Rate my web app (albumbud.com, up now) - <AUTHOR>

http://www.albumbud.com<p>My apologies to people to checked it out before and got an error. I needed to restart the server after the last update. <comment><USER2> <http://albumbud.com> \- Sharp, clean design. I like the music metaphor in the header. Good tagline 'Keep tabs on your favorite musicians'. I wonder if it could be more specific, like 'Get notified when your favorite musician releases a new album.'

If all I want is one RSS feed, I shouldn't have to sign in to try the app. Maybe make registration optional.

Good search results. I found both artists I searched for. It would be nice if after I added an artist, Album Bud told me the most recent album. Just an idea.

Glad to see you've open-sourced the site. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.albumbud.com>

</comment><comment><USER4> 504 Gateway Time-out

nginx

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for posting this. It looks like the server gets into that state by itself.</comment></comment>


AWS Batch Now Generally Available (US East) - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/01/aws-batch-now-generally-available/ <comment><AUTHOR> Previous discussion (following announcement at re:Invent 2016): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13081679](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13081679)</comment>


MIT's gas-powered drone is able to stay in the air for five days at a time - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/mits-gas-powered-drone-is-able-to-stay-in-the-air-for-five-days-at-a-time <comment><USER2> At first I thought the kicker was going to be: the gas is helium, it just floats.

And then I thought: why is that a joke? Could you save fuel keeping it aloft with a lighter than air gas and just use the fuel to move it around?

<comment><USER3> I think you just invented the dirigible?

<comment><USER2> Ha, yes.

I guess another way to phrase the question would be: why don't they use dirigibles to solve extended air time problems?

<comment><USER4> Dirigibles require huge volumes, because the lifting power of gas is small. Those huge volumes make for a relatively weak, slow, and difficult-to-maneuver craft. A big reason why airships disappeared in favor of airplanes was that airships had a really tough time handling or avoiding bad weather because of these limitations.

<comment><USER5> I have a blurry recollection of seeing an aircraft design that was a combination of an airplane and a dirigible. It looked like a poofy manta ray, an inflated rigid lifting body or flying wing. It wasn't quite VTOL & needed a very short runway, but it also gained more maneuverability in flight. Maybe it was too much of a compromise though.

<comment><USER6> Could it be this one [0], or its predecessor [1]?

[0] [http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lockheed-martin- aircra...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lockheed-martin- aircraft-20160308-story.html) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_P-791](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_P-791)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just goes to show there's nothing remotely like fossil fuels for energy density.

<comment><USER8> > Just goes to show there's nothing remotely like _organic molecules_ for > energy density.

GTFY (generalized that for you). ;)

It's all about the energy in that carbon-hydrogen bond. Lipids have a similar energy density, which is why migrating birds have a similar nonstop range as fossil fueled airplanes (11,000 km vs 14,000 km for the 747 long range variant).

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2864269/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2864269/)

<comment><USER9> Reminds me of Fight Club's premise, but with a different output.

Not sure a tiny biodiesel internal combustion engine is a very suitable power source for laptops, though. :-)

<comment><USER10> [https://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2009_10/pr2201.htm](https://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2009_10/pr2201.htm)

Exists. Stop disguising your nostalgia as future entusiasm :D

<comment><USER9> Really cool, thank you for sharing! Would totally be interested in buying one, if you happen to have a stockpile :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's neat, but not very revolutionary. The Rutan Voyager flew for 9 days (around the world) without refueling back in the 80s - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Voyager](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Voyager)

<comment><USER12> That craft had two pilots onboard, this one had a single remote pilot. It's a real challenge to design a small craft that maximizes payload and minimizes fuel consumption along with scores of other constraints.

Voyager also needed a long runway for launch and probably costs vastly more than this drone. Its use case as an emergency communication device is revolutionary.

<comment><USER13> It seems that not having to have pilots onboard would make things easier, though.

<comment><USER14> This is meant to be portable, weighing only 150 with fuel and payload.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> To be frank, for the non-Americans who read the article; the first thought would be that the drone is actually using some form of 'gas' and not liquid petroleum. I presume 'gas' in this context means gasoline and not LPG.

<comment><USER16> It definitely perplexed me until the word "gasoline".

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well they inadvertently proved once again just how energy-dense and how incredibly ridiculously efficient liquid petroleum fuels are and what a boon and a curse they've been to humanity during this brief one-or-two-century blip, and how difficult it will be to replace them with anything that could even come close to current levels of energy output/consumption.

(That's a problem statement, not an ad.)

<comment><USER18> If you have a truly ridiculous amount of electricity, such as from a multi- megawatt scale photovoltaic system that was almost free to install, or from a theoretical very high power/low cost nuclear reactor... You could electrolyze seawater into hydrogen and store it in tanks. Doesn't necessarily have to be fossil fuel.

The watthours per amount of hydrogen stored are ridiculous, but as giant scale photovoltaic becomes commonplace, it might be possible. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaic_power_sta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaic_power_stations)

Cover a 20 x 20 km section of Libyan desert with ground mount 360W PV panels, there's your power source.

<comment><USER19> _> Cover a 20 x 20 km section of Libyan desert with ground mount 360W PV panels, there's your power source._

Sure, but first you need to find a desert in a relatively stable country, and then you have to account for the fact that the panels will need to be cleaned.

UAE is building lots of solar, if you've been through DXB or AUH you've probably seen the Total [0] ads for solar. However I know from personal experience that even in the desert you need to have methods to clean the panels or they will be covered in dust/sand after some time, and this significantly reduces their output. [1]

[0] [http://www.total.com/en](http://www.total.com/en)

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Confused. There seem to be plenty of drones that can stay up there for 120 hours or so [1]. Presumably, their solar additions should be able to do even more?

[1]: [http://www.airforce-technology.com/features/featurethe- top-1...](http://www.airforce-technology.com/features/featurethe- top-10-longest-range-unmanned-aerial-vehicles-uavs/)

<comment><USER21> Precisely. This is an incredibly easy problem to solve. See all the Rutan projects, the model plane that crossed the atlantic, etc; most from over a decade or more ago.

They claim that solar efficiency is not there yet, but look at the NASA Helios. Yes, it's large, but such is life if you want solar. The math behind it is incredibly simple.

Yet, as usual, HN is foaming at the mouth because it has the word drone in the title.

Edit: this is just another MIT fluff piece. Watch the video, it's a carbon fiber tube filled with random COTS hobby grade components. With a hot wire and some composites knowledge you could make this in your garage.

<comment><USER22> NASA Helios was quite expensive and tricky to build, with not a lot of margin left for useful payload.

There's a weight runaway that occurs with solar powered aircraft, look at Fig 12 in this report: [http://hoburg.mit.edu/publications/gassolar.pdf](http://hoburg.mit.edu/publications/gassolar.pdf)

Disclaimer: I worked on this project, so am super biased.

<comment><USER23> Please read the next four paragraphs.

Could you kindly reply with your email, as I would like to email you. I am a crank inventor (no but keep reading, just three and a half more paragraphs!) who has invented something similar to a free-energy machine, except in the field of aviation and specifically renewable energy flight, where free power is in the skies for anyone so it's not totally cranky. After all you just wrote a 27-page draft about it. (By the way your paper is very solid and prominently describes in detail several trade-offs that I address specifically through a different mechanism; you are the real deal.)

I would like to work with a collaborator (such as yourself) and then patent and license the technology. Specialist patent offices I contacted said that they would have a conflict with their existing large clients Boeing etc, and for this reason cannot work with me.

On the other hand if they do not have this experience it is kind of a catch-22. Your personal resources and if appropriate (if it works) your resources at MIT would alleviate this issue.

We can discuss the rest by email. I look forward to your reply. It will not take much of your time to make a determination. I promise it will be interesting and well-specified (usually crank inventors misuse common terminology, don't correctly understand the principles they use, and are vague and underspecified, committing logical errors and non-sequiturs to arrive at their mechanism - this isn't like that.) Thank you!

<comment><USER24> OK, two obvious questions.

What is the general range of weight vs power levels are you producing with your device (that wouldn't reveal anything about the tech, only what sort of craft it might suit)?

What is the range of scales at which this device will work (what is the smallest, largest, optimum range for the device)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone know where the US Airforce posted the challenge?

Is there a good repo for all of the US Govts challenges/requests (e.g. DARPA ones + others like USAF?)

</comment><comment><USER26> Very impressive.

I was quick to look up how long The Spirit Of Butts' Farm [0] was in the sky for, only 36 hours.

In 5 days, assuming MIT's model held a similar speed, it could probably circumnavigate the globe.

[0] [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/08/0805_020805_...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/08/0805_020805_transatlantic_2.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> Curious how they used gpkit for the design, I found this: [http://gpkit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/examples.html#simple-w...](http://gpkit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/examples.html#simple- wing)

<comment><USER22> Code is here: [https://github.com/hoburg/jho](https://github.com/hoburg/jho)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> There is no way a gas powered drone will help bring internet access to some remote area.

Why do these press releases always include the most farfetched goals?

<comment><USER29> It will bring internet, but only to the US Army as it trundles across the area and needs an over the horizon repeater to get the signal back to the uplink station.

A 5 day duration manually operated drone is clearly not going to provide long term service.

<comment><USER30> Why not? They've done television broadcasts from circling B-29's ffs. This is quite a bit more efficient, to say the least.

<comment><USER29> Your example is from 70 years ago, and it proved to be impractical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm sorry to have to be negative on this. I look at a bunch of this stuff that is DOD/Armed Forces funded and all I have seen for decades are nothing less than what I would call scams. Total waste of taxpayer money. And this isn't universities only, it's companies that win stupid-as-fuck "research" grants and produce crap in return.

There are a few companies out there playing with what are nothing more than ridiculously expensive toy RC planes (< 6 ft wingspan) that almost anyone could build out of parts available in the open market.

This MIT thing is nothing less than an overgrown model airplane. It uses what looks like a stock 4 stroke model airplane engine with a stock model airplane propeller. It probably uses stock model airplane servos, electronics and 2.4 GHz TX/RX.

Oh, wait, advanced materials. Nope. I have been designing and building RC airplanes as a hobby for three decades. I was vacuum-bagging large (12 foot wingspan) glider wings from fiberglass, carbon fiber and also Kevlar twenty years ago. I still have and use my vacuum bagging setup to build planes today. I have also made custom carbon fiber propellers by CNC machining aluminum molds and stuffing them with epoxy impregnated carbon fiber rovings.

So, this is what I would call "advanced hobby" stuff.

Special airfoils? Nah. Any serious RC glider pilot who has built planes knows what airfoils to use. Not a secret. These guys didn't do anything special on that front.

Oh, but it can be taken apart and stuffed into a box for FedEx shipping. Guess what, so can any large scale RC glider. Nothing new there. Make the wing in six foot sections and you are golden.

Yeah but...

Yeah but nothing.

Here's a guy flying an OFF THE SHELF 6 meter wingspan RC glider. What do you think the wings are made from?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3xxjqpIRNg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3xxjqpIRNg)

That's nearly 20 feet. The MIT "drone" has a 24 foot wingspan.

Here's another guy flying a 6.5 m, 21 ft motorized glider:

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

Replace the electric motor with an internal combustion engine and a fuel tank and bingo. Again, off the shelf.

And here are a BUNCH of guys with huge gliders, powered and not, including one that has a 51 FOOT wingspan. And, look, no truck for launch, they use another large scale RC airplane to tow it up to altitude.

Here's a list of a bunch of large scale RC sailplanes you can buy off the shelf today.

[https://www.scalesoaring.com/scale- sailplanes](https://www.scalesoaring.com/scale-sailplanes)

Here's an 8 to 8.8 meter (~26 to 27 ft) DG 1000 S you can buy and build for about $5,000 Euro:

[https://www.paritech.de/content/modelle/dg1000.php](https://www.paritech.de/content/modelle/dg1000.php)

Shame on MIT for being a part of a scam. It's embarrassing.

<comment><USER32> Calm down, this was just a fun practical experience course for students, that is being oversold by the news article:

From the original press-release:

>Hansman and Hoburg worked with MIT students to design a long-duration UAV as part of a Beaver Works capstone project — typically a two- or three-semester course that allows MIT students to design a vehicle that meets certain mission specifications, and to build and test their design.

Obviously a bunch of undergrads aren't going to design a revolutionary new airplane.

<comment><USER31> You missed my point.

No problem with any of this except their use of tax money to fund it.

If they need a capstone project they can pay for it themselves. Don't create a bullshit grant for something that will not be delivered. I mean, a five minute napkin calculation would quickly reveal the solar-whatever idea was nonsense. They still took the money and built exactly what the Air Force did not ask for. That's wrong in more ways than one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I remember when we used to call them model airplanes.

<comment><USER33> Yea, but this model airplane is bigger than a car (looks like 3x wider at least)

<comment><USER34> Yep, we used to call them LARGE model airplanes.

Now, seriously, allow me to doubt that flying some 2 minutes a plane (model or not) that has (or has the possibility to carry) on board five days worth of fuel actually means that the engine is capable of reliably running 5 days no- stop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> So many fascinating inventions seem to be supposed to be used for search and rescue. We've had jetpacks, robot drones, this drone, robot walkers, crashable drones, even the Boston Dynamics Atlas walking robot is for search and rescue.

Is there actually a need for so many robots? Even if there is, is the market big enough to make economical sense? It seems like it's just an easy thing to imagine when you can't think of a real purpose for your robot.

<comment><USER36> The Defense Department used to just be more honestly called the War Department. Search and Rescue is how lots of inventions are sold to newspapers, Search and Destroy is probably how they get sold at military trade shows :P.

<comment><USER37> > The Defense Department used to just be more honestly called the War > Department.

Not exactly; the (now subcabinet) Department of the Army used to be called the (cabinet level) War Department. The Department of the Navy used to be its own cabinet-level Department. Then a new cabinet level Defense Department was formed, the Air Force split out of the Army and made co-equal, and each of the three (two before the split) service departments made subordinate to the new Defense Department.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Too bad the project is (presumably) slowing down now that Warren Hoburg has been selected as an astronaut.

</comment><comment><USER39> So when asked to build a solar-powered airplane, they ... built a gas-powered one?

<comment><USER40> This was actually modeled! See here: [https://github.com/hoburg/gas_solar_trade](https://github.com/hoburg/gas_solar_trade)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> SkyFront ([https://skyfront.com/](https://skyfront.com/)) builds hybrid drones than fly 10 times as long as battery only drones.

</comment><comment><USER42> The future: ultra-light drones with 90% of its weight being batteries of charging during day time, so they can be operative at night. Flying 24/7, forever (e.g. zeppelin-like).

<comment><USER43> If they need batteries, this cannot be forever. Not even close. Even less if they let the batteries deep-discharge, which dramatically decreases their lifespan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> We need an efficient way to use solar to create gasoline.

</comment><comment><USER45> I guess that when the vehicle isn't helping deliver communications to areas impacted by natural disasters or other emergencies, the Air Force will strap an AGM-114 Hellfire package on it and have it linger over combat zones for days.

I hope these college kids are bright enough to recognize that they are building killing machines unlike anything warfare has seen before.

<comment><USER46> The one who will build high-capacity, low-weight batteries will also build "super" killing and "super" spying machines...

<comment><USER47> You could rule out things by licensing.

<comment><USER37> No, you can't. You might get paid what the courts find is fair value for use of your IP, but IP rights are not an effective to prevent government use of your work.

See 28 USC Sec. 1498(a) regarding patents, and Sec. 1498(b) regarding copyrights.

<comment><USER48> Source [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/1498](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/1498)

It looks like you would need to have a patent. If you manage to create a magic battery and you keep the manufacturing process a trade secret, then you could disallow government use of your work. Is that correct? They'd obviously be able to attempt to reverse-engineer your product, of course.

This got me wondering. Could they force someone to provide them with a license due to extreme circumstances? e.g. Time of war, magic battery can help us win.

<comment><USER24> Yes, they can force you to provide your goods to them in any situation they declare urgent/emergency, and at priority over all other customers, even prepaid ones.

You will get paid, it's not confiscation, but it is an offer you cannot refuse.

I'd be surprised if the situation isn't the same in every other country -- national security/defense takes a very high priority. Moreover, any truly revolutionary technology that could create a significant military advantage will be almost required to be controlled by the mil, lest the adversaries get it.

If you don't want to ever be in a situation where you could help the military of your country, you probably need to move to a country without a military. Then worry about other countries deciding to invade for your revolutionary technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Gas in the American colloquial sense? Or actual gas?

<comment><USER50> It's in the article!

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> The less fuel is left, the lighter the drone.

</comment><comment><USER52> Damn that's like a DLG on steroids

</comment><comment><USER10> They used a refill service drone?

</comment><comment><USER53> Equip it with Neural Net ML and it will find it's way to reach ground in no time for at least 10,000 times.</comment>


AMD Statement on Theft of Graphics IP - <AUTHOR> https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/data-update <comment><AUTHOR> Apparently the code is being ransomed for $100 million: [https://www.engadget.com/2020-03-25-hacker-steals-source- cod...](https://www.engadget.com/2020-03-25-hacker-steals-source-code-for- xbox-series-x-graphics.html)</comment>


Calacanis on Ellen Pao and Fixing the Gender Issue in VC - <AUTHOR> http://calacanis.com/2015/03/23/mansplaining-the-ellen-pao-trial-fixing-the-gender-issue-in-venture-capital/ <comment><USER2> > Venture capital used to draw the best of the business-school crowd, but > today it's being taken over by 30- and 40-year-old founders who have the > credibility of having run a business.

From what I can tell senior partners are still predominately MBAs. Beyer, Doer, Boetha, Gurley, Khosla, etc

<comment><USER3> Khosla was a Sun founder. Doerr was an HP exec, albeit not terribly senior IIRC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ok, but "be a billionaire and start a VC firm" and "kick ass" aren't actionable pieces of advice for anyone except the half-dozen or so women he mentioned.

I appreciate the characterization of VC firms as clubs though. That makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER5> What doesn't make sense in my circle is this.

If EP was so adamant about trying to 'bring KPCB along' and change it's 'boys club' culture -- which _really_ rings with JC's point #2 --

\-- why did she leave VC? She's 100% convinced she got passed over for promotion at KPCB for illegitimate reasons.

Thus she's convinced she has a lot to give in VC. And she has years of experience.

And there _are_ other VC firms with a very inclusive environment for both genders.

Why on earth abandon a highly remunerative career path, if she's confident of her VC talents? Being CEO of Reddit isn't bad, but financially she'd be MUCH better off sticking with what she knows.

</comment><comment><USER3> A note on Ann Winblad. It took her and John Hummer 18 months or so to get their fund started. They had one substantive hook -- they promised to be the first software-only VC firm. (Accel, already well established then, was just software-mainly.)

They also had a gimmick -- their visual. Ann is tiny, while John is a former NBA forward. If there isn't a full 1 1/2 foot difference in their heights, it's close to that. As Ann told the story then, it helped people remember them. :)

Ann, by the way, was a founder, while John had worked for another VC (Pitch Johnson) and elsewhere in finance (Victor Niederhoffer) after his hoops career ended.</comment>


Benchmarking Amazon's Graviton2 Performance Against Intel Xeon, AMD EPYC - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amazon-graviton2-benchmarks&num=1 <comment><AUTHOR> Considering how many software is still not optimised on ARMv8. I think this is a pretty damn impressive results especially for Web workloads. And ARM's roadmap promise another 30% increase in IPC later this year. I would not be surprised to see Amazon have Graviton 3 this time next year.

I am also wondering if Google and Microsoft will go the same route. And if Nvidia has any plan for this market.</comment>


Ask HN: Rate my Webapp: castmyclips.com - <AUTHOR>

CastMyClips.com lets you paste text into the site, then it turns into audio files which you can listen to in your browser. It also gives you an RSS feed that you can subscribe to in iTunes (like a Podcast) so each clip is automatically downloaded.
The monthly cost for a full account would be $3-$4. I haven't decided whether to offer a free account, or a free 30 day trial.
I understand the web site needs some serious design work... that is next on my list.
This is a pivot off of a WordPress plugin I wrote (castmyblog.com), and it's now to the point where I need to decide if it's worth pursing and spending some money on, or if I should drop it, so your feedback would be appreciated.
http://castmyclips.com <comment><USER2> I dinged up my car this week, so I've been taking the bus to work. For the first time in a while I've been able to read during my commute. Instapaper has been fantastic for this. I've plowed through tons of material that was in my "I'll read it later" list (which I rarely find the time to clear).

CastMyClips is an interesting alternative to Instapaper. I really like the podcast idea, which you could effectively use to pipe audio straight to your iPod for your commute.

I'd recommend you target this at people who drive to work. Reading articles with Instapaper is not an option for them, but playing audio through their car's stereo system is. I'd seriously consider using this during my morning commute.

<comment><USER3> I totally agree; I would love a way to "read" blogs while driving:

Go to a TC article on iPhone, click bookmarklet, sit back and listen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm. Someday I hope to have an iPhone app, it might be nice to have a built in browser with a button that let you listen...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Clickable: <http://castmyclips.com>

I like the idea, but I don't think the name conveys what the product does. Off the top of my head I don't have a better name (sorry), but I'd work on that and then simplify the landing page so you know right away what your product does (without needing to read an intro paragraph). Cool stuff though. I'd keep working on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Yes, I'm not terribly happy with the name either, still trying to figure something better out.

<comment><USER5> Just some guesses with whois:

speakly.it readthisaloud.com speakrss.com listenfeed.com listeningfeed.com speakingfeed.com</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Mail Rep – Let a pro set up and manage your email deliverability - <AUTHOR> https://www.petekeen.net/mail-rep

<comment><USER2> It's an interesting pitch - but as a customer of say, SendGrid, why wouldn't I just continue to use them?

Would this be for organizations who send so much email that SendGrid (or Mandrill/MailGun/etc.)'s pricing wouldn't be cost-effective?

<comment><AUTHOR> This works along side your current senders, it doesn't replace them. I take a look at your senders, install some analytics, and recommend DNS changes that boost your deliverability.</comment></comment>


Are big companies usually that bad to work for? - <AUTHOR>

Sorry if this comes across as a vague question. I'm currently a freshman in college and disliking the experience. I don't feel like I'm getting much out of classes, and it seems to be a lot of memorization or inefficient work that doesn't go anywhere.
After lurking on forums and reading articles, I've started to get the feeling that big companies are similar, or maybe worse. I'm having trouble getting excited about stuff like working on Microsoft's new version of Excel.
It's this general feeling of doom that I've started to have. I don't know if you can generalize experiences at big companies, but do they typically contain the drudgery, repetition, and corporate feel that I'm experiencing in college?
What are the alternatives? Working for a small company? <comment><USER3> Agreeing with others - there is no black-and-white when it comes to companies. There are pockets of exciting and innovative teams in even the biggest, slowest-moving companies, and there are small companies that will suck the life out of you.

Take Washington Post, for instance. Big, lumbering, dead-trees news org, right? Check out WaPo Labs sometime - they play around with projects that you might not expect from BigCo. I worked in a division of a big online company for a time, and we had a great culture as a division, and also within the smaller team I was on, a real drive to move the needle in new ways for the business. I've also worked in a 4-person company that couldn't get itself organized enough to get meaningful work done. Long story short, culture of the team and company are probably going to be more important than size at the end of the day. Oh, and industry will probably make a difference as well. If you can't get excited about MS Excel, don't work for the MS Office team - <USER2> try the XBox team, or a different field entirely.

Re: college, bdunbar makes a good point - there's a ton of hype around skipping it or dropping out and jumping straight into starting your own company, but personally I'm still on the fence about that. If you can stick it out to upperclass years in school, you'll have a lot more latitude to take courses you want, which will by definition make school more interesting for you. Call me biased, but I think having a degree on my resume has served me better than not having one would have.

</comment><comment><USER4> It depends on the company and what you want. I've worked for big companies that were tolerable and small companies that were abysmal (the one that comes to mind was run by a guy with money who wanted to play software-tycoon and did it badly enough he lost his entire engineering staff in the space of one month).

Since you're a freshman, take some internships and see what floats your boat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response. It's interesting that you use the word tolerable. Did you enjoy working at the big companies at all?

<comment><USER4> Sure. I enjoyed the people I worked with at the big companies quite a bit. In fact, almost as a rule I've enjoyed my coworkers more at big companies than at small ones. People were generally more laid back and pleasant to work around, and while I found the number of "lifers" a little unsettling, it was more of a temporal mismatch than a cultural one (I was the youngest in my department by at least 10 years and had no inclination to settle down where the job was). Now, I'm at a small-ish company and I've got far more responsibility than I did at either of the big companies, but that's mostly because there are fewer people around to handle the work that needs to be done. I'm the de-facto DBA for the product I work on largely because I understand databases better than anyone on the team. That has turned into me needing to learn Hadoop "yesterday" because the need is there and the one Hadoop guy we had just quit. At a big company this doesn't happen because big companies are, well, big. That's comforting because there's almost always someone who can give you a hand. It's also somewhat limiting because there's almost always someone more specialized in an area you want to branch out into, and they'll get assignments because working in that area is their job. If you want to wear a lot of hats, big companies aren't the best place - but if you want to have folks around who can help you out, small companies aren't going to be able to offer that kind of hand-holding. That said, if I could go to a big company and get similar respect and responsibility to what I currently enjoy, I absolutely would.

As an example of a big company role that would be fascinating - I've got a friend who's a VP of Consumer Analytics at one of the major banks in the US. His job is literally to comb through data and make recommendations regarding bank policy based upon that data. For an example of his work, the last time I spoke with him, he was working on figuring out the optimal amount of cash to keep in each ATM across the country. He gets considerable latitude to do things however he wants - all that matters is the results. For instance, he tends to write a lot of R code himself, but his assignments do not include the phrase "Implement this system using R" or anything near it. He gets to decide what works and he is only responsible for the output and not his modus operandi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Many freshman level courses aren't very interesting. You're learning to lay the groundwork so you can efficiently do more interesting work later. The most important thing I took away from my engineering degree wasn't any specific knowledge, it was the problem solving method, break problems down, etc.

I only have experience at two employers, but I say Yes, the big company was a pretty poor work experience. There were definitely people above me trying to make it better, but they were struggling against the slow-moving bureaucracy of government contracts. It's easy at a big company to get pigeon-holed because there are so many employees. If you start to stand out in one area everyone will come to you for answers in that area. At the smaller employer, I've had the opportunity to try on different hats and only pigeon-hole myself as much as I want to. It's more exciting and I've learned more that I ever would have at the big company.

</comment><comment><USER6> 1\. Stick with college, get the degree. It proves to employers you can stick with something, which is valuable and will get you places.

2\. I've worked for the big companies, small ones, medium.

3\. There is no 'usual' about any of them. They all sucked in various ways. And they were all excellent, in their own ways.

4\. A lot depends on your chain of command and your peers.

5\. It's not all MS and Excel. It Gets Better.

6\. There is no 6.</comment>


Graphene improves lithium-ion battery capacity and recharge rate by 10x - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/105343-graphene-improves-lithium-ion-battery-capacity-and-recharge-rate-by-10x

<comment><USER2> _… store 10 times more power…_

 _…after 150 charge/discharge cycles, is also five times more effective than any lithium-ion battery currently on the market_

Is this the positive way of saying they lose half of their capacity after 150 cycles?

Ten times capacity is certainly a game changer for everything from wireless ear buds to electric cars, but * week-long smartphone batteries within a couple of years* sounds optimistic for something that is fabricated at the atomic level.

What exists on the market now that is designed at the atomic level and mass produced?

<comment><USER3> Usual Li-Ion batteries get a bit over 1000 cycles, so if this is 10 times more power, it provides more power for 150 cycles than a normal Li-Ion for its lifetime.

<comment><USER4> No they don't. Degradation of lithium-ion batteries is a function of temperature, time since manufacture and charge level rather than charge/discharge cycles. If you keep the battery cool and don't discharge it below 20% or so, it will last a very long time. If you keep it hot and constantly do full discharges, it will be dead very quickly.

<comment><USER5> You need to discharge them really slowly to if you want to keep them cool. So, there is a link between discharging and temperature assuming a high power device.

<comment><USER6> Liquid cooling for batteries wouldn't be worth it in earbuds, but it probably would in an electric car.

<comment><USER7> Which is why battery packs in Tesla cars are liquid-cooled.

<comment><USER5> Tesla battery's still get hot, just not as hot as they would get with more limited cooling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems to me that if this proves out, and can be made affordably, the most exciting application would be electric cars -- no more range penalty vs. gasoline. Anyone know enough to comment on the likely applicability?

<comment><USER9> mmmm electric cars... 10x the range of current cars... thats what... cross country in one charge? can anyone argue with that? Ok fine 10x is not cross country... but it is 2000 miles per f-ing charge!

<comment><USER10> I'd rather have 200 miles and lighter/cheaper(? at least in terms of environmental costs) batteries.

<comment><USER11> Just as with gasoline-powered vehicles, I would like to have the choice of many different options.

<comment><USER12> Well, for energy storage and conversion in gasoline powered cars you only have option. Gasoline stored in a tank and combusted in an Otto cycle engine.

I don't think that people's driving behaviour is divergent enough to support multiple battery chemistries in the long run.

<comment><USER11> I was thinking I can choose between cars that have different capabilities (small or large, big tank or small, fast or slow) even if the core tech is the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This would be a real game changer for electric cars. Even a "mere" 3x enhancement would already make them really competitive with combustion engines ones, but with 10x they would just be _better_ than our traditional cars. Let's hope this technology can be industrialized in an economic way.

<comment><USER14> It'll surely be patented and sat on for a while at a very high price. My bet is we'll need to wait $time_of_release + 10 years until we see things working out over traditional cars.

<comment><USER15> You can't "sit on" patents. The whole point of the patent system is to get an idea out there so people can use it. As a patent holder you're required to license your invention for a reasonable amount (I'm not really sure how that's determined - probably in court). If you don't, a judge can put your invention in the public domain and give you nothing.

The stories you hear about the 300 mpg carburetor and machines that produce power from the spin of electrons? These devices, if they actually existed, would have to be bought and hidden away without ever entering the patent system. And the buyer (oil companies, is it?) would have to take the chance somebody else would patent the invention for which he paid millions.

<comment><USER16> Citation, please. I've never heard of compulsory licensing occurring in the US outside of government contracts and anti-trust settlements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For the record, there are a _lot_ of experimental battery technologies out there:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium- ion_battery#Variations_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium- ion_battery#Variations_in_materials_and_construction)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-sulfur_battery>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanowire_battery>

Just... one of these will probably catch on, yes, and that's awesome, but we've come up with so many different ideas that at this point, demonstrating a high-capacity lithium battery prototype is the Aristocrats joke of battery science.

<comment><USER18> And the promised capacity increase is always 10x, neither more nor less.

<comment><USER17> Lithium-sulfur is an older, more well-studied technique, and it only promises a 4x increase. There are still quite a few kinks to be worked out but I think it has the best potential of the bunch for the near future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here's the press release from Northwestern University:

[http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2011/11/batte...](http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2011/11/batteries- energy-kung.html)

and the associated journal paper, published in Advanced Energy Materials:

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aenm.201100426/ab...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aenm.201100426/abstract)

</comment><comment><USER14> Is there _anything_ graphene can't do?

<comment><USER20> So far: make it to market. But we're optimistic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> While this could change the game for electric cars (Edit: as others have already been discussing), it would also be an amazing advance for cell phones and computers. Imagine a cell phone that had a lighter battery but still lasted through a week of use between charges. Or an incredibly thin and light battery (and a correspondingly thin and light phone) that still lasted a couple of days.

Or a notebook that didn't need all the power management to dial down the CPU and GPU when unplugged, and could barrel away full speed and still last for a day or two. You'd still have to worry about heat dissipation, but there are plenty of fast notebooks that handle that fine when plugged in.

Or an iPad with the battery life of a Kindle. Or a Kindle that you charged _once a year._

<comment><USER22> But can you imagine trying to _find_ the charging cable for your Kindle after a year?

<comment><USER23> If they keep it to a standard mini-USB cable, it won't be too bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So how long do you reckon we will have to wait for something like this? I'm still waiting for lithium-air batteries from MIT [http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/better-battery- storage-07...](http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/better-battery- storage-0725.html)

<comment><USER25> Patience. It's usually a minimum of 5 years for tech to go from the lab to commercial use, and often 10 years before it's in common use. Furthermore since there are probably dozens of competing technologies currently in the lab for energy storage, most of them won't ever make mainstream commercial use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> So now the battery in my laptop will have 10x the energy in it when it explodes. It will be even more like carrying a bomb around with you.

</comment><comment><USER27> not mentioned in the article, but this could be a huge help for electric cars, and to the solar power industry.

</comment><comment><USER28> What is the safety of this battery? At 10x power we are looking at potential explosion for eletric cars instead of raging fire for gas cars... Does it work in 30 below zero?

<comment><USER29> As just a lay commenter on ycombinator, I can point out that they're just changing the anode atomic structure. They're not changing the Lithium salt.

So your concerns about safety are fine - this should only be as safe as any other Lithium-ion or Lithium-polymer battery.

<comment><USER30> _> this should only be as safe as any other Lithium-ion or Lithium-polymer battery._

So, they will explode fairly often then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> From a symposium on Graphene at Mcgill earlier this year. One study presented was Graphene/Metal contact

[http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~maassenj/aps/2011-March- meetin...](http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~maassenj/aps/2011-March- meeting/APS_2011.ppt.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER32> I still don't understand why people think this will do anything for electric cars. The bottleneck is how long it takes to charge your car. If you have a 60KW/hr pack, you can only charge it so fast with a 110v/20amp jack (for the sake of pie in the sky projections assume 50% charging efficiency between charger and battery). Period the end. you could always do 220v/30amps, or 208v/30amps/3phase. or 440v/1000amps. the tradeoff is in how many idiots electrocute themselves. It never ceases to amaze me how people don't get this simple simple fact. It's like saying that you can fill up a swimming pool faster because you've made a sturdier garden hose.

<comment><USER33> That's pretty short-sighted Mike. First, a 10x battery boost would mean you don't have to recharge the car fully over a week.

This is also a boon for battery swapping stations which are bein built in Israel and other places.

<comment><USER32> lol. it's like you're trying to troll me. #5,612,606.

<comment><USER33> He's talking about this patent, by the way, which I know he made: <http://www.patents.com/us-5612606.html>

<comment><USER34> But that patent's going to be expired by the time these batteries are ready.

<comment><USER35> Shai Agassi's patent #7,993,155 for a charging connector even references this one. Doesn't look like they consider it a problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: please review my website - <AUTHOR>

http://bargain-notify.me/
I've tried to handle the most common criticism: easy registration, and only when require, make sure the users know right away what it is about, etc., except for the domain name: I've found a better one yet :-)
Please let me know what you think of it. <comment><USER3> If you don't mind my asking...

What is someone's motivation to vote on and/or discuss a deal? Maybe I'm missing something...

On the website itself:

1) It takes two clicks before I get to the deal. When I click on a deal, I go to a site on bargin-notify that lets me discuss/vote and I need to click on the same text again to get to best buy (or whatever). I think you should have a "buy this" button or something" on both the main page and the description page.

2) I think on the main page, you want to have a way to directly get to my searches. I'd imagine most people would come to the page and want to look at their searches right away. I could be wrong, but thats how I envision using it.

Overall, I like the idea of bargain aggregation. I'm curious how your getting commission off this if your just pulling data from RSS feeds, but no need to spill your secrets to us...

</comment><comment><USER4> I would provide an example scenario near the top of your home page. I know what a "Custom Search" means, but many internet users might not. A quick little story of someone creating a custom search, signing up for an email, and getting a good deal could go a long way.

Also, I find it helpful when the website logo is a link back to the home page. (The blue on blue links in the top right are a bit hard to read).

I like this type of business model. Provide a service and earn commission on the sale. Lots of competitors though.

</comment><comment><USER5> Make your site easier to scan/read, put the savings in their own column.

eg, change this:

"Save $243.66 on SomeProduct WithArcaneLongProductName XL22000!"

into this:

"SomeProduct XL22000 | $243.66", where the second column has a "You save:" header

<comment><AUTHOR> For most deals, I don't have the original price. Based on other feedbacks, I should make a column for price, and add the saving when I get it. Something like:

$220.00 (save $25)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In all seriousness, I think you should pick something other than a pig for your logo. I realize you are going for "piggy bank" but most people will think "H1N1." Or, perhaps it's just me :) Good luck anyways.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I forgot to mention something: now I need active users to vote and comment on the deals for the website to be more useful. That is the biggest challenge for me right now.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for the feedback. I'm going to make the small layout changes that were suggested today, and bigger changes in the coming weeks.

</comment><comment><USER7> i didn't make an account or anything, but just looking at the front page - <USER2> should extract the price from each item and display it along the right side of the line.

some items have the price/discount first, some at the end of the text. if they were broken out and displayed in a different/bigger font along the right it might be easier to browse.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm actually extracting the price alrady (from title or description), and put it first in the title. When I can, I remove it from the rest of the title, but it is not always possible. off course, I cannot do it automatically when the deals says "save 50%" only.

But I agree I should make the price in a bigger fount, I will do it tonight.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> clickable link: <http://bargain-notify.me/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice Idea... How are you getting bargain data? Is it a trade secret? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> RSS, website, Twitter, e-mails, etc.</comment></comment>


Why Doc Brown is the real villain of Back to the Future (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://io9.gizmodo.com/5673855/why-doc-brown-is-the-real-villain-of-back-to-the-future <comment><AUTHOR> Do yourself a favor today and read this. I'm literally laughing out loud. Read for gems like this:

> Marty McFly is a typical 80s teen who just wants to play guitar, take his > girl to the lake, and not have sex with his mom.</comment>


Is google squatting? - <AUTHOR> http://duck.com

<comment><USER2> Er, wasn't on2 (the owners of duck.com) bought by google? That's what archive.org implies...

</comment><comment><USER3> This was on HN less than a week ago. Here's the link: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2027691>

<comment><AUTHOR> doh. i have yet to discover anything new for HN. one day...</comment></comment>


Chinese censors go low-tech to clamp down on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://www.lmtonline.com/news/article/Chinese-censors-go-low-tech-to-clamp-down-on-13508441.php <comment><USER2> > [...] had hacked into his Twitter account - @hesuoge - and [...]

> [...] said the engineer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of > landing in deeper trouble with authorities.

Uh, what?

Edit: Even worse, it's the Washington Post: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinese- ce...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinese-censors-go- old-school-to-clamp-down-on-twitter-a-knock-on-the- door/2019/01/04/1bd462e4-f331-11e8-9240-e8028a62c722_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b460528a28a4) .

I'm missing something regarding twitter handles and anonymity, right?

<comment><USER3> Obviously if the authorities visited "his house" they know who he is and where he lives. Be that as it may, he may not want to further broadcast who he is.

<comment><USER2> Such as broadcasting his twitter handle, like they did right there?

<comment><USER3> Ah I see your point. The anonymity desired might have been naive in asking not to publish his real name. He might have bern okay with handle—to give the news organs the benefit of doubt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am from Europe and I am seeing 451 (the article is not available in my region) is this normal?

Italy to be specific.

<comment><USER5> Probably GDPR related. Many publishing sites aren't willing to bother for the EU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Like what UK police did to Graham Lineham?

[https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/oct/07/graham- lineh...](https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/oct/07/graham-linehan- police-warning-complaint-by-stephanie-hayden-transgender-activist-twitter)

<comment><USER7> How is that even slightly related?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How ironic:

451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons

Sorry, this content is not available in your region.

<comment><USER8> GDPR. Welcome to the balkanization of the internet.

<comment> dane-pgp By that logic, Google Safe Browsing had already balkanized the internet. You may be right, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Similar thing happened in Netherlands

[https://www.dw.com/en/online-anti-refugee-posts-lead-to- offl...](https://www.dw.com/en/online-anti-refugee-posts-lead-to-offline- visits-by-dutch-police/a-19005888)

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't categorize it as similar. Now, ceratainly it has a chilling effect, but they're not asking the person to delete their tweets, but rather be careful not to "incite" as they might attribute violence to the tweeter. It has a chilling effect on free speech, but on the other hand the posts are not getting removed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Archive for those in Europe: [http://archive.vn/YjME8](http://archive.vn/YjME8)

</comment><comment><USER11> They didn't really go low tech though. Sure the guy got a knock on the door, but that didn't work. So the authorities went high tech, hacked his account and deleted everything.

</comment><comment><USER12> Can someone translate 超级低俗屠夫 and the context? I don't think it means "Super low-profile butcher".

<comment><USER10> It's the nickname of this guy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Gan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Gan)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks like this website blocks access from Europe, presumably due to GDPR.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you prefer to browse HN on the go? - <AUTHOR> Is there a specific mobile app that you prefer? Or do you use the browser on your phone? <comment><USER2> I use Premii ([https://github.com/premii/hn](https://github.com/premii/hn) , [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hacker-news- yc/id713733435](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hacker-news-yc/id713733435)) on iOS. Here's a list of many such apps [https://github.com/cheeaun/awesome- hacker-news](https://github.com/cheeaun/awesome-hacker-news)

</comment><comment><USER3> I happily use Octal on iOS ([https://apps.apple.com/us/app/octal-hacker- news/id1308885491](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/octal-hacker- news/id1308885491))

</comment><comment><USER4> Hews works pretty well on Android.</comment>


Show HN: VUE – Understand and Engage Your App's Users - <AUTHOR> http://getvue.co

<comment><USER2> If you have any questions tweet me @gdi2290 or @blaurenceclark @GetVUE</comment>


The LeBron James of Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zeusprod.com/2014/02/the-lebron-james-of-programmers.html

<comment><USER2> "For many years, I have wondered why a great programmer (one who is 10x as productive as a poor programmer) doesn't make 10x the income."

For many years I have wondered why so many people think that supply versus demand ought to be a linear function.

Even in the most simple economics 101 scenario you do not end up with a demand curve which is a straight line. It's always a curve, which is usually very steep at one end and very shallow at the other.

If the supply of oil dropped by 50% overnight, what do you think would happen? Those people who absolutely _have_ to have oil, and can afford it, will pay for it, through the nose!

The price will go up (and up and up!) until we are at a new equilibrium in which only 50% as much oil is consumed by those buyers that are still able and willing to pay for it at the new price.

If the supply dropped by 50%, the price will probably go up by a factor of 100 or more, not just 2.

Similarly, in the same article he mentions that some NBA players are paid 1000x as much as some others. But are those players actually 1000x better? No of course not!

The right way to think of this is "supply vs demand for someone with that particular skill set".

The only thing you could reasonably expect is for a more productive/smarter/better person to be paid _more_ than someone else. But how much more is going to depend on supply vs demand for someone with that skill set.

<comment><USER3> _For many years I have wondered why so many people think that supply versus demand ought to be a linear function._

Many curves are linear if you zoom in on a tiny enough piece of them. If there are a million 1x programmers in the world, and you increase the supply by a single 1x programmer, the price for a programmer drops, in theory, but only by a miniscule amount. Moving one part in a million along the curve is not enough for the non-linear terms to be significant compared to the linear term. Likewise, adding a single 10x programmer is still almost completely linear -- you are adding 10 more units of programming capacity to the million units that already exist. We aren't talking about a 50% change in supply here, we are talking about a 0.0001% change.

Now, if you are a tiny company that needs maybe two 1x programmers, you aren't going to pay 10x for a 10x programmer that will be idle for 80% of the time, but why wouldn't a large company that needs hundreds of programmers be willing to pay 10x for a 10x programmer instead of paying for ten 1x programmers when the cost is the same to achieve the same amount of work?

One final analogy: You walk into a store and find that a single roll of toilet paper costs $0.50. Would you expect a 20-pack to cost vastly less than $10 (say $1.00 or $2.00) due to supply and demand? There are practical reasons for there to be some discount for the larger package (less packaging per roll, less human labor to deliver to store shelves, etc.), but a discount beyond that?

By the way, the whole NBA analogy is terrible. The goal is to win the game, so being a little better (in terms of points scored) than the average player can have a big impact on the binary win/lose outcome. You don't need to score 1000x as many points to be worth 1000x as much money. In sharp contrast, much of software development is not so binary (perhaps just a few highly technical areas where an average programmer may never create an algorithm that is good enough to work).

<comment><USER2> Yes these are all very good points.

And in fact my oil analogy isn't so great because that is talking the about supply of a largely fungible commodity whereas with programmers the whole point is that different programmers have different skill sets.

So it's lots of different markets that aren't really competing against each other (the market for quantitative programmers who know Haskell and financial mathematics vs the market for programmers who know lots about Java, Spring, Hibernate and SCRUM) rather than a single market.

And that's a better explanation for why there are 10x differences in pay: the supply and demand in each "niche" is often very different (by an order of magnitude).

If you're a programmer working in exactly the same niche as another programmer and you can prove that you're ten times as productive, then yes I suppose you could get 10x the pay... The trick is the first part though (proving that you're actually 10 times as productive).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mario West (as the cited lowest paid NBA player) makes 25,000 dollars... on a team (and league) he hasn't played for in 3 years. The NBA has a unionized workforce, with a collective bargaining agreement which sets salary minimums as well as caps, with all sorts of rules regarding compensation, employment, trades, etc.

Interestingly, an economist recently estimated LeBron James' fair market value at 50 million dollars a year, which is far above his 20m current salary (which is largely driven by the CBA to keep player salaries low).

Also, when you sign an NBA contract, most of it is guaranteed both ways. That is to say, a four year contract means you get paid for four years even if you get injured or your performance is lacking. The converse being, you can't simply sign with another team for higher salary if you feel you're being underpaid, underutilized, or under appreciated. There are exceptions, player and team options, but those are typically in the final year of a multi-year contract.

I don't have strong thoughts on the general point of the article, but I thought I'd clarify some of the basketball background info, because I feel it's somewhat misleadingly presented. And I'm not sure the NBA really serves as a great analogy with the author's points.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you want to complain about unfairness of the market, at least argue for more equality, not more inequality. My heart won't bleed for you - if you want to be selfish, just be; don't cry to me for help.

I don't find the moral argument for pay per productivity very convincing. Being smart is like winning a lottery; you are lucky enough already to be born that way. I think (useful) effort is what should be rewarded, not productivity.

<comment><USER6> _I think (useful) effort is what should be rewarded, not productivity._

How can we reliably measure effort?

If we are to reward by effort, how can we encourage people to go into fields where they will be even somewhat productive? If I could choose any job, it would be stand-up comedian. I may not make anyone laugh. Should my reward be the same as that of Louis CK or Chris Rock?

<comment><USER5> I am not sure we can reliably measure productivity, either. GDP is supposed to be such a measure, but it has its own share of problems.

Anyway, I argued from a moral perspective, not a practical one. It's a complicated problem, and everybody has a different perspective (and they should have).

To answer your question - what should be discouraging is your incompetence in the field. In other words, you either shouldn't get that job or become frustrated with it enough to try something else. And on the other hand, if you are good at something, you are probably already plenty motivated to do it. Think about it - if all the jobs would be payed equally for the same effort, why would you want to waste your life on something that you cannot do well?

The difference is that I see usefulness as a binary thing. To me, if there is enough good people doing the stuff already, therefore we don't need you even if you like the job, and you shouldn't get it (your work in that field is not useful). Instead of, having market system to depress the wages for all the people in that field, just because everybody is capable of doing that job. Or because there are differences in productivity between jobs.

Also, I agree that other people have to decide somehow whether or not your work is useful for society, it cannot be just your decision. But I don't agree the weight of this decision to be tied with productivity (I think it should be decided democratically, in fact), because that's prone to positive feedback loops.

<comment><USER6> _if there is enough good people doing the stuff already, therefore we don 't need you even if you like the job_

How can we determine whether there are enough people doing the stuff already? Going back to my comedian example, should I get to be a comedian just because I started doing it at some minimum acceptable quality, before there were 'enough' comedians, whilst the next Louis CK has to do something else?

I think you're missing:

\- we don't need to measure productivity in aggregate (and I agree GDP has problems in doing this) but for each individual, and probably only in a relative sense

\- competence in a field and motivation to do it are not necessarily correlated, as evidenced by the popularity of career-change guides

\- A democratic process for deciding whether your work is useful for society would require a lot of information on each person's work. I don't see how you could summarise that information without coming up with a metric which means something like 'productivity'

Anyway, we've veered far off topic and I don't think we'll convince each other. Have a great weekend!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The fact of the matter is that it's necessary to have both superstar and fair- to-middlin' programmers in any decently sized organization. Why? Because superstars aren't usually keen on spending a bunch of time on support and refactoring, and every time they push something brand new _someone_ has to keep it running. So far, the best success I've had managing programmers has been when I ensure the right people are placed in the right roles, not when a team is stocked with "LeBrons". I'd argue the Heat might not be as good if they had 5 LeBrons, either. After you get people in the right positions to contribute via their specializations, the next most important is -- by far -- to encourage mentorship and active sharing within the team. Working in isolation may result in fast results, but they'll be shit quality and no one will understand the code (speaking from experience here!).

As far as the salary scale for superstars vs average programmers, it's typical that the best people are compensated better, whether it be via salary, RSUs/options, bonus or fringe benefits, but it is not typical to compensate them higher by multiples of base salary. And why should it be? As stated by others, almost none of what is required of programmers by most organizations is anything that couldn't be done by a thousand other candidates. Most of you guys may not find it pertinent to take a global view, since large enterprise representation is dwarfed on HN by the startup & 1099 constituency, but when you get to the high levels of management (C-level) it is a _real thing_ in most companies that the folks at the top don't understand the difference between what you get when spending x amount in y places. The problem is that the technical hiring manager or product owner aren't always allowed, in those situations, to hire in the place that makes the most sense, causing further stress and inefficiency in the organization. This, then, leads to conversations like the ones that resulted in the mass outsourcing of the late 90s and early 00s. I've long held that we'd all be better off if corporations took the position that most programming skills should be roughly equally compensated for no matter where in the world the individual sits, but until this scales from <10 (startup) to >1000 (enterprise), don't expect much. I employ -- against my will -- ~50 technical folks in South India at a total salary of <$600k US.

<comment><USER8> Sports analogies are quite accurate for any team work I think.

I recall Phil Jackson talking about the Chicago Bulls with Denis Rodman. Denis Rodman was sometimes late to practices, always in trouble, and etc. And Phil Jackson was connivent with him. When asked if this permissivines with one rebellious player wouldn't have a bad influence on others, specially when you have two other more important stars (Pippen and Jordan), he answered that they knew it better. They knew one team can have only one Denis Rodman on the team. And despite being _more important_ than him to the team, they didn't try to play the "I'M the star here, so I should have the privilegies". They knew Denis Rodman needed this kind of freedom to perform, and they needed his performance.

So, just as you need more down to earth programmers to support a superstar, you also need to everyone know they role in the team and why they need each other. A superstar that doesn't recognize the importance of those with less talent than him isn't a good one to have on your team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you're 10x as productive as other programmers, why not join a startup as an early employee, or be a technical cofounder? Wouldn't that be better, compensation-wise?

<comment><USER10> Not if the startup fails ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The primary issue with this comparison is that Lebron James doesn't have to be the best player in basketball to command the highest salary. Court productivity is what the author is measuring, but the true measure is how much a player will effect a team's revenue.

Lebron James puts people in seats, and those people buy jerseys and beer. Even after his skills start to dwindle, he still may command a much higher salary than equally productive players due to his ability to draw crowds.

Another element lost in the analogy is how much someone like Lebron makes the others on his team more productive. Because of his presence, other players on his team (and on the floor with him) benefit from his abilities and their production is improved. He's some form of catalyst or multiplier.

Of course measuring individual productivity and any individual's impact on team productivity is much more difficult in a business setting where statistics are not easily measured and external forces can impact the team's behaviors.

A basketball court is a rather fixed and controlled environment - team size, rules, and even temperature are standard. A free throw line is always the same distance from the rim, and the rim is always the same height. Business and development environments have multiple factors that could make one person more or less productive than they would be at another shop.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have a lot of experience hiring programmers, and to me the salary range for programmers appears to be much larger than this article states.

Specifically this: "Here are some things you can point out to your employer to help make your case that you are worth 2x or 3x what they are paying other programmers, but you'll be lucky to be paid 25% more. If you are 10x as productive as other programmers, you'll probably be paid no more than 2x their salary."

seems incorrect when compared against my data.

Obviously if you look at total compensation there is more than a 10X difference between groups of programmers in many cases, but even just considering salary I have seen a pretty large dynamic range. For example, many large software companies (that I compete with when hiring engineers) pay their experienced engineers 3-4X+ salary compared to someone they might hire straight out of university.

The best methods of measuring productivity or value of an engineer are certainly worth debating, but the idea that the range of salary is something like 2X doesn't hold up for me.

</comment><comment><USER13> Worth noting that those $25k earning players he mentioned are in fact getting paid to do nothing. Their salaries are still a part of the NBA Salary Cap and deferred to this year. Guys like Vander Blue ($28.8k), have been paid to play in a mere 3 "games" for a total of 5 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER14> There are no NBA players getting paid $25K a year. The NBA minimum salary for a rookie is currently over $500K a year and around $1M a year for a veteran with at least 4 years experience. The $25K salary figure is misleading because they are taking into account extremely short term contracts for a handful of games. If you ride the bench for an 82 game season, you are making a lot of money, and you literally cannot make less than the number in the NBA's collective bargaining agreement.

Bench players are valuable assets. Your starters practice against them even if they don't play, and there are some guys who are talented but not up to the task of playing 30+ minutes a game for various reasons.

</comment><comment><USER15> so why not start a startup if you are 10-100x more productive than the average? I doubt in a large political corp people will even notice you are super productive. The job can even be boring because the superviser may assign everyone in the same level similar jobs.

</comment><comment><USER16> I always was a bit jealous of athletes, ballet dancers, concert pianists, etc, because their expertise is valued so highly. A top-level athlete or ballet dancer will have a complete support staff around them which provides coaching, physical therapy, etc. They will spend most of their time practicing. Imagine how good programmers we could be if we were treated similarly! And of course, elite athletes are well paid in dollars too.

I guess the difference is that the numbers of players on the court is capped. Even if a good player is only (say) 50% more likely to score a goal, having the best player makes the difference between winning and losing, so it's worth paying a lot. And the only way to get a good concert is to spend a huge amount of resources training one particular pianist.

With programming there is no cap. Rather than paying a particularly good programmer 10x as much, you can just hire 10 mediocre programmers, and they will probably get more done. So smallish differences in competence never translate into very large differences in pay or training.

<comment><USER9> > "With programming there is no cap. Rather than paying a particularly good > programmer 10x as much, you can just hire 10 mediocre programmers, and they > will probably get more done. So smallish differences in competence never > translate into very large differences in pay or training."

That doesn't sound accurate to me. How can 10 mediocre programmers do the work of 1 spectacular programmer? I'm guessing this only applies when we're talking about mundane stuff. Smallish differences in competence translates into large differences in pay/training at the very top of the food chain.

To quote pg:

"This is why so many of the best programmers are libertarians. In our world, you sink or swim, and there are no excuses. When those far removed from the creation of wealth-- undergraduates, reporters, politicians-- hear that the richest 5% of the people have half the total wealth, they tend to think injustice! An experienced programmer would be more likely to think is that all? The top 5% of programmers probably write 99% of the good software." \- [http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html](http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html)

<comment><USER17> PG is just making stuff up as usual. That "theory" isn't even consistent over a few sentences.

"In our world, you sink or swim, and there are no excuses."

"The top 5% of programmers probably write 99% of the good software."

So 95% of programmers make 1% of the good software, but somehow they aren't "sinking"? By comparison what do think happens to the far far majority of players that doesn't get drafted to the NBA?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Basketball is a direct competition, and the arms race dynamic drives up the price. It's not quite the same with programmers most of the time.

<comment><USER19> Which areas in which programming is involved are arms racing? I guess finance is one, but I can't think of many off the top of my head.

<comment><USER20> Startups competing for the same market? Mint vs. Wesabe comes to mind. And of course the struggles of our ecosystem's titans: MS vs. Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The forces shaping NBA player pay are so unrelated to those in play for programmer salaries that the author sounds shallow when he says that a factor of 4x between max and average in the NBA is why we shouldn't be surprised if there's a similar spread in programmers.

Just as a start, nobody will pay the average basketball player, but the average programmer can earn a nice living. Then move down the line to the owners' monopoly vs players' union, 5 players on the floor, etc.

A better analysis could start with why a 10x more skilled programmer isn't able to produce 10x more value, or, if she is, why she isn't the one capturing it.

There sure are domains where 10 hard working just-competent programmers can outproduce a single genius. Ideally the genius has a few near-peers and a grunt-programming support team, and everyone feels good about that.

</comment><comment><USER22> IMO the difference between an NBA player and a programmer is that a NBA player's performance is a known quantifiable and verifiable fact.

I have never heard of a professional athlete that came at the top because he was a lick-ass ;-)

</comment><comment><USER23> While LeBron is a good example of this kind of asymmetric skillset, the Chris Bosh of programmers is...Chris Bosh, which is pretty cool. [http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/10/chris-bosh-why- everyone...](http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/10/chris-bosh-why-everyone- should-learn-to-code/)

</comment><comment><USER24> I'd never hire Lebron, simply because he's an pompous dickhead. Don't care if he wins championships(and he doesn't on his own. proof = Cleveland) I wouldn't want to work/interact with a prima-donna like that.

</comment><comment><USER25> Even though Lebron James is the best player in the world, why is there a good chance that the Heat won't win the championship this year?

Also, could a team of Lebron James level players win a championship?

</comment><comment><USER26> If you could only have 5 programmers working at once and a few more on the roster then salaries would work differently.</comment>


RailsRumble 2010 Redux - <AUTHOR> http://blog.highgroove.com/articles/2010/10/23/railsrumble-2010-redux

<comment><USER2> Chef is awesome. We recently virtualized our entire production environment with the help of KVM + chef. Now installing a package or tweaking an install is a matter of updating some code.

Did you use Chef for deployments?

<comment><AUTHOR> We sure did! We had chef-client run continually throughout development so it continuously deployed as we pushed changes up.

For RailsRumble, in order to "complete" the competition, you have to tag a commit with "railsrumble" and make sure that was deployed. Once we had setup that tag, all we had to do was make a minor adjustment to our recipe and we knew that we'd have that tag deployed according to the rules.

This isn't the first time we've deployed with Chef which was great since we didn't have to fight with it at all.</comment></comment>


China's startup working hours prompt online debate - <AUTHOR> https://technode.com/2019/01/29/youzan-working-hours/ <comment><USER2> "When asked how employees are supposed to balance family and work under such a tight schedule, a company executive said they could refer to Huawei, which reportedly told its employees that divorce might be an optional solution."

Way to go.</comment>


Usefulness of the "not in" operator - <AUTHOR> http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2011-October/1281645.html <comment><USER2> Separate from this individual post, I'm not sure I buy the original claim that led to this (that "x not in y" is worth having in a language when it's identical to "not x in y").

They use a veiled slippery slope argument; 'if we did that, we might as well use not and >='. Well no, when you say something is _less_ you don't say "not greater than or equal", in English those two sentences sound different even if their net meaning is the same. With != vs not ==, that would be awful not because not == is inherently bad looking, but because precedence levels would force you to use parenthesis every single time; in doesn't suffer from this problem since it is higher precedence than not. With !=, you avoid 5 or 7 tangled characters with 2 simple characters. With "not in" you are adding something to the language so you can type 5 simple characters instead of the same 5 simple characters in a slightly different order.

You could just as easily go the opposite direction and say 'if we are going to have a 'not in' operator, why not have "unless" that is the equivalent to "if not", why not have an "until" keyword that is the same as "while not"?

Is there any legitimate claim to be made about how "until" in VB is widely accepted to be awful but "not in" in python is beautiful?

<comment><USER3> """that "x not in y" is worth having in a language when it's identical to "not x in y""""

It's not identical. Their effects are identical --which is a different thing.

With turing completeness you could do with even less, but that's not the point.

The point is: "x not in y" is more natural -- and Python is praised for it's ability to read like natural language/pseudocode (which it doesn't always achieve, but this is one case that it does).

We say: "if my tie is _not in_ the suitcase, do something".

We don't say: "if _not is my tie_ in the suitecase, do something" (except Yoda).

<comment><USER2> The question I am raising is _not_ whether "x not in y" is more natural looking than "not x in y", I completely 100% accept that it is. My question is that why is it that people consider it to be so sufficiently natural looking that it demands it's own semantics when "unless x:" is considered to be abominable.

You completely did not respond to what I wrote; I say "until and unless are just as much more natural compared to the way you currently implement them, as (x not in y) is compared (not x in y)" and you say "(x not in y) is natural!". That doesn't show my claim isn't true, to be an argument against my claim you have to also claim that people don't say "until you are done, do next thing". Or that people don't say "do the next thing until you are done", or "bake cookies until done"; python has no do-while construct much less do-until.

So again; why is that "not in" is sufficiently important to be a language feature but do-until is _hideous_ and unnatural?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a pretty cool demonstration, but it should go without saying that all computers are built, fundamentally, to be "functionally complete." ([http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/sum2003/cmsc311/Notes/Comb/comp....](http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/sum2003/cmsc311/Notes/Comb/comp.html))

The NAND and NOR functions, independently, are the most well-known functionally complete sets -- that is, all Boolean logic can be derived from each of those single Boolean functions.

</comment><comment><USER5> See also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_encoding>

</comment><comment><USER6> Um... that's a basic topic covered in any CS discrete maths course. What's so special about this one?

<comment><USER7> Not really. The argument isn't that "x not in y" isn't useful, but that it duplicates "not (x in y)" by adding an operator spelled "not in".

I like "not in" and use it lots but I wondered the same thing the first time I saw it.

<comment><USER8> That might be the argument elsewhere in the email thread, but it's not apparent from the actual page linked to. Without any other explanation, I'd go with the assumption that the poster thought that this particular email contained an interesting idea, and submitted it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The demonstration reminds me of the link shared a few weeks ago about Ruby: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3343205> Programming With Nothing

<comment><USER10> If you really want to go all out, check out The Elements of Computing Systems (here: <http://www1.idc.ac.il/tecs/>). The book walks you through defining basic gates in an HDL up to having created your own "fully featured" processor, programming language, and runtime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Same discussion in Gmane:

<http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.general/699983></comment>


My Analysis of the Philosophy in Westworld - <AUTHOR> https://danielmiessler.com/blog/analysis-philosophy-westworld/#gs.rYrc40U <comment><USER2> Um, there are absolutely zero spoilers here. Good piece though!

Though I basically agree, I would only push back slightly by pointing out that the "struggles" encountered by humans in the park are guaranteed to play out in their favor. If you want to screw or kill someone you just do. Not so on the outside. Also, on the outside there are consequences, not so inside the park. To wit, bullets don't harm humans in the park.</comment>


Competition for this?  Paid, Daily news site focused on context and quality.   - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/05/17k-people-and-counting-crowdfund-dutch-news-site-into-existence/ Does anyone know of competitors for this concept?    -- Paid daily news focused on context and quality.<p>I find myself not getting a lot of value out the news sites I peruse lately, and would gladly pay for something that is put together with more 'care' and a focus on journalism over sensationalism. <comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone know existing sites already doing this?

I find myself not getting a lot of value out the news sites I peruse lately, and would gladly pay for something that is put together with more 'care' and a focus on journalism over sensationalism.

<comment><USER2> Sadly, I'm not aware of any.</comment></comment>


This angry inventor has a special gift for package thieves: Revenge - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2017/12/19/this-angry-inventor-has-a-special-gift-for-package-thieves-revenge/?utm_term=.902a9f773258 <comment><USER2> I'd be very careful about doing this - it appears illegal and could lead to civil and criminal sanctions against the person who left the blank-filled package. This concern is confirmed by statements from the police in this article.

There are a couple of scenarios that worry me here. First, suppose a neighbor (perhaps a child) sees or hears about a package thief in the area and decides to take the packages for safekeeping until the owner is back. The neighbor grabs a blank loaded package, is terrified, and falls down the stairs suffering injury (IANAL, but let's get law student case study-ish here and say "suffers grievous bodily injury"). My guess is that the case against the property owner who set the booby trapped package would be strong, and criminal charges are possible here as well.

Now, replace the above scenario where it is a thief? My understanding is that the property owner could still be charged and/or sued.

<comment><USER3> Isn't there something about you can't sue for damages incurred during the commission of a felony? Or is that just TV cop shows.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, IANAL.

My guess is that there are probably some legal protections in that situation, but not enough to shield you from criminal charges or lawsuits. But I don't really know.

<comment><USER3> A quick google turns up the doctrine of 'unclean hands' but not sure what that it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> These videos make clear a suggestion I've seen elsewhere:

Put security cameras at ground level, facing up. Perps are almost always hooded or hatted.

Side note, does anyone know how effective it is to shame, through the media, local law enforcement into actually acting on surveillance videos like these? It boggles my mind that LE, presented with video evidence and an identity, would decline to press charges.

</comment><comment><USER5> Those people are really scumbags. I think this invention is something good that has to bring some sanity to the world while the police is there not doing their job.

</comment><comment><USER6> This guy had _20_ packages stolen, _after_ he made the exploding box?

Sounds unlikely to me... The chances that there are 20 distinct thieves in the area, who all try to steal this one box?

If that were the case, pretty much every legit amazon package in the area must be being stolen too...

<comment><USER7> Doesn't surprise me. There are people driving around neighborhoods all day long looking for packages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How many of you have packages stolen? Some of my friends constantly have this problem.

There should be some ideas like this to solve it.</comment>