There is no such thing as a CEO of pre-product startup. Get off of it. - <AUTHOR> http://www.humbledmba.com/there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-ceo-at-a-startup <comment><USER4> It sounds to me like you're misdiagnosing the problem. The problem isn't too much hierarchy, it's too little! Your CEO friend needs to grow a pair and demote his CTO co-founder. Ideally, he would sell his co-founder on the idea of doing this voluntarily. This will not be an easy discussion.

Titles and hierarchy matter in a startup because someone has to be able to make decisions in the face of disagreement. Decision making by committee leads to a lot of really mediocre decisions--like keeping a co-founder as CTO despite being unqualified for the job!

This decision-by-committee dynamic happened early on in my current startup. Mostly, the problem was engineers having an equal say in marketing and financing decisions––a topic they were not focused on or very familiar with, yet had strong opinions about. This was dumb. It took one of the founders of Netflix giving me/us a swift kick in the ass to get over it. No longer. We now divide and conquer. The company is much better for it.

Every company needs a CEO. And if the CEO is not technical, then the company is eventually going to need a CTO as well. But that's about it in terms of C-level officers. A small company should not have 4 chiefs. What that really means is the company has NO chief.

Being a C-level person means being responsible for long term big picture shit and management and leadership, not just coding. For myself, I am extremely fortunate to have a visionary co-founder and CTO with real leadership qualities. He is a partner in the true sense of the word. I expect him to stay CTO for a long, long time––unless I decide to demote myself and make him the CEO. (Might happen, who knows?) Regardless, the buck has to stop somewhere. And that somewhere is the CEO. There can only be one.

<comment><USER5> Amen. Every group needs an undisputed leader. Otherwise they flail about and get very little done. CEO is the default name for that leader in a company, and using any other name would just lead to confusion when speaking to investors, press, clients, etc.

A small company (1-10 people) usually doesn't need any other CxO titles besides CEO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems superficially attractive, and it's hard to imagine too many people making a spirited defense of the 'all chiefs, no indians' job title inflation.

But there's a bullshit aspect to it that bothers me - it seems to be ignoring something basic that's being communicated when people insist on CxO titles.

Specifically, people who insist on CxO titles at some stage in a startup where it seems a bit pretentious may have a very good reason. What these titles communicate internally and to the board is something like:

"I am joining this startup and doing a buttload of work under the assumption that I will be the effective leader (or, CTO = effective technology leader) of the the company, and if anyone wants to make me step down from this, it will _actually_ be a demotion and it _will_ be an issue".

This doesn't mean "I will have a tantrum and leave". It means, "don't assume that you can seamlessly bring in a layer of management above me and this will fit my expectations".

This position _may_ be a bad idea, I'm not disputing that. However, it may be what's contingent on someone doing a pile of work for very little money - <USER2> of their vision of the startup might be not suddenly acquiring a layer of people to report to who have been parachuted in after the hard, nasty work has been done.

If you want to make it clear that at any moment, the guy who thinks he going to run the company or the technical aspects of the company can have someone parachuted in on top of them, then denying them the CxO title is a good way of communicating that. That's fine, but don't pull this sophomoric shit where you pretend that people in small companies are insisting on these titles out of sheer ego alone.

<comment><USER7> If the main purpose is "reserving" the title for the potential future, wouldn't some kind of contract be more effective and less pretentious? Just asking.

<comment><USER6> What would this contract look like, and say? All up it seems a lot more complex - and potentially brittle and problematic - than just saying "look, we have a CEO and CTO now, for what that's worth in a tiny company, deal with it".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks like it's a problem with job titles but it's really a problem with managing people. The job title is just the symptom.

I have a talk with everyone who works for me in which I say "this is a startup, job titles are flexible, and everybody (including me) will have to revisit their role and title frequently. If you're OK with that, then great. If not, we should talk it through now so everybody's expectations are set."

<comment><USER9> I absolutely agree with you.

I appreciate the author's advice, though I have a hard time imagining 3 or 4 cofounders doing fundraising when there isn't someone calling him or her self "CEO."

(I personally take no special pleasure in calling myself CEO. If it confers more ability to control my destiny, then great; anything beyond that is an ego game that no startup founder has time to play.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Also if you haven't incorporated yet and you call yourself CEO, what exactly are you an officer of? A corporation has officers; a domain name and a github account don't.

</comment><comment><USER11> That's a great litmus test. If you find yourself working with co-founders that take their Cxx title very seriously, and you have only a couple of employees, you might have picked the wrong team.

Several of us have Cxx titles at our startup, but we sell in to really large organizations (sometimes municipal), so having "Chief Customer Happiness Officer" isn't really an option for us. Or at least we don't believe it is. In the end, it really doesn't matter, because we're all supremely confident and scared humble at the same time. None of us would hesitate to give up our titles to someone more qualified should that need or opportunity arrise.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think it's appropriate to have a title on a business card or whatever that describes your role in a meaningful way. "Principal", "Founder", etc.

Corporate titles sound silly in small businesses -- I had my driveway sealed by the "President and CEO" of a driveway sealing business the other day.

People in contact with customers should have flexibility or use multiple titles. If you're trying to get an audience with a Managing Director or a Deputy Commissioner in government, shitty titles won't cut it. An "Account Manager" won't get past a secretary, but "VP of North American Sales" might. In other contexts, the dramatic title is a liability.

<comment><USER13> I never understood the point of having a title. I find the government is especially interested in my title/occupation and I never know what I should be telling them.

Professionally, I am a farmer, a programmer, a designer, an administrator, and was even a baker for a short while; though, sadly, I gave it up as it was too time consuming on top of the rest. Not to mention all of the business stuff that goes along with doing those jobs, like management, sales, mechanic in the case of my farm, etc, etc.

Why are people so hung up on them? They are pretty meaningless.

<comment><USER12> Government is very hierarchical. Everyone basically makes the same amount of money, so status is the only differentiation between people.

I worked for a government agency for a long time. At one point of my career, bigshots at the director level would not acknowledge my presence in a room. Later, they were my best buddies, because I was high enough on the ladder to be a minor "player" to potentially influence one of their peers.

<comment><USER13> I have never actually worked for government directly, but I was referring more to things like passports, where they are very interested in what I do for a living.

I don't even know what I do for a living, I just work on what needs to be done or feels right at any given time. My job is to solve problems and create value for others, just like everyone else. You can't be more specific than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I liked the way FriendFeed handled it: [http://friendfeed.com/bret/24f5ad01/we-finally-got-job- title...](http://friendfeed.com/bret/24f5ad01/we-finally-got-job-titles-at- friendfeed)

<comment><USER15> Wyoming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > And if your early guys ask what they should put on their resume, tell them > put anything down.

If you are called about a former employee and can't answer the question "what was their title" with something more concrete than "meh, whatever", you will sound like a fraudulent reference. You're inadvertently screwing over your employees if you don't pick something reasonable and stick with it (modulo actual role changes or promotions due to growth).

<comment><USER17> This is worth considering, but it depends on who's calling, what industry you, they, and the candidate are in, etc.

If you answer the question "what was their title?" with "they mostly did X and Y, they were incredible", I doubt that's going to cost them the job (assuming they'd put something like X and Y on their resume). Or at least, I wouldn't want to work at any place where the Levenshtein distance between the title on my resume and the title quoted by my supervisor was a critical part of the hiring decision.

For example, Yahoo lets technical employees choose their own titles, with a default of "Technical Yahoo". My ex-coworkers who chose alternative titles don't seem to have been handicapped in their subsequent careers.

<comment><USER18> _I wouldn't want to work at any place where the Levenshtein distance between the title on my resume and the title quoted by my supervisor was a critical part of the hiring decision._

Well, "critical" might not apply... maybe it's just an early filter by HR. This filtering out of people who lie on their resume will have a few false positives, but even the best filters are going to have a non-negligible false positive rate -- it's enough that they mostly work, as long as you're swamped with mediocre and inappropriate applicants.

With thousands of resumes coming in daily for a position (I'm guessing), some semi-automated winnowing must happen, and any test you devise will have some potentially awesome candidate crying foul (though such an awesome candidate is probably not in your pool of applicants today, or tomorrow).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Another three letter word - EGO - combined with delusion will get you all kinds of fancy titles.

My rule of thumb is that a business of less than 7 people should have 1 "Manager" (not CEO, President, etc), and everyone else should be an employee (plus additional reasonable titles such as co-founder, etc). As the business grows and more people are brought onboard you can start handing out titles.

This might not work in every situation, but it's a good starting point.

<comment><USER4> In military lingo, it's called Span of Control. 3 reports is the minimum, 5 the ideal, 7 the max.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I know of a company that has all CEO, CTO, Cxx people, and no actual employees (they take themselves pretty seriously about this too).

It's really funny.

</comment><comment><USER21> Its a foolish dispute ... but the new hire's insistence on the CTO title is a red flag to me as well.

I'd just create a Vice President of Technology position, and offer it to the co-founder ... if he doesn't go for it ... offer it to the new hire ... if he doesn't go for it ... I'd keep looking.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't see any issues with C-level executive titles as long as EGO doesn't come with it. I'd prefer Chief Nerd Wrangler myself but more often than not (at least in my case) it would only fair so well when mingling with certain styles of companies.

To each their own really, it'll operate differently in different contexts. In the context of the article I would say it would be fair that none of them have titles to begin with, including the new hire.

Forego them temporarily & operate in a bit more 'round table' style if feasible. If the titles are a burden and getting in front of the work to be done, it's not the work that is about to be thrown out the window :)

</comment><comment><USER23> When I launched my (non-startup - services) business I called myself CEO. This had some nice side effects,for some reason people (reporters, researchers) would call me for advice. But it seemed lame to call myself the CEO of one- person company. We are now more then one but I've taken titles off our business cards, instead just letting our clients know our roles ie "Technical, Design etc".

While we are still small, less then 10 folks, we're going to keep it that way since we all wear many different hats at this point. We'll get titles eventually - but we'll also get more structure as we grow so we'll wait until we need it.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm not sure for all countries but I registered my company recently and the default title the registering process allocates is "Managing Director". Which seems exactly the correct term.

I doubt I'd bother changing my title unless I needed to have a division of responsibility. And for that to occur I would need a number of staff which would get confused exactly whom they should be talking to.

I think for most companies I have dealt with CEOs start to appear over 20 staff members which may be the level where communication issues start, and division of responsibility need to be clarified.

I know a few people who use CEO title in companies with 1-3 people, most of the time its a projection thing, more of a sales tactic than anything. For a few its an ego thing, but usually they don't last long in community groups as everyone gets sick listening to narcissistic comments and they isolate themselves.

</comment><comment><USER25> Having come from the social gaming industry and attended many a conference, this is one of my pet peeves. I can't tell you how many two-man operations I encountered where each person had a CxO title. It is utterly ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is partly the reason I didn't take the CTO title when I joined a startup years ago. They gave me the flexibility to essentially pick my own title; I eventually settled on "Director, Software Development".

In addition to avoiding the friction, I had hired (and rejected) several "CEOs" for entry-level student tech-support jobs several years previous, and wanted to avoid the presumptions that went along with the title. I was young, and wanted to be taken seriously when I introduced myself. "CTO" of a company no one had heard of didn't communicate that.

</comment><comment><USER27> Agreed! There is no CTO, no CEO, no nothing until things reach a certain level of funding and traction. You're just a team trying to build a product that is useful. And like Eric Ries says, you may miss the target the first time. You have to rapidly iterate until you hit the mark - then maybe you can give yourself C-level titles. I personally think they're too snobby though - <USER3> about just 'Partner.'

</comment><comment><USER28> Heh. I once worked in sales / technical support / geekery for a smallish computer/networking var. Since I was the only sales person other than the owner I was given my choice of titles. I chose "Vice President of Intergalactic Sales and Extra-Terrestrial Support". It barely fit on the business card.

It did win us some occasional business though.

<comment><USER29> A colleague once had his official title be "Keeper of the Magic." This was in a fairly large company to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is a symptom of a larger problem at many early-stage startups: that of merging your personal identity with your purported "company," "board of directors," etc. rather than running a market experiment as quickly and efficiently as possible.

</comment><comment><USER31> I agree having a flat organization over a hierarchy should work better for start-up. Dropping the C titles is only opening a door for problems between co-founders and early employees.

</comment><comment><USER32> My preference is to use the title "Founder". It explains who you are within the company, and what kinds of decisions you are able to make.

</comment><comment><USER33> Thanks. I never knew what to tell people when they asked me my title. Now I can just say early employee.

</comment><comment><USER34> No ego's, company first.</comment>


Ask YC: What's apps.ycombinator.com? - <AUTHOR> http://apps.ycombinator.com/

<comment><USER2> Another name for news, left over from a time when news had so few users that it would have seemed odd to use news urls for people applying to YC.

<comment><USER3> I thought it was a HN app marketplace.

I guess, I would really, really like to have that.

<comment><USER4> I'd really like a generic app store backend/framework that I can drop on a server and with a little glue code use it to serve apps to whatever platform I want (desktop, mobile, web-enabled TV...). In other words, it would be cool to commoditize the app store concept, like OSes and frameworks are now. I could use it for my current project, or maybe I'll make such a system if I can't find one and/or my current project proves infeasible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Once you're accepted, you can access entrees.ycombinator.com. Then you're just one IPO or acquisition away from dessert.ycombinator.com.

<comment><USER6> I found the desert too dry, though.

<comment><USER5> Fixed! Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a handy to get around the _noprocrast_ filter

</comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps posts by people who submitted YC applications?

<comment><USER9> Dont think so, both indexes look the same</comment></comment>


Stanford Crypto Summit - <AUTHOR> http://www.cryptofolks.org/

<comment><USER2> Is this open to the public?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes - though the majority of tickets are for Stanford folks.</comment></comment>


Experiences of a self-taught female coder- "Women can't code?" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@thesurbhioberoi/experiences-of-a-self-taught-female-coder-girls-can-t-code-30ae10e39b33#.ey8xcmtx3 <comment><USER2> Being from India myself and having had partially similar experiences, there are _two_ instances of bias in this story that perhaps need to be illustrated individually.

1\. A strong bias against a candidate because of not having a computer science degree: This is liberally applied to both men and women, and is fairly common. It is even enforced by college policy during career fairs to some extent. For example, my college's application process did not allow civil engineering majors to apply to "computer" companies, even if the companies themselves might potentially have been interested. Similarly CS graduates were excluded from civil engineering companies. Since all job applications passed through the college's centralised system, it was impossible to bypass this requirement, short of personally trying to persuade one of the recruiters.

2\. Chauvinism -- what the author experienced is the real and horrible chauvinism that is prevalent among the older (equivalent of Baby Boomers) generation in India. Actually, chauvinism is just one of a range of "we know best" attitude that seems to pervade this generation. Kudos to the author for keeping her cool in dealing with this cohort of assholes and winning out.

</comment><comment><USER3> If she really started coding 2 months ago, I don't understand why she expects to have a job. It's great that she started, and I understand that she doesn't have the money for a university, but if she doesn't go to university, she should have a real portfolio and show real understanding and spend real time learning (for example not just using angularjs, but making commits to angularjs, which shows a much greater understanding of complex code).

Should I try to teach myself to play the piano for 2 months and expect getting a job as a pianist?

<comment><USER4> She says 6 months, not 2, before the first interview.

Funny how she says how she had a Github and Codepen and she sent her code yet people said "But you're a girl", and then and you reply like this.

If I send my code and people don't look at it, I assume they're assholes. In her case, it's systematic, and obviously more complex.

I'm not sure if you can't read or if you just couldn't comprehend what was written...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As already mentioned, most of the points aren't specifically against women. Another thing you'll be up against is the lack of commercial experience, being the reason students take placements to get their foot in the door.

But different from those points, what sorts of companies are you applying for? I've worked in and heard of tonnes of companies employing tonnes of women in London, it may be a prejudice specific to location you are experiencing?

<comment><USER4> She explains she is from India, and she also recognized it's a cultural problem.

<comment><USER5> For some reason I was under the impression she was doing a stint in the US or UK, I think it was just from how the article read.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any way to filter new comments on submissions? - <AUTHOR> Hello! Is there a way to sort comments in a reverse chronological order (even sub comments)? I see interesting discussions, but it's hard to come back 3 hours later and scan the comments for new comments. <comment><USER2> I've wondered the same thing. Reddit's premium membership unlocks a "highlight comments since your last visit" mode which is great for re-visiting a thread as well. Though I'd be happy with plain chronological sorting as you mention.

</comment><comment><USER3> Gnus has a plugin to do this. I suspect Gnus is a bridge too far for most, however.

</comment><comment><USER4> Find a browser plugin to do it.</comment>


DigitalOcean promotional credits older than one year will expire Sunday - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitalocean.com/company/blog/details-on-expiring-digitalocean-credits/ <comment><AUTHOR> _Note:_ Title intentionally changed to be more informative given that expiry is less than 24 hours away.

 _Angry rant:_ DigitalOcean is retroactively rescinding promotional credit that was issued prior to their updated terms of service—credit that previously had no expiration date—and did so with only 30 days notice, affecting approximately 280,000 customers in the process.</comment>


Neanderthal 0.9.0 – Clojure high-performance computing is getting into shape - <AUTHOR> http://dragan.rocks/articles/17/Neanderthal-090-released-Clojure-high-performance-computing <comment><AUTHOR> The author here. I'll be happy to help you getting started, or answer your questions here.</comment>


RethinkDB 1.3 is out, now available on OS X - <AUTHOR> http://www.rethinkdb.com/blog/rethinkdb-13-release/

<comment><USER2> It's great to see all these new ideas in the db arena. But one thing I don't understand at all is why they diss the idea of having data integrity. Am I the only developer who actually likes working with relational data and do not think of a schema as a straight-jacket? Am I the only one getting burnt by MySQL and SQLite playing loose with types and silently coercing data almost randomly?

Check constraints are also great and has saved my ass so many times. It's so much easier to debug a problem when the crash occurs when you are inserting the data than in a wrong calculation much further down the line. Postgres for example, allows you to create regular expression constraints which you could use to ensure that a text column only contains a valid variable name. Exclusion constraints are even better, if you have a table with allocations (date ranges, integer ranges, etc) you can check so that none of the allocations overlap. Plus about a million other ways you can constrain your data.

That's the killer features for me. They have helped me debug problems so many times that I consider them almost essential to writing good web applications. So why does almost all new database projects seem to neglect them?

<comment><USER3> Schemas have saved my ass a million times too, but schema migrations are a pain.

I'd love a database that's loose with types by default, but allows you to add declarative specifications for types. Documents are checked at insert/update time, but otherwise the specifications play no role in how the data is stored.

That way you get schemas, but only when you need them. And migrations don't require heavy collection-wide locking; instead, you just change the constraints you enforce and lazily update old documents.

Postgres does to an extent with CHECK constraints, but you still have to do an ALTER TABLE if you change the underlying type of a column.

<comment><USER4> > ...you still have to do an ALTER TABLE if you change the underlying type of > a column.

I don't see why this is a problem? How often do you update really big (hundreds of millions of rows) columns' data types in practice? Most of the time you'd change type early in development when you don't have that much data in the table yet which makes it pretty much instantaneous. If you really need to update the data type for a supersized table you could always make a new column instead and migrate lazily to that in the background. But all of this happens so rarely that in my view it's a silly excuse to dump all the great benefits you get from having an enforced database schema.

<comment><USER5> > If you really need to update the data type for a supersized table you could > always make a new column instead and migrate lazily to that in the > background.

I do this "irritatingly often". That said, the fact that while I'm doing it I have the advantages of schemes to make certain I do it _correctly_ is _amazing_ ;P. Even in a world where I have to do this every day, I still wouldn't feel "ok, let's not have a schema at all" would be a better fix to that problem.

(To be clear: I am not "disagreeing" with you: I am agreeing with a point that is even stronger than the one you made, as I think you ceded too much ground ;P.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I commend the RethinkDB folks for supporting Mac OS X explicitly. However, the .pkg installer, while handy for folks that prefer that installation method, installs to /usr/bin/ and /usr/share/ -- areas that are traditionally reserved for system tools provided by Apple. Sure, the DMG also contains an uninstall- rethinkdb.sh script, but I'm still left quite unwilling to kick the RethinkDB tires on my primary Mac workstation.

A better method, in my opinion, would be for the RethinkDB devs to contribute a Homebrew formula. That way everything would be installed into /usr/local/ by default, and updates would be a quick "brew upgrade rethinkdb" away. Am I the only one who would prefer that?

UPDATE: It seems they had originally planned on a Homebrew formula but thought the .pkg format was better. Clearly, I disagree with that. Want to offer both? Awesome. But if you're going to pick one or the other, I think Homebrew is the vastly superior method. More here: <https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues/5>

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason we did that is because /usr/local/bin isn't on the default path on many OS X systems, and we didn't want the installer to modify the user's PATH.

The thing about Homebrew is that it's great once you have it, but the user experience of actually installing it can be quite a pain, and we didn't want users who don't have it to have to go through the trouble. That being said, I still think it would be great to contribute a Homebrew formula.

<comment><USER7> When installing via .pkg, you can place a file in /etc/paths.d that adds to the path. For example, when you install in /usr/local/rethink/, you just add a file (e.g. /etc/paths.d/rethink) with one line: /usr/local/rethink/bin. Thats it, very easy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah cool, thanks. Will do.

<comment><USER8> Would you like to leave a comment here if you update the package to install into /usr/local, I'd also prefer to use that directory.

Congrats on the new release! You are definitely doing a great job making developers love RethinkDB, feels like you already generated loads of interest.

<comment><AUTHOR> I added an issue for this -- <https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues/171>

I'll try to comment here as well when this is done!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is an example of an excellent website for a developer tool. Even the blogpost contains a hello world example in the header. The front page contains everything you need to know in just a couple of sections.

</comment><comment><USER10> Does this include the new wire format? That was talked about here: [http://www.rethinkdb.com/blog/rethinkdb-wire-protocol- call-f...](http://www.rethinkdb.com/blog/rethinkdb-wire-protocol-call-for- comments/)

I'm itching to write a toy client in clojure.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, this doesn't include the wire protocol updates yet. That's slated for 1.4 -- sorry!

<comment><USER10> Alright, gives me more time to nail down a nice query DSL :)

Nice to see OSX support, simplifies development quite a bit for us mac users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is anyone over here using it? What is your impressions?

<comment><USER12> I used it for a bit, my first impression was very good, if buggy. The team is very responsive and extremely accommodating, and I'm hoping they make a very solid database. The featureset looks great, and the admin interface is fantastic.

I would definitely recommend giving it a try.

<comment><USER3> Could you expand on the buginess? Was it aesthetic issues, or did you ever face problems like data corruption?

<comment><USER13> RethinkDB is still very young software and will take some time to mature. The worst issues that we had during the last release cycle did result in data corruption, one due to a bug in our code. Another due to a filesystem we weren't expecting (which we still consider to be a bug in our code.)

Right now we can't recommend RethinkDB for production ready code but we're working very hard to get it to that point. Part of this is beefing up our internal testing system which we've made a big push on during the last release cycle. Part of that is fixing all of the bugs that users submit until they stop finding serious ones.

<comment><USER14> Maybe I'm just an old fart, but I think it's less misleading to label "not production ready" releases with a 0.x.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, that's very true. We used an internal versioning scheme and it became exceedingly difficult to change all the repo tags, internal references, etc. so we decided to just bite the bullet and use the same scheme publicly and privately. I wouldn't have done this if we could go back in time, but you know what they say about hindsight :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> <http://rethinkdb.a.pogoapp.com/> \- our demo has been updated to 1.3.1

</comment><comment><USER16> I can't find information on how (or whether) you handle users. Is there some built-in per-document read/write lock based on user access for example? This is the most important feature I miss in CouchDB.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you mean permissions (i.e. granting access to tables based on authentication)? If so, Rethink doesn't have that yet, but it's definitely on the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> can't wait for final golang driver, kudos for listening.

<comment><AUTHOR> You might want to check out community one for now -- <https://github.com/christopherhesse/rethinkgo> (perhaps even contribute -- hint hint)

<comment><USER18> This driver attempts to match the official drivers as closely as is reasonable. It has almost all of the functionality of the official drivers now, but won't have a stable-ish API or actual tests until the end of December.

Let me know if you have any feedback, this is the first Go language library that I have built.</comment></comment></comment>


Secret IPO Filings Feed Deal Frenzy - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/secret-ipo-filings-feed-deal-frenzy-1438039559?mod=WSJ_TechWSJD_NeedToKnow <comment><USER2> non-paywall link: [http://on.wsj.com/1Io66wL](http://on.wsj.com/1Io66wL)

<comment><USER3> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Paywalled. Search google for full article. Didn't know the extent of companies getting bought out before IPO.</comment>


O'Reilly technical eBooks for $4.99 each on oreilly.com with code "MYUPD" - kai-zer http://shop.oreilly.com O'Reilly.com has a coupon code "MYUPD" which reduces the price of their technical eBooks to $4.99 each <comment><AUTHOR> Not that I could see on the linked page. I think the title of this post is factually incorrect and misrepresents the content of the page.

</comment><comment> kai-zer guess it didnt come through, meant to have text:

O'Reilly.com has a coupon code "MYUPD" which reduces the price of their technical eBooks to $4.99 each

<comment><USER2> nope- doesn't work.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Nighthawk: A stealthy, simple, unobtrusive music player - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/quantumkv/nighthawk <comment><USER2> As a developer I completely understand the appeal of Electron. I love web technologies and targeting 3 platforms at once is amazing.

As a user, I simply won't accept it. Platform integration is suboptimal at best and resource usage is preposterous.

If this is the future of desktop software, and it seems like it is, we have got to find a better solution.

There has to be a way to share the rendering engine and Node process among the many Electron apps that are proliferating on the user's machine.

<comment><USER3> The rendering engine in Windows is accessible. It has not been as advanced as V8 but it is getting better and that means you can, or will soon be able to, create an app with html+css+js and run it on Windows without downloading a full engine.

For the more common solutions I think computers already have enough memory to handle this. The boot time is a bit too long but if each app uses 200-300 MB does not mean _that_ much when the computers have 8 GB or more.

<comment><USER4> > you can, or will soon be able to, create an app with html+css+js and run it > on Windows without downloading a full engine.

Actually this functionality has existed on windows for about 15 years or more.

[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ms536496(v=vs.85).a...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ms536496\(v=vs.85\).aspx)

HTAs, or HTML applications, almost forgotten, have been available as far back as xp and possibly windows 98. They still work in windows 10, though they only support html4 and very limited JavaScript, and obviously aren't cross platform like electron.

Microsoft saw the potential in html for building apps way back in the late 90s. You used to be able to use html as a wallpaper back in windows 98, something I dearly miss.

It's also worth pointing out that uwp / windows store apps can be built in html/js, which are very small to distribute and use a global rendering engine

<comment><USER2> Yeah, the more I think about it, the more it seems like Apple's neglect is responsible for Electron's success.

If they exposed Webkit and JavaScriptCore in a friendlier way, things could be different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm typically the defender of electron on these threads. I think its a great way for devs to get an MVP out there quickly. But there is a time and a place for electron.

 _electron good_ \- IDEs, markdown editors, visual git clients, things that are front and center

 _electron bad_ \- music players, tray notifiers, app launchers, things that work in the background

On windows and mac I use foobar for music and greenshot for screen grabs because they use minimal resources.

<comment><AUTHOR> The main reason I went with electron is that fantastic system tray integration. System tray integration with the native .Net is an unholy mess. The windows 10 UWP apps do not have a way to integrate with the taskbar. WPF requires interop with win32 code or a half baked 10 year old depreciated WinForms component.

And none of the native solutions allow me to shape and design the UI like I want to without compromises.

Electron may not the best in every aspect. But it was the only sensible and feasible choice for what I wanted my app to behave like.

For me, a small performance hit is justified for being able to make _exactly_ what I want.

<comment><USER4> I'm going to try your app, despite my post, because I also believe in giving things a chance and leaving my mind open to change.

<comment><USER4> I have tried nighthawk, and though it shows promise it needs a little work. Settings is not an obvious place to add music from and when I did add my music folder it didn't seem to look in any subfolders I had.

I was quite surprised by the CPU and memory usage though. Surprisingly lean. I ran a bunch of music players along side it and it averaged the same memory and CPU as colibri, vlc, foobar, and swinsian. Clementine stood out from the pack as an absolute hog, burning up my desk with 33% cpu usage, where nighthawk and the others stayed below 1% most of the time.

That's pretty impressive performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll stick with [https://www.clementine-player.org/](https://www.clementine- player.org/)

<comment><USER6> My needs are simple... [http://qmmp.ylsoftware.com/](http://qmmp.ylsoftware.com/)

(Need 1: Player must remind me of WinAMP)

<comment><USER7> The WinAmp interface is fantastic, most other media players simply take up to much screen space. Everyone seems to build iTunes like clients and media library managers. My files are already managed just the way I like them, in folders, there's no need for additional management.

<comment><USER8> I like having a solid tagging scheme. I don't go deep into subgenres, re- release dates and all that jazz. But having an easy filter mechanism to select music that can have multiple tags for a particular category is very handy. That doesn't work so well with folders, unless you go mad with symlinks everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I see a lot of negative comments on these electron threads (rightfully so, especially if one cares about resources / performance). Question is: what other frameworks would you recommend for developing cross-platform desktop apps ?

<comment><USER10> I don't have a good answer to the framework question, but I do have an opinion about cross-platform. Why make cross-platform a priority over efficiency and user experience? I bounce between Mac and Windows daily, and my least favorite apps are those that try to run on both. They are often resource hogs and provide a UI experience that feels worse than native apps. Electron apps have the least bad UI experience, but are resource hogs. One app I use for work, Mendeley, uses Qt for its UI I believe, and it's garbage on both platforms- so I use the web interface instead. Give me a good native app instead of a suboptimal cross platform one.

I often think the issue isn't cross platform though: it's that there is a cohort of developers who know a toolchain (JS+web), and use frameworks that let them live in that instead of investing the time and effort to learn how to write an app well using a toolchain not built for those focused on web/browser models of programming.

<comment><USER11> Electron does not magically make your app work like shit - if you treat it like any other framework and actually invest resources into architecture and optimization it (surprise!) results in a good software, eg: vs code. Problem is it also allows to disregard all that and quickly prototype a solution that works good enough for some, and forget about all the optimization. That's real problem, but it's not tied in any way to electron. Same people would go and make a shitty app in qt if there was no electron, or just wouldn't make anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Has anyone else tried deadbeef? It's one of the lightest players I've ever used. It's very bare bones.

[http://deadbeef.sourceforge.net/](http://deadbeef.sourceforge.net/)

<comment><USER13> Don't forget Billy, from back in the day:

[https://www.albinoblacksheep.com/download/billy](https://www.albinoblacksheep.com/download/billy)

<comment><USER14> or cmus ([https://cmus.github.io/](https://cmus.github.io/)) for that matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Something something electron bad

<comment><USER16> One of it's key features listed is 'Highly Efficient.'

<comment><USER17> I saw that too...How can something using Electron be highly efficient? Maybe they are talking about the interface and not the system resources the app uses.

<comment><USER18> Clementine doesn't use Electron and consumes more of my memory and UI is ugly. Before we start talking about resources maybe we should compare other music players on the market.

<comment><USER19> The observation that there's a music player resource tax just makes me less inclined to combine it with the Electron tax.

<comment><USER20> There isn't really one inherently; a music player like foobar2000 only takes a few MB of memory even with many plugins. That doesn't mean Clementine and Winamp haven't found ways to waste resources that aren't loading a full Chromium instance (after all, Chromium is pretty efficient considering what it actually brings to the table.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> WinAmp can hide in the tray too, and uses 3 (!!) orders of magnitude less RAM than this. I know it is not new and shiny, but it still works well.

</comment><comment><USER22> Nighthawk looks very nice!

However, I found out that for me tui is where it's at for music players. Using cmus combined with a drop down terminal such as tilda or a tiling windows manager is the most comfortable i've been with music players.

</comment><comment><USER23> You can't throw folders with subfolders at it to make a playlist out of them. The music files have to be in the same folder. Where's the unobtrusive in that if I have to create my playlist first?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out. I tend to curate my library as a playlist itself without sub-folders so I never gave a thought to it. I am working on a playlist system after all the feedback i got. Will definitely look into the sub-folders way.

Oh, and unobtrusive is for the fact that the player stays completely in the background without a single notification or interruption to your work.

</comment></comment><comment> v-yadli hey is anyone interested in building a modern frontend for Foobar2000?

edit:

I think from the Foobar2000 sdk alone, you'd see how advanced that thing is.. I mean, extension points everywhere, dsp plugin support, built-in query & library management, codecs, gapless processing, all of that written in a scalable & native architecture.

It truly lacks a proper UI toolkit though. The current options are quite outdated that I'd rather fall back to the default Win32 UI.

So, Electron frontend + C/S communication with Foobar2000? I'd totally buy into it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Internally, both foobar2000 and Chrome/Electron use ffmpeg for audio processing and codec support. The web audio api allows for writing all sorts of equalizers and audio processing effects.

Extensions and query and library management can be coded in JS easily, like VSCode, Hyper and others do.

Electron frontend communicating with foobar2000 sdk for every little interaction will lead to a huge mess of performance and latency issues. It's better to rebuild the whole thing in electron instead.

<comment> v-yadli > both foobar2000 and Chrome/Electron use ffmpeg for audio processing and > codec support

not quite true. for example, the ZXTune plugin brings support for a dozen of chiptune formats which is obviously out of scope of ffmpeg. It'll be possible to incorporate webaudio api for codec but that's a resource hog. Also if you're doing decoding work and the GC jitters, you're going to run out of audio buffer (stuttering). If we take one step back and rely on some audio playback API, then gapless play and other issues would be difficult to deal with.

> The web audio api allows for writing all sorts of equalizers and audio > processing effects.

maybe, but that's reinventing the wheel. foobar2000 supports VST plugins, the professional tools used in the audio production industry. there are a few dsp components for webaudio but that's far from satisfactory.

> Extensions and query and library management can be coded in JS easily, like > VSCode, Hyper and others do.

Yes I agree. That way we can make a neat package manager for an audio system. Some Digital Audio Workstations(DAW) have already begun to move this way (Bitwig Studio etc.)

> for every little interaction will lead to a huge mess of performance and > latency issues.

Not quite sure.. Think about how NeoVim is built. But my concern is that, foobar2000 is not built for tightly interacting with a frontend, so yeah, better rebuild a native audio core, and use a modern communication protocol (msgpack maybe?) to do the roundtripping. But again, that protocol could be implemented as a foobar2000 plugin...

The downside of using foobar2000 is also obvious. It's close sourced and Win32 dependent. So I'd think about this:

```

Electron frontend <\-- msgpack --> Native audio core <\--> JackAudio, RtAudio or alike, whatever that bypasses the middleware and directly access the hardware audio buffer

```

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Finally after months of development, procrastination and a complete rewrite, > the First stable release is out

It's a good occasion to change the "Hello world" window title.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is there a subsonic interface/client that integrates nicely natively? Having to have it in a browser tab and not having music hotkeys is kind of a bitch.

</comment><comment><USER26> I just tried it and compared with Winamp 5.666 - 10mb download, 14mb memory footprint.

</comment><comment><USER27> It doesn't seem to work with flac and wav files. Tried on windows.

<comment><AUTHOR> It currently only works with mp3, wma and ogg files. Flac had some codec issues when I checked it in the beginning. Might have changed as I recall chrome having done something in this regard.

Will definitely check if the new versions of electron support it. If it does support flac, I'll get it working on the next release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> gorgeous UI

</comment><comment><USER29> > Unobtrusive

Well besides eating half your RAM and melting down your battery.</comment>


Ask HN: Please review my StartUp - <AUTHOR>

Please review my Start-Up VersionEye: https://www.versioneye.com/. I would like to know what you think about the idea. How do you like the landing page? Any ideas for improvements? Your feedback is appreciated. <comment><USER2> _VersionEye allows you to follow software libraries and talk shop with other developers._

This should be up there in the top, slightly re-formated to something like:

"Follow software libraries and discuss their progress with other developers"

Ditch the whole _"it's like this and this for that"_

Never lock yourself into other peoples definitions and never assume people know what yelp or twitter is (unless your product is an extension of those services)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok. That is helpful. I will refactor the landing page a little bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like what I think you do, but I agree with the other people here, add some more concrete explanations of what it is VersionEye does.

1) I searched for "zlib" which is something I needed recently for Python. zlib comes built in to Python, but I think you could include it in your results anyways since it's kind of a toss up what comes prepackaged and what doesn't.

2) I tried to filter and the filters cleared and showed me the old results again.

Good luck, I think it's a really great idea. I search for different packages like this all the time, and it's a PAIN.

<comment><AUTHOR> I put zlib on my ToDo list. I just saw that the language filter is broken. Sorry for that. Tomorrow it will be fixed. Up to them. You can just add "lang=Python" to the URL, to make it work. I will write a RSpec for that.

I know that it is pain to search for packages on Google. Because there is just to much noise on Google.

Many Thanks for your Feedback. I will continue to improve it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found out about what it did by sheer luck, because I scrolled down enough to see the description. Also, what's the graph on the front page? It doesn't change no matter what I do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback. Was the search field not clear enough? The graph is the dependency graph for Ruby on Rails. It's standing below the the graph. You can click on the nodes. But if that wasn't clear to you, I have to change the landing page.

<comment><USER4> Well, I saw the graph and expected that I could plot dependencies for arbitrary packages, but looking a bit more revealed that it's a site for staying up to date on new packages. I don't know how I can plot the dependencies of other papackages, or how that ties into the app...

<comment><AUTHOR> In the login are you can upload your gem file and VersionEye is showing which of your gems are outdated. The dependency graphs for your own projects is coming soon. Also an embed button, so that you can embed the graphs into your own pages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey,

I'm getting application error. You must be making some changes.

BTW why are you linking https for the landing page? It'd work just as well on http.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am sorry for that. I didn't changed anything on the page. I guess the reason for the error is here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4180543> Amazon was down again.

It is not much slower with https, but the configuration is easier. GitHub is doing the same. By default https.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> you are not google (yet) - explain what you do, what you offer - in one or two catchy sentences above the fold.

other than that: cool & interesting idea - still a few bugs in there (i.e.: [https://www.versioneye.com/search?lang=&q=coffeescript](https://www.versioneye.com/search?lang=&q=coffeescript), select boxes on the search box don't remember their setting)

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. I am not google. I thought that the search field and the language icons would be clear. But if not I will add some description. Thank you for you feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> incoporate twitter bootstrap or jquery ui, front end tools are getting better don't get left behindd

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. The twitter bootstrap framework looks pretty awesome. Right now I am using the blueprint css framework. But I think I will switch to bootstrap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> clickable <http://www.versioneye.com>

</comment><comment><USER8> I am honestly lost and do not understand what your startup does.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK. It's a search engine for Software Developers. You can find Libraries and additional information. And you can follow your Libraries to get notified about new versions. How would you design the landing page for that?

<comment><USER4> I would put the description higher up. It's pretty clear, just hidden.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK. I will do that. Many thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> application error?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for that. I didn't change the app. But Amazon AWS was down again: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4180543> I am considering to move away from Amazon.</comment></comment>


Xcode 12 - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/xcode/ <comment><USER2> Nice UI updates, but I'm still surprised they haven't adapted Xcode's UX to be more in-line with other popular code editors (Intellij, Eclipse, Sublime, VSCode, Visual Studio, Atom). It's a radical departure from all of those. It feels like NIH syndrome applied to UX (and maybe a bit of "we've always had this UX, why change?" pride).</comment>


Ask YC: Advice good books to learn jQuery - <AUTHOR>

I really want to find a book with good complex real-life examples. <comment><USER2> I have all three "JQuery Reference", "Learning JQuery" and "JQuery in Action"…

Of the three, "JQuery Reference" is the best — granted, you can access similar like reference material online, but I found it was nice to have in book form, with more examples, so you could leaf through when not gazing at a monitor…

"Learning JQuery" is decent, but dated, and many of the examples given use deprecated features. Also, some of the examples are quite contrived, and accomplish presentation tasks that I would never ever implement as JS. But my philosophy on JS is that it should enhance, and not be a replacement, so YMMV.

"JQuery in Action" — wish I would have foregone purchase of, not that it's bad, just that it seems to be packed with lots of verbiage and ends up being a poor man's ORA style "JQuery in a Nutshell".

</comment><comment><USER3> Manning's "jQuery in Action" is quite good and has some decent examples. You can pick up a PDF copy from their site for very little.

</comment><comment><USER4> A good intro is "Learning jQuery" by Jonathan Chaffer and Karl Swedberg although the jQuery web site offers some very good introductory material. I have found the "jQuery reference guide" (same authors) helpful to have around though.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've always self taught myself stuff through example code, blogs, and misc web resources. It's typically more up-to-date than books as far as web languages are concerned... However, I'm sure there's one or two worth grabbing.

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://docs.jquery.com/Main_Page>

And it's free.</comment>


Visualizing popular machine learning algorithms - <AUTHOR> http://jsfiddle.net/wybiral/3bdkp5c0/embedded/result/ <comment><USER2> For learners it is confusing to see the nonlinear decision boundaries for linear and logistic regression, IMO a note about the feature expansion should be added

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that or label the axes....

<comment><USER4> How would labeling the axis help explaining what is going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awesome. Would be great to have execution times.

Also what is nerdy.js? I saw it was related to "Carl Edward Rasmussen" but couldn't find another reference on the net

<comment><USER6> It's a Javascript library I put together a long time ago for dealing with datasets and machine learning algorithms. It was used for some of my own personal projects and hasn't been focused on for release in the wild (although I'm considering it now).

The reference to Carl Edward Rasmussen is because I based my minimize function heavily off of this one: [http://learning.eng.cam.ac.uk/carl/code/minimize/](http://learning.eng.cam.ac.uk/carl/code/minimize/)

<comment><USER5> I'd be interested in the library :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like K-nearest neighbor does pretty well.

<comment><USER8> Yes, k-nn is theoretically the one of the best ML algorithms in the sense that it will find the closest items in the training set. For classification or finding similar looking items it is great. However, it has pretty poor running times for evaluation of unseen data ([http://nlp.stanford.edu/IR- book/html/htmledition/time-comple...](http://nlp.stanford.edu/IR- book/html/htmledition/time-complexity-and-optimality-of-knn-1.html)). This is contrary to something like neural networks, which take a while to train, but then evaluate very quickly. For real world use the training times matter to an extent, but in a web app or real time application the latency from knn is just impractical.

<comment><USER9> That's why we developed the "Boundary Forest" algorithm which is a fast nearest-neighbor type algorithm with generalization at least as good as K-NN, while being able to respond to queries very quickly.

It maintains trees of examples that let it train and respond to test queries in logarithmic time with the number of stored examples, which can be much less than the overall number of training samples. It thus maintains k-NN's property of very fast training time, and is also an online algorithm, and can be used for regression problems as well as classification.

See our paper that was presented at AAAI 2015 here: [http://www.disneyresearch.com/publication/the-boundary- fores...](http://www.disneyresearch.com/publication/the-boundary-forest- algorithm-for-online-supervised-and-unsupervised-learning/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is also MLDemos [1] which is open source.

[1]: [http://mldemos.epfl.ch/](http://mldemos.epfl.ch/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm a little surprised neural network comes up with a straight line and linear regression doesn't, which I thought by definition it would do. (e.g. on 2 normal groups)

Some discussion of methods, ie how many hidden layers/nodes for the neural network, would probably help make some sense of it.

Random forest could be worth adding.

<comment><USER12> Looking at the code ([http://jsfiddle.net/wybiral/3bdkp5c0/light/](http://jsfiddle.net/wybiral/3bdkp5c0/light/)) it seems they are expanding the features to include all second and third order terms (options.expansion = cubic), that's why linear regression does not come up with a straight line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds interesting, but I can't see the results with Firefox 38.2.1.

<comment><USER14> Try this one: [https://jsfiddle.net/752pqyvp/embedded/result](https://jsfiddle.net/752pqyvp/embedded/result)

It's because of the browser blocking mixed content: The JS libraries are being loaded over HTTP but the JSFiddle is over HTTPS.

The version above loads the libraries over HTTPS via cdnjs.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can someone please explain this?

<comment><USER6> It's using the X and Y location of the dots as training data. Each algorithm is being trained on (x,y)->color in an attempt to buildup a rule for predicting what color an unseen (x,y) pair would be. The hypothesis it builds is then used to color the background so that you can see the decision boundary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There's a bug somewhere.

Refresh, choose dataset: curved, algorithm: k means clustering. You get this:

[http://imageshack.com/a/img633/7110/sfteaE.png](http://imageshack.com/a/img633/7110/sfteaE.png)

If you play around and select different algorithms before selecting k means clustering you can get very different results. :)

<comment><USER6> I accidentally left k means in there as an option and it doesn't make much sense in the context of this example. So, yeah, it's a bit of a bug. Realistically, linear regression doesn't make sense being included either but it still kinda works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> any visualization of these algorithms in 2 dimensions (with cubic feature expansion!) is completely misleading if you intend to work on any real problem with many dimensions. Also, for those asking for execution times, these would be horribly misleading as well.

<comment><USER18> +1!

Are you aware of reasonable high dimensional "visualizations". It cant' be accurate of course. But catpuring essential features would be nice.

E.g. here is a 4d cube: [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:8-cell.gif](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:8-cell.gif)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How is there no training time delay? How is training all these classifiers not putting my CPU into a sweat??

edit: I should also mention: these is very cool :)

<comment><USER20> The dataset is quite small and you have a fast machine. On my laptop, a 7 year old Core 2, there's a slight delay when running some of the heavier algorithms (e.g. running neural net or svm on the island data set).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Note: you can click on the graph to add datapoints.

</comment><comment><USER22> No sources on GitHub, but why? Nerdy.js looks like interesting component, but I failed to find any relevant information about it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Wow it is awesome. Can we also play around with classifier parameters ( k of kNN) ?

<comment><USER6> Only in the code :) Click "Edit in JSFiddle" and look at line 109 in the Javascript section. You'll see: options.k = 5</comment></comment>


Advertising Companies Fret Over a Digital Talent Gap - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/31/business/media/ad-companies-face-a-widening-talent-gap.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26

<comment><USER2> Very interesting to hear what ad industry people say. And that even now the agencies are short-handed. I'm sure traditionally skilled and trained people are still setting the technical values. We'll there lunch will be eaten. After reading it, I'm making time to attend Ad:tech for at least a day to look for work (UX, product management) and just absorb. Oh, there are truely creative "creatives". And they are crucial. But the third rate me-too creatives will be optimized out soon, I venture. Who among us is in advertising? NYC?</comment>


Ask HN: As founders/unemployed folks, what do you do for health insurance? - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone, just curious about what people do for health insurance (if at all) in the US if you're just starting something new and don't have the structure in place for a company health plan yet.<p>Is there a plan that you'd recommend, do you go off your parents (if you're under 26), etc. <comment><USER2> We don't have enough people to warrant group coverage, so I've always just paid for a health plan for my wife and kids. I'm healthy, so I don't see the need in paying several hundred $ per month on myself, when my costs are no where near that amount.

<comment><USER3> I would strongly suggest looking into a high deductible HSA plan to protect yourself from a (financially) catastrophic medical event.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have one you'd recommend? I'm thinking about doing that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This thread might help: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2247560>

</comment><comment><USER5> I have a high deductible health plan that I couple with a HSA program. It costs about $400/month for full family with dental.

</comment><comment><USER6> www.enetinusrance.com . I found that there are $80 plans (yes HSA ones) that you could buy in California.

In New York you'll end up paying 400+ for a single person.

Google for a "health insurace agent" in your state. They get a commision from your premium so they are free to use for the end user. Get them to od the research.

All said and done CA was much cheaper.

<comment><USER7> Getting someone who gets a commission to do your research doesn't sound like a good idea :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have an individual plan (as does my wife and our son). They cost us around $450/month total.</comment>


Ask YC: Viability of StackOverflow for other topics and community building. - <AUTHOR>

YC:
I know that most of you have at least used StackOverflow.  I had thought that it would be a great platform for Q&A of any topic.  I whipped up gamersaurus.com and now (before I even have any real users/questions) I'm not so sure.  For example:  Do most video game questions have answers that are 1) cannonical AND 2) not widely available?  To me, that's really the value propisition of stackoverflow.
So, my question is:  Is stack exchange, as a platform dead in the water for this, or is it as valuable as the community you build around it (or something else).  My friend who runs a video game forum with 220k members seems to think the former. <comment><USER2> The concept of voting on questions and answers could probably be a valuable metaphor for most communities. Once you've been on voting sites a regular forum seems lame, what can you do when you really like an answer besides commenting "+1 to OP"?

I think that if stack exchange could be improved to allow customization in more ways it would be very useful, however the sites just seem too generic to have broad appeal in my opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's one of the biggest complaints I had from "Guy A" who looked at it. There was no decent way to 1) Interface with the content with his current site 2) port reputation two ways from his existing community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> i, for one, would love a version for startup related questions, from logistical, strategic and financial to technical implementation suggestions. something like a more powerful Ask HN. users can respond to questions based on their opinions or (hopefully) experiences, others can vote on the relevance and usefulness of the response

<comment><USER4> your wish is granted:

<http://answers.onstartups.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> So, that brings up another good point. StackOverflow, like answers.OnStartups was leveraged from an already burgeoning community, and quickly got other communities involved. With something grassroots, are you stuck in a chicken and egg problem?

I feel like if there are questions, there can be answers (some of us are better at google than others.. or less lazy or whatever) but if there aren't questions, it's dead.</comment></comment></comment>


Plentyoffish: 1 (Actually 2-3) Man Company May Be Worth $1Billion - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/plentyoffish_one_billion.php

<comment><USER2> Yes, but that $1B is only calculated using the special Facebook RDF.

John.

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazing! The next coming years we'll proabably end up seeing teenagers working alone in their bedrooms, making companies that outrun myspace and facebook. Imagine your 16 year old son rich enough to buy a private jet.

</comment><comment><USER4> The $10k per day number is only interesting if you understand the marketing numbers. If he's spending $20k per day in marketing, the business isn't that interesting.

<comment><USER5> what marketing do you think he is doing?

I have a feeling its mostly word of mouth and a high ranking for 'dating site' in google

<comment><USER6> He does radio ads[0] and tv ads on shows like "The Bachelor"[1]

[0] [http://onlinepersonalswatch.typepad.com/news/2006/01/plentyo...](http://onlinepersonalswatch.typepad.com/news/2006/01/plentyoffish_ra.html) [1] See comment from Reddiance [http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/12/29/yahoo-to- surge-...](http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/12/29/yahoo-to-surge- in-2007/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hmm, 1.2 _billion_ page views a month, and only making $30 mil a year?

I don't think I'll go into the ad business...

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow, this is pretty impressive... I don't know about the valuation, but the revenue is awesome.</comment>


FaceID on iOS 13.5 skips to passcode screen if user is wearing a mask - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/_inside/status/1255554064454168576 <comment><USER2> What's wrong with that? it's a good fallback</comment>


Xerox Star demo - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYvxgNhUwBk

<comment><AUTHOR> Pretty amazing when you think of how many ideas that the industry spent the next 15 years developing were already present here.

Check out part 2 at [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jttq6F6o_J4&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jttq6F6o_J4&feature=related)

And also id Software eat your heart out: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7chDIySXK2Q&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7chDIySXK2Q&feature=related)</comment>


Introducing Pakyow UI: Build Realtime, Back End-Driven Web Apps - <AUTHOR> https://vimeo.com/122983514

<comment><USER2> If you're interested in what truly logic-less views look like, you should check out this framework. Plenty of frameworks seem to be claiming logic-less views, when really they just removed the 'if' from the conditional.</comment>


FB employees react to the latest scandals: 'Why does our company suck at having - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-employees-react-nyt-report-leadership-scandals-2018-11 <comment><USER2> Really, do they have to ask? Company culture is defined by the founder and perpetuated by the CEO.

</comment><comment><USER3> All of that was public knowledge since the beginning of Facebook:

"Check this site out: www.harvardconnection.com and then go to harvardconnection.com/datehome.php. Someone is already trying to make a dating site. But they made a mistake haha. They asked me to make it for them. So I'm like delaying it so it won't be ready until after the facebook thing comes out."

[https://www.businessinsider.com/how-facebook-was- founded-201...](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-facebook-was- founded-2010-3)

"ZUCK: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard

ZUCK: just ask

ZUCK: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns

FRIEND: what!? how'd you manage that one?

ZUCK: people just submitted it

ZUCK: i don't know why

ZUCK: they "trust me"

ZUCK: dumb fucks"

[https://www.businessinsider.com/embarrassing-and-damaging- zu...](https://www.businessinsider.com/embarrassing-and-damaging-zuckerberg- ims-confirmed-by-zuckerberg-the-new-yorker-2010-9)

And don't even let me get started on how Zuckerberg behaved towards fellow executives and co-founders.</comment>


Be careful of who you work with - <AUTHOR> http://chadfowler.com/2011/02/24/be-careful-of-who-you-work-with <comment><USER2> I would have preferred the title, "Recognize who you're working with"

I have worked with many programmers and it's not always readily apparent who is better than me and who is not. And of course, some are better than me in some things but not others.

We don't always have the luxury of choosing who we work with, and have even less chance of only picking those better than us. So it's probably more practical to learn which habits to emulate and which to avoid in those we actually do encounter.

For example, that database whiz may suck at algoritms, so just because you learned one great thing from him, it does not necessarily follow that you should learn others. Also, I have often found a big difference between the perceptions of others (especially bosses and users) and my own assessment of their skills.

There is something to be learned from everyone. Just get good at figuring out "what" from "whom".

<comment><USER3> Indeed,

Suppose every single person adopted the "I only want to play with a people better than me" approach?

Well, then those people you want to play/program/etc with... they don't want to play with you!

Ad-finitum till you get Grouch's "I'd never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member"...

(there's lots of "interesting" game-theory/mating-theory describing these situations but I still don't find them appealing)

<comment><USER4> Skill isn't one dimensional. If I'm better at X and my colleague is better at Y we can both learn from someone 'smarter' and everybody is clearly better of by cooperating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You see this phenomenon in Rock Climbing quite clearly. There are only maybe 30 guys in the world who have climbed routes graded French 9a+ or harder. Of those, more than half are from a tiny region in Spain.

You might think that this is some weird genetic thing going on, but if you go there to investigate you'll notice something strange: your climbing improves. A lot.

Suddenly you're thrown into a world where climbing 8a (a lifetime goal for most dedicated sport climbers) is something that pretty much everybody does, often within only a year or two of starting out. Your concept of what is "hard" changes, and suddenly it doesn't seem so outrageous to get on a route that should be way over your head. It gets in your blood. You train harder. You _climb harder_. Just because you're there.

It's not a fluke of grading, either. You can take that ability you gained back to your home crag and demonstrate for yourself that it's real by polishing off projects that you'd been working on for years. Then you can watch it fade away over the course of maybe half a year as you slip back into climbing with your old crowd.

</comment><comment><USER6> "always be the worst musician in every band you're in" -- GOLD!

FYI, the continue reading link either shouldn't be on the page, or it should take you to the rest of the article - not sure if I got everything or not.

<comment><USER7> It sounds great but most places seem to hire based on current abilities or previous accomplishments, not potential, so how does one go about implementing this advice for anything other than an entry level position?

<comment><USER8> Work for companies that are weak in what you're strong in, but strong in lots of other areas.

When I joined Google Search, I was frequently the smartest guy in the room when it came to JavaScript quirks, or web development, or rich AJAX apps. I was usually the dumbest when it came to massively distributed systems, or information retrieval, or i18n and accessibility, or unstructured data mining.

Over time, I've transferred a bunch of my frontend knowledge to other engineers, and I've learned a whole lot about how massive software systems are architected. I'm a better developer, the people around me are better developers, the company is several hundred million dollars richer, and everybody wins.

<comment><USER9> Your experience sounds a lot like mine, except my team thought that expertise in Javascript was a sign that you had wasted your life.

I'm not bitter. At all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hey Chad, seems like a good post. . . not being one of those crazy typography guys, but it was very hard to read this post. I'm in Chrome, xp, and on a 21 inch monitor. The letters look like they are weighted differently in thickness. Maybe move to a more standard font? Anyways, just an fyi.

<comment><USER11> I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one having that problem - site is nigh- unreadable with both firefox and chrome.

Also, there seems to be a continue reading link on the page that doesn't actually do anything.

<comment><USER12> <https://www.readability.com/bookmarklets>

The version of the bookmarket I use [edited to code, because its length was mucking up the whole page]

        javascript:(function(){readConvertLinksToFootnotes=false;readStyle='style-newspaper';readSize='size-medium';readMargin='margin-wide';_readability_script=document.createElement('script');_readability_script.type='text/javascript';_readability_script.src='http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/js/readability.js?x=+(Math.random());document.documentElement.appendChild(_readability_script);_readability_css=document.createElement('link');_readability_css.rel='stylesheet';_readability_css.href='http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/css/readability.css;_readability_css.type=text/css;_readability_css.media=all;document.documentElement.appendChild(_readability_css);_readability_print_css=document.createElement(link);_readability_print_css.rel=stylesheet;_readability_print_css.href=http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/css/readability-print.css;_readability_print_css.media=print;_readability_print_css.type=text/css;document.getElementsByTagName(head)[0].appendChild(_readability_print_css);})();

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Excellent points on the spreading of behavior and emotions via social networks.

In "The Hidden Power of Social Networks" (an excellent book on social network behavior within large organizations), Rob Cross reports work looking at the effect different people had on energy. Some people, when you meet with them, everybody comes out energized ... others, you come away totally meh. Who's it more productive to associate with? I don't know of similar studies with startups, early customers, and partners, but I'd bet dollars to donuts there would be similar patterns.

<comment><USER12> An extreme version is to work for energy, not money. Instead of choosing clients, customers, markets, suppliers, angels based on profitability (or future profitability), base it on energy.

There's a reasonable probability that energy will translate into value creation and then into money, anyway. And even if not, would you rather be full-of-life and poor, or half-dead and rich? (to dichotomize for dramatic contrast.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am pretty strongly affected by the environment that I'm in, so this post really hits home for me, but there's a conflict I can't resolve about always being the worst x in your collective noun:

Why would a collective that is better than you, which probably subscribes to this moderately common notion, hire you?

I guess Harpo had the same problem.

<comment><USER15> _> I guess Harpo had the same problem._

Actually it was Groucho who uttered the phrase to which you refer. However a little research shows that it was apparently originally from the "Forsyte Saga" novels about edwardian era upper-middle-class british life. You learn something new every day.

<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx>

<comment><USER14> Two things for me today! Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I agree with this premise entirely....however, in the .Net world, at least in my experiences, the smartest (in terms of raw mental capabilities and depth of knowledge) are also the people that write the most verbose, complicated code to do the simplest things...generally I suppose under the guise that it will be "more flexible" I suppose. Often times after enough frustration I've rewritten some of the code in question in one fifth the size, which handles more scenarios, runs faster, and usually even a junior programmer could figure it out.

I often read people making fun of the grossly overarchitected solutions in the java world, but I personally feel the same way about the .Net world, at least when it comes to code written by people who are in most ways genuinely the smartest, most capable developers I have worked with.

Any other .Net people feel this way or am I missing something?

<comment><USER17> I've noticed a corresponding tendency, but amongst the most experienced (But not most capable).

The longer someone's been a '.Net Programmer' (rather then a programmer who does .Net) the more likely they are to over-architect, over design and use frameworks and tools that are just...wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> When I click on 'continue reading...' it doesn't do anything. Is there supposed to be more to the article? The last sentence I got was :

         If you're a teacher, go where the students care about what they're learning.

</comment><comment><USER19> "If behavior spreads through social networks, then working in a toxic or slow- moving corporate environment is really really bad for you."

1) I think working in a toxic or slow moving corporate environment is really bad for you for reasons much more direct than behaviors moving through a social network

2) Researches demonstrated that certain moods and obesity appear to be correlated in social networks - but they have not demonstrated causation or show that this applies to behaviors and moods in general. The fact that two nodes in a social network are likely to both be obese together only shows that obese people move in the same social circles, and there could be a wide variety of social and economic reasons why that are more directly causative than two people knowing each other.

Not to be a downer, it just seems to me that this article makes an unfounded leap there.

<comment><USER20> Or, gravity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> According to the papers cited about alcoholism and happiness, you are not affected by the behavior of your coworkers. For smokers, they only claim that coworkers influence each others' behavior within small firms, which makes sense because people are more likely to be friends anyway and there is more pressure to smoke socially. Even then, the confidence interval is huge; they claim smoking cessation by a coworker decreases your chances of smoking by 34% but with a 95% CI between 5% and 56%. I haven't read the papers, and maybe they explain this, but I wonder what happens when more than one of your friends stops smoking; surely they can't decrease your chances of smoking by 34% each.

</comment><comment><USER22> I gave up waiting for the page to load. Better things to do and all that.

</comment><comment><USER23> Fire clients that are worse than you? Why not just do an amazing job for them?

</comment><comment><USER24> Never date anyone crazier than you are.</comment>


Show HN: Returnif – the conditional return statement - <AUTHOR> https://suczewski.com/2018/07/returnif.html# <comment><USER2> Could you perhaps use [https://www.sweetjs.org/](https://www.sweetjs.org/) instead of modifying babel?

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the `err` being returned here? I didn't think JavaScript was big on error returning, as might typically be used by a `returnif` keyword.

This, funny enough, reminds me of Go. We've been having debates about how to improve syntax of `if err != nil { return err }`, and many of us _(myself included)_ disliked helpers to immediately return or hide an error value.

The reason is that `if err != nil { return err }` is actually somewhat non- idiomatic. It returns the error value with no additional context of where the error occurred, what is wrong, etc. So something like `returnif` in Go, I think is bad. For reference, this is a more idiomatic example: `if err != nil { return fmt.Errorf("foo bar: %v",err) }` where `foo bar` adds context about the thing returning the error.

So perhaps my Go logic doesn't apply here in JS land, but it seems like a bad keyword, if it's similar to Go.

<comment><USER4> The proposed syntax allows for a precondition which can evaluate an expression and return that.

So if you wanted to format the error returned you could do `returnif error : formatError("Error context:", error)`

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting. However I'm not sure the benefit of saving couple of lines outweighs the cost of depending on a non-standard syntax thorough a transpiler.

You mentioned that this is a proof of concept hack. What's the plan ahead?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Agreed on the cost/benefit.

Was mostly a fun project to prove out & build a new idea. No plan ahead for this, but always new projects in the pipeline!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool concept! Looks much more readable in this context:

        err = checkErr()
        if (err)
            return err

Vs

        returnif checkErr()

However, seems a bit overboard to add a reserved keyword for this 'exceptional' case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Definitely a bit overboard.

`returnif` is fun, but there's certainly value in the simplicity of restricted, opinionated syntax (e.g Go).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> if (err) return err...

Pointless sugar

Postconditions ala ruby would be "neat", still kinda pointless tho.</comment>


Record Number of US Citizens, Residents Cut Ties with US in 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/record-number-of-u-s-citizens-green-card-holders-cut-ties-with-u-s-in-2015-1454698808?mod=e2fb <comment><USER2> Summary for those who don't want to work around the login wall (plus extra comments based on my own understanding):

Every quarter the Treasury Department publishes a list of people who renounce US citizenship or long-term residency. Last year there were 4,279 such people. In 2014 it was about 3,300, in 2013 about 3,000, in 2010 and 2011 around 1,500, and every other year was less than 1,000.

We don't know why this is the case. It's conjectured (and I think highly likely) that many do this to disentangle themselves from US tax law and requirements. Unlike nearly every other country, non-resident US citizens are taxed on income they earn abroad. While there are some partial offsets for double taxation, "complying with the law is onerous". Another law, FACTA, "requires financial institution to report income information for their customers who are U.S. taxpayer to the IRS, or else face severe penalties." Some banks would rather not have U.S. account holders than have to report to the IRS.

The U.S. put these in place to identify tax cheaters, and the program has collected some $13 billion. But it's also "complicated the financial lives of an estimated 7 million or more Americans living abroad."

Now my commentary. I'm one of them. I live in Sweden. I have an accountant in the US to handle my taxes and keep track of the laws for me. Among other things, I've had to request special paperwork from the Swedish government to show I am covered by the Totalization Agreement between the US and Sweden regarding double taxation of income with respect to social security taxes. Every year I have to report the highest amount in my bank accounts, in USD, and translate my Swedish tax forms so my accountant can understand it. So, not much work for me, other than the hundreds of dollars in accountant fees.

And a couple of years ago it felt like my bank would have gotten rid of me as a customer if I had any ties (like part-time residency or employment) in the US. I also wonder how getting a home loan, or capital gains from selling a home, would affect things. That's encouraged me to rent.

So I can empathize with those who decide that being a US citizen just isn't worth the hassle.</comment>


F# Code - <AUTHOR> http://fsharpcode.blogspot.com/

<comment><USER2> A nice use for a tumblelog, although there are code snippets sites that are also handy references for stuff like this (e.g. <http://snippets.dzone.com/>).

Anyone got any similarly focused tumblelog recommendations (for other languages, ideally)? They make for great "quick bite" resources.

<comment><USER3> I actually have one, but it's more about a language's irregularities than anything else. it's fun and concurrently interesting to read. it's also useful, especially if you want to avoid some bad scenarios and random behaviours. here you go: <http://wtfjs.com/>

<comment><USER2> No, that's an excellent example. I forgot about it despite seeing it all over here just a few days ago ;-)</comment></comment></comment>