60 minutes: Is sugar toxic? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7403942n&tag=contentBody;storyMediaBox

<comment><USER3> I've watched Dr. Lustig's video previously, and in general its the same principles touted by Gary Taubes, but I still find it dubious. You can look at your patient population and come up with a hypothesis that would make sense from a pure biochemistry perspective, but that's really no different than what the proponents of dietary fat as a cause of heart disease did.

And since when is monitoring people in a controlled lab for a few weeks at a time (likely limiting their physical activity and who knows what kind of stress to the system having your blood drawn every 30 minutes induces) considered valid scientific research when it in no way exemplifies real world situations that people are exposed to. And sugar is apparently carcinogenic because it can cause an increase in baseline insulin levels as a response, which can drive glucose into potential tumor cells allowing them to grow. That's purely speculative, and very difficult to substantiate when there are so many other reasons for people to develop cancer: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/health/research/red- meat-l...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/health/research/red-meat-linked- to-cancer-and-heart-disease.html)

Personally, I'm still convinced that a calorie is a calorie. And the reason we've been gaining weight, with greater incidence of heart disease, diabetes, etc. is that we simply consume too much food, perhaps too much processed food, but in general we just eat too much. So eat less, and the best way is to consume small portions of food multiple times a day instead of large meals with large gaps in between. Trust me, it works.

<comment><USER4> It's true that you don't lose weight without caloric deficit. But while a calorie equals a calorie, the body reacts differently to fast calories and slow calories: a steady supply of blood sugar, vs. spikes and troughs. This affects feedback loops of insulin, satiety, etc., prompting people to overeat.

Side note: I'm really looking forward to future biofeedback tech. It'd be interesting to know my blood sugar level and heart rate at all times.

<comment><USER5> > It's true that you don't lose weight without caloric deficit.

Are you sure? I've lost plenty of weight following a low carb diet while eating tons of high calorie dark chocolate and oily meats.

<comment><USER6> The basic equation is: calories consumed - calories burned = weight loss (or gain)

If you lost weight it means you burned more calories than you ate.

<comment><USER7> This is widely believed but not true or supported by scientific evidence. Have a look at Gary Taubes "Good Calories, Bad Calories" for a rundown on much of the relevant research.

<comment><USER8> It's thermodynamics. Living takes energy, and that energy needs to come from somewhere. We can't photosynthesize energy, and we can't get it from air or water. So if there's not enough energy in food to sustain our body's processes, then it must come from stores in the body (fat).

I don't think there's any other possibility.

<comment><USER9> Weight loss only reduces to simple thermodynamics if the body is functionally equivalent to a coal furnace. It turns out metabolism is more subtle than that.

<comment><USER8> There are subtleties to nutrition and weight loss, of course. But let's say you stopped eating, and you didn't just die: do you think it's somehow possible to NOT lose body mass?

<comment><USER9> Of course not, and nobody here thinks that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a big fan of Alan Aragon, one of the country's leading experts on nutrition/health (in my and a lot of people's opinion). He did a pretty well informed takedown of Dr. Lustig's alarmist stance... check it out here and make up your own minds:

[http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth- ab...](http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-about- fructose-alarmism/)

[http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/02/19/a-retrospective- of-...](http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/02/19/a-retrospective-of-the- fructose-alarmism-debate/)

<comment><USER11> Compare:

<http://www.alanaragonblog.com/about/>

to:

<http://chc.ucsf.edu/coast/faculty_lustig.htm>

I'm not saying that's dispositive, but why exactly is Alan Aragon more credible than a medical doctor and UCSF clinical pediatrics professor?

<comment><USER12> I've never heard of Alan Aragon, but he claims to have a master's degree in nutrition. That's a HELL of a lot more nutrition training than your average MD gets.

I'm sure both have tons of post-degree self-study in nutrition, and that's virtually impossible to measure.

The problem of quantifying levels of expertise is a hard one, especially in the world of nutrition.

<comment><USER13> In the UK things are slightly easier. The word "dietician" is reserved. It is illegal to call yourself a dietician unless you have specific qualifications and are registered.

Anyone can call themselves a nutritionist. I could set up shop tomorrow, calling myself a nutritionist.

That's made a bit more complex because you have sensible nutritionists working within public health doing real science, and you have wingnuts.

<comment><USER12> The word 'dietitian' is protected similarly in the United States, and the word 'nutritionist' is similarly unprotected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My boss, on my first job, whenever presented with any alarmist "study" of this nature would mumble:

"If you feed a rat a boxcar of anything, it'll get cancer".

<comment><USER15> And the point these studies are trying to make is that, we are taking a boxcar of sugar everyday.

<comment><USER16> I think this is the key. In the amounts that people are consuming it today, sugar is a toxin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes, sugar is toxic. It was never found in a natural diet for humans in the high quantities it is now ingested by people. The two major effects it has on the body is: 1) simultaneously raising blood sugar levels while promoting insulin resistance when it is eaten, and 2) promoting the glycation process that badly affects metabolic processes. Do a google search on "Advanced Glycation End Products" (also called AGEs) for a better understanding of what exactly sugar does to you.

<comment><USER17> What alternative would you suggest for high short term energy?

<comment><USER7> If you cut the highly processed carbs (sugar and wheat based snack foods primarily) from your diet, you will stop having the 2-3 hour cycles of hunger, energy rush, crash, and food cravings. Once your body has corrected itself, you will no longer need to eat for "high short term energy". Think about human history for a minute and consider whether it would be an advantage for hunter- gatherers to have to stop and eat every couple hours. The fact that everyone generally does now and that people living on traditional diets like the Masai of Africa do not should tell you something.

While it is an aside, getting enough sleep will also reduce your necessary daily food requirements by about 400 calories.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> HN threads on this topic already:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3781829>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2443316>

</comment><comment><USER19> Here is Dr. Lustig's UCSF lecture, referenced in the 60 minutes piece: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM>

NYTimes article, same subject: [https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.ht...](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?_r=2&ref=magazine)

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting newsstory. Dr Lustig was also features on Science Friday a few months ago -- <http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/201202172>

One concern of the doctor's that's somewhat glossed over is how fructose, unlike other sugars, is metabolized in the liver. His gripe here is partly with the glut of sugar in our diet, and partly how all of the sugars in a food product are lumped together on the nutrition label as "sugar", with no distinction between the different molecules.

</comment><comment><USER21> As a person who read about studies like these, how do I filter out the "real" studies versus the studies blown out of proportions? I've read Ben Goldacre's _Bad Science_ (which I highly recommend), but I don't have the time to do much research on every study newspapers/other media come out with. Is there a simple way to find out whether this - or any other study, for that matter - <USER2> a study to take seriously?

<comment><USER22> There really isn't a simple way to find out if a study should be taken seriously or not.

What you need to do is read the original literature and pay attention to the details. Bad studies are usually bad for a few reasons:

1\. Bad experimental design. If you are testing hypothesis X, but your study design doesn't control for all the variables, then the data won't really tell you anything. For example, if you want to see if a high-fat diet increases the risk of cancer and you don't control for smoking or environmental exposure, your data is crap whether it supports or rejects your hypothesis.

2\. Bad data. You may have a great experimental design, but if your data isn't strongly supportive of a conclusion, then it's a weak study. If we take the above example and compare a high-fat diet to a low-fat diet across 5 different group and 2 groups show no effect, 2 groups are right on the border of being statistically significant and one group is strongly positive, it doesn't really tell you anything.

3\. Bad conclusions. The data says one thing, but the author goes ahead and concludes it means something else. You see this a LOT in bad science. Again if we take the above example, the data may strongly support that a high-fat diet is bad, but then the author goes ahead and says that all fats are bad. The data doesn't support this. This is sort of what the sugar-is-toxic studies do. Are diets that are hyper-caloric and have a high percentage of carbohydrates derived from simple sugars bad for you? Most likely. Should you actively try and exclude them from your diet? The answer to that is no (and the data doesn't support that conclusion).

I was formally trained as a scientist, but no longer work in the lab, but the training on I got in designing experiments (be they in the lab or in marketing) has served me well in filtering out "crap" of all sorts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Pretty much everything's toxic depending on the dosage. Salt, water (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication>), and, of course, sugar.

<comment><USER24> One of the main points of the story is that sugar intake has increased dramatically in America. They talked about the reduction of fat in food, and manufacturers responded by replacing the fat with sugar.

The point being that the average American now consumes sugar at "toxic" quantities (and of course, the word "toxic" was very much link bait). It's hard to deny America has an obesity and diabetes problem.

<comment><USER23> Some people take the word "sugar" literary and switch to brown sugar, agave syrup, evaporated cane juice and so on, which aren't much better and some are actually worse. The only acceptable form of fructose is the one part of an organic fruit as you get the full complex of phytochemicals, not just the fructose. I'm really mad at the organics industry, which puts so much redundant "healthy" sugars in so many products.

<comment><USER25> Agave syrup has the benefit of being vegan; normal refined sugar is processed with bone meal. People have various different reasons for wanting 'alternative' sugars. Attempting to move away from refined sugar because it's 'bad' is just one of them.

<comment><USER26> Agave nectar is probably not that healthy either. It's highly processed and more akin to HFC than sugar.

<comment><USER25> The original post was lamenting the existence of products such as agave nectar as attempting to falsely lead people astray that are looking for alternatives to sugar, as a more 'healthier' choice. I posited a completely separate motivation that someone might have for choosing/using agave nectar (one that I might add does not necessarily have anything to do with being 'healthy').

The conversation is coming off like:

      Original Post: "People might choose agave nectar for
                     <reason 1>, but it fails to deliver what
                     they are attempting to do."

      Me: "Agave nectar doesn't exist just to satisfy
          people with <reason 1>. There are people that might
          choose it for <reason 2>."

People seem to be attempting to 'rebut' me with, "BUT <REASON 1>!" I really don't understand it.

<comment><USER26> You're right and I apologize. I can't stand when people talk "past" each other in discussions/arguments. My comment was about Agave in general and not the particular aspect you spoke of.

Aside 1: I'd heard that Agave wasn't that good nutritionally and did a quick search to clarify. The first piece I read was actually about how many people see Agave nectar as a raw food sweetener when in fact it is cooked at 250+ degrees for many hours to break down the starches into simpler fructose.

Aside 2: To be fair, the original discussion was about health effects not the philosophical/moral considerations our our food choices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I quit white sugar for some time and I am not sure if sugar is really toxic but I can say:

\- Coming through the day w/o white sugar is a completely different experience: no more downs (or "sugar crashs") through the day and work motivation is always up

\- These sugar crashs or downs can be severe especially if you are under stress; then the stress is multiplied which leads to depression and more white sugar consumption

\- Eating now fruits because of the fructose regularly, before I've never ate fruits (there was no reason because anything with white sugar was much sweeter and tastier than fruit)

Now when I accidentally eat something containing white sugar I immediately "feel" the white sugar: my brain is getting a high like with alcohol or caffeine—it's a difference compared to fructose. It's a subtle feeling and you probably won't feel it if your are used to white sugar. Before I related the downs to the heavy lunch I had before, that I haven't slept well or that the work is just so boring, etc.

Another observations regarding "white sugar could be drug": Look how many shelves with sweets you find a grocery store and compare the amount to other foods and with alcohol (where you usually find similar quantities).

</comment><comment><USER13> Please could someone help me unpick the numbers?

> _Americans are now consuming nearly 130 pounds of added sugars per person, > per year._

This sentence is so vague as to be almost meaningless. Assuming 311,600,000 Americans. I have no way of telling how many Americans are eating a "safe" level of sugar versus how many Americans are eating a "dangerous" level of sugar.

130 lb is nearly 60 kg - that's a remarkable amount of sugar. And if that's a mean then there are people eating considerably more than that.

Scarily, the amount of added sugar has decreased (between 2000 and 2008) - (<http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db87.htm>)

> _Although the percent of daily calories derived from added sugars declined > between 1999–2000 and 2007–2008 (2), consumption of added sugars remains > high in the diets of Americans._

<comment><USER28> Actually, the 'average' (mean presumably) intake won't apply to you as an individual in any meaningful way. You'll have to try and monitor your daily diet, focusing on known high-sugar foods and most commonly consumed foods. This data is all over google, thanks for various consumer protection laws. Example:

60kg/365 = 164g per day sugar in a coke: 39g sugar in starbucks skinny latte: 13.2g / 17.5g / 22.9g (small->large) heinz ketchup: 23.7g / 100g etc.

(Looking at that list, I probably hit 100g or more per day, even though I stopped adding sugar to my tea and coffee.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> To you guys calling this alarmist, it's not. It has been known for a while: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM>

Most of the same dangers as alcohol.

<comment><USER30> They also compared it to crack on the show. I doubt the average crackhead would agree.

<comment><USER29> I think there's definitely a strong reward response when someone gets to have sugar. The thing that they are missing when comparing it to crack is that sugar withdrawal isn't that bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The crux of the piece, as I heard it, was that sugar is about as bad as fat when it comes to causes of heart disease and heart attacks, that HFCS is, in fact, worse than cane sugar because of the way the liver processes them, AND that the brain responds to sugar about the same way it does cocaine, and proves to be about as addictive.

So, toxic might a little strong, but when the doctors that worked on these studies recommend no more than about 100g/day of added sugars in your diet, less than what's in a can of soda, "large quantities" may not mean what you think it means either.

<comment><USER32> I think you heard a couple of things wrong.

For starters, there are pathways for breaking down fat, storing it, and burning it in the body.

Secondly, refined sugars incorporating fructose are all about equivalently bad.

Thirdly, when you go over a certain smallish amount of fructose, your liver has to respond to eliminate this 'toxin' from the body, which produces really bad LDL cholesterols, which contributes to stroke and heart disease risk.

On the basics, and this is the slightly confusing thing for those new to this topic, your body really only uses glucose sugar directly. There is a whole mechanism dedicated to storing glucose as glycogen (in the liver), and then retransforming it and burning it when you need energy. This does not work with fructose, which has to be transformed to fat, stored, then burned later.

This nutritional disadvantage of fructose would be enough for me to stop eating it, even without all the other problems.

The US move from complex carbs like starch that can be broken down to glucose in the body and readily used by cells, to poorer quality foods with much added (cheap) fructose, has massively increased the amount of fructose we ingest, and according to Lustig, increased the damage to our bodies.

I personally don't eat refined / fructose sugar except in fruit and small amounts of honey or jam, and the times when I have a something like a cookie with lots of sugar, I really really feel the effects, the worst being a sort of sugar come-down that manifests as extreme irritability.

<comment><USER33> The liver is able to convert fructose into glucose and glycogen.

<comment><USER32> In small quantities.

25% of calorie intake as fructose, like many Americans, and the liver floods your system with fat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> As in all articles that have a question as title, the answer is "no".

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm betting on April Fools for this one, too.

<comment><USER36> I've concluded humor isn't allowed on HN. Seriously, why the downvotes?

<comment><USER37> Most people don't go to HN to read jokes. That said, I've seen humor get upvoted, but it has to be pretty spectacular humor.

<comment><USER38> I don't come to HN for jokes either, but I'm always surprised by the extent to which incidental displays of cleverness go over like farts in churches. I keep wondering if the people who feel compelled to police this stuff heavily also struggle to connect with "the normals" at work.

<comment><USER39> It has been observed that as online communities like HN grow, the signal-to- noise ratio falls on a progression that can be summarized as HN -> Reddit -> Digg. As we become more complacent regarding downvotes on well-written comments because we disagree or not downvoting witty fluff, HN slides farther and farther into the noise pit. No one yet knows how to permanently stave off the Diggnation of HN. But, in the mean time, it is worth trying to delay as much as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Of course it is. Why do you think preserved jams and jellies work? Bacteria love sugar as much as any other creature but it's a preservative in large quantities.

<comment><USER40> Also it should be pointed out that we aren't made of fruit. We preserve meat in salts, does that mean salt is toxic to us as well?

<comment><USER41> High doses of salt is toxic

<comment><USER42> As is water: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Peer to peer insurance (question for a class) - <AUTHOR>

(I asked this a couple of days ago, but I'm going to ask for more feedback now that I have more specifics.)
I'm writing a business plan for an entrepreneurship class, and I want to know what you think about the idea. Particularly, I'm interested in what you would think of the idea as a customer, because the customers will be from small communities, including startups.
The business idea is a peer-to-peer insurance company that creates marketplaces in small communities. Community members would be able to select pre-defined contracts (for health insurance, life insurance, etc.) and divide them into units. Other community members could then act as insurers. For example, you could create a health insurance contract for yourself with a $1,000 per month premium and a $10,000 per month maximum coverage and divide the contract into 100 units. Each person who takes part in insuring you would receive a $10 per month premium from you and would be responsible for up to $100 per month in coverage.
I understand that there may be lots of issues with this idea due to industry regulation, legal issues, breaking into the industry, etc., but I'm most curious about how peer-to-peer insurance would work in small startups. What do you think?
Thanks, EN <comment><USER2> Your example's math seems wrong: the $10,000 maximum coverage could be hit by multiple people, so I'd be liable for potentially $100 x 100 in a given month.

More broadly, health insurance brings up the problem of asymmetric information. If I already know (or suspect) I have some illness, I would join this group just before I go in for expensive care, exploiting the risk- bearers. Some ways to avoid this problem: phase in benefits, force full medical disclosure to you, be able to detect fraud.

One possible benefit: if geographically organized, the community could negotiate bulk discounts from local hospitals and doctors. The business could make this mostly automatic -- grow your community, keep your community healthy => get better rates at the local docs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Personally, peer to peer insurance sounds like a gamble.

As I understand it, insurance companies hire armies of actuaries to determine risk plus the risk is spread out among many accounts, many make a little bit of money, some cost a bunch, but statistically makes a net profit. I suppose each investor would be his/her own actuary.

And how do you handle all that private personal information that insurance companies require from applicants to determine risk, like family history of cancer, just for one? or risky personal activities, like sky diving? Oh, and what about insurance fraud or moral hazard?

<comment><USER4> Yes, this one is a serious can of worms to be opening. In addition to the points you raise there is also the issue of re-insurance and regulation. If you can't get someone to cover your obligations if the odds come out against you then this is a non-starter, this is where re-insurers come in out in the real worlds and they aren't going to deal with a scheme this small so you will need something else to back your gambles. The insurance market is also heavily regulated because people actually depend on the services and the government sometimes ends up on the hook when these companies fail.

To be completely honest, I can't see any way that this would A) be allowed to operate as a legal business, or B) not face some catastrophic failure down the line that actually hurts real people.

<comment><USER3> One late night thought: something that could come out of this that is peer-to- peer, loosely interpreted, would be to have online peer groups to pool together resources to get better insurance rates, basically create your own social network group plan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sounds like what Zopa is doing with peer to peer lending.

As long as there is a central clearing organization that guarantees the payoff and assuming this p2p model results in better rates, I don't see why it wouldn't take off.

The execution would be a major hurdle though.</comment>


Money Horror - <AUTHOR> https://oltdaniel.at/2020/money-horror.html <comment><USER2> "Yes transactions are paused on the weekend. Thats like google would do a break on the weekend."

This is correct. The correct response to payment and settlement "pauses" for silly things like weekends and holidays is derision. Contempt. Ridicule.

These settlement timelines are based _literally on horse and buggy schedules_ from the 1800s. They have no place in our modern workflow.

<comment><USER3> I feel like there's an argument to be made for having an actual human monitoring large transactions. If you're trying to take out a $600,000 mortgage at 3 AM on a Sunday, that probably shouldn't go through, or at the very least have some human verification. Humans tend to work 9-5 Monday to Friday

<comment><USER4> Surely anomaly detection is better done by a machine?

I guess there's a certain level of human "intuition" about these things but is this not what most banks anti-fraud systems do already?

<comment><USER3> I imagine the problem with this is it becomes a game-able system if it's purely automated. Sort of like the stereotype in Law and Order where they always pay hitmen $9,999 because "the IRS only monitors transfers over 10k."

<comment><USER5> On the other hand, maybe this is a kind of perverse benefit of opaque ML systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I once tried to rent a car at an airport rental car place while my car was in the shop. They wouldn't let me do it without a credit card. They wouldn't accept my debit card, they said, unless I had flown in (despite that my card can be ran as a credit card).

Lyft happily accepted my debit card and probably cost less in the end anyway.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a bit "don't do that, then"; almost all the vital things take debit cards, including through contactless.

It would certainly be nice to have something like Vipps in more countries; EU Faster Payments is getting there but not quite as usable. And it's 24-hour.

For any of the peer-to-peer solutions, you _have_ to consider the fraud problems. The problem with micropayments is microfraud.

<comment><USER8> One of the most surprising experiences of my most recent trip to the USA (18 months ago) was how _few_ places seemed to cope with cards — and that those which did, mostly still used the magnetic stripe.

The experience showed me why Apple Pay and Google Pay were considered worth developing, or using. The only places which could do contactless payment with my card could also do it with my smartphone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Only with a credit card. I am a student, I have no real world use for this kind of card"

Yes you do, that vending machine you're standing in front of

<comment><USER10> You feel the need to take out a short-term loan for your soda purchase?

The fact that a debit card isn't considered as good as (and further, that it's not assumed to be better than) a credit card is yet another bit of money horror.

<comment><USER11> The way the credit card system is setup is what it is. If you know what you are doing you can take advantage of it.

One should almost never use a debit card, as if it gets compromised the money comes directly out of your account and the banks don't have much incentive to help too much.

With a credit card, that stolen money belongs to the bank, and therefore they have a big incentive to get it back, so using this kind of card allows you to wield the power of a large company for your benefit. As long as you pay off the full bill every month, you are getting this protection for free.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps this is regional thing, but in my country I get exact same level of protection for both credit and debit cards. Regulatory pressure can be useful at times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > we have an vending machine where you can pay with a credit card

> I have no real world use for this kind of card

Seems to me that he does.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. But I don't pay 2€ per month for a credit card from my local bank to buy stuff from a vending machine. The overall point is, that I have not enough use cases to make resonable use of it in the real world over my current free debit card.

<comment><USER14> In the US, many, if not most, credit cards don't charge a monthly fee. Is it different in the EU?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have not many experiences as I am 19 and haven't switche banks, but my current bank requires a fee. See [https://www.lzo.com/de/home/privatkunden/kreditkarte.html](https://www.lzo.com/de/home/privatkunden/kreditkarte.html)

<comment><USER15> INGDiba and Comdirect both offer free credit cards. Probably many more banks do as well.

<comment><USER16> Doesn't seem to be the case for ING:

[https://www.ing.nl/particulier/betalen/creditcards/index.htm...](https://www.ing.nl/particulier/betalen/creditcards/index.html)

Comdirect does, but he is in the Netherlands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> To be honest, I always kind of lol at these kinds of rants. Wishing for the "one true payment system" is like thinking that everyone will switch over to speaking Esperanto in the near future. NEVER going to happen.

Also, many of his gripes seem ridiculous. I don't know if the situation is different in Europe, but in the US I think pretty much everyone should have a credit card. You can use a secured card if you have bad credit, and most debit cards in the US can be swiped as a credit card. All of his non-existent problems seem like they could be fixed by getting a credit card. Credit cards also have better fraud protection, let you build credit, and usually have better rewards for consumers. There is virtually no difference in privacy benefits between credit and debit cards.

<comment><USER6> Many people have aversion to actual credit cards because most middle-to-lower- class families have stories of family members going into financial ruin, exacerbated by or ending with credit card debt.

"Just be responsible with your credit cards" is an easy mantra to live by if you are financially privileged.

<comment><USER18> The only financial privilege needed to use a credit card safely and responsibly is the discipline to not spend more than one can pay when the statement arrives. It's nothing more than self control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This makes me glad to live in the UK, where it seems to me we might just have the best payments industry in the world.

\\* Faster (instant) payments 24/7.

\\* All purchase transactions are generally assumed to be debit card, credit cards are never required and very much optional (I don't have a credit card)

\\* Contactless payments are instant, easy and completely standard, everything from the corner shop upward has them. You don't need your PIN for less than £30 (£45 quid from next week).

\\* A banking industry that is quick to refund anything from any fraud without asking, which makes for a low case of fraud because they pro-actively block odd transactions.

\\* Up to £75k insured per bank

I've often heard stories about payments that I just can't relate to because it seems our payment industry is so good. We have no need for bitcoin and the trendy start-ups don't even gain much traction because the banks own apps are normally just as good anyway.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think most day-to-day problems are easily solved by just getting a credit card, there are lots of no-fee cards that pretty much anyone can get. They work everywhere, and have fraud protection (edit: In North America at least).

For me, the biggest problem is trying to move large amounts of money around, especially across borders. It took me like 3 phone calls and a trip to the bank to figure out how to move my money from my US bank account to my Canadian bank account without having to pay an absurd $40 wire fee. And of course currency conversion is a pain as well - if you are converting a large amount of money you either pay a tonne of fees through the bank, pay a fairly large amount of fees (~1%) through something like Transferwise, or pay no fees by going through the hastle of Norberts Gambit.

</comment><comment><USER21> I feel his pain.

I emigrated to Canada from Australia, and it was exceptionally hard for me to get a credit card. Apparently no credit rating is the same as the very worst credit rating. It also took time to get paperwork like a drivers license and SIN number (a bit like an SSN), and without those there was no chance. I had to go a few years without one, and the number of things I couldn't do without one was immensely frustrating.

Visa debit sounds great, but I find it doesn't work for a _ton_ of transactions that want a credit card.

In the end I had to put $1000 into a special locked-in account that I couldn't touch before the bank would issue me a $1000 credit card.

</comment><comment><USER4> Would it be correct to assume the vending machine only accepts credit as it likely doesn't have a direct connection to a banking system to authorize the payments at time of purchase?

I seem to remember credit being a requirement for making purchases on planes for this same reason.

I'm curious because I live in the UK and pretty much all terminals here accept debit cards, although I think the UK in general has been a bit ahead in terms of payment standards (chip & pin, contactless etc.)

<comment><USER16> The author (who seems to use his cards in Germany) is most likely confused. The problem is not with debit cards vs. credit cards. Every terminal I've seen in Austria and Germany supports both (but see below). The problem is that Austrians, Germans, and perhaps other EU countries think that Mastercard/Visa means credit card, and Maestro/Giro/whatever means debit card. This is exacerbated by the fact that until very recently you couldn't even get a Mastercard/Visa debit card in Austria (1).

These terminals support Mastercard/Visa cards, plus more recently contactless. Mastercard debit cards certainly work.

Btw, if you are an american visiting these countries, and you want to pay with a debit card, when the cashier asks if you pay with a debit or a credit card, answer credit card. They don't care whether it's credit vs. debit, they need to know if it's Mastercard/Visa or the local crap card, to push the correct button on the PoS. If you answer debit, it will NOT work.

1\. Austria recently started replacing Maestro cards with Mastercard debit cards... but they seem to be some kind of funny Mastercard cards, not "real" enough for these terminals (except in contactless mode)... But at least you can pay for your plane ticket.

<comment><USER4> He specifically mentions that he's in the Netherlands in the article.

And based on the writing in the "banking standards" paragraph it appears he understands the difference between debit / credit cards and that banking network they operate on doesn't determine the type of finance they provide

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > _we have an vending machine where you can pay with a credit card or cash. > Well, there is the issue already. Only with a credit card. I am a student, I > have no real world use for this kind of card_

I think you've just proven that you have at least one real-world use. It may still not be worth the bother, though.

</comment><comment><USER23> Using Bitcoin as a settlement layer has enabled services to crop up that provide interesting crosswalks of other payment layers, see [https://twitter.com/ln_strike](https://twitter.com/ln_strike)

<comment><USER17> Bitcoin is probably the worst settlement layer there is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I like the optimism of imagining, in April of 2020, that the mild inconveniences of various payment systems will continue to qualify as "money horror"!

</comment><comment><USER25> There is just one thing, that he has forgot about it. He feeds a huge survailance capitalism machine with his data. The horror is not where he envisions, the horror is in, f.i. google tracking all his expenses.

Not that they know who are your contacts (android contacts synced, gmail contacts, images uploaded,...), where you surf (googletags, google analytics), what you search (google search), what software you use (google play, google spyware framework,...), now they also know where you spend your money.

Now this is real horror.

</comment><comment><USER26> Use a stable coin... USDC if you are worried about regulations and risk.</comment>


Automatically pause recurring subscription for inactive users - <AUTHOR> https://levels.io/subscriptions/ <comment><USER2> Noble thought, but I don't think it's that simple. When users aren't using a service, in most cases, there are still resources being used. I'm thinking of data/file storage and infrastructure to provide reliable availability, security, and backups. Perhaps in some cases it may make sense, but certainly not most.</comment>


ZFS tutorial part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://flux.org.uk/howto/solaris/zfs_tutorial_01

<comment><USER2> When could Sun at last make ZFS available on Linux? Stuck on license is stupid or intentional.

<comment><USER3> Seconded. I am waiting for the day that linux has something comparable or gets over its license mania.

<comment><USER4> That license "mania" is important. Just because it restricts you from doing certain things you wish you could doesn't mean the license itself is wrong.

RMS once commented that he used OSS not because its better _right now_ , but that by using it (and of course, supporting its development), OSS would be better _someday_.

I guess if you're a startup and trying to be lean and agile and pragmatic, it kind of sucks, but as a human being, who gets to make decisions where one don't need to optimize for ROI, I think its important to recognize what this is: an opportunity. Improve existing tools, maybe help convince Sun to change their license, learn BSD, any of a number of options.

This isn't because Linux is a license nazi or anything. GNU (and with it, Linux) exists for a number of reasons, but I think at least some of the people working on it push it because of the way the license operates.

In short: feature, not a bug.

(PS: this isn't an attack on you; I'm just kind of frustrated that people always have this complaint about ZFS. Sun made ZFS, and open sourced it out of their own good graces. Linus and hundreds and thousands of other people made Linux, and distribute that source out of their own good graces. This isn't a "well why don't you write a patch" rant, as much as it is licenses and laws and all that boring stuff exists for a very important reason, and its important to be mindful of the effects it has on you as a human and as a programmer. If you don't like the way it works, please try to participate in the democratic process and make your voice heard through other means as well.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm wondering if anybody here at HN is using ZFS for a file server (and pretty much nothing else). Like many others, I'm so impressed with ZFS, but otherwise have little incentive to switch over the rest of my computing life from Linux to (Open)Solaris. However, ZFS is so cool, I have many "appliance" uses in mind, from real business-y apps, to simple home networked storage. Anybody making frankenstacks out there with Linux and ZFS?

<comment><USER3> You can still use ZFS on linux using fuse so unless you want to boot off of it, you should be able to use it for any file server needs when it becomes stable.

A better option would be using freeBSD with ZFS. FreeBSD has much better support for ZFS as they don't care about the licensing issue (though the support is still experimental). Since freeBSD is (in the marginal case) more stable and secure than linux, it would make more sense for a home server anyway.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the fuse info. (Point for you!) I didn't know about that. As for FreeBSD... I actually know OpenSolaris better than FreeBSD, so if I left Linux altogether, I'd probably just use it. I guess I'm especially curious about people who are using standalone (Open)Solaris ZFS fileservers, and how they're accessing it from non Solaris OS's.

<comment><USER4> Caveat: FUSE is very slow for ZFS. Use it only to check out the features, but if you run it (hypothetically) on something important, be mindful of the limitations.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


If Lennon & McCartney designed an app... - <AUTHOR> http://www.jonathansteiman.com/1/post/2013/03/spottahs-redesign-dissected.html

<comment><USER2> When I read stuff like this I often think that people just don't understand what the Beatles did — and the Beatles were more than Lennon & McCartney, but two other band mates and an entire team behind them who were themselves talented. But to get into Beatles territory you have to have spent a few years at the top of your field, and then create a breakthrough product that redefines the field (in their case it was the concept album). So yes this case study of a redesign (really a facelift) looks good, but it hardly redefines the medium.</comment>


Walden, by Henry David Thoreau - <AUTHOR> http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden1a.html

<comment><USER2> I love _Walden_ , and whenever I'm stuck in yet another time sucking corporate meeting I dream of going off, building my own cabin, and living alone for a bit (see this cautionary tale, though: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_wild>).

My esteem for the self sufficiency of Thoreau, as described there, was just a bit dented though, when I learned that every week he would take his laundry to his mom and sisters to have them washed ([http://books.google.com/books?id=_73o98V6s7cC&pg=PR20...](http://books.google.com/books?id=_73o98V6s7cC&pg=PR20&lpg=PR20&dq=thoreau+laundry+sister&source=bl&ots=DV5KoCiVL5&sig=i0VuuvTFn0VhzRKcwfZce- qNfTE&hl=en&ei=GgzATcvZN-P50gGq3vGuBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false)).

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! I never knew that about his laundry. I imagine the attitude was different then. The idea of a grown man asking his mother and sisters to do his laundry nowadays seems downright pathetic.

But yes, I love Walden too. Often, I'll use parts of it as placeholder text. I feel like it's good to remind myself that my work has no point if I am not able to be cultivate tranquility and contentedness now, with what I have, and that it does no good to turn into the kind of person he describes: "The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor. They have no friend Iolaus to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra's head, but as soon as one head is crushed, two spring up."</comment></comment>


Hacker Finances: Growth, Value and Dividend Stocks - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@DavisJames/hacker-finances-growth-value-and-income-stocks-e7e28bc6b4e8 <comment><USER2> People like Paul Graham and Peter Thiel have deep insights into several industries, but sadly adding "Hacker" into the title does not give the author those same mental faculties.

This is clearly written by an amateur and his advice is of little value. Example from article: "I never bought an option, and I don't feel like I've missed anything important."

My protip: if you don't know what you're doing, get an index fund. Even people on Wall Street have trouble beating the market every year, so unless you are applying deep, specialized, and uncommon industry knowledge to specific companies, your chances are low.</comment>


Why are American cars seemingly less reliable than Japanese cars? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Why-are-American-cars-seemingly-less-reliable-than-Japanese-cars?share=1 <comment><USER2> I have great admiration for Toyota.

I suspect there are two related reasons:

The first is marginal improvements. Here's a quote from the New Yorker article.

Toyota implements a million new ideas a year, and most of them come from ordinary workers. (Japanese companies get a hundred times as many suggestions from their workers as U.S. companies do.) Most of these ideas are small—making parts on a shelf easier to reach, say—and not all of them work. But cumulatively, every day, Toyota knows a little more, and does things a little better, than it did the day before.

This sounds like to me, an example of Linus's Law: many eyes make all bugs shallow. To put it prosaically, the fuck-up rate will be lower because the gap between expectations and reality is closer.

The second part is with respect to automation. I suspect one of Toyota's secrets is to deliberately introduce redundant workers into processes that are normally fully automated.

This comes out of an observation from the father of economics; that men and women observing a system intimately will gradually conceive of ideas to improve it. A robot or AI cannot do this. They could probably do it if an AGI solved the frame problem but to date that is science fiction.

The net affect of this is that Toyota is smarter than GM on reliability. Of course in a world with rapidly rising salaries Toyota's reliability may lose out over flashier innovations. For now though, it is the King.</comment>


Self-Driving Car Startup Voyage Brings on Ex-Tesla, Cruise and Uber Exec as CTO - sahin-boydas https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/19/self-driving-car-startup-voyage-brings-on-ex-tesla-cruise-and-uber-exec-as-cto/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello everyone! @olivercameron, CEO of Voyage here.

Drew is currently busy at our Testing Grounds shipping a new release, but if there's any Voyage or self-driving car related questions I can answer, I'd love to hear em'!

My previous life was at Udacity, where I spent 4 years working on their self- driving car and machine learning curriculum. I learned a ton from working with Sebastian Thrun and the rest of the Udacity team.

<comment><USER2> Hi Oliver,

Thanks for taking questions. Few questions:

1) What online resources do you recommend for someone that wants to go from beginner to skilled in the field of self-driving cars? Is there a sequence of courses that you could recommend?

2) What important concepts should this self-learner hone in on as they learn?

3) How can someone that does 1) (and has projects) break into the self-driving cars career?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello! Great questions.

1) If you already have a good grasp of Python, I always advise to start with the AI for Robotics MOOC at Udacity, which is my favorite class of all time. Once that's done, I'd take a look at their Deep Learning classes and the Self- Driving Car Nanodegree.

2) I think it's crucial to get to grips with how the whole stack works, so I always advise to get to grips with a middleware like ROS. Also, don't be afraid to dabble in algorithms (think problems in motion planning, computer vision, etc.)

3) The traditional programs (think PhD programs) create a lot of specialists focused on a single domain, but the industry is in dire need of more generalists. An engineer who is able to dive into any part of the stack is a huge value-add!

<comment><USER2> Great answer, thank you! I will look into those courses and dig deep into the algorithms/stack.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ping me when you're ready to start a job search in the space :) firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER3> Where is your engineering team located? I have a friend who might be interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are based in Palo Alto, CA. We are also open to remote work for the right person! Please refer to email@example.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a reasonable business model. But their self driving doesn't really work reliably yet.[1] Their "deployment" in San Jose is three cars, max speed 25MPH, with a "safety driver" on board. Now they've hired people from the "fake it 'til you make it" self driving projects. Not a good sign.

This is similar to what Local Motors and Navya, which make minibus-sized driverless vehicles, are doing - the area and routes are very well known, but there may be some intrusions into the driving lane. Nobody has this working well enough for an airport parking lot shuttle yet.

It's too bad Waymo didn't continue with the Google mini-car. They could probably make this work. It's not as hard at 25MPH, because stopping solves most problems and sensor range is more than sufficient.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/technology/driverless- car...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/technology/driverless-cars- testing.html?smid=pl-share)

<comment><AUTHOR> Come for a ride (email@example.com)! I think you might be impressed with where our technology is. It's really quite good. A lot has happened since August 2017.

We're heavily focused on a retirement city in Florida (125,000 residents on 750 miles of road) and on our G2 vehicle[1]. We recently signed a deal with Enterprise to commercially lease many, many more vehicles than our three initial prototype G1 vehicles.

1\. [https://news.voyage.auto/introducing-the- voyage-g2-autonomou...](https://news.voyage.auto/introducing-the- voyage-g2-autonomous-vehicle-5e15cca399b5)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not necessarily a bad thing, but it seems that guy is always looking for his next job. Good luck keeping him on board for any significant amount of time. Although maybe he already ran out of self-driving-vehicle startups to work at.

<comment><USER6> I was just thinking this, but it seems his departure from Cruise coincided with the GM acquisition, and the transition to Uber from Otto probably happened because Uber acquired Otto. The primary job changes then are from Tesla to Otto and now from Uber to Voyage.

<comment><USER7> Why didn't he stay on at GM if he was good/critical? Do not acquiring companies want to keep at the good people, not let them all leave immediately after acquisition?

<comment><USER8> Lots of good people want to leave after an acquisition. Working for a fast- paced innovative startup is a very different proposition than working for GM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very impressed with some of Voyage's recent hires. A question for @olivercameron,

What makes Voyage different? From what I understand, you pick canonical routes inside private communities. Let's assume demand on these routes are high enough, and there are enough private communities to make a significant market. What prevents Google from coming in and mapping the area in a week and run you out of business? Let's say, hypothetically, I'm a self driving car engineer, why would I pick Voyage over other big players who have a lot more capital and much bigger team with a lot more people like Drew Gray?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello!

 _> What makes Voyage different?_

We are going to market with autonomous vehicles in a very different way, focusing on large private cities first and foremost. We intend The Villages, Florida to be the first (retirement) city that's traversable end-to-end (all 750 miles of road) in an autonomous vehicle.

We'll eventually make the leap to public cities, and it will feel gradual when it does happen.

We think about our technology quite differently, leaning on lots of partners for the infrastructure (mapping, simulation, sensors, tele-operation, middleware, and more) behind the scenes. This enforces a real focus on the un- solved autonomous algorithms.

We'll also be sharing later this year a project we're in the middle of that's dramatically different technologically to what we've seen elsewhere, utilizing the community itself to make a leap in autonomous performance.

 _> From what I understand, you pick canonical routes inside private communities._

We design our autonomous systems to traverse _any_ point-to-point route within an entire private (retirement) city. We intentionally don't just focus on a single, shuttle-like route. It turns out that pretty much any route in a place like The Villages is far less complex than other city-like environments, but that the business opportunity is just as large.

 _> What prevents Google from coming in and mapping the area in a week and run you out of business?_

Voyage has exclusivity clauses in our agreements with our communities, where we also grant the community a slice of Voyage in the form of equity. Contracts are unfortunately meant to be broken, which means that we put a lot of effort into making sure relationships with these locations are great. We frequently host Town Halls and make sure the community is heard. This is crucial.

 _> I'm a self driving car engineer, why would I pick Voyage over other big players who have a lot more capital and much bigger team with a lot more people like Drew Gray?_

It's a lot of fun here. Contrary to the hype, there's relatively few full- stack self-driving car startups at the Series A level. We believe our people, our technology, and go-to-market to be the best of that group.

Most importantly, when searching for new Voyage team members, we don't optimize for specific degrees or backgrounds. One of our greatest strengths is the team we've built with that philosophy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oliver, since the Udacity days I was really looking forward to a player in the field that was serious about open source and open data.

For all the gripes I have with Comma AI, they have been the only ones consistently sharing progress with the public.

For people in medium income countries like myself avoiding a monopoly from Google is very important for the next 10-20 years.

Does Voyage plan to share some of it's progress with the community on a liberal license?

</comment><comment><USER11> Congrats! Here's an algorithm to predict next Voyage hires: 1\. Look at who was in the videos for Self-Driving Car nanodegree 2\. They will eventually hire them :) 3\. ... 4\. Profit

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> @olivercameron

Hi Oliver,

Udacity SDC alum here. Are there plans in the pipeline to open a subdivision on the East coast? I am super interested applying my education in new career opportunities but self driving car related jobs are tough to find near NYC.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately not just yet, but we are open to remote work for the right folks. Ping me! firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment> uai-philip Hi Oliver, you probably have huge amounts of raw data and annotated datasets to train your algorithms. 2 questions:

1) How do you decide what you annotate and what not?

2) How do you manage your datasets infrastructure-wise (where and how is the data hosted, what software do you use to access and filter it, ...)</comment>


Ask HN: How can we make sure the web survives societal collapse? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Create an archive of it, save the data based on dates. Scrub the web and scrape the sites. Some day in the future there will be storage large enough to hold the whole Internet Archive for viewing.

Sort of what: [http://archive.org](http://archive.org) does.

Video games that use servers will have to have open source versions written to support the old games. So that anyone can run a server for them.

For example Avengers Alliance on Facebook is dead. Everyone who paid into it for extra gold, hero skins, weapons, etc have nothing now. Some people are trying to rewrite the game for a local play.</comment>


How Jonathan's Card Really Works - <AUTHOR> http://www.standingdog.com/blog/how-jonathans-card-really-works-a-very-caffeinated-social-experiment/

<comment><USER2> This is how it really worked: [http://www.coffeestrategies.com/2011/08/08/starbucks-and- the...](http://www.coffeestrategies.com/2011/08/08/starbucks-and-the- starkbucks-jonathan-card-viral-marketing-campaign)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There's nothing like free coffee.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fun, cool idea.</comment>


How Much is Traffic Affected by Being in TechCrunch? - <AUTHOR> http://feefighters.com/blog/techcrunch-traffic/

<comment><USER2> The main issue is that they publish so much. 8 stories in the past hour. I had to remove TC from my feed reader for this very reason. Even those who still follow it via feed, are mostly skimming the headlines at this point.

What they are offering, traffic wise, is literally 15 minutes of fame.

<comment><USER3> It is more than 15 minutes of fame because that blog post about a company will come up on google on the front page when someone searches for the company. Being on techcrunch can give you long tail traffic and a bump in being viewed as "established". The comments in the thread are making it read like getting on techcrunch isn't worth anything at all.

<comment><USER2> It's absolutely worth to be on TC, for many reasons. No dispute about that.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I think there are many, many great reasons to announce news on TechCrunch. This post was merely meant to provide folks with a data point regarding how much traffic one site experienced from different types of announcements on TC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Traffic from TechCrunch might crash your server (if you've got a cheap VPS) but it won't pay your bills.

I used to feel bad that TechCrunch ignored me, but then I realized that I need 20 times as much traffic as I could get from TechCrunch ~every~ day to be profitable. Therefore, getting into TechCrunch just isn't an important part of my marketing plan.

<comment><USER6> This comment really puts thing into perspective for me. Getting onto sites like TechCrunch and the like is useful for getting initial exposure, but it's no replacement for building a consistent user base.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The foolish popover "SHARE" thing makes the lower half of the article unreadable on an iPhone. That's pretty annoying.

</comment><comment><USER8> the traffic value of being on techcrunch has really been going downhill...they are putting out so many stories, you only get a few hours of exposure, before you end up on page 2.

the real value of course is in other things...but still, high traffic numbers didn't hurt

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting to see that HN is higher than TechCrunch for the Samurai launch.

</comment><comment><USER10> It would be interesting to know how much of the traffic is on the site for only a few seconds, how many of the visitors just bounce off without reading anything.

</comment><comment><USER11> those are some really surprisingly low numbers.. (at least to me) i always thought them to be at least in hundred thousands.. not couple thousand..

</comment><comment><USER12> Enough for TechCrunch to showcase the investments of those that are/used to be affiliated with it without full disclosure.

</comment><comment><USER13> For reference sake, the day BEFORE the most recent techcrunch article referenced, we had 11,975 unique visitors, ~5k of which were from HackerNews.

Given the traffic growth in HN and dilution in TC, for certain products, like Samurai (<http://samurai.feefighters.com>) targetted towards a developer audience, HackerNews is the new TechCrunch (for traffic). Some might say the new Slashdot, but more business-y.</comment>


Amazon hires goats to landscape their Japanese office - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2013/07/amazon-hires-goats-for-japanese-office-landscaping.html

<comment><USER2> I want to say this is a relatively common practice. Kudzu is an invasive species in most of the southeast United States that spreads along roadside. We got rid of a lot if in Tallahassee, FL by using goats. I don't remember the details but there was a single pack of goats that were regularly moving throughout the city.</comment>


We're F*cked, It's Over. Or Is It? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@michalis_gk/were-f-cked-it-s-over-or-is-it-5abe1432471d#.i16epxlci <comment><USER2> a master class on start-ups--really fine writing.</comment>


J.D. Salinger, Unbound - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/books/jd-salinger-ny-public-library-exhibit.html <comment><USER2> JD Salinger wrote the one book that transformed my life, and to some degree still guides how I live my life today, even in my near-50s.

That said, I tried reading his other books and as far as I can tell, he was a one hit wonder, so the deep fascination with him is strange to me.

<comment><USER3> Which book?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://web.archive.org/web/20191021001623/https://www.nytim...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191021001623/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/books/jd- salinger-ny-public-library-exhibit.html)

[http://archive.is/FxU11](http://archive.is/FxU11)

<comment><USER5> this link does not help me read the article as it still requires a ny times account. Thank you for posting it though as I was at least able to read the opening line.

<comment><USER6> Forget Me for Chrome works well for limited-reads-per-month sites like this. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/forget-me-clean- hi...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/forget-me-clean- history-c/gekpdemielcmiiiackmeoppdgaggjgda)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems so strange to have such a large exhibit when he was so private. The family photos are wonderful and the entire exhibit seems lovely. It would be incredible to read through the spiritual journals mentioned in the article.</comment>


China to Purge Foreign Technology and Replace with Homegrown Suppliers - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-17/china-said-to-plan-sweeping-shift-from-foreign-technology-to-own.html

<comment><USER2> Part of the plan is to make it easier for China to spy on its citizens and local companies. Because China will much easier integrate it's local eavesdropping plans into the technology, this will give an opportunity for other countries, using local spies, to piggyback on the spying technology the China uses on his own citizens and companies.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is just an rational act. With NSA there any country should be aware of their security while using something developed by another country...

<comment><USER4> Absolutely. If the situation were reversed we would do the exact same thing and we would celebrate it as a wonderful idea (although it would be cast as 'stimulating the national economy', since citizens here can't participate in international policy).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I'm visiting Silicon Valley. Where should I hang out, who should I meet? - <AUTHOR>

i'm winding down work on my second startup on the east coast. i'm thinking of giving san francisco and silicon valley a try. i'll be out there for say 4 weeks very soon to see if i want to move there.
in cambridge i'm connected with various hacker spaces and technology activities, a great cooperative living space and excellent salamander wrestling, roller sports and climbing adventures.
i'd love to get started on similar connections out west:

co-working and co-living spaces (hippy and/or technology centric)

-> is it ok to couch surf a few nights during my visit?

technology hangouts, events, groups

interesting people and companies (yes i am looking for a job)

outdoor fun invitations, be it climbing, slacklining, kiting or getting around on a bike or blades

 if you have any recommendations or connections please let me know. my email and resume are in my profile.
thanks hn! <comment><USER2> Drive down Sand Hill road from Hwy 280 to Stanford; check out the VC buildings along the way. Audit some classes in Stanford. Just walk in. The lecture halls are huge and no one will notice. The etl.stanford.edu has guest speaker every week.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Googleplex is fun to visit, if you know (or meet) someone who works there.</comment>


Show HN: New unix utility "when" - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/apgwoz/when

<comment><AUTHOR> I've so far only tested this on OS X, and have mostly used it with the `-t` mode to have it notify me (via "say") when ssh succeeds on a CloudFormation spawned AWS instance.

</comment><comment><USER2> This could be quite handy as need to do this sort of thing surprisingly often and usually resort to a shell script one-liner like this:

        while true; do echo "hello world"; sleep 3; done

While that above code is pretty trivial to type, having a utility to this would be a great time saver for the lazy sysadmin :)

edit: someone else just posted about _watch_ [1], never knew that existed before today. You learn something new every day :D

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6888640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6888640)

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the difference between this and the bash '&&' operator? Except for the timebomb flag, I don't really see any difference. Please correct me if I got this wrong.

The '&&' operator, as in _which ruby && echo 'found it!'_, triggers the second command, if the exit code of the first one is 0.

Also good to note, the '||' operator triggers the second command only if the exit code of the first one is different than 0. As in _which ruby123456 || echo 'could not find it!'_.

EDIT: typo.

<comment><USER4> It looks like if the first parameter fails, then it is re-run until it succeeds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is the difference between this and 'while true; do cmd1 && cmd2; sleep 1; done'

<comment><USER6> It looks to me more like

      until cmd1 ; do sleep 1 ; done ; cmd2

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. But, see the -t flag, which is the real reason I wrote it. -t is a non-trivial script (if it's even possible in shell).

It defaults to the until behavior because it's most common.

<comment><USER7> Could you give some more examples of how you use `-t` ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I went to go add a Homebrew formula for the name 'when', but it seems to be taken by this command-line calendar app: [http://www.lightandmatter.com/when/when.html](http://www.lightandmatter.com/when/when.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I struggled with a name. This morning in the shower, I liked "trip" but, I'm not sure I'll change it--certainly not because of homebrew.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> watch -n 1 foo && echo "why does this exist?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. See the -t flag. That's the reason I wrote it.</comment></comment>


Introduction to Lucee Code Samples - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rodionbykov/lucee-minute <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a guy who reacted to the comments on HN on the front page story a week ago on Lucee, which is an open source version of Adobe's ColdFusion language.</comment>


Selling a Working Web 2.0 Website - Where to Sell? - <AUTHOR>

Where is the best place to sell a fully-functional, web 2.0 website? eBay seems like it won't attract the right audience and I really cannot tell the difference between the myriad of SitePoint-like sites. What has worked well in the past? <comment><USER3> We sold kiko.com on ebay for $250k.

If you can drum up enough coverage, it works quite well. The key is getting coverage - the more people know it's up for sale, the more people will bid.

<comment><USER4> Just curious - did you guys put a reserve on that auction?

<comment><USER3> $50,000. It was met very early, but the price went from $70k to $250k in the last 2 hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Selling a website and domain... it is hard to get a good valuation out of it. It is a lot like a hot rod where a person has put in thousands of hours but when they want to sell there car no one will give them enough to justify all of those hours.

Try this site <http://www.codango.com/>, you can list it for license there. This way you can license it over and over again I believe you will make more this way then a one time sale. If you get a good base of people who have licensed it, you can create upgrades for another thing to sell.

</comment><comment><USER6> www.sitepoint.com

forums.digitalpoint.com

Those are two of the biggest out there for selling developed sites.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for chiming in everyone. Hacker News continues to impress me - <USER2> community feedback is superb.

It is not beRecruited.com (<http://www.berecruited.com>) - which is doing quite well!!

It's a side project that I worked on called PopChatter (<http://www.popchatter.com>) - which was more of an experiment in Ruby on Rails than anything else. I simply don't have enough time these days to grow it and innovate (just not enough time in the day!).

</comment><comment><USER7> Why do you want to sell it?

</comment><comment><USER8> Given the audience here on HN, it would make sense to include the link in your question. This would be the community in which to gain awareness.

</comment><comment><USER9> if its Berecruited.com - i would get TC to blog about it or mashable and drum up some interest. That site has had a lot of coverage,

<comment><USER10> "Would get TC to blog about it"

Good luck with that.

<comment><USER11> Any thoughts on that?

<comment><USER10> Get admitted into YC. Then you'll be on TC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> kiko was sold on ebay for around $250k</comment>


A small, self-governing island may hand over its roads to self-driving cars - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/02/02/a-small-self-governing-island-may-hand-over-its-roads-to-self-driving-cars/ <comment><USER2> They need to allow drones too.</comment>


Needless Crunchtime- run or rough it out? - <AUTHOR>

Startup had non-coding CTO and a Lead Engineer coding in PHP. New CTO (in his 20s.. warning sign #1) joined back in February (this one codes), and the Lead Engineer ended up leaving. I joined ~6 months ago.
The first two envelopes were already opened by the new CTO (previous guy, equipment) when there was simply a lack of interest in investigating the actual issues because "PHP is digusting/stupid, ______ is an idiot.". (keep in mind it took a single guy two years to build the product)
Language choice? Golang. CTO thinks VIM is the one true way and everyone else is a heretic, but everyone on the team except for his buddy from another other startup greatly prefers an IDE. (there's also "80 cols" or the PR gets rejected: warning sign #3)
Original schedule had us starting at the beginning of September and launching at the end of December. Feature requests on the old product moved the start to the middle/end of October. The finish date moved to the end of November. (that didn't happen)
Delivery date has been dictated to be the second Monday in January. CTO is working 11/17 days until then, his buddy 13/17- they're the guys who are (still building) the core of the product in Golang, and are the in-house knowledge resource for how the core product downcasts almost everything to interface{} when fetching from the database.
What particularly concerning is that management at that level didn't/couldn't smell a horrible idea (the rewrite)
Not sure if I should (or any combination of these)
- just put my hours in
- yolo, take off same days as management
- take a bunch of vacation to job hunt over Christmas
- go to the CEO and say something to the effect of "What are you smoking that makes you believe the CTO taking time off during crunch-time is a good idea?" <comment><USER2> Sounds like the new tech leadership is taking the opportunity to scratch a technical itch (learning and building stuff on Golang) rather than giving a crap about the actual business they are helping to build and move forward.

With such an aggressive delivery date, they have already figured out they have no hope of reaching it, so they aren't going to blow their holidays on it. But they aren't telling you (and presumably the rest of the team) because they want to see what you can accomplish.

From here you have a couple options:

1) Get jazzed up about the technology and hitch your wagon to theirs. The project will likely fail spectacularly, but you might learn some skills that will come in handy for your next job.

2) Run, don't walk to your next gig.

My suggestion would be to stick things out through the holidays and start looking for a new gig in January when the job market is usually better. But don't work any more hours than you normally would.

</comment><comment><USER3> I pretty much agree with all your warning signs, so I guess it mostly depends on your love for the product/startup. If you feel compelled and love it, and it is concerning you that this direction is wrong. Which by your account it sure seems to be. Then use the holidays to do some searching, talk to the CEO to feel him out and see where you are in the first week of January. You may find out the CEO is just as confused and dumbfounded as you are, but is trusting the people he hired. Or you may find out that he is a technology chaser and wants to be able to say Golang to whomever asks.

Either way, they aren't overly dedicated to making this happen given their schedule, so I wouldn't bust my ass in this case, but I wouldn't half ass it either. I would give it 100% because it is your reputation that you are protecting here.

Lastly, sometimes we don't see all the details or have all the answers even when the issue looks so clear from our current seat. So asking direct questions without being accusatory or sounding derogatory can really be enlightening. And that new knowledge can go either way of course, but that makes your decision easier.

</comment><comment><USER4> Honestly, just _having_ a CTO in a small startup is a bit of a warning sign. More so if the CTO isn't a founder (in 2+ founder companies, sometimes people get the CTO title just because it's the only C-level title that doesn't have misleading business connotations, so you cut them some slack).

</comment><comment><USER5> If you're unhappy if your job in general, go with the 3rd option (look for something better during the holidays).

If you're only unhappy if the pending deadline and the ensuing chaos, go with the 1st or 2nd option. This depends on how you feel the CEO will react to the deadline not being reached (he could take it out on the people around him or the people who took time off).

If you genuinely care about the company and what its trying to do, go for the risky 4th option. If it doesn't pay off, fallback to 3rd option.

my 2 cents

</comment><comment><USER6> First, I'm really glad that we let new accounts submit stories that don't get autokilled now, because people like 'aretx need them.

Second, you won't have much luck job hunting over Christmas, although you _should_ use it to clear your head and do some passive investigation of the job market.

</comment><comment><USER7> Feel free to contact me. My e-mail is in my profile. There are many good opportunities for devs out there.

I would look for something over the holidays but continue to state your objections.

</comment><comment><USER8> PHP ain't that bad.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Hey, you have this product with some rough edges. Let's smooth them out."</comment></comment>


Looking for designers: good places other than 99 designs or Odesk? - <AUTHOR>

My co-founder and I are looking for a designer to completely re-do the look of our site. I have a pretty specific idea of what I want, but the design is far from "web 2.0" looking. My partner knows code but nothing about design (or where to find them), and I am just as clueless. One entrepreneur I talked to recommended either 99designs or odesk, but I was curious if, in addition to these sites, there are any other good web resources to find designers. <comment><USER2> Dribbble.

Also, <http://www.heynico.com>

;)

</comment><comment><USER3> Dribbble, Behance

<comment><AUTHOR> Just checked them out, very cool sites. Thanks for the advice.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the bibles of Computer Science? - <AUTHOR> I am building out my CS book collection, and I was curious to see if there is a widely accepted group of textbooks that are considered the bibles of different CS fundamentals. For an example:<p>* Brian Kerrigan's "C Programming Language" for C language<p>* W. Richard Steven's "IP/TCP Illustrated" for networking<p>Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Knuth's "The art of computer programming" is definitely the bible of algorithmics: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Computer_Programm...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Computer_Programming)

</comment><comment><USER3> What's your background?

For CS, I'll concur with others on these (for algorithms):

      Introduction to Algorithms, Cormen et al.
      The Art of Computer Programming, Knuth

I'll add:

      Introduction to the Theory of Computation, Sipser

More on the math side, I found this helped me bridge the gap between Calculus (and other continuous maths) and discrete math topics:

      Concrete Mathematics, Knuth et al.

SICP is good, and worth recommending, along with the _Schemer_ series (Little, Seasoned, Reasoned). I have both _The Reasoned Schemer_ and _The Little Prover_ here at my desk. I had intended to work through them on my lunch breaks but, well, that hasn't happened yet. I don't know how much these are "bibles" versus good introductions to their topics, not really reference books.

My library is at home, I'm trying to run through what all I have and would recommend in particular of that collection.

On the practical, software engineering, side:

      Mythical Man Month, Brooks

Fantastic read on real-world experiences on a large-scale project. Every essay in there is worth reading at least twice, and several are worth rereading every year just in case you forgot the lessons.

I am currently wracking my brain to recall the other titles, may edit later.

</comment><comment><USER4> SICP. In addition to being an incredibly illuminating read on programming fundamentals it was also the foundation of a religion on 4chan's old programming board.

<comment><USER5> Would you elaborate?

<comment><USER6> Not OP, but SICP stands for "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs". It is available online; it is generally regarded as one of the great CS books. As for religion, I have no idea what that means.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Mythical Man Month - Fred Brooks

It is amazing how this book can be interpreted as having predicted the necessity of Agile/DevOps long before the tooling was really available to easily enable that methodology.

[https://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Essays-Software- En...](https://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Essays-Software- Engineering/dp/0201006502/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=2MPWMC784KG14MMCTDZN)

<comment><USER8> Brooks' view is much more closely aligned with Boehm's Spiral Model than with Agile. He valued an overarching design that satisfied all stakeholders before construction. He also recommended a top-down approach to iteration, which means prototyping the entire system with each iteration, in successive degrees of refinements. I find that very different than picking features to implement with each sprint. He also found PERT charts to be invaluable, and I can't imagine he would find Kanban boards a sufficient substitute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Introduction to Algorithms (CLRS) - probably the closest you'll get for Algorithms, next to Knuth. It's also updated relatively often to stay cutting edge

[https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/introduction- algorithms](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/introduction-algorithms)

AI, a modern approach (Norvig & Russel) - For classic AI stuff, although nowadays it might fade a bit with all the deep learning advances.

[https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Modern- Approa...](https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Modern- Approach-3rd/dp/0136042597)

While it's not strictly CS, Tufte's Visual Display of Quantitative information should probably be on every programmer's shelf.

[https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Display-Quantitative- Informati...](https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Display-Quantitative- Information/dp/1930824130)

</comment><comment><USER10> These books are all venerable CS standards (AKA bibles) that teach principles well, though probably not the most up-to-date:

"Compilers, Principles, Techniques and Tools", by Aho, Ullman, Sethi, Lam

"Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach", by Russell, Norvig

"Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach", by Patterson, Hennessy

"Computer Networks", by Tannenbaum

"Operating System Concepts", by Silberschatz

<comment><USER11> Aho's compiler was intimidating, but it's one of my favorite experience of the last 5 years. Not approachable, but every neuron you give is rewarded twice.

<comment><USER12> Yes, it is a very complex book, but without any doubt THE BOOK if we are talking about compilers. A must if your want to know how a compiler works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The Pragmatic Programmer from Andrew Hunt. Very informative book. It is a book filled with opinions/tips from experienced programmers, some of which apply and some don't. The ones that do are invaluable.

</comment><comment><USER14> Lisp in Small Pieces (Cambridge University Press, 1996 ISBN 0-521-56247-3; paperback edition (December 4, 2003) ISBN 0-521-54566-8; translated by Kathleen Callaway) is a book by Christian Queinnec on Lisp, Scheme and other related dialects, their interpretation, semantics, and compilation and contains code for 11 interpreters and 2 compilers.

<comment><USER14> oh yeah, this one too:

The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis: Techniques for Experimental Design, Measurement, Simulation, and Modeling

Raj Jain ISBN: 978-0-471-50336-1 720 pages April 1991

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> PAIP: [https://www.amazon.com/Paradigms-Artificial-Intelligence- Pro...](https://www.amazon.com/Paradigms-Artificial-Intelligence-Programming- Studies-ebook/dp/B003VWBY1I/)

While it deals with classical AI techniques, it is worth working through this book. Especially the AI example chapters where Norvig teaches how to go from specification to implementation and iterate over the design to fix problems etc. Backed by Common Lisp which allows this quick iteration by getting out of your way, this book is one way to fall in love with programing.

Warning: Once you are done with this book, be prepared to handle the less powerful systems and I am not implying here CL is the most powerful programming environment.

</comment><comment><USER16> Written by the creator of the language, 1300 pages long and weighing almost 4 pounds:

The C++ Programming Language, 4th Edition

[https://www.amazon.com/C-Programming- Language-4th/dp/0321563...](https://www.amazon.com/C-Programming- Language-4th/dp/0321563840)

</comment><comment><USER17> "Joel on Software". Much like the bible, it's full of parables that can be interpretted in multiple ways, contains a lot of advice that is no longer relevant and contains enough good parts to cherry pick that I can consider myself a spolskyite.

</comment><comment><USER18> The Psychology of Computer Programming by Gerald Weinberg. It considers programming as a human activity and introduces the concept of egoless programming.

<comment><USER11> Interesting, did he coin the egoless term ? does the book speak about "state of flow" or similar ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby

I don't consider it a bible of CS, but it's one of the most playful, imaginative and, essentially, fun, introductory programming books that I've read.

The analogy of the truthiness of a value as an energy or life force that flows through your program, or Ruby's ranges depicted as accordions, are just some examples of the book's approach to visualising some of the aspects of programming that seem so rote after you've used them for a while.

How useful it is to someone learning to program is questionable, as the book's style might get in the way of teaching fundamentals, but it's certainly fun to read as an experienced programmer (imho, of course).

</comment><comment><USER20> Programming Pearls, by Jon Bentley

The Elements of Computing Systems, by Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken

and its accompanying website: [http://www.nand2tetris.org/](http://www.nand2tetris.org/)

</comment><comment><USER21> For Software Engineering I recommend anything by Steve McConnell such as 'Code Complete', 'Software Estimation', and 'Rapid Development'.

</comment><comment><USER22> About 30 years ago, my VW and a thousand dollars of tools, having been stolen and stripped, I left my low budget Malibu bodysurfing, workbench with an oscilloscope, free Lincoln Heights cabin and moved to Berkeley and enrolled in the first UCB extension course for the holy grail (at the time) of learning Unix and C programming. I started building the best library of computer programming books I could buy and about 1/4 of the books mentioned here were my choice then too. My recommendation to you is extend your computer science interest by going to college and mastering the fundamentals and also in your junior and senior year join in on the most interesting academic or scientific programming projects you can find. These days a Degree is required and your employer is hoping to benefit from the esoteric work you did in college.

</comment><comment><USER23> While not a reference book or software engineering book like the rest of the suggestions, I'll throw in Godel, Escher, Bach. It's pretty difficult to explain, but if you're deeply interested in computer science and want a challenging and mind-expanding read, it's an easy recommendation.

<comment><USER24> The author's (Douglas R. Hofstadter) other two books (which kinda form a trilogy) are also great companions:

The Mind's I: Fantasies And Reflections On Self & Soul

I Am a Strange Loop

...and yes, they are all very challenging reads. On the "computer science" perspective, they are definitely worth reading if you are at all interested in machine learning, artificial intelligence, artificial (and actual) neural networks, and how these subjects relate to the "philosophy of mind" and similar related "hard problems" in CS and mathematics.

<comment><USER25> Calling The Mind's I "Hofstadter's" is a bit misleading; he's its co- anthologist. Nevertheless, a great read; it introduced me to Borges which is praise enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Am extremely disappointed that this scene in the movie Hackers has not been referenced:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4U9MI0u2VIE](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4U9MI0u2VIE)

</comment><comment><USER11> What about non-bibles ?

Henderson's FP book: [https://www.amazon.com/Functional-Programming- Application-Im...](https://www.amazon.com/Functional-Programming-Application- Implementation-Henderson/dp/0133315797)

Watson's Lisp: [https://www.amazon.com/Lisp-3rd-Patrick- Winston/dp/020108319...](https://www.amazon.com/Lisp-3rd-Patrick- Winston/dp/0201083191)

</comment><comment><USER27> The examples you give, for me, aren't computer science (TAOCP, SICP), but "pivotal technologies" (to those, I would, for example, add books about Algol, early Unix and git)

You may consider splitting your collection in three parts: those two and software engineering (examples: the mythical man-month, the psychology of computer programming), which itself can be split into a technical and a social part.

Doing that may show gaps in your library/where your interests lie.

</comment><comment><USER28> Might not be full bible level of importance, but if you intend to do any work on Fortran and legacy science codes, "Modern Fortran Explained" by Metcalf, Reid, and Cohen is a must. Better examples and explanations than anything you can find on stack overflow with a focus on f90 (the most commonly accepted flavour) while also discussing the useful parts of 2003.

</comment><comment><USER29> A little unorthodox, and not exactly a bible, but I enjoyed Feynman's Lectures on Computation. His CS chops include administering the computation group (of human computers!) during the Manhattan Project and a little work on the Connection Machine (including, apparently, a new method for computing logarithms).

</comment><comment><USER30> I would say that the words 'science' and 'bible' do not go well together. The books mentioned in the answers are all worth looking at, but they take you only up to the foothills of the discipline and are no substitute for reading widely and working things out on your own.

</comment><comment><USER31> The Dream Machine is good for history and genealogy, much like the real Bible.

Edit: It's more popular to ignore history, but you can find Shannon's information theory, As We May Think, Cybernetics, etc. along with historical context. It might keep you from pretending you have invented the wheel.

<comment><USER32> Do you mean "Dream Machines"? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib/Dream_Machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib/Dream_Machines)

Alan kay listed this on his list of good books: [http://www.squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp](http://www.squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp)

<comment><USER31> The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal

Thanks for that list of books from Alan Kay. He's the one that recommended The Dream Machine to me most recently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Steven Skiena's The Algorithm Design Manual. Especially the "war stories" contained within.

</comment><comment><USER34> Might I add, "The UNIX Programming Environment" by Kernighan and Pike, 1984. Still the best book on how all the tools of the UNIX command line work together for someone new to the shell, culminating in a parser for a small language using lex and yacc. Just saying.

</comment><comment><USER35> The C Programming Language (sometimes referred to as K&R, after its authors' initials)

||

The 23 Gang of Four (GoF) patterns

<comment><USER36> +1 for GoF - still relevant as well despite people moving against "patterns"

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> For the hardware side: "Code" by Charles Petzold.

[https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware- Softw...](https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware- Software/dp/0735611319)

</comment><comment><USER38> Look on Goodreads and Amazon for books with 4.2+ stars (preferrably 4.6+, but those are uncommon) ratings, then filter from there. They need to have a good number of reviews (to suggest they've been read some number of times).

</comment><comment><USER39> For cryptography : bruce schneier's applied cryptography

</comment><comment><USER40> Not CS exactly but for Linux you could do worse than

      Linux Bible 9th Edition by Christopher Negus

</comment><comment><USER41> I would add Clean Code to the list just because the concepts are applicable to many languages

<comment><USER42> I think Code Complete is much better-Clean Code was more about (IIRC, feel free to correct) praising the glory of agile dev than good coding practices in general.

<comment><USER12> Both books are good, and I don't believe Clean Code is praising the glory of agile dev, it talks about technical good practices ... practices that can be applied to any objected oriented language in general, doing agile or waterfall or whatever ... IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> How about Gang of Four? or

The C Programming Language K&R

</comment><comment><USER43> Modern Operating Systems by Tanenbaum

</comment><comment><USER44> Object Thinking by David West.</comment>


How does hard working, overachieving person's day looks like - <AUTHOR> http://jezebel.com/here-is-what-a-hard-working-overachieving-person-s-day-1702915330

<comment><USER2> I apologize that I have not read the linked article.

I am dismayed by the hero worship that is so common these days - "here's how to be an overachiever", "Uber's valuation exponentiates", "Children graduate high school without ever meeting their parents".

It is exceedingly uncommon for only one parent to have a job anymore. Nowadays, if there are two parents in a family, they both work, not to get rich, but in their struggle just to get by.

When I was a kid, unless he was aboard ship or - for a year - stationed in Saigon, my father was always home for supper.

Me, I work seven days a week, quite commonly go for days without sleeping so I can work.

What have we become?

<comment><USER3> > I work seven days a week, quite commonly go for days without sleeping so I > can work.

Jesus. What kind of work do you do, if you don't mind me asking?

<comment><USER2> I would link to it, but I just relocated every URL on my website to [http://www.warplife.com/ethics/reputation.html](http://www.warplife.com/ethics/reputation.html)

I am self-employed. You'd think that would enable me to take all kinds of time off, but it's quite common for the self-employed to work far more than those who hold regular jobs.

I have a whole bunch of different projects going on. Admittedly I would work less if I focussed on just one, but it has always been my nature to pursue many goals at once.

Of most use to you is that I am building a list of every computer employer in the world. This is going very slowly so far, but I am building tools to automate it. I plan to fund it through KickStarter but am still working on the text of my written pitch, and have yet to shoot the video.

When my regular site comes back, have a look at [http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/](http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/)

It is really easy to get overly obsessed with largely unproductively activities, such as analyzing my web server logs every single day. There are times when there is some point to that, but not commonly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You, too, can be an overachiever, so long as you have someone to run personal errands and do your chores, you're rich enough to have quick "outs" for personal emergencies, and you also fall into the small subset of people who function perfectly with 4 hours of sleep, and etc. God help you if you have kids.</comment>