DHH on Hiring - <AUTHOR> https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3071-why-we-dont-hire-programmers-based-on-puzzles-api-quizzes-math-riddles-or-other-parlor-tricks <comment><USER2> While I agree I also think that a "senior software architect" candidate should be able to solve a fizzbuzz. You would be surprised how many that simply can't because all they can do is "code" in one web framework where all problems are already solved and they are really just routing to templates.

I think that some relevant (home) assignment for the job is OK to weed out those that will not be able to solve any real problem. This is not the same as doing algorithm problems under stress on a whiteboard.</comment>


Bali security guard caught planting drugs on tourist - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ReCiqiMqMQ&feature=youtu.be <comment><USER2> And even more comforting? The fact that Indonesia still imposes the death penalty for drug trafficking.</comment>


Despite Attempts to Get Users To Upgrade From XP, 30% Still Use It - <AUTHOR> http://thesurge.net/2014/03/04/despite-attempts-to-get-users-to-upgrade-from-xp-30-still-use-it/ <comment><USER2> Many XP systems cannot be upgraded to another version of Windows, at least officially the hardware isn't adequate. On the other hand there was a huge opportunity to switch these systems to Linux if there had been a savvy distro with a little cash and a business model. But I fear that bus has left the station.

<comment><USER3> Not only that, a lot of times that hardware simply has no drivers for newer Windows! Linux indeed often works much better to address this (usually this happens with laptops). I installed Linux for quite a few people in such situation.

<comment><USER2> I have a Toshiba Satellite 1805 laptop that I bought in August 2001. It runs Linux (Wary Puppy 5.5). It's that or Winodes 2000 [or the ME it shipped with] because XP ties itself to specific hardware.

It's a handy third screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm one of those people unfortunately.

XP was all I needed for a decade. My firewall which has thousands of rules does not work with anything newer and other firewalls suck today, very badly.

I have many many programs which are licensed and I do not want to have to try to find the key for each one again, heck find the program again, only to find out it doesn't work beyond XP.

XP was just a launching UI for me, really could not care about how it looked. I have it very locked down and very tweaked.

And I really do not want to lose the months of getting something configured again. But come mid-April I won't have a choice.

<comment><USER5> My guess is that someone will step up and continue to create patches for XP, because you're in a pretty big boat.

But if I were you, I'd switch to a newer OS and run the whole XP box in a VM (note you may run into some MS licensing issues setting this up). Then at least you can slowly start migrating and at least your "main" hypervisor OS will be fully patched. Doesn't help you with the firewall, though.

<comment><USER4> What blows my mind is that XP still needs constant, serious security patches after 12 years. Think about that.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not because the software is necessarily "insecure", it's just because new ways of getting around protections are found every day. Plus, look at how much the technology landscape has changed since XP was introduced in 2001.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Uh, ATMs use Windows XP Embedded, which isn't really the same thing and is _not_ at EOL. Microsoft said they'll support Embedded at least until 2016.

<comment><USER3> I wonder, why would ATMs use XP instead of Linux which sounds like a much better fit?

<comment><USER6> Hardware and software support mostly. OEMs and vendors often write software and drivers for Windows only, or have better support in Windows.

But there's no reason I know of to keep using XP instead of 7 or 8 for these applications.

Disclaimer: I work for a company that engineers software for self-service patient check-in kiosks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why do I still use Windows XP? Because Microsoft charges too much for Windows-8. Right now I am running XP in virtual box on my Linux workstation, and everything works fine. Why would I pay to upgrade to Windows-8 knowing that I might have trouble installing Windows-8 in virtualbox. There is no point.

<comment><USER8> Just curious, why are you using XP in a vm instead of just using Linux?

<comment><USER5> How else do you test on IE?

<comment><USER9> [http://modern.ie/](http://modern.ie/) ? Microsoft's got VMs for almost every IE/OS combination you could want.

Edit: meaning, why are you limiting yourself to just XP. I realize that was unclear.

<comment><USER10> Now this is cool. Thank you for sharing the link.

<comment><USER11> I have found it to be pretty slow and painful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a good opportunity for institutions to move to Linux instead of Windows 8, if they're going to have to train their users to use it anyway:

[https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/education- mi...](https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/education-ministry- romania-endorses-ubuntu)

As for why ATM's aren't using Linux, is beyond me. I guess Microsoft got to them first. This is the problem with open source projects over commercial solutions - there's hardly anyone out there working hard to _promote_ that solution to users, other than the "community".

Things are changing and the community and social media can have a bigger impact, but not when these ATM owners had to make the choice, and Microsoft is still spending billions on promoting their stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly, I would also think that most of the applications for ATMs were created before Linux systems gained much popularity. Plus in general Linux isn't used to often commercially, I believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Shit, for some reason people don't want to drop a wad of cash on a upgrade that provides no benefit to them and may not run effectively on their hardware. I don't understand it! Haven't these jerks heard of _progress?_ "

</comment><comment><USER14> What could be interesting will be percentage of computers running Windows 7 at EOL. My bet is it will be the same or higher. I don't see many companies jumping on the Windows 8 bandwagon any time soon, especially with how much "less buggy" 7 is versus 8.x.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't either, but not just because the the bugs. The whole focus on tablets and touch screens is a big turn off to most businesses I would think. Even though Microsoft is finally considering switching 8 to more of a classic style, I think it's too late for that.

<comment><USER15> It's not too late at all. Microsoft has had a number of "skip this version" Windows versions, and the subseqent release has done well. WinXP did well despite WinME, Win7 has done well despite Vista, and Win8.1 or Win9 will probably do well despite Win8.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no doubt that Microsoft will do well on future editions despite Windows 8. What I do think is that anything with Windows 8 in it's name is always going to have the touchscreen/tablet stigma attached to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Still think Microsoft should open source XP. They have no interest in developing it despite user demand, let someone else take over.

<comment><USER16> Do you really believe there is any sort of significant demand for XP? Maybe you could make an argument for 7, but really the almost 13 year old Windows XP?

<comment><USER13> Hey, look, there's a link to an article up there! Let's read it together: "Currently, the more than a decade old OS still has a market share of 29.53%." Wow!

<comment><USER17> "Market: the state of trade at a particular time or in a particular context" \- Google definition.

29% of operating systems sold today are XP?

29% of computers sold today are running XP?

When the article says "market share" I think that's misleading, there's no money or trade involved in people using an old thing. It's more indicative that such people are _not_ willing to spend money on computing, than indicative that they are willing to spend money to stay where they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> at this point they should be treated like ie6 users. Its been 15 years

<comment><USER19> 13</comment></comment>


Samsung Pays Apple $1 Billion Sending 30 Trucks Full of 5 Cents Coins - <AUTHOR> http://en.paperblog.com/samsung-pays-apple-1-billion-sending-30-trucks-full-of-5-cents-coins-294795/ <comment><USER2> Breaking news: Apple sues Samsung for infringing on their patent to use trucks with rounded wheels to deliver money. More to follow

<comment><USER3> And Samsung sends another truck without wheels on scates ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is under category 'satire' so probably not true.

Apple is the new definition of evil. They themselves stole from Xerox, once upon a time. And suffered at the hand of Microsoft (because of bad practices). Now when they get a second chance, they themselves chose to be evil. "Thermonuclear war" on you Apple!

</comment><comment><USER5> Nonsense, 20 billion coins will weight 100,000 tons (the nickel is exactly 5 grams), it will take 3000 heavy trucks to deliver, not 30.

<comment><USER6> Oh no! Apple didn't got paid in full you mean? :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this is going to turn out to be a hoax

<comment><USER8> But we're all secretly hoping it isn't, right?

<comment><USER7> Haha I know right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apple should send back those trucks to Samsung and say - 'Sorry amount not matching!'

</comment><comment><USER10> Most probably, this is a hoax. Let's hope it's not. :P

</comment><comment><USER11> cf. Kyle Bass had to have his banker get clearance from the Federal Reserve to buy one million dollars in nickels.</comment>


Ask HN: Help me find a name - <AUTHOR>

We have a contest in my company to find a name for a new product. The product is a report module for a security feature in the cloud.<p>Can you help me and suggest such a name? <comment><USER2> CloudLock?</comment>


Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work? (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/11/quick-how-might-the-alien-spacecraft-work/ <comment><USER2> It might be a good idea to investigate from the point of view of engineers, what this guy [1] wrote some 15 years ago:

[0] [https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/6706/AIM-2002...](https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/6706/AIM-2002-017.pdf?sequence=2)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Wisdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Wisdom)</comment>


Headlyy.com- the Hub for Communication - <AUTHOR> https://www.headlyy.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Headlyy.com is a platform where users can come and express their feelings as to however they like, we currently have hundreds of users who have signed up from Quora and other sites and we'd love if people joined from here.

Headlyy</comment>


Microsoft's Surface Go tablet has a 10-inch screen and starts at $399 - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/7/9/17550252/microsofts-surface-go-tablet-10-inch-screen-399 <comment><USER2> Autodesk Sketchbook drawing experience on Microsoft Surface is a revelation. UI simply disappears and its just, a canvas and your creativity. At this price point, it will make a fine "sketchpad" to take to museums, life drawing classes, Hudson Valley riverfront landscape painting, etc ;)

<comment><USER3> Like the iPad, I mostly see this as a complementary accessory to a regular laptop, but it surface or other. But maybe that's their market, the thing you can virtually carry everywhere and in a pinch actually get some work done, if a bit painful (due to size and power limitations).

I'm actually tempted to try one out, but with the unencumbered OS version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does it come with uninstallsble copies of candy crush?

<comment><USER5> Possibly, but it will be reinstated after every update. :(</comment></comment>


Sugggest HN: Allow me to disable the downvote button from my profile page - <AUTHOR> I've read people saying that parent posters might have been accidentally downvoted. I propose the ability to disable the downvote button from the profile page with maybe an additional option to only disable it while on mobile. <comment><USER2> Try sending an email to the mods: firstname.lastname@example.com (perhaps it's not easy to make this a switch for everyone, but they may disable downvoting for your account manually)

As a workaround, after voting/downvoting a new link that says "unupvote"/"undownvote" appear for a few minutes next to the points, so you can use that info to confirm that you voted in the right way.

</comment><comment><USER3> voting is already reversible - you should see an "unvote" or "undown" link in the comment header after you vote.</comment>


How to avoid copyright trouble when using online images - <AUTHOR> http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/16531.aspx

<comment><USER2> Why is this an image?</comment>


Tim Cook Says Apple Is 'Very Committed' to the Mac and to 'Stay Tuned' - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2016/09/09/tim-cook-very-committed-mac-email/ <comment><USER2> Assuming this email is authentic, I think Cook is hinting that rumors of an October announcement are too optimistic. (I hope I'm wrong, because I'm impatiently waiting to purchase a new MacBook Pro.)

<comment><USER3> Actions speak louder than words. If Apple were that committed to Mac, then it wouldn't be 3 years since new mbps were released.

<comment><USER4> Huh? There were updates to the MacBook Pro in March and May of 2015. Are you talking about the fact that the quad-core models are still using Haswell chips?</comment></comment></comment>


Node.js: Initial experimental implementation of HTTP/2 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/14239/ <comment><USER2> I'm curious what will happen with the existing `http2` module. Will the http2 support get rolled into `http` or will `http2` remain separate and simply overshadow the npm module?

Also, is there a roadmap between what they expect that needs to be done to take it from where it is today to non-experimental, production ready? Granted I'm sure testing and bug squishing is part of it but I'm curious to know if there are specific goals they want to accomplish before final exposure.

Nice job all around on an initial release! I'll definitely take some time to play with it over the weekend :)

<comment><USER3> There's also the 'spdy' module for http2 despite the name. It's what express.js supports for HTTP/2.

[1]: [https://github.com/expressjs/express/issues/2364](https://github.com/expressjs/express/issues/2364)

<comment><USER4> I tried that before but it is very slow compared to native https module [1]

In the end though I added Nginx to my app container to be an HTTPS2 proxy and to serve static files instead - much better performance :)

[1] [https://github.com/spdy-http2/node- spdy/issues/304](https://github.com/spdy-http2/node-spdy/issues/304)

<comment><USER3> Yes, but that kind of setup doesn't give you HTTP/2 server push so gives you hardly any benefit over HTTP/1.1, does it?

<comment><USER4> I was interested in multiplexing and I got that, as well as a big increase in performance serving static content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mmmmm... I'd rather see QUIC support -- A lot of Google -> Chrome traffic is served via QUIC, and Google, until very recently, had the only production- ready QUIC server. (Apparently Litespeed just added QUIC last month.)

<comment><USER6> QUIC has not yet been fully standardized. If you integrate a current draft you risk that your claimed QUIC support is broken 1 year from now. Google risks that, because they control all parts of the system (services & brower).

However I generally agree that HTTP/2 might only be short-term milestone on the way to HTTP over QUIC, as only this really fixes head-of-line blocking and therefore maybe justifies the increased implementation complexity better than HTTP/2.</comment></comment>


Murky: A Mercurial Client App for OS X - <AUTHOR> http://mooseyard.com/Jens/2009/04/murky-a-mercurial-client-app/

<comment><USER2> Looks good, and that was a side project I was going to do. Glad I didn't.

I tell you though--it speaks well to Mercurial's UI and usability that I really don't feel like I need any graphical UI. The CLI is easy and fast.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just can't get used to using GUI SCM clients on OSX. I tried to use ZigVersion for svn but just couldn't integrate it into my workflow -- I'm too used to using the command line for svn, git and hg.

It does look nice though.

</comment><comment><USER4> I like it, almost as nice as GitX which I'm sure it will match it soon enough :).</comment>


How we built automated support at Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> https://kickstarter.engineering/how-we-built-automated-support-f2ea669252f <comment><USER2> I can see why you would want to spend as little time on support as possible (and actually the goal is to improve your internal workflows, which the article spends more time on) when your business model is founded upon taxing scammers 5% and ignoring users.

Sorry for the snide post, I'm just 0/3 now on kickstarter projects. All abandoned for years now, nothing delivered, no recourse, nobody cares, kickstarter aggressively ignores. It's beyond stupid and completely unsustainable.

</comment><comment><USER3> Somehow " _Sassy_ " seems like a weird name for something that's supposedly about " _a deep, fundamental empathy with their users_ "

</comment><comment><USER4> macro_name score

preorder_site 1.00

scam_projects 1.00

cc_chargeback 1.00</comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup - <AUTHOR> Would love to have your feedback on my startup named Sportal - it helps you find players in your locality for playing any sport you want.<p>Here's the link to the app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.getsportalapp.sportal&hl=en <comment><USER2> I'm probably in your target market. I host/organize pickup games in several sports. I attend lots of other pickup sports. Finding other games, and getting people to come to my games is a constant struggle.

Kudos for shipping something, that's awesome!

Feedback:

Network effects are working against you. If lots of events are on here, it might be a useful place to search for sports. If lots of people search for sports on here, it might be a useful place to recruit people to my events.

Without either, this provides no value to me.

Product:

* As a person who wants play a sport, this app is not useful to me. There were no "events" nearby me to join.

* As a person who organizes pickup sports with friends, I'm not sure why I'd use this over my favorite messaging app to organize.

* As a person who wants to recruit new people to join pickup sports game, this app isn't useful for me. I help "advertise/promote" my pickup games on email lists, FB pages, and a meetup page. Creating an event here doesn't seem worth my time since I'm not convinced that it'll bring in people to play with.

Technical * Facebook login didn't work for me, it said some error about a bad location or something.

* Loading is painfully slow.

* It crashed after I tried to create a "I want to play sports" event.

<comment><USER3> To OP - read this carefully as this is great, honest, kind feedback. Also, to OP don't fixate on the technical feedback - the non-technical feedback here is even more important (assuming your goal is a product people want).

To wsetchell/the feedback giver - kudos on giving great, honest and kind feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, indeed it is a great feedback and I'm taking it into total consideration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> First, kudos for the app! Creating any product and shipping it is a sucess.

That said, I suggest you take a look at [http://bestpitchdecks.com/](http://bestpitchdecks.com/) to see some of the additional information you need in order to make a startup.

Having a MVP is a great start, but if you haven't done customer research, SWOT market analysis, etc. you don't know whether the app you created is a real MVP that can progress you down the road to product-market fit, or a collection of features that you think would be good (and you may be right, but without customer input, you might not be profitably right).

<comment><USER5> > SWOT market analysis

First time I've come across this acronym. Googled it to find SWOT expands to "Strengths, Weaknesses Opportunities, Threats".

Any inexpensive way to do this for an MVP? I'm currently working on shipping my 1st side-project and am very interested in learing more about how I can utilize SWOT approach.

<comment><USER6> When you say inexpensive, what do you mean? In terms of time or money?

It's inexpensive to do (just use a whiteboard or piece of paper), but can take time to get the data and analyze it without bias. Getting feedback from potential users on the weaknesses & opportunities takes time too.

To reduce this effort, spend 30 minutes to draw up a cursory SWOT and then continue to think about it while in the shower, driving, on the bus, etc. The answers will come to you over time.

<comment><USER5> Thanks. By inexpensive, I meant in terms of money.

Example:

> Getting feedback from potential users on the weaknesses & opportunities > takes time too.

I know there are individual sites that let you poll users, or send them questions or surveys etc. But the good ones cost money. I don't mind paying at all, but wanted to know if there are any good websites / Saas etc that will help do each piece of the SWOT. Or maybe I am overanalyzing this?

P.S. My project is a niche job board. Any ideas how I could try to do the SWOT analysis?

<comment><USER4> There are sites that let you ask your users questions, and building a mailing list can help you create your list of users.

I think you'll get much more bang for your buck if you talk directly to customers though. With a survey you can only ask the questions you know to ask. The more important questions? They are the ones you don't know yet that you need to ask. You'll find out about those from one-on-one conversations with potential users. Very little beats getting out of the office and talking with potential users face to face.

If you can't do individual user visits then going to a relevant conference and talking to people there can be similar - just be aware that lots of people there are rushed.

Regarding a SWOT how-to... a full thing would be a book, or blog post series, but some tips and URLs follow.

* Strengths and Weaknesses address internal factors.

* Opportunities and Threats address external factors.

* Strengths are things (tangible or intangible) that give you a competitive advantage (e.g., you have an existing business relationship with businesses in the tri-state area).

* Weaknesses are things that might hold you back, hinder your growth, or erode your strengths (e.g., not enough money, not enough technical talent).

* Opportunities are events representing positive shifts in your environment that you could take advantage of (e.g., new technologies, new markets), or areas where your competitors are weak.

* Threats are events representing negative shifts in your environment (e.g., commoditization, a big name like Google entering your niche), or areas where your competitors are strong.

* One technique you can use is to roleplay your competitors. What makes you as them be confident, and what makes you as them be afraid?

* Another technique is to segment your users into personas (fictional user characters that represent with their traits a segment of your user base) and for each use an Ishikawa (aka Fishbone) diagram to do a root cause analysis of what made them choose to buy. Also do the opposite to analyze what could make them pass on buying. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram)

[http://articles.bplans.co.uk/marketing-a-business/how-to- per...](http://articles.bplans.co.uk/marketing-a-business/how-to-perform-swot- analysis/300)

[http://www.leadershipthoughts.com/how-to-use-a-swot- analysis...](http://www.leadershipthoughts.com/how-to-use-a-swot-analysis/)

<comment><USER5> Thank you so much for all the info! I really appreciate the help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My two cents:

\- As a fan of pick-up basketball games, I could definitely imagine myself using this (in fact, I've read people ask for this exact app). I wouldn't use it unless there was a good deal of activity in my area. Try and incentivize first-time downloads.

\- It'll be difficult for people to find your app with the name Sportal--it's the name of a Bulgarian sports site. Aside from ease of discovery via search engines, there might even be a copyright issue.

\- Try to get on to iOS as soon as possible to expand your audience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for giving this nice and small feedback.. I got your points!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> you've done some nice work on the app! hopefully that was fulfilling in itself.

(but there's always a 'but'...) most small businesses (startups or otherwise) are a marketing problem, not a technology problem.

i've seen a ton of event discovery apps like this over the years (i even worked on one myself! =), and, while it seems logical on the surface for something like this to exist, such apps almost never solve a burning need for users.

discovery just isn't something recreational athletes go to an app for. social networks and search are generally good enough initially. and once you find a single location or event (in my case, a basketball league), your now expanded network provides all the further discovery you need (including other sports you like).

because of this, every casual sports discovery app i've seen either dies or pivots very quickly.

i would advise you to think about what else you can solve in this space that doesn't have a substitute product (e.g., don't pick messaging, as that's well covered by social networks as well).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback and kind words. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I cofounded a social discovery company a while back, so have thought through similar issues.

Consider a dating site -- at the minimum, it must laboriously onboard a number of users at each location.

Your site faces a much more difficult challenge -- you not even need lots of users per location, but you also need them to be continually posting events. I encourage you to consider how to add value to users even when there is no constant stream of events (and perhaps even when there are few other local users).

</comment><comment><USER10> I think this could be awesome. Especially for sports leagues. I play some sports my friends don't play, but there isn't a great way to find a team. And most leagues have a shitty system to sign your name and hope a team needs a spare. But all in all, it's kinda shitty. It would be awesome to be able to join a sports league and connect with everyone else who doesn't have a team so we could make one.

</comment><comment><USER11> Don't forget that Sportal is an existing name (I saw it advertised in the 90s/early 2000s), and people _will_ try going to sportal.com.

</comment><comment><USER12> How do you grow your local user base in your town?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question! This is what is needed to be figured out. I'm thinking about this. Do you have any ideas or advice on this? Please let me know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would love the same app for tennis partners :)

</comment><comment><USER14> does it do games as well as sports?

<comment><AUTHOR> it helps in finding players for playing outdoor sports and not for mobile or video games.

<comment><USER14> I'm asking about games that would require a similar sized group of people that an outdoor sport would. board games, roleplaying games, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> haven't thought about considering board games etc into this but this is something we can think of integrating in the app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> An Android app isn't a startup.

<comment><AUTHOR> then what are Instagram, Uber, WhatsApp, Tinder and Snapchat?

<comment><USER16> They are startups with mobile apps.

<comment><USER17> let's not be nitpicky. He apparently wants it as a startup, maybe not as big as snapchat/instagram, but they all started with an app.

also - how do you know he didn't incorporate the company already?

<comment><USER16> there is no point in calling your project a startup if you are only a wannabe fasting growing app. You can call it but people will appear to contradict you. And it is not a problem to have an app instead of a startup. I actually think it is a lot better and less biased.

<comment><USER18> > will appear to contradict you

Sometimes "startup" is used instead of "project". Is it really that big a deal? All this time wasted over such an insignificant detail.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: VPN-Contained-IPSec-Basic - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/0x4447/0x4447-product-vpn-contained-IPSec-basic <comment><USER2> Cloud computing... fun times. FWIW, IPSec+IKE can actually be quite simple. For example, here's the _lone_ configuration line from /etc/iked.conf needed to create a VPN tunnel using OpenBSD:

      ikev2 "home-to-colo" quick active esp \
        from 184.108.40.206 to 0.0.0.0/0 \
        peer yournode.cloudvendor.com \
        ikesa auth hmac-sha2-256 enc aes-128 prf hmac-sha2-256 group curve25519 \
        childsa enc aes-128-gcm group curve25519 \
        psk "some password"

That's the whole of it beyond enabling the iked service at startup. The other side of the above tunnel (taken from a working example, names changed to protect privacy) is exactly the same except the flows are reversed (from 0.0.0.0/0 to 188.8.131.52) and its configured for passive mode (waits for someone to connect and claim the flow for 18.104.22.168). The above tunnel is actually used to give my home router a static IP address (188.8.131.52), routed through a vultr VM. vultr let's you add up to 2 additional IP addresses to a $5/month instance.

An X.509-based PKI setup is just as easy, other than generating and signing the certificates.

It's actually easier than using Wireguard, IMHO. Now, if you want to be interoperable with random vendors you have to be mindful of which cipher suites are supported. Few IPSec implementations support curve25519, for example. I manually specify the ikesa and childsa cipher suites in the above to ensure that the negotiated ciphers will be hardware accelerated on my PCEngines APU2, but also to prove that IPSec can use the latest cipher modes like aes-gcm and curve25519. OpenBSD even supports chacha20-poly1305 if you wanted to be really hip. But aes-128 + SHA-256 + one of the ECDSA groups (I forget which one) is supported by all modern BSD, Linux, macOS, Windows, and iPhone implementations, so in 2019 near universal support is actually quite easy to achieve.

Technically you shouldn't need to specify any cipher modes at all as IKE endpoints can negotiate a shared set themselves. But IKE works differently than TLS. Rather than a peer sending all supported ciphers and the other peer selecting one from their shared set as TLS does, the IKE peers go through multiple cycles of proposals and rejections. The problem is that many vendor implementations will give up after 2 or 3 cycles, so you need to constrain the supported cipher suites to ensure they agree on cipher modes within the first few proposal cycles. Easiest thing to do is to just constrain one endpoint to the known best cipher suite.

Alas Android still only supports IKEv1 natively, which means for maximum interoperability you have to rely on IKEv1 + L2TP server side. L2TP is usually implemented as a separate service requiring additional configuration, which adds to the confusion. IKEv2 simultaneously simplified tunnel setup while also obsoleting L2TP. The irony of Android possibly getting native Wireguard before native IKEv2 kills me....

FWIW, Linux IPSec stacks like FreeSwan don't have the concise configuration of OpenBSD's IKE daemon, partly because the Linux ecosystem sucks at polish, partly because OpenBSD's IKE daemon is many years newer and has less baggage. But conceptually it's just as simple.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! Thanks for the extra details, very useful.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Freelancers in the US: How do you succeed in getting a mortgage? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Most banks want at least 2 years of tax returns if you are a freelancer. It _is_ possible to get a mortgage under 2 years but extremely difficult and not many banks will do it.

If you have at least 2 years of tax returns with good credit, then there is not a whole lot of difference compared to the salaried/employed people. You will still need to come up with all the remaining requirements but the 2 year tax return is a must.

<comment><USER3> Would like to confirm this, exactly what I was asked for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If your credit is decent you can get a traditional mortgage. It takes a little extra effort but you can still do it. You'll have to provide tax returns and usually around 4 months of bank statements plus a P&L for the business (if you are a corp) but that's about it. Plus of course your down payment proof.

If you have less than decent credit or have very unpredictable income it can be a little tougher, but there are secondary and private mortgage markets to help there and while more expensive they aren't horrible, but a little more buyer beware. I have used this market before for income properties and you will find that there are assholes that try to take advantage of you because they think you are desperate. Then there are those that are there to make a good return but are totally reasonable. If you have to go this route, find a mortgage broker that deals in this market, it isn't that hard and a reputable one will help keep you out of trouble.

EDIT: BTW -- debt to income ration is a little more important here depending on the type of debt.

</comment><comment><USER5> Taken from startups for the rest of us, episode 166 transcript.

"[10:19] Mike: When I first started out, I did have a mortgage and to be perfectly honest, if you have a mortgage already, it's a lot easier to quit your job than it is to quit your job and then go get a mortgage just because the sheer amount of paperwork that the bank will send you in order to get a mortgage if you're self employed is just astounding. You're much better off just going and finding someone to pay them to hire you at whatever salary you want and in order to be on their payroll instead of having your own just because banks have this thing about you're self employed, you're risky. And it's like you're probably making decent money in order to be able to do that."

</comment><comment><USER6> Two years tax returns. Don't call yourself a freelancer or even self employed. Say "I work for OP Consulting LLC, here are my pay stubs, this is my salary."

<comment><USER4> Don't do this.

Most of the financial forms now ask if you own more than X% of a company (I think 10-20%), and you must list which one if you do. Plus you sign an IRS form that allows them to pull your prior tax returns, in which case they will likely see the corporation or partnership forms, meaning you just lied to the bank. While rarely is it prosecuted and rarely do you get in any real trouble, it is technically against the law in the US from what I understand. And if nothing else, bad way to start off with the bank.

There are the rare cases like remyp mentioned where you are an employee but own a reportable percentage of a company in which case you still have to disclose it all up front to avoid banks from getting all crazy on you.

You can search for a lot of the rules as many fall under the dodd-frank mortgage rules, and also you can look at the fannie mae guidelines as most banks follow them to protect themselves.

<comment><USER6> I don't advise lying, I didn't know the forms ask that question. Anyhow, the discrimination against the self-employed is ridiculous, especially with so many contract workers and freelancers out there and the spread of at-will employment means you can lose your job tomorrow even at a large company.

<comment><USER4> Fair enough. And I totally agree with you that it is tougher on the freelancer or self employed and can be quite frustrating.

To your point, in my experience, when a bank evaluates your tax returns for proof of income, they use the net income, so after all deductions, to calculate your debt ratio. Yet if you were an employee they would use your gross income on the pay stub and then calculate your debt to income ratio. A lesson I learned at the wrong time, it all worked out but what a pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just throwing a crazy idea out there - maybe you can be a landlord of one property then rent another one where you want to live. This gets you in the real estate market, and if you can do it smart you buy where the yield is high and rent where it is cheap.

This assumes you don't mind having and being a landlord at the same time.</comment>


Learn Python in minutes - <AUTHOR> http://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/python/ <comment><USER3> """-delimited text is not actually a comment. Its a multiline string literal

        x = """aaa
        bbb"""

And you can also use single quotes if you want.

        x = '''aaa'''

The reason this might have been confused with a comment is because triple- quoted strings are often used for documentation strings, a Python feature that gives special meaning to string literals that occur as the first statement in a function or class. Those strings get associated to the function as its documentation and can even be inspected at runtime:

        def foo():
           "my documentation string"
           return 17

        print help(foo)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is exactly what I wanted a few years ago while working on a GAE project. I had never touched Python but I knew programming and just wanted to know what the language had and how in basic terms to use it.

I remember picking up a large book from a store shelf titled something like "Python for Programmers". Thinking, "Oh, this is for people who already know how to program and just want to learn Python". I open the book randomly and start reading it's explanation on what functions are in programming and why they're useful. I sighed and placed the book back on the shelf.

</comment><comment><USER5> An error: *args arrive as a tuple, not a list, so the first line that all_the_args(1, 2, a=3, b=4) prints is not:

        [1, 2]

but is instead

        (1, 2)

The second line of that output also happens to be wrong, because printing a dictionary uses repr() on its keys and values and str.__repr__ normally uses single quotes, so instead of

        {"a": 3, "b": 4}

It will instead print

        {'a': 3, 'b': 4}

For that matter, I would prefer it if this guide used single quotes primarily; that is the preferred standard in Python.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice and concise. It would be complemented nicely by a list of Python "gotchas".

E.g., off the top of my head, mutable default arguments, or trying to catch multiple exceptions with "except Exception1, Exception2:". That's the kind of thing people new to the language can spend a lot of time debugging when they first run into it.

Edit: and any introduction to tuples should probably show how to write empty and one-element tuples, since that can be non-intuitive. Writing (1) instead of (1,) is also a fairly common gotcha.

<comment><USER7> Author here.

I didn't want to overload the reader. Perhaps a more in-depth guide is required.

<comment><USER8> Hey, thanks for the guide. It's a concise read :) looking forward to the article on Python 3.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Learn X in 30 Days" has gone to "Learn X in Minutes"

I am waiting for "Learn X While You Sleep--wake up as an expert!"

<comment><USER10> I used to sleep with a walkman plugged in and playing german vocab - <USER2> knew that was guaranteed to work

<comment><USER11> I put my computer on youtube's google io talk whenever I can't get to sleep. It sures put me to sleep fast. :-)

If Michael Jackson just knew that......

<comment><USER12> ...he would still be alive , lol !

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks very similar to the notes I was taking on my own when going through "learning python the hardway". Yours are much better and easier to read though, and make more sense in terms of going from very easy to more complicated in staggered steps.

Great stuff!

As a sidenote, how does everyone take note (if you even do) when learning something new like a language or some kind of skill?

<comment><USER14> I don't take notes.

I learn better when I read the same thing over and over from different sources, which might have additional details or different points of view.

Not taking notes forces me to go back when I don't remember something, often finding new sources.

<comment><USER15> What taking notes does for me -- and I assume most other people -- is that it forces me to internalize what I just learned in a way that makes sense to my brain and fits within previous constructs I've already developed through n years of living.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What this needs is Rap Genius style annotations, so people can make comments and additions. I recently (re:yesterday) decided to pick up and try out python for a small project and this is a great quick and dirty start.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think you mean to say "glance over and quickly forget the basics of python in minutes"

<comment><USER7> Author here.

How would you improve the retention rate?

This article is meant for programmers from other languages who want to quickly look up a language specific detail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow. I've only every programmed Java and this looks amazing. I'm so sorry scripting languages, I've neglected you!

<comment><USER19> I've been forced to use C# for the last week. I'm so sorry scripting languages, I'll be back soon! I miss you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> While I see value in a cheat sheet that helps you remember a language's features, using the words 'Learn X in minutes' is a bit stretching it. It takes a good few weeks to get comfortable building something in a new language.

This is a good cheat sheet.

</comment><comment><USER21> obligatory norvig: [http://norvig.com/21-days.html](http://norvig.com/21-days.html)

but all snark aside, good work so far! like the concept.

</comment><comment><USER22> Having just recently learned Python the "hard" way, I really wish I would've seen this beforehand. Even having done some hands-on work and a lot of Googling, I picked up a few new things from this I hadn't seen before. Thanks!

<comment><USER23> Same here, I just went through the same course. (Learn Python the hard way).

Coming from a php background I had (and am having) problems wrapping my head around the packaging section. I started to lose interest because of it. It's as if I hit a wall.

Can any Python hackers offer some good resources for learning more about packaging?

<comment><USER24> Are you trying to use packages or create them?

<comment><USER23> I'm trying to create packages.

I haven't been able to find a decent tutorial on creating packages. That particular section in "Learn Python the Hard Way" was hard for ME to follow. I was able to create a package but only after finding a link on stackoverflow question that then redirected me to a github page containing a sample package from an individual who also had problems. He states that his package worked but he wasn't sure if he created the package correctly.

I've tried reading the python documentation but I'm too dumb to understand some of the language. (No CS background, just a regular dude and a computer here.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The bit about exceptions, using a comma instead of as, should just be left out. I don't imagine anyone starting out today is using Python < 2.6, and having both in the document is confusing.

<comment><USER26> I added that after the fact because someone _did_ try to run the thing on python 2.4, got an error and was confused about it

<comment><USER25> Responded in the ticket, but yeah, totally your call (obviously :D)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I added a couple of lines to fix errors I ran into with Python 2.7.3:

Add about line 89, before assignment to some_var,

        a, b = 3, 4

Added a try-except around line 186, to guard the KeyError,

        try:
            filled_dict["four"] #=> KeyError
        except KeyError:
            print "Raises a KeyError"

Added a definition of foo around 320, so calls would work

        def foo(*seq, **dict): pass

</comment><comment><USER28> int, boolean, float etc. are not _primitive_ data types in python. If you say that, you really have no idea, what you are talking about. They are objects like everything else. You can inherit from them and do all the good OO stuff.

Sorry for the nitpicking, but calling them primitive types, is just plain wrong.

<comment><USER7> Author here.

Sorry for that. I know they are objects but if you consider everything an object then really you have no primitives except object itself. Certainly this has a place in programming philosophy but not really a helpful point in a language-primer/cheat sheet.

<comment><USER3> I agree that "everything is an object" doesn't mean much but "primitive types" has a strong meaning when it comes to OO programming so a different term might be more appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm usually a php guy, and recently I had to use some vendor's python api to do some data integration and this might have come in handy. I picked up python, or atleast the basic syntax in roughly 1 day, and was done with my implementation within the next day.

</comment><comment><USER30> This might be even more useful as an ipython notebook so that people can modify and execute any of the examples. The easiest way to host a notebook that users can try from their browser seems to be Wakari (public viewing, free signup needed to modify/run).

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't know the efficacy of this as an educational tool, but as a Python programmer, it's a really handy "cheat sheet" to have around whenever doing general scripting. It's really well written as well.

Kudos to whomever wrote it.

<comment><USER7> Author here.

Glad you find it useful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I would love a version of this that is incredibly comprehensive. I mean like, go over the entire Python doc in this format. Don't get me wrong, this goes over a lot, and but there's still a lot missing.

</comment><comment><USER33> What does he mean by "# Tuples are created by default if you leave out the parentheses".

With or without the parens I'm getting the same result for "a, b, c = (1, 2, 3)"

<comment><USER34> You get a list if you do "object_a = [1, 2, 3]" and a tuple if you do "object_b = (1, 2, 3)". Then try "object_c = 1, 2, 3" and you'll also get the tuple.

<comment><USER30> You should also mention the 1-item case where the (optional in other cases) trailing comma is required to form a tuple: (1,)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> One thing is missing: package importing and the related gotchas.

</comment><comment><USER36> And something I wrote seven years ago, for Y = 10:

[http://www.stavros.io/tutorials/python/](http://www.stavros.io/tutorials/python/)

</comment><comment><USER37> awesome tutorial. if you need a free Python IDE (based on VS) to try the exercises in, we just released PTVS 2.0 Beta: [http://pytools.codeplex.com](http://pytools.codeplex.com).

for you gurus, it's got a cool new feature: debugging Python & C++ together: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvJaKQ94lBY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvJaKQ94lBY)

</comment><comment><USER38> This comes to mind: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byEkJ3zRTcY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byEkJ3zRTcY)

</comment><comment><USER39> Looks like Java won't make it in this part of town.

</comment><comment><USER40> I love this. Do it for ruby pretty pretty please?

<comment><USER41> I'm working on a ruby version, the WIP can be seen on this pull request: [https://github.com/adambard/learnxinyminutes- docs/pull/18](https://github.com/adambard/learnxinyminutes-docs/pull/18)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> _Shakes body in chair_

"I know kung-fu"

</comment><comment><USER43> li[-1] #=> 3</comment>


Is fasting safe? A review of adverse events during water-only fasting (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5819235/ <comment><USER3> I am confused by some of the comments in here who seem to see no food intake for more than 36 hours as dangerous or even pathological or assume that you need to somehow "prepare" for that or take certain precautions. Is this a cultural thing?

When I was I student, I ate one meal a day, maybe some snacks in between. Very often, I went without food for a day, simply because I was too lazy / too emerged in some project to leave the house to buy food. Eating the last meal on Sunday evening, not eating on Monday, eating again on Tuesday evening - <USER2> hours without food. I did this many, many times, and still (in my early 30ies) do it occasionally, again just because I am too lazy to buy food sometimes. It never occurred to me that this could be considered "fasting", because neither did I feel any different after going 48 hours without food, nor did I lose any measurable amount of weight from it.

Days, weeks or even months without food was pretty much the norm until ~150 years ago. If a day, or even a week without eating would be seriously dangerous to your body, mankind would've become extinct a long, long time ago.

<comment><USER4> You would be surprised how many people have gone trough their life without experiencing real hunger.

I was doing short weekend hike with a friend and the shop we intended to visit was closed. We had to walk six hours without eating. My fried started to panic and would have called emergency services because he was feeling so weak that his hands started shaking. I had to explain it to him several times that if you sit down for a 15-20 minutes the shaking goes away as the body converts fat to glucose. He was convinced that he would die from walking hungry. Yes, physical exercise while hungry sucks, but you don't die in several days.

<comment><USER3> > He was convinced that he would die from walking hungry.

Do you think that this is a cultural phenomenon? I cannot imagine a person having constant access to food, everywhere, so that he never walked a few hours without eating. You would have to carry a backpack full a snacks everywhere, or you would somehow make sure that a store or some food place is near you, which seems pretty inconvenient.

<comment><USER4> > I cannot imagine a person having constant access to food, everywhere

I think it's very common in urban environment with middle class people. You may feel little hungry but you eat within hour or so, never hunger pangs or real weakness. When you do hard exercise, you carry sport drinks and snacks. It's not that hard.

It can be different for poor people in the same culture. Maybe the lack of shared experience contributes to the lack of empathy. When people see poor person walking on the street with hunger pain expression in their face, how do people interpret it? If they don't have a shared experience, hungry person may look just angry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Conclusion:

>> To our knowledge, this is the most comprehensive analysis of adverse events experienced during medically supervised, water-only fasting conducted to date. Overall, our data indicate that the majority of adverse events experienced were mild to moderate and known reactions to fasting. This suggests that the protocol used in this study can be safely implemented in a medical setting with minimal risk of a serious adverse event.

<comment><USER6> But is it safe to fast on our own in a non-medical setting?

If only "the majority" of adverse events were mild to moderate known reactions, how many were severe? How many were unusual? And what does the medical setting provide (clearance, planning, monitoring, intervention) that people fasting on their own might lack?

<comment><USER7> It's safe because humans had to fast. Think about it, humans didn't have a fridge and fast food. Humans had to go through fasting and in now way except the elite have 21 meals a week.

When you read books in history winter sucked because the lack of food. They would normally ration and it would literally be feast or famine. Just the way we evolved was to be able to do this.

<comment><USER8> While I believe fasting is safe your logic is flawed. If I following your logic, what would the answer be to "Is it safe to not brush your teeth or visit the dentist"

It's safe because humans had no access to dental hygiene. Think about it, humans had neither toothbrush or toothpaste. And there where no dentist. Humans had to go through life without proper dental hygiene.

Obviously, not taking good care of your teeth is not a good idea. Even though our ancestors didn't.

<comment><USER9> >Obviously, not taking good care of your teeth is not a good idea. Even though our ancestors didn't.

TBF our ancestors weren't eating much

<comment><USER7> Didn't say it was a benefit (I think there is a benefit though personally). My logic was that it was a common occurrence that humans evolved with the ability to go through long periods of fasting. You can go 40+ days without eating and live and that seems pretty amazing how the human body has adapted.

Also looks like cleaning our teeth goes much further back then tooth paste (19th Century Invention) [https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/ancestors-eat-to- clean-tee...](https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/ancestors-eat-to-clean- teeth.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For people that come into this and think: "wtf is wrong with someone that they want to starve themselves" there is more to this than meets the eye.

There is more than one type of fasting (more than one protocol - thowing this here: IF with 16:8/18:6/omad, ADF, 5/2, Extended) and there is some science backing this up. some of the benefits of fasting are mind blowing but it's hard to "swim upstream" when some of our beliefs are so entrenched (examples: not eating is going to slow your metabolism down, not eating is going to make you lose muscle mass, it's a sing of mental health issues, it's a eating disorder, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, you need to eat X time per day to keep your metabolism working)

go to reddit and read the side bar for r/fasting and r/intermittentfasting and do a little bit of research/keep an open mind.

<comment><USER11> Agree, keep an open mind and don't be affraid to try. I don't know how to categorize my IF, I've been doing it for 4 years. Tuesday and Thursday a snack at 14 and dinner around 21. Friday night, saturday and sunday I eat whatever I want. All other days just tea or cofee.

I'm 42 and I feel better than ever.

<comment><USER12> Just to make sure I understand...

Sunday: coffee Monday: coffee Tuesday: snack and dinner Wednesday: coffee Thursday: snack and dinner Friday: three full meals Saturday: three full meals

Are you able to focus by Tuesday? I feel like I would struggle to be productive.

<comment><USER13> You get used to it after a while. The hardest part I found was social pressure to eat. So much of our culture revolves around eating that it's hard to do IF with any schedule where you leave out dinner time.

So skipping breakfast is super easy (IMHO) and skipping dinner is nigh impossible.

Skipping lunch highly depends on how pressured you feel to eat with your colleagues. I think one meal a day (usually named OMAD) is also not hard if you don't have lunch at work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Who fasts with distilled water? Is this a thing now?

It's dangerous because it will dilute electrolyte concentrations in your body. Drink tap/bottled water. Distilled water is completely unnatural to the body and should only be consumed in emergencies when you literally have nothing else. Even then it's still probably not a good idea.

There's literally no benefit to choosing distilled water over tap/bottled water.

</comment><comment><USER4> Water-only diet is fine, but it's possible to make it unnecessarily uncomfortable (tired and headaches)

Idiocracy was right. You need the electrolytes. In other words, you should drink water with enough magnesium, sodium and, potassium. Many mineral waters, zero-calorie sports-drinks and low-sodium salts like Pansalt contain the right mix.

<comment><USER15> Indeed, it's surprising they went with distilled water exactly for this reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The two patients with most serious side-effects experienced dehydration and hyponatremia. This supports my view that it's important to maintain electrolyte balance during fasting (or other types of dieting like low-carb). When doing these kinds of practices I usually add some salt to water (or other electrolyte solutions if needed although there might be some sugar in them).

I think this should help with the common complaints they saw like headache, fatigue, even the cardiovascular related issues. I gotta admit that as far as 'insomnia' goes I don't think electrolytes will help with that... you probably need some combination of fat/protein/carbs to get good sleep.

<comment><USER17> Most people who fast for more than 36 hours recommend electrolyte supplements. Now they even have "snake juice" recipes. If fasting takes off, I bet there will be commercial snake juice products for long term fasters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yes, it is.

The better question: is it safe to eat/snack/graze chronically? Type 2 Diabetes seems to indicate it is not.

</comment><comment><USER19> I did 12 days (300 hours) on water, drinking Snake Juice off and on and seem to be fine. I lost about 15 lbs during that fast and regained about 5-6 lbs afterwards. I did notice my skin was a lot healthier and I felt my mind was much stronger, everyone said I looked younger. I didn't suffer any type of medical problems afterwards and continue to fast at least once a month for 2-4 days on just water and a daily 18/6 IF. I rarely get sick anymore (colds, sore throats, etc). My weight has come down to a healthy level (lost 70+lbs over the last 1.5 years).

You just have to get over the fear of not eating and understand that missing a few meals or not eating for a few days can make you feel better. It's sort of the same as quitting smoking, you free yourself from destructive living.

<comment><USER10> and learn to keep your mouth shut about what you're doing

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Fasting and duration seems to be an individual discovery, until more scientific data measurements about amino acids, genetics, immune state, glycogen levels, etc are established. I've water fasted over 50 times in the 15 months ranging from 16 - 48 hours to help with Lyme and other tick borne pathogens. I've found it to be highly anti-inflammatory and have yet to feel bad (maybe 3 very mild headaches). For example, my vision acuity improves around 15 hours into a fast every time (noticeable when reading). I've even jogged or walked miles 30 hours into a fast, depending on residual glycogen levels in the blood and muscles. The glycogen should be consumed from the liver, blood, and muscles (partial) before entering ketosis. With that said, it's not for everyone and it is probably better to slowly increase the duration of the water fast to evaluate individual response. Also, hundreds of millions in the Muslim culture practice a complete daylight fast every year with minimal side effect. That should be significantly significant ;-).

</comment><comment><USER21> I would be interested in a comparison to 'total' fasting, i.e. abstaining from both solid food and liquid. This is the most commonly practiced religious practice (and so has a thousand year history). It would be interesting to know what the differences were, if any.

In my own experience, somewhat unintuitively, total fasting is a lot easier than water-only fasting. I ascribe this to the digsetive system kind of shutting down after several hours of complete fasting. It feels like the stomach shrivels up, and hunger pangs become fewer and further between as time passes. Whereas going without proper food, but consuming water or small snacks, I feel very uncomfortable and usually get a headache.

<comment><USER22> Going for a long period of time without water is intuitively a bad idea for your health. I think this is the reason for this study being water-only.

It also makes sense from religious perspective, since a religion will prepare you for another life which is only attainable by dying, with no apparent intention to give you a good and healthy life on Earth.

<comment><USER23> Cultural evolution suggests that, regardless of intention, these practices which have become mainstays of popular religions around the world, cover some type of benefit to survival, reproduction, or intellectual spread.

<comment><USER22> That, or terrible peer pressure. In my opinion, Occam's razor suggests the latter.

<comment><USER23> That's fine. I think it's just conventional wisdom that makes this seem like the "simpler" solution, and I'm a bit allergic to that, but to each their own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As someone coming off a three-day water fast (five days was my max), all I can recommend is that you try it for yourself. The lightness, clarity, and self- assuredness that it builds is lovely.

<comment><USER10> hahaha. that's not healthy for you /s

seriously, as someone that has done extended fasting at times (think weeks) my advice is not to jump into the deep end of the pool.

Try eating all your food in an 8 hour window for starters and after that do several fasts with increasing duration s 1,2,3,5,8... days of fasting (fibonnaci fasting)

the other thing to consider is that if you think or see something is wrong yoh stop. fasting is mostly safe, but there are edge cases were yoh will have a bad time.

and last piece of advice is that I have noticed people that eat sugar (lots of sugar) have an exceptional hard time fasting (the hunger is unbearable). So one thing to try is to kick the sugar habit before fasting (at that point even if you decide fasting is bullshit you've kicked sugar to the curb and that's huge in its own way)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Not only electrolytes but the lack of fibre is also a big problem when you fast more than a few days.

Body needs fibre to maintain a healthy gut flora. So when the body lose the flora, it will struggle to digest the food, take the vitamins and nutritions from it etc. at the end of the fasting period.

This is not only something I read from articles but also something I have experienced for a long time by the way. So please bear that in mind, keep your gut flora healthy and your life will be easier.

<comment><USER26> > Body needs fibre to maintain a healthy gut flora.

Do you have a good link that explains that further?

<comment><USER25> I am on mobile, couldn't find the original article but this one seems good enough. Please take a look.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fiber-famished- gu...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fiber-famished-gut-microbes- linked-to-poor-health1/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The Chief complaints table had some interesting tidbits:

> Cancer: Breast (11), Andrologic (10), Lymphoma (3)

> Tumor: Neck (6), Breast (1), Colon (1)

So a nontrivial number of people reported _cancer_ as a side effect of water fasting.

I suppose you'd probably want to review the standard correlation-does-not- equal-causation fallacy, but still.

<comment><USER28> These are the complaints and issues that brought patients to the facility that administered the fast, not "reported as a side effect of water fasting".

> Table 1 describes chief complaint categories as total counts and as a > percentage of total visits. A patient could have had more than one chief > complaint per visit. Quality of life, including prevention and fatigue, was > the primary reason patients visited TNHC (n = 384, 50%). Other major chief > complaint categories included the cardiovascular (n = 193, 25.1%), > musculoskeletal (n = 147, 19.1%), gastrointestinal (n = 122, 15.9%), and > endocrine (n = 107, 13.9%) systems. Following prevention (n = 358, 46.7%), > hypertension (n = 152, 19.7%) was the largest chief complaint category.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> tl;dr: yes it mostly is.

<comment><USER24> Only for Americans in labs, though. It's totally fine for the rest of the world and our ancestors. I'm an American not in a lab and I do it all the time with life-changing results.

<comment><USER29> I think you think I am saying the opposite of what I think I am saying.

<comment><USER24> Apologies, my mistake!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Common pharmaceuticals (even vaccines) have known (and some extremely debilitating) side effects.

While the conclusion seems reasonable (ie, some people have adverse affects to not eating) it's by no means a condemnation of fasting.

Fasting is the universal method of allowing the body to heal itself, animals fast to heal naturally. (ie, no medicine actually heals only compliments/supports healing, the body does all the real work)

<comment><USER31> >Fasting is the universal method of allowing the body to heal itself

This sounds like folkloric nonsense.

<comment><USER24> When you try it for yourself, you realize that it's not.

<comment><USER31> That's exactly the mentality that keeps wives' tales circulating.

How often do home remedies "work" because of placebo and/or simply time?

<comment><USER24> Ok, don't try it. :)

Wive's tales and home remedies still circulate because they often work. Of course, you're not going to read that on Hacker News because it's biased by people wearing modern American blinders that don't have the humility, courage, awareness or something else, to just try for themselves. I was that way until I tried psychedelics, meditation, pranayama breathing, lucid dreaming and many other alternative modalities just two years ago.

All love--good luck on your journey!

<comment><USER31> >American blinders that don't have the humility, courage, awareness

No, it's about having some degree of scientific rigor, as opposed to blind anecdote.

<comment><USER24> Scientific rigor is not just about gathering people as lab subjects, experimenting on them and publishing your findings in peer reviewed journals. In my experience, the strongest science, where the deepest knowledge arises, is by systematically performing experiments on yourself. This isn't possible for all things, but it's 100% available for fasting.

Thanks for the conversation, best to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Compared to what ?

Is it safe to eat 3 times a day + snacks, mostly over processed, calorie dense, low micro nutrients food ?

Food is like most things, moderation/balance is key. I have no doubt fasting can be beneficial in some cases just as I have no doubt that the typical western diet is universally bad.

This new fasting trend is just the blowback of the over abundance / over consumption of low quality food we experience pretty much everywhere in US / Europe.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is an NIH study which to me implies rigor; including controls.

<comment><USER33> The report appears rigorous, but it notes in several places that the data is not acquired in a rigorous way as it was not intended to be used to make such assessments.

As to controls:

>"the relative safety of water-only fasting is necessarily descriptive in nature as we did not identify a comparison group(s)"

It's a good paper.

I was left wondering why people attended the facility. A 9 day water only fast, with limited activity, sounds pretty extreme for a 70+ yo.

<comment><USER34> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallekhana](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallekhana)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Finds Another Excuse to Block GNU/Linux - <AUTHOR> http://techrights.org/2011/09/22/tricks-with-boot-process/ <comment><USER2> This has been shown to be bullshit already:

[http://www.winrumors.com/microsoft-clears-up-linux- confusion...](http://www.winrumors.com/microsoft-clears-up-linux-confusion- over-windows-8-secure-boot-feature/)

* UEFI allows firmware to implement a security policy

* Secured boot is a UEFI protocol not a Windows 8 feature

* UEFI secured boot is part of Windows 8 secured boot architecture

* If desired, Windows 8 utilizes secured boot to ensure that the pre-OS environment is secure

* Secured boot doesn't "lock out" operating system loaders, but is is a policy that allows firmware to validate authenticity of components

* OEMs have the ability to customize their firmware to meet the needs of their customers by customizing the level of certificate and policy management on their platform

* Microsoft does not mandate or control the settings on PC firmware that control or enable secured boot from any operating system other than Windows

<comment><USER3> From what I understand:

* If you want "Windows Certified" approval for your hardware, you have to provide and activate this by default.

* If it's active, it won't allow uncertified systems (read: Linux) to run without deactivating the option in the BIOS, which doesn't have to be provided.

* If it's inactive, it won't run Windows.

Since this isn't the first time Microsoft had troubles being fair to their competition, I'd see this less as "bullshit," and more as "people caught on more early this time." With Microsoft's past, why are you surprised people are more careful with its suggestions?

<comment><USER4> From the ms blog post:

 _Steven Sinofsky 22 Sep 2011 4:10 PM #_

@Jose Pedro Of course Windows is usable without secure boot -- just like the post stated

<comment><USER3> You're right on that point, sorry I missed that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why not submit a link to one of the legitimate sites covering this (some even covering it accurately!), instead of a link to a discredited conspiracy theory site?</comment>


Ask HN: How does a small team of freelancers approach large companies? - <AUTHOR>

Few days back, there was a Ask HN 'How to move beyond "freelancer"?' : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9289500
Some comments mentioned about getting projects from large companies:
pauletienney (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9289724):
- Once you have a team, you will look for interesting projects. They are more complicated to get. They often come from medium / large organization. Those orgs. have important inertia. Projects can take weeks of month to start. Chase multiple projects at the same time.
---
cheetos (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9290005):
Instead, find startups with technical people doing the recruiting or large companies with established roles and processes for freelancers. They will at least understand market rates and what you actually do.
---
How do we find out which companies have 'established' roles and processes for freelancers?
Also, what are some other ways to approach companies for remote projects? What techniques have you tried that seem to work : for example cold emails, picking up the phone and calling at office hours?
I understand that having people from your network in companies helps. My query is mostly related to companies where we do not have anyone from our network.
PS: We are a team of two who have been doing software consulting and development for a year, and are looking at ways to get larger, longer contracts, which we are thinking might come if we approach large companies. <comment><USER2> I don't recommend you try to do this without networking. I was successful at getting projects from a big company, but I don't think blind applications would have worked. That being said, I will try to explain the process that one VERY large company (>10k employees) used.

Even though I was effectively hired by a senior executive (former colleague), I still had to become an approved contractor in their procurement system. They used a 3rd party ([http://www.pontoonsolutions.com](http://www.pontoonsolutions.com)). So, I was instructed to make a proposal via that system -- to be clear, though, I had already negotiated everything before this even came up -- but it was a requirement to get the work.

However, once I was in, I had visibility to other work that was being put out for bid. I personally was fully booked up with work from my network in this company to take advantage of it though. My sense is that it would not be a good idea to bid blindly for these projects -- most of them were commodity IT work, not necessarily interesting projects. I found out about those from my internal networking.

So, I guess I would suggest looking at Pontoon -- seeing if there's a way into companies through 3rd parties like this.

I would also suggest just looking at giant company career sites and seeing if they have any contractor positions listed. Once you are in, you can find other projects. The easy networking you can do is with the company's recruiters (they probably call you) -- find out how they hire contractors.

</comment><comment><USER3> In our experience, almost all the larger company deals come from a contact you already have or you network to get. Rarely does a cold email or call end up in a deal with a larger organization, although we have stumbled into them a few times.

The short version is that you need to target companies with specific demographics. I'd say few companies really are "setup" to handle freelancers, but many businesses are setup to have solutions provided. You get bigger deals by not being a team of freelancers and instead bringing solutions to problems. Your goal is to take a part of a project or a whole project and develop it outside their team generally. If you are integrated to their team and need to be in their daily stand ups or on site etc, you are just a contract employee which will not make you independent or allow you to take on other work easily and grow your business (see my last point below on this).

To your question how to get these deals. Find ways to meet people in these companies, using your network of contacts, go to meet ups, conferences and basically stalk people that can help you get in the door. You can cold call and send emails, this keeps your name around but just be careful not to be annoying. We also research companies heavily to find out what their tech stack is, what issues they are having, who works there that we can target and try and offer free help in some cases. For example, many times one of us will answer forum posts from a developer we have found works for the target company. This is in fairness to help them out but importantly for us many times it then can help lead us to a foot in the door (we just made a new contact). Without a big marketing budget it is all about creative ways to meet people at a distance and have them see you as a solution and expert that can help them.

IMO, focus on companies that have revenue of $3M-$10M annually at first, sometimes this is a guess obviously because they are private but rough head count and other details you find in the public domain can be used to estimate. This generally gets you companies that are mature enough to understand they have to pay for quality and also small enough that they still need to outsource quite a bit of work to meet their goals. Not only that, what we found is that by doing well for these types of companies, they will help you network to the next level up and so on (usually they will have mentors or contacts they are happy to introduce you too). So over time you are working with as large of an organization as you like.

Personally, we have gone back to targeting businesses in the $10-50M in annual revenue (with most in the $10-25M), they are large enough to afford us, small enough we can meet all their legal requirements and generally low enough politics that we can get paid reasonably timely. We have worked with Fortune 10 companies too, but the time requirements and reserve funds needed to service a client that is used to be waited on by everyone can be really tough when you are building yourself up. They also generally have a great deal of cruft you have to work your way through and typically pay their bills very slowly, which again is tough when you don't have significant reserves. On this note too, the industry of the companies matters too, a $3m software company is way different then a $3m retail sales company. You have to learn to tell the differences and what can be sold to each.

Last point, I know this is a touch off topic, but here is my simple way to figure out if a company is really trying to use us as a group of contract employee or a solutions provider, I just ask/answer some basic questions. If 1 or more are yes then they just want a contract employee which is not what we do. Are they trying to manage our time? Do they want to set our working hours? Are they expecting exclusivity? Are they wanting to task my team individually? Are they wanting us on-site sitting in their building doing the work? The last point does not include sales, demo, installation, integration or training type work.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> loumf, davismwfl: Thank you for your thoughts. We will try to follow a strategy along the guidelines that you have suggested. As you have said, we are initially going to target companies where we have an existing network, and take it on from there.</comment>


Because soylent isn't weird enough, the Internet wants you to chew your coffee - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2015/08/21/lets-just-start-injecting-coffee/

<comment><USER2> I'm one of the creators of GO CUBES. I loved the point-counterpoint here. Startups often toe the line between absurd & interesting, because that's where innovation happens. Making nootropics as accessible as cup of coffee is no small feat.

Curious to hear what people think!</comment>


Amazon Employees Are Very Interested in a Particular Article About Arlington - <AUTHOR> https://www.arlnow.com/2018/02/20/amazon-employees-are-very-interested-in-a-particular-article-about-arlington/ <comment><USER2> Well, this is certainly fascinating.

If this gets discovered, I'm sure it'll become someone's job to build a little redirect obfuscator so avoid any more such "leaks."</comment>


Gadget Graveyard: Dot-Matrix Printers - <AUTHOR> https://paleotronic.com/2019/08/26/gadget-graveyard-dot-matrix-printers/ <comment><USER2> I kinda miss the fan-paper banners that were so easy to generate with dot- matrix printers.</comment>


Making Seattle my home - <AUTHOR> http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2011/07/making-seattle-my-home.html <comment><USER2> I just moved away from Seattle after spending two years there - it's a place I'd probably go back to once I'm older, but IMO it's not the best place to spend your 20s.

The neighborhoods are nice, there's a lot of nature - you're close to mountains, parks, and water practically always. The weather is relatively mild (if a little dreary for most of the year), and the politics relatively progressive (well, sort of, all of Washington state _except_ Seattle is pretty much very pro-Republican).

The social scene though, leaves a lot to be desired. Google "Seattle Freeze" for a much more in-depth look at the problem than I can write up. Locals deny it exists, anyone transplanted from another city swears by it. I find myself in the Bay Area now and find people far more approachable, and far more willing to make a new friend, whereas in Seattle one finds a lot more polite- yet-distant interactions, none of which ever seem to go anywhere. Making that worse is the fact that the social scene in Seattle is very much locals vs. transplants - which is to say neither side interact with each other very much. For people on the transplant side (where transplants are mostly tech people) it means your circles get pretty homogenous. Nearly all of my friends from my time in Seattle worked in software (either Amazon, Microsoft, or a smattering of other local companies).

Right now I'm still in that place in life where I enjoy making new friends and meeting varied and interesting people, and Seattle was _really_ not doing it for me. I've had a much easier go at it since moving to California, and I can't say I really miss Seattle.

<comment><USER3> Wow, I thought I was just bad at making friends. But I almost never seem to meet anyone around Seattle.

<comment><USER2> That's kind of one of the more insidious things about living in Seattle, isn't it? You start out bitching about how hard it is to make friends.

And then, after a while, this doubt sneaks into your mind: is it me? Do I suck at this socialization thing a lot more than I realized? Oh God it's me isn't it.

I thought the same, then I moved to SF and the number of people I befriended in the first few weeks is staggering compared to the number of people I managed to meet in the two years I was in Seattle. So...

<comment><USER4> It could be worse. I grew up in Seattle, and never made any friends until years after I'd moved away and finally realized it was possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Matt, not sure you read HN, but I know friends of yours and you know friends of mine. Anyways; we walked in the same circles, and both decided to leave CS academia.

I wish you would honestly answer this; did you leave cause academia was bullshit? That's why I left. I regularly talk to grad students all torn up about leaving academia, and I keep telling them that "industry" is just as worthwhile an endeavor as research. I feel like reading about your path you've come to the same conclusion.

<comment><USER6> You seem like a very interesting character, _ycalumn_ throwaway account.

Having read Matt's account of his actions, I agree with your reading. It feels like he came to believe academia was bullshit, but didn't want to hurt his close friends in academia. (Which is fine! You are using a throwaway account, no?)

Over time, I came to view CS academia as bullshit as well, but I am starting to reverse this view. Academia is inefficient, anachronistic, political, bureaucratic, and doesn't do a very good job measuring its own output. However, that seems to apply to countless other institutions, especially institutions with billions of dollars.

Is it possible that academia is a flawed system that sometimes has good results (e.g., new knowledge, startups, quality engineers) that would not have happened otherwise? Or have new inventions like incubators or online education arrived that make it easier to achieve those good results without the old, flawed system?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was originally from Seattle where I was an engineer at Amazon for a couple years before moving to the bay area. Seattle is an incredibly livable place. If you feel yourself getting bothered by the rain, just remind yourself that the rain cleans out the air and produces the greenest, freshest natural beauty that you can find on the West coast. Hands down - better summer climate than anywhere. If you're doing a startup, do you really leave your computer anyways? Just save it for when the weather's nice. I don't know why Seattle doesn't have as large of a startup scene. It's got a huge tech scene, no doubt, and it has every ingredient in the mix to foster a large startup community (smarts, companies, UW, coffee, good beer). Most of all, it seems more business friendly. In particular - the economic climate seems more startup friendly. You could get a really decent place to rent for 800 dollars a month. The transportation has gotten much better with the underground train/bus tunnel. About seven days a week there's almost always a killer happy hour where you could eat gourmet food for under ten dollars - much better than the food I've had in the Bay Area. Also, there's no state income tax. If you're looking to buy a house, I believe that all things considered, your house purchase dollars go five times further in the Seattle area. - And you're just an hour and a half flight away from the South Bay. It seems you could live there and be very frugal, and spend your credit card miles commuting to the bay area once every other week - and still come out ahead. I haven't been back there in a year, but I hear the startup community is getting even stronger. I hope it does well as a startup hub.

</comment><comment><USER8> A few years ago, I got a job offer from Amazon. I live in Silicon Valley, and I almost took it, but then I was playing rollerhockey outside at around 7pm, clear blue sky with the sun setting, it was still 75 F. At that instant, I had a "California moment", and I thought to myself "Do I really want to exchange 300 of sunshine for 200 days of rain?" So I didn't take the job.

Now, I would very much like to move to Seattle. I actually grew up near the Pacific Northwest, so I'm used to the rain, but my wife wouldn't be able to handle it, so it's basically a non-starter.

But now that I'm older, I would very much like to live the lifestyle that Seattle has to offer. It's a genuinely beautiful city, and I would very much like to live there at some point in my life.

<comment><USER9> >I actually grew up near the Pacific Northwest, so I'm used to the rain, but my wife wouldn't be able to handle it, so it's basically a non-starter.

My situation exactly. Every time we go back up to WA/OR to visit, everything looks so beautiful and green. On the other hand, after living in California for the past 10 years, I find myself wondering if I'd be able to tolerate the lack of sunshine, even after growing up in Seattle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I spent fourteen years in Seattle until I moved to SF this June. I sorely miss the natural beauty. The air is cleaner, the nature is encompassing, and people are smart and down-to-earth. The rain is manageable -- just don't use an umbrella, otherwise people will know you're new to the city :-)

</comment><comment><USER11> _SUNDAY, JULY 31, 2011 I moved to Seattle about 4 months ago_

It's cloudy from November through June. Let's see how he feels in six months.

If you move to Seattle and complain about the weather, please, shut the fuck up and go back to California. We have enough of you whiners up here already.

<comment><USER12> _"It's cloudy from November through June. Let's see how he feels in six months."_

Only if you count July, September and October as sunny. By any conventional standard, "summer" in Seattle lasts from August until early September. I lived in Seattle for seven years, and every single year I was wearing a sweater to the fireworks on July 4.

You get used to it, but that's nothing to brag about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am also moving to Seattle in a few months after I finish school. Having spent my summer there, I can't say I have any complaints, winters however, are a different story I hear. Coming from the Midwest though, I think I would prefer the rain over 3 months of harsh winters.

On a side note, I am curious in finding out why do so many high-achieving computer science folks in academia make the jump to work at Google? It takes a lot of effort to reach the point where some of these people are at, so there must be great incentives to make that move. What are those?

<comment><USER14> I'm moving from the midwest to Seattle soon after graduating too! I'll be moving out in late August to work at Microsoft after I graduate from Northwestern University this spring. I agree about the weather - mild/gray/rainy may be an improvement over wintery death.

<comment><USER15> I moved to Seattle from Chicago to work at Amazon. When people ask me how I put up with the rain in Seattle, I just reply back "how do you put up with the snow?"

Seattle has a great diverse ecosystem for outdoors enthusiasts - drive for an hour or so, and you can go skiing, hiking, swimming, camping and more.

Seattle has a great craft beer culture as well. Some of my favorite bars are: Brouwers, Uber, Naked City, Beveridge Place Pub and Collins Pub.

If you want authentic mexican, check out Oaxaca in Ballard. As for taco truck food, check out El Camion in the parking lot of Home Depot on 135th and I-99 Aurora as well as Taqueria Tequila on 85th.

For Chicago style stuffed pizza, check out Delfino's in University Village and stay far away from Kylie's in Fremont (ugh)...for normal pizza, try Serious Pie, Flying Squirrel and Via Tribunali.

For breakfast, try Beth's Cafe and CJ's (my favorite eggs benedict)

For italian, try Cafe Lago. Great pasta.

For sandwiches - my 2 favorite places are Salumi's where you should try the Mole & Mozz. Salumi's is a few blocks away from where the Seahawks play. Second place is Tat's where they have the town's best philly cheese steak sandwich.

For ice cream, Molly Moon's wins hands down. They are in Wallingford as well as Capitol Hill.

Enjoy!

<comment><USER16> _For italian, try Cafe Lago. Great pasta._

The first rule of Cafe Lago is you don't talk about Cafe Lago. They run out of lasagna at 7 PM as it is. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> He mentions missing Chinese food, but there's a reason there isn't much of the Good Stuff -- it's all up in Richmond, BC. It's just a couple hour drive north over the border, and is a small town just south of Vancouver with a population that I can't confirm, but appears to be roughly 50% Cantonese. Some of the great food there:

\- Food courts in the malls. Seriously, Parker Place if you like it "almost a bit too real" and Yaohan Centre if you and the family want to get a mish-mash of dishes.

\- Dim Sum Restaurants. They're a little further south on No. 3 Road, closer to the Nordstrom's, but they're big, clean, fresh, and always packed.

\- Hot Pot. Seriously, having tried in NY, Chicago, SF, etc. I've never had reasonable Cantonese-style hot pot until there.

\- Buddhist Vegetarian. The hours require some planning, but the Internation Buddhist Temple has stunningly amazing vegetarian food. And it's a great site, even for non-Buddhists.

\- Tofu dessert! Yes, at least as of a couple of years ago, there's even a late-night tofu dessert shop (better than it sounds, trust me) in the strip mall area buried about a block south of the Yahoan Centre.

My wife's originally from HK and I lived in Seattle for 6 years, so this food knowledge was crucial to a happy marriage...

</comment><comment><USER18> It is interesting to note that if the Bay area had a high speed rail system, it would alleviate both of Matt's issues (quality affordable housing and reasonable commute times).

<comment><USER19> High speed rail isn't necessary for that. Cities just need to relax their zoning restrictions to allow more housing to be built where people want to live. Low supply + high demand = high prices.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a perspicacious comment; if you're curious about more, see Edward Glaeser's book _The Triumph of the City_ ([http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City- Greatest-Invention-Health...](http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest- Invention- Healthier/dp/159420277X?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957)), which is quite good on 1) how density promotes idea transmission, 2) the environmental consequences of cities, and 3) transportation problems, which affect (2).

<comment><USER19> Read it; loved it. I highly recommend it as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sounds good to me, except the damn weather. My office is in Santa Monica and the weather is 70s, sunny, and never too humid. We keep the door and windows open and a cool ocean breeze blows in all day.

Silicon Valley has similar weather, so that would be easy, but I don't know if I could handle gloomy weather a big portion of the year.

Google's Santa Monica office is 6 blocks from the beach, same as ours.

<comment><USER21> > "My office is in Santa Monica and the weather is 70s, sunny, and never too > humid. We keep the door and windows open and a cool ocean breeze blows in > all day. Silicon Valley has similar weather, so that would be easy"

Hate to burst your bubble, but as someone who lived in the Valley for 10 years, then San Diego, no, the weather in the Valley is not nearly as nice as SoCal!

San Francisco gets the ocean breeze, though it's more like a freezing cold foggy rain. (We used to have this ongoing joke in SF: "How do you know that person is a tourist? Because he's wearing shorts!") I lived in Pacifica, which was beautiful, and right on the coast, but it was never warm and breezy like SoCal.

The rest of the Valley is a 1-hour+ drive from the coast, and it gets that "inland hot" weather. Not like the IE, but like a mini-IE. You don't want to live in San Jose without air conditioning.

I don't really miss the weather in the Valley!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Mixed in have been some cooler rainy days that feel out of place for the > season.

Better get used to it. Seattle has many cool, overcast days (although, surprisingly less precipitation than Chicago or NYC) and is definitely known for its dreary weather. If you had a few sunny days in the Summer it was a damned good Summer.

As a former Seattleite (I was born there and lived there for many years) I understand where you're coming from, apropos the weather: but in all seriousness, learn to love it (or at least how to deal with it) because it's definitely a primary feature of life there. The good news is most of the time the weather is fairly mild, including the Winters. There generally isn't a lot of snow. But it will get cool (even cold) and you will have to deal with the weather never actually being insanely nice for most of the year.

</comment><comment><USER23> We most probably live within few blocks of each other in Seattle.

Let's hope you will still like in couple of years the mostly cloudy, rainy, dreary, no sun weather of Seattle. It is depressing weather 10 months a year, IMO.

Wallingford area has some nice eateries on 45th from Dick's to Tilth. We typically just walk down street for dinner weather permitting. Some of our favorites on 45th are Joule's, Tilth, Issian, Kabul, Chutney, Sutra. You most probably also not far from Tutta Bella on Stone Way or student style eateries on University Ave. Pam's Kitchen and Chilli's are our favorite on Univ Ave.

<comment><USER24> Dick's and nice eateries do not belong in the same sentence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> We should hang out

<comment><USER26> For all new to or planning on coming to Seattle there is a Hacker News meetup that recent started ([http://www.meetup.com/HackerNewsSeattleMeetup/events/2752013...](http://www.meetup.com/HackerNewsSeattleMeetup/events/27520131/)), I haven't been as I live up north and driving into Seattle is something I try to do as little as possible for my own sanity. There is also a local startup group (Seattle Tech Startups: <http://seattletechstartups.com/doku.php>) who have occasional talks at the UW campus as well as a fairly active social calendar (<http://www.seattletechcalendar.com/>). Then of course there is the UW which has public lectures, Bill Gates is giving a talk next week I believe (just saw an e-mail invite for it today, but alas I am gone on vacation next week).

<comment><USER27> Yep! I run the events, and I was looking for a good place to plug them on this thread... :) They're wildly successful (120 RSVPs in ~24 hours for this latest event...), and there's free beer and free pizza.

I'll be posting it to HN early next week, but if you RSVP now you'll have a much better chance (I'm capping it at 200 RSVPs).

<comment><USER28> Keep up the good work Zach! I appreciate the time and energy you put into making these Meetups come together. I'll see you in November...

<comment><USER27> Make sure to say hi and introduce yourself. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> As a positive, he lists "one of the best elementary schools in Seattle (John Stanford) just a few blocks away."

As 1 of 2 negatives, he lists "everyone in Seattle appears to be white".

Consider the economic conditions of American cities in which Whites are a minority. Virtually all are economically depressed. Think Detroit, Newark, East St. Louis, East LA, Miami's Little Haiti, South Dallas, etc.

Unfortunately, most white people would do anything to avoid being called a racist. This includes doing things that go against their group interests at all costs. Most white people are proud of themselves for "not noticing" race unless it's to point out whites behaving badly. I get so exasperated with the whole situation that I don't know what to do.

<comment><USER30> I'm not sure what your point is. Is it to say that it takes minorities to create poverty?

Are you saying there aren't poor white communities in the US? What about around the world, like Eastern Europe, or even Greece?</comment></comment>