Ask HN: I just got fired for being a junior developer. What do I do now? - <AUTHOR> The official reason for the lay-off was "your services are no longer needed." Off the record, they wanted to hire more senior devs and didn't have the skills/capacity to train juniors such as myself.
In fact, while I was there, I never received any training at all: no pairing, maybe one or two UML-ish diagrams, only a few explanations of the code base. I taught myself Rails in order to get the job, and I learned the codebase with liberal use of `git blame` and reading commit messages. I thought my work was pretty good, all things considered.
What are other companies going to think of my situation? What should I do to recover from this and increase my chances of getting another (better) job?
I've only been programming professionally full-time for about a year, before that I did freelance work on the side while in college. I do Ruby, Python, {Java,Coffee}Script and Clojure, full stack (including dev ops) because I'm too young to have a specialization yet. One hundred percent self taught (studied philosophy and some biotech in college). Unfortunately I wasn't paid enough to establish much of a financial runway, so I've gotta hit the ground running and find my next gig in ~60 days. So on that note, if anyone is hiring, well you know how to contact me. <comment><USER2> A couple of comments. Sorry you were let go, but that is just business, they need people with more experience and likely learned the hard way that they can't pay lower prices for less experience and expect things to work out. That really isn't a reflection on you or your abilities so much as it is on them for bad planning. So don't look at this as you failed them as much as they failed you and likely others.

As for what you do next. Take a few days and chill and have some fun, spend a little time brushing up your resume and start sending them out. There are a lot of positions available. Remember this, when you are applying for jobs you are selling yourself and what you can do for the company. So many times I interview developers and they don't realize that they need to sell themselves. I am not talking about being a sleazy used car salesman, but recognizing you have to tell people what you are capable of and be able to back it up with mastery of some set of skills.

Last point, you mentioned you are to early to have specialized. I totally disagree with this approach but others may have different opinions. I think you should specialize in a couple of key areas, generally for someone with 1-2 years experience I expect them to know a single language quite well, have a little knowledge of others and be able to do some data queries in SQL (or the database they have been using) etc. I want new hires to have some depth not as much breadth, it is important to get a wide span of knowledge, but it is even more important to go deep in a couple of areas. You have plenty of time to master multiple skills, but focus first as it makes you more valuable. For a web dev, I'd expect decent JS, css, and whatever their front end language is to be fairly mastered in terms of syntax and core coding. I wouldn't expect advanced topics like concurrency or nuances of debugging yet (unless they have been heavily mentored).

Good luck, you should have plenty of runway depending on where you are at in the country, and whether you are willing to relocate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the thought-out response. I think it's typical among developers to think that their work stands for itself, so they don't have to sell themselves. I agree with your statement that selling yourself is important. I recently beefed-up my resume[1] because I kinda saw this coming.

Interesting point on specialization. I'm not quite sure where I want to specialize, though. I love functional programming (Clojure et al) but Ruby and Python are fun too. I started in front-end years ago (high school?), so I'm extremely fluent in HTML, JS, CSS, but I've been getting more interested in algorithms, machine learning, and related stuff in recent months/years.

I've got a few books from the library on programming that I plan to read, I think this will help me decide which direction to specialize in. Next I'll decide on a project to establish my specialization. The books are: The Joy of Clojure, Functional Programming Patterns in Scala and Clojure, Seven Languages in Seven Weeks, and Web Development with Clojure. I also want to read The Rails Way (or something similar, since I don't have formal training in Rails) and a book on algorithms.

[1]: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OrBr3KPDjeJBcXdKFJ2vE3tg...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OrBr3KPDjeJBcXdKFJ2vE3tgAKQxThciGMsIX1icVx8/edit?usp=sharing)

<comment><USER2> Your welcome.

I get not knowing where you want to specialize yet, but just because you say choose Ruby or Python today, doesn't mean you won't then after 2-3 years move to something else. Specialization in this case teaches you more than the language, it teaches constructs, data structures, loops, algorithms, debugging techniques, error conditions, testing theory etc. Then once you have a handle on those it is easier to apply them in a new language and you start learning how to architect solutions more efficiently regardless of the language chosen.

The coolest part to me about being in Software is we are almost never locked into one language or framework, but you have to get rooted somewhere. And as fapjacks points out, if you advertise yourself as full-stack with 1 year professional experience it looks funny to most employers because you just can't start out there. It takes time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _What are other companies going to think of my situation?_

There's a specific language to hiring and firing. Make sure you get it right. They'll think it's quite bad if you say you were _fired_. Fired very specifically means you were told to leave for some sort of misconduct. You weren't fired - you were either layed-off or you were made redundant.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps a different business culture:

Staff are given a record of their employment history, and companies have to follow strict rules when dismissing employees:

* Fired is a big negative. It goes in the government sealed employment record. But you do get 3 months salary on the spot. * Chose to resign gets a month's salary and (usually) no need to come to work and get on the job hunt. * Released (made redundant), a pain for employers but great for employees, as they get the 3 months' benefit plus it is not their fault.

Focus on the 3rd option, especially when getting a contract signed. Powers out of your control are out of your control, don't get blamed for them.

<comment><USER5> >you do get 3 months salary on the spot

That doesn't sound right. I think it's up to the employer's discretion. If you're fired, I think you're far less likely to get a severance package.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I looked into this. At least in NY, I don't get any severance package or benefits. I only worked there for 5 months (6 is required[1]) and I'm still under my parent's health insurance and never bothered to sign up with my company's plan.

However, this is definitely something that people should know. If someone is reading this and aren't clear on what their rights are, it's super beneficial to read up on this stuff before you get let go.

[1]: source: NY Unemployment office [http://labor.ny.gov/ui/claimantinfo/beforeyouapplyfaq.shtm#0](http://labor.ny.gov/ui/claimantinfo/beforeyouapplyfaq.shtm#0)

Edit: I misspoke. I might be eligible for unemployment benefits from the state (I'm putting in an application), but I certainly don't get a severance package from the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was working with a friend whom I consider as a very good programmer. She had just joined our company. She told me that she was fired from the previous company as the company was not doing well. I was surprised to know that how a company could let go such a good resource. It seems she was in 'entry level' category. As the company was not doing all that well financially, they had to let go most of their employees who were at 'entry level'.

While it seemed unfair to me, she was actually happy about it. She said as the company was not doing well there is always a tension around as who will be fired next. And she was glad that this finally happened to her. It was then she started searching for jobs and realized her true potential. Now, she is getting paid really well. The challenge with the companies which are not doing really well is that there is always a knife which is hanging around your neck. And you ll never know when this knife will be dropped. Now that you are relieved from this company(knife), you should start feeling better. There are nice companies out there. You ll find them. Everything happens for a reason.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is almost exactly what happened to me. Internal turmoil, people moving around. Thanks, this was encouraging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just checked your resume linked to from your website. To be blunt, you have mentioned too many unrelated things on your resume and it sends out the message that you are a jack of many trades.

My sincere advise would be to organize it so that someone can know what you are looking for and whether you'll be the right fit for them now rather than when their E-commerce company has a computational biology division. Since you already have had a year of Rails experience, why not highlight it there? (The world rails doesn't even show up on my tablet above the fold.)

<comment><USER8> My observation while looking at his resume: Why so much emphasis on functional programming? Most shops are much more OOP than functional, and making it seem like you care more about the intellectual aspects of programming than actually solving problems is not good. Employers don't care if you like functional programming if they aren't also huge functional programming people. HR managers sure as hell do not know what functional programming is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Emphasis on functional programming because I made this resume when I was still working there, but wanted a job with more engineering and I like functional programming in particular. I will update my resume and even make a few resumes tailored to different roles later this week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe it's obvious and should go without saying, but you should file for unemployment.

I wouldn't give the reason "they wanted someone someone more senior" on your interviews, their official reason is a lot nicer.

Your resume in the link says 'traditional resume'. Is that on purpose? I'd just call it 'resume'. If you have several, just put them in different folders, and call each file 'resume'. Not really sure it's important though.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think you might have to brush up/learn common algorithms and data structures for your interviews - I remember being in a similar situation and found that my round of interviews afterward were the hardest I had to go through. Most of them were asking questions way above what a Jr. Dev should know and it was pretty disheartening; I think most had their set of questions they'd ask in any interview and don't really adjust for the junior status. So yeah, don't get too discouraged and keep going

</comment><comment><USER11> I would suggest walking through the list at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9812245](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9812245), finding things that interest you (more so than location, really like what the company does) and reach out to them. As one of the companies on that list that's hiring, having someone reach out that really wants the job helps quite a bit. It's a super long list with a lot of options.

In the meantime, since you don't have a ton of experience, i'd work on your Github. Right now it's a lot of small learning projects but nothing that shows how to build anything in particular. Personally, I was looking for some Ruby that wasn't boilerplate or some Javascript that wasn't other people's libraries.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I'll definitely work through the "Who is hiring" posts. I haven't had a lot of time recently to work on my Github, but I will focus all my time on that soon. The most mature OSS (+ hardware) project I have is Nebula Bio[1], which is what I usually share, but I think I'll put together a Rails or Django app or something like that for fun next week. Or maybe actually finish creating a library (I've started a few, never finished).

[1]: [https://github.com/nebulabio/protochip/wiki](https://github.com/nebulabio/protochip/wiki)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> You've got the magic word - _experience._ That first year of real-world experience opens more doors than you might expect.

Where are you? People here might be more able to point you at promising openings if we knew that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in Rochester, NY, but I'm open to relocating just about anywhere. I've got a few friends in the Bay Area, so I'd love to move out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sorry to here that, I know it sucks. Business is cyclical, goals change, there's no point in taking anything personally [which is easier said than done]. Finding another job will make the moving on easier.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER14> Go and get another role, hopefully with better pay. It's not super unusual as a junior. No training is completely normal, it sounds like you know what your doing. 60 days sounds great.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't realize no training is normal. I've heard from friends and blog posts that juniors tend to be taught by a senior via pair-programming or something similar.

<comment><USER5> That sort of training would probably be a best practice and most efficient, but I think there are a vast number of companies--especially small ones-- operating in an ad hoc manner. Even ones who pay lip service to certain methodologies will struggle to get them right. Rather than expect them to train you, do your best to observe the practices of the company, while learning what you can and work toward a contribution. Always carefully consider a problem before asking for help--and at that point don't be afraid to ask for help, but do so in a polite manner.

I am older than you, but came to programming late and consider myself a junior developer. I'm impressed from what I saw on your resume, especially for such a short period of time. Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I really appreciate your comment and kind words. As a self-taught junior, I find I have gaps in my knowledge that I'm not even aware of sometimes. Reading books and talking with coder friends helps me patch these over. I'm not sure what languages you work in, but if you want to pair on an OSS project sometime, maybe we could help each other. I'm @bensima on Twitter and @bsima on Github</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bing.com now runs on .NET Core - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2018/08/20/bing-com-runs-on-net-core-2-1/ <comment><USER2> Somehow I actually fell in love with .NET Core 2.0. While their naming is still confusing and it's hard to know what will come next. I found myself amazingly productive with Razor Pages. It's really cool if you don't need an SPA and you could do everything pretty damn fast. It's like WebForms, but without the Microsoft specifics and instead relies on the good old html5 part to make an app great.

<comment><USER3> That is one thing I always admired about .NET from afar: there was generally one fairly polished framework that you could reasonably trust. In Javaland I feel like I sometimes I have to second-guess everything to make sure I'm using the "best" implementation of something.

That and C# is an ISO standard which is pretty cool.

<comment><USER4> I'm a C# developer who has been learning React for the past year, and it really is an exhaustive job to look for the right JS library for every case, this is my process:

1\. Facing a code task.

2\. Asking myself, should I reinvent the wheel or should I look for a library?

3\. Google for libraries solving the task, open at least 5 npm/github tabs.

4\. For every tab, I should make sure the library is not too big for my needs/popular/still being maintained/not too many open issues. -Closing the tabs that didn't pass this step.

5\. Taking a look at documentation/examples to determine if it can solve my problem. -Closing the tabs that didn't pass this step.

6\. Testing the library and see if I can make it work.

7\. Implement it in my project.

It's a really different environment, and it has its advantages, it's just that Microsoft has spoiled me a little with their out of the box implementations.

<comment><USER5> As a dev that's trying to brush up on JS after neglecting it for years, it's really hard to know where to start.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > That is a 34% improvement

That graph is completely misleading then. I can understand why they don't want to show actual y-axis values, but at least put relative values on that axis. Even "60%" and "100%" would do.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the suggestion, I've modified the graphic.

<comment><USER8> It's still misleading unless you look for the specific numbers...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like the fact that they are highlighting the individual Pull Requests. It's a good reminder that .NET Core is indeed open to community changes.

<comment><USER10> Indeed. But it is worth noting that most of those individual pull requests were from Microsoft employees.

It is still awesome that the community can comment, and Microsoft does take community changes regularly for .Net Core, VS Code, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not a .NET developer, so apologies for the dumb question, but why did MS release a second open source .NET implementation around the same time as they acquired Xamarin? Do .NET core and Mono compete with one another? Do they serve complementary roles? Why would I choose one over the other?

<comment><USER12> I'll take a stab at this.

.NET Core and Mono are not exactly analagous. A better comparison historically would have been Mono to .NET Framework (i.e. classic .NET).

.NET Framework is a fairly expansive set of standard libraries bundled with a runtime - it's commonly used and well-supported, and dates back to about 2001, give-or-take a beta or two. There's a _lot_ of current and legacy applications built on this out in the wild.

.NET core is effectively a do-over for the longer term in the form of a minimal set of dependencies that imports more of the standard library separately. There's a couple of reasons for doing this - primarily the parts that have been abstracted out mean that .NET core runs in a lot more places than the classic framework (including natively on devices like the Raspberry Pi, for example), and can also be (and is) fully open-source (the classic framework is _mostly_ open-source these days as it is, but licensing problems meant that not every part of the toolchain could be opened up).

There's also the question of expectations when it comes to community changes. .NET Framework was adopted in many quarters on the basis that it was developed by Microsoft directly, and bureaucratically opening it up to community changes after the fact becomes problematic due to the massive number of stakeholders and their expectations.

I'm sure someone else can add more info but as I understand it this is the gist.

<comment><USER13> Just to confuse things even more, there is also .Net Standard. ([https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2016/09/26/introduci...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2016/09/26/introducing- net-standard/)).

.Net Framework (Windows only), .Net Core and Xamarin are all implementations of .Net Standard.

To add even more confusion, ASP.Net Core can run either on .Net Core or .Net Framework.

<comment><USER14> I know I've over simplified this for myself. But the way that I look at it is like so.

.Net Standard is an "Interface" \- No implementation behind the scenes just a list of apis.

.Net Framework, .Net Core, Xamarin are all "classes" or implementations of .Net Standard.

ASP.NET Core only relies on .NET standard which is implemented by both .Net Framework and .Net Core. Which means it can run on both.

ASP.NET (Framework) does not rely on .Net Standard but directly links to the implementation of .Net Framework. Which means those libraries can't run anywhere and are instead limited to only .NET Framework.

I'm no Jon Skeet, or tech guru. So please take this explanation with a grain of salt and if I'm wrong correct me as needed. This is just how I've wrapped my head around it.

<comment><USER15> David Fowler (Microsoft engineer on ASP.NET Core) posted an "analogy in C#" gist a couple years ago that is similar to yours, but in code. It's a couple years old so is a bit out of date at this point, but the basic idea holds.

[https://gist.github.com/davidfowl/8939f305567e1755412d6dc0b8...](https://gist.github.com/davidfowl/8939f305567e1755412d6dc0b8baf1b7)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm a huge fan of C# and ASP.net, but this transition hasn't went as smoothly as I hoped.

I tried .NET core a lot pre-1.0 and it seemed really fragile (especially on Mac and Linux, which was my main excitement around it).

As I was a bit nervous about that, I started a new project in 'classic' .NET w/ MVC5. It however seems a lot of projects are migrating rapidly to .NET Core and leaving support for legacy projects recently.

It does seem to be a giant pain to migrate a legacy asp.net app to asp.net core (very manual). Anyone have any tools/advice on this process?

<comment><USER17> I was an early adopter of .net core. It definitely had its quirks in the beginning. Recently I gave it another go, it's really improved a lot. Like it's production ready now. I'd say pick it up again.

<comment><USER18> I remember all of the KRE, KVM, project.json, etc. It was pretty rough, and that's from someone that's been using .net daily since the 1.0 beta many years ago.

They've fixed all of that stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if it's running on windows or linux. And whether they're using ASP.NET core or rolled their own framework.

<comment><USER20> HTTP Response header say the server is running IIS 10.0 so its most likely Windows Server 2016.

<comment><USER19> Interesting, I thought kestrel was supposed to be way faster than IIS. Wonder why they stuck with IIS after going through all this.

<comment><USER21> Kestrel needs a reverse proxy in front of it for SSL termination etc. [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/aspnet/core/fundamentals/se...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/aspnet/core/fundamentals/servers/?view=aspnetcore-2.1&tabs=aspnetcore2x)

<comment><USER22> Doesn't need on for SSL; needs a reverse proxy if you want to do port sharing (many apps on port 80/443 switched by host header) or Windows Auth.

You can also build your reverse proxy using Kestrel.

Though IIS is more battle tested so they may be using that as front line server for such a high profile service as Bing

<comment><USER23> Is it even wise to design a system that uses un-encrypted backend traffic? The Snowden revelations did demonstrate that intelligence services are snooping on those.

<comment><USER22> Not over an actual network; but localhost or in-process it should be fine? Though the in-process IIS hosting is ASP.NET Core 2.2 as it got bumped from the 2.1 release [https://github.com/aspnet/IISIntegration/issues/878](https://github.com/aspnet/IISIntegration/issues/878)

<comment><USER23> ok but then it is not much of a load balancer.

<comment><USER22> Meant for port sharing; multiple apps or subdomains switching either on host header or path; as you can't have multiple processes listening on the same port (80/443) on the same machine. Or changing which is run based on the path

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow, they got an eye-popping performance improvement from this change.

<comment><USER25> I get the feeling that there has been a lot of low-hanging optimization fruit in .NET that went unaddressed because a) the original compiler was too complicated to change and b) there was no pressure to improve it because it only ran on Windows and there were no real competitors.

a) was addressed by Roslyn, which is apparently much more manageable, and now that .NET is supposed to run everywhere, it has to have competitive performance. Hence the big gains.

<comment><USER26> I think there's also c) .NET Core is OSS, and has had a lot of contributions from the community for things that MS themselves didn't prioritize.

<comment><USER25> Yes, this is an excellent point I forgot. With closed-source, you only get to make perf improvements if your manager decides there's not a more important feature you should be working on instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The first commit says "Vectorization of string.Equals". It now uses SpanHelpers.SequenceEqual. How is that vectorized when it's just an unrolled loop from what I see? Does vectorization not mean using SIMD instructions? It also means improving data dependencies?

[https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/48cb3fa29a63219a9669a...](https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/48cb3fa29a63219a9669ae012eefca0bf5ce0091/src/System.Private.CoreLib/shared/System/SpanHelpers.T.cs#L608)

<comment><USER22> char ref (managed pointer) is cast to byte ref [https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/04d9b557ef8b7c60a1194...](https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/04d9b557ef8b7c60a1194d062c7c2ee6e41fd8c1/src/System.Private.CoreLib/shared/System/String.Comparison.cs#L27-L37)

Then it uses SpanHelpers.SequenceEqual for byte which is vectorized

[https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/04d9b557ef8b7c60a1194...](https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/04d9b557ef8b7c60a1194d062c7c2ee6e41fd8c1/src/System.Private.CoreLib/shared/System/SpanHelpers.Byte.cs#L862-L916)

<comment><USER28> >char is cast to byte

To be clear, char is not cast to byte (which would truncate). A char ref (ie a char pointer) is cast to a byte ref (ie a byte pointer).

<comment><USER22> Good point :) Updated

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Are there resources that describes Bing web stack/infrastructure? Something à la [http://highscalability.com/](http://highscalability.com/).

<comment><USER7> Bing is huge both in codesize and technologies used, but most of it is a flavor of Windows Server 2016 (soon 2019) + http.sys + C# + Razor + TypeScript for Frontend. C#/C++ for middle and lower tiers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I know nobody who uses Bing to be honest. Am I wrong in thinking this?

<comment><USER31> I use bing all the time. The results are good enough and I get points for amazon vouchers. "image searches" ahem work great too.

<comment><USER32> Ah, yes, I too use Bing to search for images of a specific nature with some frequency. It's quite likely the best search engine available for the... higher arts.

I do not know if they have done it on purpose, but kudos to the Bing team either way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I thought this was a really good post[0] on the networking performance potential of .NET.

[0]: [https://dzone.com/articles/how-raygun-increased- throughput-b...](https://dzone.com/articles/how-raygun-increased-throughput- by-2000-with-net-c)

<comment><USER34> Sort of? It's interesting work but I don't know if I'd frame it as "networking performance potential of .NET".

The title is "How Raygun Increased Throughput by 2,000% With .NET Core (Over Node.js)". From the article:

> In terms of EC2, we utilized c3.large nodes for both the Node.js deployment > and then for the .NET Core deployment. Both sit as backends behind an NGINX > instance and are managed using scaling groups in EC2 sitting behind a > standard AWS load balancer (ELB).

They're comparing their Node.js vs C# versions behind ELB and NGINX. It's barely touching the networking part of the stack directly. They gains are almost definitely all from a stronger compiler story and a concurrency story.

They say themselves:

> Node is a productive environment and has a huge ecosystem around it, but > frankly, it hasn't been designed for performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> .Net Framework is windows only

Mono is open source port of .Net Framework to non-windows platforms (linux, mac os)

.Net Core is cross platform (like Java but without GUI features for now)

.Net Standard for libraries shared by all 3 above.

</comment><comment><USER36> Definitely interesting... I think this speaks mostly to having a direct compile option for .Net Core that works well more so than the platform as a whole.

Personally, my first past at most things these days would be with Node.js simply because of productivity, but it's nice to see more options for performance growth as needed.

</comment><comment><USER37> Years ago I spent a lot of time trying to convince some of our large bank customers that we could run their stuff on Windows NT instead of SunOS or AUX or whatever by noting that microsoft.com ran on NT. I'm not even sure if it was actually true at the time, now that I think about it.

</comment><comment><USER38> It would be great if they compare running bing on Linux vs Windows! Is there a hidden gem somewhere?

<comment><USER7> Barring any bugs, the hope is that the code generated on Windows and Linux for the same architecture will be very similar, modulo calling conventions and ABI.

Then you come down to issues like Linux networking vs. Windows networking, Disk I/O differences which are interesting but from a .NET perspective less so in my opinion.

<comment><USER38> It is very interesting to know if running .net core on Linux gives you better performance than on Windows. If you don't get any perf. penalty then moving to Linux saves you a lot in Windows Server licenses! And if Linux is faster then there is really no reason to stay with Windows Server anymore.

<comment><USER39> Bing is Microsoft, they likely do not pay for Windows licensing, and would also rather work with the Windows team than switch to Linux.

<comment><USER38> Of course Microsoft won't. THE outcome of the performance comparison is important for all the other companies using .NET.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> They should have renamed .net to something else. Now we have to deal with the same issues as the python 2/3 but maybe even worst as it's harder to tell which apis are available looking at sample code.

<comment><USER41> just switch to. net core. "* core" is pretty googlable

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Bing folks, are you running this on Linux? Common problem a few years ago was that perf of the Linux version of Core sucked compared to Windows. The only way to fix that is through serious dogfooding. I'm wondering to what extent Microsoft is committed to such dogfood on Linux.

<comment><USER7> Windows Server 2016. All the improvements in the post that helped us are the same on Linux. I will agree though there's more dogfooding to be done. It's happening slowly but surely.

<comment><USER42> >> It's happening slowly but surely.

Exciting to hear. .NET is truly a diamond in the rough on the Linux side, its only major problem seems to be catch-22 in the sense that few people use it there, so the ecosystem is slow to come in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> ". NET is applying an update, please return to Bing after reboot"

</comment><comment><USER44> Bing is completely mess as a search engine. I tried it 3 or 4 times and every- time the context of results was long away from desired.

I heard Bing good for porn, it's probably the one strong side, LOL.</comment>


Falcon Heavy launches, two boosters land, the central core crashes on camera - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/falcon-heavy-rocket-set-to-attempt-spacexs-most-difficult-launch-ever/ <comment><USER2> Also of note is that SpaceX was able to catch one of the Falcon Heavy's fairings on a boat[0].

[0] [https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/25/spacex-records-another- fir...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/25/spacex-records-another-first-for-re- usable-rocketry-by-catching-falcon-heavy-fairing-with-a-boat/)

<comment><USER3> That's awesome! I think this is the first successful catch, so they must be quite happy over there right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 24 deployments, two boosters recovered, half a fairing, 4 relights on their Stage 2 engine... astounding and amazing as we get closer to 50 years since Apollo 11.

</comment><comment><USER5> Video of central core crash: [https://youtu.be/Vz9qMkxHaA8?t=2285](https://youtu.be/Vz9qMkxHaA8?t=2285)

</comment><comment><USER6> I (somewhat) watched this on my bicycle, live streaming to my mobile phone. Straight out of science fiction.

<comment><USER7> I wonder when we'll have someone vlog about viewing the launch on a smartwatch aboard a flying car? (Vlogs, as well as smartwatches and flying cars are all Sci-fi inventions.)

<comment><USER8> It is entirely possible to do two of the three[0], and I don't want a flying car anyway.

[0] I can view my home camera feed on my watch, just move the camera to the launch site.

<comment><USER7> Flying car: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqHQIZnv- Ok](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqHQIZnv-Ok)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They'll iterate and figure it out.

</comment><comment><USER10> Amazing. A successful Falcon heavy launch that can't even hit the front page of HN.

<comment><USER11> Was it successful?

<comment><USER12> Absolutely. The payload was apparently successfully delivered. The only issue they had was with the recovery of the heavy, which was, apparently, somewhat expected in this case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The way the center core changed course makes me think that it was pre programmed to avoid destroying OCISLY in case landing became impossible. Is this correct or just naive thinking?

<comment><USER3> I haven't seen anything official about this failed landing, but I know in the past boosters have made last second course adjustments to water crash in order to save the drone ship/landing pad. I would provide a link, but Google is overwhelmed by this morning's crash and I can't pull up anything on previous incidents.

Edit: Walrus01 reminded me about how it's actually done.

<comment><USER14> If you want older search results click on the Tools box on the right side of the News/Images/Shopping tab and you can restrict it to older links.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Hottest landing attempt to date

<comment><USER16> Wasn't that a sims 2 expansion pack?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> That's cool. One of the previous launches got me sour because it was obvious that the central core failed and crashed and the presenters hid that information from the viewers by claiming ignorance and simply not showing the camera feed.

I think we should all remain stern that even in this new era of private space flight, information should not be hidden from the public

<comment><USER18> As I recall that was their very first Falcon Heavy launch where we got to see the side boosters landing side by side in synchrony. Still gives me shivers that I got to see that.

I think you should cut SpaceX some slack. They pulled off the impossible and didn't want to spend time on their record breaking live-stream speculating as to why the center booster landing failed. It's not like they didn't report it - later that day or the next, they explained exactly what happened.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why isn't there a concerted international space colonization mission? - <AUTHOR> The title that I wanted to write was "Why isn't there a concerted international effort to escape to another planet before nuclear holocaust?"  That one didn't fit in the character allotment.
I have a feeling this will just be ignored or buried since it sounds alarmist (and I wrote it, and I'm not a popular person), but I am going to try to explain anyway.
Its a really old story.  There are lots of nuclear weapons.  It seems that generally speaking, people are incredibly unlikely to use them.  However, there are lots of nuclear weapons.  As far as I know, it is still _possible_ for them to be used at some point in the future.  There is a possibility that the use of nuclear weapons could result in nuclear holocaust.  So, it seems there is a non-zero risk of nuclear holocaust.
Since efforts to reduce nuclear arsenals have not been very successful so far, it seems logical to have another plan in progress.  The other option is to move some of the population off of the planet in order to avoid extinction if there is a nuclear war. Again, I admit, it does not seem to necessarily be extremely likely.  But the possibility can't be eliminated, and since its such a bad outcome, it seems like, to be safe from extinction, we should have some people on another planet.
So there are two popular destination ideas: the moon and Mars.  It seems obvious that one would practice by iterating with bases on the moon and then move on to Mars.
It also seems obvious to me that this should be a priority, at least for some segment of the population.  And, since it is a planetary risk and probably the most challenging task ever attempted by humankind, it should be a global mission with coordination across borders.
Why isn't this a thing? <comment><USER2> They have started meeting up more often - [https://www.globalspaceexploration.org/wordpress](https://www.globalspaceexploration.org/wordpress)</comment>


Quantitative Easing Cartoon - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4e8Cb-Dc4I&feature=player_embedded

<comment><USER2> Comments here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1914900>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The presentation is over-the-top, but could someone help me assess the content? I'd especially appreciate input from people who have advanced knowledge of economics.</comment>


Cue, the home lab for quantified self - <AUTHOR> https://cue.me/

<comment><USER2> This looks like a hypochondriac's wet dream...

As useful as self-diagnostic equipment cam be, the more we can measure, the more likely people with unwarranted health worries can run to the doctor with "My X level is off by 5% says my $150 uncalibrated thing".

I get the feeling that this falls somewhere between very useful (like glucose level to a diabetic), and negatively helpful (a misinterpreted level that causes unhelpful behavior).

<comment><USER3> Haha yeah, I'm a physician and I can tell you there're few things worse then when a patient get all worked up about some number that is "0.1" too high/too low. It's usually totally meaningless, gives groundless anxiety and waste everyones time.

It's not easy to interpret these numbers and you have to have quite a deep understanding of statistics, i.e you can be in the normal range and be sick, and you can be outside and be healthy. Type i/ii errors, precision, accuracy, calibration etc etc. I'm sure hackernews knows what's up I'm sure.

It's said about 90% of all diagnosis can be made only on taking the history. Tests are normally only done to assure, quantify, guide treatment etc.

* Testosterone: I have no idea why you would be interested in measuring this at home and I strongly suspect this could lead to misguided treatment with severe side effects.

* Inflamation: Probably a C-reactive protein. Pretty much useless on it's own.

* Fertility: Not sure exactly what they measure but I guess LSH/FSH. This job can be more easily done with a thermometer.

* Vitamin D: If you are worried, get it checked ONCE. No need to check day to day. If you take a supplement, your body will regulate the rest.

* Influenza: Again, not sure what they are testing and why you would want to do this as there's no specific treatment. When you do a test, always reflect what you will use the result for.

IMHO this device lacks the "test" that actually would be useful, like * glucose * maybe TSH * your weight * your activity level * your caloric intake * your sleep

Because these are things that actually mean a lot to your general wellbeing.

[not native english speaker disclaimer]

<comment><USER4> Well, I'm an occasional patient and there're few things worse than when a doctor acts like taking an active role in your own healthcare is an inconvenience.

I, for one, would not shed a tear if the role of human diagnostician is replaced by computer systems with far more raw data to work with than was ever before possible.

Watching a family member with an extended illness, I came to the conclusion that we would be better off if doctors stopped thinking of themselves AS healthcare and were instead the human face of _delivering_ healthcare.

<comment><USER3> > I came to the conclusion that we would be better off if doctors stopped > thinking of themselves AS healthcare and were instead the human face of > delivering healthcare.

I believe you are right. I'm sorry you had bad experiences. All physicians are different.

I believe all patients should take an active role in their healthcare (that includes smoking, diet and exercise). My point is only that sometimes a misappropriate amount of time can be wasted on very very subtle differences and we forget the big picture.

Computer diagnostics is the future. I'm on HN for a reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm really fed up of sites like this that hijack scrolling, it prevents you from skim reading. Instead of scanning 100% of the page's content I've just left the site after reading about 20%.

<comment><USER6> I would have thought 20% was skim reading?

<comment><USER7> There's a difference between reading 20% of 100% and 100% of 20%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I totally like cool products like the one on display here. But i'm so tired of those preordering-sites.. really, i want to order your stuff. now. Tell me when it's finished, put the site online. If you really need an indication whether someone likes/needs it, perform market research without irritating potential customers. And if you need additional funding to make your vision happen, sites like kickstarter offer a clean and generally well understood way of making that happen.

No, I'm not going to preorder a product now that ships sometime in 2015. Not even for a 50% discount.

<comment><USER9> I understand your frustration but I think pre-orders are important for them to understand how many units to manufacture. What if they produce too many, and people don't buy them ? what if too little and they can't cope with the demand ?

<comment><USER10> Acceptable and calculable business risks. How did new products launch before the internet?

<comment><USER11> I can think of an example of an industry that has been doing pre-sales to fund production for a long time and that's property development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is great, but the video seems a bit misleading. Seems like a all-in-one device with a magic collector capable of getting instant results of several indicators on a single sample, be it blood or saliva. But the site make it clear that an analysis package is needed for each molecule being tracked and that results take minutes. Nothing is said about packages lifespan and sample collectors reusability. Anyway, could someone familiar with this matter give us some background on the hardware?

UPDATE: from the FAQ:

"Cartridges are single-use and disposable. To enhance user safety and hygiene as well as minimalize contamination of samples, the Sample Wand permanently locks inside the cartridge and is disposed of with the cartridge." (...) "A 5-pack of inflammation vitamin D, fertility, testosterone, cartridges costs $20/pack. A 3-pack of flu cartridges costs $30."

Definitively not the everyday tracking thing seen on the video.

</comment><comment><USER13> From the FAQ:

You can track 5 key health molecules: inflammation, vitamin D, fertility, influenza, and testosterone in just minutes, at home.

I was trying to figure out what the device can tell you about yourself, and it appears it can't tell you very much at present. Also, these things aren't 'molecules'.

As an MVP this is exciting stuff! In a few years we might have something that is actually useful.

<comment><USER14> Well, 2 out of 5 are actually molecules. But this kind of sloppy language doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> On a scale of 1-10, how bullshit is this?

I'd actually benefit from being able to monitor my testosterone levels, so this interests me.

<comment><USER16> I worked for a company in this space for a bit. My 2% of a dollar: the tech probably isn't BS. They're most likely using direct colorimetric assays, and also possibly immunoassays (think ELISA). I'd be concerned about the sensitivity of their assays from such a small sample volume (a drop of blood is about 20 microliters). Vitamin D in particular is tricky due to its low blood concentration. I'd hope that they are doing something clever with fluidics to amplify the signal. The price of the reader seems about right (if just a bit low to encourage adoption). Their business model is likely a) dependent on a razor-and-blades strategy, with expensive consumables, and b) dependent on the system cost being reimbursable through insurance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I would love to comment on the product, but the site's scrolling locks up every now and then and most images flicker or don't display in Chrome Canary. Designers, please don't break the Web by overriding spacebar :(.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wish this product explained in one sentence why I need it.

How would my world come to an end without it? I often wonder if the ADHD you get from availability of all this data subtracts more than a product adds.

" _Be your most motivated_ ". How did our ancestors do it? Keeping things simple is as important as having the power promised by information. We still fail at the simple things, while getting distracted by complicated things.

 _" Add a sample"_. A sample of what? I'm also curious about how they measure how well you sleep and how they achieved wireless charging.

<comment><USER19> A sample of something containg testosterone, flu, inflammation, vitamin D and fertility! Not sure how something can contain fertility, but still.

<comment><USER20> Maybe hormone stuff, at least for women?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm not sure about anyone else, but the fact that they kept using the word 'sample' instead of what sample they were referring to bothered me. Thankfully further down in their FAQ (the hardware FAQ) it mentions what samples are (blood, saliva, or nostril swabs).

I kept imagining this "simple and easy to use sample wand" as a massive self- administered spinal tap, sort of like those water extractors from the 'Tank Girl' movie.

Sort of funny when you're to the point that marketing talk makes you assume the very worst possible scenario.

</comment><comment><USER22> First, a fabulous idea that is simply not ready.

I like the concept here, but the mobile integration seems wholly arbitrary and shoe-horned. Yes, we want everything mobile, but if I'm sticking my blood sample in this thing I don't know why I couldn't just get an email or have it connect directly to my device.

Like others here have said, I would mostly want guarantees about the efficacy of the device wrt results. And I'd want a whole bunch more than fertility (is this just a LH measurement), "inflammation," vitamin D and the flu. Perhaps that's a phase two?

And to echo others, please stop scrolljacking. Thanks.

<comment><USER16> "Inflammation" is likely measurement of C-reactive protein (CRP) concentration.

<comment><USER22> I'm not doubting they can quantify it, I'm just not sure what that info alone tells us.

And there's such a disparity of metrics here that you're getting a pretty incomplete health picture unless you want to know if you're infertile or have the flu.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> For some reason I feel this will be bought by a Google or Facebook before making it to market. I can't explain why, I just get that vibe.

</comment><comment><USER24> I hope more of these type of products come out. I think real time tracking of a persons biomarkers will be evolutionary in the health space.

</comment><comment><USER25> From the FAQ:

How accurate is Cue?

We use rigorous, gold-standard internal testing and validation techniques to evaluate the performance of Cue. We cannot make any specific claims on the performance of the device, because it is not yet cleared by the FDA. However, we will not release Cue until it has met our own internal performance standards.

<comment><USER26> > _because it is not yet cleared by the FDA._

I confess I'm dying to know how "Inflammation is elevated, recover with a green smoothie" is going to get past the FDA.

What is the measure of inflammation? Are they really measuring ESR, CRP, and PV? If so, how would you predict that recovery would occur via the medicinal green smoothie, as opposed to knowing that there are early signs of, say, psoriatic arthritis?

Kudos if they can pull that off.

<comment><USER27> They can pass the FDA as being validated to measure certain biometrics, but it's going to be really difficult to be considered a treatment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> So what are they going to do with all the health data they harvest from this? I don't suppose the device will be offlinable.

</comment><comment><USER29> For me on Chrome, there seems to be some broken loop somewhere. It continually requests and then cancels those requests to certain sprite images. It still downloads at least part of them though, so you're getting maybe ~100kb/sec continually downloading for as long as you're on that site.

</comment><comment><USER30> Very interesting device. I would be very interested in getting one, but again, before there is actual device on sale, I am not parting my money for video alone.

I wish you produce it as soon as possible and get my money.

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't know why, but it creeps me out. If it's that easy to test your body for "molecular" levels . How long before you are asked to be tested at your workplace, on interviews, etc.

Gattaca anyone?

<comment><USER13> It's already easy to test for political affiliation / religious beliefs as part of the interview process, but people aren't doing that. No reason to believe that something like this will be different.

<comment><USER32> The issue with political and religious beliefs is that they're generally irrelevant to your work but may be basis for discrimination. The chemical composition of your blood and other tissues may be relevant to your work but is generally not expected to be basis for discrimination.

This is why I think you counterpoint is not exactly spot-on. On the other hand I share your disagreement with Gattaca-inspired fear mongering: if chemical analysis of your tissues can provide useful information for recruitment we should embrace it. Interviewing is flawed and hard as it is, so any improvement should be welcome. My fear would be that chemical composition turns out completely useless like many other simplistic solutions to complex issues around selecting the right humans for any job.

<comment><USER21> >if chemical analysis of your tissues can provide useful information for recruitment we should embrace it.

I disagree.

There are no fields in which poor health is an advantage. So, that idea extrapolated, their are no jobs which wouldn't benefit in some way from having the most healthy staff possible.

I'm of the opinion that it is the job of recruitment staff to secure employees who are capable of doing the job that's asked of them, capable of advancement, and capable of a degree of amiability which will allow them to work well with the other parts of the system.

If chemical analysis were to be used normally in the course of recruitment, it'd no longer be a game of determining if the candidate was capable of the task, but rather a min-maxing of attributes which would be expected to produce a company with the results desired.

Simply put : I, too, fear that chemical composition is far too simple a criteria to judge a possible (human) candidate on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Someone needs to make a parody video of this ASAP: "Man takes cue out of his mouth...smartphone says: You have 4 hours to live." "Woman pulls cue out of her ear...smartphone says: You are deaf"

</comment><comment><USER34> So what does this thing actually measure? I have zero reason to think that the tech can deliver on this. It's raman-spectroscopy-on-a-key-chain over and over, and at least they had a faux demo.

</comment><comment><USER35> It will be interesting to see if the FDA comes down on this. On the one hand, they aren't selling anything, yet. On the other, they are making promises about efficacy for the initial users.

<comment><USER16> It looks like they are in the data gathering phase for a 510(k), as an exempt IVD. From their site:

"Cue Inc. will be conducting tests and collecting information and data from a number of individuals to ultimately support submission to FDA of a pre-market notification 510(k). We hope that you will consider voluntarily participating in these tests. These tests are exempt for Investigational Device Exemption requirements because the testing (a) is noninvasive; (b) does not require an invasive sampling procedure that presents significant risk; (c) does not by design or intention introduce energy into a subject, and (d) is not used as a diagnostic procedure without confirmation of the diagnosis by another, medically established diagnostic product or procedure."

I'm curious what they'll cite for predicate devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The broken scrolling totally destroys the experience. Also, the lack of text made me wonder whether the page was loaded completely.

</comment><comment><USER37> scrolling is totally broken on chrome mobile, I can't even see half of the pictures

</comment><comment><USER38> Apple is buying this thing in no time</comment>


A grant proposal shouldn't hinge on whether research is driven by a hypothesis - <AUTHOR> https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.3.20180424a/full/ <comment><USER2> The article answers its own question with this bit -- _" Yet grant-writing experts universally stress that proposals should be built around hypotheses and warn that those not written this way risk rejection as "fishing expeditions."_

"Fishing Expedition" is code for a project that spends a bunch of money and has no tangible result. Typically that is called wasted money. When you have a patron that wants you go out and follow your curiosity, where ever it might lead, that is great. But if you're spending the tax payer's dollar, the folks who gave it to you have to explain to the congressional budget office _why_ they gave it to you and what they hoped to achieve by giving it to you.

The easiest way to express that value proposition is with a hypothesis statement. Building equipment that is known to work (like the Hubble) doesn't require a hypothesis, it requires a credible statement that it will be able to do something that other equipment cannot. Or that you could not build the same capability in a different more cost effective way.

<comment><USER3> The problem with that is that when you propose a hypothesis and someone pays you to prove it, anything other than a positive result is also considered wasted money. This is the reason why we have all the paid-for junk science out there today.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps we should have more of these:

> When you have a patron that wants you go out and follow your curiosity, > where ever it might lead, that is great.

<comment><USER2> I think it would be really useful. And if the giving pledge is real, it seems plausible that a couple of hundred million might be pledged for "pure science"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When taking science classes in school, I never understood why a hypothesis had to take a side. It could not be a question, like "hypothesis: does hot water freeze faster than cold water?", but had to take a position on the issue: "hypothesis: hot water freezes faster than cold water". I never got why this was the case; it sets the experiment up for failure: "oh no, I proved my hypothesis wrong". Who cares? As long as you show something (even not reflecting the null hypothesis is _something_) with a well-designed experiment, why does it matter if your guess is right or not?

I'd much rather prove a hypothesis like "a chalk circle drawn around sugar does nothing to inhibit ants" wrong, than to prove it right! That would be much more interesting!

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure what level of schooling you're talking about, but I think there's two reasons to take a side. First, I think in early school it prepares you to think in a way that makes sense with null/alternative hypotheses and all of those z and t stats hypothesis tests. The second reason is to have you think about what you expect to happen. If you're doing an experiment, you likely have some information to come up with what you think will happen, and what the explanation for that is. If you get a result that goes against what your reasoning was beforehand, then you have a misconception and have to adjust what you think you know. If you don't take a side, then you could potentially say that you believed that would happen all along, even if it doesn't make sense with how you understand things. Taking a side makes you confront your confusion when it doesn't work out as you thought.

<comment><USER7> >>> If you don't take a side, then you could potentially say that you believed that would happen all along

How does that harm anything? The result is the result. Pretending to have a belief so it can potentially be disproven seems contrived.

<comment><USER6> That part was probably more about using the scientific method in personal life, I got a bit off track. But to answer you, the idea is that you should have a belief beforehand, and the experiment is how you test beliefs. The experiment should be designed to falsify a specific idea. Like say for example your code doesn't work. You have to have an idea of where it could be broken in order to test that belief. So you know there's a method with complex decisions, and it should call foo, but you believe that it isn't. To test this you throw a print at the top of foo, and see what happens. The belief is necessary to create the experiment - you won't make efficient progress if you put print statements after every line. The experiment is designed to differentiate between "this idea wrong" and "this idea is probably right".

<comment><USER7> I suppose in the case of programming, there should be a belief in what a function does, because somebody wrote the function in the first place. I'm thinking about my own work, in areas such as physics and electronics. On one fine day, I measured the characteristics of about 100 Zener diodes, to inform a design decision with about 3 or 4 possible outcomes. I don't see where pinning myself down to a particular opinion of the expected outcome before making the measurement would have changed the outcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I finally 'got' the concept of hypotheses after a couple stupid public policy experiments here in India. The 'Odd-Even' car rationing experiment in Delhi to reduce pollution was praised because it reduced traffic. Then the country-wide demonetization disaster meant to reduce undeclared income was later touted as a way to enable digital transactions. So to generalize, if you're not clear on what you're trying to achieve, you can claim success by retrofitting your results to any stated purpose.

</comment><comment><USER9> In neuroimaging research, I often would rather think of myself as a kind of explorer/cartographer, just weakly mapping the brain in order to fuel future strong hypothesis testing. That is one reason why I think opening and sharing our data is so fundamental to the lasting value of our work.

</comment><comment><USER10> Scientific funding is actually one of the things I would want to cut to fund a UBI.

I feel like a lot of "college professor/researcher" work is dealing with the paperwork of justifying why someone should give you enough money that you can pay an undergrad or master's student enough money to cover half of tuition so that you can get them to do some experiments with you.

If people didn't have to worry about rent or putting food on the table, they wouldn't have to spend time on government paperwork and could just focus on advancing science instead.

<comment><USER11> Are you suggesting that scientific funding doesn't have benefits for society, or that it's benefits are outweighed by the need for UBI?

<comment><USER12> I think the poster is suggesting that if people didn't have to work for money, many scientists would continue doing scientific research for free, and they'd have more time to spend on it because they wouldn't have to play the grants game.

This might actually be true for a field like math, where you just need paper/computer to make a major discovery. Probably not for a field like biology that involves a lot of web lab materials -- paying the humans is only a tiny sliver of the cost of making a discovery in the biosciences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > The success of a grant proposal shouldn't hinge on whether the research is > driven by a hypothesis, especially in the physical sciences.

You're looking at it the wrong way. If one call for proposal (meaning availability to fund only one project) receives a hundred proposals, then the acceptance rate is going to be 1% no matter what. Requirements like hypothesis inclusion are just ways to split the weed out work into two phases, e.g., eliminate 50 of the 100 proposals because they don't have hypothesis, and then eliminate 49 out of the remaining 50 after more careful reading. If you don't have the hypothesis requirement, that only means 99 out of 100 are eliminated after full reading. And what do you think the likelihood is going to be that the reviewers would accept your hypothesis-free proposal over dozens others that have one (all other things considered equal)?

The problem is lack of funding (or alternatively, too many researchers and not enough research work to go around, depending on how you look at it; Masters degree is the new Bachelors degree, PhD is the new Masters, etc, etc). What you're focusing on are marginal issues.

</comment><comment><USER14> It seems like the idealist model of science - observable data, falsifiable hypothesis, repeatable experiment - is often not how science works. Aeon has a good article on this subject.

[https://aeon.co/essays/a-fetish-for-falsification-and- observ...](https://aeon.co/essays/a-fetish-for-falsification-and-observation- holds-back-science)

</comment><comment><USER15> [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Has using a quote from 4 centuries ago to try to prove a point ever worked out for anyone? It sounds about as effective as "Newton didn't use vaccines, so why should we?". Perhaps there is some merit to the idea, but talking about 17th century science is probably not the most convincing way to make the point. That aside, here is Newton's actual quote from Cohen and Whitman's translation of Principia:

> I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of > gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses. For whatever is not > deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, > whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or > mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy > particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards > rendered general by induction. [1]

To me, this appears to be a very different sentiment. Newton seems to be saying "I don't try to guess about things I don't understand", not "You don't need to have a clear plan before doing research". Even if it is true that Newton never framed a hypothesis in his life (which strikes me as blatantly false), he didn't live in a world with thousands and thousands of researchers funded by taxpayer money. When commitees have to decide how to spend money, of course it's more logical to fund a project with a well-formed question.

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

<comment><USER17> A little further into the article, the author presents many other arguments in support of his point, and discusses why some types of experiment (e.g., typical medical investigations) may need hypotheses, while others need not (the Hubble telescope was not built to investigate a specific hypothesis.) This article deserves more of a response than one that ignores anything not mentioned in the title.

<comment><USER18> I'm reminded of research in Computer Science, that generally looks like this: "In this paper we investigate the hypothesis: Is it possible to build something cool? First, we briefly summarize cool things that already exist, then we show how we were able to build something cool, we measure how cool it is (it's cooler than a bunch of competing things!), and finally conclude with some cool ideas that we or you might pursue the future."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> And then there's the Broad Institute[1]. For some research a hypothesis is too reductionist. Sometimes you need to catalog at exhaustive scale: sequence the entire human genome, catalogue the structure of all cell types[5], and their pathways[6], log all gene expression for every tissue type in as many states of disease as possible[3], examine repurposing drugs by exposing every type of cell to every compound in the US Pharmacopoeia to look for novel effects (via transcriptomics)[2]

Genomic sequencing, microfluidic liquid handling[4,7], and novel statistical approaches allow for scientific knowledge to be generated at an astounding pace. After the data exist, then we can make hypotheses. This is the new model for biomedical big science.

This model of science is often criticized for not being hypothesis-driven, either as "stamp collecting," or as a force for vacuuming up funding that would otherwise support myriad small labs. It does bear fruit for schizophrenia[8], depression [9], as well as diabetes, obesity, and heart disease [10].

Where are the most interesting, most complex, and most challenging data problems these days? Not advertising. Not finance. Not crypto. Biology. (And many from cryptography, math, CS, and physics have switched gears to work on biological problems.) We run on messy stochastic software, and we finally have the tools to read the source code and save edits. It's an exciting time.

1\. [https://www.broadinstitute.org/about- us](https://www.broadinstitute.org/about-us)

2\. [https://clue.io/repurposing](https://clue.io/repurposing)

3\. [https://www.gtexportal.org/home/](https://www.gtexportal.org/home/)

4\. [https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/dronc-seq- microfluidic-s...](https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/dronc-seq-microfluidic- single-nucleus-rna-sequencing)

5\. [https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/international-human- cell...](https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/international-human-cell-atlas- initiative-gets-underway)

6\. [https://www.broadinstitute.org/klarman-cell- observatory/appr...](https://www.broadinstitute.org/klarman-cell- observatory/approach)

7\. [https://www.broadinstitute.org/files/patents/WO2016149661.pd...](https://www.broadinstitute.org/files/patents/WO2016149661.pdf)

8\. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4112379/pdf/ems...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4112379/pdf/emss-59304.pdf)

9\. [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0090-3](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0090-3)

10\. (Via profile of common author in several fields) [https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=EISUuucAAAAJ...](https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=EISUuucAAAAJ&view_op=list_works)

</comment><comment><USER20> It's actually not a terrible article. But argh is the framing in the title awful.

Fine, fine. Isaac ?!@# Newton can get away with theorizing ab initio and turn out useful theories. _You can 't_.

More to the point, and relevant to the practice of modern science and not the Work of Giants: experiments designed without an eye to a clear hypothesis are pretty much guaranteed to be exercises in p-hacking.

<comment><USER21> Ok, let's try the subtitle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Newton was looking for the Philosopher's Stone. Why shouldn't we?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton's_occult_studies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton's_occult_studies)

<comment><USER23> The fun thing is that modern science has transmuted other elements into gold.

<comment><USER22> Not quite there with regards to immortality (a property of lapis philosophorum) though :-)

<comment><USER24> You probably don't want to become immortal. At first glance it may sound desirable, but once you start actually thinking about it, you quickly realize that you were probably pretty naive about that. You may however want to live a bit longer than what your current life expectation grants you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


10 Overrated Business Books (and What to Read Instead) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bnet.com/2403-13070_23-160571.html

<comment><USER2> Malkiel's book on investing is really good if you want to understand how the markets work, but it's not really necessary if you all you want to do is maximize the returns on your retirement fund. Dilbert's 9-point financial plan gives the exact same advice, but in only 123 words:

[http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7BBE5...](http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7BBE57F0AA-03D9-4320-BC4D-83363B6372F6%7D&siteid=myyahoo&dist=myyahoo)

The only exception is that if you are young then instead of investing in the index you'd probably be better to invest in the index of small cap stocks. Your returns will probably be much better over time, although in any given the variance will be much higher. You can't do this when you get older because if you need the money and the market has been down three years in a row then you're in trouble. The only other thing worth mentioning is that Roth IRAs may be better than traditional IRAs depending on your tax bracket. (And also there are some special retirement vehicles you have access to if you run your own business, though I don't really remember the details.)

The Malkiel covers some technical stuff, like what it means to invest in assets with a negative beta. (Negative beta securities tend to move against the market, so for example when the index is down gold tends to go up.) However there isn't really much reason to invest in these obscure securities unless you're running a hedge, so knowing about them is really only good for intellectual curiosity value.

<comment><USER3> Two thumbs up for the Dilbert financial plan. May it spread far and wide.

If you're the kind of person who can't bring himself to follow a simple and sensible plan like Dilbert's, I have the book for you: William Bernstein's "The Four Pillars of Investing".

[http://www.amazon.com/Four-Pillars-Investing-Building- Portfo...](http://www.amazon.com/Four-Pillars-Investing-Building- Portfolio/dp/0071385290/ref=sr_1_2/103-3892353-0078258?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189716378&sr=1-2)

If you follow Bernstein's advice you will end up with Dilbert's financial plan, except that instead of one giant index fund you'll have a bunch of smaller index funds - some small-cap, some large-cap growth, some international, and so on. Plus bonds, of course. In other words, you'll be a Vanguard customer. But there's nothing wrong with that.

This additional layer of complexity might be good for an additional point or two of growth. Or it might turn out to be a useless exercise in micromanagement. But it's a nice safe way to satisfy your urge to pretend that doing a lot of higher math and complicated bookkeeping is making you richer. The book is careful to steer you away from stupid stock-picking strategies, stupid stock newsletters, and advisers who work on commission (who are, by definition, not on your side).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This kind of stood out:

"Read this instead: 'The Prince' by Niccolo Machiavelli. Why: It will provide you with the precise moral foundation you'll need to be successful on the corporate ladder."

I dont recall PG ever bringing this up in his essays. But I think this is why a lot of hackers gravitate towards startups. They cant get themselves to follow the advice in that book.

<comment><USER5> Read it more carefully. It's satire.

 _Edit: I'm referring to "The Prince," not the list._

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder how much it's really satire. You'd definitely be better off with their replacements than the original list.

<comment><USER2> I think it's meant to be snarky, not satirical.

<comment><USER6> I'd go for 'tongue-in-cheek'.

(not sure if that's largely an English phrase, or if there is a similar American term) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue-in-cheek>

_edit: oh, the book_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Talk about a straw man argument. The ten "over rated" books are - on the whole - a pretty poor list. I'd also call them over-hyped, rather than over-rated (who honestly would rate 'Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work' as a serious business book)?

I'd have been far more interested in seeing books selected from the 'recommended reading' list used for (say) Harvard Business School, and then an examination of the merits of those. It could also be very interesting to compare the reading lists of the top b-schools to get a glimpse at their emphasis and biases.

Like most 'top 10' lists, I suspect this was intended more as a space-filler than as a serious contribution.

This just made #1 on my '10 Overrated Articles'. Now I just need to find what to read instead...

<comment><USER8> At the first company I worked at after graduating, many of the supervisor and manager cubicles had little certificates on them saying that they completed some sort of "Who Moved My Cheese" seminar. I remember seeing copies of "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" as well. Right before I left I saw someone with a copy of a book like "Love 'em or Lose 'em" a book about how to keep good employees. It's cover looked suspicious to me but I don't know much about it.

Honestly, though, most managers simply did not read, and those who did certainly didn't read anything about how to become a better manager, unless it was forced on them from corporate. Even those who took the initiative to read the bad books on that list will probably benefit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> While 'The Prince' is a better read, I think the business community takes it too seriously. The prevalent episteme at the the time of writing and the audience for that book effect its interpretation. Today, we live in a completely different world and that book is not suited for business, neither is Sun Tzu.

PS: It is possible to find some advice, thought or concept in anybook which you can apply to business.

Also, this list isn't the best list of over hyped business books.

<comment><USER10> Don't like Sunzi? Try the Book of Five Rings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A lot of business books, like some of the ones on this list, suffer from overly anecdotal arguments. All the books that have actually affected the way I do things tend much more towards theory and frameworks of thought.

Our little startup has three holy texts: "Nonzero" by Robert Wright, "The Paradox of Choice" by Barry Schwartz, and "Fooled By Randomness" by Nassim Taleb (which is even more sanctimonious than "The Seven Habits...", but a lot better, too).

</comment><comment><USER12> These are debunked in "[How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World]([http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Mumbo-jumbo-Conquered-World- Delu...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Mumbo-jumbo-Conquered-World- Delusions/dp/0007140975))"

</comment><comment><USER13> Jesus CEO?</comment>


10-month-old startup raises $20 million to sell imaginary (sorry, virtual) goods - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloggingbuyouts.com/2007/12/19/10-month-old-startup-raises-20-million-to-sell-imaginary-sorry/ <comment><USER2> Certainly this is a viable business. Their difference from competitors like <http://www.igxe.com> is that they negotiate agreements with the owners of the game. I don't know what they need 20 million for, but those $3 a bottle fruit juice drinks do taste very good.

<http://www.livegamer.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> The value of virtual goods are strongly tied to the virtual world they are associated with. Facebook gifts only matter because Facebook matters. WoW gold only matters because WoW matters. The key to selling virtual goods is the virtual environment where they matter and can be made artificially scarce without pissing anyone off.

There's not enough information in that article to evaluate the virtual goods market. It sounds like this is more like a 3rd-party virtual-goods service and not actually a game itself, which is something that has been around for quite awhile.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure whether I should be inspired by this or want to stab myself in the eye, but just in case I think I'm going to go eBay up a rusty fork.

</comment><comment><USER5> Halting State by Charles's Stross ([http://www.amazon.com/Halting-State- Charles-Stross/dp/044101...](http://www.amazon.com/Halting-State-Charles- Stross/dp/0441014984)) explores what happens when some crooks steal all the virtual goods in this kind of company. WoW meets NUMB3RS in an interesting way.

</comment><comment><USER6> Kids used to play basketball after school in my neighborhood. Now they're inside logged into Facebook or watching YouTube videos. I guess virtual worlds are the next step.</comment>


CES 2017: UK support to tech firms 'an embarrassment' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38469141 <comment><USER2> Not sure this is news to anyone working in tech in the UK we are still seen by the "powers that be" as oily engineers.</comment>


Nikola Tesla: An alcohol-fueled history - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-03/drunk-history-nikola-tesla-father-western-technology

<comment><USER2> The title suggests that Tesla was a drunk, this is absolutely not true.</comment>


Nitrome to convert its Flash game library to HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nitrome.com/blog/articles/1427/ <comment><USER2> Flash was an amazing, low barrier way to make games that could be distributed with almost no effort. In a single weekend I was able to make a game, do all the art, integrate a video advertisement API into it, and release it to hundreds of websites. I made tens of thousands of dollars doing this from my dorm while going to school and working two jobs. I have yet to find an alternative that can come anywhere close to this.

I wrote a bit about this on my blog, if you'd like to know more: [http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/blog/8lessons8games.html](http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/blog/8lessons8games.html)

<comment><USER3> > I have yet to find an alternative that can come anywhere close to this.

It wasn't the technology, it was the economy. In the late 90's consumer internet uptake was growing literally exponentially, but the population of hackers who could provide content was lagging terribly.

I mean, obviously Flash was probably the best option for that particular niche, but if it didn't exist something else would have happened.

<comment> barry-cotter And yet no one has built anything like it since. No one has even built a tool that's has as low a barrier to entry for either of creating animations or making games, never mind one with both that low barrier to entry and no upper limit to the quality of what you can make with it.

<comment><USER3> > And yet no one has built anything like it since.

Because it's not the technology, it's the economy! You _can 't_ build another Flash, because no such product could exist. We're awash with talented content generation for the connected modern society. There's no niche for hacker students to fill, with _any_ tool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I grew up with nitrome as a staple of the internet, so I'm happy they're doing this, even for nostalgic reasons- their games really shaped my youth and we definitely lost a wealth of content when flash died.

I feel like in general the "spirit" of the old flash games has died, I'm not sure why but there was an incredible amount of low grade content around during the flash days, and thus we had breakout successes like "the stick guy vs the web designer" and line rider. Maybe it's because I'm old, but I don't see those kinds of incredibly Indy things anymore.

I don't miss flash as a web technology though.

<comment><USER5> Did you ever dabble with Flash? I did, and it's frankly amazing how easy it was to make games with it, especially since it gave you tools to draw right there in the app. It had a low barrier to entry and a high skill ceiling, which is why we saw such a massive amount of content those days from high school and college students.

I don't know of an equivalent program to help build HTML5 games. It's basically on you to pick the engine, choose the drawing program, and cobble the entire thing together with only code. The barrier to entry is way over kids' heads.

<comment><USER6> This. I made Flash games back in the day, some of which were fairly popular. My most played game, Proximity, I came up with the idea at the beginning of the week and had it released on Newgrounds by the end of the week. It was just so easy to make games on that platform, and to collaborate effectively with artists, who could create the art directly in the software and you could incorporate it into the game easily.

I haven't found any platform that's been as easy or quick or easy to collaborate with artists, while at the same time not having too many restrictions in what type of game you want to make, since, and I've floated around from platform to platform since then.

I'm still making games, but I'm doing more analog game design now (board games), which is giving me a little bit of that easy to make (at least the prototypes) and collaborate vibe that I haven't gotten from video games. Currently using MonoGame for video game development at the moment. I've used Unity professionally before, but it's too cumbersome for 2D hobby game development.

I'm actually a little surprised that lightning in a bottle hasn't been able to be replicated properly since then.

<comment><USER7> Thank you for making Proximity! I spent many hours playing it and enjoyed immensely.

<comment><USER6> You're welcome :) Glad you had so much fun with it.

Currently trying to bring it back, actually. I released a sequel on Xbox 360 a while back, and I'm trying to clean it up, add some things, then release it on desktop, then mobile, then hopefully more modern consoles.

Now that Flash is basically completely dead from modern browsers, I'm trying to figure out what I should do about the original. I might eventually make an HTML 5 version, but in the meantime I'm considering making downloadable executables of the Flash game and releasing it on itch.io or something.

I also finally prototyped a board game version, and at some point I'm hoping to find a publisher for it. Figured I need to bring the video game back so it can be played again before publishers will give it a shot, though.

Speaking as a fan, do you have any opinions on what I should be doing with the game?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We are working on fixing this problem "the right way" by virtualizing the x86 Flash plugin in WebAssembly. For more info see here:

[https://medium.com/leaningtech/preserving-flash-content- with...](https://medium.com/leaningtech/preserving-flash-content-with- webassembly-done-right-eb6838b7e36f)

[https://medium.com/leaningtech/preserving-flash-content- with...](https://medium.com/leaningtech/preserving-flash-content-with- webassembly-done-right-eb6838b7e36f)

<comment><USER9> Is "the right way" in quotes because it's sarcasm? This is a really cool idea, but very impractical. I think most would agree that "the right way" would be to port the game to HTML5, either using straight JS or a technology like Haxe and OpenFL.

<comment><USER10> This is a pipe dream, as Flash has capabilities you just don't get in HTML+JS without writing an entire VM, such as text metrics and weak references.

<comment><USER11> Hence WebAssembly + WebGL/WebGPU.

<comment><USER12> There is functionality that is just not available while in the browser sandbox, so some flash apps will never work. But I'm happy to see this happening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd be interested to see the metrics for a browser game site. When I was a kid, Flash games were our go to when we had time in class, or even at home. I can remember my sister and I crowded around the family computer playing countless Flash games.

But what about now? Now that phones are so common among children, and they offer such a large library of free games (granted, many are packed with ads and micro-transactions), is there still a large market? I don't have a modern perspective since I don't really play mobile or web games anymore, but I'd be interested to see how websites like this are doing in terms of traffic.

<comment><USER14> This past weekend I uploaded a small game to Kongregate. It's been played 1000 times in the last 24 hours. I'd say the community is still surprisingly alive! Also, if I had uploaded the same game with zero marketing to mobile, I'd have expected zero downloads.

[https://www.kongregate.com/games/Frenchie14/factions](https://www.kongregate.com/games/Frenchie14/factions)

<comment><USER15> thats awesome! what technology are people using these days to make "flash" games?

<comment><USER14> There's a lot of options! I use Unity3D. For 2D games, I'd recommend something with a more native web build.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I want the same for [http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/](http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/)

<comment><USER17> The music in "rainmaker" is one of the most soothing loops I can think of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> For anyone interested in playing/archiving old flash games, BlueMaxima's Flashpoint has some 49,000 games packaged up to be played offline. I haven't messed with it yet, but it seems like a really neat project.

[https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/](https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I've been looking into how to best make a large collection of flash games available after flash is removed from browsers. An electron app was looking promising but that plan has been scuppered by licensing issues with the Flash runtime. Adobe have told us they'll be removing flash installers from their site and the cost to embed Flash into the app itself makes it a no go.

Maybe before December there will be a good HTML5 converter but I'm not holding out much hope. Shame to see so much content disappear.

Glad to see that Nitrome have had the resources to port their games over and some content is being saved!

</comment><comment><USER20> I did not know about Nitrome, but wow I love the site design!

On a related note, Neopets has also been migrating their huge catalog of Flash games to HTML5 over the years. I have no idea how that's going though.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wish Newgrounds would also find a better solution than its current Windows- based Flash player to play its enormous Flash games collection (which currently still works in browser, of course)

<comment><USER22> It should be possible to make a Flash player that works for the most part using web technologies (e.g. WebAssembly). I remember Mozilla created Shumway ([https://github.com/mozilla/shumway](https://github.com/mozilla/shumway)) but it looks like they have given up on it.

<comment><USER23> I believe that's exactly what Newgrounds is doing. See [https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle](https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Flash was a lot of fun to use. The possibilities were endless. Especially because web isn't what it is today. I used to do a lot of flash banners for Vodafone. It was a lot of fun and made good money whilst I was doing my MSc too.

I eventually picked up Flex because flash was all the rage and did a really nice UI for an exhibition that was in the museum for a year. I think you'd still need to use something like imagemaps now for what I achieved with flex and flash together

</comment><comment><USER25> While it wasn't a game, so the bar was pretty low, a fun project (it was a sporting goods company I think) I did was converting a ton of Flash widgets into the HTML5 equivalent - this was probably 8 years ago, when the options were pretty much limited to jQuery plugins. (short of rewriting in vanilla JS, which was tougher then than now, given that older version of IE were still somewhat in use)

</comment><comment><USER26> I loved Nitrome when I was younger and I am super excited for this! I haven't visited in years mainly because I don't have Flash.

</comment><comment><USER27> Astonished to see this in 2020.

</comment><comment><USER28> [https://htwins.net/scale2/](https://htwins.net/scale2/)

this needs a html5 version

</comment><comment><USER29> I hope 'Flight' from Armor Games where you fly/upgrade a paper airplane gets an HTML5 treatment.

</comment><comment><USER30> Someone script convert homestarrunner.com quick

</comment><comment><USER31> The text is so hard to read! Even after zooming in. I think I am used to modern sites so much that I completely forgot how it used to be before 10 years

<comment><USER32> Your screen was probably 800 pixels wide or something less than it is today so the characters were bigger.

HN is not so great in this area either

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is this approach different from what sites like Newgrounds did for their Flash libraries?

<comment><USER34> It is. Newgrounds rendered old flash animations to a video container. To NG flash games, you are directed to their pre-set offline flash player.

<comment><USER33> Ah. I can see disadvantages with that approach. Bandwidth usage for a given video would be increased as well as losing the vectorized nature of Flash video that allows them to be losslessly upscaled.

<comment><USER35> Plus interactive elements are suddenly unavailable or, depending on how the original video was rendered, smashed together at the end or beginning or wherever the developer put them in the timeline. Strongbad Emails are an example... the SWFs frequently had secret links and hotspots that would take you to Family Guy-style cutaways. In sbemail's latter years some of them were quite involved. You could even hit tab repeatedly and flash player would highlight them for you. I don't think any of this appears in the DVD release, or on rendered versions on Youtube.</comment></comment></comment></comment>