If there's one thing Microsoft is better at than Apple, it's… email. - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/2009/09/16/microsoft-apple-email/ <comment><USER2> It is entirely plausible Mail.app is not the greatest e-mail client ever, but the Outlook/Exchange combination is the absolute worst e-mail solution ever conceived.

It's unreliable, expensive, limited, slow, heavy and each and every attribute I don't want in an e-mail solution.

I can't count the number of companies that make people take messages off their mail server and put them in local stores just because the Exchange server cannot reliably manage terabytes of messages and their attachments. Just imagine the nightmare it would be (because nobody does it) to do any kind of analysis on this mess. It's nearly impossible.

<comment><USER3> "... the Outlook/Exchange combination is the absolute worst e-mail solution ever conceived"

Have you used Lotus Notes?

<comment><USER3> A lot of folks seem to have modded this up, taking it as a rhetorical question. But I'm serious. Lotus Notes seems to have fairly reliable large- scale server-side storage, but the user interface is crap. The Outlook UI is a lot better (actually, a lot better than many mail UI's...) but I don't know much about the Exchange backend.

<comment><USER2> In one word: "horrible".

As for Outlook, it seems to be a de facto standard mail clients try to emulate. I would much rather use a Gmail-is interface. Labels are a much better idea than folders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Complaint boils down to:

1\. Apple Mail is bad at working with Exchange. Probably true.

2\. "Apple Mail "expands" document attachments inline or places icons anywhere within the body of emails. The only way to stop this ugly behavior is to switch to plain text mode." If Mail's display of expanded attachments is the _only_ thing that bothers you about receiving HTML email, count yourself lucky.

3\. Address Book and iCal are separate apps. I welcome this--Mail is too bloated already even without them--though they are thin on features as she points out. Other than that, I think separating these apps while allowing their databases to talk to each other is one place where Apple really got the Unix way and updated it to the GUI era. Each application does one thing, but they can interoperate.

<comment><USER4> I didn't see much of a complaint about iCal and AddressBook being separate apps. I saw the major complaints being lack of features in the separated apps.

<comment><USER3> He started by complaining about them being separate apps, as if to complain that Address Book's low feature set was a consequence of it being its own independent app. While some more specifics would have been nice, the context implied that the lack of features came from them being separate apps--which doesn't give enough credit to how their data is integrated, and to the advantages of this approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "reducing an essential tool as a contact manager down to adding, search and editing capabilities with absolutely no options for view customization, filtering, categorization etc."

Is this actually true? I'm not familiar with Outlook or Entourage but the things you want to do seem entirely possible in Mail:

You filter with the search box. You categorize with groups You can add any custom fields to contacts You can add general purpose notes to contacts

<comment><USER4> The author probably didn't realize that lists existed because (iirc) by default AddressBook doesn't show your the 'tiered' view with the different groups. I think that by default it shows you a single AddressBook entry at a time (with the 'next/prev' arrows to navigate through search results).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem is that the apple version doesn't say "Microsoft" at the top.

I know, this is a stupid joke, but I'm only half kidding. A coworker stormed into my office today _livid_ because he needed _microsoft_ office, not _open_ office.

"It's free! It's SHIT!", he screamed while throwing his hands into the air.

I walked into his department and had him show me, on one of the other machines (which had MS office installed) what he was trying to do.

I then walked over to his machine and pressed LITERALLY the exact same series of menus and buttons to get EXACTLY the same result. (it was excel vs OO.o calc).

He had never even tried.

Perhaps I should start lying to my users and telling them that Open Office costs $1000 per seat. I bet they would beg me for it then.

As far as mail clients go. Get thunderbird and stop even thinking about the fact that you're using a mail client.

</comment><comment><USER7> Outlook was always too busy for me. It was almost designed for people who want to spend their day "living" inside of email and calendar appointments. Ever click on the Journal by accident and get a wizard to set it up? New emails greet you with a "click me" pop-up notification including preview text, a sound, and a little "new mail" icon by your clock. It's like the most important thing you should do right now is stop whatever you're working on and read the new message; mental death for anyone attempting to concentrate on something.

I know you can shut this all off and make Outlook quieter, but sometimes coworkers and bosses don't like this. "Did you get the email I just sent you 30 seconds ago?" The thing that bugs me about Outlook more than anything is that its incessant ADD can affect an entire organization and trickle into its blood. It takes a group of rebels to fight against it.

This isn't really an issue if you're job is reactive. Customer support, IT getting an email alert that a server just went down, etc... Then Outlook can be really helpful so long as you know how to "tame the beast" with email rules.

Exchange is a nice piece of tech (albeit a bit of a pain to setup and configure from an IT's perspective - I've done several builds myself). It "tightly" integrates with Outlook in a properly-configured Active Directory environment. For corporate-hosted email, the Outlook/Exchange combo is pretty tough to beat if you have the cash for it.*

In non-corporate land, however, I'm in love with Mail.app. It's so simple and basic. Far less annoying than Outlook. There still are new-mail notifications (easily turned off), though they're less tempting to click on as you don't get a mini-message preview as with Outlook. Search is MILLIONS of times better than Outlook.

I think it comes down to a matter of taste and work habits. Some people live and die by Outlook. Others like myself are just plain sick of it for a list of reasons and like something else. It's like OS-wars. Just pick whatever makes you happiest and stick to it. Don't tell others what they should be using or how they should be using it, etc... :)

*If anyone has any experience using Mac OS X Server's mail server and Mail.app, compared to Exchange/Outlook, please share!

<comment><USER8> I configured Thunderbird to alert me to all incoming emails by showing a preview window (no sound), which I can then very quickly scan to see if the email is important (I had several near miss emails from my university, but, as a student, I can't tell them not not send me urgent email).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Off the topic:

Do you all find that the toolbar that sticks at the bottom of the webpage is really annoying?

<comment><USER10> I found that it fit in the the generally annoying motif of the page. Particularly egregious is _the scraping and reposting of this very comment thread_.

Dear authors of "thenextweb.com": You do not have permission to post this comment on your site.

<comment><USER11> And there is your comment now, right on their site :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Forgive me, but I'm hoping there are a lot of nerdy Mail.app users in this thread...

Does anyone here that uses Mail.app and has it sync up only the last month, or couple months of mail? Or even the last..50 or 100 messages like the iPhone client? I'd really like to use it as my mail client, but I have no interest or need in having my entire gmail account synced on my laptop. I suppose it doesn't really matter if I have a couple gigs of wasted space, but I don't know why I should have to carry it around if I don't need it.

Seems like it should be easy? It's available on the iPhone client.

Any ideas?

<comment><USER13> There isn't a comparable feature in Mail.app.

If you turn on the "Advanced IMAP Controls" labs feature in gmail, you can switch off the labels that will give you the most trouble. You can do this with "All Mail" and "deleting" messages from your inbox will still archive them in there: <http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=78755>

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the reply, that's too bad that it doesn't exist, but I appreciate knowing now instead of looking for it all the time. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It depends on your definition of better. I can't comment on Apple's offering but I suspect your definition of better is feature based.

Exchange has a lot of promise (easy server and user integration, if you use small business server it's an easy setup, if you use a standard win server god help you) but it's features are incredibly poorly limited, the performance is horrendous and it's missing lots of basics. I truly have no idea how the money and brains that must be behing Exchange could have so poorly tested the system for usability and real-world use.

Outlook again is better than any other email interface I've used. Customisation and filtering and stuff can be a pain and have their limits, and there are some general problem but overall it's not that bad. But one thing that is bad again is its performance - it's terrible! With Xobni, search isn't such a problem (even instant outlook search can be slow) but just opening an email, and eventually the interface is an experience in frustration unparalled for the average user.

</comment><comment><USER15> If the criterion here is the number of messages sent out by windows machines then this is a definite yes. Unfortunately the users of those machines have not much to do with the messages being sent.

Re. the rest of the article, anything attached to emails of that size will get the sender a nice bill from me with a reminder that sending email with 3Mb attachment might end up on a mobile phone.

It won't be a very friendly reminder.

Send me a link where I can get the file (and a password if you feel that it is precious stuff).

<comment><USER16> Regardless of your personal taste on the matter (with which I am admittedly sympathetic), the fact that the software _fails_ to support it---and in particular, fails to the exclusion of other mail!---is inexcusable. "Can't send messages large enough to annoy you" is obviously not an intended feature; it's just extremely poor software.

Whether any of us like it or not, in most office environments large email attachments have become part of the landscape, and Apple seemingly doesn't care. I can't bring myself to believe that this could have slipped past QA, which leads me to believe that someone made a conscious decision to ship software with a feature most would take for granted in an unusable state.

My goodness, it almost seems like I'm turning into an Apple detractor. I assure you, I do not intend it! Poor software design is equally repugnant whether it comes from Redmond, 1 Infinite Loop, or RMS. That the poor design in question happens to satisfy your or my proclivities with respect to attachment sizing isn't really relevant.

<comment><USER17> Except when it's probably not Mail's fault.

I've never encountered such problems despite having sent 100mb+ email attachments from Mail before. I've just tried sending a 35mb email attachment to myself (other email account) and sure enough it was sent without a hitch.

Maybe instead of having the urge to whine how about just chill and dig deeper.

<comment><USER4> He (article author) was specifically talking about Mail.app + MS Exchange interaction, not a generic 'send an email using any old email provider.'</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong - <AUTHOR> Someone commented to Paul Graham last month (original thread: http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=1320439):
"pg, unfortunately for America, in recent years most of the highest paid people (to the tune of hundreds of millions per person) have been financiers. Even fairly successful outcomes in the start-up world, such as Mint.com to take a random example, don't make founders that rich.
I suspect if you look at the new inclusions in Forbes 400 list over the past 10 years, that list (of deltas) would be dominated by Finance. This is not a good thing."
pg replied:
"Instead of assuming this, why don't you check and tell us? It should be pretty easy; historical Forbes 400 data is available online."
I decided to go check and tell everyone, and Paul Graham is wrong about the Forbes 400 showing startups having a higher return than Wall Street. According to the Forbes 400 data, between 1999 and 2009:
- 211 new people entered the Forbes 400 list during this ten-year period.
- Of these, 59 were from finance.
- 17 were from technology.
I think the record speaks for itself.
You can see the raw data at http://www.forbes.com/lists/home.jhtml?passListId=54&passYear=1999&passListType=Person, http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/54/rich-list-09_The-400-Richest-Americans_FinalWorth.html. <comment><USER4> I made that original comment. Thanks for doing the analysis I was too lazy to do! Your analysis jives with the broader point I was trying to make - in the past 15 years, finance has been the surest path to riches in America. It is not just at the level of the Forbes 400. During the real estate bubble, newly minted mortgage brokers (often coming from other fields such as car sales, they found selling debt far more lucrative) were taking home $0.5 million - and not just a few of them. I have had acquaintances in Goldman, at fairly low level in the org chart, who have been taking home similar sums in bonuses every year. I know Unix systems administrators in Wall Street who take home ~$300K/year - and these guys are generally very low in the Wall Street totem pole.

It has been the age of the financier for a while now. No, this is not capitalism at work; it is Federal Reserve policy. It allowed specially privileged entities to lever up (30x leverage in case of investment banks like Goldman or Morgan Stanley, 10x in case of hedge funds), allow them to speculate with easy money, and have them pay out huge bonuses in case of investment banks or huge carried profit in case of hedgies ... and finally bail them out when their leverage blew up on them, only to have them start speculating all over again.

<comment><USER5> The thing is, however, that the times are different now. Look at a chart of the US 10 year note from the 60's to the present. It peaked in 1981.

I parse that history as -- the world was coming off of a golden era in productivity, wealth and economic stability. It would make sense for people from B school to make a lot of money if they started getting their chops on Wall Street, etc.

But now it's different. I think that the 10 year note has begun its steady rise again, finally (biggest acceleration since the late 60's and early 80's). But in this economic climate, nimbler business arrangements surely are more viable and better training for future business leaders.

It's just basic math -- in a 4% environment, things like SpaceX and other lighter economic models will be successful. In a 15% environment, financing itself is more useful, and, with synergy and everything, on average produces more massive individual personal wealth.

The constraints that faced those currently on the Fortune 400 list (which is really some sort of integral of the past 30 years -- as these are people at the peak of their careers) are different from those who will be on the Fortune 400 list in 2030.

(N.B. I made all this s* up having looked at an all-time 10 year note chart earlier tonight. But it's an idea.)

ETA: Although it's a bit of a project. I think it would be interesting to compile the 100 wealthiest people in the world over the past 100 years. I have a feeling that certain periods in time would've produced clusters of financiers (JP Morgans, etc.), whereas other times would produce clusters of startup founders. Would be interesting to compare them to different economic indices, etc. Then the thing would be to determine if our own present economic climate resembles others periods -- and what that means to the different types of fields you should, on average, go into to maximize personal wealth (if that's something that you're into). Or at least be aware of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a fundamental difference between 'there are more financiers than start-up founders in the Fortune 400' and 'a greater percentage of financiers in America make the Fortune 400 than start-up founders in America'.

Using extreme example to make my point, if 0.001% of all 'financiers' made the Fortune 400 and 5.000% of all start-up founders did, no-one would claim that 211 v 59 means much because of the asymmetrical volume of the candidate pools.

The percentages won't be that stark, of course. Are there 4 times as many financiers as start-up founder? I would suggest more (many, many more) which would indicate that being a start-up founder makes it more likely to hit that measure of financial success than being a financier, based on those figures.

I make no comment about the relevance of this to the original discussion and pg's right or wrongness, which I was not a part of.

<comment><USER7> That depends a lot what you consider a startup founder. If you consider a startup founder as anyone who quits their day job to start a business, I'd bet that there are many more startup founders than financiers. If you consider only people in the technology field, the numbers drop significantly. If you consider people in the technology field who start a project that may become a business, but don't restrict to those who quit their day jobs, the numbers balloon again.

I could look up these numbers, but they really don't tell you all that much. If you're a Xoogler with venture capital in Silicon Valley, your odds are much better than if you're a college dropout in Indiana who's playing around with Rails in his free time. It's silly to lump both "founders" into the same category.

<comment><USER8> "- 17 were from technology." Seems like we only consider technology startups.

<comment><USER7> Then do you consider only venture-funded technology startups? After all, most of the folks on the technology list got there through venture funding. Do you consider only startups where the founders quit their day job? Do you consider ones where the founders eventually quit their day jobs, but not until their startup had traction in the marketplace? (That would include Apple and EBay, FWIW.) Do you consider any technology project that may become a startup?

The original thread-starter wants to know the chances of making the Forbes 400, _given_ that he becomes a tech entrepreneur or financier. He rightly points out that this depends a lot on the denominator - but the denominator depends a lot on how you slice the categories of "tech entrepreneur" and "financier". There are a large number of factors besides entrepreneurship that alter the odds, and many of them alter the odds a lot more than the mere fact that you've started a company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I used to work for CSFB (now Credit Suisse) in London's Canary Wharf. It's the most I've earned in my entire career.

Unless you've worked for an investment bank you have no idea how much money they have. It's like a giant gulf-of-mexico-style money gusher that doesn't quit.

How do they make it? CSFB flies on the bleeding edge of what's legal and always have. I was there when Frank Quattrone was involved in the IPO of VA Linux. The share allocation resulted in the US vs Quattrone lawsuit. Imagine you facilitate an IPO and you get to hand out shares at $80 a piece to your buddies on and the first day it pops up to $300/share and you can sell - <USER2> then. <http://bit.ly/cBMdqb>

I was also there when James Archer, Jeffrey Archer's son was found guilty of manipulating the swedish stock exchange and banned for life. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1459638.stm>

In investment banks there is what's known as the Chinese Wall. It separates investment banking from the brokerage divisions to prevent conflicts of interest. Imagine you have a bunch of guys buying and selling stock for the bank's account and another group of guys recommending to customers which stock to buy and sell. They're all in the same building, using the same elevators, the same mens rooms and the same lunch hall. Quick entrepreneurial quiz: Anyone see a business model there?

They take their licks though. I was there when the LTCM fund collapsed and they lost $600M. Also when the Russian economy collapsed and they lost another $600M. Layoffs? Nah - business as usual.

If you're a developer or ops guy and get tired of startups, I strongly recommend going to work for an investment bank. It's very very hard to get your first job - you're going to have to network your ass off or have a seriously hot resume - probably both. But once you're in, provided you're good at what you do, it's very easy to move between banks and promote yourself into better jobs in other banks or divisions.

So what the f __k am I doing running a startup? Good question. I ask myself that sometimes. When you look at the opportunity cost from the "I could be in an investment bank" perspective it is scary. I don't have some magic answer or a bunch of bullet points. I guess what draws me to it is the fact that I own my own business. It's also completely honest. Your success is your own and so is your failure. Working in banking feels like cheating. Perhaps it is. But it pays cash and lots of it.

<comment><USER10> It's worth pointing out that this is really only a viable career option if you are a straight, white, anglo-saxon male ready to work long hours, drink hard, and put up with a machismo-dominated culture. The financial sector and investment banking in particular, even in their tech departments, have the kind of corporate culture that sends me running.

<comment><USER11> Having worked at Goldman Sachs in FIG investment banking, and having very close friends at virtually every bulge bracket as well as 8 of the 10 largest Private Equity firms, I can attest that this is completely false. If there is one industry that bleeds meritocracy (outside of entrepreneurship, which I think is a clear first), it is finance. You are definitely right about the long hours - you must be intelligent and be willing to work extremely hard, and you must also be willing to put up with a great deal of tedium and grunt work at almost all levels. However, the one thing that you don't have to be is white. Minorities are vastly overrepresented, and while I have not done a hard calculation if you take Asians and Indians as a percentage of total front office workers, I would not be surprised if it were near 30%. Include Jews and it's even higher. I currently work at McKinsey & Co in the Corporate Finance practice in New York, and the office as a whole (of 500 front office consultants) is probably 40% Asian or Indian.

That said, there are many downsides to finance as well and there are many reasons I am forgoing a $400k+ paycheck in PE to move back to SF to start a company where I am paid $0 and will have to live off of a ramen diet. The fact that I am not straight, white, and anglo-saxon however does not play a factor at all (and in fact there are running jokes at many banks and top tier consultancies that the above description puts you in the minority).

<comment><USER12> Agreed. I'm British Asian and work on the the trading floor of a mid-tier bank in London, race is completely a non-issue. Diversity is huge both on the business and tech side.

On the IBD side (M&A/CF) there's probably less diversity, but again it's not a huge issue. In IBD the division is more down to class than to race.

The trading floor is still male dominated though, although there are a fair number of female quants in the industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can we explain this by saying many hedge funds are negatively correlated, along with survivor bias?

This is a huge simplification, but consider for every four hedge fund managers, one goes long the market, another short the market, another long volatility and another short volatility.

No matter what it's very likely one or two out of those four perform very well over one year. Start with enough hedge funds and throw on enough leverage and after a few years, there are bound to be some huge outlier-sized winners and many other blowups. It's like a big roulette table, but every possible outcome has someone betting big on it.

Contrast that with startups, where almost every startup has exposure to market beta (either in receiving funding or finding an acquirer). In addition, it's quite possible every music startup in the industry goes bust, or every PDA- maker startup, or every online poker startup, etc. The roulette wheel has an infinite number of bets, and can easily land so that no one wins.

Edit: I'm very convinced there are people with extraordinary skill in investing and/or in founding startups. I'm only suggesting how the Forbes 400 list could still exist if it was pure luck and no skill.

<comment><USER7> Startups have the same phenomenom: for every product that people are _not_ buying, there's a substitute that they're buying instead. Either that or consumers are stuffing their money under the mattress, but we know (from the savings rate data) that this isn't happening.

In some ways, there ought to be _more_ variation with startups, because consumers will tend to pile onto the market leader because they're seen as reliable, which starves other firms in the industry and shifts resources onto a few big winners. The information cascades among consumer businesses can be much bigger than the information cascades among financial firms.

<comment><USER13> That accounts from some ways startups can be negatively correlated, but for the purposes of billionaire founders making the Forbes 400, I still say they are all hugely correlated to market conditions that enable crucial funding rounds, M&A events, and IPO events.

Also, if I think startup X sucks, it's not that obvious how I can bet against them and get rich on their dismal failure. But if I think hedge fund Y is doing stupid things, I can take the other side of their trades, and one of us will wind up rich.

<comment><USER7> "Also, if I think startup X sucks, it's not that obvious how I can bet against them and get rich on their dismal failure."

Compete with them. If you think startup X sucks, then enter the same market, gunning for the same customers, but serve them better.

It's harder to do this than for a financier to short a stock, but that's because everything in finance is higher leverage than in business. The goal of an entrepreneur is to do things better than established businesses; the goal of a financier is to _predict_ which firms will do things better, and then divert capital to them. The actual effort involved in finance is simply a decision, but that decision needs a lot of information to be correct more often than it's wrong. (None of which changes the relative likelihood of wealth concentrating at the top of one of these fields.)

<comment><USER13> I don't follow. Say a startup comes along and I think the entire idea, space, and sector is doomed to failure. The whole market is a no-go. I can't get rich off the ones I decide will be failures, and it's possible for an entire sector to fail together in a correlated way. Say, Gmail crushes all web-based email startups, or iPhone crushes all startups based on the available 2007-era mobile platforms.

At least in financial derivatives trading, there is a somewhat zero-sum aspect to who is winning and losing money. Every dismal derivatives trade should have some winners on the other side.

<comment><USER14> > Every dismal derivatives trade should have some winners on the other side.

Unless the market collapses. In that case, all you have are losers.

OTOH, markets collapse not because resources are destroyed, but because investors realize they never existed.

<comment><USER15> > Unless the market collapses. In that case, all you have are losers.

And people who were short.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> People can interpret a data set in so many ways. I don't know which people you put into the "technology" and "finance" categories. I just went with the people that Forbes put into the categories of "Finance" or "Investment" vs the people that they put into the categories of "Internet" or "Software". I ran some numbers on the data they provided and here's what I found:

Finance/Investments:

      Total People: 81
      Avg Net Worth: 181.77
      Avg Age: 62.32

Internet/Software:

      Total People: 48
      Avg Net Worth: 321.47
      Avg Age: 45.43

The net worth is in millions I guess, but the numbers don't seem to jive (Bill Gates is worth $85B??)

It seems that technology > finance, in terms of net worth and number of years required to achieve that worth. While a financier may be more likely to make the list, the expected value for a tech entrepreneur seems to be much higher.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you look at just the _new_ rich (the people who have gotten rich over the past ten years), or all the rich? If the latter, you're including a lot of dot-com people who wouldn't have gotten nearly as rich if it weren't for the bubble.

<comment><USER16> I'd have to normalize the data for all kinds of bubbles in a variety of markets, not just the dotcom bubble. Plus, I couldn't see how to determine who was new rich based on the data.

In the light of morning, I'd like to amend my statement to "the expected value for a tech entrepreneur seems to be _slightly_ higher", based on the definition of an expected value:

      81 / 400 x 181.77 = 36.80
      48 / 400 x 321.47 = 38.57

Given that the odds of making the list in finance are higher, it's still a better bet to start a technology startup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a false dichotomy. The financiers who made this list were all entrepreneurs. James Simons, John Paulson, Steve Schwarzman, David E. Shaw, etc all successfully founded companies. Their companies just happen to be investment firms. The fact that more founders of financial startups have made this list in past decade than founders of tech startups speaks to the dominance of the investment industry in recent years. It says nothing about finance vs start-ups. The Forbes list will always be dominated by those who took an entrepreneurial risk and had that bet pay off. Nobody, finance sector or otherwise, makes this list by being an employee. Not even top employees can reach this level. Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, John Mack are not on here.

Now for more modest monetary goals, there's still no better field than finance. The only path to the Forbes list is through entrepreneurship, but finance opens up additional paths to millionairehood. Make it to Managing Director at an investment bank? Become a successful trader? You'll get 7-figures in yearly comp. Wanna do that in the tech world? You'll need a successful exit.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Nobody, finance sector or otherwise, makes this list by being an employee. Not even top employees can reach this level."

That is indeed true, but "start-up" has specific technology connotations in the minds of most people here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The original discussion was about expected value, not maximum value. I continue to believe that the expected value of finance exceeds that of startups, but the answer to that is not in the Forbes 400, which shows those who are at the extreme. To make an analogy, the guy that just won the Powerball lottery is far richer than all the doctors in his state, but that doesnt mean the expected value of playing the lottery is higher than being a doctor. Salaries in finance tend to start at close to $100K for first year employees coming out of undergrad. A solid performer can get up to $300K/year in 5 years. The difference between this kind of career path and startup is that the finance employee has much more control over his compensation - <USER3> you're smart and willing to work hard, the salary rises in a predictable fashion. An entrepreneur can make a lot more if he is successful, but many of the factors that determine success are out his control. The entrepreneurs win much bigger than financiers (so the entrepreneuers should be much better represented in the Forbes 400), but the expected value of being a financier is greater (no data available to prove that).

</comment><comment><USER19> The real question is: Do you want to be a financier or a founder? Personally, forget finance. Some of us like to invent stuff, and by stuff I don't mean phony securities.

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting. Who were the 59 from finance?

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't write them all down because that would have taken another hour and it's 11 PM Bay time on a Friday, but here are a few:

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

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

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

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

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

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

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_A._Cohen>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_C._Griffin>

If you're curious as to whether I included any specific people please feel free to ask.

<comment><USER20> I'm curious what your test was for deciding whether someone was in finance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here are the industries I considered to be "finance":

\- Hedge funds and other money management

\- Private equity

\- Investment banking

\- Leveraged buyouts

\- Proprietary trading

\- Traditional (retail) banking and credit cards

I did _not_ consider heirs with investments to have gotten their money in finance, unless they increased their original sum ten-fold or more (in real dollars). I also did not consider real estate investment/speculation to be finance.

<comment><USER20> Sounds reasonable. But when you have time it would be useful to see the actual lists of the people you put in each category.

<comment><USER21> Since the ecosystem of non-bootstrapped startups combine founders and financiers, where do you draw the line? VC firms seem squarely in the financier camp, and founders who do not contribute capital are not, but angels and incubators are more difficult. An honest classification attempt would attribute some of their equity to capital and some to work contribution, but even when there is currently a stable valuation available to calculate the capital contribution to an equity grant, the numbers are often uncertain guesses.

<comment><USER21> apsec112: I see your reply, but it is [dead]

 _I actually counted VCs as having made their money from technology rather than finance_

You know my next question then: what is the financier/founder ratio if you consider VCs to be financiers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > "Instead of assuming this, why don't you check and tell us? It should be > pretty easy; historical Forbes 400 data is available online."

Well, he wasn't WRONG. He just advised you to make a stronger argument, since the data is easily available.

</comment><comment><USER23> outliers hold no interest for me. what percentage of people who tried to become successful financiers made it vs what percentage of tech entrepreneurs started a successful company?

<comment><AUTHOR> Difficult to say exactly. Both are definitely high-risk industries. The key difference is probably the timespan over which you make your money. A moderately successful entrepreneur might work hard for five years, sell his company for $20M, and get $4M of that. A moderately successful financier might work hard for thirty years, and make $500K - $2M every year that he works. Essentially, successful financiers tend to be older (50s and up) while successful entrepreneurs tend to be younger.

<comment><USER24> > Essentially, successful financiers tend to be older (50s and up) while > successful entrepreneurs tend to be younger.

I think this data can also answer the question. Has any one done any calculations on this front?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Original thread:

<http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=1320439>

Raw data:

[http://www.forbes.com/lists/home.jhtml?passListId=54&pas...](http://www.forbes.com/lists/home.jhtml?passListId=54&passYear=1999&passListType=Person)

[http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/54/rich- list-09_The-400-Ric...](http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/54/rich- list-09_The-400-Richest-Americans_FinalWorth.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> The smart middle ground would be applying good technology/product entrepreneurship to the finance industry. They clearly have the money to play with and what may seem simple to us is wizardry to them. Someone pointed out an opportunity to me yesterday re: illiquid real estate assets. My mind is blown. I'm sitting here fucking around trying to get a 300k angel round, and these guys are trying to get rid of 300mil. there's a lot of money to be had out there combining tech/product know-how with boring industries. Money is usually found in the unsexy places.

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't understand why the two categories are being contrasted against each other as though one cannot be both. Wouldn't many highly successful founders later become financiers as well? If the root of this discussion is indeed which paths any given individual might take to achieve much greater wealth-- and not some sort of "financing vs. founding" contest-- then the founder role should nonetheless receive greater attention in all/most aspects. For most, the financier role will only ever be open if they are founders first.

<comment><USER28> It appears that the "finance" category often _is_ totally separate though, and that you can break into it without doing something like tech first. The people being classified as "financiers" on the list never started a non-finance company--- folks like George Soros made their money 100% in finance. They made their initial money moving up the ranks at investment banks, playing arbitrage strategies, pulling in bonuses from big deals, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It may be stating the obvious, but if you are founding a (tech) startup for the money, you are doing it for the wrong reason.

<comment><USER29> While this is true to a certain extent, one must consider the opportunity cost of a startup. In this case: how much I am giving up, assuming I could have gone and worked in finance?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> A man of finance measures his success on a single metric - wealth accumulated. A techie founder on the other hand has many takeaways - social respect, geek goodness, making the future instead of guessing it, money in some cases.

I think if economic wealth is used as a measure instead of monetary wealth, pg would be spot on. What say?

</comment><comment><USER31> You said:

> 211 new people entered the Forbes 400 list during this ten-year period. > Of > these, 59 were from finance. > 17 were from technology.

He said: 'that list (of deltas) would be dominated by Finance'

So how exactly was he wrong wrong?

<comment><USER15> "that list (of deltas) would be dominated by Finance" was said by startingup.

pg said, in response to "the expected value (in money) of going to Wall Street is still quite a bit higher than that of a startup.", "in the Forbes 400 [...] at least that is not the case."

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > _I think the record speaks for itself._

There's something about the way you phrased this that makes me think you were gunning for pg. It would be nice if you included the complete breakdown, as well as your criteria for determining tech vs. finance. Since you had to manually go through the entire list, I can't imagine it would have been difficult to record your results.

<comment><AUTHOR> "There's something about the way you phrased this that makes me think you were gunning for pg."

I was responding to him specifically, yes.

"Since you had to manually go through the entire list, I can't imagine it would have been difficult to record your results."

Not actually difficult, just time-consuming (I did it by having the two different lists, sorted by name for easy comparability, in two adjacent browser windows).

<comment><USER32> I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it's a little disingenuous to publicly call someone out without providing your methods or your results.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a payment provider for monthly changing subscription rates? - <AUTHOR> Im testing a new subscription service where customers pay for the amount of leads they get, every month. So this number fluctuates and I'm looking for a way to charge customers at the end of each month based on the number of generated leads. How could I make this work? <comment><USER2> So the base subscription is free? And they're just paying when new leads are generated?

From the payment provider's point of view, you essentially have a free subscription with misc charges each month. So using Stripe, you would just sign up a user to your subscription plan which would have a $0 cost.

Then at the end of the month when you're reconciling the billing, you create a charge on each customer equal to NEW_LEAD_COST * COUNT

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah perfect. Yes the base cost is free so that should work. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> AFAIK you can use a normal provider like Stripe to collect the card number once and then make multiple charges.</comment>


Chinese troll campaign on Twitter exposes disconnect with the wider world - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/asia/nnevvy-china-taiwan-twitter-intl-hnk/index.html <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, democratic countries find themselves in disarray. Which, among other things, makes harder to present benefits of people's power.</comment>


Windows Internals, 7th Edition - <AUTHOR> http://www.alex-ionescu.com/?p=335 <comment><USER2> If Alex happens to drop by: what happened to DriverMon? Clearly Alex has been very busy but he mentioned the GUI-fication of the tool was being handled by his co-worker Robin Keir.

"Abusing the NT Kernel Shim Engine" by Alex Ionescu at REcon 2016 (October)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCa9icMqBNM?t=48m55s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCa9icMqBNM?t=48m55s)

 _a tool called DriverMon is planned for release at the conference, which uses the KSE to provide ProcMon for Drivers_

 _Will be available from[https://www.crowdstrike.com/resources/community- tools/](https://www.crowdstrike.com/resources/community-tools/)

Will announce release on Twitter in a few weeks_

\--

Waiting for this has reinforced my belief that vaporware (or whatever is preventing the release of this tool) has served as the best deterrent preventing anyone else from running with this undocumented tech!

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe it's just me but when I glance at the cover it looks like the book is about Windows 7 Internals only. I'm wondering how many others would think the same when seeing it on a bookshelf. It looks like the same layout was used for the 6th edition, I want to suggest the use of a different layout for the next editions.

<comment><USER4> It does look as if the title is _Windows 7 Internals_. Note that it was the preceding edition that covered Windows 7 (Windows NT 6.1). This edition has been updated to cover Windows NT 10.

<comment><USER5> Not the way I read it - it is "Windows Internals - 7 (seventh edition)". It is not even ambiguous IMHO because "7" is not vertically aligned with "Windows". But at a glance, yeah, someone could misunderstand it...

<comment><USER6> You can't say it's not ambigous if you're replying to two persons that found it confusing. :) I also read Windows 7 Internals, for one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Surface Aggregator Module (SAM) Internals - a little chip on your Surface > Pro/Laptop/Book that you probably didn't know was there

Nobody on the Internet seems to know what it is (based on my 5 minutes of looking). Does anyone on HN know?

<comment><USER8> Based on this[1] tweet, "System Aggregator Module" firmware on Surface Pro is similar to Macbook's "System Management Controller"[2].

[1] [https://twitter.com/aionescu/status/815878947200077824?lang=...](https://twitter.com/aionescu/status/815878947200077824?lang=en)

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

<comment><USER9> > _System Aggregator Module_

> _System Management Controller_

It's like the worst Java naming patterns (FactoryControlerBridgeAdapterManagerAdapter), but in hardware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For those having trouble accessing the page:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170512030315/http://www.alex-i...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170512030315/http://www.alex- ionescu.com/?p=335)

<comment><USER2> And here's Amazon's Kindle edition, listed for me at $31.19:

[https://amzn.com/dp/B0711FDMRR](https://amzn.com/dp/B0711FDMRR)

<comment><USER11> 45% off currently.

Was ~$19 AUD ($14 USD)

<comment><USER12> Can you share the link?

<comment><USER12> Code INTERNALS gives 40% off the pBook or eBook price on the MS Press Store. Just used the code for the bundle and it worked!

[https://www.microsoftpressstore.com](https://www.microsoftpressstore.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What's the modern equivalent for the Linux kernel these days?

<comment><USER14> [https://www.amazon.com/Linux-Kernel-Development-Robert- Love/...](https://www.amazon.com/Linux-Kernel-Development-Robert- Love/dp/0672329468/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494565611&sr=8-1&keywords=robert+love+linux) is very good, as is [https://www.amazon.com/Mac-OS-iOS-Internals- Apples/dp/111805...](https://www.amazon.com/Mac-OS-iOS-Internals- Apples/dp/1118057651/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494565653&sr=8-1&keywords=Apple+kernel+book+Jonathan)

<comment><USER4> Amit Singh's book on MacOS is quite interesting, too. But gtirloni did ask about Linux, for which neither MacOS book is really appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is the book released? Where can i buy it? What about part 2? So many questions...

<comment><USER16> Book is released on May 15. [http://a.co/hC9N59E](http://a.co/hC9N59E)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow, awesome. I've been checking Amazon every few months waiting on this. I was starting to think it'd never come. Also, just to echo xurukefi, what about part 2?</comment>


A Line in the Sand - <AUTHOR> http://robdobson.com/2017/02/a-line-in-the-sand/ <comment><USER2> I had to laugh at my own grumpyness. I saw the headline and started thinking, "ugh, another story with a headline that doesn't explain what the story is actually about." Turns out it does!

<comment><USER3> Not quite, I think the title should contain the word "machine".

<comment><USER2> true but I was expecting it to be some post about metaphorically drawing a line in the sand on some issue. I was surprised it was about a machine to draw a line in the sand

<comment><USER3> That's what I thought too, that's I say the word is missing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The project looks cool - but the link to the video is hard to find.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xGQmm7FXD4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xGQmm7FXD4)

</comment><comment><USER5> See also this (great-looking) kickstarter:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1199521315/sisyphus- the...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1199521315/sisyphus-the-kinetic- art-table)

</comment><comment><USER6> Man it's loud haha, don't mind me, just relaxing to the sound of sand being crushed by a metal ball.

Edit: might be quieter with more sand. Realize that was just a proof of concept video. Also not sure if the gears can be made to be quiet.

Cool mechanical engineering, could build 3D printers and what not.

<comment><USER7> I'm guessing sand on plexiglass isn't super quiet =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a smaller version of one from Maker Faire 2008.[1]

[1] [http://gizmodo.com/386879/sisyphus-v-a-robot-making-a-zen- ga...](http://gizmodo.com/386879/sisyphus-v-a-robot-making-a-zen-garden/)

</comment><comment><USER8> The classic computer-controlled Etch-A-Sketch was the Iconorama.[1] Large screen display technology from 1964.

[1] [https://youtu.be/etroQFqmV1k?t=768](https://youtu.be/etroQFqmV1k?t=768)

</comment><comment><USER9> Make the plotter(?) programmable via an internets app and find a way to "reset the sand without making everything on it shake" and I'll buy three of those.

</comment><comment><USER10> Engineering something this beautiful to spite your wife has made my evening.

</comment><comment><USER11> Cool project - and an upvote for having nothing to do with politics :)</comment>


What does it feel like to quit your job - <AUTHOR> http://abstrusegoose.com/172

<comment><USER2> hehehehe that was so funny. And I could see myself in that position in a few months (right now I am laughing though). Going through those double checks and triple checks right now before I take the plunge - quit my job to concentrate on my project full time, and I am so wary of those thoughts in the second and third paragraph. Hopefully the reverse order stays and I do end up feeling free and staying that way!

Cheers, Skowmunk.</comment>


The infernal semicolon (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://brendaneich.com/2012/04/the-infernal-semicolon/ <comment><USER2> I never tire of comparing Lua with Javascript, and this is another one of those cases. A semicolon in Lua is simply a character which is illegal to place anywhere but the end of a statement.

There is no insertion stage, the language parses just fine on a single line, or any whitespace you choose. Semicolons are vanishingly uncommon in Lua code, but if you want to compress a couple statements onto a line, they signal your intention.

Lua is like what Javascript would be if it were: based on Pascal, written by resource-constrained Brazilians, and capable of making backwards-incompatible changes. Though with the de-facto fork between Lua and LuaJIT, the latter has become much more difficult, as it should at some point in the maturing of a language.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure Lua is that different than Javascript here. What is a semicolon in Javascript if not a character you can only place at the end of a statement? There are some similar ambiguities in the Lua parser if you insert a newline into the middle of a statement.

The difference is that Lua is quite a bit fussier about statements versus expressions, and won't allow things like "x() or y()" as statements. So the Javascript example, translated to Lua, wouldn't compile with or without a semicolon.

<comment><USER2> There are no such ambiguities. Here is the complete Lua grammar. You may confirm for yourself that semicolons are always optional and that newlines have no semantic meaning.

[http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#8](http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#8)

<comment><USER3>
        x = fn (y)

Insert a newline:

        x = fn
        (y)

Syntax error. What happened? The newline has no semantic meaning.

<comment><USER2> Your problem is not what you think! Quite....

print(foo) ("x"):len()

This creates the same error. Deleting the newline gives you a new, different error. A semicolon give the correct behavior. It's the edge case that the Lua grammar can't resolve, and it does the sensible thing, by refusing to compile.

Also note that it is a compile-time _error_ that is described as an ambiguity. It isn't a silent thing that bites you later, as in Javascript, and the difference is huge.

[added] I'm not sure what you mean re "x() or y()" the following compiles fine:

        function t()
        	return true
        end

        function f()
        	return false
        end

        if t() or f() then
        	print "logic"
        end

and does indeed print "logic".

<comment><USER3> Complete example:

        function fn(y)
            return y + 1
        end
        x = fn (1)
        print(x)

Works.

        function fn(y)
            return y + 1
        end
        x = fn
        (1)
        print(x)

Doesn't work. The only difference is a newline; clearly newlines do matter. (And I specifically added the space to show that it's not simply whitespace that matters.) This is, of course, documented in the manual.

For the original example, I meant that expressions are not valid statements.

        true or false

On a line by itself does not compile. It's an expression, but not a statement.

This is one of the things I like about Lua, that it prefers explicit over clever, although sometimes the difference between statements and last statements gets annoying. I'd like to do

        function fn()
            return nil
            -- more code, stubbed out for testing
        end

But you can't have code after return. Instead it needs to be wrapped with if true.

<comment><USER2> Quite so. I didn't consider this aspect in my first post because it's a syntax error, not an ambiguity; unlike Javascript, Lua won't resolve your ambiguity for you.

I share your feeling about Lua being a bit more statement oriented than I'd like. Have you checked out Moonscript?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Somewhere, Alan Perlis is looking down on this and laughing his head off.

(For those who don't know the reference: [0], #3.)

[0] [http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis- alan/quotes.html](http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> OCaml's approach to semicolons is nice—they are clearly nothing more than sequence markers between side-effecting expressions.

        a ; b    (* a THEN       b *)
        a   b    (* a APPLIED TO b *)

You also can basically just desugar them to let bindings

        a ; b
        ==
        let _ = a in b

        a ; b ; c ; d e
        ==
        let _ = a in
        let _ = b in
        let _ = c in
        d e

Due to static typing it's vanishingly unlikely that a forgotten semicolon will properly check.

        let this = x ; y (* if x : 'a       and y : 'b then this : 'b *)
        let this = x   y (* if x : 'a -> 'b and y : 'a then this : 'b *)

So forgetting a semicolon only check if `x` is an unapplied function of type `'a -> 'a` which the value you intended to completely ignore.

<comment><USER6> The desugar'd version should be

      let () = ...

instead of

      let _ = ...

<comment><USER5> Huh. Certainly true stylistically, although OCaml accepts things like `1 + 1; print_endline "hello";;` with just a warning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The real surprise here is that people still use JSMin, written by an opinionated grump who apparently does not understand the concept of using a real parser. Several superior alternatives exist. UglifyJS is better in every respect.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is ASI really worth the amount of time that has been spent discussing it?

It would be nice if it were deleted from the language entirely.

<comment><USER9> Can't do that. Web sites rely on it.

<comment><USER8> Even as a pragma, a la "use strict"?

"use stricter"?

<comment><USER10> No, because:

1\. Modes are bad for implementations (this feeling was strong from V8 folks such as Erik Corry, but the new crew in Munich may not feel the same way), due to code branching burdens in testing and optimizing while keeping the complexity down.

2\. Worse, what you propose would fork the language to double the testing burden for web devs (apart from engine implentors, item 1), since older browsers would ignore the useless expression statement.

This already happened with ES5 "use strict", and created real world bugs (e.g., [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=631043](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=631043), there are more like this).

Developers do not test all the combinations. Notice how a tower of M modes implemented via these string-expression-statement prologue directives can make a 2^M-fold testing burden.

<comment><USER11> Aren't Google now proposing a bunch of new pragmas?

[http://www.2ality.com/2015/02/soundscript.html](http://www.2ality.com/2015/02/soundscript.html)

<comment><USER10> As noted in item 1 ("new crew in Munich"), but these may both throw early errors, not let code get to runtime with different semantics (as ES5 strict did, due to arguments object and a few other changes), _and_ use real pragma syntax, which will fail in old user agents.

How can real pragma syntax work on the Web? Only by using a compiler such as Traceur or Babel, otherwise old browsers would choke on the `use types;` unquoted directive.

Note how this can still complicate VMs, but it doesn't fork the test load for web developers. And if the type system results in early errors, plus better optimization with unforked runtime semantics, then the only burden on VM implementors is in the parser and type checker.

We shall see how this experiment works, but in no way is it like `"use stricter";`.

<comment><USER12> > use real pragma syntax, which will fail in old user agents

> We shall see how this experiment works, but in no way is it like `"use > stricter";`.

I might be misunderstanding your comment, but stupidcar's link ([http://www.2ality.com/2015/02/soundscript.html](http://www.2ality.com/2015/02/soundscript.html)) mentions `"use stricter;"` and `"use stricter+types;"` as mode flags, although it also contains a big disclaimer ("The final version of SoundScript may look and work completely different").

Has the syntax been changed since February? If so, I'm interested in reading about it (but my Google-fu is failing); got a link?

<comment><USER10> That talk on which Axel Rauschmayer reported had some info from a presentation given by Andreas Rossberg of the V8 team to the last TC39 meeting. Here's the PDF:

[http://www.mpi- sws.org/~rossberg/papers/JSExperimentalDirect...](http://www.mpi- sws.org/~rossberg/papers/JSExperimentalDirections.pdf)

There are two ideas:

1\. A `"use stricter";` (originally "use sanity" :-/) prologue directive that would not change runtime semantics for code that passed all of static checks, (control flow dependent) dynamic exception-throwing tests, and runtime restrictions on object behavior.

2\. A "SoundScript" mode, perhaps enabled by a `use types;` opt-in, or expressed some other way (per module?), that enables gradual type checking based on optional annotations inspired by TypeScript, but with TS-incompatible differences.

Mode 1 _might_ fly with TC39, because it does not fork semantics for code that passes all checks. But for real-world code, there will be divergence when run on old vs. new browsers, so I expect push-back in TC39 on this mode being expressed by a useless string expression statement.

Mode 2 cannot be enabled by a fake-string-expression-statement "prologue directive".

<comment><USER12> Thanks! This looks promising. Gradual typing is something I've been wanting in JavaScript ever since ES4 got my hopes up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Every time someone brings up semicolons I think it's worth posting Isaac Schlueter's blog post on the topic: [http://blog.izs.me/post/2353458699/an- open-letter-to-javascr...](http://blog.izs.me/post/2353458699/an-open-letter- to-javascript-leaders-regarding)

You can get by perfectly fine without semicolons. Going further, if you're using a linter like eslint, I think you can even configure it to give you a warning when the missing semicolon could cause problems.

<comment><USER14> The biggest problem I have is the "leaders" forgetting the beginners. The whole semicolon thing took JS from "end a statement with a ;" to:

THE RULES:

In general, \n ends a statement unless:

1\. The statement has an unclosed paren, array literal, or object literal or ends in some other way that is not a valid way to end a statement. (For instance, ending with . or ,.)

2\. The line is -- or ++ (in which case it will decrement/increment the next token.)

3\. It is a for(), while(), do, if(), or else, and there is no {

4\. The next line starts with [, (, +, *, /, -, ,, ., or some other binary operator that can only be found between two tokens in a single expression.

You have a junior dev now that's 2 steps behind because he's worrying about self-imposed "beatifying" edge cases instead of getting his code to run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not using semicolons has never be a problem for me.

Just like everyone else I put them where they are needed. I don't put them where they aren't needed, because they aren't needed and adding pointless syntax noise is dumb. If I forget to put them in somewhere they are needed, as anyone might do, I add them. No problems.

<comment><USER16> The problem is that the rules for remembering where they are needed are hard to remember and error-prone.

<comment><USER10> See [http://inimino.org/~inimino/blog/javascript_semicolons](http://inimino.org/~inimino/blog/javascript_semicolons), hope it helps. The minimal semicolon style has only a few rules and many people find it easier to use and remember. I've used it but my C hacker habits go against it. It's a fine style.

/be

<comment><USER17> Wow neat,yeah, js devs are going to call anyone out that doesnt use semicolons.

Question : If you ever wanted 1 breaking change in the language, and somehow it would be possible (I know it wouldn't) what feature would you change ? Again just 1 feature.

<comment><USER10> I would undo the implicit conversion madness around == and !=.

<comment><USER18> Is that really a big concern today where == is heavily frowned on by just about everyone due to the above and its slowness?

<comment><USER10> == is not slow when types of operands (in typeof sense) match -- then it's equivalent to ===.

You'll find a lot of == out there, or would if only Google code search were still up.

Hey, I got to answer with the one thing I'd change. There are more than a few, and I had to pick. Losing the equivalence relation I had in the first ten days (apart from NaN != NaN of course) was my pick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3844302](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3844302)

</comment><comment><USER20> Which programming language first used a semicolon as a statement delimiter? Did they choose the semicolon because it was easy to type on a QWERTY keyboard? Why not end a statement with a period like a sentence?

</comment><comment><USER21> A while back I think there was a github issue where the authors of some popular library refused to use semi-colons and it was causing all sorts of problems for people. I can't remember what library, but it was funny watching hundreds of people comment on the issue to say "Just use the damn semi- colons!"

<comment><USER3> The first link from the article in question?

<comment><USER21> Haha, yeah I guess should have followed that link :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I see these warnings a lot, but I work on a team that does not ever use semicolons, and hasn't for years. It is simply not a problem, I don't know what else to say. And I have come to really dislike the syntactic noise the semicolons add.

<comment><USER10> Do you start files with a leading ; just in case (of concatenation, where the file otherwise would start with one of `([+-/`)?

Do you use ; at end of var declarations? If not, beware; if so, do you use comma-first? Thanks for answers, just curious.

<comment><USER23> I use var foo = 'bar'; but at my place of work they insist on no semi-colons and comma first. I want to tell them this is stupid but I need solid facts. anyone care to expand.

<comment><USER10> If you happen to write

      var foo = 'bar',
          baz = 'bletch'
      (function (global) {
        //module pattern code here ...
      })(this);

then you have trouble. Semicolons are _not_ optional (meaning always optional, you can leave them out at will). Please read my blog post.

<comment><USER24> I wish `void` would get more love for IIFEs instead of just sitting there in a dark corner of JS, unloved.

        var foo = 'bar'
        var baz = 'bletch'

        void function (global) {
          //module pattern code here ...
        })(this)

<comment><USER25> Almost perfect, but you left an unmatched close parenthesis before the call operator.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Obama backs down, won't continue apple lawsuit - o0-0o http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/us/politics/obama-wont-seek-access-to-encrypted-user-data.html?_r=1 <comment><AUTHOR> Note: This article is from Oct. 10, 2015. It's not news about the current Apple controversy.

<comment><USER2> And the title is just wrong. The article's title is "Obama Won't Seek Access to Encrypted User Data". It's about proposing new laws, and has nothing to do with a lawsuit.</comment></comment>


Artisanal Integers - <AUTHOR> http://www.neverendingbooks.org/artisanal-integers <comment><USER2> I have an artisanal integer. It's globally unique and leased to me by the phone company.

They even used to make a beautiful yearly book of artisanal integer owners where you could look up people's artisanal integers by name, but sadly that book is now out of print.

<comment><USER3> They even had a special typeface for that beautiful yearly book: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Centennial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Centennial)

<comment><USER4> Off-topic (though hand-picked integers isn't much of a topic to begin with..) do you know of a font, preferably serif, that has the little cross bar on the digit 7 that's common to hand-writing but seems to be shunned by most font designers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bah, who wants these hipster "unique" integers? Real fashionistas want on- trend integers just like those used by famous celebrities! And what if I told you you there was a place you could get those for low low prices?... well, take a visit to [http://canalstintegers.com](http://canalstintegers.com)

(Disclaimer: bad parody site from 2012 that I made very quickly, seems to still be working, but who knows.)

<comment><USER6> This is great!

        370372663736147970

        A dashing integer as used by TomCruise.com on Twitter.

Guaranteed Authentic™: [http://twitter.com/TomCruise/status/370372663736147970](http://twitter.com/TomCruise/status/370372663736147970)

<comment><USER7> > _Sorry, that page doesn't exist!_

That may be authentic but hardly original.

<comment><USER5> These were scrapped from top twitter celebrity tweets in 2012, I assume quite a few of them have may have deleted their old tweets since then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also see the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences: [https://oeis.org](https://oeis.org)

You can download all of their integers for free. However all of them are already in use in mathematics. The smallest positive number not in use is 14972.

<comment><USER9> Are you telling me that 14972 is the smallest non-interesting number?

<comment><USER10> Well, not anymore. Everyone knows about it now!

<comment><USER11> FYI, this is the crux of an old "proof" that every number is interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Because the long strings of alphanumerical characters and dashes provided by > UUID are less efficient at the database layer, they needed Mission integers, > or perhaps Brooklyn integers, or both.

What's the betting they a) never spent five minutes looking for an efficient way to store UUIDs in the database b) never profiled/benchmarked the performance c) never came within three orders of magnitude of the level of overall service performance where the difference would be noticeable?

</comment><comment><USER13> I can't tell if it's satire or not, but its a fun concept

I thought UUIDs basically meant collisions would basically never happen though

<comment><USER14> UUIDs are out because the article says they're inefficient to store in the database vs integers, so one hopes it is indeed satire.

<comment><USER15> UUIDs _are_ less efficient in databases though, so that isn't complete bollocks.

* At 128 bits they are larger than the majority of integer types. If you are using them as keys for large data sets this might be a concern, especially if you are using them in a clustering key in SQL Server or similar because every non-clustered index entry would include the larger value too (a table with four extra indexes: that is 40 extra bytes per row if you have a UUID clustering key over a 64-bit integer, 60 extra compared to a 32 bit integer - if you have many millions or billions of rows that is worth considering).

* Unless using some tweak such as SQL Server's sequential UUIDs they result in significant fragmentation (assuming a b+tree index structure with allocation and cleanup semantics similar to SQL Server, other DBs may manage things differently) due to their effective randomness, which wastes storage space & memory and can therefore impose greater IO and RAM load beyond that implied by the difference in size.

UUIDs are great when you genuinely need them, but often an integer type is much more efficient so refrain from using them where you don't have a specific need to.

The article and the services described are definitely satire though.

<comment><USER16>
      At 128 bits

And you'll probably end up handling them as 37-character strings, meaning you need 296 bits of space to store about 57 bits of data. And don't imagine you'll save any space by compressing it, as it's random and it'll compress terribly.

<comment><USER15> That depends on your DB (and DBAs/developers). A good database has a specific UUID type which stores the value as packed as it can be in 16 bytes.

Even without explicit support you could conceivably write a wrapper as part of your data access layer which packs them better (as 16 character strings assuming fixed 8-bits/character string types are truly 8-bit safe which is a fairly safe bet, or as a composite key of a number of integer columns).

Of course that doesn't stop people storing them as text instead anyway. Worse: I maintain a legacy system (with not time/budget to refactor and regression test something this fundamental) where many are stored as two-bytes-per- character text (SQL Server's nchar type) so that is 74 bytes (58 wasted per UUID column per row per table/index).

"Sequential" UUIDs like the special type implemented in MS SQL Server helps on the compression front (even when stored as proper binary types and not text) but it you are relying on compression for that you probably have other issues to deal with too...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Because the long strings of alphanumerical characters and dashes provided by UUID are less efficient at the database layer"

If there is anyone reading this that _is_ storing UUIDs as text, don't. They're 16 bytes, in hexadecimal with standardized hyphenation. Store 16 bytes. (Granted, that is still twice the storage of one of the offered integers,)</comment>


Humble Monthly Bundle - <AUTHOR> https://www.humblebundle.com/monthly <comment><AUTHOR> Details: [https://support.humblebundle.com/hc/en- us/articles/210560328](https://support.humblebundle.com/hc/en- us/articles/210560328)

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting take on the monthly subscription thing. Personally I still have many humblebundle games I haven't even installed.</comment>


Marketing and The Bubble  - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/02/marketing-and-the-bubble.html

<comment><USER2> I can't believe that there have been three days of posts with a wealth of intelligent discussion, and still Fred Wilson is conflating Marketing and Promotion.

This makes me a little bit sad...</comment>


Ask HN: Why almost no software works properly? - <AUTHOR> Hi there,
I've just downloaded a pdf invoice that was broken from Vodafone.
5 seconds later I went to Godaddy's page where on the domain settings page I've grepped for "forwarding" and found nothing. A domain transfer failed and they told me on the phone to turn off forwarding first. Can of worms...
Fast forward 20 seconds I had to log in with Lastpass, it succeeded, but I got an alert it failed.
I (and probably everyone else) could go on for ages. Why is the state of our industry is in such a ridiculous shape? <comment><USER2> Capitalism transforms functionality from a cardinal concern (how much of the thing works, & how useful is it) to an ordinal one (which implementation is least-bad). Ordinal concerns are easily gamed: no matter how easy it might be to do something correctly, it's almost always easier to do it only slightly better than someone else (or to break somebody else's implementation so it's worse).

Capitalism also moves much of the emphasis to the initial selection stage: if any kind of lock-in is in place (even sunk cost), most of what matters is the implementation somebody initially picks, not whether or not they ultimately regret their selection. So, rather than making a solution that is stable and reliable or one that has deep rich expressivity, the emphasis is on making a solution that looks good on a shallow basis.

This kind of logic affects even folks who aren't getting paid for their work, because it's taken to be 'common sense' instead of a set of generally- undesirable side effects of a warped circumstance.

Software for a general audience expresses this in a more extreme way than other fields because it's nearly immune to costs like materials & liability, and because regulation largely hasn't stepped in to limit the worst of its side effects. If you build a house, it has to stay standing for long enough to sell (which is a lot longer than most software operates as intended), and it needs to pass inspection in order to be saleable; failure on either of these fronts is a big deal, because no matter how little you pay for labor, houses cost a great deal in materials, most of which lose nearly all their value in salvage. Software is almost pure labor, and can scale to an absurd degree because of this. Unlike publishing, software really doesn't have strong traditions left over from when manufacture and distribution was substantially more expensive & so quality was more important. As a result, the software industry behaves less like publishing and more like futures trading (that other entirely-abstract profession where people who are good at numbers inflate and pop bubbles while living in houses they can't afford and driving up the city's rent).</comment>


CHP arrests protesters in Sacramento who defy shelter-in-place order - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/Protesters-in-Sacramento-and-San-Francisco-defy-15240894.php <comment><USER2> That link gives me a "Page not found" page.

This link works: [https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Protesters- in-S...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Protesters-in- Sacramento-and-San-Francisco-defy-15240894.php)</comment>


Inspector General criticizes the IRS for seizing money from innocent people - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/04/05/the-irs-took-millions-from-innocent-people-because-of-how-they-managed-their-bank-accounts-inspector-general-finds/ <comment><USER2> So now you can take my money if I keep it in cash and travel with it, or if I deposit it to a bank in under $10k increments, and if it's more than that, that's also suspicious. I guess just having money is suspicious these days... we're all supposed to spend it on fancy phones.

Overall, it just feels like the IRS felt jealous of the civil forfeitures.

<comment><USER3> Those things are not illegal per-se but can be signals of things resulting from illegal transactions. So, they are more a heuristic --but not following procedure because it can be used to evade detection is made illegal.

The one thing I don't understand is why some of those figures rarely keep up with inflation. I think they should. 10,000 isn't what it used to be.

<comment><USER4> From the article:

> The IG took a random sample of 278 IRS forfeiture actions in cases where > structuring was the primary basis for seizure. The report found that in 91 > percent of those cases, the individuals and business had obtained their > money legally.

That's not a very good signal. Even if the numbers were reversed and 91% had obtained their money illegally, I'd say that a 9% false seizure rate would still be way too high.

<comment><USER3> I agree it's a rough tool and one they likely could replace with better tools in this day and age. And one hopes they would.

<comment><USER5> It isn't okay to use a rough tool to steal. The IRS is stealing from people. They need proof people have this money illegally or they are an outright criminal who is stealing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The previous president appointed Loretta Lynch as AG, who made a name for herself with civil asset forfeiture.

[http://www.rawstory.com/2015/01/loretta-lynch-civil- forfeitu...](http://www.rawstory.com/2015/01/loretta-lynch-civil-forfeiture- hirsch/)

If he didn't want this sort of nonsense to be a front and center policy of the DOJ, then he would have appointed someone else.

What about Jeff Sessions? Policy wise, he's also a supporter of this policy, although he doesn't have the proven track record of using it as a tool like Lynch did. Maybe there's a small ray of hope there, but I doubt it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I work on software banks use to look for fraud or money laundering. Fraud always made sense, since there was a feedback loop with the end customer to confirm transactions were legit or not. We could adjust our algorithms from there.

I don't think the same exists for BSA. The main incentive for banks is to avoid fines for not reporting suspicious activity and the Fed doesn't let the bank (or us) know whether the suspicious activity submitted turned out to be legal or not. I would love to reduce the number of false positives from our system, but have no way to build a proper training set. Sounds like the IRS doesn't know what it should really be targeting either.

<comment><USER8> There is sort of a feedback loop based on the reports you do file, whether the Fed ends up accepting or complaining about them, and also (sadly) news reports. It works OK.

Monitoring structuring mostly works fine at larger banks. The problem here is that the IRS doesn't have the same network of analysts and other quality control measures. At a bank, someone can take their money elsewhere and be held liable. The IRS has a smaller budget and much less incentives (very hard to switch governments) and so there's a failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> TL;DR Do not try this at home: "The IRS's own internal watchdog found that the IRS had a practice of seizing entire bank accounts based on nothing more than a pattern of under-$10,000 cash deposits."

<comment><USER10> I would think the vast majority of cash deposits are under $10k, so I assume what they mean is repeated deposits of _close to, but slightly under_ , $10k.

<comment><USER11> Also called "structuring" \- intentionally making small transactions to avoid the oversight that comes with large ones [0].

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

<comment><USER12> And the law in question specifically says

 _No person shall, for the purpose of evading the reporting requirements of section 5313 ..._

But the report indicates that the IRS made no attempts to determine whether the supposed "structuring" was done _for the purpose of evading the reporting requirements_ , and simply ignored any evidence the showed that the pattern of deposits had a legitimate explanation.

<comment> wav-part Is "for the purpose" predefined ? If not, we have only ourselves to blame for including such subjective terms in such serious matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's this recent story which makes it seem likely the practices of asset forfeiture won't stay as they are for too much longer: [https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/04/clarenc...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/04/clarence- thomas-civil-forfeiture/521583/)

<comment><USER14> One can hope. Still, it just amazes me how the police forces of this country can just take actions known to cause even more public distrust and continue them when they know they are in the wrong morally if not legally.

<comment><USER15> It amazes me that otherwise intelligent people can observe this and still believe we live in a genuine democracy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Stories like this make it hard to maintain the illusion that government employees are public servants, except in the sense that cowboys are servants to cattle.

<comment><USER17> Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me a thousand times, well, what choice do I really have anyway?

<comment><USER18> I know it's so 90s to bash neither the current nor the last POTUS but I can't resist

 _Fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can 't get fooled again._ \- G.W.Bush

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> 91% of 278 randomly-sampled cases were wrongfully seized. Jesus.

> More troubling, the report found that the pattern of seizures — targeting > businesses that had obtained their money legally — was deliberate.

That part is not surprising to me, given how many cases were wrongful, that it was deliberate. There is no oversight, except for occasional investigations like this one.

This will not result in rolling back this power, though. They'll just put "stronger oversight" in place, to make sure the wolves guarding the hen house are on their best behavior.

</comment><comment><USER20> The problem isn't their policy, the problem is the law that allows this. These asset grabs are clearly unconstitutional violations of the 4th amendment - that doesn't change just because of a law. They're taking assets without a warrant or even probably cause. If you want to take the drug money after you've proven and convicted someone of a drug offense then maybe (that's a different debate). But this is simply authorized theft. The justification really isn't there (excuses are there).

</comment><comment><USER21> What gets me is the audacity of making a suspicious activity that may be an indication of a crime, the crime itself. It's as if they outlawed having a suspiciously high power bill, or looking over your shoulder a lot while you browse items in a store.

</comment><comment><USER22> It seems to me that data processing capacity must have increased to the point where they could just reduce the reporting level to zero (ie every transaction is reported) and so remove the entire need for rules against "structuring".

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if you would just be better off refusing these kinds of actions as a private citizen. I'm pretty sure you could make enough noise about it that it wouldn't be worth their while. Same with those videos of police officers trying to cease cash from people after pulling them over. I would just refuse to give it to them. Are they going to shoot me for money on the side of the road?

<comment><USER24> > Are they going to shoot me for money on the side of the road?

you're simply not given an opportunity to "refuse". it's usually going to go something like:

1) "mr doe, step out of the car." refuse? you're getting tased and definitely going to jail for refusing a lawful order.

2) "mr doe, i'm going to search your car now." well you're out of your car. you can (and should) say "no", but your car is getting searched regardless. maybe you jump the cop? or shoot at them? now you're definitely going to jail for assaulting the cop, if you even survive the night.

3) they find cash. they bundle it up, pull it out and probably just go stuff it in their car. if they're smart they're not even going to tell you what they're moving until it's locked up in their trunk. if you figure it out and say "hey you can't take that blah blah", they're going to ignore you. so you're back to assaulting them somehow. you're definitely going to jail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can see how these transactions can trigger an alert but why don't they give people a chance to clarify the situation first before taking action? This seems extremely unproductive and a big burden for someone who can't afford a lawyer easily.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think we're all guilty of this one - that is anyone with a job that pays less than 10K per pay-check.

</comment><comment><USER27> IRS algorithm is screwed :)

</comment><comment><USER28> You should see what law enforcement does.</comment>


Why we should reconsider manual labor - <AUTHOR> http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/wealthofnations/archive/2009/07/01/reconsidering-manual-labor.aspx

<comment><USER2> I think a more significant distinct is between skilled and unskilled/semi- skilled rather than between manual labor and office work.

Skilled labor, such as master electricians or certified mechanics, are generally well paid, often have a decent amount of independent thought in their work, and are generally hard to replace (and therefore hard to outsource or layoff). They are also unlikely to be automated any time soon, though it is possible.

On the other hand, unskilled labor tends to be easy replace and is much more likely to be automated in the future. For precisely those reasons it often comes with low pay.

Just as my personal perspective, I could easily support with pride, my (currently quite young son) if he decided he loved cars and wanted to become a mechanic, for instance, but I would want him to consider very carefully before seeing something like being a janitor or factory laborer as anything more than a way to pay his way through college.

<comment><USER3> Well put.

I would add that there are more similarities between a master mechanic and a skilled applications/systems programmer than people usually recognize.

Both professions require similar amounts of schooling (Two years at a tech/vocational school versus four at a university, but I would argue that there are only about two years worth of CS classes that are _really_ necessary for programming success), and both deal with large, similarly complex systems that need to be known equally well for success.

I would even go so far as to argue that the same "type" of mind gravitates to both professions - differing socioeconomic pressures just nudge people in different directions.

<comment><USER4> I definitely agree that some of the manual "vocations," such as electrician or plumber are really great trades, and are ideal careers for a certain personality type. Some people really need to work with their hands, and just can't abide a cubicle. I wouldn't deter my kid from these trades either.

That said, I think CS is pretty far from these fields. It's a little hard to say, because I don't have a background in these vocations, but in some ways I think they have more in common with nursing or even medicine. There's a required and tightly enforced educational background, formal licensing, and apprenticeship, and when you leave, you really are prepared (again, I presume) for practice.

Truth is, we have no such thing in programming. CS really doesn't prepare you to be a programmer. While I suppose some things in programming are becoming standardized, there ultimately is no agreement on fairly basic things. As five programmers to write a webapp, and I mean a simple, two page, database driven crud app, and you'll get five _very_ different implementations. There really is no accepted way of doing things for us, not on the level of a formal vocation.

Of course, I say this not really knowing. For all I know, electricians graduate from their apprenticeship, show up a their first job, and figure it all out for the first time like programmers do.) I sure hope not, though ;)

<comment><USER3> I agree that most of CS is far more freeform than these professions, but I mentioned systems/applications programmers for a reason.

They need to write their software to behave compatibly with certain system restraints, and thus don't have quite the freedom afforded to web app developers and their fairly lax-by-comparison set of browser requirements.

Granted, the similarities only go so far - being a mechanic is far more diagnostic and enhancing of the underlying system than being a programmer is (and hence, as you said, probably closer to the medical profession). However, a mechanic's ability to diagnose issues based on the subtlest of clues seems fairly close, at least in my experience, to a skilled programmer's ability to track down a quirky bug - both are based almost entirely on their exhaustive knowledge of the underlying system. The medical field's underlying system is biologic rather than mechanical in nature - hence most of the diagnostics have to be based on generic tests that are variably reliable (at least now, prior to surely-forthcoming genomic advances in medicine), rather than solely intuition and experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anecdotal, but I am an unemployed software engineer/ programmer/ whatever. I picked up some temp labor work for quick cash. Obviously that kind of work has built in benefits that satisfy the mind and body, but my "colleagues" really made me question society. From what I saw, manual labor was a sure path to a life time of degeneration. I've also seen the flip side, which I hope is the majority, not enough exposure to be certain.

</comment><comment><USER6> Mike Rowe (yes, the Dirty Jobs Mike Rowe) has been talking about this for a while - he has a pretty interesting TED talk: [http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.htm...](http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html)

<comment><USER7> Another great TED talk on the subject titled _life lessons through tinkering_

[http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_s_tinkering_school_in_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_s_tinkering_school_in_action.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1\. It has been a looong time since I read _Being and Time_, but I don't think that's what Heidegger had in mind.

2\. Could it be that we're on a 35-year, say generational, cycle? It's about that long since _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ came out.

3\. Don't underestimate the trades' exposure to the larger economy. In Washington, DC, where the economy remains relatively stronger, the best builders stay busy. But I hear it is not so elsewhere, and here a lot of the less-skilled manual workers are out of work.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't want to do anything with my hands, thanks you.

Maybe reconsider robotics?

<comment><USER10> More than "maybe robots". If you're a kid looking at what to specialize in, maybe just entering college, I'd still say go for the knowledge stuff (science, programming, etc). In ten, fifteen, twenty years, the idea that robots will be doing construction, driving, plumbing, sewer cleaning, all quite plausible. We're a very long way from totally eliminating human labor, but we're actually starting to see robots being able to do 60%, 80%, 90% of those jobs starting to come over the horizon. Still not "tomorrow", but as you plan your life path, keep that in mind.

(If the idea of robots doing construction sounds odd, remember that what we consider "construction" is currently shaped by what machines can do vs. what humans are good at. As the machines get better, the nature of construction can change. This sort of thing: <http://www.physorg.com/news139161727.html> won't just "replace humans" but change the nature of what's cheap and what's not when it comes time to decide _what_ to construct. A robot doesn't need to replace a human's full capabilities to replace their job.)</comment></comment>


An ode to passwords - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cryptoaustralia.org.au/2018/05/17/an-ode-to-passwords-rant/ <comment><USER2> Another problem is that you should not use an authentication password to protect your wallet. See [https://fejoa.org/fejoapage/2018/05/17/DeveloperRelease.html](https://fejoa.org/fejoapage/2018/05/17/DeveloperRelease.html) for more info.

</comment><comment><USER3> A great point, the actual length of the password is the only real way to measure strength. Good breakdown of how passwords work.</comment>


Ask HN: What's your favourite API? - <AUTHOR> What web API do you find the most useful? Which one provides really good information or allows you to make amazing things happen? <comment><USER2> Stripe and Mailgun and Twitter are some of the best documented, clearest to use APIs.

The Google Maps API i can usually get cool stuff happening with quickly.

My favorites overall are probably Sunlight labs APIs though: <http://services.sunlightlabs.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> The sunlight labs stuff looks cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Google analytics API. We use it, have been for a few months and its excellent.

</comment><comment><USER4> I still think the Amazon S3 API is really nice.

</comment><comment><USER5> Zencoder's api is solid and easy to work with.

</comment><comment><USER6> for(facebook=0,Win32=0,twitter=1; !(facebook && twitter); ++twitter) {}

</comment><comment><USER7> Twilio.</comment>