Half Life of a Tech Worker: 15 Years - Slashdot - <AUTHOR> http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/12/03/1435217/half-life-of-a-tech-worker-15-years?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29 <comment><USER3> The fact that Google's employees are young does not say anything or imply anything about the half life of a computer programmer. It's just one data point. Here are reasons why it is skewed:

* Fast-growing companies at large scale do enormous amounts of college recruiting. That's because the quality of the pool is much higher than the pool of out-of-work programmers... not because young people are smarter or better programmers but simply because the candidate pool includes a cross-section of skills, whereas the candidate pool of out-of-work programmers is biased to programmers who _can't_ find work.

See also: [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FindingGreatDeveloper...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FindingGreatDevelopers.html)

Thus, the average age at Facebook is younger than Google, at Google it's younger than Microsoft, and Microsoft is younger than IBM. It's just a question of when the biggest growth spurt occurred in hiring.

* Nobody was working as a software developer 30 years ago. Well, of course, not nobody, but this field has grown like CRAZY. Everybody knows that, but they don't think of the implications. Even if every software developer who started work in 1980 was still working today as a software developer, they would only constitute a small fraction of the current workforce because the number of software developers in 1980 was miniscule. And you would expect them to be working in relatively mature companies simply because those were the companies that were around when they got their jobs.

Bottom line--this "mystery of the disappearing tech worker" is a good bit more imaginary than real and is probably mostly explained by the kinds of people you're hanging around with, not a real social phenomena.

See also: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=computer+software+appli...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=computer+software+applications+engineers) (If anyone can figure out how to get older data than Wolfram Alpha displays, I'd appreciate it)

<comment><USER4> I wish I knew how the Googles and Facebooks hire a crowd of junior programmers and have them do these amazing things.

I am in the 5th year of leading development teams and have more than 5 years to go until my half-life is over. Yet, I have not figured out how to run a team entirely of junior programmers. Yes, they come with a lot of energy and current knowledge but there is also so much missing that people gain from, well, experience. In the field of software but also in all the adjacent domains that are so crucial for being successful as a team. I cannot image how I would do without having a few senior people around who can give things a little structure and a little broader understanding of things.

Also, most experienced folks, even if not super up-to-date with fancy technology, are a hell of a lot more productive than the shooting-from-the-hip youngster. They don't need to put in 12 hour days.

My other problem is that it's so hard to actually find good senior programmers. There are also a lot of people who got stuck more than ten years ago ...

<comment><USER5> My experienced as an unofficial team lead of a few programmers with various experience (which I conclude that they were Jr. Programmers with a few years of lack of mentorship) was to do the following:

1) Define structure

Set some rules. Coding styles, check-in etiquette

2) Find tools to limit mistakes

Static code analysis, automate build that breaks when #1 fails.

3) Always on alert

Do a lot of code reviews. A lot. Argue and fight over little things (variable naming convention, missing documentations, unclear code).

Now this might not sit well with others so get ready:

4) Become a "drill" sergeant

I find that becoming the "bulldog" sometime works. You've got to become some sort of "drill" sergeant. People may dislike you at first but if the project is successful, they can hate you all the way to the exit door all they like.

That was my experience. I made a concious decision to put the success of the project as the top priority. Even if it means breaking some bridges with other programmers. I hope they learn why I did those things in the future. If they don't, I won't quarrel or regret my action.

5) Be nice on other occasions

I may be the biggest jerk during code-review and check-in commits but when my co-workers stuck, I'll be gladly help them even if it means I have to sit with them and do my overtime. This can gain you some respect after confrontation/intense debate/being a jerk.

I always try to be friendly during office/release party. Give credit to the team, etc.

<comment><USER6> Just an alternative to #4 (which I have been on times with various degrees of success).

What's the #1 thing people are afraid of? Public shame. I have a theory that Scrum primarily works because of this. Just have daily Scrum-light meetings with your group. If you have 15 minutes with a group of 5-6 people and everyone has to say either "done" or "not done"... the not dones will of course have some silly excuse, but because of the time constraint you must cut them off, be curt, and say to the effect "so John can you help Dan with that right after we break?". And then everyone would make commitments on to what they would do that day. I guess in a way you can say this was being a drill sergeant, but the thing was I wasn't an a-hole, that 15 minute meeting every morning was just part of the process, it was expected.

After a few weeks of this everything moves at twice the speed. I had a team of 6 devs (including myself) burn through nearly 200 bugs in 2 months. That's every engineer fixing about 4 bugs a day. There was a hug chasm of talents on that team... we had the top guy in my dept as well as one of the weakest engineers on the same team. Everyone performed.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps there is a more euphemistic term than "shame", but I agree that Scrum and code reviews harness this shame in a positive way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This lack of senior developers also leads to the chronic amnesia our industry has, that includes reinventing the wheel every 10 years (same wheel different color). The more the things change the more they stay the same.

<comment><USER5> I wish more people hear your opinion.

I'm on my late 20 and I went to my alma-mater library once a week in the past. I grabbed old books (Liskov, Bentley, Kernighan, some of the software engineering books, etc) a few times and I was surprised to see methods or techniques that people use these days and considered cutting edge were being discussed in a THIN, DUSTY, paper with YELLOW-ish color books.

There are plenty wisdoms in those old books yet these days people were gung-ho with the latest greatest.

I'm not saying that the latest greatest aren't advancing our thought. It's just that there are more noises than actual wisdoms.

<comment><USER8> The noise I contribute to the general low average age of our industry. Lots of strong opinions combined with inexperience leads to flame wars.

More people would be better off doing their 10 000 hours of practice before raising their voice in an opinion.

That said I always thought the guild model of apprenticeship would be a better model for developing our craft. But I'm not sure how one would go about setting something like that up.

<comment><USER9> Raising your voice to have an opinion and getting in lots of flamewars is a fine way to improve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "by the time you hit 35 you better have a plan".

This _should_ go for everyone, not just tech workers. We only get so many years on this planet, and assuming you make it to 35 and are reasonably healthy, you've likely got a lot more years ahead of you (another 40ish?).

You've had some education about life, work, money, etc. You've got no more excuses by 35. Have a plan. Have a backup plan. Understand what you'll need to do to execute on that plan.

For tech workers, this may be going in to consulting, doing a startup (two of the more popular ones), but it also may be moving around to different companies to keep tech skills cutting edge (or demanding that from current employers). Not everyone will be accommodating to your plan, but _you_ have to execute. If current employers won't support you, find new employers.

There's probably many reasons people leave standard tech/dev work by that age - employers wanting cheaper/younger workers is the most popular reason/excuse, and there's probably some truth to that. But I moved out of that because much of it was boring. Some of the _work_ was still interesting (data sizes, algorithms, etc) but the day to day realities of 'corporate life' grew tiresome. Never saying never - I won't rule out "corporate job" again - <USER2> fact, there's always some interesting companies popping up that need my skills/labor, and one day I may join one again. But my mindset is totally different about how I would approach a "job" again, and that mindset probably puts off many would-be employers anyway (making finding one both harder and easier at the same time).

So... what's your plan (those of you 35 or older)?

<comment><USER11> I would go even further than you and say "have a plan by 25" myself. Why dick around and be a fool for longer than is absolutely necessary? :)

I am all for learning by making painful mistakes, but one should cut the failure iteration cycle as short as possible. Learn the lesson by scraping your knees, not by breaking your legs, is my analogy.

This is good reading for those who, like me, are in their mid-20s: <http://tynan.com/youngpeople>

I look at my age peers and I am flabbergasted that they seem to spend all their free time on fashion, computer games, going to clubs, Facebook, etc.

I spend basically all my free time reading, engaging in self-improvement activities, and plotting for my eventual world domination (heh).

Sorry for ranting, but this is a topic that is close to my heart :)

<comment><USER10> I don't disagree, and wish I'd had a better plan in place by 25, but culturally in the US, we've had a generation or two that have taken longer to grow up. Kids living with parents until late 20s, harder job market, etc. 25 is great, but for some reason culturally we still accept 25 year olds being flakes.

So.. there's still some acceptable excuses for flitting away your 20s (not really acceptable _to me_ , but I'm not in charge!) but by _35_ there's just no good excuse to not have a life plan in place.

<comment><USER11> Ah, gotcha.

I'm in Sweden, and it's the same here, possibly even worse.

I've been reading self-help materials non-stop for the past 5 years. When I introduce this stuff to people my age they just stare at me like I'm an alien.

They also seem to have no concept of real individuality. Ie in Sweden most everyone my age looks like a bizarre hipster, 'cause that's what the fashion is and deviating is not an option (the most popular blogs here by far are vapid girls posting about their daily outfits).

Combine this with lack of sunshine, über-costly alcohol, super-cocky entitled chicks who wear basketball shoes all the time and refuse to smile, high taxes, shitty wages, inbred media, lack of gung-ho disruptive startup people to hang with, a culture of mindless consensus, public transportation which is always delayed, snow which refuses to arrive around Christmas when it's wanted and instead fucks you in February, a PM with doggy-dinner bowl eyes and a main contender who's some kind of mustached character who's very creative with the truth, inferior Christmas food, total surveillance of all Internet/phone traffic, getting your Vitamin D solely from a bottle of pills, annoying Stockholm people who think their Milwaukee-sized hamlet is the world, the gov't wanting to regulate everything, the law of jante, Stalinist gov't liquor stores where they scowl at you for buying alcohol, everyone expecting the gov't to fix everything, people being un-creative and uninterested in my ideas, everyone being dressed like some bizarro ironic lumberjack with Buddy Holly glasses, houses being like the albino rhinoceros in terms of their availability to the common man, all people (including chicks) filling their body with ugly tattoos and piercings and being proud of it, chicks who are more interested in dogs than men, supermarkets where they rape your wallet and then scowl at you for entering their premises, punctuality being more important than actual productivity, being hit on by fiendish cougars ONLY when you go out on the weekends, daring to exist and being scowled at, everyone uncritically relying on "experts" all the time, it being FUCKING COLD, etc, and you have one unhappy itmag :(

Fuck Sweden, give me my Green Card already!

/rant

<comment><USER12> I think you had better have a day off and perhaps investigate home-brewing.

Seriously, most people have more than one career, I'm on my third. I see no reason why the same should not apply to computer programmers.

Right now, I've slowly begun to realise that I can produce documentation and tutorials that people find useful. This may (or may not) lead to career number four.

<comment><USER11> I don't think I'm cut out to have a career per se, it's startups or nothing for me: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3283401>

Which got quoted on teh Internetz: [http://unicornfree.com/2011/fuck-glory- startups-are-one-long...](http://unicornfree.com/2011/fuck-glory-startups-are- one-long-con/)

<comment><USER12> Hummm, home brewing then. You career is being an employee of a startup? Do you have any side projects between startups?

<comment><USER11> What I meant to say is that I want to start my own startup in the not so distant future.

Sure, I run a magazine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My tech half life was almost exactly 15 years. I am just posting this to vent. The last year of my life has been frustrating.

I had my first job at age 21. A month before my 36th birthday, I left my last job. I have not been able to get a job since.

I have applied for 58 jobs over the past year and have gotten a response 11 times. I got a phone screen for three of these jobs, and got to an in-person interview for one of them. All rejected.

I am not a superstar but I have built solid things including sites from scratch that are still running on the web. I worked on parts of an iPad app that has over 3 million downloads in the app store. I solved the programming challenges on the HR pages of two hot companies. (Didn't hear back from one, was told there weren't any positions for me at the other) I even was on a team that made it to a y-combinator interview. My other HN account has a decent amount of karma.

I just say all this to point out that I'm not the typical square sob story where some guy making crystal reports for 15 years get the boot from IBM and spends his days whining about H1Bs on patriot message boards. However, sometimes I wish I was one of those guys. I can't even get a job doing something like ".NET Sharepoint integrations" because I've never done it before!

I'm mostly zen about the whole situation but at times I catch myself sliding into serious depression. I've been working on iPhone UI programming to learn something new. However, in the back of my mind I know that even if I get a job, something like this will happen again when I'm 42.

I don't know how I would get a management job, but I'm not convinced management is a safe haven. I have two uncles who worked at IBM for decades. They were made redundant in their early 50s and never worked in the industry again. Then again, at least they made it another 15 years and were able to pay off their house.

I could write more but you probably get the point. My only advice is to make a lot of money when you are young so you can coast when you get old (35?). I basically think programming is like pro sports. You can be an amazing rookie in your early 20s, a kobe like superstar in your late 20s and even early 30s. But mid 30s you need to make way for the next generation.

<comment><USER14> Are you in the SFBA?

<comment><USER13> No. I used to be, though.

<comment><USER15> where are you located? I think in most metros, folks are starving for programmer talent right now. Move to a new city, go to meet ups and hack nights, and you'll land a job in no time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Never stagnate. If you aren't valuable to employers, then it doesn't matter what your circumstances are. The difference between a low 20-something who isn't valuable and a 50-something who isn't valuable is that at least the 20-something straight out of college has an excuse. The 20-something is raw, and probably needs some training and experience. The 20-something may also be cheaper, though that may not be an issue at places which are fighting for talent.

This is why I like being independent. I'm forced to keep up with changes in my industry. I have to always be networking. I have to keep my selling skills sharp. When I have some down time I can plant seeds for alternative streams of income. These are the same things everyone should be doing, but you don't have to do these things when you work in the bubble of traditional employment.

In short don't get too comfortable. Work every day as if it's your last day at the company. I suppose this advice goes well for life in general. ;)

<comment><USER17> It it's my last day in general; I wouldn't be working at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As an older developer who has been developing for more than 20 years, I find that the reason for the "half-life" to be the impedance mismatch between the demands of a family and the demands of mismanagers (and their crunch time and death marches).

Eventually, developers start saying things like "I want to watch my kids ball game" instead of being at the office and dealing with the latest manager- inflicted crisis. 60 hour weeks are not family-friendly, and the developers that choose family over the office end up getting pushed out the door.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, as someone who will be moving into the 'married & family' stage in the next few years, I am getting concerned about the paces I will be expected to put in. I am not going to be working until 11 at night on my kid's big event. I'm going to be there for my kid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> You know, the young ones complain nobody hires them because they don't have experience and buzzwords on their resumes.

The old ones complain that they're discriminated against because they are... old.

Meanwhile business complain they can't find good people no matter how much they pay and Google & Facebook can't give enough bonuses to stop their people from being pouched.

So, who's right? Bunch of f-ing whiners all of them, if you ask me:

Youngsters should CODE and get the right experience.

Oldies should LEARN continuously, not stop and rely on their old stuff.

Business should PAY and PAY even more, while rewarding on merit, not people skills.

Now get off my lawn!

</comment><comment><USER21> It must depend on the company because the company I work at now has almost exclusively older programmers, I think I'm one of only 2 developers under 35 and most seem to be at least 40. I think the technologies used influence this, I work with Java and it seems they tend to people with more experience, if its a startup working with the next hot trendy dynamic language then, yeah, they probably aren't going to see a lot of value in hiring a dev with years of experience but I think this says more about the company than anything else as they value trendiness over solid software development practices.

</comment><comment><USER22> My plan is to be financially independent from what I love to do. I love coding because it's a medium for me to create something tangible out of nothing. I loved it before I was paid to do it for a living, and I'll love it till I become senile (the plan is to write lolcode when that day finally comes).

That said, I love other things in life as well - friends, family, girlfriend. All these loves are first class citizens and I can't tradeoff on one for another. When forced to choose, I always find a way to compromise. For example, when my girlfriend started grad school, I started working with Intridea (an all remote web and mobile consultancy).

I constantly in the process of finding ways to allow me to code what I want to, and still make money. I like to think of it as a daily and incremental refactoring of my life.

</comment><comment><USER23> I have a plan ... It's quite simple - I only work at jobs doing what I truly love. I am motivated and do my best work and my employer reaps the benefits too. Being almost through my second half-life, this has served me well for almost thirty years.

</comment><comment><USER24> At my 15 year mark, I was learning perl, html, css and JavaScript at the 20 year mark, it was PHP, now nearing the 27 year mark, I'm doing SSJS. Stop? Heck no, I'm just getting started.

One of my uncles retired at 66 still writing COBOL.

</comment><comment><USER25> And I guess I belong to a group who partied too much during their twenties. I am now mid-40's and finally have a game plan that should have me independently wealthy by about 55.

At first I felt impatient about that result, until I stopped and looked around and realized how many of my peers were probably never going to be independently wealthy...

</comment><comment><USER26> Perhaps they've all moved over to the defense industry? I work for a small (25 employee) defense contractor. I am 32 and the second youngest software engineer in the business. 32 is also younger than almost all the engineers at my previous job. Forget being anything resembling a lead developer until you are 35-40.

</comment><comment><USER27> Being in my mid thirties I've seen many colleagues and friends go into management because it was the thing you do when you reach at certain age. Some returned to development and some stayed in management but they all at one point admitted "I miss development so much, I just want to code".

</comment><comment><USER28> I recall making many plans (5-year, 10-year, 15-year) when I first graduated. It's funny looking back at some of my original plans to see how things varied so much.

The key is to stay flexible, always be willing to learn and set your priorities. Try to put yourself in positions where good things can happen. The path you take will likely vary greatly from what you envisioned, but if you achieve what is most important to you, then you have succeeded. There are many definitions of success, so be sure to measure your accomplishments based on your own definition.

</comment><comment><USER29> I love IT, and I love being a code monkey and staying a working programmer with my various startup projects, but let's face it: although well-paid, the world treats programmers like crap. Long hours, working weekends, staying on call, impossible deadlines, complex and ever-shifting technologies, and high- stress deployments. It's no wonder that the people at hot-shot firms all look like they're in their 20s.

Some folks just get caught up in, well, life. They have kids, a house, and grow a life and hobbies. That means that they are no longer staying current, and their heart just isn't really in it any more. After you've kicked ass and conquered the world with code a dozen or so times, you've gained weight, you're missing out on the rest of life, and there are just a dozen more impossible missions ahead of you. It never ends. I'd throw out some kind of pithy remark like "work at a sustainable pace" but the sad truth is that a "sustainable pace" for a 23-year-old is not the same as it is for a 40-year- old. Not even close.

I like the model I've seen of moving great programmers into lead roles (with PM-type duties) and then "uber lead" roles, which also include some program- management duties. That way you keep your technical talent close. It's easier to teach a programmer business than it is to teach a businessperson programming. This idea that we move good programmers out simply because they start acting much more like middle-aged people than college students is hurting the industry. In my mind, the MBAs are much more expendable than some guy who has just spent 15 years of his life learning our business systems inside-out.

<comment><USER5> I, too, also love IT and programming. But lately because of the re-hash after re-hash (SOA vs REST, Java vs .NET vs Ruby, JavaScript, Functional, polyglot, Agile, XP, Scrum), I'm kind of losing it. Seeing programmers swinging their d*ck around saying language X is better or how their favourite tool is better drifts my heart slowly away.

I felt like I want to be a team lead or a manager whipping undisciplined developers to get better at ever lasting all-around skill as opposed to jumping between bandwagons too early.

So I made a decision to work my butt off in people skill, communication (and writing of course). Decided to branch out into PM and BA as well.

We'll see how things will develop.

<comment><USER30> I hear you. As a 46 year old "senior technical lead", I have to be choosy about what new things I commit the time to delve into.

That said, sometimes the little things matter, but you have to trust your intuition about the big picture to determine which techniques may be important in the near future, as be willing to understand that some of these technologies really are largely equivalent in many ways.

If I can just get my juniors to stop writing N*100 line subroutines, ironically coupled with "kangaroo code" with too many useless abstraction/indirection layers, and learn enough about the functional style (even though working in Java -- AKA "Object COBOL") to write small routines with clearly defined inputs and outputs, I'll be a happier man at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Maybe part of what this article is observing, is that so much of life has a 15-year half-life. Your family, your situation, your wife, the economy, your 'career', what you think you love. If any of this resembles exactly what it did 15 years ago, you're the exception, not the rule. It is change that is the constant.

</comment><comment><USER32> Ok, before I go and offend a bunch of people, let me explain that I'm describing how things _are_ , not how they should be. A lot of the aspects of the business world that I'm about to describe are morally wrong and deeply disgusting. I'm not defending those.

First, technology is _a lot_ less ageist than mainstream business (i.e. BDC- land).

Here's the thing about corporate culture. Anyone or anything (a group, a project) that is judged to be not successful (regardless of reason, regardless of whether it's that person's or group's fault) is avoided like a corpse. What ageism is about is the (often unfair) negativity directed at people judged to have underperformed their age curve. In mainstream business, there's an expectation that a person will be in an informal leadership role no later than 32, be in an official leadership role (i.e. manager or executive) by 35, be a VP by 40, (S|E)VP by 45, and CxO by 50.

Here's where sciences and technology have an edge. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being a non-managerial programmer, scientist, or mathematician at 40, or even at 60. The best tend to peak later (with a few notable exceptions) so most of them are just starting to do their best work at this age. I repeat, there's nothing wrong in technology with being non-managerial at 40. No one looks down on you for that if you're great at what you do.

Contrast: in mainstream business, if you're still at the analyst/associate level doing line work at 40, no one will want to talk to you. Most investment banks have one "adult analyst" (i.e. someone in his late 20s or 30s working alongside college kids who use "steak sauce" as an accolade) and his co- workers mock the hell out of him behind his back.

There is a catch: by 35, you have to be really good, and you should probably have more than one specialty in which you can out-perform 99% of the competition. By that age, it's not enough to just be talented; you need to come with a seriously formidable skill set. The upside of this is that in technology, working hard and working smart means you _will_ be good. The technology career is quite volatile but it's pretty easy to have reliable, steady improvements in one's level of skill. This is a lot better than mainstream business (banking, biglaw) where people can be passed over for no reason at all.

</comment><comment><USER33> Money comes and go...but everyday passion is priceless... Don't worry about your old days...tomorrow is right now... 'Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish': The best Steve Jobs quotes

</comment><comment><USER11> 15 years??? How the frakking fsck do you guys endure writing boilerplate, filing TPS reports, going to meetings, and listening to PHBs for that damn long?

I'm not even 1 year in and I'm already busy executing my plans for freedom (by starting my own business, for instance).

Then again, I guess I don't have a single lick of salaryman in my bones. Others may relish the thought of a holding down a comfy desk job and not having to make your own decisions about what to work on.

<comment><USER34> I hate to break it to you kid, but no matter what you do you'll end up writing boilerplate, filing reports, and listening to assholes spout nothing on a very regular basis. Thats how business works and why it can suck. Running your own business will likely mean you have to endure more of these life-sucking tasks (but only until you hit the big time, right?!). This isn't to say that we must all resign to this fate, but you're deluding yourself if you think that self- employment or startup work is all that much different at the end of the day.

Its hard to read your comments in this thread without thinking that, no matter how proud about yourself you are right now, you're exactly the type who will fall to attrition within a few more years of your career.

<comment><USER11> Upvoted for brutal candor. I refuse to be that pessimistic about the future, though. There has to be a way.

<comment><USER34> That's the right attitude. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Skype audio graded by workers in China with 'no security measures' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/10/skype-audio-graded-by-workers-in-china-with-no-security-measures <comment><USER2> "We've always disclosed this to customers" Microsoft disclosed that Skype conversations can be _recorded_ and listened to by a random person, really do I understand that correctly?? Seriously why wouldn't this be at least opt-in? Big tech really can get away with anything nowadays, imagine a small company trying to pull that off. Deleting skype account.

</comment><comment><USER3> How can we be sure they are not doing the same with data flowing in and out of Azure ?</comment>


War plan red - US plan for war against Britain and Canada (1930) - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red

<comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4199855></comment>


Restream: Stream live to many social platforms at once - <AUTHOR> https://restream.io/ <comment><USER2> I'm sure there are use cases for this, but I see two issues I'd be worried about when using it.

First of all, any exclusivity requirements on any platform. Something like this must get you in trouble with the TOS of any of these sites.

Second, the culture of streaming on each platform is unique. Not to mention the form factor and expected behavior of any chats on each system. Or even things as simple as vertical vs horizontal video formats. Sure there are areas where this doesn't matter, there always are, but it shouldn't be ignored when trying to spread your reach.

<comment><USER3> I got the impression that Restream is mostly used for talks / podcasts.

I know of DJs who use the service to hit YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, and maybe Mixcloud all at the same time. In that case, they're not trying to grow a platform-based audience (like gamers). They're simply trying to reach their existing audience through the available channels.

I don't think anyone is taking exclusivity seriously, except maybe well-paid gamers. It's too early to act like Apple. Maybe once live streaming matures...?

<comment><USER4> Twitch definitely cracked down on Restream usage among partners at some point in the past, because I used to watch some streams on YT and that stopped happening suddenly, with some of them citing their Twitch contracts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Context: ex-early-twitch engineer.

The economics on this are confusing to me; if they're hosting a "repeater", they're paying for bandwidth in/out, and that's expensive.

If the streaming software is sending to multiple locations; the stability will be low (assuming folks become outbound b/w limited from their home conn).

Am I missing something obvious here?

At twitch we needed a heck of a lot of interconnecting with various providers to make our service viable.

Edit: [https://restream.io/blog/restream-series-a- funding/](https://restream.io/blog/restream-series-a-funding/) \- goes someway toward answering my q.

<comment><USER3> Huh? They're not streaming to thousands of viewers - they're just forwarding to a few services. That's nothing.

<comment><USER5> Oh, right! I was obvi missing something simple. You're right, my b: they only relay to a few services so it's keep their costs low.

I guess I'm just so conditioned to think about video going direct to consumer that I missed that.

Sorry for the noise :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A few other commenters seem to be confused about the purpose, so here's what we use Restream for: easily switching streaming destinations without reconfiguring our encoders (eg we use Twitch for informal student facing content, LinkedIn + FB + Periscope for content we want to be seen by professionals).

Honestly I was also initially skeptical of its utility but it turned out to be pretty worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER7> Any open source or DIY alternatives to this?

<comment><USER8> nginx-rtmp can take a source and forward to multiple outputs. Fairly more advanced is BBC's Brave which is more of an API-driven live video editor that can push to multiple outputs.

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately it hasn't been updated for RTMPS (rtmp over tls), which is required/heavily encouraged for FaceBook Live.

<comment><USER10> You can work around this limitation using stunnel.

Just search for rtmps and stunnel. Quite a few helpful results. There is even a docker container that makes this pretty simple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I use this to stream to YouTube and Twitch at the same time. It works well.

</comment><comment><USER12> This has been around for years. It's a solid service. With Mixer's FTL it added normal amounts of delay, so that kind of sucked, but no need to worry about that now, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why does the site not tell you... what platforms it streams to? Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER14> Well, Streamlabs has that plus more and a lower price... plus a mobile app.

</comment><comment><USER15> Are there any services like this that do the job of a streaming pc too?

<comment><USER16> [https://www.superstreamsystem.com/](https://www.superstreamsystem.com/) might be what you are looking for, you can set up scenes and overlays etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> we used to play around with this idea. a tagline we liked was: "stream once, go nuts!" dunno why but it still makes me laugh</comment>


Miscellaneous Thoughts and Observations on iTunes 11 - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2012/11/itunes_11

<comment><USER2> My initial (sure to be expanded) list of things I hate about iTunes 11:

1) The option of a dark background in grid view has been removed; the white background is horrible;

2) Sometimes the expanded view works well (the algorithm is clearly quite clever, zooming in to remove borders, etc.), other times it looks atrocious; it's around half and half; I've now spent hours debating whether to turn it off or keep it on;

3) Track lists in columns, everywhere, often inexplicably (e.g. on an artist page with no other albums); I know there's a bunch of horizontal white space to fill, but this is an ugly way to fill it;

4) With the new grid view and 'expanded view' there is no longer a quick way to view useful metadata about tracks (e.g. last played, number of plays, etc.);

5) Previously track lists formed 'rows' that had alternating background colors (I forget the name for this) that made it easier to follow; this is no longer the case, and for some reason looking at track lists in iTunes 11 makes me want to break things;

6) The new status bar no longer allows one to toggle the unit of measurement for the amount of music in the library; previously you could toggle hours, minutes, etc. now all it shows for me is days;

7) There is no longer an easy way to copy album artwork out of iTunes; previously you could have a preview up in the sidebar, right click -> copy; now one has to select an individual track (inexplicably, doesn't work for entire albums), right click -> get info -> artwork -> copy;

8) The album artwork thumbnail at the top of the window (in the little dialog showing the track, etc.) looks ugly and can't be removed;

9) The sidebar in the old version used to match the sidebars in other OS X apps (Finder, Mail, etc.); now the font has changed to Helvetica (bold, for that matter) it doesn't match anything;

10) The coloured sidebar icons that got ditched with OS X Snow Leopard and iTunes 10 are back; I really hope this isn't a sign of things to come elsewhere in the OS;

11) The option to change the size of album artwork in grid view has been removed; it's now one size, take it or leave it. This is excruciatingly irritating;

12) Still no FLAC support; this is beyond a joke now;

<comment><USER3> Haha, I think this list illustrates quite nicely how useless reviews of software might be. Not a single one of the points you mentioned irritates me even lightly†. Those are all things I do not care about or even like. I hate completely different things about iTunes.

That is not to say that anything you mentioned isn't a valid point, they clearly all are. I have often thought that as comprehensive as possible lists of grievances (created by more than one person – you didn't mention a single thing I hate about iTunes and immediately noticed) might be the ideal way to review things. When you read the review you can then just discard all the grievances you don't care about and use the rest for your decision making.

—

† The App Store one is the lone exception.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apple's lack of consistency on every iTunes update always baffles me (see [http://s12.postimage.org/cra1i5ax9/Captura_de_Tela_2012_11_2...](http://s12.postimage.org/cra1i5ax9/Captura_de_Tela_2012_11_29_s_22_23_23.png) for reinventing the wheel), but this time they really get the prize for changing the font on the entire UI.

Now, the real news. It is _not_ a complete redesign until you make a separate, decent application to sync with iOS devices. The navigation when I plug the iPhone is still the same, and it sucks.

Also, how does it make any sense that iPhone apps are still managed by iTunes, not the App Store, when on the iPhone itself iTunes and App Store are clearly different apps? Come on Apple, you can do better than rely on fanboys praising everything you release on their blogs.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure how I feel about it. Maybe I'm a luddite, but I prefer list view and I can't see how to flip that on in the music section.

Something still feels a bit unpolished about it as well.

<comment><USER6> To get back to the list view, you have to click "Songs".

<comment><USER7> Which would be fine, except searching then takes me back to the other view. I miss being able to use "search" as "filter"

<comment><USER3> For some reason taligent's very relevant response is marked dead: "Click on the dropdown in the search field and deselect 'Search Entire Library'. It will now change to 'Search Playlist' and filter as before. Although it seems a lot slower than before."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like the changes and new features quite a bit. My single quibble is that you can't use the MiniPlayer when iTunes is in fullscreen mode.

I'd love to be able to relegate iTunes to its own Space and have the MiniPlayer float around the Space I use for development, etc. When I want to do basic navigation (beyond what I can do with my keyboard), I'd use the MiniPlayer; when I want something more, I could swipe over to the fullscreened app.

Maybe in 11.1.

<comment><USER9> You can, just go to window > mini player and it appears in conjunction with the fullscreen itunes.

<comment><USER3> … but you have to do that _before_ you switch to fullscreen mode. I'm not sure whether the ability to do this is a feature or a bug. It certainly seems like one: When you switch from fullscreen back to the desktop with the mini player you briefly see it flash its controls. That cannot be intended behavior. Anyway, they certainly should turn this into a feature.

Cohesion is a bit lacking and there are many small bugs, which is probably inevitable given the rushed release. I hope whoever worked on iTunes during the last two months (which must no doubt have been hell) gets a few days off and can then work on polishing and fixing those little bugs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Gruber approves of an Apple product... What's next, RMS advocating for free software?

<comment><USER11> HN troll whines about Gruber submission. What next, an argument about patents?

<comment><USER10> I would argue that the article doesn't really say much/add much value and that if it weren't written by Gruber, it wouldn't be submitted and it wouldn't be on the front page.

<comment><USER12> Even if the sentiment is perhaps predictable, it's still an interesting and relatively detailed critique.

<comment><USER11> The interesting part of a Gruber post isn't the conclusion, it's how he gets there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Does Apple have a single other remaining app with a modal preferences dialog?"

What is Gruber talking about? The "Preferences" dialogs in Pages, Keynote and iBooks Author work exactly the same way as the one in iTunes.

<comment><USER14> Modal means that you can't do anything else in the app when the window is up. In the other apps you mentioned I can open their preferences and still use the app for something if I have to without closing it.

<comment><USER15> To add to that, another common and very useful behavoir of non-modal preference box is the changes takes effect immediately, rather after OK is clicked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It feels weirder with an iPhone connected. You either see just the iPhone menu or you're in your library. Now that it's almost like two apps with one button to switch between them.

</comment><comment><USER17> My favorite part of the new app is that scrolling is fixed on Windows.

<comment><USER18> What was wrong with it? I haven't used iTunes on windows in years.</comment></comment>


A 5-year project to develop "rigorous formal foundations for Rust" - <AUTHOR> http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/pipermail/types-announce/2016/005741.html <comment><USER2> Sorry to see this post sink without a trace; I think this is a really big deal, and I'm excited to see a shared industry/academia ecosystem growing around Rust. Now if only the macro system were a little more hygienic ....</comment>


Ask HN: feedback on an idea - send messages/questions to suburbs/cities - <AUTHOR>

Probably one of the many location based startups do this now, but anyway.
I was thinking it would be good to be able to send a message/question to a suburb or city.  People who know the area can reply.
Is there a site that focuses on this concept? <comment><USER2> The best site that I know of for this is <http://www.city-data.com/>

It looks terrible, but frankly there is some great information on there, and the forums are pretty useful too.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm kind of thinking more like sending a message to an area, where other people in the area can respond. Mobile is probably ideal but no reason not to be web too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How specific of an area? Can you provide a use case for someone asking for feedback and another for the person providing it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Say for example a suburb - people in the suburb of Camberwell chatting to each other locally. Or maybe when you visit a city as a traveller, for example to Sydney, send a message to anyone tuned in and ask them where to find X or Y, or what current events are happening or something.

Kind of like CB radio but text, and over the Internet, and just for a local area. like cb radio, messages would have limited range.

<comment><USER3> I understand completely why travelers would want this. I've often had a need for something like this but i'm not sure what locals would get out of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> You might be right although I think many local people like to help out travellers who are visiting and peering at maps on street corners in confused manner.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


VirtualBox 6.1 - <AUTHOR> https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog-6.1#v0 <comment><USER2> It might be better to steer clear of VirtualBox and other Oracle products because of the licensing issues: [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/04/oracle_virtualbox_m...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/04/oracle_virtualbox_merula/)

If you only use the open source parts you're okay, but it's a bit scary.

<comment><USER3> This is my policy as well.

My perception of Oracle is that they'll do very underhanded, even criminal, acts to extract money from entities who have at one time used their software.

Happily, I have enough alternatives to VirtualBox to let me avoid that risk.

<comment><USER4> What alternatives do you recommend?

<comment><USER5> Having ran my home (and work) lab environments with many different virtualization systems, in the end, I always keep coming back to VMware. ESXi in particular. These days, with GPU pass-through, you can make it a workstation and a server at the same time. It's free for personal use and it's rock solid.

<comment><USER6> In the same vein, Proxmox is another choice, it's open source (or you can pay for support), also allows for GPU pass-through.

<comment><USER7> Proxmox is a management layer over LVM (and LXC), not a different virtualization technology.

<comment><USER6> I assume you mean KVM. Yes it's based on existing technologies, I wouldn't necessarily call it just a management layer however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I used to use virtualbox but I became afraid of being trolled by Oracle using gradually changing license terms a few years back and stopped updating.

I'm curious if anyone knows of a table summarizing these products and what their licensing would mean for a laptop you may take to work, etc?

<comment><USER9> A framework I wanted to trial provided VB VMs instead of containers, definitely made me stop for a bit and think if I wanted to use VB (ended up using it anyway).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> On Linux, I've entirely replaced Vbox with virt-manager and QEMU.

As a bonus, virt-manager can connect to remote libvirt/QEMU instanced over SSH, making it easier to manage a small "farm".

On Windows I find myself happy enough with Hyper-V too.

I really don't miss virtualbox at all.

<comment><USER11> Second that - Hyper-V is my preferred way to run a Linux dev machine on a Windows machine. Killer feature: dynamic memory (a VMs memory footprint grows and shrinks with its needs).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a (part time) qemu developer, why do you think VirtualBox is preferable, eg. what are the feature gaps that qemu doesn't provide, or what could qemu do better? (And by "qemu" I include the broader free ecosystem like virt-install, virt-manager, etc)

<comment><USER13> Shared folder support is lacking. I have to use NFS to share any folders in VMs when using QEMU and virt-manager. Which isn't necessarily bad but it's an extra config step. The built in method (which uses Plan9 I think?) is a huge headache in terms of setting up permissions. Out of the box it never works right and there isn't any straightforward documentation on getting it configured properly.

VirtualBox, VMware and Parallels all offer much better shared folder options that are built in.

<comment><USER12> virtio-fs should fix the problems with 9p. It offers better performance and conformance with POSIX.

<comment><USER13> Awesome, that's great to hear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> FEAT>> Nested virtualization on intel. This is a big deal, for dev and testing. Congrats to the devs, thank you. You can now run a hypervisor hosting real vms at decent speeds inside VB.

</comment><comment><USER15> Looks like a lot of Graphics related upgrades/fixes. I desperately hope this makes the experience better, onto downloads!

</comment><comment><USER16> Is it allowed by Apple to set up a macOS version N virtualbox guest on macOS version N host?

Because I'm trying and I can't imagine how their OS could be more hostile toward me doing it...

<comment><USER17> You're now allowed to run up to two macOS guests in VMs as long as you're running on Apple hardware.

It's pretty painless with VMWare Fusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What are the highlights of the new versions?

Also

>Linux host: Drop PCI passthrough, the current code is too incomplete (cannot handle PCIe devices at all), i.e. not useful enough

does this affect usb drives and devices?

</comment><comment><USER19> Interesting how the Windows download went from (VirtualBox 6.0.14) 163 MB to (6.1.0) 107 MB. Wonder why...

<comment><USER20> It could have something to do with this:

 _Virtualization core: Drop recompiler, i.e. running VMs now needs a CPU supporting hardware virtualization_

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If only they could come up with a WSL2 Hyper-V workaround.

<comment><USER22> Can you clarify what you mean?

<comment><USER23> I believe the problem is that if you're running WSL2, you're automatically running Hyper-V, which monopolizes hardware virtualization on the machine, so you can't run VirtualBox, VMware, etc.

<comment><USER24> Wait, it's not a kernel personality anymore?

<comment><USER25> They've moved away from that due to complaints about I/O performance. There was no way to "fix" it without the hyper-V shim.

[https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/announcing- wsl-2/](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/announcing-wsl-2/)

<comment><USER26> WSL was a failed attempt by Microsoft, WSL2 will not be any better. Look at the problems it is causing for people already, and it isn't even GA yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It seems to me that Oracle is doing well in cloud, may not be too long before they beat the number 4 Google.

<comment><USER27> I mean, this has little to do with the article, but it's also a bonkers claim. Doing well? Oracle Cloud is a literal punchline and has no argument for its existence, let alone its use, beyond "we're Oracle, now be a dear and lean back so we can get at your delicious throat bits".

What would a bunch of extremely legacy technology--and this is a great example, between OS-supported virtualization in Windows and OS X getting good and virtualization solutions having already been just fine on Linux for a long time, VirtualBox hasn't had a meaningful reason to exist for going on five years now--and the worst reputation in the industry do to leapfrog Google Cloud? (If they're even actually "number 4" in the first place.)

<comment><USER28> Not trying to defend the claim itself but it is related:

From article:

\- Implemented support for importing a virtual machine from Oracle Cloud Infrastructure \- Extended support for exporting a virtual machine to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, allowing the creation of multiple virtual machines without re-uploading. Also added option to export a VM to the cloud using the more efficient variant "paravirtialized", and to specify free-form tags for cloud images

<comment><USER29> > Also added option to export a VM to the cloud using the more efficient > variant "paravirtialized"

So they don't seem to be very serious about multi-tenancy?

(Spectre and Meltdown are more or less considered the nails in the coffin of Xen para-virtualisation for multi-tenant environments).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CS student searching for accommodation - <AUTHOR>

I am a computer science student from Germany and will be working in Palo Alto for three months, however, I have a problem, I am not able to find accommodation which is in line with the budget the company gave me ($1000). I have been searching on airbnb, but haven't been able to find anything that's in line with the budget without having to rent a car to get to work every day, which would also be too expensive.<p>Can you recommend a place I can search for other than airbnb, or even better, a place I could stay at? Best location would be anywhere between Palo Alto and Mountain View. <comment><USER2> The budget your company gave you is absolutely, ridiculously not possible.

We're talking you can't even rent an illegal laundry room closet for that pricing. You need to show your company that you definitely need more.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen There are a few hacker houses around there, but talk to your employer, the budget they're giving you is completely unreasonable. Show them evidence you can't possibly live there at that price, and they might take that into consideration.

I would also say you don't literally need a car to live in the Bay Area. You can be organised and use a bike and Caltrain, which is what I did.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're interning, consider joining the 2014 Bay Area Summer Interns Facebook group (link: [https://www.facebook.com/groups/1378139645766413/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/1378139645766413/)).

There have been a number of posts by people looking for housing and/or roommates, including some in/near PA and MV.

<comment><AUTHOR> Technically its not an internship, since I already work for the company here in Germany, but I'll see if I can get into the Facebook group.

edit: I got accepted into the group, I will see if I can get help there, but thank you very much so far!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Depending on where you work in Palo Alto, you might be able to live further away and commute. Union City/Fremont area is much cheaper and there's a bus that will take you across the bay. I'm not aware of anywhere in the area that you could find something for $1000, but maybe with roommates it could work.

You should check with the company and see if there's anything they can do. I really hate that some companies exploit interns by offering such clearly unsuitable amounts for living expenses. If they live and/or work in Palo Alto, they know how expensive it is.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure I understand the other comments. When I moved here in 2012 I had to rent for several months until I found a house to buy. I ended up in a B&B that I found on craigslist for the price you mentioned. I just went to CL just now and there are a lot of listings for the price you mentioned. I don't think you can really dwaddle on any of this stuff - find something passable, and take it, or someone else will, but it is possible.

[http://sfbay.craigslist.org/roo/](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/roo/)</comment>


Product Misjudgment - <AUTHOR> https://blog.appacademy.io/product-misjudgment-imperfect-science-understanding-peripheral-environment/ <comment><USER2> > Firms rarely fail for a lack of effort, but rather an inability to > adequately consider the complex dependencies of all the things happening > around them.

This is why I don't work very hard. Not entirely kidding. What'll make or break the company isn't me grinding away churning out incremental features and fixing tiny bugs. What'll make the difference is whether someone spots the game-changing opportunity, whether it's a product innovation, a business model or a particular partnership. To spot that kind of thing you have to give yourself some space and not have your head down all the time.

<comment><USER3> Couldn't agree more.

The challenge then becomes how do you build a prepared mind to be able to observe and think about the world in such a manner. My usual answer here is just to read widely, do deep dives into periods of history where these kinds of changes happen, and maintain a pulse on what changes

<comment><USER4> Outgoing: a huge advertising campaign helps.

Incoming: talk to a LOT of people. There needs to be people at companies who do nothing but just listen to what people outside of the company's bubble are saying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have not found this to be true in my own professional life. While we do not want to diminish the contributions of the individual coders, designers, marketers, etc. in the process of bringing a product to life. It's VERY hard, with all of those human opinions and ideas in the mix, to focus on a product vision and see it come to life.

Someone won't like the design, someone will see the code complexity and use that as a litmus test that things are horribly awry and resourcing needs to be rethought, etc.

The "visionaries" are celebrated precisely because they faced down the machine, and helped pull it to the destination they wanted it to go in... and their idea works. They were right... and succeeded on a rare level of effectiveness. People are still generally very happy with their iPhones a decade later. It's mind boggling to me... is THIS design actually that timeless? Wow. I wouldn't have bet on that.

Them being right isn't a common thing, either. For every Steve Jobs there are a million talented people who managed to focus the process and their idea just wasn't that hot.</comment>


[Solved] What programming languages should I learn? - <AUTHOR> http://www.mahdiyusuf.com/post/3279728032/solved-what-programming-languages-should-i-learn I get asked this all the time. <comment><USER3> _Also if they are starting out I would recommend a language that enforces better OO (Object Orientated) practices than python, like Java (don't hate me but it's true)._

I can't say I agree here. I suspect you knew this would trigger some debate.

First of all, the definition of OO is not well established. What defines OO? Is it encapsulation? Inheritance? Message passing? Jonathan Rees discusses the issue in more depth here: <http://paulgraham.com/reesoo.html> . Whether OO, by any accepted definition is a Good Thing is also debatable, and beyond the scope of this comment.

More importantly, I think imposing that "good OO practice" on a brand new programmer is a distraction from learning the basics of programming. None of the boilerplate Java requires for a "hello world" program actually has anything to do with printing "hello world" to stdout. The beginner has a great deal of information to absorb, and the meaning of "public static void main()" is an extraneous distraction from what's fundamentally required to make a program work, and arguably not helpful for making programs that are well- structured and easy to understand. If "hello world" requires much more than "print('hello world')", it's not a good language for learning the basics.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you must know the reason behind that statement, was due to the fact at where I work we use jython, java and python extensively. When I first got there I was rapid prototyping applications for the end user, based on some data that had been structured in Java. While this was available through API I had no inner understanding the objects that I was passing around in python, which you can get away with in python very easy. Which is why I think its bad to get into the habit for beginners. Understood that clutter is a bit extraneous but at the same time necessary, or least until we all move towards simpler languages like python. :)

<comment><USER4> At my workplace I need to code in Java. After programming in Python for 2 years I am simply hating the experience. Nothing to do with OO, but the language is a lot more verbose and I personally find it a bit irksome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So ignore his arguments and opinions and take a look at that graph. That's one of the more informative pieces of "what language should I learn" dialogue I've ever seen.

Take a look at the github and stackoverflow communities. If you think they're doing cool stuff, then you can probably feel safe tackling any language in the upper right corner of that graph. It's a safe bet.

And look what's up there!

        javascript, python, php, ruby, c/c++, perl
        scala, actionscript, haskell

The angle above the regression line suggests whether the language is more talk (so) or walk (github), the clusters are sensible based on my domain knowledge of the languages: useful workhorses, weird and developed.

I love the informative display of quantitative information. This is especially true when everything rhetorically boils down to opinions.

<comment><AUTHOR> I not sure whether to thank you or write another post just talking about the graph I made.

<comment><USER6> Definitely write another blog post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd recommend taking the scrolling "who I am" box and making it be fixed relative to the page or fixed relative to the screen. Its movement makes reading really annoying and it isn't convenient or anything.

<comment><USER8> I had a very satisfying few moments destroying that annoying box with "Kick Ass":

<http://erkie.github.com/>

I was so pleased with myself I didn't even bother reading the article...

<comment><USER9> I can't remember where I first saw Kick Ass, but I immediately implemented it as a Konami Code easter egg on my company's website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While i didnt drop out of software engineering class, i found it to be a real chore to learn how to program. That was in 1998-2000.

Since then, i've had a little dabble with html and css and thats about it. On one or two occassion, i had a colleague try to shove Delphi down my throat, and i didnt take to it too well.

Up until a month ago, i never wanted to touch or look at code, but i had to get involved with a little bit of VBA for an important project at work, and then i also had a little dabble with javascript. I actually enjoyed working with them both, and im finally able to start reading code, and oddly am getting very interested in coding now.

I turned 30 about 6 months ago, so its strange to be learning at an age where most are usually seasoned veterans, but still i'm having fun.

But as an entrant into this area, i've been most intrigued by Javascript, both for client-side AND server-side (Node.js), and that graph makes me feel much better for opting for javascript as my language of choice for the short-to- medium term.

Sorry for the mini auto-biography, but i felt i had to share.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am glad that helped! Looks like that graph I made on a whim, is turning out to be the show stopper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not really sure that looking only at github is fair. You'll find many more .Net projects on codeplex, and more of everything (though not necessarily in the same distribution) at bitbucket and sourceforge.

<comment><USER12> But in terms of "what should I learn", I'd say github is a better place to look.

<comment><USER11> Why?

I view all active, open-source projects as equal when it comes to language popularity. Github is great, but it's hardly the only place to host a repo.

<comment><USER13> GitHub has the largest number of repositories (yes, more than SourceForge) and arguably represents the more 'up and coming' open source projects.

You're particular complaint about .NET projects is more than compensated for by the Stack Overflow cross-listing.

<comment><USER14> Counting repositories inflates results for Github. Consider a project that consists of a server, a client, and a library. In Subversion, that would quite likely be one repository, containing server, client, and lib subdirectories. People just interested in the client can checkout the client directory from Subversion as if it were its own repository. (That's the one thing I really miss from Subversion since I switched my department at work to Git).

In Git, there's a good chance it would be three repositories. One for the server, one for the client, and one for the library.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >Dying Technology - <USER2>

Wow, that's a bold statement.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really do think so. If people aren't loving it anymore its dying. I didn't say it was dead, they can still make a turn around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cobol, PL/1, spss, modula-2 and fortran.</comment>


Rate My App: Simple In/Out - <AUTHOR> https://simpleinout.com

<comment><USER2> The tag line needs to be much clearer. It needs to be super obvious. "Availability" sounds a little vague.

How do you signify if someone is available inside your app? A person icon and an illuminated coloured dot? A magnified version of that would convey the apps use very easily.

The icon makes me think of an "updating" symbol rather than location.

I had to read a fair bit until I had a general idea what it does.(I'm still not 100% sure what all the features are)

It would be instantly understandable if you had a screenshot of your app in use, where you logo is currently.

Displaying the viewpoint of a users would help a lot. Do I get a list of my colleagues and their current status? Is it messaging too? Can I look at other locations and see who's there?

It's an interesting app!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll take all your suggestions and look at revamping the home page to make things more obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's a digital in/out board for business'. Basically replaces the magnetic board hanging in the office for one on your phone or web browser. Pretty cool.

<comment><USER2> That's way clearer.... __Lightbulb goes on __

We use one of those (handwritten actual board)

Instead of IN we write 1 word what we're working on - this helps others to know if we can be interrupted or not and finding who to direct people to when they ask questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have custom statuses, so users can add 30 characters to explain what they are working on or where they are at a given time.

<comment><USER2> Awesome! I'll be sure to give it a try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe I'm missing something obvious but... what does it do?</comment>


Debugging In My Sleep - <AUTHOR> http://www.pointy-stick.com/blog/2008/03/01/debugging-my-sleep/

<comment><USER2> This is exactly why you should rest a day before you push a big release to your app/site. After a marathon coding session there are bound to be bugs that will pop up in your dreams, and you'll catch them in time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Happens to me on a regular basis. I wake up in the night with a solution to a bug I am chasing or some difficult interface that remained unfinished.

Sometimes it comes right out of the blue. Last week I awoke in the night with the realisation that there was an "edge case" bug in some code I was due to deliver the next day - and I certainly had not consciously been thinking about that code after I had finished with it - almost the opposite as I had been happy with the run of tests I had applied.

The brain is a wondrous organ.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wish this happened to me. I do often do the "subconcious solves the problems" thing, but "sleeping on it" rarely seems to help, and it usually happens somewhere where I'm a long way away from anything to code on (computer, paper, or otherwise.)

Result: I've turned into an obsessive carrier of pens and paper. I've basically come to the realization that my muse strikes unpredictably, without warning, and almost ALWAYS at the least convenient time.

</comment><comment><USER5> I deliberately load the code I want to improve in my head before going to sleep to maximize my chances of having a productive night ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> Used to happen to me a lot when I hacked in C. Not so much in PHP. I'm not sure if it's memory handling abstraction or experience. Lately this sort of thing has crept into subtle flaws in business models and ideas.

</comment><comment><USER7> often times I find solutions to complicated problems while I sleep. But I usually don't spot bugs while I sleep (unless I've been thinking about some particular known issue the day before).</comment>


Rich Tables in the Terminal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/willmcgugan/rich#tables <comment><USER2> He he! Souped up IBM PC box drawing characters, circa 1981: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box- drawing_character](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box-drawing_character)

<comment><USER3> These terminal character boxes remind me of the DOS days.. lots of programs such as the library access program used these and I used to use them in my QBasic programs.

</comment></comment><comment> yjftsjthsd-h So, it _is_ cool; let me say that much before I criticize. That said: live resizing a table is a bit of a pain if you're trying to select something (to copy or to highlight it to show someone else). It's like a webpage that moves a link just as you click. Is there any way to fix the width and append only to the end? (Just optionally; I understand why it resizes dynamically by default)

<comment><AUTHOR> The animation is purely for demonstration purposes. Generally you would use this to render a formatted table as the result of a CLI.

<comment><USER4> IF you want to add other things to the CLI, like graphics or unicode, check this library:

[https://gitlab.com/klamonte/jexer](https://gitlab.com/klamonte/jexer)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Anthony-G This looks really impressive: elegant and beautiful with an easy-to-use API. I don't know if submission titles can be edited 9 hours after posting but this would be an excellent addition to _Show HN_ and might get more attention as such.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Can It detect non terminal output and render normal ascii such as when pipe/redirect stdout/stderror to a file? or pipe to seed and avoid messing up with color code.

I recently release a tool with a nice table but many hate the format, the color and it even make `grep` impossible because color code make grep match every line :-(

<comment><USER6> man 3 isatty

If you find yourself hard coding ANSI escape sequences in your program's output, please, please check to see if STDOUT is a tty first. This will prevent spewing escape sequences to a file.

For extra credit, please consider using tput() and friends to emit escape sequences rather than hard coding them. This may seem stupid when nearly every terminal in the world is now effectively an ANSI terminal, but sometimes vision impaired folks (and others) are using intentionally limited terminals with their type set to "dumb". Good programs respect this, and conditionally output their escape sequences.

<comment><USER7> * [https://github.com/willmcgugan/rich/blob/837b6d7e85254f0047c...](https://github.com/willmcgugan/rich/blob/837b6d7e85254f0047cb41a4cbe0e4b00f54809d/rich/console.py#L435)

Note that it is possible to respect TERM=dumb without using termcap or terminfo, although this library does not do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems to only support rendering. If you also want interactive use, another library which does things like this is Urwid:

[http://urwid.org/examples/](http://urwid.org/examples/)

<comment><USER9> I originally looked at Urwid for a side project I was working on, but it seemed a bit heavyweight for the kind of prototyping I wanted to do.

I ended up settling on Visidata's vdtui [1]. It's pretty strongly opinionated and there are a lot of batteries included, but on the plus side, you can get a pretty functional tabular CLI app working with very little code, and start focusing on your business logic rather than the scaffolding. I was pretty satisfied with it.

[1] [https://github.com/saulpw/visidata/blob/stable/visidata/vdtu...](https://github.com/saulpw/visidata/blob/stable/visidata/vdtui.py)

<comment><USER10> Do you have a link to the tool you built with vdtui? =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Rich is great. Have been using it for a couple of projects and the support is great, even on terminals with less color support.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad you find it useful!

<comment><USER12> I pushed for moving one of our internal tools to Python 3 only so that I could start using Rich in it, it's that good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Naff tables (along with poor graphs) was one of my key motivations to create WV Linweise, which spawns a tiny web renderer to make displays nicer... Love the terminal, but some things it is just not great at...

This mini example app renders CSV data from STDIN into a HTML tables - [https://github.com/forbesmyester/wv- linewise/tree/master/exa...](https://github.com/forbesmyester/wv- linewise/tree/master/examples/discover-types)

</comment><comment><USER14> Related from a few months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23070821](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23070821)

</comment><comment><USER15> I started using this in a project of mine a few days ago and I highly recommend this library. It is super intuitive and easy.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is sweet. Is there an equivalent of this library for Go? Particularly with scrolling support

<comment><USER17> Im using [https://github.com/olekukonko/tablewriter](https://github.com/olekukonko/tablewriter) in Go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Those progress bars look delicious

<comment><USER19> I agree.

Also: My kingdom for rsync with progress bars.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h \--progress ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This makes me think how close this is to HTML output + DOM rendering, and what would be the proc and cons of each, how could you get max pros of the CLI approach into the HTML approach.

<comment><AUTHOR> My goal was to bring some of the capabilities of HTML to the console. The browser is always going to win in terms of capabilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> this is awesome! Terminal programs are so satisfying, but at the same time it always feels like they miss so many primitives that I take for granted for content display

<comment><AUTHOR> That was my main motivation in working in Rich. Whenever I move from the frontend to the backend, I miss what the browser can do so effortlessly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is this using ncurses?

<comment><USER23> [https://github.com/willmcgugan/rich/blob/master/rich/console...](https://github.com/willmcgugan/rich/blob/master/rich/console.py#L501) shows that's it's directly using escape codes: [http://ascii-table.com/ansi- escape-sequences-vt-100.php](http://ascii-table.com/ansi-escape-sequences- vt-100.php)

<comment><USER7> It's not using ncurses nor terminfo, but it's very misleading to point to a list of VT100 escape sequences when it most definitely is not doing things the VT100 way _either_.

In contrast to the monochrome VT100 this is using colour quite significantly, albeit not supporting the recent corrections of a widespread mistake; and it even seems to support the rare framed and encircled attributes of later ECMA-48. Also in contrast to the VT100 it nowhere seems to deal in double- height or double-width, nor is it using ECMA-35 character set switching.

<comment><USER22> THanks!, I ask because I am starting a new project to create a terminal based gui and my research led me to think the ncurses was a solid choice, are you experienced with the terminal gui ecosystem, what are your thoughts on starting a new project with ncurses?

<comment><USER7> It's really a _Textual_ User Interface when one uses terminal I/O, not a _Graphical_ UI.

Personally, I did start a new project with ncurses. I wrote console-ncurses- realizer before I wrote console-termio-realizer in the nosh toolset. But I hit the limitations of ncurses very quickly.

* [http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/console-ncurs...](http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/console-ncurses-realizer.xml#LIMITATIONS)

* [http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/console-termi...](http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/console-termio-realizer.xml#IOPROTOCOL)

There are lots of problems with ncurses, and the terminfo system that underpins it. They include the model of BCE not matching how terminals actually work, function key processing involving string matching instead of proper parameter parsing, little to no distinction between calculator keypad and editor/cursor keypad keys, "cursor addressing mode" not being what terminals actually do, ECMA-48 processing being needed in both directions, the "colour pair" system not really matching any terminal's handling of colour since the 1970s, and the continued use of ECMA-35 7-bit/8-bit character set switching (a cause of a vast amount of end user headaches down the decades) rather than Unicode for things like block graphics and box drawing characters.

If one starts again from first principles and comes up with a terminal capabilities system now, one comes up with a rather different set of capabilities and an ECMA-48-plus-ITU-T.416-plus-UTF-8-plus-some-DEC-VT model. One comes up with a far better model of the colour mechanisms, for starters. The library at hand employs it, as does my library.

* [http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/TerminalCapab...](http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/TerminalCapabilities.xml)

And there are, as the headlined library shows, UI libraries that do this. There _are_ problems with some of these libraries, as with the headlined library here for example and lack of support for TERM=dumb, which is still a mechanism that is very much in use. (My library allows for it.) But for programming languages from C++ to Python one has been able for some years now to find libraries that aim to replace terminfo with something better, and build up to approximately the level of abstraction that one gets in ncurses with panes and windows and suchlike.

Of course, those library implementors themselves also discover how bad some terminal emulators are at even some of the 1976 basics such as reverse video; that some terminal emulators are actively regressing from 1980s video terminal semantics to 1960s paper terminal semantics; and that there are still parts of the 1990s editions of ECMA-48 that no terminal emulator has implemented until _this year_.

If you feel comfortable with the idea that you or your users will never in the 21st century encounter a terminal that doesn't understand ECMA-48 and ITU T.416 and UTF-8, with varying degrees of DEC VT added in, then yes you probably should consider libraries such as the headlined one and others like it. Now that Unicode 13 is here, you can even ask their authors to allow using MouseText for TUI window borders and gadgets, a bold step forward into the 1980s. (-:

On the other hand, if you are comfortable living within the constraints of a C language API, limited keyboard and colour models, and the various mismatched paradigms, because you won't be pushing any of their boundaries in your TUI, then ncurses is there for you.

On the gripping hand, if you want WIMPs, there's always the option of _writing a GUI application_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This may be heresey, but does it support mouse interaction, e.g. sorting by clicking on the column header like midnight commander does?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, the animation was for demo purposes. It's not normally dynamic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> That traceback handler is awesome. I wonder if there's a way to hook all my python programs to use it.

<comment><USER26> You can, the instructions are here: [https://rich.readthedocs.io/en/latest/traceback.html](https://rich.readthedocs.io/en/latest/traceback.html)

But it is noticeably slower than the default python handler

<comment><USER25> Slower in what way? Just on crash? I don't mind that. But I meant for programs I _don't_ typically write source for - if Python has a way to run code before every program start up it would do what I want.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its slower when it renders the traceback, all that reading of source and syntax highlighting takes second or two. There is a way of importing something automatically, see the sites module docs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This looks awesome! Gonna try to use it for DVC where we need to show tables of experiments, metrics, etc.

</comment><comment><USER28> kitty terminal has built-in extensions to xterm terminal protocol extensions to make this kind of thing much easier, toda. Hacking the terminal is nice but another way is moving forward in developing it.

</comment><comment><USER29> This seems to be begging the question: At what point does one move to a GUI? GUIs are well suited for these tasks.

<comment><USER30> Terminal features work better across all platforms than most GUIs. They are more likely to have efficient keyboard commands for everything. And if (say) you wanted to Copy arbitrary text from anywhere in the terminal, you can (a GUI would have to explicitly support Copy for the things it presents).

Clearly GUIs have a place but terminal UIs are really powerful.

<comment><USER29> GUIs are much more consistent across platforms than terminal features. Windows look and behave consistently but DOS vs BASH are totally different.

I'm not sure what you mean by efficient keyboard commands. Command line programs are extremely inconsistent with regard to command line parameters, especially across platforms. They're inconsistent between common programs in Linux and between common programs on Windows.

Copying arbitrary text from a terminal is more rigid than a GUI; it's difficult to select with a keyboard, the text is unlikely to be formatted ( sometimes a good thing), and often what you want to copy isn't text but an image, sound, video clip, or some sort of object.

Powerful depends on what you mean by power. There exist somewhat-interoperable terminal programs, but there are lots of GUI programs that are as interoperable or even more interoperable and both can be scripted. Often requisite functionality is only exposed with a terminal program, but that has nothing to do with the lack of power of a GUI.</comment></comment></comment>


Arkaim - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkaim <comment><AUTHOR> Not being able to attach images, please scroll down to the wiki sub section of 'structure' in the above link.

Then do a google search for Apis Cor..the construction robotics company that makes 3 D printed homes.

Of course, the ruins in the Urals are shaped like the nautilus and is an entire city design. And the Apis Cor 3D proof of concept printed homes in Siberia are single units..

But the remarkable similarity struck a chord in me.

Altho it's not the same place, it's somewhat the same region.Perhaps Apis Cor was inspired by the history of the region's archeological records. But it was likely because the circular foot prints were the easiest design for the robotic arms. Regardless..it was a poignant 'old is new' again moment when I compared the images side by side.

Why don't we have circular homes with domes and nautilus shaped cities anymore?</comment>


Why do you think black female founders receive basically no VC funding? - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/13/its-true-black-female-founders-receive-basically-zero-venture-capital/
https://www.wired.com/2016/02/its-embarrassing-how-few-black-female-founders-get-funded/
As a black female founder I'm wondering if pursuing VC is worth the effort.
Do you think there are any easily identifiable reasons why the numbers are so low, or are these numbers actually proportional? <comment><USER2> I think the TechCrunch article is misleading at best, both in title and content. The report they link to studied ~60.000 startups, of which 88 (~0.14%) were black women led. According to the article, 0.2% of all venture deals from 2012 to 2014 went to black female founders. The numbers seem proportionate to me, or am I missing something here? There simply aren't many black female founders.

<comment><USER3> Came here to say exactly that. Not only is it proportional, but if anything is a sliver above average. The argument that TC is trying to make is on par with the people who advocate for workplace diversity and go on to say about how 50% of the hires should be black - without recognising that the black population makes up only about 13.5% in US, at which point what you're doing is discriminating against everyone else just to fill arbitrary quotas not grounded in real world statistics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Rather than thinking about things you can't realistically change (sex/race), I would think about other things - e.g., is your company the sort of thing that VC's want to fund? And, do you really want VC?

If your business is VC-friendly, and you want to go on the VC ride, then yes, you should go for it. Even if you don't get funded, or even if funding doesn't go the way you want it to, you will learn a lot of interesting stuff and make a lot of good connections. I went through the VC cycle 2x in the first dot-com boom and learned a tremendous amount from it. (Including a lot of skepticism about whether or not VC is a good path for founders - it is absolutely _not_ the only good path.)

This article does a reasonable job of helping identify which companies might be VC-compatible and which aren't:

[https://medium.com/point-nine-news/the-rise-of-non-vc- compat...](https://medium.com/point-nine-news/the-rise-of-non-vc-compatible- saas-companies-47054f1f3b29)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think the issue stems from how this is reported. Too much focus on race and gender and not enough focus on the real world. These articles focus 100% on the racial politics rather than on why a VC would invest in a company in the first place.

Even saying "the typical startup, typically founded by a white male, that typically fails." ... The reality is, upwards of 80% of all companies, not just startups, fail within the first year of operation, it's not a black vs white, male vs female issue. It's simply a combination of questions about the quality of the founders, the quality of the product, the quality of their marketing, the overall environment and a hundred other factors.

"... examined over 60,000 startups and identified just 88 led by black women... " and then go on to complain about how little money was raised from VCs without mentioning that 99.95% of all startups period, regardless of who is in charge, gets no VC funding [https://www.forbes.com/sites/dileeprao/2013/07/22/why-99-95-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/dileeprao/2013/07/22/why-99-95-of- entrepreneurs-should-stop-wasting-time-seeking-venture-capital/)

So to answer your question, first replace the "as a black female founder" with just "as a founder ...". Focus on your product 100%, focus on improving it, focus on your users. That is the only thing you should be focusing on. And only after you have a good product vision (or ideally an already built product, even if just an MVP), only after you're seeing promising growth or at least plenty of interest in your key demographics, can you start thinking about VCs.

If I was to invest in any company, the only things I would look at is their numbers, their vision, and their skillsets. Ultimately the race, gender, orientation or any other such things, would never come into the equation.

I am curious, anything you could share about your business? Anything we could read?

Cheers

</comment><comment><USER5> It's very simple. There are not many black female founders. Hence, not many black female founders get funding.

For example, compare it with the number of female polish founders who get funding. It's even lower!

<comment><AUTHOR> Are the numbers not relatively significant at all?

<comment><USER5> If at all they mean that black women receive comparatively speaking a lot funding - if we can trust the numbers in the TC article.

But there are also a lot of factors left out. For example, geographic factors, how many startups receive funding in Poland?

<comment><USER6> I agree - Torwald. Well done! Few people actually even compare percentages - they prefer the absolute number (88).

I'm good at math, not everybody is.

If you looked at it mathematically, this subset (black female co founders) are actually very well funded.

It's funny that a high funding rate is paired with an article that is trying to use the percentage value for exactly the opposite position. Who ever writes this junk needs to take a statistics class ASAP.

Question: "As a black female founder I'm wondering if pursuing VC is worth the effort."

Answer: Absolutely. The numbers don't appear on first glance, but they are actually on your side!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think sexism and racism play a part. I'm a white man and I wouldn't wish to swap that with any other race or sex because my experience tells me that other races and sexes face more obstacles, are taken less seriously. Which means they have to put on more work to get the same results.

I don't think that means I owe anybody anything because of who I am, nor that I need to feel guilty anyway. But I would try to get beyond my own internalized biases when interacting with people.

From what I can sense about being other race or sex, if I were, I wouldn't want to apply for funding since I'd assume the game was rigged, mostly. I'd just try to go my own way. But that just me.

After applying to YC and funding a few times and failing, that's pretty much what I'm doing anyway.

If anyone is having trouble sensing the barriers of race and sex, you could try asking yourself, would I want to be another race and sex from what I am, to asses your own biases, and perceptions. That's what I did to realize I wouldn't want to swap it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Assuming that black founders have less of a shot at raising money and women have less of a shot at making money, then it would be obvious that black women have even less of a shot at raising money. Mathematically speaking.

I'm not sure whether that bias actually exists, but lets assume that it does.

What this means is really just that you can't be Juicero. Do you want to be Juicero? Being biased against by VC only works against you if you want to be part of the VC lunacy. If you build a real company with actual value, your race won't matter. Maybe a little bit. Maybe even a lot. Maybe you don't get the inflated price some companies get, but raising money is not a competition. You just want to raise the money that you need, not top the Series A olympics.

If you don't view raising money as a competition, you will be fine. You are not a statistic. People make the mistake of viewing themselves as the outcome of a statistic. Statistics don't work that way. If one of those articles says that "only .4% of funded companies have black female founders", that does not imply that "of all the black female founders who apply, only .4% get funded". It just means that there are not many black female founders with VC funding. Could have any number of reasons.

Maybe one of those reasons is that black women have a hard time even getting into a position in life where they would consider trying to raise money. That is a big political and socioeconomic problem, but it is not YOUR problem. Just because there are not many of X, doesn't mean its hard for you to be X. Could be really easy. Do not get discouraged by statistics.

If you build a company that is worth investing in, someone will see it.

</comment><comment><USER9> A few comments:

\- To answer your question directly, if the numbers in the article are accurate, black women were disproportionately more funded per black female founder. The overall numbers are very low (i.e., relatively few black female founders overall), so I personally wouldn't draw any conclusions from this data since it is too easy to skew.

\- Getting funding in general is hard. If a black female founder doesn't get funding, it probably has more to do with their idea or team than with anything else. Said another way, the same idea with founders of different race/sex will only very rarely change the outcome.

\- Is it with the effort to pursue VC funding period (irrespective of being a black female)? Most ideas that people have simply don't scale to levels that will be interesting to VCs. Additionally, even if the idea has the potential to scale, it has to scale in the right way (i.e., on a VC timeline).

\- I'm curious about why you believe anything in TC or Wired. They are in the business of selling clicks, and most businesses like this are quick and dirty with numbers and/or conclusions. I would weight these about zero in my decision about whether to pursue VC funding or not.

\- Social capital goes a long way in VC funding. While there are certainly some people who will exclude because of a founder's blackness or womanness, there are many others who won't. I suggest getting close to some VC-funded founders somehow (social hack this). Private conversations with these folks will get you much more valuable and actionable information than a TC article or a post on HN.

\- HN's (and Stripe's) own patio11 makes a point of being willing to meet young entrepreneurs to talk about these types of matters. This guy has well- informed opinions. Even if you disagree with some of his conclusions, you will at least have some great information to act on. Searching for patio11 and kalzumeus will point to a way to reach him.

\- I suggest reading all of Paul Graham's essays. Short summary for founders: talk to your customers and iterate your product.

\- I also suggest you read Michael O'Church's essays about VC culture on the way back machine. Sometimes they come off as being a bit shrill, but those essays provide a lot of valuable (and imho often accurate) insights about the dysfunction of certain parts of VC culture.

I hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER10> Don't give up. The general rule is that traction trumps everything. Even if there's vicious discrimination at the pre-traction stage, you can still totally make it.</comment>