Projecting the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 through postpandemic period - <AUTHOR> https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/14/science.abb5793.full <comment><USER2> This paper seems to have every imaginable scenario of which 2022 is a worst case.

But, now actual data is starting to come in - such as the extremely interesting serum testing in Scotland (1) - which suggests that the infection rate is much much higher than previously supposed. The Scotland serum testing shows that around 35000 people were infected at a time when only 110 cases were known officially, and strongly suggests that at least 10%-20% of the country have been infected by now.

Similar data has been suggested by the Danish serum testing.

So I'd be interested to see what comes out of this Harvard model if they put in the numbers suggested from serum testing.

1\. [https://figshare.com/articles/Serological_analysis_of_1000_S...](https://figshare.com/articles/Serological_analysis_of_1000_Scottish_blood_donor_samples_for_anti- SARSCoV2_antibodies_collected_in_March_2020/12116778/2) )

<comment><USER3> And also a similar study in Germany with similar results [1]. The result is of course to mechanically reduce the fatality rate to a number close to that of the flu (the problem for hospitals being not so much the fatality rate than the high number of infections), and well within the 0.1-1% range that US health authorities have been advertising for a while.

Regarding models, it seems 0.15% is the new basis [2].

Even on the optimistic end of the range (0.1% fatality), with 13k deaths, that's 20% of the UK population infected, a long way from achieving herd immunity.

The other thing is that I invite people on hackernews to better control their anxiety. It is not so long ago that pointing that case fatality ratios in jurisdictions that didn't do mass testing and where there seemed to be many unreported cases with mild symptom was overestimating the fatality rate would get you treated of conspirary theorist. South Korea had been measuring a fatality ratio in that range (~0.6%) over a month ago and that was probably already an upper bound (due to not testing 100% of the population).

[1] [https://mobile.twitter.com/AmeshAA/status/124944656101010637...](https://mobile.twitter.com/AmeshAA/status/1249446561010106370)

[2] [https://mobile.twitter.com/AmeshAA/status/124902067755179622...](https://mobile.twitter.com/AmeshAA/status/1249020677551796224)

<comment><USER4> NYC population is 8.4 million. Their death rate is 6,589 (Apr 13). 0.1% of 8.4 million is 8400, that would mean almost everyone in NYC has been infected, I'm not sure that is feasible at the moment.

[https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-d...](https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-daily- data-summary-04142020-1.pdf)

<comment><USER3> It would only take a 0.25% fatality rate to imply 30% of the NY population to have been infected, which is plausible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "To avoid this, prolonged or intermittent social distancing may be necessary into 2022."

Wow -- seems very unlikely to happen though.

<comment><USER6> Intermittent seems quite possible. Every time the death rate spikes, we'll have to lock down again.

Chances are, some region will decide against doing that, and their outcome will provide a clear incentive for everyone else to be more rigorous about it.

<comment><USER7> Yeah no this is not happening, the young people will revolt before that. You can suspend civil liberties for a few months, that's fine, but not intermittently over several years. No way that governments in western countries will get away with that. I expect this to be an event that will remove most baby-boomers from power and bring in the millennial generation, they expect us to support ~5 old people through most of our productive life and now they created or are about to create debt that we will have to pay off for the rest of our lives. A lot of it is to prop up pension schemes and assets which are primarily owned by old people and projected to have collapsed by the time a 30 year old will retire.

<comment><USER8> Lmfao you are far too optimistic about the revolutionary potential of westernized young people.

They will not revolt. They won't take power. They don't even vote today.

<comment><USER9> I take the "Ok boomer" to be the canary in the coal mine, or atleast I hope so, because without the young people revolting this planet is royaly screwed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article brings up something I was thinking about when this all first started: cross-immunity with other coronaviruses and whether or not infection with one of them could at least give partial immunity to SARS-CoV-2. As the study points out, there are less harmful human coronaviruses which are thought to cause around 15% of common colds worldwide.

I wonder if anybody has thought to research using these viruses as part of an innoculation strategy at least for high-risk groups. After all the first 'vaccine' ever developed in the 18th century (really an innoculation) was to intentionally give people cowpox in order to give them immunity to smallpox.

Maybe it's too risky though for some reason? I dunno.

<comment><USER11> The existing human coronaviruses aren't the most well-researched things around, but as I understand it there's evidence infection with them might actually be pretty dangerous to at-risk people. They just can't cause a pandemic because too many people are immune.

<comment><USER12> The common cold is dangerous to people? The flu, sure, but I never heard of people dying from a cold. I'm sure it happens, but in comparable numbers though? I don't think so.

<comment><USER13> You may already know this, but for the sake of others, it's important to realize that many viruses cause what we refer to as 'common cold'. Coronaviruses are only a minor component of this set of viruses, as low as 1-2% in a study I read (can't find it now; this value also depends on lots of factors).

<comment><USER14> FWIW this WebMD article I read a while back puts "colds" as being caused by Coronavirus 20% of the time, [https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold- guide/common_cold_ca...](https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold- guide/common_cold_causes).

<comment><USER15> This migth depend on location and local climate. The typical cold in my country has different symptoms and length then typical cold 8 hours of drive away south.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's mind blowing we are not putting more money, Billions of dollars, into why people are getting reinfected and around antibodies.

It is fully expected people will be able to get the disease again in years.

But it might be much sooner. And when you get it a second time it might not be as easy as the first. Your third winter and third time getting it might be death.

This variable turns SARS-CoV-2 from it's current media accepted 'mild' to very serious, and we don't know what it is, these 3 months into the disease.

Ok link talking about some of the issues -

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opinion/coronavirus- immun...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opinion/coronavirus- immunity.html)

<comment><USER17> Actually we don't have to do anything except let corona virus run its course. Just saved you billions in research.

<comment><USER18> "Run its course" = 2-3% of the population die due to the virus.

I think the billions in research might be a more humane alternative.</comment></comment></comment>


I made an app to help travellers compare cities - <AUTHOR> https://nomadtraveltools.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Howzit tech people 🇿🇦 I'm Ollie and I'm the maker of Nomad Travel Tools.

I travel regularly as a digital nomad. Before I decide to go anywhere, I need to research a few things such as:

\- Can I afford it? \- Is the internet fast enough? \- Do my work hours overlap the 2 different timezones? \- What are other people saying about my potential destination?

So I created a web app that answers these questions and compares the answers to your home city (or any other city) to help you understand them better because not everyone thinks in dollars .

I think that community input before deciding on a destination is very important as data doesn't always cover the intricacies and nuances specific to a place. So my users have the option to post , chat , and upvote  relevant things contributed by the community.

Its free to create a profile on Nomad Travel Tools and you can start exploring  and sharing too!

I hope it helps your future travels! </comment>


Your name is fine - <AUTHOR> http://blog.standupti.me/post/126530670964/paul-graham-is-wrong-and-your-name-is-fine <comment><USER2> The author did not address pg's point that lacking a .com has the potential to signal weakness... such as among potential investors, potential employees, press, and other influencers (like pg himself).

(Yes, there are always exceptions - like angel.co - and hacks like getdropbox.com also work).

But perhaps the tradeoff of retaining your "perfect" .io domain is not worth the extra friction of convincing influencers that you are credible company, when an hour creative brainstorming session for a .com might solve the problem?

Sure, if you have a hockey stick growth chart growing revenue 100% month over month, it doesn't matter, but it's rare that most startups have that right out of the gate. So why add to your burden?

<comment><USER3> I don't care at all about whether or not a business as a .com domain name. I care about usefulness and utility. As long as the business shows up when I google them, I'm good.

<comment><USER2> That's fair. But the question here is: "Do even 10% feel a different way? Followed by: "Is the tradeoff worth it?"

For instance, the author's own web site is standupti.me. It's actually something I might consider trying out. But it comes across as someone's side project by a solo developer, not a company. As a potential customer, I might still get around to trying it out at some point in time, but I do have a slight negative connotation in that it might just disappear tomorrow. It would be 1000x worse for a larger enterprise customer.

<comment><USER4> Until I clicked the link and saw "StandupTime Blog" I thought the domain was trying to say "standup to me" in a colloquial manner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only point I will make is favor a short name for the people that _do_ type it into the address bar... I'd much rather see foo.club or foo.io than have to type in some-kind-of-foo.com just to get a .com address.

Depending on your business, you may be doing offline marketting. Flyers, cards, etc... you _really_ don't want people to have to type in things like [http://www.foo-bar-baz-biz.com/pub/8588277760](http://www.foo-bar-baz- biz.com/pub/8588277760) to get what you want them to see... [http://goto.biz.io/](http://goto.biz.io/) (with a form taking the number) is much better UX.

It always made me laugh when I'd see a URL more than about 15 characters beyond the [http://](http://) because people just aren't likely to do that. I'd say, if your primary url for an offline marketing drive will be more than 12-15 characters (not including prot), find a shorter name.

<comment><USER6> My impression has been that consumers frequently mistake the url for the brand name, which is unfortunate if your url is for instance [http://{try,get,...}{brand-name}.{com,me,...}](http://{try,get,...}{brand- name}.{com,me,...}).

I also have the skill of naming companies and there are a lot of good names still left our there, even on .com. And I think a name should be 8 characters or less. If anyone needs help just send me a message. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Eh, I also don't entirely agree with pg and wrote a bit in reaction to his piece about Change Your Name. But this is super weak. If all you can say is "famous guy's opinion is wrong," you aren't really adding much of value. Your position shouldn't be defined by "I am against x." That leaves x -- in this case pg -- defining your position by default. It isn't very rich.

</comment><comment><USER8> Seems pretty clear to me that the right answer here varies case by case. My company sells enterprise software in a fairly niche market. Some people in Europe are squatting on our .com, so we have .io and .co and use both for various things. We're a startup but have achieved pretty good name recognition and visibility among our target customer base through various marketing activities and plain old hustle. Also if you google our name, the entire first page of results are refer directly to us (website, crunchbase, linkedin, etc.). So from where I sit it would seem to do a lot more harm than good to change our name at this point in pursuit of the .com. Respect for PG etc. etc. but this is not a one-size-fits-all question.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't see this as having addressed the main point of the PG article which was "The problem with not having the .com of your name is that it signals weakness."

</comment><comment><USER10> You need the ".com" because mere mortals don't think about anything other than ".com". Put another way, for consumers, ".com" is assumed and ".<whatever_the_hell>" is an anti-pattern.

<comment><USER11> Whenever someone asks me for my email address ($myfirstname@$myfirstname.mn) and they're not tech savvy I always get "is that @gmail.com or @hotmail...????"

I've learned, like you alluded to, nearly everyone associates the internet with .com. Will we ever get past that point? I don't know. As some other comments mention, .co is not the new .com, but .co.com is.

Made me chuckle.

<comment><USER10> This brings me back to a nice little marketing book I read about ten years ago:

[http://www.amazon.com/Positioning-The-Battle-Your- Mind/dp/00...](http://www.amazon.com/Positioning-The-Battle-Your- Mind/dp/0071373586)

One of the interesting ideas the author postulates is, to put it in CS terms, that people's minds work like a dictionary. Each key associates with one and only one value. And, in this case, the key is a concept, need, category, etc.

If you ask someone in the US to name a plumber they'll probably answer "RotoRooter" without hesitation. Fast food? "McDonalds". Rental car? "Enterprise". Fast car? "Corvette".

The values side of the relationship isn't necessarily uniform across a population but some keys have more uniformity than others (Fast Food).

Once a person makes that key:value association it is really, really hard to break it, if not impossible. Politics tends to work that way too.

In the case of the web, the vast majority of people make the following key:value pair association:

"internet":".com"

And that's the end of the story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In a way I think the "being attached" part of the argument is perhaps being misinterpreted.

Who is "attached" to what here? Why should I be attached to having a .com domain name? On the other hand, why should I be attached to the name I gave my business? If neither is critical to the success of the business, which is better? Sticking with a name that doesn't matter even though I can't have the .com domain? Or what if I could have both, but decided not to. It seems frivolous to say you must have .com domain, but also seems frivolous to say I need to stick with the name of my company.

Also if a .com is available probably means you'll be able to get more marketing accomplished by name recognition alone. When you talk about a company you don't say "I heard about this new company Company.com". Generally when I hear people talk about a company they refer to it as the name of the company not by the domain name. So what's the first thing people think when they want to learn more? "Companyname.com". Ok they probably Google it too, but even that small amount of additional hassle you put a user through trying to find your company is probably statistically significant.

</comment><comment><USER13> alphabet.xyz is way better than alphabet.com and I don't understand it when people say it's a problem. .xyz makes me think of the alphabet, .com makes me think of the 1990's

</comment><comment><USER14> Yeah, I'm not super buying the arguments presented here.

Changing your name certainly isn't the most important thing you could be doing, and I wouldn't buy that domains matter a ton.

However, the earlier you are in a startup's life, the lower your existing brand value. You can so easily change your name and move on. So much of the VC money you are going to get is going to drive up brand value, whether you like it or not. Is there anything else you could do at your startup at that time that would take such little effort to change then and be so much more costly to change later?

Maybe there are some things that are less effort to change now and would be so much more costly to change later. You should do those things first. If you've got a long list though, either change is way too expensive and you are doomed, or you've already got a lot more invested in your name than the pg's target audience.

</comment><comment><USER15> It just occurred to me: Because Google/Alpha owns a popular search engine, they may be uniquely positioned to assess this dilemma. That is, they have massive data sets about companies employing either scheme. They also probably have live data regarding how people are finding their company. They may actually be big enough to make .xyz a thing, when smaller companies could not.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yeah, when I first heard about Palantir I think their domain was palantirtech.com or some such. I dismissed them as losers.

</comment><comment><USER17> In recent news, many HN users avoid up-voting/commenting on things that disagree with pg/sama/etc. in the chance that their likelihood of getting into YC will be hindered.

<comment><USER18> After seeing how PG treats people when the filter's off, I don't think I want to be in YC: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii1jcLg- eIQ#t=2179](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii1jcLg-eIQ#t=2179)

<comment><USER12> Perfectly legitimate answer. Most importantly you're wasting pg's time w/ that question, but also important you're wasting other people's time who are interested in learning about startups, not about economics.

<comment><USER19> IMO, It's totally a fine question to give - I do believe however that the gripe was against the assumed intent of the questioner, but then, is it fair to assume one's intent in a situation like this? The answer was a good one and informative - startups are companies, and to ignore the economics involved would be a huge mistake. History does repeat itself, and so it's important to understand the difference between now and the 90's.

<comment><USER12> Oh, and not to mention, imagine if he had actually tried to answer that question? Next day headline in newspaper "Paul Graham doesn't think we're in a tech bubble". Or if he did, "Paul Graham thinks we're in a tech bubble". It's a lose-lose anyway you look at it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Seth Lloyd (MIT) Quantum Machine Learning (2017 Winter Graduate School) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCoSh1h28ieLJRPn7_XoR-Inx80ookpBa <comment><AUTHOR> There is not much info at [https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/itamp/WinterSchool2017.html](https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/itamp/WinterSchool2017.html)

Quick info gathering for the other videos in the youtube list

Paola Cappellaro (MIT) Introduction to Circuit QED

Steve Girvin (Yale) Introduction to Circuit QED

Wolfgang Lechner (Innsbruck) Adiabatic Quantum Computing

Seth Lloyd (MIT) Quantum Machine Learning

Misha Lukin (Harvard) Three Lectures on Quantum

Science with Atoms and Atom-like Systems

Chris Monroe (JQI - UMD) Atomic Qubit Control

Matthias Troyer (Microsoft) The Quantum Future of Computation

Susanne Yelin (UConn & Harvard) Photonic Quantum Information with Dipolar many-body Systems</comment>


Kiwi Calendar - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/29/kiwi-calendars-new-app-does-more-than-organize-your-meetings-it-also-recommends-local-events/

<comment><AUTHOR> I was a bit surprised to discover that the web version is in plain http, no ssl even after login.</comment>


The One-Seventh Ellipse: why is this true? - <AUTHOR> http://www.futilitycloset.com/2016/06/08/one-seventh-ellipse/ <comment><USER2> If you take the digits three at a time the points will lie perfectly on the line x+y=999.</comment>


GoDaddy forbids account deletion - <AUTHOR> http://support.godaddy.com/groups/go-daddy-customers/forum/topic/how-do-i-delete-my-account-with-godaddy/?pc_split_value=4

<comment><USER3> Now, I loathe GoDaddy - for their elephant-hunting CEO, sexist homepage, and most of all because I had to use their awful admin interface for work - <USER2> expecting a company with whom you have a commercial relationship to delete their records of you seems unrealistic.

Sure, you can mark the account as dormant and remove the authentication credentials, but at some point it's a matter of historical fact. Governments tend to prefer that companies keep accounting records, and look unfavourably on those that don't.

<comment><USER4> That depends on the country. (as usual) For example in the UK there's a data protection act which allows you to both check and edit any personal information stored about you by any company. I would assume that godaddy has to comply with that too if they're doing business in the UK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So does other popular domain registrars. Eg:

Namecheap: <http://www.namecheap.com/legal/general/privacy-policy.aspx> Scroll to "Personal Information Following Termination of Account"

I think it has something to do with the ICANN rules.

<comment><USER6> According to GoDaddy's Privacy Policy[0], they will delete your information if you are in the EU.

"Go Daddy complies with the EU Safe Harbor framework as set forth by the Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of data from the European Union. Users in the European Union consent to the transfer to and processing of their personal information in the United States. We will respond to your request for access to modify or delete your information within thirty (30) days."

Also Namecheap's Privacy Policy looks like some boilerplate that has been copied from another source. The text for the section you identified is the exact same as GoDaddy's, and many others[1].

[0] - [http://www.godaddy.com/agreements/ShowDoc.aspx?pageid=privac...](http://www.godaddy.com/agreements/ShowDoc.aspx?pageid=privacy)

[1] - [https://www.google.com/search?q=placed+in+deactivated+status...](https://www.google.com/search?q=placed+in+deactivated+status+within+our+corresponding+database)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems like a more public representation of what is probably being done on most sites anyway, with the exception of the login credentials being invalidated. That being said, it is more than a little unnerving to know that my account will always be accessible in one form or another. As a member of the "internet" I felt that there were certain understood "rights" that were available to me... account suicide being one of them. I guess that type of thinking is more hopeful than realistic nowadays.

<comment><USER8> I get it ... but I don't get it. You couldn't/wouldn't walk into AutoZone and ask them to expunge your entire history as a customer of their service. They couldn't/wouldn't, on the flip side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So does Skype:

[https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA142/can-i-delete-my- skype...](https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA142/can-i-delete-my-skype- account)</comment>


Small Victories: Host a website on Dropbox - <AUTHOR> http://smallvictori.es/

<comment><USER2> See also [http://www.site44.com/](http://www.site44.com/)

<comment><USER3> Also this: [http://calepin.co/](http://calepin.co/)

<comment><USER4> Also [http://scriptogr.am](http://scriptogr.am)

<comment><USER5> Also: [https://www.backlift.com/](https://www.backlift.com/)

<comment><USER6> Brilliant.

<comment><USER7> Also: [http://pages.github.com/](http://pages.github.com/)

<comment><USER8> Also: [http://harp.io](http://harp.io)

<comment><USER9> Also: [http://pancake.io](http://pancake.io) is pretty slick

<comment><USER10> Also: [http://paperplane.io](http://paperplane.io)

<comment><USER11> Also: [http://cloudcannon.com/](http://cloudcannon.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yet another "host a website on Dropbox" service...

<comment><USER13> You can say the same for literally every single product out there. The people who have invented a truly unique idea, are the ones with an icon on your homescreen ;)

It's a tight list to get on.

<comment><USER14> >The people who have invented a truly unique idea, are the ones with an icon on your homescreen

Are you being sarcastic?

<comment><USER13> I was attempting to be somewhat clever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks pretty easy if all you want is a simple blog.

I'm wondering about the pricing, though. It _seems_ free, but there is no word about it.

<comment><USER16> they have bandwidth caps.. so if you get more than a few GB of traffic in a month, they'll take down your page.

and in an article posted here a few days ago (about their initial scaling), they referred to people using Dropbox as a CDN as "illegitimate" users of the service.

So it's probably fine for your (unpopular) personal blog/website.. but I wouldn't use it for anything serious

<comment><USER17> A blog platform that could disappear with zero notice if it gets popular doesn't seem very useful to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like playing with various dropbox experiments.

What is the deal with dropbox these days? Is it okay to host websites out of my dropbox via a dropbox associated app?

<comment><USER19> Dropbox has bandwidth limits for Public files. (I think 2GB/day for free accounts)

<comment><USER20> No, it's 20 GB (for free accounts). [https://www.dropbox.com/help/45/en](https://www.dropbox.com/help/45/en)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> For those with bandwidth needs outstripping Dropbox, S3 is another good option (although not as available for most people).

</comment><comment><USER22> Do any of the Dropbox-based solutions support custom domains at no cost?

<comment><USER23> This one does. :)</comment></comment>


Niche Tracker - <AUTHOR> https://www.serpwoo.com SERPWoo was created to answer the frustration traditional rank trackers pose - only tracking selected URLs. That process did not give a clear picture of what's really going on in the top SERPs for a niche; nor how to rank properly or automatically track, monitor, and analyze new competitors. We created this tool to fill in those gaps.
Since the search engines have to display all their cards on the search engine results pages (SERPs) we created this tool to allow marketers quick glances and access to the top 20+ results for any given keyword to get a better understanding of how websites are ranking, moving up & down, and generating organic traffic.
We then integrated crucial 3rd party data we utilize everyday like ahrefs, majestic, moz, semrush, social signals, and additional tools to dig deep into a website's SEO structure (on-site & off-site) allowing for a better picture of HOW and WHY the selected website is ranking. <comment><USER2> The notifications are cool, but as implemented they seem way too spammy. Even the demo account with just a few search phrases has over a hundred notifications from the last 24h.

Also, on the demo account, search volumes don't show up? Is it a bug, or is data just missing for those keywords? I also used SEMrush as a data source for a while so I'm a interested if you can get it to work. For me it felt like they were missing data for almost everything (Swedish words on Swedish google though) and had to replace them.

Ps. I really like the bug reporting thingy in the top bar, really cool.

<comment><USER3> We are reducing the default sensitivity of the notifications in an upcoming update. That setting was really for ORM where brands usually want to know everything in the top 2 pages as it happens. So far, we've actually had zero complaints about the notifications coming in too fast. I personally thought it was a little overzealous after the first couple of days, but got used to it. 30% of users have actually increased their sensitivity, but I'm going to reduce the default setting for new users.

We just Launched thursday afternoon so the beta testing is still going on. We've gotten lots of good feedback from early adopters and plan on implementing the stuff that makes sense for reverse engineering and ORM monitoring.

Also we are looking into pulling SEMRush data in the future as well as search volume - even though that's kind of anyone's guess to the accuracy since it's not directly from the 'search engine that shall not be named'.</comment></comment>


2013: Flat design vs Realism - <AUTHOR> http://flatvsrealism.com

<comment><USER2> Wow, html5 has finally reached the point where it's more irritating than flash.</comment>


Love thy coworker; thy work, not necessarily - <AUTHOR> http://yosefk.com/blog/love-thy-coworker-thy-work-not-necessarily.html <comment><USER2> This comment from "Jack" says it all:

> Well, you can also be motivated by doing a good job regardless of what that > actually entails. For example, I'm a very good programmer. Programming has > become boring because there is no challenge anymore. But I do enjoy > producing very high quality output and being better than almost everybody > else. So I don't care what I program or who uses it but I want it to be the > best possible engineering solution.

No, you're not a good programmer because there's no challenge any more. You're a _bad_ programmer because you've lost sight of the context of your work. If you're bored, it's because you're solving easy problems which have already been solved, probably for some turd-polishing startup that calls putting a Web 2.0 interface on top of a rewritten old solution "disruption". Someone will pay you because the ad business can sell any crap, but you're not producing value; you're just producing stuff that can be sold.

If you were really "better than almost everybody else" you'd be hired to work on hard problems that even someone _actually_ better than almost everybody else would find challenging. There is no shortage of difficult problems that people need solved. And incidentally, real ability gives you options to choose what problems you want to solve, so you can pick a problem you can find at least a little passion about.

Sure, you can treat your startup as a country club where the members are more important than what you're actually doing; that's a lifestyle some people enjoy. But let's not entertain the delusion of grandeur where that makes you a good programmer: that just makes you a member of a country club.

<comment><USER3> > If you were really "better than almost everybody else" you'd be hired to > work on hard problems that even someone actually better than almost > everybody else would find challenging.

That's assuming a lot. It's assuming that great programmers also make great career decisions. It's assuming that well funded companies or startups necessarily have the most difficult tech problems. It's assuming that the people who hired you to do really tough problems don't also have a huge list of "mundane" problems to solve as well.

I've had some really interesting problems and challenges to solve during my career. But every role also has a lot of boilerplate. I've found that what has really made me valuable isn't just my ability to solve the challenging problems, but also being able to see a project from conception to completion, even when you have to do the tedious and uninteresting tasks.

<comment><USER2> If there are a bunch of mundane tasks, the responsible thing to do is to delegate those tasks to a junior developer:

1\. I'm happy because I don't have to do mundane tasks.

2\. The junior developer is happy because those tasks aren't mundane for them.

3\. Management is happy because the junior developer gets paid half as much as I do.

<comment><USER4> I disagree with this approach.

My policy as a tech lead (and then manager) was to spread the mundane tasks across the team equally. This let everyone experience the pain points and usually led to faster elimination of technical debt, since the senior developers would see patterns in the pain and find ways to address it. (Junior engineers often don't have the experience to recognize bad patterns or bad smells and would happily plow through a bunch of mundane tasks that could be done better with a higher level solution.)

It helped that we had a Tech Debt Week every 8-10 weeks where we took a week to fix problematic code and harden our deployment and automation processes. It was hugely popular with the engineers, we gave out trophies for the best fixes based on team vote.

The "share the love, share the hate" approach also meant that new junior developers were given challenging tasks as soon as they joined the team (and were paired with a senior developer for support). If they excelled, we gave them even harder things to work on. If they struggled, we found easier projects for them to work on and coached them through it so they didn't feel bad about their struggle--we always said it was better to try challenging problems and fail than attempt something safe and easy. Either way, we started new team members with the hard stuff instead of ramping them up slowly on the easy stuff.

The same policy applied to interns. They got challenging and impactful projects, no busy work or work the team didn't want to do. This meant we had a huge return rate on our interns and most of them joined our team when they came to work full-time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > What makes you do the bits of work that are neither fun nor strictly > necessary to get paid is that other people need it done, and you don't want > to fail them.

I have a bad habit of classifying coworkers into "tidy" and "sloppy" ones. Tidy people for example take time to arrange code neatly, they care about coding styles and other things that are strictly unnecessary (sometimes to the extent bordering on OCD). Sloppy people are result-oriented: if it works, it is done.

The majority of coworkers that I can depend on are tidy people - in addition to caring about code formatting they are also more likely to go through all corner cases to ensure that the program actually works. But do they do it because they don't want me to suffer or because they want the job done neatly? Or because they don't want others to think of them as sloppy? I dunno. I guess it is a little bit of everything.

<comment><USER6> There are issues on both sides of that divide. I can't stand the tidy programmers who try and clean up ugly code that handles lot's of real world edge cases they don't understand.

Sometimes you can find loops in the source code repository where multiple people make the same kinds of changes to the same function before reverting back to the original state when some bug shows up again even when there is a comment about that edge case. It's one of the few times I feel leaving commented out code is reasonable, no don't do this it's not going to work.

The real world is messy, at some point you have to represent that twisty logic or it's not going to work.

<comment><USER7> If removing edge case handling doesn't make some tests fail, then poor test coverage is the root problem. Refactoring a code base without tests is always touching the third rail, neat or tidy, no?

<comment><USER6> You say that as if people don't remove tests while 'refactoring'. Better coverage = people ignore tests as they always fail. Worse coverage and they ignore tests because the tests must be outdated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting article. I fall on the love work side. It is always nice to see situations from multiple frames of reference however.

I left banking compliance almost 10 years ago to get back to web development and development management at a university and never looked back. I took a gigantic pay cut and left some serious grants money on the table. My health improved. My happiness improved and my now grown kids say I stopped being a grumpy dad. I've been able to be part of my family's life in seriously fun and meaningful ways.

At the bank I ran projects as the lead systems analyst and sometimes business analyst to bring some situations into compliance as viewed by bank examiners. I won corporate awards, had bank examiners exclaiming surprise at how fast and well the projects met or exceeded expectations.

But after killing a project across 7 business units for 3 to 6 months and working 70 to 80 hr weeks my boss would say thanks that was really great. Now here is another crazy can't really get this done but we need it done project.

So now writing backend code and running 140+ subdomains for a small university, I work most weeks 45 hours, love my team and the extended scrum team and only despise maybe 5% of my work such as performance management.

I'm nearing retirement (in 5 years) and am so happy I made this final career move. Oh I should mention, I am pretty good now at boxing my opinions and emotions about the stupid things that go on at a University. I see a lot of dysfunction at the cabinet level and think we are lucky that students don't get inculcated by these idiot savants.

<comment><USER9> You actually sound like you fall on both sides similarly to the way I (TFA's author) do, seeing that you did high-paid less lovable work and then more lovable work for less pay. (At the moment I program 3 days a week and during the other days I animate without any plans to get paid for it.)

My point was mostly that one could be equally valuable (or, conversely, pernicious) at both types of jobs having either sort of motivation.

<comment><USER8> Working for the bank at times was very fun. I love problem solving and getting work done across large and small teams. But in the end my passion waned and it became a well paid job that was a burden. Thanks for the thought provoking post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting article, and a lot of it really rings true to me, though personally I experience this through a different slant.

I've been working remotely for this company for a while now, and compared to my previous job (which was on-site) the culture, management, practices, codebase, and attitudes are just far superior and healthier. Really in almost every way it's an objectively better workplace.

Yet, because it's so much more difficult to form meaningful friendships with remotes (you don't get to go out to lunch and chat about non-work stuff, there's no chance to hang out in non-work settings like after-work bars etc) many times I wish for my former job back just because my colleagues were my friends, there was an element of "brotherhood", and that just makes a huge difference. As humans I think our biological needs for belonging and kinship far outweigh our desire for craftsmanship and work. It also helps having interesting personalities as your colleagues.

Also, I get annoyed at companies and and interview processes which give a lot of weight to those who seem "extra passionate" about their craft and go to tech meetups, read lots of tech books, etc. I suppose it's something that's easy to screen for and gives a "feel good/look good" factor for the hirers, but it completely eschews the idea that one's desire to work might not be for the passion of the work itself; not to mention it often doesn't turn out to be that accurate of a filter when it comes to actually working on production apps in a business setting.

<comment><USER9> I met a guy I studied with recently, he found my blog and invited me to dine together. It turns out he managed a team of remote workers, and he ranted how those office buildings where you catch infectious diseases are a thing of the past (he also freaked out when I sneezed.) However he also wanted to meet various people from our joint past, like he just met me, which was kinda weird given that we were never best buds or anything, and I think this ought to have to do with a shortage of time spent in office buildings where you catch infectious diseases.

Personally... I'm not smug about this at all, I'm the opposite of smug; because the stuff I'm doing in my spare time of which I now have more does not involve such an office building and I really wonder whether a void will form there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I become irritated being told how I'm supposed to feel about a job. The reality is that a good number of people don't have opportunities to do something they truly like doing. Most folks would do something completely different - or at least work on different projects or give the bits they don't like to someone else - if they could just simply do what they love. I highly doubt anyone would clean toilets or wash dishes.

But some folks don't mind doing that sort of thing so long as they bring in income, preferably enough to live off of. And some of these folks take some satisfaction that they have done their job well, even if they don't like the work. And they can treat each other well.

I'm never sure why this isn't enough. So long as one doesn't hate the job and it doesn't make life miserable, i'm not sure why it matters if someone has "passion" or "love" for their work. I highly doubt people could tell the difference anyway.

<comment><USER12> Because employers prefer candidates with "passion" over ones without, all else being equal. Which makes sense, given their incentives.

So, given that reality, employees learn that demonstrating "passion" gets them more job offers than not doing so, so they do what they can to appear "passionate". Which also makes sense, given their incentives.

So you end up with a system that looks ridiculous, but it's just groups of people following their respective incentives.

It's not that a sensible work ethic isn't enough, it's just that when the next guy is promising more than "enough", you're less likely to get picked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I totally agree that it's about love of your co-worker, not the work.

The work is inane most of the time. Is your company's code complicated and full of weird curlicues because edge cases from poor planning and requirements that change on the fly 'disrupted' the original design? Do you wish you could rewrite it all?

Because of human nature, and entropy all code outside of personal pet projects devolves into a big ball of mud.[1]

How easy is it to love your work now?

This reminds me of the novel Catch-22. For me the core message of that book[2], was that the only solid thing to believe in was this:

You kept flying missions not because they made sense, or helped win the war, or for the commanders, or for the love of flying, but to help your friends. Because if you didn't fly the mission, some other poor sap would have to risk _his_ life fly it in your place.

Now as programmers in the work world, we don't risk our _lives_[3] but it's a similar thing. If you do a poor job on your bit some other guy is going to have a bad day.

Want some advice from someone who's been doing this for a long time? Forget about disrupting entire industries and about 'changing the world' just write good code so the other guys can depend on it. This is how you change the world, one task at a time.

[1] [http://www.laputan.org/mud/](http://www.laputan.org/mud/)

[2] War novel about enlisted men caught in a dysfunctional air-force, run by incompetent, if not outright insane commanders who demanded more and more dangerous missions be completed.

[3] Or do we? We risk our lives in small quanta by frittering it away on stupid inane stressful tasks. Do you wish you could be at home in the backyard flipping steaks on the BBQ instead of fighting that fire in production, again? We risk parts of our lives every day this way.

<comment><USER14> But the military has compulsory service. You can't quit if your general is making terrible choices.

> Because if you didn't fly the mission, some other poor sap would have to > risk _his_ life fly it in your place.

This isn't true for development. If your coworkers are pouring into a product with severe defects in the technology or business plan, the best thing to do is start that conversation, not help them waste their effort.

At the end of the day, if your leaders are making bad choices, talk about it and be ready to find a boss or organization you're excited to work for.

<comment><USER13> >If your coworkers are pouring into a product with severe defects in the technology or business plan, the best thing to do is start that conversation, not help them waste their effort.

I agree, and in that case 'the work' becomes exactly what you described. I never intended to imply that 'the work' always consisted of programming.

Also I'd say that flaws in the business plan are more important to address than flaws in the code. Shitty code has conquered the world many times over, I don't know if I've ever seen an example of good code doing the same. (see below)

>At the end of the day, if your leaders are making bad choices, talk about it and be ready to find a boss or organization you're excited to work for.

Except they all make bad choices, compared to the ideal code we imagined our future selves would be writing. See my comments on the big ball of mud. In the end the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy will be loosed upon the world[1], and all that code will devolve into a big ball of mud anyway. If the business plan is good the CxOs and sales guys will be happy, though.

So in my opinion, it can be better to stay at a company that is good enough, with colleagues and bosses that you know, instead of idealistically seeking some programmer heaven that doesn't exist filled with colleagues and bosses that you don't know.

[1] [http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html](http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> nommm-nommm Agreed!

Some people say they are looking for "passion" in a job candidate. I don't want "passion," I want three things - can you do the job? Can you work well with others? Do you have a good work ethic?

Save the passion for outside the office. Nobody asks a coal miner how passionate she is about coal - you don't have to have passion to do a great job.

I based this from experience. Some of the best coworkers I have are the 9-5, just a job crew.

<comment><USER15> I suspect there's an anti-passion meme around at the moment beyond this article? Perhaps not, but my young friend who is all over the social medias recently talked about how the word "passion" is redundant and overused. I agreed, and will no longer use the word on job applications. The awful truth is probably that any passion I had is now worn down to a dull weathered surface. Luckily I'm into weathered surfaces so it's all good.

<comment> nommm-nommm Not that I know of. It's just tons of people who write about interviewing say they are looking for candidates with passion. This is actually the first time I've personally seen someone arguing against it.

I suspect passion is a proxy for youthfulness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is so on point about one of the toxic corners of engineering culture - the strange insistence that only those who love programming above all else in life can be good at it.

Aside from being a great way to squeeze extra hours out of naive new grads, it's just totally off base. As this blog post touches on, one can TAKE PRIDE in one's work and be motivated to do a great job without having to love it.

The lady who cleans my apartment once a month does an amazing job, unlike the 5 or 6 people I tried before finding her. Is she passionate about cleaning bathtubs? Of course not. But the difference between her and the others is that she takes pride in doing it superlatively.

And that's how I hire engineers too. I really couldn't care less about whether you're an [X] developer because you love the technology or because it's a steady paycheck that feeds your kids. What I do care about is that you're considerate towards the people around you (and that includes the people who will come after you) and that doing a good job is important to you.

Not everyone has the opportunity to do something they're passionate about. And if they could, we'd have a world with an enormous shortage of both programmers and janitors. But everyone has the opportunity to CHOOSE to take pride in doing a good job. It may not be inspiring, but -- speaking from experience -- even if you're flipping burgers you can make the job more fulfilling (or at least less soul-killing) by caring about doing it well.

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting article.

Just a note on the biblical reference: The moral angle that thinks it is important to love your work comes from a more protestant view of the Bible. Martin Luther defined that wordly work is a duty that benefits the individual and society, it is an extension of the concept of good works in catholicism. From a protestant perspective, work ethic is very important, because the "good works" are not only charity work, our wordly daily work is a work of mercy as well. It must be done in benefit of society. Even though it is a more lutheran concept, it is very influential in the states, the "self-made man" myth, the importance of the person that goes up the social ladder on perseverance, is very influenced by this protestant ethic. So, the view of love thy colleague, but not your work, is more akin to a catholic thinking. Countries that have a very strong catholic tradition such as spain or ireland, tend to have different work ethics than germany or the netherlands.

<comment><USER9> I've never lived in either a Protestant or a Catholic country (I've lived in an Orthodox country and a Jewish one), so the following guess isn't based on much first-hand experience, but I'd guess that "love your work" in the Protestant sense is probably closer to what I mean by my tongue-in-Bible "love thy coworker" than to "program for free during your weekends and publish code on github." That is, "work ethic" \- yes, but because that's the proper way to get things in return for things in a society, not because nothing is more fun than neural monadic closures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Got bad news for you buddy - money or Love, you can't have both.

</comment><comment><USER19> Liking your work helps you through downtimes. Tech has had a long enough boom that the newbies havent experienced an industry wide downturn. Its happen before and could happen again.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is one of the best pieces about work I've read in a long time.

</comment><comment><USER21> Everyone should love their work, deeply. If you don't, then you should demand work that you do love. If it's impossible to get work that you love, then you should change the world.

<comment><USER11> I'm laughing. That surely sounds like inspirational stuff, but it is crap advice. Most folks are just stuck choosing from what they can get.

Besides, it is really irritating being told how to feel. It just makes people fake it to make their boss happy. You start hearing this sort of thing in low- level retail jobs, where you go home and don't want to pretend happy and love for work any longer. Very demoralizing stuff.

I'd much rather people focus on doing well in their jobs, everyone, helping others out if they need it, and treating coworkers well. This is realistic to most workplaces and makes even mundane work not nearly as horrible to repeat for hours and hours and hours every week.</comment></comment>


Punchd has been acquired by Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.getpunchd.com/google <comment><USER2> Did an Ask HN on this a few months ago (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1897331>). Knew the responses would be pretty biased, but it was still encouraging. Glad I heeded you all.

<comment><USER3> Wow, no joke. Really cool to see Cal Poly grads doing big stuff, especially from the Android Dev classes. Missed that one by a quarter :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4>
        Super Secure
        Patent-pending technology guarantees the integrity
        of your loyalty program. GPS triangulation, velocity
        analysis, and statistical variation keep things secure.

Each venue gets one static QR code. A bit of fraud prevention based on location and statistical analysis does not seem "super secure" to me but perhaps i am missing something.

<comment><USER5> "Super Secure" is obviously marketing copy and not an existing security spec. The actual security is explained below.

<comment><USER6> Can you link to the "actual security". I don't see it below.

Regardless, any small business with a loyalty program would pick up on some guy that comes in repeatedly for free stuff. Their reports would probably indicate it too. An electronic version like this is definitely more secure than a punchcard, which can easily be gamed by going to your local art store.

<comment><USER7> We started around the same time in Velocity, Waterloo but with a more secure patent-pending approach:

<http://vimeo.com/22926049>

hardware took ages to develop.. It still doesn't work for BB.. ;)

<comment><USER8> That looks like quite an interesting piece of tech. I'd be keen to see it in action.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I met Reed at StartupSchool last year, he was pretty passionate about this project -- and it was clear they were on to something. I hope Google continues the project, there's lots of potential here. Congrats to the team!

<comment><USER10> Reed is a bad ass

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was wondering why I saw someone retweet "We have NOT been acquired." from Punchd's account last week. Now comes the rest of the story.

<https://twitter.com/punchd>

And as always, congratulations! Great and fun business and I'm glad for Google that they picked them up.

</comment><comment><USER12> Congrats Punchd, saw your great preso on 500 startups demo day (also, Alexia is dumb for ever calling you one of the 'least interesting' startups)

</comment><comment><USER13> Huge congrats to the Punchd team! Really glad to see one of the Starup Madness final 4 have a good exit. Thanks again for participating: <http://thisorthat.com/t/punchd-vs-cheekd>

</comment><comment><USER14> Congrats to Punchd, have met the team and they are all incredibly talented. It will be exciting to see their product realized via Google.

</comment><comment><USER15> w00t! for Cal Poly. Nice job Punchd.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm a Cal Poly grad and this excites me. Congrats guys!

</comment><comment><USER17> acqui-hire

</comment><comment><USER18> FYI the transaction price was estimated at greater than $10mil. [http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/08/google-to-buy-mobile- loyalt...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/08/google-to-buy-mobile-loyalty-card- startup-punchd/)

I like the product and am excited for the team, but $10mil seems a bit high to me for a pretty early product. I'm assuming that this will eventually roll into Google wallet as a competitor to Square's card case.

In any case, this is great news for the young team - looks like they'll continue their work but within the confines of Google. Looks like Dave McClure's hypothesis is getting stronger by the day with a few 500 startups companies getting snapped up recently (Backtype to Twitter and Cardmunch to Linkedin).

(disclosure- we're a fellow 500startups company - go 500!)

<comment><USER19> Agreed. Given it's a nascent product with few users/retailers and low barrier to entry (there are at least a dozen similar scan-code-for-punch-card apps), it sounds like a pure talent buy. And $10MM sounds high if that is truly the case.

<comment><USER8> Firstly, congratulations to the Punchd guys.

Secondly, it is interesting because there are indeed a bunch of other punch- card replacement apps. Even here in Australia I know of at least two. If it's a pure talent acquisition (which seems to be a logical conclusion) then it is indeed quite a large sum.

I can't imagine Google wouldn't already have begun development of a similar concept when creating Google Wallet.

It's fantastic for the founders though. Not having met them, and just based on what I've read here, they seem like great guys.</comment></comment></comment>


Goldman Sachs: Microsoft has gone from 97% share of compute market to 20% - <AUTHOR> http://seattletimes.com/html/microsoftpri0/2019853243_goldman_sachs_microsoft_os_has_gone_from_more_than.html

<comment><USER2> Given the vast differences in smart phone use (such as iOS web use stats versus android), how meaningful is this? If a smart phone is being used as a dumb phone (feature phone in marketing speak), it seems a touch meaningless to use stats like these to show that Microsoft is declining. It's not that I'm saying Microsoft's relevance is declining, it's that stays like these may not mean anything. Taken a step further, surely a low cost phone being used as a dumb phone is actually a point against Google, due to development costs and no monetary gain for Google.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a bit weird that in 2005 Other and Apple leap to 50% of the market, years before Android and iPhones and a year before Intel chips in Apple computers. Linux was also long and well established in servers by then if that's what it represents.

It's especially weird Goldman Sachs explicitly declined explaining what happened.</comment>


Low adoption of features and the sad realization - <AUTHOR> https://agyam.com/low-adoption-and-sad-realization/ <comment><USER2> I work for a large company and when discussing a product with a startup/small company, usually in a relatively new market, I've noticed interesting behaviour:

Before I meet, I try to think of ways their product could be provide benefit including non-obvious ones. So I ask if their product does this or that, and why I think it could be useful.

Some companies tell me: it is on the road map, or why they think the feature will never be used, or an explanation of why it is extraordinarily difficult to implement. Cool. You probably know what you are talking about and I learned something interesting (to me anyway).

Other companies take it as a feature demand. I find this bizarre, because I have barely (or never) used their product. Some almost seem insulted that limitations in their product are being raised. Not my intention, and that raises a huge red flag, for "The lady doth protest too much, methinks"

I also hate demos of enterprise solutions. The feature details never matter to the financial buyer. What actually affects the financial buyer are product implementation delays caused by a major problem such as resiliency functionality or interoperability. Extending the timeline affects other projects, the budget, and the pushes out the timeline for the benefit to be realized. Edge cases and niche features don't, the business will usually sign off on production with an agreement that these issues will be resolved by the vendor. Rarely do the big problems arise in demos, but the small manageable ones do. The technical buyer is thrilled that their pet requirements are met, and the financial buyer is furious that their programme was a failure.

My 2 cents.

<comment><USER3> People get offended by unsolicited advice all the time. Regardless of your intentions, that's how some people will perceive it. It's worse if they know you haven't used their product, because that makes you seem like you're flippantly handing out advice. You're likely giving off the impression that you think you're right without any experience or consideration of their product.

None of that actually discredits your suggestions though; you could be right.

As a counter example, some people are PoC||GTFO types who wouldn't take offense easily but would rather punch holes in your argument. Seems like you might be jumping in with the advice before you know if it's that kind of environment.

<comment><USER4> I have thing thing. I think if you're going to punch holes in someones argument then you should also commit yourself to figuring out if it can saved. Otherwise you're just being an ass. That said one thing I'm aware of is one should be careful when giving advice that you aren't dragging their vision through the mud either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The number of features sales has told us some big sale hinged on, that subsequently no one has used, is very high.

We actually restructured our _entire product_ to win the sale of a very large customer who's users didn't fit perfectly into our metaphor. It was unwieldy and we basically rolled the whole thing back several years later.

<comment><USER6> I could give almost limitless examples where we've been forced to drop everything and jump on implementing a hacky version of a new feature because sales convinced the CTO we were going to lose a major client if we didn't implement it asap.

They were usually never used, or used by an incredibly small percentage of users.

The platform ended up a complete mess because of the number of hacky features implemented and was a nightmare to maintain.

I'm sure we ended up losing more business due to the instability of the platform than we gained from adding these.

It's incredibly frustrating for the engineering teams who continually warned of the risks of rushing these things in without any analysis of usage.

<comment><USER7> >>or used by an incredibly small percentage of users.

Sometimes it is not the number of users that need the feature but just 1 or 2 very important users... The ones that have the final say over Yes we use this, or no we do not

<comment><USER6> Yeah that can certainly be true - unfortunately we often found that the very important users to us didn't see us as important as we saw them, meaning we'd implement these hacky features on their request on short timescales only for them to then refuse to integrate for weeks - we could have done the feature properly had we not been pressured into getting it over the line so soon.

<comment><USER7> Ahh yes the old "Hurry up and wait"... been there too many times....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Customers tell the right problem, but never the right solution.

Thanks, I threw this on my phone's lock screen.

I have a strong intuition along the same lines, but find it hard to phrase on the spot when explaining to stakeholders (and myself) why issues filed should not be considered actionable as is.

<comment><USER9> FWIW this is called the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem)

<comment><USER8> XY problem is invoked when someone is asking for help, to get to the bottom of the problem.

I am dealing specifically with product users or prospective users who, possibly via stakeholders, request new features to implement.

The tip I quoted is very helpful with the latter as means of explaining why feature request should not be treated as actionable to stakeholders. Until I manage that, neither XY nor any other approach can be used.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> People don't like it when things change.

Change means things will break.

Change means your way of doing things won't work anymore, and you'll have to waste time and money figuring out why.

Change means that your fixes for when things go wrong won't work anymore.

Change means months of hitting new edge cases.

Change is scary.

Once you have a solution that works well enough for your use case to succeed, your motivation to adopt change goes through the floor. The bigger the organization, the worse the worst case scenario, and the lower the appetite for change.

<comment><USER11> I really, really wish that Slack would learn this. Their constant creep in features means I lose about a cumulative hour every other week trying to do something that I once knew how to do.

<comment><USER12> Reminds me of Microsoft Office's latest big UI change, removing drop-down menus in favor of "toolbar ribbons". Went from being a power user / expert to a complete novice over night. I always wonder if there's a better way to make those types of transitions.

<comment><USER13> > _I always wonder if there 's a better way to make those types of > transitions._

Yes, there is. It's actually pretty simple and takes one step:

1) don't.

I can expand on that though with a few more discrete steps:

1) don't screw over people who already spent time (money) learning your product

2) don't screw over people who paid money (and time) for certifications in your product

3) don't assume that everyone will work better with the new flow

The toolbar ribbons tanked discoverability, readability, and usability.

<comment><USER14> Something needed to be done though. I use LibreOffice every few weeks, they still use the toolbar UI by default, and it's faster to google where an option is than to go hunting for it.

As a dev I'd love a ctrl+p sublime style search.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Constant change is a nuisance. When I'm working on a task I want to be able to concentrate on doing that task, not relearning my tools for the umpteenth time.

If the new feature doesn't affect my current workflow, then great! I can ignore it until I'm ready. The trouble, as the article notes, is the application making me aware of this brilliant new feature. Often application developers do this either by breaking a workflow and forcing interaction with the new feature or otherwise nagging me while I'm wanting to do something else.

Education outside of the application (tutorials, good documentation, blogs, etc) is perhaps a better way of driving adoption of features.

</comment><comment><USER16> Nothing to do with the content but the pop up for 'lack of dark mode optimisation' on this website is more annoying than the actual lack of dark mode optimisation

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for that. May I know what annoyed you the most? The old style popup (JS alert) or the presence of the popup?

<comment><USER17> You seriously have to ask? Pop-up blockers were invented for a reason. Things that jump out and demand your attention are annoying, period.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback. I have removed the pop-up for now. No warning about the ugly readability experience in dark mode.

<comment><USER18> if you really care about it, can already detect it, and show a pop-up, surely it'd also be doable to show a header or something?

as others have said, the pop-up is really the issue here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Seems like yet another manifestation of the Pareto principle.[1] 80% of software value comes from 20% of the features.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle)

</comment><comment><USER20> A good sign is when people are trying to do something using a complex workaround because they need it that badly, and you can implement a change to make it easier.

If they haven't even attempted to do it now, chances are they won't after you implement a new feature.

</comment><comment><USER21> Good advice to consider customer feedback carefully. Its been said, ask a farmer what they wanted in 1900, they'd have said "A horse that can pull more weight and eat less hay". They'd never had said, "a tractor".

</comment><comment><USER22> i've seen well respected product managers ship features that go unused. it seems to be pretty common.. but i think what is uncommon is talking about low adoption, it's not a pretty conversation to talk about for anyone. but a product manager that does talk about it and wants to refine the roadmap strategy is really valuable.

</comment><comment><USER23> It would be interesting to see the year each company graduated from YC. There might be a cluster of Ruby startups in a particular time period, and maybe many of the Go startups came later.</comment>


What's Wrong with CS Research - <AUTHOR> http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/whats-wrong-with-cs-research.html <comment><USER3> >churn out meaningless solutions to irrelevant problems.

That can be said of most of the advancements in math, science, and computer science. At a time, there was no need for zero, calendars, calculus, square root of negative one, etc. What the author calls irrelevant today will be tomorrow's great achievement. Most of Turing's work was irrelevant at the time, other than his work on cryptography.

I don't think it is proper for great minds to worry about trivial things like enterprise Java code or what it takes to build a social networking website. This stuff is simple, that's why we can outsource it to other countries that don't have the resources to invest in the future developments that are needed for progress.

Also, the whole article is based on the author's opinions, which isn't bad for that fact (actually the article was entertaining to say the least), but they aren't backed by something in any form.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. One weak point in the essay (rant?) would seem to be the underlying assumption that the output of all CS research has to be usable by Joe Average Programmer to be counted as "good".

Physics wouldn't have progressed much if all research results had to be immediately usable by kids playing with Lego blocks. Most so called "programmers" are just fitting blocks together without any deep understanding. Just look at all the horrendous VB code out there.

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't say it has to be usable by Joe Average Programmer, but if it's not - and it will obviously never be - it should have to explain why. And it shouldn't be described in any context, whether paper, grant proposal, or university press release, as anything else.

C, for example, should never come within a mile of Joe Average Programmer. But the world needs C, it needs the Linux kernel, etc, etc. For other things, this is not so clear.

You have to be able to judge the prospects of research programs. Otherwise, how do you separate the dry holes from the promising ones? There is an infinite set of dry holes in the world, and any of them is happy to accept all the funding you can give it.

<comment><USER4> " But the world needs C, it needs the Linux kernel, etc, etc. ".

This still misses the point. C was "invented" well before the Linux Kernel or GCC was written in it. _At the point of invention_ , it was not clear that C would become the roaring success it turned out to be. The utility (or otherwise) becomes obvious only _after_ (sometimes long after) something is invented/discovered. IOW, no one knows whether an idea is a "dry hole" or not, until after it has been explored (though you can make some, usually inaccurate guesses more on this below). The history of Physics (for e.g) is full of discoveries that became usable centuries after the discovery.

Coming back to the C language, your article seems to be saying that the inventors of C need to justify it in terms of an yet to be conceived of (leave alone implemented) Linux kernel, before writing the code for the language compiler.

From wikipedia, (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_>(programming_language)

"# The development of Unix was the result of programmers' desire to play the Space Travel computer game.[1] They had been playing it on their company's mainframe, but as it was underpowered and had to support about 100 users, Thompson and Ritchie found they did not have sufficient control over the spaceship to avoid collisions with the wandering space rocks. This led to the decision to port the game to an idle PDP-7 in the office. As this machine lacked an operating system, the two set out to develop one, based on several ideas from colleagues. Eventually it was decided to port the operating system to the office's PDP-11, but faced with the daunting task of translating a large body of custom-written assembly language code, the programmers began considering using a portable, high-level language so that the OS could be ported easily from one computer to another. They looked at using B, but it lacked functionality to take advantage of some of the PDP-11's advanced features. This led to the development of an early version of the C programming language."

Following your "dry hole" logic , at the point of invention, C would be a very dry hole. I can just see Kernighan and Richie "justifying" their new language by saying "umm so we want to play Space War"... :-)

"You have to be able to judge the prospects of research programs."

True. To a _certain extent_.

The _point_ of research is that it is an exploration into the _unknown_. The unknown is, by definition unknowable. When allocation of finite resources (like money) is involved, researchers who expect to consume those finite resources (in the form of grants for e.g) expect grants should _try_ to elucidate the benefits of their proposed research. And the people in charge of allocating those resources should _try_ to examine those claims and place their bets wisely. So far, so good.

The fact remains though that this is all guesswork. No one knows what the outcome of a proposed line of research will be. Think of it as funding Colombus's expedition. (see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus> particularly the sections on background and "funding campaign"). Both Colombus and his funders had several "best guess" judgments about his "prospects" but they all turned out to be wrong. His voyage was revolutionary nonetheless.

"For other things, this is not so clear."

This is just the nature of exploring the unknown. Which is what research is all about. You do your thinking, allocate your resources and try like hell, knowing all the while that it could be a colossal waste of resources. Just the nature of the beast.

Now, if your point is that there are people who game the system, that is a valid point. But then people game every system. So ...

<comment><USER5> I actually agree with all of this - in theory.

The problem is that the _actual process_ by which this guesswork is done, _actually right now in the real world_ , is nonsense. It is permeated by intentional distortions of reality. As a result, in my opinion, research is pointed in directions which a reasonable observer would guess are dry holes. The fundamental difficulty is that Congress is not a reasonable observer - <USER2> is a political one.

This is inextricable from the phenomenon of official research funding. I suspect that private philanthropic funding - the way it worked before WWII, a period in which there was no computer science, but quite a lot of other science - would do a much better job of "guesswork."

<comment><USER3> You can't "guess" any better than flipping a coin when it comes to funding research. They laughed at Bill Gates when he said he wanted control of the software. I think there is room for improvement (which there is for everything) in the funding of research but to call it worthless just because there isn't a direct need or use for something is itself worthless. Any kind of knowledge is useful, no matter what.

<comment><USER5> Try submitting this paragraph as your next grant application!

It is actually possible to make educated guesses as to what's interesting and what isn't. It is just very hard.

The management of the old Xerox PARC, for example, was very good at it. So were the people at DARPA - about 40 years ago. So, once, was Bell Labs. And so on.

Needless to say, the actual process of guesswork has nothing in common with the modern scientific budget process.

<comment><USER3> The only thing that made the management at Xeroc PARC, Bell Labs, etc. good, was that they let smart people do what they wanted and stayed out of the way.

<comment><USER5> Read Michael Hiltzik's "Dealers of Lightning." It's a little more complicated than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've never seen criticism of Haskell that was at once so well-informed and so stupendously misguided. It gets under my skin even more since every other point made in the article had my total sympathy. Now I'm going to have to somehow find the time to write a detailed rebuttal.

<comment><USER5> I think this is my favorite response ever to anything I've ever written.

I look forward to your rebuttal - if you could post a link to it in the Blogger comments, that would be ideal...

<comment><USER6> Will do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The reservations seem rather unqualified indeed. A lot of strawman argumentation to begin with (singling out specific subjects of CS the authors deems unworthy). But even about PCC I don't think the author has the right notion. It is not the same as type checking. As an example, at my old university department they created a proof of the euclidian algorithm and extracted a program from it that would compute the gcd. That way you have more than a syntactically correct program, you have a proof that the code actually gives you the gcd. And yes, it was very academic, but still.

Also, if CS is so useless, how come most leaders in the Netflix challenge seem to be CS departments?

<comment><USER5> Also, when you're examining something that dubs itself "science," pointing out a spot of routine dishonesty, however small and irrelevant, is hardly indicating a "strawman." Shades of the [Curate's egg](<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curate's_egg>). I'm sure most of the entries on Enron's balance sheet were perfectly accurate, as well.

<comment><USER7> Yes, but how does one area of research of CS being pointless spoil the other areas? I don't think it is a curate's egg at all. I don't want to claim that CS is not spoiled, though. The patronage thing might be a problem. However, research topics do have to compete even in science - they may not be exposed to judgement by the general public, as are companies, but internally, there are mechanisms of selection. Probably not the best ones, but still. And if too much money would flow into obviously useless research, there might even be a public outcry.

<comment><USER5> It spoils the others because the relationship between science and personal honesty is extremely close and important. Science has to be utterly intolerant of nonsense. Its spirit is to attack it and take no prisoners. If you have this spirit - like D.J. Bernstein - you will not be welcome in any CS faculty that exhibits curate's egg nature, for fairly obvious reasons.

(I'm a particularly big fan of DJB because his very existence is a sort of counterattack - he's a programmer who's infiltrated the math department! Unfortunately there is only one of him, but we could certainly use a dozen more.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I used to be one of those people who came into a CS undergrad program, complaining about the barrage of math we had to learn and the very little detailed real-world programming we had to do. However, after having taken PL, automata, crypto, algorithms and AI, I see the point of having concrete rigor of proof and abstraction about your code. However, what the author says about CS being a badly managed field, by being a mix-bag of math and science rings true to me.

For instance, I have found out when I was a student sysadmin for my school, one of my CS professor who does research in typed-system does not know Perl. It behooves me that someone involved in CS, particularly research of programming languages, do not have a fundamental understanding of the practical application of their field. Someone earlier pointed out Church- Turing thesis being completely useless at the time of their publication, the same argument could be made for the Crick-Watson DNA publication (in their original publication, Watson only suggested that DNA being a double-helix). But the difference between these truly remarkable scientific discoveries with the average Joe academic pumping out crap each year, is that these theories were even then, foreseeable to have impact.

No, I don't buy the "oh, theory is an art; let the academics work for knowledge's sake." Recent advances in technology are as much driven by industry as much by academia, see Bioinformatics (Celera), see high performance computing (Aerospace companies), see AI/data-mining (Spam Bayesian filters, Amazon, Netflix).

I read recently a quote that declared "form is liberating" - just as architects are forced to design their pieces by both the constraints of material and economics; I would rather design my software and theory in the domain of application.

</comment><comment><USER9> This isn't an agreement or disagreement with the essay (I tend to lament the current sorry state of CS research but not necessarily for the reasons stated in this essay). But I would like to throw out that (a) before there was chemistry and physics, there was alchemy and that was hardly based on the scientific method, (b) computer science is becoming more ingrained in hard sciences via simulation and visualization, and (c) there is no law that says the scientific method can't be adapted to include information as a first-class primitive like stars, particles, energy, and inclined planes (among other things). Maybe (a) and (c) are the same point and we are muddling our way through as informatic alchemists at this stage of the field in the sense of CS being defined by the scientific method.

As a CS PhD, I like the essay and appreciate that it raises points to think about. I never really thought about academics as bureaucrats in that way but, as a former academic who left the hallowed halls for the reasons you describe much better than I could formulate, I think I agree with you on that point.

</comment><comment><USER10> This piece is both well informed -- there are certainly no factual errors -- and vitriolic beyond belief. What is anyone supposed to take away from the author's attack on partial evaluation, for example? The author seems to suggest -- but does not say -- that function composition would be better handled by writing even more functions and passing around lists of function pointers.

<comment><USER5> In the rare cases that a programmer actually needs (dynamic) function composition, yes.

For very understandable reasons, most of the examples you see of higher-order FP languages tend to stress very intricate and elegant algorithms. But what is 99.999% of the actual functional programming that is actually done in the world? SQL and Web template transforms. About as intricate as a brick.

The result of having these incredibly high-powered, high-strung thoroughbred FP languages is that no one even thinks of these mundane tasks as cases of functional programming. But of course they are. FP is the natural generalization of declarative programming.

The real tragedy of Haskell is that, if the people who designed Haskell had actually been working on, say, XML and XSLT, XML and XSLT would not suck nearly so much.

I repeat that in almost all cases, dynamic construction of functions is unnecessary and can be eliminated. Otherwise, yes: write even more functions and pass around lists of function pointers.

But you're right that I could probably make the same point in a much less vitriolic way. Blame acid reflux.

<comment><USER11> > f the people who designed Haskell had actually been working on, say, XML and > XSLT, XML and XSLT

You might want to check out SXML / SXPATH/ SXSLT. These definitely don't suck, in fact I'd consider them nothing less than "XML processing done right". They are created by a well known type-system wizard (Oleg) with a fondness for Haskell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The author chooses to rant about CS research being patronage that wastes US tax dollars. The examples he chooses don't support his argument very well.

He doesn't like Haskell or Caml because they sprung from academia. Haskell was designed mostly by a couple Scots and the little funding it received came from Microsoft Research. Caml comes from IRNIA in France. No US tax dollars were wasted in either case.

He claims that Python wasn't invented by a programming language researcher. Guido Van Rossum was employed as a programming language researcher (working on ABC) by a Dutch government research lab, and then by NIST and CRNI in the USA. NIST and CRNI are US government funded research organizations. Using the author's train of thought, the development Python WAS partially funded with US tax dollars.

<comment><USER5> If you don't know the difference between what Guido van Rossum does, and what Andrew Appel, Luca Cardelli, Zhong Shao, etc, etc, do, you are clearly not a PL researcher!

I am not a budget analyst. What bothers me is that I think a field I admire is being mismanaged, not that it is driving the US (or any other country) bankrupt. The US has worse problems than a little bit of science pork.

<comment><USER13> The thing is - you're essentially distinguishing Guy Steele and Guido van Rossum from Andrew Appel and Luca Cardelli by success. Steele and van Rossum created languages used by lots of people, and so they're "system software designers", while Appel and Cardelli created languages used by small communities, and so they're "programming language researchers". If you set up your definitions like that, it's tautological to claim that programming language research doesn't yield any useful stuff, because everybody who creates useful stuff gets taken out of the PL research category.

The big question is: can you detect, a priori, which research projects will be successful?

For example, would you have funded Dave Moon's research at the AI lab? How about L. Peter Deutsch? Ricky Greenblatt? Kernighan and Ritchie? Tony Hoare? Dijkstra? Knuth? James Gosling? Matz?

The irony is that no matter who you consider relevant, you're almost always wrong a decade later. Moon was brilliant at the AI lab, and his work was the foundation for most of the 1980s AI boom. But it's largely irrelevant today. Matz and Guido were relatively unknown throughout the 1990s, but they're suddenly critical now, because technology has shifted towards dynamic languages. Hoare spent most of his life working on arcane topics like proof- carrying code, but think of how many bugs have been found because of assertions.

What if the next big development in computing comes out of type theory? Would you then add Luca Cardelli, Benjamin Pierce, and Phillip Wadler to your "system software designers" category? (Heck, Wadler has already made important contributions to Java 1.5 generics.)

The university system is built upon the premise that you can't tell what basic research will be successful beforehand, and so you better fund all of it (or as much as you can, at least ;-)) and wait for some entrepreneur to sift through it and figure out what's commercially viable. You seem to think that all that random chance is unnecessary, and you can pick the winners beforehand and shut down the rest. If you're right, there's a very lucrative career waiting for you as a venture capitalist, where you get to bet Other People's Money on the future system software designers.

(BTW, I met a girl at a party who's in a swing dancing class with Guy Steele, and he calls himself a Programming Language Designer. So maybe your title for him is a bit off the mark...)

<comment><USER5> If you can't detect, a priori, which research projects will be successful, why in God's name do we have a grant process?

You're making my point for me, which is that the process of allocating research funding is driven by nothing other than political power.

The university system is built upon the premise that basic research can justify its funding annually by explaining to Congress the many benefits it will yield to American citizens. There is no "all of it" to fund. An infinite amount of funding will generate an infinite amount of research.

I can tell you exactly why the next big development in computing won't come out of type theory. It's because type theory, at least as it exists presently, is impossible for anyone with an IQ of less than 140 to understand. And it is getting more complex, not less complex.

Isn't a PL designer what I called Steele? Note that he doesn't call himself a PL researcher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm skeptical (but can't refute without actually researching it) of the assertions about academic advancement vs. free market advancement. I think the fact that academic research may not have any immediately obvious practical application is an advantage in the long run.

In any case, that post was very interesting. I bookmarked it and will have to revisit it sometime.

</comment><comment><USER15> Related posts:

[http://weblog.fortnow.com/2006/07/science-and-art-of- computa...](http://weblog.fortnow.com/2006/07/science-and-art-of- computation.html)

<http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html>

</comment><comment><USER16> well .. some pieces of the article are not even wrong</comment>


Amazon is down ... implications for AWS? - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com

<comment><USER2> Can you imagine being the guy or team that f'ed this up? Think how terribly nervous/stressed you'd be for the hour or so until you fixed it!? An hour would blow by in minutes as they frantically hammered on the keyboard in a terminal to see what got f'ed, just thinking that they are loosing your salary in revenue every minute or something awful. I can't imagine being an admin in that sorta situation.

</comment><comment><USER3> $14.8 billion in revenue ~= $28,000 per minute

So an hour of downtime costs ~ $1.69 million

Very rough estimates, but could be close.

<comment><USER2> Assuming you average their revenue. But i'll betcha they make a lot of their money in spikes, so going down on a random friday evening, although costly, isn't as costly as 1.69 million. Also, what percentage of people who wanna buy something at the moment its down, won't come back later?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> AWS services are all up. Just checked.

<comment><USER5> AWS status updates here:

<http://status.aws.amazon.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> on that page it says "we are having issues with aws.amazon.com" so the domain itself (including subdomains) are in trouble...

\- Im predicting the https: will break soon (Currently working) as people find out that it is working ...

TC just said its been down for over an hour ...huge, huge money...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/amazon.com> Still down.

<https://amazon.com> still works.

<comment><USER7> Odd... Amazon.com works fine for me, despite the downforeveryone site saying it doesn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> To me this smells of a rollout gone terribly, terribly wrong.

</comment><comment><USER9> My EC2 instances are all up. It's specific to Amazon's main site.

</comment><comment><USER10> I went to a recent AWS talk by one of their evangelists, where they mentioned that AWS is separate from amazon.com, in terms of the hardware used.

<comment><USER11> It's time to put Amazon on AWS then?!?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm getting a HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable from here [http://web-sniffer.net/?url=www.amazon.com&submit=Submit...](http://web- sniffer.net/?url=www.amazon.com&submit=Submit&http=1.1&gzip=yes&type=GET&uak=0) and of course from my own PC

<comment><USER12> Something was going on yesterday I was getting error screens all over the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I get "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable", but if I refresh the page in my browser it comes right up. Click on a link? "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable". Weird.

</comment><comment><USER14> Amazing how long it's been down for, I would figure this to be something that they'd work to resolve nearly immediately.

<comment><USER15> yeah, its being worked on as we speak.

<comment><AUTHOR> "he strongest day of holiday sales for Amazon was December 10th, on which customers ordered 62.5 items pers second for a total of 5.4 million items. On its peak shipping day, the retailer shipped products internationally to more than 200 countries, moving more than 3.9 million shipments." from: <http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16762>

\- although its from the same spam article that said they sold 17 wiis a second (when they were in stock) in 2007 ...

I would say every 10 minutes cost ...

78mm for a quarter in 07, (4 months = 120 day) 78mm/120 = 650k/day = 27k/hour = $450/sec ... they are losing big would love to hear the story behind it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My ec2 instances are up.

</comment><comment><USER10> It would be interesting to know what kind of failover mechanisms they follow and the reasons for the outage, and how much money they lost due to this?

<comment><USER14> Well according to returns last year, about $503/revenue per second. $15.9 billion last year.

<comment><USER17> I'm not it's accurate to give a $ revenue for second. For me personally, if I wanted to buy something and the site didn't work. I would just come back in an hour; not sure how others would change their behavior.

<comment><USER14> Oh certainly, that was just a figure. I suspect people will just come back. Still a fascinating number (btw, pulled from Reddit.com, forgot to credit originally).

<comment><USER18> I wouldn't trust that.

<http://www.reddit.com/info/6mbec/comments/c049fo7>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> S3 is still working. I don't know what's up with Amazon, but it seems to be just their storefront.

</comment><comment><USER20> Works for me now. I wonder if the outage was related to adding the 3G iphone to their catalog?

<comment><USER21> LOL. That and the addition of the bazillion servers to cope with the sudden traffic surge the 3G iPhone will cause.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Our AWS web app (EC2 + S3) has been running fine without interruption or delay.

</comment><comment><USER23> My question is, will a new order that I place today be properly logged...

</comment><comment><USER24> Http/1.1 Service Unavailable

</comment><comment><USER25> It's back up.

<comment><USER18> It's back down.

<comment><USER26> Weird:

> You have been denied access to this feature because we believe you violated > the terms, conditions, rules, guidelines or policies of our site in the > past. If you believe we have taken this action in error, you may contact us > at firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER27> I got that too.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Properly stopping a SIP flood - <AUTHOR> http://jcs.org/notaweblog/2010/04/11/properly_stopping_a_sip_flood/

<comment><USER2> For these kinds of SIP scenarios you could just use sipp (<http://sipp.sourceforge.net/>) and craft a simple scenario file like <http://sipwise.com/reg_srv.xml.txt> instead.

Start with "sipp -sf /path/to/reg_srv.xml -i <local ip> -p <local port>" and you're done.</comment>


Ask / Tell HN: dropped out, learning from books by myself... any advice? - <AUTHOR> Sorry for the grammar, I'm not a native English speaker.
I left university shortly before getting a bachelor degree in Computer Science. This happened some years ago; I did it because I was very busy with my own startup and I decided focusing on the startup was a better idea. Also, I noticed that I learned much faster by myself than on the university (though that university wasn't a very good one, so maybe it was worth dropping it anyway).
This is how things continue now: as I'm passionate about cs and maths, I keep buying undergraduate and graduate level books which I read cover to cover. Since I cannot spend too much doing this because I have other obligations now -I'm not a full time student-, depending on the book, it can be one to four months per book. I'm not focusing on exercises much so far, but rather on learning the concepts and general tools of the trade, which I try to apply whenever possible. So it's possible that a big part of what I read, even if I understand it, will be forgotten in some time, unless I find a way to apply it or to set it in my memory in a better way. I'm using spaced repetition for memorizing important equations and concepts that I don't want to forget though.
In the last two years I think I have learned a lot, at a pace slightly slower than that of university (though with a wider variety and more advanced texts maybe). I think I can keep learning this way, progressing to more and more advanced concepts.
I'm posting here because I don't know about any other person doing this kind of disciplined self teaching. I'm sure there has to be a lot of people doing this. Any advice from such people? Also, any advice or comments from people not doing this? Actually, all comments are welcome. <comment><USER2> Don't read; do.

Reading is great, but it's a means to an end. Pick a project, work on it. When you get stuck, read to figure out how to proceed.

But doing is worth a lot more than reading.

<comment><USER3> This advice is spot on. I read a lot of books before I realized I wasn't really challenging myself.

Actually putting something into practice will require hours of frustration every day, but it will lead to actual learning.

Pick one project to work on, and no matter what: stick with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The danger of self-teaching is that it is easy to focus on what interests you to the exclusion of things that you really ought to know but which don't grab you the same way. I wish I could tell you how to avoid this danger, but I can't. Perhaps you could browse sites of respected departments and see what courses their students must take, and what the students are expected to learn in the courses.

</comment><comment><USER5> Choose at least some books and other educational materials which appear to be relevant to some real world problem you are trying to work on. But don't be too strict about it. Following something that sparks your interest may bring you the solution you didn't know you needed. Still, anything you can do to tie it to real world goals will make it more memorable and useful.

Good luck with this.

</comment><comment><USER6> User pkrumins has been doing a lot of self study, albeit more in computer science and technology than maths, I believe. Perhaps some of his posts might nonetheless prove interesting with regard to the meta-topic of self-study.

Kudos to you, from one who is slightly envious.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone for your comments, they have been very useful!</comment>