The boss, not the workload, causes workplace depression - <AUTHOR> http://sciencenordic.com/boss-not-workload-causes-workplace-depression <comment><USER3> To elaborate, the things that often lead to unhappy workers also include:

      - Unknown expectations from the job
      - Little or no control over decisions that affect your job
      - Missing feeling of involvement

The fair treatment bit is mentioned in the article. The reality is that people tend to be more irrational than they probably ought to be which usually has significant (negative) side-effects.

<comment><USER4> These factors indeed would stress people out. Put poor compensation and poor quality-of-living on this list as well, since we now live in a race-to-the- bottom global labor marketplace, and companies are aiming for absolute low payroll costs rather than location-adjusted costs. People will take a job at a unsustainable salary in the hopes of proving themselves and eventually receiving a compensation upgrade; there is a non-zero number of companies out there who have the exact opposite plan as a rule.

We can also say that not-every-boss is the irritant in a bad workplace situation, but that's a nitpick. Yes, I've had the bad-boss-in-a-good- organization and I've had the great-boss-in-a-rotten-job scenarios. In the latter type of situation, at least one human in a management or executive role made decisions that adversely affected my personal growth, workplace conditions, or feedback relationship with the company. It was often many humans up-the-chain making these kinds of decisions, in a loosely (sadistically) coordinated fashion, fully aware that their handling of resources was resulting in human suffering. If you have a great boss, both your job and his/her job can still be very, very stressful and limiting. Since we know that it's possible to run companies that don't have chronic worker stress issues, it's very much immoral to put people through this in the service of any business or organizational goals. (This applies to not-for- profit orgs, too)

<comment><USER3> The following image sums up the stress/burnout part rather well:

[http://imgur.com/a/k6MPj](http://imgur.com/a/k6MPj)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had a problem of burnout in the past. My boss was an asshole, he lacked any planning or technical skills, he want impose his point of view without listen anyone opinions. He change assigned priority every seconds and want to take technical decisions without any knowledge. He was crusty when someone try to reply to him and explain a different point of view. He changed position during the time trying to earn merits and charge others to his own faults. He ever defend one of two employees who he like, even if they are completely wrong. Also holiday planning was a nightmare: he pretend to stay one month in holiday and we have to cover this period (I come from Italy where everyone usually go in holiday in August). Unfortunately he was one of the founder and of the owner of the company. When he decided to sell his share, we opened a big bottle of champagne. Now, with a democratic, polite boss (that is also a technical guru) the climate in the office is great and no one want to leave.

<comment><USER6> Lucky. My boss, who was very much like that, got a promotion in the owning organisation, and now has more power (and pay), and still runs our place into the ground.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's also this very real phenomenon: "Retaliation: A Guide for Vindictive Bosses" \- [http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffschmitt/2012/12/10/retaliati...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffschmitt/2012/12/10/retaliation- a-guide-for-vindictive-bosses/#6fe16402461d)

<comment><USER4> True and frightening.

There isn't a particularly good reason why a modern middle manager has that much power over their direct reports.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _concludes an extensive new Danish study._

> _A study of 4,500 public employees... at Danish schools, hospitals, > nurseries, offices, etc._

Public employees in Denmark work 35 hours a week, with 8 weeks holiday for teachers and 5 weeks holiday for others.

I really do not think this study applies to people who work 12 hours a day with no holidays.

Also it was published in 2013

<comment><USER9> It's banal to say "this was 2013" as if such results age so quickly.

It amazes me how on one hand "Peopleware" (1987) and "The mythical man-month" (1975) are held up as ground-breaking ideals here but a published academic study is dismissed because "it was published in 2013".

As for "Well it's not transferable to 12 hours a day with no holidays", what you're describing isn't reality for most people in most countries. It is not even legal to work 12 hours a day for 5 days a week in any of Europe+.

If you are doing 12 hour days and don't have holidays then you are a slave not a worker.

\+ Except UK, but only if you have specifically opted out of the law, otherwise the 48 hour week maximum still applies.

<comment><USER8> I think mods should add (2013) into title.

12 hours a day is not uncommon. Even in EU and public sector, for example doctors in some eastern countries have to work this way.

Anyway, my point is: this study should not be miss represented.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is funny to see this on the same day as the Amazon story, especially with the comment about how Bezos, in the wake of the negative press, encouraged people to come forward and report issues they see. People did, and he fired those who complained.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12260891](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12260891)

<comment><USER11> I was going to reference the Hundred Flowers Campaign, but it looks like a lot of people got there before me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Employees quit their bosses not the company.

<comment><USER13> Maybe sometimes, not always.

I quit to go to a new company, but I would have gladly kept my boss. Actually that's happened to me a couple times.

<comment><USER14> I've got a "me too" comment.

In my first job post university, after about two years, the moment I realized "I don't belong here" was when a coworker in the 80% underground open plan office stood up and asked in a loud voice to be heard by everybody "Does anybody need a few project hours for billing? I've got some hours left in my project that you can have." My boss responded "Yes! I'll take whatever hours you can spare for myself and for [Noseshine _(me)_ ]". We had to have a billable customer project for each and every hour of our time at work.

My boss was great, the "system" sucked.

<comment> T-hawk I'll me-too your me-too. I had that exact same situation on a job and left because of it. The only question I ever heard from my boss was "Are you billable?" She didn't care anything about technical quality, career development, tooling, architecture, morale; the only thing that mattered was billable billable billable. It wasn't entirely her fault, it came transitively through her from upper management, the entire division only cared about billable hours, but she sure didn't do anything to help either. Classic "shit pipe" rather than "shit umbrella".

The product had a hideous installation process involving hundreds of manual edits to settings in IIS and configuration files. I was deliberately told not to try to improve that via scripting, because they wanted to keep being able to charge customers dozens of billable hours for each installation.

<comment><USER15> One of my early software jobs was at a shop and we built conference registration 'pages' (a big form with a bunch of perl stuff behind it).

Each project was... a lot of hand-customization, and usually took 8-12 hours, and we did a few dozen per year (IIRC) and that number was growing. But each one was... a pain.

I spent some time putting a lot of configurable stuff in a a config file, and some runtime checking of the configs, and dynamic behaviour, and... we had something that would make setup of the form and _most_ 'custom' requests down to about 1-2 hours max.

I wasn't filling out my timesheet, and someone said "you have to put what project you were working on"... so I filled in 42 hours (over 2 weeks - <USER2> time here and there) for "project X" and... holy crap I got a verbal beating. We're going to lose this client - we're overbilling, we're gouging, etc.

I tried to very little avail to demonstrate that... we can keep charging 12 hours ($2500? IIRC) for the pages in future, but now they'll only take an hour or so. Apparently I was talking to the wrong people because they thought I was advocating fraud, and I probably almost got fired over that. My code was erased, everything was put back the way it was, they 'ate' the overage to the client (read... I just had 42 less billable hours for 2 weeks) and ... I was sort of 'demoted'.

Had only been there a month or so, and I think had I been able to explain to the owner (a tech guy, and decent business guy) what I'd done, he might have understood. My cube was only 30 feet from the guy. In my eyes at the time, though, I thought this wrath was coming from him through someone else. Looking back now, I doubt he was even aware of it.

<comment><USER16> > Had only been there a month or so, and I think had I been able to explain to > the owner (a tech guy, and decent business guy) what I'd done, he might have > understood. My cube was only 30 feet from the guy. In my eyes at the time, > though, I thought this wrath was coming from him through someone else. > Looking back now, I doubt he was even aware of it.

He probably didn't know about that situation, but he should have been aware of the billable hours culture and the problems that was causing.

<comment><USER15> agreed, although... in his defense, it was a crazy time and crazy growth - they were hiring and putting a lot of policies and structures in place at that time, and I know some things got lost in the shuffle. This was definitely one of those "hindsight" insights from me years later though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Serious question: how would a psychiatrist distinguish "workplace depression" from your garden-variety depression that strikes people outside the workplace?

<comment><USER18> I've been to a psych and he has never actually suggested that my issues are caused by my work place but he has suggested I take short-term leave on several occasions. I have refused to do it thus far but that seem obvious that he thinks work is causing or increasing my issues.

I've also talked to a therapist's but in general have no other major causes of stress in my life. I make more than double the median income in my area, my family is all healthy and close, etc. Work seems to be a major cause of stress. I've tried to find another job but the interview process in tech is more stressful than the actual work. So many rejections just wear you out over time.

To your point I would say the only way they could really tell if it was job related would be talking to each person and ruling out other causes.

<comment><USER17> Thank you. So what you are saying is, the psychs view the workplace issues as exacerbating factors.

<comment><USER19> An abusive work environment is akin to an abusive home environment. Given that at work you don't even have the option of standing your ground, it's at least as bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In my experience this is a common problem in tech startups, often because "the boss" is a "business" guy who is imposing unfair things on engineering. For example, instead of following a lean startup or customer discovery method of determining the product, he is imposing feature-of-the-week management based on whatever random thing a "potential" customer wanted that week, and never changing the delivery date even though the spec (spec? No he just requests a feature, never integrates it with he product design) ... is constantly changing.

And this isn't a specific example, this is just something that has happened so often that it seems to be an epidemic.

I think Agile is partly to blame for this. Sure, changing direction every 2 weeks is ok, but you have to leave room for designing the new features, you can't just add them to the workload for the next sprint.

</comment><comment><USER21> Yup, I'll buy that sauce.

Been there, done that, not again.

Testify, brothers!</comment>


Tesla is raising up to $1.5B through convertible note and share sale - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/02/tesla-1-5-billion/ <comment><USER2> A lot of people want to trash Musk and Tesla, but I look at it this way:

\- Sure the CEO might be too active on twitter and at times say or do things typically considered inappropriate CEO behavior.

\- Musk often makes bold claims and sometimes misses his projected dates.

However:

\- Musk also is often right.

\- He delivered amazing things with the model s. The Audi e-tron looks quite nice and I think competition is nice, but it still doesn't match the 2012 model s specs.

\- He wanted the model 3 entry price to be $35k. Lots of peopple doubted he could do it, and many projected it wouldn't be available until 2020 or later. It looks like the base model 3 I can order is about $39k and with tax credit brings you downt to $35k and change.

\- He promised autonomous driving 2 years from 2016, and honestly many people thought he was nuts. And his prediction was overly optimistic here, but there have been a steady stream of amazing incremental improvements to auto-pilot. On freeways, the tesla can now determine when to change lanes and does it. It can follow navigation within freeways, and it can warn you if a stoplight or stopsign is approaching. They demoed true autonomy, and I believe it's actually getting quite close. Given 1 or 2 more years of incremental improvements, your tesla would be capable of driving you most places I would think. He didn't make his 2 year prediction, but his team at tesla is still doing amazing innovation in this space.

\- Part of what makes a great innovator is being able to fail sometimes. Musk will continue to make bold claims, sometimes he will fail to fulfill it, but many times he will deliver.

What he's doing is nothing short of amazing. He's doing things people keep saying can't be done. Re-usable rockets that land? Electric cars? Cars that drive themselves? I'm willing to tolerate a little shenanigans in exchange for this kind of innovation.

<comment><USER3> >Sure the CEO might be too active on twitter and at times say or do things typically considered inappropriate CEO behavior.

The problem is he's saying or doing things that are typically considered crimes, like securities fraud.

>Musk often makes bold claims and sometimes misses his projected dates.

Or, to use normal language, he's a serial liar.

>Part of what makes a great innovator is being able to fail sometimes. Musk will continue to make bold claims, sometimes he will fail to fulfill it, but many times he will deliver.

Being willing to fail and being dishonest aren't the same thing. It's bizarre how the Musk Cult contorts itself to avoid any possibility of criticizing the Great Leader.

<comment><USER4> Mostly, it just that like any CEO, he will always paint the situation in the best light possible. "Semi is coming next year", "Model X deliveries will start in 2015" etc.

The going-private-at-420 thing was reckless, and he's paid the price for that.

But I don't think its accurate to brand him a serial liar. He's just doing what a CEO does.

<comment><USER5> "He's just doing what a CEO does."

I disagree. At a certain point, Musk turned the corner and became delusional. It's beyond simple boasting now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was on Jeju Island in South Korea and apparently it's where the South Korean government tests renewable technologies like electric vehicles. Our tour guide had this electric Hyundai that was indistinguishable from the gas-powered version. It was quiet, and that's about it.

I remember thinking that this is the future of electric vehicles. Boring. Reliable. No drama or shenanigans about CEOs doing weed or pissing off regulators or stiffing suppliers or "production hells" or falcon wing doors and touchscreen dashboards or getting rich people to adopt it first and making everybody else wonder if the price will ever come down. Everything just works.

China's already there with electric buses and electric scooters. I think they own those markets now (well-deserved based on their execution BTW).

If you haven't been paying attention to renewable tech in East Asia, you should definitely explore more; I think it would be valuable experience for the rest of the world's big-volume automakers. At least I learned a lot.

<comment><USER7> The imitators always catch up to the innovators. Eventually. And everyone downplays the innovation, as if it were just part of some natural evolution of things.

But some people know the truth: That it could have easily been another 50 or 100 or 200 years before some OTHER innovator came along to lead the pack along.

The story is timeless.

<comment><USER8> _That it could have easily been another 50 or 100 or 200 years before some OTHER innovator came along to lead the pack along_

Give the fact that Musk didn't start Tesla I don't really understand this comment. Musk has done a great deal to further electric vehicle adoption, but it's not like it's he's the only person in the industry. It _obviously_ wouldn't have taken another 50 years.

<comment><USER9> I read the "innovator" in that post as "Tesla" and not "Musk", FWIW. You don't need to buy in to the ridiculous cult of personality to agree that Tesla cars have absolutely pushed the market in new directions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Quoting Musk on Twitter[1], about a year ago:

 _The Economist used to be boring, but smart with a wicked dry wit. Now it's just boring (sigh). Tesla will be profitable & cash flow+ in Q3 & Q4, so obv no need to raise money._

[1] [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/984705630106673152](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/984705630106673152)

<comment><USER11> So the bank predicted 2-3 billion in 2018, and instead it's 1.5B in 2019. The CEO of a company is optimistic about his company, and the bank is pessimistic about the company. Truth ended up somewhere in the middle, I don't see anything noteworthy about this.

<comment><USER12> You don't see anything noteworthy about a $1,500,000,000 gap in funding?

<comment><USER11> Tesla had a revenue of $20,000,000,000 in 2018. Yes those are big numbers. They had some problems, fell short by 5-10% (or 25% if the trend continues :P), yes that's a big deal short term, and yes if this were some big stable corporation people would get fired. But Tesla is not a big stable company, no matter how many people buy the stock on their Robinhood accounts. And no one said the gap wasn't noteworthy, what I'm saying is Musk's response to that article has very little relevance to this situation, at least from my perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This comment seems prescient. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19723650](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19723650)

"Take a moment and think about why are they doing this event now. Elon is setting a stage for a capital raise, he's pitching the autonomy narrative after the Model 3 cash cow narrative failed. They're trying to convince investors (and customers) to give them money because money-printing autonomous taxi service is coming next year."

<comment><USER13> If they could do it for next year, why don't they just do it and profit alone, not selling the autonomous cars to anyone -- and make trillions? :-)

It is probably because they can't

<comment><USER14> Because they also need money now, so they started leasing Model 3 and telling lessees that Tesla will be keeping the car after the lease expires.

They get money now and keep the car for use as a robo-taxi.

<comment><USER15> What an outrageous hedge story that I am shocked anyone believes. Tesla needed to lease model 3s because

\- They were horribly late in delivering the car (and now claim they are going to have fully autonomous taxis by next year when they couldn't even deliver on a basic car on time)

\- They can't make the $35k car they promised without losing money

\- They have exhausted the market of people that will pay 50k for an electric car knowing the fuel savings will never make up for the premium so they have excess inventory

\- They now are low on cash, high on inventory so they make up this moonshot story to get people to invest in them again. Simply saying they are doing standard leases would be too honest.

The day is going to come soon where the amount of people that believe the hype will dwindle and the debt will pile up even more where there is a liquidity crisis. It is essentially a legal pyramid scheme. I have to hand it to them though being able to convince a good amount of people that their leasing is actually ensuring a future supply of robo taxis is impressive. One day people will laugh at the outrageousness of that.

<comment><USER16> Every day I see young people dreaming about owning a Tesla someday instead of the ICE dream cars of the past (Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, etc.) I don't know what the value of that is, but it ain't nothing.

<comment><USER17> No, it's nothing.

If Tesla was aiming to be the size of Porsche (not VAG) or Lamborghini it'd be something.

But the same "conversion" rates from young person wanting a dream car to old person affording dream car apply regardless of if it's an EV or a ICE, because the limiting factor is money.

So "stealing" the kind of volume that Porsche and Lamborghini get from... daydreaming young people, isn't worth anything in the long run if you're talking about keeping up Tesla's 40B dollar market cap

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> With 2.2 Billion in remaining cash and $700 million loss in Q1, it was clear that Tesla needed to raise more money to survive. Tesla can't take 3 more quarters of that kind of cash burn.

Assuming Tesla improves their cash flow, this new +$1.5 Billion raise will provide Tesla with another 1 to 2 years to turn the company around... for a total of 3ish years worth of cash reserves.

Remember the key profitability calculation from years past: 5000 Model 3 Cars / week is the break-even point. (Its a very blurry estimate, Tesla managed to be profitable with ~4500 M3 cars in Q3 2018... margins and other services may change that). With cheaper cars and fewer cash credits, maybe the new profitability point will be ~6000 cars/week instead. But that's Tesla's overriding goal.

Tesla is currently selling 2500 Model 3 Cars / week based on latest estimates. A drop from Q3 2018. USA is at the end of a car cycle, so the USA is dropping sales in general (this is why Ford and GM shut down so many of their factories, in preparation for this cyclical downturn). Tesla is feeling the effects of this as their sales drop. They HAVE to get Chinese and European sales numbers up now, to make up for the loss of American sales.

<comment><USER19> With the current chinese policy against anything non-chinese, as well as the tariff wars i don't think china is going to represent any kind of market for tesla (especially since electric vehicle are seing as a strategic industry for the chineese regime).

Europe is completely stuck in economical weak growth, and has an extremely high population density and good public transport system that makes it clearly try to steer away from personal vehicle. Not to mention the fact that german cars are starting to embrace electric engines, and have an insanely better reputation regarding manufacturing quality than tesla.

There again, i don't see how a 40k vehicle is going to sell well enough to compensate from the american market decline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Don't underestimate how badly demand is dropping / going to drop.

You basically cannot get timely repairs on a tesla. This is getting mainstream coverage.

Your car could be out of service for 5 months. That's simply a no-go for a lot of more mainstream buyers myself included.

My own prediction, some skinny / dark days ahead until they work out some of the kinks. Execute on getting parts inventory up / available. Model Y execution. And price - a huge segment at 32K or so especially in Model Y segment - my worry is that with federal rebates going away the price issue becomes much worse.

<comment><USER21> >You basically cannot get timely repairs on a tesla. This is getting mainstream coverage.

You get a loaner Tesla during repairs so it's not that bad.

I was at work and discovered a flat tire at lunchtime. By 2pm there was a truck there with a loaner wheel, identical to my wheel. Not a lame low-speed wheel. The tire was also identical... same brand, same model. They took my wheel away and when it got to the service center, they called me and said that the tire would need to be replaced, as the flat was not fixable.

After a week they called me and said they couldn't find my wheel. It was lost somewhere. They said they would keep looking. Sounds like a nightmare, right? Well I had the perfectly good loaner wheel, so I was fine. It's a company going through some growth spurts, so there are bumps in the road sometimes.

Then a week later I came too close to a curb and put curb rash on their new loaner wheel. I had signed a document saying I would be responsible for damage. I called them (no hold time btw) and said hey, you lost my wheel, and you're taking a while to get it back to me, are you going to hold me to this thing about no damage on the loaner wheel? And they said, no, some wear and tear is fine. I mentioned the curb rash and they said don't worry about it, it's fine.

A week later they called and said they had found the wheel, replaced the tire, and the new tire replacement would be free, comped by Tesla because of the extra delay. That day they brought my wheel with the new tire on it to my workplace and mounted it onto the car in the parking lot, which took all of 10 minutes out of my work day. No charge for the tire, no charge for the time, no charge for the curb rash damage to their loaner wheel, no charge for anything whatsoever.

During this entire time notice I did not lose use of my car at all. Nor did I have to go to any service center.

People who do lose use of their cars get loaners... different from their own cars, but a bit too first world of a problem for me to complain about.

<comment><USER22> Just out of curiosity, a flat tire is a warranty item? Was it something wrong with the wheel or the tire? Never realized you could claim a flat tire as a warranty item, I would have just gone to a tire shop.

<comment><USER21> No, flats are not covered under my warranty as far as I know. Did I seem to say that?

I didn't mind not going to a tire shop... tire shops are not my idea of fun.

<comment><USER22> Oh ok, my bad then. Just would have never thought to call Tesla for something like that but glad it turned out ok in the end.

<comment><USER21> They have free road service for the first year ("free" means the coming and doing minor fixes part, I guess you still pay for non-warranty repairs) so calling them was an easy option. After the first year the cost is comparable to something like AAA except the mobile service person who comes out is trained on Teslas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> All-out war between fanbois and the hate crew in 3...2...1?

I wish there were a forum were decent discussion about Tesla would still be possible but wherever (HN, Reddit, Ars Technica, ...) you look, it always ends the same way.

Any recommendations, maybe?

<comment><USER24> It's better to not read them. I usually try to debate and clarify to people who clearly don't know what they are talking about how the actual cars work and etc., but the amount of bull crap that haters post in articles like this is so ridiculous that it isn't even worth reading the comments.

They are still stuck hating the CEO, regardless of the company's achievements, so it is useless to try to debate.

<comment><USER23> The problem is that you do not know on first sight if they are just misguided or actually malicious.

I remember a few names of the worst offenders that I just ignore now but it sucks anyways.

 _Edit:_ Using Stylus, the following solution is possible to highlight the names of selected people (the list needs to be updated when you want to add someone):

      a[href$="username1"],
      a[href$="username2"],
      ...
      {
        color: darkred !important;
      }

Hiding the sub-thread in a similarly easy way is not possible though, due to the nature of the tree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> They are raising capital to tool up for the Model Y, Semi and Pickup assembly lines as planned.

Q2 is going to be a positive quarter as the only reason Q1 fell short was missed deliveries from cars in transit to Europe and China.

<comment><USER18> > Q2 is going to be a positive quarter

Tesla sold 10,000ish Model 3 cars in April. That's 2500 Model 3 cars/week. Remember, 5000ish cars/week is the breakeven point, when Tesla is profitable.

[https://insideevs.com/news/347137/tesla-model-3-s-x-sales- ap...](https://insideevs.com/news/347137/tesla-model-3-s-x-sales-april/amp/)

Inside EV is pumping the story. But anyone paying attention recognizes that Q3 2018 and Q4 2018 were the quarters to look at. Q3 2018 sold 4653 Model 3 cars / week (and also sold way more Model S / Model X cars).

Tesla is severely behind on Q2 numbers, there's almost no way they're going to hit their guidance. 100%, Q2 will be a miss as well, I guarantee it. The numbers are already quite bad for Q2. Either that, or "Inside EVs" is wrong (quite possible... but buy the rumor, sell the news, amirite?)

Q3 is where you can hope for Tesla to become profitable. They gotta expand into Europe and China and make up for all the lost sales. Americans are at the end of an automotive cycle, Americans are not going to be buying cars for a long time (in general).

<comment><USER26> Just curious why you are in every Tesla thread providing critique? I understand the general skepticism/pessimism/negativity which goes along with HN comments but it seems as if you go out of your way to always be in Tesla- related threads arguing why they will fail or why their latest decision is pointless. The last month of your comment history proves my point.

<comment><USER18> 1\. I find stock analysis to be fun. There's a huge variety of information available because of the required 10k forms, quarterly filings, and so forth. I've been doing this since the start, you can ask the Tesla Bull "Toomuchtodo" about it, he and I often butt heads on this subject (but we both enjoy the discussion).

2\. Tesla is such a divisive topic right now, that you can gather a lot of opinions and viewpoints on this stock. Other stocks, like Costco or Target, are less exciting. There's so little discussion that almost no one would want to talk to me about those stocks.

3\. I can state strong opinions as a test to myself. They're documented, and sometimes I'm wrong. But making predictions and improving my own predictive skills in the market is absolutely essential if I want to make money in the long term. So I'll get my "paper practice" with Tesla, with regards to investing strategy.

4\. The topics I __DO __care about deeply, don 't get upvoted and don't get discussed. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19702487](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19702487) .

It takes two to tango. I post interesting subjects when I can, but everyone around here is talking about Tesla. I'd rather talk about GPUs and CPUs, but there really isn't as much discussion around that subject these days. (Unless... Tesla makes an ASIC chip. Then I get to talk about GPUs, CPUs, AND Tesla at the same time!)

If you're insinuating that maybe I have a greater reason... I own ZERO Tesla stock. The shares I do own are Costco, Lattice Semiconductor, Ford, SPY ETF, Pebblebrook, and a few others. Tesla is purely a theoretical exercise for me, since there's a lot of discussion online and analysis available. Other stocks don't even have a fraction of the analysis or discussion Tesla has, so its great "practice" as far as I'm concerned.

I don't short shares either. So no shorts, nor do I have any put options right now. (My last put options / bear bets were on Kellogg and on Bank of America, if you want to know my stock-trading history). I don't make many bear bets or play it short very often... its very difficult to predict short squeezes and other issues like that, so I recommend people to stay away from shorting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Am I the only one who thinks Tesla is destined to be acquired by a proper Manufacturing company?

Can Tesla by itself exist after 5 years ?

<comment><USER28> Tesla has in excess of $11bn in debt; even if you could get the equity for nothing, an acquisition would still be extremely expensive - more than 25% of Ford's market cap.

I can't see a middle of the road outcome for Tesla; it'll either be wildly successful, or Musk will destroy it in the attempt.

<comment><USER29> Still easily doable by Apple, if they only wanted to.

<comment><USER30> Larry Ellison invested in TSLA. I would not want to see Oracle buy them.

<comment><USER31> Model 3 suddenly cost $1,000 per wheel and come with a mandatory $40k/year support package, but don't worry, your rep got you a sweet 7.5% discount on future services — and he's never heard of a director approving such an incredible discount.

<comment><USER32> Hmm maybe TSLA should leverage Oracle for corp. fleet sales :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is this all going towards autonomy?

[https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=13330](https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=13330)

<comment><USER34> It's going towards not dying. The autonomy pitch (IMHO) was showmanship to distract investors from focusing on the real problem: not dying due to running out of funds.

 _If you can just avoid dying, you get rich. That sounds like a joke, but it 's actually a pretty good description of what happens in a typical startup._

Ref: [http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> FYI. Tesla Net income in millions.

Q1 2019: -702

2018: -976

2017: -1,961

2016: -675

2015: -889

2014: -294

2013: -74

2012: -396

2011: -254

2010: -154

2009: -56

2008: -82

2007: -78

<comment><USER35> Do you have numbers for revenue growth?

<comment><USER36> It doesn't matter though. Just as people are rightfully skeptical of Uber's selling a dollar for 80 cents, it looks like Tesla are doing the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think it's odd that Musk says he's buying 10M of shares to boost confidence, but he is already very highly leveraged with loans against his current shares.

If you use a loan against your shares to buy more shares and that causes your share value to increase, that's a very interesting chain of events.

<comment><USER38> Ah, the self sufficient pyramid scheme!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> He used Tesla to save SolarCity, he can still continue using SpaceX to save Tesla.

<comment><USER40> that's not how it works. thankfully.

<comment><USER41> In 3 years, it's not terribly unlikely that SpaceX will be worth more than Tesla is now (with most of the value from deploying Starlink). And Elon is significantly more vested in SpaceX than Tesla. If Tesla has continued to face challenges, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that Starlink is spun-off as a highly profitable company (allowing Musk to maintain a majority interest in SpaceX proper) and Musk uses the capital from that to stabilize Tesla.

Of course, in 3 years, Tesla's situation could easily be vastly different in both directions. And Musk would probably prefer to fund Mars ambitions than necessarily Tesla.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Where is Elon Musk getting the $10M of cash to buy into this offering? Isn't his wealth tied up in his companies?</comment>


Marc Andreessen's newspaper deathwatch - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/21/news/newsmakers/quittner_andreessen.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008022207

<comment><USER2> Does anyone have a link to the actual blog entry? I'd be curious to read Marc A's actual analysis of the newspaper business, rather than have it reported second-hand by a journalist. It doesn't seem to be up at blog.pmarca.com yet, though.

That said, I think the idea of immediately killing the dead-tree version of the NYT is flat-out laughable. Obviously the media business is moving online, and it's crazy for the NYT not to have some more clued-in people on their board, but killing off the paper version of the NYT is a sure-fire way to eliminate one of the NYT's most valuable assets (its priceless brand and ability to influence some of the world's most important decision makers). Sure, many of those people will turn to the website, but they could do that now if they wanted to -- there's a reason they are still paying for the paper version. Plenty of those important decision-makers are old-fashioned folks that actual want something they can hold, and read on the subway, on the airplane, or at the gym. Online media is making progress toward making dead tree editions redundant, but that hasn't happened yet.

But since I haven't read Marc A's actual analysis, it's hard to tell if he's serious or not.

<comment><USER3> <http://blog.pmarca.com/2008/02/inaugurating-th.html></comment></comment>


Defold: Free 2D Game Engine for Cross-Platform Publishing - <AUTHOR> http://www.defold.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> A tech lead from King wrote a game in Defold and streamed on livecoding.tv: [https://www.livecoding.tv/video/small-game-from-scratch- part...](https://www.livecoding.tv/video/small-game-from-scratch-part-2/)

</comment><comment><USER2> So, a 2D Lua Game Engine with a Scene Editor?

At a cursory glance it seems like [https://coronalabs.com/](https://coronalabs.com/), but it's free, which is nice :).</comment>


Like a mass casualty incident in slow motion– a EM doctors recount on Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://emupdates.com/surge/ <comment><AUTHOR> Although this post was written for physicians, I think hacker news will still appreciate it</comment>


"I have failed to find dark matter, but I got a very pleasant consolation prize" - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/science/space/10galaxy.html?_r=1&src=twr

<comment><USER2> The writer had fun with this paragraph. I know stories like these in the general press are ragged on often (rightfully), but seriously? Would a writer in the Politics or Business sections ever get something like the 2nd sentence past their editor?

 _The source of the bubbles is a mystery. One possibility is that they are fueled by a wave of star births and deaths at the center of the galaxy. Another option is a gigantic belch from the black hole known to reside, like Jabba the Hutt, at the center of the Milky Way. What it is apparently not is dark matter, the mysterious something that astronomers say makes up a quarter of the universe and holds galaxies together._

<comment><USER3> > A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

> ...known to reside, like Jabba the Hutt, at the center of the Milky Way.

A lesson to all the mainstream writers out there: don't drop references if you can't get them right. :P

<comment><USER4> And I believe Luke says that Tatooine is nowhere near the center of its galaxy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So they have basically discovered The High Beyond.

</comment><comment><USER6> Z-pinch!!!

See: [http://plasmauniverse.info/downloadsCosmo/KukushkinKartinovC...](http://plasmauniverse.info/downloadsCosmo/KukushkinKartinovCos.pdf)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> _"Wow," said David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton who was not involved in the work._

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks like an electromagnetic field. I wonder why they didn't make that connection.

<comment><USER8> That's funny. I didn't think of that, I immediately thought that it looked like an atomic p-orbital. Then again, I was a biochemistry major...

<comment><USER9> I couldn't help but think about Warhammer 40k's Astronomicon (<http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Astronomicon>) since that's supposed to extend for about 50,0000 light years as well. Then again, I am a bit of a WH40k fan...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> bah. please don't link to things behind a wall

<comment><USER11> use this: [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=136...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=1366&bih=677&q=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/science/space/10galaxy.html&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=)

<comment><USER10> Thanks, I do know how to get access (I mean, I am sure I registered in the past anyway) but it's still trashy to click a link on a site like HN and be prompted with a login before you see the content.

<comment><AUTHOR> The situation is that after 8 views (aprox) of articles you're asked to Register. You can always clear the NYT cookie or switch browsers or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pay Wall =(

<comment><USER13> Appears to be available for free now.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's up with tech internships? - <AUTHOR>

"Ideal applicants will possess:
1-2 years experience working with: HTML/CSS, XML, integration and template design on a CMS (such as SharePoint or Kentico), JavaScript libraries, Photoshop or Fireworks, ASP.net, C#. Knowledge of Windows Server 2003 and 2008, IIS. Experience with SQL Server queries and stored procedures; Oracle PL/SQL knowledge. Experience with Visual Source Safe (or similar)."
This is for one 'programming/web development' internship, and it's not even asking for as much as most other ones I've seen (they usually mention C or C++, AJAX, PHP, Ruby and Flash as well).
Am I making too many lofty assumptions about the level of competency they expect in all these areas, or are employers just looking for ridiculous qualifications in college students (who may or may not be paid)? <comment><USER2> No. Knowing C# is enough for this job; SQL would be good, and Photoshop is a bonus

Employers post everything they use hoping that someone will match at least half of them. Most full timers aren`t even experts in all the technologies.

Don't be intimidated, think about it from the employer POV. Most are DESPERATE!

</comment><comment><USER3> If you've got a year or two of internships under your belt already and are a junior or senior in a CS program these requirements seem pretty reasonable. 1-2 years just means you've made something with it, it doesn't mean you are an expert.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. These requirements are not unreasonable at all. I don't think it is out of line for an employer to expect that you've at least seen/touched the tech they use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lot of the 'requirements' are more on the way of suggestions. Most companies only expect you to know some of the things they list in this sort of situation, anticipating that you can learn the rest if and when you need it on the job.

</comment><comment><USER6> Where did you see this? There are plenty of bullshit "opportunities" forwarded around CS student mailing lists. You'll learn to bin these soon enough.

My favourite was an ad for a PHP Ninja, where you needed to be a PhD student in order to maintain their CRUD webapp, but they _might_ be willing to glance at your CV if you only had a Masters.

If an advert emphasises what you will _gain_ from an internship, in terms of skills and in terms of money, that is a good sign.

Just ignore anything that doesn't feel right.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I know those spam emails you're talking about. Usually the type of "great opportunities" where you get to manage yourself and earn "tons of money" on commission, AKA free help.

Most of the internships in my area (Philadelphia) are just like the excerpt I posted. Some are worse -- like the company that obviously wanted an unpaid intern to build them a brand new website -- and very few are better.

<comment><USER7> All the ones I am seeing are similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's not a bad thing when employers continually raise the bar on their expectations for both full-times and interns.

You should still apply to these seemingly daunting positions because many times employers want to see you have the capacity to learn (remember almost anyone can learn anything given some reasonable amount of time) even if you don't know something right now.

Also well-known companies know they can suck people in through name alone and not pay them as much as other firms.

</comment><comment><USER9> In my experience, for any company that is really worth it, the job description is pretty meaningless.

All that matters is how you do in the interview. Thus, if you have good coding skills and reasonable algorithmic/problem solving skills, you shouldn't have any problem getting an interview.</comment>


Stop Thinking Like a Freelancer – Free Book on Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/Stop-Thinking-Like-Freelancer-Evolution-ebook/dp/B00PJIDO9C/ref=sr_1_72?ie=UTF8&qid=1416217895&sr=8-72&keywords=freelancing <comment><AUTHOR> I think it is Kindle only at this point but the Kindle app for iOS is solid (IMO better than iBooks), likewise they have a web viewer for OS and Windows.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks a good read to fill up my lunch time breaks! For free aswell - <USER2> the hell not!?

</comment><comment><USER4> Ok Liam, let's give it a shot. I'll take a ride.

Just don't put me in a sales funnel, dude!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> No danger of that Daniel... that link goes straight to anyway Amazon :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Kindle only</comment>


NASA to Make Major Announcement Today About Astronaut Transport to the ISS - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/september/nasa-to-make-major-announcement-today-about-astronaut-transport-to-the <comment><USER2> I can only imagine it is related to this announcement from SpaceX...

[http://www.spacex.com/press/2012/12/19/nasa-selects- spacex-r...](http://www.spacex.com/press/2012/12/19/nasa-selects-spacex- return-americans-space)

"Hawthorne, CA – Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) today won a $440 million contract with NASA to develop the successor to the Space Shuttle and transport American astronauts into space."

"SpaceX expects to undertake its first manned flight by 2015 – a timetable that capitalizes on the proven success of the company's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft combination. While Dragon is initially being used to transport cargo to the International Space Station, both Dragon and Falcon 9 were designed from the beginning to carry crew."

<comment><USER3> there were numerous stories submitted here today that point to Boeing winning

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a good chance for a joint award (SpaceX/Boeing).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> According to the follow sources, one of the winners is Boeing in a joint effort with Jeff Bezos' company Blue Origin:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/16/us-boeing- lockheed...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/16/us-boeing-lockheed- martin-bezos-idUSKBN0HB0UU20140916)

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2014/09/16/reports- boe...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2014/09/16/reports-boeing-to- beat-out-spacex-for-nasa-contract-thanks-to-jeff-bezos/)

[http://seekingalpha.com/news/1984465-boeing-lockheed- bezos-t...](http://seekingalpha.com/news/1984465-boeing-lockheed-bezos-to- develop-new-rocket-engine)

[http://www.cnet.com/news/boeing-said-to-win-nasa-space- taxi-...](http://www.cnet.com/news/boeing-said-to-win-nasa-space-taxi- contract/)

<comment><USER5> Surprised this is the top comment. Your first link is reporting on an unrelated military program to replace the RD-180 rocket engine. The other four links are all blog spam using the same source: the Wall Street Journal article by Andy Pasztor. Pasztor is well known in the aerospace industry for writing what you might call "speculative" articles based on not much more than rumor.

Edit: here's the WSJ article so people can go to the original source. You'll need the google trick to get around the paywall. [http://online.wsj.com/articles/boeing-takes-lead-to-build- sp...](http://online.wsj.com/articles/boeing-takes-lead-to-build-space- taxi-1410820865)

Fair warning I don't think it has any actual news content. The expected outcome was that Boeing and SpaceX would both be winners, but because SpaceX is always cheaper, Boeing would get a larger amount of money.

It certainly could be true, but the official announcement is in two hours so probably just makes the most sense to wait and see what happens rather than post more speculation.

<comment><USER4> I found some better sources and cleaned up the links. Thanks for pointing that out. The purpose of the links is to shed more light on what is happening and the relationships among the companies and government bodies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> if it goes like a typical gov contract then Boeing wins and later it buys rides on SpaceX when its own dev program costs spirals out of control with no real progress in sight.

</comment><comment><USER7> According to this article Boeing beat SpaceX.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2014/09/16/reports- boe...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2014/09/16/reports-boeing-to- beat-out-spacex-for-nasa-contract-thanks-to-jeff-bezos/)

<comment><USER8> I'm curious what the implications of that are. My emotional reaction is disappointment that "the old guard" is winning because of NASA's risk aversion. But is that really the case or am I just living in the Musk-worship echo chamber? Is Boeing still something to get excited about? How much cheaper would a Space-X solution be per astronaut trip versus Boeing (if at all)?

<comment><USER9> _But is that really the case or am I just living in the Musk-worship echo chamber?_

It's probably not the Musk echo chamber, your assumptions carry the telltale scent of the "large corporations can't do anything right!" echo chamber. They're slower, suffer from inefficiencies caused by scale, more risk-adverse, etc... But they're not outright incompetent the way startup-fellating media leads you to believe.

Boeing could have just delivered better. Or they delivered worse but Boeing's track record covered the spread in a reasonable way. Or in a nepotistic way. The fun part is that unless they blew SpaceX out of the water, you'll never know which of the three it is!

<comment><USER10> It's not large corporations per se, but traditional government contracting where the implicit incentive is to deliver minimum value at maximum cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like they are going to announce the CCtCAP award winners: [http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/news/rumors-swirl-about- imm...](http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/news/rumors-swirl-about-imminent- cctcap-announcement)

</comment><comment><USER11> Washington Post: NASA to award space contract to Boeing and SpaceX

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2014/09/16...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2014/09/16/nasa-awards-space-contract-to-boeing-and-spacex/)

> NASA plans to award a much-anticipated, multi-billion dollar contract to > ferry astronauts to the International Space Station to both Boeing and > SpaceX, according a person familiar with the process.

<comment><USER12> >> United Launch Alliance is expected to counter that tomorrow by announcing that Blue Origin, the space startup founded by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, would develop an American-made engine for the Atlas V, according to another person who is close to the situation. ULA is a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Here's hoping Bezos doesn't blow the barnacles off the F1 they fished out the ocean and pass it off as a new 1.5 million lbs thrust engine :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Result:

 _" The partnership w/ @Boeing & @SpaceX promises to give more people the opportunity to experience the exhilaration of spaceflight"_

[https://twitter.com/NASA/status/511970135935295488](https://twitter.com/NASA/status/511970135935295488)

</comment><comment><USER14> Boeing is being selected due to its being the "least risky" option.

IMHO NASA needs to start taking some risks. It is amazingly slow and inept. So much so that I would consider shutting it down completely and allocating the money we spend as grants over the next 10 years to get private industry viable.

When the Dutch group asked for volunteers for its one way mission to Mars, how many viable candidates signed up? 10,000? NASA ruled during the 60s, since then it has been just another government bureaucracy.

<comment><USER15> There's a lot more stuff under the NASA umbrella than manned spaceflight that do a lot of great science (Such as the JPL) and are generally some of the best at what they do, so I wouldnt advocate shutting down the whole program, however I would agree that building launch vehicles is not something they should handle themselves. I would have preferred them to be championing SpaceX, but it seems big, slow, hulking bureaucracies have an affinity for each other.

Unless NASA's already got a rocket they've been developing in secret, I'd say SpaceX could put up a person in orbit faster than NASA+Boeing can with theirs, given their respective track record.

<comment><USER16> NASA has been developing the Space Launch System (SLS) [1] since the 2010 Authorization Act killed the Constellation program. If it means anything, they're through their Preliminary Design Review and heading towards their Critical Design Review. They expect somewhere between 70 metric tons to 155 metric tons to LEO depending on the version of the design. Whether it will fly, who knows, but they are actually farther along than NASA has gotten on a space vehicle in a while.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is it just me or is the "Launch America" banner completely ridiculous? Of course NASA is government agency and the subject is highly political, but still...

<comment><USER18> Come on you apes, you wanna live forever?

 _They 're doing their part. Are you? Join the Mobile Infantry and save the world. Service guarantees citizenship._

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Less money going to Russia the better, now if only they would do the same for the middle-east.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Boeing CST-100 awarded $4.2 billion and SpaceX Dragon $2.6 billion.

</comment><comment><USER20> I really dislike announcements of announcements.

</comment><comment><USER21> Boeing, SpaceX, Lockheed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Boeing, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8296567](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8296567)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Astronauts now given free* pouch of Snapple for their ascent."

*to the astronaut. $4.2bn per pouch from Lockheed-Snapple.

</comment><comment><USER23> "SpaceX is scheduled to launch its fourth operational cargo mission to the ISS, SpaceX CRS-4, this Saturday, September 20."

My guess is spacex got disqualified so boeing won because elon was found stowing away in a space suit in this saturday's launcher. That would severely ruffle some feathers.</comment>


The universal earphone for hearing aid, cochlear implant, and normal-hearing ear - <AUTHOR> https://rearia.io/hai/ <comment><USER2> Aww, I'm a hard-of-hearing myself. It looks like a cool concept! Idk if it works with my hearing aids.</comment>


Cognitive Dissonance in Programming - <AUTHOR> http://hangaroundtheweb.com/2018/07/cognitive-dissonance-in-programming/ <comment><USER3> This is a great article and more people should read it. I was wondering why the sentences sound so familiar and it turns out it's heavily plagiarised (as in, a substantial number of sentences and paragraphs are lifted verbatim from) Gerald Weinberg's book _The Psychology of Computer Programming_ (listed at the end as one of the "references").

Read this book; much of it is still very applicable decades later (and the exercise of translating it into modern terms makes you think and is valuable too).

<comment><USER4> I think by definition if it's heavily plagiarized another source it's not a great article.

<comment><USER5> Not necessarily, humans are pretty derivative in general.

<comment><USER4> You can be derivative without _plagiarizing_ someone else's work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is an interesting perspective, but I find it flawed. First of all, the author doesn't seem to understand artists, so those analogies fail. Secondly the comment of: "But the one thing we never seem to hear* is a simple 'I goofed again.'" tells me they haven't worked with many senior devs. I find once devs have enough experience to not have self-esteem issues over their own skills, there is little hesitation to admit mistakes. If we limit the scope of the article to being about newer devs, though, the content holds more value.

<comment><USER7> The thing is "a simple I made an error" is not a good enough reason: everybody makes mistakes but why weren't they caught in UT, ET, code review? Explaining the cause of errors and improving the process (IF necessary) is much more interesting than "sorry, I made a mistake".

<comment><USER8> It's implied, isn't it? "I goofed up" is admitting that "I didn't test it thoroughly".

A more interesting question, imo, is: how does the user/customer community receive an honest admission of goofing up? Do users/customers think less of the programmer? Or do they value the honesty?

<comment><USER9> Yes, sure, because the programmer is the oracle of testing.

There are redundancies that should be set up in the development process for this reason.

Admitting the mistake gives you nothing but low opinion of everyone involved. (which is in itself sad) The only thing to do is to set up whole systems to prevent them from arising again. But that is expensive so is not done. Instead, everyone is moderately discontented with the junk they use.

<comment><USER10> > But that is expensive so is not done.

The goal is to produce, as efficiently as possible, programs that work adequately for their intended purpose. "Work adequately" does not mean perfection. The optimal solution has failures in almost all directions - not- quite-rigorous processes, not catching all bugs, not testing all scenarios, just-barely-adequate code review, just-barely-adequate tests, and so on. To "improve" any of those would be to make the whole process more inefficient.

That's at best, when management knows what they're doing. At worst, those things are totally missing, and technical debt kills you later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I thought this was an interesting article, but in real life I'm not quite sure how big the problem of programmers being unwilling to admit their own mistakes is.

A checkin goes through many checks and eyes in which mistakes are bound to surface, and not admitting to those mistakes is not really an option most of the time. What's more, they are different _kinds_ of checks, so if you can find an excuse for one thing telling you something is broken it's likely you won't have an excuse for the next. By the time a CL goes from code review to autotests + CI, you've potentially had to admit to a few mistakes or things you could've done better. This happens daily in my workplace - and it's not that these checks are foolproof and we all check in perfect code, but there are certainly a lot of silly and not silly mistakes in both approach and syntax which we regularly have to admit to making.

<comment><USER12> Cognitive dissonance appears to be a very big problem with security - <USER2> not aggressively auditing their systems, rationalizing away concerns, etc.

<comment><USER13> I think this has a lot to do with certain developers not knowing much about security and not wanting to go down the rabbit hole of potential threats and concerns. In my experience a lot of people from project managers to developers would just rather ignore things they don't really understand (especially if it's not causing an immediate problem).

<comment><USER14> Especially true because customers rarely want to pay for it and when there are issues you just sweep them under the rug and move on. Developers are the last people we should look to blame / change if we want better security.

<comment><USER12> I did not mean to suggest that it is exclusively or even primarily a developer problem, though developers do also have a role, for example in following best practices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wanted to be a programmer from the age of 8. I noodled around a bit in BASIC, and then taught myself C at around 15 or 16. I was easily into my 20s before I could even reasonably claim that I understood C. I've turned 40 this year and even though I've written a lot of code in the last 30 years, I still don't really feel like I'm a _good_ programmer, so I tend to always blame myself before the libraries or the compiler or the daemons or the hardware.

<comment><USER16> You can get a pretty good assessment of someone's C++ knowledge by asking them to rate themselves out of 10, and then subtracting their answer from 10.

If they say 9/10 and they are not Bjarne Stroustrup, it's a good bet their actual ability is close to 1/10.

<comment><USER17> The famous Dunning-Kruger Effect.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > A programmer who truly sees his program as an extension of his own ego is > not going to be trying to find all the errors in that program. On the > contrary, he is going to be trying to prove that the program is correct – > even if this means the oversight of errors which are monstrous to another > eye.

From the original 1989 "Version 1.0" of The Hacker Test[1]:

        0477 Ever spend ten minutes trying to find a single-character error?
        0478 ... More than an hour?
        0479 ... More than a day?
        0480 ... More than a week?
        0481 ... Did the first person you show it to find it immediately?

I don't know if this is caused by cognitive dissonance of the ego, "highway hypnosis"-style blindness from staring at your own code for too long, or something else. Regardless, programmers have always had this problem.

[1] [http://www.hungry.com/~jamie/hacktest.text](http://www.hungry.com/~jamie/hacktest.text)

<comment><USER19> What's a puffer train?

<comment><USER18> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffer_train](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffer_train)

A pattern in Conway's Life that generates an infinite pattern of live cells. (it's a pattern that drives forward across the cellular automata universe, continuously puffing out permanently-live "smoke")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This reads like someone who works only with junior devs or not very good devs. I work on a team of senior devs who are very good and if there is ever an issue where it could be attributable to one or more people, those people will argue about who created the bug: "It is probably related to the code I added yesterday, I will fix it." ... "No, I'm pretty sure it is my code. I'll take a look".

The best way to improve is to admit to yourself that you can always be better. Someone who thinks they are the best has no reason to improve. Anecdotally, I've found the people who can admit their mistakes easily are some of the best programmers I've met.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't see this is a real problem in professional development. The program owner or customer decides whether the behavior of the program is correct or not - not the programmer and not "the computer".

<comment><USER22> It's not as straightforward. I mean, I wish it would be...

POs or customers don't decide wether code is correct or behavior is correct. The more adequate word would be that they design wether it's useful or not, wether it's good enough or nor or wether it's on spec. Behaviour and program correctness are Comp. Sci. disciplines and coder/engineer responsibilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I freely admit I'm defective. Software development is a constant cycle of solving problems and then solving the problems created by solving the previous problems. Fortunately, I love solving problems.

<comment><USER24> I am the same. In fact, there are whole classes of bugs that you overlook when you don't consider it could be a stupid mistake that you, the programmer made.

For example, if you've ever written a "perfectly good, you know it has to work piece of code" and spent hours trying to prove that the compiler is wrong, or some other crazy reason. If you are humble about it, you can more quickly accept that you might have made a mistake and possibly find it more quickly.

This class of bug is, to me, the "it's impossible for this code to break" type, where it really is impossible and you made an obvious mistake. In the rare cases where it is a serious problem and not your fault (also possible, but quite rare), it's important to know how to do the hard work to debug deeply.

A skilled programmer knows both how to trust their tools, question themselves, but also how to question, build or fix their tools if necessary. I think patience/persistence and confidence/humility gained through experience, combined with being creative, thoughtful, open-minded and somewhat of a perfectionist (but not completely one!) is what it takes to code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was almost derailed by the grossly oversimplified programmer personality dorito chart at the beginning. Personality types are merely stereotypes for shortcutting the immensely complex network of factors underlying every decision in every individual and should not be wielded without a deeper understanding.

Soldier past that part and the article espouses a lamentation common in all social situations: that people often seem to deny truth to protect the integrity of the reality they currently grasp. The essay experiment where groups are interviewed about the deltas in their perceptions after one group is paid $20 to write an essay supporting a viewpoint they oppose and another is paid $1 demonstrates this nicely. The fact that those paid $20 hold on to their original views with more conviction seems to suggest that it is the value people place on their past ideas (more so the efficacy of the abilities they used to arrive to them I suspect) that precludes them from considering the current ideas being proposed.

There is likely nothing special about the environment of programming that gives rise to this phenomenon, and it is probably something more fundamental to the way that humans have grown to interpret the world around them that causes this situation. Anyone who's ever tried to have reasonable discourse with a scouting attitude rather than soldiering one on any subject will have noticed that at some point, some people seem to double down when presented with clear evidence against their views.

</comment><comment><USER26> >But the one thing we never seem to here is a simple: I goofed again

We don't? Who is this guy working with? And keep them far away from me.

There are some good points in here about separating ego from work, and accepting that flaws are an inevitability born from the complexity of software development.

But it's roundabout, uses an unnecessary (and at points erroneous) line of reasoning to get there.

It also conflates the need for "fresh eyes" in problem solving with some ego issue. - How many times have you struggled with something, stepped away for a moment, and come back to find the solution immediately? Or sent code out for a code review, taken it off your mental load, then immediately spotted bugs when you re-visit the code a day or two later?

</comment><comment><USER27> I disagree with article on so many levels. Positions where you truly code alone are rare. The issue of ownership is oftentimes issue of autonomy which is completely normal thing to seek. I heard programmers admit mistakes routinelly - except two rather toxic environments.

And so on.</comment>


Rails Rumble 2008 Apps - <AUTHOR> http://48hrlaunch.wordpress.com/2008/10/20/rails-rumble-2008-apps/

<comment><USER2> Just an FYI... The official list will be online at the Rails Rumble 2008 site shortly, once voting opens.

Teams have an additional 24 hours to update their profiles (make screencasts, etc) and then we need to review and weed out any entries that were disqualified. Therefore, I would expect voting to open sometime Tuesday. In the meantime, please register as a judge to vote! <http://railsrumble.com> (anyone can judge!)

The entries this year were absolutely unbelievable. Thanks to everyone who got involved.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was on the team that built <http://bootleggers.r08.railsrumble.com>

Think of it as election.twitter.com... except you make your own channels. And you can follow or fork other people's channels, and blah blah.

Oh and it's not just Twitter. :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Which one do you think will be most successful? (i.e. alive 2 yrs from now)

My vote is for <http://app.r08.railsrumble.com>

<comment><USER4> TastyPlanner, the winner of RailsRumble '07, was built by a 4-man team. According to them, it has been improved ever since but the core of it is what existed at the RailsRumble '07 deadline.

<http://www.tastyplanner.com> 10,000 real monthly users

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's my entry: <http://comicly.r08.railsrumble.com>

One man effort. Hoping to win the solo prize :-).

</comment><comment><USER6> I was the guy with <http://inspiresme.r08.railsrumble.com>

Yeah, it didn't turn out that well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mark, what are you talking about? It's an good app, especially for 48 hrs. Don't sell yourself short.

<comment><USER6> I'm talking comparatively.

Thanks for the kind words, though.</comment></comment></comment>


RC4 No More - <AUTHOR> http://www.rc4nomore.com/

<comment><USER2> If I may ask a potentially silly question, does this have any security implications for RC4-based random number generators (notably, FreeBSD arc4random[1] and libbsd arc4random[2]; OpenBSD and NetBSD seem to have replaced their arc4random with a ChaCha-based RNG around 2013)?

[1] [https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/release/10.1.0/lib/libc/gen/...](https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/release/10.1.0/lib/libc/gen/arc4random.c?revision=274417&view=markup)

[2] [http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libbsd/tree/src/arc4random.c](http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libbsd/tree/src/arc4random.c)

<comment><USER3> Yes and no. Practical exploitation depends on how the RNG is being used. The good news is that, as noted, replacement code is available for those who want it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The page makes use of numeric expressions like 9x2^27. What's with the choice of exponent? Why not e.g. 1.125x2^30?

<comment><USER5> It's fairly normal in crypto papers to express vulnerabilities and potential vulnerabilities in base two, as so many other bits of crypto, like key sizes, etc, are also expressed in that base.

<comment><USER6> He's questioning normalisation, not base. "Just over 2^30" is a bit more intuitive than "Just under ten times 2^27".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9892157](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9892157)</comment>


Show HN: Twitter game for march madness predictions - <AUTHOR> http://www.playscorecaster.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey HNers, I created a game / prediction net where people can tweet in final score predictions for the upcoming March Madness NCAA games. To play you have to post a tweet that includes "@scorecaster" or "#scorecaster", the hashtag for the game (they are listed on the site), and the score prediction (in the same order as the teams in the hashtag), example: "@scorecaster #UMvMU 65-55".

I wanted to make something that adds a playful, social element to watching sports. I tweet and chat with friends back home when watching basketball games, and I wanted to have a way to sort of trash talk/compete with one another. Something more casual and less formal than betting, and more social.

I'd love to get feedback from all of you. My biggest concern is that it might not actually be very fun to try to predict the final score of a game. Sometimes it feels quite arbitrary to me. I'm looking for ways to make that more interesting. If I get a critical mass the first thing I'd want to add is the ability to restrict the leaderboard and predictions list to people that are connected to you on twitter.</comment>


Ask HN: Subreddits like HN - <AUTHOR> What are other subreddits: high signal to noise ratio, expertise people who write them, also being sensitive to reposts (just like the function of searching past).<p>Surprisingly there isn't any good community on the subject of: Logic (Philosophy of mathematics) expect HN that talks about computer science which is the closest things to logic. <comment><USER2> Philosophy of logic has an extremely low SNR in the real world. Millions of pseudo-intellectuals think they've solved Russell's Paradox or found a flaw in Gödel's incompleteness proof, while the number of legitimate new results these days is very small.

So any community that could discuss it productively would have to be invitation-only. The book "Exact Thinking in Demented Times" by Karl Sigmund talks about how the Vienna Circle (where many of the seminal results originated) had to carefully manage the guest list at their meetings.

For a field like logic where the important results are mature, it's probably best to just read books.

<comment><AUTHOR> >Philosophy of logic has an extremely low SNR in the real world. Millions of pseudo-intellectuals think they've solved Russell's Paradox or found a flaw in Gödel's incompleteness proof, while the number of legitimate new results these days is very small.

Spot on. Thank you for book recommendation. Hits close to home for me, because I also am a pseudo intellectual sometimes.</comment></comment>