Should we just ban the use of gadgets while driving, period? - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2009/07/21/gadgets-and-cars-dangerous-together-period/

<comment><USER2> How about just enforcing reckless driving laws? It's not as if there are cops watching people drive like idiots while on their phones and going, "Dang, I wish there was _some_ specific law covering why these people are driving recklessly so I could give them a nice, fat ticket towards my quota."

<comment><USER3> Man, I wish people got pulled over for dangerous shit like tailgating and reckless driving more often, and speeding (especially on highways with an artificially low posted limit) less often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes!

GPS can be configured at the start of a trip. Any music player shouldn't be used more than pause/skip while driving. Hands free calling _needs_ to be mandatory.

People just do not have the spare cognitive capacity to attend to both driving and gizmos.

<comment><USER5> Soooo, people shouldn't drive with kids in the car? I can tell you that if you let them, small children can be _much, much_ more distracting than any electronic device.

<comment><USER4> I would not object to hog-tying and gagging small children...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Except when changing lanes or making a turn, I think using gadgets are okay. I think banning the use of gadgets entirely when driving, would be a bad idea.

</comment><comment><USER7> Of course. Driving demands your full and complete attention. From the second floor of a building I was in one morning recently I watched a young woman execute a perfect left turn at a major intersection . . . WHILE EATING A BOWL OF CEREAL! We also know that hands free is no help because, unlike when you are speaking with someone else in the car, the person on the other end of the phone cannot see the shit happening in front of you in traffic and will not shut up when you REALLY have to drive. But realistically nobody is going to be told what they can and cannot do in or with their automobiles. Driving is dangerous - period. So, as much as I hate SUVs, I recommend driving one, or else getting your vehicle armour plated.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it reasonable to host a professional event on Valentine's Day? - <AUTHOR> Today (Valentines Day), I had an important work event scheduled from 7-9pm. To me, it felt inappropriate for that organization to ask people to attend at that time. Do you think Valentines Day (evening) should be treated as blocked off or treated as just another day in the week? <comment><USER2> It seems like such an unreasonable request that it must be an accident. If it is on purpose, the company believes it own your personal time as well. Best to disabuse them of that notion. "Sorry, I already have something planned for Wednesday night."

</comment><comment><USER3> People are able to go to restaurants, bars, concerts, and movies because other people are working.

</comment><comment><USER4> I guess the only question is: what type of industry do you work in?</comment>


Developing a Embedded System - <AUTHOR>

Hi Friends, I am interested in developing some gadgets. Say Tablet PC, With less features like viewing PDF's, writing notes, Paint, Calculator... How do I start? I know for a beginner it is too hard. So where do I begin? From microcontrollers or can I directly start from things like beagle board or something. Aim of this total thing is to understand the lifecycle of a product development. <comment><AUTHOR> Anyone help please. Have I posted this on wrong page! Where do I need to post for "Ask HN"???</comment>


Python Tools for Visual Studio - <AUTHOR> http://www.hanselman.com/blog/OneOfMicrosoftsBestKeptSecretsPythonToolsForVisualStudioPTVS.aspx <comment><USER3> This doesn't even mention the most awesome feature of PTVS 2.0: mixed-mode debugging, which provides an integrated experience for debugging mixed Python/C processes. See [https://pytools.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Mixed- mode%20deb...](https://pytools.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Mixed- mode%20debugging) for details.

Disclaimer: I used to work on IronPython.

<comment><USER4> Microsoft really does make the most outstanding developer tools. I admit that I occasionally miss that deeply integrated, seamless feeling.

You guys deserve some recognition. I'm not too frequent a user lately, but I'm continually impressed.

<comment><USER5> I'm developping on some platforms.

But i have to admit, nothing beats visual studio in awesomeness / completeness

<comment><USER6> I came into a shop that does a lot of .NET development over a year ago, and I swear I came into the experience hoping to learn what made lots of people say exactly what you've said.

6 months into it, I all but stopped caring, and overall, I felt like it actually created problems for me. But I'd like to understand what problems others feel it solved for them.

<comment><USER7> Honestly, coming into visual studio/c# from emacs/common lisp feels like going backwards in time for me.

Running my CL environment on Gentoo feels like the future; a not-quite-there- yet-but-still-awesome future; running VS on Windows feels like kiddie toys that haven't gotten around to growing up yet.

And that's a weird feeling when you realize the dollars, time, and research poured into each environment. :-)

<comment><USER8> That's funny because I feel the same way if I have to use Emacs. It feels like going back to the early 90s with some DOS Borland IDE.

Regular text editors just feel so clunky next to the cohesiveness of VS/Resharper or Intellij.

At some point in time, Emacs is going to have get overhauled to join the 90s, much less the 21st century.

And I understand that CL is a special case with Emacs, but it's still clunky as hell compared to what could have been really awesome environments (think Smalltalk environments), but with lots of resources pumped into the development.

<comment><USER9> > Resharper

You've kind of hit the key here, Visual Studio alone is decent, but Resharper is really what makes the experience for me. I don't know a single .net developer who could live without it.

<comment><USER10> There's one here.

It stinks on our 1Mloc C# project to the point you have to disable it or it crashes VS every 5 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Another Microsoft's best kept secrets is using Javascript for shell script. It has been there forever since Javascript first came out. It's called JScript but it's just Javascript with Windows support like running ActiveX Objects, which let you access the file system, OS, network, etc. You can pretty much drive the Windows system with it through ActiveX Automation. Also you can do Office application integration like Excel Automation with it.

<comment><USER12> Related, but for the same reasons, you could also write classic ASP using JavaScript (as opposed to VBScript). Years ago, I spent months trying to convince my team to let me use JavaScript instead of VBScript in our ASP files.

<comment><USER11> I know. When I need to do some Windows scripting, I'd do it in JScript rather than VBScript. Like when a user wants to merge two Excel files, nothing beats to whip out a simple JScript to do it. Running it is simple. They just double click on the JScript file and done. Business users love it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For me, Msft and JetBrains provide the best IDEs for getting work done. The majority of my work is in Java, C#, and Python.

At the moment, I use PyCharm for python projects because I'm usually working on OSX (and prefer the local unix-y environment instead of the Windows- virtual-machine thing.) However, I started with PTVS years ago and really like it.

MSFT adding IDE support for Python is a good thing -- as developers, we need more options, not less.

<comment><USER14> MSFT porting VS to Mac and Linux would give developers even more options.

<comment><USER15> ...which would be detrimental to Microsoft. Limiting our options to theirs is precisely their goal by giving us a great IDE that only works on Windows.

They're never gonna go it. They stand to win nothing from that.

<comment><USER16> I dunno, I might just be cost prohibitive to port, and likely wouldn't run as well.

<comment><USER17> Even on a modern, high-powered laptop, Visual Studio still runs slowly for me. Some actions inexplicably cause the UI to hang for a few seconds. I really appreciate how OSX seems to prioritize UI responsiveness, which doesn't seem to be the case in Windows.

<comment><USER18> Do you have specific examples? This is an area of interest for me. VS architecturally has a lot of things tied to the UI thread due to COM STA requirements (well, that and the fact that historically people created their STA objects on the UI thread, thus tying them to the UI thread).

Another possible cause can be extensions. Not that VS doesn't have its own problems of 'doing too much work on the UI thread', but there are TONS of callback points that third parties can hook into, and lots of times people do very ill-advised things on the UI thread, leading to poor responsiveness.

We monitor it actively (via PerfWatson[0], you should install it if you want your perf problems brought to the attention of Microsoft, it should have low overhead at runtime, only kicking in when the UI thread is already unresponsive), but of course with a product as large and complex as VS, and with said product being extensible, inevitably customers run into stuff we never see internally, so we rely on getting repros/data from them to understand what is going wrong.

[0] [http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/fa85b17d-3df2-...](http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/fa85b17d-3df2-49b1-bee6-71527ffef441?SRC=Home)

<comment><USER17> I don't have a specific example at the moment, except that it's often unresponsive during builds. (I guess this should be expected? Other work I do is in interpreted languages, so there is no "build" step)

Thanks for the link. I'm happy to add it.

<comment><USER19> Which version of VS, and what language? If you're using VS 2010 or earlier, then both C# and VB were running the build (MSBuild and compilers both) on UI thread, so responsiveness was as bad as you'd expect it to be with such architecture. From VS 2012 onwards, VB builds on a background thread, and C# builds out-of-process (which also makes it scale on multi-core systems).

<comment><USER20> I definitely notice the performance improvements in VS2012. I wonder how many people reporting performance issues are also running ReSharper. JetBrains do great work, but ReSharper (<=v7) is _very_ resource-heavy.

<comment><USER8> Resharper can definitely bog things down, especially in big Razor pages.

But as you and the parent pointed out, I've also seen huge improvements in build times with VS2012.

And with VS2013 we finally get edit-n-continue on x64.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I chuckled at: "Django (Python's Web Framework)". Someone has missed out on years of hand-wringing about our menagerie of frameworks.

<comment><USER22> ;) The PTVS guys said they are going to add support for Flask and Bottle soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I primarily use Sublime, TextMate or Komodo on Mac for python dev but would love to also use VS. I do run windows and do most dev on that under VS. Maybe one day VS will come to Mac, I know that doesn't follow the platform mission but would get some good traction for Visual Studio going forward and a little fire under Xcode for C/C++ dev on Mac.

At this point both XCode and VS are pretty equal but XCode I also like and have no problem with. Both are unique to the OS though. Both are also extremely bloated but needed for C/C++ dev. Eclipse is also a bit cludgy. That python to native screenshot on the site looks intruiging.

I do use MonoDevelop on Mac for Unity dev and it does support debugging but would love to use VS on Mac one day.

All in all when I do python dev I like less in my IDE at times, just a good autocomplete/intellisense and I usually despise integrated source control into IDEs preferring to do it with outside tools such as terminal/cmd, sourcetree or tortoises. SCM integration in IDEs always seems to kill performance and gets out of sync, especially in the latest MonoDevelop (startup indexing kills the usefulness - [http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/356129/monodevelop- perf...](http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/356129/monodevelop-performance- in-unity-4.html)).

<comment><USER24> Try PyCharm. It works on Mac and Windows and is miles ahead of XCode for Python.

<comment><USER23> Haven't tried it yet, might give it a try. The debugging looks cool and even Guido seems to think it has some benefits: [https://profiles.google.com/115212051037621986145/buzz/CGh9M...](https://profiles.google.com/115212051037621986145/buzz/CGh9MoWU53V) \- note he mentions painful SCM integration, as usual in IDEs that just doesn't work well. SCM support I usually turn off as it adds iteration lag typically. Prefer the scm tools directly almost always.

<comment><USER25> I keep SourceTree, by the same company, running while I'm working in PyCharm, and it picks up all the changes nicely. It has been my crutch in becoming competent using Git.

<comment><USER26> PyCharm is built by JetBrains, and SourceTree by Atlassian. Both great products, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I love Visual Studio but after having worked with python quite a lot and being involved in the local developer community (IN NEOhio, NYC, and starting into Southern Maine) I think I've only ever meet two python developers who used windows as there development Os. I'm not holding my breath but if MS would port VS to OS X/Linux it would be really cool. I don't know that a good business case could be made for it though.

<comment><USER28> On the other hand perhaps something could be done about Python so that we who are forced to develop Python on Windows stop being second-class citizens in the Python world?

ButI agree. VS is an awesome IDE and the more operating systems it would be available on the better.

<comment><USER29> You are fighting various other teams in Redmond/power users that have issues with OSS and technology that's cross platform and not from the Mothership. Python/Iron Python would have been a great default language for administrative scripting , but nope, they had to reinvent the wheel with PowerShell.

(I've had MVPs yell at me for discussing data analysis with Python, even on Windows.)

<comment><USER30> PowerShell is a very nice language in its own right, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Do people run django production sites on Windows? Not trolling, genuinely interested.

<comment><USER32> I currently maintain and run a big ol' Django project running on Apache/Windows/MSSQL (and some Oracle) here (university of Arizona). It's not that bad although myself and the other developer both use mac's so its annoying having to RDP in to do anything in a python shell.

<comment><USER33> If you only use the shell, can't you use something like an SSH daemon on Windows and ssh to it?

<comment><USER34> Is there any decent SSH daemon on Windows? And what shell does/would it run? cmd.exe?

<comment><USER35> Some people dislike it but I use Cygwin when I want access to the various unix standard tools on a Windows box (including the openssh daemon).

[http://www.cygwin.com/](http://www.cygwin.com/)

The setup.exe is both the installer and the package manager.

<comment><USER36> I recommend trying out Mintty for Cygwin if you haven't already. I love it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Does anyone have experience with the free VS Shell mentioned in the article as the foundation for putting together a free of cost installation?

How does it compare to VS Express? Why would there be two different free Visual Studio offerings...just to keep things locked down and rule out support for add-ins?

<comment><USER38> overgard is correct.

Our PTVS + integrated/isolated shell basically gives you a virtual "Python Express". However recently msft has moved away from the "Express" model to "Scenario" models. ie, VS for Phone, VS for Desktop, VS for Web, etc. and each includes all the tools and multiple languages you might need for that workload. We're hoping to include PTVS into the desktop & Web scenarios in the future.

[disclaimer: project lead]

<comment><USER37> That would be cool. I've been enjoying how much I can accomplish using VS Express for Web and Desktop. It is a little annoying having to install both of these, but beggars can't be choosers, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> There are a lot of Python IDEs out there, some very good, such as IntelliJ IDEA. I'd prefer to see an objective comparison.

<comment><USER40> It's Scott Hanselman's blog. The entire point of it is to proselytize for MS products.

<comment><USER22> Not really, the blog is my side gig. I talk about lots of stuff, but since I'm in the MS dev space I lean in that direction. I work in Azure and ASP.NET as a PM, I'm not in marketing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Question: Why did the PTVS developers eventually adopt the _.sln|_.*proj file thing that other MS languages (C#, VB) use?

As far as I can remember, there was some resistance to going through that route before (v1.5 didn't have this, I think).

</comment><comment><USER42> add in vi for VS and it's hard to use anything else: [https://github.com/jaredpar/VsVim/](https://github.com/jaredpar/VsVim/)

</comment><comment><USER43> Just Vi or Vim for me. Used VS, VB, Eclips years back, but now back to Vi/Vim for embedded and server environment. Have not missed any of IDE features at all.

<comment><USER44> What languages do you work with? Simple things like being able to jump to the definition of a function with a press of a button (esp. when working with a large unfamiliar code base) are indispensable for me.

<comment><USER45> grep is nice. its gnarly in template heavy c++, but so are all the tools. intellisense can't reliably provide navigation among all of the possible instantiations in your project.

(esc;qgrep -rn thing .) is faster for me than reaching for the mouse.

<comment><USER19> >> its gnarly in template heavy c++, but so are all the tools. intellisense can't reliably provide navigation among all of the possible instantiations in your project.

Have you tried it in VS 2010+? You might be surprised. I've seen it correctly handle polymorphic Boost lambdas, and that's a rather impressive feat of TMP. Also, I've just tried the scenario that you've described (if I understand it correctly - "Find all references" on a class template), and it does list all the explicit instantiations in the project.

<comment><USER46> I have to second this. I hear VS>=2010 uses the compiler infrastructure to generate the intellisense data, rather than doing it (as VS<=2008) by simple text processing, and it's made a huge difference in terms of reliability. As well as improved support for templates, it also does a good job of handling code generated by macros. Newer Visual Studios might prove that the question "OMFG what could POSSIBLY be worse than the VS2008 C++ build system?" isn't actually rhetorical after all, but the code completion is much improved.

(On another note, Xcode. I'm normally pretty negative about Xcode, because it's mostly awful. But I believe its code navigation and code completion is done in a similar way - only using LLVM, of course - and that part does work extremely well. If anything, it's actually slightly better than Visual Studio, because its navigation shortcut is much better about giving you a popup list of all possible reasonable destinations, e.g., if you try to go from a member function call to its definition when that function is virtual.)

<comment><USER19> >> I hear VS>=2010 uses the compiler infrastructure to generate the intellisense data, rather than doing it (as VS<=2008) by simple text processing, and it's made a huge difference in terms of reliability.

To be specific, what they did was take the EDG C++ front-end, and use it to drive all code intelligence features (code completion etc) - <USER2> [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2009/05/27/rebuilding...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2009/05/27/rebuilding- intellisense.aspx). That's why it can correctly handle all templates, macros etc.

Here's a nasty trick that I love to play on unsuspecting C++ IDEs:

      template<int = sizeof(void*)> struct foo;

      template<> struct foo<4> {
        template<int> struct bar {};
      };

      template<> struct foo<8> {
        enum { bar = 0 };
      };

      float baz;

      int main() {
        foo<>::bar < 123 > baz;
      }

The nastiness here is that the line of code inside main() should be parsed differently depending on pointer size on the target architecture. If it uses foo<4>, then it is a declaration of a local variable named baz, of type foo<4>::bar<123>. If it uses foo<8>, then it's an expression involving two comparison operators: ((foo<>::bar < 123) > baz) - referencing the global float baz.

Now, if you try the above in VS (2010+), you'll see that it will parse this correctly and give you the proper type info for baz (and "Find References" etc), which will change if you switch project configuration from "Win32" to "x64" and back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Awesome as this looks, I'm not sure it's worth giving up my entire workflow or having to actually use Windows.

</comment><comment><USER48> This made me remember about the "Visual Node" project[1], which is very similar to this but for node.js. I hope it's still being actively developed.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5873351](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5873351)

<comment><AUTHOR> If this project isn't still in development, Microsoft does treat NodeJS as a first class citizen in Web Matrix[1] and is definitely worth a look.

[1]: [http://www.microsoft.com/Web/webmatrix/node.aspx](http://www.microsoft.com/Web/webmatrix/node.aspx)

<comment><USER48> Thanks for the suggestion. Actually, I already knew about webmatrix but it's missing a lot of features from VS and is IIS oriented. It's been a while since I last checked it, though. I'll have a fresh look.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's cool until you see the price tag for Visual Studio Profi/Prem/Ultimate (I assume you can't use Python tools with Express versions). In that case I will stick to my old copy of Visual J++...

<comment><USER19> You can't use it with VS Express, but you can use it with VS Shell (also free) - and we have a single-file installer that will install both Shell and PTVS for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The article mentions that Visual Studio is not required to use this, but all of the downloads I tried from that page tell me to install Visual Studio..

Can somebody point me in the right direction?

<comment><USER51> You download either the integrated package, or the Visual Studio Shell separately

Integrated package:

[https://pytools.codeplex.com/downloads/get/697389](https://pytools.codeplex.com/downloads/get/697389)

Isolated Shell downloads:

[http://www.microsoft.com/en- au/download/details.aspx?id=3066...](http://www.microsoft.com/en- au/download/details.aspx?id=30663) [http://www.microsoft.com/en- au/download/details.aspx?id=3067...](http://www.microsoft.com/en- au/download/details.aspx?id=30670)

good luck

<comment><USER50> Great, thankyou!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I use Pythonwin for quick and dirty stuff but I absolutely love PTVS for anything else :) I'd never use another Python IDE after I got used to it

</comment><comment><USER50> Can this be made to interface well with vagrant?

</comment><comment><USER53> is there ruby equivalent?

<comment><USER54> As for an IDE, RubyMine.

<comment><USER55> RubyMine is cool so is PyCharm.

<comment><USER56> and PHPStorm from the same company..all their IDEs are pretty awesome!

<comment><USER55> Yeah their stuff is pretty awesome, I actuall haven't tried PHPStorm how is it? I'm learning PHP at the moment so might use it.

<comment><USER57> If you're learning PHP I'd give it a shot, I thought it was a pretty nice IDE for someone writing PHP for the first time

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> best kept secret? How did it end up in an article here then?

<comment><USER29> NSA whistleblower...

:)</comment></comment>


How to Market Your SaaS Product - <AUTHOR> http://blog.evantodesk.com/post/how-to-market-your-saas-product?category=journey <comment><USER2> Assumptions that apply to this author, but may not apply to your business:

\- The pricing is $15 / user a month. This is a small purchase for businesses.

\- The product is in a crowded market. Comparison shopping is the norm.

\- The target is SMBs. Simplicity / ease-of-use is big for this market, vs larger businesses.

\- The product is in a mature market. People have well-defined expectations of what this software should do.

\- The audience is customer support, or perhaps generalists / founders.

\- Testing the software in "production" is hard, because it requires you to answer support tickets through it. It may be impossible to get full value from this product without committing to a trial, which implies a certain amount of investment.

The conclusions in the post are highly dependent on the specifics of this product and market, so take them with a grain of salt. If you're making a better CI/CD tool, or a better analytics dashboard, you may find that an entirely different approach works for you.

</comment><comment> m-sed How Capterra compares to g2crowd, getapp, or software advice?

</comment><comment><USER3> nice</comment>


Beware of fake VC scams - <AUTHOR>

I recently sent an investment pitch to some VC firms.
Yesterday I received an answer from one of them. This is the exact answer: http://i.imgur.com/k5AyYZA.png
The website in question is childresscap.com (screenshot for posterity http://i.imgur.com/g2RsmYR.png)
When I read it, the first second I was thrilled. Wow, I could actually get an investment. But then I got to the $130 part and I immediately felt something was wrong. At first, It was still hard for me to believe this was a scam because I was under the impression that I only contacted legit VC firms. So I started digging.
First I did a WHOIS for their domain name childresscap.com to see who registered the domain. The details are hidden with "Domain Privacy Service". Not good. Why would they hide the info? I took a closer look at their website. The fact that their website is ugly and unprofessional is not a clear give away of a scam. I've seen worse websites so this was not a clear indication of a scam.
I then looked at the "Partners" section. "Janice Nelson", the women who sent me the email, was not in the list. Again, not a very clear indication of a scam because I've gotten emails before from legit people that wore not on the website.
I googled the persons on the "Partners" section but didn't find anything good so I decided to search their image on Google Images. I have a very nice add-on for Firefox that does exactly this, so all I had to do was right click the images and send them to Google. All the images wore stolen and the names wore fake. Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/TUBXcLJ.png
This is just a twist of the classic Nigerian Letter. I know there are a lot of entrepreneurs reading HN so please be safe and take care of yourselves.
NOTES: - I contacted each person from the Partners page and told them their image was used on another website. - I also contacted the abuse department from Authorize.net <comment><USER2> It's very much the Nigerian letter as you said b/c it's definitely preying on the weak or naive. I've gotten 100+ of these just in the past 3-4 years for my company and they are all bad deals. Is it a scam? I don't know. I've followed up by phone with the first one that came one. We were fundraising at the time and I didn't know any better. You will get 1 a month then 2 a month then 4 a month as you grow. "Business capital" is the key phrase they all use.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a person who's in venture capital I can tell you guys one thing. We don't go looking for people to lend money to take him to us most of the time. The other times when I say most there through trusted sources that have been reliable time and time again before they can bring somebody to the table. Think about, logic whenever you read an e-mail that sounds too good to be true. It's true that banks offer credit card deals that are may be better than they should be in the beginning but we all know there's a hitch right? Venture capital is something people spend months of their time and their own money to get to a qualified person or company. To lend them money I think this is equivalent to the e-mails saying, Sheikh from Abu Dhabi and I lost $1 billion mind sending me 500 grand until I get back on my feet? Oh yeah and if you do do it I will give you well half fortune or later twist my arm okay well I guess I'll do 1000 bucks for 1 billion we have a deal just send it now.

VC money is hard to come by and it's not going to come by you unless you're looking for it actively and the amount of due diligence a cousin to every deal is tedious to say the least do not worry about people asking to loan you money or asking to have you involved in loaning out money it's bad news if you get an e-mail that says that.

Only thing I'm worried about is that spam filters now are going to block were commonly talk about normally in a honest and legal manner.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've actually had normal emails get returned to me because Gmail thought they wore spam. Crazy. Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thank you so much for writing this post! A lesson learned!</comment>


Toppcloud: a utility for deploying Python applications to cloud servers - <AUTHOR> http://bitbucket.org/ianb/toppcloud/src/

<comment><USER2> Ian Bicking does useful things all the time - that impresses me.

<comment><USER3> he is also a really nice guy.

<comment><USER4> well thank you

<comment><USER3> anytime ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pretty good LiquidWeb special Dual Opteron, 32GB Ram, Dual 1TB HD - $399/mo - <AUTHOR> https://www.liquidweb.com/cart/content/dedicated/Enterprise/Opteron2212Special/

<comment><AUTHOR> I use liquidweb and they are great, usually a little pricey, but the support is worth it...I once had to call them at 4 in the morning and someone picked up after 3 rings.

If anyone wants to give me referral credit, you can use this link instead: [https://www.liquidweb.com/cart/content/dedicated/Enterprise/...](https://www.liquidweb.com/cart/content/dedicated/Enterprise/Opteron2212Special/?RID=vaksel)

If not, simply follow the main link</comment>


Peregrine is free today - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/peregrine!/id488823796?mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://peregrine.cc> \- the source is available too.</comment>


Show HN: Engineering group to help medical staff against Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> We've created an engineering group to help in the event of a severe COVID-19 crisis.
Right now we have engineers, PhDs, and the owner of a manufacturing company, with a supply chain and offices in New York, Florida, and Taiwan.
The idea behind the group is that a COVID-19 outbreak might be something our medical system hasn't seen before. There may be shortages or special needs of medical equipment and other resources. We think we can help by building certain devices.
We probably can't build ICUs, but we could provide real help to a burdened medical front-line in a crisis. We're doing this in a deliberate and pragmatic way, informed by medical opinion.
Right now, we're looking for more help—anyone with project management, engineering as well as non-technical experience.
We're especially looking for doctors, particularly those with emergency room, triage experience, or who have (are) dealing with the current outbreak.
If you're interested, please get in touch. My email is in my profile. <comment><USER2> Please post it in reddit/r/covid19. There might be more interested parties there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for suggesting this, I posted this in the main comment thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sent you an email!</comment>


Auto Racing Becomes a Favorite Hobby for Tech Elite - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/technology/in-silicon-valley-the-rise-of-high-speed-networking.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

<comment><USER2> Because auto racing has been for the regular Joe?

Auto racing (and really any motorsport) is extremely expensive and you need to pay to play. This is just another way to hate on people with money.

<comment><USER3> When I was in college, I raced SCCA style with an late-60s MG Midget I picked up for $900 and put maybe another $2k in (engine rebuild, Weber carbs and other assorted tweaks). Great fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4>
      At some point during every conversation I had with a tech guy who
      is interested in racing, there would come an awkward moment in
      which he would ask me not to paint him as an extravagant, sexist
      cretin. Mr. Schachter told me, "Try to tone down the rich guy
      hobby thing."

Too late.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I talked about a lot more about club racing and LeMons and it didn't get included.</comment></comment>


Has the TIME Person of the Year vote been fixed? - <AUTHOR>

A few days ago I voted for Edward Snowden, and at the time I'm sure he had nearly 200,000 votes. Now he only has 44,000 - http://poy.time.com/2013/11/25/vote-now-who-should-be-times-person-of-the-year/slide/edward-snowden/ <comment><USER2> It has always been. The online vote is just merely for fun, the actual choosing is done by the editors, and hsa absolutely nothing to do with the online vote.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love how the Internet is facilitating this slow awakening to the degree to which the media is controlled and spun.

<comment><USER4> The media is not controlled at all!

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R9oJZswV6Y](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R9oJZswV6Y)</comment></comment>


"Irrational" Compression - <AUTHOR> http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/_22Irrational_22_20compression <comment><USER2> > "...there is no repeating pattern in the decimals, any combination of > numbers is possible somewhere ..." Just pretend pi in base2 is in base10. It > is irrational and no sequence will appear with 2-9. Or what am I missing?</comment>


Covid Notes from an Intensivist in the Seattle - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/marie.e.will/posts/10163071254245156 <comment><USER2> there is an unsubstantiated , unsourced twitter and facebook thread circulating.

the language and abbreviations here look legit, but it doesnt say anything gamechanging in any way except that most deaths were not asphyxiation due to lung failure but were due to heart failure, this is to be expected as hypoxia [low oxygen level] is straining to the heart, and the heart is one of the secondary trophic targets[a place the virus goes to replicate] of the virus.

in summary this says nothing new or unexpected, or particularily conspiratorial.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can anyone give a layman's summary of this? Too many technical terms and short-hands in the post itself and it would be useful info to if one is a patient undergoing treatment.

<comment><USER4> I find these two posts from Italy more readable: [https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/ff8hns/testimony_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/ff8hns/testimony_of_a_surgeon_working_in_bergamo_in_the/) [https://twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/123714289107769753...](https://twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/1237142891077697538)

IANAD but there are some nuggets to pull out: 1) They're seeing young (20's) patients w/o prior medical conditions show up 2) China used CT extensively to diagnose Covid-19 patients. This doc is pointing out its harder to that w/o contaminating everything 3) many are dying of cardiac arrest rather than inability to ventilate/oxygenate 4) lots of patients get sent to the ICU, seem to do better on "flolan" then die of cardiac arrest 5) seem to suggest that patients do well on Remdesivir (experimental anti-viral) but its hard to get a hold of

<comment><USER5> >lots of patients get sent to the ICU, seem to do better on "flolan" then die of cardiac arrest

Didnt doctors in Wuhan discover the same thing? Why is Italy repeating this mistake?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The clinical notes are interesting but with a sample of 21 patients and 11 deaths, is the Law of Small Numbers not in play?

</comment><comment><USER4> Based on the title, I thought the notes would be more something like this: "Internet Book of Critical Care (IBCC): COVID-19" [https://emcrit.org/ibcc/covid19/](https://emcrit.org/ibcc/covid19/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting but a lot of medical jargon. It would be very interesting to see this translated into "plain English."

<comment><USER8> "Stay at home or risk death from heart failure after 1-2 weeks of hospitalization" is a succinct summary that sets aside medical specifics for plain-English advice.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I'm stuck, should I outsource a part of my project? - <AUTHOR>

I have a project that involves a lot of PHP (which I can handle) and a little bit of actionscript. I know a little bit of AS3, but not enough to complete my project. I've spent the last two weeks figuring it out myself but it has become really frustrating, my time is limited and I can think of better ways to spend it than poundering through AS3 books and internet fora.<p>My question: should I outsource the actionscript to India/Pakistan/China? It's a relatively straight forward, non-trivial part of my project, so there is no harm in outsourcing. On the other hand, I'm used to keeping matters in my own hand, and outsourcing feels like, well, cheating a bit. Did any of you outsourced stuff like this before? If so, can you recommend someone? <comment><USER2> Depends. If it is your product/startup then be careful:

We had a split between founders (business vs technical) about outsourcing vs hiring more people, but I finally gave up. So we outsourced 2 non-trivial components, I interviewed both teams (that was my condition and they were really good!) and of course they shipped.

The problem was that we had to throw both outsourced components out and eventually expand our team. Why?

1) Minor tweaks: code was hard/impossible to extend - no long term thinking and why should your outsourced team really care? They follow the specs! 2) Pivot 3) Expensive 4) No know-how 5) Hidden costs -> communication 6) After some time the code quality dropped dramatically

If you need something YESTERDAY and have the resources to do that... then why not? Just be mentally ready to throw that code away next month.

In retrospect we should have used outsourced teams only for mockups/experimental front-end prototypes and not for the actual product.

</comment><comment><USER3> Instead of looking for a typical outsourcing company, why not look for a blogger or forum member (stack overflow or HN) that answers questions/writes tutorials on the topic you are struggling with.

Contact a few with the offer of a small bit of work and I'm sure if you email enough people you will get a response.

By already viewing their work and being able to hand pick only the best you will ensure that their work is top-notch.

</comment><comment><USER4> We've have some big pitfalls in the past when outsourcing relatively minor components of much larger projects to India and Eastern Europe. Even with the best technical documents, results have varied from ok to simply bad coding practices. With such a low hourly rate, the goal is to code and deliver as fast as possible. We've had good experiences and bad. You're mileage may vary.

</comment><comment><USER5> Depending on how much time it needs ( you mention "a little bit of actionscript" ) something which I have used in the past to speed up this kind of small task is to look at oDesk and search for developers who know the technology in question and who like to pair program. You get to learn something along the way, and can keep the project focused and completed quickly.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! In my case, the part of the project is'nt something that requires 'long term planning', it just executes what my app produces. I'd be more than happy with them just following my specs. May I ask what outsourcing companies you've used?

<comment><USER2> We avoided middlemen/agencies. Searched for actual teams relatively near us (via google/recommendations). I would recommend companies/teams in Baltic states if you're from US/EU (good quality, relatively cheap, less cultural issues). After that: Eastern Europe (more cultural issues that might make you feel that the entire team has the total IQ/motivation below average), Pakistan, India. No idea about AS3 :( !

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm ashamed to say I've never heard of Odesk before, but it looks like I'll be able to find someone there. Thank you all!

</comment><comment><USER6> You have a problem. If you outsource your app to some random company you may end up with two problems.</comment>


Ask HN: Indoor Gardening – What to Grow? - <AUTHOR> I live in a small NYC apartment with plenty of natural light. What are some things I can grow indoors (food-wise)? <comment><USER2> I agree with Mountain_Skies that basil is easy to grow and is tasty.

About 6 weeks ago I ordered two sprout growing systems, one circular with 4 levels, and one rectangular with 2 levels. For about $20 I also bought a collection of different types of sprouting seeds, weighing about 1.5 pounds.

Sprouts are great because you have something fresh to add to meals in just a few days. Currently, my wife and I order groceries delivered about every ten to twelve days so I start growing sprouts a few days before we will run out of fresh produce so we always have something fresh.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where did you buy your system? Would you recommend the same?

<comment><USER2> We bought them from Amazon. The best one is: Kitchen Crop VKP1200 Deluxe Kitchen Seed Sprouter, | 6" Diameter Trays

It is easier to clean than the other one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Look up the website for your nearest "county extension" office. It will generally be a good source of gardening info for your specific location and may even have info specifically about _container gardening_.

</comment><comment><USER4> Basil is easy and forgiving.

</comment><comment><USER5> Potato</comment>


Ask HN: What framework to use for side project. - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys, So I'm thinking of starting a web application in my spare time as a side venture. Also using the experience to learn something new. I am a c#/java developer so I have experience with j2ee, mvc 4, and even play framework. But I was looking for something thats new/popular. I was thinking of using ruby on rails as I have heard some good things. But it seems to be going out of favour/security risks arising. Then I hear all these new things like node.js meteor and the likes. I dont want to use javascript as my server side code. Using it on the client side is enough :D. Thanks. <comment><USER2> Premise: You are not familiar with ruby. My suggestion is that use RoR instead of Sinatra because Sinatra is extremely minimal (hence you will have to make lots of decisions initially). But if you go the RoR route, you would understand the usual way of ruby coding.

Then, once comfortable (which would take atleast 6 months), you can shift to sinatra (if you still feel the need).

</comment><comment><USER3> I think, as some others have said, it's best to ship ASAP by going with what you know.

...BUT, If you're really just looking for something new, and you already know play, why not scala?

</comment><comment><USER4> Try Sinatra: <http://www.sinatrarb.com>

</comment><comment><USER5> You'd be better off using what you know and shipping as soon as possible.

<comment><USER6> Or shipping the best you can as soon as possible. Just shipping (crap) and striking a task from the To-Do list doesn't mean the task is done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why not try Javascript or C? I'd try AngularJS/EmberJS/Meteor or built something on my own using epoll.</comment>


Square launches Square Cash - <AUTHOR> https://squareup.com/news/releases/2013/square_cash_makes_sending_money_easy

<comment><USER2> If it's really free and remains so, it'll be cool. Oddly enough, I'm in a tiny little niche market where there are a few folks who've had really nasty experiences with eBay, and hence refuse to do business through PayPal. The accepted alternative right now is they send me a check, but this thing looks like a good alternative.

</comment><comment><USER3> This will be very handy indeed for a number of circumstances, for the low, low price of free.

Trust is a big issue though, people know paypal (mostly from ebay), merchants and techies know and generally trust square so getting that hurdle cleared will be a big deal.

I'll use it though for sure. An overseas option for cheaper than my bank (around $30 once everyone has had their slice), competitive with Xoom and I can see a lot of expats using this.

</comment><comment><USER4> Already posted here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6557394](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6557394)

</comment><comment><USER5> I was going to look for the 3-5% fee and be snarky. Free. OMG. done done done. For as long as it's free to .5% holy sheet.

<comment><USER6> Where did you get the .5% figure?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Really valid alternative to Venmo (soon to be owned by Paypal through the Braintree acquisition)

</comment><comment><USER8> Seems to be USA only?</comment>


The hidden toll of fixing Meltdown and Spectre - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/meltdown-and-spectre-patches-take-toll/ <comment><USER2> The intro here was interesting to me, I hadn't considered the cost that embargoed vulnerabilities like this might cause to people / companies outside of the inner circle. How many man hours went into debugging AWS performance drops alone before the public disclosure, and eventual identification of the link between those performance drops and these issues?

Could AWS+similar have made people aware in advance that patches would slow their system down? Would that have leaded to an earlier disclosure? Would it have reduced the incidental costs?

Probably the answer is no - they couldn't have, but it's interesting to consider.</comment>


Hiring advice for startups from Hackruiter (YC S10) - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackruiter.com/advice

<comment><USER2> This is all totally sane. Virtually everything on our "careers" page (which is far from perfect) came from feedback from people who passed on us. The single most important factor we've identified so far is responsiveness.

It is _so easy_ to inadvertently go dark on a candidate.

These guys observe that employees are almost never as dedicated to the company as the founders. A similar thing happens during recruiting, except it's the employer who isn't as dedicated as the candidate. For most companies, the simple truth is that your decision on your next hire is not as important to the company as the decision is to the candidate. Your next hire is unlikely to totally transform your company. But it will certainly be transformative for the new hire!

As a result, you should assume time is moving 10x slower for candidates than it is for you.

The only thing I'd add to this set of advice (ie, the only bit of advice I have that I think ranks up there with theirs) is, debrief the people who pass on you. Actually debrief everyone. Find out what people hate about your hiring process, so you can start fixing it. I've found that nobody minds questions like these, so go ahead and ask.

<comment><AUTHOR> _...debrief the people who pass on you._

That's an excellent point. I'll add it. (It's a historical accident it's not there already: We wrote this advice for the companies we work with, and since we ask candidates for feedback on behalf of the companies, we didn't think to tell our companies to do it, too.)

Also, I really like how transparent your jobs page is about how your process works. That's something else we should add: Tell people what to expect, how long it usually takes, etc.

Thanks for the suggestions and kind words!

<comment><USER3> _...debrief the people who pass on you._

Right, I'd be so thrilled to provide feedback because companies have the courtesy to do the same to the candidates they pass on. Back when I was job hunting for 6+ months I would consider myself lucky if I got an almost automated "We're sorry to inform you that..." email, most don't bother even with that.

Fuck them and the horse they rode in on, leave them in the dark.

<comment><USER4> > Right, I'd be so thrilled to provide feedback because companies have the > courtesy to do the same to the candidates they pass on.

They don't, because anything they say is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

> Fuck them and the horse they rode in on, leave them in the dark.

That a personal perspective. Say some big company Google let me hanging for 2 months before sending me an automated "we are sorry" mail, I will be mighty pissed, but I won't take it out on some other company which was responsive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On a related topic, I've been thinking about the interviewing problem and had an insight that is probably blindingly obvious to everybody else.

In engineering terms, interviewing is benchmarking. Making an effective benchmark is somewhere between very hard and intractable.

A benchmark has to be...

* Difficult enough to clearly differentiate between good and bad yet be simple enough to "run" in 5-30 minutes.

* Repeatable, yet not beatable. Remember the compilers that recognized drystones and compiled them to the final answer? That is what google does to interview "trick" questions.

* Applicable: drystones are totally worthless if your algorithm is dominated by floating point calculations. Having said that, "comes up to speed quickly" is the most applicable metric for a candidate, but is awfully hard to benchmark in a limited interview.

Anecdote: I had lunch today with the engineer that hired me on my first "real engineering" job (I was a freshman in college at the time). He commented that I was "the smartest guy he knew, until he met my younger brother." My brother is several years younger... Bob was working for a different company and my brother applied for a summer job there. Bob's take, and the other folks at the company's take, on my brother's resume' was "meh". Bob told them "never mind his resume, _hire him_. Just do it! Do. It."

Moral of the anecdote: benchmarks are poor stand-ins for real life. Unfortunately, I don't have a better way. :-/

<comment><USER6> Good points. Your annecdote about your brother is captures the truism that interviews and resumes are only a substitue for knowledge of someone's real ability. This is why references from employees (smart engineers know others) is much more effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Don't write inflated and ridiculous job posts; they're a turn off to good people."

I have noticed the following things about tasteless tactics: 1) they're often horrifically effective; 2) people with taste will pronounce that they're ineffective without providing any evidence.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, we don't have real data. It's all anecdotal. But we speak to a lot of hackers, and we've yet to meet a good one who's said he likes those posts, and we've met plenty who hate them.

<comment><USER7> See, that's the thing about tasteless tactics -- the fact that nobody says they like them cannot be taken as evidence that they're ineffective.

<comment><USER8> Are they effective to the _right_ people though?

<comment><USER9> That's it. They end up hiring people who think they're ninjas and rock stars. If all you need to do is fill a seat (traditional HR or recruiters) then this ad is probably pay-dirt - after all, there are a lot of people who want to be special.

In looking for a place I'd like to work I look for ads that say they understand what I'd be doing.

Also, there are two ways of asking for everything under the sun. The first, which rockstar/ninja companies ask for, is "7+ years Java, 3+ using ANT, 5+ in etc". You can never satisfy the requirements of this kind so they only get scammers or the truly naive who qualify but only because they once did all that stuff 10+ years ago.

The second way, which hacker companies use, is to say "We use X, and do hard- thing-Y in it. If this is your speed, join us. Bonus points for things we don't know about." These are not only clear and precise to the people they want but easily lend themselves to entrance interviews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _We can't recruit for you, so please don't ask. We hope you find the advice > below useful nevertheless._

Does this mean they're closed to new clients? I've never seen a recruiting agency do that.

Edit: they are. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2979874>

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting that they're full up already.

I guess that's either a good sign for their business or a bad sign for their business model :-)

<comment><USER12> Honestly, it's a little of both.

<comment><USER11> I'd kinda suspected. I've spent a lot of stray moments thinking about the whole "recruiting is obviously broken" thing (and congrats for taking it on). And I have yet to come up with a genuinely good solution.

I put together something called "wantmyjob" that used the OKCupid solution with making and answering questions about your workplace. But that _really_ won't work for startups since they don't have a bunch of existing employees to recommend them. I'd also probably have to commit the cardinal sin of trying to charge the job seeker -- not so good.

Similarly, there are a lot of places that will certify that you (as an individual employee) aren't a bozo. Those don't scale terribly well, but worse, they also charge the job seeker.

You can make money but not do the world much good by charging (probably bad) employees a small fee to apply or charging bad companies a lot for dubious access. But while that's probably where the money is, it does the least good for the world of almost anything you could do in recruiting. Maybe a "schlemiel match-up service" for mediocre-to-bad companies with exactly- equally-bad employees? Don't know. I'll bet you guys wouldn't be passionate about that one ;-)

And yet, how do you make enough money and still scale well on matching up the best companies (who don't have to pay as much to hire) and the best candidates (who should never, never be charged anything at all)?

It's a hard problem. Glad you're thinking on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> _I put together something called "wantmyjob" that used the OKCupid solution with making and answering questions about your workplace._

Funnily enough, the idea we applied to YC with was "OkCupid for jobs."

<comment><USER11> It's a seductive-sounding model, isn't it? I couldn't find a way to make the business model work. It sounds like you've departed from that model pretty completely (not a bad idea, I say now that I've tried it out).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it is seductive-sounding. And yes, we switched to a very different idea shortly after YC started.

I still think "OkCupid for jobs" has merit, but it has some serious problems, too, not least of which are that it only gets really valuable after lots of companies and people are using it (and we didn't have a good way to bootstrap, at least from the job-seeker end).

Another issue is that matching isn't the really hard part of hiring -- the hard part is finding good people.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Former Linux Developer Hans Reiser to Remain Locked Up - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Hans-Reiser-Locked-Up-No-Parole <comment><USER2> You'd think he would have been able to write a lot of code in the last decade.</comment>


Language Learning is Broken - <AUTHOR> http://thangudu.com/2013/01/27/language-learning-is-broken/ <comment><USER2> "holy grail of language learning is the ability to learn a language outside the country that speaks it, to a level of fluency that puts the user within 30 to 45 days of advanced reading, speaking, and vocal comprehension "

As someone who has learned several languages to near native fluency and majored in linguistics at the University, I think the OP is right on in his estimate of the goal. But the biggest problem software in this area is facing is that language learning is not a one way street. You can't memorize thousands of words in all the contexts in which they occur and expect to be able to have any competency, at least for speaking & vocal comprehensione. Even when the software provides dialoges and attempts to simulate conversations (ie. "Pimsleur" and others), it fails because its the same over and over, mostly outside of real world contexts, where background noise, dialects, and other tasks are involved. A new language learner has to be able to respond rapidly and fluidly in spoken conversation over a variety of subjects if he/she wants to be able to function at the level the OP is talking about, and current software simply doesn't provide the degree of realism in these types of situations.

IMHO, in order for any software to be able to achieve the above stated goal, I think it would need to first have a very good humanlike AI. why? So you can have a "human partner" in conversations over a variety of subjects, where the learner is forced to quickly respond and interact with the partner/software. Otherwise, you're left with all the current options which are at best subpar in comparison to actually living and interacting with native speakers in the said country.

<comment><USER3> I had a friend move to Argentina and in order to improve his Spanish, he found a group that pairs fluent Spanish speakers learning English with fluent English speakers learning Spanish for one-on-one conversations. It was pretty informal in that the pair could meet wherever and whenever they wanted. Half the time they spoke in English, half the time they spoke in Spanish.

Perhaps software that scheduled live video chats of similar conversations between learners could help with the problem you bring up? Given that most language software aims at multiple languages anyway, seems like the only challenge is technical with the video chat (latency might be a problem although audio is pretty good too) and the scheduling interface. And I suppose enough users in each language willing to do such conversations.

<comment><USER4> There are actually quite a few startups doing this already, e.g. Verbling: <https://www.verbling.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a problem worth talking about. The good news is there's a lot of innovation in the field, and language learning in a few more years will be completely different than it was, say, 10 years ago.

I mostly agree with the author's four points - I've tried a number of the well-known systems over the years, and none of them really worked for me. I mean, sure, you _can_ brute-force your way through them, but I can probably just pick up a dictionary and do it on my own with about the same level of success.

The first service I've used that has actually worked for me is <http://www.memrise.com>. I've been using it the last few months to bash my head against the wall that is Mandarin, with surprising (for me) success so far. The 1.0 "launch" removed some very useful features from the beta, but overall it's still pretty good. Incidentally, I guess it's a counter-example to "flashcard systems don't work" - they can, if done right.

Recently I found <http://www.fluentu.com/>, which I'm also very excited about. I don't think by itself it can get anyone very far in a language, but once I'm at an intermediate level it should be a great addition.

Did I mention both those sites are free? (bye bye #4, excessively boring costly systems).

My point is I'm gradually cobbling together a system from multiple parts that works for me. There's a lot of innovation in the field, and more and more new options will become available. I don't know if we'll ever find a "holy grail" that works for everyone at the same time, but there's no reason why it can't be achieved for anyone by combining several free or low-cost resources.

Edit: one of the biggest problems is how boring most of the systems are. Starting a new language from scratch is difficult enough on its own, but it doesn't NEED to be boring. Look at children's cartoons compared to any typical adult learning video...

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know if that means bye bye #4. Those 2 solutions are flash card systems. It might be worth testing fluentu by spending a considerable amount of time on the system and then talking to a native speaker.

Just because it's free, doesn't mean it's free, especially if it doesn't get you closer to the holy grail.

I think innovators should strive to get to the holy grail. The potential upside would be huge.

<comment><USER5> Memrise works quite well for vocabulary building, but more interestingly they're working towards becoming a "course platform", where people can create and sell their own courses. It's not necessarily an innovative learning method (though the emphasis on "mems" and the practice schedule are quite effective), but it's an interesting business model - if it works and if the quality is reasonably high, the cost to produce and distribute the material will be much lower than the big players.

The amazing thing about FluentU is that you can dissect videos of native speakers and understand exactly what's going on, in context, at your own pace. Again, I haven't used it enough to say that it works, but it _should_ be quite effective at learning to understand the spoken language. Again, their costs are relatively low - they use Youtube videos and all they have to do is translate and annotate them.

Then you have an entire army of sites that let you find native speakers to talk to over Skype, or to correct your daily written "journal", etc.

None of those by itself is the "holy grail", but there's a lot of experimentation and innovation. I would argue that combining several of those methods can be at least as effective as something like Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone, at a much lower cost. And I think figuring out how to combine them into a single coherent service _will_ be the holy grail you want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Students of language are always looking for the best way to learn, but there isn't any "best way" in my experience. Each person learns differently.

Personal motivation is without a doubt the largest factor in whether a person successfully learns a language. To that end, I think the goal of any classroom or learning system should be to maintain a high level of learner motivation. There is a strong correlation for students of foreign languages (i.e. a language that is not spoken in the country where it is being learned) who are strongly interested in the culture of the language they are learning and their success at learning that language. This is because their motivation to learn, driven by their desire to experience the culture more completely, remains high throughout the learning process. Students who take language courses as part of a compulsory education curriculum, or who are studying out of casual interest, lose motivation quickly regardless of the learning system.

As a language teacher, I try to expose my students to as many learning techniques as possible. Some students successfully increase their vocabulary using word lists and flashcards, others require the pressure of real communication to acquire new words.

There will never be one "best way" to learn, so my advice to any learner is to try as many learning systems as possible, expose yourself to as much media in that language as possible, and constantly change it up so that you don't lose motivation.

I wouldn't say that language learning is broken, but rather that students who begin learning a language have misguided expectations about how difficult and time consuming it actually is. If you, as an adult learner, can learn just one foreign language fluently in your lifetime, you are doing well.

<comment><USER7> Learning a different language is very difficult, and IMO, a certain personal sense of necessity is necessary.

That necessity could be to be able to comunicate with others, living in a foreign land; or to be able to understand cultural products (like songs, books, movies, etc.), but I think if it's not present, or it's just a "I'd like/love to" level, is almost impossible to achieve a fluent level. Think of an English speaker that gets a lot of people just speaking to her in English, instead on their own different languages. It is too easy just to give up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Something I have always been interested in is developing videogames with the idea of teaching another language as a goal. Imagine a game such as Skyrim, a rather large and open world, but designed such that its goal was to teach you another language as you played the game.

Of course one can just change the language of the actual game Skyrim, and this is decent for learning new medieval themed vocabulary, but imagine if the game were designed with the concept of language learning in mind.

At the beginning of the game, the characters would speak clearly and with simple vocabulary. Perhaps with subtitles of written text in the same language. Maybe even with an English (or whatever your native language is) subtitle if you are really having trouble with a task.

The vocabulary used would go along the same pattern of reinforcing while slowly building more.

I think it might be a neat concept to explore, to learn a language passively while playing a fun game.

<comment><USER9> Totally. I did this with the Diablo games et al. to aid in learning Polish, and it was very effective, even though language learning was probably as far from Blizzard's mind as you can get. The problem is that you need the really high production values of AAA games to keep people engaged. A studio prioritizing language learning to any degree will have a very hard time putting on the polish (not Polish...joke!) required to retain players.

I've thought a lot about this problem as well, and the best I can think of is to create mods, so you have the solid game engine and story already in place, and can then solve the language learning problem on top of that.

<comment><USER8> Mods are indeed a good idea. I have played through Skyrim in both French and German and, even though I already spoke those languages with a decent amount of competency, it really helped with various grammar and vocabulary aspects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Flashcard systems don't work"

No one tool is going to do everything. Flashcards are actually pretty good for acquiring masses of vocabulary. But it doesn't help you put those words together coherently or even enable you to comprehend what you hear.

Language acquisition is all about growing a set of extremely complex interconnections between brain cells. You need to grow a massive number of interconnections between many areas of the brain (including to sensory and emotional areas) and you need to strengthen those connections by repeated firing.

Software, books, audio and video can play a supportive role but there's a big chunk of the brain development that is only going to come from struggling to express your own mind and to interact with real people in real time.

<comment><USER11> " _Flashcards are actually pretty good for acquiring masses of vocabulary. But it doesn't help you put those words together coherently or even enable you to comprehend what you hear._ "

In my experience with Japanese, using flashcards for kanji doesn't really help with long-term memory acquisition.

I agree with your latter point about context; it's better to find an unknown word in a sentence and look up its meaning, then you tend to remember the word longer b/c you understand how it's used.

<comment><USER12> Have you tried using Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji"? I have never tried to learn Japanese, but I have heard very good things about using this book to learn the Kanji.

<comment><USER13> For anyone using "RTK" I recommend using <http://kanji.koohii.com/> . I also recommend that you actually write the kanji out (on paper, or even just tracing it out with your finger in the air) when reviewing, and only consider a kanji remembered when you can render it properly, with the correct stroke order.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> From the submitted blog post:

"I believe the holy grail of language learning is the ability to learn a language outside the country that speaks it, to a level of fluency that puts the user within 30 to 45 days of advanced reading, speaking, and vocal comprehension fluency once they are in the country." That sounds like an ambitious, but reasonable, goal.

The author notes, while writing in English, "I've independently studied the following languages and achieved varying levels of fluency. By competency:

1\. Spanish

2\. French

3\. German

4\. Swahili

5\. Russian

6\. Hindi

7\. Farsi

8\. Arabic

9\. Afrikaans

10\. Polish"

That list is heavy on Indo-European languages (with Swahili in the highest place for a non-Indo-European language) and rather heavy on closely cognate languages within the Indo-European language family that share many mutual literary influences. Learning Japanese or learning Tamil for someone who already knows those languages would be a good test of a new method.

AFTER EDIT AS EDIT WINDOW IS ABOUT TO EXPIRE: Yes, Arabic too is a non-Indo- European language

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

and as a Semitic language in the Afroasiatic language family different language family is quite a differennt language from Swahili (a language from the Niger-Congo language family).

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

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger%E2%80%93Congo_languages>

My (partial but suggestive) list of languages studied before appears in my Hacker News user profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree.

Is Arabic indo-european? I thought it wasn't. Maybe I'm mistaken though.

I don't know that my solution works, but it's a stab at it.

<comment><USER15> Semitic if I remember my tree's correctly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been trying to learn Spanish for a year now, I'm struggling and I even live in Spain! Here's the list of things I've tried:

Rosetta Stone - probably spent about 2 months working my way through this.

Language school - 6 weeks, spent most of it feeling utterly confused and wondering why they were trying to teach me Spanish, using fluent Spanish...

Pimsleur - this did really improve my accent and some of the words I'd been using along the way started to become second nature. Still a long way from conversational though, did this for about 4 weeks.

Michelle Thomas - by far the best of the bunch for learning grammar, by the end of the basic and advanced courses I pretty much knew the various past/future tenses. Great base, but conversation still isn't happening...

Memrise - yeah actually, this really did help my vocabulary, spent about a month using it before christmas, learnt a lot and I can see me using this in the future to expand my vocab.

Duolingo - a good base for getting started, not sure how much if sticks though, it has the "lack of context" problem.

Private tutor - this is hands down the winner. I've only had a few lessons but I find this really works for me. The big difference is you can have conversations with complete understanding of every word that is said by either of you i.e. if you don't understand a word they say, they can write it down for you, explain what it means (falling back to english if necessary but generally avoided) and then move on. Likewise, if you make an error in something you've said it's corrected on the spot, often going off on tangent to explain some grammar before continuing the conversation. If you want to learn at a consistent pace I think a private tutor is really the only way to go. You're trying learn to converse in a foreign language, until computers can do the conversation bit the other approaches are all going to fall short of the mark. That's not to say they don't have value, and they're obviously far cheaper than a private tutor but without the conversation part they're never going to be enough to get you speaking fluently.

</comment><comment><USER17> Language-learning is broken and remains to be a VERY complex problem. There are so many factors involved - language complexity, understanding of culture, student's age & ability to learn...

I'm convinced that learning a language without complete immersion in culture is doable for easy languages such as English, French, Spanish, but almost impossible for Mandarin, Russian, Polish and others. I'm a native Russian speaker and i can confidently tell you that 70% of __native __Russian speakers cannot speak proper Russian, mangle vocabulary and sentence structure. I'd say something like 90% cannot use proper grammar. This is after 11 consecutive years of taking Russian in elementary, middle and high schools. This got really bad after the collapse of Soviet Union, which took Russia's impressive Soviet-era education system with it.

Obviously, the older you are the worse it gets. I took English lessons for 4 years in Russia. In the end, i could barely put a sentence together. After immigrating to the US, I picked up English at 14 in less than a year and got to the point of losing any kind of identifiable accent. If i tried to learn it today i would likely never reach the level of fluency i'm enjoying now.

Having said that, I've only ran into one American who actually spoke Russian possibly better than I did (my Russian is significantly worse now than at 14). It was an intelligence agent who interviewed my father when we came to the US 14 years ago. So our government likely has a few tricks up their sleeves.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's a new comment, based on the other comments that have come up in this thread now that discussion is active. As I learned Mandarin Chinese up to the level that I was able to support my family for several years as a Chinese- English translator and interpreter, I had to tackle several problems for which there is not yet a one-stop-shopping software solution. For ANY pair of languages, even closely cognate pairs of West Germanic languages like English and Dutch, or Wu Chinese dialects like those of Shanghai and Suzhou, the two languages differ in sound system, so that what is a phoneme in one language is not a phoneme in the other language.

[http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/Wha...](http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhoneme.htm)

But a speaker of one language who is past the age of puberty will simply not perceive many of the phonemic distinctions in sounds in the target language (the language to be learned) without very careful training, as disregard of those distinctions below the level of conscious attention is part of having the sound system of the speaker's native language fully in mind. Attention to target language phonemes has to be developed through pains-taking practice.

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10442032>

It is brutally hard for most people (after the age of puberty, and perhaps especially for males) to learn to attend to sound distinctions that don't exist in the learner's native language. That is especially hard when the sound distinction signifies a grammatical distinction that also doesn't exist in the learner's native language. For example, the distinction between "I speak" and "he speaks" in English involves a consonant cluster at the end of a syllable, and no such consonant clusters exist in the Mandarin sound system at all. Worse than that, no such grammatical distinction as "first person singular" and "third person singular" for inflecting verbs exists in Mandarin, so it is remarkably difficult for Mandarin-speaking learners of English to learn to distinguish "speaks" from "speak" and to say "he speaks Chinese" rather than * "he speak Chinese" (not a grammatical phrase in spoken English).

Most software materials for learning foreign languages could be much improved simply by including a complete chart of the sound system of the target language (in the dialect form being taught in the software materials) with explicit description of sounds in the terminology of articulatory phonetics

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

with full use of notation from the International Phonetic Alphabet.

<http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/ipachart.html>

Good language-learning materials always include a lot of focused drills on sound distinctions (contrasting minimal pairs in the language) in the target language, and no software program for language learning should be without those. It is still an art of software writing to try to automate listening to a learner's pronunciation for appropriate feedback on accuracy of pronunciation. That is not an easy problem.

After phonology, another huge task for any language learner is acquiring vocabulary, and this is the task that most language-learning materials are most focused. But often the focus on vocabulary is not very thoughtful.

The classic software approach to helping vocabulary acquisition is essentially to automate flipping flash cards. But flash cards have ALWAYS been overrated for vocabulary acquisition. Words don't match one-to-one between languages, not even between closely cognate languages. The map is not the territory, and every language on earth divides the world of lived experience into a different set of words, with different boundaries between words of similar meaning.

The royal road to learning vocabulary in a target language is massive exposure to actual texts (dialogs, stories, songs, personal letters, articles, etc.) written or spoken by native speakers of the language. I'll quote a master language teacher here, the late John DeFrancis. A couple years ago, I reread the section "Suggestions for Study" in the front matter of John DeFrancis's book Beginning Chinese Reader, Part I, which I first used to learn Chinese back in 1975. In that section of that book, I found this passage, "Fluency in reading can only be achieved by extensive practice on all the interrelated aspects of the reading process. To accomplish this we must READ, READ, READ" (capitalization as in original). In other words, vocabulary can only be well acquired in context (an argument he develops in detail with regard to Chinese in the writing I have just cited) and the context must be a genuine context produced by native speakers of the language.

I have been giving free advice on language learning since the 1990s on my personal website,

<http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html>

and the one advice I can give every language learner reading this thread is to take advantage of radio broadcasting in your target language. Spoken-word broadcasting (here I'm especially focusing on radio rather than on TV) gives you an opportunity to listen and to hear words used in context. In the 1970s, I used to have to use an expensive short-wave radio to pick up Chinese- language radio programs in North America. Now we who have Internet access can gain endless listening opportunities from Internet radio stations in dozens of unlikely languages. Listen early and listen often while learning a language. That will help with phonology (as above) and it will help crucially with vocabulary.

The third big task of a language learner is learning grammar and syntax, which is often woefully neglected in software language-learning materials. Every language has hundreds of tacit grammar rules, many of which are not known explicitly even to native speakers, but which reveal a language-learner as a foreigner when the rules are broken. The foreign language-learner needs to understand grammar not just to produce speech or writing that is less jarring and foreign to native speakers, but also to better understand what native speakers are speaking or writing. Any widely spoken modern language has thick books reporting the grammatical rules of the language,

[http://www.amazon.com/Mandarin-Chinese-Functional- Reference-...](http://www.amazon.com/Mandarin-Chinese-Functional-Reference- Grammar/dp/0520066103/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Comprehensive-Grammar- Grammars...](http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Comprehensive-Grammar- Grammars/dp/0415150329/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-Grammar-English- Language...](http://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-Grammar-English- Language/dp/0582517346/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Grammar-English- Language/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Grammar-English- Language/dp/0521431468/)

and it is well worth your while to study books like that both about your native language(s) and about any language you are studying.

P.S. I'm puzzled about the pattern of upvotes and downvotes on my first comment in this thread (which was the first comment posted, when it wasn't clear whether this story would move from the new page to the main page here on HN.) I'm not aware of any factual mistakes in the first comment I posted here, which was a response to the submitted article, nor anything about it that violates the Hacker News guidelines.

<comment><USER5> >It is brutally hard for most people (after the age of puberty, and perhaps especially for males) to learn to attend to sound distinctions that don't exist in the learner's native language.

Do you think people who grow up bilingual have an advantage in this area? Not necessarily just because they have a larger set of phonemes to fall back on, but because they may find it easier to notice differences and recognize new ones? ("this is language specific" understanding vs. "this is how it always is")

Also, your comment about reading touches on a project I've been working on (and have shelved for about a year). If you don't mind I'd love to hear what you think, I'll dust it off and send you an email once I get the prototype up and running again.

<comment><USER18> I have read a tiny bit of the literature on language acquisition, and what I have read says that mere exposure to the phonemes of a language (even absent any attempts to actually teach that language) during early years (definitely before puberty but with greater effect between the ages of 1 and 6) makes it easier to form those phonemes later in life.

That said, I think every second-language learner (even those who will never learn a third language) could benefit from being taught the entire international phonetic alphabet, to aid them in mentally placing (inside the mouth) the sounds they're supposed to be making.

Knowing the difference between 'a' (unrounded open front) and 'ɐ' (unrounded near-open central) vowels helped me when learning the Cantonese phonetic system. Just knowing all the sounds that are "available" and knowing which of those sounds the target language uses is very useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I studied Spanish for 10 years taking courses at Berlitz (not recommended), The Spanish Institute (<http://spanishinstitute.org/> \- pretty good), a private tutor (a lot more enjoyable) and finally immersion at a language school in Antigua, Guatemala (<http://www.spanishschoolplfm.com/>).

I found immersion to be orders of magnitude better. After a few months in Antigua I probably learned as much as the prior several years. You get so much more out of spending your day just talking in another language. I remember when I stopped trying to translate from English to Spanish and just spoke in Spanish. It's quite a trip to speak so much Spanish that you find yourself hunting for words in English when you switch back. Spanish sometimes came first.

Unfortunately, you'll lose it quickly. My weekend project is to take what I learned and put it on the iPhone and iPad for both myself and others. Shameless plug:

<https://itunes.apple.com/app/id388918463>

I've got more content that I used to create a rather ugly website, which I'm about to turn off that I will eventually put in the app. I'll spare everyone that link. :-)

</comment><comment><USER20> Sorry, bit late to this discussion. Took me a while to read through all of it. I think there is no one system that can teach languages fluently. As a language learner, I currently use a variety of ways - from speaking to native speakers, watching movies, using flashcards, playing games and listening to podcasts.

I'm also the founder of language startup called <http://www.nativetongue.com> If you are interested check us out. We combine language learning with gaming, to make it fun and addictive. We have the following apps available:

\- Learn Chinese with Mandarin Madness <http://itunes.apple.com/app/mandarin- madness/id494800742>

\- Learn Spanish with Spanish Smash [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/learn- spanish-spanish-smash/...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/learn-spanish- spanish-smash/id524637598?mt=8)

I think the ultimate would be learning like Neo in Matrix. Just plug a cord into the back of your head and upload the mandarin lesson module, and absorb it in seconds!

</comment><comment><USER21> I just want to add that I recently took the plunge and bought levels 1-5 Rosetta Stone for both Spanish and German. I know there are a lot of criticisms about this system, mostly in terms of cost but I have found it to be a huge improvement over any other self study course. Unless you are able to take off time and go live in the other country I think Rosetta Stone is the best option. I would go so far as to say that it is better than taking a night course at a local community college.

I do think the system has it flaws but it is definitely a big improvement over everything that has come before. I think the future of language learning will resemble Rosetta Stone but that it will use machine learning to be more dynamic and adapt itself to things that you are having trouble with, perhaps it will seem more 'croudsourced'. Before Rosetta Stone I was making zero progress with German, after one year using a CD/Book approach I was continually forgetting vocabulary, unable to pronounce things, etc, etc. There is something about Rosetta Stone that is almost like falling into hours of mindless gaming. It never seems too hard to get stuck but it just keeps on pushing what I know little by little. I think that they should use photoshop to make their pictures more cheaply. Also, the milestone segments seem pretty worthless. Sometimes it would be nice to see the grammar of a practice sentence diagrammed so that I could go and read an analytic description of the grammar point.

For German more than for Spanish I'm finding it helpful to treat the Rosetta Stone as a supplement to other approaches especially as the grammar confuses me a great deal.

So while the program is expensive (I paid $500 for Spanish on disks and $329 for one year of online only access to the German) it is the only thing I have found worth spending money on short of immersion. If you have a 9-5 job then most likely Rosetta Stone will be a good time vs cost trade off. That has been my experience so far.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think flashcards are popular because they're a good way to prepare the night before the exam.

Language learning schools are popular because they're in fun places with lots of other interesting young people.

Watching a YouTube video kind of sucks the fun out of language learning worse than flashcards do. Not that language learning in and of itself is fun to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER23> Most of this is beyond me; but I have a domain name originally for a translation site that could be useful to someone looking to solve these problems (depending on approach) -- scatterlang.com.

Let me know if anyone's interested.</comment>


Generals.io Bot API - <AUTHOR> http://dev.generals.io <comment><USER2> Wonderful! This is something that has been asked about for so long, I'm glad it's been implemented.</comment>


What is the best weight-potential ratio for startups? - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexanderpeiniger.com/2013/02/what-is-the-best-weight-potential-ratio-for-startups/

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me know any thoughts you have on this :-)</comment>