How to Make a Great Puzzle Game - <AUTHOR> https://thepuzzle.press/how-to-make-a-great-puzzle-game/ <comment><USER2> Since I am mentioned in the article I have a correction to make that I think is pretty important.

The article says that I like to find ideas by "playtesting" then goes on to describe playtesting as a form of user testing.

Whereas there is some definition of the word playtesting that might be applicable to the way I design puzzles, it is not remotely the one in the article. In fact I think too much "playtesting" as described here will make your game boring, and will degrade your skill as a designer, and over time make you a boring designer. It is important to avoid this.

If you playtest too much it means you don't really know what you are making or don't have confidence to determine what playing it can be like. Even if you don't have these skills or this confidence yet, you should be working on building them. Certain high skill levels of design will not be accessible otherwise.

The amount of playtesting we did on The Witness was very small — about 5 or 6 days over the course of 6.5 years, on a game that takes 50-100 hours to play through.

Whereas I do sometimes get puzzle ideas from bottom-up exploration of a space by myself (which is the definition of "playtesting" that would make sense here), in fact the vast majority of my puzzle ideas just spring to mind after I have built a sufficient understanding of the possibility space. So these are more like two distinct phases of design, and you might switch between them when designing one game. But I think most of the actual puzzle ideas have to come at least semi-intentionally, or the game will not feel very strong.

You have to know where you are trying to drive the truck.

<comment><USER3> And on the opposite side you have Nintendo, known for some of the most beloved games in the world. They have the "Mario Club" and playtest extensively. They test often and continuously. They can test every day if they want. Adjust the jump height 10%, ask the Mario Club if the game got better. In this way they iterate on game play far more than just about any other game company I know of. The biggest benefit is they get feedback early. Most game devs wait until their game is "presentable" which basically means they've already spent too much time making what they've made that they can't change anything except minor tweaks. Nintendo gets feedback early and often.

<comment><USER4> I wonder about that. Do you have any additional reading on Nintendo's playtesting?

Although their games are mass mass market, they still feel opinionated. Their designs have a certain Nintendo-ness to them that's persisted for decades in almost all their games. Even when they partner up with a third party their design shows through.

If they had extensive playtesting early on I would think their uniqueness would be eroded. It obviously hasn't. Most recently Nintendo set the bar for what an open world game should be like with their take. Not just in quality but by applying their method they elevated the genre.

<comment><USER5> Not Nintendo, but Valve has some very interesting playtesting commentary in Portal 2, if you play with commentary on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> one of my favourite puzzle game creators is Everett Kaser games... [http://www.kaser.com/](http://www.kaser.com/)

HoneyComb hotel being my favorite!

The games have been around for a long time, and seem to be updated for modern platforms. But the website is still a blast from the 90s, and the graphics are joyfully 90s amateurish :)

One of the interesting things he did was invent his own language, and virtual machine for doing his games.... [http://www.kaser.com/kint.html](http://www.kaser.com/kint.html)

<comment><USER7> Honeycomb Hotel took a short while to figure out how it works (in particular I didn't realize the puzzle isn't considered solved until all walls are placed), but it's quite addictive, thanks for that.

Any others of his that you would recommend?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those interest in designing great puzzle games, I would suggest reading the following thesis on evaluating fun in puzzle games.

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/27476077_Automatic_...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/27476077_Automatic_generation_and_evaluation_of_recombination_games)

(update: Non paywalled version [https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e401/51cbec7bdcc65b59fff53c...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e401/51cbec7bdcc65b59fff53cc2ee692c63bb83.pdf))

Cameron Browne (the author), suggest many way to evaluate your puzzle, and this was used in his further research as a way to automatically generate fun and interesting puzzle games.

[http://cambolbro.com/games/index.html](http://cambolbro.com/games/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> This article talks more about what a great puzzle game is and less about how to design one. it's a bit disappointing!

</comment><comment><USER10> Myst was probably my favourite puzzle game. :)

<comment><USER11> It really didn't age well if anyone is getting that itch. The atmosphere is phenomenal but the puzzles can be extremely frustrating. Back in the day, that wasn't a problem because exploration felt like a privilege. Now, the scenery doesn't captivate like it used to and you just want to know how to solve the stupid thing.

Portal 2 is a great brain-teaser if anyone is looking for a constructive use of their time tonight. I recommend the Nyskrte NYS maps if you want a real head challenge.

<comment> teshier-A If anyone has that itch they can turn to Obduction and Quern : Undying thoughts, both recent and both very good.

<comment><USER12> My only problem with Obduction is the loading; oh my god the loading. I know they wanted to keep the original Myst on Windows 98 feel, but a 30 second to 2 minute load between scenes is killer and why I haven't finished it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Chip's Challenge is _the_ all time great.

[https://archive.org/details/chips_challenge_windows_3.x](https://archive.org/details/chips_challenge_windows_3.x)

<comment><USER14> If you listen to the Apple time warp podcast interview with Chuck Somerville". He talks about chips challenge/ chucks challenge /chips challenge2 and the licensing from the current owners. It's actually kinda a fun listen about Apple ][ development.

[http://appletimewarp.libsyn.com/apple-time-warp-podcast- epis...](http://appletimewarp.libsyn.com/apple-time-warp-podcast- episode-2-editedm4a)

For those that like reading more than listening ars summarizes it

[https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/06/how-an- early-90s-wind...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/06/how-an- early-90s-windows-gaming-classic-was-unearthed-after-years-in-limbo/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> missing: how to make any money from said game.</comment>


Ceglia's law firm bails on Facebook ownership case - <AUTHOR> http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2082549/ceglias-law-firm-bails-facebook-ownership

<comment><USER2> "Chancer Paul Ceglia, who claims to own a significant chunk of the social _notworking_ outfit Facebook,..."

Harsh...</comment>


Ask HN: Making a viral prelaunch page, here's what we've got. What do you think? - <AUTHOR> http://YoNeibs.com/

<comment><USER2> I'll start with the criticism, because that's what you want, but all in all I think you have a good start here. :-)

My main point of feedback would be: why would I want to meet the 'right' people in my neighbourhood? What is 'right' anyway?

It is a question you answer further down the page, but I just barely got to that point. The design mostly focuses on how you try to solve a problem when to me as a visitor I don't even know the problem I'm having.

Furthermore, I am not entirely sure what you want me to do here. I think you want me to sign-up for an invite, but the call to action to do that is down below and not clearly visible.

The "Say YO!" button near the bottom of the page looks like an illustration due to the previous content blocks and I wouldn't have expected it to be the desired call to action. Perhaps even rephrase it to just say "Request an invite" and drop the "Have ideas?" part as that just gives someone another reason not to spend 30 seconds and not to complete the process.

Add a call to action to the lightbox showing the video. Else you're asking me to close the lightbox first and then look for whatever you're trying me to do.

I would reorganize the left hand side navigation as I think it greatly takes the attention away from the main pitch.

Remove the poll. Surely number of sign-ups is a good indication of people thinking your service is going to be useful?

Remove the cat and the text below it. Nobody is going to read that.

Hope that helps a bit. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the criticism is what we need, because we already now that the page is cool :) Thanks for you feedback. I'd disagree only with what you said about the cat)</comment></comment>


Imperfect Forward Secrecy: How Diffie-Hellman Fails in Practice [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://weakdh.org/imperfect-forward-secrecy-ccs15.pdf <comment><USER2> I think Chrome is considering getting rid of DHE cipher suites now.</comment>


Cybermancy is the hottest new trend in information technology - <AUTHOR> https://escapepod.org/2005/11/17/ep028-corporate-network/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is the short story "Your Corporate Network and the Forces of Darkness" by Lucy A. Snyder. Also available at [http://strangehorizons.com/non- fiction/articles/your-corpora...](http://strangehorizons.com/non- fiction/articles/your-corporate-network-and-the-forces-of-darkness/) if you don't like audio books.

An entertaining story for SysAdmins and the like.</comment>


5 TED Talks You Should Watch to Help Realise Your Inner Potential - <AUTHOR> https://blog.clickoffices.com/5-ted-talks-watch-help-realise-inner-potential/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone else think TED talks are all flash and no substance?

<comment><USER3> I do, and have for some years now. The topics and titles are attractive, but when I look at what value or knowledge I got from the talks, it seems like most of them have very less actionable information. The promise of the titles seems to be actionable information but the end result isn't. This inconsistency is frustrating. This isn't a blanket accusation about all TED talks, but to me most of them fall into this category (maybe I've watched more of the "here's how we can change the world" talks).

<comment><USER4> You can't escape that. Nothing that is 30min long can be filled with substance if the talk is flashy enough to make you take note and look into the subject on your own it's a good talk. The only bad TED talks are those in which the subject matter behind them has no substance and there are quite a few pseudoscientific and other new age bullshit talks out there especially on TEDx but if you are looking for real substance 30min or even 60min talks for the general audience could never fill that.</comment></comment></comment>


Tree-nation: tree-hugger facebook (buy a tree and watch it grow) - <AUTHOR> http://www.tree-nation.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> This actually is a great present for someone. "Look, I give you a tree in Senegal and you can watch its growing process."</comment>


Fundamentals of Cryptography; Algorithms and Security Services slides - <AUTHOR> http://vidcat.org/papers/fundamentals-of-cryptography-algorithms.html

<comment><USER2> Even though I think the slides are great, I am flagging this because it looks like Vidcat is just a way of displaying public domain PDFs, except getting ad money for doing it. The submitter has done nothing but submit a bunch of vidcat links in the 4 days he's been on here.

The slides themselves are good, but there's places they are quite confusing unless you already know what they're talking about.

For example slide 43: they talk about hash functions and birthday paradoxes, but then they conclude that we need to use a "larger MAC". An attacker would not be able to do the birthday attack on the "larger MAC", because they don't know the secret key, so there's no way for them to compute the message groups in the first place. It could be that they're trying to equate MAC and hash function, which would be even worse!

For example slide 47, RSA parameters: n, and totient(n) line: public? n is public, yes, totient(n) is not public at all, totient(n) gives you the privkey!

<comment><USER3> What appear to be the same slides are available here: [http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/noubir/Courses/CSU610/S06/crypto...](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/noubir/Courses/CSU610/S06/cryptography.pdf)</comment></comment>


The Science of Goals - <AUTHOR> http://www.dbtventures.com/blog/2018/10/20/the-science-of-goals <comment><USER2> Fascinating. The degree to which you micro-manage yourself with the "recurring goals" is a bit shocking tbh, but seeing the data stack up over 4-5 years is instructive.

I have 3 main observations/questions:

1) what happens to the goals you don't attain? 2) are they prioritized in some way? 3) having 1.035 activities in a qtr seems like a lot. how do you think about the "upper limit"?

I lead a large team and fount this useful for empowering individuals in their own development, and also highlighting what you're working on, routinely (beyond JIRA/Github).

<comment><AUTHOR> To your questions:

1) goals I don't accomplish typically either roll over to the next quarter once I diagnose what went wrong and assuming its a valid goal, or, if I decide to kill it, it goes onto a list of failed goals w/ the reason they failed. this is how I got the 3 flaws in the article (by doing mini postmortems on each failed goals)

2) Typically the first goal in a category is the most important. However, the goals are NOT prioritized overall (just intra category) so this is something I should think about - thanks for calling that out.

3) Upper limit = only anecdotal. 1,035 activities in a quarter is about 11-12 activities per day, and some are as small/quick as flossing, or 10mi of meditating. If I'm not at the theoretical upper limit, I certainly feel close (and its starting to adversely affect my binary goals based on the correlations). I don't know, it also depends on the magnitude of the recurring goals, i.e. a goal of "I will run 10 miles 5x/week" would take 8 hours of your week (pacing at 10min miles) so it also depends on the time required per recurring goal/activity. It would also depend on how demanding one's job is. I work full-time, but the hours are fairly flexible and I build/plan my own schedule so I can find some extra time if I'm behind on certain goals. I usually get up around 5/5:30am and have found mornings to be my most productive time which alleviates evening/night anxiety, vis-a-vis: [https://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Morning-Not-So-Obvious- Guaran...](https://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Morning-Not-So-Obvious-Guaranteed- Transform/dp/0979019710)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> thank you for sharing this - where do you recommend learning more about the goal setting in general?

<comment><AUTHOR> thx for reading. For me, learning about goals all started with a talk at work. This pretty amazing guy, Tommy Romero, taught a small goals class at work and started off by saying that <1% of people set goals. Then he talked about how 87% of US companies fail in the first 2 years, 50%+ of marriages fail, and a bunch of other daunting facts which helped build the case that maybe we should plan better.

Other resources: • The Art of Exceptional Living, by Jim Rohn ([https://www.amazon.com/Art-Exceptional-Living-Jim- Rohn/dp/07...](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Exceptional-Living-Jim- Rohn/dp/0743529065)) • Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill ([https://www.amazon.com/Think-Grow-Rich-Landmark- Bestseller/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Think-Grow-Rich-Landmark- Bestseller/dp/1585424331)) • Research on how to set SMART goals, e.g. [https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_90.htm](https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_90.htm)

Hope this helps.</comment></comment>


Apple reveals Lightning to microUSB adapter to pacify Europe - <AUTHOR> http://www.slashgear.com/apple-reveals-lightning-to-microusb-adapter-to-pacify-europe-13247411/

<comment><USER2> How is an adapter a valid way to obey the law? The goal is that you don't have proprietary chargers in the box. i.e. the goal is the charger, not the phone.

If apple sells the phone with their charger, that has a proprietary interface that are not obeying the law, adapter or no adapter.

To obey the law the charger must have a microUSB connector on it, and they need to offer phones with no charger at a lower cost as an option.

The goal is to reduce waste, instead apple is increasing it with this adapter.

<comment><USER3> The charger has a normal USB-A female connecter, so you can connect any USB cable that will fit in a computer to it. So the charger itself isn't limited to Lightning, but can be used with a USBA->microUSB cable.

Also see [http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/rtte/chargers/questio...](http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/rtte/chargers/questions/index_en.htm) that says:

 _Which is the agreed common interface?

On the basis of the Micro-USB interface, the companies have agreed to develop a common specification in order to allow for full compatibility of chargers and mobile phones. These specifications have been translated in European standards.

N.B.: The agreement allows for the use of an adaptor._

<comment><USER4> > N.B.: The agreement allows for the use of an adaptor.

That doesn't make sense unless Apple ship adaptors for both the charger and phone.

As your parent said, the goal is very clearly to have one charger be capable of charging any mobile device.

So... can the Apple charger be used on the Nokia? If not, then they also need to make available an adaptor the other way around.

The whole point is to not ship chargers at some point. If Apple make it so that other chargers can charge the iPhone but the Apple charger cannot charge anything else, then Apple are still outside the spirit of the law.

They need to provide 2 adaptors. The charger must charge a Nokia, and a Nokia charger must charge an iPhone.

<comment><USER5> Yes. The current Apple Power->USB charger works just fine at charging Nokia devices. And no reason why it would be any different now.

<comment><USER4> If the only cable provided in the box with the iPhone is this one: [http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MD818ZM/A/lightning-to- usb...](http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MD818ZM/A/lightning-to-usb- cable?fnode=45)

A USB > Lightning cable.

Then how can I take any phone off my desk and just charge it? The Nokia doesn't have a Lightning interface.

And if they don't supply a cable with a male microUSB end, then how are they complying?

It's not like the last video on this page doesn't make the purpose eminently clear: [http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/rtte/chargers/index_e...](http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/rtte/chargers/index_en.htm)

In Europe, they should ship a microUSB charger and give everyone the adaptor too.

Then, we have one charger for all... and the iPhone can be charged using the adaptor.

That's not ideal for Apple and it is a less than elegant solution given the lightning port, but the whole point is to put a common consumer and the environment before the corporations and proprietary interfaces (and chargers).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I guess they will need to include the adapter with the phone here in EU, otherwise they can be in serious trouble with even a sales blockade by EU as one of the options.

Here is a FAQ about the Micro-USB from the European Commission: [http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/rtte/chargers/questio...](http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/rtte/chargers/questions/index_en.htm)

<comment><USER5> Apple isn't stupid. They always include the adapter and charger with every iPhone sold.

Not just to comply with regulations but because the iPhone is designed to be usable without a computer.

<comment><USER6> Of course they will include the charger, but now the question is if they will include the micro-USB adapter as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Instead of changing the old port with Lightning, they could've changed it to microUSB.

<comment><USER8> Can anyone come up with a feasible reason why they haven't done this? Other than allow the connector to go in either way up, what advantages does Lightning provide?

<comment><USER9> 1\. Force you to buy overpriced cables 2\. Lock you in - once you have a bunch of iPhone-only peripherals, you're more likely to keep buying iPhones rather than switching brands

<comment><USER10> So you say what they just unlocked all the users of previous iPhones and iPods, because the connector is no longer the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> None of the adapters offered so far look like they're going to support use inside existing docks/devices -- the best you can do is the use the cable adapter and then sit the phone nearby.

On top of that, there isn't even a Lightning dock for sale from Apple!

This change seems badly thought out, and shaving a few mm from the overall device a poor justification for the massive expense and upheaval involved. When even hotel rooms have caught on to the popularity of the dock connector, changing it should have had better reasons.

<comment><USER12> Shaving a few mm is definitely a good justification for doing it. Every company is pushing for thinner devices.

The dock connector has been in use for years, it was fit for purpose then and it's not fit for purpose now. Apple as a company has never shown any remorse over killing technology and ports it thinks are outdated and pushing forward.

Personally I think it's the best thing of the new iPhone, the current connector sucks and is overly fragile, but I'm not invested in docks or similar mostly as the change has been expected since the iPhone 4ish.

<comment><USER11> "never shown any remorse over killing technology and ports it thinks are outdated and pushing forward"

Whenever it has done this, it has nearly always been in the name of progress -- it has made things better.

This makes them worse. It takes you from a world with nearly a half-billion usable dock connectors and devices in it to a world with none (unless you remember your adapter everywhere you go).

This is not them replacing ADB with USB. This is them replacing VGA with ADC (their ill-fated custom video adapter which was rightfully killed when the market adopted DVI.)

The market now is settling on Micro-USB (which would have equally given them their few mm back) The advantages of "adaptive digital interface" pale next to the advantages of "a charger and connection, wherever in the world you are".

<comment><USER12> Well, ADC was killed when Apple realised it was unsustainable in the market. It wasn't actually a bad idea, combining power, signal and USB over one cable. 20/20 hindsight though.

This thins out the device, it improves the connector and it makes it more durable and it builds for the future, it's a good thing (in my eyes).

It takes you into a world where there's many dock connectors that don't work with your device, and if you're an iPhone 5 buyer then you deal with that. And saying 'they should have used Micro-USB' (in not so many words) would also break compatibility with the docks, so the only thing they could have done is _not change anything_ , which is also a bad idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's a shame Apple didn't design this new port such that a microUSB cable could plug straight into one half of it (for charging only).

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm not familiar with the specifics of legislation, but surely it must be pretty shoddy if companies are allowed to charge for adapters which are needed to make the phone comply with the rule?

<comment><USER15> I'm not an expert, but yeah, I'm fairly sure these will need to be included in the box for iPhones sold in Europe.

Off topic, but the Lightening connector has 8 copper strips, and it's a 9 pin connecter. Presumably, the outer metal strip is the 9th?

Does this adapter lessen the capabilities of the connector?

I mean, are their legitimate functional requirements that the 9-pin connector addresses beyong the capabilities of a micro-usb? I've seen a comment or two on blogs, but no explanation.

<comment><USER16> Yes, the additional pins are for things like audio in/out & video out, making the Lightning connector more capable than microUSB alone. So this microUSB adaptor will be usable for charging only.

In terms of the legislation that's ok, as it only specifies a common charging format, not a common accessory connector format.

<comment><USER17> > Yes, the additional pins are for things like audio in/out & video out, > making the Lightning connector more capable than microUSB alone

I don't think we know this yet, details on the Lightning connector specs are sparse, aside from it being "all-digital" and "adaptive".

<comment><USER15> This is what I was wondering about. You can do a heck of a lot of different things through a thunderbolt port. You don't need seperate copper pipes/pins for each function... It's not a miniature switchboard, with a bunch of tiny cables plugged into each pin.

<comment><USER5> Thunderbolt cables have very expensive, somewhat fragile controllers at each end of the cable.

The Lightening cables are designed to be cheap, simple and sturdy.

<comment><USER15> Not an answer to the question I asked. You've conflated 'connector sturdiness' with function. A micro-usb plug could be made rugged. Thanks anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Please, please, stop saying that there is a law on microUSB compatibility in EU. There is memorandum of agreement, which is not binding. Vendors agreed that it would be awesome, if you could charge any phone via common external power supply. That's all. Nobody is forcing anyone to do anything.

Also, there are several standards, which also are not binding. One can implement them and wave hands, but one can also ignore them or work around them (via adaptor, for example).

</comment><comment><USER19> It seems like something that will get lost after 2 seconds since its so small. Wouldn't it of been better if they made something really slim that just attached to the bottom of your phone? So if you did want to regularly charge with micro usb, you could just leave it on and not loose it.

The other thing I don't get is why Apple charge so much for this tiny thing. In 2 seconds flat we'll see clones of it coming on ebay for $1, if Apple actually priced it at $5 or something, people would actually buy it and Apple would still make a 1000% mark up on it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Apple: NIH reinvented.</comment>


Now is the time to switch back to Firefox - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/now-is-the-time-to-switch-back-to-firefox-7000028641/ <comment><USER2> This is merely another article capitalizing on manufactured outrage. Much of the article is centered around the size of tabs in the browser window, and how to cope when you have 80 of them open.

The author appears confused at the end when he says "Security is the area where Firefox is weakest", but then hedges himself saying "so using Chrome doesn't guarantee security either". Weak sauce.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems like (to me) that Firefox is consistently hacked more at the yearly pwn2own event:

[http://www.eweek.com/security/pwn2own-2014-claims-ie- chrome-...](http://www.eweek.com/security/pwn2own-2014-claims-ie-chrome- safari-and-more-firefox-zero-days.html)

Chrome got hacked as well, but Firefox had 4 separate hacks in this year's event. It just seems like a recurring pattern that Chrome doesn't get hacked or gets hacked a lot less than firefox. Chrome is an absolute memory hog, but I'll keep it. Mozilla has consistently put me off by putting Linux as a second class citizen (I've used desktop Linux almost exclusively for the past 10 years) and some of their software which I really loved like Thunderbird, is practically abandonware (except security fixes).

Once upon a time, I was a very loyal Firefox user. Not so much anymore.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love how the author mentions Chromium in passing, without even suggesting the possibility that those who like Chrome can just use Chromium instead, and opt out of the so-called botnet of Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Also, after Firefox crashes

Now there's a recommendation

</comment><comment><USER6> Or Seamonkey! It's even smoother.</comment>


The Tech Revolt - <AUTHOR> https://story.californiasunday.com/tech-revolt <comment><USER2> Protesting Chinese censorship, I get that. But they lost me at "protesting projects with ICE". I happen to think that immigration and customs enforcement is a net positive. Those people deal with human trafficking, seize a ton of dangerous drugs (2370lbs of Fentanyl alone in 2017), and send a lot of people who shouldn't be here back to where they should be (or to jail if they've committed other crimes).

<comment><USER3> _I happen to think that immigration and customs enforcement is a net positive._

I guarantee those people would be as well if they were effected by it personally. If you're not personally doing the kind of jobs an illegal immigrant can do for less, then you can only benefit - it lowers the cost to you for many things in your life. As a bonus, you get to pretend that makes you a good person.

An episode of South Park addresses this brilliantly, though people conveniently only remember the first part. Time travellers from the future come into South Park and take all the menial jobs. The blue collar americans yell "they took our jerbs!" Randy - a geologist - admonishes them as racists, until he finds out his own white collar positionhas been given to an alien, and then he too is complaining about how they took his job.

The day the wealthy Californian tech companies start hiring illegal immigrant developers at a lower cost is the day the echo chamber changes its tune.

<comment><USER4> Have you heard of outsourcing? Or the term Offshoring? Or Tech Companies using H1B Visas?

I mean it is already happening, perhaps you just missed it.

<comment><USER5> Sure, and there is resistance to that too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You have to wonder if the key ingredient in this is the fact that tech jobs are booming. There's so much written about the job market, you tend to feel confident that you're in high demand.

I know a lady who was working for a startup that folded. She got told, then walked down the hallway in the same building, got hired by another startup. Boot camp grad.

There's even a person mentioned in the article who refused to work at Amazon, which I guess pays over $200k. Some people would do it out of principle regardless, but many more would find it easier to protest if they had high confidence they could find another job in that bracket.

I've seen sexual harassment suits happen in finance, and it hasn't led to any form of mass movement. People just get paid off and let out the back door.

In addition you have to ask about the effect of that hiring cartel being broken.

<comment><USER7> You're right. It's also because we live in 1st world conditions, and once your basic needs are met, we strive to address the higher ones, like fulfillment and meaning.

I've worked with programmers who live in 3rd world countries like the Philippines, and notice a huge difference in the way they treat their job. When I give them a boring task, they don't ask what is this for, or why am I doing this? They just do it - on the flip side, they don't care about the product, or the company mission. I'm not saying this because it's good or bad, but this is just what I've noticed.

<comment><USER8> interesting. Sometimes I wish I was more like them, and things didn't bother me if they seemed boring or pointless. Seems like an innately selfish view, but one i'm having trouble rectifying.

<comment><USER9> After serving in the military (Air Force air traffic controller, so military lite) I align more with the 3rd country workers mentioned. Take the task, complete it to the best of my ability, move on to the next task. I don't care about the mission or domain. Im paid well, work from home and have relatively little stress compared to 11 years in the military. Searching for more meaning out of my work would create undue and unnecessary stress trying to find that unicorn role, which in reality doesn't exist.

<comment><USER10> I think the 'find the unicorn role' thing is a generational thing. So many of my peers (early 30s) are striving for the side hustle that will bring them millions while they chill on the beach. What happened to just going to a decent middle class job, doing your work, then going home and living your own life? It seems to me social media has created so much of this. It's social media where people find the need for one-up-manship that leads them down these ridiculous paths.

Perhaps I'm delusional because I've been comfortable in my low stress, check out and go home, type of job for some period of time. I just don't feel any desire to chase some kind of meaning in my work. Most of my coworkers seem to have the same outlook.

<comment><USER9> We are in the same peer group, of early 30s. Luckily, most of my peers don't have this line of thinking, although they do put great deal effort after hours into our line of work - data science / machine learning. They all want influence someone, somewhere - who are they attempting influence, I don't know.

I will admit I also an outlier for my age group. Have been married over a decade had kids in my early 20s without any debt (GI Bill helped here). Probably could have a bigger nest egg saved but traveled quite a bit before and after kids. This has resulted in different goals, and career trajectory than my peers. Both of our children will be out of the house when we are 46.

I 100% agree with you that social media has warped people's views of life. My social media presence is LinkedIn (and I guess here), just a page with one post. None of my hobbies I post about or share online, only through in-person interactions. Nor do I have smart phone, so I don't take pictures to share, thus we discuss what visiting a Nepalese village was like, instead of scanning a bunch of photos. In my opinion this creates a better relationship dynamic. I am sure there are things Im missing out on due to the extra step people need to take to invite me (a phone call) but I gladly trade it for the reduced information overload from a smart phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Neveragain.tech is silly to me because they pledge:

> We refuse to participate in the creation of databases of identifying > information for the United States government to target individuals based on > race, religion, or national origin.

But then you have people signing it who work for companies like Google and Facebook that obviously already _have_ built huge databases to target individuals based on race, religion and national origin to show them ads.

If the US government really wanted to go full fascist, these companies have conveniently collated all the data for them.

It's like saying "I'm happy to work on building nuclear bombs, as long as you pinky-swear you'll only ever use them for digging harbours."[0]

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chariot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chariot)

</comment><comment><USER12> This seems a good time to point out that a few of us been organizing a revolt against HN. I wish it wasn't so, and the drama is mostly uninteresting. Suffice to say, expressing concerns about HN on HN is a quick way to end up beheaded.

If you're looking for an alternative: [https://www.laarc.io/](https://www.laarc.io/)

You may find the site a welcome change of pace. We just had our first Show post today.

There is a good chance that this account will be quickly banned, this post killed, and this account marked as "uncommentable", meaning this is the last comment I am likely able to post under this handle. But you may also know me as sillysaurus.

I've missed you guys.

<comment><USER13> Why the revolt over HN?

<comment><USER14> I can't speak for the OP, but I've been frustrated to find that any time a controversial topic comes up on HN (say, sexism) it is immediately flagged off the homepage. A small cohort of HN users get to dictate what the site at large discusses, and I'm not sure that's for the betterment of the industry.

<comment><USER15> ???

So is this basically a revolt by the more political oriented people? I mean, the people who want to discuss the political type controversial stuff and not so much tech and science?

Just wondering why I never heard of it until I read that comment?

<comment><USER14> > Just wondering why I never heard of it?

Because it gets flagged off the site immediately.

<comment><USER15> In fairness though, if you want a politics version of HN, you can just make your own. I think there are a large number of flags required to get a post removed from the front page. So, to me, it sounds like there are a lot of tech, math, science types who are just not interested in posts that they feel "pollute" the stream so to speak.

I mean, again, if we're being fair, those guys should get as much of a say as you do.

<comment><USER14> I think the core contention is that tech, maths and science do not live outside of politics - they're all political topics. Books have been written about the politics involved in science.

> those guys should get as much of a say as you do.

Absolutely agree. But the flagging mechanism means that a small number of users make the choice for the rest, who never see the story in question.

I'm not suggesting I have an easy fix, community moderation is one of the biggest problems out there. But I'm not sure the current approach is the best one, that's all.

EDIT: and you might notice it happening now. This story has slipped down to 23rd on the front page, despite having far more upvotes in a shorter space of time than the stories that surround it. Soon it won't be on the front page any more.

<comment><USER15> > _But the flagging mechanism means that a small number of users make the > choice for the rest..._

That's the thing though, _" a small number of users"_ made the choice to put the post on the front page in the first place. It only really takes a tiny fraction of the daily user count to promote a submission to the front page, and, to my mind, YCombinator is just kind of saying, "well, since there's no way to downvote a submission, we'll have this flagging mechanism." I think that's a reasonable compromise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm interested in seeing whether we begin to see more unionizing among tech workers and therefore more collective action. It'd be like the incidents detailed here but to the Nth degree.

<comment><USER17> Big companies have this thing called "segregation of duties" which protects the company from organized labour. You can organize all you want, but the job has been cut up in to so many pieces, it's easy to replace whoever forms a union.

<comment><USER11> That's why solidarity mattered, historically.

<comment><USER17> Can't have solidarity if you coworkers all speak different languages than you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Never to be mentioned: All of the engineers who won't work at Google because of what they did to Damore.

Techies aren't as politically mono cultural as this (and most other pieces) would have you believe. Many would happily build something for ICE as another example.

<comment><USER19> I'd be surprised if there's a statistically significant number of engineers making a stand because "company fired engineer hired to do machine learning because he demonstrated an impressive ignorance of statistics and applied that knowledge to make a public ass of himself".

Sure the number is nonzero, but I'd look beyond you're own bubble if you think that's a population worth mentioning in a discussion about larger trends.

<comment><USER20> It would sure be nice if researchers who work on machine learning were less ignorant of statistics! But singling out one employee for this seems rather disingenuous, doesn't it?

<comment><USER19> Are there many (any?) jobs where you can go and publicly announce that you're not only unqualified but extremely proud to be so and not suffer consequences?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The anatomy of a startup, illustrated - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/05/05/the-anatomy-of-a-startup-illustrated/

<comment><USER2> Blogspam. Original here: <http://www.focus.com/images/view/57338/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, I submitted link to the original post [http://www.focus.com/fyi/small-business/tech-startups- expose...](http://www.focus.com/fyi/small-business/tech-startups-exposed/) but somebody killed it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do we need Engineering Managers? - <AUTHOR> People(engineers) don't leave jobs anymore; they leave managers. I've seen so many bad managers in my career that I strongly believe we should get rid of that extra layer. Here's the reasons why:
1- Managers are expensive.
2- Manager = Dispatcher. They dispatch tasks coming from above and make sure work is done.
3- They push engineers, they don't pull them (leader vs boss).
4- They don't treat people equally.
5- Micro management, micro managerment, micro management...
6- We have to deal with their personalities.
7- We have to justify everything we do etc.
What are your thoughts? I believe companies should minimize layers of management and invest in a more self-managed company culture. <comment><USER2> Google tried this in 2000, it was an absolute disaster.

Managers also:

1\. Handle administrative concerns like requests for leave, vacations, illnesses, deaths in the family, etc.

2\. Understand each of their reports' career goals and try to put them on projects where they can grow & contribute best.

3\. Handle personality conflicts between individuals on the team.

4\. Make sure that individual contributors get recognition for their work.

5\. Encourage their team to keep going in the face of obstacles.

6\. Protect their team from interruptions by handling many of the external inquiries themselves.

7\. Connect team members with relevant collaborators in other parts of the organization.

Now, there are good managers and bad managers, and typically good managers will do more of the activities on my list while bad managers will do more of the activities on your list. But that isn't a reason to get rid of managers entirely. Rather, it's a reason to invest in manager training, make sure they understand their role, and ensure that you've hired good managers and fire the bad ones.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like you've seen engineering management done badly, and you don't like it. But if you saw a self-managed team done badly, you wouldn't like that, either.

Good engineering management insulates you from the corporate politics and irrelevant stuff going on above you. You really want that insulation, because those who don't do corporate politics can still have politics done to them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen very good managers but the ratio is bad. %10 vs %90 of bad ones. A world with less management could be a world with less politics. I understand that a conflict between teams, for example, is a problem that can only be resolved at the management level. The question is, what if these 2 teams become one? The rest is about company re-org, new manager assignment, etc. Politics... as you said.

<comment><USER3> > A world with less management could be a world with less politics.

Wow, are you an optimist. Sure, it _could_ be, but it probably _won 't_ be.

You seem to think that engineers are wonderful human beings and managers are horrible. It's not that simple. If you're finding 10% good managers and 90% bad ones, you'd likely find 10% engineers good at interacting with others while self-managing, and 90% who will get into petty vindictive garbage and make your office a miserable place.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with that. Engineering managers are ex-engineers after all so the ratio 10/90 applies at any level.

What if you promote a "bad" engineer? She/he would have a much bigger impact on people = more impact on the company. The problem is not about engineers vs managers. The problem is about micro bubbles within a company which create micro cultures that are often driven by these (micro) managers. A solution would be to put everyone at the same level. That sounds very naive and provocative... but after all, there hasn't been much innovation in that space within the last 20-30 years. We manage engineers like we used to manage workers in a factory. I think the model does not apply anymore. That's just my naive/ideal world opinion...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Managers operate the company, and serve as a buffer between me and even more managers or executives. I don't want to do that, and I'm glad someone else is willing.

It sounds like you're currently working for some managers that should be left. They aren't all like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't believe managers operate the company. I believe engineers do. As you said we don't want to deal with all the extras which consist on dispatching tasks and making sure everyone does the job. For that we have project management tools and meetings... lot's of meetings.

These 2 things can easily be handled by the engineers (e.g. agile methodologies, etc). You always need a boss to make a big decision like getting rid of someone for example or picking up the next big thing. %99 of the decisions made at the 1st level, maybe even the 2nd level of managements are usually not relevant. Again, they only dispatch the work and approve your vacation requests. You have to go higher to start seeing people making real decisions for a company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree, Managers are extra layer & expensive but in reality without them, there would be chaos in the company. I think it would be better to either hire the best or fire & re-hire.

<comment><AUTHOR> There would be chaos because companies never invested in finding a way to promote self-management. If they do, maybe chaos would be out of the picture. As well as turn over (which is currently an existing problem).</comment></comment>


Auth0 Having a Major Outage - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/auth0status/status/1207707183355330561 <comment><USER3> Update: Our response team have found the root cause and have applied a fix. Response times are now back to normal. We will publish a post-mortem within the next 7 days; further updates will also be published [http://status.auth0.com/incidents/rpctnc6jd1kl](http://status.auth0.com/incidents/rpctnc6jd1kl). Thank you for your understanding and we applogize for the degraded service and outage. Should you have any queries please don't hesitate to reach out to your Auth0 team. Discloure: I am the CPO at Auth0.

<comment><USER4> Your status page still shows the outage as having been "less than 15 minutes," but it was close to 90 minutes. Will you be updating that to reflect reality?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Meta: $1B valuation: [https://auth0.com/blog/auth0-closes-103m-in-funding- passes-1...](https://auth0.com/blog/auth0-closes-103m-in-funding- passes-1b-valuation/)

Not notable enough for Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Auth0)

</comment><comment><USER6> I am still seeing numerous failed Auth0 calls (~10% of Auth0 calls or so), and our account representative is not being responsive at all.

<comment><USER3> Are you still seeing failures?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> And in full transparency in case it comes up here we are also investigating some intermittent access issues to our dashboard (only affects some users not all). Status here: [https://status.auth0.com/incidents/1j399kcrzgzr](https://status.auth0.com/incidents/1j399kcrzgzr)

<comment><USER3> Now resolved

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> i'm confused as to why they have the status as "elevated response times"

everyone (including their own dogfood implementation) is experiencing a massive outage, their baseline "get user" endpoint is 500ing exclusively right now.

<comment><USER3> Sorry for the status title. The service was initially degraded and then 500ing so acknowledge your feedback and we will add this to our post-mortem. FYI - <USER2> am the CPO at Auth0 and apologize for the outage. All services are now back up and we are monitoring them actively. You can follow along here: [http://status.auth0.com/incidents/rpctnc6jd1kl](http://status.auth0.com/incidents/rpctnc6jd1kl)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> They have updated their status to monitoring when their endpoints are still 500ing... this is infuriating.

<comment><USER8> things should be back to normal. Are you still seeing an issue?</comment></comment>


StrongLoop and Express - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/code-adventures/strongloop-express-40b8bcb8e5af

<comment><USER2> Seems disingenuous, since the email talked about "branding on expressjs.com", but what actually happened was moving the github repo out of the independent expressjs organization into strongloop's namespace, which is extremely different. It sounds like TJ doesn't understand what part of this was upsetting.

<comment><USER3> Maybe missed "I understand this won't clear my name, and that's not the intention of this post"?

Eran was claiming I mentioned nothing to Douglas at all so I just wanted to put the facts out there. I could have taken the money and run, frankly it's hardly a month's worth of money, not worth all the community BS haha but I wanted to share it with Douglas. I know StrongLoop will do no harm, moving of the repo is completely irrelevant IMO, lots of people will rage and say otherwise but that's my view.

<comment><USER4> Moving the repo is the source of the issue here. From now on every developer will see "hey, this belongs to strongloop now".

It is completely different from Automattic, because they took over almost dead project. I saw socket.io at the moment with months without commits, and it was necessary to do something about it.

It is different from Joyent. I would rather see node under a foundation now, but five years ago Ryan probably couldn't promote it by himself and needed help.

Express.js had three active developers working on a new version already. It had an organization named "expressjs" where all related modules are stored. It didn't need to be transferred anywhere (especially not to a for-profit organization for using the repo as an advertising place).

Even if strongloop guys will manage to avoid doing harm (not sure about that), seeing the company name in the all hyperlinks to github is a harm enough (considering that the company did nothing for it... well... except for the transfer payment...).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's amusing, the sense of entitlement expressed by contributors. There were some hiccups along the way, but everyone was given back their commit rights.

If you want it to be "your" project, fork it. Everyone who was working on Express was working on TJ's project. There were no "rightful maintainers".

When TJ decided to step away from node, he did offer to give up all his projects to people he felt could maintain them the best. He has said repeatedly he feels StrongLoop can maintain it best. I agree with TJ. The Express "community" can throw all the tantrums they want. It was never their project.

<comment><USER6> These weren't just contributors, they were github collaborators and the project's active maintainers, including the person TJ himself put in charge of the project, Doug Wilson.

TJ's last commit was on February 19th, 2014 (6b05f60b), and it was simply a version bump on a dependency. Since then there has been one major release (Express 4), six minor releases and 13 patch releases. 167 files changed, 6003 insertions, 1958 deletions.

Of the 581 commits made in the last 12 months, the top five contributors were:

       303  Douglas Christopher Wilson
        84  Jonathan Ong
        66  Roman Shtylman
        49  TJ Holowaychuk
         5  Fernando Silveira

This is just on master and does not include the work Doug has been doing on the 5.0 branch, or the VOLUMES of work all three had done in the tertiary repos on the ExpressJS organization. StrongLoop hasn't contributed anything.

It stopped being TJ's project a long time ago.

<comment><USER3> I'd 100% agree on poor ethics if I didn't talk to Douglas but I did, poorly obviously. I get that now but my intention wasn't to offend him or the other contributors, it seemed (and still does) like a win-win to me and some recognition for the work. I don't recall people freaking out at Ryan when he sold to Joyent, he wasn't the only one working on the project either.

<comment><USER6> I've not seen any ill will towards you from the people I named above, at least not publicly. They all know it was your project and you were free to do with it as you saw fit. They disagree with your choice, but it was yours to make. You had good intentions, even if the actions played out badly, but that's all now in the past.

Strongloop, on the other hand, has the ability to change the outcome, and have chosen not to. They've been given loads of evidence of what the maintainers want them to do, and so far their actions have not demonstrated a desire to resolve the conflict. Their public responses have been entirely self-serving and barely apologetic.

I am firmly of the impression that they want to hold on to Express so they can claim it's development as an R&D tax write-off. This fits with why they've stated they would only give it to an organization backed by a non-profit foundation, since then it could continue to be a charitable donation. They want to make money off this situation, and that's basically thumbing their noses at the people who put their time into it for free.

As I said in the github thread, there are some major differences between this situation and when Ryan sold to Joyent. Ryan was still working on Node, and Joyent hired both him and Isaac to continue doing so. They also announced [1][2] the transition before it happened, made it very clear what was happening in terms of code ownership, and answered everyone's questions ahead of time. The repos didn't transfer until four months later [3].

[1] [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/nodejs/lWo0MbHZ6Tc](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/nodejs/lWo0MbHZ6Tc)

[2] [https://www.joyent.com/blog/a-new-abode-for- node](https://www.joyent.com/blog/a-new-abode-for-node)

[3] [https://github.com/joyent/node/commit/45adc907c9b3eff0bc560d...](https://github.com/joyent/node/commit/45adc907c9b3eff0bc560d0c6a0f904ff9ee0c39)

 _edit_ : I'm being told Strongloop is actually helping to create a foundation for Express to be owned by, they're just not doing it publicly. So that's good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's also an article about this matter -- [http://hueniverse.com/2014/07/30/open-source- dickishness/](http://hueniverse.com/2014/07/30/open-source-dickishness/)</comment>


Biodevices Harvard iLab - <AUTHOR>

Biodevices is a new movement based out of the Harvard iLab in Boston. We're looking for people interested in having fun and opening up science to more people. We are making cheap lab tools to make research more accessible. We're just a bunch of kids in need of someone to help focus us. Buddha Dharma Sangha <comment><AUTHOR> Contact us at email@example.com or message us @biodevices</comment>


Doom and Doom II Games Recompiled with Web Assembly - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/UstymUkhman/webDOOM <comment><USER2> It's a great project and you are insane.</comment>


Ask PG: Adding team members - <AUTHOR>

Hi Paul, as this is the eve of announcements for second round interviews, this isn't the best time to ask the question, but I'm curious nonetheless.<p>The question is: whats happens if people are added to the team after the app has been submitted? I'll use myself as an example. when I submitted my app I submitted as a single person. After the deadline I added two critical co-founders to help execute the technical side. Since then, I've been concerned that the app would have been considerably strengthened had I included the other co-founders in the app. What are your thoughts? <comment><USER2> It certainly strengthens an application to have multiple founders, but there is not much you can do if you add them after we've read it. We have to have some cutoff; we can't reread every application that gets changed, or we'd never be able to read them all.

</comment><comment><USER3> Didn't you ask this exact same question a few hours ago?

(checking ...)

Yes, here it is: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1859720>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, but didn't get a response (it was buried within another thread so I assumed PG didn't get a chance to read)</comment></comment>


Bitcoin Futures Will Be Allowed to Start Trading - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-01/bitcoin-futures-will-be-allowed-to-start-trading <comment><AUTHOR> According to Bloomberg, margin requirements are going to be quite high in order to keep bitcoin trading from creating issues.

If you can trade bitcoin futures in Chicago, to me that says regulation is coming, and even central bank involvement. Seems to go against the grain of what bitcoin pretends to be about.

<comment><USER2> Nah. You are reading too much into it. Futures are just a way to bet on bitcoin without touching bitcoin itself

<comment><USER3> Yes and no. The (delightfully named) bitdiddle may have a point.

Although the CME futures will be cash settled so Bitcoin will not be _directly_ involved, it's not clear what would happen if there was evidence of price manipulation.

For example, if there is an anomalous spike on a stock exchange around the time of the futures mark, this is always investigated.

If a similar thing occurred on, say, GDAX (which will be included in the benchmark), it's not clear what that would trigger. It's possible that the answer is nothing (there are futures on Libor after all) but it doesn't require much tinfoil to see this as a possible point of attack.

<comment><USER2> Sure, but price manipulation is already illegal, so those investigations are coming with or without the futures.

<comment><USER3> My point is that, just because the futures are not directly linked to Bitcoin, they can still have a direct effect.

And I'm not suggesting that they're listing futures in order to attack Bitcoin. I have no reason to believe that.

However, it is notoriously hard to prove general price manipulation. It is much easier, and more common, to prove specific price manipulation. In practice this usually means an extraordinary anomaly e.g. a flash crash or a targeted anomaly. The latter is almost always due to a specific event such as a rate setting or a close price.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why men on earth outnumber women by 60M - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/335183/heres-why-men-on-earth-outnumber-women-by-60-million/ <comment><USER2> Relevant: [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-a-pregnant- woma...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-a-pregnant-womans-chan/)

The probability of conception producing a male child is not 0.5; it is stacked in favor of the male. (In "most industrialized countries").

<comment><USER3> That's true. However, women have a longer average life expectancy in every country in the world, which should (over-)compensate the slight imbalance towards male at birth. Which in fact it does in industrialized countries.

<comment><USER4> The more interesting fact is when you break down the numbers by age group. By the mid to late twenties, the gender ratio is very close to even. Why do so many men die so early?

We know that parents tend to ignore male children much more. We know male suicide rates are several times those of females. We know that 92% of workplace fatalities are men. We know males are the vast majority of victims of violent crime. We know that most deaths in war are men (consider ISIS taking females captive while killing the males).

What we do not know is why the world is okay building itself on the bodies of men.

Speaking of retirement though, is interesting that despite women living longer than men, a huge number of countries force men to work five more years than women in order to retire.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement_age#Retirement_age_b...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement_age#Retirement_age_by_country)

<comment><USER5> This is quite fascinating issue. There is also cultural aspect. For instance in China, one child policy created imbalance of genders. Parents prefer their single child to be a boy and with cheap USG they could pick and choose.

Retirement time is also interesting. In Poland we used to have 65 years for men and 60 for women. Now its 67 for both (still in transition period so its increasing slowly to finally settle at 67).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Contemplating the outcome of 60M+ single men (discounting homosexuals which estimates put at around 5-20% of the population) unable to find a woman simply because of the numbers game seems coupled with the "Little Emperor" phenomenon that was discussed here on HN recently is pretty concerning.

In countries with high rates of sex-selective abortions, I fear violent crime rates, particularly sex crime, will skyrocket.

<comment><USER7> Surprisingly enough, China still has a huge number of (as they put it) "left- over" women. This is likely because the population of there is well aware of the 60M+ fact going in their favor and, in truly amazing display of classical economics, heightened the standards and criterion the average girl uses to look for a man. The result (aside from the large majority who are one-to-one dating/engaged/married like it's always been) is that there are a ton of frustrated young men who (unless a miracle occurs) will remaining single until he dies, a small population of ultra-successful men who concurrently juggle multiple girlfriends (and possibly wives), and a large group girls who are annoyed that all the "good" men are taken.

Unfortunately, sex crimes have been on the rise in China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That has got to be the most annoying website I've seen in a long time. As I started skimming the page looking for the point where it talks about population imbalances, I had scrolled down a few pages and was asking myself "what the hell does this article have to do with population?" before realizing it's just stringing a bunch of articles together in one big scroller.

Only then did I realize that it was just the top 1/3 of the beginning of the scroller (which I skipped because it looked like a bunch of spammy noise).

<comment><USER9> Also it won't let me scroll with clicking the middle mouse wheel and dragging the mouse. That's how I quickly skim an article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Link to the actual article: [http://data.qz.com/2014/qz- sexmap/](http://data.qz.com/2014/qz-sexmap/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm the author of this piece. If you have any questions, go ahead and I'll try to answer.

<comment><USER11> What's the actual article? I get "Teaching women to fight today could stop rapes tomorrow". The string "60" doesn't appear anywhere...

<comment><USER12> I had the same thing, then I tried in incognito and it worked. Probably adblocker or something.

<comment><USER11> Oh yeah, it works in incognito.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interestingly some researchers believe that sex is determined due to hormones (rather than genes - i.e. it's not possible to create a breed that biases one sex more than another), and that there is a bias in animal (including human) populations. It's not determined by a simple roll of the dice.

In some insects the female is able to select gender specifically by fertilising the egg with sperm or withholding it.

In others, it seems that it has to do with ambient temperature, abundance of food, etc. If there are enough resources to make a large offspring, the most optimal one is produced that can benefit by being largest. In turtles it's a female, in crocodiles a male is produced (IIRC).

Anyway, in humans, higher rankers typically have male offspring. Apparently American presidents have had a disproportionately large number of sons. Poorer families typically desire - and apparently some studies indicate produce - more girls. This can again be explained by what is most optimal. It's more common in human societies for males to inherit rank, whereas women can marry into it. So poorer families in some cultures bequeath more wealth to women for dowries so they can try to buy their way into higher classes. By contrast, higher ranking men can father more children.

I'm basically regurgitating what I've been reading in The Red Queen. Not my ideas - check out the book. It's very interesting.

<comment><USER13> American presidents aren't exactly a large sample size. I seriously doubt any statistically interesting data can be derived from such a small set.

<comment><USER14> Sample sizes have nothing to do with it. If you want to study the determinants of presidency in the US it's a 1:1 sample.

I keep repeating this on news.ycombinator: statistical analysis is predicated on the prior hypothesis that the stuff you're measuring is orthogonal to the stuff that you can't measure.

So: what are we measuring? What are we _not_ measuring? Is our theory that people exerting power have more testosterone and hence have more sons? That can be tested in wider populations, and including presidents might just be a huge confounding factors. Is it that presidents become powerful because they have the Mystery Factor, and that, too, is behind the excess sons?

If, by construction, only presidents have the Mystery Factor, we have to start from there. But then we need theories about the Mystery Factor to test. And controls, men who haven't become president by a matter of chance, and so on.

On the other hand: you can have _huge_ datasets generated from website design tests and still end up doing "A/A testing" and such cargo cult statistics, complete with sacrifices to the gods of large sample sizes.</comment></comment></comment>


Evaluation of 18F's Information Technology Security Compliance - <AUTHOR> https://www.gsaig.gov/content/evaluation-18f%E2%80%99s-information-technology-security-compliance <comment><USER2> This is an epic bureaucratic smackdown. Somehow in the bowels of The GSA, Moradoc, the preventer of information technology is cackling gleefully.

Highlights:

\- "We found that 100 of the 116 software items listed, or 86 percent, had not been submitted for review and approval by GSA IT for use in the GSA information technology environment."

\- PII leak

\- "We also found that during the period of June 2, 2015 through July 15 2016, 18F entered into contracts and other agreements for the acquisition of information technology valued at over $24.8 million without obtaining review and approval of the contracts by GSA's CIO. These contracts included $21.5 million for infrastructure services, $2.5 million for support services, $484,641 for software, and $332,909 for hardware."

\- "Employees of an executive agency are prohibited from sending work-related emails using an unofficial email account unless the employee copies their official account when the message is first created or within 20 days after the original creation or transmission. GSA's Information Technology Security Policy reinforces this requirement.15 During the course of our review, we found that 27 unofficial email accounts belonging to 18F staff had been used to send work-related emails without copying or forwarding the messages to the employees' official GSA email account as required. Among the 27 unofficial email accounts used to conduct GSA business were those of the former TTS Commissioner, Phaedra Chrousos, a senior 18F advisor, and an 18F director."

<comment><AUTHOR> To play devils advocate: federal authorization workflows for such things can be notoriously slow and counter intuitive. I'd argue that 18F's completed projects, and any other contract company's similar attempts, would either be impossible or greatly underperformed if done "the proper way."

Of course, security is not something that can be played off as technical debt and 18F is definitely in the wrong here. However, the security apparatus of the federal government must evolve if projects like 18F's improvements to healthcare.gov are desired in the federal space. You cant have monolithic waterfall processes and agile project performance anymore than you can eat your cake and have it too.

<comment><USER2> I completely agree with you.</comment></comment></comment>


What a Rotten World It Can Be: Report Says Three-Fourths of World Is Corrupt - <AUTHOR> http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/10/26/what-a-rotten-world-it-can-be-report-says-three-fourths-of-world-is-corrupt/ <comment><USER2> I've always felt that it is important to keep in mind that there's corruption and then there is _corruption_...not all corruption comes in the same flavor. For example, I have the feeling that corruption in Mexico (#98) associated with drug cartels is primarily driven by money. Your own brother might shoot you if he was paid enough by one of the cartels. This sort of corruption seems to be 100% detrimental to society.

Then there are places like Turkey (#56) where corruption is much more family oriented. Let's say you're mayor of a small town in Turkey, and you need to fill some lower level functionary position like Director of Sanitation. You're aunt or grandmother might come to you and tell you that you should give that position to your no-good lazy slacker of a cousin who's been out of work for the past 6 months, even though he's not exactly qualified. You wouldn't dare say no! You couldn't...you'd be disowned. Is it corrupt? cronyism? Sure. Is it as bad as the money driven corruption you've got from the drug cartels in Mexico?

Well, I'm not so sure. You see, while this sort of corruption does impede progress by not giving those most qualified the positions of power, there is something to be said for strong family bonds. Visiting Istanbul you won't see _nearly_ as many homeless as you do visiting NYC. Why? Most of the homeless in NYC are individuals with some psychological ailment (most often Schizophrenia) and it is often more than a spouse can handle on their own to take care of such individuals. Caring for these problems really requires a strong family and community of helpers. You'll find that is much more common in a place like Turkey, where family means so much.

Would the world be better off with less corruption? Sure. But I guess my point is that not all corruption should be treated equally...

<comment><USER3> Corruption is always caused by government doing more than what it should be doing. To illustrate from your examples, if a government does sanitation and therefore has a cushy job for the director of sanitation, this is a breeding ground for corruption. The solution is to get the government out of the sanitation business. Let this function be carried out by privately competing sanitation companies.

Likewise, if a government seeks to prevent people from using drugs, this is a breeding ground for corruption. The solution is get government out of the drug prohibition business.

<comment><USER4> The bottom line of your argument seems to be: No government, no corruption. Which is more or less correct, but not really helpful: Without any government you have to pay the guy with the gun or he'll shoot you in the head (no one there to hinder him). Different? Sure. Better? I'd say no.

<comment><USER3> As long as there are thieves and robbers, people will always need protection. And protection, unless you do it yourself, usually has to be paid for. Thus your statement, "you have to pay the guy with the gun" is true without the qualification of "without any government." In most ordered societies today, the man with the gun is government and if you don't pay him, he will take away your property and liberty, though usually not your life.

Corruption arises when government, i.e. the man-with-the-gun-who-must-be-paid, goes beyond protecting property and, abusing its power, begins infringing on liberty.

As long as the police stick to preventing robbery, forcible rape, and other assaults on liberty and property, corruption is not a problem. It is only when they begin interfering with the free market, for example, trying to prevent the exchange of pot between willing sellers and willing buyers, that corruption arises. If the government would stick to protecting liberty and property, there would be (practically) no corruption because the overwhelming majority of people support laws protecting liberty and property.

The bottom line of my argument is: no abuse of government power, no corruption. This is helpful because it clarifies the legitimate role of government in practice. Corruption and widespread law breaking become symptoms of an abuse of government power. The cure is to rein in the abuse of government. Without this understanding, the natural tendency of politicians is to fight corruption by making it worse: by increasing government abuse of power, e.g., the war on drugs.

<comment><USER5> "As long as the police stick to preventing robbery, forcible rape, and other assaults on liberty and property, corruption is not a problem. It is only when they begin interfering with the free market..."

What happens when a company grows so rich and powerful that it can influence your supposedly small government to protect company interests with new laws that have nothing to do with protecting liberty and property?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I found this video of Milton Friedman helpful in understanding corruption: ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-7oMOxPjNE&feature=autof...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-7oMOxPjNE&feature=autofb)). He argues that corruption is caused by government passing laws which do not appeal to people's moral instincts. The way to eliminate corruption is to get rid of laws which provide incentives for bribery. If a nation has a small, efficient government, free trade, low taxes, little business regulation, and little if any prohibitions on vice (alcohol/tobacco/drug use, gambling, prostitution, etc.), what is there to bribe a government official about?

But when governments pass laws that are widely disrespected, this creates a culture of corruption which rots away the just administration of all the laws, even those that would normally be considered legitimate, like laws on burglary, assault, and murder.

<comment><USER6> Risking downvotes but here I go anyway...

It's interesting to compare his theory against the country where his theories were first, and arguably most purely put into practice - Pinochet-era Chile.

The measures put forward by Friedman + his acolytes resulted in huge unemployment, inflation, and many multi-nationals effectively stealing wealth away.

In order for the people to 'accept' these measures Pinochet instituted oppression, abandonment of the freedom of the press, torture, and extra- judicial killings.

I think the ideas which originate from the creator of neo-liberalism ought to be judged against the evidence of its actual implementation in real life before recommending its architect's theories on dealing with just about anything.

The laws that were passed in Chile, as with many other countries which have instituted exactly the policies you outline were widely disrespected, and that disrespect was 'dealt with' in various arguably really rather negative ways.

I am certain that corruption also remained a problem throughout.

For references and discussion of this phenomenon, see The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein - <http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0141024534/>

<comment><USER7> > I think the ideas which originate from the creator of neo-liberalism ought > to be judged against the evidence of its actual implementation in real life > before recommending its architect's theories on dealing with just about > anything.

Fair enough. China, Cuba, the USSR....

<comment><USER6> > Fair enough. China, Cuba, the USSR....

Hardly wonderful examples of corruption-free parts of the world!!

Or ought there be a sarcasm indicator in that message? :)

<comment><USER7> I'm not referring to corruption, but suggesting that we can apply the "I think the ideas which originate from the creator of neo-liberalism ought to be judged against the evidence of its actual implementation in real life before recommending its architect's theories on dealing with just about anything." to communism/socialism.

Of course, that standard is always rejected when it comes to communism/socialism.

<comment><USER6> I absolutely apply the same standard to communism, socialism or any political/economic system.

There are alternatives to extremes, which both communism and neoliberalism can safely be described as I think - a Keynesian approach has a great deal of evidence in the positive behind it (the new deal for example), and I am sure he has had (I know far too little to comment myself) opinions on corruption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "At least we're doing better than Uruguay and France."

As a Uruguayan, I wouldn't say so :) , and the point is:

"it seems the pesky ghost of Watergate just won't go away"

The perception of corruption in the US comes from the high-level cronyism in the Bush administration, not from Watergate. (Enron, Halliburton and Dick Cheney don't have a good reputation on these parts). And I'm certain there will be some mud on the Democrats' side as well afterwards.

In Uruguay we do have some problems with high-level corruption, but it's the low level small things that put us on a slightly lower level than the US.

</comment><comment><USER9> Recently there was an HN link to a list of the best countries to do business - <http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings>. When I looked at that list, I remember thinking that the one column which was missing was corruption. It was definitely a factor for two companies I worked for when they set up operations overseas and jumped through licensing and regulatory hurdles.

</comment><comment><USER10> Direct link to survey results: [http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/...](http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results)

</comment><comment><USER11> As a Norwegian resident, I'm a bit surprised to find that Norway lags noticeably behind Denmark, Sweden and Finland on the chart. I'll have to dig a bit to find out why...

</comment><comment><USER12> I think that to understand corruption the only sane path is seeing this as an evolutionary advantage. As long as it will continue to provide an advantage it will last.

We need to evolve more to kill corruption.

What is sad is that a percentage of the world population is already at this state of evolution, and the rest is not. It is not very cool...

<comment><USER13> The above comment shows the early stages of eugenic thought. Separating people out into more- or less-evolved is a very dangerous thing to do. Or perhaps it's just an unfortunate choice of words.

IMHO, corruption is just the free market's way of overcoming bureaucracy.

<comment><USER12> not sure if I was clear in my comment but I don't mean that people that regret corruption live in a specific part of the world. They are everywhere, just not enough.

And when I talk about evolution I mean cultural evolution, as this kind of ideas are not carried genetically I guess (but a general attitude to benefit from circumstances may be carried genetically I guess).

Still as long as it will be a strong advantage, it will last.

For instance police in Italy here is trivially corruptible. They are payed low to do a work that if done well will put them in danger. It's much simpler to take money I guess. Our society is paying more people misbehaving.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Corruption is present everywhere; the only thing that differs from place to place is the price.

I, for one, like low prices :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Why is it that the "western world" rank low in corruption?

<comment><USER3> More freedom. If government doesn't prohibit or overregulate a thing, there is no chance of there being corruption about that thing. So, for example, when the Soviet Union was around and the economy was tightly regulated and commerce was tightly restricted, corruption abounded. It still abounds in areas of high government involvement.

For example, if government has few regulations on starting a business, there little need for corruption. If, however, there are a lot of regulations, then the result will be that you need to "payoff" local officials in order to open and operate a business.

The question then becomes: why do eastern peoples tend to tolerate big, intrusive governments and western people tend to like freedom?

<comment><USER15> There are many developing countries, e.g Indonesia, that are quite "free", too.

<comment><USER16> Indonesia has only been politically free since the late 90's, but is still very corrupt. India and Pakistan are also "free" politically but corruption is pervasive.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Corona game from 14-year-old reaches no 1, passes Angry Birds - <AUTHOR> http://blog.anscamobile.com/2011/01/corona-game-from-14-year-old-developer-reaches-1-passes-angry-birds/

<comment><USER2> This is a bit disingenuous.

1\. It did not pass Angry Birds, but Angry Birds Seasons Free, which is a relatively new app.

2\. The Free app list is more volatile in general.

Still, congrats to the developer on becoming so visible so quickly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Off-topic: It's one thing to be inspired by Apples web design, but to completely rip it off is in bad taste.

<comment><USER4> Who really cares, as long as they're not infringing copyrights? This site design may have been tested to work for attracting their audience and converting interested eyeballs into sales.

They are not selling a continuous service or "lifestyle" product, so I'm not sure if they would benefit from having a site with a unique visual identity.

At $349, the Corona SDK is not a cheap product in a world where most development kits have become free... Looking like Apple may be just the simplest way of reassuring their customers that they're getting something that fits the Mac development environment like a glove.

<comment><USER5> The web design almost turned me off completely from investigating Corona further. Then again, I come from a web design background, so I may be more sensitive to that than others. Fortunately for Corona, the actual product does seem to be the best for what I'm looking for.

<comment><USER6> It's a dashcode output (aka the free web design thingy that comes with XCode).

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

Apple makes the tool that makes websites look like that.

<comment><USER7> I cannot find this template in Dashcode. Does it use Blueprint CSS framework too?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "As of January 14, it has gotten 1,571,213 downloads!"

That's about two weeks that the app has been out. Incredible.

<comment><USER8> Yes it is... more so when you try to play it, which I did just now. It isn't bad, but I also wouldn't call it a great game. I just don't understand the popularity...

<comment><USER9> I'll pretty much download anything new that pops up on the free list. A lot of it is junk that gets deleted fast, but if other people are doing the same...

<comment><USER10> Free and downloaded isn't the same as free and replayed.

I download Xbox Live demos of almost everything, I may only buy 1/100 that I try (exaggeration). I'm sure this game has some modicum of popularity, but you can only truly tell by longevity when something is being served to you for free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone have any experience using corona? How well does it work, how full featured is it, etc?

<comment><USER12> I've used it for a few apps and am generally happy with it. Search for Wetwork or ConsultUtah in the app store to see what I've done.

I definitely congratulate anyone that can make that kind of headway. It makes me feel extremely humble that I can't get anywhere near the results that this 14 year old has... ;-)

<comment><USER12> Here is a great follow-up review from someone that has had success in writing iphone apps with Corona: [http://jonbeebe.tumblr.com/post/2726165170/corona- sdk-revisi...](http://jonbeebe.tumblr.com/post/2726165170/corona-sdk- revisited)

<comment><USER11> Great article, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm glad to see other tools for RAD succeeding but after trying it I don't know that it is the most polished game and probably wouldn't survive if it wasn't free (almost hate saying that about a 14-year-old's game).

</comment><comment><USER14> It's an excellent name and I wish I had thought of it. People seem to like the word "bubble" in the app store. Not sure why, but there is definitely a trend there if you look into it.

<comment><USER15> Will "Bubble %s" become the new "Doodle %s" for copycat games? It's interesting to watch the popularity of certain, seemingly random, words in copycat game titles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting. I´ve found better, free ¨physics¨ games in the past with simple exercises in kinematics. The engine seems slightly off from my limited playing after seeing this article, and the graphics almost detract from the game. It´s just odd that this particular game ended up with so much popularity.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if he did anything to market it. He's either incredibly good or incredibly lucky.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite Bachelor Chow recipes? - <AUTHOR>

Many of us here are almost too busy to cook, so we end up eating out a lot.  This is costly, and not as healthy as it can be.  To remedy that, I'd like to start a thread for your favorite quick to prepare, cheap, healthy recipes, which I like to refer to as "Bachelor Chow" (you know, like the stuff that Fry eats on Futurama).  There are no hard qualifications, but basically anything that can either be prepared in about 5 minutes (even if it has to cook for a half hour or so), and/or something that you can make a large quantity of and it keeps good for leftovers.
For example:  Chicken and yellow rice -- get a bag of frozen chicken breasts (about $7, usually has 4 - 6 pieces of various sizes), a bag of mixed frozen vegetables, and a package of yellow rice (essentially, rice with turmeric and other seasonings).  Boil 1 - 2 pieces of chicken (takes about 15 minutes to boil), cut or tear into small pieces, throw chicken pieces, frozen peas, yellow rice, and appropriate amount of water in a pan (the rice package gives how much water to add), cover and cook for about half an hour.  Total time in front of stove, 5 minutes (broken down into two separate sessions), total cooking time about 45 minutes. Variations include using strips of boneless pork chops (brown pork first in skillet, doesn't have to be cooked all the way through), and you can slice up red potatoes on top instead of peas.
Both of these are awesome even a few days later (or fill small bags with the leftovers and throw them in the freezer.
Another quick recipe is beef stew -- basically a package of stew meat ($6.00 or so), a large bag of soup-mix vegetables (this should include potatoes, or you can cut up red potatoes -- reds, so you don't have to peel the skins), a package of stew seasoning.  About $9, makes enough for about 6 meals.
So, any others?  If this thread gets some up-votes, I'll add a few more in the comments section. <comment><USER2> Chicken adobo is really easy and good. [1]

I usually do it a bit more simply. Brown chicken thighs and drumsticks in a pot, remove chicken and then add 1 onion sliced into chunks and some garlic. Brown onions and garlic. Add white wine vinegar, a carrot or two and a bit of water and maybe a splash of soy sauce and the chicken back in. You can put one cut up tomato in if you like too. Cover and cook for another 30 mins or so. Takes about 45 mins, mostly unattended. Serve with rice.

[1] [http://www.amateurgourmet.com/2012/05/chicken- adobo.html](http://www.amateurgourmet.com/2012/05/chicken-adobo.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been eating vegetarian and enjoying it. One thing I do is saute some veggies like onions, celery, garlic, jalapeno in some refined coconut oil, then add a can of drained and rinsed pinto beans and mash them up. It lasts a while, and you can put some hummus on a sprouted grain tortilla, then add some of the bean mixture and even some rice if you want, it's damn good. Especially if you grill the tortilla too.

I still eat meat sometimes, but it's just so much more expensive than a package or can of beans. Beans are really versatile.

Also, sometimes I'll make deviled eggs. Put eggs in pot of cool water and bring to boil. After eggs boil for about a minute, take off the heat, cover and let sit 10-15 mins. Afterwords, pour cold water or even water with ice to chill the eggs and stop them from cooking (this will give you bright, yellow centers instead of the yucky grey).

Then if you have like 4 eggs, you can add say a tbsp of sweet pickle relish, tbsp or less of mayo, tsp dijon mustard, tsp vinegar, and mash all that with the egg yolks. You can also use some finely chopped celery & onion if u want. Or u can always man up and add some cooked bacon. Pretty good stuff. protip- slice eggs lengthwise to obtain a more consistent cut through the yolk (the cavity depth in the white part of the eggs will be more consistent this way, which just makes it look better)

</comment><comment><USER4> Leftover chicken soup. This was invented one Saturday afternoon when I looked in the fridge and it was practically bare. One piece of chicken thigh, one onion and 3 leaves of celery was the entire contents of the fridge.

Sautee the chicken thigh in a bit of olive oil. Wait until it cools and strip off the cooked meat. Put the bones and skin in a pot of water and boil for a while. Dump water into another pot or a bowl through a sieve or strainer. Chuck out the bones/skin.

Now, chop the meat into chunks, and start sauteeing them in olive oil while the broth simmers in the pot. Chop the onion and add it to the frypan. Chop the celery and add it to the pan. Add some salt to the pan, and any handy herbs. After a few more minutes dump it all into the broth an boil together 5 minues. Then add half a cup of rice and turn down to a slow simmer for an hour or so. Eat when the rice is no longer crunchy.

You could do better with adding some other veggies but, honest, that is all that I had in the fridge that day.

</comment><comment><USER5> Slow cooker soup recipes. You put a bunch of stuff into the slow cooker, let it sit for 4-8 hours and are awarded with an awesome meal that will last you several days.

One favorite recipe from a friend:

Ingredients: • 1 (16 oz.) pkg. dried green split peas, rinsed • 1-2 ham hocks, depending on how much of a carnivore you are. • 3 carrots, peeled and sliced • 1/2 cup chopped white onion • 2 ribs of celery plus leaves, chopped • 2 cloves of garlic, minced • 1 bay leaf • 1 tbsp. total Spices: Marjoram, Thyme, Rosemary, Savory, Sage, Oregano, and Basil • 1 tbsp. seasoned salt • 1 tsp. fresh pepper • 1 1/2 liters water Preparation: Layer ingredients in slow cooker in the order given; pour in water. Do not stir ingredients. Cover and cook on HIGH 5 hours or on low 10 hours until peas are very soft and ham falls off bone. Remove bones and bay leaf. Mash peas to thicken more, if desired.

If you want healthy - I go for smoothies in the vitamix. Mostly some mesh between fruit and green smoothies.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not great for leftovers, but Thai omelettes/frittatas (ไข่เจียวหมูสับ) are my go-to meal. I keep bags of chopped green onions and cooked ground pork in the freezer and have have a squeeze bottle of minced garlic in the fridge to make it quick and easy. Crack a few (I usually do 3) eggs in a cup and mix in some fish sauce and/or seasoning sauce. Cut up a tomato. Put some oil in a frying pan at medium-high heat, add garlic and green onions. Add pork and tomato a little later. Give it another 30 seconds or so and pour the egg mixture over everything and stir it up. Let it set up a bit and then stir it again to get everything cooked faster. Once it's cooked through and a bit browned on the bottom, flip it over and cook long enough to brown that side. Put it on some rice and top with Thai Sriracha sauce (the rooster brand stuff isn't Thai, but it will work if you don't have the right stuff).

Thai massaman curry and Japanese curry are both pretty easy and are great for leftovers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I think I would include this as a form of bachelor chow too. Even without leftovers, any time you can batch the prep work, and pull out a small quantity at a time, cook quickly and eat, then it is still a time saver.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Egg fried rice is great - not much prep, and the time it takes to cook once prepped is minimal. You could be eating within minutes of getting home from work if you prep the day before!

As for the recipe, there are a lot of versions out there, but I've had the best results with Felicity Cloake's: [http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/jan...](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/jan/19/how- to-cook-perfect-egg-fried-rice)

Edit: It's a bit controversial but Delia Smith's "How To Cheat At Cooking" is an interesting recipe book if you want to knock up tasty meals quickly. Jamie Oliver has books (and apps!) specifically for fast meals - 20 minute meals. I liked the app but I couldn't reproduce the results as fast as him!

</comment><comment><USER8> Two things that I cook that make a ton and will freeze are baked ziti (or lasagna, ziti is a bit easier on prep), and Japanese curry. Prep on the curry takes a while because there's a lot of vegetable chopping, but cost per serving is pretty low.

Walk down the frozen section and see what they're selling. It'll all freeze well if you make it yourself.

I also enjoy tonkatsu, because it's basically like flour, egg, panko, fry. By the time you've done all that your rice is cooked. Good with either pork or chicken. Tonkatsu sauce is awesome on rice. Leftover rice you can make fried rice out of with any leftover meat.

</comment><comment><USER9> Pita bread can be used to make quick and tasty meals.

Use thyme and olive oil spread on top of a pita and put in toaster over. Very tasty as a side dish or by itself. It's call Manakish. [http://arabic- food.blogspot.ca/2008/12/manakish-recipe.html](http://arabic- food.blogspot.ca/2008/12/manakish-recipe.html)

Instead of thyme, use pizza sauce and toppings, or ground beef/lamb/chicken with spices like thyme or oregano.

Pita bread is pretty cheap and lasts a long time in the freezer. A few minutes in the microwave will soften up the bread.

</comment><comment><USER4> Coleslaw with salmon: tasty, HEALTHY and nutritious.

Cut a chunk of cabbage, slice it into shred by keeping the leaves together while slicing. Dump in bowl, add salt to taste. Grate two or three carrots, dump in bowl, add a couple of dashes of balsamic vinegar. Mix and let it sit for 15 or 20 minutes, or a couple of hours if you forget... who cares. Then, add some mayonnaise, and a can of drained salmon broken into chunks as you dump it out. Mix so that the mayonnaise is spread out through the salad and eat. Yummy.

</comment><comment><USER10> Oily fish make for some great quick high-protein meals.

Smoked salmon and smoked trout are the easiest of all — obtain from supermarket, open packet, eat — the only disadvantage is that this can cost upwards of $5 per meal.

Other options include herrings and tuna. My preference here for a quick meal is boil-in-the-bag kippers. I know people who will eat herring or tuna out of a can, but personally I find them too "fishy" that way.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like to make ramen with sandwich beef strips. The sandwich beef comes thin sliced so it broils in like 15 minutes, and I slice it into thin strips. A whole package of it is a good ratio of meat to ramen for 1 package of ramen & it makes 2 servings. Add a tablespoon of butter & a little steak sauce for extra flavor.

</comment><comment><USER12> My favorite easymode lunch when I was telecommuting was Triscuits and sharp cheddar. ~$8 (at Whole Foods, figure half that price if you're thrifty) will yield atleast four decent lunches, each with a good mix of carbs, fat, fiber, and protein.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's another one: Bagel Pizzas. Slice a few bagels, spread pizza sauce, cover with pepperoni, olive slices, mozzarella cheese, and bake on a cookie sheet for 10 minutes until the cheese is melted.

<comment><USER4> So complicated. How about slices of toast, buttered lightly with salted butter, some strips of cheddar cheese, and thinly sliced tomatoes. Put under the broiler of your toaster oven.

Yay, pizza.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> corned beef hash, frozen hashbrowns, canned corned beef flaked, frozen or canned corn in skillet. Maybe add egg and cheese.</comment>


Ask HN: Decent Windows imaging software? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know of any programs that enable you to take an image of a 32 bit Windows 2003 Server machine (including the OS) and then restore that image back onto a remote server (for example a vanilla Amazon ec2 Windows instance).
My key requirements are:
1.  Ability to restore remotely (via an RDP session) - not from boot or boot disk
2.  Cost - would like to keep this to a minimum - ideally open source if available
I've tried the following software already:
These all look to require access to the boot of the machine -
http://www.symantec.com/connect/forums/ghost-windows-2003-server
http://www.acronis.com/backup-recovery/server-windows/
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-windows.htm
http://www.clonezilla.org/ <comment><USER2> I haven't seen anything like that but I'd like to!</comment>