Control what personal information your apps collect about you - <AUTHOR> https://privacycheck.com <comment><USER2> nice idea! waiting to see more</comment>


How to Write CSS That Works in Every Browser, Even the Old Ones - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/03/how-to-write-css-that-works-in-every-browser-even-the-old-ones/ <comment><USER2> It would be very appreciated if anybody who can afford to take the time watching all of these videos would like to extract the key information into a synopsis and maybe a cheat sheet or at least a list of URLs.

You can skip the first one, that is a verbose introduction that starts with CERN web history. Key message: "build for all deviecs". No more valuable info, unfortunately, and I have to spend time now on other things.

I am sure 10 minutes reading an article I would have been able to extract some more.

Advice to video tutorial makers: please value your viewers time most, make this a very high priority in your production workflow. Think twice about every sentence you write into the playbook and after one or two days write the sentences again with a target of 50% time reduction. Absolutely never just talk ten minutes something that just comes into your mind - this will just waste the viewers time. Tutorials are not for time wasting. Keep the information very precise and to the point. Always provide at least a cheat sheet of key info. Thanks!

<comment><USER3> Final edit: I skimmed all videos (the content was fluffy) and got the following links and lessons out of it. Don't consider them to be the best notes, but I feel most of this is pretty self-explanatory. Personally, I was hoping for some more technical content, but at the same time if I want to quickly hack and get the job done, then this knowledge will help.

Tip: if you want to quickly see the Video headings CTRL + F or CMD + F and type in Video so that you can highlight it. I don't know how to make proper headers on HN.

Video 2

The whole theme of video 2 is: what can I get away with?

caniuse.com

statcounter.com (caniuse.com uses it as a data source)

Use GA to see what you can get away with

chromestatus.com

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platform/status

platform-status.mozilla.org

bugzilla.mozilla.org

Edit video 3:

What happens when a feature isn't supported and you use it?

It strikes it through. / It ignores it.

It's okay that websites don't look identical in every browser. In fact, they never ever do.

CSS is not like JS where it breaks / generates an error. It just ignores stuff it doesn't know.

shape-outside circle example: it works when it works. It is a square if it doesn't work. Users won't necessarily know that it is different.

shape-outside polygon example: it works with supported browsers and is a square when it doesn't work.

CSS Error handling: it just ignores stuff

Edit video 4:

Counting on how CSS handles is enough. Other times it is not quite enough. You want to make adjustment for browsers that do not support many things. CSS Overrides help.

Basic example: the header is the height of the viewport.

header { display: flex; height: 100vh; }

h1 { margin: auto; }

What happens in browsers that do not support display flex? The functionality gets lost. Client in said example says it wants a bigger height for older browsers.

Solution: header { display: flex; height: 500px; height: 100vh; }

h1 { margin: auto; }

caniuse viewport units caniuse flexbox

Browser supports viewport units but not flexbox. We want the headline in the middle Solution: header { display: flex; height: 500px; height: 100vh; }

h1 { padding: 2em 0; /* cannot use margin since the next line overwrites margin _/ margin: auto; }

Check 5:30 for all the different output examples

Firefox inspector: play with CSS.

Edit video 5: feature queries

caniuse initial-letter? Not really, only in Safari

p::first-letter { color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0,9); font-weight: bold; margin- right: 0.5em;

      -webkit-initial-letter: 4;
      initial-letter: 4;

}

Initial-letter makes a giant initial letter.

Feature queries look like this:

@supports (initial-letter: 4) or (-webkit-initial-letter: 4) { p::first-letter { color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0,9); font-weight: bold; margin-right: 0.5em;

        -webkit-initial-letter: 4;
        initial-letter: 4;
      }

}

This means that browsers that do not support it, won't show it.

Example of grid and how feature queries help when grid isn't applied.

Code is on 7:15. It is too big to write.

8:30 is more in-depth on the syntax of @supports

There is also one bad idea to use @supports and this is: @support not

Edit video 6: feature queries advanced info

Every version of IE does not know what a feature query is. Safari also did not know it for a long time.

What they do is: they block the whole code.

There are 4 combinations:

(1) browsers that support feature queries && do understand the specific feature

(2) browsers that support feature queries && do not understand the specific feature

(3) browsers that do not support feature queries && do understand the specific feature

(4) browsers that do not support feature queries && do not understand the specific feature

We do not want (3).

Example

@supports (display: flex){ /_ code */ }

When using feature query know that you ignore Internet Explorer and Safari.

With older properties you might not want to use feature queries (e.g. flexbox), but for new feature queries you may want to.

Edit video 7: what happens when the browser doesn't understand the CSS?

Ask yourself: how well does a particular feature fail?

Maybe you don't want to use the property at all because it fails horribly.

Example:

h1 { writing-mode: sideways-lr; }

caniuse writing-mode? yes 94%

Yet in most browsers sideways-lr doesn't work in most browsers!

Why does caniuse lie to us?!

caniuse represents the level 3 specification of writing-mode, but she is using level 4!

go to the MDN network to checkout support

One solution to this problem is to ignore the feature and create the same output like so:

h1{ writing-mode: vertical-rl; transform: rotate(180deg); text-align: right; text-orientation: sideways; }

<comment><USER2> A BIG and humble THANK YOU! I wish you a beautiful weekend!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I started writing CSS at around the them when you were still asked to write Hacks for IE5/5.5/6 -- and it was truly horrific -- but it made a lot of sense when you looked at the market shares.

Yes, please be good and build accessible websites, just because its actually not hard to do on a rudimentary level and your probably sucks if you don't anyway.

But actually working on CSS compatibility is such a waste of time considering how "good enough" all of the widely available options are. Yeah, you probably do not want to use the latest in web tech if you are doing a reasonably sized web project that loses actual money for every % of users that can not use the app/site. So what? Just don't. Unless it's a vanity project pick a reasonable cut off point, go with it for that project (or that iteration of the product) and then you reevaluate for the next one.

You can obviously use auto prefixer and the sorts to widen the margin -- everything you can automate, you don't have to think about, by all means, go for it. But the mental overhead you are creating by doing shit like "height: 500px; height: 100vw;" is insanity in a reasonably large project with multiple developers. I forbid you to do it.

By the time the next project comes, you can probably already set the cut off somewhere else. People are actually (being forced to) update their computer, and really enjoy throwing out their mobile devices every other year (thanks apple, I guess). I gladly reap those benefits.

<comment><USER5>
      >  "height: 500px; height: 100vw;" is insanity in a
      > reasonably large project with multiple developers.
      > I forbid you to do it.

What have happened to us? Too many post on HN show this attitude: make it cheaper to develop, don't care about the users. What happen with the "zen of the web"?

For one, I've started with the web around the time CSS was being born—2016. And in your example I see neither insanity nor large overhead, just a robust approach.

<comment><USER6> "CSS was being born-- 2016." ???

I started doing webdev in 1998 and gently suggest you check your notes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> 1\. CSS and HTML are extremely resilient, they ignore your typos and unsupported features gracefully and never crash, so just daring to use them in your code, no need for exception handling comparing to JS, in that sense, if you can do it in CSS, avoid JS.

2\. Leverage CSS override

3\. Use browser devtools to test all browsers. No need install all older browser to check CSS. icanuse helps greatly too.

4\. Use feature-queries for CSS.

These indeed can make your CSS code work for both the stone age and hottest browsers, all at the same time, without much hacking. Great videos.

<comment><USER7> > they ignore your typos and unsupported features gracefully

I wish there was a browser version that would handle these errors loudly rather than silently. The fact that React does some of this is rather nice.

<comment><USER8> That was one of the goals of XHTML....

<comment> yoz-y I find it quite baffling that we have gone to such lengths to make html/css resilient. I know of no other language/format that does this.

Can you, for example, make a half broken PDF and would it still render?

<comment><USER9> The ones doing the implementing are the browser vendors and it's a competitive disadvantage for them to not render every site on the web as best as they can. Consumers who come across a broken site will blame the browser and switch to a different one.

<comment> yoz-y Haven't thought of that. It does make sense, the incentives are all wrong thinking about it. Publishers want the sites to be made quickly, browser vendors need market share and users have no patience and very low bar for acceptance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have had my fun supporting Mosaic(which is basically the oldest browser that has available source) on my personal sites. You can even still run it on Ubuntu[1]. If you go back that far you can't really use much CSS though. Google's site actually works on Mosaic which is awesome.

[1]: [https://github.com/alandipert/ncsa- mosaic](https://github.com/alandipert/ncsa-mosaic)

<comment><USER11> I'd think older browsers like Mosaic have problems with SSL/TLS, especially now that most web servers no longer support older (compromised) versions of those protocols and SNI (server name indication, allowing web servers to serve multiple domains over SSL from the same IP) wasn't a thing back in the days.

I certainly remember taking a really old version of IE (2 or 3 I think?) for a spin and running into problems because it didn't support SNI.

<comment><USER12> IE didn't support SNI until IE7 and that was only if it was running on Vista, not XP. IE8-10 don't support TLS 1.1 or 1.2 by default.

[https://caniuse.com/#search=sni](https://caniuse.com/#search=sni)

[https://caniuse.com/#feat=tls](https://caniuse.com/#feat=tls)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I never stopped. For that matter I never stopped writing javascript the same way. Using let instead of var still breaks a few browsers. I want to move to modern javascript without the babel requirement some older browsers are not ready yet. I would like to but prefer no production bugs.

<comment><USER14> > Using let instead of var still breaks a few browsers. I want to move to > modern javascript without the babel requirement

It seems unreasonable to me to expect to run new language features on old runtimes, do you have a good reason to not use Babel and move on? I've been writing ES6 (with Babel) from > 2 years now and have never regretted the move.

<comment><USER15> I think they mean they use var instead of let as var is fully supported by all JavaScript capable browsers.

<comment><USER16> And I think allover's point was that doesn't matter if you use Babel to transpile back to ES5. Personally, I would never go back now that I've been writing ES6 in production for almost two years

<comment><USER15> ES5 doesn't cover all browsers, which is again I believe OP's point.

[https://babeljs.io/docs/usage/caveats/](https://babeljs.io/docs/usage/caveats/)

<comment><USER17> No, but as your link mentions you can add a polyfill to cover those gaps instead of letting IE9 dictate what you can and can't do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't have time to watch all these now, but I just want to say how awesome Jen Simmons is and how great it is that Mozilla employs her to make stuff like this, and evangelize things like the CSS grid. Kudos!

</comment><comment><USER19> I remember the ie6 era very well, and got hired by an agency exclusively for my CSS-fu.

The boss became kind of `jealous` of my skill and the praises i got for it, and would complain that the website did not look perfect on every browser, sending me screenshots of broken sites on his computer.

I spent about 2 months making sure they looked pristine on ALL browsers on ALL platforms, even installing Mandrake Linux and RedHat 7.20 (iirc) just to test them.

No dice, sites still malfunctioning on the boss' pc, who was really happy I couldn't make perfect sites. The more i got obsessed with it the worse the sites would look on his ie6 browser.

After yet another smug comment from him I stormed his office in a rage fueled raid and i ran to his pc shouting that this is IMPOSSIBLE, grabbed his mouse and clicked on the "?" menu and About.

He was using some obscure chinese aternative modded version of ie6 (iirc UC Browser), probably installed just to complicate my life.

tl;dr: vaffanculo, Marco.

</comment><comment><USER20> This sucks so much !

What a waste of time and resources, hiding knowledge in video is the among most inconvenient and inefficient way of making it useful: no indexing, ni skimming, no copy pasting, it's slow, cannot be searched, cannot be put in a translator, cannot be mirrord, uses much more resources.

Then it's hosted on youtube which is the worst offender privacy wise and does not work without allowing script from a few different domains.

Once again mozilla fails to deliver according to their supposed values which are mostly marketing.

Why do I have to relinquish my privacy to endure an inconvenient and inefficient way to learn when it could have been written in the very same page with text which will survive time and can be easily mirrored. Why put such an unecessary wall between knowledge and audience ?

<comment><USER21> No one owes you anything. If someone chooses to make something it's entirely up to them how and where they do it. If your personal choices mean you can't benefit from it then that's unfortunate but it definitely isn't grounds for the sort of tirade you've posted here. Everything in this video is available elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The battle now is native vs web apps...old browsers are already a tiny niche...and pretty much a waste of time considering that most clients are using evergreen browsers anyway. Unless you are ORACLE, SAP or IBM I don't this it's worth it to support anchient browsers.

<comment><USER23> While I am generally in agreement, that is most applicable to B2C.

B2B, it shocks me how often we run into old-browser problems. IE8 is the biggest one I encounter day-to-day. Sure, it's been EOL for 2 years, and was released almost a decade ago, but... it still lives on within organizations that we have to support.

<comment><USER24> I remember vividly when I could finally _start_ targeting IE8 in 2013, after internal IT phased out IE 7 support. You could finally go wild and add a comma after the last element of your array/object literals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> TLDR: Write CSS that still displays a website that makes sense even if it fails. Stop designing websites using CSS for every different browser and device, know they will look different but you can still support users who utilize your site by writing CSS in a structured way.

</comment><comment><USER26> Quite a bit of negativity on the comments, but can anyone hit me with a concise guide of how it works from the ground up - in text, not a video! I've read some good guides in the past, but don't have them bookmarked.

</comment><comment><USER27> I expected a joke like Dont write CSS but actually it was an interesting article!

</comment><comment><USER28> Just deliver the mobile version to very old browsers.

</comment><comment><USER29> I know that Mozilla is not a single group and actually heterogenous but this talk doesn't ring very true to me when the Firefox add-ons site uses CSS Grid and when it detects you don't have it it shunts you to the mobile site which looks and works terribly (hiding things) on a real desktop computer monitor.

<comment><USER30> When your target audience is 'Firefox users', doesn't it make sense to more freely use features that are supported by Firefox?

<comment><USER29> Firefox is open source. There are lots of Firefox forks. Right now there are more add-ons that work in the Firefox forks then there are add-ons that work in modern Firefox.

<comment><USER24> I'm going to make a guess that the same goes for exploits.

<comment><USER29> Not with the amount of new attack surfaces that Mozilla is cramming into Firefox lately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> We need babel for CSS.

<comment><USER32> PostCSS is what you're looking for: [http://postcss.org](http://postcss.org)

<comment><USER31> I always thought postCSS was just for vendor prefixes. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> writing for old browsers is irresponsible. The only browsers which should be supported are modern browsers that update themselves by default.

<comment><USER34> That's naive.

<comment><USER5> To put it gently.

<comment><USER33> see my reply above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> No. I'm not watching 10 videos to learn cross browser css.

</comment><comment><USER36> These presentations are mostly wasted time. Blah, blah, blah. Get to the goods, already! So, skip to the second one ... where's the "How to..."? In section 3?

<comment><USER37> Video is usually a huge waste of time, period. The typical reader can take in information something like five times faster that a skilled speaker can talk.

<comment><USER38> I feel the same way about podcasts.

<comment><USER39> The good thing about podcasts is that they can still be consumed while your hands or eyes are busy, when reading wouldn't be an option.

<comment><USER38> I realize some folks are able to focus on work while listening to a podcast, but sadly I'm not one of them. Anything auditory which I need to actively listen to breaks my ability to work (conversely, an IM doesn't do that, just someone talking). About the only time a podcast would work but reading wouldn't is while driving, and thankfully I do that rarely.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Ownership vs licensing my own code. - <AUTHOR>

I am currently working with a company (say ACME) on developing a proof of concept idea. We started working with a premise that if things look promising, I would start my new company and this company would be our first customer and potentially a investor as well.
I spend considerable amount of time on this and now when things look promising, CEO of the said company  wants to continue on terms that THEY WILL OWN the code and license it back to me if I want to use it to start my own company later. I will be compensated for the time I spend on working this in some hourly rate fashion.
I understand the value of legal counsel but wanted to get opinion of experienced folks here if I should even be heading in the direction of licensing my own code.
1. Will this sort of a deal prevent me from using the code to start a company of my own?
2. Is licensing the code as licensing the IP? I dont think anything would prevent them from filing patents without including me.
3. What's the alternate route?
Thank you very much for your advice... <comment><USER2> Talk to a lawyer. IANAL.

If you don't have the initial agreement in writing, you effectively never had one in the first place. Check your invention assignment agreement in your hiring paperwork, if you have one. Also, check your states's rules regarding IP and your employer.

Now, for question 1, building a company off of licensed technology shouldn't be a problem. However, if you have dreams of an exclusive license, make sure it's in some sort of agreement.

For question 2, I've thought about this b/c of a situation I'm in right now. Consult a lawyer. Inventions are invented by people (in the US), and then can be assigned to a company. If you don't have an invention assignment agreement and won't sign one, can they arbitrarily name someone else as the inventor...sure. Then, you might be able to get into a really hairy legal game, like for example, when the published step forward. I'm not sure what the outcome will be, so consult a lawyer. Could you rush and file a provisional ahead of the company? These are the types of games that cost money to play, so beware.

3\. Move on. It's probably seems like your whole world / future is collapsing around you. It's not.</comment>


Ask HN: Good books written before ~1900? - <AUTHOR> I recently saw a post on HN that recommended (among other things) reading books that were over a century old as a way to reflect on how different things were prior to the ubiquity of technology (i.e. social media, the 24/7 news cycle, smartphones, etc.)
I'm thinking of spending a week or so doing a 'digital detox' and aside from hiking, meditation, and journaling, I'd like to spend most of my time reading.
Does HN have any recommendations? I'm open to pretty much any genre, fiction, nonfiction, or otherwise.
A few that I have on my list already:
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville - Crime & Punishment by Dostoevsky
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley <comment><USER3> There are literally thousands of books in the Gutenberg Press, ([http://www.gutenberg.org](http://www.gutenberg.org)) that include stuff as recent as the 1920s. After the 1920s, things peter out because of the harsher copyright laws ("The Mickey Mouse Laws") since then.

These include books by many famous authors such as Dickens, Conrad, Conan Doyle, Defoe, Kipling, Poe, etc, etc, etc. Enough to keep you occupied for years!

</comment><comment><USER4> Joshua Slocum - Sailing Alone Around the World

A fascinating account of the first solo circumnavigation of the world. Definitely a digital detox that will prep you the next book in this list

[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6317](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6317)

John Esquemeling - The Buccaneers Of America

This is a fascinating read and provides some insight into some of the influences on the origins of American democracy. One to read before you start the de Tocqueville.

[https://archive.org/details/historybuccanee02perkgoog/page/n...](https://archive.org/details/historybuccanee02perkgoog/page/n10/mode/2up)

Rudyard Kipling - <USER2>

A spy thriller set during the great game between Russia and the Indian Raj. Most anything by Kipling is a rollicking good read.

[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2226](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2226)

The travel writings of Isabella Bird

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

Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita

Not pre 1900 but it is the perfect counterpoint to the paranoia inducing crime and punishment.

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

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

</comment><comment><USER5>
        The Bourgeois Gentleman
        Complaint tablet to Ea-nasir :-)
        Emma
        Essays
        Gulliver's Travels
        HMS Pinafore
        In Praise of Folly
        Journey to the West[1]
        Mullah Nasruddin stories[2]
        Nicomachean Ethics
        Panchatantra
        Uncle Remus
        War & Peace[3]

[1] haven't read this one yet myself, but the old cartoon "Havoc in Heaven" was good, and books are usually better than their movies.

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasreddin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasreddin) , collections are probably available under multiple titles

[3] much more in the book than the movie. it also looks like I should queue up Eugene Onegin.

</comment><comment><USER6> Adam Smith the wealth of nations

You will understand much about the world and you will know how small the overlap between what is in the book and what people think is in it is.

</comment><comment><USER7> The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.

</comment><comment><USER8> Seneca's essays & letters.

</comment><comment><USER9> Darwin "The Voyage of the Beagle"

Homer "The Odyssey"

</comment><comment><USER10> The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzō (1906)

</comment><comment><USER11> Bleak House by Charles Dickens

</comment><comment><USER12> DRACULA [1897]

Interesting as it was one of the first [if not THE first] novels to be written in epistolary format [ie. composed of a series of extracts from journals, letters, newspaper articles and even wax cylinder recordings, rather than narrated by a single person]. So there's a nice contrast there with works of today which might use a similar style, but compose the narrative from emails, text messages, TV reports, etc.

As a novel, it's a very mixed bag. The beginning and ending are classic gothic horror --very action packed and exciting and feel quite modern. However, there are vast tracts in the middle which are hard going, having been severely beaten with the 'Victorian Melodrama' stick; women faint at the drop of a hat, men fall to their knees, beating their breasts, crying and wailing their devotion in front of all present and everyone eulogises at length on 'good vs. evil'.

ROBINSON CRUSOE [1719]

I didn't realise this one was _that_ old, til I looked it up!

Another cracking story but, to an even worse extent than Dracula, suffers from the attitudes of its day. Crusoe is such a pious, pompous self-obsessed prig that, whenever I read the book, I end up hating him and wishing he'd suffer some painful testicle-crushing accident, to wipe the sanctimonious expression off his fizzer.

In spite of being holed up in a cave with barrels of rum, sacks of tobacco, piles of guns and gunpowder and more food and livestock than the average farm, Crusoe continually whinges about his terrible lot in life. [Try being cast ashore with only an ice skate and a netball for company, or confined to barracks with only a couple of bottles of hand sanitiser to drink --you pampered pillock!]

And, of course, when he meets Friday, he treats him with the kind of masterly benevolence you might show a favourite dog; change your name, change your culture, change your religion, change your language. Good boy! Now you're fit to be a slave for an Englishman. [and, even the addition of a live-in servant to his already well-appointed cave, doesn't stop Crusoe endlessly bemoaning the terrible fate life has given him].

TREASURE ISLAND [1883]

Another great adventure story. It's got pirates and buried treasure. What's not to like?!

As with the previous two I've mentioned, Jim Hawkins, the hero character is annoyingly pious and good. However, in the case of Treasure Island, these niggles are more than rectified by the introduction of a great supporting cast of villains including Billy Bones, Blind Pew and, of course Long John Silver.

I don't know if Robert Louis Stevenson intended this, or I'm putting our contemporary preference for 'flawed heroes' onto what he wrote. But, unusually for novels of that era the 'baddies' in Treasure Island are portrayed as rounded individuals with likeable aspects to their personalities, rather than being cast as one-dimensional pantomime villains. I think it gives the book a feel that's more modern than its vintage would lead you to expect.

</comment><comment><USER13> It would be much easier and shorter to ask for good books after 2000.</comment>


NoSQL no more: let's double down with MoreSQL - <AUTHOR> http://tatiyants.com/nosql-no-more-lets-double-down-with-moresql/

<comment><USER2> Enough of this non-sense. There are 3 fundamental types of data out there. Dynamic relational data, dynamic non-relational data, and static data.

1\. Data that needs to be modified by the client/server and is relational, should be stored in a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) and should involve SQL.

2\. Data that needs to be modified by a client/server and is _not_ relational should be stored in one of the many key/value store systems out there. SQL is pointless when the data is not relational.

3\. Data that does _not_ need to be modified by the client/server should be stored in flat files. JSON or XML to the rescue.

Can we get back to writing software now?

<comment><USER3> A data is not relational or not-relational. Creating relations is a way to model data. Sometimes it's adequate, sometimes it's not.

As for the separation between "static" and "dynamic", again, I'm not sure I follow you. The definition of what is static and dynamic depends on how your model the data. What if you store every update? What is static? What is dynamic? Is new content dynamic or static?

Additionally, do you imply XML or JSON may be valid to store, say, a HD movie?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Its said in jest but I think its true.

Heard that Google use SQL over Map-Reduce?

I naturally had to blog about it:

[http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/16399069781/googl...](http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/16399069781/google- moresql-is-real)

</comment><comment><USER3> For those who didn't get it, it's an ironic article.</comment>


Quantify: dimensioned values in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/transcriptic/quantify

<comment><USER2> I made something similar to this a while ago. Example usage is here: [https://github.com/nickretallack/Dimensional.JS/blob/master/...](https://github.com/nickretallack/Dimensional.JS/blob/master/example/main.js)

I'm not sure if mine is perfectly accurate though, as it may lose floating point precision in some cases.</comment>


Italu – An Integral Table Lookup (1967) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19680004891.pdf#page=156 <comment><USER2> The funding project is MAC; that is, the 'MAC' in 'MACSYMA'. The codes are of historical interest only—it was only a year later that Risch published his decision procedure. SIN & SAINT are still wonderful bits of software to explore.

<comment><AUTHOR> Still potentially useful today for small libraries though: [https://github.com/davidedc/Algebrite/issues/83](https://github.com/davidedc/Algebrite/issues/83)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> somebody has a summary? :)

<comment><USER4> The Abstract is a good summary. I am unsure how useful this is today. We now have battle tested numerical libraries that use Runge Kutta and similar to solve ODEs.

Abstract: SIN and SOLDIER are heuristic programs written in LISP which solve symbolic integration problems. SIN (Symbolic INtegrator) solves inde-finite integration problems at the difficulty approaching those in the larger integral tables. SIN contains several more methods than are used in the previous symbolic integration program SAINT, and solves most of the problems attempted by SAINT in less than one second. SOLDIER (SOLu-tion of Ordinary Differential Equations Routine) solves first order, first degree ordinary differential equations at the level of a good col-lege sophomore and at an average of about five seconds per problem attempted. [...]

<comment><USER5> In some situations, there is a huge performance advantage to symbolic integration. The symbolic integration is expensive, but once it's done, you can evaluate integrals of different parameterisations of your function in a handful of cycles. With numerical integration, you have to spend however many thousands of cycles it takes for every parameterisation.

If you're evaluating integrals as part of the objective function in an optimisation over a multidimensional space, then you're going to be doing a lot of optimisations, and that saving can add up.

<comment><USER4> Fair point. The same thing applies to differentiation, where e.g. computing analytic Jacobians can be useful to save precious CPU cycles in embedded control systems.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why You Should Tell Your Children How Much You Make - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/your-money/why-you-should-tell-your-kids-how-much-you-make.html <comment><USER2> I agree that parents should tell their kids how much they make. Even better, bring them in on the budgeting process, explain how much of their paycheck goes to taxes, etc.

I was raised not knowing any of that -- my mother absolutely hated talking about her finances with me. So I never really had a clue what a reasonable wage or salary was, or how much I would actually lose to taxes, or what a reasonable budget was... and of course, none of that stuff was taught in high school, either.

Even with the FAFSA, etc., I remember being told to just sign it and my mother would insist on taking the form and going to fill in the blanks herself.

I think that parents talking to their children about this kind of thing provides them with a healthier financial barometer overall, which would be useful when they start getting pounded with credit card pre-approval letters out of the blue.

Edit: Even now, as a 29-year-old adult, I have no clue what my mother makes, what (if anything) she has for retirement, what she inherited from her father last year, the status of the house she lives in, etc. She just won't talk about that kind of thing because it "has nothing to do with me."

As a child, it can be a handicap, but as an adult, it can be massively stressful. I can understand the need to be independent (especially as a single mother), but money is just a sensitive topic when there isn't a lot.

<comment><USER3> I'm in favor of this sort of disclosure in principle, but I have a (perhaps uncommon) problem with it.

I don't want to disclose my income because my kids are unlikely to ever earn what I do - and I don't want them _ever_ to feel bad about it, and I don't think the budgeting aspect would be very useful/instructive given that it's "not normal".

We have lived far below our means, and I'm a known cheapskate. While my kids know we're "comfortable" the frugality seems to have rubbed off. They're savers (agonizing over substantial purchases, delaying gratification) and when they earn wages or get monetary gifts it goes in the bank rather than into clothes/gadgets/cars. I'm proud of that. They recoiled at my hints that they might consider a college major that would lead to a decent wage, claiming that they don't care about status buying and owning stuff. I hope it lasts beyond youthful idealism.

So here's the thing. If I show them my salary, it's likely 3X to 4X what they'll ever earn (based on median wages for college grads) so I can't show them "reasonable". I can show them some sort of freak-show budget with >60% going into savings, but it's still not likely to be very useful to them.

Part of me _wants_ to share this info, and I'm happy to hear other opinions, but on balance it seems like it could do more harm them good. They're already financially wise for their ages. Maybe I should just show them our bills? Then they'd at least know what it takes to run an average home.

<comment><USER4> My dad earns 2.5x my graduation salary (which in France is a huge difference - I'm 31 now). Don't worry about your kids knowing the figures, I've always rationalized about my father: He's from a business school (earns more than engineers), he explained me stuff about fluid mechanics theory (=He's smarter than me), he had 30 years of experience when I had 0.5, he manages 150 people when I would be incapable of that, and most of all, if your child isn't that rich, you may have 3 kids when he can adjust to having 2 or 1 if necessary.

If anything, knowing the figures will help kids plan their life accordingly and with more anticipation; the only drawback is I'm not good at holding secrets and a few friends have known about my father's salary.

The most important is probably something your kids already know: My father has a belly, and that's the result of long years of stress; In other terms he paid his wealth with his health.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Revealing the salary is one thing but i think revealing the monthly expenses is even more important for kids to realize how much money actually just "disappears", into recurring bills like rent, for one to live a comfortable life.

There's a reality TV show in Sweden, called the teenage boss(tonårsbossen), where in each episode the teenager of a family get's to control the whole budget for his family for one month. Surely there's selection bias on what type of family they put on the show but it's quite revealing to see how kids think when they get that much money because they don't understand how much or how little it is. Even when the hosts help them lay out a budget they always always end up overspending. First they go buy tons of clothes the first week, they give their parents less pocket money than what they themselves normally got before, the food bill is always double because they don't know what's normal price for grocery items, there's always some recurring monthly expense that's easy to forget like gas for the car, they don't take into account unexpected events like the fridge breaking down, nothing goes into savings etc etc.

I think every kid would benefit greatly from doing this kind of exercise at least once, at least letting them join the budgeting and let them see where the money goes.

</comment><comment><USER6> I sort of feel like is a middle class/upper class problem or lesson to be learned. When you grow up poor none of this is really a mystery. You understand very early on the value of a penny, where it goes, and why it's spent. Still a valuable lesson.

<comment><USER7> But do "you" _really_ understand?

My parents have always been on a tight budget -- they got most of their cutlery, plates etc with loyalty schemes for the biscuits I'd eat every morning. They bought a second-hand campervan so that they could go on holiday without paying for hotels, and could afford a house only thanks to old-school "socialist" policies here in Europe. They always fixed what they broke and always talked about the importance of using money wisely, for real things etc etc. They were also politically active, so I know how the sausage gets made, so to speak.

The result? I've always been rubbish at managing big sums of money. When my salary went over a certain threshold, I just stopped caring. I get anxious at the first sight of debt, yeah; but in many ways, that's also a handicap because it stops me from effectively leveraging debt as an instrument of growth. I can't get myself to talk about money with clients, and I'm thankful someone else does it for me. I used to spend days looking to save a few quid on this or that £20 gadget, and now I buy my cars from an expensive official dealer that is clearly overcharging me. When numbers go over a certain threshold, it just becomes "funny money" and my brain switches off. Right now I'm probably living beyond my means and balancing my budget by pure luck, I just have no idea.

Growing up poor can give you a certain inner fire and a sense of the importance of money in society; but it doesn't necessarily give you a full picture, in the same way knowing how to develop a simple webapp with Django or Ruby doesn't mean you know how to implement a scalable and highly-available system with queues, nosql, AWS orchestration and so on. You know the value of a penny, but not necessarily the value of a grand.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps thinking of your spending as a percentage of your net income, rather than an absolute amount, would help? Have a read over:

[http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly- sim...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math- behind-early-retirement/)

I found it provided a very useful perspective.

<comment><USER9> Very useful, thanks. Basically: "your age to retirement depends entirely on your savings rate, as a percentage of your take-home pay".

So, in short, try to live on less, put the rest in the bank and don't spend it. Live on what you need, avoid needless luxuries. And avoid credit card debt like the plague, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We got our daughters checking accounts when they were 8. (actually USAA savings accounts that you could write 3 checks a month on) and we set up some auto-deposits for their allowance.

Generally the question wasn't about how much money we made, rather it was about how money "works". And why would you save it rather than spend it, and what is debt, and what are luxuries. We also made some of the things that other parents were paying for out of pocket, come out of their allowance. That exercise forces them to choose amongst a couple of things to spend their money on, and they get to experience both good and bad choices. Like spending money on going to a movie versus waiting and buying it as a DVD and having a movie night at home with your friends. Same net expenditure of cash but very different experiences.

And we tried to impress upon them the notion of 'current' money (money in the bank) 'future' money which was inbound assuming you met the conditions, 'mandatory' expenses, and 'optional' expenses.

The goal was to show how saving money "pushes" it into the future while taking on debt "pulls" money from the future into the present.

I think in general we were reasonably successful. They all knew how to balance a checkbook and make a budget when they got to college. The hard part as a parent is to know that you could make a temporary hardship "go away" but holding back so that your kids can get the experience and feeling of getting past it. The trick is doing it early, so the 'hardship' is they don't have any money left to buy ice cream from the snack shop, rather than something more serious like coming up with enough money to pay first and last month's rent on a new place to stay.

The only thing I really didn't like about the article was responding "Why do you ask?" which is always heard as a challenge by my kids, as if they have over stepped their place by asking a question. I much prefer, "Great question! What are you trying to figure out or understand?"

</comment><comment><USER11> "he decided to do something that many parents would consider radical: show them exactly what he earned."

Huh? Really? That's radical? I always knew how much my mom made. Do parents really keep this from their children, the same way they keep it from other coworkers?

<comment><USER12> I never knew how much my parents made when I was growing up. All I knew was that they worked hard, there was always food on the table, and we got to go on cool vacations once in awhile. I think that's really all you need to know at a young age. Doing chores, mowing lawns, etc, is a good way to learn the value of a dollar at a young age. At 14 I started working a real job and opened a checking account, seems like a perfect age to be learning about how to manage your own finances.

<comment><USER13> Usually when people say kids must "learn the value of a dollar", they imply kids _underestimate_ how important that dollar is... but to me it feels like the reverse.

Kid-me would have been absolutely shocked at how many potential candy- bars/toys/etc. are being spent on adult things like rent or gas or insurance.

<comment><USER14> It goes both ways. At first money is meaningless, completely free. Then as you learn its value, it is incredibly valuable to you. Five whole dollars! Wow!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Budgeting with older kids, as part of teaching about general responsibility, is probably a great idea. I'm also bewildered why anyone would hide their finances from their kids. Neat idea to dump it out in cash and divide it out, as an easier way to visualize.

But, some kids worry. Having to tell them we have to be careful with money, that we can't do something because of money... eh, that introduces an unnecessary thing for them to be concerned about when they're only 6, or 8 or so. They're already terrified about death, plus all the other "stresses" of whatever kids deal with (getting to the bathroom on time, not being made fun of, studying, etc.).

So my line to my kids is: I earn enough, and I always will find a way. You should never worry about this. Don't let money be the deciding factor in decisions. Even at one point when I was a kid and we were on food stamps, my father always tried to make it clear that money would not be a concern. Dealing with teen stuff, no matter how insignificant it now appears, plus worrying about my parents budgeting? What's for?

As far as "Why can't I get <newitem>?" \-- I don't buy them every toy they want, but that's due to clutter and accumulating shit. I let them get any new toy they want, if they trade in several old toys (so that they'd approach only having a few, plus presents that don't require trade in). That's a separate discussion though.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Each month, she has them sit with her while she pays the tuition online, > asking them to click the button. "We jokingly say that it costs $92.50 to > send them each to school every day,"

I don't like this at all. If you decide to send your kids to private school, don't lord it over them and make their education a source of guilt to keep them in check.

<comment><USER17>
        > don't lord it over them and make their education a
        > source of guilt to keep them in check

Why not?

<comment><USER18> It probably wasn't their choice not to go to a public school (and if it was, come on, they shouldn't have the ability to make that choice all by themselves).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> One of the benefits of growing up Jewish is that business talk at the dinner table each evening drowns out even the TV. Of course, you learn pretty quick that not all families are like this.

I'm happy to give lessons but I'll never give an exact net worth. Stealth wealth FTW

[http://www.joshuakennon.com/stealth-wealth-why-americas- rich...](http://www.joshuakennon.com/stealth-wealth-why-americas-rich-hide- their-money/)

<comment><USER20> My family, from a Chinese heritage, has a similar thing. We talk about business, our salary, our financial plans etc within ourselves, but silence outside the family. I heard similar stories from other families. I always wonder how pervasive that is in other cultures.

<comment><USER21> I actually envy you guys. I come from an European Christian family, and it was only my father that occasionally engaged in discussions regarding wealth, earnings, business. It was not a popular thing to do where I grew up. Although I firmly believe this is the right thing to do, properly executed it brings family together and gives support to everyone's plans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> When I was 16 my dad made me balance the check book and pay all the bills for a year. It is why I feel I am successful now. He also taught me to ask how can I expand my means to afford something vs cutting. A great idea for sure!

</comment><comment><USER23> I was surprised to read so much concern about children learning what their parents make or what their home is worth, as well as concern they might share that with outsiders. I have three kids, aged 1, 3, and 5, and I don't worry about that. Maybe it's because I'm a freelancer so I think about income more often than someone with a stable paycheck. Do other people fear those things?

If so, and sorry to veer off into a different thread, but maybe salary and home value are good answers to "I have nothing to hide." :-)

<comment><USER24> There's slot of weird psychology at play here.

Many people harbor guilt or are otherwise insecure about money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I kind of don't want them telling the other children in school how much I make.

<comment><USER17> Eh, my Dad told me it was important not to tell other kids because it would hurt their feelings, so I didn't. I'm pretty sure none of them would have cared, either. Have more faith in your kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Information has value and power when it is scarce and loses value when shared. Honestly, I think more people should be open about how much they make, how much profit margins their businesses have, etc. because transparency in the long run deflects a lot of questions and problems.

Many/most people are basically rational and understand things in somewhat reasonable terms, even if greed is problematic. For example, Bill Gates is worth like $50 billion or whatever. I'm not rushing to take his money, company, or job.

Yet, if I know that I'm charging $85/hr. for developer consulting when my competition is charging $150/hr. perhaps I'd be better off adjusting my rates higher. Or, at $250/hr if I'm already top of market maybe I don't have as much room to raise my rates.

Knowing that I can make rational decisions about what to charge and so on and people won't freak out about that. The way people handle salary negotiations by and large is really bad simply because we are a nation of price takers, not price setters. Thus, the majority takes what they are offered and doesn't bat an eye.

The handful of people with professional negotiators or who are good negotiators themselves are making far more than everyone else.

If you tell your kids how much money you make and explain why, they have a better chance of making the same or more money than you do.

</comment><comment><USER27> I personally figured most of this out whilst growing up by just, well, looking at what we had, where we lived, occupations, etc. All the data is there... I saw a world dominated by fun coupons, researching it was just a given, like asking 'why is the sky blue?'.

What I can remember intensely, is thinking that the amount of work that seemed to occur for what we had seemed obscene. It was very difficult not to see that as a failing in my parents. (I don't feel that way now). Why would they choose to work for such low pay? The people on the TV, on the Internet seemed to be doing well.

I try, but it's hard to not feel despair when reading these sorts of articles. There are so many issues with this... the college debt throwaway, for example. The choice looks completely different to a poor child in social housing, than it does to a child whose parents are well on the way to owning the family home outright.

</comment><comment><USER28> Since there's some discussion in this thead about inequality of revenue between generations, I would mention here Stéphane Laborde's "Théorie Relative de la Monnaie" [http://trm.creationmonetaire.info/](http://trm.creationmonetaire.info/) or "Currency Relative Theory" [https://github.com/informatimago/LatexTRM/blob/master/LateXT...](https://github.com/informatimago/LatexTRM/blob/master/LateXTRM- en.pdf)

Basically: instead of performing QE by giving all the new money to banksters, we give a Universal Dividend to all human being, at a rate determined from the average lifespan, so that each human being gets the same relative amount of money during his life who ever he is, and WHENEVER he lives. (Of course, this doesn't precludes normal economic exchanges, and therefore differences in paychecks, but at least the QE are done systematically in a reasonned system, contrarily the aphasard releases of the Fed). (For the European Union, given the average lifespan here, this would give a Universal Dividend of about 500€/month).

</comment><comment><USER29> The day when folks are in no way defined by their income can not come quickly enough. It saddens me to know that it will likely not be near my lifetime.

<comment><USER18> Money is essentially a measure of your influence/ability to make people do things, so it's not surprising it's tied up with status.

<comment><USER30> I suppose that is true. However, I see money as giving me the ability to not _have_ to do what _others_ want me to do (within legal bounds of course).

<comment><USER31> It's the same thing - your immunity to that power is your status.

<comment><USER30> I disagree. Using a probably hyperbolic metaphor: I don't want to be a slave but neither do I wish to be anybody else's master.

<comment><USER31> That is (or was) the definition of the middle or burgher class, though. The middle class is independent enough to be a check on the power of the upper class since they can't be bought, but not so wealthy or powerful that they control others. I think the analogy fits well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Some parents start with even larger line items. Trisha Jones, a stay-at-home > mother in Norfolk, Va., sends her children, who are 6 and 8, to private > school. Each month, she has them sit with her while she pays the tuition > online, asking them to click the button. "We jokingly say that it costs > $92.50 to send them each to school every day," she said, adding that they > know that the daily number is akin to a nice Lego set. "But it's a privilege > to go to the school that they do, and we want them to know that we are > making sacrifices to send them there."

This really made me cringe. Specifically why should you admit to your kids that what they have is a privilege. Isn't it the same as saying we're rigging the contest? We're making the world more unjust?

Your kids should know that is not really that good for them to be away from the poor/slow/racially inferior/wrong religion kids (or whatever your reason is), but it's actually really harmful for the public school kids not to have the kids who can afford private school in the same class.

<comment><USER33> _This really made me cringe. Specifically why should you admit to your kids that what they have is a privilege._

I think it's important for people to be aware of the privileges they can and do take advantage of. Even (especially?) kids can benefit from learning this early on.

 _Your kids should know that is not really that good for them to be away from the poor /slow/racially inferior/wrong religion kids (or whatever your reason is), but it's actually really harmful for the public school kids not to have the kids who can afford private school in the same class._

So you're saying that parents should intentionally give their kids a (presumably) inferior education, just because others aren't quite so privileged?

My opinion is that recognizing and doing something about your own privilege shouldn't be about handicapping yourself, but should be about helping to elevate those without the same privilege.

Now, you can argue that putting the more-well-off kids in a regular public school would do that, but the problem is it's another one of those solutions that only works if _everyone_ does it simultaneously. And that's just not something someone is going to be able to make happen. So, instead, you have to compromise: you give your own kids an advantage that some people may not have access to. If you have the ability, you might also try to help out the less- advantaged kids by donating time or money (or something) to improving their education in other ways. Certainly not a perfect situation, but many families don't have _that_ much wiggle room in what their finances will allow.

Of course, this is all assuming as fact your assertion that private school = rich, smart kids and public school = poor, dumb, disadvantaged kids, which... I don't really buy as a blanket statement.

<comment><USER32> You have some good points and I admit that what I wrote came mostly from a gut reaction. However there are a lot of studies showing that there are few benefits for more well-off kids to avoid social mixing, while the damage inflicted to those who can't afford private schools and are deprived of interaction with other social classes is great.

I personally don't believe in solutions like charity and volunteering to make a society more egalitarian and fair. I'm thinking specifically at the impact of this type of philosophy on American society vs advanced socialdemocracies like Scandinavian countries.

If you realize you have a cultural or economic advantage I think you should really put it to use by sending your kid to the same school as everybody else and improving it passively by their sole presence, and actively by making your local public school as good as possible for everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I had parents that shared quite a bit about money with me.

I remember, when I was a kid, any cash gifts that I got on my birthday, festivals, etc. would be divided in two equal piles. 1/2 would go to my savings account, and the other half would be given to me to do with as I pleased. This was my parents way to encourage savings.

A bit later, when I was in the 5th of 6th standard (we don't call them grades), and my parents spoke to me about their investments in the stock market, I began saving up my half of the gifts (from the last paragraph) and invested that in stocks. They really liked me doing this, and decided that they will match all my investments in stocks (really tiny sums of money then) provided I do not sell until I am eighteen. I realise now, they wanted me to get into the right kinds of stocks. Stable enterprises, with good leadership, etc. After seeing me doing this for about a year, they handed me my savings bank account, with all the 1/2's of all cash gifts I had been getting for all my life (about 14/15 years). This was there way of telling me that they had some confidence in my dealing with money. At around this same time, my dad was buying a new office. He spoke to me about the loans that he would be taking to buy this. There was some cash that I had (a gift from my grandfather, to be given to me when I turned 18) and I asked him to use that to offset the loan. I'd already realised, that I was not going to need this money until 18, and it made more sense to use this cash and offset the loan. Why pay more interest to banks that you need to?

On the whole, there have been a lot of incidents in my life, where my parents have been rather open about their income with me. Now, I'm 2 years out of college, I see the difference, in that, I am able to advise friends and colleagues, some older than me, on where to invest cash, how to save tax and a few stock tips a year. (I'm still a really long term investor :) )

</comment><comment><USER35> My parents completely hid all finances from me and my sister growing up. My mother in particular would be horrified to think that their kids were stressing out over mortgage and utility bills. They didn't have to sit down and show us their pay-stubs for us to know roughly what types of things we could afford though. Perhaps if my parents had been really wealthy and could afford anything, then I would have grown up with no concept of money. But, as it were, I had a small allowance that I could spend as I pleased and I knew pretty well what price range we could afford for birthdays and such.

I would like to think I'm a moderately successful entrepreneur with a decent ability to manage personal and corporate finances. I'm thankful I didn't have that "adult" stress on my shoulders and was allowed to just be a kid.

</comment><comment><USER36> It's inescapable if they go to college. That's the only way I would have found out.

There's a line on the FAFSA form.

<comment><USER37> My parents simply told me they had too much in savings for me to get financial aid so filling out the FAFSA was a waste of time. But the entire time I was growing up they acted like we weren't in the best financial shape and couldn't afford name brand cereal and stuff so I learned to be thrifty through a false sense of being worse off than we actually were.

It is important to teach kids to live with in reasonable means and how to prioritize needs over desires to stay within budget when everything is accounted for. It is not important in my opinion for them to know an exact amount anyone makes, but the article does outline a way the former was achieved by doing the latter.

<comment><USER38> I don't know that the threshold for FAFSA being useless is really that high.

<comment><USER39> For Pell Grants isn't not that high, but you still have to fill one out if you want federal student loans which have no limit at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I grew up with no idea how much my parents made and they often sent very conflicting messages about how much they had or how much we were able to spend, giving me money freely one minute and then screaming at me for being selfish about money the next. I never did have a clear picture and probably never will, after a while I didn't care. If I got something I got it, if I didn't then I didn't. Instead of money being used as something I could earn respect with or be trusted with, they used it to control me and get me to do things whenever they wanted.

Now I am older and they desperately beg me to know about my finances. I don't answer and I plan on never giving them the slightest clue. There is a complete lack of mutual respect and this is something I WILL NOT screw up with my kids if I ever have any.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think the title could have been rephrased.

It's definitely a good idea to build some financial sense from young age, helping kids figure out how budgeting works, where the money gets spent, how it all works, etc. It also works if they are able to learn why someone pays you that money in the first place - how a business makes profit because of your work, which justifies the salary (or some other value gained if it's a non-profit organisation). Finally it also makes sense to let them understand money as a means of exchanging value, rather than some magical paper that just helps buy stuff.

The earlier they learn about stuff like interest rates, debt, investments, etc. the better prepared they are to take on their life.

However, just telling kids that "hey kids, I make $xxxx" and doing nothing after that is never a great idea!

</comment><comment><USER42> I knew what my parents made as long as I can remember. THey also explained there health care and retirement situation to me at a young age. This helped me realize that since they are teachers and were grandfathered into the systems before benefits started getting massively cut that I needed to take into account more then just my salary. While my starting salary was much higher then theirs with inflation taken into account I also realized that I had t start saving as soon as I got a job. I am lucky that I enjoy programming and it allows me to live comfortably. While if money were no issue I may have gone into history talking with them about finances made me realize that I should find a happy medium with something I both enjoy and will allow me to be comfortable.

</comment><comment><USER43> Some parts of this article struck me as bizarre, like the "Why do you ask?" part. And the parenthetical "this also works well for questions about sex and drugs" was even worse! I guess in some cases it's useful or important to ask "Why do you ask?" but using that line every single time? I think that would get old very fast.

The counter-examples seemed plastic. Who doesn't tell their kids "because it costs too much money" when they ask for some stupid toy they are going to play with for 5 minutes and then forget. I explain the cost of things all the time to my kids, it would never occur to me to dodge the subject.

</comment><comment><USER44> There are some good tips in this piece I am definitely going to apply.

Growing up I remember very well that I always felt my parents had a near unlimited budget but that they just didn't buy everything because they wanted me to learn that that was somehow bad. It real took until somewhere in my mid teens to understand that this was not the case.

My father never shared his salary. Taking all this cash home sounds like a lot of fun! OR perhaps you could just sit your kid down and make Python/matplotlib script that shows some pi/bar charts where you add categories... Get the kid excited about programming too ;)

</comment><comment><USER45> I felt like this article actually begs a bigger question, why don't we tell each other how much we make? I get the sense that because we keep this so extremely private, it makes it so much easier for the class division between the wealthy, the 'middle class', and the poor to continue to grow.

If everyone truly understood just how much less the 'rich' people they know earned than any of the 700,000 or so folks in the global elite, would we still be having the same sort of disdain for progressive taxation?

<comment><USER46> Because it leads to discontent: www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> > [E]ven the youngest generally understand when budgets have become tighter > and want to know why.

I don't think this is true for everyone. Children could write off a lack of stuff to any reason other than "budgets have become tighter", or give it no thought at all, or be proud that they are not spoiled. Also, "I never thought we were poor" stories are not uncommon. I don't know if that's a better way to go, but at least it's sometimes possible.

</comment><comment><USER48> I don't tell my kid how much I make because they use it to compare with the other kids' parents. It is uncomfortable and embarrassing to overhear them bragging among themselves that their dad earns more than that ones.

It's easy, if you don't have kids, to theorize on how you should instruct and mentor your would-be offspring, but few plans survive first contact with the real world.

</comment><comment><USER49> > "We jokingly say that it costs $92.50 to send them each to school every > day,"

That might actually have an adverse effect. Kids doing worse at school for whatever reason, get a huge guilt complex because their parents pay a lot of money for them to be there. Reminds me of the "disappointed Asian parents" meme / stereotype.

</comment><comment><USER50> I love seeing this. I run a full-disclosure household. We talk about money (savings, income, assets for now; they're young) and careers and aspirations often. Justice themes bubble up naturally out of this. As a parent, I can only recommend bringing your kids into the conversation.

</comment><comment><USER51> You should tell your children how much you can do and what you know.

Being is important, not having.

<comment><USER50> Education is also important. We have created economies so that we can conduct business and allowing children to remain ignorant of these things is a direct harm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I wholeheartedly agree. Our consumer-led marketing manipulated society casts a massive shadow over the reality of just how much things cost and no sum of money is too big. When you're a child or teenager, you don't have the pressures of life on your shoulders, you don't realise just how hard things can be. You have no bills, little to no responsibilities and everything is so much easier.

I actually had this conversation with my wife the other day. We decided we would raise our child to be aware of just how much things cost and teach him from a young age to be successful in life and get the things you want, you have to work for them and that nothing is ever handed to you.

This is why I think it is important to instil good values into your children from a young age and teach them the importance of money, how it is earned and where it is spent. When they're old enough to do things for themselves, encourage them to earn money through chores but also ensure they do some chores for free. Maybe give them a few dollars for mowing the lawn, but make them do the washing up and clean their room for free.

When I was about 10, my father who is a small engine mechanic gave me a full can of fuel, a whipper snipper and a mower. He then suggested I go door-to- door and ask people in the street if they would like their lawn mowed for $15 (for a small yard). When the fuel ran out, I had to use my own earned money to buy more fuel, oil (for two stroke mixture) and whipper snipper cord. I remember one stage I had like $40, but I spent half of that on fuel, oil and cord.

Because of that experience my father taught me, I believe it actually made me grow up to be more conscious of money and taught me the basics of running a business and managing money. I have very little personal debt, I earn an okay salary and have some savings. Sadly, we're seeing the current generation getting into massive amounts of debt thanks to credit cards, expensive electronic items and even in-app purchases on our cellular phones.

I learned to be more budget conscious when I go shopping with my wife because I grew up going to the store with my mother who knew to go at a certain time of day to get discounted; fruit, meat and vegetables. The importance of buying in bulk, the importance of knowing what you want to buy by writing a shopping list before you even set foot in the store.

When I was growing up, money was a taboo subject that my parents didn't like discussing in-front of me and my siblings. I would see my parents sometimes argue about money, not very often, but I didn't really know first-hand some of the stresses until I got older and paid more attention. I wish my parents involved me and my sisters in the budgeting process so we could all be a little more grateful for what we had and the sacrifices my parents had to make raising us.

Honestly, I think the whole money subject should be taught in school. I know some schools do to an extent, but children need to be taught the honest basics and realities of everyday life financial responsibilities as an adult and the consequences of things like debt.

</comment><comment><USER53> You forgot that HN readers are cool bros who travel the world and code from cafes in Thailand while writing books about now to be cool. They don't have kids.

<comment><USER50> I'm probably risking my karma to respond in agreement with an already downvoted post but whatevs. You're mostly spot-on about the demographic even if also something of a prick about it. ;)</comment></comment>


Grove.io: Hosted, Searchable IRC Chat For Teams - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/11/groveio-hosted-searchable-irc.php <comment><USER3> I know it's brand new and all, but there seems to be a lack of "normal" irc functionality/usability. Nickserv has no 'help' functionality, nicks apparently have to be universally unique across all of Grove (better hope someone doesn't use my name in a different organization?), there's no chanserv. The help page is concise but should probably be printed in MOTD or some other way for non-Web clients (I was confused that I had to identify before joining a channel... it created a 'ghost' channel for me instead of booting me and telling me to identify, like most irc servers). And when you add a member to the org, they immediately are joined to the channel - even if they're not connected to a client? How do you know they're available to respond to a question?

Also, since it appears to be a new & custom irc server, i'd not really be willing to trust corporate communication on a platform known for attracting hackers.

<comment><USER4> _there seems to be a lack of "normal" irc functionality/usability. Nickserv has no 'help' functionality, there's no chanserv_

This may shock and surprise you, but I've been using IRC on servers without NickServ and ChanServ for decades. No services != not IRC.

 _Also, since it appears to be a new & custom irc server, i'd not really be willing to trust corporate communication on a platform known for attracting hackers._

Obvious troll.

<comment><USER3> Granted, services are not required. But if you're going to charge for a hosted IRC server (and you require nickserv to join a channel) you might as well clean them up and make them slightly user-friendly/functional.

Rewriting an irc daemon from scratch is a bad idea. The multitude of existing irc daemons and their hybrids are proof that the technology's complex enough to take years to stabilize, much less secure. If it does actually succeed they'll run into the growing pains of scaling that (assuming they add standard irc cluster topology) will bring on netsplits and other potential issues. If I were a hacker i'd look at a from-scratch not-quite-complete alpha-release IRC daemon as a fun toy to mess with. And if I owned a company I wouldn't want to risk my private communications on such shaky ground.

I'm not saying it isn't a cool idea... it just needs a few years to cook before i'd put my money or business into it (or at least a reputable, secure codebase)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice work, thanks for making pretty things, keep it up.

Disclaimer: I've been brainwashed by working in "enterprise" environments. I understand that is not necessarily your target audience.

Logging scares me when it is a hosted solution like this. I signed up for the trial (for personal use) and didn't see that configuration option. Maildrops are lots of fun, but dumps of your dev IRC chats? Most regulated environments have retention periods, and after that most communication is considered to be a liability and storage concern (IANL, TINLA). I would say that dev chats are useful for about a few months, max.

A non-hosted solution would be nice, but certainly takes a huge amount of effort to layer on something like that to what you already have.

Is there any open community (i.e. a grove.io instance) to join and chat about your product, get a feel for it? Sounds like a bit of maintenance headache, but probably worth it. I can't really demo it well by myself.

Also, I can't imagine talking to my coworkers like I am accustomed to chatting on IRC <ahem>. That's just a random thought.

Edit: spelling errours

</comment><comment><USER6> Just saw a demo of this; it blew me away with a clean UI, and some awesome features -- the search/ACL implementations are REALLY slick. It also gets rid of another problem I have, which is that I _hate_ installing/configuring IRC servers.

Every company I've ever worked for has needed this.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not quite as shiny, but I've hosted IRC logs for a few years now. Example: <http://irclog.perlgeek.de/perl6/today>

If anybody wants a channel on freenode logged publicly, feel free to contact me.

(The search facility currently sucks, I'm working on a very different search backend these days).

</comment><comment><USER8> What's the advantage of an IRC-backed chat vs. a Jabber-backed chat?

Sure, IRC's protocol is simpler, but it's also not designed to support authentication or security natively, or to be federated in a "cross-network" way like XMPP is. It seems that XMPP is more modern, more flexible, and supports real user authentication natively - a win in every respect.

Plus most of the clients people these days use for IRC (Adium, irssi, Pidgin, XChat) support Jabber anyway.

<comment><USER9> It's not? How about:

* passwords required to connect to the IRC server,

* passwords required to use given nickname (enforced via NickServ),

* SSL.

<comment><USER8> NickServ and "IRC services" in general are shoehorned extensions to IRC. Most clients support them in some automated fashion now, but there's no guarantee, and usage differs depending on "IRC services" package.

At any rate, my original comment came off a bit the wrong way. I'm not trying to say that IRC isn't a workable solution for this kind of group chat system, as it clearly is. I just don't see why using IRC over Jabber (which seems more technically suited to this domain) is a selling point, especially in a marketplace crowded with group chat solutions.

<comment><USER10> I think it's actually an issue of perception. When I hear Jabber or XMPP, I think of one-to-one chat and when I hear IRC I definitely think of group chat. In general, IRC clients seem more tailored towards groups.

That said, there's definitely room for both protocols and I could see supporting XMPP as well at some point.

<comment><USER11> XMPP MUC is not fun, nor fun to scale. IRC has netsplits, but it does work reliably for tons of people all day every day.

<comment><USER12> I don't really think that's true. Look at Jabber.org which is probably the biggest jabber network out there and it seems they're scaling pretty well.

Edit: Also XMPP supports UTF-8 for everyhting out of the box and as far as I know it's not really possible with IRC (or did that change over the last years?). E.g. nicks with non-ascii chars are no problem to have..

Why do you think it's not fun?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd be interested to know how this stacks up against HipChat. I'm not sure what I'm missing out on, but it would be good to hear if there is something.

<comment><USER14> The major advantage I see with this over HipChat is that you can use existing IRC client software to connect. Personally, I'd much prefer Irssi in a terminal to an Adobe AIR product.

<comment><USER13> I can see the reasons for that, but the HipChat application lets you drag and drop files to share them with everyone in a room, auto-loads images... that alone is worth the client app to me.

<comment><USER15> You can do that with HTML5 (I suspect it's coming soon)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Awesome, this service is needed. I had the job of finding/implementing an outside-accessible group chat service for a startup. I wanted Campfire, but one of the founders didn't like newfangled web chat and required it be traditional IRC.

Setting up open source IRC servers is a pain. They are almost completely void of documentation. And as the article points out, IRC doesn't usually have the traditional username/passwords or access controls you really need for business group chat.

I realize this is an MVP. Here are somethings I think should be included:

* Groups. It makes it way easier to manage access controls.

* A way to invite outsiders. The specific use case is inviting customers to join a chat, without the customer taking up a user/license seat.

* You've probably done these but I can't tell from the website; persistent chat rooms and varying admin privileges (ops in some rooms, not others, ability to create rooms, etc.).

EDIT: Why was my comment down voted?

</comment><comment><USER17> This would be cool if it included what I think is the most useful aspect of IRC for teams: trainable IRC bots.

Back in 1999 - I used IRC to manage my IT org. We had two IT channels: one for IT staff, which we were all required to be logged into when on the clock - <USER2> another that was company wide, where users could jump on IRC to ask the IT/dev/support teams questions.

We used bots to train IT FAQ and system info...

So for example, we would type "DNS Server" and the bot would reply with the IP of the DNS server.

We could type in a hostname and the bot would reply with the system details we put in there.

So, i this had the capability of learning and storing data that was retrievable in this way, rather than simple search, I think it could be very useful.

User:"Whats the current version of ProductX"

Bot:"Product X current version is 1.1.2"

<comment><USER18> Hubot has this feature, and it also has an IRC adapter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hmm, I just started working on an open source web-based IRC client a couple of weeks ago. This takes a bit of the wind out of my sails.

<comment><USER20> Something that works with existing irc servers would still be fantastic.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, the cient looks pretty fantastic, but the apparent limitation of working with Grove-hosted servers does limit its usefulness.

If you're interested, here's my client so far:

<http://web-irc.nodester.com/>

<https://github.com/akavlie/web-irc>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maybe it's just in my circles like this, but I think these days chat itself is no service anymore. You need to integrate it into something else, like social networks, gtalk, skype (chat+telephone), "webcam-services". 10 years ago Grove might've been awesome, but now it feels like something is missing, because I can chat everywhere else contextrelated anyway.

Look how meebo developed over the last years. First it integrated web and traditional chat media like ICQ, MSN and then they already moved on to integrate their chat services into other peoples web-businessmodels as a b2b service.

<comment><USER22> Meebo also took $ SEVENTY million in funding.

When you take that sort of investment, the rules of the game change a lot I think. It's no longer sufficient to make a few million profit a month.

<comment><USER21> You are right, there is a possible niche that is probably profitable. Thus the businessmodel might be valid, even if they have no chance of hitting any main stream markets (with the businessmodel they have right now).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nice work, Leah! Love the fact that it's just IRC at heart.

Is there any way to integrate a file-uploading facility (drag'n'drop in the web client, ideally, like Campfire) to the IRC concept, or is that an impedance mismatch?

<comment><USER10> Thanks!! I'd love to add some file uploading and/or hosting capability. I think it would be easy enough on the website side of things but I'm not sure yet what it would mean for existing IRC clients.

<comment><USER24> Let your services bot announce the user and url, perhaps?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is it going to remain free? Would consider moving our internal irc server here but am concerned that in a few months it will become pay only?

<comment><USER10> No, it won't remain free forever. Soon we'll having pricing plans that are comparable to existing team chat products.

<comment><USER26> How unfortunate.

I've been working on an open source version of what you're purporting to provide as a service.

<comment><USER19> Open source software != free service -- in fact, even when the software is open source, you usually have to pay for a hosted, managed service.

<comment><USER26> I can make an automatic heroku application. I even have a guy who works at Heroku that would help me do it.

I could charge instance-hours for a prefabbed EC2 instance image too.

<comment><USER11> Do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've been beta testing irccloud.com. It's very well done, but I'd also like something that can be self-hosted to access internal-only IRC servers.

<comment><USER28> I like irccloud.com quite a lot. A bit different of a product, but still very nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Grove looks very cool. But groupme is free and has a good iphone/android client that a non-technical user can setup and use. Push notifications work great.

But Grove intrigues me for the ability to hook up useful bots to IRC.

If Groupme had an API available now, I'm not sure Grove would offer any benefits for my purposes. But I love how this space is exploding with all sorts of cool services.

</comment><comment><USER30> Looks great, I'd love to try it, but I had an error 500 while attempting to register. Being an IRC fan, I believe a service like this will really help me to convince my workmates to talk over something else than Google Talk or Skype.

<comment><USER31> Just keep trying, I got 500s a couple of times too.

<comment><USER10> Sorry, our server is swamped right now. I'm working on it...

Update: I've made a few tweaks and it should be better now. _fingers crossed_

<comment><USER30> Works fine now! Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Cool idea. However, I am missing the method to auto-group chats by topic. Would be nice to have it with IRC.

Currently, I am doing that (not with IRC, but with Jabber/XMPP) via my side- project <http://TwoToReal.com> (beta): You ask questions (or raise topics) for which automatically determined experts are then pulled in via IM into a real- time web chat (most of the knobs/switches are tuned by machine learning).

What are your pricing plans?

</comment><comment><USER32> Not sure whether it is in your vision as well, but wouldn't it be cool if Grove.io offered a library of such IRC agents in the same manner as HuBot from GitHub?

<comment><USER10> I think this is a super cool idea and it's something I've been thinking a lot about. Right now, existing IRC bots work fine with Grove but it would be cooler to have more integration.

<comment><USER32> Could even open a market of such bots for you: Customers of Grove.io could then offer their bots in your IRC bot market place ... but now I'm just dreaming ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> >Geeks love IRC, but it comes with a few hassles, mainly having to host it, that have led teams away from using it in favor of easier IM solutions.

The nature of IRC's channel-level organization¹ obviates the need to set up independent servers for a given team group.

What advantage does something like this offer me over just opening a new channel on freenode?

¹I.e., access lists (ops, voice) and modes like +psk (p[rivate], s[ecret], and k[eyed]).

<comment><USER34> Technically Freenode doesn't allow the creation of random channels for any purpose; they are required to be for some open project or open source software. (I say this as a member of quite a number of random channels on Freenode; but they could technically crack down at any time, and I would not recommend this approach for corporate use.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> But aren't the hassles one of the aspects us "geeks" like about IRC? I think us "geeks" deep inside love the terminal, having to setup an IRC client on a hosted server and tweaking the settings, getting our hands dirty. Us, "geeks", love also the sense of exclusivity that the barrier to entry to IRC provides. Take that, and the hassles, away and it becomes yet another chat network.

<comment><USER36> think you have a valid point there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The Do team has been using Grove for a while now, and we're really liking it. The web app supports embedded content and gravatars, and connecting via IRC is great for those who love it.

We used Convore in the past, and Grove has definitely encapsulated the best parts of Convore along with laser-focused features and great performance. We actually can't wait to be a (or the first?) paying customer.

</comment><comment><USER38> this is awesome, mixing a bit of irc + campfire. really like the ability for users to pick web interface or their own irc client.

</comment><comment><USER39> Will its model work well with an open source/community project – where you want to allow all walk-up participants, but need some moderator powers?

For example, can you edit the searchable logs to remove spam?

<comment><USER10> I can actually think of a few good reasons why you might want to remove messages as a moderator. We'll add this soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> And I already crashed my instance. Can no longer connect via IRC, only web client. Connected Hubot to it and did a help with all the scripts installed. Flooding ensued. Now it doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER41> what happened to convore?

<comment><USER22> I don't think people wanted to use it.

<comment><USER42> I dunno, I was pretty happy with it. It was really nice to have at conferences. Like any social medium, there's a tough chicken-and-egg nut to crack. I'm going to try to use it at Supercomputing next week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Looks great, now time to convince my cofounders we need it...

</comment><comment><USER44> I was thinking something like this would come in handy the other day. Goes to show if you have an idea, chances are someone else is already thinking about it.

</comment><comment><USER45> Neat.

Easy hosted custom plugins/bots would be awesome.

You can run your own IRC bot, of course, but then you have to worry about finding a server to run it on, keep it running, etc.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. We need to figure out a good way to do better bot integration! (suggestions welcome)

<comment><USER45> I'd probably start with a configurable bot with a few predefined plugins (RSS feeds, version control / bug tracker integration, etc) and a configuration UI (similar to Github's Services hooks)

Eventually you could add a way to define custom plugins that are properly sandboxed.

<comment><USER46> You're describing <http://hubot.github.com/> which ist pretty much a configurable bot with a few scripts and an irc adapter. It doesn't have a configuration page though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I've been using this lightly for about a month now and it's a fantastic service. I hope it's wildly successful.

</comment><comment><USER46> Now if it only were possible to get the github commit hooks working with this... Coding time I guess.

</comment><comment><USER48> Too bad silcnet.org is dead. It would probably be a better base for such chat application than irc.

</comment><comment><USER49> No /me implemented. :(

</comment><comment><USER50> would be great to integrate with github

<comment><USER51> You should be able to use Hubot with Grove as it provides IRC interface. We have few users already using it.

<comment><USER52> Assuming you'll have to create an entirely new Grove account for each bot you want to add, though?

<comment><USER37> That's fairly typical though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> i was wishing that this existed a few weeks ago. win. now i don't have to implement it.

</comment><comment><USER54> Love the idea.

</comment><comment><USER55> A website exists which is already here to pwn this space.

Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER56> great idea

</comment><comment><USER57> I've been using grove IRC for a while now. If you use the irc.grove.bz server instead of the .io server, you can create channels without registration.

<comment><USER58> oh wow this is amazing!! thanks!!</comment></comment>


Working Remote, or Remotely Working? - <AUTHOR> How do you distinguish the difference between working remotely and remotely working? <comment><USER2> Don't think I (personally) ever have. But pondering the question, if I were to make the distinction: working remotely would intimate simply taking a day to work from home as an exception to one's general/typical location of being in the office, whereas remotely working intimates someone who may be a majority or full-time remote worker.

My $0.02.

Good question

</comment><comment><USER3> very interesting question, for me it's very easy to slip into remotely working remote.</comment>


Least amount of calories required  - <AUTHOR>

Just a thought. What could be the least/optimal amount of calories required for someone to function well, in terms of physical and mental fitness. Like, everyday, we consume certain quantities of food, but what exactly do we need to function reasonably top-of-form yet, without an ounce of over-consumption. <comment><USER2> I think you mean your basal metabolic rate. Wikipedia has a pretty good entry about it:

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


Who hates you - <AUTHOR> http://www.chrisconrey.com/2009/07/29/who-hates-you/

<comment><AUTHOR> "If no one hates you, you're not doing a good enough job of being remarkable."</comment>


Internships Abroad: Unpaid, with a $10,000 Price Tag - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/education/edlife/the-10000-unpaid-global-internship.html

<comment><USER2> A bit of a different perspective: as a CS undergrad in Silicon Valley, internships routinely pay upwards of $20k for a summer, complete with relocation -- simultaneously defraying costs of tuition and providing real work experience.

Far from being a mechanism to filter for the upper class, the interns I've worked with came from a diverse range of backgrounds, local, foreign, and all across the States. The tech industry might like to overstate the amount of meritocracy in its system, but at least in this regard internships seem to do well at providing more equal opportunities.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but you have to be very, very good to get one of those internships. I'm a mid-top tier programmer (better than most of my cohort) from a modest state university. I've been applying everywhere, and there's no way in hell I'll make close to $20k. I'm pretty good at what I do, but there's a gulf between what you get if you're good and what you get if you really good.

<comment><USER4> Don't sell yourself short. I am a fairly average programmer coming from a state school, and I made 1800 a week plus housing last summer, and am going to be making 2000 a week plus housing this coming summer. If you are really a mid-top tier programmer opportunities like this and better will be available to you.

<comment><USER3> Where do you find these places? I've been blasting job apps since November. I think I've applied at like 15 places. No bites so far.

<comment><USER5> Check out realhq.com. If you are interested email firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Like article says, unpaid internships, especially in expensive cities, is also a reliable way to select people from upper crust i.e. parents can bankroll their stay in high priced neighborhoods. Sometimes I wonder if that is what some firms and banks are doing.

In this case some are using student loans for it. Which is an interesting twist on things.

<comment><USER7> If you're referring to investment banks, they pay roughly around what the upper ends of SV pays. I just signed a summer analyst internship that's prorated at 90k. I didn't hear of any firms that have structured summer analyst programs, with active campus recruitment, paying any less than 70k prorated to the term of the internship.

<comment><USER8> Congratulations! I signed with an investment bank as well, you working in Manhattan?

<comment><USER7> Thanks very much! Yes, I'm at one of the bulge brackets. I'm a pure maths student, not CS or finance, so the whole interview process has been really interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >...a junior majoring in history and French at the University of Michigan, had an eight-week internship at a bridal boutique in Paris arranged by Global Experiences. Ms. Friedberg said that the internship, which cost $10,000, was a great learning experience but the grunt work, like serving tea and coffee to customers, got repetitive, convincing her she did not want to work retail.

Do French majors really think their best post-grad option is to be a store clerk in a France?

<comment> steve-howard It sounds like these students are getting degree credit for the work. My school had a strict policy against that sort of thing, but you doubtless get much better at French when you spend a lot of structured time in France.

<comment><USER9> I guess that's legit if the purpose is language immersion. The article made it sound like she was paying to find out how much she'd enjoy selling clothes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> tuna-piano Just a personal experience with an internship abroad.

I spent a semester on a combined internship / study abroad program in London (work 2 days, class 2 days). The cost of the program was about ~$15k including living space. While that may sound expensive, I was already paying ~$15k in tuition a semester as an out of state student at a state school. So studying abroad actually ended up being cheaper (with the included living space) than staying at my normal university. There were also several scholarships available to study abroad students to further reduce the cost.

<comment><USER10> Did something similar when I was an undergrad. It was arranged through my school. Worked out to be cheaper, and was a great experience -- probably the best of my undergrad years. Led to other opportunities that I never would have had, had I stayed in the U.S. that semester.

EDIT: Just looked at the cost for the current semester - it's about 30% less than regular tuition + room & board, although the semester abroad is 3 weeks shorter. Airfare is not factored in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This should be criminal. Internships need to be paid positions. Period. Anything else is exploitation.

<comment><USER12> You are free to reject unpaid internships. You are also free to accept it. \--> No coercion. --> No exploitation.

In contrast, a law against unpaid internships restricts free choice.

<comment><USER11> I'll tell you what: assuming you're employed, why not just give up your salary and work for nothing? That's free choice, after all, right?

<comment><USER12> Correct.

<comment><USER11> Excellent. So, please start working for nothing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>