Undermining strategic stability: The burst-height compensating super-fuze (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-modernization-is-undermining-strategic-stability-the-burst-height-compensating-super-fuze/ <comment><USER2> I'm not a nuclear policy expert, but it is interesting to read about. My impression is that a lot of the improvements the Bulletin casts as destabilizing could also be viewed as deterrents against some escalation scenarios. For example, Russia has stated that it reserves the right to use battlefield nuclear weapons if it is losing a conventional conflict that threatens it's sovereignty. If our only response to that is to nuke their cities, then they may reasonably calculate that they can safely escalate to tactical nuclear options. On the other hand, if we can respond in kind or with other effective counterforce options, they will have to think twice. It sucks, but deterrence is still the only thing we have.

</comment><comment><USER3> Undermining, possibly, but I don't see how it can be even close to the point of collapse.

Even if the USA could launch an attack that takes out all Russia's ground based ICBMs, Russia still would have those 500-ish submarine-based ones, wouldn't it? If those ignore military targets, and manage to hit the top 100 largest population centers in the USA, everything larger than Spokane (population: 220k) would be hit ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population#United_States))

<comment><USER4> Russia's strategic submarine fleet is not the same as the US FBM force. USN boomers are deploying _constantly_ , to the point where they have literally two different crews (Blue and Gold) to minimize the time the actual hulls stay in port (allowing them to spend roughly 2/3 of their service life at sea, an incredibly high utilization rate for a warship). Russian ballistic missile submarines generally average 1-2 sorties _a year_.

Now, the Soviet (and then Russian) solution to this was to eventually develop missiles that could reach the US from port, but guess what? That means that instead of a survivable, highly dispersed and hidden missile force, the vast majority of your missiles are massed together where a single warhead could take them out.

Russian strategic bombing forces are also pretty small (36 Tu-160's built, maybe half operational, and something like 60 Tu-95MS operational), so most of their nuclear deterrent comes from land based ICBMs. Note, however, that Soviets understood this and so built the SS-25 Topol, and there are about 100 of these road-mobile ICBMs operational today. (Along with ~130 silo launched missiles.)

The Bulletin kinda glosses over the road-mobile survivability. It isn't what America did, so people who are experts in American systems often don't pay sufficient attention to the advantages of such systems, in my experience.

<comment> Tuna-Fish > Because of the new kill capabilities of US submarine-launched ballistic > missiles (SLBMs), the United States would be able to target huge portions of > its nuclear force against non-hardened targets, the destruction of which > would be crucial to a "successful" first strike. One such mission would > likely involve the destruction of road-mobile ICBMs that had left their > garrisons to hide in Russia's vast forests in anticipation of attack. The > garrisons and their support facilities would probably be destroyed quickly, > and some of the dispersed road-mobile launchers would also be quickly > destroyed as they were in the process of dispersing. To destroy or expose > the remaining launchers, United States planners would have the nuclear > forces needed to undertake truly scorched-earth tactics: Just 125 US > Minuteman III warheads could set fire to some 8,000 square miles of forest > area where the road-mobile missiles are most likely to be deployed. This > would be the equivalent of a circular area with a diameter of 100 miles.

> Such an attack would be potentially aimed at destroying all road-mobile > launchers either as they disperse or after they have taken up position some > short distance from roads that give them access to forested areas.

<comment><USER5> > Just 125 US Minuteman III warheads could set fire to some 8,000 square miles > of forest area where the road-mobile missiles are most likely to be deployed

Russia has over 3 million square miles of forest, and is over 6 million square miles total. 8,000/3,000,000 seems like pretty poor odds to get all the ICBMs hiding in the woods.

<comment><USER6> Road mobile systems deploy onto a set of prebuilt roads connected to their bases, they don't cross-country the impassable taiga since it's ... impassable. These are ballistic missile launchers, they don't fit under bridges, etc. so they can't just drive them around the Siberian interstate.

<comment><USER4> The MKZT-79221 that is the basis for both the Yars and Topol-M TEL is rated for driving off-road, and both TELs are even considered capable of launching off-road.

About half of the Russian mobile ICBM force are based in the Volga plain, and the Siberia based half are in mixed forest-steppe zones, because the Russians know their own geography.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems like a great way to increase the capability of your nuclear arsenal without adding more nuclear material / missiles. While I understand this tips the balance a bit in terms of lethality, I would consider it much less destabilizing than full-on development - not to mention much more friendly to the national budget.

A fascinating article. Thanks for posting. Currently reading "The making of the hydrogen bomb" by Richard Rhodes (a great follow-up to the Making of the Atomic Bomb, and these discussions are all super interesting.

</comment><comment><USER8> As an undergrad back in the 80s I took a few classes on geo strategic planning, MAD and game theory etc. A few years later came to see that stuff as time wasted on useless classes.

But with a recent trend of undoing various interlocking systems designed to promote safety I wonder if we have a set of policy makers world wide who have forgotten or never knew the point of those complicated systems (e.g. overflights)

</comment><comment><USER9> See, now, this is proper scary. A US pre-emptive nuclear first strike that could happen at any moment is something that really worries me.

The fact that the US appears to be optimising its nuclear arsenal to do this is frightening. And giving the Russians/Chinese less and less room to do the same is frightening. And then the US giving the keys to this decision to someone as egotistical, narcissistic and unstable as Trump, is really frightening. I can totally see him deciding to launch as a hissy-fit reaction to being impeached.

I think I'm going to rejoin the CND, if it's still a thing...

<comment><USER10> You assume the US undertaking a first strike is more likely than some kind of retaliation for some perceived slight by some other nuclear power, like Russia or China? That's... strange.

Historically those forgoing weapons were subjugated. If you want to be nonviolent to a fault, fine, but leave me out of it.

<comment><USER9> TFA is saying that the USA is optimising its nuclear arsenal for a surprise first strike capability.

Surprise first strikes work best if unexpected. So encouraging the President to throw a hissy fit and press the button is the best strategy if you're a nuclear general with rockets to launch. First strikes aren't retaliation. This is not escalation of a conventional conflict. This is out-of-the-blue, kill the other guy's ability to hit you. Think Pearl Harbour but with nukes.

If "having a fight" means we both die, then non-violence is the only answer. A nuclear war has no "winners". Being "subjugated" or "not-subjugated" is the same: generations of radioactive hell. Losing a conventional war is better than winning a nuclear war. So yes, non-violence please.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Russia and China are developing missiles that are a major improvement on what they had? How does this not threaten stability? Is the bulletin afraid of President Xi?</comment>


Cloudflare Traffic Manager - <AUTHOR> https://www.cloudflare.com/traffic-manager/ <comment><USER2> I am a customer of a competitive product, where we have a cluster of servers on port 25 that need load balancing. Pretty simple setup - if port 25 goes down for more than 2 minutes remove from DNS until it comes back online.

It's been incredibly stable and robust and a real life saver if you have gear in multiple geographic data centers that are not all with one provider. The competitors cost for the service is incredibly cheap hen you consider what it does - but the BIG GOTCHA is you need to use their DNS in order to use the load balancer.

And we move about 350 queries per second so the bill is pretty high (for our sized company). The place that I should be able to get an immediate impact and huge savings is that Cloudflare does DNS for "free".

I should be able to pay a modest but competitive rate for their traffic manager, but with no QPS it will be huge.

I just spoke to sales in the UK and they don't actually have a good definition of the product yet. No pricing and really did not have their questions to ask prospects yet.

That being said we are already using them for pseudo-Traffic Management services we have a script tied to Pingdom.com that updates DNS from the port monitoring and adds and removes records in just a few seconds.

<comment><USER3> It's okay for port 25 to go down for 2 minutes because standards-compliant senders will retry when your server is back up.

It's not okay for a widely used web service to go down for 2 minutes until you can update your DNS. Failover needs to happen within a few seconds, and most importantly, _while the client is still connected to the load balancer_. You can't do this using DNS with short TTL values.

<comment><USER4> > Failover needs to happen within a few seconds, and most importantly, while > the client is still connected to the load balancer. You can't do this using > DNS with short TTL values.

No it doesn't and it's good enough. Humans are not stupid, they will try again, web browsers will try other IPs too. For custom clients it's not even a question, as they can implement transparent failover in the client itself. Essentially this is all about web browsers.

The big problem with anycast routing is that you still have to rely on a single AS/company and have a huge SPOF, that will fail from time to time. A few hours of downtime every other year is as good as you can get, less than that would be pretty much impossible for such architecture. So, if you need anything better, you would have no choice but implement a DNS failover.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't knock them for constantly adding features.

I know people don't like the psuedo-centralization and the hand wavy action that their waf does...

yet they keep creating a strong value proposition that makes it so easy for small-medium projects to get so many services for free (DNS, SSL, CDN) or relatively cheap compared to competition (DDOS Mitigation).

I don't know of any other single service that does this at their price points, is there one? (maybe aws with their offerings of waf, cloudfront, route 53 etc).

</comment><comment><USER6> It is shocking how many sites now use CloudFlare, I have recently switched ISPs and aparently my new ISP is SPAMMER and BOT heaven so almost every site I go to asks me to complete the Im Not A Robot Cloudflare reCapture. Really makes the experience suck.

<comment><USER7> what else would you use instead of CloudFlare?

<comment><USER6> If I was operating a site? I dont think there is anything comparable at the free cost. But what you can do is turn the sensitivity if the captcha challenge down to 'Essentially Off' as detailed here [https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/200170096-H...](https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/200170096-How-do-I-turn-the-CloudFlare-captcha-challenge-page- off-) the default setting seems to be way too quick to throw up a captcha.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This has been offered by their competitor Incapsula for some time under the name 'Global Server Load Balancing'

[https://www.incapsula.com/load-balancing- failover.html](https://www.incapsula.com/load-balancing-failover.html)

<comment><USER9> And AWS Route 53: [https://aws.amazon.com/route53/](https://aws.amazon.com/route53/) Or Microsoft Traffic Manager: [https://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/services/traffic-manager/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/services/traffic-manager/)

And possibly many, many other providers.

It would be interesting to know if there's some innovation here.

<comment><USER10> Because Cloudflare uses Anycast there is no change in the public IP address for a request that hits us. It will be routed to the nearest data center (of which we now have 100 cities covered globally). The Traffic Manager product controls how that traffic is the routed to the origin server (if the request could not be served from cache).

As the active monitoring is performed from each location separately the Traffic Manager applies its policies in each location and can automatically route around connectivity problems in the Internet as well as origin server problems. All without changing public DNS.

This allows us to do very fast failover and route changes because this is independent of the propagation time for DNS on the public Internet. Solutions based on changing DNS records are suboptimal.

<comment><USER3> Somewhat off topic, but since CloudFlare keeps mentioning "routing the nearest data center" as one of its benefits...

I have a number of clients near ICN (Seoul) who have been happy with CloudFlare for some time, but now the vast majority of their users are being routed through LAX. Not Tokyo, nor Osaka, nor any of your other locations throughout East Asia, but LAX all the way across the Pacific Ocean! This detour adds about 300ms to every uncached request, and 150ms to every cached request. All the time I spent helping my clients shave a few milliseconds off their response times, now completely obliterated!

When the Pro plan ($20/mo) users contacted CloudFlare to find out what was going on, they were told to upgrade to the Business plan ($200/mo). Some of them did, but their users were still being routed halfway around the world. When they contacted support again, they were told to consider upgrading to an Enterprise plan. What is this, a cheap webhosting shop that tells people to upgrade whenever they're having a problem?

I don't know what happened around late summer that suddenly made Korean and Japanese locations off limits to all but the highest paying customers (local ISPs demanding more money?) but whatever it is, it has made CloudFlare barely usable where I live.

<comment><USER10> That experience with support doesn't sound right at all. Please email jgc @ cloudflare so I can follow up with you on this.

<comment><USER11> This is definitely correct. Every Cloudflare pro plan site I know of now routes to LAX for South Korean users. For business sites, going over a certain amount of traffic, they also route to LAX for South Korean users.

I also have confirmed with Cloudflare support, that sites going over a certain amount of traffic have to upgrade to Business -> Enterprise plan to keep South Korean users to route to ICN (Seoul). This is causing huge continous performance problems for nearly all Cloudflare sites in South Korea.

[http://www.todayhumor.co.kr/cdn-cgi/trace](http://www.todayhumor.co.kr/cdn- cgi/trace) [http://www.ilbe.com/cdn-cgi/trace](http://www.ilbe.com/cdn- cgi/trace) [http://www.issuein.com/cdn-cgi/trace](http://www.issuein.com/cdn- cgi/trace)

All show loc=KR, while using a slow LAX colocation. The first two from what I know, are business plan sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Since cloudflare staff is always in this forum:

This means like you can add several server ips and you get a load balancer? And how many servers? And round-robin or something more smart? In what plans will this be available and if at extra cost ?

Is there any alternative to this ? This may be the perfect thing for dedicated providers that don't offer a loadbalancer.

<comment><USER10> This allows you to create groups of servers (multiple servers per group) and do load balancing across servers inside a group, failover between servers, failover between groups (based on some threshold number of servers inside a group having failed), geo-steering so that visitors from different parts of the world hit different groups.

Today's announcement is currently only weighted round-robin within a group, but additional algorithms will be supported.

<comment><USER12> What about the cost ? Your competitor on another comment has a "contact us" price.

<comment><USER10> In Early Access this is completely free. Pricing will be announced later.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Selenium 2.1 Released - <AUTHOR> http://seleniumhq.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/selenium-2-1-released/

<comment><AUTHOR> I probably should have mentioned when Selenium 2.0 was released. It was something like 3 years in the making and is a big release if you need browser automation or do in-browser functional testing.

<comment><USER2> mattyb submitted it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2742718>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I somehow completely missed that. Now to go read the discussion over there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm really impressed by Selenium's breadth of language and platform support. The GUI editor and code generator was useful for getting started.</comment>


Graphic: Methods That Have Been Tried to Stop the Leaking Oil - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/25/us/20100525-topkill-diagram.html?ref=us

<comment><USER2> I find it difficult to believe that the basic mechanism of the BPO is unworkable. It's composed of 4 sequential independent valves, usually hydraulically-activated from a remote location: closing any one of the 4 should shut the well down. It should be possible to disconnect/bypass the communications, electrical, and hydraulic circuitry and manipulate the individual valves directly. The parts are of extremely high quality metals. At the very least several options are available:

a) disconnect the current hydraulics, connect to an alternative hydraulic source and then close one of the valves,

b) disconnect the current hydraulics and use physical methods (e.g., ramrod, jackhammer, wrench etc.) to mechanically force each side of one of the valves closed. In other words, simply screw (in the case of the valve rods being threaded) or beat (if valve rods are smooth) the valve plates into position by hammering on their external valve rods. A jackhammer might work well since, should there be any obstruction in the valve, it should tend to break it up. If the valve rods are threaded, alternately tightening and loosening each side of the valve should tend to break up obstructions.

<comment><USER3> Exactly what I thought, why did the blow out preventer fail? It looks like it was designed for just this sort of thing

<comment><USER4> I hope that once it's sealed they recover the blowout preventer and figure out why it failed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why isn't it mandatory to drill a relief well at the same time as the main well?

Other countries have this requirement, why didn't the USA?

Since it's the only thing that really works, now and with past disasters, if we don't pass a law to make it mandatory after this, we deserve to have spills happen again and again.

Oh and BP's deepwater Atlantis has MORE safety problems than Horizon and no relief well.

<comment><USER4> Other counties do NOT have this requirement. That was a reddit fiction (in general if you saw it on reddit you can be pretty sure it's not true).

See here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1389688>

<comment><USER5> Hmm, maybe I subconsciously got it from Reddit.

Well then the USA can be a pioneer again in something, mitigated greed via sane laws and requirements to prevent billions in damage and wildlife needlessly lost.

Just imagine if we get hit by ANOTHER one of these in the next decade, and here's hoping no major hurricanes this summer.

<comment><USER4> Be careful. There is no difference between a relief well and a regular well.

What do you do if your relief well blows?

Maybe if you drill two simultaneously, making sure they stay in sync. But the relief well needs to intersect with the regular one, so that might not actually be possible.

> and here's hoping no major hurricanes this summer.

Oh no. Quite the opposite! A hurricane would be the best thing possible. It would clean the entire area like nothing else can.

<comment><USER5> Hurricane would be good?

Where will the oil disappear to in a hurricane? Alternate dimension? Or simply coating somewhere else on earth it's not supposed to be?

<comment><USER4> The oil is biodegradable. Very biodegradable actually. All you need is oxygen.

In deep water there isn't much oxygen, and when it coats shores only the top layer degrades (so it takes some time). But if you can spread it out it will all be gone.

And once degraded it leaves no residue at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've always wondered why they don't just intersect the relief wells with the original well closer to the surface (don't have to drill as much). Is there a technical reason for why they don't do that?

<comment><USER4> They want to do something called a "Bottom Kill" vs. a "Top Kill". So you have to be at the bottom of the well.

A top kill doesn't always work, but a bottom kill is pretty guaranteed.

The oil pushes whatever material you inject up. So you want to be at the bottom so the material fills the entire pipe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My uncle (blacksmith/inventor) is pretty certain that step 1 (cutting the pipe) was a mistake, as he had a solution (which he e-mailed to BP, which of course ignored it) which involved the pipe (and a clamp).

OTOH he doesn't have data on the exact pressures and forces involved, so BP probably had far better information on which to act. (and it's far easier to be an armchair engineer!)

<comment><USER8> The pressure of the oil at the leak is 3500 psi.

It is coming out of a 20" dia pipe.

3.1415 * 10^2 * 3500 = ~550 tons of force, about the weight of a 200ft ship

Then throw in a gas/oil 2-phase fluid with different viscosities and varying temperature -- it is not an easy problem to solve

Some good technical info here: [http://www.greendump.net/the-oil- drum/deepwater-oil-spill-th...](http://www.greendump.net/the-oil- drum/deepwater-oil-spill-the-congressional-illustrations-and-friday-early-am- thread)

<comment><USER7> Thanks, I'm passing the link and the information to my uncle right now (and I'll ask him for the details of his proposed solution :) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "BP constructed a four-story containment dome" - keyword they "constructed", didn't have ready made.

Clearly this is taking so long because there is absolutely no preperation, these guys are following a manual and throwing mud against the wall.

Our gov't stimulous throws untold millions out into stimulous programs that offer little or no value, hopefully some bright gov't lacky decides to throw some R&D money into DARPA or otherwise to build better containment systems in the future instead of relying on corporations who have a max $75m tab.

The whole thing makes me sick. Sorry for the rant.</comment>


Researchers Draw Romantic Insights From Maps of Facebook Networks - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/bits/2013/10/28/spotting-romantic-relationships-on-facebook/

<comment><USER2> I wonder how effective relying on the listed "spouse or relationship partner" on Facebook is. Among my friends in high school, it was fairly common for girls to list their best friends as their significant others on Facebook, so as to avoid (the often sexually explicit) ads that were targeted at single women in our age group.</comment>


How a month and a half on Paxil taught me to love being shy. - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2143243/? <comment><USER2> "It's really hard. If you can medicalize your faults, you get legal protection for them. If you can't medicalize them, you're personally responsible for keeping them in control. That creates a huge incentive for medicalization of everything in the human condition. And we're all worried about being left behind in this Red Queen's Race."

From excellent comment from philosophical discussion about Modafinil (the stay-awake-alert-all-night magic drug).

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=389321>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=389408>

<comment><USER3> Hacking personality. Welcome to cyberpunk, what made you think it was all fiction?

Eventually the artificial line between "medical" and "I feel like it" will need to be addressed. On the other hand, the world is probably rich enough to support the kind of experimentation described here "in the noise."

Personally, I expect or rather hope for a drug that will truly help me lose weight with minimal danger and minimal side effects. I eat too much, almost enough to qualify for "the biggest loser," but not quite at that level. (If I lost 100 pounds I'd be thin but OK, they routinely lose 100 pounds or more and are still zaftig, plus they are shorter than me.)

I'd say as long as I wait for the right drug to lose weight, I can't fault those who have found it to talk to more girls at parties. Its probably healthier than becoming a rock star or carrying around cocaine all the time anyway.

<comment><USER4> Wellbutrin helps with appetite as well as depression smoking and ad(h)d. You should also get checked -- you may be (pre)diabetic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I found the top comment in Reddit about this topic to be very interesting:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/88i21/how_a_mont...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/88i21/how_a_month_and_a_half_on_paxil_taught_me_to_love/c08jqz4)

My personal experience: When I was regularly playing Racquetball and lifting weights, I didn't find everyday problems - tough as they were - to be daunting. Then there was a long gap when I didn't have this protection and the circumstances had much greater impact on my mood. I am starting workouts again.

<comment><USER6> The comment:

 _If you are male, the best "drug" for social anxiety is weightlifting. (No, you don't need to be a huge-ass body-builder-douche, if you don't do 'roids you probably won't be one, you'll look normal and athletic.)

I think probably it's all about testosterone - weightlifting increases the levels of those and thus makes us feel more "manly" and that just blows away the insecurity.

I'm not a scientist, so that testosterone stuff is just a guess, but it was amazing how at the age if 17 it transformed me from a shy, withdrawn, never- look-people-in-the-eyes teenager to a "real man" - relaxed, confident, one who talks to people as a real equal. Much of social interaction has hidden traces of very primitive instincts behind it: the sexual instinct and the fight instinct, and weightlifting gives you confidence in both (even though you would still be beaten to a pulp by any 120 pound Thai Box fighter, but that doesn't matter, you probably don't actually need to fight: it's just the feeling) which transforms into a relaxed and confident social interaction.

Another way to put it is that as an Aspie, I always felt alien from both the world and from my body. My idea of "me" is something in my head who tries to drive my body with a remote control and it just doesn't work well. Weightlifting got me to connect with my body, it made by body a part of the "me", and through the body as a medium, it made me connect with the world and other people. (Probably it's something about strenghtening some under-used neural pathways that connect the "self" parts of the brain with other parts.)

Now at 30 I'm often too lazy to do it, but whenever I do it for a few months, my Aspiehood just goes away._

<comment><USER7> I always find it strange that when people suggest doing weight training, there's often a disclaimer that you won't become huge and muscular with regular workouts. It's like a disclaimer saying that you won't get all brainy and smart if you study physics or math. I would imagine that if you had the potential to be a world class bodybuilder, it's worth exploring, just as if you had the potential to be a world class physicist, it's worth exploring.

About weight lifting helping cure social anxiety, I think it's more than just testosterone. If you get serious about weights, you start watching your diet. Eating well is a large component of feeling well, and cutting down on junk and processed foods makes a noticeable difference in mood and energy.

<comment><USER8> Another factor that comes into play is having regular periods of intense focus. We all claim to be focusing when we're doing work, but there are still all those microdistractions that come with the territory. You'll learn very quickly how to maintain focus if you down want to drop a couple hundred pounds on your chest.

There was a period of time when I wasn't working out, but I'd go for a drive late at night when I was stressed. Not a normal drive, mind you; I would blast up and down the side of a nearby mountain. The physical aspect of driving, combined with the focus necessary to not go flying off a cliff, had a very similar effect. I don't recommend this, as it was extremely reckless, but if you happen to live anywhere near a track, or even a karting facility, I'd strongly suggest trying it out.

<comment><USER9> Joseph Campbell said it best: "people want to feel alive".

And when you're exercising at the limit of what you're physically capable of, you do feel very alive.

Getting into and pushing through physical pain on a regular basis also makes it easier to connect to and overcome other pains in you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Personally I'm not a fan of antidepressants. For me, Prozac had the side effect of extra-sensory perception: I couldn't do anything without having immediate karmic effects on people I knew who lived hundreds of miles away. I'd be sitting in bed talking to my wife about (essentially unpredictable) events that would happen to take place the next day. People think they might want those kind of powers, but you can count me out. I lasted about a week, but it took most of a month for the metabolites to wash out of my system.

One tablet of lexapro causes my interest in sex to disappear entirely for a week. Personally I think this simplifies my life, but three days of sleeplessness is quite a price to pay.

A friend of mine started taking Effexor, but then we found accounts of how it's impossible to stop taking Effexor: blood-curdling stories about pharmacists who'd dissassemble the pills and reassemble them to titrate the dose down, and who'd still be unable to get the dose to zero. He stopped in three days, before the damage was done.

Anyhow, all of those drugs affect serotonin metabolism, as do the 5-HT2A agonists that some people call psychedelics or entheogens. Alexander Shulgin did a 30-year research program on psychedelic phenethylamines (drugs structurally related to dextroamphetamine, mescaline and ecstacy) and found that certain drugs in that family have a synergism with alcohol much like what the author of that article describes.

<comment><USER11> I think I lost you there, can you explain this line for me?

      A friend of mine started taking Effexor, but then we found accounts of how it's impossible to stop taking Effexor:
      blood-curdling stories about pharmacists who'd dissassemble the pills and reassemble them to titrate the dose down,
      and who'd still be unable to get the dose to zero. He stopped in three days, before the damage was done.

Edit: Fixed format as requested.

<comment><USER12> For me, stopping Effexor after having taken it for a year was 2-3 weeks of misery. I have heard that for some people the withdrawal is so bad that they can't stay off the drug long enough for their body to finish returning to normal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't know that this is really that irrelevant. Hacking the brain has been an interest of some hackers since at least the 80s, and once you get beyond some over-hyped nootropics, drugs like Paxil _are_ how people are hacking their brains.

Further, there are a lot of shy geeks out there who might want to try something like Paxil. Brain chemistry is a very complicated and sometimes weirdly individual thing, and while there are undoubtedly people who've benefited from Paxil, I think it's useful to have a clearer narrative of what the very possible downsides are beyond some rattled-off disclaimers on a commercial.

<comment><USER14> One interesting downside to SSRIs in general I heard about recently comes via Helen Fisher's research (<http://www.helenfisher.com/>) - SSRIs suppress the dopamine systems in the brain, and high levels of dopamine are associated with the 'artisan' personality type (manic, creative, risk-taking, autonomous). High levels of serotonin are associated with the 'builder' type (managerial, traditional, stubborn).

So by taking SSRIs to hack your brain's level of shyness you might actually end up dampening your entrepreneurial vibes and becoming a middle-manager. Crazy, huh.

<comment><USER15> Are there good ways of measuring your dopamine/serotonin levels?

<comment><USER16> No.

<http://www.etfrc.com/ChemicalImbalances.htm>

 _"No experiment has ever shown that anyone has an "imbalance" of any neurotransmitters or any other brain chemicals."_

<comment><USER17> That's not what he asked. The question is "can it be measured?" and it can: <http://www.clinchem.org/cgi/content/full/44/1/155> and <http://www.springerlink.com/content/tq58032421q41q14/> and [http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/110436914/abstrac...](http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/110436914/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0)

I write code for medical devices for a living; if a substance found in the body is therapeutically interesting, then someone, somewhere has built an instrument to measure it :-)

<comment><USER16> The comment author almost certainly assumed that the measurement would have a _meaning_ \- specifically, that it would determine whether he might benefit from a drug.

There is no doubt that we can measure the concentration of dopamine or serotonin in an aqueous solution (and eventually, within a brain.) Whether there can be any clinical point to such a measurement is debatable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One of the issues that has always bugged me about this is the issue of context - medicine has a great track record in treating emergencies, but fares quite poorly with preventative care and chronic illness.

The issue arises when people associate the good track record of emergency care with preventative treatment - so essentially take what's prescribed as gospel. Would you take investment advice from a great pig farmer? Dental advice from a good banker? Art advice from a physicist?

I would imagine that pharma will have to tread very carefully over the next decade, as the cumulative resuls of drug-trials like these start to create an interesting track record. However, spin-doctoring is everything....

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm surprised 41 comments have been posted and nobody has pointed this out...

From Drugs.com... "What should I avoid while taking Paxil?

Avoid drinking alcohol, which can increase some of the side effects of Paxil."

<http://www.drugs.com/paxil.html>

From rxlist.com "...Alcohol

Although PAXIL does not increase the impairment of mental and motor skills caused by alcohol, patients should be advised to avoid alcohol while taking PAXIL...."

<http://www.rxlist.com/paxil-drug.htm>

There usually a pretty good reason for medical warnings. Sherlock here made that pretty clear. He was warned not to drink alcohol. He drank. The side effects of the medication became more intense when mixed with alcohol just as he was told would happen.

If you are warned by a doctor and/or pharmacist not to mix alcohol with a medication, then don't mix alcohol with that medication.

<comment><USER20> You can't follow the directions of the medicine you're testing if you're out to villainize an entire class of life-saving medications to support the moral weakness theory.

I hate to say it, but this article is trollish. He isn't depressed. He doesn't have social anxiety disorder, he's just shy. He doesn't get therapy or join toast masters, he just pops the pill and then gets drunk all the time.

And it doesn't work wonders for him. Who woulda thought?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Bitterness, anger, jealousy, sadness: They all make me happy."

Exactly. Coming full circle to the point you actually derive happiness from what you once eschewed is probably the most important thing you can ever teach yourself to do.

</comment><comment><USER22> I have never taken a single neuroceutical that did what it was supposed to. Ever. Including caffeine. Eventually I gave up and decided not to try messing with my brain chemistry in any way ever again ever.

<comment><USER23> Which ones have you taken?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I had a similar, but more positive experience on Paxil, and I think my experience is more typical than the author's, which is why it is in widespread use.

I was always very shy, and had problems opening up to others. I was isolated and depressed, so I saw a psychiatrist. I took Paxil and had intensive (and expensive) therapy, and over the course of a year I opened up and learned to enjoy other people. After that I did not require the Paxil, and I am much more outgoing.

The side effects were not much fun: sweating, inability to orgasm or to feel orgasms, insomnia, etc. and yes Paxil made me love alcohol too. The side effects of depression however were much worse, and Paxil addressed those.

In combination with therapy it totally changed my life, and probably saved it. Its not a recreational drug, however, and the author seemed to use it as such.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's sad that our society values and rewards extroverts so much, that introverts like the author feel the need to alter their minds in order to fit in.

The very existence of the tweeters and facebooks tell something about that need to reward extroverts.

</comment><comment><USER25> From what I understand (to some extent personal experience), drugs like Paxil can be very helpful for people with certain problems. Unfortunately, there is a significant cost, and the gain may require more than just low-grade $disorder to really be felt.

I guess it depends on your specific case.

<comment><USER11> Very much so. Sometimes you have little choice but to take the drugs.

It was once explained to me that depression is somewhat like a deep pit, with slippery sides that get steeper and steeper....once you are in a certain depth, you need a rope to get out.

Over the last year or two, I have begun to really understand how true that can be, learning to control how deep my moods get, and use the people, world, and experiences around me to keep myself from going beyond that self-salvageable depth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Summary: Taking drugs to alter your personality is a bad idea.

<comment><USER27> Taking drugs that have a net negative effect on your personality is a bad idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> From 18 to 24 or so I was on tons of various anti depressants. In my experience I found them all to be placebos! I was no different on them or off them. Either way I really could never be myself around people I hung around with; anxiety-ridden & silly OCD stuff(I can laugh at now).

For me talking about anxiety and OCD stuff was the biggest help. So many people go through the same thing but you think your the only one and are afraid to talk about it, because oh no people may think Im crazy. Yet were all the same! Though even after talking about my issues it generally took some years and feeling comfortable in my own skin was the end all cure.

Im not saying anti-depressants don't work, but for me they were pointless. Time and talking about my issues with friends/others was my cure!

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't know guys, but after take a long run, I usually in high mood, and ready for everything, yes that include talking to some strangers.

but then again, I am to lazy to do a long run periodically

</comment><comment><USER30> By the way, not very well known but benadryl (OTC antihstamine) and Chlortrimeton (OTC antihstamine) are some of the oldest substances, known to have serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibition features. In fact Prozac was synthesised from benadryl, in attempt to make it more potent antidepressant. Chlorpheniramine was researched by swedish scientist, who won Nobel prize (not sure for what exactly), in 1950-s and was found to have SNRI effects. But I beleive these will never be researched again - it hurts potential profits for Pharma.Who needs month of supply of antidepressant for $10, when you can sell it for 200?</comment>


How much commission to pay salesperson for selling Consulting Services? - <AUTHOR> My software consulting company is looking to hire a salesperson (as my first hire!). I've been finding it difficult to get an idea on what other software consulting companies pay their salespeople. (I've found details on what software product/SaaS companies pay, but it's not the same).
My first hire will be a friend doing some sales efforts part-time (lunch-breaks, after-work, weekends) on a contractor agreement, and I'm offering 8% commission on gross sales generated. i.e. 100k project = 8k in commission. The thought is that if we start landing some sales, I'll bring them on full-time, in which I would then offer a base-salary in addition to the 8% commission.
I don't want to cap commission, and I want the formula to be very easy for the time being (hence the % of gross sales approach).
In your experience, is 8% of gross sales generated by the salesperson considered high, or low, in the custom software consulting field? At a full-time capacity, I'd be looking to pay a base salary of around $30-40k with health benefits. <comment><USER2> Ok, so I have started 3 different consultancies which I sold 2 (failed horrible at the other) and I have run larger groups too. My 2 cents:

1\. Do not hire traditional sales staff and base compensation on a commission structure. It is the 100% wrong structure for a consultancy.

2\. Do not hire sales staff before you have excess capacity in the form of employees, beside yourself.

3\. When you do hire sales staff, do not hire sales in the form of client closers, instead hire lead generation staff that finds clients and passes "hot leads" to the principle for closing.

4\. If you need help getting deals moving, you can initially reach out to a friend or others, but very specifically structure it as a referral fee for any deal you can close. e.g. you own the customer, they bring the customer to you, you set the terms, project guidelines and tone for the entire relationship with the customer. Once the deal is closed the referral gets paid a fee (8-15%), usually deferred until the client has made their first payment. So this way they can't bring you someone, then the client closes a deal but never pays you but you still had to pay a referral. Sometimes people balk at this, but to me it is non-negotiable, and the first time you ignore it and pay out a $10k referral for a client that cancels or stiffs you, it will become non- negotiable to you too.

Traditional sales staff is motivated by getting the client through the door and tells them all kinds of wonky things to get that done and get a signature on the dotted line. Then you have to live with that in the deal because the customer will come back and say, well I was told XYZ. Then you are caught between a rock and a hard place, even if the contract doesn't state it, you could still be on the hook if for no other reason then to keep a customer happy. This doesn't happen when the PM or Principle manages the customer because they own the project to completion. Hence, when you get bigger, let the lead generation staff get you the clients to talk to, you or an account/project manager then close the deals.

If you were selling product it would be totally different, but you are selling your and other peoples time which is much harder to do correctly. I have probably made most mistakes possible and paid some heavy prices for them in the past, but using referrals and lead people always worked well.

<comment><USER3> Sound advice, particularly about focusing on generating leads rather than closing deals and on the scale. I'd add that by the time a principal of a small firm explains what sort of lead they wish to pursue and what sort they do not, it will take more time than just digging up the leads. There's just too much capacity planning with a small staff to ignore small variations in workflow and backlog with generic instructions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> {My random opinion from the internet} This is a really bad idea for a software _consulting_ business because the incentives are grossly misaligned.

With fixed fee work the sales person's income is orthogonal to the company's profit. A $100k project with an 8% margin is better for them than a $12k project with a 50% margin, even though the smaller project's lower opportunity cost is probably worth the $2k difference in net profit. Of course if you are paying commission on sales, a $100k project that loses money is as good as a $100k project that makes money. That's the essence of commissions.

Suppose, on the other hand, that the consultants are billed by the hour with a nice healthy 24% margin. An 8% commission essentially amounts to 1/3 ownership for spare time work if and when the salesperson feels like it...maybe they go to the beach with their friends instead of chasing a $12k project because recovering from the rough week at their regular job is more valuable than $960 that they might make if the deal closes -- last week all their work to close a deal went to naught because there was no production capacity to complete the work on the potential client's timeline.

Typically, the principals of a consultancy do most of the sales work...though with multiple principals it might be some but not others as roles diversify. This is because clients are the principal's clients first and foremost.

If you can't resist hiring a salesperson, just pay the salesperson a salary, keep open books, and share the profits. A contract that intrudes on all conversations makes for bad personal relationships...it has to cover things like commission on change orders or simply when a previous client calls you about a new project.

For a one person firm, there is a reasonable probability that this will just turn into a mess and a distraction.

Good luck.

<comment><USER4> > Typically, the principals of a consultancy do most of the sales work...

There's nothing more impressive than hiring the actual principal to do the work versus dealing with a flunky sales rep.

What to do?

Aggressively read up on how market & pitch your services. Become an expert on consultative selling. You might even enroll in a professional sales program like Miller Heiman. Ultimately, this is a core competency needed to grow any business.

BTW, Alan Weiss has great food-for-thought on Value Based Fees, separates you from the hourly bozos > [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1145457.Value_Based_Fees](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1145457.Value_Based_Fees)</comment></comment>


On Truth and Lying in the Extra German Sense - <AUTHOR> https://longreads.com/2019/06/20/on-truth-and-lying-in-the-extra-german-sense/ <comment><USER2> I really wanted to like this article.

Unfortunately it came across as a pseudo-intellectual free-association of language, culture, stereotypes, history, philosophy, and humor.

It needs to decide if it's Dave Barry or educational. It just came across as a drunken loudmouth at a party with a grandiose theory supported by loosely accurate, loosely related facts.

</comment><comment><USER3> FWIW, if you want to know whether you gained weight, go to China. People will frequently tell you how much you have gained or lost since they last saw you.

EDIT to add: and the funny thing is, Chinese are very concerned about face and honour, and will lie to protect it. It's just that weight is merely an aspect of your body and health to monitor, not something sacred or potentially shameful.

</comment><comment><USER4> >Germans couldn't even begin to imagine why being brutally honest would hurt someone in the first place! If the truth hurts you, isn't that more your fault than the truth's?

What? This is simply not true at all, germans aren't emotionless robots, of course they don't go out of their way and hurt the feelings of other people.

Kept reading after that statement and regretted it.

<comment><USER5> The author seems to have suffered a bad case of misunderstanding the "Berliner Schnauze"...

I, unfortunately, also read the whole linked opinion piece on german humor from the economist [0] which I almost disliked even more. I might just feel insulted (being German) but please: calling out "Instead of a raised eyebrow, we get full-body signals to laugh now." from the country that gave us laugh- tracks...

[0] [https://www.1843magazine.com/ideas/the-daily/being-german- is...](https://www.1843magazine.com/ideas/the-daily/being-german-is-no- laughing-matter)

<comment><USER6> maybe the 'humorless germans' are just playing it straight and trying to increase the comedic tension in the situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article would have been better if it had a little more humor. I usually like playing with national stereotypes because if you don't take them too literally there is a lot of truth in them. But this article isn't much fun.

As a German living in the US I definitely agree about the paragraph about preferring to be honest vs being liked. I hate listening to a long list of pleasantries before getting to the point. If you think something is wrong just say it.

The "how are you?" habit has also tripped me up. I have had several occasions where somebody asked me something in the hallway and I just said " fine" and kept walking .

</comment><comment><USER8> I moved from the UK to Germany over ten years ago. I've lived in the South and North, city and countryside.

None of this article really rings true. Germans are just as happy to tell polite lies and make small talk as the British.

Maybe some things are just lost in transliteration.

</comment><comment><USER9> I am learning High German (in Switzerland) and the writing style and general approach in this article to the words' literal translations and the aggressive cultural characterizations bothered me, for a reason I can't quite put into words. Ich habe keine Ahnung.

<comment><USER10> Is Switzerland a good place to learn High German? I was wondering about doing that myself.

<comment><USER11> Switzerland teaches High German (and colloquially - as far as I as a German am aware - refers to it as 'Written German').

If you learn High German in Switzerland you'll be able to speak German perfectly fine. There are regional differences though - Switzerland doesn't have the letter ß, Switzerland has some words that plain don't exist in German (as I know it).

If any Swiss guy is reading: "Widerrechtliches parkieren wird verzeigt" contains two words (in a sentence of four..) that I can understand perfectly fine, but that just don't exist on my side of the border, as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER12> Duden agrees with you, btw: both parkieren and verzeigen are marked as Swiss.

[https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/parkieren](https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/parkieren) [https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/verzeigen](https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/verzeigen)

<comment><USER11> Stumbled upon quite some words like that in 'Written German' aka perfectly fine and official German (like the sign text quoted earlier).

'zuegeln' vs 'umziehen', 'grillieren' vs 'grillen', 'wir gehen in den Ausgang' vs 'wir gehen aus' come to mind, but most of the samples aren't in directly accessible memory anymore (and just as above, before you confirmed my suspicions, I'm not sure if the word I'm not familiar with is actually not a thing or just something I didn't encounter)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This reads like a high school essay composed of random factoids about Germany and its history. Eloquent but border line incoherent.

</comment><comment><USER14> This article may be interesting as trivia, but the nuance of many of the words mentioned is so different from the literal translation that it doesn't make much sense.

<comment><USER3> I find the connotations captured reasonably well here:

> ehrlich ("sincere"), aufrichtig ("straightforward"), rechtschaffen ("right- > doing"), redlich ("true to one's word"), anständig ("decorous"), brav > ("well-behaved"), ehrenwert ("worthy of honor"), and bieder ("upright").

(which incidentally is at odds with the claim that German and English are fundamentally different there...)

<comment><USER11> I'd translate "rechtschaffen" as lawful ... because Lawful Good is officially Rechtschaffen Gut of course.

(Sorry, this German is missing his Pathfinder group)

On a more serious note: I assume you could pick different translations for most of these words and I'm not convinced that the article makes any sort of generally applicable point.

What I do want to say is that the little exposure I had to the US culture ("How are you doiiiing? Are you alriiiight? That's SOOOOO nice!") is impossible to digest and feels .. fake.

I also have to admit that - living in Asia for the last 2 years - my tone and direct (or is it blunt?) communication leads to misunderstandings sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> here isn't even a single long word in German for "hurt feelings," they just translate the English directly (verletzte Gefühle)

> Beleidigt

<comment><USER16> "Beleidigt" is quite negative, implying a sense of hurt feelings where none is expected. I don't think this is an adequate general translation for "hurt feelings". Just "verletzt" might work, depending on context.

<comment><USER5> i agree, "verletzt" fits quite well. Especially if, like in english, you pair it with "Gefühle".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Lügengespenst

he, it should be Lügengespinst - from "gespinst", which means web. Not "Gespenst", which means ghost. Although funnily it would also fit.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think the essay would have been better served getting to what appears to be the point much more directly:

\- The VW scandal was so shocking because executives and engineers exploited a societal taboo against lying

\- Was sustained for so long by exploiting another taboo against placing personal advantage over honesty

\- Signs of fraud were dismissed because people assumed successful executives would never violate these taboos, leading them to accept misleading explanations and discounting the possibility of a cover-up.

</comment><comment><USER19> thought for you: Can i as a German contradict this article without setting an example for it?

<comment><USER5> Haha. I always feel the same way about these types of statements on "the german nature". Such a catch-22.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Yet there is but one contemporary direct translation from the German for to lie."

> 1\. Lügen > 2\. Schwindeln

You would find many more translations for "to lie" in a broader sense.

<comment><USER19> common online tool for german synonyms: 461 synonyms in 24 groups for "lügen" "to lie"

<comment><USER20> That's what I said:

You would find many more translations for "to lie" in a broader sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The article is kinda racist.

We do jaywalk all the time and not everyone as direct as described in the article. "Love of order" has long been lost. Half of Europe is more orderly than Germany.

I laughed especially hard at this: "It is more important to a German to be honest than liked, honest than professionally successful, honest than rich."

You're living 50 years in the past. Modern Germany has adapted to the American life style and the article is a collection of stereotypes.

<comment><USER22> I find it frustrating that any kind of stereotype is now considered "racist", as if there were no cultures anymore, only a uniform global distribution of individuals. At the same time, how is it better to claim that all Germans have become less focused on honesty in the last 50 years?

I agree that the stereotype is not wholly accurate. German youngsters spend a lot of time maintaining their thoroughly fake Instagram/YouTube personas. Nobody with a love of order would tolerate our terrible trains. But the culture shock I got from visiting Australia and California somewhat resembles the stereotypes in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It reminds me of Mark Twain - The Awful German Language.

It combines anecdotes of an English speaker about Germans and German and makes for an amusing read for everyone. But .. please don't use any of these works as any sort of hard truth or reference.

</comment><comment><USER23> "Grab 80 million people and claim they have some psyche in common, people love reading this stuff"

<comment><USER24> Of course they do, it's obvious the moment you step across the border. It doesn't mean the author is correct, or that there isn't variance.

I find the issue with candour is mostly with casual conversation or casual issues. The 'big lies' I think happen just the same.

<comment><USER23> What do you mean by 'big lies'?

<comment><USER24> Corruption, corporate messaging lies, political lies etc..

Corruption in UK is about the same as Germany.

UK is super deferential and not candid, i.e. 'it's not polite to point out ugly things', but this might be perceived as duplicitous in 'candid' countries.

An English person might say 'that's interesting' instead of saying 'it's shit', to be polite.

But in terms of how it breaks into level of civility, it's just the same really. 'Transparency International' ranks them the same in terms of corruption.

So I think it's more a matter of immediate, interpersonal communication than anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> this kind of stuff belongs into #iam14andthisisdeep

</comment><comment><USER26> TL;DR in a country where everyone is obsessed with adhering to truth and order lies do have long(er) legs.

<comment><USER27> In the US, for example, it works a bit differently: everyone lies, and everyone knows it, but nobody wants to offend or confront anyone, so the results are mostly the same. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is a succession of prejeduces, historic and contemporary events.

And some things are wrong. I don't know. Maybe you should travel there without trying to search for situations in which your prejeduces become real. I don't know. Im German and Im really tired of all these articles

I mean: relotius, VW, Hitler and Goethe. If I would write an article about American culture in this way you would call me xenophobic. You are the opposite of polite. You are racist.

<comment><USER29> Spiel mal nicht die beleidigte Leberwurst. Spend a little time abroad, and you will notice the same things. Furthermore, the poor woman lives in Berlin, a city where being a rude asshole is being romanticized as an endearing local tradition.</comment></comment>


Certified Translator, stuck in Venezuela, looking for remote freelance work - <AUTHOR> http://www.cointotranslate.com/ <comment><USER2> Hey there, another venezuelan here.

if you want to help this person PLEASE dont send any money without asking for verification first, I have seen so many people lately using this "please help me im venezuelan and i am in need" to scam money, there has been at least 5 sucessfull scams on r/btc, r/bitcoin and other online forums.

Also Please note that:

1- it's harder to change BTC for VEF than change USD for VEF

2- this domain it's registered at godaddys servers, meaning that what the OP claims here: "Venezuelans cannot accept USD without a bank account. You can use paypal but its hard to exchange from paypal USD to the venezuelan currency (Bolivares)" is half incorrect and does not really applies to him, he had to use either paypal or an international debit/credit card to pay for this domain.

<comment><USER3> To add to this to this point:

1\. USD is the de facto world currency, and many (most?) banks in the world let you open an account in the local currency, plus another account denominated in USD which is absolutely necessary for doing any sort of international business

2\. Venezuela's currency collapse is a problem _mainly_ because it needs to import goods (medicine, machine tools, etc.) from the international market, which must be paid in USD, and which Venezuela now can barely source because their oil industry (main source of foreign earnings) is falling apart [1]

3\. In most cases, USD is superior (more liquid, more easy to transact in, a more stable store of value) to any cryptocurrency. View 'I'm Venezuela ergo crypto' claims with skepticism, especially when they could be paid in USD to a foreign account instead. Not sure what the exact situation on the ground is in Venezuela, maybe it's very hard to receive USD because the government will seize it, but that's the a situation a foreign bank account can solve.

OTOH, if the goal is to use BTC to pay for living expenses by converting to bolivars, it's probably even easier to use USD.

[1] [https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13803](https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13803)

<comment><USER4> That's not even close to an accurate assessment. Yes, you can technically have a bank account in Venezuela denominated in USD. However, it would be completely useless for a few reasons.

You cannot withdraw USD in Venezuela. Only Bolivares. And when you withdraw Bolivares from a USD denominated account, the bank must do so at the official rate.

The official government rate is a complete farce and has no bearing on reality. If you were to pull out $1 USD from any bank in Venezuela, you would get about 10 Bolivares. The real rate on the street right now is about 3 million Bolivares to 1 USD. [https://dolartoday.com/](https://dolartoday.com/)

In other words, with your USD denominated bank account, you would have to withdraw about $300k usd to buy a bottle of coke.

As for getting an overseas account, that is extremely difficult if not impossible without physically being in that country. In the US you cannot get a bank account without some type of US id, either a SSN or TIN/EIN.

There are very few ways to get money into venezuela. One is to be lucky enough to already have a foreign account or overseas family or friends with an account. You can then transact with other locals who also have a foreign account by transferring money to them electronically.

The other method is Western Union to an adjoining country like Colombia. They go across the border get the cash and come back to Venezuela. Crossing the border with cash is fraught with danger right now. The other option is simply to travel outside the country but getting a travel visa to fly is exceedingly difficult for most Venezuelans. Venezuelan officials have stopped issuing passports to most. And countries like the US are not quick to grant a visa considering the fact that the great majority of tourists from venezuela are going to stay in the US permanently/illegally.

As for crypto... you still have to find someone else with money that is willing to pay cash for a crypto currency. But at least the barrier of entry for crypto currency is much lower right now that the difficulty of getting an overseas bank account.

Things are very, very bad in Venezuela right now. Of course, that doesn't mean scammers won't scam. But if the person is truly still in Venezuela, it is very likely they are in dire straits.

<comment><USER3> The thing is, I don't see how crypto helps solve _any_ of those issues you enumerated.

I did specifically mention that regardless of whether you try to take crypto or USD, if your goal is to immediately convert into bolivares for survival spending, neither is easy or simple, since the government presumably wants to seize any USD it can get its hands on (the extortionate 'official' conversion rate just being a particular method of doing so).

> But at least the barrier of entry for crypto currency is much lower right > now that the difficulty of getting an overseas bank account.

I don't see how that is the case, unless you have a specific example? Sure, you can get a crypto account and perhaps get someone to pay you, but you can equally well get a PayPal account denominated in USD, if you didn't already have a foreign bank account.

Neither of those can directly translate into bolivares, but at least the PayPal account can be be easily used to buy physical goods and perhaps get them into the country if you can bypass or bribe your way through customs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In case anyone is not aware of the current situation of Venezuela. Here is a recent explanation: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17408792](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17408792)

<comment><USER6> The EU has sanctions on Venezuela and the US keeps piling on sanctions and newspaper reports say Trump is contemplating an invasion. Obviously these external pressures will have a negative effect on the Venezuelan economy.

One reason for so much pressure is oil prices are rising and external forces want things changed before that happens. Thus the talk of US invasion.

This is in contrast to the US-backed military overthrow of the Honduran government, which has been slaughtering its political opposition. In fact, these are many of the immigrants on the US border being discussed. The western governments back the military and post-coup governments on that case, which has been much more bloody.

<comment> swagasaurus-rex Got any sources for this? Anybody know if these claims are substantial?

<comment><USER7> Maduro and Chavez just about every time on TV or radio claimed the US was preparing an invasion, was subverting the gov't by way of the opposition, etc. All the way back to the GW Bush, through Obama and till now.

Was/is Chavez/Maduro credible? I'll leave that up to you to decide.

The sitch down there is the govt's own doing. Nationalizing, expelling and enacting policies which drove out Industry SMEs ensured that the country would slowly but surely go downhill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's heartbreaking seeing what happened to Venezuela.

It is also really scary as Venezuela was doing relatively quite well compared to other nearby nations. Democracy, functional institutions (relatively) and then .... people chose to vote in some strong men who trashed it.

Granted oil prices would have resulted in real problems anyway, but nothing to the extent we're seeing now. While nobody would want that situation, people in a democracy chose people who set them on that path (since then it hasn't been a democracy) ... and that is scary.

<comment><USER9> Nationalistic socialist regimes almost always poison the ground beneath themselves. Especially when they try to confiscate and nationalize major sectors of their economies. The history of the last century is so replete with instances of this being attempted and going disastrously wrong.

I can't reply for some reason, but: Ataturk should be forever revered for being one of the very few who was able to steer a country through the narrows between Charybdis and Scylla into a functional state.

<comment><USER8> Yup, Turkey is swimming in debt... and the water is getting deeper.

<comment><USER8> I don't know what you're saying there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Your page says "text that need to be translated" but it would read more correctly as "text that needs to be translated". Just saying! Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER11> Love the idea.

But I'm curious...

Is ~$12/page actually the going rate for translating english to/from spanish?

As $6,300 USD/BTC * 0.002 BTC = $12.6 USD

<comment><USER12> [https://www.strakertranslations.com/translation- pricing/](https://www.strakertranslations.com/translation-pricing/) \- $0.13 - $0.16 per word which comes to $32.50 - $40 per 250-word page.

[https://gengo.com/pricing-languages/](https://gengo.com/pricing-languages/) \- $0.06 - $0.12 per word or $15-30 per page.

[https://www.gts-translation.com/translation-prices-per- word/](https://www.gts-translation.com/translation-prices-per-word/) \- $0.10 per word or $25 per page.

[https://www.onehourtranslation.com/translation/benefits/tran...](https://www.onehourtranslation.com/translation/benefits/translation- price) \- $0.087 or $21.75.

It's certainly seems cheaper and Bitcoin fees seem relatively low right now (at least compared to the end of last year). However, I'm not sure it seems so significantly cheaper, especially weighing the 250-word one-size pricing.

Agreed that it's really cool, though.

<comment><USER11> WOW... no wonder there are so many AI startups working on translation.

I thought Google Translate uses AI now fairly perfectly.

Why is anyone paying a human translator $40/page when Google Translate is "free"?

<comment><USER13> Google translates "The IT group" to French as "Le groupe IL". Context matters.

<comment><USER11> That's good to know!

I haven't really used them for anything serious in the past few years which is why I asked.

I had just read all of this AI stuff recently about Google using machine learning/AI to better help it's instant audio translation service or something.

Perhaps the only thing they machine-learned was the audio to text conversion part? Not the translation part?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I know people have concerns with altcoin longevity/soundness/security but in a situation where every cent matters maybe an additional crypto to accept would be NANO? Though it seems to be less bartered locally. I read this a few days ago [https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/8wfl2r/venezu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/8wfl2r/venezuelan_user_i_bought_102_kg_of_food_today/)

edit: Oh never mind, moments after I posted this i realized that with altcoins you could end up even less crypto worth vs BTC than you'd save on tx cost. :)

</comment><comment><USER15> Fuerza bro! Pa' lante.

</comment><comment><USER16> While this looks interesting, it only helps one person/family. Is there any other way to help the people in the country? I looked up a couple of websites, but would love to hear people's opinions.

</comment><comment><USER17> Can you post a eth/bitcoin wallet address on your site?

<comment><USER18> I've submitted his web form requesting it.

</comment></comment><comment> semi-nontechncl Have you considered accepting Nano instead of BTC? Nano is perfect for this since there are zero transaction fees. Also, transactions are instant with Nano. A lot of people in the Nano subreddit are trying to get Venezuelans to start accepting and using Nano. You should definitely post in the Nano subreddit if you start accepting payments via Nano. More info at Nano.org and reddit.com/r/nanocurrency

<comment><USER19> Build a profile on Peertal & happy to send you LTC payments on the platform for translating our website. [https://youtu.be/tkyH3JRxndc](https://youtu.be/tkyH3JRxndc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good luck!

Are you still working on [https://www.tryeffortless.com/](https://www.tryeffortless.com/) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you, This is not for me I'm just helping somebody in Venezuela (Yes, I'm still working on effortless)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> How did you get stuck?

<comment><USER22> Yes, incredibly difficult to get a Venezuelan passport now, these restrictions prevents nationals from leaving en masse. Thousands of Venezuelans have illegally walked out of their country, and making their way to my home country Ecuador on foot.

<comment><USER23> That's correct, everybody is hungry so corruption is everywhere. To get a passport you need to give the officer an iPhone 7 or a few thousand dollars. I read this today, it's pretty bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Venezuela is working on sovereign crypto asset backed by oil [http://archive.is/Zdhxe](http://archive.is/Zdhxe)

</comment><comment><USER25> "Please help me use the blockchain, a ledger that can never be erased and can be tracked back to you, to circumvent your country's sanctions against mine."

</comment><comment><USER26> Why hasn't some cryptocurrency replaced the bolívar as the unit of currency for most private transactions in Venezuela?

Given the Venezuelan government's poor economic management and tight restrictions on foreign exchange transactions, if cryptocurrency was going to overthrow fiat currency anywhere it should be in Venezuela.

<comment><USER27> I think you are aiming at this result, but to spell it out:

Because most cryptocurrencies are not suitable for use as a currency. They are not stable units of account, are not as easy to exchange on an everyday in- person basis as cash, and are only a stable store of value by comparison to complete disasters like the bolívar. There _are_ attempts (e.g. [https://basis.io/](https://basis.io/) or [https://tether.to/](https://tether.to/)) to make a crypto-currency that fills this niche, but they have flaws (Basis isn't deployed yet, and Tether is a bit scary - it's backed by a single company that theoretically owns one dollar for every Tether coin issued).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Has anyone gotten verification? Or where can I get some bitcoin to try it out?

</comment><comment><USER29> Hi, sent you an email. Hopefully we can help each other out!

</comment><comment><USER30> Why not just dollars?

<comment><AUTHOR> Venezuelans cannot accept USD without a bank account. You can use paypal but its hard to exchange from paypal USD to the venezuelan currency (Bolivares)

<comment><USER31> How, and why is it easier to exchange BTC for Bolivars, then Paypal dollars for Bolivars?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Great idea.</comment>


Yet an Other Website Generator - <AUTHOR> https://y-nk.github.io/blog/encre-a-minimal-blog-engine.html <comment><AUTHOR> I've been building a "markdown-driven blog generator" with minimal mindset.

There's no "templating engine", plugin system or bloated options, just "optional" functions to render partial parts of a post" (default are provided)</comment>


Ask HN - On your current project, how long does the build + tests take? - <AUTHOR>

For me, 12 mins. And I'm impatient. :( <comment><USER2> Normal build, < 30 seconds. Build for production, about 2 minutes. Build from scratch, that includes building and populating the database, 20 minutes.

No tests yet. I really need to fix that...</comment>


Goodbye Apple, hello Amazon for music? - <AUTHOR>

Has anyone seen the message on Amazon.com home page regarding their new Cloud Drive and Player? Man if they can convert my itunes library I am in! ;) <comment><USER2> They can import your iTunes library, via an uploading tool (written with Adobe AIR).</comment>


P-III autopsy - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencystuff.com/?p=24 <comment><USER2> Note this blog post is from 2010. It's customary to put the year on the title (I think?).</comment>


An Introduction to Data Mining - <AUTHOR> http://chem-eng.utoronto.ca/~datamining/dmc/data_mining_map.htm

<comment><USER2> That tree's a good example of how not to do it.

For one thing, it's representing something that's not really a tree. "Support Vector Machine" and "Neural Networks" appear more than once as leaf nodes. Like any Chinese Encyclopedia classifications they often succumb to the temptation to add nodes that say "Other" to keep the length of the branches constant. (They could probably think of some name for what neural nets and the SVM have in common -- they've got all day to think about this stuff because they get paid to teach and to do research, it's not like they are harried practitioners.)

At some point I quit distinguishing regression and classification. There was a time when I knew some tricks for classification and regression seemed mysterious. Once I got over my mental block it seemed pretty obvious that much of my box of tricks worked for regression too.

Another issue is that it's not a good graphic for the web. You could probably print this out and read it but you can't take it in at glance on the web which destroys the purpose of it being an infographic

<comment><USER3> The graphic does what it's intended to do: give a high-level overview of machine learning concepts and techniques. Even if not perfect, it's a lot better than a block of text.

<comment><USER2> it still isn't the way i'd do it. the sheer number of different methods is intimidating -- there are a lot of commonalities of the methods that aren't depicted.

if you wanted to make things clear you're better off picking ONE problem and ONE method applied to the problem. the real challenges in understanding ML or DM are pretty much the same with all methods.

a graphic like that creates the illusion that it's transfered some knowledge when really it hasn't. that's why infographics are dangerous. if HN was my site i'd have it reject any article that has an image that's > 800 pixels high in it.

<comment><USER4> "it still isn't the way i'd do it."

I look forward to your attempt!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's a nice overview. I don't mind that certain things appear more than once as "leaf nodes", because it shows that the same methods can be used for different things. Visualizing this with only one "leaf node" each would have been more messy in my opinion. I also think the differentiation of Classification and Regression is justified, because while Regression can be used for Classification, it's not quite the same thing.

I'm not an expert, but in my opinion the difference is that Classification is sorting a basket of apples and bananas into two separate baskets, while Regression is predicting which fruit will come out of the basket after X apples and Y bananas.

</comment><comment><USER6> As a quick rule of thumb would be to never trust anyone who claims "regression" is a separate topic from "classification". Oh yes, and in this case it is beyond awful.

<comment><USER7> Can you explain why you feel that way?

<comment><USER8> He's making a fair point, which is that certain types of classification methods basically involve "fitting" a hyperplane to a dataset in such a way that the hyperplane divides the data into different classes [1]. In trivial cases, we may be able to do this in two dimensions, in which case the "hyperplane" is just a line bisecting two different classes of data. It's easy to see how this can be conceptualized as a type of regression.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Support_vector_machine>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is really, really cool, thanks Dr. Sayad. I love how this allows people to see the entire process and then drill into each step as deeply as they want to go.

I really think this is the way complex topics need to be taught. It's so easy to get caught in the weeds and lose track of where you are in the overall picture, an approach like this is extremely helpful.

</comment><comment><USER10> That's a great overview of data mining. I am wondering if you can somehow insert multivariate analysis into this flow chart. Multivariate analysis may be a good substitute for clustering methods. Thank you for providing such a clear picture.

<comment><USER10> another thought is: if it's possible (I do notice the copyright for this), could we put it on wiki, so everyone can update it after approved by Dr. Saed Sayad to generate a comprehensive one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I enjoyed reading all your comments. I would be glad to moderate the "wiki" version.</comment>


How Groupon migrated from a monolithic Rails app to a new Node.js infrastructure - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.groupon.com/2013/misc/i-tier-dismantling-the-monoliths/

<comment><USER2> The title was "I-Tier: Dismantling the Monoliths"

And it's actually not just about going from RoR to Node. The European operations are of nearly equal size and value as those in the US, and they were on a Java/Apache/PostgreSQL stack. I-Tier has been nearly as much about about unifying everything under one uniform architecture as it has about performance.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://twitter.com/mcculloughsean/status/396465701239545856](http://twitter.com/mcculloughsean/status/396465701239545856)</comment>


Congressional Budget Office releases study on minimum wage increase to $15 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2019-07/CBO-55410-MinimumWage2019.pdf <comment><USER2> The concept of a minimum wage ON IT'S OWN, is flawed. There also needs to be a maximum wage or you know what happens all those who were at $15 will want a ramp that places them in the same relative position versus all others as it was before. It matters not if the minimum wage was $200 per hour if the UAW wage was then set at $800 - minimum wage earners would be just as unable to buy a new car as they are now. The group at minimum needs to ramp up, while the rest have a limit. That way purchasing power would broaden. In Germany the organised labor does not get 5-10x what current fed minimum (~~$7.50) is. They say the UAW total package with benefits and perks is about $60 per hour, with less than half in wages the rest in pensions and benefits.</comment>


Ask HN: How long will it take Yahoo to buy Tumbler.com - <AUTHOR>

It took Yahoo more than 5 years to get flicker.com.<p>Think they will go right after tumbler.com? <comment><USER2> noooooo</comment>


Remember Microsoft's $80M color? Let's put that to the test. - <AUTHOR> http://eightymillion.heroku.com/

<comment><USER2> You could talk about the point more, I went through 18 iterations and never found the "$80M" color -- which is what I wanted to see in the first place.

There is no right answer or wrong answer, or end of the tunnel, or goal. There should be.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would be interested to see an analysis of how frequently people prefer the color on the right over the color on the left, independent of what those colors are.

There is a bunch of research indicating that people's attention is drawn to the right and they are more likely to like things that appear on the right. (It has been verified that this preference switches for left-handed people.) And I'm curious how strong the bias proves to be in such a simple neutral test.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, I will update it right now so it logs this data too :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just to let you guys know, I'm the author of this little experiment.

I'll publish any findings that this project generates under Creative Commons, of course.

If anyone has any ideas on how to improve this, or the data being collected, I'd be super happy to read it :)

<comment><USER4> The phrase "let's see if they're right" implies a reward, but none is apparent.

Voters need to feel they're achieving some progress towards a goal, visibly refining a dataset (zeroing in), or learning something, other than just the cheery counter at top right.

Otherwise you're essentially measuring how many altruistic clicks till a person gathers they won't personally benefit from clicking more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Basically we just keep going until we feel foolish and give up?

</comment><comment><USER6> There is a lot of priming going on.</comment>


Corporate logos dataset? - <AUTHOR> Anyone know of places where I can obtain a corporate logos dataset? Commercial or FOSS <comment><USER2> There was a logos-as-a-service featured some time ago.

Maybe you can use this one?

[https://blog.clearbit.com/logo](https://blog.clearbit.com/logo)

I've been very positively impressed by Clearbit, though I haven't used them as a customer yet.</comment>


As the Startup Boom Deflates, Tech Is Humbled - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/technology/tech-start-up-boom-deflate.html <comment><USER2> So some of the fake-innovators are finally failing (long overdue). Startups are no longer a "fashion", so hopefully there will be less posers and less people who brand as startups businesses that are more fit for slow organic growth. Like really, WTF did Uber or Airbnb really _innovate_ or _invent?!_ Grateful to them that _they finally raised the bar in areas of the service industry where everything sucked for the consumers..._ but there should be other stuff to focus on if you want 100x ROI. What they did was pretty much mundane and incredibly boring, they succeeded by incredibly-smart-business- sense and uberhuman bubble-surfing-skills!

Finally more breathing room. And hopefully less competition for capital, so that the people _actually really innovating and inventing new stuff_ have more chances of getting it.

 _Overall there 's only reason for optimism!_

<comment><USER3> It's easy to criticize AirBnB and Uber. Try to do something with a similar impact. If that's not an innovative company, I don't know what is it.

I don't particularly like Uber and AirBnB, to be clear. But it's hard to deny they're rare and valuable.

<comment><USER4> Every single word you use is defensible, but in the context of Uber presently losing billions of dollars a year. There is a huge surplus of people who can create something rare, valuable and innovative if they are allowed to lose billions of dollars a year of other people's money.

It is critically important that all this business activity happens at a profit, otherwise it is unsustainable and a bad use of resources. Profitless activity will stop fairly quickly and won't come back.

<comment><USER5> You need to consider it a form of warfare, a tremendous cost absorbed in the hope of conquest. Once the adversaries, i.e. cabbies and taxi companies, are defeated, Uber expects to be in a strong position in an oligopoly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I welcome the reckoning honestly, I think there was a whole decade or more of this myth that tech startups just print money and that young, hip, techie folks were at the forefront of innovation. The reality was just that many, many idiots were flush with VC money, and that there was very little intelligent business going on.

Most startups I worked at seemed to care more about their slick office space and their culture than the bottom line, equating a successful round of funding with actual business success.

That being said, I won't deny that the well known tech companies did change culture dramatically (Netflix, Google, Amazon, AirBnb, Uber, Facebook, etc).

These days I really prefer the "bootstrapped" business scene. Companies that start small, and are forced to make revenues early on to stay afloat. Why the need to build 100 billion dollar businesses? What's wrong with 50 million dollar businesses? Rather than starting with some grand vision, why not start with the basics: I can create value in x way, and meet the needs of y market. From there it's all just managing finances, spending time wisely, and making tough trade-offs, the hallmarks of any business.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have the feeling that, unlike in 2001 and 2008, we haven't had a recession in a while so there wasn't a filtering process for unprofitable startups. Due to the quantity of $$ looking for an investment target, the unprofitable ideas kept getting investment $$ far longer than would normally be the case. But, eventually, it becomes apparent that some of these ideas aren't going to ever be profitable, because not every problem is solved by growth.

So, really, it's just as well to have a shakeout of unprofitable ideas now, rather than accumulate ever-more bogus ideas sucking up resources. The only unusual thing is that it's been so long since the last recession that this shakeout is happening without one.

Of course, we could have one soon, but I've been thinking that for a while now, so who knows.

<comment><USER8> I foresee a post-crash wave. Yes there will be a shakeout of unprofitable ideas. But "VC unprofitable" is not directly comparable to real world unprofitable. Growth at all costs mantras take down good ideas with 8-9 figure market caps too. If you don't take investment (maybe through debt + bootstrapping) and can deal with the slower growth rate $50M "lifestyle" businesses with full founder ownership isn't something to sneeze at.

<comment><USER7> There are definitely cases of a potentially profitable X-size startup being killed by taking 100*X in VC money, and then trying to find some way of justifying that pricetag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Our entire sector is overvalued. This could just be the beginning of investors realizing their investment isn't really worth what they paid. If there is a reckoning on the big companies, that could lead to a recession.

</comment><comment><USER10> IMO We reached a peak of start up enthusiasm: so many entrepreneur wannabes around.

The reality is that Mr Market is going to make lots of egos very humble very soon.

</comment><comment><USER11> Doesn't this seem similar to other downturns the tech industry has seen? I think it is quite likely that in the next 5 years there's a good chance of a recession and that tech and startups will feel it as they have in other downturns (this may be a cycle of that). Why would it be incorrect to assume that startups will roar back as they did post dotcom bubble and post great recession?

<comment><USER12> We'll likely see many more tech-enabled consumer (and some B2B) startups fail. Meanwhile, B2B tech companies with good unit economics will continue to grow, hire, raise more capital and IPO/exit.

They may not be as sexy as the PR-laden BS that we've seen in the last few years, but there are many more solid companies with real businesses than there are Caspers, WeWorks, scooter companies etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My suspicion is with the low hanging fruits gone, investors will soon turn their eyes away from growth-at-all-cost unicorn potentials to profitable companies that target tiny specific niches.

<comment> blaser-waffle > to profitable companies that target tiny specific niches

I agree with this, and will take it a step further: it'll mostly be B2B and niche business and service applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So, is this rationality prevailing (play stupid games, win stupid prizes), or a canary in the coal mine for the US/world economy as a whole?

<comment><USER2> Bet on the first. The US economy is probably getting healthier, dropping/burning the dead wood.

Now, US politics... that circus looks weird from the outside, but whatever works for them ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER15> The next presidential election, despite being an absolute circus, should keep things split no matter who wins. This makes political stagnation a reliable bet for the next 2.5 years, possibly even longer. Normally a good sign for markets as little new regulations/change will be occurring.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How having children impacts your career choices? - <AUTHOR> I recently had to hire someone for the first time in my life. I was surprised, that candidates tried to find common ground in thinking about planing their carries in terms of parenthood. I have no children (other interviewer has) so it seemed really illusive to me, how they evaluate their career path in terms of being a parent. Does having children impacts you so much? If so, how? I get it, you think not only for yourself but also for a person who's life just begun. Is there something else? Why people still care about the job safety in IT when you can find a job basically in week now? <comment><USER2> When you have children your career isn't your number one priority. Time becomes much more of a precious thing, because you have multiple demands on it. Some employers feel you can get the job done while respecting your time some don't.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have an 18 month old daughter and I'm currently looking for work, so this question has been incredibly important.

Essentially, I see three major areas where Lauren impacts my job search:

1.) My time is significantly more important.

2.) Equity is less important.

3.) Stability is more important.

My time is significantly more important because I will only have one child and frankly, I don't want to miss her entire youth while I chase my startup dreams.

Equity is still nice, but I want to make sure that if my daughter has the kind of brain and work ethic that could get her into MIT/Ivy League, she won't have to worry about money. Consequently, I invest heavily in her education...both in an education savings plan and via making sure that she is surrounded by intellectually stimulating activities. As an example, consider daycare. It's relatively easy and affordable to put her in a daycare where the kids sit and watch television all day. It's much more expensive to have her in an environment that will use her imagination and where she is cared for by people with an education in early childcare education. Unfortunately, RSUs or stock options don't pay many bills...

Finally, stability is important because finding a new job is stressful. It's significantly more stressful when you have a little person who can't eat your hopes and dreams!

I hope this helped!

</comment><comment><USER4> Being a parent myself and also in IT: what changes is that you start looking for things that are actually decent and contribute to the quality of life as a parent.

Effectively that does a few things to selecting possible jobs:

\- based on age you start to evaluate e.g. the next unicorn offering you a job instead of just accepting and working long hours again. Questions to e.g. consider: does this provide a personal perspective? Can I tell my kid where a work? The last one is especially interesting as kids will quite blandly tell you if what you do at work sounds ridiculous. \- personally, being employed or freelancing does not matter for me. But having a kid gives you this feeling of being grown up, so the you start only doing work that is satisfying. I avoid work or contracts where I feel like "this is total BS".

If anything could be the most common thing about being a parent and working... I would stay you start being an adult questioning the sanity of your choices. You do not have to do that without kids because you are only responsible for your own life.

</comment><comment><USER5> It will impact it a lot if imagine. As a single person without family I've done a lot of consulting work, worked for bunch of startups and travelled quite a lot for projects. If I decide to have a family I'd prioritise funding a long term no nonsense job in some boring corporation probably.

<comment><USER5> typo: should be finding not funding

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am not concerned about job safety as a parent as yes there are plenty of opportunities. And I'm not even in the US where it's even better from what I gather.

What is important is being paid well and in Sydney that requires being paid pretty much the top advertised rates. It's still not enough to support a family and live a middle class lifestyle, so partner needs to work.

Requiring good pay generally means taking more demanding jobs which then can be tiring when dealing with family life. This is something I'm trying to figure out how to solve or at least adjust to.

</comment><comment><USER7> Having children impacts your career (assuming you make choices with them in mind) because suddenly, long hours are less appealing, you can't put all your energy and time into your job, and a job you can hang onto for 5-10 years is more appealing (moving a lot with young children is a royal PIA).

Regarding job safety when you can get another right away: Finding and getting another job is stressful. You have to acclimate to a new environment. You probably have to learn or relearn some skill. So while doing this once every 2-4 years is fine, every couple of months or even once a year is disruptive.

</comment><comment><USER8> > Why people still care about the job safety in IT when you can find a job > basically in week now?

Those of us who remember 2002, and to a lesser extent 2008, don't take this for granted. You shouldn't either imo.

</comment><comment><USER9> previous discussions on the same topic:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14860849](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14860849)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14777851](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14777851)

</comment><comment><USER10> There is NOTHING more disruptive to your productivity than having children.

There is NOTHING more joyful in my life than having children. (YMMV.)</comment>