Is It Better to Be Poor in Bangladesh or the Mississippi Delta? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/angus-deaton-qa/518880/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I was born in an African village, literally in a mud hut. I spent the first 9 years of my life in a village. The town I grew up in wasn't far from the village so I spent holidays in the village too. I now work in IT and try keep up with the latest frameworks. That is I am not concerned with starving to death and I have health insurance.

If I compare my upbringing with my daughter's, there is nothing to compare. We walked around barefoot, unsupervised, climbed trees, ate wild fruit, made spears from wood and once you were four you had to take your two year old sibling with you and look after them. There were no nannies. Here is the interesting thing, none of us ever had to see an occupational therapist to help us with our hand eye co-ordination. Falling out of a tree was enough incentive to figure it out on your own. I digress, the point I am trying to make is that I remember my childhood as a happy time. Full of activity and adventure. I would have been classified as poor because I we slept on the floor, shared blankets as kids. Kids ate from the same plate, grouped roughly by age group. No toys except ones we made ourselves.

I am not advocating returning to the village. Running water and healthcare are good things. I often wonder about who is better off, me in town with access to water and health but with all manner of rates and taxes and social pressures?

Edit: typos

<comment><USER3> Funny (ironic?) thing is that each incremental advance in civilization may be a good thing in isolation and, given the choice between adding benefit X to their existing situation or not, most people would choose adding benefit X without hesitation.

And yet, somehow the sum of hundreds of such benefits (secure food, healthcare, fire departments, internet) doesn't lead to a significant increase in average happiness. In fact it may be that we in the west are less happy than people living in stone age societies.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if it's because of the kinds of stress people in western societies deal with. Humans have always had to deal with stress, but the modern world seems to have more "intangible" kinds of stress. It's one thing to be stressed about being in danger from a predator. The stress drives you to action, and you either survive or don't. But the kinds of stress people deal with now is somehow different. Most of the time, the things you're stressed about won't kill you, but the stress won't go away either. Worrying about money to pay rent, etc. The stress drives people to make enough money to make this month's rent, but that same stress will constantly be there, because of next month's rent.

I dunno if this makes any sense, just something that popped into my head.

<comment><USER5> I think you hit the nail right on the head. I believe there has been research with rats on this type of thing (sorry I don't remember the name of the study). The sort of 'ambiguous' stress of modern life is much harder on the body/mind than say, being chased by a tiger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I noticed when traveling through Central America, that while extreme poverty is everywhere, homelessness seems to be quite rare (with the caveat that I didn't spend much time in the capital cities, so the situation there may be different).

I think there are two reasons for it:

1) People don't seem to be as mobile, in general, and you'll find 3 generations of family living very close to each other quite often. I was hanging out with a local in Leon, Nicaragua and met like a dozen of her family members walking around a couple of blocks. People who are having hard times seem to just take up with family. We found one drunk lying on the side of the road, and she insisted we stop and find out what was wrong with him and take him back to his family. I had barely registered that he was there.

2) There don't seem to be as many zoning or construction safety laws, so building a shelter by yourself with almost no money seems to be quite easy. It might be a shack on the side of the road with no water or electricity, but it's better than sleeping on the street.

I was also struck by how jovial even people with very little seemed to be. Like having cable tv, food, friends and family was enough for people to be satisfied with where they are with life. They also seemed relatively fatalistic about health and safety issues. When you don't really have any expectation that someone is looking out for you, the idea that you could die from an accident or sickness any day doesn't seem to be that unlikely. People there in general just seem to take it in stride. I guess you have to if you want to get out of bed in the morning.

I think it made me realize that loneliness might be worse than poverty, and that the lack of social support for poor people in the us is worse than the lack of money. We could do more for people by creating social connections than we could be just giving them a check. I don't really know what the answer is there. I don't think it's a problem at either the market or government can solve.

<comment><USER6> Just want to be clear that I don't want to paint to rosy a picture of what poverty looks like in Central America. It's not uncommon to see a single mom with a family of three or more kids living in a tin shack with a dirt floor. It's fucking heartbreaking to see. And you know that you could spend a few hundred bucks and help change their lives, but there are a billion more people just like them in the world. We in the west have no idea how good we have it. It's really hard to understand how the rest of the world lives unless you see it directly.

Even just watching a documentary doesn't really capture the scale of it like spending three months traveling from town to town and seeing nothing but abject poverty every where you go. You really do get an understanding of why people risk their lives to come to the US.

<comment><USER7> I know there's balance to this issue - I once spent an afternoon at a shantytown located in a garbage dump in Managua. Worldview-changing, especially when the interpreter noted that some people felt fortunate to at least have work to do in the dump.

But some things certainly are a matter of perspective. My grandmother was one of 13 kids, 12 of which survived early childhood. The way she describes it, they all lived in one three-bedroom house in a steel town: one bedroom for the parents, one for the girls, and one for the boys.

So, 14 people in a house that, assuming it was an average-sized house from that era that you see in these parts, was probably about 1,200-1,500 square feet. That'd be pretty unthinkable to your average American today (outside of NYC/SF, anyways).

"Keeping up with the Joneses", coupled with a lot of land, probably our economic policies, and other factors, has certainly moved the needle on what an acceptable home looks like.

<comment><USER8> I was born and raised in Managua. I think a visit to La Chureca (the dump you're taking about I think) would be a life-changing experience for most. I don't think you can truly understand poverty living in the US and not traveling to the third world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> charles-salvia I think a lot of the resentment felt by the rural American poor has to do with their perception that they are constantly ignored or overlooked, while similarly impoverished inner-city minorities are at least given some kind of institutional sympathy. It's hard to say how true this really is, or how much of it is simply further fuel for pre-existing racism, but apparently this perception is ubiquitous enough that it can be leveraged to win national elections.

I will say the events of the last year have definitely opened my eyes to the situation. The thing I've noticed is that it actually _is_ harder to sympathize with the white, rural poor than it is with the inner-city minorities, at least for me - even though I want to sympathize and I acknowledge their suffering is probably more or less equal to the inner-city minority poor. I suppose the reason I find it more difficult to feel equivalent sympathy is that it's hard to get over the fact that the white rural poor seem to constantly cling to counter-productive political/world- views that perpetuate their poverty and act against their interests. I mean it's just really hard to allocate significant sympathy towards a large voting- bloc that seems to blame all their problems on terrorism and immigration. But then again, perhaps I am generalizing - I mean I'm just a clueless liberal living in my NYC bubble so what do I know anyway?

<comment><USER9> Would you sympathise with someone who blames his problems on slavery?

<comment> charles-salvia I would say it's counter-productive - but at least a direct causal line can be drawn between slavery and the current lower average socio-economic status of black people in the US. Whereas, there is absolutely _no_ causal line between the current plight of poor white people and Mexican immigrants/Islamic terrorism.

<comment><USER10> Not trying to derail the topic, but is Islamic terrorism a claimed cause for the plight of poor white people? If anything, Islamic terrorism is a boon to poor white people. US Military will provide a decent cash influx at sign-up, fund education, and provide a steady paycheck for a few years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am a Bangladeshi who is now a grad student in US. Perhaps I can give a generalized peek view of the health system of Bangladesh. I feel much more safe being in Bangladesh if I were to have some urgent/serious health problems. There are public hospitals where doctors are always available. You go and buy a ticket which is very cheap(in the order of 1-2 dollars in BD currency) and you get to see a doctor. Sure, there are lots of people, you might have to wait for 2 hours, but it beats the insurance system here in US any day. In fact, the concept of having a health insurance is so alien in BD that I feel there will be riots if someone wanted to introduce that. Also, the quality of the doctors in the public hospital is almost on par with the private hospitals. Because for any up and coming doctor, if they want to gain recognition, they first have to get a job at a public hospital. Then they may also practice at a private hospital at their extra hours. If you do not want to wait and you have the money(which is in the order of 10 dollars in BD currecy) you can visit the same doctor at a private hospital. Medicines are really cheap mostly too. This is one of the reasons many Bangladeshi green card holders or US citizens would go to BD for health care if they have some serious issues. I feel there is a huge cultural difference regarding the solution of healthcare between US and BD. The public in BD expects the government to take care of its people through public hospitals. That is why when I came to US and got acquainted with the system of healthcare here it was a huge shock to me.

<comment><USER2> Very interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing. In South Africa you get both private and public. Some public hospitals are very good. Particularly those attached to medical schools. However you have to be referred and your case prioritized if you have something wrong.

Private medical aids are big business. It gets more expensive by the year and the benefits seem to be less and less. Its a grudge purchase. How much money is in medical aid in SA, take a look at this story. The CEO of the biggest medical aid made enough to [buy a top notch property]([https://therealdeal.com/2014/01/06/south-african- insurance-m...](https://therealdeal.com/2014/01/06/south-african-insurance- mogul-adrian-gore-buys-737-park-condo-for-11m/)) in New York. Bear in mind exchange rate is 1US$ = 13ZAR

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The author of the question does not have a straightforward answer but puts this forward as a thought provoker.

For example while Appalachians have higher income on average (PPP) than a typical Bangladeshi, Appalachian life expectancy is lower. So maybe the marginal increase in income is more impactful in a place like Bangladesh -where people are less able to commit self-harm (even unintended like poor diets). Maybe people in Bangladesh, not having much in the way of comfort do more with marginal incomes. Maybe we can learn from these social forces to take advantage of our higher income and provide better living for people who while not at extreme poverty levels do worse then people living in extreme poverty.

<comment><USER13> Does Bangladesh have a systemic prescription opiate problem?

How about an illegal heroin problem?

<comment><USER14> > Does Bangladesh have a systemic prescription opiate problem?

If you want to talk about the impact of opiates on Bangladeshi poverty today, you should go back much further in history.

Bengal opium, being much higher quality than the product found in China and Afghanistan, was the major impetus behind the British annexing the territory back in 1757. They used this monopoly to extract exorbitant taxes from Bengal, causing widespread man-made famines which killed tens of millions of people. They then used this tax money and the opium to flood the Chinese market with cheap, high-quality opium, against the Chinese rulers' will, in an attempt to undermine the Chinese government as well by creating a widespread opiate epidemic. China did not come under _explicit_ colonial rule the way Bengal did, but it came very close.

Over this time period, Bengal went from being the richest region in the second-richest empire/region in the world (next to China) to one of the poorest, which it still is today, despite its rapid growth in recent years.

This strategy isn't over, by the way. The opiate market was (and still is) a part of the US military strategy in Afghanistan - balancing the desire to "crack down" on heroin production and smuggling against the desire to provide Afghani civilians with an agricultural economy that doesn't rely on Taliban support.

Bangladesh doesn't have a _synthetic_ opiate problem, simply because people there are generally too poor to purchase synthetic opiates in the first place. Raw opium is still used in these areas due to its widespread availability, but it's much less addictive than the synthetic opiates, because pharmaceutical synthetics are obviously designed to be highly concentrated and potent.

As for the raw numbers, 0.3% of Bangladeshis consume opiates at least once per year, compared to 0.57% in the US, 0.8% in Italy, 2.65% in Afghanistan (the highest) and 0.004% in Singapore (the lowest).

<comment><USER13> >Bangladesh doesn't have a synthetic opiate problem

I feel that's the key here. That oxycontin was over prescribed for about a decade. We are talking people getting in a car wreck and waking up in a hospital addicted to opiates.

I'm assuming we are in agreement that the pharmaceutical opiates are way more addictive than their illegal analogs. Snorting a pill is way less work than shooting up or "chasing the dragon" but once you're addicted and your brain tells you need dope to live, you'll do whatever you need to do to live.

>As for the raw numbers, 0.3% of Bangladeshis consume opiates at least once per year, compared to 0.57% in the US.

I wonder what the opiate use rate is amongst the Appalachian population. A few days ago there was a map posted of heroin overdoses in the US and West Virginia was the hottest hot spot. Anecdotes of OD's and pill heads in WVA abound. When I showed the map to one of my friends, he told me has had 12(!) people that he went to high school with die of pills and/or heroin.

I can't help but feel that the pharmaceutical companies and their executives are complicit in the current US opiate epedemic.

Thanks Obama(care)!

<comment><USER14> > I'm assuming we are in agreement that the pharmaceutical opiates are way > more addictive than their illegal analogs.

Actually, that's... a complicated question.

Pharmaceutical opiates are definitely more addictive than raw opium (that's like asking if eating white sugar is sweeter than cane sugar). But once you're comparing heroin available on the street to prescribed opiates, there are enough variables (variable quality of product, means of ingestion, the different situations under which a person chooses one over the other, etc.) that there isn't a straightforward answer.

<comment><USER13> >there isn't a straightforward answer.

We have to acknowledge the biological component of addiction, that some people are predisposed to certain addictions. There is a physical, chemical component that comes into play.

I, for example, smoked my first cigarette at 12 y/o. I continued to smoke cigarettes socially for the better part of the next decade, often buying my own packs of smokes. I never understood the "need" to smoke that many of my fellows expressed. I enjoyed the nicotine high, but never once felt it necessary to smoke tobacco to live a "normal" life. I stopped smoking one day after college and never felt the urge to smoke again. Even after long-term repeated exposure to nicotine I never developed a physical dependancy.

The "William Shatner seat" article posted yesterday sent me down a rabbit hole of Shatner talk shows (in "Aftermath" he interviews Bernie Goetz and it is amazing) ending on his "Raw Nerve" interview with Rush Limbaugh where Rush goes into great detail regarding his own painkiller habit. Contrasting how he speaks about opiates about how his body told him he needed pills like he needs food or water to my own personal experiences with opiates and nicotine only reinforces this belief that some people just have the right brain chemistry to get addicted.

My next thought is that the chemistry of the brain changes over time, under stress or when exposed to other chemicals. Ergo, at some point, people may be more prone to particular addictions than at other times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The poor in Bangladesh are at least allowed to have shelter in slums. Anywhere in the US it would be highly illegal and violate many regulations.

<comment><USER13> I don't understand the downvotes.

Rent is just theft based on the monopolization of land. Forcing the poor to pay to live in government approved ghettos is more extortion of their limited resources by those who monopolize the commons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The answer is simple, don't take what I say seriously, take what I do seriously.

7 out 10 times you are better of in Mississippi delta.

The other 3 times are both cultural and relative wealth.

</comment><comment><USER17> How is the healthcare system in India? Google gives me conflicting answers.

<comment><USER18> What's that got to do with Bangladesh?

<comment><USER19> Because in the article Deaton uses India also ("...But if you had to choose between living in a poor village in India and living in the Mississippi Delta...").

<comment><USER18> Thanks, missed that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook employees in disbelief memo was leaked, think spies might be to blame - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-posts-show-facebook-employees-are-worried-about-leakers-suspect-spies-bosworth-memo-2018-3 <comment><USER2> Discussion of original source: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16714018](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16714018)

<comment><USER3> Comments moved there. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Why Reddit is Better than Digg - <AUTHOR> http://www.chrisg.com/reddit-beats-digg/ <comment><USER2> I think it's exactly the opposite. Digg has a much better mix of homepage stories (not very fresh though, I will admit that).

The posters on digg are considerably smarter then those on reddit. (I know that's not the popular perception, but that's what I've found.)

But reddit has one main thing going for it: it's about 1 thousand times faster to load. (Not an exageration - digg's home page takes about 15 to 30 seconds to render, compared to a fraction of a second for reddit. Comment pages can take several minutes, vs again, a fraction of a second on reddit.)

I've given up on both: reddit for the sheer stupidity, and digg because it's just too slow.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've given up on reddit as I can't stand the new interface. I gave up on digg a long time ago. Both are too slow w/ their fancy javascript fadeouts and there's not enough stories per page. I liked reddit better as I felt there was a stronger technical community but today I think it's just another platform for SEO companies.</comment>


The Complete Guide for Starting iPhone and iOS Development - <AUTHOR> http://writings.withoutfriction.com/the-complete-guide-for-starting-iphone-and-io <comment><USER2> I wrote Building iOS Apps From Scratch (<http://designthencode.com/scratch>) a 30-page guide for coders just learning Objective-C and Cocoa. Also, for coders looking to get into UI design, I wrote a 70-page guide as well: <http://designthencode.com>

Hope it helps!

</comment><comment><USER3> The Stanford iTunes U Courses should not be overlooked. They do a great job of taking you from crawling to running in no time. I enjoyed doing the homework too, it really increased my learning experience.

Winter 2010- [http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/iphone-application- devel...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/iphone-application- development/id384233225)

Spring 2009-[http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/iphone-application- progr...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/iphone-application- programming/id384233222)

Spring 2011 (Starting Soon)-<http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi- bin/drupal/>

<comment><USER4> I think you missed the best one—Fall 2010 [http://itunes.apple.com/itunes-u/developing-apps-for-ios- hd/...](http://itunes.apple.com/itunes-u/developing-apps-for-ios- hd/id395605774) Downloads: [http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi- bin/drupal/download...](http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi- bin/drupal/downloads-2010-fall)

<comment><USER5> Why is the one better than the other one?

I've followed parts of CS193P twice (can't remember which one) and both were pretty good. If this one is really better, I wouldn't like to miss it… :)

Oh I can not say enough good things about that class. Great teachers, great material.

<comment><USER6> Winter 2010, taught by Paul Hegarty, is the best introduction I've found. I have some books, I've watched some Apple videos, but I was still confused. Mr. Hegarty really explains things the right way. Highly recommended.

<comment><USER4> I guess you mean the same as me: Fall 2010? These names a tricky, Fall 2010 is really Fall-Winter 2010, and comes _after_ winter 2010 which was winter- spring. What Stanford calls "Winter 2010" was taught by Alan Cannistraro and Josh Shaffer, and what I reffered to as Fall 2010 was indeed by Paul Hegarty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It should be noted you don't _need_ a Mac. I've had 2 apps developed, submitted and approved from my makeshift vmware player running on W7. I know others who use Virtual Box. Never ran into any trouble other than wondering why all the keys behave differently!

Yes, it's technically illegal but isn't that the best kind of illegal?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did add a point about using a Hackintosh, though it is good that you mentioned about using a VM image of OSX.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yes – programming is fun to hop into, but just a heads up: the most difficult process to learn and master is the marketing and promotion part of releasing an app.

I feel that two blog posts linked in this article touches this subject in an interesting way: <http://struct.ca/2010/the-story-so-far/> and [http://blog.endloop.ca/blog/2010/08/12/100k-in-4-months-a- ni...](http://blog.endloop.ca/blog/2010/08/12/100k-in-4-months-a-niche-apps- path-to-app-store-success/)

That said, I would recommend Corona - <http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/> \- for anyone wanting to give iPhone app development a shot. Much easier and fun to jump into than objective-c, especially if you want to make games, and still pretty damn powerful!

<comment><USER9> Really not sure I agree with that. Coding is tough, and in my experience developing iOS apps _well_ (and Cocoa apps in general to a lesser extent) is one of the most difficult forms of programming.

And as for marketing and promotion, I'd say even more challenging is coming up with an idea which doesn't need marketing or promotion :)

<comment><USER8> Yes, fair enough – I basically agree. Just posted that comment as some food for thought. I think this link was a good read, but perhaps should mention the marketing part of app production as well, if not just coding for coding's sake is the purpose. The reality is not really "you build it and they will come", which is a common mindset that might get people disappointed in the long run.

And yes – the biggest challenge is probably coming up with something original!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Coming from Python, web development and Android, I found interface Builder to be the trickiest part of iOS to learn. The way it instantiates some of your classes requires you to build up a really odd mental model; I still don't fully understand it after a couple of months.

You're welcome to do it all in code, but it seems to be discouraged by many.

<comment><USER11> Model View Controller is an odd mental model? It's quite popular right now and I think that it's the best pattern for decoupling user interfaces from the underlying code.

<comment><USER10> MVC is fine. It's the way that your controllers are instantiated by a NIB that I find odd. It's too magical for me.

<comment><USER12> It's exactly the opposite of magical: you're simply building objects in IB that are "live" while you're building them and that then are freeze-dried when you save the file, and reconstituted at runtime.

It's certainly magical in the sense that it's a beautiful way to do things. ;-)

<comment><USER13> I prefer a programming model that is not so complicated that you need an IDE to generate the code for you. Even watching the Apple tutorials on using XCode I was struck by how many magic incantations you have to kearn that seem totally opaque and unmotivated (just hold down command and drag this thing on top of that thing and set this property in the pop up - what?).

I think simple programs should be able to be expressed in one file and created in a simple text editor.

<comment><USER12> You're missing the point: no code is being generated. Objects are being generated. The real objects you'll have at runtime are being generated. The real objects that will be freeze-dried to a file and reconstituted at runtime.

You're saving creating the hundreds of lines of codes that would be required to do this in a "normal" IDE.

<comment><USER13> _no code is being generated_

This seems a patently false statement. I would count as _code_ any representation of procedural or configuration information that could be interpreted or executed in the running of an application.

If the underlying systems requires _hundreds of lines_ to represent a simple object (like a button, panel, or toolbar), then maybe as a programming environment designer, you should go back and simplify your underlying representation, rather than add a layer of UI to generate hundreds of lines of code.

<comment><USER14> Cocoa doesn't require hundreds of lines to represent a simple object. Here's code to make a button:

        UIButton *button = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeRoundedRect];
        [button setTitle:@"Button" forState:UIControlStateNormal];

That's it. Two lines for a basic button.

Of course, if you want to display the button:

        button.frame = CGRectMake(10, 10, 80, 20);
        [view addSubview:button];

...which is a big part of why Interface Builder is handy, because it saves you from trying to figure out exactly how large you want the button to be and where to put it.

Now, when you put together all the objects in a moderately complicated UI, you will end up with hundreds of lines of code. Some people find it easier to work with this visually in Interface Builder. Others find it easier to manually construct the UI in code. Either method works perfectly well. I generally use a mix of both, depending on the nature of the UI element I'm working with.

<comment><USER15> > Some people find it easier to work with this visually in Interface Builder.

All of our designers use IB to layout the UI. It works really well - as they don't have to touch the code and we don't have to touch the layout.

Unfortunately, if you are doing any kind of custom animation (think sliding/expanding), IB is useless - you'll have to set the frames in code.

In general, IB is great because it helps separate presentation from the code.

When I first started out, I hated IB, but I've come to accept the fact that it really does help productivity (when working with designers closely). If you hate IB, consider going Android - there is nothing like IB on Android. All XML and a simple (nothing like IB) layout editor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is great! I just started going through Programming in Objective-C 2.0, although I'm not new to programming at all, I am pretty new to C/Obj-C. Good to see it in this guide, reaffirms that it's a good starting place.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is there a similar resource for Android ? I don't currently own one, but this kind of writeup would be helpful to estimate the effort to get into developing first things for it..

<comment><AUTHOR> If this guide stays popular on HN for a bit, I will strongly consider (read: will) research it and write one up.

<comment><USER17> Oh that's nice. Looking forward to reading it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is just a bunch of links. Can anyone vouch for the author's credibility?

<comment><USER19> Are you talking about the linked article, or HN in general? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> For anyone who wants to fiddle with development and doesn't know any form of C, a company called Revolution Media makes a scripting tool called LiveCode. It is pretty easy to use but I'm not sure how advanced your apps can get.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wouldn't call this a "complete guide" ... seems more like pre-reqs.

</comment><comment><USER22> The Apple docs already explain this pretty well. Not too hard. It's weird we live in a world of hand-holding comfort and plentiful documentation on almost everything and yet we still create more.

<comment><USER23> _Not too hard._

That's a tautologically pointless thing to say.

 _It's weird we live in a world of hand-holding comfort and plentiful documentation on almost everything and yet we still create more._

How terrible we are for wanting a world of comfort instead of superior discomfort and confusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The fine print for new iOS devs:

If you succeed in overcoming all of the obstacles ahead of you and actually create a worthwhile app on Apple's platform their is a good chance they will screw you over without warning or explanation by blocking your app, yanking your app, changing the rules, calling you a pornographer, randomly charging you new fees, prohibiting whatever it is your app does, changing the hardware you're allowed to use, changing the software you're allowed to use, and many other ways that seem impossibly outrageous right now until it actually happens.

Invest your time and money at your own risk. You've been warned.

<comment><USER25> Man, there's all these things standing in the way of success! I'd better not even try.

Come on, seriously? There's risk involved in pretty much every venture, and you can't exactly control the actions of outside entities. If I kept avoiding tasks because there was a chance of it being screwed over by someone else, I'd never get anything done.

<comment><USER26> This risk can't be mitigated. One guy wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and bam, 99% of potential customers (everyone who doesn't have a jailbreak, assuming that remains possible) are out of your reach for no real reason. Every developer needs to be aware that Apple bargains like Darth Vader.</comment></comment></comment>


Inequality And New York's Subway - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/sandbox/business/subway.html <comment><USER2> Amazing visualization!

Although, I will say this. As much inequality as you see in New York, at least everyone rides the same train. I take Metro North every morning and you see poor minorities going to jobs in Harlem riding the train next to rich white guys getting off at Midtown. So much better than where I grew up in Northern Virginia where rich people freak out about public transit because they're worried about poor people being able to get to where they live.

<comment><USER3> It still says something that an economy capable of producing entire parts of town with a _median_ income of nearly $200K doesn't do much for those living on under $20K a year.

<comment><USER2> New York does a lot for people living on under $20k/year. That's why those people live in New York--because of the very generous public services. The NYCHA houses 400,000 people in 180,000 apartments. The Section 8 program assists another 620,000 people, and accounts for 8% of the city's rental apartments. The average family has a median income of $22k/year.

The city's public housing projects aren't the nicest in the world, but that's endemic to any such project. The actual facilities aren't bad. They are comparable to the apartments my (upper middle class) family in Bangladesh live in (which was to me a stark illustration of the 'top 5% of Indians live like the bottom 5% of Americans' phenomenon).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: A Syllabus for Modern Web Development? - <AUTHOR>

How would you outline a one semester syllabus on Modern Web Development? Which are the key technologies, concepts and languages to include? <comment><USER3> I would suggest checking out the WaSP interACT curriculum: <http://interact.webstandards.org/curriculum/> It's a bit on the academic side, but it does do a good job of listing the many different competencies involved in web development, as it's easy to forget how much is involved.

I just helped in putting together a proposal for an advanced web dev course for a university, and it involved: semantics, offline/storage, graphics/3d, device access, multimedia, performance, cross-browser debugging/optimizing, user experience (web apps/mobile), SEO, and analytics. That course is frontend-focused and presumes previous experience with basic web dev technologies (HTML/CSS/JS).

Also, if you need HTML/CSS teaching materials, I've put some here: <http://www.teaching-materials.org/htmlcss/> (JavaScript materials coming soon)

<comment><USER4> I would replace (x)html with html5 wherever mentioned though. Nice guide overall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the order I learned web development - I think it should be broadly applicable:

1\. Static website dev - modern HTML(5) & CSS <http://www.http://htmldog.com/>

2\. Scripting HTML and CSS - Javascript (use standards based browsers only - avoid JQuery/libraries at first) <http://javascript.crockford.com/>

3\. Intro Server side programming to template HTML pages - PHP (easy to grok for beginners - combine previous lessons with some simple dynamic data) <http://php.net/manual/en/introduction.php>

4\. Intro to SQL - MySQL (give them the basic CRUD commands and show them how to hook those up with PHP) <http://code.google.com/edu/tools101/mysql.html>

5\. Cross browser Javascript with the help of JS Libraries - <USER2> <http://docs.jquery.com/Tutorials>

6\. Using XML/JSON Web Services - Last.FM API (its a simple REST interface - avoid OAuth complexity) <http://www.last.fm/api>

If you covered all that in a semester, you would have some semi-competent (there's always more to learn) web developers. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER6> There's no better way to learn than by doing. Assuming we're talking about basic web-development here for people with limited prior knowledge, I would design the syllabus around a final goal of building a fully-functioning website. Better yet: have a really specific goal. Maybe decide that the website should be a one-page online store. This makes it easy to split the syllabus up into smaller, manageable chunks and everyone will know what they're shooting for, even if some pieces get a bit tricky. Also, this way they only get the stuff they need. Let's be honest, nobody cares about the theory behind web development.

I would start with registering a domain name, setting up hosting and DNS, creating and modifying the index.html file. Then add a css file and run through the basics of html and css standard practices. Limit the design to basic colors and fonts at first. Just when they start to get the hang out it, bust out a crash course in web design with Adobe Illustrator and make those sites pretty. After that, utilize something like Paypal's webmaster tools to set up an extremely simple shopping cart. If time allows, dedicate a session to Jquery UI to spice up the sites even more. In the end, there will be some really polished final products with plenty of new skills and lots of invaluable experience.

That's what I'd do. Good luck!

<comment><USER7> I was going to say it slightly differently, but this is pretty much exactly what I was going to suggest.

One of the main reasons is that it's a quickly moving target. Any technology you learn today has to be questioned in a year. It may still be around, but it'll probably be used at least a slightly differently.

So to learn web development, you need to learn to be flexible from the start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I personally think that the topic is far too wide to provide a solid grounding in just one semester. What I would advise is that you should find out the common ways that that the students would use this knowledge, and explore the concepts that relate to their work.

For example, I recently put together a 10 week course (1 hour per week) to introduce HTML and CSS to the marketing/sales/editorial staff in my department. I work for a prominent Australian news/media company, and we draw inspiration for new site features and improvements from across the entire department. We (the developers and product team) felt that the rest of the department would feel more confident in suggesting ideas (or making judgements about feasibility) if they knew what work goes into the presentation/interaction side of our websites.

We spent the first 2 weeks introducing the web and giving a bit of back story, and heavily enforcing the most up to date web standards. We then spent the remainder of the course jumping between HTML and CSS, and eventually had the team dreaming up ideas for widgets that we could add to the sites, and being more creative with inline content in our stories (having fun in the HTML mode of the WYSIWYG editor that they never got to see before).

So to wrap this up:

* engage your audience

* find out what they plan to use the skills for

* lay out coursework that works towards them achieving their personal challenges

You'll find them more attentive, more eager, and looking forward to whatever the next semester contains.

</comment><comment><USER9> What are the prerequisites for the course? Do they already know HTML? CSS? Will there be other courses after this one?

Definitely teach about accessibility, standards compliance, and the necessity of bending to the browsers your audience uses.

<comment><USER10> Web development, or web design?

Development could mean code ignoring the front-end design to the OP.

<comment><USER6> I've always thought of development as a big picture kind of thing. Programming is the back-end and design is the front-end, while development is a perfect harmony somewhere inbetween.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Philip Greenspun has two solid resources: \- <http://philip.greenspun.com/seia/>? \- <http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/>

I would also guide myself by looking at the top languages on Github: <https://github.com/languages>

Best way to start though is to work on a project on your own using the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), that'll give you a good overview of all the different pieces involved.

</comment><comment><USER12> Whatever curriculum you come up with, make sure that by the middle of the semester, students have a working and public site, so that they can spend the rest of the semester experiencing how actual end users use and respond to it and you can discuss the process by which developers decide how to deal with user feedback.

Basic product/project management techniques should also be covered, including a brief intro to agile development.

</comment><comment><USER13> Should also be aware of <http://w3fools.com/> before reading any w3schools.

</comment><comment><USER14> I know I'm not the one that asked the question, but I've been looking for these types of resources for a longtime. The w3fools one was especially eye opening, and the topics at greenspun are very interesting too! I'm off to learn, yeay!!! Thanks HN, you guys are awesome!

</comment><comment><USER15> Its not really a syllabus per se, but it shows the key technologies, concepts, how to learn them etc.

[http://lifehacker.com/5401954/programmer-101-teach- yourself-...](http://lifehacker.com/5401954/programmer-101-teach-yourself-how- to-code)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found Opera's Web Standards Curriculum from 2008. Going to take a look.

[http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/1-introduction-to-the- web...](http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/1-introduction-to-the-web- standards-cur/)

Also found this monograph -- Teach the Web -- where several experts were interviewed about how to teach web professionals.

<http://teachtheweb.com/monograph.php></comment>


Ask HN: How do you sell to grammar schools in the US? - <AUTHOR>

I'm considering exploring a startup idea from a friend. He works in a grammar school. There is a federal regulation for which he needs to track a bunch of info for each student. Right now, he tracks it through a google docs spreadsheet that he built. It's a lot better than not having it, but he sees that it's not optimal, and he asked me to see about building something.
I'm excited about the possibilities because this would be directly helping to solve a real problem.
But I'm worried because I think this would be very difficult to sell. According to 1 study I found, most purchasing decisions for this particular regulation are made at the district level, not the school level. The further the separation between the people doing the work and the people making the purchasing decisions, the more a sales team seem necessary, and the less effective standard micro isv/startup approach of careful google ads, a/b tests, etc. seems. And a full-time sales team is not something we can afford, nor can we drop our day jobs to drive around and talk to execs.
Does anyone here have experience selling SaaS to grammar schools? Advice greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> check out <http://noredink.com> they have managed to make progress with the school system.</comment>


Centralized logging with ELK - <AUTHOR> https://blog.hypertrack.com/2017/02/10/centralized-logging-at-hypertrack/ <comment><USER2> > What's out there

> Grep

> Paid logging services

> Self hosted

> Our Solution: The ELK Stack

So, basically, what everybody else is doing. Nothing fancy.

Also, you may discover that grepping through the logs for processing them can actually be faster than using Elasticsearch (and I haven't mentioned the speed of _storing_ them yet). I've seen this happen.</comment>


Sketching in Code: the Magic of Prototyping - <AUTHOR> http://www.alistapart.com/articles/sketchingincode <comment><USER2> A pretty vague article. ALA used to be much better about addressing the "how" of their topics. Yeah, there are countless ways to prototype, but some expert examples would be valuable.</comment>


Show HN: Mobify.js, a client side adaptation framework for going mobile - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN! We would love to hear your thoughts on our new client-side adaptation framework called Mobify.js. We've worked extremely hard on this product for a year and a half now, and we recently went open source with it. We use it internally to create mobile websites for our customers, and we would love for the rest of the world to use it too. Here is our first blog post on it: http://www.mobify.com/blog/introducing-mobify-js/. Once again, feedback would be awesome - go ahead and be brutally honest :) <comment><USER2> The writing on your blog and site seems distant to me. I would like to read a _short_ narrative on the problems Mobify addresses, the origins and inspiration of the solution, how the solution was developed and tested and what results have been gained. IMHO This story should include the real people involved including engineers, managers, clients, customers and hockey-stick graphs ( you're in Canada after all... ) This seems like a great initiative. Way to go!

PS Check out item #10 on this list, I think it's what you are missing: [http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/03/googles-design- guid...](http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/03/googles-design- guidelines.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Adding link in comments for clickable hyperlink goodness:

<http://www.mobify.com/blog/introducing-mobify-js/></comment>


Man builds giant computer at home - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33237863

<comment><USER2> Discussion on the Megaprocessor from 2 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9755742](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9755742)

<comment><USER3> It would not be the first time something got a lot of attention on HN and then "suddenly" landed in a more mainstream news site. It still unnerves me a bit when comments I make here end up in a story in the press.

<comment><USER2> _> It still unnerves me a bit when comments I make here end up in a story in the press._

If that ever happened to me, attributed or not, I would be pretty damn excited! The fact that it never happens to me or most other users here, but it happens to you, should probably restore a bit of faith in the journalistic profession. ;)</comment></comment></comment>


Professional Code Breakers of Renaissance Venice - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cryptography-renaissance-venice <comment><USER2> I was so sure that the article would be by Ioanna Iordanou, but it isn't.

She is about to publish a book about this:

Venice's Secret Service: Organising Intelligence in the Renaissance

Amazon says it will be out in October.

[https://www.amazon.de/Venices-Secret-Service-Intelligence- Re...](https://www.amazon.de/Venices-Secret-Service-Intelligence- Renaissance/dp/0198791313/ref=sr_1_2?__mk_de_DE=ÅMÅŽÕÑ&keywords=Iordanou&qid=1568388497&sr=8-2)

</comment><comment><USER3> That era also had competitive equation solving, i.e. math contests.

<comment><USER4> Math contests feature prominently in the Cardano-Tartaglia dispute, an important chapter in the history of the discovery of the cubic equation.

[http://brain.caltech.edu/ist4/lectures/Cardano- Tartaglia_Dis...](http://brain.caltech.edu/ist4/lectures/Cardano- Tartaglia_Dispute.pdf)</comment></comment>


Google launches Cloud Dataflow, says MapReduce tired - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/google-launches-cloud-dataflow-says-mapreduce-tired-7000030937/

<comment><USER2> A dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7945895](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7945895).

</comment><comment><USER3> The article compares it to AWS Redshift or Elastic MapReduce, but I'd say its more like AWS Kinesis.</comment>


Cellphone tracking could help stem coronavirus spread. Is privacy the price? - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/cellphone-tracking-could-help-stem-spread-coronavirus-privacy-price <comment><USER2> Benjamin Franklin: "those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither."</comment>


Have all OVH VPS' been compromised? Just like Linode was recently? - <AUTHOR> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1976.msg1925535#msg1925535

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is a response from "Slush" in that same thread... Slush is the owner and operator of the Slush Bitcoin Mining Pool, is very well respected in the community, and these are his exact words: [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1976.msg1925708#msg1...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1976.msg1925708#msg1925708)

"I cross-checked my mailbox setup and no forwarding is configured here. For now I fully blame OVH for this issue." -Slush

</comment><comment><USER2> Delusions.

<http://blog.linode.com/2013/04/16/security-incident-update/></comment>


Ask HN: Why Twitter - <AUTHOR> I was talking to a famous technical author the other day, and the subject of Twitter came up. I mentioned that you could get 100k rewteets, end up with 300 visitors -- and still get bupkis as far as conversions or new customers.
"I really have no idea why I keep using it."
This is a really good question. I've been on many years, and I like using it to tell jokes and idly chat/help my friends. It's also a place I'd use language that I wouldn't use on my family-friendly FB account. But the place is a cesspool. It has internet-drama-of-the-day, people repeating the same tweet over and over again, retweeting rings, idiotic arguments that self-generate because you can't fit anything nuances into 140 characters, fake accounts trying to like and follow whatever you post, paid crap that you don't want or need, and so on.
So why bother? What are you guys using it for? Where's the value here? <comment><USER2> When I used it, the main value was communicating with people who used it. It allowed direct communication with relative celebrities of the sort roughly equivalent to an O'Reilly author of something on an Apache project.

I imagine at that level of 'fame' Twitter offers access to fame level commensurate perks of celebrity. Among those perks is an excuse to engage in behavior appropriate in a cesspool. By which I mean that being an asshole in the manner in which the junior high popular kids would treat the junior high unpopular kids can be written off as just the way Twitter is.

Since I am less a celebrity than the author of an O'Reilly Apache book, the value I got from Twitter when I used it was reaching upward on the popularity ladder. The most intellectually interesting part, aside from the social aspect, was composing literary tweets of exactly 140 characters...a perhaps underappreciated art.

Eventually, I stopped bothering when the negatives outweighted the jokes and chat...i.e. when the logical structure of cesspools began to dominate my experience.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mainly news. For that I follow the news sites but am hesitant to follow editors, columnists, journalists etc as they tend to post useless comments that are supposed to be funny. I do follow them but unfollow once they become a wannabe comic with unfunny puns, oneliners etc. For similar reasons, I don't follow well known tech bloggers (though I read their blogs or medium posts).

Secondly, I follow handles for topics such as museum, history, science etc. I generally distrust curators who seem like enthusiasts, so try to follow authentic sources as far as possible.

Thirdly, I follow some highly opinionated people, many of whom are usually well known from all walks of life, while some I find by their responses to certain topics. It is fun to see how people can twist anything to fit their agenda.

Lastly, I follow official accounts of various national governments, and organizations like UNESCO, RAND, PEW etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to repeat this to make sure I got it.

The value for you in Twitter is news. You try to stay away from people who might be excitable and/or trying to be entertaining, and follow folks who tend to give immediate little chunks of news.

Among MSM journalists, the word is that Twitter is just creating a huge echo chamber, where one person starts a rumor and then seasoned reporters and editors have to rewteet/comment on it or miss out. By staying away from certain folks, are you able to keep the BS/noise level down?

<comment><USER3> Mainly news, yes. Rumormongering is big, though probably not as much as on other platforms where the origin of a message is hard to trace for ordinary folk, but again, if one has used this service for a while, and know the nature of the posts a handle typically makes, it becomes clear which is news and which isn't. Also, it is rare for all MSM people to RT the same non news without their colleagues raising suspicion, so it is not that bad. All that said, pruning is an indispensable activity for twitter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use it as a backend for Nuzzle :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have to admit I've thought of that also. Using it sort of as a more modern IRC.</comment></comment>


Electromagnetic Field 2018 venue announced - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/emfcamp/status/942711641900187648 <comment><AUTHOR> From [https://www.emfcamp.org](https://www.emfcamp.org) –

 _Electromagnetic Field is a non-profit UK camping festival for those with an inquisitive mind or an interest in making things: hackers, artists, geeks, crafters, scientists, and engineers.

A temporary town of more than a thousand like-minded people enjoying a long weekend of talks, performances, and workshops on everything from blacksmithing to biometrics, chiptunes to computer security, high altitude ballooning to lockpicking, origami to democracy, and online privacy to knitting.

To help matters along, we provide fast internet, power to the tent, good beer, and amazing installations, entirely organised by a dedicated team of volunteers._

[Disclaimer: no affiliation; I'm interested in attending)</comment>


Google changes logo - traffic to our site spikes - <AUTHOR>

Was wondering how our little app could see 100 fold increase in uniques just overnight. Simple reason: Google changing logo to depict an ITF bar code - tons of people going to wikipedia articles on bar codes. We have some referral links originating from wikipedia (mostly submitted images of EAN and UPC bar codes).
Too bad the bar code logo will go away - these are our Andy Warhol threw a "15 Minutes of Fame".
http://barcoderobot.com <comment><AUTHOR> Obviously the comments on the site are most welcome ...

</comment><comment><USER3> What is your revenue model? I can't initially tell if you offer premium services, or if the service is totally free.

<comment><AUTHOR> (vector) EPS files are sold over PayPal - no subscriptions yet, was a side project really but seems to break even the hosting charges etc ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As an exercise with PHP and the gd library, I wrote a couple of scripts a while ago that would generate UPC-A and UPC-E barcode images on the fly. I've always been fascinated with barcodes and scanners that read them.

<http://jazzychad.com/barcode/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, most complicated part for me was getting images "up to the spec.", since I am mostly competing with desktop software, that pre-install drivers and fonts my EPS files needed to embed OCR fonts (it took tons of time to produce them accurately).

Here is the proud result (rasterized back from PostScript):

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ean-13-5901234123457.png>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've assumed half the reason Google's been on a custom logo binge is to drive users towards specific search terms and boost AdWords revenue. Show an obscure geeky thing one week to keep the baying nerd masses happy, show Michael Jackson the next.

It's nice to see "the little guy" getting a boost as well!

<comment><AUTHOR> what is really amazing is what amount of traffic goes directly to Wikipedia (just deducting from the spills that we are getting today).

<comment><USER6> From: <http://stats.grok.se/en/200910/Barcode>

Went from 24.6k hits to approx 1.3m

<comment><AUTHOR> Very nice link - many thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So, what does the logo say exactly? Just "Google"?

<comment><USER8> Yes. Yay for cell phones that can scan barcodes.

<comment><USER9> Are there any iPhone apps that will read traditional barcodes such as the one on the Google homepage?

All the ones I've seen seem to either only read the fancy 2D datamatrix-type ones, or go off to some price comparison webservice and don't actually tell me anything about the barcode.

Edit: Just tried zXing from the app store, and it failed all of the pictures I took in good light conditions...

<comment><USER8> "Barcode Reader" on Android, which uses the zXing library, worked for me. (I don't know how the iPhone app works, but Barcode Reader continuously takes pictures until it recognizes a barcode. It seems to work quite reliably.)

<comment><USER9> Ah, it seems the iPhone one 'barCodes' based on zXing only supports QR barcodes. Eep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting - type in barcoderbot in google search. (I misread your URL so stumbled on this google nugget).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, actually finding a good domain name for this purpose is difficult - <USER2> ended up with the long one. Best written in camel case: BarcodeRobot

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What encoding is it using?

<comment><USER12> Google's? Code 128</comment></comment>


Elon Musk offers Boeing SpaceX batteries for the 787 Dreamliner - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/29/boeing-tesla-idUSL1N0AY11R20130129 <comment><USER2> Of course, this is fairly meaningless.

What they need is not new batteries, what they need is to _understand what went wrong with the old batteries_ (right now, they haven't the faintest idea). Not just to fix the problem, but so that the FAA understands the failure mode, and thus can do a better job when vetting future planes.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's more a publicity stunt than anything else, but it's a brilliant publicity stunt.</comment>


Booksbyus/scalable-c: Scalable C – The Book - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/booksbyus/scalable-c <comment><USER2> Link to the readable book content: [https://hintjens.gitbooks.io/scalable-c/content/chapter1.htm...](https://hintjens.gitbooks.io/scalable-c/content/chapter1.html)</comment>


Michael Seibel on Leadership Attributes in Successful Startup Leaders - <AUTHOR> https://torch.io/ceo-interview-series-michael-seibel-on-leadership-attributes-in-successful-startup-leaders/ <comment><USER2> "Level Two thinking is about creating an environment and empowering people such that they do produce great outcomes without you having to tell them. If they can get into a mental model of what's good for the company, and if they can be motivated and feel empowered, then they start doing great things. You don't have to direct them. "

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

<comment><USER3> but what happens if number #1 doesn't like the ship they built?

<comment><USER4> Then they hired the wrong people.

<comment><USER3> Or there might have been a failure to negotiate requirements and priorities, or that different parties were pushing in different directions. Many choices exist. The endless sea may not appear to be the same to everyone.

<comment><USER4> For the first part of your comment to make sense you have to assume there is a right answer and a correct solution both which don't make sense in the real world as you eluded to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The topic of leadership seems to come up frequently in these circles and I think it's great and important.

It does strike me as odd though that there is almost no recognition or reference to the vast world of case study and literature about leadership, and technical leadership to boot.

For example, Siebel talks about "Level 2" thinking as well as self awareness as important attributes to being a good leader. These attributes can be found discussed in great detail with well worn concepts like "Servant Leadership"[1] and "Referent Power"[2].

Further, actively seeking high consequence/stress situations like Siebel discusses is a well understood way of learning leadership.

So my question is, if it is important for tech CEOs or other tech people to understand and embody these leadership principles, why not seek out the huge amounts of training and learning on this - and to that end seeking out people who have gone through a lot of it, rather than trying to start from first principles?

Let me be clear too, I'm not suggesting you can learn this stuff from a book. Far from it. What I am saying is that there are a lot of great people out there with tested leadership experience, that are overlooked by the tech world because it does not specifically select for it.

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

[2][http://www.communicationcache.com/uploads/1/0/8/8/10887248/t...](http://www.communicationcache.com/uploads/1/0/8/8/10887248/the_bases_of_social_power_- _chapter_20_-_1959.pdf)

<comment><USER6> I see this pattern a lot: leadership advice in the form of general principles/first principles, but not a lot of advice on the nuts and bolts of how you accomplish those things. Human emotions, motivation, and communication are far fickler things than software, and it takes a lot of skill and work to create consistency and resilience from that mess.

For example: how do you tell someone that they're underperforming while still motivating them? There's a lot of partial advice out there like "frame it as a growth opportunity." But how? What words do you use? Half of the new managers will flinch before they give the feedback, and the other half will flub the delivery. It's a hard-earned, fundamental leadership skill.

MBA programs actually encode a lot of time-tested wisdom on leadership and management _for the students who go looking for it_. Huge emphasis on the caveat because not all MBA students are looking for that. They even do simulations to give you practice in a low-stakes setting. As a risky generalization based on my own observations, I think Silicon Valley has thrown the baby out with the bathwater with its historical hostility towards MBA's.

Speaking of which, I think executive coaching is worth its weight in gold for younger startup leadership.

<comment><USER7> > how do you tell someone that they're underperforming... MBA programs

When you ask someone, "Describe the person you'd like to work for," I seriously doubt talented people say, "An MBA."

So surely you'd see why so many mediocre people wind up working for them.

<comment><USER6> Talented people aren't going to decide on the basis of whether their manager- to-be has an MBA. Talented engineers will gravitate towards teams with likewise talented engineers and good leadership.

I'm suggesting that, as a reliable way to raise the bar on leadership, engineers who want to manage might benefit a lot from going through MBA training.

<comment><USER8> Engineers who want to manage would definitely benefit a lot from learning about psychology and leadership. MBA training however does produces great leaders that attract skilled people. There is a reason MBAs are complained about so often - the reason is that their management style tend to be demotivating and offputting.

<comment><USER6> _would definitely benefit a lot from learning about psychology and leadership_

That's a significant chunk of the MBA curriculum. Of course you don't have to get it from there, but if you look at who teaches in business schools, quite a few of the professors specifically research those subjects.

 _the reason is that their management style tend to be demotivating and offputting_

What about it is demotivating and offputting? The typical complaint I hear isn't about their leadership skills, it's about a lack of technical expertise or lack of appreciation for subject matter expertise. As an example, I've seen some of Harvard Business School's materials, and their curriculum definitely teaches to seek technical expertise.

<comment><USER8> > That's a significant chunk of the MBA curriculum. Of course you don't have > to get it from there, but if you look at who teaches in business schools, > quite a few of the professors specifically research those subjects.

I am mostly judging it from results of MBA managers. It seems that highly motivated happy teams are rather exception then rule. This kind of psychological knowledge seems to lead to manipulative behavior that most eventually figure out in the span of months and consequently leads to lack of trust, demotivation.

> The typical complaint I hear isn't about their leadership skills, it's about > a lack of technical expertise or lack of appreciation for subject matter > expertise. As an example, I've seen some of Harvard Business School's > materials, and their curriculum definitely teaches to seek technical > expertise.

As general as both complains are, they are closely related to leadership skill, they are not independent of it. The "no appreciation for subject matter expertise" is euphemism for "experts under their leadership are unable to use their skill and knowledge and are treated without respect and without regard". It means that project is running into the same problems again and the leader does not care, because problems are not affecting him right now and experts are effectively talking to a wall that smiles back.

Lack of technical expertise means that experts are forced to implement decisions they know will lead to problems and then get resentfulness when those problems happen and they are blamed for it. It means you work around the manager and not with manager. It means that you have to keep secrets and manage manager, because manager cant be trusted.

I don't know what exactly those schools teach, so I can not say what exactly is wrong with it. But I had managers that I respect to this day, not all of them were technical and they seemed to be able to work around lack of technical knowledge better then mba I have seen. Mba are good at creating illusion of well run project for upper management. That absolutely has value, especially in corporation, but is not really leadership skill and is not same as actually run the project well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the military, this is also called "Commander's Intent".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intent_(military)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intent_\(military\))

I have never been in the military, nor do I know much about it. And, tech companies are very different from militaries. But, I sometimes come across military leadership readings that help give me ideas, and "Intent" is something that has stuck with me.

</comment><comment><USER10> The problem with CEOs talking about inspiring people to get stuff done is... they write their articles in an inspiring way, leaving out the inevitably uninspiring parts of reality.

Visionary envisaging can easily become meaningless corporate speak, and L2, with its tendency to abstract ways of talking about things.... it opens more door for this... for example.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is an ad

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks like leadership characteristics are mostly "manufactured" kind. For example, you manipulate (motivate) people into doing stuff you will benefit the most in the long run. This might go against the values of some people.

<comment><USER13> > manipulate (motivate)

> go against the values of some people

This reads like you have experience with bad leaders.

When I try to motivate colleagues or team members, it's not at all manipulation. It's helping them through issues that they're dealing with and getting them happy about what they're doing. I'd rather do that than let them be unhappy and unmotivated. When you manipulate, people will see through it, when you motivate, people will appreciate it and work harder because they want to. I'm not sure why that would be a bad thing.</comment></comment>


The share of Americans not having sex has reached a record high - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-americans-not-having-sex-has-reached-record-high/#click=https://t.co/AAegjsMEAr <comment><USER2> "One particularly disturbing study, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism in 2007, indicated that men's testosterone levels plummeted 17 percent from 1987 to 2004—and that's controlling for health and lifestyle factors, such as obesity and diabetes, that are known to affect T levels. The study found not only that individual men were losing testosterone as they aged (which is fairly normal), but that same-age men from later eras had substantially lower T than their predecessors: a man who turned 65 in 2002, for example, had much lower T than a man who turned 65 in 1987." [1]

While I don't doubt that social and economic pressures have a lot to do with decreased occurrences of sexual relations in the US, it's quite possible that decreases in average testosterone levels are also a factor. Low testosterone is highly correlated with a decreased sex drive.

[1] [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-mystery-of-declining- test...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-mystery-of-declining- testosterone_b_59fcc5fbe4b0d467d4c224b3)

<comment><USER3> Could this be related to less manual labor and less exercise in consequence?

<comment><USER2> I suppose, but they did say that they accounted for health and lifestyle factors, so I'm pretty sure that means that it's another cause they hadn't pinned down at the time of the study.

From what I understand, the current theory is chemicals used to make plastic more pliable ended up being endocrine inhibitors, which decrease testosterone production. BPA, and other similar chemicals.

Also, reports that many flame retardant chemicals do the same thing. The law requires that furniture with fabric and curtains and things like that have those chemicals to lower risks of fire. But, those chemical treatments physically break down into dust and we get exposed to them.

There are probably other contributing factors too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems to indicate a winner-takes-all hierarchy emerging within the sexual market place. As the data in this article shows, fewer men are having sex than women. That would indicate a group of men have multiple female partners while a large chunk of men remain unemployed living with their parents. They've been selected out of the sexual market place. I don't have time right now to dig up sources, but throughout history this has been the norm.

<comment><USER5> Are you talking about prostitution? That's a sexual marketplace. This article isn't talking about people buying and selling sexual encounters. People deciding to have sex with one another doesn't mean that there exists any sort of bartering or trade. The overwhelming majority of sex is because it feels good and all people involved want to feel good. Living in your parent's basement isn't sexy, but not because one isn't rich, but because it indicates that one cannot make it in the real world. Kids live with their parents and no one wants to have a relationship with someone stuck in a child's mentality. Or even remotely resembling it. And you completely ignore homosexuality and the fact that now, more than in the past, is it possible for one to come out and not be eviscerated. A likely explaination of the same data is that more women are having sex with one another.

<comment><USER6> sexual market place does not mean "prostitution".

the user is most likely speaking about the sexual economy, or the mating economy, or the relationship economy if you will.</comment></comment></comment>


Windows 10 is one year old - <AUTHOR> http://www.themorningbulletin.com.au/news/windows-10-is-one-year-old/3082593/ <comment><USER2> "Most of the changes centre on W10's new web browser (Edge) which is not really a good browser anyway - unless you live in the US. We already disable Microsoft Edge and set Internet Explorer as the default browser which is by far the best option in Australia."

Might someone explain this to me? I didn't really try Edge but I think it in almost everything better than IE11. Except of course you have to use some weird ActiveX plugin. In that case, I'm really sorry for you.

<comment><USER3> I think some of the new cloud features are currently limited to the US. But the biggest issue I've had using Edge in 10240 and 10586 is Edge's tendency to crash out. 14393 has a much more stable version of Edge though.

<comment><USER2> Ah, yeah might be, my parents are using Chrome on Windows 10, so they don't know. Also I feared it was like the issue in South Korea where people need(ed) an ActiveX plugin for encryption, which only worked with IE of course.</comment></comment></comment>


FreeBSD 8.0-RC3 released - <AUTHOR> http://www.freebsdnews.net/2009/11/15/freebsd-8-0-rc3-released/

<comment><USER2> How about a link to the actual content? [http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- stable/2009-Novem...](http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- stable/2009-November/052699.html)

Even still this is pretty content-free.

Some readable FreeBSD 8 changes I found: <http://ivoras.sharanet.org/freebsd/freebsd8.html>

<comment><USER3> The status entry under CLANG/LLVM says _Status: Experimental, but works. Highly motivated._ I had not seen "highly motivated" as a status before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm still a bit skeptical about ZFS, seen a few horror stories with it (one of the major complaints is the fact that ZFS "shouldn't" need an fsck util, but that it really does....

Also, is ZFS root bootable without trickery yet?

<comment><USER5> ZFS on FreeBSD is great, but its mostly ZFS is great compared to UFS/geom or ext{3,4}/LVM.

svn.apache.org is using it now, we caused many panics on FreeBSD 7.x with ZFS -- and lots of patches are now baked into 8.x, with all the patches ZFS has been great for apache.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Has anyone been running this? Does anyone have any comments?</comment>


The War for Catch-22 - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/08/heller-201108?printable=true

<comment><AUTHOR> Certainly one of my favourite novels. The author, Joseph Heller, was famously asked if he was disappointed he'd never written a better book than this, his first? He replied "No, because nobody else has either." [1]

[1] <http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/plain/A291133></comment>


OVH Montreal BHS-2 datacenter just when down hard taking out ~100,000 machines - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/zeeshizz/status/936562646966571008 <comment><AUTHOR> And it is back up.</comment>


Documents show how the NSA infers relationships based on mobile location data - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/10/new-documents-show-how-the-nsa-infers-relationships-based-on-mobile-location-data/

<comment><USER2> I actually posted about this a while back here on HN, having figured this out when attending a course on SS7 signalling several years back. At the time i thought it was a 'theoretical possibility'

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6682320](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6682320)

</comment><comment><USER3> What I'm enjoying about these documents is that they reveal the 'correct' amount of paranoia.

If you're pretty technical, it's easy to simulate what the NSA does with your imagination. Just imagine what databases they have, and imaging what you could do in a limited way if you made it your side project. Badabing.

<comment><USER4> and if it happens that NSA doesn't do it or haven't even yet collected an imagined database, it should be treated as a performance issue and negligence on behalf of the NSA.

<comment><USER5> Exactly like how all of this should have been imagined pre-Snowden. But of course it was much easier to brush off room 641A as performing simple tcpdump sessions on TV villains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, basically, Google's location history is NSA's HAPPYFOOT data aggregator.

[https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/](https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/)

<comment><USER7> That seems suboptimal. By pulling directly from the telcos, they could get data on all users rather than a subset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Given the glossary at the end, I'm surprised it didn't include Skyhook.

<comment><USER9> How many commercial wardriving services are there? Skyhook was an early one, but lost Apple.

Also: If 2.4 and 5.8 GHz satellite-based SIGINT were technically possible, at extreme difficulty and cost, it maybe within the realm of possibility of classified budgets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's disturbing is that even though they _know_ which data is from US citizens, they still won't discard it, and can even use it. I mean, maybe I can understand if they "incidentally" collect the data of some people - although doing that for tens of thousand of people a year is really pushing it since all sorts of people could be in that "incidental" collection, and US persons could actually be targeted this way, and then masked as being "incidental collection".

But even after they know they are Americans, they still keep it? That's just unacceptable. This other story puts things in an even scarier perspective, because of what they can do with that data if it gets trickled down to other agencies (parallel construction, etc:

[https://www.aclu.org/meet-jack-or-what-government-could- do-a...](https://www.aclu.org/meet-jack-or-what-government-could-do-all- location-data)

<comment><USER11> The fact that we are somehow considering Americans' privacy more important that non-Americans' privacy is what I find disturbing. Also, the illusion that they were ever discarding American citizens' data never took hold of me. The NSA collects ALL THE DATA.

<comment><USER12> Sorry.. but Americans privacy is more important than non-Americans when we are talking about the US government. They aren't collecting the data for entertainment. They can very easily round up anyone they please on US soil.

At least you have your own government to protect you (assuming you aren't important enough to start a war over).

<comment><USER13> You are never leaving the american sector[1].

[1] [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_B_145_Bi...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_B_145_Bild-F079005-0022,_Berlin,_Grenz%C3%BCbergang_Checkpoint_Charlie.jpg)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Security Vulnerabilities in Heroku - <AUTHOR> http://stephensclafani.com/2013/01/09/vulnerabilities-in-heroku/ <comment><USER2> Hi, our response can be found at...

[http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2013/1/9/password_hijacking_...](http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2013/1/9/password_hijacking_security_incident_and_response/)

Thanks again to Stephen for giving us ample time to fix this.

-Tom Maher, Heroku Security Team

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow. Those are pretty nasty vulnerabilities.

Way to responsibly disclose them after working with Heroku!

</comment><comment><USER4> from the article: "Initial fixes were in place within 24 hours." So it's all fixed? Great! I'll stick with Heroku as my hosting provider like the author does.

</comment><comment><USER5> "If the POST was made with ID removed from both the URL and body, the password of a random account would be reset and the account automatically logged in to:"

That seems like a very strange bug to occur.

<comment><USER6> This kind of bug can happen when you have code like this in SQL:

SELECT @id = id FROM table --Oops, forgot where clause. This selects a "random" row

DELETE FROM table_2 WHERE id = @id

<comment><USER2> It was actually slightly more dumb than that.

Like most sites, after you register your account, we generate a nonce and email it to the provided address. You click the link with the nonce, we prompt you to set your password, and your account is ready. Our bug was that for already-verified users, the nonce column in the database is empty (it's a nonce, you see, so we only use it once...). This was the root cause for both bugs Mr. Sclafani describes.

<comment><USER7> The ActiveRecord query that caused this was along the lines of:

        User.find_by_email_and_token(params[:email], params[:token])

If the token is nil, it basically turns into a `find_by_email`.

I'll also add that while we had tests that were intended to avoid this bad behavior, these tests were unfortunately broken and were instead verifying the incorrect behavior.

<comment><USER8> It's interesting how differently Django handles password resets - no nonce is generated.

Instead, the user is emailed a token that's just her user ID, HMAC-signed with the last login date and a secret site key.

You can't generate valid reset links without knowing the secret key and you can't tamper with the one you got because it's HMAC-signed. By adding the last login date to the HMAC you make sure the link can be used only once. After a user resets her password, the last login date is updated to _now_ so the link is no longer valid due to broken HMAC.

I like this solution because it doesn't rely on storing any state anywhere between requesting the reset and completing it.

<comment><USER9> This is pretty much exactly what Drupal does as well, with the exception of using the user's password hash instead of the ID as input before hashing and it also stores the timestamp of the reset request as part of the URL (and the token) to allow for expiring password resets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> WOW this was critical bug, you could basically change anyone password without authenticating and then authenticate as them.

I wish heroku would disclose this issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> Heroku will be publishing a blog post sometime today.

<comment><USER11> [http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2013/1/9/password_hijacking_...](http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2013/1/9/password_hijacking_security_incident_and_response/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Always like to see transparent and timely responses to issues like this. Well done.</comment>


Show HN: A very simple way to share your location - <AUTHOR> http://mapme.in

<comment><AUTHOR> I've created a super simple way to share your location. You simply go to mapme.in and then you get a unique link to text, tweet, email to a friend from your phone, tablet or desktop.

I decided to create this after a night out trying to describe where I was to friend. It was too much hassle spelling the street name and I wished I could of texted her a link. They weren't familiar with area.

Appreciate any feedback, its super simple! :-)

<comment><USER2> Doesn't show anything if you have location services off (Safari, MacBook Air).

 _It was too much hassle spelling the street name and I wished I could of texted her a link._

WhatsApp -> send my location.

<comment><USER3> WhatsApp costs 69p and is lame. At least this free I guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like how practical it is. I normally use WhatsApp or LINE for this, but even on my laptop the geolocation is fairly accurate.

Bug report:

I get an offset between what I see when I generate a location to what it shows using the URL on an incognito window. Correct one on the left, wrong one on the right:

[http://f.cl.ly/items/2D261R141A082F3G2V2w/cafe.png](http://f.cl.ly/items/2D261R141A082F3G2V2w/cafe.png)

[http://mapme.in/5298](http://mapme.in/5298)

(Yes, I just shared my location publicly on the internet. I'll be fine.)

<comment><USER4> New bug report!

It seems you are reusing four digit IDs? The address space might not be big enough for HN! My previous link is now showing a location in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. Thanks for the improvement report! I'll get on it right away.

<comment><USER4> Glad I could help. Nice project!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys! Thanks for your feedback. Using your suggestion, I've now updated the 4 digit IDs to 10 digits :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Shows location of my ISP provider , google maps on phone using triangulation is accurate

<comment><USER6> Same thing here.

I then hit F5 and it told me I was in Germany.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice little project. The map placed me in the middle of a river, made me laugh

</comment><comment><USER8> This is petrifying. My computer knows exactly where I am sitting.

</comment><comment><USER9> Very simple service, I wish there were more like this.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hmmm, this was rather out for me. I got: [http://mapme.in/1515](http://mapme.in/1515) however I live almost 5 miles away from there.</comment>


Ask HN: Why aren't Google, Facebook or Twitter CAs? - <AUTHOR>

It would seem to me that their graphs are stronger predictors of authenticity then government sanctioned ID or financial payments. <comment><USER2> It would require a massive investment in infrastructure and licensing to become a CA that I suspect the major internet firms are unwilling to pay. The amount of paperwork and day to day management time required to run such an operation would be massive. In this case, unless the government/other certifying body is willing to accept current identifiers from these companies, they gain no benefit from becoming CAs.

<comment><USER3> > It would require a massive investment in infrastructure and licensing to > become a CA that I suspect the major internet firms are unwilling to pay.

Or they could just invest some of the vast pile of cash that some of them (I'm looking at you, Google) have lying around, and buy an existing, widely trusted CA, which would probably be lower-risk than investing in infrastructure and licensing; they still end up with full control of how the CA _works_ going forward either way.

<comment><USER4> Why do you think it would be lower risk?

<comment><USER3> > Why do you think it would be lower risk?

Because gaining control of an existing trusted CAs (and, consequently, existing widely trusted root certificates) gives them built-in reach that doesn't have to be be grown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, Google _is_ a CA. Check the certificate chain for [https://www.google.com](https://www.google.com): issued by "Google Internet Authority G2".

<comment><USER6> More details on [http://pki.google.com/](http://pki.google.com/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sorry for my ignorance but what is a CA? Here in Canada, CA stands for Chartered Accountant.

<comment><USER8> CA stands for Certificate Authority in this case.</comment></comment>


John Carmack Quakecon 2013 Keynote Livestream - <AUTHOR> http://www.twitch.tv/bethesda

<comment><USER2> "Kinect is sort of like a zero-button mouse with a lot of latency on it."

</comment><comment><USER3> John Carmack talks at length about Haskell in this keynote. Definitely worth watching if you're interested in that stuff.

<comment><USER4> He seems to start talking about Haskell at 1 hour and 32 minutes into the VOD of the talk [1] (don't think he mentioned it before that).

[1] [http://www.twitch.tv/bethesda/b/439369577?t=1h32m](http://www.twitch.tv/bethesda/b/439369577?t=1h32m)

<comment><USER4> He also talks about Lisp and functional programming in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He talks at length about the recent years of Armadillo, I think it is really interesting his gripe was a lack of oversight from his end when he wasn't active on site, while he was spending a million a year funding the project. I wonder how many of the startups around these parts could use that kind of lesson (ie, inverse of the overbearing boss).

I also love that John Carmack and Elon Musk are email buddies, and that even John Carmack isn't thinking big enough for Elon =P

<comment><USER6> _John Carmack isn 't thinking big enough for Elon_

A few years ago I had the same thought about Carmack. I wondered why he seemingly abandoned his vision for space travel by returning to work in the game industry on Rage. I figured Carmack probably realized that Elon's SpaceX was going to "win the race" and gave up. Or maybe Carmack is just getting old. Either way, he's still one of my heroes.

<comment><USER7> John is less than one year older than Elon. They are both hugely smart from a technology standpoint but John's knowledge goes very deep. John's focus is implementing the future of technology personally. Elon's focus is bringing sufficient capital to bring the technological future to the present.

<comment><USER8> Both came from game dev backgrounds. Carmack announced he was getting into rockets a couple of years before Musk sold paypay... and then got into rockets :)

I wouldn't be surprised if Carmack heavily inspired Musk. If not just with shareware, and online payments, then with rockets.

Also, the public .plan files he published in the 90s heavily inspired the web log/blog craze :)

<comment><USER9> These are interesting points. I think the crowd that wasn't on the web in the mid 90's may not understand just how influential Carmack was on so many of us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You could also watch Carmack's keynote from YouTube [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNWAcEu1jpU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNWAcEu1jpU)

<comment><USER11> Thanks! Just to note, Carmack doesn't come out until 15 minutes into that video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really enjoy that Carmack speaks so precisely. It makes it a joy to listen to anything he has to say. He truly is a brilliant guy.

<comment><USER5> I would say I want him to make a podcast (and would pay like $5 a month for an episode), but considering he thinks hes wasting his free time if all hes doing is learning scheme and implementing Wolfenstein in Haskell, I definitely don't want to take away of his time to educate muggles.

<comment><USER12> Right, but if it made enough money to fund Armadillo it might be worth his time.

<comment><USER5> This is a good point, why doesn't he crowdfund Armadillo?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Link to the video to watch later: [http://www.twitch.tv/bethesda/b/439369577](http://www.twitch.tv/bethesda/b/439369577)

</comment><comment><USER14> His talks are unstructured brain dumps that take a lot of effort to unpack. Even so, they contain interesting experience/research/experimentation insights that make it worth the effort. I have every single keynote right from 1998 and its interesting to see how his thoughts have shaped over the years.

For people new to game dev don't miss these ..

Tim Sweeney's talk at POPL about the next mainstream programming language.

[http://www.st.cs.uni- saarland.de/edu/seminare/2005/advanced-...](http://www.st.cs.uni- saarland.de/edu/seminare/2005/advanced-fp/docs/sweeny.pdf)

and Jonathan Blow's column from gdmag.

[http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=971590](http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=971590)

<comment><USER15> Was just discussing Tim Sweeney on reddit when someone told me that he was publishing papers on dependently typed languages (found a public one in pdf) [http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/1jj40p/john_carmack...](http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/1jj40p/john_carmack_talking_at_length_about_haskell_in/cbfj4qv)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Always a pleasure to see John wax lyrical on graphics tech. I used to love reading his .plan files back in the day and recently found a link to a PDF version of some of them here on HN: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/14192/John- Carmack-Archive-plan-19...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/14192/John-Carmack- Archive-plan-1998) \- via [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3367230](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3367230)

<comment><USER17> That is _not_ a link to a PDF. Would you mind sharing the original PDF if you have it? I can't/won't read scribd documents.

Edit: As an HTML document: [http://www.team5150.com/~andrew/carmack/plan.html](http://www.team5150.com/~andrew/carmack/plan.html)

<comment><USER18> FWIW, here's a link to a PDF version:

[http://fd.fabiensanglard.net/doom3/pdfs/johnc- plan_1997.pdf](http://fd.fabiensanglard.net/doom3/pdfs/johnc-plan_1997.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> He is really into Haskell. Would love to see some practical example from him.

ps:he can speak for hours.

<comment><USER20> This is probably not as fun as the stuff Carmack is up to, but if anyone out there wants to see some examples of "real" stuff done in Haskell (for "typical startup" values of "real"), check out _Real World Haskell_. I found it to be a great read, especially after working through _Learn You a Haskell_.

[http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/](http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is anyone doing anything related to a universal memory abstraction in the Linux kernel? He speaks for around 5 minutes at the 20 minute mark about a unified memory architecture, and I just say _hell yes_. I think it might become one of the largest problems in the apu / dedicated card world, and just in general it is always an issue in a transition from dedicated plug in hardware cards with their own memories to integrated solutions using system memory. Having real universal reference would make all that a non problem.

<comment><USER21> He actually started talking about unified memory architecture at about the 51 minute mark. (If anyone else is curious.)

<comment><USER5> I meant after he started talking, my bad. I was watching it live. In the vod that might not make sense.

<comment><USER21> Oops! No, that's my bad. I liked your comment by the way. I was just trying to give people a reference time if they were curious.

I'm still watching the VOD because I didn't catch it live. I didn't realize the timing doesn't sync. In the VOD he first talks about unified memory architecture at about 51 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> His keynotes are always so good. I'm really looking forward to watching it a bit later.

<comment><USER22> This year's speech made me think what it might have been like to listen to visionaries in the past give a talk out in the middle of a town's square.

It was like the room was dead silent (not even random people coughing or opening bags of snacks) for 3 hours while one of the smartest game devs talked about various topics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is it possible to get a permalink to the talk so that I can watch it later? (or will this link work for that?)

<comment><USER24> [http://www.twitch.tv/bethesda/b/439369577?t=15m](http://www.twitch.tv/bethesda/b/439369577?t=15m)

This is the automatic twitch vod they were mentioning, with the timestamp. By the way, Carmack has been going at it for more than 2 and a half hours now. Impressive!

<comment><USER25> How impressive? He is impressive and just talking about what he does and loves is easy :)!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Could someone post timecoded highlights? I probably can't watch a 3h keynote as I'm not a gamer, but I'd like to watch the bits I'm interested in (like about rockets, Haskell etc).

<comment><USER9> It's an extremely monolog, and he tends to follow connections in his thinking between the various topic areas, so it's difficult to index.

And honestly, I'd say only 20% of the talk is directly about gaming. Most of it is about what he thinks the future will be like in terms of programming and hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> if you are interested in rendering, don't miss out John's talk at 5pm dallas time today: "Principles of Lightining and Rendering with John Carmack" [http://www.quakecon.org/event-schedule/](http://www.quakecon.org/event- schedule/) Should also be streamed on the quakecon twitch stream. according to the keynet video, it is supposed to be a talk he has given internally at id before and was urged to redo it at quakecon.

"John will present a lecture-style presentation on the physics of light transport and rendering. He will discuss how light behaves in the real world, and the approximations and compromises that are involved in simulating the behavior with computers. Note: not for the technically faint at heart."

</comment><comment><USER28> Lots of big hints there for developers to pick up on. Haskell for a large simulation project , GPGPU advancement, 120 hz clock with physics interpolation, benefits of functions without side effects, performance benefits from elegant design rather than complicated optimization kludges.</comment>