I Wouldn't Hire a Programmer With No Interest in Programming Outside of Work - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2009-10-08/no_hire.md#readme

<comment><USER3> What I do outside of work is none of my employers business - period. I'm surprised I'm the only one that finds this practice offensive?

For the record I have known many, many engineers who devote themselves 100% passionately to their 9-5 jobs and when they get home, they relax and do other things. These people are the type of people I would hire in my organization in a heartbeat.

I have also known the 'entrepreneurial' type of developers who have side projects and while they are generally good workers, a few of them are more interested in their side project then their actual day job and their work quality has suffered.

Hire the people with the skills and aptitude to do the job, leave their personal lives out of it.

<comment><USER4> You're right: what you do outside of work isn't your employer's business. However, I would not hire a programmer who will not program at home. That's not to say I would expect them to be contributing to so Open Source project, or to be running a side business, but that they can and do put together code in their own time, for their own reasons.

For example, the guy who runs a personal blog, and put together his own widget to display some sort of stat, seems like a good idea. The guy who runs a personal blog, and spends a day (off) hunting down a widget that someone else made, that kind of does what he wants, and costs $20 to use, would not be a good fit.

My view on it is something similar to: I wouldn't take my car to a mechanic who takes his own car to the dealer. Why would I hire a a programmer who, when he needs a program written for himself, goes and finds someone else's work?

<comment><USER5> Maybe because the programmer is an adult and isn't wowed by the prospect of spending more than 5 minutes writing something (s)he can buy for $20?

Also, this is seriously nasty ageism. Once you grow up the same thing will happen to you: significant others, friends, activities, hobbies, pets, kids, etc, most of which don't involve sitting on your ass in front of a computer. In fact, having put 10 years into this industry, I work a lot harder and better at my actual job if I don't spend all my off hours in front of a computer.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't sound like much fun to just buy something for $20 rather than create it yourself. Obviously if you're going to buy it, you don't consider creating it to be fun. Some people like to create things for fun, and that is their activity or hobby. I'm not sure why doing what you do professionally can't also be your hobby. Why is buying something rather than creating it the "adult" thing to do?

<comment><USER7> Did you read the post your replying to? The poster pointed out that he's got other things in his life. When you grow up you might decide that $20 to spend time with your kids when they're young is cheap.

<comment><USER6> Yes, and how you spend your time is personal decision. Just because one person decides to code in their free time doesn't mean they aren't an adult nor that that's a blanket bad decision. The wording in the comment I'm responding to ("Once you grow up", "sitting on your ass in front of a computer") is kind of inflammatory and seems to imply that only non-adults have time to do coding or hacking, that it's a "kids activity", and that coding can not be a hobby (since "hobbies" is called out as another possible thing that "adults" do).

In the context of this discussion, however, if you were to ask during an interview "Talk about a personal programming project you've worked on recently" and you heard back:

Candidate A: "I don't do or think about coding outside of the office, but I did just recently spend $20 purchasing tool to upload images to flickr and I had to read the docs to configure it to work with my firewall."

Candidate B: "Well, I wanted to upload the 2,000 pictures of my son to flickr to share with my family, but doing that with the flickr web UI manually was taking a long time, and there isn't a good flickr uploader for Linux, so I hacked out a shell script that gets invoked when automount mounts my camera or flash drive that uploads the images to flickr with their API"

Is anyone seriously going to consider Candidate A, just based on this question, as more valuable for a coding/hacking/technology position? Obviously, other factors come into play, as techiferous points out elsewhere in this thread, but this is meant to show someone's passion, not if they have good judgement as to if something is worth doing (hopefully, you've got a battery of other interview questions that help determine that).

<comment><USER8> I know a lot of people like Candidate B and I would not like to work with any of them. Life is a balance. Passion for programming is good, obsessive compulsion is not.

<comment><USER6> Wow, that seems kind of extreme. We have both "adults don't program in their free time" and "programming in your free time is possibly obsessive compulsive" in this thread.

If passion is a good thing to have, how do you measure it other than with a question like this? And what would be a good way to measure unhealthy dedication to a hobby that could be obsessive compulsive?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a developer, I take it as a red flag whenever I hear a prospective employer categorically state "I would never hire a programmer that X."

First of all, it's a heuristic. If a programmer doesn't program outside of work, it could be that they are not passionate and don't take the time to keep their skills sharp. It could also be that they are a polymath genius, and simply can't function unless their life is full of a variety of interests.

Hiring heuristics are appropriate when there are too many applicants. For the sake of efficiency, you need some way to narrow down the huge stack of applications. However, if you are having a hard time finding developers, that's not the time to use heuristics.

It tells me something about a prospective employer's problem-solving skills and imagination when they would not consider interviewing someone for a single reason, such as not having a blog. That's like being a one-issue voter.

Also, these heuristics have a way of confirming themselves. The person who hires only programmers who do X will probably end up finding decent programmers anyway, but they will be oblivious about the ones that got away.

<comment><USER10> What if the employer says: "I would never hire a programmer that sucks"?

Seems pretty reasonable to filter out people who are bad at their job.

So your argument is really one of breadth - breadth of the filter. From my point of view as a programmer, I certainly do believe that programming outside of your job is an extremely good predictor of passion, which is a great predictor of ability as a developer, particularly for younger people. I might consider a 40-year old who doesn't program for fun anymore, maybe. I wouldn't bother interviewing a 25 year old who never saw a point in coding outside of university/work.

<comment><USER9> "I certainly do believe that programming outside of your job is an extremely good predictor of passion"

Yes, I think that's the point. Is this a good predictor? If you are a young, single male, then maybe so. There are many other reasons besides lack of passion that can prevent a passionate programmer from programming outside of work.

<comment><USER10> Actually, no. I think that's almost the definition of a passionate programmer: there's very little that cna stop them from programming outside of work - <USER2> even a full time programming day job.

<comment><USER9> You are a mother with two kids.

<comment><USER11> Yep. I am. And I program, but rarely outside of work. I leave work at 5 and, when the schedule permits, I start coding again after they go to bed. This is likely to happen 2 or 3 times a month. So far I've read nothing in this thread that doesn't make the assumption of no other demands on one's time. Maybe I'd get the job if I just said, "I wish"?

Not that it matters. I have a great job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The answers to this are so ridiculous. "Well too bad because as it turns out when he goes home he cures cancer, with paper and pencil!"

Is it really necessary to explain that the point is that this person clearly isn't passionate about his work, as demonstrated by having zero outside interest in the subject. Clearly if he is a genius and has some amazing reason this doesn't apply.

More importantly the point of this article wasn't so much that he wouldn't be hired out of spite or something, but that he would never even get to know these people and thus get a chance to interview. This is of course obviously true and has nothing to do with "privacy" concerns. If you are an active member of the community, then you will inevitably meet other people in this field and get opportunities that just won't show up in the classifieds, there's nothing controversial about it.

</comment><comment><USER13> This post actually presents two premises.

The first, that programmer hacking on their own projects, I agree is a very positive indicator. If they don't, it may or may not be a negative indicator, depending on the circumstances. However, I've found the combination of someone who really has the itch to hack in their own time, and that same someone who honestly _can't_ find the time is rare. More often, after enough prodding, they'll admit they just aren't that interested, and that it is "just a job like any other".

The second, that selecting candidates based upon social connections is an optimal strategy, I approach with some caution. This is not to say that it isn't the best way for raganwald to do things, but I have seen people develop insurmountable confirmation biases simply because someone they know gave a candidate the thumbs up. A lackluster interview performance wasn't enough to overcome this; poor performance once hired wasn't enough either. The trust the hirer puts in their network to suggest the right people _must be for the right reasons_. This, in a person's profession network, is rather rare. More often, two people knowing one another _is_ the basis for a referral, rather than what the two people know _about_ one another. This works ok in situations where the primary goal is to find a good social fit, but it is like throwing dice when determining if the candidate is capable of performing the required duties. In a lot of cases, both parties just don't care; the referral is a social, not economic or professional, transaction. Luckily for both parties, many companies don't care that much either. Mediocrity is not really affected by the introduction of more mediocrity, so neither party ends up with a tarnished image. This sort of politicing sucks.

My perspective on this is much the same as Joel Spolsky's -- or at least the perspective he used to have. If a particular candidate comes pre-recommended by someone, I'm really hesitant to know that. If I'm the person doing the recommending, I always wonder whether I'm doing it because this person is a genuinely good fit, or if I am just feeling the pressure to be a good friend. If I was both introduced to him and one of the one's vetting him, I'd be really concerned that my bias is way too strong for me to make an honest, objective decision. Hiring people based on a blind resume submission sucks, too, and I don't know of any other alternatives. But I worry we have a blind spot to the biases of this method of finding candidates, simply because we want to believe the best in everyone we know.

<comment><AUTHOR> Elsewhere, Giles Bowkett described hiring through networking, HN, blogging, twitter, and so forth as being "inbreeding" and would produce "retarded" results.

I <3 Giles!

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/raganwald/3488885664/>

p.s. Giles was positively kind in comparison to discussions elsewhere. It really shows that individual communities do have a very strong cultural bias, which I think supports your point and his:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9s5pd/no_i_woul...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9s5pd/no_i_wouldnt_hire_a_programmer_that_has_no/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> On the other hand:

<http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html>

 _It's strictly an 8-to-5 kind of place -- there are late nights, but they're the exception. The programmers are intense, but low-key. Many of them have put in years of work either for IBM (which owned the shuttle group until 1994), or directly on the shuttle software. They're adults, with spouses and kids and lives beyond their remarkable software program._

<comment><USER15> How can one be intense but low-key?

<comment><USER16> Don't surf the net at work. Don't take long breaks. Don't waste time on useless things. Only show up when you are healthy and well rested. Only work with talented people who get stuff done.

6-7 hours of real work a day x 5 days a week x 48 weeks a year x 7 people can get huge amount of stuff done.

PS: The longer most people are at work each day, the lower percentage of the time they are actually getting stuff done.

<comment><USER6> Of course, the ratio of work-done to at-work is going to down as at-work goes up, even if work-done remains constant. This is why you should go home at the point where work-done equals at-work, so the ratio remains at 1, even if work- done and at-work are both less than 8. Most companies don't like people working significantly less than 40 hours a week, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A friend of mine always asked the following question in interviews: "What was the last program you wrote that wasn't for work or a programming assignment?" He just wanted an answer that wasn't "I have never programmed just for myself".

Every other craftsman will use their talents for their own purposes, so it is generally a good sign if programmers do the same.

</comment><comment><USER18> I must say, I agree. Having _no_ interest in programming outside work begs the question: Why is it your day job?

Although I don't work on too many spare projects on my own, I read a whole lotta websites relating to programming (this site, for instance..) and catch up on relevant news and technologies.

If the title was "No, I wouldn't hire a programmer who isn't cranking out code every hour he's awake", I'd definitely disagree. But, in my opinion, in this business, you really need to know what's going on. And unless you're in a research position at your day job, I'm guessing your boss wouldn't want you to spend working hours studying every interesting story on HN. Ergo, you'd read up on your spare time.

That's not to say you shouldn't have hobbies. A three year old Norwegian study [1] shows that IT-engineers have the largest burnout-rate of all occupations. It's important to relax, find something that makes you feel disconnected (my love for the moment is mountain biking, but whatever floats your boat).

[1] Google translate of Norwegian article about burnout-rates in the IT- industry: <http://bit.ly/it-burnout>

<comment><USER19> You ask "Why is it your day job?"

Because I spend the largest part of my life at my day job, and want to work on something I am passionate about during that time. However I am also a person with many additional interests and desires, such as playing sports, reading, art, and music and since each of those are deep areas of interest themselves, they all occupy parts of my non-working life, while being balanced with my family.

There are plenty of people who feel this way. They are well balanced individuals who are effective at their jobs, and passionate about them. But there are only so many hours in a day. Working isn't just about time spent coding. It is about working well in a team, and relating with your customers, and understanding social issues as well as technical ones. Someone who only codes is simply more likely to be underdeveloped in one of those areas.

It is just a stupid qualifier. If you are hiring a marketer, would you only hire someone who telemarkets from home on their off time because they enjoy it? That's just stupid.

Someone who has side projects at home -might- be a more experienced developer. Or they could be a poorly rounded individual. Someone who doesn't work on side projects at home -might- be non-passionate. Or they might be very passionate and effective, and simply more well rounded. To say you would always require one or the other is just dumb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I guess he's not hiring a whole lot of people with families then.

When I was 20 I had a LOT of free time in my hands. I spent some of it doing programming. I'm no longer 20, and I have two kids who require near constant attention from my wife and I and I'll be damned if I spend any of my scarce free time doing programming. I have far better ways to spend my time these days. Mainly sleeping.

<comment><USER21> Agree. When I was younger I built this monster ESX server for all my programming whims. Now, the server is still there, but it's primary job is a NAS for my kids' DVD collection. I sit in front of it maybe once a week. Most of my hobby programming is now done at work. Friday afternoons are set aside to experimental stuff that may or may not be related to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I agree completely. I built a team of engineers (generally junior devs) all of them had pretty freshly minted degrees and all of them had built something outside of work. This team rocked.

This was the single best bar I ever set for hiring young engineers.

</comment><comment><USER23> Paul Graham has a great post about hiring: <http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html> [Great hackers]

Some other good links: [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html) <http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html>

</comment><comment><USER24> Working 6 days a week with 60-hour weeks, how is a startup employee supposed to do anything other than chores and the occasional date outside of work?

Maids, cooks, personal shoppers?

</comment><comment><USER25> Too bad. If he sits around reading math books in his spare time, you just missed out on an incredible opportunity.

Seriously, I would be supremely interested in at least getting to know him, if not working with him. Actually managing to go off the grid at 5pm every day takes a lot of self-control. I'll bet most of the people reading this couldn't do it (myself included.) My guess is he spends his non-work time doing something enriching, not just swapping the monitor out for the TV.

<comment><AUTHOR> If such a person networks enough to have friends recommend him for the job, I'll meet him. If he doesn't network, I'll miss him.

I don't have the patience to sort through thousands of job posting submissions and Indian outsource emails looking for the one incredible opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> While the interviewer/writer might seem a little flippant or lacking in eloquence with his description of the event, in the long run he would probably be making the best decision for the company.

It seems like when he interviews he likes to hire those with a higher level of dedication to (more love of) coding.

Perhaps as an interviewer his real concern here isn't so much what someone does in their off-time, but rather he looks for a good fit with the rest of the team. If the current engineers are all about the never-ending love of coding and the new hire was not, the overall cohesion and possibly productivity of the group may suffer. "Ducks of a feather..."

There are complaints all over the web about new hires who are perceived as slackers, or a know nothings, being hired on in hardworking departments (at good companies) and sometimes even being promoted up and up the ladder to the chagrin of the current employees. It can cause deep animosity towards the company and increased turnover of good people. Perhaps you have worked somewhere where this has happened and experienced it first-hand, or know someone who has.

</comment><comment><USER27> The Hacker News title here is the opposite of the one on the article itself.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, I was looking forward to a good contrarian article. But it was worth reading (and right) that hires should come from 'in network'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> On the flip side, how reasonable is it for an employer to claim ownership of outside-of-work code? And how do you evaluate someone who works at such a place -- certainly, that could be a large incentive to avoid extracurricular projects...

<comment><USER22> I can't for the life of me remember the term right now. But I believe these issues are usually actually dictated by state law.

I remember vaguely a case based in Texas where the company was able to claim someone's home brewed work as their own.

<comment><USER24> This also depends on the state. yay, california for protecting our rights!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So what? To any developer concerned that you'll be ostracized by a potential employer because you don't have an interest in programming outside of work, let me give you a piece of advice. Employers who think they can define your work ethic on the job based upon what you do as a hobby outside of work, are some of the worst people to work for in this industry. If you want to let your hobby be your work, then more power to you, but you are in the vast minority. To everyone else, take heart in knowing that just because a few managers feel this way, it doesn't make it some industry standard we must all follow like sheep. Programmers -- go home at night, and be home. Enjoy your family, your friends, other hobbies, recreational pursuits, the environment... do what you enjoy in life. More than likely you'll be the group of developers that actually brings new, fresh insights to the table, because you're not living in a box coding 24/7, but you're living in the real world.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've seen really good programmers(at ThoughtWorks for example) who didn't code at home at all. If you have an interesting job that leads you to code eight hours a day (typically the case at TW, if you find enterprise sw, agile, XP etc interesting), I can understand why you wouldn't want to code at home. If you are coding a solid eight hours a day, you are probbaly exhausted when you get home and don't want to see more code on the weekends. Playing with your kids beats coding any day.

That said, would I be inclined a bit more toward someone who had say Open Source contributions? Of course, it would be foolish not to.

I guess most of the debate is centred around the binary nature of the decision - will hire/ won't hire. Move to a more flexible non-binary judgment and it looks more reasonable.

Personally, I am open to hire both kinds of devs, but I'd _prefer_ someone who had a side project / Open source cred etc.

<comment><USER32> 8 hours inevitably leads to exhaustion.

7 hours is the limit, for me and many others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> On the contrary side, it is interesting that this opinion is held of hackers, but would be ridiculous to consider for other fields. Imagine expecting an admin assistant to do personal admin assistant projects at home, or a bus driver to drive around just for the heck of it.

It makes me curious which fields lend themselves well to having fun time outside work doing the same things. I can imagine car mechanics tinkering with their own cars after work. I can imagine chefs cooking for their friends.

Do sports commentators call out shots at home or at the local sports bar when they are off work? How about journalists? Do they write for fun?

<comment><USER31> "On the contrary side, it is interesting that this opinion is held of hackers, but would be ridiculous to consider for other fields"

Well Imagine a musician who never played except when he was on stage. Or a golfer who only plays at championships.

The key is (more than whether one works at home or not, which I think is a mistaken emphasis) is to be able to see output so you can judge its quality. You could ask a musician auditioning for an orchestra to play a few pieces or a juggler to actually juggle 5 clubs. The problem is that there isn't a coding equivalent.

Most developers who code only at work can't show you any of the resultant code. An interview is too short a time to ask someone to code anything meaningful. Having some independent work he can show makes evaluating a candidate much easier.

<comment><USER21> If you are a professional it just might be that. A lot of artists and athletes have insurance contracts that require them to only do work when they are working. This is why you'll rarely hear of a basketball player doing a pickup game. A sprained ankle or blown knee off the court and they can, really, lose everything. Most of them do enjoy the game so they'll play in disguise or an alias.

When millions of dollars are on the line, sometimes, your passion can become your prison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There seems to be a total flaw in this article.This strategy would make sense if you are hiring someone just to code aka pure code monkey. On the contrary it makes sense to hire someone who is "good (tending to) very good" in his 9 - 5 job and then spends time after work creatively pursing other interests. These people have the most wide ranging spectrum of ideas / creative in their thought and just make more interesting co-workers to have !

I find this useful - Many times, I apply my comp sci ideas and solutions to solve other mundane ( non work )problems.

My 2 cents

<comment><AUTHOR> How do I go about meeting such people? the flaw in the article I see is that it suggests there is a dichotomy between monster.com and networking. Are there other ways to find qualified people that will locate these brilliant programmers who don't do anything programming-related outside of work?

<comment><USER9> You can start by not driving them away. Seriously.

There are a lot of really good programmers who don't tinker or blog in their spare time. If they come across an employer who makes a categorical statement that "their kind" is not employable, do you think they'll even bother to send in their resume?

As another commenter noted, tinkering with programming on the side is a positive indicator, but _not tinkering_ is not a negative indicator. Good programmers notice the logical mistake here, and it is off-putting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your intent is laudable, but your argument seems to miss what I actually said, which was that I personally would never meet them, not that they weren't qualified or weren't employable. I can't hire someone I don't interview.

My experience is that "hiring practices" is a very touchy subject. No matter how precisely you express yourself, people will take things personally because their self-worth is loosely connected to whether other people value their potential inclusion in a team.

So I'm not even remotely surprised to find comments like yours.

<comment><USER9> "Your intent is laudable, but your argument is flawed."

Yes, you are correct. In my passion I got carried away and started constructing a strawman. My apologies!

"What I said was that I personally would never meet them, not that they weren't qualified or weren't employable."

True. I think it touched a nerve with me because I've seen job posts specifically state that they would not consider any programmer who does not have a blog (!).

Thanks for bringing up the subject; it's a good one. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Now that I think about it, I'm upmodding your original point. Whether the argument was flawed or not, the very fact that hiring is a touchy subject makes your point necessarily valid: While there may or may not be merit in my practices, _blogging about them_ may be a poor idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Well, maybe he would not want to work with you either? Did you consider that? That you may be so one-dimensional that your programmer with slightly more diverse interests would find you and your job a boring place!

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't be offended at all if anyone finds my personal life too boring and one-dimensional for their tastes.

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/raganwald/3983773743/in/set-721...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/raganwald/3983773743/in/set-72157622397631319/) [http://www.flickr.com/photos/raganwald/15825489/in/set-72157...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/raganwald/15825489/in/set-72157606261432453/) [http://www.flickr.com/photos/raganwald/525184427/in/set-7215...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/raganwald/525184427/in/set-72157606261432453/)

<comment><USER36> You don't mess around. Thanks for being an excellent example of an adventurist doing activities where people don't care what you do for a living.

5.0 level rock climbing. I'd be more impressed though if you were a trials rider :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think in any field that requires thought, you are much better off hiring people who are just plain interested in _thinking_.

That is to say, if somebody is a lifelong learner and has passion for it, I'd hire them way before somebody who lives, breathes and eats a particular language 24/7.

People who are interested in the world around them spend their lives increasing a well of knowledge that comes in handy in remarkable ways, not to mention the fact that they know how to learn what they need to know, when they need to know it.

</comment><comment><USER38> Is this rule plausible for other professions viz lawyers, doctors?

</comment><comment><USER39> I understand the employer's point of view: Such mono-track, passionate programmers will be easy to exploit to work long hours and weekends.

<comment><USER40> I think your post sums it up. I can't imagine someone wanting to actually hire one-dimensional droids except for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Perhaps title should be:

> I Wouldn't Hire a Programmer With [No] Interest in Programming Outside of > Work

</comment><comment><USER42> I worked with an extremely smart and productive programmer who only worked M-F 7-4, and never did any programming outside of work. Any company would be lucky to have him.

<comment><USER43> Ok, so you are no good at statistics (your anecdote means very little), why should we trust you to judge a programmers ability.

You know how hard it is to actually measure how productive a programmer is, he could be writing absolute crap, that just gets the job done. The projects he has could be very simple.

And someone smart might just be someone who can switch a computer on, to a lot of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Watch what questions you ask about a persons personal life in an interview. Depending on how and what you ask, you could set yourself up for legal action.

</comment><comment><USER45> I would if I could, but my hands, back, and eyes can't take it.

I do a lot of technical reading instead.</comment>


A bot now tells Financial Times reporters if they're only quoting men - <AUTHOR> http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/11/a-bot-now-tells-financial-times-reporters-if-theyre-only-quoting-men/ <comment><USER2> So, this is sexist, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> I bloody hope so :(</comment></comment>


Show HN: Digital Socrates 2.0 – Train your mind with thoughtful questions - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/digital-socrates-2-0-2 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone!

I'm one of the founders of Vocalize, a voice application company, and I wanted to share our latest project - Digital Socrates for voice. A few months ago, Ben Issenmann made Digital Socrates to much success. It received almost 800 upvotes on producthunt and thousands of people continue to use it over a year later (a few of those people being ourselves).

With Ben's permission we decided to convert the questionnaire to voice and to launch it for Amazon Alexa and Google Voice.

Digital Socrates 2.0 now has twice the number of questions, and is expanding on functionality every week. We hope to implement a way to save your answers and to crowd-source more questions in the near future. If you have any questions or suggestions for improvement please let us know!

[https://vocalize.dev/products/digital- socrates](https://vocalize.dev/products/digital-socrates)</comment>


Chatroulette Forum - <AUTHOR>

Guys, do you know what forum did Andrey (chatroulette) promoted his site first time? DOes anybody know ? <comment><USER2> your title is really misleading

<comment><AUTHOR> what really happens is not misleading but mistyping (can I edit that ?) guys ...focus at the question please .. thanks

<comment><USER3> Yes, you can edit the title. If you want people to click on it, you need to accurately describe what you're after. Right now it reads like spam.

<comment><AUTHOR> how ? I couldn't find any edit button..thanks

<comment><USER3> It disappears if you don't edit in the first hour or two.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh ok, thanks</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Andrew Yang answers policy questions in Quora session - <AUTHOR> https://yang2020.live/Quora <comment><USER2> It's probably just me but he does not seem as a legitimate candidate. His presence is based on some illusion heretofore yet revealed.</comment>


Khan Academy and BitTorrent Partner to Distribute Educational Videos - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackeducation.com/2011/02/11/khan-academy-and-bittorrent-partner-to-distribute-educational-videos/ <comment><USER2> If this adds legitimacy to the BitTorrent protocol, then the greater good is served.

As for the BitTorrent app ecosystem, that's a real chicken-and-egg situation. People are looking for Khan Academy videos and then use BitTorrent to facilitate that. Not the other way around.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you listen to this interview by Techzing with th creators of a "web tv show" Pioneer One, they talk about how releasing it on Bittorrent has given them access to many new people and new lead gen.

(Also I note they mention in it in the blurb) [http://techzinglive.com/page/643/102-tz-interview-pioneer- on...](http://techzinglive.com/page/643/102-tz-interview-pioneer-one-the-no- budget-tv-series)

Assuming Khan do a "nice bit of self branding" at the start or end of the video with the link, then I can only see this being a plus, it also keeps the videos more in the public domain, instead on youtube, for instance... I believe ultimately it will bring them more exposure.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is good news for the people who watch these videos sped up. It's amazing how much more engaging some speakers are when you watch a video at, say, 1.4x the normal speed.

<comment><USER5> That's also what I do with the podcasts I listen to. 1.35x is my default though ;-)

The files go from my podcatcher directly into sox for conversion. Sounds a lot nicer than the speedup mechanism provided by my mobile media player.

time sox --single-threaded -S "${FILE}" -t wav - tempo ${TEMPO} | lame -h -V 4 - ${NEWFILE} || exit 1

id3cp --v1tag "${FILE}" "${NEWFILE}"

Does anyone know of a way that doesn't need a conversion to WAV first?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Three words... "substantial non-infringing use".

Very nice.

</comment><comment><USER7> They already have all the video files in a .torrent on their website. I downloaded part of it the other day to brush up on trig.

<comment><USER8> the torrent file is at : <http://code.google.com/p/khanacademy/downloads/list>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I rather see academic books for free on the web, I am not much of a video guy, no time even for a one minute youtuber. Kudos to the Khan Academy for their effort, but more is needed in the free ebooks arena.

<comment><USER10> Wouldn't it take you more time to read a topic in a book than view a 5 minute video?

<comment><USER11> Generally not, no.

Khan's fairly good at explaining stuff, but I have to view all of his material at double speed -- otherwise the repetitions and "uhm"s would be too bothersome. Same content could be delivered in half the time if written and read.

<comment><USER12> Bingo! The quality of the information is high but the presentation quality is, ah, um, has room for improvement.

Transcribing the narration and converting the "chalkboard" to text/svg/flash/whathaveyou would be a huge win.

<comment><USER13> You could give it a try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems like this puts Khan Academy at risk given the idiots at Homeland Security--- guilt by association with BitTorrent

<comment><USER15> I don't think that it will become a problem. BitTorrent enjoys widespread use for legal purposes like distributing Linux distros, open data, etc. Homeland Security hasn't caused any trouble for legal downloads yet.

The bigger dangers are firewalls and ISPs that throttle or block BitTorrent traffic.</comment></comment>


The Seven Point Scale - <AUTHOR> http://www.jgc.org/blog/2007/12/seven-point-scale.html

<comment><USER2> How'd you meet Dr. Ousterhout?

For something like a job candidate, a 7 point scale might be a good idea, however, it's often sensible to use an even-numbered scale for polls, as otherwise, people tend to flock to the neutral option. Making them choose between 'a little good' or 'a little bad' makes them think about it a bit more.

<comment><AUTHOR> John hired me as VP of Engineering at Scriptics and then he and I founded Electric Cloud together.

I like the 7 point scale because there is a definite ambivalent option. In practice most people have a definite opinion and 4 is not often used.</comment></comment>


Fiber Lasers are set to make laser weapons practical - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/military/fiber-lasers-mean-ray-guns-are-coming <comment><USER2> I have a 4kw IPG laser. It cuts through 1/4 steel plate with ease, unless there is a piece of tape or spray paint on the metal. It can't cut that! it has to do with how the wavelength of the light couples with the material. (I am not a laser engineer, I am the customer)

The 4kw power supply only is $128,000 if you want a cost reference,(just the power supply - motion control, cutting head and chiller are extra). It is an 8 module unit of 500 watts each, that can be powered down to 50w each if wanted, with full frequency and duty cycle control of the beam. It is about 48"x48"x18" and plugs into a 460v 30A 3Ph circuit. There is a chiller the size of a refrigerator to keep it cool.

100kw like in the article would cost roughly $3.2M for the light source only.

There were 20 kw lasers mounted to 7 axis ABB robot arms when I visited the IPG factory in November, being used for welding. The fiber optic cable was the size of a garden hose and terminated at the end of the robot arm in a tool changer mount. It could tool change from cutting laser head to welding head.

<comment><USER3> This reminds me of all I could think about watching the new star wars films. Why don't all the storm troopers get to have the shiny mirrored suits. Those pesky rebels and their lasers blasters would just bounce off. check mate empire.

<comment><USER4> This bothered you? and not WWII style bombing run using inexplicably slow and unmaneuverable crafts? or space ships slowing down after fuel runs out?!?!?! :o how about small unmanned shuttle hitting lightspeed into the destroyer? too obvious I guess.

<comment><USER5> Star Wars is not sci fi. It's set in space and in a different time period, but has little to do with science, and much to do with fiction.

<comment><USER6> >in the far future

Ehm...

"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...."

Couldn't resist ;)

<comment><USER5> Ah you're right, updated. But whatever, point still stands, haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My read is that this will be great for commercial applications (e.g. welding, lighting), but a weapon that doesn't work in a smokey/foggy environment is going to be fairly easy to circumvent. Environments where something is being hit with a high power laser tend to end up being smokey/foggy.

That won't make it useless, but it will definitely reduce utility and adoption. 100kW really is not that much, unless you can focus it to a fairly small diameter, which just is not possible at long distances.

My personal favorite for a "ray gun", and far more difficult to make work, is the Laser-Induced Plasma Channel.

<comment><USER8> What we really need is an energetically advantageous way to produce high energy neutral particle beams. That would start to look more like the ray guns of science fiction than lasers ever will. It's not just the weather either, when you hit a target that has a bit of appropriate ablative armor, you'll be dealing with another source of bloom.

LIPC tech is good too, and might be closer than you'd think. You can exploit the interaction of ultrashort laser pulses to create and modulate plasma, and then do neat things like send a bunch of volts down the channel.

<comment><USER9> Something like a Godiva device (pulsed nuclear reactor)?

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

They have a risk of creating a small nuclear explosion though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just spent two years experimenting with laser ablation of various metals with a high powered fiber laser that can concentrate its output into picosecond pulses (MOPA). I do think that something like silver plating would make a target vastly harder to destroy. That said, it's one more thing that needs to be added to a weapon that likely also needs to be hard to lock onto with conventional countermeasures, survive high speeds in atmosphere, handle high heat of engines and launch systems, etc. Rain might largely dissipate the laser over any distance. The wavelength of these lasers tends to be in the infrared. Having a second laser of a different wavelength would drastically reduce the number of materials that could be used to reflect it. Use of some kind of flak to dirty up the target could help a lot. I've found that something as simple as some pen marks on mirrored silver can make it easy to ablate. The real advantage of this tech is that it's light speed and very accurate. It could slice up a swarm of drones in a moment, or be aimed into a jet engine to avoid reflective coatings.

</comment><comment><USER11> On the power end, some years ago I noticed that every time there was an announcement on supposedly significant progress in ultra-capacitors, said line of inquiry seemed to "disappear".

Probably not, but I started to wonder whether military/security agencies were moving in and sitting on these developments, in lieu of having an effective defense against weapons powered by them. Not just large-scale weapons, but anti-personnel weapons.

</comment><comment><USER12> Are they small enough to mount on sharks?

<comment><USER13> You just need to breed bigger sharks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I recall reading a thread here or on reddit about a prosumer laser pointer (the kind that people misuse against airplanes) being shined at a glass table and the reflections temporarily blinding everyone in the room. This seems like an military application worth exploring.

<comment><USER15> Blinding laser weapons are banned from use by most UN members due to the 1995 Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons. Although I guess it's only for "permanently" blinding weapons, so temporary blinding (ala a flashbang) might be permissible?

<comment><USER16> I think the Skripal assassination attempt in London proves that it's not because biological weapons are banned that they aren't developed. And if Russia does it, I doubt the US is sitting idle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _> By comparison, a laser shot from a fiber-laser weapon would cost only $1 in diesel fuel_

Ugh, what a dirty power source for a shiny ray gun! I hope diesel will be phased out soon.

<comment><USER18> It's not going away anytime soon. Especially since jet fuel is pretty much just another form of diesel.

<comment><USER17> Sigh. I want every large marine vessel to have one of these installed:

[https://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact- fusion.ht...](https://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.html)

Well, OK, not precisely one of these because it doesn't work yet. But something similar.

<comment><USER18> It would be fantastic if we had a reliable viable way to convert large marine vessels to clean electric, but there also a ton of other applications for diesel such as portable generators, stoves, lamps, heaters that would be hard press to switch to electric.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Coming Soon: DJI will be mounting these on their drones.

</comment><comment><USER20> Fiber lasers are part of the solution, but blooming in air, and from target ablation is still a problem. What we really need for "ray guns" are phased array lasers and/or FEL's. Just pumping more energy through conventional optics will make the problems I mentioned worse, not better.

<comment><USER21> ISTM "target ablation" might be the purpose of a ray gun? It sounds painful, anyway.

<comment><USER22> I'm having a hard time imagining what this kind of damage would be like. What would happen for instance if it were fired at a person's head?

<comment><USER8> Blindness, 2nd and then 3rd degree burns. Think of it more like a heat ray, and you get the idea. Human heads don't have the option of countermeasures though, such as ablative costing which dramatically increase blooming, while insulating the target. You need more than 100kw to either punch through that, or take advantage of non-linear effects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 80's tecno-fashion and glitterball stuff, here we go again!. Weeee!!

Honest question. Would a jacket with embedded small mirrors make our children invisible to police helicopter scanners and safe against ray guns?

</comment><comment><USER24> >A clever configuration of industrial lasers is set to finally make laser weapons practical

Finally? Really? Why is this a good thing? Because star wars manchildren want to roleplay? We're looking at terrible burns and very high chances of being blinded. These weapons should be banned from use on humans.

<comment><USER25> The first use that came to mind for me was easily deployed and reusable missile defense systems. Not every country can spend billions on disposable anti-ballistic missiles, but lasers could eventually become affordable for most countries.

<comment><USER24> Lasers can never replace anti-missile systems completely, simply because fog or rain will stop them. Also they're completely incapable of taking on reentry vehicles. Other energy weapons might do the trick, but they're not even in protytpe phase yet (as far as we know).

The only thing lasers can do is provide low cost per shot for assymetrical warfare defence/offence. They also have other niche applications (ie sensor blinding/soft kill defense) and of course they can easily make warfare an even worse hell, with the next semi-symmetrical war leaving millions blind and hundreds of thousands rotting away from skin infections.</comment></comment></comment>


Vulnerability or Not? Pen Tester Quarrels with Software Maker - <AUTHOR> https://www.securityweek.com/vulnerability-or-not-pen-tester-quarrels-software-maker <comment><USER2> I'm inclined to side with the researcher on this one, just from this quote from the vendor: "Christiano responded, 'The issue described in the [SpiderLabs] article is certainly not a vulnerability, it is misuse of the product.'"

Attackers don't care what is, or isn't "in scope" for your pen test. They will use what's available. Unauthenticated network services capable of writing files to get code exec is _bad_.

This doesn't need to be visible on the open internet, what about lateral movement within the organization?</comment>


Yahoo CAPTCHA Cracked. - <AUTHOR> http://www.0x000000.com/?i=502

<comment><USER2> A CAPTCHA method that just came into my head at this moment, and thus is completely unfounded and horrible: "Please compose a haiku on the topic of 'togetherness' [or something equally vague]. Your work will then be passed through a Bayesian filter specifically trained on that topic."

</comment><comment><USER3> I really like to use reCpatcha. Sure it's not the most secure, but it's for a good cause, and it keeps out the basic bots.

For anyone who doesn't know what recaptcha is: <http://recaptcha.net/>

<comment><USER4> I wrote about reCaptcha before and the big problem with it is that it can be hard. And by hard I mean that the majority of people can't solve it. If you have a big site and you have a spam issue, then by all means, use it. But if you're a small site that's trying to grow and a site that considers every potential user to be precious, stay away from it because the last thing you want is to frustrate people!

Since you will not be a target early on, consider not using captcha at all since spammers don't target sites that have no traffic.

<comment><USER5> do you have a link? i love to read your thoughts. I have been thinking about using recaptcha, primarily because of the little refresh button and of course the captcha.

<comment><USER4> it's somewhere on N.YC but I can't find it anymore :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised the Russian hackers gave away their implementation for free. I suspect it was an unintentional leak.

Anyone else remember that Chinese website that was selling captcha hacks for 20 different types of captchas?

</comment><comment><USER7> Oh my god! The singularity has begun!

</comment><comment><USER8> A long time ago I decided, that if I were to ever have a captcha system, it wouldn't use ones of that style, which are getting so.. randomized these days, it's hard for a human to read.

Frankly, I think knowledge or logic based captchas are the way to go.

"Todd is three times as old as Jane is. When Jane was ten years younger, Todd was five times as old as Jane is. How old is Todd?" for example.

Sure, takes longer to think about, but if someone can write a script to start parsing logic puzzles like that, quickly, and use it to defeat website signup authentication methods?

I'll buy that person a pint.

<comment><USER9> I'd take you on that bet. Write the system and I'll write the solver. I drink Guinness :)

A better system would be to ask the user to identify the gender of a person based on an image to tell whether the picture is of a dog or of a cat and so on, these tasks are trivial for a person and very very hard for a program.

<comment><USER10> My introduction to AI class required us to write a classifier for people in the news (20 different images of 10 different people). We were given the location of the people's faces, but we were able to get 60% accuracy using SVMs and the 32x32 block of pixels (nose, eyes, mouth region). This was the "baseline" system. Some systems were getting nearly 85+%. I must admit though, that this was a restricted dataset, but the faces were not all looking straight ahead the way eigenfaces are, and I'm sure with enough data, and enough features that sort of CAPTCHA could be defeated a large percentage of the time.

<comment><USER9> You are confusing two different tasks, identifying a person out of a small comparison group is relatively easy - just deconstruct the face & compare certain facial features. There was a ton of research on the subject and even some working commercial products (my schools AI lab uses one we built as a lock).

Identifying gender is significantly harder.

You want something a lot harder, have them click on the picture of the more attractive person, use data from a hotornot type site (just make sure the data isn't public). Good luck solving that with Support Vector Machines. If you want to generate more data just use build RE-CAPTCHA type system.

<comment><USER10> I don't see why it'd be harder with good features, and after looking at the article again, 35% accuracy was considered a success. Obviously, I'm not as qualified as you in this sense, but it seems logical based on results I've seen (again, admittedly not the same quality as you've probably seen).

<comment><AUTHOR> I checked on the "obviously, I'm not as qualified as you in this sense" by looking at the user info, and I remembered that "Ideas to monetize new artifical intelligence" thread... so Marcus, sorry if it's offtopic, but how did you solve that problem? Are you doing captchas maybe? :)

<comment><USER9> Doing CAD - Computer Assisted Diagnosis - working on improving early cancer detection in Mammography.

<comment><USER9> In a way I understand trying to apply the algorithm manually for each client is wasteful, negotiation with each client is tiring especially when its with a 7B company.

I'm thinking about using the idea I got of building a web-service around it, and letting people find their own uses for it.

Considering applying to YC with the idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for your reply and details! I was very interested on it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I'm moving to the Bay Area, where should I live? - <AUTHOR>

I just accepted a job in Palo Alto as a software engineer and will be moving to the Bay Area.  I'm more of a city person and think I would like to live in San Francisco.  With the rental market being so crazy in the area, finding a place has been daunting. I have a few questions and was hoping some local hackers could answer.
What are the best places to live without a car?
Any great local resources for finding a place to live that I should know about (besides Craigslist)?
Any other gems that fellow hackers can offer? <comment><USER2> \- What price range are you looking at for renting?</comment>


T-Mobile announces unlimited global data roaming at no extra charge - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/9/4821692/t-mobile-announces-unlimited-global-data-roaming-at-no-extra-charge

<comment><USER2> Sprint used to offer a plan called Data Worldwide which you could add on for $40/month on top of an Everything plan. It allowed roaming using one of their GSM/CDMA world phones in over 140 countries. You could even add it for just the time you needed it at a prorated charge. I used it extensively before they got rid of it (as of 2011, you had to be a corporate customer to get it). It was nice having unlimited data on carriers worldwide who didn't even offer unlimited data to their own customers!</comment>


'17,000 islands of imagination': discovering Indonesian literature - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/28/why-isnt-more-indonesia-literature-translated-english <comment><USER2> Scary. Not only have I personally met the organizers of the festival that was muzzled last year, but I have also filmed in Indonesia which could have resulted in a nominal 'visa violation'. Of course, the latter example was clearly politically motivated: it's widely held that the Indonesian military authorities profit handsomely from and even help to organize piracy. On the other hand, in my experience Indonesia is pretty decentralized, somewhat like the 1990s internet. People in many areas hold much more affinity for their island or regional identity than that of the nation, and significant animosity is held against the politically dominant Javanese. In fact, people on some islands even said "we like you guys, you can stay here as long as you like, fear not central government visa issues". Back on the political side, I once attended a Wikimedia event at the National University of Jakarta, where it seemed that the main bureaucratic function was the decision on whether or not to approve additional 'minority' language Wikipedias. A young man from the Minangkabau region of Sumatra had endured a ridiculous amount of bureaucracy to reach this point, and I argued heavily in favor of adding the language since in my view it cost so little to maintain and Wikipedia has no business politicizing language availability and should equally support all linguistic communities who adhere to the general format, regardless of size. Unfortunately, the Minangkabau Wikipedia seems to have entirely stagnated in growth over the last three years, which while sad does not devalue its >220,000 articles: [https://min.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laman_Utamo](https://min.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laman_Utamo)</comment>


Mona Lisa is no mystery for micro-sociology - <AUTHOR> http://sociological-eye.blogspot.com/2012/12/mona-lisa-is-no-mystery-for-micro.html

<comment><USER2> It is not a confidence builder when the page has a prominent advertisement for the book _Napoleon Never Slept_. According to those who knew him, he required an average amount of sleep, but in emergencies could stay awake and alert for a long time.</comment>


Getting Started with Swift on Windows - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/Windows.md <comment><USER2> _reads_ no

</comment><comment><USER3> highlight: Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

<comment><AUTHOR> WSL is only one option. As noted in another comment here:

The guide is split into separate sections for clang (cross-compiling), MSVC, clang-cl, and WSL. Compiled swift binaries can be native windows executables when using the non-WSL compilers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Note that all compiled Swift binaries are only executable within Bash on Windows and are Ubuntu, not Windows, executables."

<comment><USER5> The guide is split into separate sections for clang (cross-compiling), MSVC, clang-cl, and WSL. Compiled swift binaries can be native windows executables when using the non-WSL compilers.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, a misread on my part. Please ignore my comment, then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That is a lot of work and fuss for 'Hello World'.

I mean, nice article, kudos. But 'just sayin' ...

<comment><USER7> Off topic, but the words "just saying" fill me with rage to the point where I am curious about my own psychological reaction. I suppose it has to do with the fact that it feels like a "free" way of putting something down without truly standing by ones words. Interesting..

<comment><USER8> I was wondering about rage, frustration, annoyance, et al recently.

I came to the conclusion that I experience all these things to varying degrees when the world does not conform to my mental model of how I want/expect it to be.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Google Lens the Next Step in AR? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It's the next step in object-oriented UI.</comment>


Seven Awful DRM Moments from the Year (and Two Bright Spots): 2017 in Review - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/11/seven-awful-drm-moments-2017-and-two-bright-spots <comment><AUTHOR> _...virtual rabbits facing starvation because the DRM-locked food-server has shut down..._

We truly live in a bizarro world.</comment>


The WordPress Talent Shortage Might Be a Pricing Problem - <AUTHOR> http://andyadams.org/wp-talent-shortage/

<comment><USER2> An article like this should probably focus on either salary worker or providing development services to paying clients. There is a big difference between the two

As has been mentioned here many times, commodities get priced at market rates. If you are a freelancer basing your time on market rates then you might as well just get a job. You are setting your fee as if you were an employee while taking on all the headaches of running a business.

You base your fee not on market hourly rates, but based on value. You don't charge the same fee building a campaign for Little Bobby's Lemonade Stand (which brings in a profit of 5 bucks for a couple of hours work and then shuts down for the coming school week) as you do for a high stakes start-up which is flush with funding. In the latter example, you might join a small team and have a large impact. The difference in the value of your execution vs someone who drops the ball could be huge, and you can't express this in terms of market rates.

Bringing this value (targeting high value clients and delivering high value services) is a completely different component of running a business than simply being a programmer and marketing yourself as such.

Personally, I don't think there is a talent shortage. I just think that people who need development services don't know where to start looking. There can seem to be a shortage of anything if you don't know where to look. On the supply side, people don't know how to connect with paying clients. The available tools help, but they still don't solve the problem.</comment>


You need 9Go of RAM to create websites - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/P_Etienney/status/298782877833887745

<comment><USER2> Let's see what I have for local development: \- Virtualbox (with 2-3 various OSes up, for testing) \- a webserver \- a database \- graphics editor \- IDE (code+DB)

With RAM-backed filesystem cache, I can fill the 8 GB of RAM easily - and not having to fall back to disk-based I/O speeds things up _a lot_.

So no, not essential - but pretty convenient, if you ask me ;)</comment>


Shell Gamification (how I learn to use my shell aliases) - <AUTHOR> http://paulmckellar.com/shell-gamification/ <comment><USER2> I sort of did the opposite. I took all my aliases that were created because I couldn't remember something (commandline switches, non-trivial tool invocations, non-trivial regexes, etc.) and just set the alias to echo the command. Whenever I'd attempt to use the alias, it would just print and I'd have to retype it by hand. Eventually I learned everything I used to have trouble remembering and have became much more fluent with command line utilities and bash.

I still leave convenience aliases intact. Nobody needs to be typing --color=auto every time they ls.

<comment><USER3> > I still leave convenience aliases intact. Nobody needs to be typing > --color=auto every time they ls.

Hm. All of my aliases are convenience aliases:

cls=clear # Yes, I started out in DOS

ls=ls --color=auto

ll=ls -l

ll.=ls -al

And that's it. It's amazing how different peoples' workflows become once a tool allows a certain level of customizability.

<comment> vhost- > cls=clear # Yes, I started out in DOS

ctlr + l is your new best friend.

<comment><AUTHOR> cmd + k (too)

<comment><USER4> cmd-k also clears the scrollback buffer. It's probably the single thing I miss most after moving back to linux from macOS.

<comment><USER5> You can bind Alt-K to Reset and clear in gnome-terminal's keyboard bindings.

<comment><USER4> Thank you!

My remaining minor complaint: alt-k loses the prompt.

<comment><USER5> Alt-K and Ctrl-l will solve that :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you want to make it so that any changes stick, you have to make it so the old way doesn't work anymore. I remapped my Caps Lock to several things over the years, but it isn't until I learned to unmap the original key that any of them stuck.

If you turn out not to like it, switch back.

It's a bit of a challenge to wrap something like 'git' with a shell script that spanks you for doing the wrong thing, but that's a good shell learning exercise.

A point scheme is still too diffuse and the feedback still too slow vs. It Didn't Work occurring instantly. You'd be amazed at how quickly you learn new keystrokes this way.

<comment><USER7> It's not so much of a challenge, git-achievements does it in a few lines of bash: [https://github.com/icefox/git-achievements/blob/gh- pages/git...](https://github.com/icefox/git-achievements/blob/gh-pages/git- achievements#L487)

(The interesting logic happens elsewhere, but the above template demonstrates that one can wrap git without too much trouble and without reducing functionality.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For aliases, convenience functions, and fancy widgets, my philosophy is one word: wait. I make myself go through the trouble of doing it the usual way for a little while. This way, I usually end up with much more domain knowledge and a much more elegant solution than if I'd rushed in to make things easier right of the bat.

For example, I don't have `alias gs='git status'`. Just `alias g=git` works great, and git has its own awesome alias system with tab completion that gets me the rest of it. So instead of `gs` I type `g s`, and I get tab completion on all the flags.

<comment> robert-boehnke Tab completion and aliases need not be mutually exclusive. For instance, in zsh you can use:

        alias gs='git status'
        compdef _git gs=git-status

FYI: I also mapped g without parameters to `git status -sb` but g with parameters will simply execute everything as normal

        g () {
          if [ $# -eq 0 ]
          then
            git status -sb
          else
            git $*
          fi
        }
        compdef g=git

<comment><USER8> Neat! I'll try that using the g() function. I would replace your $* with "$@" (in double quotes), though, so it doesn't try to re-split your arguments by the IFS. (Yes, $@ is a gigantic hack, but a necessary one.) See [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3008695/what-the- differen...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3008695/what-the-difference- between-and-in-bash#3008734)

<comment><USER9> It only looks like a hack until you understand Bash arrays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> awesome quote from article: "Why do something reasonable when you have the opportunity to do something ridiculous?" ... explains so much code ...

<comment><USER11> That for me also summed up nicely what separates a coder from a hacker. :]

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's another hackish way to do this, probably a bad idea, insert in your profile

        git() { if [[ $@ == "status" ]]; then echo "NOT TODAY BUB (hint, use gs)"; else command git "$@"; fi; }
        alias gs='git status -'

edit: removed ' | more'

<comment><USER7> Why the piping into more?

<comment><USER13> I don't know. I thought it was because if you pipe into "less," it will wait for you to hit 'q' until letting you carry on entering commands. But "more" does not have this behavior.

<comment><USER14> Passing -F to less causes it to automatically quit if the file can be displayed on one screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is cool. I am thinking of gamifying my alarm clock in the morning, so that I earn more XP by _not_ snoozing, and just waking up.

Primarily it is a way to help give my mate some experience programming, but I also hope that it will help kick my morning alarm snoozing habit.

In the future, I thought it would be cool if you could just pass it new config files to allow gamifying everything. For example, if you want to kick your fast-food-for-lunch-habit, then allow the gamify-everything app to award XP and trophies for things such as "Making your own lunch for X straight days"

</comment><comment><USER16> I love this. I'll try implementing it in my shell later this week. I've been looking for a great way to remember all of my custom aliases.

</comment><comment><USER17> By far my biggest timesaver aliases are for cd-ing to commonly used directories.

alias ch="ch ~/Repositories/my_project/foo"

alias cn="cd ~/Repositories/my_other_project"

<comment><USER18> Instead of creating aliases, I'm using z (<https://github.com/rupa/z>) for that. You use it instead of cd to navigate to the most frequently used directories anywhere.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the tip. I'll try it out.

However, I am wary of "smart" things that change with usage. I like my tools to be consistent and predicable. For example, I am constantly getting burned by alt-tab

That said, I imagine the "frecency" component of z makes it more reliable.</comment></comment></comment>


How do we know the LHC really is safe? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126926.800-how-do-we-know-the-lhc-really-is-safe.html?full=true <comment><AUTHOR> See also the original paper:

 _"Probing the Improbable: Methodological Challenges for Risks with Low Probabilities and High Stakes"_

<http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.5515>

</comment><comment><USER2> "Flawless logic" in here:

> Lots of arguments do turn out to be wrong. To get an idea of how many, Ord > and his colleagues looked at the proportion of published scientific papers > that are eventually retracted. Using Medline as their source, they found it > to be around 1 in 10,000. Given that Medline covers mostly top-ranking > journals, they estimate the error rate for all journals to be more like 1 in > 1000, which suggests a fairly high chance of error in any argument. And > remember, scientists often don't publish painful and embarrassing > retractions unless forced, so the true rate may be even higher. <

It's true. Studies have shown the error rate of physics papers to be 1 in 10000. But that was only _high-quality_ papers, for the average paper we estimate it to be 1 in 1000 or more. Also, physicists are self-absorbed egomaniacs who would only admit a mistake if their professional reputation depended on it, so the _true_ error rate is at least 1 in 100 in fact. 1 in 10 if it's about string theory, which I don't understand anyway.</comment>


PubSubHubBub Security Concerns - <AUTHOR> http://www.xn--8ws00zhy3a.com/blog/2009/11/pubsubhubbub-security-concerns

<comment><USER2> It sucks that comments aren't enabled on that post. You can see the responses from the community (including Brett Slatkin one of the authors) on the Google Group for PuSH:

[http://groups.google.com/group/pubsubhubbub/browse_thread/th...](http://groups.google.com/group/pubsubhubbub/browse_thread/thread/b3d376b6778974b9)

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems that the all of these problems could be eliminated by giving every client, feed server, hub and actual feed a UUID, and swapping them in a handshake. (A feed having the same UUID would be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to consider it the same as another feed; it would still compare the URLs.) This would reduce the actual message transmission, in cases of mistaken identity, to a few (16-32) bytes each time. Then, clients, servers, or hubs which repeatedly return incorrect responses to identity queries would just have to be throttled.

</comment><comment><USER4> Oh dear... time to get news.yc to render international URLs properly.</comment>


Radixx – JavaScript State Management Library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/isocroft/Radixx <comment><AUTHOR> This is a simple yet robust library for Unidirectional State Management in Web Applications with support for the major JavaScript UI libraries/frameworks (e.g. ReactJS, VueJS, AngularJS). By default, it stores application state across page loads.

<comment><USER2> Redux is useless in React (and no one uses it elsewhere). Good job following in its footsteps to solve an imaginary problem.

If you are using Angular, use a service.

If you are using vanilla, encapsulate a state object with a closure using the module pattern. P.S. this means "5 lines of code make your library redundant".

<comment><AUTHOR> okay... Thanks for your observation</comment></comment></comment>


Why you should never use a CAPTCHA - <AUTHOR> http://www.onlineaspect.com/2010/07/02/why-you-should-never-use-a-captcha/

<comment><USER2> My local theater's site allows you to purchase tickets online. However, in the final ordering form, in which you enter your credit card details, there's a CAPTCHA.

What are they protecting against? Automated bots sending them more and more money?

<comment><USER3> The price of a single ticket is probably relatively small and so they may be protecting themselves from chargebacks. It is extremely common for those with stolen credit cards to test them using small value purchases. If you can find a site that doesn't rate limit your purchases in any way you can test a lot of cards at once, determine which cards are valid/active, and saddle the merchant account holder with tons of chargebacks and their associated fees.

<comment><USER2> I'd be very surprised to learn it was this complicated, but this is a very interesting take on it.

Do people tend to have such a bulk of credit cards/credit card numbers that they'd test them in such a fashion? And also, wouldn't it be very risky (detection/police wise)?

<comment><USER3> I can't speak to anything but my own experience. Having helped on a few ecommerce sites for very small merchants, the amount of fraudulent purchases that came through was staggering. One of those companies has been open for about six months now and is only breaking even in large part due to the expense of dealing with chargebacks. What they have observed is that a significant number of cards were tested through what appears to have been a rented botnet. Those went away with the addition of a captcha. The remaining fraud that looks like card testing (only purchases of low value items, with IP's far away from the billing address and similar peculiarities) are often done from Tor exit nodes.

Small merchants have very little support in this area. Local authorities often don't care or have the man power to deal with these types of issues. The banks and visa/mastercard also don't care since they just force the merchant to eat the costs and still collect all their fees. It would be very difficult to tie these transactions back to any one person in most cases as the tester is going to be using a valid card, valid billing/shipping address. Once they know the card works they can just have a mule go get a cash advance from an ATM or start having big ticket items shipped to various places for pickup. Or they just resell the card info as verified which increases the value significantly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What he doesn't get is this: Yes, they are easy to crack, especially using crowdsourcing, against which there's no defense. However, that still is a threshold against automated attacks, however small.

The argument is the same as a free product vs. one that costs 2 cents, having a price, however small, changes the category. Or, you can think of it this way: Most simple home locks can be picked in less than 30 seconds, but you still lock your door, although it's a nuisance (find your keyes, etc.), knowing full well that this won't stop a determined attacker.

<comment><AUTHOR> great point

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Site's down for me. Here's the text-only Google cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.onlineaspect.com/2010/07/02/why- you-should-never-use-a-captcha/&hl=en&strip=1)

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry, my server is having memory issues. i'm looking into it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> OK, I like the idea to use a "hidden" captcha to block automated spam bots. However, I don't think a hidden blank field is enough.

Maybe you could use javascript to set a value in that hidden field. Or make sure the client loaded the empty form page first?

Anyone have better tests?

<comment><USER7> For any programmatic way of checking to see if the user is a human, without them interacting with the system, there's a programmatic way of faking it.

<comment><USER8> If you not only block problematic comment, but also block abusing IP address from for next couple of months -- it would be pretty hard to figure out what exactly your anti-abuse system checks for. Especially if your system check for several red flags.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've used something like: _Please join these two "words" together (without spaces): hitgzwhv and iprmagfg_ A little copy pasting required, but I discovered an older simple math one was vulnerable. Also changing the comment submission link seemed to have helped on its own.

What I don't believe in is a captcha after the registration process. But in any case, wouldn't the idealized solution be a Bayesian spam filter? Is there an open source well-trained one out there that's easy to bolt onto anything?

<comment><USER10> The strength of Bayesian filters is that they tailor to individuals, i.e., everyone can have a different model. An open source "well-trained" one is trivial to subvert.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> They are like 5 seconds of annoyance. I fill them out all the time, and I still don't particularly care. (perhaps because when it's a recaptcha, I am too busy gleefully wondering which word is the test and which is the text)

If I wrote this article, it would go...

Why you should never use CPATCHA:

Because reCAPTCHA exists. You should be using that instead.

<comment><USER8> Why use reCAPTCHA if there are plenty of less obtrusive alternatives? [http://postjobfree.blogspot.com/2009/06/postjobfree- automode...](http://postjobfree.blogspot.com/2009/06/postjobfree- automoderator.html)

<comment><USER7> I like how that post had absolutely no relevant information, except for some vague description of an apparently in house alternative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is funny that we are still using these old systems in CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA.

This week, NuCaptcha launched a video captcha offering. They have solved the readability and sweat labor issues that have come about. It's a true security offering that also improves input accuracy to 99%.

<http://Nucaptcha.com>

Disclosure: I've advised with NuCaptcha on a pro bono basis.

<comment><USER13> That's an interesting technique, but it seems like the human-detection is based more around it being a flash-based solution than any sort of obfuscation. e.g., if the text is always red, and always the same font (judging from the examples only), a screen capture of this would be _far_ easier to decode than a regular captcha™. A flash-running bot should have a pretty easy time breaking it.

Granted, the current state of the captchas™ is kinda bad.

<comment><USER14> sigh.

you don't even appear to need flash, the swf apparently just downloads an mp4 that's actually just a concatination of flash params exposed in the initial page request. from there one would be able to crack the captcha even easier by using the fact that the captcha persists across many frames of the video in various orientations/perturbations (the first character is touching the second character on top for half the video and then on the bottom for the other half, or so for example)

gasp there's in addition to the mp4 and a completely different gif served with each request (To offer support for those without flash installed, of course!) that would provide even more data for figuring out the three red letters that persist across most frames of both animations...... :(

edit--the three combinations of letters(captcha solution) across the mp4 version, the gif and the mp3 appeared to all be different

voice recognition against the mp3 would be fun

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That sliding solution is great if you don't care about accessibility, but then I suppose visual-only captchas don't really work very well for the blind, either.

Wonder how it works if you have javascript disabled, or are using a text-only browser, or have NoScript installed.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why not use both anti-spam technology and CAPTCHAs?

<comment><USER16> To quote the article:

"We live in a world where spammers are a real problem and must be addressed, but CAPTCHAs are not the answer. You simply can not afford the friction. By using a CAPTCHA you are making the internet a whole lot less fun for all of us."</comment></comment>


China fines Qualcomm $1B - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-09/china-fines-qualcomm-975-million-sets-patent-licensing-rates

<comment><USER2> "It makes more sense if China wants to protect the Chinese consumer."

No, it doesn't. Just like every other neoliberal economy out there, since when has China's government started caring about the consumers?

The Chinese government is "punishing" Qualcomm for monopoly, yes, but it has nothing to do with the consumers.

"fueling concern that the country -- the world's second-largest economy -- is using such inquiries to boost its native enterprises."

No shit. Look at all the local clones/"competitors" that have started doing very well after the original companies have been eliminated from the market (Google, Dropbox, just to name two obvious cases).

It's all about lobbying, the kind that you don't find in public records - i.e. bribing and corruption.

<comment><USER3> History repeats: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile_manufacture_during_the_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile_manufacture_during_the_Industrial_Revolution#Export_of_technology)

To be more specific, because the parallels may not be evident, the IP tactics of a burgeoning industrial nation are likely to be underhanded because the system favors the established power (see patents within the US). I find it extremely amusing to watch the US crow about IP when its very own industrial base was built upon foreign tech... just like China today.

<comment><USER4> > I find it extremely amusing to watch the US crow about IP

Irrelevant nationalism. What does the U.S have to do with China's blatant IP theft? Plenty of my non-American friends have lost quite a bit due to China's underhanded tactics, and they're not big players. China isn't stealing IPs from the U.S because it's "America", they're stealing any IP they can get their hands on, whether it's from America, Russia or Bulgaria. They've already "caught up" to the rest of the world as far as technological development goes, now they're trying to get ahead.

It's largely the reason why every country who participates in the ISS wants absolutely nothing to do with China and wouldn't let them participate in the program. There was a vote and it was unanimous. Participating in the ISS would have opened the doors to a lot of sensitive and classified IPs and nobody trusts China enough not to abuse their position of corroboration.

China is literally bursting with corruption and it boggles my mind why anyone would want to do business there. My experience with that country is that if you're _not_ corrupt, you stand no chance. It's not something that's underhanded or kept "hush hush", but par for the course. Expected.

China really is shooting itself in the foot here. It's not just America they're pissing off and scaring, but the rest of the world. America isn't the only country with IPs to lose, and if you think everyone else isn't paying attention, then you're naive.

<comment><USER5> Artificial "intellectual property" monopolies are anathema to innovation, and they're a major reason why the US tech industry is mostly reduced to making online chat room apps for cellphones developed by China's tech industry. China's choice to not enforce foreign companies' "intellectual property" rights against its domestic industry exactly mirrors the US's very successful choice to do exactly the same thing in the 1800s, except that the US did it overtly, rather than in violation of treaties it had signed. (However, the US's territorial expansion during the same period, also crucial to its prodigious economic growth, _was_ in violation of treaties it had signed.)

<comment><USER6> > US tech industry is mostly reduced to making online chat room apps for > cellphones

That may be the face of the US tech industry that shows up on TechCrunch but the reality is that the rest of the industry is far more varied and much deeper than consumer apps like that.

Healthcare, energy, aerospace. Those—and a few dozen more—are all tech industries worried about IP protection. They just aren't sexy and don't make it to the top of HN.

<comment><USER5> The US has the least cost-effective healthcare system in the world except possibly for Switzerland — it manages to provide a reasonable level of care, similar to that of Cuba, but only by throwing enormous amounts of money at the problem. It's certainly true that it's "worried about intellectual property protection", but not in the way that you imply — intellectual property harms healthcare more than perhaps any other industry, accounting for a very substantial fraction of those massively overinflated costs. And it's only through pushing through exceptions to the "intellectual property" regime pushed by the US, in WIPO, that India has been able to essentially end the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Energy is the industry where US producers of photovoltaic panels — the primary source of marketed energy for the world starting in the 2020s — have had to seek domestic protection behind punitive tariffs against the Chinese manufacturers who are dominating the market by relentlessly copying each other's innovations. Evergreen Solar, the only pure-play US photovoltaic company, went bankrupt in 2011.

The part of the US energy industry that's actually an economic bright spot is oil and gas extraction. I don't know much about their economic structure. Maybe you can elaborate?

Aerospace is indeed an exception to the overall pathetic performance of the US tech industry, and the 481,400 people working in 3364 aerospace in the US are rightly proud of that, although you've probably noticed that a lot of US companies that want to launch satellites end up having to buy launch services from Russia or Europe. But the US aerospace industry is largely supported by the US Department of Defense (74% of Lockheed's income is from the military, and 45% of Boeing's income is from BDS), and the DoD does not consider it an option to buy from lower-cost and higher-quality manufacturers in China or even Europe. That massive DoD R&D subsidy is what enables companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin to compete overseas (admittedly, against other similarly-subsidized competitors).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Odd that they state that "For handsets sold in China, Qualcomm will charge a licensing rate that's similar to the royalty rates it charges elsewhere in the world, countering concerns that it would be forced to offer a discount to settle the investigation."

And then immediately follow with "While the percentage being charged is similar, the value of the handsets -- used as the basis for the calculation -- will be assessed at 65 percent of the device's total price for phones sold in China, Qualcomm said."

If read right, that means Qualcomm is forced to effectively discount licensing fees in China based on this decision, meaning the Chinese government has engaged in a bit of price-fixing relative to the rest of the world on the patent fees.

<comment><USER8> No. Qualcomm changes Chinese companies with a rate that is higher than anywhere else in the world.

<comment><USER7> Not quite before and not now. Before, they forced bundling in China, as they do in a few other countries. Now, Qualcomm must unbundle the basic 3G and 4G patents and charge the same rates in China. But, a fair and level playground wasn't quite good enough, so the Chinese government has forced Qualcomm to value the Chinese handsets at 65% of the actual value which is used to calculate the amount of the patent fee per unit, effectively giving Chinese companies a discount compared to everywhere else in the world. So this verdict forces some price fixing in favor of Chinese companies vs the rest of the world. Plus a billion dollars to the Chinese government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Qualcomm's IP portfolio is sufficient that the company can demand royalties from virtually any company that wants to produce a cell phone. It had a stranglehold over CDMA technologies, and has a great deal of valuable LTE- related IP.

I don't know how China defines a monopoly relative to the U.S. definition, but Qualcomm seems like a natural candidate.

<comment><USER10> Patents are monopolies by design.

<comment><USER9> In a reductionist sense, yes, but this is interesting because the patents are intertwined with an international standard that every participant must conform to.

When a patent covers a stand-alone product, you may be able to avoid licensing by developing an innovative or otherwise differentiated product. But when patents cover critical portions of a standard, your hands are pretty much tied.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> OK, Qualcomm puts a good face on this and their stock goes up, but:

It is starting to really annoy me when powerful countries like China and my country, tha USA, throw their weight up against companies just doing business. This article is about one example with China, and my personal pet peeve is the USA under FICA laws brutalizing (sometimes small) banks in developing countries for not keeping up with the paperwork demanded by the empire.

It seems to me that the world needs an effective way for small countries to not get rolled over, including unfair patent portfolio attacks. If this article was about a small developing country vs. Qualcomm my reaction would be different.

<comment><USER12> > It is starting to really annoy me when powerful countries like China and my > country, tha USA, throw their weight up against companies just doing > business.

Patents only exist because governments offer companies a framework to have government-backed enforcement of a property right. If Qualcomm want to do business without government interference, let them go without copyright, trademarks, and patents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Qualcomm is a known patent abuser. They attacked Opus codec with fake claims which were refuted: [https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/1520/](https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/1520/)

But Qualcomm refused to withdraw those claims. Just to be nasty. So I don't feel sorry for them.

</comment><comment><USER14> ...Qualcomm will offer licenses to 3G and 4G essential patents and will no longer require the bundling of those rights with other patents in its portfolio...

Wow, is that a common tactic? No wonder antitrust was on them.

<comment><USER15> Not to defend Qualcomm, but patent bundling is very common in telecommunications tech for a very simple reason: what good is 1 licensed patent when you need 5 patents to actually build a product?

And more specifically, 4g phones usually have fallback to 3g or even lower speeds, so if you're going to build a 4g phone, you almost always need to license the tech for 3g and prior. Unbundling the patents in this situation is great theoretically, but in practice it is likely to result in licensees not licensing _enough_ patents, opening themselves up for patent lawsuits.

<comment><USER16> Interesting. From a microeconomics perspective, bundling is a form of price discrimination which is optimal for situations where the seller has multiple products, but buyers' wants are negatively correlated.

e.g. Roger sells both candy bars and packs of gum, both of which cost him $0 to produce (for simplicity). Al is willing to pay $5 for a candy bar, but $1 for a pack of gum. Jesse willing to pay $1 for a candy bar and $5 for a pack of gum. Roger could sell one candy bar to Al for $5 and one pack of gum to Jesse for $5 for a total profit of $10. More optimally, Roger could sell a bundle consisting of both the candy bar and the pack of gum to both Al and Jesse for $6 for a total profit of $12. Bundling has optimally increased Roger's profits.

<comment><USER15> It would be interesting to know to what extent Qualcomm was doing this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Somewhat unrelated to this specific case, but what happens to all that money? The government can't exactly budget for influxes of cash like this, so what do they do with it and who gets to spend it?

<comment><USER18> Government money/budgets isn't that precise, income from taxes are variable, for example. Also most countries spend more then they make anyway (deficit).

It's accounted for as revenue via fines and spent according to the normal budget.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> At this level isn't a "fine" simply a tax, custom made just for you by the government of the country you'd like to sell your stuff into?

</comment><comment><USER20> Business in China. You need to evaluate all aspects before you decides.

</comment><comment><USER21> I heard that Qualcomm's record on monopoly is not good either.

</comment><comment><USER22> The $1B fine might be one reason why they suddenly are charging for Vuforia AR SDK in version 4.0. They maybe rushed the change to pay licenses.

EDIT: Yes slightly off topic but Vuforia is owned by Qualcomm and recently surprised all SDK developers with the bait and switch to licensing from free for commercial. But it has happened so drastically that there is no way to find out what it costs, "contact sales" is the answer but no response from them yet. It was very rushed see here: [https://developer.vuforia.com/forum/vuforia-40-beta/prices-a...](https://developer.vuforia.com/forum/vuforia-40-beta/prices- and-64bit-commercial-only) This is a good example of how not to introduce pay commercial licensing on something that used to be free.</comment>