The Japanese Iced Coffee Method (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://petergiuliano.tumblr.com/post/22177089634/why-you-should-stop-cold-brewing-and-use-the <comment><USER2> The writer of this article is really wrong to assume coffee aficionados don't drink cold brew, that's absolutely false. It's made even worse that he's conflating cold brew with iced coffee. They are very much not the same.

I'm sure it's lovely but it's not cold brew. Cold brew is less acidic because it's not heated; it's also said to have a more "true" taste because it's not extracted with hot water.

I have some stomach issues, one of which is an ulcer, and I am unable to drink hot coffee regularly as it tends to upset my stomach much more. Cold brew besides actually having a richer taste because of the slow brewing process actually hurts my tum tum less.

... Granted I also live in PDX, so I'm fairly sure (based on some comments) not everyone out there has had, or is actually being served, cold brew. Putting hot coffee on ice just doesn't even begin to compare.

Update: hit post early.

<comment><USER3> Could you share your recipe/process of cold brewing to someone that never heard about it? Thanks!

<comment><USER4> I had to stop making cold brew because I was overcaffienating to an extent I was afraid my molecules would match the harmonics of the ground and I would fall through to the center of the earth.

But here's what I did:

Get a big french press, a narrow mouth pitcher or a wide mouth bottle, and one of those single serving coffee maker funnels (mines a Hario, which seems to clog up more slowly).

Put about 3/4" of coarse coffee grounds into the french press. Fill it with water to a little below where the plunger sits, stir it a little, put the lid on (plunger up) and push it back under a cabinet on your counter where nobody will mess with it.

24-36 hours later, push down the plunger slower than you've ever thought you could push down a plunger. Put an unbleached paper filter in your single serving coffee funnel, put the funnel on top of your pitcher/jar, and pour. There's gonna be a lot of fines in the coffee so this may take a while. After you're done put the pitcher in the fridge.

Some people make a second pitcher from the grounds. It takes a bit longer to reach full strength the second time, so let it go for another 12 hours. But if you need the second pitcher before the first is gone your doctor may have some harsh words for you.

<comment><USER5> I suggest you try using multiple small extraction volumes instead of a single big one. The long extraction time could be shortened, and you will get less heavy molecules out (which in tea, for example, tend to make the brew taste a bit bad). See [1] for an explanation. It might just taste better, let me know if you try it!

[1]: [http://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/37712/why- using...](http://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/37712/why-using- smaller-portions-are-better-for-extractions)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been making Tokyo Ice-Drip Coffee for the last year - it has a slightly different taste than just mixing cold water and ice with the grounds, but I specifically like the lack of bitterness that would come about if the waxes in the coffee were melted by the heat and then extracted with the brew.

In any case, the most important phrase in the story is "many of the iced coffee processes I liked the best brewed coffee hot". If you find the coffee you like best, brew it that way. I'd also recommend trying the other brew methods to make sure you're not stuck on a local optimum.

And remember, you can brew coffee with water anywhere between freezing and boiling - the hotter the water, the more parafins you'll melt. If you're using a French Press (Cafetiere) and you think your coffee is too bitter at 200F, try 190F, then 180F, etc.

And coffee will change flavor as it stands. Brewing hot onto ice as described in this article eliminates post-brewing flavor changes. If you cold brew your coffee and then let it stand at room temperature for several days, it won't taste like the freshly brewed coffee either.

TLDR: Experiment until you find what you like.

<comment><USER7> >>but I specifically like the lack of bitterness that would come about if the waxes in the coffee were melted by the heat and then extracted with the brew.

As a long time coffee drinker, I've realized that the bitterness is what wakes me up in the morning, rather than the caffeine in the coffee. The first sip of coffee is usually enough to bring me out of my morning stupor. It's probably some kind of conditioned response, which would probably be lacking with a non- bitter cold-brew. :P

<comment><USER8> Can I recommend an espresso while you froth the milk for a flat white? That's an actually perfect morning combo which also uses your savage wake up technique.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not to take anything away from the Japanese, but we have a similar process in Italy: brew hot, then quickly chill with ice.

An espresso cup is brewed with a proper, bar sized espresso machine (or with a Nespresso, which IMHO is the only thing that comes close to it.) Then it is sugared, mixed, and poured in a shaker over ice cubes. The shaker is agitated quickly and vigorously for a short time, then the mixture strained into a tall glass.

We call it Shaked coffee ("caffè shakerato") and it's notoriously difficult to get right.

I have a stainless steel cocktail shaker that I use every summer for this very purpose, but even after years of trying I cannot get the right timing, quantities, and temperatures as a proper Barista would.

Oh, and it's delicious!

<comment><USER10> Some places in the US do a shakerato; I know Cafe Ladro in Seattle does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Relatedly, the writer here offers a photo of some beautiful Japanese apparatus for cold brewing, a few paragraphs down.

[http://www.funraniumlabs.com/the-black-blood-of-the- earth/](http://www.funraniumlabs.com/the-black-blood-of-the-earth/)

"Fast forward 14 years. An acquaintance working and living in Japan went on holiday and discovered a bar with this exceptionally beautiful rig for the preparation of Viennese Triple Cold Extraction Coffee. Upon sampling this, he felt that, and I quote, "I could see colors that weren't in the visible spectrum, and could vibrate through walls." I looked at this I said to myself, "Hey, you've got enough virgin laboratory glassware lying around the house that you could probably build something like that." Probably several somethings, actually, but that's beside the point."

<comment><USER12> This twit podcast [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PAxZi7uess](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PAxZi7uess) is with Phillip Broughton the gent that makes Black Blood of the Earth cold brewed coffee. Pretty interesting podcast. If I remember he is a physicist.

For the record I have not tried black blood of the earth but would like to try it. It is just I am cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Recently paid $5.50 for cold brew in Brooklyn.

I think cold brew is an attempt by coffee shops to upsell what used to be regular coffee + ice. Taste wise, it's completely subjective. Value wise, nothing beats Starbucks double shot on ice.

At home, I just aeropress into an ice cube. That way, I don't have a pitcher of cold brew concentrate that has to be used within a week.

<comment><USER14> > I just aeropress into an ice cube

Does aeropress allow you to use cold water?

<comment><USER15> I don't think that would come out right. If you use cold water, you'd have to replace heat with time and the entire point of the aeropress is to brew quickly, to avoid leeching the more bitter parts of the bean.

My general approach is: ~2.5 scoops into the aeropress, fill with 165 F to just above the -2- marker, stir a few times, immediately press out over 20 seconds directly onto tumbler of ice.

<comment><USER16> I don't care what aeropress says about the right brewing temp (I think they claim 180° is ideal)... I find coffee to be sour if I don't brew it in my aeropress at 200°. (I make my iced coffee the same way and have been for years.)

BTW, if you want your coffee slightly sweetened, you can put a tsp of sugar into the aeropress with the grinds and press the combination over ice. Saves needing a simple syrup or having the sugar not dissolve if you put it into the iced coffee afterwards.

This is of course very similar to how vietnamese iced coffee is made. [https://ineedcoffee.com/brew-vietnamese- coffee/](https://ineedcoffee.com/brew-vietnamese-coffee/)

<comment><USER8> Reading this timings me of John Grubers theory that success requires three things. A clicky keyboard, over carbonated water and fussy coffee. Youre on track and im going to try your way too. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wasn't entirely convinced about why the coffee is better than the cold brew method. They both return different flavor sets, and taste at that point is completely subjective. A bad comparison would be like saying orange juice with pulp is scientifically better than orange juice without pulp.

<comment><USER18> I agree.

You see the same thing with the "third wave" movement who espouse that very light roast is the "best" way to roast coffee. Light, medium and dark roast coffee is all perfectly fine ways of roasting, and all return different flavors for different beans.

I prefer a roaster that has mastered the whole range.

<comment><USER19> Except light roasting preserves a higher caffeine content. So this method is objectively more efficient as a stimulant delivery mechanism.

<comment><USER20> This is a myth. Roasting does not alter caffeine levels, as it is very heat stable. You might get more caffeine from a light roast if you are measuring your beans by volume. Light roasts expand less and are more dense than darker roasts, so you ultimately end up with more mass.

<comment><USER19> Interesting. Thanks for the correction.

<comment><USER20> You're welcome. I was under the same impression myself until recently. If you really need a kick though, pick up some Robusta. It tastes pretty rough but has more caffeine than Arabica.

<comment><USER21> This definitely shook what I had thought was fact for quite some time. I found this article[0] to be quite informative.

0) [https://www.kickinghorsecoffee.com/en/blog/caffeine-myths- da...](https://www.kickinghorsecoffee.com/en/blog/caffeine-myths-dark-vs- light)

<comment><USER20> That was a good article. The only other cause of caffeine variation I'm aware of is altitude. Caffeine is produced as a defense against pests, and since there are fewer pests at higher altitudes less caffeine is generated in that scenario. Coincidently, altitude is usually associated with higher quality coffee. The difference is negligible, so I guess my point is if high caffeine consumption is a goal just drink more coffee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As other commenters noted, this is not a particularly Japanese method of ice coffee brewing.

This Kyoto-style coffee tower, however, is:

[http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2014/03/japanese-style-slow- dr...](http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2014/03/japanese-style-slow-drip-coffee- cold-brewers-kyoto-yama-hario.html)

<comment><USER22> Additionally, Serious Eats also did a cold-brew method comparison, which may be of interest:

[http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/05/whats-the-best-way-to- bre...](http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/05/whats-the-best-way-to-brew-iced- coffee.html)

<comment><USER23> Which is an excellent article with a nice surprise at the end.

> With milk, the diner-style and cold brew tasted the best, whereas the > Japanese style and immersion-over-ice were terrible, their bright flavors > clashing with the creamy dairy, giving them the flavor of curdled milk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm all about the aero press into a glass of ice morning routine.

<comment><USER14> Can you expound on this method?

<comment><USER24> Normally you aeropress into a mug and then top it off with extra water as needed. Instead I aeropress into a glass of ice and the melted ice does the topping off.. which cools the coffee without watering it down too much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Cold brew tastes great. Hot brew tastes great. AeroPress tastes great. It's not a "Better", it's just a taste and situation thing. Sometimes I want Turkish coffee, sometimes I want a Greek Nescafe Frappe. It's not that one is better, although one is definitely better _when I want that one_.

<comment><USER26> Agreed.

Along the similar lines, I like a nice double cream brie, or a gruyere cheese. I also like a good slice of kraft american cheese. They all have their time and place.

<comment><USER25> Exactly. I don't want to melt a triple-creme on my nachos, or use American slices in my fondue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> _What about oxidation? Oxidation in food is generally bad news: oxygen has a habit of monkeying with oils to make them taste horrible, a phenomenon also known as rancidification._

Couldn't the 2nd sentence simply be shortened to, "Oxygen has a habit of monkeying with oils to make them rancid."

[https://haveabit.com/feynman/knowing-the-name-of- something/](https://haveabit.com/feynman/knowing-the-name-of-something/)

</comment><comment><USER28> What makes this process Japanese, exactly? I remember my parents doing it and nobody called it "Japanese Iced Coffee"

<comment><USER14> Presumably because it's very common in Japan, and not so common elsewhere.

When I was in Japan (July 2015) I was surprised at how common iced coffee was – it felt like every street corner had a vending machine that sold (among other things) iced coffee. You can buy some of it here in SF, too, even at Wallgreens.

<comment><USER29> For what it's worth, brewing coffee directly over ice is extremely common in Vietnam as well.

<comment><USER30> I live in Edmonton, which has about 20 Vietnamese restaurants for every Japanese one. I've always known it to be Vietnamese iced coffee, and had no idea it's done in Japan as well. Although here the coffee conventionally drips over a mixture of ice and sweentened, condensed milk. I'm not sure if that's done elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've been doing this forever. Brew from Aeropress right into a glass full of ice, top it off with milk. Delicious.

<comment><USER32> Yep. This is what I do. I have a couple of large plastic Tervis glasses that work great for this, and as a bonus if I've put too little ice in or heated the water too much I can adjust on the fly by seeing through it.

<comment><USER33> Even better: I aeropress onto a cocktail shaker with ice, then shake the hell out of it. The coffee get's very cold much faster, and I just throw out the ice and sometimes put nice new cubes in at the end. The coffee comes out a bit frothy and tastes better than any variation I've bought.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> A local coffee shop does this and the results are excellent. As he suggests it maintains crisp aromatics. They use a special double walled vessel with ice separated from the coffee so it doesn't become watered down. The taste is very good.

That said, so is that shop's cold brew, espresso, and pour overs. I think quality of ingredients and the attention to detail they pay is more important than the specific technique. To me this is more like getting your sourdough in a boule vs a baguette than a "stop drinking cold brew" experience.

<comment><USER14> > I think quality of ingredients and the attention to detail they pay is more > important than the specific technique.

It might make sense to use the technique used by those who have that level of attention to detail and quality – presumably they would be less likely to use a sub-standard method.

<comment><USER34> Sure but my point is that they have multiple quality methods at their disposal. I'm not saying this is a bad method, I'm saying it's one of many good methods. I think as far as Coffee geekery goes, the Kyoto Coffee maker does an even better job than the linked method.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I would love to try it! But I must disagree that cold brew is a lesser or incomplete version of coffee. Rather, it highlights different flavors than hot brewing methods do, and those flavors are wonderful in my opinion. When made well, cold brew is the caramelly, chocolaty coffee I always wanted.

What doesn't get dissolved into the cold water is often the more sour (or "bright" if you're feeling charitable) flavors.

(I have had the stale, flat kind of cold brew the author mentions. It sucks. I have also had plenty of terrible hot coffee.)

<comment><USER36> That's a great point. Hasn't the author ever had terrible hot coffee, so why not terrible cold brew too? Some of the other posts in this thread point out that some beans are better for cold brew than others. And I agree with you that I've had really good cold brew and really enjoy it's aroma and taste.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The sole source in the UK: [http://www.theoriginaldutch.com/](http://www.theoriginaldutch.com/)

The founder is a pal of mine! He exhibited recently at the Caffe Culture Show in Olympia, London. In a huge hall filled with all the complex paraphernalia of coffee-brewing and consumption, his stand was situated at the periphery, in the artisan foods section.

Interestingly, with all the bustle (and hustle ;-) of the main venue, this section - arguably, the _most interesting_ \- had relatively light traffic. But a few savvy people came by to sample this unique coffee (and other awesome products in the vicinity), including one prominent coffee critic/blogger. His opinion: a very interesting flavor profile that was too earthy; not enough acidity. My friend patiently explained that this is the intention: to preserve the natural 'sweetness' of the bean. The critic wasn't swayed, but I was delighted: at least his product had elicited a strong reaction!

Most significantly, many people mistakenly equated 'cold brew' with 'cold drip'. Huge difference!

Visitors tended to love it. Some came back for a second and third sampling. We gave away a _lot_ of bottles...

<comment><USER38> There's a minor typo ("than" is written as "that") in the third block of main- body text on the linked landing page.

<comment><USER37> Yes, I just mentioned it to him too! Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> As others already said, this article really confuses "cold brew" and "iced coffee".

Friends of mine have a roastery in Berlin and for "cold brew" the coffee extraction process takes a long time:

> Basically, cold water is used in a Cold Brew for extraction, that is heat is > replaced by time.

Full step by step recipe is at [https://www.flyingroasters.de/blog/cold-brew- rezept/](https://www.flyingroasters.de/blog/cold-brew-rezept/) (German only, Google Translator: [https://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=ht...](https://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.flyingroasters.de%2Fblog%2Fcold- brew-rezept%2F))

I personally like it very much with Tonic water. Especially in summer. Everybody who also likes Gin Tonic should try a Cold Brew with Tonic.

If you happen to live in Berlin and want to try one without much hassle, they have a booth at the next Weddingmarkt on 3 July. Highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER40> Japanese? OK but this is common in Europe as well since I can remember (40 years)

<comment><USER20> We know they've been doing it since the 1600s. As far as written history goes, Kyoto is the furthest back we can trace this brew method.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> If anybody happens to be near Richmond, VA go to Alchemy Coffee near Virginia Commonwealth University ([http://www.alchemycoffeerva.com/](http://www.alchemycoffeerva.com/)). That's where I got my first taste of cold brew and I was hooked. It tasted like a different drink and I felt that I could taste different characteristics about coffee than other types. They take the time to talk to you about their Japanese cold brew process as well as the different types of coffee they acquire.

</comment><comment><USER42> > since the elusive and charming elements of flavor that make coffee special > never get dissolved into the brew, and remain in the coffee grounds, which > get thrown away.

Isn't this just elegantly adjectivezed nonsense? The net result of a stoichistic process isn't altered by the speed at which it occurred. So cold- brew shouldn't end-up with a different composition if timed correctly relative to hot-brew?

</comment><comment><USER16> My first association with brewing directly over ice was when I ordered vietnamese iced coffee many years ago:

[https://ineedcoffee.com/brew-vietnamese- coffee/](https://ineedcoffee.com/brew-vietnamese-coffee/)

I've been brewing my coffee directly over ice since I first got an aeropress... which is old enough to be the original blue plastic, whenever that was.

It never occurred to me that this was some magical technique.

</comment><comment><USER43> Counter Culture Coffee has a video depicting the "brew hot, chill instantly" method (admittedly somewhat self-explanatory as merely brewing over ice) described in the article: [https://counterculturecoffee.com/learn/quick-easy- iced-coffe...](https://counterculturecoffee.com/learn/quick-easy-iced-coffee)

</comment><comment><USER44> Brewing steaming hot coffee directly onto a glass carafe filled with ice looks like the perfect way to crack the carafe.

</comment><comment><USER45> I wrote an analysis on cold brewed coffee's a while back: [https://www.gastrograph.com/blogs/gastronexus/flavor- profile...](https://www.gastrograph.com/blogs/gastronexus/flavor-profiles-in- cold-brew-coffee.html)

Cheers!

</comment><comment><USER10> Every morning a glass of crushed ice goes under the spout of my espresso machine.

Any iced americano is going to be a lot like this method, except with espresso instead of brewed coffee, and water added. I add minimal extra water just because i like it as-is.

</comment><comment><USER46> This article would be so much better with an actual recipe, or even just ratios of coffee:ice. Though it has inspired me to look elsewhere to find that information, or do some experimentation in the kitchen to discover it.

</comment><comment><USER47> It's a different method of brewing. However the psuedoscience he uses to justify it as being 'better' is just touchy feely handwaving.

If you enjoy the taste do it, if you don't, toddy brew on my fellow humans.

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm surprised nobody has tried to flash chill it with liquid nitrogen.

</comment><comment><USER49> This is common in Europe. How else would you make cold coffee if not by first making proper coffee then cooling it. I just use my bialetti espresso maker and add ice cubes.

<comment><USER50> You make cold brew coffee without any heat at all by immersing grounds in water for a long time. There are different methods that produce either concentrate or ready-to-drink, and some chill in the fridge during the brew process and some leave it out on the counter. Lots of options, though the distinction is that none uses hot water.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> the first time i tried the japanese iced coffee method, i ended up with a cup of coffee that had such a strong bitter, chemical taste that i was sure i must have been drinking poison. i later realized it was probably my ice cubes, which came out of those Tovolo king cube molds. after a few months, those molds impart an extremely strong chemical flavor into their ice cubes.

so… long story short, the ice you use matters a lot

</comment><comment><USER52> Summary: Brew normally, pour onto ice right away. Factor the volume of ice you use into the amount of coffee you use.

</comment><comment><USER53> Im in seattle. Where can I find japanese coffee? :p

<comment><USER10> Try a shakerato at Cafe Ladro. Not japanese coffee, but the shakerato is mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> cortado con hielo

no more words required :)

</comment><comment><USER55> The Japanese Iced Coffee Method [2012]

I thought this article was recent, but the date stamp reveals that it's four years old.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm guessing the site author is (1) young and (2) has a large monitor because that font is far far too small.

<comment><USER57> The font on the site is the same size as the font on hacker news (on my computer, Windows 10, chrome 51).</comment></comment>


Lessons for Capitalism from the East India Company - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/0f1ec9da-c9a6-11e9-af46-b09e8bfe60c0 <comment><AUTHOR> > And just as Facebook today can employ Nick Clegg, the former UK deputy prime > minister, so the EIC was able to buy the services of Lord Cornwallis, who > surrendered Yorktown to Washington. The EIC, in other words, was not just > the world's first great multinational corporation, it was also the first to > run amok and show how large companies can become more powerful, and > sometimes more dangerous, than nations or even empires.</comment>


Rule Induction and Instance Based Learning – A Unified Approach (1995) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~pedrod/papers/ijcai95.pdf <comment><USER2> As this is from 1995, can anybody tell how this work has evolved since then? Are the techniques presented in this paper still relevant?

<comment><AUTHOR> The author of this paper, Pedro Domingos[1], just wrote a book on machine learning titled _The Master Algorithm_ [2]. In the book, he talks at length about the various elements that may serve as (part of) the basis for a "master algorithm" \- a generalized learning algorithm capable of learning anything. Rule induction is one of the things he talks about in the book, so at least one expert seems to think this stuff is still relevant.

Of course, it might just be that this is his pet "thing" and for all I know he could be totally wrong, but it struck me as interesting enough to start doing some reading on. And hence this post.

[1]: [https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~pedrod/](https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~pedrod/)

[2]: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Master-Algorithm-Ultimate- Learning...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Master-Algorithm-Ultimate- Learning/dp/0465065708)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> machine learning</comment>


Robot arm controlled by the mind - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8677132.stm

<comment><USER2> Man, think: if World Wrestling Entertainment got ahold of this, we could see fights between six-armed wrestlers on Pay Per View TV.

<comment><USER2> That's also assuming we could attach extra arms on top of the two we've already got.</comment></comment>


The Pirate Bay Has Been Bought By A Public Company?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090630/0104135410.shtml <comment><USER3> Here's the lowdown, for people morally opposed to clicking on TechCrunch links:

<http://thepiratebay.org/blog/164>

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the link but FYI, the URL is techDIRT, not techCRUNCH.

Interesting story nonetheless, I'm curious what TPB's exposure will be now that there's a clear monetary gain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Assuming it's legit... I cant help thinking this is just a sideways move again like in 2006 to avoid the lawyers.

That said it is interesting The Video Bay appeared earlier this week - <USER2> be financing that?

</comment><comment><USER6> This makes me wonder why, instead of hundreds of millions in lawyer fees, the RIAA didn't simply buy them themselves!

</comment><comment><USER7> I find it really really hard to believe that the largest bittorrent site/tracker in the world sold for just $8 million dollars...maybe I'm just making assumptions but I feel like it should be worth 10 times that much...</comment>


6 Reasons Why Working at the Office Is Much Better Than Working Remote - <AUTHOR> https://seroter.wordpress.com/2015/07/27/6-reasons-why-working-at-the-office-is-much-better-than-working-remote/

<comment><USER2> I completely agree with the point on contextual interactions.

I completely disagree with the point on "productive interruptions". This is an ideal but the fact is that just as many interruptions are unproductive in most office environments.

That said, there is no dispute that it's more efficient and effective for teams to work with some degree of physical proximity. The debate lies in the tradeoff between the ability to recruit (and retain) the best talent in a narrow geographical area vs. the loss of efficiency in working remotely. This listicle unfortunately oversimplifies that debate.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Good point on interruptions. In any setting, constant interruptions hurt productivity. But, I'd rather be interrupted with a question about a software feature than interrupted by a screaming child.</comment></comment>


Will your iPhone destroy the Internet? - <AUTHOR> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24521105/

<comment><USER2> There was a MacWorld article posted about a month ago. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=160241></comment>


Ask HN: Computerized Karaoke? - <AUTHOR>

I should know the answer to this, but I can't seem to find it on the web.
I'm a bit of a karaoke nut. As such, I've collected a couple hundred karaoke cds and a few players over the years.
Isn't there some way to play karaoke on the computer? I tried downloading a karaoke mp3 album from Amazon but all I got was music without singers -- and no lyrics. There's a couple of plugins for WinAmp but I can't seem to get anything to work.
I know that a lot of the new karaoke machines have discs "pre-ripped" onto their harddrives, and I know I can use them to rip my current collection, but I'd like to move away from specialized equipment if possible.
So -- any way to computerize my karaoke hobby? or am I stuck having to have special equipment?
Any help would be appreciated! <comment><USER2> Search for "CD+G software" in Google, you should find players for your existing Karaoke disks as well as programs that will help you make your own, etc. Lots of hits will need a bit of research. Good Luck !</comment>


'Payment sent' – travel giant CWT pays $4.5M ransom to cyber criminals - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-cwt-ransom/payment-sent-travel-giant-cwt-pays-4-5-million-ransom-to-cyber-criminals-idUSKCN24W25W <comment><USER2> Two big ransom payments in less than a week. Ransomware is going to spike heavy.

Tangentially, I wonder if there's a side effect from COVID at play. I hypothesized at the beginning when mass workforces were moving to home offices that usual security functions like vuln/patch management would take a performance hit, which could lead to latent increased malware / ransomware abuse.

Would be interesting to hear from the frontline if theres actually any truth to it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Forgive my ignorance, but if bitcoin's blockchain is a 'public ledger', how safe is for the attackers to keep anonymity when they got paid $4.5M in bitcoin?

<comment><USER2> A concept called bitcoin mixers exist which can be used to "shuffle" your bitcoin supply, supposedly to anonymize your funds.</comment></comment>


Weird Science - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/weird-science <comment><USER2> Calling it science by citing protoscientists and writers is disingenuous.

Yes, people held some weird notions about climate and weather.</comment>


Car-Mounted Ads Take a New Direction: Data Collection - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/11/firefly-digital-advertising-driver-pay-uber-lyft-cars-data/602077/ <comment><USER2> I couldn't help but notice some of the internal comms wires that were seemingly crossed between Firefly's CRO and their Product team (and the police apparently).

>"When you look at that density in major cities, we do have the potential to collect significant amounts of data. The question is what to do with that data." (After this story was published, a Firefly representative said the company was "not questioning what to do with that data.")"

>"But he said they've been "contemplating" and "testing lightly" a feature where the screens pick up noise off the street with built-in microphones. (Noise sensors are not part of last week's roll-out. A Firefly representative stressed to CityLab after publication that Hudes has nothing to do with the product team where these decisions would be made, and that all his mentions of such a feature are hypothetical and are not part of the company's roadmap.)"

>"Acoustic data cross-referenced with GPS coordinates might help police identify where the shot came from, and from what direction. The San Francisco police department says that "never had such a discussion with a Firefly representative about this hypothetical use of this technology." They did meet with a representative "to discuss the possibility of featuring public safety messages on the display screens," but have no formal agreement, and have "no plans to move forward with an agreement."

</comment><comment><USER3> The bottom line of all the pay for ad mounting that goes around in the world, it would be really great to see how much profit it really returns, minus all the expenses...

I've implemented ads on web sites before, and though they weren't high traffic sites, they still made thousands of hits every month and ad revenue was nowhere near the hours it too to implement and configure ads across them.

Side revenue is a great thing when it works, but there are so many pyramid schemes when it comes to ride sharing, house sharing, office space sharing, scooter sharing and everything else, it's making me wonder if all the people that used to sell AMWAY and Tupperware are at the bottom of this one. Maybe I'm being cynical... But putting a billboard on top of my car for $300 a month doesn't justify the wear and tear to even a hooptie, and the damage it will do the one time I forget it's on and drive through an automated car wash. :/</comment>


Tired of waiting for Magic? Try PurseMagic (BTC only, 0 fees, 5% off Amazon) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/PurseIO/status/583317364902514688 <comment><USER2> Tried this service and its great! Very smooth and easy to use.

Text (323) 577-8773, and save 5% on Amazon.</comment>


Redshirt: Experimental OS where binaries are WASM, run in ring 0 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tomaka/redshirt <comment><USER2> This is interesting, as an answer to how much the OS/user boundary costs us.

The OS seems to be essentially a unikernel that runs an interpreter of a safe language which happens to be expressed in something close to machine code, and could use a JIT compiler to generate native-code loops. (Seems like it ought to use the actual unikernel, rather that starting from scratch. Maybe it does, and I misunderstood?) The language it interprets is output from compilers of lots of conventional languages.

Maybe it should directly execute machine code from compilers of declared-safe languages like Rust, provided the compiler attests it compiled no unsafe blocks. I don't know if there are any useful programs that it could say that about.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it is interesting, and it just happens to have had multiple variations from this idea since the early 60's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this inspired by Gary's talk about JavaScript? Seems pretty similar.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I'm wondering the same. I thought of that talk too when I saw this post.

[https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and- death...](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of- javascript)

<comment><USER6> Previously on HN (227 comments):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7605687](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7605687)</comment></comment></comment>


Graphene magnetologic gates could replace silicon transistor logic - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/98801-spin-based-graphene-magnetologic-gates-could-replace-silicon-transistor-logic

<comment><USER2> Replacing "silicon transistor logic" is no longer about physics and material science, it is about economy of scale.

And silicon is going to be pretty damn hard to beat for many decades to come. Just ask the GaAs guys.

<comment><USER3> I've seen variants of this article a number of times. Is it really many decades from here already getting below 20nm feature sizes with Si?

<comment><USER4> The ongoing miniaturization of silicon technology has to end _fairly_ soon, as the atomic scale is approaching rapidly. The 11nm node is scheduled for 2015. The silicon-silicon bond length is 0.235 nm. There's no longer plenty of room at the bottom.

The question is whether, when silicon runs out, something else can take over, or whether we just put our hands up and say "OK, that's it, that's about as fast as our computers are ever gonna get".

There's the possibility that alternative technologies will exist but that they'll be much more expensive. So consumer electronics will be based on silicon, and outrageously expensive supercomputers will use graphene or diamond or any one of a number of currently speculative technologies. So far, though, none of 'em is even close to being able to compete with silicon for _any_ price.

<comment> Tuna-Fish > So consumer electronics will be based on silicon, and outrageously expensive > supercomputers will use graphene or diamond or any one of a number of > currently speculative technologies.

Outrageously expensive supercomputers are massively parallel. For massively parallel loads, the fastest chips are the cheapest chips. If the new stuff cannot break into consumer space, there is no market for it above consumer space.

<comment><USER5> Presuming there will never be a market for a very fast, very small computer is making a lot of assumptions about, for example, space travel.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tech Predictions from Seattle's Startup Whisperer - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2008/12/31/10-technology-predictions-from-the-startup-whisperer/

<comment><USER2> Except for number four this list could have been written a year or two ago.

Is it surprising a CEO of an ad network thinks ad networks are the next big thing?</comment>


Zenefits Fined $7M by California Insurance Regulator - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/zenefits-fined-7-million-by-california-insurance-regulator <comment><USER2> Slap on the wrist.

They are back in business... Sacks with a future crisis management hbs case study.

But I heard "The Macro" is not really dead. It lives. It lurks. It lurks in the bowels of the organization, slowly -almost imperceptibly- gathering strength, twisting and winding into the minds of men, all for its eventual, cataclysmic return....

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a serious question:

Shouldn't there be an ethics stipulation in HR departments/companies/services?

I have many a horror story about HR violations including (at multiple companies) where HR employees were sleeping with employees and in certain cases taking ___interviewees_ __to the company gym and having sex with them...

Sure - sex in the workplace does happen... but heck, HR reps should be held to a higher standard of punishment should they violate the rules - and even an HR ___COMPANY_ __should be held higher still...

How should such situations be handled?</comment>


TBEK: Tiny Basic Experimenters Kit (1977) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ittybittycomputers.com/IttyBitty/TinyBasic/TBEK.txt <comment><USER2> It really is fascinating how up to a certain point, it was possible to understand the workings of 90% of the early 8-bit computers. Sadly with the vast improvements in speed and efficient comes a cavernous increase in complexity. While the fundamentals of computer architecture haven't changed that much, modern computers are these hugely complex beasts.

I've always been captivated by the Homebrew Computer Club and have been considering putting together a set of tutorials which go through the steps of creating a really basic CPU with an FPGA (perhaps a simple RISC-V core?) and writing a toy OS to run on top of it. A lot of this stuff you learn at Univeristy, but not everyone has that opportunity. I'd like to see a comprehensive guide which walks someone through every step and teaches the fundamentals of computer architecture, hardware design and systems programming in a fun and hands-on way (it's how I've always learnt best).

Would anyone find a 'Retro PC from scratch' resource useful?

<comment><USER3> It's not too much "retro", but you can find a lot of resources on OSDev:

[http://wiki.osdev.org/Main_Page](http://wiki.osdev.org/Main_Page)

The forum is very instructive too:

[http://forum.osdev.org/](http://forum.osdev.org/)

<comment><USER2> OSDev does indeed have some great resources, but sadly most of the info is targeting x86. Of course the general principles of interrupts, framebuffer memory etc. can be applied to other platforms provided you have an understanding of the platform. Which I guess is the problem - there are tons of great resources, however to fill in the gaps between them requires a knowledge of the platform which a beginner won't have.

The best approach I've seen so far is the excellent Nand2Tetris, however it can't run on hardware due to the custom HDL it uses.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Now.JS Abandonware? - <AUTHOR>

Against our better judgement, we're using Now.JS to power some side projects. But their blog hasn't been updated in > a year, and their main website seems to be down.
http://blog.nowjs.com/ www.nowjs.com/.
I thought they raised funding? <comment><USER2> They told somewhere in their website (or was it in Github) that the project is deprecated. They even don't seem to respond to pull requests, which is bit alarming. The reason for it might have been their new commercial websocket service.

I myself used NowJS in my first websocket applications, but have then moved onto Socket.IO and other more niche kind of solutions. NowJS lacked and still lacks some newer features and it is bit buggy. If I would be you, I'd just try my best to adopt something which is and will be maintained for some time, or just start from something simple and build my own.

To answer to the original question, yes.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sucks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yes. My site www.sharelatex.com was built on nowjs originally, it taught me a good lesson in not trusting random open source projects. I moved over to socket.io about 4 months ago which has far bigger community so feel a bit safer.</comment>


Trees as graphs vs. trees as data structures - <AUTHOR> https://www.codefellows.org/blogs/trees-as-graphs-vs-trees-as-data-structures <comment><AUTHOR> What are the data structures that you think every entry level dev should have a solid conceptual grasp on?

<comment><USER2> Learning to think in terms of immutable/persistent data structures is transformative and surprisingly simple.

Boils down to same toolkit though, lists, vectors, trees, and key-value maps.

I benefit from the use of immutable or structure-sharing persistent data structures even in languages that don't natively support them.

<comment><USER3> Immutable/persistent data structures are almost always some sort of tree, even if on the outside they look different. Knowing that all your operations that were constant (for the mutable case) are now logarithmic (for the immutable case) is a must.

<comment><USER2> Modern HAMTs are faster than your run of the mill hash table, the "constant" vs. "logarithmic" is misleading here.

The HAMT will be log32 or log16 N and will have runs of values that play very nicely with the caching behavior of the processor if you find yourself traversing more than one value.

<comment><USER3> With log N > 2, you have to pay extra space costs. This can be worse than a simple binary tree.

Locality is also a problem for high-performance applications, but the HPC people would never go near this stuff anyways.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice - <AUTHOR> http://www.sott.net/article/228583-Scientists-cure-cancer-but-no-one-takes-notice

<comment><USER2> If there were a robust peer reviewed research report that detailed cancer cures in the manner this post suggests to be true it would be world headline news.

Claiming that is is somehow suppressed because it is not possible to patent the idea is just like the huckster trying to sell you a car that runs on water - but the oil companies are trying to suppress it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not proven. Overhyped. [http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/05/...](http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/05/cure- for-cancer-resurfaces-and.html)</comment>


The Mood Ring of Algorithms Could Zap Your Brain to Help You Feel Better - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/algorithms-play-doctor-in-brain-stimulation <comment><USER2> Whilst such devices will have many positive uses, the way it is portrayed will certainly raise concerns from the mindful amongst us with fears the abuse such devices/technology could offer.

Equally, zapping the brain as they say to change a mood is from my understanding not as simple as we are not just fireing neurons, because much is done via chemicals and that is an area of the brain we are still no experts upon. Take psychiatric drugs - they way they are prescribed is very much trial and error. Because it is extremely hard and impossible/impractical to measure the brain chemistry. AFAIK it can only be done via invasive measure that has more side effects/risks than the psychiatric drugs being doled out.

So for me - just zapping the brain to control mood may be a short term solution, long-term - the effects upon the chemical balance could create a far bigger issue. It's a bit like clicking ignore to a warning light constantly and then down the line find out you have a bigger problem that no amount of clicking ignore will solve.</comment>


Show HN: Tab Ninja – Chrome extension to close tabs with loads of options - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-ninja/ciffmfhhemdpbpppgbfnlkbbehmdbpnh <comment><USER2> This is very similar to my addon Tab Close Plus for opera that can also be used on chrome that I created few years ago. It is available here: [https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/tab-close- plu...](https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/tab-close-plus/)</comment>


Ask HN: What strategy should Snapchat have used against Facebook's copying? - <AUTHOR> Related articles
Copycat: How Facebook Tried to Squash Snapchat // https://www.wired.com/story/copycat-how-facebook-tried-to-squash-snapchat/
Clone Wars: Why Instagram Will Legally Get Away With Copying Snapchat Stories // https://www.fastcompany.com/3062593/clone-wars-why-instagram-will-legally-get-away-with-copying-snapchat-stories
Instagram on copying Snapchat: "This is the way the tech industry works" // https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/16/to-clone-or-not-to-clone/ <comment><USER2> Sell the company to the dumbest acquirer they could find.</comment>


Let It Crash the Right Way (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://mazenharake.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/let-it-crash-the-right-way/ <comment><USER2> I'd say in a test environment you should let it crash a lot. But in production, facing users (which can be another programmer, who suddenly forgot that he is a programmer and knows what you are dealing with) there are few situations were you should really crash.

Think about a very dumb user application like Word. Let's say word crashed with a Stacktrace, some log messages, the best error message ever, maybe even saving the user data in a backup file somewhere. The user will think Word is unusable.

Now let's consider a scenario in which Word recovered under the hood by losing the users data but never losing the GUI. The user still thinks it's bad, but he won't think it's unusable. To some degree he will blame himself for not saving the data himself.

That's why I think I would be way less willing to crash in front of the user and would apply Pokemon Error Handling (Gotta Catch them All) in all user facing software as a feature, not a bug.

<comment><USER3> I have trouble imagining very many situations where crashing is _the right thing to do_.

Program gets bad or unexpected input (parsers, tokenizers, renderers, data processing): parse or process as much valid input as possible, then set a helpful error condition and return.

Program encounters a resource constraint (malloc failed, can't get a lock, no socket available, permissions problem): set a helpful error condition and return.

Something really went bugnuts (kernel panic): crash, but as gracefully as possible.

Raising exceptions is an OK way to transmit errors up the call chain, although it's not my personal favorite, but allowing unhandled exceptions to find their way up the call chain doesn't seem like a great idea to me.

edit: I went back and re-re-read the post. His points here seem reasonable:

> _Do I know how I'm supposed to handle an error here?_

> _If not, then should I handle it? (Thus going back to specification)_

etc., but I don't understand the code example at the end; I'd think it would be good to have more precise information about what failed and where and why, rather than omitting that exception handling and letting a parent process or something else deal with it further up the chain where the cause is far more opaque.

<comment><USER4> Not having that catchall will trigger a "badmatch", which will cause the process to crash. The Erlang VM will log it to the error log. This isn't a "throw/catch", where the caller will catch it and have to do something; the process this happens in -will- die (and the parent may timeout in waiting for a response).

But, it's an Erlang process; it should be supervised (or separately linked or monitored, but that's neither here nor there). If it is, it will be restarted in a known good state (or at least; should be. That's the guarantee the developer needs to work towards in an Erlang process).

So given that, the outcome is that you get a log of what happened (and it stands out), you wrote less code, and you return to a known good state.

The outcome of the catch all is you have to explicitly log what happened, it is very easy to miss, and your process/system is left running in a possibly ambiguous state (since either that message should have been handled, or it never should have been sent).

Now, that said, dealing with bad user data and sending them a useful error message -is- something that requires some work, some sussing out of what went wrong, yes.

Talking to external resources (as alluded to elsewhere in mentioning jlouis' Fuse library) -is- something you want to limit crashes on (since supervisors are built as a hierarchy, and just because a piece of hardware is temporarily unavailable, you shouldn't crash so often that the system comes down).

Malloc...you probably still want to crash on. Crashes will percolate up the supervisor hierarchy, until eventually hitting the highest level one, effectively dropping all memory and resetting to a good state. If that doesn't get you to a good state, there -is- no way to get there without manual intervention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "We all know the saying it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. And everyone knows that, but I think there is a corollary: If everyone is trying to prevent error, it screws things up. It's better to fix problems than to prevent them. And the natural tendency for managers is to try and prevent error and overplan things."

— Ed Catmull, President of Pixar

[https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2440-we-all-know-the- saying-i...](https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2440-we-all-know-the-saying-its- better-to-ask-f)

</comment><comment><USER6> Please excuse the self promotion but if you like this topic I wrote a related post "Insidious Bugs or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Exceptions" [http://verysimple.com/2009/04/03/insidious- bugs/](http://verysimple.com/2009/04/03/insidious-bugs/)

It does seem like a lot of people are afraid to let a user see an error, but if you're not extremely careful then attempts to shield the user can mask bugs.

</comment><comment><USER7> Thank you for posting this! I'll be sure do share the link with my team: a lot of people are looking at exceptions as they're some kind of voodoo that needs to be handled explicitly in every nook and cranny of the code.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is great advice for everything except debugging.

I would like to accumulate a "stack trace" of calls among actors to see what led to a particular exception, and log it.

<comment><USER4> Slight problem there, at least in Erlang; if A sends a message to B that causes B to crash, A doesn't know about it. A doesn't in any way see the error (though it may be restarted if part of the same supervisor, and it may timeout and crash if waiting for a response). So handling that message/not handling that message doesn't affect debugging; the top of your stack trace will be in B, regardless (and you may have a separate one at A if it times out waiting for a response from B, or if it's been linked to B such that it dies when B dies). Errors do not propagate except where you've said they should; i.e., by your supervision tree, or by explicit linking.

<comment><USER8> No, B should log it along with the accumulated call stack, before crashing.

<comment><USER4> In Erlang, B will log only what stack accumulated in B's process. Nothing from A's. That is -

      run() ->
        B = spawn(fun() -> receive_func() end),
        A = spawn(fun() -> send_func(B), io:format("A completed normally", []) end).

      send_func(Pid) -> Pid ! whatever.

      receive_func() -> receive _ -> throw(blah) end.

You will receive a call stack listing only an error in receive_func. You will not have the anonymous function in B (due to tail call optimization) in the call stack, and you will not have the send_func in the call stack, at all, because that process completed normally; there was no error involved with it (a fact you can see by the io format call, which will be invoked just fine). A sent its message, and then printed something, and that's it. B's error does not relate to A; A might have a separate error (such as if I were to add a receive clause to send_func, expecting a response, that times out after a while), but that error is unrelated to B, and will create an entirely separate error in the logs, with an entirely separate call stack.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for posting that just before running out of the office. You are 100% correct. So the thing to do here is to isolate the message that caused the crash, that way you don't need to know what happened in 'A', you _shouldn 't_ have to know what happened in 'A'!

If you do have to know what happened in A then you are using messages where you should have used function calls, after all a message should be context free once it leaves the sender. This may require some re-thinking of the concept of messaging, it is wrong to see a message as some kind of RPC mechanism, a message is a self contained package sent to a recipient that contains everything the recipient needs in order to process it and/or elicit a reply. Any other state should be elsewhere and should not be required at all to identify the cause of the crash.

Getting this right can be quite tricky.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How many developers over 40 do you know? - <AUTHOR> http://davybrion.com/blog/2011/03/thoughts-on-developer-longevity

<comment><USER2> _there really aren't that many older (for all you old-timers reading this: i mean that in a loving and respectful manner ) developers that are any good in this industry._

Here's a hint: When you find yourself writing this kind of awkward, smiley- equipped parenthetical statement in the middle of your big topic sentence, it means something. It means that your subconscious is trying to tell you to delete the sentence and start over.

I'd say more, but I'm turning forty any day now, so I'm out of time. I've only got _hours_ left to learn Haskell before I become senile.

<comment><USER3> I'm an over 40 developer. I worked with a mid 50's and a mid 60's developer a couple of jobs ago. Both good people. Both whip-smart and very thorough.

I've met plenty of good older developers. I've also met plenty of marginally competent younger ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm an over-50 developer. Most of my friends don't write software anymore (some burned out, others got bored with it). I've always loved creating software, so I try to spend as much of my day writing code as I can.

I left <big company> several years ago - part of the reason is that it was not as rewarding to me personally to be spending all of my time on management and administration.

My advice would be to follow your passion - if you want to build your skills as a developer, be sure to refuse to be "promoted" into management or do a really crappy job at all the non-development tasks your company tries to get you to do.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think the perceived lack of older programmers has many causes:

1\. industry fairly young. yes there were some professional programmers back in the 70's but the number needed and working know probably dwarfs that by a couple orders of magnitude. websites, mobile devices, appliances, vehicles, CAD/CAM modeling, simulations, CNC, toys, Wall Street -- tons more places running software now than used to

2\. the pay's pretty darn good. much easier to retire younger from a salary- type career, plus if you're a software/entrepreneur type it's fairly easy to start your own company focusing on that and score FU money -- not guaranteed, of course, and not impossible in other fields, but other fields are capital intensive whereas this one pretty much just requires a single PC and a chair to get started, and this field has seen a lot of growth and innovation in the last few decades, it's not an old/mature/commodity industry like many others are (cutting hair, selling oranges, etc.)

3\. tech mastery freshness. while the fundamentals you learned a few decades ago will still serve you well, there's a lot of superficial/application- facing/fashionable technology that's changed pretty rapidly -- again, not all of it has changed, but the rate of change has been higher than a lot of other working fields. Humans get better over time at anything they do long enough. There's a natural tendency to slowly get very good at doing things the old way, even if it's no longer the best way. I looooooved writing C apps for several years but I'm glad I made the jump to languages and tools which are better suited for that role. Eventually a good chance somebody fails to make the jump to new tech/paradigm -- increasingly due to distraction from family, friends, hobbies, health issues, travel. Speaking in generalizations, of course.

4\. it's demanding work, intellectually. folks burn out. eye strain. wrist strain. brain strain. the 1st 100 times you're asked to solve some evil bug caused by dipshit coworkers may be interesting or satisfying to solve, but eventually it gets old. (I think this is a big reason why Java is so popular inside large corps: it reduces chance that newbs/dipshits hurt themselves, plus, when shit does hit fan, Java has great tools and hooks for digging in quickly and finding out what's wrong and fixing it, in runtime/production scenarios, not just static code reviews)

5\. management track black hole, certainly. partly the demand to push programmers into it, partly because you get bored, partly because you lose your edge, partly because it's a more sure-fire way to increase your pay in a corporate/salary type job working for The Man, and you don't want to become a contractor or start your own business, for whatever reason

<comment><USER6> Continuing your first point that the industry is fairly young:

We also have a "mythology effect" but with a twist... It applies to companies alive and thriving today (unlike an urban myth where no credible source can be found).

Consider stories from early days at Apple and other companies where no one was older than 30, then 35, then they stopped reporting. That was mid-1980's and into early 1990's for other businesses. Then it repeated in 1999-2000 with brand name dot com start-ups. It's happening today with upstart game companies that consider 7 years experience to be senior level.

So this meme persists on some level with each wave of newcomers (e.g., college grads).

I suspect that the effect gets compounded by newer programmers beginning with relatively newer languages and tools. It's easier to master a language/tool when it grows up with you. I saw this when C became mainstream, with Python, with Ruby, and currently with Clojure, Scala, etc.

When C was blossoming outside of Bell Labs (following Peter Norton's "Industrial Strength Programming Language" article in mid-1980's), when Python was merely v1.5 in 1999, when Ruby wasn't yet associated with Rails-- the majority of people using these were young, looking for an edge and seeking to avoid pitfalls associated with urban myths about what came before. (e.g., pre- ANSI C satisfied concerns that Lisp was slow and required special hardware-- myths circulating college labs of late 1980's)

It's easier to debunk these things today, thanks to the programming languages shoot-out, stackoverflow and threaded comments such as on HN. Due to these reality-check possibilities, we may hopefully put such systemic ignorance behind us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If this had been titled ...(1980), it would have mad a point. Back then there was a practice that managers had to make more than their subordinates. There was real salary compression among engineers. If an engineer go to 40 he had to become a manager in order to put his kids through college. Companies started to create separate career paths for developers so they could get paid more. Then came the restructuring of the 80's to a flatter management hierarchy and suddenly it was middle managers who were out on the streets.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting post, does Davy read HN?

I know lots of developers over 40 who are great. I also know folks who were good once but now are not. There is a strong correlation between continuing education and continuing competence.

A lot of young developers re-create the wheel, they don't know they are because they haven't been around the block that many times but they are. Then along comes an older developer who has to use their code/api/design and recognizes it for what it is, another wheel designed by someone who didn't realize this was old hat. How someone responds to this situation (which occurs again and again) seems to be key.

You can note the particular vagaries of this particular implementation of the wheel concept and work with it to get done what you want to get done, you can throw it out and replace it with a more up to date implementation of a wheel, or you can get disgusted at how little this developer knew when they tried to do this particular implementation of wheelness. I got to meet the guy who invented the insertion sort this way, not. (well he thought he had invented it)

Seeing wheel re-implementations gets old fast, trust me.

So if you let it get to you, you lose your sense of wonder. That thing where every new technique you saw was thought provoking and, well, new. It gets replaced with "gee IBM did it that way in the 60's and it didn't work for them either." If you let it get under your skin you will burn out and become one of those developers that just stops looking at new stuff because you know you will have seen it all before and it will be wrong for the same reasons the other six versions were wrong. And you will miss out on the stuff that really is new, and your currency in the art will degrade.

How many developers under 30 do you know who can tell you the second order effects of their new network protocol? How many even care? How many have found themselves intersecting the same bad design decisions that were bad back in the last century and are still bad today?

And finally, technologists are often like classmates from college, at first nobody you know is married then it seems like everyone you know is, or no one has kids and then suddenly everyone is busy with their kids. Your social circle ages like you do, if you know a lot of really great developers when you are 25 I can guarantee you that you will know several when you are 45.

</comment><comment><USER9> Being 43, the question got me alarmed. The article, even more.

Am I the oldest person on HN?

<comment><USER2> Wikipedia claims that PG was born in 1964.

I won't speak for any of the others, but rest assured you're not alone.

<comment><USER10> Gadzooks, I wrote my first programs before he was born, possibly even before he was conceived.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used to have the same impression that there weren't many devs over 40, and if you found one, they were likely to be a little senile.

I've now realized that this is more due to the corporate (or wanna be corporate) environments that I've worked in. Such environments really suck the life out of you and are rarely conducive to staying passionate about software development.

My assumption is that people passionate about development don't stick around more than 5 years in these environments and either move to smaller startups or go independent soon after.

I think .NET developers like myself almost exclusively see this type of environment in the jobs that demand our skill set. All the more reason why I'm focusing on learning Ruby, NoSQL, iOS, and Linux in my spare time.

</comment><comment><USER12> The commercial internet didn't exist as a career path for those over 40, so it is a relatively smaller cadre. For example I'm almost 40 and a dev who studied history in college. There were fewer than 20 computer science majors in my graduating class.

<comment><USER13> The best response I've seen to this kind of thing is along the lines of "Who do you think built this place, anyway?"

Engineers who are now in their 40s, sonny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My first programming job was with a team that was mostly in their late 30s and early 40s. They were all extremely experienced and still pushing their own personal knowledge limits. Best environment I could possibly have hoped for.

</comment><comment><USER14> Both of my technical partners in my venture are over 40 because a) I am over 40, b) I needed to find people I knew and trusted, and c) they're very experienced and very solid. If I was still living in SV, I probably could have found a younger dev partner (and may be looking for one soon) but the local area, despite having two universities, doesn't have any/many appropriate development partners. (Anyone in Central Illinois reading this?)

</comment><comment><USER15> Better question: how many people (developers or not) over 40 keep learning and stay hungry? How many people over 30?

This is not an issue unique to developers.

<comment><USER16> Quite honestly, how many people under 40 (or 30) keep learning and stay hungry? Many kick back, raise a family, party, ... There's a lot to life, and only so many hours in the day. If you're lucky enough to do what you like, and to have time to enjoy yourself (at work, or elsewhere), you're doing just fine.

If it happens to make a difference, so much the better. But you gotta keep up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> i still remember the first time i touched a computer i was 15 in college, and the problem was writing a short program "Hello Turbo C". Then I study more on programming from C to C++ and Java. After graduating as a computer science students i heard that many of my classmates doesn't even want to proceed to development. I took a job as a computer programmer using Java and the same time as a part-time instructor. i also love to learn new development applications such as groovy and grails. I am over 35 developer. But i still love to code and teach what i know and learn new things in programming. To enhance more my programming skills I also volunteered to create free applications in school and community.

</comment><comment><USER7> old programmers become managers or they loose their edge and fade away. Rubbish, as the comments in the article point out.

Programmers who love their craft stay current in the areas that interest them. No one talks about older writers or older lawyers loosing their edge.

</comment><comment><USER18> I know several, and most of them are pretty good...

</comment><comment><USER19> I spent my 30s as a sysadmin and started learning and using Ruby on Rails three years ago. Now I'm a freelance web developer with tons of backend knowledge, which people like. Everybody knows what a good looking website looks like and so can reasonably be expected to squeeze a decent job out of a freelance designer, but systems stuff is still inchoate for a lot of people.

</comment><comment><USER20> Two</comment>


Microsoft and Skype set to allow backdoor eavesdropping - <AUTHOR> http://memeburn.com/2011/07/microsoft-and-skype-set-to-allow-backdoor-eavesdropping/

<comment><USER2> Sorry, but I think I missed something here. First, this article is from last July. Second, it says that it's based on the US law named CALEA. The Wiki article on CALEA says that it covers all VoIP traffic. So.. what's the outrage? That Skype now functions the same way that, say, your VoIP phone service at home does? I'm not trying to be a jerk, I'm just curious what I'm not seeing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Am I the only on who thinks there were always backdoors in Skype? Also what is actually new in this story if venturebeat was writing about the patent in 2011?

</comment><comment><USER4> I've still got the Linux client... I don't think they've updated it in ages. Does anyone know if that is also affected by this backdoor?

</comment><comment><USER5> An old patent years before they acquired Skype, one among thousands Microsoft files, doesn't mean that it has _any_ plans of actually doing this.

Sigh, tech press.

</comment><comment><USER6> The article is from July 1st, 2011?</comment>


Designing a CTA Button That Hits the Sweet Spot - <AUTHOR> http://www.pagewiz.com/blog/landing-pages/designing-cta-button

<comment><AUTHOR> How easily can visitors to your landing page find your call-to-action (CTA) button? If your answer wasn't "How can they miss it?!" – then you may have some work to do. The formatting of your CTA button is a critical part of designing a landing page that converts.</comment>


The Harsh Realities Of Being An Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/17741/The-11-Harsh-Realities-Of-Being-An-Entrepreneur.aspx

<comment><USER2> "Your Friends And Family Won't Understand What You Do."

Very, very true. Unfortunately, as much as I enjoyed 'The Social Network,' it certainly didn't help our cause in this regard. Practically overnight many of my friends and extended family went from thinking entrepreneurship was a fancy word for unemployment to them thinking that entrepreneurship meant: Step 1: Think of an idea. Step 2: Build it in four hours. Step 3: Party. Step 4: Party. Step 5: Party a bit more. Step 6: Profit.

<comment><USER3> If only people could understand. Usually when you say 70-80 hour weeks you're really saying..every hour I am not sleeping I am most likely working on my business....

<comment><USER3> err...wait I've had some working dreams that have help my business. So count some of those.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My Mother "Your web site is doing really good. You should go work for IBM or Microsoft. They could use your talents."

or the ever popular.

"Your cousin just finished school and he's going to be working on Wall Street. You should call him. Maybe you can help consult with his company since you know computers so well."

<comment><USER4> A really good reply to the first would be "If I wait until it it is a little bigger I would get a large signon bonus" (that is you would be aquired).

<comment><USER3> Me - "Thanks mom but do you think IBM would hire me. I dropped out of school to work on this web stuff."

Mom - "You're right maybe you could work with your Uncle. He needs computer help from time to time."

Me- "Good idea. I'll have one of my engineers call him and see if we can help."

Mom - "Good. Maybe they can get work also."

Me - "You're the best."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a great list but it strikes me as just a list of The Realities. The _harsh_ bit is that you will work 80 hours a week for weeks and months for no money, that you will prioritise your coding and design time over friends and family and may loose some along the way, that you will fund marketing with your rent and servers with your food budget, and that _if_ you are successful in doing this you are statistically likely to be a rather disappointing "profitable small business" rather than the internet rockstar Social Network sensation your friends associate with entrepreneurship.

The nice bit is that if you have your feet planted firmly on the ground, all of that is probably OK with you.

</comment><comment><USER6> "There are forces outside your control"

This one is huge. You have to persevere and not let things get to you. At a micro level this will cause all sorts of unexpected and frustrating challenges for your new venture and you'll just have to roll with the punches. If you're the typical OCD entrepreneur, you'll have to be extra careful to avoid digging too deeply and for too long into why one of these happened.

I'd say this is one of the primary causes of entrepreneur insanity.

You got scored on. Forget it and get ready for the next challenge.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Everything Takes Twice As Long...If It Even Happens"

HAHAHA. I wish! So far, everything's taken 5-10 times longer than what I hoped.

</comment><comment><USER8> Please crop the number "11" out of the title. Thanks!

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html></comment>


Prenatal Fluoride and Autism - <AUTHOR> http://www.townsendletter.com/April2016/prenatal0416.html <comment><USER2> "Townsend Letter, the Examiner of Alternative Medicine, publishes a print magazine about alternative medicine." Why would this be published here instead of as a regular review article in a peer reviewed medical journal.

<comment><USER3> Because peer reviewed social science doesn't really mean much? [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/science/many-social- scienc...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/science/many-social-science- findings-not-as-strong-as-claimed-study-says.html?_r=0)</comment></comment>


Germany Phased Out Nuclear Power and Deadly Emissions Spiked - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/germany-rejected-nuclear-powerand-deadly-emissions-spiked/ <comment><USER2> The data paints a different picture.

[https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/historic- emissions-de-1850-2018.jpg?itok=uSE6qxaS)

[https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig2a-gross- power-production-germany-1990-2019-source.png?itok=gfWUQdcp)

[https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and- maps/daviz/co2-emission-i...](https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and- maps/daviz/co2-emission-intensity-5#tab- googlechartid_chart_11_filters=%7B%22rowFilters%22%3A%7B%7D%3B%22columnFilters%22%3A%7B%22pre_config_ugeo%22%3A%5B%22European%20Union%20\(current%20composition\)%22%5D%7D%7D)

<comment><USER3> All three of those graphs show the spike around 2010.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For years the share of coal in the German energy mix had been in decline, and this trend continued after the start of the nuclear phase out.

So "nuclear power was mostly replaced with power from coal" could be misleading...

(Plus the price of coal had played a role for some spikes of coal consumption some years, which is independent of the phase out...)

</comment><comment><USER5> The article does not mention that in addition to nuclear power plants we (over here in Germany) are also phasing out coal plants.

<comment><USER6> The nuclear phase out will be finished in 2022 but coal phase out is 2038. 18 more years, 1 more generation away.

Coal+Lignite production is 170.9 TWh. Current nuclear production is 75.2 TWh and all renewables combined are 242.6 TWh.

So Germany has to find 75.2 TWh in 2 years and 170.9 TWh in 18 years. In the last 5 years, renewables are increased only by 50 TWh.

So, it will be extremely expensive to cover all these power requirements in renewables only. What do you think will happen? Either Germany will start buying power or buying gas to fund new natural gas power plants.

In any way, phasing out nuclear power is one of the worst ideas Germany has ever executed.

<comment><USER4> 1)You forget the energy efficiency / less energy consumption part

2)You forget the demand-response and energy storage part

3)" it will be extremely expensive to cover all these power requirements in renewables only" ; a lot of existing power plants are old would had been closed anyways... and renewable are becoming the cheapest new capacity, so I don't seen the extremely expensive part

I am not a big fan of this German "energy transition"... but often I find sloppy the critics addressed to this transition

<comment><USER6> 1) Energy efficiency will surely be better over time but population is also increasing and migration rate to Germany is increasing as well. So this will probably even out the efficiency improvements.

2) Energy storage is a very difficult and expensive task. Germany is able to store energy around 7.6 GW[1], this number is comical next to the TWh numbers we are discussing.

3) You should perhaps read a bit more about this here [2] to be informed. It is quite obvious and proven from technological perspective and material costs that renewable energy is right now more expensive to produce and still causes more human fatalities than nuclear energy.

[1] : [https://www.cleanenergywire.org/dossiers/energy-storage- and-...](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/dossiers/energy-storage-and- energiewende) [2] : [https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/how-much-does- ger...](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/how-much-does-germanys- energy-transition-cost)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It obviously delayed the shutdown of coal plants but there was no emissions spike.

</comment><comment><USER8> title of post is missleading and article doesnt do a job describing the status of germany's energy sources.</comment>