SimplyInsured (YC W13) raises $750K to simplify health insurance - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/02/simplyinsured-aims-to-put-health-insurance-into-terms-anyone-can-understand/ <comment><USER2> The key question here is how much additional value-add does SimplyInsured provide over the online marketplaces being set up under the Affordable Care Act.

A significant part of the broker's value is the high-touch relationship and trust.

The market fit question to me is: if a state marketplace has a decent web portal (like California's [http://www.coveredca.com](http://www.coveredca.com) ), what additional value does a private portal offer that NEITHER the official portal NOR an offline broker can offer?

(Don't mean this as polemical by any means; lots of states are _not_ going to have great portals. Just interested in hearing opinions on this.)

[Edit: making CA link a real URL]

<comment><USER3> I'd argue the ACA will enhance the market for SimplyInsured. Yes, for an individual who wants a basic policy, Covered CA will probably be sufficient and they won't need more help than that. But there are dozens if not hundreds of edge cases.

Some examples off the top of my head:

\- A healthy 24 year old software engineer is making $75,000. This means he doesn't qualify for any of the tax subsidies by buying insurance on the exchange. He wants to avoid the $2,500 penalty for being uninsured, but every plan on the Covered CA will cost more than that over 12 months. Perhaps his best option is to buy an individual policy for catastrophic coverage only.

\- A small business isn't sure whether it's optimal to insure their employees, or just give them a cash "bonus" and tell them to buy their own policy on Covered CA (similar to what Trader Joe's announced they're going to do with their part-time employees).

\- Purchasing insurance on Covered CA is limited only to certain enrollment periods (this is perhaps the biggest misunderstanding, as I've seen various media personalities ask "why wouldn't healthy people just wait until their sick, and then get insurance?" countless times). However, there are exceptions for a life-changing event. Thus, a person who is laid off (thus counting as one of those life-changing events) would like information on whether their best option is to pay for COBRA or buy a policy on Covered CA.

Basically the ACA is complex, but it does turn health insurance into a much more structured and transparent market, which lends itself well to applications like SimplyInsured. Otherwise, what could any sort of system do for my third scenario, for example? All anyone could advise to have them stay on COBRA because they'd probably get screwed by letting it lapse and then trying to get an individual policy.

<comment><USER4> I agree on the last point: ACA probably actually helps them by making this kind of analysis possible to automate, since it gets the plan data into some kind of commensurable, analyzable form, and simplifies the answers to all kinds of eligibility questions. Once you have a standard format for health- insurance offerings, one analogy could be with air travel, where people build sites like Kayak and Hipmunk on top of ITA's systems. That isn't possible to do adequately if every health plan has its own custom set of terms written in English/legalese.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly! Unfortunately - the ACA "format" is still legalese... like this (government mandated form) [http://www.seechangehealth.com/SitePages/PDFLoader.aspx?Titl...](http://www.seechangehealth.com/SitePages/PDFLoader.aspx?Title=SG%20Classic%203500%202013)

We've built software to normalize despite that - check us out!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be nice to know if I should get a Bronze HSA or a Gold PPO based on 1) my medical billing history for the past 1-3 years 2) my past and projected income 3) potentially, my current medical status and good projections about that.

The weird thing about ACA is it essentially turns this into a relatively low range problem; I'm going to be spending $200/mo to $400/mo in premiums, and I'm never going to be out of pocket more than $6350 on top of that. So even if I do exceptionally well, it's maybe a $200x12 - $3300x0.35 (tax savings on HSA) cost vs. a $400x12 plus epsilon cost vs. ($200x12 + $6350). Which isn't enough to _really_ care that much, since most likely it's within $1-2k/yr regardless of which plan I pick. And I doubt your picking would be that much more accurate than a general WAG based on "do I often go to the doctor?"

</comment><comment><USER6> How is SimplyInsured going to deal with the long-term move of health insurance towards single payer?

<comment><USER7> Hopefully they figure out how to stop it. Single payer is a horrible idea and generally lowers the standard of care for everyone.

<comment><USER6> ....which would explain why every first world country uses it except the US?

I'd much prefer we don't devolve into a political argument. My question, I thought, was relevant due to ACA kicking in, which is the first step towards universal healthcare/single payer in the US (which would eliminate the business model in question).

In closing, here is healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP by country (almost all first world countries): [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Internati...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/International_Comparison_- _Healthcare_spending_as_%25_GDP.png) The US leads in spending, and only spending.

<comment><USER8> I would like to point out we're also significantly more overweight, have higher rates of heart disease, have a quickly aging population of baby boomers etc.. Your argument is not logical as there are plenty of other reasons we have higher healthcare costs other then that we're not single payer.

<comment><USER9> > I would like to point out we're also significantly more overweight, have > higher rates of heart disease, have a quickly aging population of baby > boomers etc..

Those are all, arguably, _consequences_ of the poor access to health care in this country and the short-term incentives in this country to delay care. IOW, they are products of the system that we pay more for (per capita or even per GDP -- or even either way _only considering public expenditures_ and excluding the private costs) than first world countries that provide universal coverage through government single-payer systems.

<comment><USER10> I see this argument a lot: people go without care, or delay early treatments that would be cheaper, because they can't afford to go to the doctor. I'm sure this is true to a degree, but making terrible diet choices, being sedentary, and being 100 lbs overweight is not a consequence of not having health insurance.

And I really don't see the avoidance of primary care being primarily financial either. A yearly routine physical is not very expensive, and is often free at many public health clinics. Likewise common preventive care like flu shots, pap smears, and prostate exams.

A big reason a lot of people don't go to the doctor is that they _don 't like going to the doctor._ I'm in that group. Having insurance doesn't change that.

<comment><USER11> There is a huge cultural difference between almost every single payer nation and the US. For example, I haven't seen a regular doctor in 3 years for any kind of check up, because I'm uninsured. Meanwhile, I have friends in Canada that get quarterly or even monthly checkups. It isn't even a cost thing, they say it is cultural - their parents and peers expect them to regularly see a doctor to make sure nothing is wrong with them, and if they sneeze wrong they see the doctor.

I dislocated my knee this spring and reset it and just stayed in bed for 2 weeks. Never saw a medical professional, because they would want to x-ray (it might have broke, it was much more painful than a normal dislocation to me, and swelled huge for a while) and I'd be stuck with a $3 - 5k bill minimum just for that, combined with any treatment, and I'd laugh if they'd want me in physical therapy for it.

So it isn't just about not haivng a doctor to say 3 bic macs a day is bad for you, it is that in most other places people _do_ see their doctors, regularly, and for most issues, beucase it doesn't bankrupt them. That adds up over a lifetime.

<comment><USER10> I haven't been to see a doctor in at least 5 years, and I have insurance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This appears to only be value to businesses who aren't interested in self- funded policies.</comment>


Human rights groups are the new extortion gangs - <AUTHOR> http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column_human-rights-groups-are-the-new-extortion-gangs_1658490 <comment><USER2> The site won't let me post comments and there is ZERO information to support any arguments. Sounds like more right-wing propaganda to me.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I grow my startup? - <AUTHOR> I have launched Indiebookish.com a few weeks ago and battled to get any customers to subscribe. After a few days, I dropped the pricing by >50% and still had no success. I am now offering my debut release as a free option to build a database of users that I could potentially sell my paid subscription to once they see the value of my product.<p>How else would you suggest I build with no Marketing investment? <comment><USER2> I went to the landing page and I dont immediately know what this service does or why I should buy it. Suggestion 1: Look at some copywriting tutorials and implement those lessons on your page copy. Suggestion 2: Dont hide behind 'Us'. Who are you? At the early stage, your personal story is important. When I click 'about us', I get sent to #Deliverable. Which is not what I'm looking for. Suggestion 3: Show me, don't tell me. Let me download an example from a well-known book of how you took the lessons and injected real-world applicability.

Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER3> >Summary of an accredited self-development book >Our expert opinion on how to incorporate the takeaways from the book in your practical life >An actionable template to help you add value to your life based on the key insights and advice in the book

How is this different from blinkist? And why bother doing this? What problem annoyed you so much you tried to build a whole company around it?</comment>


12 factor app configuration vs. leaking environment variables (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/telent/9742059 <comment><AUTHOR> For me, there are two compelling points in this:

      1) Environment variables are 'exported by default', making it easy to do silly things like sending database passwords to Airbrake. Sure we could introduce code to filter them out, but it's another thing we need to remember to update every time we add one - not robust in the face of code changes.  Better not to put them there in the first place

and

      4) if you restart an app by sending it a signal (e.g. SIGHUP) from an unrelated shell that causes it to re-exec itself, it will still have the environment of the original process.  So for example, you can't update config in environment variables and do a Unicorn "zero downtime" restart. This can cause confusion

While the restart/reload problem can be circumvented using multiple instances, the leaking problem can't be easily solved in a generic way.

That's why I would suggest not to put secrets into environment variables. Systems like Kubernetes or Docker Swarm have great support for such kind of secrets. Is there someone who researched this concern in more depth?

</comment><comment><USER2> One of the organizational problems I've seen with ENVs are when there are too many of them. When someone starts up a new environment for staging or production, they just copy all the ENVs from another environment and don't bother going through each one to see if it is valid or safe to copy. So you end up with a testing environment that can send real money. What fun! Been there!

This can happen with configuration in code too but at least it gets checked in and there is usually a better review process.

So I usually go for a hybrid approach. Have most configurations committed and tracked in code in different files, one for development, production, etc. This makes it really clear which configurations are more important. Any configurations that can't be committed to code, use ENVs or a secure key store if you can handle the extra process complexity.

This approach can still have holes but at least the surface area is reduced.</comment>


Show HN: HN Browser, yet another Hacker News reader on iPhone - <AUTHOR>

I thought building something that I would use while learning iOS SDK was a good idea so I built HN Browser.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hn-browser/id578535095?ls=1&mt=8
HN Browser is a simple app which lets you to read articles and comments on Hacker News. (no voting and writing comment yet)
For the logo, I reached out to Joel Glovier(http://joelglovier.com) for his previous work on Hacker News logo(http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4731140) and he kindly granted the use of his work.
It was really fun experience to collaborate and build a mobile app using iOS SDK. (although approval process was painful)
I would really appreciate if you share any thought. <comment><USER2> Nicely done. A couple of things I noticed...

\- When panning the UI to show the left menu, it doesn't always open when the touch ends, even if it's mostly open.

\- If there are no comments tapping on the "no comments" cell selects it blue and there is no deselect.

\- Comments 'meta data' is displayed as "on (null) :username"

Overall it's a nice app, and a really good job for a "learning" project.

(iOS 6.0.1 iPhone 5)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks skylarsch, I will take a look at those issues you've mentioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good app, pretty useful when following HN. Would be nice to have a STAR feature. You can star stories and quickly access them to follow the comments feed or get notifications when new comments arrive

<comment><AUTHOR> vsfa, a great idea. I was trying to avoid backend but now that I think about it again, it can be done locally as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> +1. How long did development take you?

Mind sharing what you learnt in a blog post?

Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> I have written a blog post about it. [http://soleun.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/how-i-built-hn- browse...](http://soleun.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/how-i-built-hn-browsermy- first-ios-app/)</comment></comment>


Playable ZX Spectrum Game from Bandersnatch (Black Mirror) - <AUTHOR> https://tuckersoft.net/ealing20541/nohzdyve/ <comment><USER2> I am just amused to see them namechecking the most infamously unreleased game from the Spectrum scene.

[http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0009525](http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0009525)

Which makes for some nice symmetry with them giving Jeff Minter a small role, what with one of his latest few games borrowing the name and legend of Polybius.

<comment><USER3> Yeah it took me back too.

I started coding on a ZX Spectrum, back in 1982/1983, and even now I can hear the load-sounds!

(I still play a handful of Spectrum games, via emulators, now and again.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Took one day for someone to make this haha

<comment><AUTHOR> It's made by the show - they've probably been working on it for a while...</comment></comment>


Find (or Host) a Local Co-Working Space With Loosecubes - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/biz/2011/07/how-to-find-coworking-space-near-you.php#.TiYAW-oylLA.hackernews <comment><USER2> My lone search found what I think used to be called "executive office" space; hardly co-working, at all.

<comment><USER3> It's probably early days, spotty and highly variable from region to region.

I found exactly one place in my metro area, a desk for $75/month. It was four desks jammed up against each other in a 2x2 grid. Do-able, if I absolutely needed it, but at the price and distance from my place I'm more likely to stay at home or in the coffee shop.</comment></comment>


"bro" has a gender problem - <AUTHOR> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=366559#c147 <comment><USER2> So to successfully contribute to US based open source projects you need intimate familiarity with US culture and politics not to make a linguistic faux-pas? Got it... but it doesn't feel inclusive to me.

<comment><USER3> Inclusivity is making sure no open source anywhere features a shortening of the word 'brother'. If people outside the US don't understand why that's offensive I guess they're bigots.

In all seriousness, this has to be the height of meddling for the sake of meddling.

<comment><USER2> > If people outside the US don't understand why that's offensive I guess > they're bigots.

Yeah look at this bigoted Swedish wikipedia article [https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bro](https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bro)

> In all seriousness, this has to be the height of meddling for the sake of > meddling.

For me it is not only meddling. The abbreviation was changed without proper explanation. "I have asked a feminist friend from the North American culture- sphere, and she advised against bro." is devoid of any actual information why it is important to change. I think reasons of "misogynistic" and "offensive" is not enough.

Because if we look at the other offensive and unacceptable words I'm aware of I know why they are loaded and how they are perceived badly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I fully expect to be downvoted to oblivion for pointing this out, however it seems to me that the supposition that the word 'bro' is inherently 'misogynistic' is not only absurd (bro is simply a shortening of the word brother, after all) but it also reveals a deep-seated devaluation (and even demonization) of maleness which I find disturbing.

<comment><USER5> Meanwhile "She++" [1] is perfectly okay, it seems.

[1] [http://www.sheplusplus.org/](http://www.sheplusplus.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of the guy being called out on irc for accidentally writing "jap" (German version of "yep", literally putting a "p" at the end of the translated "yes")

</comment><comment><USER7> According to that logic we can also go ahead and ban all products that rely on the chemical element Bromine.

</comment><comment><USER8> Seems like an eminently sensible outcome. The fact is, regardless of context, a word that has a derogatory or inflammatory meaning in a separate context will always be questioned. It doesn't matter if _you_ find it acceptable; this is about respecting other people's boundaries.

Substitute "bro" for any word that you would find inappropriate and the problem becomes obvious.

<comment><USER9> Do you realize that your reasoning can be extended ad nauseam to everything, all the time? So much that you will find yourself spending more time on finding a name that actually building anything.

Should Coq - the proof assistant - be renamed to something else, because it is pronounced like "cock"?

Yes? Even though it is a project of the INRIA (One of France's Computer Science research institute) and means "rooster" in French.

This overly fixated attitude toward "respecting other people's boundaries" is very much begging for mockery. Perhaps as much as it is intellectually dishonest because it leaves so many questions, and unknowns unanswered.

How do you know what are the others' personal boundaries? Is there group whose boundaries does not matter> Does this rule extend to any creative work? Should existing projects be renamed? Are boundaries dynamics? Can someone be offended by this rule? Or are there rules about things that you can be offended about, or not?

There are _so_ many issues with this paradigm of thinking.

Let me suggest an alternative: common sense.

<comment><USER10> And one comment even pointed out perfectly good reasons not to consider br - "'br' is already an abbreviation for Brazil and is the HTML tag for linebreak".

<comment><USER11> The same comment suggested "bti" as a sensible alternative, though.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Wal-Mart Customers Complain Bare Shelves Are Widespread - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-02/wal-mart-customers-complain-bare-shelves-are-widespread.html

<comment><AUTHOR> first question will probably be "What is this doing on HN". It has to do with the trend of many US companies, fire people to increase profits: _The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer's workforce at its namesake and Sam's Club warehouse chains in the U.S. fell by about 120,000 employees between 2008 and Jan. 31, according to a securities filing on March 26. The company now has about 1.3 million U.S. workers. In the same period, it has added about 455 U.S. Wal-Mart stores, bringing its total to 4,005._</comment>


Content Used to Be King. Now It's the Joker - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@amywestervelt/content-used-to-be-king-now-its-the-joker-d40703c18c73

<comment><USER2> TL;DR: Author is giving up ghostwriting because she is "tired of making rich, white dudes seem more thoughtful than they are".</comment>


Why is Android Studio's Emulator always listening to my microphone? - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52945864/android-studio-wants-access-to-microphone <comment><USER2> Doesn't the Android emulator run in QEMU? And doesn't qemu actually emulate a Soundcard? So it makes sense that when the emulator starts and boots the kernel in the VM it will probe the devices and act as an audio in&out pass thru, like the virtual SD card, or like the network connection or everything else really...

Coding a special SDK image to adapt to the host system permissions doesnt make any sense. Android will always have access to hardware, and you're testing that it will work on Android, not on an emulator...

</comment><comment><USER3> It wouldn't be an accurate Android emulator without that feature.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if AI would detect this as sarcasm or not.

<comment><USER5> I wonder if this is how an AI would respond when it meets an exception

 _glares_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It just enables the microphone at emulated device instantiation time. Easier than enabling/and disabling it at runtime.

[https://android.googlesource.com/platform/external/qemu/+/a7...](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/external/qemu/+/a7c579bdcbe2543472535718d3b637cb864f6f36/hw/android/goldfish/audio.c#288)

</comment><comment><USER7> Why is a 1 year old stack overflow question (with no answers) being reposted to HN?

(Also, I cannot replicate this by the way)

<comment><USER8> I thought HN audience was smart and not manipulated by inflammatory headlines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isn't the emulator emulating devices having a microphone like phones and such? It seems rational for it to plumb the host's microphone into the emulated one, so such features may be tested etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> It would be rational if you used an app that required the microphone, or if you allowed it permissions. By your logic it also seems rational if an android phone used it's microphone 100% of the time just in case you need to make a phone call.

<comment><USER10> Always-on hotword recognition is a normal thing phones do. Even if the emulator is only requesting mic access when an app uses it, that would still actually be "basically always" unless you are using a no-Google image. Which isn't the recommended image.

<comment><USER11> > Always-on hotword recognition is a normal thing phones do.

I wouldn't call that normal at all, nor does your theory address the issue of the permissions request being explicitly denied while still gaining access.

<comment><USER10> > I wouldn't call that normal at all

What would you call it then? It's a thing 99% of modern phones do (Android & iOS). If that's not "normal" then what is "normal" in your world?

> nor does your theory address the issue of the permissions request being > explicitly denied while still gaining access

My theory was not intended to address what is obviously an OSX bug. The theory is _why_ it was asking. Why it managed to get access anyway after being denied is just a straight up permission bug in OSX and has nothing to do with Android Studio or the emulator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The same happens with the iOS Simulator. I noticed when developing an app (that doesn't need any microphone permissions itself), my noise cancelling headphones would stop the noise cancelling feature, like it happens when calling someone and using the microphone. Resetting the permissions and denying "fixed" the issue for me.

Can't understand why the Simulator needs it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Welcome to modern computing.

</comment><comment><USER14> >I received a pop up in which Android Studio requests permission to access my microphone.

Uh? What OS shows that? Perhaps a newer Mac OS?

<comment><USER15> Since Micro Snitch is referenced in one of the comments, yes.

[https://www.obdev.at/products/microsnitch/index.html](https://www.obdev.at/products/microsnitch/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is a certain sense of poetic justice that developers of Android applications be subjected to invasive spyware, since that describes the vast majority of applications those developers create.

At this point I avoid all apps that aren't from F-Droid. Both Google and Amazon's android app stores are packed to the gills with software that wants to spy on me and advertise to me.

<comment><USER11> This seems rather off topic and unproductive to the effort of solving the SO ticket. I highly doubt it's a matter of Google spying on developers, more likely a bug or weird interaction with the OS.

<comment><USER16> > _" unproductive to the effort of solving the SO ticket."_

That's an odd thing to object to. I have no interest in resolving the SO ticket. Google doesn't pay me to fix their problems and nor am I inclined to donate my labor to a for-profit corporation.</comment></comment></comment>


Jobs for Older Developers - <AUTHOR>

After the vigorous discussion "Ask HN: What happens to older developers?" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7372997), this is an experiment to see if there are companies that are willing and interested in hiring older developers.<p>(This is not intended to be a discussion about age discrimination.)<p>If your company is will to hire techies of any age, please post the information below (ala "Ask HN: Who is Hiring"). <comment><USER2> Didn't that thread conclude old developers branch out into non-dev avenues?

<comment><AUTHOR> One theme was that there are older developers who are still working and doing what they love. Of course there are also plenty who have gone into different directions.</comment></comment>


Semicolons in JavaScript are optional - <AUTHOR> http://mislav.uniqpath.com/2010/05/semicolons/

<comment><USER2> Use semicolons. Always. It's looks cleaner, and you won't come up against stupid errors like

      return
      {
         foo: 7
      }

From the article -

      When you're done trying to wrap your brain around
      why would anyone in their right mind want to write
      a return statement on a new line

Well, if they love having { on newlines, then it's pretty obvious:

      function foo()
      {
          return
          {
              bar: 8
          }
      }

From the article -

      That's 24 bytes right there. Stamp semicolons
      everywhere and run it through a minifier:

      var a=1;var b=2;var c=3;

Yeah um, hate to break it to you, but a minifier (and any experienced coder) would write it as "var a=1,b=2,c=3;"

      // after minification
      if(condition){stuff()}

Wrong again. Use a better minifier. Closure advanced mode for example will remove the {}, inline functions if it makes sense and hundreds of other things.

      Easy solution: when a line starts with parenthesis,
      prepend a semicolon to it.

      ;(d + e).print()

Ugly horrible hacky advice.

I remember when I first saw C code (coming from BASIC) and thought similar thoughts - eugh what are all those useless semicolons they don't do anything what's the point of them etc.

One important point is that it allows you to rearrange the whitespace in your code, without changing the execution meaning of your code. Which is pretty useful in making your code beautiful and readable and avoiding bugs.

<comment><USER3> I don't think semicolons help your example.

        return
        {
            foo: 7
        };

still returns undefined.

<comment><USER2> And that's one of the reasons (IMHO) that bracketing style sucks.

I was really explaining why rookies will make mistakes with js. The simplest way to prevent those types of errors is to always use ; and to use { on the same line style.

<comment><USER4> I understand the curly on the same line thing can bite you in Javascript, but man I find it so much easier to read when I can match them up by line of sight on a new line, that is one of my big pet peeves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do we really want to heed advice when it's comes with obviously wrong advice like "Only people can detect and solve software bugs, not tools."

Static bug analysis is definitely not the be all and end all of software quality but definitely has a place. We automatically run FindBugs (along with unit test etc) on our code base every time new code is pushed by a developer and it definitely helps pick up quirky little errors much more cheaply than code reviews.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use semicolons, and a linter to let me know when I miss them, because IE pukes all over itself if I don't. Same with trailing commas, IE HATES those.

Article ignores reality.

<comment><USER7> I'd like to see an example of IE breaking without semi-colons. I've never seen that happen before. (I have seen the issue w/ commas though)

<comment><USER7> Why the downvote? A google search didn't turn up anything about a IE-only lack of conformance to the spec regarding semicolons.

If you've seen code that breaks only IE because of a missing semicolon, please share.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> text on there made my eyes hurt.

the basic message seems to be "don't do what everyone else is doing just because everyone else does it".

Which is great in your bedroom, but in a team with lots of eyes on your code the most efficient way is to use the same style, with that style being one that is easy to read and that avoids potential misunderstandings and bugs.

I can't imagine any situation in the sphere of development this article is about in which worrying about a couple of hundred bytes is more important than having a set of code that someone other than yourself could happily sit in front of.

<comment><USER9> Try my tool: [http://toadjaw.com/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmislav.uniqpath....](http://toadjaw.com/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmislav.uniqpath.com%2F2010%2F05%2Fsemicolons%2F)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10>
      I write semicolon-less code and,
      in my experience, there isn't a
      JavaScript interpreter that can't
      handle it.

Come visit me at work and I'll show you a few JS implementations on various set-top-boxes that will freak out if you don't use semicolons.

<comment><USER11> So in essence, the problem is still to be blamed on those specific JS implementations. Optional means optional, at which point making an implementation that demands the absence of semicolons is as bad as one explicitly requiring them, as both are breaking the set rule: _optional_.

(personally, I'm for the mandatory semicolon, to avoid mistakes)

<comment><USER10> Yep, those implementations are crappy, but they are in production and deployed in hundreds of thousands of end-user systems. The author seems to have only been testing PC web browsers, which is not the only place JS is used. This is easy to forget, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The minifier he uses seems rather bad, wonder which one it was? Ie instead of var a = 1;var b=1; it could be var a=1,b=1; Also in case of the single line if, the minifier could actually remove the brackets.

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell His comments about minification are silly. It's entirely dependent on the minifier. Google Closure on my system converts:

if(condition) stuff()

To:

condition&&stuff()

So no, it doesn't add curly brackets and increase the size of the expression. And Google closure converts:

var a=1

var b=2

var c=3

To:

var a=1,b=2,c=3

Not what he said all minifiers do.

</comment><comment><USER13> Umm, please let me restate jameskilton's position below (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1460474>):

Use semicolons or your shit wont work in IE... That's why semicolons in javascript AREN'T optional.

</comment><comment><USER14> What's wrong in using semicolons?

<comment><USER15> Nothing, they just add noise.

<comment><USER16> if a semicolon at the end of a line is noise to you, then you have bigger problems than semicolons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Simple question: Which code does preserve your lifetime? Highly optimized, less readable but really short code, or highly readable, good structured, better maintainable code? As for me, I really enjoy sharing my code with my colleagues. Maybe there are others who don't, but they always will have to work alone in the basement where light never reaches theirs pale faces (think of 'The IT Crowd', for example).

</comment><comment><USER18> Hm, if we look a little more generalized at what that says, its like:

"If theres a language/library feature with a few quirks, use it anyway, if the border cases aren't that usual."

Thats really bad advice. The main disadvantage is that no one will, if you combine a lot of such decisions, have all this border and special cases in mind, all the time.

</comment><comment><USER19> FWIW If you're using JavaScript in PhotoShop the following produces an error because there's no semicolon after the second statement:

      for(i=10;i--) { /* do stuff */ }

So maybe that's an example of a JS implementation where it differs on optional semicolons.

<comment><USER7> That doesn't work in any javascript interpreter. Semi-colons aren't optional inside the parenthesis of a for statement, according to the spec.

[http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA- ST...](http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA- ST/ECMA-262.pdf)

Section 7.9.2 (page 37)

<comment><USER19> Doh. Yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you're so desperate about semicolons, maybe you should just use CoffeeScript instead?

</comment><comment><USER21> Gotta make a plug here for CoffeeScript, in which semicolons really are optional. CoffeeScript code compiles to neat, legible JavaScript (with semicolons).

<http://coffeescript.org>

</comment><comment><USER22> I fail to see the problem with minification. The minificator can insert semicolons by itself because the algorithm for that is known and present in every JS engine. Besides, it just looks cleaner without them. Less for errors too.

</comment><comment><USER23> The way this semicolon-free syntax is implemented should be reason enough not to rely on it: if the interpreter/compiler encounters an error, it steps back, inserts a semicolon and tries again.

</comment><comment><USER24> I bet this guy thinks using tabs in source code is a bright idea too.

</comment><comment><USER25> wow, quite the rant about... um... semicolons. yeah, ok, I only skimmed. much more interesting things out there.</comment>


Why SSDs Will Not Replace HDDs. - <AUTHOR> http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/article.php/3894671

<comment><USER2> Hard drives didn't completely eliminate tape either, but they did chase it off into specialized applications where capacity was more important than speed. Flash will do the same thing to magnetic storage. Superior power consumption, form-factor, and speed will eventually push magnetic storage out of consumer devices. Most people can get by perfectly well with the SSD capacities available today, much less the drives that will be available in ten years.

<comment><USER3> Also, flash has better shock resistance than hard drives do. This is important as we have more and more on the go laptops.</comment></comment>


China alarmed by US money printing - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/6146957/China-alarmed-by-US-money-printing.html <comment><USER2> I agree with one of the commentators below the article ("B.Karn") that there always seems to be a bit of a "Clever Chinaman" undertone in these US/China articles. The Chinese do not have an enviable position; they're in serious trouble, and quite possibly in deeper trouble than the U.S.

There's some not-well-concealed racism, reminiscent of the old "Crafty Jew" banker stereotypes, in the amount of credit the Chinese get. No matter what happens, it's always part of their master plan or to their advantage, at least as it's reported breathlessly in some quarters.

It looks to me like they're screwed pretty badly, that they bet on the same sort of endless growth that burned everyone else, and their economic advice is the equivalent of the guy in the low-lying end of the boat giving suggestions on how everyone might bail faster.

<comment><USER3> It's probably less of racism and more of narrative fallacy - people just like to think there is some sort of a plan and a story to go with it.

But it's a keen observation.

<comment><USER4> Yes, and the more secrecy there is the more everything appears to be part of a grand plan.

Another such fallacy is to always assume that what happens is the result of a successful plan, when it's most probably the result of many conflicting plans with variying degrees of success plus a lot of randomness mixed in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> nick-dap A couple of weeks ago a friend pointed me to a blog entry about the coming inflation since the Fed supposedly printed vast quantities of new money. The blog entry felt very religious in proving someone defined as "deflationists" wrong, so I didn't think much of it.

I am very much interested in open government data so I wondered how much of the financial data is actually available from the Fed in its raw form.

It started as me wondering how full of shit this guys is and turned into five to six hours of trying to understand the raw data that is readily available from the Fed online. Their website is surprisingly good.

What I saw did not make me happy. The Feds actions resulted in an EXPONENTIAL increase in monetary base of our economy: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_base> Note that all I did is plot the numbers that the Fed supplies: <http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/2792/44768686.png>

It seems that all those "bad mortgages" that the Fed bought were not bought with "debt." The Fed bought them with freshly printed bills. Go on the Fed's website and download the data for yourself, don't take my word for it. Regardless, I dismissed my findings as "I don't actually know what I'm doing" and forgot about it.

This article however is absolutely in line with what I saw happening from the raw economic data, so it makes me wonder. We _did_ print exponentially more money than we have ever done before. Look <http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/2792/44768686.png> The Fed literally DOUBLED the amount of money in our monetary base in a matter of months. I can't imagine the Fed being able to take that much money out of circulation in nothing less than years. I also can't image how that could not be a very bad thing.

Another thing that I saw is a rather sharp increase in how much banks are keeping in reserves since the Fed now guarantees interest on reserves. [http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary/2008...](http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary/20081006a.htm)

All this money in reserves has nowhere to go but into the economy once banks start spending it. It also pisses me off that our banks were essentially given a lot of money (when you see a doubling of money in the economy, thats a lot) for them to sit on and for us to pay interest on it!

I am failing to understand the Feds plan. Can anyone enlighten me or is it really this simple?

<comment><USER4> I think the concern is justified. However, considering Japan during the 90s and the Great Depression makes deflation appear much more dangerous and persistent than inflation because no one knows how to fight it once it's become entrenched.

We know how to fight inflation. Interest rates can be raised without limit. They cannot fall without limit. The Fed can sell the bonds they are now buying back into the market and thus reduce money supply.

And you need to consider two other facts. First, the monetary base you plotted is just a small fraction of overall money supply (M1, M2, M3). Other parts of the money supply are growing as well but not as fast. Second, money that isn't used has no effect on inflation. The speed of circulation is sharply reduced in recessionary times and that's why the amount of money has to be sharply increased to counteract that potential deflationary spiral.

The line you want to plot is the amount of all monies (the Ms) normalized over the speed of circulation. That line is flat to falling, but it's true that there is a potential for a sharp rise down the road.

Inflation is very likely in say two years time. It's very difficult, politically, to raise interest rates while unemployment is still high. And inflating debt away is rather convenient for a heavily indebted nation like the US as well.

<comment><USER5> The Fed has made politically difficult decisions in the past. During the 80's, they kept interest rates high, despite the massive unemployment.

<comment><USER6> They certainly did not make politically difficult decisions over the last decade, which would have been to cool off the growth. They generally only make these difficult decisions in hard times, not good times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As we continue de-valuing the dollar, China and other investors will convert their assets (cash being diluted by the fed) to physical assets and ownership equity (real estate and stocks). It's in their interest, and we provide the money management services to handle-hold them through it. This is not alarmist, but the US will be somewhat different with significant ownership by Chinese investors (in addition to the existing Dutch, Japanese, Saudi investors).

<comment><USER8> isn't this what they said about japan in the 80's? I mean, I'm not saying you are wrong, but I'm just saying that last time this happened we ended up buying our stuff back for pennies on the dollar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The chinese are planning way ahead, think decades.

Inflation != rising prices

Inflation = Increase in the money supply

Inflation HAS already happened, now the symptoms will start to accelerate.

Hyperinflation is always a monetary event, not an economic event.

Fiat currency is based on confidence in the government among other things.

Gold is a bet against the government.

<comment><USER10> China has some of the world's largest reserves of USD. It seems their bet is on the US government.</comment></comment>


Make your own sourdough - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hendricius/the-bread-code/blob/master/basics/sourdough.md <comment><USER2> On the topic of bread for a moment: I recently started making my own bread. I bought a book on the topic by Ken Forkish "Flour water salt yeast", and I've fallen in love with the process.

The recipes are great, but the first few chapters that cover his journey to making bread, a bit of the science behind it and talking about the less scientific components of what almost sounds like "luck" (Really, just super detailed experimentation and careful repetition once you get the variables right) in the process of getting the perfect rise.

I've got to admit, i'm not a big reader, but there is something about the way Ken put this book together that I really enjoy. Maybe it's that he worked for IBM before becoming a baker and we both think like technical individuals? Maybe it's just good writing and I need to experience more of it? Whatever it is, I'd encourage you to buy the book...i've got no skin in the game, but bread making is great and his methods are slow but fun (My first bread took 18 hours to go through the whole process).

<comment><USER3> Second "Flour Water Salt Yeast". I've been baking bread for a few years now following his techniques with great success. He also has a 2nd book called "The Elements of Pizza" that I highly recommend.

I had a similar experience when starting. The process seemed time consuming and complicated, but now I can bake a couple loaves any day of the week with a small amount of planning and little effort/thought.

In both books he provides techniques and recipes for being able to start baking bread and pizzas with little or no upfront investment (some containers, a couple bannetons for bread and a peel + stone for pizzas). The best part of the process is experimenting with your own recipes. Here's a couple shots of some recent loaves and pizzas I've baked recently:

[https://i.imgur.com/0cKI4ad.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/0cKI4ad.jpg)

[https://i.imgur.com/iMkzJJB.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/iMkzJJB.jpg)

[https://i.imgur.com/ZEIlGy9.png](https://i.imgur.com/ZEIlGy9.png)

[https://i.imgur.com/gr0qO2t.png](https://i.imgur.com/gr0qO2t.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> I would suggest to score the bread in the middle before baking. That way you will have a higher rise in the oven.

I did an experiment here: [https://www.instagram.com/p/BhERhlnDgdQ](https://www.instagram.com/p/BhERhlnDgdQ)

Basically it's like cracks in the surface. At an angle the rise can be much higher.

<comment><USER3> Forkish suggests not scoring your bread. From what I understand it can be somewhat of a contentious issue in the bread-baking community.

I've experimented with scoring with mixed results, although I'll admit I don't have the right tool for it and my technique may not have been correct.

<comment><USER4> A community is basically defined as a group of people squabbling about something that outsiders find laughable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Recipe is fine for sure, and I was doing this for a long time, but some time ago I have learned superior way of keeping sourdough.

The oft cited recipe asks for feeding it every day and also keeping something like 100% hydration. Remembering to feed it every day is a major hassle for me.

My sourdough is a piece of bread dough that is enough to use for my next batch. Basically, after first rise and before I shape my bread, I will cut something between 50-200g of dough, put it in a glass container with a small hole for air circulation and store it in the fridge. I will not feed the starter. Next time I make bread I will take it out of the fridge and mix it with measured amount of warm water that is going to be used for the bread.

Advantages:

\- no separate feeding, you cut a piece of bread, and you use it as part of next one,

\- hydration and salt level matches your bread recipe which means you can add way more or less starter and the bread will still have the same hydration and salt level,

\- the hydration and salt level makes it stable in a fridge for a very long time, I have tested up to 3 weeks with no ill effects and I decided not to stretch it any more. I was only able to keep the traditional 100% hydration no-salt starter for only about a week or risk it spoiling.

I also use a spreadsheet to aid calculations (I plan to make android app but I somehow never have time to finish it): [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lSBl3kjAeitBUH75DEIR...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lSBl3kjAeitBUH75DEIRM95ZX94Tgk- miApmWdpHfUA/edit?usp=sharing)

<comment><USER6> I've got a lazier option. Get some starter, add 70g of flour, 100g water and leave it overnight. Then stick it in the fridge and use it like you'd use a very slow working shop bought yeast (and maybe 20g at a time). Don't feed it till it gets low. Treat it mean, any more effort on it is wasted. Mine's coming up on 10 years old now and is just fine. I accidentally put it in the freezer and lost it for a month, I think it improved it.

<comment><USER7> Even lazier option - go ask for some starter from a bakery.

<comment><USER8> Laziest option - buy bread from the bakery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had a starter for several years that was descended from the one kept by Dick Proenekke [1]. He lived alone in a cabin that he built himself--by hand--deep in the Alaskan bush. He made sourdough pancakes daily and his original starter came from a friend of his back in town. Someone related to this person sells the starter (on a wooden spoon) that you can buy [2] and use to create your own descendant.

There's a fascinating PBS documentary on him that you can watch on YouTube, if you're interested: [3]

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Proenneke](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Proenneke)

[2] [http://richardproenneke.com/heirloom_sourdough_starter_spoon](http://richardproenneke.com/heirloom_sourdough_starter_spoon)

[3] [https://youtu.be/iYJKd0rkKss](https://youtu.be/iYJKd0rkKss)

<comment><USER10> Correct me if I'm wrong but if you get sourdough made at some other place after couple of weeks your local culture will take over thus sourdough will loose that other place uniqueness so to speak. But I'm not an expert just something I remember when I was interested in sourdough and pizza making.

<comment><USER5> You are correct. Your method of keeping the starter will over time select the culture that is best suited for your method of keeping, from available gene pool.

<comment><USER11> Reminds me of a story I heard of a beer brand (forgot which one) that opened a new factory which was heavily modernised, but decided to take the wooden roof from the old one and install it above the copper kettles in the new location to make sure the environmental bacterial cultures would remain the same to keep their "flavour identity"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you live in Denmark, the Meyers bakeries will give you free starter, just bring a container:

[https://www.meyersmad.dk/om-meyers/meyers- virksomheder/meyer...](https://www.meyersmad.dk/om-meyers/meyers- virksomheder/meyers-bageri/)

<comment><USER13> Same everywhere where there's artisan bread-making. Just ask if they have some and they'll gladly gift it to you or tell you when to come back.

<comment><USER14> I started sour-doughing last fall (My wife liked it better than my brewing hobby since it took shorter chunks of time and she liked the final product).

My local bakery actually _wouldn 't_ give or sell me a starter because, and I quote, "I'd feel bad selling something like that, and it's too easy to start yourself".

He then gave me instructions for starting the starter myself.

It's been fun, and way less fussy than the internet likes to make it out to be. Except this page. Y'all seem to have the same abusive relationship to your starters as I do,.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> while this is an excellent introduction to creating a sourdough _starter_ this doesnt cover oven temperatures, bulk ferment, shaping, or the obvious use of a banneton for final rise. There is every possibility you'll be able to create this starter and still end up with a pancake.

The final picture in the link is absurd. The crumb is too wet to do much more than gum up a bread knife and the crust is undefined. in the first picture, the crust is underdeveloped suggesting low oven temperatures or a cold kitchen.

Id like to clarify this recipe by adding the following:

80% hydration of the loaf if you're making a rustic/boule and to promote proper gas development in the gluten structure. 65% for sandwich sourdough loaves formed in a pan (and a prayer).

450F oven temp for 45 minutes.

12 hour rest after cooking to allow gluten to properly finalize.

1.8% salt in accordance with the EU health commission recommendations for salt content of artisan breads.

remember to subtract your preferment hydration from the total fermentation. that is, if you start with a 100% hydrated 200g starter, then 100g of water must be deleted from your 80% final hydration.

if you dont have the patience for sourdough --and frankly a commercial steam proofer-- then 1-2% yeast by weight is the general recommendation for white bread. If you've never baked before, sourdough is enough to turn you off to the idea of anything but store bought. it is not as easy as this post makes it seem.

<comment><USER16> Just to make sure we're clear on this, since I'm relatively new to breadmaking and have so far only followed exact recipes... 80% hydration refers to mass ratios, correct? 80% hydration = 100g flour to 80g water?

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I find it funny that this is post is popular because the title includes "an engineers guide." As a hobbyist bread and pizza maker there are so many amazing resources across pizzamaking.com, YouTube and reddit that have years of community input I'm almost insulted that this is more popular.

<comment><USER18> It's not a great "engineer's guide" though.

My main issue at a glance is it's too linear "Day 7 Add another round of ingredients. Day 8 You are done".

it doesn't work that predictably. You have to describe the outcome you're waiting for, it might happen on an earlier day or later. For SW engineers, it's a "while (!ready())" loop, not a "for (day in 1..8)" loop.

Maybe it worked that way once for the OP. But it will vary. For SW engineers, this is a "works on my machine" type issue.

<comment><USER19> Yes! I'd been baking all my own bread for years but had repeatedly failed to cultivate a sourdough starter despite following lots of guides to the letter. I finally got mine living nicely when I completely let go, stopped measuring and worrying, just learned to smell and watch. I pour flour in straight from the bag and splash water from a big container, as long as the consistency is somewhere between thin mud and thick mud it can work (I think heavily chlorinated water makes it very difficult though). I have no fridge in summer and little-to-no heating in winter, my starter just sits on a shelf at various temperatures... if I don't use/feed it for a while it needs a couple of days of feeding to get busy again. Even when it's not very lively I still make dough, it just takes longer to rise (and the taste/sourness might vary). I've not bought commercial yeast for a year now, all my bread is sourdough. Flour, water, salt, those are all my bread contains...well, those and billions of tiny fungi and bacteria.

I feel like once flour was invented sourdough was inevitable. Adding water to ground up grain is an obvious move as it binds it and makes it easier to work with. At some point a flour/water mix is going to be left standing and start bubbling, and when cooked it's going to get magically bigger. Boom, bread.

I enjoyed the post, always glad to see anything bread related. Baking bread has been a huge positive thing in my life, I'll never stop now (I was even without an oven for a year and learned to bake bread in a cast iron pot on a gas burner/hob). It's a rich sensory experience with all the smells and textures, and working dough is very grounding and 'real'. Every loaf is different and it's great fun waiting to see what's going to come out of the oven. I'd massively recommend getting into bread!

<comment><USER18> I would _strongly_ recommend getting a digital kitchen scale (cost is under $30) and measuring water and flour in repeatable weights. A volume of flour is just not a consistent weight - it can be packed loose or tight.

<comment><USER20> That's very relevant for the bread-making process.

For starter feeding, though, I'm with the GP post: measuring all the time is a PIA, and totally unnecessary. The margin of error is massive, after a few measures you'll know the consistency to aim for, and if you're too stiff/wet it's dead simple to compensate when baking.

Feeding by texture lets you get to know your starter better, follow its rhythms, and makes daily feedings a very easy habit to maintain. We've been pulling this off for 5,000 years without a digital scale :)

<comment><USER21> I think one of the biggest culture divides in baking is the "I love baking, it is so scientific and exact" crowd versus the "Everything makes bread!" crowd.

I personally use the big measurements (flour, water, etc) as a rough guide so that I'm in the right ballpark on consistency and don't need to add too much one way or the other to get it right, and usually ignore the smaller measurements entirely (salt, baking soda, cinnamon, vanilla ...) and pour what looks like an appropriate amount in my hand before dumping it in the mix. Fewer dishes to wash that way :-)

<comment><USER18> > so that I'm in the right ballpark on consistency

You can get lack of consistency with an accurate scale, just always experiment, e.g. vary a weight. That way you know what you did also get _repeatability_ if you like the result.

> entirely (salt, baking soda, cinnamon, vanilla ...)

Sourdough bread famously has only 4 ingredients: flour, water, salt, yeast (starter). Though that's not the whole story, there is also seeds, and more than one kind of flour sometimes.

> pour what looks like an appropriate amount in my hand before dumping it in > the mix. Fewer dishes to wash that way :-)

Measuring by weight is exactly the same, the mixing bowl is on the scale. pour in until the right weight is reached.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A couple left academia to pursue their passion for cultures and turned their treasures into a market:

[http://www.sourdo.com](http://www.sourdo.com)

Apparently they run into some sticky situations carrying dried yellowish brown powder around in aluminum foil. In Saudi Arabia they were detained at the airport for hours while authorities verified that the sketchy powder was in fact mostly harmless yeast.

<comment><USER23> Mostly?

<comment><USER24> Presumably the remainder was harmless non-yeast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Would this have appeared here is it wasn't hosted on github?

Don't get me wrong, I am quite interested in fermentation (I make my own sauerkraut for probiotics), but it seems strange for it to appear at number one on the front page of HN.

<comment><USER26> From the README:

>Learn how to master the art of baking the programmer way. If you love programming, you will also enjoy breaking some bread. A/B test, iterate and ultimately become a self taught baker. This repo is dedicated to becoming your bread manifesto with useful tricks and hacks. Furthermore the goal is to illustrate how easy making bread is and that you can get started today without expensive tools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I suggest starting with fresh ground rye flour as it has more yeast on the berries surface. If you can't grind it fresh yourself from rye berries, then purchase something reasonably fresh like Bob's Red Mill. I consistently get a new starter up and running in 4 days, after the fourth day I mix in other (wheat) flour.

Second suggestion is to start with a smaller amount (say 15 grams) and feed double whatever you have with each feeding (equal parts by weight flour and water). Throw out some starter when the feedings get too much (remember you're doubling each time).

The water should be left to dechlorinate in an open container overnight. I have a pitcher with a cloth over it that I keep on a shelf for feedings and making bread.

White flour and lower temperatures will slow down your starter activity (useful at times). Whole grain flours and warmer temps will speed up your starter activity.

</comment><comment><USER28> I've been getting into baking bread lately, so it's very cool to see an article like this on HN.

That said, if you're new to baking, I wouldn't recommend this as a starting point unless you strongly prefer sourdough to other breads. Sourdough is trickier, and this recipe is quite minimalist: lots of ingredient ratios and timings should actually vary with your ingredients, equipment and supposedly even atmospheric conditions.

I'd recommend one of two loaves for fellow newbies: a bloomer or soda bread.

The bloomer requires more effort and time, and is a fun way to try out all the basics of baking: kneading, yeast, proving, shaping. It'll give you a loaf like the kind you're probably familiar with, albeit at a higher quality than supermarket bread.

Soda bread is very easy to get good results from and very fast to bake. It doesn't require kneading, and doesn't use yeast -- instead using bicarbonate of soda and buttermilk. You can substitute buttermilk with anything milky and acidic; I use soy milk mixed with lemon juice. This is a great way to get quality bread with minimal effort, and you can make it sweet or savoury according to your preferences.

I'll post some recipes later...

Edit: recipes in my reply to this comment.

<comment><USER28> These Paul Hollywood recipes are a pretty good starting point. They don't mention the buttermilk trick, but it's easy enough: squeeze half a lemon into your milk.

The nice thing with Hollywood's bloomer recipe is that lots of people have tried it, and share tips for debugging problems you may encounter.

Bloomer: [https://www.bbc.com/food/recipes/paul_hollywoods_bloomer_846...](https://www.bbc.com/food/recipes/paul_hollywoods_bloomer_84636)

Soda bread: [https://www.bbc.com/food/recipes/soda_bread_24837](https://www.bbc.com/food/recipes/soda_bread_24837)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hey, how do I clone source code? All I get are some Markdown files :( I'd like to compile and execute it quickly as I am hungry! Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> You can also speed up the process and have your bread ready in 1 hour. You just have to kneed the dough way more. When I have guests I use my machine to kneed the dough.

<comment><USER29> Where can I get a dough coprocessor? Can't see any on eBay :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My wife has kept a sourdough starter going for almost 3 years now, including us being gone for 3 weeks - Fridge slows down/temporarily stops the process.

The extra that gets taken out each night during a feeding is now used to make sourdough pancakes - Refrigerate then warm up when hungry.

I do not see baking temps mentioned, she uses cast iron dutch ovens with lids, something like 15 minutes at 500 degrees, lid on, 15 minutes at 450 degrees lid off, then another 30 or so minutes lid off at 400 degrees. Definitely scored.

She is not available right now to correct me, so be careful if using these steps. Many recipes vary, here is one that is close to what I vaguely remember: [http://www.bakersandbest.com/2012/06/10/sourdough-so- simple-...](http://www.bakersandbest.com/2012/06/10/sourdough-so-simple-a- spartan-could-make-it/)

And she will use no other flour, just King Arthur Bread Flour. Although once in a while she does mix in other types of King Arthur flour, such as Whole Wheat or Rye.

YMMV

Edit: She corrected me: 20 minutes at 500 degrees lid on, 10 minutes at 450 degrees lid on, 15 minutes at 450 degrees lid off. And she said the rising will break the bread unless scored (giving the rise a semi-controlled path).

When I see the biga being made, I know the next day is folding, and the following day the house is going to smell wonderful. :)

</comment><comment><USER31> "As a baker it is your job to ensure that [the yeast and bacteria] feel happy and enjoy their home."

... until you impose hell upon them in the form of an oven. That is one awkward "light-hearted" sentence.

</comment><comment><USER32> As a German, I appreciate this. I don't like the idea of nations, but in cultural terms, bread is one of the best innovations in this country. I always miss high quality bread when going to the US.

<comment><USER18> It seems like places like the US and UK have swung between extremes: first a long period when beer was nothing but bland macrobrew: Bud light, Heineken etc, and then a growing counter-movement of artisanal craft beer.

Same with bread, Artisanal Craft Sourdough bread is a thing now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> "If you don't feed your mother dough it will starve eventually as it has no more food." I read this out of context with hilarious interpretation.

</comment><comment><USER34> Being a programmer who recently started making sourdough, this is nice to see. But I have to admit that I clicked because I saw Github + sourdough and thought that someone had coded an app to help you track weights and timing!

</comment><comment><USER35> My mom's been baking sourdough bread once a week since I can remember. We've been a family of 6 killing at least a whole leaf a day. The awesome thing about sourdough bread compared to yeast or yeast/sourdough based mixtures is the ability to stay fresh for way longer. The neighbors would show up and ask for a piece of the mother dough for their occasional bread-baking experiments. While studying I really missed 'proper' bread - especially during my time living abroad. I've been baking my own bread ever since, too :)

</comment><comment><USER36> Nice guide.

I have tried a couple of sourdoughs but mine nearly always end up with a lot of alcohol (acetone smell, bitter liquid). As OA says, you can just scrape the liquid off the top and feed the sourdough to refresh it, but then the bread I bake has a slight acetoney taste.

Suggestion: add a description of the sourdough after each day so people have a rough idea if their sourdough is growing. The photo helps - you get a lot of bubbles after around day 3 or 4 and the volume doubles.

<comment><USER20> Fermentation goes through four phases, roughly paraphrased into: wheatey, champagne, alcohol, vomit.

You're describing a starter that is too 'old'. Very 'young' starters have little flavour, and then get sweet and honey-like before getting souuuuuur. Personally I'd recommend just leaving it on the counter and going to a 24 hour or 12 hour feeding schedule.

Flavour: you can absolutely scrape the bad stuff off the top and feed the starter _to keep it alive_. But if you're going to bake, remember that you're blending out the original product... If you start with some 'alcohol' or 'vomit' and mix out half, bread made the next day will be 33% bad-stuff. You want to mix out for say a week or so to get back to mostly tastey happy stuff.

Also: not sure if this applies, but in general making a mature starter is a 5 week process from scratch. Bubbles in the first few days are generally bad bacteria dying in the container you're using... You can still bake with it, but keep going for a week and a half and see what kind of lovely smells start coming :)

<comment><USER37> > If you start with some 'alcohol' or 'vomit'

I've always heard it called 'hooch', which I find really charming for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I started making sourdough out of law school back in the late 90's when I got Nancy Silverton's book on the topic (La Brea Bakery Founder). I baked bread back then, but found it too exacting and inconsistent. I began again years later after starting a family and almost every weekend we make the amazing sourdough pancakes and waffles in Silverton's book. We maintain a starter that's 60% water and 40% flour by weight. It stays in the fridge during the week. We pull it out Friday morning, feed it midday and night and it's ready to go in the morning a repeat for Sunday. Then it gets a small feeding and goes back in the fridge. It can stay there for up to a few weeks. The pancakes are excellent and light I believe because the yeast digests much of the flour. You don't have that heavy feeling after eating them. The waffles are the best I've had anywhere. I have a one-page spreadsheet that has the feeding recipe and schedule for various batch sizes and the recipes for the waffles and pancakes if anyone is interested. We also make kefir soda from water kefir grains, which is really good. Naturally carbonated soda that's not too sweet and is probiotic.

</comment><comment><USER39> > Learn how to master the art of baking the programmer way. If you love > programming, you will also enjoy breaking some bread.

As a hobbyist sourdough baker and professional software engineer I definitely think there is some truth to this.

For me bread baking is a great complementary pursuit to programming. It is entirely manual and rooted in the physical world, which makes it a great way to "unplug" and decompress. But it also requires a similar type of analytical skills and problem solving mindset that developers tend to have.

If you are interested in getting into baking sourdough I would highly recommend this blog as a resource:

[https://www.theperfectloaf.com](https://www.theperfectloaf.com)

The tutorials and recipes are very beginner-friendly and have tons of hi-res photos. I own about 6 books on bread baking but would say this site is probably a better overall resource for a beginner. Interestingly, the author of the site is himself also a software engineer. It definitely shows through in the precision of his recipes :)

</comment><comment><USER40> Off on a tangent here but if your ever in Toronto, Canada and you like bread, visit Dimpflmeier [http://www.dimpflmeierbakery.com/](http://www.dimpflmeierbakery.com/) or Future Bakery [https://www.futurebakery.com/](https://www.futurebakery.com/) down the street. Both are Factory Bakeries open to the public and make some of the best Sourdough Rye and bread I've ever had.

Wish we had something like this in TX...

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm surprised no one mentioned Alton Brown:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqxkMqsEQI0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqxkMqsEQI0)

</comment><comment><USER42> If anyone is looking for frugal yet meaningful gifts for Christmas, etc, I found great success by making gifts of my sourdough starter to some close friends and family. Some time beforehand, I started to split up and increase the amount of starter I was growing, then printed little laminated labels with instructions for feeding the starter (and an example recommended bread recipe that was easy to make), and attached it to the mason jars in which I was storing the starter.

</comment><comment><USER43> I love this geek / hobbist way to approach cooking. Do you know any other books / websites / youtube channels with the same format?

I enjoy watching French Guy Cooking [1] (he even has a video series about making your own bread which is quite good) but never found other sources with the same format.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/user/FrenchGuyCooking/featured](https://www.youtube.com/user/FrenchGuyCooking/featured)

<comment><USER44> The modernist cuisine books might be up your street then.

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=modernist+cuisi...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=modernist+cuisine&tag=hydrukspg-21&index=aps&hvadid=186577499467&hvpos=1t1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13455683551674071624&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=e&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9045886&hvtargid=kwd-20138705597&ref=pd_sl_1g5h4lz830_e)

<comment><USER45> He has now also written books about bread! [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Modernist-Bread-Art-Science- Cuisine...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Modernist-Bread-Art-Science- Cuisine/dp/0982761058/ref=la_B003TG79GU_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524931038&sr=1-1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Not unrelated, yeast came from China apparently:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0030-5](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0030-5)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/yeast- se...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/yeast-sequencing- china/557930/)

</comment><comment><USER47> I am afraid your sourdough in the pictures is a bit unconventional. It did not raise as much I expected. Did you use a Dutch oven?

Also some useful links:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Breadit/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Breadit/)

[https://youtu.be/yg5nLQVg4VY](https://youtu.be/yg5nLQVg4VY)

</comment><comment><USER48> Get some starter for the price of a stamp: [http://carlsfriends.net/source.html](http://carlsfriends.net/source.html)

Or choose from many others for sale: [http://www.sourdo.com/our-sourdough- cultures-2/](http://www.sourdo.com/our-sourdough-cultures-2/)

<comment><AUTHOR> You can also go to many local bakeries. Here in Germany the are happy to give you some starter for free. But I still think making your own one is so easy, it's 14 minutes of time over a week.

<comment><USER48> 100% agree. Among my favorite things was growing a starter from scratch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> If you're looking for some more guidance on how to bake the loaf itself, I've been making bread in the following way several times a week for most of the last seven years, and it is easily adapted to sourdough: [http://mackerron.com/bread](http://mackerron.com/bread)

</comment><comment><USER50> Nice article, thanks. Losing your starter can be painful as it takes at least a week to build a new one. So it's good to have a backup; build a bit extra then freeze it. Should you lose your starter, you can defrost the backup and carry on right away. Especially handy if you go on holiday or can't bake for a few weeks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wouldn't freezing kill the bacteria and yeast?

<comment><USER51> It's pretty hardy and goes dormant. You only need a few alive to grow a healthy starter back when you need it again, so every now and then I make an extra amount, mix in a little more flour than normal, spread it in blobs on an aluminium foil-covered baking tray and stick the whole thing in the freezer. After a few hours I come back, pop them off the foil and into a freezer bag.

When reviving, I try to use two blobs from two separate bags just in case one has died. I put them in tepid water for a bit, then add flour and mix and I'm back in business.

My starter was given to me by Dan Lepard[1] (the end-boss of breadmaking) during a sourdough masterclass that I was given as a present. I thoroughly recommend this as a present if you have a friend or loved one who is interested in making bread btw. It's fantastic and you get payback in tasty loaves for many years.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Lepard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Lepard)

<comment><USER52> If it's just a few weeks, I've found the fridge to be fine. It will take a couple of feeds over 48h to re-activate completely, but it's otherwise ok.

If you start from scratch, you can get going in 3/4 days if you're willing to throw in a bit of honey or maple syrup at first (1tsp). Without it, it does seem to take a week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> How about that 122 year old sour dough starter mentioned in the recipe! The starter has been passed between multiple families and across generations.

Is anyone familiar with starter? Would a unique flavor or anything like that carry with the bread all those years?

</comment><comment><USER54> I'm still trying to figure out how did something edible grabbed such attention on HN??

</comment><comment><USER55> Excellent article!

We've been baking sourdough bread at home for about a year now. When the starter is done, baking bread is a lot less work than when using yeast. The work is spread over a few days but there are no laborious processes involved.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. This strategy has been used by people since we first invented bread. I always think we should use it, it's ready for the taking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Anyone that's interested in this and looking for a good short fiction read, pick up Sourdough by Robin Sloan. It's a fun little tale set in the Bay Area about someone who picks up bread making as a hobby and things get weird.

</comment><comment><USER57> Have to mention [http://www.sourdo.com](http://www.sourdo.com)

You can get cultures from all over the world.

But it's also worth trying to start your own from scratch. As a complete noob I had some great success.

</comment><comment><USER58> My brain seems to recall you want to keep your sourdough for 2 weeks before using it, to make sure there are no harmful strains left in your culture. But I cannot find the resource atm.

</comment><comment><USER59> Wait, wait... there's no salt in the sourdough?

<comment> cup-of-tea No mention of salt in whole page. That is a huge omission. It's not even bread without salt. If you follow this recipe it will taste awful. Use salt if you want your bread to be like bakery bread. And there is no "salt to taste" in baking. 10g per 500g of flour is a good start but the point you add it is important so check a proper recipe.

<comment><AUTHOR> No salt at all in the sour dough. When baking you will add salt. I like around 2%. But in the mother sour dough you do not want any salt. This link is only about how to get your actual mother sour dough, not baking! That's still TODO and will follow up later.

Edit:

2% of the flour's weight in salt. Let's say you bake 700 grams of flour (500 grams flour, 200 grams sour dough) then you would add 14 grams of salt. Note please that this is my personal preference. It could be you prefer more or less salt.

<comment><USER60> 2% bp not total weight. Should probably clarify since this isn't a baking audience

<comment><USER61> > 2% bp not total weight.

Where bp stands for... what?

> Should probably clarify since this isn't a baking audience.

Yes please.

<comment><USER62> bp => Baker's Percentage [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_percentage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_percentage)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Been thinking about an automatic machine to make bread this way. Everything you need is flour, water and power if you have the machine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but it is really to to have one machine to rule them all. It also depends on each flour you are using. The machine would work better in some countries than others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Cooking/Making bread is fun like coding, except that its tastier and will still bake if you make tiny mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER65> For those in the US which flour do you typically use?

Anyone had any success with whole wheat sourdough, and is so with which flour?

</comment><comment><USER66> Nicely done, excellent pictures.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I usually do the baking, my fiancee does the pictures :D. I love to bake and a/b test the different doughs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Good Amount of Alcohol - What Quantity are we talking about here?

</comment><comment><USER68> Tempted to file a bug report that simply reads, "Bacteria".

</comment><comment> cup-of-tea Baking is a surprisingly geeky thing to do. While cooking is more about knowing your ingredients and tasting as you go, baking absolutely requires strict adherence to a recipe.

I can't actually remember why I started baking bread. But when I first started the product was horrible. I would let the dough rise in a warm place and "make it big" as quickly as possible. For me the rising was just about CO_2 so it made sense. It took me a long time to realise that time is a crucial ingredient. You want the rise to take more time, not less. The difference is astonishing.

I never had much luck with sourdough but I actually prefer the taste of "fresh" bread anyway in the French style. Sourdough is in fashion right now but don't think using cultured yeast gives an inferior product!

<comment><USER69> >baking absolutely requires strict adherence to a recipe

nonsense every recipe you know of started life as some cook mixing crap until "it seemed alright" before putting it in a an oven they gauged by hand, eye, or by how long it took to cook some sacrificial dough/food. then eyeballing the bread for when it was done.

Bread is especially forgiving, but this holds true for basically all baking too. Even as goddamned finicky as filo or puff pastry can be, they still come down to "yeah thats about right" far more than they do strict anything.

<comment><USER70> All that eyeballing and intuition comes from experience, though, which is experimentation and learning. That's a pretty geeky process in its own right. And if you're in a commercial bakery, the process is down to a science, with exact weights and temperatures and times. You can also do that at home, and if you do, the results do come out better (or at least more consistent).

Bread has this nice property of being both forgiving and playful, as well as highly optimizable with experimentation. Nice combo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I make this often to make żurek--a Polish soup.

Basically, instead of putting it into bread you add it to a broth with sausages, bring it to a boil for two minutes or until it gets dense, and it's ready.

One of my favorite.</comment>