Bootstrap or not? High level pros and cons of using Twitter Bootstrap - <AUTHOR> http://blog.baregit.com/2012/bootstrap-or-not-bootstrap <comment><USER3> Bootstrap is a godsend for the corporate world and the vast majority of industry software shops that don't have huge levels public web exposure. Most of these places don't have the resources to hire dedicated UI specialists with the hottest CSS 3.0 skills, are still forced with IE6 somehow, and end up being designed by devs who liberally use nested tables and iframes like it's 1999.

I assume this dislike for bootstrap comes from those who believe it wants to compete as the de facto UI for anything of large scale or designed for instant sex appeal. Anything on that level will have their CSS highly customized and optimized by their specialized UI staff. I can also assure you, CSS and choice of UI framework is the absolute _least_ of your priorities over business development, marketing, revenue generation, and security holes. Get the product out the door, and see if people actually want it before you worry about them inspecting your page source and find that you've used bootstrap.

<comment><USER4> _I can also assure you, CSS and choice of UI framework is the absolute least of your priorities over business development, marketing, revenue generation, and security holes._

Unless, of course, people find the design of your MVP so utterly boring that they dislike the product entirely. I don't believe that design can be treated as an optional feature, that it's something you can add on later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's what I find interesting:

Take a look at the computer you are reading this on. Mac, PC, Linux, other? Every single program on your machine has a uniform UI. Sure, there might be tweaks here and there and differences in icons, but the UI is consistent. You get on any Mac and things look and work the same way. You get on any PC (save Windows 8!) and everything looks and works the same way.

Has anyone ever said: I am not going to use <insert very useful software tool here> because the UI looks exactly the same as the UI on <insert another common software tool here>? Probably not.

Well, why is it that every site on the 'net has to look and work differently? If form follows function then most sites don't really need to reinvent the wheel. Yes, they need to deal with app-specific paradigms, but that's no different than the difference between, say, Excel, Word, Photoshop, iTunes and Dreamweaver.

Somehow on the desktop we have come to understand that a stable, uniform and well-understood UI is actually useful. While I am not sure that this translates directly into the web, I don't really agree with the idea that lots of sites using Bootstrap is equivalent to the end of the universe as we know it.

Considering how many downright awful sites there are this is probably an absolute gift from the Flying Spaghetti Monster (who's name shall never be uttered in vane).

<comment><USER6> "Every single program on your machine has a uniform UI"

Minesweeper, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Messenger, Word 2010

6 Applications by a single vendor. 6 UIs that are similar (WIMP paradigm et al) but different (UI looks) - just like any 6 websites are similar (links, some forms, 2 or 3 pane layouts, ...) but different (design details).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why are there so many of these debates?

This is really starting to be like php vs. ruby vs. dot net discussions. The end result is it doesn't matter as long as you're comfortable starting and finishing a project with it.

The value Bootstrap brings is to save time. Also, no one really should care what developers think of this as the teams race towards finishing their MVP. Your job is to finish the MVP - that's it!

IF YOUR PAYING CUSTOMERS are bitching at you for making yet another Bootstrap site, then let's come back and debate this. You guys are all focusing on the wrong problem.

<comment><USER8> I think most notable backlashes against Bootstrap came from the designer community. They do have valid points, but one cannot ignore the motives of the designers. Obviously due to Bootstrap, importance of designers at very early startup stage has diminished significantly.

This debate around Bootstrap seems really similar to enterprise web developers who used to use Java and C# complaining about Rails and Django a few years ago.

<comment><USER9> So... if it's a problem with designers not liking bootstraps stale design, why not build templates that use Bootstrap as a base and release them to the public?

I really don't see the issue.

<comment><USER10> Two plugs in a single thread is pushing it, but please see my other comment regarding Bootstrap themes/templates: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3701287>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yesterday me and my girlfriend were looking for a car related service, and we found a site which supplied that service. It was obvious that it was using some kind of generic design template, so both of us got a bit suspicious, and not until we had researched the company for quite a while were we OK with doing business with them. It just didn't feel serious.

I feel the same way with a Bootstrap site that isn't customized at all - <USER2> would hesitate doing business with them, because if you don't have the resources to put a day on at least _customizing_ your design, are you really trustworthy? Of course you can be, and it's not a completely rational feeling, but I would be surprised if I am the only one with that gut reaction.

For minor tools (such as <http://dochub.io>) and other small projects, Twitter Bootstrap is awesome and doesn't even need much customization, but I don't think it's a good idea to use it uncustomized for a business.

<comment><USER12> I know several people on HN who have successful software (SaaS) businesses who will tell you that this just isn't really the case; that the overwhelming majority of your customers for something like car buying aren't going to finger you as a "Bootstrap user" and then think less of you for it.

It's hard not to wonder whether the fact that you're the kind of person who posts on HN doesn't bias your response to sites like this.

One way to get some real data on this would be to ask your friends to ask their nontechnical friends and relatives for a list of sites they actually paid money at, and then take a hard look at how good their designs really are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The problem with Bootstrap is people don't treat it as a framework, they treat it as a theme. If people want to use Boostrap they _can_ and _should_ do custom themes that don't look like the tutorial. But they don't, they include the css/js, set some 'row', 'span4' and are happy with the result, because the navbar, forms and buttons are fancy startupish.

Simple conclusion: take advantage of the technical solutions Bootstrap provides and ffs put some work to make it look at least a bit original and branded.

<comment><USER12> For most people's applications, and in particular for the space of apps for which people pay money, it matters not- one- whit how much different your app looks than Bootstrap's native theme, because Bootstrap's native theme looks better than 80% of all web apps normal people come into contact with.

Different- for- different's- sake is a curse on web developers; it costs more time, more momentum, and more initiative than any other issue I can think of. Get the value working and proven _first_ , then, when people are paying for it, start thinking of how much you'd budget to make your application visually distinctive.

There are exceptions, but they tend to prove the rule.

<comment><USER13> > Bootstrap's native theme looks better than 80% of all web apps normal people > come into contact with

Today. The more people use raw TB the faster that 80% approaches zero and you'll get to my conclusion.

<comment><USER12> You're right; I left out the last part of my sentence, which should have read "... and yet still pay money to".

You will probably not pull off the next Foursquare or Pinterest using Twitter Bootstrap. But: you're not going to pull off the next Foursquare or Pinterest anyways.

So think of it this way: this debate has the question backwards. _If you're doing a startup for which a major risk of your version 1 is that you built it with Bootstrap, you probably picked a bad startup idea_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I use Sass with Bootstrap without a problem. If you're the kind of person that has a hard time moving from one preprocessor to another, consider whether that's a VERY STRONG argument to go with something like Bootstrap, because it solves a lot of other problems that you could lose whole days or weeks to.

<comment><USER14> If you're using Sass with Bootstrap, then you're probably using the compiled version of Bootstrap (i.e. the final .css file.) If that's the case, you're missing out all the LESS mixins and variables that Bootstrap provides.

If you're serious about adopting Bootstrap, you should consider switching to LESS.

The less-rails-boostrap gem makes it easy if you're working on a Rails app. It integrates seamlessy with Rails' asset pipeline, and has a generator for Rails scaffold CSS.

<https://github.com/metaskills/less-rails>

<https://github.com/metaskills/less-rails-bootstrap>

<comment><USER15> You can also use the sass forks of bootstrap (700 watchers)

<https://github.com/jlong/sass-twitter-bootstrap>

<comment><USER14> That's awesome. Glad to hear a Sass port exists.

Out of curiosity, (and assuming you use the sass-twitter-boostrap gem in your projects) do you use any other Sass libraries besides Bootstrap port?

<comment><USER16> I use the Compass library which works great with Bootstrap. The recent Railscast also got me testing out the [Bourbon gem](<https://github.com/thoughtbot/bourbon>) (a similar Sass libary) on a new project along with Bootstrap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It might be a non-issue, but I am concerned about the performance of Bootstrap on older/slower computers as well as mobile devices. The stylesheet is so huge, I assume there has to be some kind of performance penalty somewhere? Or maybe I'm just overly paranoid... thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER18> I wouldn't mind if the pendulum swings a bit towards unique functionality and away from unique aesthetics. A lot of the energy spent on unique look and feel could be better spent on usability and functionality.

</comment><comment><USER15> "I wonder why Less and SASS are not merged in a single project"

I've also wondered this.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think it is a given that you shouldn't use boostrap in it's entirety for a startup. However, using bootstrap for _parts_ of the library is very effective. I'm using the excellent 'Bootstrap-sass-rails' gem, which lets you include all or just parts of bootstrap easily in the Rails asset pipeline. I then get the mixins, forms, type treatments, dropdowns, css reset and more for my project. Without the generic graphical styles.

Also, all of the less is converted to SASS.

Here's the gem if anyone is interested: <https://github.com/yabawock/bootstrap-sass-rails>

</comment><comment><USER20> > Harder to be original. Because we all start with the same base.

That is so not true. What is easy is to use the basic theme to build out a prototype of your app. Customizing will always be harder, but then again, it's been hard to build out a well-designed site since the very beginning.

To say that it's hard because it comes with a default theme is to not understand.

<comment><USER21> The default theme makes it easier not to be original, but I don't see how it makes it harder to be original anywhere.

<comment><USER20> It doesn't. Sounds like there's a lack of imagination in that article or they're alluding to the inevitable result that people who possess neither the skills nor interest in making a visual customization of their site will leave it standing on the default theme, populating the web with a lot of sameness.

If it makes it easier for people to communicate faster, than I'm all for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote the article, so please let me try to reformulate a bit better. When you start with a so complete, consistent and well though base design, it is hard to introduce new _original_ concepts. This is because these new concepts will have to somehow _fit_ nicely with the base design. It is kind of attracting you to simply do incremental improvements not to lose the benefits of the base design.

I am sorry, I am not a designer and not a native English speaker, this makes it a bit harder to formulate this correctly.

<comment><USER20> > I am not a designer

Then why would you even be talking about Bootstrap, let alone criticizing it from a design point of view?

You can take any past, present or future "original" concept and build it with Bootstrap. You do understand that, right? You are not limited to the default theme. If you're lazy, lack talent or interest then yes, your website will look pretty much the same as those of your peers, but then you can only blame yourself, not a CSS framework.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


CSS grid 2: subgrid - <AUTHOR> https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/07/css-grid-2/ <comment><USER2> IMHO W3C should stop churning through ever more complex CSS specs and take a step back to review their goals. At this point, only Chrome will realistically be able to implement CSS Grid Layout Level 2, with FF increasingly becoming a token implementation to satisfy the "two interworking implementations" criterion.</comment>


Richest 1% Is Likely to Control Half of Global Wealth by 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/business/richest-1-percent-likely-to-control-half-of-global-wealth-by-2016-study-finds.html

<comment><USER2> Considering that about 2 billion humans have a negative net wealth due to debt, this is not surprising. If you don't have any debt, you are already richer than the poorest 2 billion humans combined!

For more details why this statistic should not be trusted, see here: [http://www.iea.org.uk/node/9980](http://www.iea.org.uk/node/9980)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8910476](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8910476) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8912298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8912298).

</comment><comment><USER4> The global cutoff for the top 1% in annual income is $34,000. (Not a typo.) Different than wealth, but still revealing.

</comment><comment><USER5> So, who are the 1%:

[http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/04/news/economy/world_richest/](http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/04/news/economy/world_richest/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I always wish in these articles they would single out the top 1% of the 1% - It definitely shows more of the issue since most doctors would be in the top 1%.

When you say "1/100,000th of the population has xx% of the wealth" it showcases the issue at hand in a much clearer view.

<comment><USER7> If you take the global richest 1%, pretty much everyone on this website gets included. The cut-off point is at around $35,000 a year.

<comment><USER8> >The cut-off point is at around $35,000 a year.

That doesn't sound true. Can you back up your argument with facts' data?

<comment><USER9> [http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business- tech/120331...](http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business- tech/120331/global-pay-scale-international-labor-organization)

Various sources from the past couple years cite between $34,000 and $37,000.

More than two-thirds of the population of the earth makes less than $1,000 a year, so this shouldn't be very surprising.

<comment><USER10> I'm confused...

Sniff test:

        World pop: ~ 7,000,000,000
               1%: ~ 70,000,000

        Population of the US ~ 300,000,000
        Median income in the US ~ $50,000

So you can come up with well over 70 million people in the US with incomes greater than $50,000. How then can the global top 1% cut off be $35k?

<comment><USER11> Median personal income in the US is ~$35,000, I think you must have looked at household. That $35,000 doesn't include people under 25. So the "7 billion" median would be even lower.

<comment><USER10> You're right that I was looking at household income. Thanks for the correction!

Still, that number doesn't seem accurate for the cut-off for the global 1%

2010 census has over 180,000,000 Americans over age 25. So assuming that there are people making more than $35,000 outside the US, this number still smells fishy...

<comment><USER9> Well the household income is not the incorrect number to look at. You just have to divide that by the number of people in the household. Children, elderly, disabled and others don't typically work. That makes the income-per- individual lower than the "individual income" which only counts those that are participating in the workforce.

Quickly looking at Wikipedia ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States) ) I see that the median household income is $50,233 and there are 116,011,000 households in the US. A quick googling shows there are about 316.1 million people in the US, yielding an average of 2.725 people per household. Dividing $50,233 drops our previous income figure down to $18,434.12 per person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Negative View: 1% of people control half of global wealth.

Positive View: 99% of people control half of global wealth.

I guess it's a matter of perspective?

<comment><USER13> Neither sounds very good.

<comment><USER12> It's ok.

You belong to the group of people who control half of global wealth :)</comment></comment></comment>


Megaupload User Asks Court for Files Back. Again. - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/05/megaupload-user-asks-court-files-back-again

<comment><USER2> "Cloud" is not the future, with governments like these. All you entrepeneurs better take note.

Also, it's probably just a matter of time before PaaS and SaaS servers are taken down because the political winds shift against a few apps located at Rackspace or Amazon or wherever.

If I were in this game, I'd host everything locally and secure the crap out of it. In fact, securing your data and services against governments is likely to become a big business soon.

<comment><USER3> _If I were in this game, I'd host everything locally and secure the crap out of it. In fact, securing your data and services against governments is likely to become a big business soon._

Business depends on the acceptance (or at least tolerance) of government. Expect anything that slows down the government to be outlawed.

<comment><USER4> Business has rockets these days.

<comment><USER5> Only because the government allows it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This highlights the core question of property rights applied to private data.

Surely individuals must have the same rights in this regard as governments and large corporations whose database may have been stolen?

The wisdom of the decision about where to store that data should not be important in law, as long as there was a reasonable expectation not to have it stolen.

We are not even talking about just unauthorised access to private data but about deleting it altogether! Once they get away with this, no data will ever be safe again.

</comment><comment><USER7> Isn't this just grandstanding by the EFF? IANAL but during most physical trials the evidence stays under seizure until the case is over.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps, but how does evidence handling work when it's of crucial importance for the defense?

<comment><USER7> This isn't actually related to the defense, it is for a random Megaupload customer.

<comment><USER9> The defense cannot get the data, either.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A tool to help you charge customers at the right price - <AUTHOR> https://www.chargewhat.website <comment><USER2> ...and how much do YOU charge? :) If it's only a lead gen tool for you, it's hard to gauge expertise or why would someone get your advice on how to price it. If it's a tool, then I've missed how it exactly works and what it does.</comment>


Long ago, I designed a language - <AUTHOR> http://scripting.com/2018/04/18/164609.html <comment><USER2> Now this... This is the pinnacle of software engineering blogs. Shitty grammar and masturbatory bragging, interspersed with unnecessary expletives and abbreviations, topped off with a weak blog engine and zero citations is exactly what I love to read. Aaron Swartz, I'm sure, would be proud.

<comment><USER2> dang, please delete the above comment.</comment></comment>


Manual chip decapsulation [video] - <AUTHOR> https://duo.com/decipher/dont-try-this-at-home-chip-decapsulation <comment><USER2> Putting the video in a modal window that disappears and resets playtime when you click anywhere has got to be the worst UX decision ever. Can't even resize the tiny little viewport.

<comment><USER3> You can watch the video in its own window/tab here: [https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/kf4tdpqvyd](https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/kf4tdpqvyd)

<comment><USER4> How did you get the link? I didnt even get a full screen button

<comment><USER3> Just "Inspected" the page with Chrome Developer Tools (built into Chrome). If you haven't tried it before, you can do a lot of fun stuff with it, on any site!

Like another commenter said, I found that the video is contained in an <iframe> so I grabbed its URL and found it works nicely to watch the video in a separate window or browser tab. :)

I searched around to see if the video host ("Wistia") displays videos in some more YouTube-like layout, but it seems not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I like duo, this video is a little misleading in the all of the chips shown a DIP package. Let's see the same UV erase tried on WLCSP BGA parts.

This is a pretty old technique. Almost every modern produce chip has mitigations for UV erasing.

<comment><USER6> I don't know much about the decapping/chip security process.

What is the benefit in selectively erasing part of the chip? How does that help you read the part that isn't erased?

<comment><USER5> The idea is that you can reset just the config bits. So the bits that keep the JTAG/SWD/ICSP from reading out the flash.

So imagine your flash is over here, and your SRAM is over here, and over on this other side is the SFRs and inside those are bits that once set disable the debug interface. Reset just those and you can dump the firmware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. I did not realize that you could still erase such chips using UV light, and that this would also wipe out the 'fuses' used to protect readout. I always figured that blowing those fuses actually physically destroyed a conductor in the chip. But once you have things opened up to this degree even that could probably be repaired using a pantograph and a very steady hand.

<comment><USER8> The fuses I have experience with are indeed "blown" \-- actual metal traces are physically opened with a large current -- and can't be intentionally reset.

Often you blow fuses in multiples and take a vote, because the fuses can occasionally re-connect or have awkward leakage due to how the metal bits behaved during the over-current, and that's embarrassing for a fuse controlling a security feature.

<comment><USER7> Have you tried re-instating those?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's the blog of a group doing the same sort of things to recover rom and firmware from arcade machines:

[http://caps0ff.blogspot.com/](http://caps0ff.blogspot.com/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Believe me, or not. Inside the carding scene, mass decapping is now a thing. That includes decapping of chips that were specifically designed to be decapping-proof. I remember that began at around 2010-2011, when first mass wave of chip and pin cards began to hit carding networks.

<comment><USER3> What are they decapping for the purpose of carding? Just curious, as I know little about that "scene"

<comment><USER11> Chip cards have some private key burned into them that makes them unique, depending on the chip they may just use this to witness a transaction (so the issuer knows this card was used) or something more involved so that the issuer can verify the card was really told the correct PIN and transaction amount.

In principle you can uncap the chip and get that key back out. You could then clone it, or bypass any restrictions built into the chip like "I won't authorise more than £200 total spend without going online". I'm not sure how that would be worth doing unless it's surprisingly easy and quick.

Unlike with cloning magstripe cards though this would trash the original, take substantially more than a couple of minutes and be readily detectable by the issuing bank if they are paying attention. So it seems crazy to me and my default position would be to believe it's not actually being done, certainly on an "industrial" scale.

<comment><USER10> How they prime majority of such cards get to carders is through bought post workers that steal replacement credit cards sent by post.

So, even when a card is does not arrive, most people will assume that the post simply lost it, and call for another replacement.

As I understand, a great lot of banks still ship fully active cards that require no "activation" by phone or online, assuming that nobody can recover the pin.

<comment><USER12> Ah ok... that is an interesting attack.

Is the actual pin on the chip though? I would have assumed only a hash of it was stored, enough that it can verify the right pin has been supplied without having to store the actual code?

<comment><USER10> I there are full rainbow tables available for each used hash algo for 4 digit pins. They are routinely bruteforceable.

<comment><USER11> Whereas I don't have criminal contacts who'd know whether anybody actually is stealing chip cards and de-capping them, I do know plenty about algorithms and data structures.

Rainbow tables make no sense here, the rainbow table is a clever optimisation of the normal time-space tradeoff where we don't want to pay the full space cost, and will accept a time penalty (and usually in practice an accuracy penalty) to avoid using so much space.

For a four digit PIN there is no concern about space, storing and indexing 10 000 possible hashes is trivial, (whereas storing and indexing say three trillion password hashes is kind of a pain so that's why you have rainbow tables)

<comment><USER10> Well, they are trivial, actually I ha e no idea of details

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In case you are wondering, this technique probably doesn't work against security-hardened chips. But other might, like what nation-states can afford.

"More security-focused mircocontrollers like the ones used in hardware security modules (HSM) to store encryption keys, trusted platform modules (TPM), and SIM-cards have have hardened chipsets to make these invasive attacks more challenging, Davidov said. They have countermeasures such as protective shielding and an active mesh layer to detect when a trace has been cut. Light sensors, when tripped, could automatically destroy all stored secrets if the chip powered on after the molding component was removed. While there are ways to bypass these features, they require extremely specialized equipment and 'significant investment.'"[1]

[1] [https://duo.com/decipher/new-diy-method-researchers- recover-...](https://duo.com/decipher/new-diy-method-researchers-recover-data- hardware-chips)

<comment><USER14> > to make these invasive attacks more challenging

The problem with that is, there are fewer people capable of attacking their countermeasures and so they don't get a strong test before being deployed. I'll always remember Christopher Tarnovsky's talks at DEFCON.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp26rPw90Dc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp26rPw90Dc)</comment></comment>


Uber Drivers "Strike" and Switch to Lyft Over Fares and Conditions - <AUTHOR> http://www.buzzfeed.com/johanabhuiyan/uber-drivers-are-protesting?s=mobile <comment><USER3> The really interesting story here is that if drivers are so willing to switch networks for better opportunities, there isn't a compelling reason for Uber to have the valuation that they do.

The value of Uber isn't really in the tech or the app - it's in the networks of riders and drivers in each city. If each of those can be aggregated into some other kind of service, where Uber, Lyft, etc. are just providers of payment processing, and possibly some operations expertise, that middleman network will capture all of the value.

<comment><USER4> This.

Basically while there are network effects in the sense that any provider (Uber, Lyft etc.) will need to have some critical mass before there are enough drivers and enough riders, both can subscribe to multiple providers and there is no long-term stickiness at the moment.

In other words, this is not a winner take all market with FB/LinkedIn/Twitter type network stickiness and the overall market is still fair game. The driver's rating is the only sticky data, and it is unclear in this context as to how valuable that is as riders are not going to wait an extra 30mins to get a 5-star driver vs. a 4-star driver.

This should not come as a surprise to anyone since right now most metros have multiple competing taxi service providers, so it makes sense that that may be replaced by a similar multiple mobile-app taxi providers.

Also, it is difficult to re-paint your taxi when you move from one traditional provider to another, in the Uber/Lyft/etc. world, that is no longer required, so provider switching or aligning with multiple providers is trivial which will imply that in future the providers' margins will be squeezed out and riders and drivers will keep the most benefit.

<comment><USER5> How would you say self-driving vehicles fit into this? Supposedly they're rolling out in ~3-5 years, and with self-driving vehicles, you no longer need the middle man managing a fleet of contractors.

EDIT: I'm willing to me a Long Bet [1] with anyone regarding fully autonomous self driving vehicles in regular use in 6 years.

[1] [http://longbets.org/](http://longbets.org/) ; [http://longbets.org/rules/](http://longbets.org/rules/)

<comment><USER6> ~3-5 years is way too soon. The technology might be ready but the governments (think regulations, traffic laws, car insurance companies, car manufacturers, etc etc etc ) in addition to the public (which is not ready either). Is going to take at least 10+ years for it to resemble something like you imagine it.

<comment><USER7> The technology is not nearly ready. Not in a city. It's like flying drone delivery. Easy to demonstrate in a single controlled setting, but nearly impossible to actually implement in the real world.

<comment><USER8> It's not really like flying drone delivery. Flying drone delivery is far simpler and far closer than general use self-driving automobiles.

<comment><USER9> Actually landing UAVs is far harder than automatically parking a car. The driving vs flying after take off is what is easier. Landing and take off.. nope.

Note that drone could mean a car in this case. UAV being an unmanned aerial vehicule.

<comment><USER8> With a modest infrastructure of marked landing pads on roofs, I think UAV landings are easier than automated car parking. If you're expecting delivery UAVs to fly under the tree line along sidewalks and yards to land directly on a residential porch, then yes, that's extremely difficult. But I highly doubt that this is a remotely feasible plan within a decade or so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Update -- Uber reverses policy: [http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/09/12/uber_drivers_...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/09/12/uber_drivers_strike_they_protested_cheap_uberx_fares_uber_backed_down.html)

<comment><USER10> I'm genuinely surprised. I imagine this is just a policy of minimum appeasement, but it's very interesting how rapid the change was.

Edit: Also, the strike is going forward - not all of their demands were met. Maybe this is just so Uber can say "hey, we tried to do what they asked?"

<comment><USER11> Or maybe the strike is closer to what happened last year in SF, where a bunch of drivers who were banned from the uber system because of low quality scores protested for other reasons. Something doesn't add up with the strike anyway (the threat to leave Uber because some trips might be on uberx, but to go to lyft where all their trips would be at that level and they'd make less doesn't make sense). The fact that the strike is still going forward makes it pretty clear it's not about having to make more money per hour by doing uberx trips.

<comment><USER12> Or maybe now that a large group of drivers have an impact on Uber, they want to continue to build muscle. If it was something other than accepting UberX fares, Uber wouldn't have caved (they're too smart for that). No this points in at the very least a small shift in negotiating power between Uber and its drivers. The fact that Uber caved makes it pretty clear Uber knows it was in the wrong and they are starting to fear a unified group of drivers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What would it take for somebody to just build a free, open-source matchmaking service for drivers and riders? It doesn't seem like what Lyft or Uber offer is very technically demanding (perhaps doing it at scale is), and presumably you could attract a lot more drivers by offering them the chance to keep ~99% of the fare.

The existence of Lyft demonstrates that Uber's first-mover advantage isn't insurmountable, so who's to say the third-mover shouldn't be a free utility that provides matchmaking at cost?

<comment><USER14> Who would provide customer service, sales, marketing, user research and the other non-technical elements of the business? It's true of many companies that what they do is not very technically demanding (Amazon, Facebook, eBay, etc) but that very often means that you _can't_ replicate them by just replicating the technology - these successful companies are much more than just their software.

And anyway, I bet there is a surprising level of sophistication to eg: Uber's software

<comment><USER13> > Who would provide customer service, sales, marketing, user research and the > other non-technical elements of the business?

Do you need any of those things? How much does Craigslist spend on marketing and sales?

Operate as a non-profit, compete only on price, and let drivers spread the word themselves. Imagine if at the end of the ride, your Uber driver told you, "Hey, next time call me with the CheapRides app and it'll cost you 20% less, and I'll make more."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a much more specific issue than most of the comments here are making it. People are talking about capitalism, competition, etc...

The problem is simply that a couple weeks ago Uber started sending UberX fares to Uber black car drivers. Which was a dumb move, because they are unprofitable and undercut the value of the premium car service. They've now reversed that dumb move.

<comment><USER16> Exactly. This was a protest over a very specific issue, and Uber ended up listening.

The article surprisingly doesn't really spin this into generalized pontificating and really talks about this specific grievance at length. HN commenters however are responding as if this was a general piece on Uber's failings as a whole... Strange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's great to see how easy it is for drivers to switch networks if they are unhappy, but drivers have to understand that prices are going down and they'll likely earn less money over time on all networks.

When articles are posted about Uber drivers earning $90k/yr, I'm sure many folks quit their $40k office job and hit the road. The thing is, driving taxi is pretty low skilled so the growing supply of drivers will really push down their income. There's an efficiency problem when an Uber driver "can earn" more than 75% of Americans, and existing drivers have been reaping the benefits of those inefficiencies.

<comment><USER18> Even if $90K a year is sustainable, driving a taxi is a very high-expense business. You'll drive your car into the ground far quicker than you did before, insurance is going to be insanely expensive (an UberX driver I talked to once told me his insurance is $7K a year), and gasoline isn't free (and getting less and less free every day).

The take-home from $90K driving taxis is very different than the take-home from $90K sitting at a desk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is how capitalism works, survival of the fittest. If someone comes along that allows the drivers to make more money, prudent drivers will likely switch to that service.

It is a no brainer.

<comment><USER20> > This is how capitalism works, survival of the fittest*

* Unless you have enough money to change regulations in your favor, skirt regulations, and so on, in which case it's survival of the financially-backed.

<comment><USER21> Access to capital and the political world are part of "fitness" in this environment. Generally, the companies that are seen as most likely to survive have easier access to funding than companies that are seen as riskier. The same can be said of companies that are likely to succeed v.s. simply survive.

<comment><USER22> If you're willing to redefine fitness like that, then any economic system is by definition "survival of the fittest."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Lyft drivers are creeped out by Uber. "Operation: Shave the Stache" [1] is one of the most manipulative business practices I've heard of. Lyft chooses to invest its money on improving the experience inside the car, and hiring socially intelligent people, who they then treat like human beings. Uber could learn a lot from them.

[1] [http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6067663/this-is-ubers- play...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6067663/this-is-ubers-playbook-for- sabotaging-lyft)

</comment><comment><USER24> I almost hope that Lyft is orchestrating all of this behind the scenes.

It would be such an Uber-move.

<comment><USER25> BuzzFeed is almost entirely "sponsored" content so it wouldn't be too surprising if this article was a PR move.

<comment><USER26> All sponsored content is indicated as such.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> _The drivers, who are mostly comprised of SUV and black car drivers, have planned a protest outside of the Long Island City Uber Office_

I wonder how much good the office protest will do versus just emailing Uber saying "Adios Uber! I'm headed to Lyft because of..."

The on site picketing made sense for blue collar industrial and government workers because the switching cost of quitting your job and (hoping) to get hired at another plant would have been very high. For hire drivers working for Uber and Lyft essentially have close to zero switching costs. A demonstration of that would seem more effective than picketing.

<comment><USER28> The media attention that drivers get through this action help signal to consumers that they are moving to a competitor. This might make me (a rider) more likely to fire up the Lyft app instead of Uber next time I need a ride.

<comment><USER27> True, media attention is important but I wonder if the protest will make it onto more mainstream channels and not just the tech news/blogosphere.

Local papers in Dallas have been doing quite a bit of coverage as Uber and Lyft taken on the politically connected taxi industry here. I don't know if intra-service fighting would get as much attention.

Maybe some HNers in the Long Island area will chime in.

<comment><USER29> > in the Long Island area

Long Island City is right across the river from Manhattan. It's technically on the Island, but for most people Long Island = Suffolk and Nassau, not Brooklyn and Queens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is how free market capitalism is supposed to work - where mobility (switching services) is low to non-existent and so then users can migrate en mass to the ecosystem that is governed better or more in their favour.

</comment><comment><USER31> That's awesome I cancelled my account last month due to the issue of "we are lowering prices for summer" me thinking naively that this meant eventually prices would go up after a month or two. However after receiving not only notification that the prices would not go up further (Houston drivers at a minimum) but also I would now be required to pay 10 dollars a week to maintain service. Prior to Uber I was thinking the sharing ecnonomy was an embodiment of a change in corporate attitudes. F me right?

</comment><comment><USER32> The current incarnation of ride shating is fatally flawed. I imagine a superior model in which there is no direct reward for picking somebody up, rather a network of normal people, who can submit and receive requests to pick up. The only compensation would be that in a splitting of gas, which could potentially be done automatically.

The main difficulty in getting a network like this to succeed is the fact that there is no incentive for new drivers to join.

Until then, they are just a taxi company with lax employment protocol.

</comment><comment><USER33> I can think of two possible sources of driver lock-in: insurance (on the clock but between rides) and car financing. Anyone heard of uber or lyft working on this?

<comment><USER34> There is another reason: employment status and the resulting side-effects.

If you lock in a driver, you start to look like an employer with employees. This creates enormous payroll tax responsibility, workers comp insurance and other headaches for Uber/Lyft.

I would bet that Uber/Lyft have burned a metric crapton of lawyer and accountant brains in an effort to be on the "safe" side of the independent contractor vs employee fight. They're not going to screw that up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Clearly the cracks are starting to show.

If the drivers create the value/provide the service and Uber is facilitating that by taking a share, it has to make sense for the value-creator/service provider to continue the relationship. If Uber erodes that margin, the drivers will leave.

Eventually Uber has to change to benefit their service providers and act a little more ethically. The drivers know of their underhanded ways with dealing with Lyft and eventually the public will.

I am an immigrant, I drove a black car in NYC(many years ago), my cousin drives one now. He is none too happy with the UberX situation right now.

Uber should consider the plight of the drivers and not their 100X VC overlords. Nobody ever got rich driving a cab, why victimize the drivers?

"Because we can?"

"We are making the market more efficient"

"Frictionless"

It is just at the expense of the drivers. That's your friction point.

Hard working people just want a fair shot, not to be exploited.

Instead of a billion-dollar pay day, why not just a little human decency.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm going to go ahead and assume there's an app that aggregates Uber/Lyft/whatever and just gets you the closest driver regardless of network. Uber's service goes from being a premium product to a replaceable commodity in a blink.

<comment><USER37> Well, Uber, Lyft, and whoever will fight such an aggregator for obvious reasons, and attempt to prevent them from accessing their APIs.

<comment><USER38> Already happened at least once: [http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/02/corral- lyft/](http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/02/corral-lyft/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Excellent, this shifts the balance of power a little. Looks like the whole "everyone is a free agent" thing has some benefit for the little guys too.

</comment><comment><USER40> Sounds like the market is demanding UberX, and Uber is responding.

I'll keep using UberX in cars that don't need $80/day in gas.

</comment><comment><USER41> The bottom line is: If you're easily replaceable, you will feel the squeeze sooner or later.

Been in those kind of jobs myself and the only way out is to upskill until your value as a worker is high enough that ruthless managers that couldn't care less about the impact of their decisions on individuals won't get away with it.

</comment><comment><USER42> So they were fine and dandy until a better competition came around. When Lyft has its rival, same thing will happen.

<comment><USER11> [http://fortune.com/2014/09/11/uber-vs-lyft-the-credit- cards-...](http://fortune.com/2014/09/11/uber-vs-lyft-the-credit-cards-dont- lie/) It doesn't look like a lot of competition honestly. That probably paints Lyft in the best possible light too because it just takes into account US only trips (100% of Lyft's business and only a fraction of Uber's). But even then, that's only competition for the uberx market. These drivers are black car drivers, where uber has no competition at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Wait, strike? First off...IANAUD. If you become an Uber Driver are you under any sort of contract? Are you now an employee (W-2) of Uber or free agent contractor (1099). If drivers think they can get better fares elsewhere... go nuts and do it. Yay economics!

I feel like I am missing something here.

<comment><USER11> This. Although I don't understand the argument from the driver's side. They're upset about sometimes getting trips from uberx (and apparently making more doing so), so they're going to a place that pays less per trip and per hour? Something doesn't add up there.

If there was a factual claim here, I have to believe that they'd be sharing their numbers. It would be trivial for them to show a decrease in earnings (they can easily calculate gas and wear-and-tear) in the before-and-after earnings. The fact that that isn't happening makes me believe this is similar to the protests last year in SF. From the reports back then, it ended up being mostly drivers who had been banned from the uber platform who were trying to be reinstated (although that's not what they claimed).

<comment> vertex-four > They're upset about sometimes getting trips from uberx (and apparently > making more doing so), so they're going to a place that pays less per trip > and per hour?

They're trying to convince Uber to stop doing what they don't want (according to them, they do _not_ make more by accepting UberX fares, no matter what the company says) by denying them labour. In the meantime, they're doing work elsewhere, although are hoping not to permanently work there; they're hoping that Uber will cave in.

Denial of labour ("striking") is a tried-and-tested approach to persuading companies to do what the labourers want. They can't operate without labour, so labourers organise to deny them that until they get better working conditions/better pay/etc.

Assuming enough labourers agree to deny labour, this will work unless (a) what the labourers want, the company literally cannot provide without going bust, or (b) there are enough people looking for jobs and willing to put up with the bad terms that the company can hire them to replace the striking labourers.

This is a relatively simple idea, and has been a thing since the Industrial Revolution; I'm not really sure what you're not getting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Heh they get banned if they accept/deny or plain deny more than 50% of the requests it says in the article.. that seems legit to me as a customer ;) dont really want drivers (of uber or any similar company) to accept/refuse my rides.

</comment><comment><USER44> Why not have a social network for professional drivers. Let that network destroy any type of information withholding that companies like uber do.

Leverage the power of scale. Unions 2.0

</comment><comment><USER45> Followed this Uber thing for a little, Read a few articles from the neo liberal tech press, specially interesting when Uber was banned in germany. Initial Reaction to this: haha

</comment><comment><USER46> Statists, take notice of how improvements in work conditions come from competition and not from regulation. They're better off now than through the monopoly of taxi medallions.

<comment><USER46> Why am I being modded down?

<comment><USER47> I don't yet have down vote privilege, but I have to imagine The GP (your original comment) got nuked because it is both needlessly inflammatory and also lacks a substantive argument. As for your response to dragonwriter, you appear to be talking past one another; of course markets are matchmaking services for buyers and sellers by definition, but what you've done here is mistake this specific case of relatively frictionless movement between employers increasing the surplus of the employees for an indictment of regulation in general.

This particular case seems to realize said friction (and consequently, the surplus/benefit for the drivers) precisely because the service itself being offered by Lyft/Uber is market like, and the end-consumer product is in fact offered by the drivers themselves. It is not clear to me (or the others disagreeing with you here evidently) that regulation has any bearing on this conversation -- in a world where both Lyft and Uber's respective operations are regulated by the state, the power is still in the drivers' hands because Lyft and Uber are competing to offer the drivers' services.

This is not exactly the common formula for most employee-employer relationships, although it may become more common as this business model takes off. What dragonwriter seems to be saying IMO is that there are certainly cases that don't fit this mold that are good arguments for state intervention; among them are cases where there is greater friction for the employees themselves due to the nature of the business; lack of information about compensation, working hours, or other metrics to evaluate the given positions; or, as dragonwriter said, physical proximity to the workplace itself.

If you would be so kind, please elucidate how you feel this particular seemingly unique scenario is generalizable to regulation in general.

PS: Apologies if this is wordy and difficult to follow, I have a hard time writing coherently into this tiny box.

<comment><USER46> Thank you for the thoughtful response. I agree with your points, including your elucidation of dragonwriter's reply.

I'll try to clarify my point: before Uber/Lyft, we had taxis. Just taxis. Then, the argument went: "Well yes, for taxis we need state intervention because if the government doesn't regulate cabs then anyone can charge fare and conditions will deteriorate and it will be inherently less safe and..."

Then Uber/Lyft comes around and all of a sudden the taxi market is "relatively frictionless" and has other "unique characteristics" that make it so beneficial to employees.

I'm trying to point out that there is nothing special about taxis. It is not a special market. I can't deny that one to one business relationships allow for faster change in the market, as the employee can simply up and leave at any point.

The taxi market was the furthest thing from frictionless until competition started. The power will always be in the employees' hands so long as anyone is free to start competition. We see this with this selfsame example - <USER2> Uber, taxi drivers were basically employees to medallion owners (and taxis were supposed to be a regulated system for the free enterprise of starting a one-man cab company, not for the rich to buy all medallions and rent them). This is an example of failed regulation that allowed the current exploitation of taxi drivers. Competition is now allowing better conditions for those same drivers, even though there's no pretense that Lyft drivers own their business. It's an above-board operation and more moral than before, and not surprising that it works better for both parties engaged in this.

So what I'm arguing is that whenever we say "but it doesn't apply to roads/this/that", it's usually because of the blind spots we have from looking at the system the way it is and being unable to imagine how else it could be. The roads example is a classic one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I thought the whole point of Uber and Lyft was that didn't have to be full- time occupations.

<comment><USER49> That's what I thought, but now it's rare when I see a driver that isn't a full-timer.

I'm sure the system works better with stability so the incentives push towards full-timers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> My ugly questions on this are: What about liability for when an Uber or Lyft driver kills someone in an accident driving unsafely? Or just murders someone because they're having a bad day? Or get carjacked? I mean, I guess it's just one spree away from people doing dangerous things?

<comment><USER51> The only reason to phrase your question the way you did is to increase the FUD surrounding car services like Uber and Lyft. The same question could be asked of any person in any profession.

Regardless, the answer to your question is the first result when you search Google for "Uber liability coverage":

> Uber holds a commercial insurance policy with $1 million of coverage per > incident. Drivers' liability to third parties is covered from the moment a > driver accepts a trip to its conclusion. This policy is expressly primary to > any personal auto coverage (However it will not take precedence over any > commercial auto insurance for the vehicle). We have provided a $1 million > liability policy since commencing ridesharing in early 2013.

[http://blog.uber.com/ridesharinginsurance](http://blog.uber.com/ridesharinginsurance)

<comment><USER52> It's a legitimate question because Uber and Lyft are a "new thing" and they're international brand names, something that's not true of regular cab services.

If a cab driver in New York City rapes and kills a passenger, it wouldn't make people distrust all cabs in NYC, much less cabs in other cities; there's no brand name to be damaged by news coverage, and as a news story it probably wouldn't even be covered by media outside of the NYC area.

But if an Uber driver rapes and kills a passenger, it will be covered by media everywhere, because Uber is a newsworthy company and because Uber has a global presence, and the Uber brand will be damaged worldwide, not just locally. Because Uber is a "new thing" there will be lots of people/media asking questions about the safety of Uber (in many cases stupid questions, but still).</comment></comment></comment>


Debugging Incidents in Google's Distributed Systems - <AUTHOR> https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3404974 <comment><USER2> In my experience, correctly identifying the culprit is the most difficult, but during an incident, mitigation is the most important. Most incidents I ran into happened after a job rollout, in order to find and mitigate an issue, a distributed system needs monitoring, replicated drainable services, rollout canary/rollback. With these, an SRE oncaller doesn't need as much knowledge of the system as the devs in order to handle an incident.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems to miss step 1 which is verify there is an issue (exclude false positives). Maybe the process is abandoned at step 3 sometimes (pinpoint exact location of issue). I guess only true positives make it to post mortem

<comment><USER4> The fact that the oncaller has been notified without an actual issue in a production system, is an issue in itself - incorrect monitoring/alerting. And will be addressed an the next production meeting.</comment></comment>


Journalists to cover your startup story - <AUTHOR> https://reporters.io <comment><USER2> I would add pricing and explain the benefits of a paid plan over the Try It Now feature.

<comment><AUTHOR> Added! "Try now" is a free feature that shows only 3 relevant reporters, while paid users can get full search results and all contact details.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just launched - any feedback highly appreciated!</comment>


The Elusive Theory of Everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-elusive-thoery-of-everything&print=true

<comment><USER2> The authors of this article are "semantic jockeys." First, they define a "theory of everything" as a theory that will unify disparate theories of physics. Then, further down, they define "theory of everything" as "one complete and consistent set of fundamental laws of nature that explain every aspect of reality."

Unifying 3 inconsistent domains of academic physics; and explaining "every aspect of reality" are two different things.

The authors use their authority as academic physicists to corrupt our everyday language. They have no credibility as scientists.</comment>


Building a Nexus 4 UART Debug Cable (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.accuvant.com/blog/building-a-nexus-4-uart-debug-cable <comment><USER2> Google has actually published the proper design for the cable here:

[https://android.googlesource.com/device/google/debugcable/+/...](https://android.googlesource.com/device/google/debugcable/+/master)

</comment><comment><USER3> Neat- not quite the same as the Yaesu VX-7R cable: [http://www.kc8unj.com/interface.html](http://www.kc8unj.com/interface.html)

Now tell me the secret of where to buy new, tested, guaranteed replacement batteries for my Nexus 4 :-)

<comment><USER4> I've finally broken mine's digitizer, after two years of other serious falls and baths that had left it in perfect working condition. It might be for the best, considering each Android update lately has been buggier on this now unsupported phone.

I miss this phone already, and I need to find a worthy successor now.

I'd consider sending you my old, untested and unguaranteed battery if it could prolong the life of a Nexus in need :)

<comment><USER3> Luckily I preserved my original battery because it's still better than any of the replacements I tried. Even so it does not last as long as it did when new.

The replacement batteries can't seem to handle power surges, and this causes the phone to crash.</comment></comment></comment>


DIY Stream Deck for broke people - <AUTHOR> https://bminusl.xyz/2020-07-18/diy-stream-deck-for-broke-people/ <comment><USER2> Doesn't this effectively make all your number keys unusable, since they're now mapped to other functions?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at all, it does not change how keys operate. It only listens to events, without modifying the original behaviour.</comment></comment>


The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/17723223

<comment><USER2> A computer science Ph.D. is nothing like what is described in this article. For various reasons (other opportunities, generous industry grants, minimal financial overhead to run a lab), students in computer science are comparatively well paid and free to work at their own pace. YMMV based on advisor.

It's been exhaustively shown that stopping after undergrad or masters degrees will be more financially lucrative, so some reasons to go on:

      - you want one of the specialized researchy positions that
          are typically filled by Ph.D. holders
      - you have a genuine interest in some specialized field and
          want to work purely on learning/investigating that field
      - you want to be a professor

<comment> shawn-butler I would limit that to just #2 in your list. The other two carrots are so out of your reach or subject to factors so far beyond your control that a love for learning and a burning interest in your research is the only thing that you can count on sustaining you.

<comment><USER3> #1 is also pretty achievable. For example, if you get a Ph.D. studying how to implement compilers and virtual machines, you basically have your choice of which place that implements compiler or VMs to work at (source: I am about to defend my Ph.D. in implementing compilers and VMs).

<comment><USER4> But how many places are there that do that? You have google, Microsoft, maybe intel, a few companies in the valley. PhDs are very specialized, and so they really can be at the mercy of their hot skill.

And even google...might tell you to go work on ads with your hot VM/compiler skills. Disclosure: I'm a PL PhD who got out of the vm/compiler area to focus on PL design, which is even more esoteric.

<comment><USER3> I don't know about google - all the PL people I know who went to google no longer work on PL stuff, though I don't know if that's because of working at offices where PL work is not supported rather than a lack of company-wide freedom.

From conversations with hiring managers at each, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, NVidia, and Adobe all have far more positions than they can fill for people with PhD-level VM/compiler writing skills. Heck, we can't turn out experienced _undergrads_ fast enough for their tastes. I assume there would also be stuff in embedded systems, particularly FPGA compiler-related, though I don't personally know hiring managers at the big firms in that area.

<comment><USER4> Google has found PL PhDs very versatile I guess. Many of their top people are in PL, so it could also just be a top down hiring bias.

I'd be weary taking just any job in VM/compilers, much of it is quite tedious and boring for a PhD. Intel used to have compiler groups filled with PhDs, Sun also. Them there are smaller companies like coverity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I do sometimes wonder if this "PhD is a waste of time" is being pushed so heavily to get a glut of the best computer science grads, who would otherwise consider a PhD, onto the engineer job market. A cute little trick to drive down the salaries a bit, cut back on the perks...

I mean, people posting links like this, on this board, don't really have English lit grads in mind, do they?

Not that I disagree with the sentiment entirely, but it seems to be getting a lot of mileage the past few months.

<comment><USER6> I think this is just a continuation of the old "College is a waste of time" thought, but I have noticed a _lot_ of people -- especially from China and India -- enrolling in CS PhD programs the last few years. I talked to a few of them from my college, and an exceedingly common theme seems to be family and peer pressure, so personally, I'd really like to understand more about this topic.

<comment><USER7> An important, but rarely overtly stated reason for foreigners to attend grad school in the United States is immigration. A graduate degree (esp in STEM disciplines) is a relatively secure way of getting a student visa, getting a job while on OPT, getting an H1B and finally a Green Card. Of course it does not mean that immigration is the sole reason for asians to attend US grad school in hordes, but it is an important one.

Funnily enough, when you apply for your student visa, you're required to assert that you will return to your country after your education in the US is over :-)

<comment><USER8> I don't understand the motivation there at all - shouldn't the US be trying to hold on to the most educated foreigners as much as possible?

<comment><USER9> I used to ask that question and have been told that the US greatly benefits from having US-educated people in positions of power around the world. I don't know if this is true, but what is true that a surprising number of heads of states of countries that are considered political allies of the US have degrees from US universities. I first noticed this trend when reading about Pacific island nations.

<comment><USER8> I suppose, but the number of people leaving the country that that requires is fairly small, unless you're talking about spreading a cultural hegemony. I think it's likely just irrational.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it depends on whose perspective you're talking about. I think for typical engineers, especially in EE/CS, the increase in earning power from the PhD doesn't make up for the six years of lost income and career progression. But I think from the point of view of society, it's absolutely worth it. The most brilliant engineers I know are PhDs. They have this incredible depth of theoretical understanding of a particular area that I think is hard to achieve without those years of dedicated study.

<comment><USER11> It's hard to know which way the causality goes here. It might just be that really exceptional undergrads happen to end up in grad school (because of pressure from professors or family, or simply because "it's just what smart people do"), even though they would have been exceptional engineers either way. I agree that PhDs are very knowledgable when it comes to their precise field of study, but this is often very narrow. How useful is this expert knowledge unless you're hired specifically for it (ie, as a researcher)?

<comment><USER10> Socially, there is a big value in getting a very bright person to intensely study a single area for many years. PhDs do usually go on to work in their field, and a vastly disproportionate amount of innovation comes from them. That's why I don't really buy the correlation argument. I don't think even very bright people are going to be able to make contributions like new speech recognition algorithms or new algorithms for wireless networking, robotics, etc, without the kind of dedicated and focused study that comes from a PhD (or an equivalent level of theoretical study outside a PhD program).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a hiring manager of non-specialized software developers, I take people with 4-6 years of real world coding over a phd any day. We generally hire phd's at the same level/pay as a bachelors in cs with maybe only a nominal amount more in salary. the skills you learn as a phd are not really what the industry needs, unless you manage to find one of the small number of jobs that requires whatever specific thing you studied as a phd. like the article says, those are very few and far between compared to the # of students exiting with degrees.

<comment><USER13> I concur. My experience with CS PhDs is that they lack the production-oriented mindset needed for the real world. We hired a CS PhD to write reports for us. In six months he did not write one single line of code, but produced a very impressive whitepaper about the code he intended to write. He went on to write more whitepapers for a company specializing in vaporware somewhere else.

I've had similar experiences with PhDs in many other fields as well. I have a great deal of respect for the degree, the person who worked so hard for it, and I love to read their often brilliant research, but either the effort of getting the degree or the mindset it takes to want to obtain one makes these people nearly useless in the business world. Give me an entry-level BS degree or 5-6 years equivalent experience any day.

<comment><USER14> Meanwhile, the top tech firms aggressively recruit CS PhDs.

<comment><USER15> Well, more power to them. They have the resources to train them up to a level where they'll be productive.

<comment><USER14> Or perhaps this thread is full of obscene generalizations that are untrue. Hell, it even started off on the wrong foot by invoking "real world". All that term means is that you think your work is somehow relevant while the work of others, in this case PhDs, is not relevant.

Parts of this community have a real problem with ego and unsubstantiated generalizations.

<comment><USER12> No, real world = in production for potentially a long time, iterated with customer feedback. phd/ms work = functional hacks that maybe a professor or the student ever looks at/codes against and that are eventually thrown away _.

_ except in very rare circumstances

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article was pretty good at identifying drawbacks of higher education. (unlike the recent article by the literature PhD)

There's so many assumptions surrounding a PhD degree. "I'll make more money!" Maybe, but it takes a lot of years to make up for making $0 for several years. "the only jobs for a PhD is in academia" depends on the subject, last I checked google hires lots of PhDs. "I'll only work 5 hours a week!" just because you only saw your professor when you showed up for class does not mean those were the only hours your prof was working. "PhDs are super smart!" maybe, or they're just good at jumping through hoops.

The article pointed out that there is a glut of PhDs compared to available academic jobs. But then laments that only 57% of PhD students finish the degree within 10 years. The author seemingly argues that more people should graduate sooner, and increase the glut?

It's not about smarts, self-motivation and leadership are required to finish a PhD. If someone expects to have their hand held and be told what to do, they might never finish.

The article also says that these students are the smartest of their class. If that's true, then they are smart enough to view the job market and weigh the pros and cons of higher education themselves. (if they can't do that, then I'd argue they are not the brightest in their class after all)

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder when the first article was written claiming that doing a PhD was a waste of time? I'll bet it was in the 19th century. And we'll no doubt keep seeing such articles until such time as the PhD fades from history.

(Nothing against the article in question, which is a better-than-usual discussion of the issue.)

</comment><comment><USER18> Getting a Ph.D. is "often a waste of time". Sometimes it's much worse: I've seen too many lives seriously hurt or even destroyed, as in they died, e.g., from suicide from clinical depression, from the stresses of a Ph.D. program. Some of the students hurt or killed were brilliant, some of the best undergraduate students in the world, PBK, 'summa cum laude', Woodrow Wilson, NSF, etc.

Still the fact that a Ph.D. is "often a waste of time" should not be regarded as very important. Why? Because that statement is essentially a probability. So, if W is the 'event' of a waste of time and P is a probability measure, then the claim is that the probability of W, P(W), is too large. I'd agree P(W) is too large.

But a given student usually doesn't have to 'face' only P(W) and, instead, has information about some more 'events', say, A, B, and C, that are relevant, and then gets to observe an estimate of the 'conditional probability of W given A, B, and C', that is, P(W|A, B, C). Then, even if P(W) is too high, P(W|A, B, C) can be quite low in which case that student might go ahead.

We know that a Ph.D. is the 'union card' for professors in college and universities. While there can be a lot to discuss about a career as a professor, I set that aside as, at least for HN readers, not very interesting.

But, what about a Ph.D. for careers other than being a professor? Okay:

I limit my discussion to Ph.D. degrees in 'technical' fields. I omit biomedical fields due to my limited knowledge of those fields.

There are pros and cons:

Cons. In nearly every line of work other than being a professor, having a Ph.D. is 'unusual'. So, in particular, if a Ph.D. takes a a job, say, job J, at company UGE, then somewhere in the path in the tree of the organization chart of company UGE from job J to the CEO likely there will be a person S without a Ph.D. where person S has a Ph.D. reporting to them. This is an uncomfortable situation; lawyers know this, and supposedly their profession tries to arrange that any working lawyer reports only to a lawyer. This unfortunate situation is a special case of the larger situation that Ph.D. holders in technical fields do not have a strong 'profession' to protect them.

A Ph.D. in electronic engineering can at times want to swap their degree for an electrician's license -- good union card, key to a sole proprietorship that commonly pays well enough to buy a house and support a family, a rock solidly stable industry, a great geographical barrier to entry.

Why "awkward"? Because person S will be afraid of two cases: (1) The Ph.D. training is irrelevant so that the Ph.D. holder will have their degree influencing their job performance in ways irrelevant to the job. (2) The Ph.D. training is relevant in which case the subordinate may conclude that their supervisor S is low on competence and, thus, be insubordinate and, with their extra competence, may be a threat to the career of person S.

So, if get a technical Ph.D. and pursue a non-academic job, then likely will be in an awkward position without help of a recognized, respected profession.

Pro. One aid in making 'the big bucks' is to do some work that meets three criteria: -- powerful, valuable, and new. If everyone over at UGE is determined to hire people only like themselves, keep down any additional competence, and, net, just keep doing things they way they long have been doing them, then a person with work meeting the three criteria might have a golden opportunity. Call it 'innovation', 'creative destruction', 'survival of the fittest', or just blowing the doors off those other guys, getting the big house, winter vacation house, summer vacation house, sports cars, good, old Stradivarius violin for a talented daughter, help getting into Princeton for another child, yacht, for wine for dinner parties, shopping, for a few dozen cases, between Beaune and Dijon, seat at the Round Table of the university president, for a child help getting through graduate school and seed funding for a startup, etc. Or just quite a lot of additional financial security.

Of course, in this case will be 'different'; maybe in a good way different but definitely not the same. Often will not 'fit in'. E.g., would not be hired at UGE.

But being different is commonly what goes with success, which in itself is 'different'.

So, what does a Ph.D. have to do with doing some work that has the three criteria of powerful, valuable, and new? Answer, a lot: Those three criteria are essentially those of some successful original research -- the usual statement is "new, correct, and significant" but for non-academic work we can substitute the three criteria I gave. So, the crucial work is necessarily about 'research'.

So, how to do 'research'? Well, history shows that commonly it's not easy, but there's education for that, called Ph.D. programs at the best 20 or so US research universities -- many of the names are well known, Harvard, MIT, Cornell, Brown, Yale, Columbia, NYU (and Courant), Princeton, Johns Hopkins, UNC, Georgia Tech, CMU (see, Jerry, I didn't leave you out!), University of Chicago, University of Washington, Berkeley, Stanford, Cal Tech.

Nearly always the main difficulty in a Ph.D. program is the research part. For a good, succinct description of much of the challenge, buried in at least the machine readable copy of D. Knuth's 'The TeXBook' is

         "The traditional way is to
         put off all creative
         aspects until the last part
         of graduate school.  For
         seventeen or more years, a
         student is taught
         examsmanship, then suddenly
         after passing enough exams
         in graduate school he's
         told to do something
         original."

And there can be other challenges.

But as difficult as the original work is via a Ph.D. program, commonly such work is more difficult otherwise. So, for someone in business trying to do work with the three criteria I listed, a Ph.D. program should be a big help.

In my Web 2.0 startup, the computing is often a pain in the back side due to poorly written documentation, system management headaches, security holes, ..., bugs but is all just routine. The key to my startup, if it is successful, will be some work that meets the three criteria, and for that work I have to admit that my Ph.D. program helped.

So, right, glad you noticed: If get a technical Ph.D. and want to use it outside of academics, then are heavily betting on doing some work that meets the three criteria and being a founder of a successful startup.

Maybe there are too few examples successful Web 2.0 companies founded by a Ph.D. who did some research crucial to the success of the company. Then can take this situation as evidence that (1) a Ph.D. and some research are not powerful or (2) there is a wide open field full of opportunities. My guess is (2).

I know; I know: But why can't there be just a nice, easy, secure, 20-30 hour a week job that will provide good financial security for life? Well, Obama already has that job (that's intended to be a joke!).

</comment><comment><USER19> I've been "All But Dissertation" for two years now for a PhD in sociology. I haven't touched my dissertation after having my proposal approved. Instead, I co-founded an organization that addresses the problem that I discovered in my preliminary research. Right now, my decision feels right.

<comment><USER4> Are you sure you aren't just procrastinating? I'm joking, it sounds like you are doing the right thing.

<comment><USER19> Hehehehe, this is what my advisor thinks :) But honestly, right now, it just feels so good to reject the idea that a doctorate is everything. I've been in school for 12 years!

<comment><USER4> I was in school for 13 years (5+8). Procrastination is a common grad student problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "How should we make it attractive for them [young people] to spend 5,6,7 years in our field, be satisfied, learn about excitement, but finally be qualified to find other possibilities?" -- H. Schopper

</comment><comment><USER21> old news

</comment><comment><USER22> The decision to enter a PhD program only makes sense for one of the two reasons: either you think you're going to win a Nobel Prize one day, or, you don't mind spending five years in a way which doesn't advance any goal (literal quote from a conversation I had, "so you had an offer from Google but you decided to do a PhD instead--why??", "Oh, I just want to do nothing for a while longer".)

The two kinds of PhD students may look the same but they're very different. If you belong to the first category, even if you realize you won't get that Nobel Prize, I doubt you're going to regret trying. If you're of the second kind, why yes, you have wasted five years of your life, _which is exactly what you signed up for_ so why do you complain?

<comment><USER10> Look at the interesting things Google is doing. Driverless cars is headed up by Sabastian Thrun (PhD). The technical lead on Google Glass is Thad Starner (PhD and professor at my alma mater). Heck, Page and Brin were halfway through their PhD program at Stanford (both have an MS from there) before they founded Google. PageRank was exactly the kind of thing that comes from PhD projects (extension and application of theoretical principles to new areas). And Dr. Starner has been working on wearable computing for two decades.

All these things didn't just appear out of nowhere because Google hired a bunch of bright fresh college graduates.

<comment><USER23> Google's early success was much about the supportive environment for founding a company, not the academics: networking with investors and early hires, getting recommendations from influential professors, than it was about the "PhD project" of PageRank. It was a standard graph algorithm executed on the Internet, not a ground-breaking academic project. (Obviously -- they left school before they did much any work on PageRank)

If PageRank were a new idea now, Google.com could have come up through YC.

<comment><USER10> It's not that simple and they did a prototype and published a paper before they left Stanford (three years in). See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank>. It was conceived as a "citation graph of the web" based on theoretical work in that area: [http://web.archive.org/web/20020506051802/www- diglib.stanfor...](http://web.archive.org/web/20020506051802/www- diglib.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/WP/get/SIDL-WP-1997-0072?1).

You say that today they could've come up through YC. I'm not sure that's true. Would they have the necessary grounding in those "standard graph algorithms" if they had just come straight to YC (or bearing in mind Stanford undergraduates benefit tremendously from the graduate program--skipped college entirely?) I think you're downplaying the interaction of study and invention here.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Technical Sales Engineer - <AUTHOR> I'm interested in finding out if any HNers have ever been (or are currently) a technical sales engineer for a technology company operating in the (broad) IT space?
I'm specifically interested in your experience transitioning out from behind the monitor to a customer facing role. What were the challenges you faced? Do you have any advice for those considering making a similar move?
If you consider yourself an introvert it would be especially interesting to me to hear how you learned to step outside your comfort zone into an extroverted role. <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure most HN members are going to transition from being an engineer to being a founder more often than not. You've got a bit of a mismatch in your choice of crowd to ask this.

To be honest, I wouldn't take someone who switched to sales from engineering all that seriously to begin with.

Call me provincial, I don't care.

<comment><AUTHOR> It would be interesting to see a breakdown of the types of users here on HN. My suspicion is that this place has far fewer founders (or people who will make the jump to becoming a founder) than it does just plain old smart people looking for intelligent discussion.

Someone in this community has done what I'm asking about, guaranteed.

<comment><USER2> >My suspicion is that this place has far fewer founders (or people who will make the jump to becoming a founder) than it does just plain old smart people looking for intelligent discussion.

I'd tend to agree.

I'm still not going to take the described transplant seriously.

<comment><USER3> when it comes to starting a company, being a good salesperson is far more important than engineering expertise. i've considered switching just to be more well rounded. most software startups aren't actually trying to do anything difficult. they need designers, salespeople, and marketing, not phd computer scientists.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Planned to code the summer away, stuck for ideas - <AUTHOR>

Hi folks!
I've currently just finished my third year of a four year MEng CS course. I had an internship last summer developing iOS apps and ended up feeling burned out at the end of this year so I decided to hack most of the summer away.
But I've got writer's block. I have no idea what to build, except that it has to be useful rather than a tech demo.
Any ideas, or advice? <comment><USER2> Generally, I find programs that are useful to me are good places to start. Is this something that you do regularly that could be automated or generalized? I've made programs that help with my classes and sometimes even published them for the rest of the class to use. Is there anything aggravating and repetitive in your major that you think you or others would enjoy no longer dealing with?

Going in a different direction is there some technology that you know of but aren't too familiar with but might be useful later? Learn it by implementing something basic using it.</comment>


Ask HN: Are some languages better than others for learning CS fundamentals? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> If we are being pedantic, yes. Eg. learning to program in "brainfuck" will teach you the real fundamentals of the Turing machines. Programming in assembly will teach you the background for any more complex paradigms in higher level languages. C will similarly teach you about memory management and data types.

But in practice, if you can understand the core abstractions and principles behind higher level constructs (loops, functions, objects and their representations), you do _not_ need to internalize their details to a level that you can do daily work with them.

I know this is not what you were looking for, but basically, my advice is to go with whatever language you like.

I like to say that you are allowed to use anything that you have an idea of how would _you_ implement it yourself (maybe not as optimally, and with infinite time :)). Eg, if you understand hash tables, just go ahead and use a language that has them as built-ins. That makes you a CS guy, rather than just a developer!</comment>