You are Not the CEO - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/You+are+NOT+the+CEO <comment><USER2> Investors want a CEO. You can't tell them "we're co-CEOs" or anything other than "X is the CEO" or they'll think you have a problem. They'll fear a power struggle could cause instability. It's a red flag.

Larry/Sergey were co-leaders (co-presidents or co-CEOs or something). I think it's actually the ideal case where two people are equally capable/willing to be the public face and big-decision maker. Tell that to investors though.

On a personal basis there are real benefits to having the title CEO. If you were CEO of a successful company you have real credibility with press and investors. If you were CTO or COO you're going to be _seen_ as 5% as important. When it comes time to raise money for a new venture or to talk to the press they're much more interested hearing from The Head Guy.

<comment><AUTHOR> It all depends on the stage you're in. When you are just out of the gate, building a product and getting your first customers having titles is silly.

At a later stage it makes good sense. Whether or not 'investors want a CEO' depends on a lot of factors, the most important one being what stage the company is in, as soon as you incorporate you'll need a 'signing officer' (or two, or three, depending on the law), and maybe one of the people in the company is preferred for that role and so a natural transition from co-founder status to a CEO role is established. Don't be surprised if the guy that ends up in that chair is _not_ the guy you originally envisioned.

There are lots of situations in which investors _don't_ want a CEO. Two co- founders looking for seed capital are going to have a problem getting themselves taken serious if one of them labels himself CEO and one of them labels himself CTO. Too many chiefs, no Indians.

Agreed that having 'two captains' is not ideal, but should there be so much conflict that this is a problem the titles don't matter much. When your 'other half' walks out you have a problem regardless, and a title used to force an issue is not going to help in this respect.

Finally, the title of CEO of a successful company is useful when starting a new company, it becomes part of your track record, and a successful company will have a CEO, but you first have to get to that stage. And a good CTO is just as valuable as a good CEO, to weigh the role of CEO as fully 20 times as important as that of the other co-founders is not at all in line with my experience.

<comment><USER3> I disagree with you. It seems there are two simultaneous things happening, and you are unfairly dismissing both.

The attitude you're calling out is, as you rightly mention, harmful to a startup. Anybody who refers to themselves as the "CEO" in internal discussions early on has a problem. You're right -- everybody in a startup does as much of everything as they can.

However, as the commenter above pointed out, there is another important function being played while handing out titles early -- establishing a basic leadership structure -- and this is vital.

Being on top of the leadership structure doesn't mean you sit around and order people all day, or refuse to do work; both of those would be the hallmark of a horrible leader. The leader is someone who takes ultimate responsibility and who has the final call in all decisions (should it be necessary).

Early on, that might not really show up much. A good "leader" would be the person who makes sure the little things get done and on time, like prioritization meetings, or helping to hold people accountable if/when they are underperforming (both of which can be unpleasant). Early on, a good leader would recognize that it would be horrible to exercise any kind of overriding call as consensus is better in a very small group.

Over time, however, having a clearly defined leader from the beginning helps in the outwards presentation of the company (to investors or prospective employees) and, most importantly, prevents the company from failing to due a power struggle or a misunderstanding of the leadership chain when it comes time to formalize it. I've seen it happen to several companies -- it isn't pretty, and is entirely avoidable.

<comment><AUTHOR> You need a leader for one thing only at this stage, which is to break deadlocks, but it usually better in such situations to find outside counsel. I usually have someone on board specifically as a tie-breaker in the case of deadlock. In one of the companies I'm involved in the shares situation is exactly balanced so when we're deadlocked we ask the bookkeeper. Everybody gets to state their case, he casts his vote, we move on.

Having a 'clearly defined leader' is as good as having a single founder and a bunch of employees, you will never get the kind of teamwork and commitment from your co-founders if one of you starts to behave like 'the boss' until it is absolutely necessary.

The places where you see power struggles are those places where decisions are not made on their merits. Attempts to force such decisions usually backfired, and as you say, it isn't pretty.

Once you start taking on employees, or investors that ask for a clear corporate structure, you're probably at the right time to start to solidify those roles, so we agree there.

But that initial phase can last for a long time, and naming your 'CEO' too early can cause real problems.

<comment><USER3> I suppose we can agree to disagree then. Naming a "leader" early on does not mean that leader has to exert any kind of authority early on -- as I think we both agree, decisions should be made by consensus early and often.

To say that establishing a basic understanding on who will be taking the leadership roles early is somehow detrimental to the startup? I couldn't disagree more. Most companies I've seen out here (and I've seen quite a few as part of YC) have clearly defined who the "CEO" will be later, and it hasn't hurt them one bit, as long as that person is actual worthy of the position (and doesn't act like an idiot early on).

Your example that "Having a 'clearly defined leader' is as good as having a single founder and a bunch of employees" almost proves my point. If your team's motivation relies on them all imagining that they are the "CEO", you're going to have problems down the road. A good founding team should all understand their eventual positions from the get-go, and have no problem with that.

I think you're confusing someone being named "CEO" and someone behaving like "the boss". They may sometimes happen together, but I would not say they are correlated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Founders should not get worked up about titles, though they often do need them as a matter of formality (e.g., the corporate law requires it) or as a matter of public positioning (e.g., third parties want a contract signed by the CEO) or as a matter of necessity (someone has to be the point person to sign contracts, government forms, etc.).

The unhealthy variation is where founders let titles get to their heads and screw up their perspective on who they are and what they are doing (the point of this article).

While the bad cases do happen, I would not eschew titles altogether, as they do play a helpful and utilitarian role in the early-stage companies and can even reflect the reality that some founders truly do have stand-out leadership and strategic-thinking qualities so as to merit the title CEO.

So, use the titles if you have to; just don't over-emphasize them at the start, or lose sight of what they mean, as this can and does lead to problems.

</comment><comment><USER5> FWIW, certain legal documentation mandates the role of an "executive officer" or "president", but clearly those are mere formalities in companies of this size.

I've always preferred to keep titles quite "loose" (e.g. "Member of Technical Staff","Sales","Support", etc.) outside of "Executive Staff" and "Founder" since nomenclature eventually reflects expectations as the enterprise scales.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are many good reasons for incorporating as late as you can get away with and for some situations, for instance, YC actively discourages people from incorporating before applying.

This also helps in a different way, it is much easier to reshuffle after the 'shake-out' period if you have not incorporated yet.

<comment><USER6> I learned from this (surprisingly interesting MSFT history) that Bill & Paul didn't formalize even a simple partnership between the two of them, let alone incorporate for about the first 2 years, during which time MSFT was operating and bringing in revenue.

[http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.h...](http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm)

<comment><USER7> Maybe this is why Paul got screwed. ;-)

<comment><USER2> Net worth ▲US$13.5 billion (2010)[1]

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

<comment><USER7> So it'd be more like $20B if Microsoft had split the equity 50/50 instead of of 66/33. Ironically, Bill Gates's reasoning for the split was the Paul had taken a part-time job at MITS to pay the bills, but then Bill went and took a part-time job at MITS too after they formed the agreement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> At my startup, we give ourselves fancy titles, but we still wake up every morning and do the grunt work (who else is going to?). In fact, we rarely even notice that we have fancy titles.

<comment><USER9> There's a practical reason not to do this as well: it puts off investors. Investors think when you've styled yourself as _CEO_ , "Shit, if we need to bring in a external CEO at some point this guy's going to cause problems."

Co-founder seems universally safer.

<comment><USER2> I don't think that's true of modern/good investors. I think most of them desperately hope they don't have to find an outside CEO. They want someone strong in the position, and ideally it's one of the co-founders.

<comment><USER9> I've heard it from multiple investors, good and bad. I think good investors naturally _hope_ that one of the founders will pan out as a long term CEO, but they also don't want to be up shit creek if it doesn't happen.

Calling yourself CEO in a 2 person company is a common enough faux pax that I've seen it mentioned in several investors' blogs and it's one of the things they sit around and make jokes about when the startup's back is turned.

<comment><USER2> I'm genuinely curious who you're referring to. Making fun a haughty 22 year old CEO makes sense, expecting that one of the founders will likely not be the CEO doesn't.

 _"If you don't have anyone on your founding team who is capable of being CEO, then sell your company -- now."_ \-- Marc Andreessen

<comment><USER9> I know Art of the Start from Guy Kawasaki mentions it -- I thought it was in his blog too, but I can't find it at the moment. Here are a couple more:

<http://venturehacks.com/articles/top-heavy>

<http://www.beyondvc.com/2006/06/topheavy_teams.html>

I've also heard this in private conversation (specifically, the first time we met with a VC before promptly ditching the titles) and a couple of the speakers at YC in our batch mentioned it.

<comment><USER2> That Venture Hacks article says "One of the founders should be the CEO so you can make decisions quickly."

Anyway, I'm sure it varies. I really am curious what top investors think though. Does Ron Conway think less of you for telling him "I'll be the CEO and he'll be the CTO" assuming you're not arrogant/lame about it?

<comment><USER3> He certainly didn't when we were pitching him...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I encourage my clients (mostly small businesses) to embrace the CEO tag, but to view it as a function or role, not a title.

In other words, you might be CEO 20% of your time / one day a week. Another 20% of your time might be Sales Manager or Code Monkey. All are necessary roles, none is more essential than the rest.

FWIW, we then define the CEO role as having three tasks: Managing the company's vision, Managing the company's energy, and Coaching the team to up their capability. This encourages small business owners to think and act strategically, even if only with part of their time.

<comment><AUTHOR> That makes good sense.

Do you view the role of CEO as tied to a specific individual?

<comment><USER10> Yes, but largely because the responsibilities are few. Many common CEO responsibilities (particularly reviewing financials and signing off strategy) may be done by other directors / partners etc.

Where relevant, we also encourage clients to consider rotating CEOs. It's something we've done in our coaching company (which is large enough to have a full time CEO), and it means the role of CEO isn't the pinnacle, subject to office politics and power trips, and that post-CEO our coaches find other ways to contribute within the company (including going back to business coaching operationally).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A painful lesson we learned (2 men startup) is that you can't be co-managers.

While I coded, my co-founder was out making deals. I would sometimes help and after two occasions where I agreed on something (rather small) but that collided with something he agreed, we had to stop.

Now, all major decisions are made by both of us with lengthy discussion.

All small decisions (technical for me and biz for him) are done by one side. We can't afford to go go into a 2 hour discussion and can't afford conflicting decisions.

Call me CTO/VP-RND/Programmer, call him CEO/Presiden/VP-Dev/Sales-Guy. But the roles are clear when it comes to making decisions.

And yes, the CTO does wash the floor and the CEO buys the coffee filters and toilet paper.

<comment><USER12> I remember we had a slightly painful meeting when there was 4 of us and it was clear who the best candidate for CEO was - and it wasn't one of the founders. I even said the "you aren't going to be CEO he is" to my co-founder, which I don't think he ever forgave me for (although we went on for another 6 years after that).

That was probably the single best decision I made at that company. Once we got that out of the way we kind of all knew what our areas of responsibility were, before that it was "everyone does everything".

<comment><AUTHOR> That happens far more frequently than you may think. Kudos to you and your team for recognizing this (ok, reluctantly in one case) and acting on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Counterpoint. As long as you don't let these titles get to your head, its fine to have these titles. There are upsides to it.

First, you start behaving like a real company. A real company has CEO, CTO's etc. The sooner you start behaving like a serious company, the better it is for you.

Second, your customers know who is who. It gives them a clear idea of whom to go to, to ask for. If he asks for a sales guy, then its CEO, Tech support, CTO and so on.

There are downsides to it too. But as long as people realize that they have to handle everything in a 2 person startup no matter their title, its fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think there are any upsides at all, you are basically as realistic here as kids playing house, if we call the couch the living room, we have a house. But it's still play-acting, and the couch is _still_ a couch. CEO is what you may want to be, but before you can do that you first need to become a company large enough to warrant one.

Just like the cargo cult people try to build planes by laying out trash in the shape of one you can try to build a company by 'imitating' the structure of one but that isn't going to work, you have to imitate the core activities of a company to become one.

Behaving like a real company means making sales, getting satisfied customers, building a product, dealing with challenges and making money.

It's not going to happen by having a perspex thingy on your desk that says 'John Doe, CEO'. It also implies that you and your buddies are not 'self- starters' and that one of you is calling the shots, when in practice co- founders in most successful startups (not all of them, so this is not a hard rule) achieve stuff by working together, not by ordering each other around.

If the 'sales guy' is out of the office who is going to take the sales call ? The CEO ? Surely not, it's no longer his job.

Having people realize that they have to handle everything in a two person startup is _exactly_ what this is all about, the effect of a title is more than just decorative, it changes the position the person with the title finds themselves in, it reduces their mental flexibility to the point where they no longer realize they have to handle everything together.

See the article here that I linked for a fantastic example of that.

<comment><USER13> Completely agree. You're not worth the prespex if you allow the title to reduce your mental flexibility. However if you let the prespex sink in and take responsibility of the company, of doing what it takes to make sales, getting satisfied customers, building a product, dealing with challenges and making money, you've got that 90% inspiration thing going. Now you need that 1% perspiration.

<comment><USER14> The quote is 1% inspiration, 90% perspiration. (or 99%?).

<comment><USER13> There you go!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Titles are for insecure people that need to have their egos re-inforced...

Can't agree more...I'm glad I got over the need for titles with my first (and maybe second) girlfriend(s).

I can't think of a time when my cofounder and I will prefer our actual (read: legal) titles as opposed to "co-founder". I suspect it would come when some external pressure starts demanding it, a la board meetings and VCs.

<comment><USER16> Well, titles can be pretty important if your startup doesn't work out and you end up needing to go join the work force again. Being the CEO of a company of 5 people isn't a big thing, but it's better than being "Junior developer" at one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For a 2 man company, "co-founder" is perfectly appropriate for email signatures to _most_ recipients.

<comment><USER18> We put "Founder" on it. Does this make a difference compared to Co-Founder (I'm not a native english speaker)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Founder is fine, co-founder is too. Co-founder automatically conveys that you are not a single founder, with just 'founder' someone might infer that you were either first or the only founder. It doesn't matter much in practice, either is fine. It distinguishes you from a regular hire and it is clear that you can be addressed with any issues.

<comment><USER19> I am about to start a "Sole Proprietorship" to do some VoIP consulting and system integration. I have had 2 clients before this, but I was just getting my foot in, so I didn't have a "Company Name". I am glad this came up on HN. Would 'Founder' be the most appropriate title on my biz card?

<comment><USER20> For a one-man shop, I'd just skip the title entirely. The only downside is potentially someone seeing just the card wouldn't know if you have the authority to do deals, but I really doubt that would be an issue with a consulting shop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In the company I co-founded, for the longest time the business cards of me and my three co-founders said just that: "Co-founder." Once we were to a good place and were profitable (and the REAL work started), action items began to fall by the wayside, despite the proficiencies we all knew we had (you've heard the phrase "if everyone is responsible, then no one is responsible").

Internally—not to anyone else—we designated CEO, CTO, CMO and COO designations. It wasn't about titles, it was about a mindset; that's when things started getting done again. It wasn't about ego at all. It wasn't about getting off from having a title on my business card (in fact, we didn't re- print new cards because we didn't want to spend money on new cards, hah!).

Our decision was about highlighting our proficiencies and giving each other the power to take ownership of different aspects of the business we owned together. We could give a shit if people were impressed with a title on a piece of paper.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds about ideal, a gradual and natural transition to formal roles after building up a track record.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> For the startup I founded, I prefer Tech Support Lead. It's more reflective of the day-to day. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hehe, that's really a neat way of putting it.

Personally I like 'janitor', it has many subtle implications.

<comment><USER23> I once wanted a business card that read:

<my name>

CEO, Janitor, Marketing Director, Coffee Maker, Architect, Tech Support, HR, Snack Purchasing Agent

But to your point: If a company is a corporation, than someone is CEO; it doesn't matter if the corporation is 1 person or 100. But I agree -- the main thing is that titles don't get in the way of the work to be done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Titles can be important for dealing with clients. Many organisations won't even give you time on the phone unless they see that you're a 'Managing Director' or 'VP of Sales'. If you impress your client with your product, you'll inevitably get a chance to present to their superiors, and it helps a bit if your contact doesn't have to introduce you as 'the guy that does this stuff'.

Of course, as has already been said, it's important to remember that these are just titles: they don't change your work or what you're trying to do.

</comment><comment><USER25> When you go on an interview and say you were CEO of acme co 4 employees or VP of product at Microsoft they will know the difference. I've always thought your a "CIO" but my project manager has a bigger budget and more responsibility. People know this. No harm in giving yourself a flashy title. Good on you CEO's of 2 man companies!!

</comment><comment><USER26> If you really need a title, make it "Quality Inquisitor", "Grand Vizier of Partnerships", "Priest of the Council" or "Czar of All Servers".

That will, at least, make it clear how seriously you take the titles.

If it's a two-man company, one can be the CEO and the other the Chairman of the Board.

</comment><comment><USER27> Great post, Jacques.

I prefer "Lord Master of all I Survey" It leaves the immediate impression that if you're looking for titles, we can give you one. I understand that this gives the impression that I don't take the duties of the job seriously, but in fact what it's saying is that I don't take the competence of the questioner seriously.

Yes, investors want a CEO. We can't just have chaos, barbarians at the gate, or nobody to put in a suit. But to your point, if there are 2-4 of you in a team trying to find a market, you shouldn't be spending a millisecond worrying about who has which title. This is the organizational equivalent of premature optimization.

Or look at it this way -- before profit, before sales, before working product, how do any of you have _any_ idea who might be better at doing what?

You don't know. Just be honest about it.</comment>


Proposed Redesign of the Dropbox Homepage - <AUTHOR> http://forrst.com/posts/Hello_guys_at_DropBox_Your_App_is_absolutely_f-y4l

<comment><USER2> It's pretty, but I don't think it's an improvement. The problem with the highly visible login boxes is that they distract from the other actions available - watch a video and download the client - which are exactly what you want the first-time visitors to be doing.

It should be very clear for first-time visitors what to do. Existing users already know what to do, so it is fine for their action (login) to be tucked away in the corner.

Dropbox doesn't want first-time users to decide what (if anything) they should be doing with those login boxes.

But then again, the true test is of the A/B variety!</comment>


Show HN: Subsequential Transducer for Efficient Text Rewriting - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/deniskyashif/ssfst <comment><USER2> Could someone explain why this is better than simple string substitution? Is regular string substitution much slower than this?

<comment><USER3> I am not yet 100% certain so I requested full-text access to read the paper, but I can say that a naive approach to string substitution will certainly be less performant than this, and offer less flexibility in replacement complexity without significant effort.

The reason being that in a naive approach, a vocabulary of size M and a document of token size N is an O(m*n) operation in the best case - while this is claimed to be an operation of O(2n).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've wanted this specifically for terms and conditions documents for a long while... any thoughts on it's applicability to this subject; so many legal document sections are the same but you can't just copy them.

<comment><USER5> What would it do that some basic templating library wouldn't do?

Not knowing the specifics, I would lean toward a template library, as it would be more precise, and could account for things like changing gender, plurality, a vs an, etc, in a structured way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting project. Question on this: _" For any text t of length |t| the time it takes to perform a rewrite is O(|t|+|t'|) where t' denotes the resulting output string"_

Wouldn't the vocabulary size fit into the order complexity? Vocabs that would be considered useful in this context tend to be quite large. Are you achieving worst case logn of search in the vocab?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks! The outputs are encoded in the transitions and the states themselves, so the vocabulary size doesn't affect the search. It affects, however, the construction because for each node in the trie we have to add an outgoing transition for each distinct symbol of the input vocabulary.</comment></comment>


What's new for developers in Android 4.4 KitKat - <AUTHOR> http://developer.android.com/about/versions/kitkat.html

<comment><USER2> Finally the webview uses Chromium instead of the native android browser. I've been waiting so long for this.

I hope they find a way to roll it to more devices really quickly so more people use the latest version. I guess its a big problem but there's plenty of value to google in finding that solution.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't support WebGL or WebAudio though, according to [https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/webview/ove...](https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/webview/overview) \- a big shame, since this still means it'll be poor for gaming, especially since HTML5 audio won't play unless in a touch event...!

<comment><USER4> This is only for the WebView object embedded in Android apps. Chrome and Firefox have supported WebGL on Android for a long time.

<comment><USER5> Have they made it so users don't have to go to about:flags to manually turn it on anymore?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Step Detector and Step Counter platform support is an especially interesting addition.

Perhaps a nod to the wearables market, with the upcoming Google watch hooking into it for some Fitness tracking smarts?

<comment><USER7> Must be a response to Apple's inclusion of a dedicated movement-sensing M7 processor on the iPhone 5s.

[http://www.technologyreview.com/news/519531/what- apples-m7-m...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/519531/what- apples-m7-motion-sensing-chip-could-do/)

<comment><USER8> Surely it was scheduled for inclusion previous to the M7's announcement 6 weeks ago.

<comment><USER7> Surely it was, but 'rumor' sites were writing about the dedicated movement processor in late August (at a minimum of 10 weeks ago) and I'm sure there are enough moles at either company so that Google / Apple know what their competitors will do several months in advance.

* * * Late Edit * * *

So I looked through the Google public Git repo, and it looks like the initial Step_Counter functions were added in Dec 2012.[1] The hardware must've been wrapped more than 6 weeks ago, so I was probably wrong. Google must've been working on this for months ahead of time.

[1][https://android.googlesource.com/platform/hardware/libhardwa...](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/hardware/libhardware/+/a455772)

<comment><USER9> I doubt Google has anything to do with the hardware for this. Qualcomm has been pushing movement tracking and user context recognition using sensors with their chips without using a lot of power at conferences for over a year now. This is probably just Google throwing in a cut down version of their Pivot functionality. It's basically a chipset feature, just like how the chipsets are who pushes the OpenGL ES drivers and demos each version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Android now supports the Common Encryption (CENC) for MPEG-DASH, providing a > standard, multiplatform DRM scheme for managing protecting content.

wow, discussion of web DRM was much louder

<comment><USER11> Well, yeah. Because you don't have to root/jailbreak normal computers.

The true horror of "appified-zomg-everyting-in-teh-cloud" tablets, smart phones and other mobile devices is that the walled garden model leaves most people benumbed to the concept of DRM, as if it were a novocaine injection.

Then, to top it off, the combination of shitty cell phone reception along with the price of a required data plan behaves like some continuous supply of laughing gas, and net neutrality just goes out the window.

It's different when you use a real computer, because you haven't acquiesced to all the limitations of cramming every last tidbit of computation and networking into the space of a 3' x 5' index card. People stop caring about standards compliance, page rendering consistency, and the whole works. Most people are still amazed that full motion video, megapixel cameras, the internet, and gigabytes of storage can fit in the palm of their hand, and then get put on pause and stuffed in their pocket for later. We don't complain as much because we're so happy for the convenience.

The Web does not exist within the mobile domain as it does among laptops and desktops. Your standards are 1,000 times higher, sitting at a desk in a controlled environment, than they are while standing in a train station or an airport, or sitting in the back of a taxi cab.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anyone know if NFC emulation will let me create an app to replace my Clipper card and work key fob? I would have guessed that NFC chips would have an embedded secret that you can't get directly.

<comment><USER13> I would really like to know on which devices the host emulation API will be available at all.

<comment><USER14> Most Android devices with NFC will probably support the API assuming they are running or are upgraded to KitKat.

Edit: including link to source: [http://developer.android.com/about/versions/kitkat.html#44-h...](http://developer.android.com/about/versions/kitkat.html#44-hce)

"Support for HCE is already widely available on most NFC controllers, which offer dynamic support for both HCE and SE transactions. Android 4.4 devices that support NFC will include Tap & Pay for easy payments using HCE."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> KitKat isn't trademarked?

<comment><USER16> There's a deal between Google and Nestle. This has caused some consternation because many people see Nestle as Evil.

Nestle engage in really shady practices - pushing formula milk in developing nations, ignoring wide spread international laws and drives to encourage breast feeding. This isn't just "giving mother's freedom to chose", it's killing little babies.

<comment><USER17> They were not "killing babies" they were "monetizing the vast network of uniformed African's who were potential baby killers". If they were technically doing anything wrong then Google wouldn't have partnered with them, because as Eric Schmidt said:

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

<comment><USER18> Um, wasn't this like 3 or 4 decades ago? It might be time to move on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Android 4.4 is designed to run fast, smooth, and responsively on a much > broader range of devices than ever before — including on millions of entry- > level devices around the world that have as little as 512MB RAM.

Does this mean that it will run the same as it is running now, but just on more devices, or does it mean that KitKat is even more responsive than JellyBean?</comment>


New Inks Cut Costs of Office Color Printing - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/technology/business-computing/07ink.html

<comment><USER2> So Xerox is still using the "Phaser" solid ink technology they got in the box when they bought Tektronix and HP is still using inkjets. And ...?

</comment><comment><USER3> How is this different than wax thermal transfer, which apparently didn't catch on?

We had a wax thermal transfer printer at my department in college back in the waning years of the last millennium. I liked its output better than anything I've seen since, including our expensive HP color laser printer at work.

</comment><comment><USER4> We've had one of the smaller predecessors to this printer at my university for a couple of years now. They're great! The prints look beautiful and the printer is blazingly fast. So easy to service, too.</comment>


Do users a favor and set the keyboard focus. - <AUTHOR> http://miksovsky.blogs.com/flowstate/2007/10/show-mercy-to-k.html

<comment><USER2> Don't think you're doing keyboarders a favor if you do this on any page with a scrollbar. Us keyboarders like the Page Up / Page Down keys to work.

I do this on the ourdoings.com login page, but not as a matter of course.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd murder someone if they made the search box in Google Reader grab keyboard focus. Keyboard shortcuts are way more important, and '/' focuses the search there, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER4> do users a favor and DON'T steal the keyboard focus

<http://reddit.com/info/628t3/comments/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Only if it's really really really what every user that would EVER use the web page will want.

I would actually like it if IMDB put focus in their search box, when I'm looking up a director of photography or such, I'm just impatience and would like to go, type, enter, read. The extra click to type is annoying. But I still don't know if they should actually implement that as I have not done a real analysis of how the broad community uses the site.

</comment><comment><USER6> The second I saw this title I started thinking the same things as all these comments are listing.

Maybe someone should write this up as a context-menu addition for Firefox. Just put it under "Add a Keyword for this Search..." Use something like "Set keyboard focus on load..."</comment>


Ask HN: How do you report your progress or status to your Manager/Boss? - <AUTHOR>

1) How do you report your progress or status to your Manager/Boss?<p>2) How often do you submit these reports? <comment><USER2> We use a project management tool:

1) We make "progress reports" by updating our own tasks assigned to us within the Sprint. The "boss/manager" just takes a peek at burn-down and other charts. For more details he just takes a peek at the latest updates on the comments.

2) Daily, I take 5 minutes to write a simple comment on the task assigned to me. Daily updates are better than weekly ones, weekly comments and paragraph type progress reports tend to be too abstract for it to have actual meaning. Sometimes paragraph-type reports are too verbose for a decision maker to make decisions upon. We let the charts speak for themselves in terms of weekly overviews.

If a software development team uses docs and text files to submit reports, 1) the development process is still in its infancy or 2) no budget is alotted for project management tools because quality software development is not a priority for the company.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1) At my job we have a Word Template to fill in and send to our boss every Friday. At a previous job we just created an email answering: What did you work on this week? What are you planning on working on next week.

2) We had to submit these reports weekly.

</comment><comment><USER4> I only submit reports to my boss when he asks for them, either in person or by email.

I do this maybe once a week if he's not at the office and maybe 2-3 times a week if he is at the office. (It really just depends on his mood.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Whould you mind sharing one of these reports with me?

<comment><USER4> Emailed reports are usually project-specific, like "Projects X and Y are done, I'm stalled on project Z with this issue...".

In person it's usually a 2-minute meeting where we clarify which projects are done, which are priorities, etc.

...and sometimes the 2-minute update meetings turn into 2-hour planning meetings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Text file, today at the top, copy that part at the end of the day and email it.

<comment><AUTHOR> So you have to submit them daily? Would you mind posting it here or sending it to me at davidsmit at google's email service?

<comment><USER5> Yep, daily, and then we recite the same thing at our daily morning standup.

Don't think I'll share a real one, they're probably proprietary and no upside for me in that. But I can give you a fake one.

Below is the top of my file. The last entry, the dated one, gets pushed down every day under a fresh one, and I update it as I go during the day.

The markup syntax is vimwiki <http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2226>, but it could be any markup. Years ago I used to use markup something like this without transforming it, before there was anything like markdown or reST.

At the end of the day I run Vimwiki2HTML from within vim, and my daily status html page is updated; it's just a local page, I don't serve it. I copy today's entry from that and email my boss. Ten years ago I would have just copied the plain text from the vim file.

Every once in awhile I email the ever growing file to myself at home.

Scripts that generate the daily template after the example.

      =Status=

      ==Long term ToDo==
      * Some long term thing that currently doesn't have any tasks:

      * Some slightly more interesting long term thing:
          * practice elocution
          * study needed inventions
          * study electricity

      ==Immediate ToDo==
      * Follow up on that thing by end of the week.
      * See if that other thing is ready.

      ==2013.03.22 Friday==

      ===Today===
      * Wrote test ABC.
      * Reviewed test BCD.
      * Passed test CDE.
      * Failed test DEF.
      * Wrote bug ticket 234 describing test DEF failure.
      * Cleared ticket 345.

      ===Tomorrow===
      * Write test XYZ
      * Run tests MNO, PQR.

      ===Roadblocks===
      * My cube mate keeps looking at me.

This generates a date:

      $ cat bin/adate
      #! /usr/bin/env bash

      dt="$1" || "today"
      date --date="$dt" +"%Y.%m.%d %A"

      $ adate
      2013.03.22 Friday

      $ adate Monday
      2013.03.25 Monday

      $ adate "last Monday"
      2013.03.18 Monday

      $ adate "next Friday"
      2013.03.29 Friday

And this generates a daily entry skeleton:

      $ cat bin/edate
      #! /usr/bin/env bash

      dt="$1" || "today"
      echo "==$(adate $dt)=="
      echo ""
      echo "===Today==="
      echo "*"
      echo ""
      echo "===Tomorrow==="
      echo "*"
      echo ""
      echo "===Roadblocks==="
      echo "*"
      echo ""
      echo ""

      $ edate
      ==2013.03.22 Friday==

      ===Today===
      *

      ===Tomorrow===
      *

      ===Roadblocks===
      *

Then in vim, put your cursor above the previous day's entry, and:

      :r!edate

which creates a new blank entry with one empty bullet per section.

<comment><USER6> haha, your roadblock is awesome

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> used version one for a while but it was kinda painful. hard to update a lot of status all at once. We also did daily stand ups.

<comment><AUTHOR> What are you using today?</comment></comment>


The Internet of Compromised Things - <AUTHOR> http://blog.codinghorror.com/welcome-to-the-internet-of-compromised-things/ <comment><USER2> The claim about HTTPS not being sufficient for downloading Chrome (or anything else) is incorrect. The page cites [https://cryptostorm.org/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=8713](https://cryptostorm.org/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=8713) for this, but that's a long page of nonsense.

Most likely what's happening is that HTTP resource loads are being manipulated; thus it appears to affect all browsers. Also possible is that the end-machine has been compromised some other way and the malware is attacking local programs.

As far as a user is concerned, the difference is irrelevant, but we'll never get a grip on problems if even technical pages are fear mongering.

</comment><comment><USER3> On how HTTPS sites are compromised:

> Compromised router answers DNS req for *.google.com to 3rd party with faked > HTTPS cert, you download malware Chrome. Game over.

So this is a DNS mitm? Doesn't it still require the faked cert to be signed by a trusted root CA?

<comment><USER4> Yes. Thankfully, that's _never_ happened to Google yet.

/s

The worst part is that we don't know that it's happened until someone figures out that they're being MITM'ed.

<comment><USER5> I am trying to confirm that cox does this with google. The cert is funky and doesn't match what I see from other connections. All hosts from nslookup are cox hosts, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's one of the reasons I'm on a VPN right now. I'm at a rental place, and the owner is reasonably competent technically (ex-DEC engineer - we have some good chats), but I still don't trust that his router is 100% safe. Come to think of it, I don't trust that _mine_ is. Maybe I should start using a VPN even while I'm at home. Unfortunately, this can introduce a few problems of its own.

(1) You have to trust the VPN provider. Not a big problem in this case, but worth mentioning.

(2) If you have to be on your work VPN as well, you're going to have a bad time. Being only on the work VPN often isn't an option, as a lot of personal use might run into blocks and/or violate the company's policy on use of their resources.

(3) Some sites block VPNs, either intentionally or unintentionally. Just yesterday I noticed that Tumblr is blocking most (but not all) of my VPN's connection points. It's probably just an overzealous anti-DOS system rather than a deliberate block, but the effect is the same.

We really do need a better solution here. Jeff's right that home routers are a _huge_ vulnerability. DNS and BGP hijinks are too effective and well known to leave them unaddressed any longer, and there are other issues that need to be solved as well.

<comment><USER7> You can eliminate 1 by self-hosting your VPN and possibly 2 with some configuration magic to have the work stuff accessible from your own VPN.

3 is actually a bit of a problem, AWS IP ranges are notorious for being widely banned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It might be useful to use Upside-Down-Ternet[1] as an educational tool when explaining this kind of attack to non-technical audiences.

[1] [http://www.ex-parrot.com/pete/upside-down-ternet.html](http://www.ex- parrot.com/pete/upside-down-ternet.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a serious problem for those of us who need to use public WiFi. The only thing standing in the way would be HTTPS but that's far from comprehensive at this point.

<comment><USER7> If your livelihood depends on a clean machine and you commonly need to use untrusted networks, you absolutely need to use a VPN.

The only problem is with the shoddy crap we call operating systems, very difficult to have them maintain radio silence until the VPN is active.

<comment><USER10> How can one maintain radio silence until a VPN tunnel over a WiFi is set up?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> VPN addresses a different issue not the one discussed in the article. If your router is compromised, then the encryption on the local network is useless, including that which is used to encrypt the VPN tunnel.

<comment><USER12> Why? Encryption of VPN is enforced on the OS level, not the router level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> ISP's could be doing a better job of looking for/blocking out these shaddy DNS servers. Until that happens, workaround is to setup all devices to not rely on router provided DNS.

<comment><USER14> Blocking DNS servers gets into the tricky business of common carrier status, and also actually knowing which DNS servers really are shady and which are just hijacked. Because if you block a server that's sending shady results, you could block a legitimate service.

If you don't trust router-provided DNS, then you really shouldn't trust the unencrypted DNS traffic that goes through your router, either. The current defense against that is to run your own recursive DNSSEC-validating DNS server. Most domains are not DNS signed, though, and most clients do not distinguish DNSSEC results, so this is sort of hollow advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >Never access anything but HTTPS websites. If it isn't available over HTTPS, don't go there!

I thought it was funny that that comment is on a [http://](http://) website.</comment>


42% of California's STEM Workforce Hails from Outside the U.S - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-careers/fortytwo-percent-of-californias-stem-workforce-hails-from-outside-the-us <comment><USER2> I think everyone here is ignoring a very important statistic within the article: "data shows that 25 percent of high tech companies founded between 1995 and 2005 have at least one immigrant founder". Would you rather have these companies be based out of Asia entirely?

Also see: [https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2016/03/17/study-immigrants- fou...](https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2016/03/17/study-immigrants- founded-51-of-u-s-billion-dollar-startups/)

I was recently speaking with Demis Hassabis and he recommended looking for startup funding in California but continuing to work out of London. More and more companies are gravitating towards this general template (not London specifically). Would you rather have some low level Stack Developer working at Airbnb on an H1B build the next Billion dollar startup in the Bay Area or out of Bangalore?

Yes, hiring someone with an H1B might cost a company 10k less per annum. But what would it cost America to not have these foreign workers want to work in California altogether? Besides, it isn't fair to build such an impressive hotbed of thought and progress and then try and wall others out of it.

<comment><USER3> >>Would you rather have these companies be based out of Asia entirely?

>>Would you rather have some low level Stack Developer working at Airbnb on an H1B build the next Billion dollar startup in the Bay Area or out of Bangalore?

As somebody who stays in Bangalore, I can tell you this is already the case and has been for a few years now.

Back then when I started my career there was a mad rush to move to US in most young people. Today coupled with a impossibly long green card wait, and uncertainties associated with a job on a Visa for most smart people moving to US isn't even an option. I know a lot of smart people for whom moving to US isn't even in their list of priorities.

In the past decade start up ecosystem here has become very good. Starting companies is no longer social or economic taboo in India/Bangalore today.

US people think outsourcing was bad for them? Imagine competing with start ups and their funding, which are operating at 1/10th the budget of any city in US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Every time H1B related stuff comes up, I make the same simple suggestion: just inflation adjust the minimum H1B salary from when the law was passed in 1990. 60K dollars in 1990 is about 110K now. This should be able to see a lot of support from different groups because:

1\. It makes a clear appeal back to the original intent of the law.

2\. It would most likely end most of the perceived abuse/misuse of the law, which occurs at lower salary ranges.

3\. It will not prevent tech companies that actually do cool stuff like Google & co from hiring, since most of their hires probably start over 110K now.

I also think that the impact on American workers in this salary range from H1B is pretty low. Many companies with salaries in this range are always hiring provided you have the skills.

<comment><USER5> I think that's a start but specifically because $110K is nearly entry level in silicon valley it ought to be significantly higher. $150K would probably be enough to stop it from holding wages down.

A great side effect of this is that it pretty much makes H1B not viable in the Midwest or other areas where we probably ought to be trying to develop more talent

<comment><USER6> $60K is the minimum salary for a H1B visa, it is not the minimum salary for a H1B visa in a technical position.

I would be very surprised if the "H1B prevailing wage" for any meaningful technical role in the SF bay area is less than $100k.

<comment><USER7> Prevailing wage for an entry-level "Computer Programmer" in SF is $73k [1].

[1] [http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?code=15-11...](http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?code=15-1131&area=41884&year=18&source=1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This wouldn't be necessary if we actually invested in our own citizens. I'd have no problem with it if our own population didn't have a skills shortage, but it does.

<comment><USER8> I have absolutely no issue with your policy priorities. Let's get more native- born citizens through school with skills appropriate for the modern workforce.

But the bit where this falls down is your use of "our own" in a context where it either has no meaning or has, let's just say "accidentally discriminatory" meaning. The idea that we should invest to "prevent" this situation is kinda distasteful.

These people are americans now. No, they aren't all citizens (though many are), but their kids are and their descendants will be. This is their home as much as it is yours or mine. This country built itself on the backs of imported talent, there's no valid reason for that to stop now.

<comment><USER9> > This country built itself on the backs of imported talent

No we didn't. We built our country on the exploitation of poor european factory workers, chinese "slave" labor and african slaves.

This country wasn't built on "talent". It was built on exploitation of CHEAP or free labor.

> there's no valid reason for that to stop now.

We stopped it many times in history to protect AMERICANS. Go read about immigration history rather than propaganda we are forcefed. European immigration was stalled to protect american labor. Chinese immigration was stopped to protect american labor. And if you think about it, even american slavery was stopped to protect american labor.

Immigration wasn't all great. Throughout US history, it led to lots of turmoil, displacement and heartache.

Nothing is all great or all evil like people with agenda like to believe. There are pros and cons to everything. The skewed "pro-immigration" policy the past 50 years has gutted american labor and american society. We need a more rational policy.

And the fact that america/american government shouldn't favor AMERICANS over immigrants is pure rubbish. It's neoliberal fantasy. As a nation we have gone too "left". We need to correct our trajectory lest america fall off the tracks entirely.

<comment><USER10> "Immigration wasn't all great. Throughout US history, it led to lots of turmoil, displacement and heartache." Get a grip on your self. It was never good for the natives amricans. Anyway, the current issues of the country are not immigrant made. That's a fantasy fox world view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Google and the rest could have instituted huge training programs for Americans. Instead, they imported the most fortunate from other countries, leaving behind the least fortunate everywhere.

It's 1% Americans importing the %1 from other counties. It's the most powerful and well off united in screwing the least powerful.

You don't have to dislike immigrants to dislike corporations and politicians destroying opportunity for millions of the families that literally built America.

<comment><USER12> I don't think the burden should be on corporations. Nearly (all?) every other developed country on earth has government subsidised or provided education. Where do you think all the immigrants are getting their degrees? Americans can even go to other countries and get educated for free (Germany I believe does this).

The US needs to overhaul, hell, even nationalize, its higher education system. Don't expect corporations to educate people for you.

<comment><USER13> I do think most of the burden should be on corporations. They're the ones that need the talent.

<comment><USER12> And some businesses need people who've been through high school (and some don't). Why is college different?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Articles like this seem to bring out people involuntarily triggered to grind their pet axe. The discussion is never enlightening. That's why I flagged.

<comment><USER15> I suspect a lot of triggering is voluntary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a failure of both our educational system and our culture. Our educational and cultural systems both underscore soft majors in the liberal arts realms and don't make STEM cool to average students as they might in China Russia or India.

Kids care too much about fitting in rather than making it in life with hard skills. You will have thousands working service jobs in LA with hopes of making it in entertainment. You don't see that emphasis in STEM in the US.

<comment><USER17> I've always wondered about this. People never really talk about it, but I see the "cool" factor as pivotal. Smart social people want to be bankers, lawyers, doctors, management consultants, not STEM.

With the internet everyone has had the ability to learn programming for ages, and it really hasn't dramatically changed much. People are just not interested in it at some point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is this a case of there not being enough qualified US citizens or immigrants being willing to work for less?

<comment><USER19> In my very limited experience with companies that hires H1B to fill programming jobs, it's because they can't find qualified local candidates.

All the really qualified people are in the bay area working for tech startups, etc...

So a company outside of the bay area would have to bring in H1B workers who are willing to live in the area.

I am not sure if there are costs concerns for the company in making that decision, but I figure if they were willing to hire me, they probably don't have a problem hiring local candidates if possible.

Edit: Since people want more details, I'll elaborate on the VERY LITTLE that I know. Right now consulting agencies in Sacramento, CA need Senior Ruby Devs and they can't find any. I am not 100% sure on what salary is being offered, but I am guessing around 100K. A junior dev fresh out of college can make about 40K (remember its Sacramento!). (I want to make it clear this is all hearsay, don't quote me on this)

I was told an agency that hires out H1B workers can get paid as much as $50/hr. I have no way to verify this, but this is what I heard.

Another thing is, these are short term, project based, positions --- not very attractive to people seeking a career.

They also have a constant need for .NET and Java devs.

That being said. I am very much against outsourcing jobs that could be hired locally. But Sacramento has a very small developer community, so I don't blame them for using H1B to fill the gap. But who knows... maybe it's all a ruse.

<comment><USER20> At risk of opening that whole debate again...

Are there really no qualified local candidates, or are there no qualified local candidates _who can also solve theoretical CS problems on the spot_ while pretending they're not doing it from memory?

Or qualified local candidates who refuse to lie and say they only took 3 hours on the take-home exercise?

<comment><USER21> I personally think this is the real problem. Companies dismissing qualified candidates as "unqualified" because they are too lazy to evaluate candidates based on their skills, and would rather throw brainteasers at them instead.

For every 100 candidates a CS job gets, probably 80 are truly unqualified, 20 are truly qualified, but only 2 were both qualified _and_ could pass an arbitrary list of brainteasers.

And that lie lets managers run around saying "see, we can't hire enough talent! Skills shortage!" (where "skills" means "brainteaser skills", not software development skills)

<comment><USER22> In the past, I've done dual-track interviewing where candidates could choose either a (paid!) evaluation project or a traditional technical interview. Even then, the vast majority of applicants could not perform at a suitable level.

Have you actually done hiring? The truth is that there really is a shortage of qualified applicants (at least, at existing prices). I've literally never met a fellow hiring manager who thought there was a surplus of good engineers.

<comment><USER21> I have never been a hiring manager, but I have been a developer asked to evaluate candidates in interviews for multiple companies, and I've seen my own employer turn away qualified candidates. I've also been an employee at companies who institute hiring policies _their own current employees would not pass_ , and then claim new candidates are unqualified based on those policies. Neither of these are particularly unusual.

I've also been a person applying to jobs, where I know I'm fully qualified (usually because I already do the same thing in the same way for a competitor) and where I'm told "we think your a good culture fit, but we're worried about your technical abilities". I can't know exactly why they said that, but when I've showed working code they say their happy with, but I know I struggled on their brainteaser questions, it feels safe to infer.

So, I've seen qualified candidates turned away because they were "unqualified" (but they really weren't), from both sides of the table. I'm not claiming there is a huge surplus of engineering out there, but there is no real shortage either. There are enough engineers, just not enough employers willing to hire them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think some might read that title and jump to conclusion. Don't. The article states that they are only foreign born, but it doesn't say anything about how they got here. It would have helped had the article made this clear, but it's likely IEEE doesn't want to step into the H1B visa abuse issue.

<comment><USER24> Whenever someone brings up H1B, everybody goes to abuse issue, but a lot of us got here as students and we still have to use H1B to work. It is unfair to just lump everybody on an H1B as a low wage, unqualified person.

<comment><USER25> The issue that many of us have, myself included, with the H1B program is that is is primarily used to suppress local wages. It is easy to say you can't find candidates if you are pricing the job well below market wages.

<comment><USER24> I'm not saying H1B is not abused, I'm saying not everybody on H1B is abusing the system or is getting paid below market wages.

<comment><USER25> I am not saying everyone on H1B is as well. Yet the overwhelming majority of uses I see of H1B is to get a lower wage full stop. I do work extensively with offhsore resources and have worked with H1B's for over 20 years.

I don't begrudge them recipients for taking the jobs. My issue is the corporations who are abusing a system to make themselves more money while simultaneously destroying local talent. It is a death spiral of greed, yet they seem to be oblivious to it.

<comment><USER24> I can't say I understand this argument. Say an American company X outsources to a foreign company Y. Y abuses the system and hires a bunch of H1B and pays them pennies to the dollar. X is still paying Y dollars and not pennies right? Sure, the H1B is working for lower salary, but X's cost is still not a lot lower than hiring locally right? I see how just shipping the jobs to India/China might have the effect you are describing, but I don't think hiring H1B holders is the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This has nothing to do with immigration policy. Our kids in the US are simply not studying STEM subjects, period. We are not keeping pace with the rest of the world. I'm currently taking lower division engineering requirements in a California community college, and perhaps 20% of my class are native born, English speaking American kids. There is just no respect for it whatsoever, in a culture where it's _funny_ or _cool_ to think math is stupid. We are completely finished as a society. What rises to takes it's place who knows, but there's no way a country can survive like this.

</comment><comment><USER27> I want to keep this not politicized but is there merit to the argument that immigrants are taking jobs away from other STEM majors who are from the U.S.? To find out we would need to look at STEM job growth for a year, then look at the number of STEM graduates, then look at how many STEM graduates go to work in their field, then see if after 52% of the jobs are subtracted see if there's enough left for the recent graduates. Also immigrant graduates would also have to be taken into account.

</comment><comment><USER28> Are there numbers on where (in what country) they were educated?

<comment><USER29> this is what I'm curious about too. Are these people who came to the U.S for college / grad school?

the report only says foreign born - doesn't mention how long they've been in the U.S for or if they came just for the job they landed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I was CTO at 2 startups during the first Internet boom. I was getting resumes from janitors that were offering to be trained.

I had to hire most of the teams from Canada.

<comment><USER31> As a Canadian, that's kind of depressing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I highly recommend following and reading the link to the full report. Here it is again.

[https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/foreign-...](https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/foreign- born-stem-workers-united-states)

There's an interesting breakdown of a more narrow definition of STEM vs a broader one (that includes social sciences and health sciences). I personally would be more inclined to include health sciences than social sciences, but the data is granular enough to get at this distinction in some cases.

</comment><comment><USER33> That's funny how everyone here is against the trumps wall meanwhile every time H1B is mentioned no one has problem with people calling for "kicking them to India". Quite sad.

</comment><comment><USER34> Why would we expect a global company to hire even a majority from the US?</comment>


Face It, Your Brain Is a Computer - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/opinion/sunday/face-it-your-brain-is-a-computer.html

<comment><USER2> URL to actual article(PDF) in 31 OCTOBER 2014 SCIENCE:

[http://cs.brown.edu/people/tld/publications/archive/Marcusan...](http://cs.brown.edu/people/tld/publications/archive/MarcusandMarblestoneandDeanSCIENCE-14.pdf)</comment>


Off-topic: Acceptance and Response - <AUTHOR> http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Actual link should be: [http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2016/11/off-topic- acceptan...](http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2016/11/off-topic-acceptance- and-response.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Do we still need Shopping carts for online stores? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> What is your proposed alternative?

I run a few ecommerce stores, and I can tell you, there is a lot of "magic" that happens in the "view cart" page.

Chances to upsell more products/services, inform users they qualify for a discount (or need to add X more dollars to obtain the discount), pre-check shipping rates, etc.

All of that is in addition to ensuring the proper quantity and all the right products are in the cart before hitting the checkout page. The checkout page you want to be as simple as possible. Users are turned off by clutter on the checkout page, ie. displaying all the cart products again, too many boxes to fill in, etc. So you clutter the shopping cart page, and declutter the checkout page.

On the view cart page, we can see why a users bails on the order more clearly as well. Did they leave our site after putting in their zip and clicking the shipping estimator? Did they bail because their coupon code didn't work? On the checkout page, these things can get muddied by other criteria such as too much info to fill in (shipping and billing address, CC info, etc).

I'd argue shopping carts are a necessity.

</comment><comment><USER3> Google says an alternative doesn't exist.

The closest thing I can think of is Amazon subscribe and save and my experiences with online food delivery. I wish electronics sellers like digikey / mouser / jameco had a super saver shipping option like "send me one box of stuff per month and add this to my next box, or whenever you feel like shipping stuff out." Sooner or later someone's going to get B2B chummy with UPS or fedex and make a deal for super cheap rates at a super slow speed and for some situations thats just fine. Conceptually its almost a cart its just you never complete the order you just let nature take its course and it sends itself.

Or you might be thinking of time kind of ebay like concept where there is no concept of "an order" its just "an item" that happened to sell. So buy 10 things make 10 single item orders. Which I imagine would make the shipping companies very happy.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think it's likely that a few years down the road: purchasing something online will be more like clicking a "like" or "follow" button, and less akin to a shopping cart. There are some sites experimenting with this kind of idea already.

But those changes are likely to gain traction in parallel with e-wallets. Once users are used to having an ephemeral payment device attached to their online identities, it will be simple to hook into those payment devices without needing users to create a separate account on your site, add their payment info, or add items to a shopping cart.

Little by little, we'll get there.

<comment><USER2> Unless you're buying single items, it's not very practical to _not_ have a shopping cart. Sometimes you need to add things to the cart, several things, then review them before the final checkout. Also, from a merchant standpoint, I'd rather have a single order with multiple line items instead of multiple orders of single line items for the same person. Sure, we can try to guess the user's intention and attempt to concatenate orders together to save both the customer and ourselves on shipping as well as warehouse labor, but this becomes a significant burden (of which would get passed to the customer in the form of increased costs).

Add items to cart --> review cart for proper quantities and everything you want --> checkout. It's a pretty natural flow as it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't really see any alternative (yet) that can supply the functionality that the customers and business actually want, for example I like that I can add loads of things into a basket and then sort everything out when I'm ready to buy etc, and businesses probably like the fact they can ship everything in one big item and save on shipping.

There's a few other methods out there like one click purchases and subscription based models but these are filling a very specific requirement and don't really fit most models.

</comment><comment><USER6> Would be nice if you explained what prompted you to ask that question.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the design was inspired by Skeuomorphism, early online retailers looked at brick and mortar stores and just copy pasted the whole experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find cart useful when ordering, sometimes I have a budget and the cart lets me throw in everything I want then I pare it down to my budget.

</comment><comment><USER8> Until amazon's patent expires, the answer's probably "yes".

<comment><USER2> Amazon's system works like it does because any single customer-side transaction can likely be multiple merchant-side transactions (most sales on amazon are not from amazon directly, but 3rd party sellers).

With that said, even Amazon.com has a shopping cart.

<comment><USER8> I meant the one-click thing.</comment></comment></comment>


How Utrecht Became a Paradise for Cyclists - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/07/bicycle-friendly-city-utrecht-streetfilms-bike-lanes/593320/? <comment><USER2> Having lived in Copenhagen I can only attest the surge in living quality when a city adopts a no-compromise bicycle strategy. Back in car-loving Munich I feel set back a century. With city council members putting forward arguments like that bike lanes will "destroy retail businesses". It's frustrating.

Ps: here's the short film the article talks about. Shows the fantastic transformation of Utrecht. [https://youtu.be/Boi0XEm9-4E](https://youtu.be/Boi0XEm9-4E)

<comment><USER3> Yeah the business destruction argument is the most perplexing. It's like shop owners thing that people prefer shopping on noisy dirty streets to quiet pedestrian areas. I don't know how you can come to that conclusion.

<comment><USER4> Besides, on a bicycle it's easier to stop and park your bike if you see an interesting shop. When driving there is much more friction as you need to find a parking spot and park there first.

<comment><USER5> The difference between bikes and cars is in the mean/variance of time to park.

For a bike it takes about 1 minute or more to stop, detach/unlock your lock from the frame and lock your bike to a bike stand, then take off your helmet. You reverse this when you get back on the bike. The variance is also not that high on this number.

For a car, the mean time varies greatly from location to location and the variance is much higher. You might get stuck several minutes searching or waiting for a parking spot or you might get a spot immediately and be walking to the shop in under 15 seconds.

These differences have some effect on how much people want to bike/drive. I think one way of encouraging biking more would be to work on lock designs and bike stand design so it takes less time to park your bike.

<comment><USER6> It sounds like you're describing a much different biking culture than is the one in the Netherlands. For a minor stop here it will take less than 10 seconds to park a bike. Usually there's bike parking or a stand on the street right in front of the shop, no need to look for anything, nobody wears helmets when biking in the Netherlands, and if you're not parking for a long time you just lock the back wheel by pulling out the key- no chain involved at all. So what this looks like in practice is hopping off your bike right in front of the shop/cafe/bar/restaurant and pulling out the key- that's it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Living in Utrecht I can say: it's amazing, going to work? 10 minutes, going to the station? 10 minutes. Basically anything is within maximum 20 minutes cycling distance. In the rare occasion I do take the car, the city is still surprisingly accessible.

The only thing I hope they will change in the future is removing motorised vehicles from the bicycle lanes, scooters/e-bikes are just too fast and break the whole flow of traffic. Seeing that scooters are already banned from the cycling lanes in Amsterdam I think it will happen soon in Utrecht.

<comment><USER8> I ride my e-bike at 15-20mph. The assist stops at 20 and I only ever exceed it downhill. Are there really not a ton of athletic cyclists going faster than this under their own power? Around here, serious riders would find that laughably slow.

I find the electric assist is not so much about going faster as making transportation into a non-event and avoiding exertion.

<comment><USER9> Ah, I found the American...

Here in the Netherlands the bike paths are almost entirely occupied by people old and young biking on cheap bikes as a form of transportation, unlike in America where biking is dominated by 30-55 year old men on $1000+ bikes wearing criminally tight pants, sunglasses, and aerodynamic helmets. Nearly nobody is going 32km/hr on the bike path in the Netherlands, yes. 25km/hr, sure, there are a few (pizza delivery guys on e-bikes and scooters) but most people are not going this fast.

On the bike path inside cities you'll mostly see people going 16-10 km/h. You won't see a helmet on anyone except a confused tourist or the police. You'll also see grandmas, children, and just about everyone on a bike. Many of these bikes would horrify an American bike enthusiast with their copious rust and "deferred maintenance" to put it lightly, but they serve millions of people just fine with few accidents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I live in Utrecht. During peak hours there are so many bikes on the street that small traffic jams form near traffic lights. I cannot imagine the disaster if all these people would have taken their car instead. It simply wouldn't fit.

I also love the fact that in most parts you could still take your car. But most people don't, as taking the bike is the faster and more convenient option.

<comment><USER11> Dutch cities were not made for cars. Cars are the guests. Thats the difference between the US and the Netherlands: by the time Dutch people started to buy cars in the 1960s cycling had been a popular means of transportation for half a century.

<comment><USER12> That's actually not accurate. The Dutch were as car mad as anywhere between 1950 and the 1970s.

The cycling culture that developed subsequently was hard fought for by activist groups throughout the late 60s and 70s, before being implemented across the country by various city councils in the 1980s and then developed further with national level infrastructural improvements in the 1990s.

There's lots of good documentaries on YouTube about the change, highly recommended if you're interested in urban planning or in the possibilities for introducing cycling infrastructure.

In Utrecht one can see many roads which have multiple cycle lanes and pedestrianised parks along the middle. These roads were originally developed as 4 lane highways for automobiles before modernisation.

<comment><USER13> It's still true people were using a lot of bicycles even when there were a lot of cars in city centers. They were just more prone to get an accident with a car as cars were allowed to drive faster and basically could come everywhere.

We got the bicycle amenities not because we wanted to stimulate people using them but because too many people (especially kids) died riding them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've commuted by bike in both San Francisco and Amsterdam. In Amsterdam it's a lovely (and safe) experience, whereas in San Fransisco it was positively hazardous. The key difference being the thoughtful lane designs in The Netherlands where you have dedicated bike lanes physically separated from the car traffic. In San Francisco you are often mixed with or adjacent to car traffic or parked cars - leaving you susceptible to parked car doors suddenly opening, or being caught in a moving car's blind spot.

<comment><USER15> > leaving you susceptible to parked car doors suddenly opening

Dutch driving instructors teach 'the Dutch reach'. You get into the habit of opening the car door with your left hand, so you'll automatically look for cyclists that may be passing by.

<comment><USER16> I've always lived in the Netherlands, but I've never seen anyone opening a door that way. We do, however, look in the rearview mirrors before opening the door.

<comment><USER15> I too live in the Netherlands and always do this. Guess it's not as common as I thought then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love Utrecht. It's a college town with the cultural and intellectual vibe that always engenders. It's a very modern town but you can turn a corner and walk half a block and suddenly it feels as though you just took a time machine to the 16th century. Best of all worlds.

</comment><comment><USER18> I cycle commuted in London in the late 90s and 2000's and we pushed then for two items - to be seen by other road users as real road users (ie not something just to be brushed aside) and for dedicated cycle lanes that would improve safety.

I started cycle commuting again about a year ago (Boris Bikes) and guess what we have dedicated "cycle superhighways"

And the problem it turns out is _us_ cyclists

There is always a traffic jam on the dedicated pathway - the blue cycle lane. And so some (usually but not always male) cyclists jump on and off the lane and engage in dangerous overtaking manoeuvres.

Worst, is that the blue lane runs along normal roads and so has traffic lights at the same positions - and that I guess 25% of cyclists ignore completely a red light and plough through - and twice I have seen these idiots hit pedestrians and two weeks ago came across the fire brigade washing the blood away

We campaigned and rode to be taken as real roads users - and when we got real roads with real traffic light we ignore the real rules of the road

Cyclists need to have number plates and fines for breaching traffic laws.

sorry.

<comment><USER19> I wonder why that is, I see very, very little of that mentality in the Netherlands.

There's also a very interesting phenomena where right now in London the people who bike are "Cyclists" where they're much more likely to be enthusiasts, people who want to really go fast, people who have Bicycling as part of their identity. In the Netherlands, it's just a way of getting around and not an ideology.

The other contributing factor could be size. London is so much bigger than most Dutch cities. If you're commuting across London, speed probably matters much more to you.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, many of the cyclists in London wear fancy clothes and ride fast bikes. It's an identity thing.

There is an sad/interesting gender gap too because many of the cycle commuters are male. There should be a real push by companies to make cycling more female friendly. That means having easy changing rooms/showers at work and giving women a little more time to get ready in the morning.

I love biking in London, going fast to the Aldi and carrying my groceries back on the special bike lanes, but there are still issues to resolve.

<comment><USER18> The gender issue is real - I would put the ratio of female to male cyclists on the commute at about the same as in the software teams at work. Perhaps there is a similar thing going on

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Though this article is true, there's nothing exceptional about the Utrecht bicycle infrastructure. The great thing is that the bicycle infrastructure throughout the entirety of The Netherlands is of extremely high quality. In the suburbs the bicycle experience is actually much more pleasant than in cities: the lanes are wide, there hardly is any congestion and you can really go anywhere on bicycle lanes without being forced to do some weird manouvering (which is very common outside of The Netherlands). Utrecht is just a good example of the incredible bicycle infrastructure in The Netherlands as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER13> It can be a bit overwhelming during rush hour though, two way bicycle traffic of multiple cycles next to each other going at different speeds. Makes crossing Vredenburg almost like a real life game of Frogger on foot.

<comment><USER19> I think the other thing that's not mentioned much is that most Dutch cities are commuting at quite low speeds. I'm lucky to average 10mi/hr.

There's a huge change in the energy of a crash as you start going faster. A 15 mi/hr biker has 2.25x the energy of a 10mi/hr biker and so if you crash it's so much worse.

At 9mi/hr, you're pretty much always walking away from the crash.

<comment><USER22> The bigger factors here beyond raw speed are age and weight of the rider. Kids can have the most crazy falls at any speed and bounce right up whereas an elderly or overweight person falling from a stand-still position can get severely injured. Hip and shoulder fractures are (unfortunately) quite common in octogenarians that still cycle.

<comment><USER23> I'm quite big and somewhat overweight but taking Judo lessons as a kid saved my ass many times falling (off my bike). I would recommend it to everyone to learn to fall.

The electric bike craze for elderly people isn't helping as they now travel about twice as fast as they used to.

<comment><USER19> I actually fell yesterday while trying to unclip my bike peddles, as a case in point.

<comment><USER24> I never fall when unclipping! Can't happen. But I ride a recumbent trike.

<comment><USER22> I rode a recumbent, not a trike. I still have half an Ikea in my right leg due to the accident, and I also _almost_ flipped a recumbent trike so please be careful, they are not as stable as they seem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This documentary about Utrecth is p0rn for bike lovers [https://vimeo.com/344373585](https://vimeo.com/344373585)

<comment><USER26> This is literally the video the article is about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > have brought on much-larger windfall of social benefit

One of the things I love about Amsterdam is how the city changes in the evening. It gets quieter because there are less cars. People can go to pubs without driving (cycling under the influence is illegal but tolerated). And almost the entire city is accessible within 20 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER28> Designing cities for car is a huge mistake!

<comment><USER29> Utrecht officially became a city in the year 1122, the oldest known records about Utrecht is that it was a roman outpost since 50ad. So I don't think it was designed for cars ;-)

<comment><USER30> Yep! U-traject, the "bridge over the river U". Utrecht is great

<comment><USER31> No, the river is the Rhine. _Traiectum_ is the noun for _transire_ (verb), going through. It was a place where you could cross the river, hence a strategic place to build a _castellum_ , as the Rhine was used as a natural border _(limes)_ for the Roman Empire.

The u stands for _uut_ (old Dutch), meaning downstream. Although I am not 100% sure if U doesn't simply stand for _uit_ , which means 'from'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I love cycling, but I live in a very hilly environment, which is why I don't think it will really take off here, unfortunately.

I always try and think about designs for a "ski lift" for bikes, just as a thought exercise. Is anything like that being actually made?

<comment><USER33> It exists - [https://youtu.be/zipZ5kwhFfs?t=37](https://youtu.be/zipZ5kwhFfs?t=37)

Nowadays it's easier to just mount an electric motor on your bike.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I wonder what the carbon footprint of all the concrete they put down to achive this is?

<comment><USER35> Dutch bike roads are made of asphalt or bricks, I've seen very few made of concrete

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> At first I thought this was about the much-admired discount art supply store chain.

But there is a city with that name, that clearly must court cyclists more ardently than the most devoted retailer of paints and brushes.</comment>


Show HN: Tool to create featured images for blog - <AUTHOR> http://projects.bobbelderbos.com/featured_image/ <comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I did not see your comment. Thanks for your input.

Yes, under development. I use it to make featured images for my blog posts.</comment>


The P ≠ NP proof is flawed - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/the-problem-of-p-versus-np/article1680897/?cmpid=rss1

<comment><USER2> That's pretty content-free compared with the items on Lipton's blog:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1632763>

[http://searchyc.com/submissions/NP?page=2&sort=by_date](http://searchyc.com/submissions/NP?page=2&sort=by_date)</comment>


Karma makes customers pay another $100 to continue using their service - <AUTHOR> https://try.yourkarma.com/upgrade

<comment><USER2> Upgrading to the next Karma hardware is optional for everyone who owns a 1st gen device. There is absolutely no upgrade nor payment required if you decide not to upgrade. Data purchased will always be available for future upgrades, also when you do not upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER3> You mean, Karma wants customers to pay $100, so Karma may use customers' service?</comment>


W3 Counter: Analytics With Instant Gratification (useful tools review) - <AUTHOR> http://www.usefultools.com/2009/08/analytics-with-instant-gratification/

<comment> onreact-com Last time I tested W3 Counter it added off topic hidden links to the actual counter code.</comment>


The Tech Junkie's Way to Network - <AUTHOR> http://www.feathrapp.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> We'd love to get this in your hands (beta starting this month) and to get your feedback.

We want your valuable input – so we're going to auto push everybody that signs up through hacker news to the top of the beta queue.</comment>


3D ASCII Game - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/shareables/2019/09/19/asciicker-ascii-3d-game-text/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIsCYHpCfVc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIsCYHpCfVc)

</comment><comment><USER2> I really like the look of that. It'd be awesome to see a dwarf fortress map rendered like that.</comment>


Why you shouldn't take a client's money - <AUTHOR> https://thecreativeclass.io/why-you-shouldnt-take-a-clients-money/ <comment><USER2> So what about when you're just starting out, OP? When you haven't quite reached the Torvaldian heights of subject expertise in a niche, but you are somewhat competent with everything. What's the best strategy for finding / choosing gigs and building your brand then? Also, how long did it take you to reach expertise in your niche area?

<comment><USER3> Patio11, back when he still did consulting, charged 30k/wk, primarily by getting close to the value the business provided (e.g optimizing a signup flow on your customers Most Important Website is a lot easier to show will result in $MEANINGFUL_AMOUNT_OF_ADDITONAL_INCOME than building an entire rails app to improve developer productivity, ignoring that the first is easier).

<comment><USER4> "Patio11, back when he still did consulting, charged 30k/wk"

He _says_ , adding heavy draw to an initiative. Absolutely nothing or anyone can validate those incredible claims, though. Every engagement was, to us, like the girlfriend from Canada.

<comment><USER5> If you said you could I increase my bottom line by at least 300k by working on some low hanging fruits that I've missed so far, I wouldn't hesitate to give you $30k... Of course, I'd pay you after I have results though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jest3r- Article is kind of contradicting.

> If they're too new, they may not know much about their business or their > audience yet.

Isn't that what they're hiring you for? I mean your previous point about the right niche makes sense. But if your niche is healthcare and a new healthcare businesses shows up ... are they not leaning on you to provide expertise in that market? And wouldn't that help build your brand?

> – but those are all much harder to do if a client is starting from a place > where they're making no money or worse, spending more money than they are > making.

This has nothing to do with "can't afford you". If the business truly can't afford you then as a freelancer you're doing yourself a favor by not offering discounts to accommodate. You're not doing the potential client any favors here.

Otherwise most businesses actually do spend more money than they're making on marketing and creative, especially early on as they build their brand. You should definitely take their money. How else are they going to grow if you can;t help them at that critical early stage? Send them to get a free website first? You might as well start writing the obituary.

Established businesses that are already making money hand over fist would typically already be happy with their freelance creative, but if they're willing to spend money on something new with you, then you must have done something early on that contradicts the premise of this paragraph in order to earn their trust.

> If a client assumes that hiring you will completely turn their business > around instantly, bring them bags of money every day, and skyrocket their > brand into the stratosphere…

As a freelancer, if your work is high quality, really good, award winning type stuff, then I would expect all potential clients would think you're a miracle worker. That's high praise.

At that point it's your job to set expectations, not turn them away.

While I do agree with some of the points, the author seems out of touch with reality - we regular folks don't have the recognition or word of mouth machine to be this picky. And at the end of the day it's all about setting client expectations. Not the other way around.

<comment><AUTHOR> point #1 - there's a difference between a startup who's figuring those things out (and has the business acumen to know how business' work) and a person who's never run a business before. i'm talking to the latter point, since a freelancer can't really do everything for someone's business (like figure out their market, audience, how to run a business, etc). that's more of a business partner relationship than a freelancer.

point #2 - this again is speaking to people who start business' without knowing how business' work (for me personally, i get a lot of leads like that). through experience i've found that until a person has a good grip on how their business works and how it can make even some money, the spend they'd have on a site design is wasted money (just setup a free squarespace or WP site).

point #3 - there's a big difference between realistic expectations and totally unrealistic expectations. sure, good freelancers can make a business go from not awesome to very awesome, but it has to tempered with reality.

i (the author) am a "regular folk" too. i've been freelancing a long time, so i'm in the trenches. the only reason that i have the word of mouth machine going is because i am picky with my clients :)

cheers! and thanks for the comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds pretty obvious to me. Why on earth would you take on a job when you know beforehand that you can't satisfy your client's needs?

</comment><comment><USER7> Not everyone has so many contacts that they can really pick and choose.

Going 1-2 months without work because you turned down a client and can't find another one can be really shitty.

<comment><USER4> I'm a cynical sort with a lot of experience in the industry consulting, and I can't help but view a lot of these pieces as heavily...embellished. Akin to "fake it to make it". Ala "I'm so overwhelmed with business at 30K per week....but would you like to buy some tupperware?"

I understand the author is here, and hopefully people don't embarrassingly downvote this purely to try to act civil -- I think the embellishment is doing a massive disservice to the entire industry. It is often complete fantasy. I will also say that I found the claims the other day about the 30K+ per week consulting engagements, apparently chosen at whim, completely _ludicrous_ (again, having worked with countless organizations). It has zero verification or believability, but is a nice draw for someone's new initiative.

<comment><AUTHOR> i can't speak for anyone else - but by the same token, i'm not embellishing anything. verifiable? no, because i'm not sharing my bank account statements. believable? definitely - most of my friends make about what i make a year freelancing, so it's not totally out of scope or outside the norm (i also never said i make $30k/week freelancing - some weeks i do, but others, i definitely don't).

i've built a career and an audience by being very honest, even about my epic failures and shortcomings. i know you don't know me from adam - but luckily my audience and client-base does, and really they're the ones i cater to. my pricing is listed publicly on my website, and i wouldn't do that if clients weren't willing to pay for it (i don't have a sugar daddy or sugar mama to support me).

i also appreciate that you voiced your opinion in an actually civil way! i hope it doesn't get down voted.

<comment><USER4> The 30K thing was related to a post on here a few days back where an author claimed that they had their pick of "30K / week" engagements. As an interesting contrast with your policy, they claimed that they kept their rates hidden, thus allowing them to magically and endlessly ramp it up.

In any case, I've long come to learn in the freelance industry that the more people talk about their success (which can be "so many clients I turn them away", or "I am now charging 50K+"), the more unlikely that success actually is. e.g. the guy who puts "published author" at the top of his blog likely has an Amazon Digital Delivery PDF book. The guy who talks about "top clients" had someone from Apple visit their blog once. And so on.

The more bombastic about success someone is, the more incredible the claims, the more likely they're struggling for relevance, using the escalating accomplishments to create it. Again, this has been my experience in the industry, where when you look behind the curtain you find Lenny asking you not to tell anyone how he lives.

In no way am I saying that about you, but just in _general_ HN has been awash in "so much success I have to wear shades....now would you like to buy some tupperware?" type posts (I'm not being facetious with the tupperware thing -- it's people claiming boundless success, and then pitching something so petty that it puts it all in stark contrast), and I have to think it does a massive disservice to most of the readership, putting in their notice on this notion that there are endless lines of clients throwing money around for vague needs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A bit of a tangent, but as a freelancer who picks and chooses who to work with, have you ever been hit with a discrimination claim, e.g. you turn down a job, and next thing you know they are claiming you won't work with them because they are black, or gay, or whatever.

How much do you need to document the reasons for turning away a client? Or is there some kind of "at will" protection that applies to freelancers?

<comment><AUTHOR> preface: obviously i'm not a lawyer :)

but there's no employee/employer relationship, and i would never turn down a gig based on religion, gender, sexual preference, etc.

at least for me personally, it's never come up. it may also help that i rarely work with clients who live in the same country as i do (international law is typically too expensive to litigate for something as tiny as a freelancer saying no to work).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Should be titled 'When you shouldn't take a client's money'.

Or (text from the article): 'Why you might not want to work with a potential client'

<comment><USER10> The main problem is that someone isn't a client _until_ you're taking their money.

People ask me to take their money to help them solve their website problems, which are actually their business problems, which are actually their life problems. They do this when they find out I'm a coder, that automatically confers upon me a magical ability to fix their lives. This typically happens in the context of a bar conversation. I tell them, "no, I generally don't moonlight unless there's at least $5K involved, but, hey, as long as we're here, tell me what's going on and I'll see if I can help you."

So we unwind their problems a little bit. Inevitably there's a lot of emotion stored up and I'll encourage them to release it with some 'tough love', letting them know that without either a good bit of capital or a lot more willingness to figure hard things out on their own on their part, they're not going to achieve their goals, and they need to acquire one or the other if they want to find success.

Tears start flowing, catharsis happens, no, I still won't take your money. Accounting headache, you see. Tell you what, if you can do X, Y, and Z, to get this monkey off your back and learn something truly useful, then give me a call in a month and you can buy me a few beers and we'll talk next steps.

I call this 'community outreach'. Happens roughly twice a month, ever since I started taking my laptop to the bar. Someone in a bad situation can always count on my Houston air traffic controller delivery of the hard truths of trying to make money on the Internet. Thought about building a business around it, maybe if I find the right partner...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great read!</comment>


When Gmail ads get too intimate - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10453226-71.html

<comment><USER2> I had to stop reading this tripe when I came across "Cookies are stealthily slipped into your laptop like roofies into a margarita."

Seriously? Yellow journalism much? Ugh.

<comment><USER3> That line was pretty sick. But the article did remind me of something that happened when using google yesterday - not gmail I should add.

I was searching for a news site from another country. Soon after Google was hitting me with ads about meeting a guy from XYZ country (the one I queried.)

They basically assumed my ethnic origin. And my sex, and failed on both. But it did suggest that previous search terms were being used to target later adverts at me, which was quite sneaky nonetheless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How do you know Zappos is great? When it has become an alternative to having sex with your girlfriend.</comment>