became a realtor" craze before the housing bubble crash.

Anyone maintain a list of indicators other than S&P 500 PE ratio or the interest rate?

I'm generally optimistic on the economy because of the tax cuts and the expected infrastructure spending, but still, don't wait to be caught with my pants down like the 2008 financial disaster.

<comment><USER7> I'm always worried about that but have been since about 2012 so it is hard to know what the future holds. Best hedge plan is to live well within means and save lots so if/when there is another big crash have savings to last until the economy gathers steam again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I remember that question/conversation. So pleased it worked out.

Mind sharing a few thoughts about your experience as an "older" student? Any surprises about the coursework/assignments/fellow students?

Comparing my oldest child's recent university experience to mine (in the 70s) it's like a different world. Much more paper submission & grading online, much more 'handholding' and support from the instructors, more teamwork assignments, less reading.

Thanks again for the followup, and congrats!!!

<comment><USER33> I"m working on a BS in Software Development at 27. I 100% agree with the hand holding statement. It feels to me like universities are lowering expectations so students pass rather than fail them. I know one individual who is a senior in this Software Development program who doesn't understand basic concepts but his professors have been passing him. I don't think this benefits the student, school, or society. In fact, if anything it devalues education.

I am curious if this is an isolated situation at my university or if this trend is more secular.

<comment><USER34> I've also noticed this trend, at my university and from what I hear many from the region I'm in. I don't think that it is an isolated event.

In many classes attendance makes up a comparable portion of grades as tests, which means in order to pass classes you need attendance points and class assignments, many of which are "effort based", so in most cases one can fail 75% of tests and still pass with decent grades.

<comment><USER35> To play devil's advocate, degrees are getting more and more expensive, making it less and less acceptable for customers to not get something for their money. If I pay $100K and _dont_ drop out, and still don't get the degree, I'm going to be enraged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Reading this made my day. Thank you for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER37> I made the same moves last year and have no regrets. I was 28 when I quit my career in finance in May 2017. It's definitely been the hardest thing I've ever done (System's Architecture and Computer Networks) but it's been the most rewarding. I'll be finishing Year 1 of 3 this June.

</comment><comment><USER38> You have no idea how helpful to me it was reading your post. Congratulations my dude, godspeed!

</comment><comment><USER39> Congratulations! Did you work full time while in school? Is this in the US or Germany? I've thought about school, I'd love to get a formal education, but I just landed my first job and I probably won't end up doing it.

</comment><comment><USER40> Thanks for coming back and sharing your success! It's very inspiring for me. I just graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree and debating going back for a CSE Bachelor's degree but unsure if it would be worth it.

<comment><USER41> I don't know how it is in other schools, but at mine you can get a masters in CS even if you didn't do your undergrad in CS. They just have you take the core undergrad CS courses, which is about 1-1.5 years of work. With an ME, it might not even be that long. You should look into that before going for a second bachelor's.

<comment><USER42> Which school?

<comment><USER41> University of Hawaii at Manoa. I'm finishing up an undergrad degrees in CS and Business (started school at 30 after time in the military, so another success story for this thread), but I have a few friends in the masters program who came from other disciplines, which is how I know about this, though it's also listed on their site.

[http://www.ics.hawaii.edu/welcome/academics/graduate- degree-...](http://www.ics.hawaii.edu/welcome/academics/graduate-degree- programs/m-s-in-ics/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Nice job, comp sci degree is not easy but man does it set you up for success

</comment><comment><USER44> Good job. I received a degree in finance and ended up not wanting to go into banking so I went back and got my CS degree. Like you said, looking back it was definitely worth all the time and effort.

</comment><comment> d--b Awesome. Congrats!

That said, it was kind of clear from your original post that you were headed in the right direction! Hell, just reading/asking Hacker news meant you already had two feet in the community :-)

</comment><comment><USER45> If you don't mind me asking, where did you get your degree?

</comment><comment><USER46> I'd rather think about an interesting problem than think about career building. I thought this was a common problem, but this thread is sure different.

</comment><comment><USER47> Thanks for sharing this, I just turned 30 and started a CompSci Master's track 1.5 years ago. Very encouraging to hear your success!

</comment><comment><USER48> How do you find offers when every resume submission is met with automated replies?

<comment><USER49> You want to avoid those channels all together. Anytime you find a company that you want to work for or one with an interesting opening try to get in direct contact with someone at the company. Either at the manager level or in HR.

Simply asking for time to talk about the position is enough to bypass any automated process

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> This made my day, thank you! I am currently working on changing careers to CS.

</comment><comment><USER51> Way to go, my friend! Best of luck in your career and life!

</comment><comment><USER52> Love this. Thank you for sharing. It is an inspiration!</comment>


E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret - <AUTHOR> https://goodereader.com/blog/e-paper/e-ink-waveforms-are-a-closely-guarded-secret <comment><USER2> Is it really "closely guarded", or "worst guarded"? Anyone with a logic analyser and a few hours can probably figure it out easily enough... and some have even gone _beyond_ what the official controllers can do:

[https://hackaday.io/project/11537-nekocal-an-e-ink- calendar/...](https://hackaday.io/project/11537-nekocal-an-e-ink- calendar/log/72153-can-you-get-32-level-grayscale-out-of-an-e-ink-display) (previously discussed at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16140284](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16140284) )

More research from others:

[http://essentialscrap.com/eink/](http://essentialscrap.com/eink/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11894613](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11894613)

[https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/interfacing-e...](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/interfacing- epd-\(e-ink\)-display-from-kindle-anyone-tried/)

<comment><USER3> The waveforms will all likely be disclosed in their patents too:

[https://patents.google.com/?assignee=E+Ink+Corp](https://patents.google.com/?assignee=E+Ink+Corp)

Certainly a number of drive waveforms and the basic concepts are presented. There are likely implementation subtleties or specific configurations that are not explicitly disclosed.

You can probably figure out a lot about both the implementation, and motivation by digging through the patents.

<comment><USER4> Yes, it would be quite stupid to guard the secret and not patent it. So the title of the article doesn't make much sense.

<comment><USER5> That's done all the time. Called a trade secret. [https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_secret](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_secret)

<comment><USER6> A trade secret that can be reverse engineered by a tinkerer with an oscilloscope in an afternoon.

This is more or less the type of situation patents were invented for: a simple invention anyone can copy once it's invented, but difficult (I assume) to invent in the first place.

<comment><USER7> Or expensive to invent.

It's why I don't like most software patents, but why I think codecs, especially the modern ones, should be patentable. They're complicated engineering challenges requiring you to make numerous tradeoffs and I feel that just because the result is an algorithm doesn't mean that it shouldn't be patentable.

Other software patents I'm more dubious of, but I feel comfortable saying H.264 should be patentable.

<comment><USER4> Totally agree. However in many cases, the main technology is invented at universities with public funding. Also, codecs are a means of communication, and I don't think it should be patentable because it can cause problems once everybody settles on a single standard. See the MPEG nightmare, where professional cameras have a license attached to any movie shot with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Recently, I brought a Dasung paperlike HD to use as a monitor. (crazy expensive, prob should've spend money elsewhere...) I thought some things were impossible with eink, but it proved me wrong. (video in a reasonable fps)

It has a few different ways of display. For example: Floyd–Steinberg dithering: essentially only black and white with dithering, and the speed pretty good. A16: uses 16 shades of grey, but the speed is horrible for moving images. So I wonder if a mix of the two can do much better (e.g. moving objects using floyd-steinberg until it stops moving)

Before doing that, I need to know the exact limit of eink. Are some operations slow because the microcontroller or because it is the limit of the display module itself? This article shows such a question is not that easy to answer using the openly available information.

Also, I'm interested if there are algorithmic problems to be solved in this space. (I do research in theoretical computer science). If you are in NYC and knowledgeable I'm very interested to chat (I know little, but I have the monitor you can play with).

<comment><USER9> Why would you use an e-ink display for videos? The main advantage is the low power consumption because it needs power only to refresh, using it for a video it will negate that advantage and draw _much_ more power than a traditional display with an awful image quality...

<comment><USER8> 1\. Currently, I use it for writing code and reading papers. However, I still want the monitor to be a good enough drop-in monitor for things I need to occasionally do. For example, I need to switch to a browser window to check what was that error I'm getting.

2\. Visual snow syndrome: Many had their first experience of visual snow after staring into the screen for too long. People who believe in that is the cause of visual snow would want a screen that does not emit light.

<comment><USER10> What exactly about emitted light is a problem? Light doesn't carry a memory of how it was generated, so it must be some difference in some measurable property, e.g. brightness/contrast/color spectrum/flicker/polarization, or the way these change at different viewing angles. If you know which attributes are important then you might be able to match them with an emissive display.

<comment><USER11> Emissive displays don't generally match the brightness of their surroundings; even with automatic adjustment, most are physically incapable of being as bright as a newspaper in daylight, and many cannot be as dim as a newspaper lit only by one of those small book-reading lights without being switched off entirely.

There's also the spikey spectrum, which looks the same consciously but I've seen claims [1] that is messes with our circadian rhythm.

[1] I lack the skill to tell if this is real science or neo-mystic woo.

<comment><USER12> I think most people are forgetting that LED backlights are controlled usually using PWM which flickers, fast, but still flickers. I haven't found any research about how it might affect humans. I suspect it would be better if no- flicker current-controlled LED backlight was used instead of PWM.

<comment><USER13> According to notebookcheck only about half the devices they tested use PWM:

[https://www.notebookcheck.net/Why-Pulse-Width-Modulation- PWM...](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Why-Pulse-Width-Modulation-PWM-is-such- a-headache.270240.0.html)

It seems to be well known that it for low frequency PWM it causes headaches for some people, so I would expect that there is at least some research in that direction. That said, it seems to only be a problem for few people and only for very low frequencies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ben Krasnow (Applied Science on YouTube) did some research into driving e-Ink displays, and he made some similar observations:

> All of the lookup table information has been removed from this datasheet, > because the industry thrives on secrecy or something

Highly recommended, as usual for him it's a great video/write-up:

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsbiO8EAsGw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsbiO8EAsGw)

* [http://benkrasnow.blogspot.com/2017/10/fast-partial-refresh-...](http://benkrasnow.blogspot.com/2017/10/fast-partial-refresh-on-42-e-paper.html)

<comment><USER15> Yeah, his series is really great and it made me realize the FW flashed on these CARTA panels are actually nothing but the raw waveforms themselves.

One thing that I want to note is that while their documentation might be closely guarded secret, the actual waveforms are actually available out in the open.

For instance here are the raw waveforms for one of the latest Carta generation e-paper panel:

[https://github.com/canselcik/libremarkable/blob/master/refer...](https://github.com/canselcik/libremarkable/blob/master/reference- material/epdc_ES103CS1.fw?raw=true)

      ~ hexdump -C epdc_ES103CS1.fw | head -10
      00000000  34 88 c4 7c 01 2d 01 00  dd 09 00 00 07 06 a4 00  |4..|.-..........|
      00000010  03 58 21 1d 3c ca 01 85  02 00 00 00 40 00 00 fe  |.X!.<.......@...|
      00000020  47 00 00 01 00 04 0d 00  ff fc 00 00 00 00 00 54  |G..............T|
      00000030  00 03 06 09 0c 0f 12 15  18 1b 1e 21 26 2b 30 28  |...........!&+0(|
      00000040  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08  3e 05 00 00 00 00 00 e8  |........>.......|
      00000050  cb 06 00 00 00 00 00 c8  8d 0a 00 00 00 00 00 a8  |................|
      00000060  4f 0e 00 00 00 00 00 98  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 a0  |O...............|
      00000070  65 00 00 00 00 00 00 a8  bc 00 00 00 00 00 00 b0  |e...............|
      00000080  0b 01 00 00 00 00 00 b8  5a 01 00 00 00 00 00 c0  |........Z.......|
      00000090  aa 01 00 00 00 00 00 c8  31 02 00 00 00 00 00 d0  |........1.......|

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> E Ink seems to be one of the technologies that is hampered solely by patents. It's too sad that we're only going to get major innovations in e ink tech in 15-20 Years...

<comment><USER17> Would/could/do Chinese manufacturers ignore those patents? Are they not able to sell abroad if they do?

<comment><USER18> Importers would likely get their shipments seized. It's not illegal for manufacturers to export their goods out of China, but US customs doesn't look too highly on importing goods that contravene on registered US IP.

Small time shipments are unlikely to be looked at (eg. if someone buys a single electronic ink display off of AliExpress), but someone actually importing many displays for resale would likely eventually get caught.

<comment><USER19> Honestly how would you even know if the e-ink displays infringe on IP? I can't imagine them doing anything.

<comment><USER20> A patent gives you a monopoly which makes things easy.

You occasionally search the market for products that contain your tech (in this case eink), then look in your records to see if they bought/licensed from you.

<comment><USER21> But is it that infringement can be proven only by a court? So can US customs do any thing in such cases, even if we assume they have the competency to judge if a particular import violates IP.

<comment><USER22> They file a case, and ask for a preliminary injunction. And once that's granted (which is likely), they take that order to customs, and customs will start looking for those devices in shipments from your supplier or to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Some info [https://hackaday.io/list/35814-e-paper](https://hackaday.io/list/35814-e-paper) here and especially from the links provided, everyone is working from [http://essentialscrap.com/eink/waveforms.html](http://essentialscrap.com/eink/waveforms.html) and [http://spritesmods.com/?art=einkdisplay](http://spritesmods.com/?art=einkdisplay)

And [https://hackaday.io/project/21168-fpga-eink- controller](https://hackaday.io/project/21168-fpga-eink-controller) has an FPGA doing waveforms by extracting them from existing firmware. So while it might be a closely guarded secret, just replicating it is possible.

</comment><comment><USER24> In my experience, memory LCD has been a better technology to work with: [https://www.sharpsma.com/sharp-memory-lcd- technology](https://www.sharpsma.com/sharp-memory-lcd-technology)

No crazy +/\- 40V lines, no external driver circuitry, and extremely low power. Not as low power as E Ink, but since you don't need to drive wacky voltages, your power budget math will come out the same or better.

<comment><USER25> I've never seen one in real life. How are the display characteristics compared to eInk?

<comment><USER24> If you've ever seen an OG Pebble, you've seen that display. It looks like a better resolution gameboy display. Very little space between pixels.

Some models are different, though, and basically turn into a mirror when their pixels are turned on, rather than become matte black.

Adafruit sells a dev board for 25 bucks. Perfect for low power wearables, much better than E Ink.

<comment><USER26> Is this tech relatively new? Is it merchandised as "memory LCD"? I would like to know when searching for e-reader displays in the future.

<comment><USER27> It is not new and rarely mentioned in advertising or product information. The memory LCD I've seen are too small for a normal e-reader but if you are doing a large production run you can have something custom made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Unfortunately, what the article described sounds a lot like a thermometer coded delta-sigma DAC or other similar design.

How these are constructed and used are well known, and they're probably lying about "closely guarded" to make sure people don't realize it is just a clever usage of an off the shelf part, and none of the magic is in-house.

</comment><comment><USER29> Where would one anonymously publish an E-ink data sheet with waveforms if they had one?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can send it to me.

<comment><USER29> Are you author of the linked article? What's contact info?

<comment><AUTHOR> use the contact form on the website for the linked article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Here is a teardown of a 13.3 high perf E-ink monitor I did a few months ago: [https://kevzettler.com/2018/02/11/dasung-paperlike-pro- teard...](https://kevzettler.com/2018/02/11/dasung-paperlike-pro-teardown)

The post identifies some on market E-ink display components and discusses the design of a proprietary display driver.

<comment><USER31> _" On closer inspection all the chip components have had their labels chemically peeled off to prevernt reverse engineering."_

Wow, I've never seen that. Is it a common thing? It also puts me off buying one of these (assuming the $900 price tag hadn't put me off already).

<comment><USER2> I've seen it a lot in Chinese electronics, and it only deters the least effort of reverse-engineers.

Erased markings are usually a sign of off-the-shelf parts; they didn't go to the effort of printing their own branding on them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The article doesn't mention this anywhere, but the "waveform" is usually a 4D lookup table with target and previous grayscale value, temperature, and frame number.

</comment><comment><USER33> For extra fun for all the people trying to reverse it, the exact waveform data changes per batch of displays. The overall strategy will remain the same though.

If you want to see a more complete list of waveform names you could probably go look at the gpl releases of popular readers...

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder if eink would be really useful to make a low powered smartphone. As long as you use software which doesn't burn a lot of power, like email and other stuff which is designed to run with fewer cycles.

At that point I would really care for software with a minimum amount of non fancy feature that doubles or triple battery life. If you make extensive use of text, and don't use high resolution image or set low limits, there are surely ways to make a more durable device.

Cheap androids are awesome, but I have no idea why they're becoming slow as they age, and I'm sure software is always to blame. I really crave minimalist designs when it comes to hardware and software.

<comment><USER35> The display is only part of the story. You could save some battery life with an e-paper display sure, but you still have the CPU and radio grinding away at the battery. The ultra power saving mode on my Samsung phone is a good example, it throttles the CPU, sleeps the radio aggressively, restricts the phone to only running a few basic apps, and turns off most of the OLED display. I can increase battery lifetime by almost a factor of 5 with that on.

An e-paper display would save a bit more, sure, but the type of display isn't the only limitation to a low-power smart phone. You need to design the whole thing to work together to save power; changing one component isn't gonna be enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is really frustrating as if you already have an FPGA (and appropriate regulators), the controller is just redundant overhead (in every metric conceivable). I'm glad to see at least the beginning of reverse engineering as some of the panels (typically kindle replacement panels) are quite affordable and even the $450 13.3" panel isn't unreasonably expensive. (An FPGA-powered PocketCHIP-like device with e-Ink would be a lot of fun).

</comment><comment><USER37> Is Waveforms what is in Epsons eink controller chips?

[https://phys.org/news/2011-05-dpi-epson-e-ink-epaper- resolut...](https://phys.org/news/2011-05-dpi-epson-e-ink-epaper- resolution.html)

Japan display has made 600 dpi controllers. [http://www.j-display.com/english/news/2017/20170522.html](http://www.j-display.com/english/news/2017/20170522.html)

Further been thinking of building an Eink based smartphone, the eink display would have low power. Some kind of low power small system board running Linux and a 4g modem. Not sure what system board to pick. Batteries should be LifePo4 Lithium iron for battery safety. What kind of high resolution touch based eink displays are out there which are easy to drive from a small Linux system board?

</comment><comment><USER38> Anyone interested in running linux on their Kindle should check out [http://fread.ink](http://fread.ink)

Juul spent a good amount of time working out how to read the stored waveform configurations (different for each unit) and getting them to run at a reasonable speed.

<comment><USER39> I'm looking for an e-ink monitor (along the lines of [https://cloudconfusing.com/2018/09/18/e-ink-monitors- ready-f...](https://cloudconfusing.com/2018/09/18/e-ink-monitors-ready-for- prime-time/) ). Would this work for that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Seems like a good use case for PID loops -- drive the pixel really hard for a brief moment to bring it to the target value faster than might otherwise be possible.

Seems limited only by the voltages that just end up frying parts.

<comment><USER41> For a PID loop, you'd need to be able to measure the position and velocity of the black dots. Velocity seems very hard. You could conceivably measure the position with a camera looking at the image, but will people want an ebook reader with a camera sticking out in front?

<comment><USER40> Good point. Maybe not a PID loop at all, but rather an well tuned open-loop controller that compensates for the natural time response of the e-ink pixel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Usually when a piece of tech is protected purely by obscurity in this way, the tech isn't really tech. It is more likely something that a decent programmer/hacker could figure out in a day or two. That's why they are scared to share any info - because even just a single sentence could be enough of a hint to a competitor in how it works.

</comment><comment><USER43> Is E Ink anything more than a marketed technology with no real purpose?

One can calibrate the brightness, white balance (e.g. Apple's True Tone), resolution, etc of a regular LCD or OLED display so that the same amount of photons hit your eye (and are more tightly controlled when you move the display around) as with an E Ink display, and get better resolution color, and saturation to boot.

Besides the idea that it was easier on the eyes was never backed by any substantial scientific studies, it was just "but it's like paper, so it should be" plus some manufacturer sponsored crap.

Well, there's the extended battery life I guess...

<comment><USER22> Screen persistance with zero power can be a pretty big deal. It's always nice (ish) when my Kindle has the 'your battery is dead' screen on when I go to use it, so I know what's going on even before I try to turn it on.

Other than that, it's hard to compare because nobody makes large monochrome lcd displays. Monochrome is actually a feature for the intended use: newspapers and books use a pretty limited amount of color, so you get improved pixel density and geometry without having to split pixels into colors.

OLED won't work for dark text on a light background, and tends to be rather expensive -- I can't imagine a Kindle sized device with an oled display for less than $200, so that limits it to the high end models.

<comment><USER44> Eizo still makes monocrome LCD monitors. They are for medical diagnostic purposes. [https://www.eizo.com/products/radiforce/gx550/](https://www.eizo.com/products/radiforce/gx550/)</comment></comment></comment>


Greenwald's keynote at 30c3: priorities for privacy activists - <AUTHOR> http://jameso.be/2014/01/01/greenwald.html <comment><USER2> Michael Hayden, former chief of NSA, recently said that the young people should give up on their "romanticized" idea of transparency (for the government). That's some irony for you, considering his NSA is the one that started going after "total information awareness", by collecting everything on everyone, and trying to kill privacy and anonymity worldwide.

Why isn't his idea "romanticized", too? Also, if anything, it's the governments that should have total transparency, not the citizens. They are the public people working on the interest of the public, and the public should be able to verify that what they're doing is in its interest. Instead, we see the opposite. They're trying to make every person an open book to them, while they're increasingly denying FOIA requests, to the point where even the police does it (NYPD especially).

That's not how it's supposed to work. Maybe Hayden and the others that think like him, should give up on the idea of "romanticized" tyranny, that they want to establish.

</comment><comment><USER3> Direct link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEJIR0-KJu0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEJIR0-KJu0)

</comment><comment><USER4> If you hack corporations you can very defintly "get a gun pointed at you". There are laws against hacking, even hacking corporations, and you can be convicted. You can also be sued.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. Swartz wasn't convicted of hacking the government. He was accused of hacking a private corporation. The fact that it was the government prosecuting it like they did shows how little difference there is between the targets.</comment></comment>


I hate the DnB and DUNS - <AUTHOR>

I hate the dnb.  How can I circumvent the system.  I just waited 14 days for a duns number that didnt work.  now i have to wait 25 days for them to update their system and send me a new duns, and then another 14 days before i can use the duns.  Im ready to launch my app asap.  wtf!!! <comment><USER2> I had to wait 90 days. I open sourced an app because of this.

Are you paying them? I hear that when you are paying, it takes 1 to 3 days to do any change or inclusion.

[http://eduardo.intermeta.com.br/posts/2013/1/17/wireframeapp...](http://eduardo.intermeta.com.br/posts/2013/1/17/wireframeapp- open-source)

</comment><comment><USER3> Jump ship and develop for Android instead.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is DUNS required to accept payments ?

<comment><USER2> DUNS is now required for all developer accounts (business)

<comment><USER4> ok i read your blog. You mean required for apple apps.</comment></comment></comment>


Finnix Is The First Distro With Linux Kernel 3.0 - Softpedia - <AUTHOR> http://news.softpedia.com/news/Finnix-Is-The-First-Distro-With-Linux-Kernel-3-0-213548.shtml <comment><USER2> Well - linux 3.0-1 has been in Arch Linux [testing] since monday, so I don't know if that is technically correct.

I also think this says more about what Finnix thinks "stable" means that it says about their development activity.</comment>


FBI Is Wrong: All Routers Need to Be Reset,  What to Do - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomsguide.com/us/russian-router-malware,news-27288.html <comment><USER2> This article is wrong. It states: "MicroTik Cloud Core routers, mainly used by enterprises, may be affected if they run versions 1016, 1036 or 1072 of the MicroTik RouterOS.

Those are model numbers, not firmware versions. He lifted that from this Krebs artical ([https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/05/fbi-kindly-reboot- your-r...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/05/fbi-kindly-reboot-your-router- now-please/)) which is also wrong.

All Mikrotik products running less than version 6.38.5 are vulnerable: [https://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?t=134776](https://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?t=134776)

It makes me wonder what else is wrong....

</comment><comment><USER3> Where did this title come from? This isn't what the article says.

<comment><USER4> Probably from that the FBI previously said a reboot of your router was enough. Apparently it isn't.

<comment><USER5> Rebooting is enough to get rid of stages 2 and 3, if present. To get rid of stage 1, you have to factory reset, and preferably overwrite the firmware too, even if it's already up-to-date.

More helpful than TFA or the FBI's announcements was this blog post, already featured on HN at least once and linked by commenters probably multiple times:

[https://blog.talosintelligence.com/2018/05/VPNFilter.html](https://blog.talosintelligence.com/2018/05/VPNFilter.html)</comment></comment></comment>


There Is No Nobel Prize in Economics  - <AUTHOR> http://www.alternet.org/economy/there-no-nobel-prize-economics

<comment><USER2> The comments of the article provided a needed counterpoint. The article focuses on econometricians and right wingers, but neglects the cases where the prize was awarded to development economists, and liberals. If you add it up, the "Nobel Memorial Prize" has been awarded across the political spectrum.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm more interested in the fact that the bank consciously hitched this new prize to the brand's coattails.

<comment><USER2> It is interesting. It certainly made sense for the bank to connect to a pre- existing and well known award rather than to endow an obscure prize from nothing. I hadn't known the Alfred Nobel family was against it, however.</comment></comment></comment>


Dropbox CTO Aditya Agarwal Is Leaving - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/21/dropbox-cto-aditya-agarwal-is-leaving/ <comment><USER2> Just curious - why is this important? Is it something like given the upcoming IPO, the current investors asked for someone more experienced? but that would be odd considering he was on the tech side and not on business

</comment><comment><USER3> I read elsewhere they were looking to IPO later this year. Seems like an odd time to jump ship.

<comment><USER4> That's not unusual at all. A lecture at Harvard Business School about startup IPO mentioned that first time founder CEO and first time board member get more often then not replaced. Read about the business case of Lewis Cirne who got replaced at his first company Wily, and founded later New Relic with many lessons learned.

<comment><USER5> "Get more often then not replaced" not quite sure what you meant here. Could you say a bit more?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So is Arash Ferdowsi no longer the CTO?

What is his position now?

<comment><USER7> his position now is just "co-founder". [https://www.dropbox.com/about](https://www.dropbox.com/about)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> >That kind of five-year tenure at a startup in Silicon Valley alone is pretty long, to be sure

Does this journalist not even know about 4 year vesting schedule that are common after an acquisition?

<comment><USER9> It's common, but many people do not stick it for the whole 4 years. In fact, I have seen 12-24 months more often than the full 4. If your acquisition was even a tiny bit high profile, any new job offer will come with a stock grant that more than makes up for what you lose by leaving early. (And in fact, if you are in that position, you should be using it as a leverage when negotiating a new job offer)

<comment><USER10> It really depends on what you think the EV is. Dropbox has pretty high EV if you're in his role, I bet, which is why people are speculating in the first place. (Does this mean Dropbox is not as valuable as it seems from the outside?)

Personally, knowing how hard people there have worked over the last 6 years, I imagine he just needs a break.

<comment><USER11> If you have a sizable chunk of equity and the liquidity to exercise options (or if they are already exercised) then leaving the company can make it easier to trade on that equity.

<comment><USER8> I take it you're referring specifically to (1) lock up periods and (2) the negative signals you send when a CXO liquidates shares while still being a CXO?

<comment><USER11> In other tumultuous times, the dot com days, there were many examples of people simplifying all the rules about when to trade or what they could trade, by ending their employment. I did not take that route but many did.

I was remarking that when the future has many variables and you want to simplify, that can be sufficient motivation to leave a company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if he will join Uber.

<comment><USER13> Depends how many files he's downloaded, I guess.</comment></comment>


San Francisco Startup Weekend: HelpHookup.com (live progress) - <AUTHOR> http://helphookup.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the San Francisco startup weekend. We're in there right now, locked up in a big room, and hacking away our Community Response Web application. It's intense. We'll be releasing today.</comment>


Crypto optimizations for Go from CloudFlare/Intel blocked by licensing issues - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/dgryski/status/600346293404356608

<comment><USER2> This discussion has more participants: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9567176](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9567176)</comment>