[2003] Get Rich Slowly - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,463093,00.html <comment><USER2> We recently discussed (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=556399>) a similar [2009] article by the same publisher ([http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1890387,00....](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1890387,00.html)). I find the publisher coincidence (?) interesting.

<comment><USER3> Beyond the title, the newer article is nothing like this older article. The newer article is about a guy who built a Web site on the side. The older article is about picking mutual funds and investment strategies.

<comment><USER4> Another day in PMC :) Both articles are geared towards the poor/middle classes who try to jump above their heads.I wonder if it is the sign of things to come....Give us your money and we will invest in stocks.Poof ! No money. But now give us your money or just try by yourself and build internet/clean-tech start-up. Every 5-7 years they change the strategy after people realize it's not working. I'm tired of how people treated like sheep in Police-Mafiozo Country</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you work as product engineer or as platform engineer at BigCo? - <AUTHOR> Many large tech companies (like FAANG) have infrastructure/platform teams that are separate from whatever the business of the company happens to be (selling ads, streaming movies etc).<p>If you are looking to join such a company as an engineer, will you want to work for one of their product teams, or any of the supporting infrastructure/platform teams? <comment><USER2> I would never work for one of those companies, their ethics and morals are disgraceful.

Edit: sorry didn't understand all the letters in the acronym. I don't think Netflix are bad, Apple I'm on the fence, Goog/Face/Amaz no way.

<comment><USER3> I did a six month contract for Apple Retail Software Engineering in Cupertino.

Most of the guys there were great and I loved working with them.

But I found too many people in the larger organization who expected me to be their own personal Steve Jobs and to know what they wanted and needed before they knew it themselves, and if I couldn't magically deliver that in advance, then I was useless to them.

IMO, I managed to dodge a bullet there. It was a great experience, I learned a lot, and I'm happy to be an Apple customer. But knowing what I know now, I wouldn't want to work there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It probably depends on the BigCo... I'm happier on the product side of the fence at my current BigCo gig than I think I would be on the support side, though at somewhere like Google with a strong SRE culture and a tendency to kill many products it might be the other way around. I'd probably be happiest if I got to do a bit of both again, but BigCos love specialization.

Though even within a BigCo it just depends on the team sometimes. I talk to a few people who are _very_ happy on the support side, much happier than being in product before, I also talk to others who aren't at all happy. I've seen teams and managers evaporate on both sides too. In my sample of one the biggest sources of frustration on either side seem to be the priorities of upper management, and there can even be mutual frustration. Like some people on product will get annoyed at support people for not providing enough support in something (e.g. test automation infrastructure), but support people are equally annoyed at not being able to provide enough support because upper management decided to shift more resources to product.

</comment><comment><USER5> Be prepared to be on a _support_ team, if that's your choice. You'll always play second fiddle to the main product/platform folks and the revenue generating folks. It's not a _life in the spotlight_ type of job, but if you just want a slightly more relaxing gig, it's not the worst.

Personally after working in my _support_ role (we support our main revenue generating platform), I'm _absolutely_ changing my next position to be more on the revenue/main-platform side.

<comment><USER3> In my experience, if you're a support guy, then you are a cost center, and the only purpose of a cost center is to get reduced to zero. Increasingly Herculean efforts can stave off that pressure for a period of time, but that's just the basic fundamental nature of the game on that side of the fence.

Of course, those product guys really do need a lot of support, and sometimes they arrange to have their own internal support because they can't get what they need from the guys who are supposed to perform that job. That can be a good gig, at least until the Enterprise discovers that the product guys had set up their own shadow IT group and get all that stuff merged back into the central IT group.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm an infrastructure engineer (and love it), so I'd only consider joining in that role.

That said, I don't recommend a company whose product is something you're against. Yes, you're not directly working on it but I do enjoy my job a lot more knowing that I'm helping product developers build cool stuff. I think it'd be a lot harder to do that if I wasn't proud of what they were working on, by extension.

<comment><USER7> > I'm an infrastructure engineer (and love it), so I'd only consider joining > in that role.

I'm a student, and I think infrastructure is the place I want to be (interested in concurrency, distributed systems, Erlang etc).

Is there anything you'd recommend building/studying/doing to prepare myself for an career in infrastructure?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Generally, I like to work on product-oriented teams. I like being able to push code and actually see the results of what I've been doing on the site or in the app when it's deployed to prod.

</comment><comment><USER9> let me rephrase the question:

do you prefer orange or green?</comment>


Rand Paul: Big Brother Really Is Watching Us - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324634304578537720921466776.html?mod=WSJ_LatestHeadlines <comment><USER2> "No one objects to balancing security against liberty. No one objects to seeking warrants for targeted monitoring based on probable cause. We've always done this.

What is objectionable is a system in which government has unlimited and privileged access to the details of our private affairs, and citizens are simply supposed to trust that there won't be any abuse of power. This is an absurd expectation."

I think one of the reasons we libertarians have had such a hard time over the years talking about the security state we're building is that Paul is right: this is absurd. People simply do not believe that such a thing is actually happening. Sure, they think, some bad guys are being monitored, and the usual crackpots are complaining, but overall the government is doing a good job. After all, there hasn't been another 9-11, right?

I appreciate Paul's efforts, but we're going to need _massive_ reform in the surveillance policies of the U.S. As a start we need something like another Church Committee.

One thought is this: how about making it a felony _not_ to disclose information that an agency is clearly violating the constitution.

<comment><USER3> > "No one objects to balancing security against liberty. No one objects to > seeking warrants for targeted monitoring based on probable cause. We've > always done this.

What we've always done is get warrants for searches. No warrants were required to monitor someone (say, to have a cop follow them around). That is still the case. The FISA warrants allow monitoring. An Article III warrant is still necessary for a real search. What's changes now is that people openly broadcast, in clear text, the kind of information that previously would've required a search pursuant to a warrant to find out.

I understand why Rand Paul, as a libertarian, has to pretend that we're deviating from historical practice, though. It's much easier to redefine the status quo them claim you just want to go back to it than to admit that we face an unprecedented situation (protecting the privacy of a populace that seems happy to broadcast their private information all over the internet) which might require novel solutions.

<comment><USER4> People don't "broadcast" their information. They send it using point-to-point protocols to companies or people. The government is using special, secret authority to compel intermediaries or stewards of the information to turn it over en masse.

If the government was just browsing Facebook or doing Google searches, nobody would complain. But they are using government powers to get the information, which means that it is a search.

<comment><USER5> Precisely. Can rayiner obtain my call metadata? They cannot. I did not broadcast this information, the NSA obtained it by using state powers to secure a secret, unrestricted (in the most literal sense) warrant.

<comment><USER6> > Can rayiner obtain my call metadata? They cannot.

That's what we suppose, anyway.

Of course, we don't know whether or not rayiner has acquaintances who work for your carrier who have access to it, or perhaps law enforcement who have access to a portal that the carrier voluntarily provides.

And we don't know if the carrier has freely entered into any private agreements to sell call data to others... which they might be free to do even in the face of aggressive bans on law enforcement or national security organizations ever even breathing at carriers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congratulations Obama, Feinstein. You've got me throwing in with Rand Paul. Though I could trust you with our civil liberties and privacy, but now I have to get behind the Ayn Rand loving libertarian on this. So be it; policy over party.

<comment><USER8> Hey, ya never know, once you take the plunge, you might find that you like it here on the dark-side. :-)

Libertarians are mostly pretty nice once you get to know them. Some of us are downright friendly at times.

<comment><USER9> I have no problems with Libertarian individuals (or Republican or Democrats). I have serious issues with a national party that, when I watched their 2004 convention, a man in a Thomas Jefferson costume gave a speech about pot and guns. I thought it was a joke, but it wasn't. It was CSPAN.

Unless I myself run for office, I don't think I'll ever find a political party that closely aligns with my beliefs and also takes them seriously.

<comment><USER10> I am not joking when I say you could always start you own. Outline what it is you really believe and verify how your policies, derived from your core beliefs, improve society.

All parties start with one voice, regardless the exercise will bring clarity to the beliefs and values you hold most dear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a progressive, I have conflicts with some of Rand Paul (and his father Ron) policies and positions. However, you have to admit they're beginning to sound like profits.

Like it or not, they adhere to a fairly strict view of the constitution and that's admirable in the current poll-based world of politics.

That said, Paul (and father) were never good communicators. Both vocally and even prosaically. I'm surprised he is not using the IRS scandal and tie it to the NSA's potential abuse of power.

As we know the metadata can be used to see if a person had an abortion, may have sought mental health (calling suicide hotlines, etc.) may have feared STDs (calling aids hotline) may have had cosmetic surgery or slew of other things.

Any of these information, can for example, be misused against a political contender running against the current administration. Comparisons to IRS' supposed targeting of certain political entity would have been tangible and palpable example of the unchecked power of NSA and would have been farm more visceral than the heady, "Big Brother" argument.

<comment><USER12> Actually I liked this: "We fought a revolution over issues like generalized warrants, where soldiers would go from house to house, searching anything they liked."

The traditional narrative that youngsters in the US are taught is that the revolution was fought over taxes, but if you closely read the declaration of independence, that's not really the bulk of the argument. Historically speaking, it was violations of personal freedoms and the "home is a man's castle" principles that rankled the colonists the most.

<comment><USER13> this is one of the reason why the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are making us less safe. We barge into peoples houses and search through their stuff all the time. People seem to forget how important Respect is to people, people will fight revolutions for it. We did, the arab spring is doing it, a persons personal space and thoughts and communications are their most sacred human rights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's unfortunate that he believes the government should control a woman's uterus, which is an even more serious invasion of privacy and more likely to cause harm than this data collection.

<comment><USER9> I'm unsure why exactly you're being down voted, but unless someone who down voted you comes forward, I'm guessing the answer is in part misogynistic and also in part myopia on the importance of data collection vs. women's reproductive rights.

Regardless, it's an important point to make that politicians are complex creatures, just like the rest of us. It's best not to hold them in high regard as people and to instead focus on their policies.

<comment> a-priori I don't blame people for downvoting michaelwww because their comment is an ad hominem attack on Rand Paul. Paul's attitude on abortion has no bearing on the PRISM lawsuit.

<comment><USER9> Yes it does. It calls into question his motivations when it comes to civil liberties. He could build a much stronger coalition among civil libertarians if he were more consistent in his beliefs about the extent to which the government can monitor and control the people who give it power.

<comment><USER15> >> It calls into question his motivations when it comes to civil liberties.

Only if you accept _a priori_ an answer to the core issue which is debated in the abortion issue: whether an unborn baby should be protected as a human life.

Nobody argues that government is invasive if it forbids stabbing a toddler to death behind closed doors. People do argue that one may stab a fetus to death behind closed doors.

The point of contention is not privacy, but the definition of human life. Pretending that the issue is already settled even as you argue for a particular policy is either naive or disingenuous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Getting excited about Rand Paul speaking out about this is exactly like getting excited by candidate Obama talking about how he was going end the wars, close Gitmo, and stop torture.

<comment><USER15> It is a good point that we should focus on track record, not speech. But:

1) don't we have more track record on Paul regarding this issue than we did on Obama? 2) isn't it possible that having a senator express this opinion publicly could influence other elected officials?

<comment><USER16> I at least, have read/seen much more about Rand Paul and the polices he promotes than I had about Obama as he took office for the first time.

Reading his statements regarding his commitment to the Republican party & its goals as well as the right-wing "Libertarian" principles he habitually talks about and then comparing that to the analysis of the actual text of his proposals; it's obvious that he is simply using these "Libertarian" talking points as blunt weapons against the Democrats.

Many of Rand Paul's proposals don't actually do or change anything at all, instead they are designed only to make the news cycle and then to disappear. Many lack many of the details actual legislation is required to have or because they are designed such that a voting majority is impossible to develop. It's clear that they were never intended to go further than a news cycle... and they don't.

Besides often being couched in language Democrats are unlikely to ever accept, they're also consistent with the proposals from other Hard-Right Republican's who don't associate themselves with the right-libertarian political movement at all. So it's not like he's making non-partisan basic pro-freedom proposals, which the Democrats (being the anti-freedom party) reject. He's only making proposals about issues which can be expressed in the hyper-partisan language and which support the hyper-partisan strategy that is currently dominating D.C. politics. Moreover, he's studiously avoided good-faith, non-partisan, basic policy reform proposals which could get through the legislation process.

Assuming that Rand Paul continues to be successful with this gambit, the obvious influence it will have on other elected officials is that this sort of deceptive and manipulative strategy is politically effective and that they should be doing it too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _"... If someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that's really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison."_

[http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/05/31/232182/rand- pau...](http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/05/31/232182/rand-paul- criminalize-speech/?mobile=nc)

<comment><USER18> Do you support the violent overthrow of the government? Many people would die.

<comment><USER9> Since when is listening to one's positions, however awful they may be, indicative of support?

<comment><USER19> Also, we're pretty protective of our right to espouse even very unpopular and radical beliefs...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why is the focus only on the phone records? Getting all the online data seems a lot bigger to me.</comment>


Your Pet's Disease Could Be Cured by Gene Therapy - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608163/your-pets-disease-could-be-cured-by-gene-therapy/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2018-02-24&utm_campaign=Technology+Review <comment><USER2> Good luck getting pet insurance to cover that.</comment>


OnePlus is preloading its phones with Facebook bloatware - <AUTHOR> https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/08/05/oneplus-is-poisoning-its-phones-with-facebook-bloatware/?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4 <comment><USER2> This is upsetting. I am very happy with my OnePlus 6T, and one of the major reasons I chose is was because it was nearly stock Android and came with no bloatware. I've recommended OnePlus to friends based on that same assessment. Now I guess I have to rethink that recommendation.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We reached out to OnePlus for comment and they confirmed to us that the OnePlus 8, 8 Pro, and Nord all include the Facebook App Installer, Facebook App Manager, and Facebook Services as system apps</comment>


How did online shopping work before the arrival of HTTPS? - <AUTHOR> According to Wikipedia, SSL was first released by Netscape in 1995, the year after Amazon.com was founded. How did they ensure security without using HTTPS? <comment><USER2> At the time, WiFi wasn't a thing. The internet backbone was provided by the government, and man-in-the-middle attacks were basically theoretical so far as I know. Basically you trusted your hardware and internet provider, and so long as there weren't any devices connected (probably by ethernet) to your local network there wasn't an obvious way to sniff traffic or carry out an attack.

The world is different now, with a whole bunch of potentially untrustworthy ISPs and a lot of broadcasting over public or easily-crackable WiFi and mobile networks. That's why SSL is absolutely critical now, but it wasn't at the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, I see, makes sense. Those were the days when Microsoft hadn't learned how to make a secure browser, after all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> IIRC there was quite a bit of paranoia about credit card numbers (although that may have been created to sell SSL) and "call us to complete your order" was a big thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> In short. They didn't. It wasn't about IE not making a secure browser, none of them were secure in that regard. In 1995, almost all of the browsers were based on the original NCSA Mosaic source code (even IE). Once security started to become a concern and SSL was introduced, browsers immediately started implementing the protocol.

At that time the issue of security revolved around the retailer keeping your personal information secure.

</comment><comment><USER5> You would trust in the people working to set up online shops. After all, at the time they were at the forefront of technology.

Back in those days, people were more paranoid about malicious pop up windows rather than man in the middle attacks. You would be able to tell who's been on the naughty adult sites as their computers would be full of malware :P

Back then, if I purchased things online, I would make a point of requesting a new credit card every year or so for additional security.

<comment><USER4> Lol, I still do this :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remember ordering books from the O'Reilly website back in around 1993 and when I got to the payment part, the page asked me to email credit card details to an O'Reilly email address. I did so and received my books a few days later.</comment>


Martin Shkreli is buying websites associated with the names of journalists - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/martin-shkreli-journalists-domain-name-custom-2017-8 <comment><USER2> Someone please tell the journalists how to search for domains related to him [1]. Scores are currently available. Using his last name first opens up the coveted .Com [2]

[1]: [https://iwantmyname.com/?domain=Martinshkreli](https://iwantmyname.com/?domain=Martinshkreli)

[2]: [https://iwantmyname.com/?domain=shkreliMartin](https://iwantmyname.com/?domain=shkreliMartin)

</comment><comment><USER3> "When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say." -grrm

Attacking the media seems to be really popular these days. What is Martin afraid of?

<comment><USER4> Ugh. I hate to be the guy to defend him, but watch a YouTube video of the guy. He's just a troll. He doesn't hate poor people. He hates the media... I don't really want to explain why but there's a video of him talking to an 18 yr old kid and it became obvious he wasn't evil, he's just a dick for sport to people that want to make him look evil. I put down my pitchfork at that point.

<comment><USER5> This is morally absurd. He is "a dick for sport" to say the very least, and is entirely unmoved to the harm he causes other. Having an ironic affectation doesn't somehow mean you're not evil, it just means you aren't willing to directly face how bad you are. Many people we describe as evil are similar and it earns him no slack.

<comment><USER6> I'm not aware of any harm he caused; the $600 medicine thing could have harmed the uninsured I suppose, but being uninsured already means you'll get fucked by any medical bills anyways. So the fucked stay fucked, and he didn't change much to that equation. Afaik no, or few, new fucked people exist by that action.

The event _should_ have brought attention to the absurd dependence on insurance Americans have to have, and the fact that it gets worse by a positive feedback loop (as insurance companies extend their "benefit" range, the relevant market increases their price to make use it, so more people _need_ to get insurance to see "proper" pricing, which means insurance now has enough power/money to further increase their "benefits"). Afaik he just participated in the feedback loop, but made no effort to affect it (nor should he; its a macro-level government-scale problem)

<comment><USER7> [http://www.teenvogue.com/story/online-harassment-lauren- duca...](http://www.teenvogue.com/story/online-harassment-lauren-duca-thigh- high-politics)

Read this article. Seriously. Ignoring any potential "actual" harm his business practices may have inflicted, he is a toxic person who doesn't care what his effects his trolling has in the real world. He's inspiring people to threaten and harass people online. Someone took pizzagate seriously enough to act on it in the real world - how long until someone does the same here and shows up at Lauren's or her parent's house, or actually rapes her?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I dont understand, if he didn't do anything illegal what is the problem? It only brings light on the laws that made it happen right?

<comment><USER9> There's still a difference between legal and ethical. There's also a difference between innocent now and slander later. The potential for abuse is real.</comment></comment>


Slicehost vs Linode - <AUTHOR> http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/11/24/slicehost-vs-linode <comment><USER2> I'm also using both vendors with a couple VPSes at each.

I've had one outage with Slicehost when they needed to replace a drive in one of my servers. I wasn't even aware that there was a problem prior which shows how proactive they were. The outage was short and on schedule and everything came back up, as expected.

I've had excellent experiences with tech support in both organizations. Both are very responsive.

Both have pretty strong user communities with Slicehost having a bit of an edge on documentation, if you aren't already comfortable with your own admin. Both have active IRC channels.

Honestly, for me they're almost a coin flip. When I get ready to acquire a new VPS I see what each is offering at the time and go with the biggest bang for my buck. The article is helpful, even if unscientific, at determining the efficiency of the bang.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please note, I was reading on Slicehost's forums/blog the other day, and you can install a 32 bit OS.

Here is a link that should help:

[http://wiki.slicehost.com/doku.php?id=installing_an_arbitrar...](http://wiki.slicehost.com/doku.php?id=installing_an_arbitrary_linux_distro_on_your_slice)

So its not completely out of the question.

Hope this helps steer some people back to SH side.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't make sense to base your production system on a hack of your provider's platform. 64bit OS was the reason I ditched Slicehost too, although I knew about this hack.

<comment><USER5> A hack? To the best of my knowledge, both providers allow users to install arbitrary Linux distributions. It's not against any rules, so I wouldn't consider this a hack.

<comment><USER4> It is not part of their recommended way to do things. They do not provide support and they may close this opportunity at any time, even involuntarily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious to see what the 64-bit memory-tax is for various languages/runtimes.

I took a quick glance at the Language Shootout to see if I could find any patterns, but at least for the few I checked, it's all over the place. For example, on the "n-body" problem, both Ruby and SBCL grow 31% on x86-64. But Ruby on "pidigits" grows only 2%, while SBCL on that problem adds a whopping 111%. On "spectral-norm", Ruby grows 61%, while SBCL grows 31%.

So this appears to be a place where moving to 64-bit is completely unknown, and you have to test for your specific application. It might double your memory usage with no change in speed, or (if you're running pidigits.rb) it might double your speed with almost no change in memory usage.

<comment><USER7> The SBCL thing makes me wonder if there are any modern lisps that can be restricted to a 4GB (32-bit) address space, while still using 64-bit values and registers...

Then, cons cells would take up only one machine word.

<comment><USER8> If everything you point to is aligned on an eight-byte boundary, and if you don't use type tags, then a 32-bit pointer can point to anything in a 35-bit address space. So you can get up to 32 GB.

<comment><USER7> "16384 PB ought to be enough for everybody!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been using linode for the last 8 months and so far it has been a wonderful low cost, high performance solution. My only complaint is that they don't appear to offer any backup solutions. I an under the assumption that I'll be rebuilding my linode disk image from scratch if the physical server is involved in a fire, corrupts my disk image, etc. It would be nice if I could do the equivalent of take a snapshot, encrypt it, and upload it to s3.

</comment><comment><USER10> I can't speak for slicehost, but I have used linode for a little while now and it's been completely painless. I haven't had any disasters (perhaps that alone is telling) so I can't speak about riding the river either.

Linode has help on IRC for anything that isn't straight-forward too. Easy.

<comment><USER11> FWIW, Slicehost also has both IRC and AJAX chat support channels, plus an 800 number for escalating omg-people-are-dying level of support requests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> With Slicehost now being owned by Rackspace, they are more likely to stick around for a while which is nice if you're into that sort of thing. But they are both fantastic, can't go wrong.

<comment><USER13> Linode has been around a pretty long time now- I've been a customer for least a couple years. I think they're well past the point where we need to be worried if they're still going to be around next year.

<comment><USER14> The next couple years are likely not going to be the last couple years, especially for small businesses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been a linode customer for a year, and it's pretty cool. My only wish at this point would be for them to offer hosting at a european datacenter.

<comment><USER16> I'm also searching for a reliable and not too expensive VPS-host based in Europe. Seems like dedicated servers are cheaper here than a decent VPS.

<comment><USER17> I don't use them any more as I've moved to Slicehost, but Rimuhosting have servers in London and their pricing and service are very good, if a little pricier than Slicehost/Linode

</comment></comment></comment><comment> jeremychase-2 Slicehost has a pitiful per slice bandwidth cap of 10mbit. Linode's is 35mbit.

<comment><USER18> I hit this limit and slicehost upped it on my slice, I'm not sure if this is typical or not, but they were very quick to increase the limit for me.

<comment> jeremychase-2 That is interesting; I asked about increasing it on my personal slice and Slicehost refused. I decided to move to Linode as a result.

The company I work for also has several slices at Slicehost and, from what I understand, Slicehost wouldn't increase the limit on that account either.(I am not the point of contact so I can't say definitively in this case)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I use Tektonic.

<http://www.tektonic.net/vps.php>

I haven't done any performance comparison. (since I don't use other hosting services.)

But as far as raw resources per dollar, Tektonic has both Slicehost and Linode beaten.

<comment><USER20> Tektonic looks nice, but:

* Their 90-day money back guarantee only applies if they have failed to meet industry standards for performance and reliability. So, if you just don't like the service, you're out of luck.

* Their 90-day money back guarantee actually doesn't give you your money back! They give you a pro-rated refund of your charges for that month. So, even if you can argue to them that they are slow and unreliable, you'll still only get a refund of your unused portion.

<http://www.tektonic.net/tos.php#money>

* Click on the Virtuozzo link: <http://www.tektonic.net/vps.php#features> I always wanted a Lorem ipsum!

Maybe they are really good, but their public presentation leaves a little to be desired. I'm ok if someone doesn't want to offer a money-back guarantee. However, why word something so poorly? A pro-rated refund is not a money-back guarantee.

Going into their order system, they're definitely cheap - they divided their costs by 100! So, that $53 level becomes $0.53! It just seems like they don't have their act together. It could just be that they put all their effort into the product itself and didn't pay attention to the other details, but it isn't a great way to run a business.

<comment><USER21> The price isn't a mistake: "CURRENT SPECIAL: 99% off the first month on Virtual Private Server and Dynamic Dedicated Server VPS accounts! Discount automatically applied at checkout. The next 80 orders will receive this discount."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have used both. Gor my usage pattern (low) they have both proved to be excellent.

However, I would a ++ for Linode because they seem to offer more RAM/$ on paper. And their online control panel is a bit more sophisticated than Slicehost's.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been using Linode for a while and I've been generally happy with it. There were some glitches when they started doing xen hosting, where one of my filesystems would suddenly drop into read-only mode and only a reboot would fix it, but that hasn't happened in months.

I used to use OpenHosting (openvps.com), and I have no complaints about their pricing or service, but (a) they use CentOS exclusively, and (b) they use Linux-VServer rather than Xen or another better-known virtualization system. If you can work within those constraints I would recommend looking into them.

</comment><comment><USER23> If he was running ruby enterprise and passenger for these comparison's then the results may be skewed. My understanding is that you get about a 30% memory usage reduction with ruby enterprise, but that's only on 32bit images... so he wouldn't get that benefit on a the stock 64bit slicehost install.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't. Plain old Ruby on both systems, for the time being.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I went through this comparission recently and didn't find much between them. I ended up going with Slicehost due to their excellent collection of articles (the last time I setup up a prod linux server from scratch was about 6 years ago, so I was a bit rusty and the articles proved invalulable).

</comment><comment><USER25> huh. both use xen... you'd think you'd be able to put a 32-bit image on there (unless they are using some ancient version of Xen) 32 on 64 seems to work pretty well on Xen 3.3.

this reminds me, I need to start providing some 32-bit images.</comment>


What Is Environmental Racism? - <AUTHOR> https://www.soapboxproject.org/archives/june20-read-environmental-racism <comment><USER2> It seems to me that there is a higher correlation with living in poor densely- populated areas than there is with race. E.g if I move to one of the areas more harmed by pollution I wouldn't be exempt because of my lighter skin color. I've always thought it's odd to call it environmental racism when race isn't the causal factor.</comment>


Munich 1972: Tragedy, Terror, and Triumph at the Olympic Games - <AUTHOR> http://www.ua-magazine.com/books-munich-1972-tragedy-terror-and-triumph-at-the-olympic-games/ <comment><USER2> Blogspam ripped from summaries and comments on Amazon... right down to the misspelling of "Spitze" (sic).</comment>


Matt Maroon - But Seriously - <AUTHOR> http://mattmaroon.com/?p=557

<comment><USER3> The second curve is wrong -- because it was stretched graphically, it has more total area beneath the curve. That's important, because if you assume that the mean is the same, but the std. dev. is larger, the probability for the most expected outcomes are actually _lower_ (i.e. the peak of the second bell curve should be below the first one).

This is more than just a pedantic observation -- it's an illustration that the VC way leads to a lower probability of success at the most common valuations, but a small chance at a much higher valuation.

<comment><USER4> It was only stretched so that the bottom axis shared the same scale as the first graph. The scales match, so unless I'm missing something, the second curve isn't wrong at all...

<comment><USER5> Then you would have to change the measure to get both curves to integrate to 1. Of course the distribution is nonsense to begin with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just imagine this comment thread for a moment as a series of videos you have to click on and listen to the author slowly waffle.

Scary isn't it.

Edit: Also, funny comment from their crunchbase profile: "The twitter killer as I have blogged few minutes ago. It has video, video is web2.0, it will kill twitter."

(Sorry for being slightly offtopic from the main points of matts post which seem to make a lot of sense)

<comment><USER7> I never watch any of these videos, honestly.

It's easy to read, understand and rebut text. Video is still very much a one way medium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Founders, on the other hand, have the competing interest of reducing variation. They'd generally be happy to make a $30m mean return with zero variance. In fact, they'd often be happy with a much lower return and a much lower variance._

Ding Ding Ding. Somebody gets it.

<comment><USER8> But not _too_ low. The limiting case is an employee, who gets maybe $100k return with close to zero variance. Most of us are entrepreneurs because we wanted to take on more risks than employees in exchange for greater rewards.

<comment><USER9> Exactly, and that's why you need to be very careful with hiring. If you give one of your early employees 1%-5% equity, getting bought for 10-100 MM just doesn't cut it. After taxes, fees & TPS said employee could easily walk away with under $1 million (even if you're bought for over $100 million). This is still obviously awesome, but is probably not the upside that many potential hires are expecting.

<comment><USER8> I always took it as a given that employees will not get rich off an acquisition, unless the company is a Google or Netscape or Stratus (and even then, only if they were management-level and hired fairly early on). I did the math on my last equity offer (as an employee; not counting cofounder offers): I would've ended up with about $5000 worth of stock in a best-case (~50M) acquisition. My former coworker was an early employee of CCBN, purchased for $40M: he ended up with $3000.

Both founders and employees need to be very aware of the different risk/reward structures for each. I've heard some founders complain about how hard it is to get decent, hardworking help. Well, of course it is - their upside is 1/10th of yours! And their downside is lower as well, since they usually take a market-rate salary. People are less inclined to put in herculean effort if they have no incentive to do so.

For employees, be very cognizant of how much risk the founder has actually eliminated and make sure that fits with the reduced reward. It's really, really hard to build something people want: if they've already done so, they deserve every bit of those outsize founder stakes. But if all they have is an idea and some VC funding, they're asking you to bear many of the same risks, yet leaving you with much less of a reward.

The takeaway, IMHO, is don't hire and don't take VC money until you have product/market fit. That gives your employees a risk & upside profile inline with their equity stakes. It also gives your VCs an acceptable return without them forcing _you_ into taking outlandish risks, eg. going after that pie-in- the-sky market opportunity.

<comment><USER10> Hmmm ... those numbers are kind of depressing. But I had kind of come around to the same conclusion. Unless you are a founder, it's just not worth it most of the time.

<comment><USER11> Depressing? All this are saying is: Unless you're a founder, you're an employee. Earlier employees are closer to the founder end, later employees are closer to the employee end. Neither are probably going to retire at 23 from an early acquisition. The latter are probably not even gonna retire from a monster exit (though in this case there are probably more employees, _early_ is relative).

They do have a chance at making quite a lot of money though. 3k/40m is less then 0.01%. So it's not really a big part of the compensation package. In that case, stock just isn't a reason to work there. There may be other reasons to.

It's depressing that being in the vicinity of a startup doesn't make you rich? If everyone was rich, it wouldn't be rich. By definition, it's not available to everyone. You think market rates + a 50% chance at being millionaire, should be the going rate?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Matt's mostly right, but the mathematical conclusions are, depending on how generous you want to be, minorly misleading or flat out wrong.

Leaving aside the incorrect graphs and potentially wrongly chosen distributions mentioned elsewhere, Matt missed the real reason VC's and entrepreneurs have different risk profiles.

Entrepreneurs have one company they're rooting for--their own. VC firms have tens or, over the course of their lifetime, perhaps hundreds. The law of large numbers says that as you sample more (with more companies), variance around the mean reduces, and you're quite likely to end up with your expected value at the mean. The entrepreneur has no such safety blanket and so would clearly choose to reduce variance.

<comment><USER13> You still wouldn't want more variance even with a larger sample unless with it came higher EV too.

I know my graph is wrong (think I mentioned that in the post) since 0 should probably be the likeliest result.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, the reason VC's can stand higher variability is the aggregation, but the reason they _want_ it is approximately your argument, that the distribution makes it so that their worst case is not that bad, but their best case is great (due to the clamp at $0). The wide range of big payoff possibilities must raise the EV, but the individual entrepreneur doesn't care because of the variablity he can't take.

<comment><USER13> VCs also can stand the variation because they get paid even if they fail. Were VCs paid only a % of the profits, and had to reimburse for failures at the same rate, you'd see their risk tolerance drop greatly.

<comment><USER12> Also true, though their LPs _do_ get paid only on the profits (less the aforementioned management fees). If they weren't comfortable with the risk, they wouldn't invest, right?

<comment><USER13> Yeah, though they can invest in many high risk VC funds much the way VCs invest in many high-risk startups. Harvard's endowment, for instance, is ~$35 billion. They're risk-tolerant on a level that Sequoia can only have wet dreams about.

So though VCs will be less risk-tolerant due to sample size than entrepreneurs, LPs will be that much less than VCs. Even the best VC firm is only a few poorly-performing funds away from the scrap heap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> All probability density functions must integrate to 1.

<comment><USER15> Even if the peak for non-VC was raised, it would still be too simplistic. This is probably more like what the probability distribution looks like: [http://www.dabbleboard.com/main/public?created=dummy8&my...](http://www.dabbleboard.com/main/public?created=dummy8&myid=4)

VC is characterized by large probability spike at $0 and 0 probability at intermediate valuations. Non-VC (i.e. what founders typically want) is closer to a single-mode normal distribution.

Though Matt's point (and his graph) about mean and variance are correct: VCs -unlike founders- only care about mean because they can diversify with a large number of startups.

<comment><USER13> Your graph is probably closer than mine, but the odds of a 1x return aren't 0 at all. I think Fred Wilson said the odds of a mediocre return are like 1/3. VCs abandon ship when it looks to be the correct play just like anyone else.

<comment><USER15> IMO abandon ship == near-$0 valuation. Although I didn't know about the 1/3 odds of a mediocre return (defined as 1x?) for VCs. The main point of my (admittedly still simplistic) graph was that the VC probability distribution is bi-modal.

<comment><USER13> I would assume mediocre meaning something like 5.x-2x or something. I don't remember exactly, but I definitely know that startups that fail are often sold and VCs get some money back. And some that didn't fail but didn't really succeed and don't appear to have much potential sell for not a lot either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I swear I have the worst timing ever. I go to college just as the .com bubble crashes, and now that I'm planning my jump into startupdom everything crashes again.

Oh well, there's nowhere to go but up, right?

Right?

<comment><USER17> not really, flickr, stumbleupon, clubpenguin started when .com bubble crashed.

crises do spurr ground-breaking technologies and new ways

<comment><USER18> Starvation is a spur to success.

<comment><USER19> Starvation eliminates the ability to execute on hard tasks.

<comment><USER18> Maybe that should be read as "The PROSPECT of starvation is a a spur to success."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Maybe matt should look at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell- Boltzmann_distribution>.

<comment><USER13> That made my brain hurt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> From my limited understanding of how VC works, I would think that both distributions (curves) should be bimodal with one mode at zero rather than being normal distributions.

For the higher variance distribution, the mode at zero should have a higher probability than the mode at zero for the lower variance distribution. You might also expect that the second mode would occur at a higher valuation in the high variance distribution.

</comment><comment><USER22> Poignant observations as usual, Matt. Thanks for the link as well.

</comment><comment><USER23> Of course you can build an online business that depends on paying customers and be profitable from day 1 like TicketStumbler, but since when is it any easier?

<comment><USER9> Day 75. Revenue since Day 3.

<comment><USER24> Only if Day 1 was launch day (which it never is). Don't do funny math. :-)

<comment><USER9> Nope. Day 60 was our public launch day.

We actually had revenue before we were launched from our blog (no actual site was even up). It was a pile of shit.

Two Stone Temple Pilots tickets I believe.

<comment><USER7> Curious, once you get bigger you're going to butt up against all of the anti- scalping laws that are up there, as well as the ticketmasters of the world that are going to contend that you shouldn't have the right to complete with their monopoly. Have you thought about what strategies you'd use at that time, and if so, would you care to share them with us?

This is purely for my own curiosity, I don't have interest in this space or anywhere remotely close to it.

<comment><USER9> Short answer: No we won't because it's not our problem.

Long answer: We don't carry any inventory or process any transactions - <USER2> just show the results of others. Our ticket providers could run in to problems (they have in the past already), but enough deals exist that we'd still have ticket providers.

Stubhub, Viagogo, Ticketsnow, Seatexchange, Ticketmaster et al are already working on agreements with the teams/leagues. For example, MLB has already signed a deal with Stubhub.

Ticketmaster/Ticketsnow is one of our providers. They are not a direct competitor because they are a primary ticket market - we are a secondary ticket market aggregator. Our main competitors are TickEx, Ticketwood & Fansnap along with some unlaunched ones I'm not supposed to know about it.

Most places ignore the anti scalping laws because they're retarded. When demand exceeds supply, prices go up. No one ever complains about all the below face value tickets found at most NBA and MLB games.

<comment><USER7> Great answer, thanks. You certainly know your marketplace! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > when you count the big corporations that aren't going anywhere (Google, > Yahoo, MSN, Myspace, Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, eBay, etc.) and the porn > sites (with which you cannot compete) you have a lot of dogs fighting for > very few scraps.

WTF? Facebook and YouTube didn't even exist 5 years ago. Good to know they weren't thinking the same way.

<comment><USER13> I wasn't suggesting that nobody new will crack it. Just that very few will. 2 qualifies as very few.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A (truncated or folded) normal distribution is completely inappropriate here.

</comment><comment><USER26> "You've got to pull the weeds if you want a beautiful garden" classic.

-P</comment>


Ask HN: How do I choose an OSS license or find an OSS lawyer? - <AUTHOR> I am going to release my startup IP as OSS, what are the future consequences of this?
Is there a lawyer-approved online resource that will help me choose an OSS license and anything else I need to know, like timing requirements to file for defensive patents, copyright etc?
Where can I find general counsel with deep knowledge of OSS and is up to date on the BSD+Patents drama? <comment><USER2> This is an awfully good book

[https://store.nolo.com/products/patent-it-yourself- pat.html](https://store.nolo.com/products/patent-it-yourself-pat.html)</comment>


James GoslingInterview – 9/22/10  - <AUTHOR> http://www.basementcoders.com/transcripts/James_Gosling_Transcript.html

<comment><AUTHOR> My favorite tidbit was, _IBM's been kind of weird on the whole topic because on the one hand they do everything they can to try and screw Sun over, I mean they didn't name eclipse casually._

I had never heard that.</comment>


RIAA Lawyers Botched a Big One Against flvto.biz – So What's Next? - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2019/01/25/riaa-flvto-biz/ <comment><USER2> The title is not consistent with the article. The judge decided a Russian website could not be required to defend itself in a U.S. Federal court. Notable decision, but that alone doesn't mean the lawyers "botched" it. On the contrary, it sounds like the 3 law firms employed by the website operator did a remarkable job of persuading the judge.

<comment><USER3> > The judge decided a Russian website could not be required to defend itself > in a U.S. Federal court.

U.S. state court, I think. A Virginia district court judge does not have the power to decide whether or not an action can be taken in federal court. Technically, I doubt he can prevent the RIAA from filing in CA either, because I don't _think_ state court judges have authority over judges in other states. I believe the only thing the judge can decide is whether the lawsuit in question can be moved to another jurisdiction. But what do I know? I'm no lawyer.

<comment><USER4> No, it is indeed a Federal court

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> full decision and docket

[https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district- courts/virgini...](https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district- courts/virginia/vaedce/1:2018cv00957/393537/30/)

my biggest question from this case is if and how defendant is earning enough income from the websites to hire lawyers - i'm thinking it might have something to do with the .exe the sites push on users

edit: yep - that is what he's doing, multiple systems mark his download as adware/trojan downloader

[https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/94d20c4dbb3304ccfdcee04bdf...](https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/94d20c4dbb3304ccfdcee04bdf2c453f6cad6fc8a28eb1c3e35e30ce0facac10/detection)

<comment><USER6> You don't have to depend on adware with this amount of users. [https://www.similarweb.com/website/flvto.biz](https://www.similarweb.com/website/flvto.biz)

<comment><USER7> As I understand it, it's hard to monetize shady websites using anything except shady things like adware. Look at 4chan and it's perpetual struggle to get advertisers.

<comment><USER8> 4chan is known for hosting porn and snuff. Flvto is for downloading YouTube videos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And all that for a youtube to mp3 converter. Didn't even realize those sites got prosecuted nowadays.

<comment><USER10> If I write in a comment the command "youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 <video URL>", does Hacker News risk to be prosecuted ?

<comment><USER11> Thanks I was using ffmpeg for the conversion up til now = TIL

<comment><USER12> I'm pretty sure youtube-dl just invokes ffmpeg in the background to extract the audio for you; all it means is that you don't need to remember the exact ffmpeg commands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seems like the law working as it was meant to. It should always be about the jurisdiction of the person running the site or business that matters, not whatever one their users 'happen' to be based in. The whole US idea of people being found guilty of so and so because someone from the US used their site or services is ridiculous.</comment>


Ask HN: What to do if coworkers aren't reviewing my code? - <AUTHOR> I'm a veteran programmer -- not a 10x genius, but reliable and attentive.
My problem is that at my company, a nonprofit, there's a culture of not prioritizing reviewing others' code. That means my code, sometimes even urgent fixes to significant problems, can sit for a week or two before it's reviewed. Less urgent changes that should take a day or two of back and forth work and communication instead can many times that.
When I get assigned code to review, I make it a priority and try not to let more than a day go by without my at least responding with questions. This just makes sense to me -- after all, somebody is waiting on me to merge an improvement to the product!
The director of engineering tries to help by reviewing code himself, but he's overburdened and usually can't.
What's worse, there are fellow engineers I no longer feel comfortable being paired with on projects because the projects are sure to take far too long.
It's exhausting to be constantly spinning my wheels, trying to keep the context of my 6-8 open, unreviewed PRs fresh in my mind so I can move forward with my work.
I can't say my code is sparklingly perfect, but I don't have any reason to think it's particularly hard to review or unpleasant to review. My sense is that other people face the same situation, but don't mind so much. I know I produce more PRs than other people, and that I have higher expectations for our team productivity.
I've brought this up gently many times, but no one else seems to take it seriously. I also frequently offer to review others' PRs, and make sure to do a thorough and supportive job when I do.
What should I do? Keep trying to communicate about how this isn't working for me, and I think, for the organization? Try phrasing my needs differently? Look for another job? <comment><USER2> It sounds like your team's culture is built around a small dev team with a high level of autonomy and trust, which hasn't scaled to a larger org. Now's the time to establish a new culture.

Unless you are Milton from Office Space, you're not the only one on your team blocked by process (If you are, Amazon has great deals on bulk accelerants). Put out some feelers for others in the same situation. Junior team members are fertile waters. Schedule a twice-weekly recurring meeting to review one another's contributions. With discipline you can review two twenty line changes in an hour. Homework is unlikely to work here, or you wouldn't be posting this. In short order you will not only be pushing changes, but establishing yourself as someone who Gets Stuff Done.

Above all, don't sit at your desk and weep bitterly that nothing is merged. Stand up for doing things; either your team will improve, or you won't need someone else to tell you it's time to move on.

</comment><comment><USER3> I imagine that must be pretty frustrating considering that I get annoyed if someone doesn't check out my PR within a day...

IMO the best thing to do is exactly what you're suggesting: continue to lead by example, raise this as a concern (maybe frame it as lost productivity or something else a 'higher up' wants to optimize), and possibly consider other places to work (but know that the grass isn't necessarily greenr on the other side).

</comment><comment><USER4> You can't change other people. If they don't care about reviewing your stuff I don't see why they would care about you pushing your stuff either, so just do that. Keep the reviews open because it doesn't hurt.</comment>


Entrepreneurship: The Ultimate White Privilege? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/entrepreneurship-the-ultimate-white-privilege/278727/

<comment><USER2> Honestly I think this article really misses the point. Yes, maybe "white people" have a cushier time with the police and can come back from being a teenage delinquent. But don't kid yourself into thinking the reason there aren't more non-white entrepreneurs is because of race. It's not. It's because of socioeconomic class. And in this country, rich white kids outnumber rich black kids by a LOT.

See, when you grow up in a wealthy household, you're essentially taught that you can get what you want. It's no surprise that wealthy dropout kids want to continue their laziness. What's easier: getting a full time job, or telling mom and dad you have a business idea and living off their cash while you "build" whatever it is you are doing in hopes of scoring big? Most of these guys will fail, but some will win.

Stop making this a thing. It's not about race, it's not a "white privilege". It's about privilege from wealth, sociology, and human behavior.</comment>


How to Get an A- in Organic Chemistry - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/education/edlife/how-to-get-an-a-in-organic-chemistry.html?pagewanted=all <comment> alex-g The author suggests that we need "future doctors who are less Spock and more Kirk". I ask: "What about Bones?" In addition to actually being a doctor, McCoy has conscience, dedication, loyalty to his patients, and technical skill.

<comment><USER2> Of course, that's "actually being a doctor" in the sense of being a fictional character who was written as a doctor. You can ask too much of a facile comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I took orgo as an undergrad from a brutal professor. His name is Marcus Tius, and he is legendary at UH Manoa for being hard. He got his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at Harvard from EJ Corey. Most people on here probably don't know who EJ Corey is, but he's widely considered to be the greatest chemist alive. And Corey's lab is insanely intense. A few of his grad students committed suicide in recent years from the pressure. Supposedly, I don't know if this is urban legend, but EJ Corey told several others that Tius was his best student ever at the time.

Anyways, I just wanted to share a few of my orgo stories. Our first exam mean scores were in the 20%'s. Only 10 of us got above 70%. There is NO curve in his class. He talked about this after the first exam, and he said, "Many of you are asking me if there's a curve. I wouldn't hesitate to call 90% and above an A." The first test was so brutal, that after he called the 15 minute left mark, a whole sea of "HOly shit! WTF?!" spread throughout the lecture hall. It was shortly after that, one of the students was escorted out by a grad student proctor because he peed his pants. I was already light headed from the intensity of the exam, but seeing a guy literally pee in his pants almost made me pass out.

In retrospect, orgo isn't that bad. If I had taken it the previous year with another professor who was using the McMurry textbook, I would have even said it was pretty easy. But, no. I was stuck with Tius, and I was stuck with an entry level graduate textbook on organic chemistry--this part is no joke. However, in retrospect, I also realized Tius wasn't bad either. I realized that if I just worked on his assigned problem sets and studied those for the exams, I would have done fine. The exam mostly consisted of the problem set. So, he was very fair. However, all of the urban legend stories made me so scared, I was doing all the problems in the chapter which often took 50-60 hrs a week to complete.

For anyone thinking about taking orgo, it's really not that bad. However, like any other course, the professor and books can make it incredibly hard. Just be wary of that.

BTW, I did get an A in both orgo courses. I majored in math and chemistry, and I have to say, that class with Tius was by FAR the hardest shit I ever had to go through. And that includes a general chemistry course with another brutally hard chem professor in which I stood up three nights in a row to study for the third exam because I was so behind. I got an A in that class too.

<comment><USER4> It seems necessary to make exams that hard when they do not determine the grade anyway (the OP got an A- with a B on the final exam).

Let me expand on how it works in a German university. There are no curves, the concept is completely foreign here. Your grade is 100% determined by a final exam. You do exercises only to get approval for writing the final exam in the first place.

<comment><USER5> It sounds like your exams are more like Microsoft Certifications rather than US university exams. At top US universities, it is common to include questions that only one person in 100, or zero in 100 will get right. I took plenty of Math exams with 10 questions, where getting 5 would earn an A, and 8 is how many grad students would get right, and the 10th question was a joke, like Fermat's Last Theorem. The exams were not to demonstrate you are certified in a subject, but rather to show your ability and limits.

Not grading on a curve is a horrible idea. It means the exam must be limited to material that is taught, rather than limiting it to known knowledge in the universe. German University sounds like a big ass certification program, not a real university.

<comment><USER6> _Not grading on a curve is a horrible idea._

Maybe I misunderstand what this curve grading is all about, but doesn't grading on a curve mean the grade is not a measure of how good one is, but how one compares to other people who happened to be taking the exam at the same time? So you don't have to be any good to get a top grade - just better than other people taking the exam at the same time? And likewise, you could be the world's tenth greatest living chemist, but if the other nine people taking the exam are the world's top nine, you'll fail.

And _not_ doing this is "a horrible idea"?

<comment><USER5> This is a complex issue. Harvard grades everyone on a curve, and basically never gives lower than a B. They use "A+" as a system to identify the truly exceptional people.

My point is that a professor should be able to write 20 questions that are relevant and interesting, and just look at the distribution of results to assign grades. I think that makes sense, rather than turning university exams into certification style exams.

My answer to why, it is a horrible idea to not grade on a curve requires and anecdote:

I took an impossibly hard math course with about 15 students where the average grade was a 2, I got a 4, one guy got a 6, and another guy got an 8. The professor gave me an A, but in reality, I was 4 orders of magnitude dumber than the best student. Professors have discretion. The main reason I tell this story, is that the guys that got a 6/10 and and 8/10 have both gone on to have an 8-figure net-worth (fuck-you money). One through finance, and another through a startup. It has been awesome to see the people that I know are insanely smart become insanely wealthy.

The important part of this anecdote is that the professors that wrote the exam wrote two questions that one of smartest humans on earth could not answer. How fucked up would the world be if the professor had only written the 4 questions we all got it right? Asking impossible questions creates greatness. Grading on a curve enables professors to find truly exceptional people.

<comment><USER6> What you've written here doesn't make much sense; possibly because the reason you wrote it wasn't to support your argument but to tell us you went to school with some people who became very rich.

"How fucked up would the world be if the professor had only written the 4 questions we all got it right?"

This just doesn't make sense. What are you trying to say? Did you mean to ask "What happens if there were only four questions and we all got it right?"

"My point is that a professor should be able to write 20 questions that are relevant and interesting, and just look at the distribution of results to assign grades."

Fine. My point is that this means you're being marked on the basis of how well you did compared to everyone else who took the exam, which means it's not a measure of how good you are; it's a measure of how good you are compared to the others taking the exam. If the purpose of taking the exam is to demonstrate you know the material, grading on a curve subverts and corrupts that purpose. Any exam in which your mark depends on how well other people do in the exam is a nonsense; your mark should only depend on how well you do in the exam. If the professor knows the exam is horrifically difficult and thinks that to score twenty percent is amazing, you should get a good mark for reaching twenty percent, even if everyone else scores fifty percent.

<comment><USER7> Grading on a curve helps normalize the resulting letter grades based on how well everyone else in the class understand the material, as it was presented. You are correct in this.

I believe it acts as a check to make sure that the class is well taught, and the questions of an appropriate difficulty level.

If every student receives an F for a 40% correct (and they all only get 40% correct), a curve normalizes that. Students who understand the material as it was presented and tested better than others receive a higher grade.

Makes good sense to me. The problems arise in the Harvard situation, where nobody is curved down. If you down curve inflated scores downward, then a curve only serves to inflate grades and is less useful.

<comment><USER8> "If every student receives an F for a 40% correct (and they all only get 40% correct), a curve normalizes that. Students who understand the material as it was presented and tested better than others receive a higher grade."

If every one in the class was lazy to study/prepare for the exam and every one ended up getting less than 40% correct, then they all deserve to get F. Normalizing with a curve means, it's possible that someone who got only 39% in that exam in a class full of lazy folks who all scored much less than him, can earn a A or A+ ! Compare this to similar class/exam taken by different set of students (all brilliant) at a different time or place, who all worked hard and scored above 80% but still some of them could get B or C's due to curve grading. Wouldn't it be unfair to the 80% scorer who got a C whereas some one who scored a 39% on the same subject got A+ due to circumstances (time and peers he took the exam with) !! How is that fair at all?

<comment><USER9> This is an invented objection. In reality, in classes of sufficient size, there is always a subset of students who work hard (or are extra smart, or whatever), a subset who is average, and a subset who slacks, or just doesn't understand the material well. The objection that there might be a mass class conspiracy to all score 40%, or that everyone in the class will be lazy, just doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER10> Who says it's a conspiracy? It's more a matter of culture. I have seen it happen: there's a trend in the class where the homework grades, on average, are high, but the exam grades are low, even though the material is mostly the same. This happens at reputable schools and at "low tier" schools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was an organic chemistry TA for a professor who was notorious for having the hardest organic chemistry class at our school, but it was also widely considered that surviving his course meant that you truly understood the subject matter.

He was unapologetic about the subject matter being difficult and believed that teachers who didn't teach it hard and try to really force undergrads to understand it were cheating themselves.

He was especially adamant about it because many undergrads taking organic are trying to go to medical school and didn't like the idea of letting lazy or stupid people become doctors on his watch.

When we were grading tests, he would laugh as he marked errors and delivered low grades. "Hexavalent carbon? WRONG. Saving lives... Saving lives..."

</comment><comment><USER12> Orgo is a double edged sword. The flow of electron density that dictates bonding patterns between the machinery of life is fascinating and graspable intuitively. The problem comes when you get to those useless professors who prefer not the theoretical but the practical applications of industrial synthesis, who enjoy shoving heaps of reactions with various reagent combinations down their students' throats. As a result it becomes impossible to think mechanistically as I believe a good organic chemist should, and instead studying is reduced to carrying around stacks of note cards and memorizing different chemicals, solvents, and temperatures. _That 's_ hell, because it's stupid and a waste of time.

<comment><USER13> This is true. Some of the reason that American students in particular have a hard time in organic chemistry is the insistence of teaching intro orgo by functional group rather than reaction mechanism. In the UK, it's far more common to organize a course around mechanisms (which is how most graduate and advanced orgo is taught).

The functional group approach exposes you early and often to seemingly non- sensical (or at least challenging) exceptions that don't seem to follow any pattern, all of which makes perfect sense when you learn them grouped with other situations where the same mechanism applies.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> FWIW, the OP is a professional science writer...that is, she's written books about scientific topics and has also produced for scientific-themed shows like NOVA. Her undergrad was in American Studies.

I'm pointing this out to give her more credit for making the career change (at 42) to become a doctor. It'd be different if she were an engineer who became a science journalist and then later decided to become a doctor...This is assuming that if you didn't do something like o-chem as an undergrad (many engineers do o-chem or an equivalent hard science topic to graduate), doing it at 42 is quite the brave shift.

<comment><USER14> I think one of the quotes in the article resumes it perfectly : "Sometimes, if a student has really good math skills, they can slide through physics, but you can't do that in orgo". If they would concentrate a little bit more on physics and math, they'd get to realize the "exceptions" based on cold, acid, etc... can be explained instead of just memorized.

<comment><USER15> Although I advocate for chemists to know more physics, what you are saying is not true. There are exceptions that can be rationalized based on general principles of physics, detailed understanding of physics is not necessary. The relationship between physics and math is not the same as the relationship between chemistry and physics. Much of mathematics (especially college-level calculus, versus say, college theoretical algebra) were explicitly created with physics in mind. So with an encyclopedic knowledge of calculus transformations, a semi-educated guess at the appropriate transformation is possible. You're even better off if you understand dimensional analysis.

This is not true for chemistry. Even chemists disagree vehemently on why, for example alkanes are staggered in the lowest energy conformation. Is it because the electrical charges in the hydrogen electron orbital clouds have a weak repulsive effect? Or is it because the hydrogen electron density can partially donate into the sigma antibonding orbital and stabilize the conformation at the expense of a little bit of bond stability?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are two points regarding the relevance of organic chemistry to future doctors that the article could expand on further.

1\. Organic chemistry is often the first class that a prospective future doctor takes that requires you to develop proper study habits. One can get away with most other introductory level courses in the sciences by cramming during the day or two before the exam. Organic chemistry is different--it requires structured and daily studying. This is an essential skill for anyone planning to go to medical school.

2\. Organic chemistry teaches you to thing and reason about objects in three- dimensional space. Stereochemistry (roughly: if something is right handed or left handed) is an essential idea in organic chemistry. Being able to think about objects in 3D space is a very useful ability (and necessary) for a future doctor.

</comment><comment><USER17> > Medical schools are tweaking admission protocols, looking beyond an A in > orgo for future doctors who are less Spock and more Kirk. > I asked two > medical school deans — Dr. Robert Witzburg at Boston University and Dr. Lee > Goldman at Columbia University — about admission philosophies. Both are > proponents of holistic review, the newish idea that medical schools look > beyond grades and test scores to evaluate the whole applicant

You should always read this as code for "to reduce the number of Asian students admitted".

<comment><USER18> Not always. In the past holistic review was to keep Jews out of the Ivy League. The minority being targeted will probably be different 50 years from now.

That said, I do agree that soft skills are probably valuable for doctors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My data structures course in which I made a B- was much harder than Organic I and II which I made A+'s by never getting any question wrong on any exam. I never figured out why that was and have wondered why I saw one harder than the other. Maybe if labs were not so boring or monotonous Id of been a chemist or maybe programming is much harder.

<comment><USER20> I can't say you're objectively wrong, but my experience differs dramatically.

I am a really lousy cook. I am not handy; I'm fairly certain my relatives laugh at me behind my back. And I did high school chemistry lots of years earlier. In short, a background which promise pain when studying organic chemistry.

I was so stressed in the lab, that when a small fire started between me and the exit (a student used a poor way of evaporating she'd learned in a previous course), I just thought " _Ah, the fire extinguisher is by the exit with the other students, someone else can stop the fire, I 'm too busy._". Luckily, someone did. (This fire was a minor scandal; could have really damaged the accident statistics.)

That said, the organic chemistry and lab work was incredibly fun and giving. It really surprised me that I loved the subject.

You needed protective covering, built interesting stuff, used vacuum to evaporate, boiled stuff in oil baths to get much higher than water temperature. You could read the "things I won't work with" blog ( [http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with/) ) and shudder at the FOOF formula.

Much more fun than biochemistry lab. Much more fun than sitting on a chair in front of a screen.

If I hadn't been sick (unknown food allergies and bacteria infection in a tooth, both of which made me tired), I might be a chemist today. I got through the course but had to quit later.

Edit: I might add -- my present back problems from sitting in front of a screen for decades might force me to an unpleasant/dangerous operation in ten years.

Edit 2: Half the reason I liked Org Chem was probably that the subject had to do with reality, it was such fun after just studying/working with totally abstract concepts my whole life.

<comment><USER21> Completely agree. Created an account just to say that the lab work (for orgo 1) was the single most fun, fulfilling class I took in college. It's probably why I like to cook very much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I took Introduction to Organic Chemistry part 1 on Coursera. (And passed it.)

It was the worst executed Coursera class I have taken. The lectures contained only the bare bones of the theory and almost no examples, and there was lots of difficult homework (of the sort the NYT article describes). Even if they would want us to have no theoretical foundation, and just generalize from examples (like the NYT article suggests), they should have told us that that is the M.O. of the course, and then actually give us a large number of examples to stare at.

Of course intro level organic chemistry is no secret knowledge, and there are good textbooks, but what's the point of an online course (or real university course lectures), if just reading a proper textbook would be more beneficial.

Any subject can be transformed into a difficult course by teaching too little theory, and then giving too advanced homework.

</comment><comment><USER23> I took a night class in organic chemistry at 30, considering a career change that I never pursued. It was fantastically challenging, which was what I needed at the time (I wasn't getting enough from my job). After the experience, I completely understand why this class serves as a proxy for medical school admissibility. For someone who almost never studied, I suddenly found myself doing an hour or two of homework each night. Going back to school and getting the 'A' from a top 10 university was one of my proudest academic achievements. I highly recommend taking a few classes out of your comfort zone to recharge your batteries.

</comment><comment><USER24> > "It seems a lot like diagnosis," said Logan McCarty, Harvard's director of > physical sciences education, who taught the second semester. >"That > cognitive skill — inductive generalization from specific cases to something > you've never seen before — that's something you learn in orgo."

I wonder why people can get away with saying stuff like this without evidence. I'd be inclined to think that the diagnosis boosting from orgo is minor at best and the time used would be far better spent actually learning to make diagnoses.

<comment><USER25> It is similar in that both require applying concepts to solve very specialized situations. This neurologist agrees with McCarty and can tell you why: [http://bit.ly/16WUkba](http://bit.ly/16WUkba)

<comment><USER24> His argument "Sounds like Organic Chemistry doesn't it?" is exactly what I am criticising. Sounding similar, doesn't mean there will be strong synergy effects.

I give that there could be _some_ synergy effects, but I highly doubt there are strong enough that it's better to study orgo rather than what is actually being applied.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > But the rules have many, many exceptions, which students find maddening. The > same molecule will behave differently in acid or base, in dark or sunlight, > in heat or cold, or if you sprinkle magic orgo dust on it and turn around > three times. You can't memorize all the possible answers — you have to rely > on intuition, generalizing from specific examples. This skill, far more than > the details of every reaction, may actually be useful for medicine.

Ignoring the specifics about Organic Chemistry, this skill, relying on intuition and generalizing from specific examples, is the skill of Pattern Recognition.

Regardless of the subject, you can't memorize all of the possible permutations and combinations, but you can start to get a feel for the patterns and begin to recognize them. Then when you encounter something new, you can recognize the pattern, or enough of the pattern to have a place to start.

Think about things you do on a day-to-day basis and how you react to a new situation. You just signed up for a new service and you get your first bill in the mail - you've never seen this bill, but it fits the pattern of every other service you use and you already know how to pay it. Now apply that same concept to something more complex than paying a bill.

I'd love to see a course like this in every field of study since pattern recognition is a skill that everyone has but so few seem to do really well.

</comment><comment><USER27> Pretty neat article!

My girlfriend is a bio major and we have talked for hours about the pain and crushing defeat that org-chem can bring. I always likened it to calculus for me, since math has always been my weak point, but I never had a calculus exam that made me feel the way org-chem seems to make some students feel.

Also major respect to the author. Making that kind of career change in your 40's has to be difficult. I wish her the best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER28> Orgo is, in many ways, like learning a foreign language, in that the memorization early on is supposed to support and later be superseded by understanding the "grammar" of how things fit together. I think the way orgo is often taught, or perceived, as being _just_ about memorization is what can make it soul-crushing and not all that effective.

The introductory orgo classes I took early in college were heavy on reaction mechanisms, molecular orbital theory, and intuition and light on memorizing bucket-loads of reactions, and it ended up giving me and my classmates a much better grasp of the material than students from other schools. Many of us ended up breezing through our university's graduate courses in organic chemistry while graduate students from other universities struggled painfully through the same courses. I suspect that it's part of the reason it was the top organic chemistry program in the world.

</comment><comment><USER15> I took grad-level orgo. It was a firehouse of knowledge. One of my professors was Phil Baran, who just got the MacArthur award (for his work in orgo)... Literally got hit by a car the day before the final, (went to the ER and everything, but no broken bones); came hobbling in to the exam. First time I ever failed a class in my life, but I came back the next year, and passed. I'm so glad I did it; though I don't actively use organic chemistry in my day-to- day I can go to conferences with organic chemistry and understand 90% of what they are saying.

</comment><comment><USER29> Our orgo textbook must have been 4 inches thick. I can still remember in the first lecture, when the professor said, "your homework is to do all the problems in the book." All of them. Luckily I had an easy semester otherwise, so I sat in the library, and did untold pages of problems.

That said, p-chem (physical chemistry) was a lot harder ;-).

<comment><USER30> I'm in a PhD program for chemistry, learned calculus when I was 25, and I thought PChem was pretty intuitive.

<comment><USER29> I suppose it depends on the professors you have. I had an excellent orgo professor, and a rather bad p-chem professor.

He was the hardest grader of any professor I ever had. He gave (partial) negative points for an incorrect answer on tests. I had friends who ended up with negative scores on their tests. The class average score was in the 30% range. I had one friend who managed to get every single question wrong on a 20 question true false section, which to this day still amazes me. Luckily it was on a curve, or he would have failed us all.

Eventually, I gave up trying to understand p-chem, and concentrated on just learning his very strange test style. That turned out to be a fantastic decision for my grade. I got the high score in the class on the last test and the final, which got my grade up from a B- to an A-. The downside was I never really learned p-chem ;-).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hard-ass instructors aren't confined to orgo.

I had a professor in calculus. His tests were multiple-choice, with 1.0 for correct and -0.25 for every wrong answer. So even if you answered _nothing_, you would get a 0.

The average in his exams used to be -1.5 or so. You made an "A" if you got > 2.5 out of 15.0

<comment><USER32> If the average was -1.5, why not just answer nothing?

<comment><USER31> That is the point! People were just too proud to leave the test blank; they thought they knew the material. But the wily old fox would trick them, and very few saw through this tricks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This just goes to show you that personal interest goes a long way for these difficult subjects. I always found org chem fascinating and eventually got my PhD in it. I always found it very intuitive and not that challenging.

However stuff like advanced mathematics is completely beyong my comprehension.

</comment><comment><USER34> 1\. We need more medical schools. 2\. Free medical schools completely funded by the government. 3\. We need to weed out the students who want to make money off their patients, or future Dr. Ego's. 4\. Reading this reminded me of college, and it seemed like everyone was premed, and for all the wrong reasons --mainly Ego. Oh, how they wanted to be called Dr.. 5\. If you really want to become a doctor--for the right reasons--take your premed courses at a low income community college. You will ace the course. 6\. Once you become a Doctor, don't use it as a stepping stool. Want to become wealthy--marry a rich kid. Want money and an Ego stroke--go into finance, or learn Ruby on Rails, but stay out of medicine. Want a baby in the middle of your career, and never plan on returning to medicine after your husband makes his wade--fine, but stay out of medical school--you just wasted a coveted spot.

good luck--grade grubbers!

By the way, I always felt the difference between A students and B students was a lot of ass kissing--at many colleges.

</comment><comment><USER35> I liked o-chem, and I took 3 semesters of it, even though I was only minoring in chemistry. Its reputation as super-hard might have been motivation for me. Synthesis is a little like programming.

<comment><USER15> It really is!

The mental part of planning a synthesis is a lot like programming. The differences are: parts (i.e. reactions) are less interchangeable, and when you actually make the stuff, you get diminishing returns, "recompile" is not as trivial a task.

Synthetic biology is a lot closer, since you can copy DNA at will, and while editing is not as simple as spinning up an instance of vi, "recompile" is a whole heck of a lot easier.

<comment><USER35> I didn't take the organic chem lab course, because I had a bad time in lab I. The o-chem lab might have been better, since it was supposed to be more qualitative and less quantitative, so maybe it would have been less susceptible to shaky titration hands... but I didn't want to chance it. The analogy to programming only goes so far, but the differences were enjoyable to me, since I had plenty of exposure to real programming.</comment></comment></comment>


Banana Pi - <AUTHOR> http://bananapi.org/

<comment><USER2> Seems like a cool product...too bad the website has some terrible grammar mistakes.

"Now, You real can do your daily works on it"

"BananaPi has same GPIO and circuit layout like RPi, But it got control button and TTL interface. BananaPi work perfectly with Debian. With this powerful hardware, This easy to set up an great internet service platform on it."

"Easily move your Raspberry Pi parts or modules to Banana Pi without any inconvenient."

</comment><comment><USER3> Buy It Now button does not do anything here. Whats the price?

</comment><comment><USER4> still no ADC on board :(</comment>