Copyright myths explained - <AUTHOR> http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html <comment><USER2> There's a spattering of tiny little issues I have throughout the post - perhaps I'll blog about it. I also wish that people commenting on a particular legal jurisdiction would be totally upfront about it - "11 myths about US copyright law" would have been better; thankfully he does not in several places he's talking about US law (though there were no quotes or mentions of caselaw or statute IIRC, except for Berne)

He rather belittles moral rights, making them appear to be tacked on, the right to be named as author of your own work IMO should be considered the cornerstone of copyright and is a key part of the Berne Convention adopted in most places outside the USA early in the 1900s.

<comment><USER3> Historically speaking, the modern European conception of moral rights is quite far from being the "cornerstone" of copyright. And with good reason: they raise some rather significant problems which aren't present in jurisdictions which "lack" them.

<comment><USER2> You've piqued my interest, can you follow through: what are the problems of attribution and control over modification (and other moral rights?) that you're thinking of?

<comment><USER3> Well, to take one example which will be relevant to HN readers: moral rights pose real threats to open source software, since in many jurisdictions which have them they are considered inalienable and can be asserted even when all other rights are licensed freely. Thus, for example, someone who lives in a moral-rights jurisdiction and writes open-source code would still have -- regardless of the terms of the license -- the right to quash particular uses of the software, or the creation of forks.

This is why a number of larger open-source-supporting organizations have contributor agreements which include a clause stipulating that contributors will not assert moral rights against the projects to which they contribute.

Moral rights also interfere with uses that people in the US can largely take for granted; authors in moral-rights jurisdictions can, for example, quash parodies or satires of their work even if those parodies or satires would otherwise be permitted by the relevant copyright laws.

<comment><USER2> If a coders moral rights are inalienable to the extent that some right can be asserted after he has license away those rights then he cannot create open source software under certain licenses. If he can later demand attribution then he must choose a license that includes teh possibility of attribution - yes I can see this could be a problem. Do you know of any specific jurisdiction in which a creator can't license away the rights needed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> With regard to US copyright law, one important point not mentioned is statutory damages for infringement. Generally, if you are found liable for infringement, you owe "actual damages," that is, the amount of harm you did or profit you gained from the infringement. However, if the copyrighted work was registered, then statutory damages may be available, meaning that you could be liable for up to $200,000, even if you caused no actual damages.

My personal opinion is that this leads to a strange imbalance in the copyright law. If an individual makes a creative work (e.g., a blog post) and makes it available for free, the individual is never going to pay the $60 to register the work. So when someone else comes along and rips off the blog post, the individual only wins actual damages, which the other person argues are minimal because the blog post was up for free anyway.

But if a big corporation makes a creative work for profit, it expects to make more than $60 off the work, so it registers it. So someone who copies the work is suddenly liable for hundreds or thousands of dollars in statutory damages, regardless of the harm actually done.

This seems, to me, to create an unbalanced incentive: works created for profit receive greater protection than works created for free. There are a number of legislative options to fix this, which I will leave to the rest of you to devise.

<comment><USER5> I don't see the big deal. First of all, the fee has been reduced to about $35 for online registration. So if copyright infringement is that important to you, then just register your blog posts. The registration requirement is not there to help big corporations but to create proof that you had control of a the thing that is allegedly copyrighted at a certain date.

The US legislature decided that in order to fairly charge statutory damages, it should at least have some evidentiary certainty to when something was copyrighted. So the registration requirement was created to provide some certainty.

The fee seems proportional to the costs of running the whole registration scheme by the library of congress. So it is not there to punish you for being poor.

If you really care about your blogs being registered I can suggest a couple of tricks:

\- register a bunch of blog entries together. For example you can register a whole year of blogging as a single work.

\- You can not register all your blog posts, but if you see someone stealing something from you, register the thing they stole. They will probably continue the copyright violation after your registration.

(PS while I am a lawyer, none of the above is legal advice and no client attorney relationship is created.)

<comment><USER2> [IANAL, this isn't legal advice either]

If you register your whole years posts as one work then a large excerpt from one post would probably not be a significant part of that whole work. Copying of an insubstantial part usually rules out the copying as being commercial - this is where lawyers earn their fee, what is an substantial part?

In the worst circumstances I can see such a registration meaning you get no damages at all as it supports the copiers claim that the amount copied is not enough to be commercial damaging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's depressing reading this, and realizing how much large corporations have co-opted the entire culture, hurting both individuals and the culture itself.

Some of them I don't think are correct, quite, as it's obvious written from a copyright maximalist angle, but I don't have time to quibble with it.

</comment><comment><USER7> And most importantly you only have the rights on the actual representation of the idea (be it a drawing, a blog post,...) and not the idea itself.

</comment><comment><USER8> You can pretty reliably predict that any article featuring the terms "myths" is going to be some kind of propaganda... The term is a rhetorical device which assumes that the conceptions you're arguing against are so childish that they don't merit serious discussion. Generally, it is used by some kind of authority trying to re-impose a black-and-white view of things on a complex, shades-of-gray world - "drug myths", etc.</comment>


Pixar films don't get finished, they just get released - <AUTHOR> http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/06/pixar-films-dont-get-finished-they-just.html

<comment><USER3> A manager asked a programmer how long it would take him to finish the program on which he was working. ``It will be finished tomorrow,'' the programmer promptly replied.

``I think you are being unrealistic,'' said the manager, ``Truthfully, how long will it take?''

The programmer thought for a moment. ``I have some features that I wish to add. This will take at least two weeks,'' he finally said.

``Even that is too much to expect,'' insisted the manager, ``I will be satisfied if you simply tell me when the program is complete.''

The programmer agreed to this.

Several years later, the manager retired. On the way to his retirement luncheon, he discovered the programmer asleep at his terminal. He had been programming all night.

 _The Tao of Programming, 5.2_ <http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of- programming.html>

<comment><USER4> When I was just starting in the software development business, I worked under a project manager who liked to say - "in order to get a realistic estimate of a completion time, take what the programmer said, multiply by two and shift to the next time period" meaning that 1 day translates to 2 weeks, 2 weeks to 4 months, etc. Cynical, but accurate :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's just about the coolest response to a letter one could hope for - <USER2> kinda thing you frame and show your friends (or in this case, highlight on a blog).

Handwritten is awesome as it is, but the little sketches give it such a great personal touch. Very classy.

<comment><USER6> Here's another great letter of similar style by the creator of ren and stimpy:

<http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/01/your-pal-john-k.html>

(I like how the pixar guy said that it's all about having a good story, while the ren & stimpy guy says that good drawing is more important than the story)

<comment><USER7> I realize this isn't proof of anything, but Pixar is a hell of a lot more successful than Ren & Stimpy. Perhaps that means something.

<comment><USER8> I don't think either's success can be compared accurately — one is a behemoth of a company and the other operates on a much, much smaller scale.

Besides, Ren & Stimpy did garner a sizeable cult following (not including myself) — and quantifying interest in a cult classic isn't as simple as tracking purchases.

Perhaps a better comparison would be Pixar vs. Nickelodeon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I saw this title, I was sure I've seen a statement like that before. I looked it up, and true enough, Paul Graham wrote this in his essay "Design and Research":

 _"Indeed, there is even a saying among painters: 'A painting is never finished, you just stop working on it.' This idea will be familiar to anyone who has worked on software."_

<comment><USER10> My boss was giving a retrospective on one of our projects, and included a slide that was headlined, "Design expands to fill all available time." He and our product manager got into an argument over whether that was really true or not, and various tweaks to the wording that would make it true if not. The argument ended when I pointed out that the fact that we'd been arguing over it for an hour was a pretty good indication that it was correct, and that the presentation was in five minutes so he better decide one way or another soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This just makes me smile. It's nice to see good things being done by good people.

</comment><comment><USER12> Being a PhD student, that touches a sensitive nerve. They say a dissertation is never finished, its abandoned!

<comment><USER13> The saying is much older than that. "Art is never finished, only abandoned" seems to be widely attributed to de Vinci and "A poem is never finished, only abandoned" to Paul Valery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pete Docter is one of the nicest guys alive. I am in no way surprised that he took the time to write back a handwritten note.

</comment><comment><USER15> It is showing that Pixar shares Steve Jobs with Apple. "Great artists ship." Quite!

<comment><USER16> The quote is: "Real artists ship". E.g. <http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Pirate_Flag.txt>

<comment><USER15> You're right, and I really knew that, I say now as I look back at my post with a puzzled expression.. thanks! :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So it's like all software, then...

<comment><USER18> Given the other comments in this thread, it's like any other creative work, though I'd argue that the creativity in software is not always visible on the surface (granted, IANAA).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> i think software analogy is not quite right. after sw is released next iterations or "sequels" are generally refinement of the first. movies are not.

</comment><comment><USER20> That could be said for any artwork.</comment>


The true story of the heartthrob prince of Qatar and his time at USC - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-16/qatar-prince-usc-ucla-la <comment><USER2> I'm impressed at the sheer amount of investigative journalism that went into this story, and a little bit amused that all of it is applied to something that would otherwise be in TMZ or Entertainment Weekly.

I might just be jaded but apart from a couple of parts that got me to raise my eyebrows a little bit everything else seemed in line with the standard ultra- rich/important student experience on any major US college campus.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://archive.is/lAbTD](https://archive.is/lAbTD)

</comment><comment><USER4> What is the news here?

</comment><comment><USER5> > the son and, later, brother of Qatar's emir

Don't read this sentence too quickly...

</comment><comment><USER6> People with that much wealth and status don't inhabit the same world as the rest of us.

C.R.E.A.M.</comment>


Ask HN: What are you doing this weekend? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Managed to update couple of my blog posts this week, especially the long pending one on customizing pandoc to generate pdf/epub from github style markdown [0]. Have many more blog posts to write, hope to do at least one on Saturday.

Read first two books from Mage Errant [1] series this week, hope to finish the third one by Sunday (to finally get started with beta reading fourth book next week).

[0] [https://learnbyexample.github.io/tutorial/ebook- generation/c...](https://learnbyexample.github.io/tutorial/ebook- generation/customizing-pandoc/)

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42267952-into-the- labyri...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42267952-into-the-labyrinth)

</comment><comment><USER3> Working on [https://histre.com/](https://histre.com/)

I just launched the highlights feature:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPBdE8kMYmo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPBdE8kMYmo)

[https://histre.com/features/highlights/](https://histre.com/features/highlights/)

The users I've talked to are excited and have asked for integrations. So I'm working on that next.

</comment><comment><USER4> Working on our internal machine learning platform (opened it to some users at [https://iko.ai](https://iko.ai)). Writing docs, reviewing merge requests, pruning issues, checking if assumptions holding back features and bug fixes are still true, reading documentation for some external components we use, playing with the new real time collaboration on notebooks, testing the implementation for model deployment, attempting to do one video that goes through the different things to reveal usability issues, and checking upon a colleague who's backtesting the platform on projects we delivered in the past before we buit this (aiming for dividing time to ship by 4 folds at least), implementing a proof of concept for one integration, and improving one Python library I started writing for Minio administration ([https://big-mama- tech.gitlab.io/bmc/](https://big-mama-tech.gitlab.io/bmc/)), as they only have a Python client which can't configure hosts, start servers, or change policies, etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hired a band to play in the front yard for my kids birthdays.

People will park in their cars and listen from the street.

</comment><comment><USER6> Working on an impossible deadline with several other team mates. Same on previous weekend and same on the next. Things will get better when we hit the deadline but right now its crazy work hours...

</comment><comment> non-entity Probably nothing, If I'm being honest.

</comment><comment><USER7> Working on the finishing touches, just before the company-wide rollout of a project.

It was my side project for about a year before I talked management into turning it into a proper feature and got a part-time team to work on it with me.

Phase A, which rolls out next week, will be kind of neutered compared to what I had in mind a year ago, due to too many edge cases I didn't anticipate in the simple POC I wrote then. And the realities of having to maintain the many other parts of our system at the same time. Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER8> Working on my side project: [https://www.gethalfmoon.com](https://www.gethalfmoon.com)

<comment><USER9> Haha, love the rocket! Too bad there aren't any examples yet. With that said, I think the website itself is already a pretty cool showcase of what halfmoon can do!

<comment><USER8> Thank you! Examples are definitely coming soon-ish. Some other people have brought that up as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Both days: running, reading, helping to make dinner.

Saturday: mowing the lawn, if weather permits hosting outdoor meeting of the neighborhood book club.

Sunday: going to a farmers market, watching Mass on YouTube, phone conversations with out-of-town family.

One or the other day, maybe writing a reporting procedure for a website used by a group my wife belongs to.

</comment><comment><USER11> Exploring integration of Mastodon into one tab/section of a broader React-web and React-native app. Haven't found much in the way of drop-in libraries, just some standalone clients. I may have to write most of the client-side features essentially from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER12> Playing (or rather re-learning) Starcraft2. Playing some videogames has been on my list for a long time. Next stage might be upgrading PC and checking out more recent games.

Something physical outside, maybe rollerblading or cycling if it's not too hot/humid.

</comment><comment><USER13> Working on my two current side projects and playing video games or reading in between. One project is a simple twitter helper that launched recently (tweetlights.com) and a new social network project that is coming along.

</comment><comment><USER14> Probably play Valorant, slackline in the park, read a book (Pain Free as of recently), and cook some food for the week.

</comment><comment><USER15> Hanging ten, thanks for asking. I love you dogg. Hugs back at you. Keep safe dogg. <3 Love this community.

</comment><comment><USER16> Working on my side project that transforms 3D assets and point clouds into beautiful VR paintings.

</comment><comment><USER17> Going to run and drink beer with some friends and then prepare for the work week.

</comment><comment><USER18> Reviewing a data science coding test that one of our clients want to use.

</comment><comment><USER19> playing D&D one night, running D&D another

</comment><comment><USER20> Driving to Slovenia with three friends

</comment><comment><USER21> Zoo</comment>


Alignment - <AUTHOR> https://gazzini.com/essays/posts/alignment/ <comment><USER2> Op - loved the write up. Thanks. I would summarize slightly differently. At offices the first thing sorted out is inclusion. Who's invited to meetings or lunch and who's not. And who does the inviting. Next is control. Who's told what to do and who had to do it i.e. some of what's discussed here. The last thing that's done --- and in fact almost never is really ever fixed at an organization is openness. There's a lot of games, bs, withholding, playing at deception sales and marketing BS and the like. As the Op rightly says ... Its not consequence free because there's a reckoning eventually. From smarter people than I .. I learned the pca (primary component analysis) of most behavior is inclusion, control, openness. I've found it quite useful. The main reason openness is tough is self defense. Because of office politics and numerous other factors being honest early and often is seen as too risky. Its a greedy form of self protection.

<comment><AUTHOR> Inclusion, control, and openness seem like a very interesting lens through which to examine office politics. It seems like inclusion & control are decided intentionally, while openness is more of a culture thing that depends on the people more than anything else.

To try & combine the 2 frameworks... sometimes there are complex incentives for intentional mis-alignment.

I guess that some information is assumed to be private — sensitive personal info, or tentative strategic shifts ("we're probably laying off X department next quarter"). But this ever-present masking of underlying intent is something else entirely.

It does seem generally selfish — it's one of these locally optimal, holistically disastrous behaviors. It seems like openness will inevitably slide away from any organization — it's generally dangerous to be more open than your peers.

But, anecdotally, I've noticed that my assumptions about how "open" my team is become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I generally have better luck when I do the "risky" thing of acting more openly.

Or, to frame the last point differently: static analysis only goes so far, this is a dynamic system, and we ourselves are an important variable.

<comment><USER2> You seem to really have a nice way of seeing things, plus being self-aware which is a great combo. I learned about teamwork after being let-go from a consulting job many years ago. At that point in my life I really needed the help, and I've been drawing on it ever since. I can add a few more things, but again, this is what I learned from Dr. Schutz ("Human Element " & "FIRO Theory"). Unfortunately he passed away but his son took over. A few tid-bits not necessarily well-ordered:

\- Schutz's insights into teamwork, individuals, organizations arose after WWII. The Navy (pretty sure that branch) overhauled its officer training because too many problems occurred when the command crew could't work as a team under duress. They redid the whole thing stem-to-stern, got better candidates etc. etc. etc. Long story short under testing the results were essentially random: sometimes things rocked and sometimes same-old issues. And worse they couldn't predict which team was which. They reached out for consulting which culminated in FIRO which became "Human Element" and carried into commercial organizations thereafter.

\- Inclusion then control then openness (ex. there's always a guy or gal at the office we'll be completely candid with certainly few in number) is because as a general rule each step involves more and more risk. I can blow you off for lunch but I can less afford a control issue with you over work. Openness is the last frontier.

\- One of the central tenants of the work is that teamwork is busted when individuals become rigid in their framing of issues and behavior. Stuck individuals is the biggest contributor to failing teams. FIRO eschews more breezy theories that teams work great when ( _) there 's a uniting vision (_) strong leader ( _) etc. the kinds of things in "the 10 things I wish I knew as a manager 10 years ago" posts we run across.

\- The rigidity is a function of several things but the core insight is the individual's self-identity is threatened and they don't have the self awareness or tools to copy better. Such people remain fixed hiding behind one or more defense behaviors which attempts to deflect from that internal conflict. Eg: you talk to me about a problem. I'm afraid I'm not competent and therefore cannot exercise better control. Plus that might cost me a job, bonus, or good review. So what are two classic reactions? (_) Play it off: I disagree with you about quantity or quality of issue and pitch it like nothing to see here. Message: I'm fine; your perspective wrong (*) Blame: I put all the blame on others e.g. dumb ask, crappy code to start with etc.. What's common to all this: as long as we're not talking about my feelings nobody will see the truth. So I keep the focus elsewhere.

Consequently your last sentence is quite smart by referencing dynamics. It's the pair-wise interaction which engenders problems but also good repoire and respect.

FIRO to me is just some much more grounded in how people work. You're not going to roll into a situation with a Deloitte Consulting top-10 team fix list and do well. If I (or others in my team) are not too self-aware etc. etc. the outcomes are like with the Navy: messy and random. FIRO does much better.</comment></comment></comment>


The Ocean Cleanup Crowdfunding - <AUTHOR> https://fund.theoceancleanup.com/

<comment><USER2> so, this thing can survive a storm?

I picture the waves can be way more aggressive than the ones simulated in a pool.</comment>


Anonymous targets police and Trump administration - <AUTHOR> https://www.theweek.in/news/world/2020/06/01/anonymous-returns-hacker-group-targets-police-trump-administration.html <comment><USER2> > The message was followed by what was suspected to be a Distributed Denial of > Service (DDOS) attack on the Minneapolis Police Website

[https://xkcd.com/932/](https://xkcd.com/932/)

</comment><comment><USER3> After LulzSec was broken up they have had no teeth. Just a bunch of script kiddies these days :P

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't be so sure. I know a lot of people that do have quite some skills but just weren't really motivated.

<comment><USER5> Definitely. If anything was true of Anonymous it was that it's membership was purely self-selected based on the specific 'op' being carried out.

The current climate is ripe for exploitation by nation states who may revel in the US' woes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if there would be any overlap with the DOJ considering antifa as a terrorist org?

If that happens and there was overlap, there oils be more resources put at unmasking NSA intercepts.

<comment><USER4> In any case, the DOJ considering Antifa as well as a potential consideration of Anonymous as a terrorist organization is pretty ridiculous and toothless, as they are both anarchist affiliations/ideas and not organizations in any way I know of, really.

So I think they're gonna have a pretty hard time proving that anyone is part of "The Antifa Organization" just like it's impossible to prove that someone is part of "The Anonymous Organization". There is no hierarchy, no organized structure. The only way it could ever be applied would be to consider people with a given set of ideas and aesthetics terrorists.

Which would mean that there is a lot of overlap, as Anonymous is essentially based upon the idea of violent antifascism as far it's aesthetics and there is a ton of overlap between the dominant ideologies of Anonymous and Antifa (against state power, direct action, decentralized action, anti-censorship, violence against those you believe are a threat including organic censorship, etc...)

In any case, it's very bad for everyone.

<comment><USER7> > In any case, the DOJ considering Antifa as well as a potential consideration > of Anonymous as a terrorist organization is pretty ridiculous and toothless, > as they are both anarchist affiliations/ideas and not organizations in any > way I know of, really.

So was the El Caeda

<comment><USER4> Absolutely not. Al Qaeda is not anarchist, they have a strict hierarchy, a chain of command, membership lists, payrolls, leaders and so on. Al Qaeda is also not an ideology but a formal organization, unlike antifascism.

There is absolutely no comparison you can make between Al Qaeda and Antifa or Anonymous.

<comment><USER7> > Absolutely not. Al Qaeda is not anarchist, they have a strict hierarchy, a > chain of command, membership lists, payrolls, leaders and so on. Al Qaeda is > also not an ideology but a formal organization,

Believe people more.

<comment><USER4> There is no need for me believe when I already know.

If you knew Arabic, you would know that "Qaeda" as a word has strong insinuations of structure and hierarchy. It is in the name,

<comment><USER7> What is known as that Qaeda thing was no more than a dozen something angry disenfranchised seminary students, and their sugar daddy sponsors with Saudi state links.

For most of people, it's no more than a product of their imagination.

You've believed that nonsense. People can lie, you know.

<comment><USER4> I assure you that Al Qaeda and it's affiliated organizations was much, much more than that.

I know people that bumped into quite a lot of salafist organizations that would later affiliate with Al Qaeda, they were well organized and had funding as well as structure and hierarchy.

In any case, a few dozen angry disenfranchised seminary students with a leader as well as en executive council and multiple branches is more of an organization than Antifa is. I know that Al Qaeda has declined a lot, but I know for a fact that it was much more than what you claim it is at least at the time.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Going from 735ms on Ruby to 15ms on Crystal - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/sdogruyol/status/983705696083509248 <comment><AUTHOR> I am __not __the author of the Twitter post.

The mentioned post shows the results after switching from Ruby + Sinatra over to Crystal + Kemal.

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DabQrScW4AAycuC.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DabQrScW4AAycuC.jpg:large) [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DabQtJdXcAAMo9j.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DabQtJdXcAAMo9j.jpg:large)

Links:

* [https://crystal-lang.org](https://crystal-lang.org) * [http://kemalcr.com/](http://kemalcr.com/)

What is Crystal?

> In computer software programming languages, Crystal is a general-purpose, > object-oriented programming language, designed and developed by Ary > Borenszweig and Juan Wajnerman and more than 200 contributors. With syntax > inspired by the language Ruby, it is a compiled language with static type- > checking, but specifying the types of variables or method arguments is > generally unneeded. Types are resolved by an advanced global type inference > algorithm.</comment>


Introducing owncloud foundation - <AUTHOR> https://owncloud.com/blog-introducing-owncloud-foundation/ <comment><USER2> This is a great idea, but... honestly, I'm not sure how many people will want to donate to ownCloud. Maybe I under-estimate the size of their following.</comment>


Show HN: D3-powered table of this year's Amazon weekly bestseller lists - <AUTHOR> http://www.honba.co/

<comment><AUTHOR> A fun weekend hack. The patterns of the blue/green SAT guide are quite funny. Also, there are a few books which don't play nice with amazons image API. And one deleted book! (can you guess which one? Use your imagination :) )

</comment><comment><USER2> Nice aesthetic. Suggest zooming in to the center 70% of the book cover. It will make it more likely that you can recognize the pattern of the cover. The only cover I can recognize at a glance is 50 shades.

<comment><USER3> >I can recognize at a glance is 50 shades

Hrrm..</comment></comment>


How to Not Fuck Up Your First Marketing Hire - <AUTHOR> http://jamiequint.com/how-to-not-f-up-your-first-marketing-hire?utm_source=blog <comment><USER2> I rate the following "skills" as dubious...

-SEO : No actual control over outcomes, basing results on third party platforms subject to arbitrary change.

-SEM : No actual control over outcomes, basing results on third party platforms subject to arbitrary change.

-Social Advertising : No actual control over outcomes, basing results on third party platforms subject to arbitrary change.

-Analytics : Statistics usually skewed in favor of only the most brainless users, that do not understand how to block scripts or manage their cookies and sessions.

-Email/Push Notifications : Spam.

This kind of stuff is fluff and busy-work at best.

I'm sure there are plenty of graphs charting direct relationships between "x" and "y", in the land of "more is always better", but how many people does anyone know who's decision making has ever directly turned on one of these bullet points?

<comment><USER3> You have got to be freaking kidding me? SEO's the good ones are not saying I will rank this page better - they say we should do this, this, & that so we stand the best chance of ranking better. SEM's have tons of math available to them to optimize and if the budget is large enough sophisticated software to help them manage complex groupings to better manage hundreds, thousands, or more campaigns.

Email - spam… dear lord I hope you aren't a founder in a tech company I ever invest in.

<comment><USER2> I am not freaking kidding you.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Selinux – what does it protect against? - <AUTHOR> I'm long term user of Arch Linux and selinux is not something I see used by community very often.
In the same time I'm running a number of personal VPS's facing the internet (I host email server, web server, vpn, to name the few) and I have never had problems. To keep myself thinking I'm running those services in secure way I run all of them in rootless containers (I use podman)
I'm wondering if selinux is something worth looking at. Have you ever seen it preventing "an attack"? (I imagine somebody exploiting some zero-day in the wild and selinux stopping such individual from moving further and in the same time rising alarm to the owner) <comment> jas- SELinux can assist with prevention of various attack scenarios.

When policies and environments are setup correctly it can and will help protect the system.

Scenario: The target; A DMZ, forward facing system running an application such as Apache.

A zero day exists in the apache service that allows code execution as the running user; say apache for example.

If care has been taken with an selinux policy that prevents the apache user from executing anything but the shared libraries and binaries associated with the apache web service then an attacker that gained access as the apache user would not be able to escalate privileges or engage in further local attacks on the system due to the policy constraints.

Resources: The URI [https://www.serverlab.ca/tutorials/linux/web-servers- linux/c...](https://www.serverlab.ca/tutorials/linux/web-servers- linux/configuring-selinux-policies-for-apache-web-servers/) provides some exmaples for apache however the following URI [https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en- us/red_hat_enterp...](https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en- us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html- single/selinux_users_and_administrators_guide/index) (see procedure 3.2 & 3.3) for details on using selinux to confine processes and users.

<comment><AUTHOR> I get the concept and I totally agree how useful it sounds, but have you ever seen this in action? This is what I would like to hear :)

<comment> jas- While I used Apache as an example here I have configured a policy to protect a php application with known vulnerabilities which was prevented.

If you wish you could go install a docker image for a honeypot and then build policies with selinux to confirm yourself.</comment></comment></comment>


Millennials are still not getting married - <AUTHOR> http://allendowney.blogspot.com/2016/10/millennials-are-still-not-getting.html <comment><USER2> Anecdotally, as a millennial with a full-time non-SV software job, I socialize with entirely different cohorts of millennials who experience vastly different lives.

Some of my peer group has attained professional success early on by landing well-paying jobs early. These are the people I notice marrying in their mid-20s, forming two-income families, transitioning from apartment living to buying houses, taking several family vacations, and pondering (or dismissing) the idea of having children. These young families orient their social lives towards themselves or work-related functions. I guess this is the life previous generations expect us to have.

Some other friends of mine have dropped out of college and are under-employed, working retail or foodservice. At these incomes, living alone is financially impossible, so friends band together in groups of three or four to share a rental. Social bonds are tight-knit but spread out to a core group of around a dozen, in which there's an overarching feel of solidarity and shared circumstance. Several people in the group have dated each other in the past, and have since broken up amicably; volatile breakups usually result in one of the parties ostracized. In this group, long-term romantic bonds do develop, but marriage is seldom taken as an option. I know multiple groups of such friends in entirely different cities, between which I'm the single common link.

These two lifestyles couldn't be further apart; whenever I read about generalizations applied to millennials I am conflicted because it's unclear which group they refer to; in many cases, the other group is almost entirely exempt.

<comment><USER3> So it's, essentially, Friends vs. Dharma & Greg? ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, we're taught to prioritize career and education before other people, for a variety of reasons.

As an anecdote, I, a female millennial, was told through most of my adolescence by my whole family, "don't let a man ruin your future." (Before anyone wants to reply to whine about this statement - you don't know anything about what the women of my family had been through at the hands of men. So whine elsewhere.) By marrying age, getting married was certainly one of the /last/ things I cared about.

<comment><USER5> Consider freezing your eggs in case you find Mr. Right later rather than sooner.

<comment><USER6> Or consider the fact that not having kids is a perfectly okay decision.

<comment><USER7> Freezing your eggs does not mean you will have kids, just you can have kids.

<comment><USER8> It certainly doesn't mean that you _can_ have kids, but it improves your odds a bit for an extra 5-10 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Watched my parents split. Currently watching older colleagues going through messy financial divorces or staying with someone to avoid said messy financial divorce.

Until outrageous divorce laws are fixed, I'll opt out of signing that trainwreck of a contract.

<comment><USER10> In most places, living with someone is basically the same thing as 'marriage' from a legal perspective.

And yes, the laws are often unfair.

<comment><USER11> > In most places, living with someone is basically the same thing as > 'marriage' from a legal perspective.

If this is a reference to common law marriage, it's not actually that widespread anymore (only in 10 states in the US). It also typically requires the couple "hold themselves out as married" in the community, which makes the bar substantially higher than just living together for a long time.

If this isn't a reference to common law marriage, I'm not sure what it is—feel free to enlighten me!

<comment><USER10> It is, and you're probably right.

By 'places' I was referring to the 'Western World' :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's a very simple reason we're not marrying: we don't want to be held financially responsible for our spouse's student loans.

<comment><USER13> And not just the loans. Marriage is heavily stacked in the favor of women and the slides who make less money. More and more men just don't see the upside.

And what are the actual upsides? Visitation rights. Medical decision rights. Slightly lower taxes. Not testifying against your spouse. Anything else?

<comment><USER14> It turns out that the benefits of legal marriage have been carefully enumerated during the movement for legal gay marriage, so it's pretty easy to look this up. Here's a report from the federal government enumerating all the federal laws around marriage: [http://www.gao.gov/archive/1997/og97016.pdf](http://www.gao.gov/archive/1997/og97016.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> They can't afford getting divorced, with divorce rates being in the 50% and common knowledge no one wants that.

Even if it was affordable why would you want the trouble?

Divorce forces you to effectively hate the person you loved, and likely still love and care deeply about even if you are separating.

Long term breakups aren't easy, adding a financial and legal mess into them isn't something anyone would be looking forward too.

<comment><USER16> > divorce rates being in the 50% and common knowledge

No they're not. [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/upshot/the-divorce- surge-i...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/upshot/the-divorce-surge-is- over-but-the-myth-lives-on.html)

And where are you getting the idea that a diverse occurs between people that care about each other? If they still did, the divorce wouldn't be happening.

<comment><USER15> Since I can't reply to both of you, thank you for the correction but oddly the facts aren't "important" for this case.

Myself and pretty much everyone I know if asked what is the average divorce rate would say it's around 50%, many of us also have the pleasure of having close friends who married really early (early 20's) going through a divorce right about now (in their late 20's to early 30's) which solidifies this perception even further.

In this case like in many others the perception is what matters, even if in reality it's quite different, I wonder why this hasn't been addressed more frequently since in the early and mid 90's the trope of the 50% was broadcasted all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Because ambition drops slower then opportunity: [https://rationalmale.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/smv_curve1....](https://rationalmale.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/smv_curve1.jpg)

<comment><USER18> TIL about SMV = "sexual market value".

Seems to jibe with Okcupid's data: [https://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the- case-for-an-older-wom...](https://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-case-for-an- older-woman/)

"A woman's desirability peaks at 21, which, ironically enough is the age that men just begin their "prime," i.e. become more desirable than average. Following that dotted line out, you can see that a woman of 31 is already "past her prime," while a man doesn't become so until 36. As we mentioned above, after age 26, a man has more potential matches than his female counterparts, which is a drastic reversal of the proportion in young adulthood, when women are much more sought-after. Because men's dating preferences skew so young, and women's are age-equitable, men peak later, and have a longer plateau of desirability, than women."

EDIT: Don't shoot the messenger, I didn't make the personal choices underlying the dataset.

EDIT 2: I'm _very curious_ how this data correlates with data about vast swaths of underemployed or completely unemployed men who simply aren't interested or able to compete in the economic system to signal status to attract a partner:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/americas-quiet- catas...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/americas-quiet-catastrophe- millions-of-idle- men/2016/10/05/cd01b750-8a57-11e6-bff0-d53f592f176e_story.html?utm_term=.dab900a36541)

along with the data that women are more particular about dating men below their own education level, causing there to be an imbalance between women and men in the dating pool:

[http://www.vice.com/read/youre-single-because-there-arent- en...](http://www.vice.com/read/youre-single-because-there-arent-enough- men-253) (TL;DR There are enough men, just not enough that meet the standards of single women in the dating pool; law of unintended consequences of societal employment changes, men's attitudes shifting from past generations about what happiness and responsibility looks like, and much larger cohorts of college- educated women in the dating pool)

"So, where are all the men?

I mean they exist, they're just not going to college. This isn't China or India where they have a man-made gender imbalance because of all sorts of horrendous things. [Men are] out there, they're just not going to college. Last year about 35 percent more women than men graduated from college."

"But there have been multiple studies on this and it turns out Americans have become less likely, over the past 50 years, to marry and date across educational lines. So educational intermarriage—I don't know if that's a real term, maybe I just made it up—is at its lowest rate in 50 years."

<comment><USER19> This should be required reading for every modern man.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Fewer Men have jobs who can support a family comfortably and fewer of those jobs are for a lifetime.

Women find it below them to simply be a housewife and instead of being a copilot now they want to be in charge which makes marriage these days a 1 on 1 basketball game.

<comment><USER21> I agree 100%. Throughout human and whatever other animal we can understand well enough to interact with there has virtually always been an alpha in a pack and betas. Society is dictating that there are no longer alpha/beta hierarchies in relationships, but just one level.

People don't want to "cave" to being "exploited" and everyone is hyper alert about having their feelings hurt so they avoid it all together.

An interesting point I've heard recently is that with working/protecting dogs, it's almost always a bad idea to have two females. They never decide who is the alpha and will fight to the death whereas one male gets his ass kicked and tucks his tail from there on out.

<comment><USER22> If were were dogs this information would be relevant. Unlike someone's generation we didn't rush into marriage and then get divorced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Still need jobs. 35 and still unclear when I will be able to start a family. Younger women I'm dating always asking why they aren't making more money. With all the personal time getting a job in software development requires they never told us the wages would be so low. I've still never earned what they told us the entry level wage for software developers was in middle school.

<comment><USER24> It costs next to nothing to get married at a courthouse if you don't have much money but still want to get married.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Probably those one-sided divorce settlements have something to do with it

</comment><comment><USER26> A society that is unable to replicate itself via either biological or memetic means is not long for this world.

I am watching the best of the millennial generation be effectively genocided by anti-family propaganda, economic malaise and cultural ennui.

It is very depressing.

<comment><USER27> I consider it my responsibility not to bring a child into a society that equates a lower birth rate with genocide.

<comment><USER26> Of course.

But you do see the darwinian implications of this, correct?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Eh, in spite of the judgey-sounding title (and defensive sounding replies here on HN), a skim suggests this is just factual data, without suggestions as to _why_ this is a trend.

I think one factor that gets largely overlooked is that these are people who grew up in The Information Age. My 29 year old son has told me that long before he knew sex was supposed to be enjoyable, he understood it could lead to life altering responsibilities (baby, long term ties to the mother) or even deadly disease.

Lots of marriages are not happy -- even if it doesn't end in divorce, you can just be stuck with a sucky situation. I don't see any reason to assume we need to have everyone aspiring to marriage. With 7 billion people on the planet, it is not like there is some population shortage that needs to be remedied.

<comment><USER29> But there's a difference between population shortage and looming population shortage based on sub-replacement fertility rates. I think folks alive today are going to witness some pretty unprecedented things. Someone posted this on HN sometime back, or maybe one of the articles from it [http://graphics.wsj.com/2050-demographic- destiny/](http://graphics.wsj.com/2050-demographic-destiny/) I've been wondering when this stuff is going to hit and what it's going to look like tangibly.

<comment><USER28> It's interesting, but it is also unnecessarily negative in subtle ways, such as: _Empowering women tends to lower fertility rates._

Everything I have read indicates that empowering women -- a topic I am highly interested in, what with being a woman -- first lowers infant mortality rates. In country after country after country, fertility rates fall _after_ child mortality rates come down. The result is a swell in population during that period when mortality rates are declining but fertility rates are not.

I have read quite a few articles on the ways in which we are increasingly using technology to empower seniors to remain independent and stay in their own home longer while getting the support they need as they age.

People are living longer in part because of general improvements to health. This bizarre idea we have that everyone over age 65 should be retired is modern crazy talk. When 65 was picked as the age at which Social Security would start, I believe 67 was the average life expectancy. This was envisioned as taking care of seniors in extreme old age, in the last couple of years of their life, after most of them had worked very physically hard in factories or on farms. It was not envisioned as "All humans have some god given right to a permanent vacation of a decade or more merely for surviving to the magic number."

Change is coming. That doesn't mean it is necessarily something terrible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My partner and I have two kids. We prioritized that over the marriage ritual. I suspect we will probably get around to it eventually... Is this still so much of an outlier?

I'd like to see the same graphs for birthrates. Of course I suspect there is still a high correlation between marriage and having children and so these graphs are problematic for our future.

Eventually, if we want more babies to be born, we are going to need to vastly improve our support system for families in all their forms.

</comment><comment><USER31> Many people seem to be saying don't get married because divorce is horrible. I believe that is the wrong focus. The horribleness comes from cleaving a long term relationship where your lives have become intertwined regardless of marital status.

Without marriage, you still have child support, you still have to divide any joint assets and one or both sides will feel betrayed and taken advantage of. The main difference is when you are not married the division is governed by contract law rather than divorce law. Contract law will often leave the lower power/ lower earning spouse in MUCH worse shape.

Historically that has been women (which is why they would push for marriage). But I see a reversing trend in my wife's family law practice where it is becoming more common for women to hold more power and income and are complaining just like the men used to about divorce outcomes.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm a millennial that got married at 25. Now, I'm almost 30 and have 2 kids. I can honestly say I'm glad that I'm not any older. Kids take a lot more of your time/energy than you expect, and to wait until you're 40 seems crazy to me. (Marriage is obviously not required to have kids, but still)

</comment><comment><USER33> Don't miss the iPython notebook linked at the end of the article: [https://github.com/AllenDowney/MarriageNSFG/blob/master/marr...](https://github.com/AllenDowney/MarriageNSFG/blob/master/marriage.ipynb)

</comment><comment><USER34> There's a lot of downside if marriage goes bad, and a lot of them do. In some states, a divorce can be a sword of Damocles hanging over threatening half of anything you've ever or will have.

Just the amount of student and credit card debt a lot of people rack up before they finish their twenties is scary if you have your shit more together and are thinking of entering into a financial union.

</comment><comment><USER35> Well sure. Anecdotally, I'd (born in 1990) rather have fun now that I'm financially independent before potentially starting a family.

It's appealing to work hard and play hard in your 20s for a large portion of my friends (totally survivorship bias in who I'm friends with, but still there are dozens of us, Dozens!)

</comment><comment><USER36> Marriage is an archaic institution. I prefer to not have the government enforce my personal relationships and tax me more because the tax laws are structured to benefit wage disparities in partners not partnership itself.

</comment><comment><USER37> Marriage is like saying "I love you so much, lets get the government involved."

Why would we want to get married after watching every marriage around us end with a nasty divorce.

<comment><USER38> Have you ever been married? That certainly hasn't been my experience of what it's like.

<comment><USER37> Yes.

<comment><USER28> I am sorry for your (apparently) negative experience, but there is a reason the LGBT community has fought so hard for marriage rights: Marriage gives couples more than a 100 distinct rights and protects them from malicious behavior by blood relatives, such as tossing the partner out into the street with nothing and taking the house if one of them dies.

<comment><USER37> Like I said, the only reason to get married is the rights afforded to married couples by the government.

My ex and I are on great terms, and our divorce was mutual yet somehow still a huge pain in the ass.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why are scientists satisfied with studying existing artifacts rather than creating their own? - <AUTHOR>

Scientists are some of the smartest and most ambitious people around.
And yet many are satisfied with studying and explaining existing phenomena rather than inventing new things.
For example, why is it rewarding to study the messy artifacts of evolution?  Isn't it more rewarding to use evolution for your own purposes to create an artificial intelligence for example?
Even computer science is like that.  Many computer scientists devote their time to studying other people's inventions (e.g., social networking, blogging, tagging, etc.).  Why is that rewarding? <comment><USER2> Your question is based upon an assumption that 'inventing new things' is inherently better than 'studying and explaining existing phenomena'. It might feel so to you, but it is not an absolute truth. Some people (like me) like to explore the vast wonders of nature rather than create an imperfect object that tries to mimic the perfection of nature (most inventions fall under this category).

It's not a question of right or wrong or superiority or inferiority. To each, his/her own.

And it's not about 'creativity' as another commenter explains either. Science, the art(!) of coming up with generalisations and laws expalining a vast array of phenomena calls for a lot of creativity. The top notch people in every field are there because they are creative. Creative in coming up with new mind-boggling explanations (can you get any more creative than coming up with Quantum mechanics? :) ), thinking of new ways to measure things, thinking of ways to put a new theory under 'stress test'.

I don't understand what you mean by "Many computer scientists devote their time to studying other people's inventions (e.g., social networking, blogging, tagging, etc.)" but true scientists, the 'smart and ambitious people', are curious to understand everything. So, if they happen to be computer scientists interesting in social networking, etc., they might find it interesting to analyze and understand the dynamics of it; they like to tear things apart and look at the basics.

If you ask for the 'social' utility of it, I could say such analyses form the basis of "inventing new things", but that's actually not the point; the scientists do it for their own curiosity. Just like you would feel rewarding to create an AI, they feel it rewarding to analyze it and understanding completely.

>Why is that rewarding?

This question, IMHO, is inappropriate - things are rewarding because they are. Each one is born differently, grows up differently and has different mindsets. There's no absolute measure on what 'must be' rewarding and what 'must not be'.

</comment><comment><USER3> Scientists have created the most beautiful and useful artifacts ever made. Think "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica", "On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection", "The Nature of the Chemical Bond", and "The Principles of Quantum Mechanics". Unfortunately, most people are too dumb and lazy to appreciate them.

Picture Francis Crick, putting down his pen after writing, "It has not escaped the attention of the authors that this structure suggests a mechanism for replication."

</comment><comment><USER4> The reason for this is that most people (pretty much regardless of profession) are biologically incapable of creativity.

Neither intelligence nor ambition can substitute for it. You either have it, or you don't - and if you don't, you can't even conceive of what creativity _is_. You will see all sorts of _not-even-wrong_ essays explaining creativity, written by people who have none, and don't believe that they are missing anything.</comment>


Open-Sourcing Beeline, Singapore's first crowd-sourced transportation platform - <AUTHOR> https://blog.data.gov.sg/open-sourcing-beeline-8da9cfde9936 <comment><USER2> Bravo, Singapore!

"This initiative is developed by the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech), in collaboration with the Land Transport Authority, to engender a culture of crowd-sourcing among citizens and empower them to play a part in optimising transport route planning. At the same time, it also helps private sector players harness data analytics to improve productivity and provide better services to their passengers."

More info: [https://www.tech.gov.sg/-/media/GovTech/Media-Room/Media- Rel...](https://www.tech.gov.sg/-/media/GovTech/Media-Room/Media- Releases/2017/0302/Beeline-Factsheet.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Singapore was always ahead of other cities and is still driving innovation. Something I would love to see from some US cities claiming to be tech hubs ...

Back in 2004 I wrote my Masters thesis about a public transportation system based on text massaging which used classic bus routes but would only operate in case you ordered the bus. Kinda think of a pre-Uber app. My prototype used PHP, MySQL, JavaScript for the dispatch system. Pre existing SMS templates (specifically on Nokia phones) allowed the driver to communicate with the dispatcher. Every "bus stop" had a number (just like NYC's MTA is using barcodes today) and customers texted this number, pick up time and pax to a phone number. The text msg was automatically added to a queue to be validated by the dispatcher. The responsible bus driver was informed by the system via text msg as well and so on. My system was intended to replace an outdated, cumbersome system where every customer had to call the operator to place the order for the bus. After I graduated I found out that Singapore had already a very similar system to my prototype (but they used cabs to replace the busses).</comment>


What's new in Rails 5? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.michelada.io/whats-new-in-rails-5 <comment><USER2> This is a great summary, and there look to be some really interesting things coming in Rails 5. Two thoughts:

1) I hope ActionCable is as seamless to integrate and works as well as Rails features ought to; you can, of course, achieve web sockets right now using Faye or various other implementations, but it's quite complex to get right (though the faye-rails gem is pretty handy) - and realtime functionality is becoming more and more important.

2) I wish they'd just give up on Turbolinks. Maybe some people are using it and love it, but it's always the first thing I turn off when I start a new Rails project, and I know quite a few people who feel the same. For those of us who never thought it was a good idea in the first place, I'm not sure any number of improvements are going to change our minds.

<comment><USER3> >2) I wish they'd just give up on Turbolinks

Ditto for Coffeescript. I realise you can't just remove it, but the whole dev community is raving about ES6 - there's a whole of JS devs who could be a lot more interested in Rails.

<comment><USER4> Turbolinks can create problems even to those who don't use them explicitly, but Coffeescript can't: if you don't like it, just don't use it, and it's as if it wasn't there. How would removing it from the asset compiler help you in any way?

<comment><USER3> There's a cultural impact - it's hard to look at Rails without being pushed in that direction.

Does it directly impact me now that I choose to ignore it? No. Does it impact a newcomer, particularly one that's into JS? Yes.

<comment><USER5> This nifty web app is a good starting point: [http://js2.coffee/](http://js2.coffee/)

It's not perfect but it's how I learned coffeescript.

Other than that, I don't think Rails necessarily pushes either for/against coffeescript. You can either use it or not. Plenty of rails apps have been written in plain 'ol js.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a long-time Rails developer and unfortunately this release doesn't excite me, though I appreciate all the hard work by the core team/continued support from 37signals. The reason is this:

The intent of Rails is to make writing web applications easier, but that writing web applications actually got much more difficult for me as a Rails developer when Angular and Ember and then later React got popular. I love Ruby, but I respect the fact that the Javascript-client-side-heavy/"single- page" part of the app is where the magic is for at least a few years now- really several years.

Other than Rails helpers in the 2006-2008 timeframe being a big deal, Rails' has not ever really helped out a whole lot on the JS side, and you wouldn't expect it to. The asset pipeline is wonderful, and coffeescript support with in it is ok I guess, even though I don't use it. But, writing JS client-side is not any easier. To be a full-stack developer in today's world I have to accept the fact that Ruby, as much as I love it and would rather develop in it all day and night, is just not taking over in every facet of development. There is no Rubyscript on the client side taking over the world. There is ES6/Typescript- that is the future.

A substantial number of Ruby masters are jumping over to the Phoenix/Elixir bandwagon. I look at it, and want to like it, but I just haven't gotten into it yet. I know it is fast, but it just isn't as readable yet for me. And it won't solve the problem that the client still needs to be written primarily in Javascript.

And the answer is not Node either, because every serious Javascript developer I've talked to says, "Node is still not ready."

I just feel let down. I want to get excited about Rails again, but give me a path. I don't really like Ember a whole lot, because the community is just not where it is with Angular and React. Someone please take your favorite frameworks and show me how my life is supposed to get better by using them. Show me how it is fun. Bring back the magic, because right now it all just seems like more and more of a PITA as attention deficit has fully set in within the web application development community and there is no clear way ahead for the next few years.

<comment><USER7> I think you can try solve the "rails no longer excites me" problem by finding a more exciting language than Ruby. There are more than plenty of them out there.

<comment><USER6> Like what?

When considered as a whole of the combination of what is possible with the stdlib and all of the best gems available, Ruby can be written clearly and tersely. Those are the two first and most important things that I look for to do general web application development. From that perspective it beats Javascript, Python, Php, Java, C#, Go, Scala, Erlang, Haskell, OCaml, and every other language I've used.

I'm not saying Ruby is the best language ever. It has its flaws. In a few places in the stdlib, it doesn't make sense. There are languages, with maybe Smalltalk and Lisp at the top of the list, that beat Ruby from a simplicity and purity standpoint. But, Ruby is just great to use. I love reading it and love using it. It took a few years in the beginning of love and hate, but if I was stuck on a deserted island and had one programming language, Ruby would be it for me.

If it weren't for the Ruby core group being so exclusive and bitter towards others getting involved to make it even better, and if it weren't for the Rails core team just having too much to do and being unable to execute on support, documentation, performance, clarity, simplicity, and important features all at the same time, then maybe it would be the world's number one language and Rails would be the number one web framework.

Instead Javascript had emerged years ago as the language of choice in the browser, had plenty of attention spent on making it execute quickly, etc. though it was an uglier language than Ruby, and because of that attention, it is today's number one language for the web. But, I still like Ruby.

<comment><USER8> It's an exciting time for Haskell developers right now, we just got an a awesome new build tool (stack), an incredible new server-side framework (servant) and our compile to JS tool (GHCJS) is improving by leaps and bounds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure if this is baked into Rails 5, but you can get es6 support (via Babel) with the sprockets-es6 gem:

[https://github.com/TannerRogalsky/sprockets- es6](https://github.com/TannerRogalsky/sprockets-es6)

Rails is still a second-class JS citizen due to the asset pipeline being opinionated and controlling compared to the node way of doing things, but it gets you closer to 'the new hotness'.

<comment><USER10> What do you mean JS is still a second class citizen? I'm unfamiliar with Rails asset pipeline. Do you just mean that the asset pipeline doesn't really have as much features as other build tools like Grunt and Gulp? Or is there something about asset pipeline that prevents you from using JavaScript to its full potential? (Genuinely curious. Not familiar with the JS side of Rails)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Minor clarification: what i meant below is I plan to build a portal with major feature being CMS, not planning to rewrite an CMS from scratch, instead I will source in Github for the module that can be ported/plugged in right away with some modification.

\-----

Right now, the web frameworks that are on my radar are: Laravel(PHP), Phoenix(Elixir), React+Meteor(JS), and RoR(Ruby). This list is by no means exhaustive, just that recently they caught my attention and I am contemplating to choose one for an upcoming CMS project.

Would like to know if these frameworks each has its own segment or/and sweetspots, or they kind of compete against each other and the choice is mostly personal preference?

The goal is to hear what people like/dislike on a particular framework. Inputs from those who have worked with multiple frameworks will be awesome.

Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER12> As someone who's hosted and fixed a lot of CMS in recent years I'll say this: choose a solution that's fit for the individual purpose.

All CMS' suck, a bit like all OS' suck. As soon as you do anything non- standard their inherit flexibility becomes a burden. If you have skills in rails and need an off the shelf CMS find a popular one and use it you like but if you need to create a web 'application' look at Sinatra, rails or whatever but don't use a CMS as the foundation for an application.

Most of all, if my team and I have one take away: Stay far away from Drupal and people that preach its relevance. It is a world of hurt with an 'expert beginner' community. That has cost so many organisations more time and money than they ever anticipated.

Treat ever 'off he shelf' product with a degree of disposability - don't get locked in and never get into the trap that you've chosen 'the best'.

<comment><USER13> It's CMSes and OSes. You're looking for the plurals, so you definitely don't need to use a possessive apostrophe there because there's no ownership in the sentence.

Also, because they're acronyms you pronounce by enunciating the words, my instinct would be to use OS's (as you would pronounce the 's, O-S-es). But that's up for debate.

For example:

The OS's kernel blew up (possessive apostrophe, the OS owns the kernel)

He had a wide range of OSes to choose from (pluralization, there are many OSes)

<comment><USER12> Thank you for clarifying / pointing that out to me. I've never spent time to understand that an apostrophe used in this way made it possessive. I've taken that on board and will (hopefully) not make this mistake again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Without a doubt, it is time to prepare our applications for the upgrade; > just because of the performance improvements are worth it. If you are on > Rails 4.x, the upgrade is almost painless.

Shouldn't it be called Rails 4.3? That been said, you could get the performance improvement by just upgrading to ruby 2.2.2

</comment><comment><USER15> I thought DHH recently announce on Twitter there will be Basecamp 3, which is based on Rails 5.

And there will be Turobolink 5 too.

I was guessing they have some more things to announce soon.

<comment><USER16> Turbolinks 3

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is it more security vulnerabilities ?</comment>


Show HN: A lightweight percentage calculator to query in human language - <AUTHOR> http://giuscri.github.io/bake-the-f-k-out/ <comment><AUTHOR> I heard about a friend of mine complaining he couldn't get the right percentage value out of his phone's calculator, while working in a patisserie.

He doesn't get how to compute percentages.

Thus I coded a little (nice?) one, targeted for his phone with very low resolution/crappy display.

Maybe someone might find it useful (though I don't think so, really)

</comment><comment><USER2> Needs to strip % symbols from the input.</comment>


Aids: Origin of pandemic 'was 1920s Kinshasa' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/health-29442642

<comment><USER2> This is hardly news. The origin locale and timeframe (acquired zoonotically from Chimpanzees north of Kinshasa, probably around 1908, travelling by river to Kinshasa and Brazzaville, where social conditions permitted amplification and adaptation to human hosts) have been strongly supported by evidence for about a decade. David Quammen discusses it in detail in his book "Spillover". While this study adds more evidence supporting the theory, that area and timeframe was pretty much accepted as fact in the research community for some time.

<comment> k-mcgrady It's news for those of us not in the AIDS research community.

<comment><USER3> That book is very widely spread outside of the AIDS research community, and is only peripherally about AIDS/HIV. Even lay-people are reading it in droves. Definitely a good read if you have the time.

<comment> k-mcgrady Thanks, I'll check it out.

<comment><USER4> I'd recommend The Origins of Aids - it's a great book (wrote for the laymen) that explores this very topic.

Fascinating read - published a few years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Radiolab did a pretty interesting episode [1] regarding investigation in to Patient Zero. They talk about Typhoid Mary and Aids. I highly recommend it. [1]-[http://www.radiolab.org/story/169879-patient- zero/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/169879-patient-zero/)

</comment><comment><USER6> A Kinshasa origin around 1900 was already suggested in 2008:

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9525342...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95253422)

</comment><comment><USER7> it's real strange to me that the BBC says "Aids" and not "AIDS" when it's an acronym. Still interesting.

edit: especially when they say HIV and not Hiv

<comment><USER8> The Brits seem to do it for acronyms you pronounce, i.e. Fifa or Aids, but not the ones you spell out like HIV.

<comment><USER9> > acronyms you pronounce

> the ones you spell out

If you're looking to distinguish these, you can use the term "initialism" for the latter.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym#Nomenclature](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym#Nomenclature)

<comment><USER8> Ah! Thanks, I knew there was a word for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _roaring sex trade_

Possible allusion to: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Twenties](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Twenties)

<comment><USER11> Roaring Twenties comes from standard use of the word roaring in British English [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/roaring](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/roaring)</comment></comment>


Forget iOS. Forget Android. This Is Microsoft's Market, Baby - <AUTHOR> http://www.profitbaron.com/forget-ios-forget-andriod-this-is-microsofts-market-baby/

<comment><USER2> This already exists! An iPod Touch with Skype on wifi is the best home phone I've ever owned. But would I really call it a mobile phone, or consider a wifi only phone? I spend a lot of time in my car, and of course don't have stable wifi in there. I tried to pretend my iPod was a wifi-only phone for a few months, but it didn't work out for me. Perhaps wifi availability is good enough in densely populated urban areas, but is using random wifi across the city secure?

It will be interesting to see what Microsoft does with Skype and the carriers, though. MS is not in a very strong position in the mobile phone market, and I can't imagine the carriers like Skype at all, as charging per minute and per text rather than by the MB for data is much more profitable. The neutered, 3G only version of Skype that came with ym Verizon phone, which counts US domestic calls against your normal calling plan, shows what Verizon thinks of Skype. That's "Skype Mobile", there's another Skype which works only on wifi. When you call Skype-to-Skype on "Skype Mobile", it dials a 1800 number in Atlanta, and the sound quality is terrible. On the same phone, the wifi Skype has markedly better sound quality. It seems to me that since I'm paying $25 a mo. for unlimited 3G data, I should be able to use the data to make Skype calls if I please. If Microsoft can make that happen, more power to them.

<comment><USER3> Do Skype-to-Skype calls on Verizon really count against your normal calling plan? Skype has a similar deal in Japan with au/KDDI where Skype-to-Skype calls use the cell voice network (which is much clearer than over 3g on other carriers) and don't count against the monthly minute allowance.

<comment><USER2> You're correct, I guess I'm thinking of Skype-Phone calls using SkypeOut. On my computer or iPod, those are unlimited for like $3 a month, but they do count as minutes on Skype Mobile.

The only Skype-Skype I do is international, so that's why I hadn't considered that. Thankfully those are still data charges only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure what you mean by a WIFI SIM card. A SIM card is designed to run on a GSM network.

Outside of a wifi area you would need to use some sort of network to transmit your data.. there really is no option other than a GSM/CDMA carrier.

Also, we have the problem of distribution now. Microsoft doesn't have the same retail presence that Apple has. Google proved that selling handsets direct to consumers doesn't work that well. Nokia closed down their stores in NYC, Chicago and London. Think of the retail stores that T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint etc have across the country... there is no way to compete with that.

The GSM protocol is design to handle voice data and is well optimized and uses surprisingly little bandwidth. Skype is much heavier on bandwidth in comparison. The skype protocol wasn't designed to be used as you walk through areas of low signal or for 1,000 users going through one cell phone tower at once. For simple voice data... the GSM protocol wins hands down.

If you want to imagine any Microsoft/Skype/Nokia/Windows 7 mash up.. what if they adapted the Skype p2p technology for use on handsets to allow you to connect through other handsets to get to a base station? This will allow you to route around network congestion, prevent dropped calls, reduce network infrastructure and increase network coverage.

Nokia makes the cell tower infrastructure through Nokia Siemens... If anyone could do this, it is Nokia. Imagine how hard carriers would push a p2p handset. </dream>

</comment><comment><USER5> _With the Nokia deal, Microsoft has positioned itself with one of the biggest carriers in the world to produce its phones on its operating system_

This is an extremely low-quality article. The author seems to not know what a "carrier" is in the mobile industry.

</comment><comment><USER6> The initial cost of a phone seems to be subsidized by the carrier's data plan contract; a phone that calls and texts for "free" would look more expensive up front than its competitors. And if AT&T is even _slightly_ telling the truth about the "load" phones create on its precious network, a Skype-only phone would have to impose a significant tax on any WiFi network it passed through; so how long do you think there would be decent free WiFi in areas that become bogged down by phone Skype traffic?

<comment><AUTHOR> Microsoft could easily subsidize these to compete with the carriers, as they would be running via BING (producing them revenue in ad clicks).

Also with regards to the Wifi issues obviously, the networks would have to be improved with regards to WIFI offered by companies and Microsoft would have to most likely invest into improving the network as well but, with billions lying around. It is worthwhile to go BIG on a market where it has huge potential than trying to milk its dying cash cows forever, until the company completely burns out.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure the propaganda that MS cash cow's Windows and Office would stop anytime soon. All this post-PC bs Stevie feed people through their extravagant TV ad campaign surely have brainwashed the uneducated self-proclaimed pro- sumers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Free mobile, subsidized by ads is an attractive vision - but you need a network to do it.

And, maybe advertising revenue is not sufficient... yet. However, because ad revenue increases over time, and network cost decreases, it seems inevitable.

e.g. Google tried to do this with wifi in san fran (but IIRC had council problems). Google already has huge market share, so it's probably not crucial for them. But an up-and-coming search/advertiser with lots of money (like MS) is motivated and able.

</comment><comment><USER9> The inhibitor to free phone calls using data, rather than traditional voice minutes, is not the technology; it's the carriers (ATT, Verizon, etc).

</comment><comment><USER10> Whoops--lands me on a godaddy ad page, offering to sell me the domain.

</comment><comment><USER11> Except that Android and Google Voice could snipe them out in nothing flat. In fact, I have full confidence that they could push out their existing code call it beta, and have all of this functionality on millions of phones right now.

The infrastructure is already there. I know it, because I use this fabled phone right now. When I'm on a Wifi network, my 3g is turned off. My texts stream in (and are synced with all my PCs) through Google Voice. My calls are connected to the SIP built into Gingerbread. My outgoing calls are registered with the GVoice web interface (via GVCallback) and are then connected to the SIP on my phone.

(also note, that all of this is done transparently. If you call or text the phone number that I give out to everyone, my phone operates the same regardless of if I'm on Wifi/3g/etc)

Meaning, when I have wifi, I can make and receive texts and calls without incurring data charges. I can do this over 3g if I wanted as well, but honestly, voice performance on 1x is still better than VoIP.

<comment><USER3> If Google were interested in providing outgoing access to the the telephone system over data networks with Google Talk and Google Voice on Android like they do on the GMail website, they would have done so already.</comment></comment>


MOOC Completion Rates - <AUTHOR> http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html

<comment><USER2> I guess people see 10-20% completion rate and think: this is bad.

Let's do some math.

At my university (one of the biggest in Poland), there were 150 people majoring in CS per year.

According to the article, an average MOOC enrollment is 50.000. Let's assume 10% completion rate.

That's 5.000 people. It would take my university 33 years to graduate that many people (assuming 100% completion rate).

The cost per person? Several orders of magnitude smaller per student for MOOC.

Scalability? Almost effortless for MOOC, almost non-existant for the university (to double the number of students they would have to double the number of professors, double the number of buildings etc.).

What happens when you fail? At MOOC, try again. At university - you're out.

There are many reasons why completion rates are much better at university (you paid for it, you value it more; more external pressures (your peers, your parents), motivational support from your fellow students; the way you think about it (university: I have to do it or else it's really bad; mooc: no biggie, I can always do it again).

MOOC destroys traditional education at almost every other metric.

It's a classic Innvator's Dillema: a product that is not as good as what exists but so much better at some important things (cost, convenience) that it'll grow like weeds and will become better at things it's not good at (like retention) faster than incumbents becoming better at matching MOOC at price, convenience.

<comment><USER3> "According to the article, an average MOOC enrollment is 50.000. Let's assume 10% completion rate. That's 5.000 people. It would take my university 33 years to graduate that many people (assuming 100% completion rate)."

You are comparing a completion rate for 1 class to the completion rate for graduation at a university (consisting of a LOT of classes). If the completion rate for 1 class is 10% I cant imagine how low the completion rate would be for a whole degree assuming it would consist of somewhere around 20-40 classes.

<comment><USER2> Your nitpicking is correct. I don't think it changes the big picture, though, so it's kinda impotent nitpicking for nitpicking's sake.

If I were to be pedantic about every little detail, I would end up with unified theory of the universe.

But since you brought it up: MOOC will also dramatically alter how we look at higher ed.

For historical reasons, my CS department emerged from EE department, since electronics existed before computers. As a result, I had to take courses in analog electronics, semi-conductors and what not. Out of 5 years of study, about 3 were relevant to CS.

I hated those courses, they proved to be useless in my programming career and yet, I had no choice.

At the same time I couldn't have taken a course in Greek history, even if I also liked Greek history (Spartans, those buff, semi-naked men!) in addition to programming.

The future will not be like that. The future of higher ed will be à la carte.

People will no longer get a major in CS, they'll take whatever courses they like and think are useful in finding employment.

It's happening already - Udacity already made a big deal (rightfully so) about people who found employment at good companies after completing merely few courses.

(as an aside, the rarely spoken truth about programming is that you don't really need education; I don't credit my university with teaching me much about what's actually relevant to real-life programming)

<comment><USER4> While I agree that MOOC is absolutely going to disrupt traditional college/university schooling, I disagree with a couple of your arguments. Actually no, scratch that, now that I think about it, if I had been able to pick my own curriculum then yeah-- _(snip a bunch of stuff about what I myself learned, did not learn, would have picked, etc. nobody cares about that!)_ \--maybe I would not have learned AS much, but like you say, at least most of it would have been useful to my personal development. And I could have patched some gaps in my knowledge (Analysis) that later on gave me trouble with advanced courses that I really could have gone for otherwise.

And the GP comment was not nitpicking. Nitpicking is when someone makes a big deal out of a small thing. Just because the error they pointed out does not invalidate your argument, does not make it nitpicking. Yours was a pretty big error: comparing dropout rates for a single class to those of an entire education. And it deserves pointing out, because such a "little detail" has a good chance of causing confusion later on in the discussion. And you calling it "pedantic" really does injustice to the GP calling out a genuine error. It's not like they were being rude or annoying about it. And I admit, this paragraph can be considered both nitpicking and pedantic, I still want to say it because you could have been more polite about it. "Right. While that doesn't invalidate my argument, _thanks_ for the correction."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I sign up for just about every one that looks interesting, obviously without the time to finish them all. The reason is quite simply because I want to look at the materials on my time, occasionally take part in the discussions, and try out the assignments here and there that look particularly challenging. Last I checked, you _had_ to be registered to view any of the materials on EdX and Coursera which is pretty much why I do it this way.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I'm pretty much the same. Which should be completely fine with anyone, since it's putting me way ahead in terms of learning from where I would have been without the course.

Completion rate is only one measure of these courses, and I'm not at all sure it should be the most important one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The last MOOC I took was MIT's introduction to solid state chemistry (great course, BTW). Before an actual MIT student can take that course on campus, the go through a pre-screening process that ensures:

1\. The student has the necessary background knowledge that the course assumes,

2\. The student has the necessary skill required for the course,

3\. The student has the necessary motivation to do the work,

4\. The student has the time to devote to the course.

There's also a pre-screening process for people who wish to take the online course through edx.org. This pre-screen process ensures:

1\. The student can successfully create an edx.org account and click a sign up button for the course.

Given this huge difference in screening of students, and the fact that the online course is for the most part not "dumbed down" compared to the on campus course[1] , I would absolutely gobsmacked if the MOOC version of the course came within an order of magnitude of the completion rate of the on campus course.

[1] Online students were given 72 hours on the exams, to allow for computer and network outages, and to give more flexibility in accommodating their lives outside of the course. On campus students were given 3 hours for the exams. I think they said the content of the exams was the same.

<comment><USER8> MOOCs are still in the experimental phase. I finished 1, and about to finish another soon. I believe, there is still a lot to innovate when it comes to giving the lecture and evaluating the student.

I also believe, a major goog/fb scale company will raise for everyone to get continuous education.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Its silly to criticize them for rates under 20% since many people sign up just to see what it's like without actually planning on finishing it. What would be more relevant is to see what percent of serious committed students finish a course. E.g. what percent of students who pay for a course end up finishing it?

</comment><comment><USER10> Of the MOOCs I've participated in, the student surveys have never asked the most relevant question I can think of with respect to completion rates: "do you (or did you) intend to complete the course?"

Anybody here ever been asked that?

<comment><USER4> Very good point. Of course, for a completely fair comparison you need to ask the same question (before the course starts) to the traditional students. I expect it can't be much more than a percent or so, but it depends on whether the university penalizes students for signing up for a course they don't finish (in my years of college, the CS department didn't seem to care very much. It was very different for other departments, though).

Of course, without penalties, you will get students that start out a semester following more courses than they can finish, only to decide later on which one to drop. I'm not entirely sure how that translates to MOOCs, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is interesting, but I think completion rates (and enrollments, to a degree) are bogus statistics. All the incentives are aligned toward signing up for lots of courses, with or without any intention to finish. I'm "enrolled" in 13 Coursera classes at the moment, but only active in two (and something close to this has been my moving average for the last six months).

The only cost to me is a few too many automated emails. And since course quality still varies widely, trying out lots of courses and sticking with the best ones is a good strategy.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I've signed up for about a dozen Coursera, Udacity and CalTech courses over the past year, and finished 3 with enough work for certificate of completion, and put in enough work on a few more to get something out of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think the data is interesting, but the point it infers is absolutely moot: I have personally derived a a HUGE amount of educational value from several MOOC's that I never completed. That's part of the beauty: you can learn what you need to learn, and you're not forced into a box that the course prescribes. You can pick-and-choose your own learning process.

</comment><comment><USER14> Could it also be that many people will sign up in order to get access to certain materials, but then not end up completing all of the assignments/exams?

I don't have any experience with MOOC's, so I'm curious as to how these peer graded systems work and why they result in lower completion rates.

<comment><USER15> I have signed up for several courses on coursera, but have completed only one. Because of time constraints, I just sign up, and then go through the materials at my leisure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't care about Mooc completion rate at all. If for example only a few hundred people completed the course, this means that the course had brought educational value to thousands.

For some professors the kickback value might play a bigger role. Some courses on coursera are just not taught as widely as the professors would like to have it. For example Hinton's Neural Network course, or the one about Quantum Computation. In these cases, a few hundred completers would be plenty to justify the effort of the authors (in my opinion at least).

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting in what that might say about job candidates who have actually completed a number of MOOCs. That would put them in the top 10% or so by that measure, for whatever that's worth. It at least says something about their ability to start something and finish it.

<comment><USER18> Are MOOC completions something that job interviewers actually look out for?

I have always used MOOCs to learn, not to get certified.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't know why people are seeing low MOOC completion rates as a problem. It just makes completion more valuable as a credential. That plus the fact that MOOCs have wider accessibility should make traditional institutions very scared. It's the MOOCs' game to lose.</comment>


Redmond WA CEO charged with fraud on more than 100 H-1B visa applications - <AUTHOR> https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/redmond-ceo-charged-with-fraud-on-more-than-100-h-1b-visa-applications/ <comment><USER2> This company reached out to me about their services two years ago. A quick search convinced me that the ethical practices of the CEO should cause anyone to question working with him.

"Samal was sentenced to 90 days of home confinement with electronic monitoring and 3 years' probation. He was also instructed to complete 288 hours of community service and undergo moral reconation therapy"*

Anyone who has to undergo "moral reconation therapy" may be a dubious business partner.

* [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecode](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecode)

<comment><USER3> > Anyone who has to undergo "moral reconation therapy" may be a dubious > business partner.

Googling turned up a bunch of sketch-looking references for this MRT, compared to other therapies I have heard of (CBT, EMDR) . Can any expound on it and how reliable the sources are?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are too many perverse incentives with H1-B visas. One way to fix it would be to make it an auction based on compensation instead of a lottery. This way the companies that are using it as a way to bring in talent would have preference over companies just bringing in cheap labor.</comment>