2020 Belarusian Protests - <AUTHOR> Not sure if any info about Belarusian elections were in your local news lately, so some context to my question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Belarusian_protests https://www.euronews.com/2020/08/19/he-can-crawl-to-the-hospital-one-man-s-story-of-police-brutality-in-belarus https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/11/belarus-tech-industry-rallies-around-arrested-pandadoc-colleagues-in-new-video/ Right now it turned into attrition warfare with "Italian" strikes, economic sabotage, marches, etc. There were technology initiatives that helped to detect electoral fraud and few other things. My question is, what do you think can be done on the technology side to help the cause? <comment><USER2> Mesh networking

<comment><AUTHOR> We tried that at first with bridgefy but police were jamming Bluetooth frequency.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best place to look for remote jobs? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> An old colleague of mine, who'd worked for an LA-based tech company for 10 years, went to hand in his resignation. He was moving to Charlotte so he could be with his girlfriend.

His boss begged him to stay -- he could even work remotely. My friend took the deal. He lives in Charlotte now and flies to LA every 2 or 3 months.

The best place to look for remote jobs is to talk to people who have worked with you in the past and trust you.

<comment><USER3> I broadly agree with this, and nice to hear from people who've made it work.

But how feasible is it to do this today when so much of the current crop of advice seems to be teams-over-individuals, nobody-is-indispensible messages telling managers to avoid letting programmers gain this kind of leverage at almost any cost?

<comment><USER4> Don't work for companies like that. I have a few "red flags" which I look for when I interview for companies to avoid this type of mindset and if I see enough red flags I reject the company.

Those places are usually career dead ends anyway, even if you're not bothered about working remotely.

Unfortunately, there are many places which _only_ have employers like that which means you either move or you deal with it.

<comment><USER5> Can you elaborate on what you're looking for at the interview stage to determine a company has this mindset? I've seen it after a few weeks at an org but figuring that out earlier would be helpful.

<comment><USER4> I have a few questions I ask which often tease out the red flags:

* What hours did you and your team work in the last month? (anything that indicates long hours are frequent is a red flag, not because long hours are intrinsically bad (though they are), but because it's usually being used as a proxy for measuring productivity).

* What is your policy on remote working? Who do you have remote working currently and under what circumstances? ("no remote working" is ok for me if there's a non-bullshit reason but YMMV).

* Who is currently your best or one of your better developers? How did you come to that conclusion?

* What characteristics do you look for in clean code vs. technical debt-laden code? How do you handle and plan for paying down technical debt?

* Who reads your team's pull requests? (worst answer is "nobody", 2nd worst answer is "the team").

* Have you read any of my code? What did you think?

I'm usually not looking for a perfect answer to all of these questions, just avoiding the companies that give an impression of widespread systemic dysfunction in their answers or a manager who is clueless.

<comment><USER3> >>> * Who reads your team's pull requests? (worst answer is "nobody", 2nd worst answer is "the team").

What's the _best_ answer you've heard for this one?

<comment><USER4> Something involving not only the team reviewing each other's code but somebody with the power to hire/fire (i.e. the answer "I will").

<comment><USER3> Ah, makes sense. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The HN's Who's hiring thread is pretty good - I found a remote job twice there, and I'm not even in the US.

<comment><USER7> Since it's a throwaway, mind telling a bit more? I'm not from US too and it's hard to find remote jobs there. Are you in one of the nearby countries or Europe?

<comment><USER6> Eastern Europe. One job was on East Coast, which is not that terrible in terms of timezone differences. The other one was in SF, which I honestly though would be too much of a stretch (but applied anyway) - it turns out they found a way to make a tightly-knight coding team across nine timezones work reasonably well.

As for finding remote jobs, I think it's good to be experienced with something niche or in very high demand like Clojure, Haskel, Spark etc. Companies can easily find locals to work on popular technologies, but for the uncommon or hot ones, they sometimes need to bite the bullet and build a remote team - even if they would prefer not to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In all honesty, I work part time on remote jobs. I have a lot of debt I need to pay off, family medical.

I have for the 2 years, applied to 100+ jobs a week. When I don't have work or when I find my current work teetering off, I sit down every Monday, go to 40+ job sites I have collected over time and just apply to as many as possible within the 2 hours or so.

Its hit or miss, but I tend to find something within the month, someone looking for part time remote work.

I am always looking, but since its part time, I get filtered out a lot due to employers wanting full time folks.

Just Hustle. Keep Hustling. Don't stop hustling. It helps me.

<comment><USER9> One of my companies has been growing and our single developer is leaving.

I've been hard at work preparing everything for remote developers to be able to help us out where ever they are and how for as much hours as we can afford them to work. My idea is to scale the company based on a dynamic remote team, where knowledge is shared and only ideas come from within the company itself.

Please tell me where you have been looking for remote work? I'm dying for some good parttimers.

<comment><USER10> The Who is Hiring threads on HN have been pretty useful - you tend to find likeminded people.

If you need any part-time assistance with DevOps-related topics (Continuous Delivery/Integration, etc.), I'd be interested in hearing more - my email is in my profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [https://remotebase.io/companies](https://remotebase.io/companies)

</comment><comment><USER12> Remote work is the #1 perk/benefit for employees now. It's no wonder it's hard to land a remote job because everybody wants them.

The focus should be on increasing your skills, making them more unique and super necessary for employers.

And then use the relationships you have already (eg current employer or clients) to start working remotely.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've gotten two remote jobs off the HN "Who's hiring?" thread. It can be a bit frustrating. I applied to every single remote posting on the thread for 2 months in a row. So I guess that's one job per month (maybe I was lucky or unlucky who knows).

Following are some of my impressions but they are subjective and perhaps a bit speculative.

Generally I've found that the attitude of most US companies is that if they are willing to hire remote, they are usually only interested in hiring candidates inside the US - even if they are a native English speaker (I was an American living in Vietnam). This is very different than the attitude that I've gotten talking to a companies in say ... Singapore or Germany.

Another thing that seems to happen is that some companies seem to throw the REMOTE OK tag to their posting without considering whether or not everyone on their engineering team is actually ok with working with a remote employee. I've done several interviews with teams that were REMOTE OK but had no existing remote employees. Usually it only takes one person to veto a hire. That's something to think about if they are looking at both local and remote candidates. Unless there is a really compelling reason to hire remote, usually they will go local (makes sense). You might not even _want_ to work with one of these companies because they aren't set up for remote work... communication takes a bit more work from all team members - not just the remote ones.

Overall I've had a much more positive experience with the HN: "Who's hiring?"" thread than anywhere else. I think this is because the first point of contact is often an engineer and not an HR person. My resume is a bit odd and doesn't have a BRAND_NAME_SILICON_VALLEY_COMPANY or a BRAND_NAME_UNIVERSITY so it bounces right off the HR department. It's very helpful to be able to talk technology with someone in the initial conversation. If I can get a knowledgeable front-end engineer to look at some of my previous work, then I usually get to the coding round.

I had no luck with any of the remote hiring sites: remoteok.io or weworkremotely.com. YMMV

Ultimately getting a remote job seems to come down to:

1\. Having some kind of portfolio to demonstrate your competence. 2\. Doing as many interiews as possible. Also the more interviews you do the better you get at it.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER14> Job boards

* [http://weworkremotely.com](http://weworkremotely.com)

* [http://remoteok.io](http://remoteok.io)

* [http://remotebase.io](http://remotebase.io)

* [http://workingnomads.co](http://workingnomads.co)

* [http://authenticjobs.com](http://authenticjobs.com)

* [http://folyo.me](http://folyo.me)

* [http://jobspresso.co](http://jobspresso.co)

* [http://wfh.io](http://wfh.io)

* [http://remotefriendly.work](http://remotefriendly.work)

* [http://linkedin.com/jobs](http://linkedin.com/jobs)

* [http://angel.co/jobs](http://angel.co/jobs)

* [http://designernews.co/jobs](http://designernews.co/jobs)

* [http://news.ycombinator.com](http://news.ycombinator.com) (monthly posts for freelance jobs)

* [http://dribbble.com/jobs](http://dribbble.com/jobs) (only design)

* [http://getonbrd.com](http://getonbrd.com) (latam)

\</comment><comment>-----

With broker

Here you apply as a professional, they approve you (or not) and then assign you projects.

* [http://toptal.com](http://toptal.com)

* [http://workmarket.com](http://workmarket.com)

* [http://crew.co](http://crew.co)

* [http://hired.com](http://hired.com)

* [http://onsite.io](http://onsite.io)

* [http://workingnotworking.com](http://workingnotworking.com)

* [http://gun.io](http://gun.io)

* [http://gigster.com](http://gigster.com)

I do not recommend

* [http://upwork.com](http://upwork.com)

* [http://freelancer.com](http://freelancer.com)

* [http://nubelo.com](http://nubelo.com)

* [http://fiverr.com](http://fiverr.com)

* [http://workana.com](http://workana.com)

* [http://guru.com](http://guru.com)

\</comment><comment>-----

Slack communities

Interact with other freelancers. Usually you will find a #Jobs channel.

Free membership

* [http://wearedomino.com](http://wearedomino.com)

* [http://designerhangout.co](http://designerhangout.co)

* [http://launch.chat](http://launch.chat)

Paid membership

* [http://join.nomadlist.com](http://join.nomadlist.com) ($25 month | $75 year | $200 lifetime)

* [http://workfrom.co/chat](http://workfrom.co/chat) ($5 month | $50 year)

* [http://freelance.chat](http://freelance.chat) ($25 lifetime)

\</comment><comment>-----

This list is from an article [1] that I wrote, hope can help!

[1] [redacted]

<comment><USER8> Can anyone confirm, that any of these sites have found them remote jobs? I would love to know as I am interested in joining, but I don't actually think its worth it?

Paid membership * [http://join.nomadlist.com](http://join.nomadlist.com) ($25 month | $75 year | $200 lifetime) * [http://workfrom.co/chat](http://workfrom.co/chat) ($5 month | $50 year) * [http://freelance.chat](http://freelance.chat) ($25 lifetime)

<comment><USER12> As the maker of Nomad List: no, definitely no guarantee and it's not the main purpose of the community at all.

It's just a chat and there's a jobs channel. I know many people found clients etc. through it but it's very informal. Think of it like a bar, not a network event. You might meet the right people, you might not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You can filter for remote jobs on stackoverflow:

[http://stackoverflow.com/jobs?sort=i&l=Remote&d=20&u=Km](http://stackoverflow.com/jobs?sort=i&l=Remote&d=20&u=Km)

</comment><comment><USER16> [https://remoteok.io/](https://remoteok.io/)

<comment><USER17> I don't really like this site and others like it. I could be wrong, but it appears to be an automated scraper of real managed content like [https://weworkremotely.com/](https://weworkremotely.com/) which is what I'd recommend and found my first remote position through

<comment><USER18> The last time I tried one of these "work remotel" sites with an "io" tld, they ended up re-using my email address on other business ventures. Essentially some tard thought that I was a "lead" because I signed up for updates for a specific set of remote job criteria. I never got any of those updates, instead got emails promoting some other website/startup that the same guy ran.

<comment><USER12> Ah I think that was me! Sorry about that. Email alerts are working now, and I'll never send anything else to there anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> [http://weworkremotely.com](http://weworkremotely.com)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm not sure if there really is a best place to look for remote jobs. It depends. I personally don't like aggregators as it's so easy to overlook a job post. I prefer visiting individual job boards. As a side note, I do agree with some of the comments in this thread. The best way is of course to talk to people you know and have worked with in the past. Meetups and events can also be a great place. Perhaps it won't land you a remote job today, but it may in the future.

What kind of remote jobs are you looking for? Tech or non-tech? I've generally found weworkremotely and the HN hiring thread to be among the best. If you're interested in remote jobs at startups, AngelList have a special collection for you [https://angel.co/job-collections/remote/](https://angel.co/job- collections/remote/)

It might be worth your time to look through [http://nodesk.co/remote- work/](http://nodesk.co/remote-work/) for a collection of remote job boards (it's a list so visit them all and save the ones you find useful) as well as [http://workintech.io/](http://workintech.io/) (job boards specifically geared for tech jobs).

Let me know what you're looking for and perhaps I can help point you in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER21> [http://wfh.io/](http://wfh.io/)

</comment><comment><USER22> [https://github.com/kaizensoze/remote-freelance- jobs](https://github.com/kaizensoze/remote-freelance-jobs)

</comment><comment><USER23> [https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote- job](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job)

</comment><comment><USER24> Many I know with remote positions had worked at the company previously and then went to move or quit, and was given permission to work remotely. Obviously one needs to be an effective employee for that to be the case, and not mind occasionally traveling.

Otherwise you could seek employment at a place known for having primarily remote workers.

Contract work and freelance is also easy to remote.

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://weworkhourly.com/](http://weworkhourly.com/) is a good site for jobs.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've worked remote for the last 3 years with two different companies and found both on HN who is hiring posts.

</comment><comment><USER26> Toptal! If you want a referral, let me know! [https://www.toptal.com/talent/apply/#book-just-devoted- progr...](https://www.toptal.com/talent/apply/#book-just-devoted-programmers- today)

<comment><USER27> The interview experience is terrible. I completed a much more ambitious project than I needed to, demonstrating the ability to pick up a complex new framework quickly (React Native). I also implemented a very thorough auth system demonstrating mastery of secure programming (proper salting, message signing, defense against timing attacks.) That didn't matter one bit, I got denied for omitting a requirement which wasn't in the listed requirements and for not communicating to clarify the requirements. Whilst I understand the value of timely communication with real clients, I assumed these guys could get their own assignment requirements correct.

In addition to all this, you will get a much lower rate than you're expecting. While it's true that you set your own rate, they basically told me if I don't charge at the same below-salary rates as the rest of the people on their network, they won't send business my way.

So huge waste of time on the interview, plus you'll make less than a salaried position for the advantage of sporadic work and no benefits. Stay away if you know what's good for you!

<comment><USER8> I couldn't agree more that their interviewing is terrible.

<comment><USER28> Were you interviewing for one of the Core developer teams (the ones actually building Toptal), or for Toptal to work as a freelance developer (to work on Client projects)?

Toptal has a lot of open (internal) positions and their interview process is different than when applying to work on Toptal as a freelancer. Everyone on the Core development team is remote.

[https://www.toptal.com/careers](https://www.toptal.com/careers)

<comment><USER8> Freelance work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm a Sr. Security Engineer at a security firm called Defense Point Security. We are always looking for remote talent. Feel free to shoot me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com with your resume!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Ryan, security is something I'm very interested in. Don't have much experience apart from tinkering. Would love to chat if you had some time?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does anybody know a good place to look specially for part-time Remote work?

</comment><comment><USER31> If you do data engineering, you can work with me: [https://www.caura.co](https://www.caura.co) \- my clients are all remote</comment>


Can't get enough Justin? You can watch Justine - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/29/BUGUEQ1V8B1.DTL <comment><USER2> Wait, shouldn't that be "Had enough Justin?" Man, the Chronicle always has the sloppiest headlines.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is Justine more intelligent than Justin?

Justin Kan, the star of Justin.tv, burst onto the Internet scene two months ago when he strapped a camera to his head to broadcast his existence live on the Web. He says he has been searching for someone more intelligent and charismatic to become the network's next Web celeb. Ezarik is his perfect match, name and all, he said.

<comment><USER4> dont be silly like me and go on justine.tv. big mistake (i am at work)

<comment><USER5> Yeah. This needs to be posted on the top comment level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it might be a good idea to have specialty channels and more interactivity.

See for example this proposal:

<http://groups.google.com/group/rec.models.rc.air/browse_thread/thread/370ab19a29339553>

Also see:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=11679>

</comment><comment><USER7> _"I am going to try as much as I can to do 24/7."_

The hardest problem Justin will face is scaling human talent.

</comment><comment><USER8> Justine is certifiably hotter than Justin. =P</comment>


Diversity in tech: still an issue in 2013? - <AUTHOR> http://www.threechords.org/blog/diversity-in-tech-still-an-issue-2013/ <comment><USER2> You can't assume that this was intentional. The author writes that when he tried to inquire about why there weren't any women asked to speak, he wasn't given a very detailed response. This can mean anything! If these guys deliberately decided to exclude anyone who wasn't a white male: that sucks. But it's extremely possible that this is a coincidence. I know a handful of super-smart female designers and hackers. I'd ask them to join my team any day of the week. I see no difference in their ability due to their gender. That being said: all of them, now that I think of it, are on the extreme end of shy. Not "nerdy basement dweller anti social shy" but the kind of shy that would prevent them from speaking at a conference, let alone volunteer to do so.

I really don't think there is enough ground to say this is one way or another. It's a toss up. Why are we jumping to such harsh conclusions? In my 5-6 year career I've yet to experience gender discrimination. I've worked in Hawaii, LA, DC and Sweden: all of which I've worked alongside respected and talented female coworkers. I really feel like this recent gender inequality stuff is an example of the 80/20 rule. A few edge cases are making us feel like everyone is out to get the girls. Relax! We aren't!

<comment><USER3> Agreed, we actually would love to hire more females at my last job, but there are just not enough qualified women in tech. Most candidates are white young guys.

I don't think it's industry's fault that women choose easier majors and not Computer Science on average.

<comment><USER4> > I don't think it's industry's fault that women choose easier majors and not > Computer Science on average.

Easier majors like mathematics, physics, biology, the other "real sciences", medicine, etc? Those fields apparently don't have quite the same gender imbalance that computer science does.

I don't think it's that useful it is to be looking for someone to place blame on, but I doubt the reason there are fewer women than men in tech is because they are choosing easier majors than computer science.

<comment><USER5> "Easier" is probably a bit of a troll. But it certainly seems the case that women are attracted to certain majors.

Sciences is a funny one, when I was at university I met plenty of female students studying Biology, Psychology and Medicine but very few in Chemistry , Physics or CS.

I wonder if there is some intrinsic reason that women are attracted to certain types of science more than others?

<comment><USER6> But then there's also relatively more women in Mathematics and Astronomy. There's definitely not a simple relationship between how "hard" the science is and how many women are in the field.

<comment><USER5> True, I wouldn't necessarily think there is a difference in difficulty. But sciences that have a hard time attracted women seem to be those that might be considered "lower level". I'm wondering if there is some reason for this which might be either cultural or just a product of biological differences?

<comment><USER6> To clarify, I meant "hard" in the sense of more fundamental or "lower level". In that ranking, mathematics is more "hard" than any of physics or chemistry or biology. Astronomy is a little less clear but I think it's fair to say that it's a "harder" science than biology, and more-or-less on par with physics and chemistry.

<comment><USER5> I would really consider mathematics to be extremely high level because it deals very much with the abstract, but I suppose that could depend on your point of view. Difficult to comment on astronomy because I not sufficiently familiar with the topic.

Maybe my point is more that when people think of biology/medicine/psych they will often put it in a context of people,animals,plants which is more stereotypical "women stuff". Whereas physics/chemistry/CS is more often thought of in the context of "things" like buildings,bombs,cars,computers etc which is stereotypical "guy stuff".

Mathematics is difficult to generalise because it has such a wide range of applications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _"... I would explicitly not be satisfied with a process that resulted in 100% male speakers. I would have stopped once we'd reached, say, 17 male out of 22 possible speakers (being pretty conservative, I think) and insisted that the remaining five (a cool 22% female representation) would have to be women."_

This suggestion is a bad one. It is blatant tokenism.

Try this instead: [http://geekfeminism.org/2012/05/21/how-i-got-50-women- speake...](http://geekfeminism.org/2012/05/21/how-i-got-50-women-speakers-at- my-tech-conference/)

Key takeaway: _"The easiest way I saw for getting more women on stage at the actual event was to get as many women to submit speaking proposals as possible. Selecting presentations was done without speaker information associated with the titles and pitches, so I wasn't able to "reserve" spaces in the program for anyone based on aspects of their identity — and I wasn't interested in that sort of reservation system for this event, anyway."_

Telling people that an unintentionally all-male conference is "inexcusable" is an unproductive (and incorrect, in my opinion) way to address the problem. The industry has a diversity problem, but it's not wrong for someone to not take action to address it. It'd be nice if they did, though. When I try to get people to do things that would be nice, I never use that sort of tone. People who improve diversity issues in the tech industry are doing us a favor. Treat them that way.

<comment><USER8> Article author here. Thanks for the feedback.

I perhaps didn't word that paragraph as well as I could -- my point there wasn't to introduce quotas, but to attempt to nip the problem in the bud. If I'd been organising EdgeConf, and had got to ~80% of my speakers being male with no female representation, I would've dropped everything and made sure that the rest were women. I guess when you include the numbers then this feels like tokenism, but it was mostly arbitrary. My point here was that they should have realised they had a problem before it reached 100%, not start out with the intention to recruit x% women (no matter how relevant or qualified they were) -- that's tokenism, right?

<comment><USER7> Choosing people primarily because they add diversity is tokenism. There are processes that are effective in obtaining underrepresented speakers that are effective and don't require choosing people because they're a minority. We should use those.

I really don't think we should label conferences failures because they do a poor job on the diversity front. Instead, we should encourage them to do a better job next time and show them how.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My experience in university CS and EE programs is this: schools are under enormous pressure to bring more women into tech, yet none of the "typical" techniques for doing so seem to work. At my alma mater, the EE department could not attract _any_ qualified female applicants in my year; they published flyers showing women in class, they sent female students to speak at high schools as representatives of the school, etc., but nothing seemed to work. Where I am now, we are told to use female pronouns in our lectures and research papers and to be as gender inclusive as possible, and professors struggle to find ways to make CS seem more interesting to people who did not spend their teenage years hacking; still, women remain a small minority in the CS and computer engineering programs. There is something happening here that is beyond what schools can do; somehow, high school girls are being convinced that technical fields are not something they can or should pursue.

<comment><USER5> This was my experience too, when I did my CS degree the brochures etc made sure to prominently show female students and the testimonials were balanced to provide around the same amount of female quotes as male.

The end result was still the same though, out of maybe ~90 students there were about 6 females at the start. By the end of the course I think only 2 remained, the numbers were slightly better for the "business computing" courses rather than the hardcore CS but not by much.

There was roughly the same experience at the job fairs towards then end. The companies recruiting were desperate to talk to the female students about technical roles. Even so from what I'm aware most of the female students ended up taking non tech roles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The population is not uniform, yet our sample is? SOMETHING IS WRONG."

[http://www.empiricalzeal.com/2012/12/21/what-does- randomness...](http://www.empiricalzeal.com/2012/12/21/what-does-randomness- look-like/)

Finding a cluster doesn't necessitate a bias.

<comment><USER11> Well, possibly.

Let's compute some simple p-values: Suppose that some fraction p of potential speakers are female. Then the probability that all 22 of the speakers are male would be (1-p)^22.

For p = 0.1, we have a p-value of 0.098, which could reasonably arise by chance.

But for p = 0.20, we have a p-value of 0.0074, which is not so likely to arise by chance.

So if you assume that at least 20-25% of potential, qualified speakers were female--a reasonable assumption, I think--then this "cluster" does indeed suggest a bias.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> this topic is so complex that i am left convinced that anyone who has a strong enough opinion as to write a blog post on the topic, doesn't respect it's complexity.

what is particularly offensive about this post is that the author infers the question "why are there no women speaking at this conference?", yet they completely ignore the possibility that no qualified women applied to speak at the conference. statistically speaking, would this really blow anyone's minds? by doing this you are defaming the organizers by calling their character into question.

the responsibility is left up to the organizers because they did not go out of their way to find women to seed the speaker list. but putting this responsibility solely on the organizers without even exploring other possibilities is irresponsible.

i think i can make my point best with some rhetorical questions directed at the author: why didn't you recommend any of your female peers for consideration as a speaker? what good do you hope to bring to the argument by outright ignoring possible causes of the effect that concerns you?

<comment><USER8> Hello, blogpost author here.

I don't really buy that logic (if something is complex, people who write about it don't "respect" it?). My goal with writing this (as stated in the article) isn't to launch some Twitter hate mob or cancel a conference, but to start a dialogue (which I couldn't continue with the organisers). I don't claim to understand every facet of the issue but I'm most definitely an interested "amateur" if that makes snese.

I don't think it's fair to say I "ignore the possibility" that women could've been invited / applied. My whole point is that we have no idea about this process because the organisers are being opaque about their methods, and in my opinion, if your speaker list is 100% male, you should explicitly explain why that ended up being the case, otherwise we're left to assume that you think there's nothing wrong with that. If they genuinely tried every approach they could to make things more diverse and weren't able to, good -- I'm happy to be proven wrong. But we have no idea whether they did and we can only assume from the communication that it isn't an issue for them -- that's bad.

No need for rhetorical questions:

In the "Postscript" below the entry itself I recommended a good amount of local-or-close-to-London female devs who could've spoken. For all I know, they were approached. But I don't know (see above).

I also tried to answer the question of what "good" I hope to bring: by highlighting an "injustice" as I perceive it, and starting this discussion. It needs to be on everyone's minds.

thanks!

<comment><USER12> >>> I don't really buy that logic (if something is complex, people who write about it don't "respect" it?)

you're right. i was being too broad and my intent was to suggest that anyone who places the blame on one thing does not understand the complexity. your tone here feels less accusatory than the blog post.

>>> if your speaker list is 100% male, you should explicitly explain why that ended up being the case

i agree in that i think this would be the proactive thing to do. i disagree in that i don't think this is a requisite. and that's my point of contention: your post is criticizing and questioning a group of people for not being as proactive as you think they should be. this seems arbitrary. and by this definition, hardly anyone is as proactive as they could be. and that is certainly a problem. but i don't think the way to approach that discussion is by singling out (for most intents and purposes) one guy.

>>> I also tried to answer the question of what "good" I hope to bring: by highlighting an "injustice" as I perceive it

what is the injustice you perceive, while admitting you don't know any of the details? is the injustice that the speaker process is not transparent? if they had a 50% female roster, would you be ok with it not being transparent? what about 20%? again, your flag for concern seems arbitrary and hyper-directed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would think that part of the organizer's response is due to the use of 'inexcusable' in what looks like the initial contact. If a stranger contacted me and used that word in reference to my actions, I would certainly immediately be on the defensive. This could have definitely led to the future lack of communication.

</comment><comment> chestnut-tree Here's a take on getting more female conference speakers from a female blogger (who is a copywriter):

[http://rel.ly/2012/09/conference-organisers-a-point-for- your...](http://rel.ly/2012/09/conference-organisers-a-point-for-your- consideration/)

I'd say many of the points in the above link are equally useful to all speakers and attendees (regardless of gender or colour). So perhaps some simple forethought in planning and prepaparation can go a long way in encouraging a wider range of attendees and speakers.

</comment><comment><USER14> Would you rather them have less qualified speakers for the sake of equality? give it a rest.

<comment><USER15> I find the assumption behind this statement offensive, deeply offensive. Nobody is saying "Nominate less qualified speakers," people are saying "Don't overlook qualified speakers who happen to be brown, beige, female, and/or fifty years old."

If you could find someone beige AND fifty with 40,000 points on hacker news, a popular blog, and experience keynoting conferences, that would be great, wouldn't it?

<comment><USER16> No one cares what color or age you are raganwald. That's the entire point. If you identify yourself by your skin color, then you are in fact racist.

<comment><USER15> "If you identify yourself by your skin color, then you are in fact racist."

That is the most offensively ignorant thing I've ever read on HN. And I've been around a good long while.

<comment><USER16> Identifying yourself by your skin color means you perceive the color of your skin to imply something about you.

Anyone who asserts that the color of an individual's skin implies something about that individual is a quintessential racist. It implies nothing about you as an individual. Anyone who says it does (including you), accepts the premises that every racist accepts: that a color somehow defines the identity or nature of that individual.

"Offensively ignorant" #1) I can't control what offends you, that's your choice. If you are offended, then choose not to be. #2) Ignorance means lack of knowledge or information. What specific information am I lacking in this context?

"I've been around a good long while." Again, no (rational) person in this forum cares how long you've been around. What does that have to do with my argument?

<comment><USER15> These arguments have been going on for nearly a century, and you're trotting out the same tired old arguments. Either you're trolling me, or are ignorant of the ongoing debates/discussions/history of this issue. That's specifically what I mean when I say you're ignorant. Your words display zero awareness of the larger context.

The "We aren't racist or sexist, we're colour-blind and gender-agnostic, we're a meritocracy, and it just happens to be the case that our country club is full of white people isn't important, and you people are racists/sexists for constantly trying to disrupt our happy existence" is old. If you know that, you need to do more than whip it out, you need to acknowledge the many, many arguments against it and explain why you don't think they apply.

If you don't know that, you are ignorant of the subject matter. If you know it but do not address it, you are trolling. Some people call that being "intellectually dishonest," but I prefer to say trolling.

Of course I identify myself by all of the my characteristics that have a significant contribution to my life's experience. I have size 11 feet, but that has never meant much to me, so I don't think of myself as a "Size 11 Guy." I've been assaulted on the street and called a "Nigger" and "Spook" by strangers, so guess what? My skin colour does contribute to defining my experience.

When you call that racist, you're either ignorantly redefining the word "racist" or trolling me. I prefer to think you're ignorant of the implications. Conflating having a life experience that has been affected by his skin colour with white supremacism and Jim Crow laws _is_ wrong. It's also deeply offensive.

I'm offended. I choose to be offended. I choose to speak out against it. That's not the same thing as being "Jerry Springer" angry with you, or curling up in a fetal ball and sobbing, but it is enough to motivate me to act.

And let me tell you flat out, this "I'm not being offensive, you're just choosing to be offended" argument is nonsense, it's like that Simpson's episode where Bart windmills his arms and says "I'm just windmilling my arms, and walking forward, if you get hit that's your problem."

Do yourself a favour, and remove it from your toolbox of arguments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Alright, Got to weigh in here.

I used to work at the ft, and spent a good deal of time dealing with the labs division.

Andrew probably went out of his way to ask for diversity, seriously, he is awesome like that.

I think the issue may be time constraints and the fact that within 3 companies, no females/minorities/etc offered to speak and had the relevant high level of expertise.

<comment><USER8> Hi, article author here.

I did state in the blogpost that I know Andrew is a good chap and I respect him and his intentions, and I don't for a minute think he set out to make this event 100% male. My issue is in his response to my challenge on it, and the lack of acknowledgement by the organisers that an 100% male lineup isn't ideal.

I also find it quite hard to believe that amongst companies like Google and Facebook, there aren't enough highly-qualified female/minority devs who could've spoken. And besides, the speaker roster isn't exclusive to those three companies, either.

thanks!

<comment><USER17> I dont disagree about paragraph 3, what I am saying is the very specific, very fast mobile serving technology experts may have very few women, or at least few who wish to travel to london.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Funny, looks like britruby will be held in spirit after all.

</comment><comment><USER19> Only if we keep talking about it...</comment>


Camera Logic in a 2D Platformer - <AUTHOR> https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JochenHeizmann/20171127/310386/Camera_Logic_in_a_2D_Platformer.php <comment><USER2> Reminds me of this well written blog post also on gamasutra which was pretty exhaustive regarding camera systems.

[https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ItayKeren/20150511/243083/Sc...](https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ItayKeren/20150511/243083/Scroll_Back_The_Theory_and_Practice_of_Cameras_in_SideScrollers.php)

</comment><comment><USER3> The camera in Super Mario World worked at very similarly in 1991. Isn't this stuff pretty standard by now?

</comment><comment><USER4> How about a neural network model predicting where the player will be in one second, and center the camera there?

That lets the player see where they're going.

The network would have the local game map (including enemys positions and velocities), together with a few seconds of player history as input. It could be trained on beta users.

<comment> crooked-v This is like training a neural net to solve algebra problems instead of just solving the algebra problems.

<comment><USER5> Well at least the training data won't be hard to generate?</comment></comment></comment>


Half of all adults in the world have less than $2,300 in wealth (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/848181/half-of-all-adults-in-the-world-have-less-than-2300-in-wealth-credit-suisse-global-wealth-report-indicates/ <comment><USER2> There's a huge difference between being first world poor, and third world poor.

Just my experience, but my first world poor friends, without exception are all bad with money. They have little understanding of how money actually works, have terrible spending habits, are incredibly risk averse, and carry a "money is evil" mindset.

If it's possible for you to live within your means (edit: putting aside illness, addictions, felonies etc), you can build wealth at a good rate in the first world. You may never be a multi-millionaire, but you can be financially secure and stable.

<comment><USER3> Any advice on how to learn to not be "bad with money"?

<comment><USER4> A book that changed my life, Your Money or Your Life, by Vicky Robin and Joe Dominguez, was recently re-published with some updated info. If you're the reading type, you should pick up a copy at your library. It guides you through making peace with your past, figuring out your _real_ income and spending, tracking your savings/spending every month, thinking about expenses in terms of hours of your life, etc.

If you get an older copy, just don't take the investment advise too seriously—it's pretty out-of-date. Everything else is gold.

<comment><USER5> Another good, well-known book on the subject is the Millionaire Next Door: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millionaire_Next_Door](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millionaire_Next_Door)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to point out this article consistently uses the word 'wealth'. I take this to mean all assets owned, including cash assets.

Let that sink in a while.

That would include vehicles, houses, clothes, everything.

I am musing on this problem from my air conditioned office at work. We truly have first world problems.

<comment><USER7> But does this also include negative wealth? Especially in the US, it seems to me that many people have a lot of debt – staring from credit card debt to a too expensive car lease (and a new one ever 3 years) to the house they have payments on for ~50 years? This way, it seems to me that a lot of people (especially younger ones) have a wealth of ~-10,000€.

<comment><USER8> Debt is "bad" when used for depreciating assets (cars, credit cards). Debt is "good" when used as leverage on appreciating assets (real estate) or working assets (tools, business vehicles, servers, or anything else being used to generate cash flow).

If I have an interest only loan on something like a taxi medallions (thanks Planet Money for the example!), I generate cash flow with that asset, and can walk away from the debt at any time through bankruptcy of the owning entity, that's still positive wealth (cash flow).

The less capital you need to obtain access to greater amounts of cash flow, the better the cash on cash return/investment quality.

<comment><USER7> But real estate debt is only good if you can afford it and you buy smart. I know a lot of people who bought a house and sold it later for less even after all the payments because they bought it high and sold it low.

Furthermore, if you pay for something very long, you are also going to be paying a lot of interest. You wouldn't be paying that long if you could afford it and you would be getting a better credit rate if you could afford it.

Unfortunately not everybody is able to invest smartly and thus good debt easily becomes bad debt. It doesn't help that most people potray reale estates as good debt because they really aren't that good unless you know what you are doing.

<comment><USER9> Even if your house ends up being less than you bought it for you still have a house. Assuming you want to live in the same area long term it seems wiser to finish a mortgage and be left with a house that's worth less than you paid for it versus paying rent for the same amount of time and ending up with nothing.

<comment><USER10> I think you're ignoring the significant carrying costs of a house. My house last year had over $11,000 in carrying costs in just taxes, insurance,and interest. Never minding the upkeep and repairs (which are significant yet difficult to estimate). There's other hidden costs like opportunity cost, the return on investment you'd be getting if you didn't have that money tied up in your house.

<comment><USER8> Houses have almost always kept ahead of inflation, and carrying expenses replace rent.

<comment><USER10> Read the post I'm replying to, we're talking about a house that went DOWN in value.

<comment><USER8> I did. It's extremely rare for real estate to decline in value, and walking away from the property is always an option if it has (or a short sale, which is must less detrimental on your credit).

<comment><USER11> > It's extremely rare for real estate to decline in value

You and I must have very different ideas of what the word "extremely" means.

> walking away from the property is always an option

That is only true in twelve states. In the other 38, the lender can sue you to recover the difference between the house's value and what you owe even after they foreclose.

<comment><USER8> As I mention above, you need to do your due diligence. Investing without knowing the rules is fraught with peril.

I only use non-recourse mortgages when investing in real estate. YMMV.

<comment><USER11> The mere fact that you are looking at real estate as an investment rather than as a place to live indicates that you have far more financial resources than a typical person. For a typical person it is not a realistic option to discard their entire social network and move halfway across the country just to get some more favorable mortgage laws.

<comment><USER8> You don't _have_ to live somewhere with non-recourse mortgages. To get started, you only need 3% down, an FHA mortgage, and a 4-plex that cashflows slightly. You then eventually refi that with something more conventional and move on to your next property.

Real estate is only one investment vehicle where you don't need a large amount of capital to realize substantial cash flows. Whenever possible, seek out leverage opportunities.

<comment><USER11> You don't get to choose where you are born or grow up. You are effectively suggesting that people move a thousand miles away from every single person that they know just to get more favorable mortgage laws. That is not doable without starting from a position of privilege.

<comment><USER12> As investment, you don't actually have to live where you are buying. I have a relative 2000 miles away that buys condos in my city as investments. My wife researches them, reports back and they make a buying decision. There's a favorable situation here and they're taking advantage of it. Not by 'privilege'; by smart investing.

<comment><USER11> If you can afford to buy a house that you aren't even living in, you have far more financial resources than the vast majority of people. You seem to be completely deluded about how much a normal person can afford to put into investments.

<comment><USER10> The average person probably shouldn't be buying investment properties anyways. Running income producing properties is more of a part time job than anything else. It takes significant effort to find the right property at the right price with the right renovations in order to make a good profit. Unless you're really willing to put in the leg work (and usually the "sweat equity"), you're better off putting your money in index funds or REITs. It takes the right person to make money in real estate.

I've known several people who wanted to "get into real estate" so they bought duplexes and became landlords. All of them lost money or broke even because they went into it without doing their due diligence. My parents ended up just walking away from their "investment" property and declaring bankruptcy, that's how much they lost out. It isn't buy property -> profit like people think.

Leverage cuts both ways - it magnifies both gains and losses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I only read the headline but does this use local purchasing power in $ equivalents? If not, I don't see what use that number could be.

<comment><USER14> > If not, I don't see what use that number could be.

There is still value in the comparison. Products like mobile phones are going to have similar prices around the globe. Also, it affects the capability to travel.

With my European salary, I can travel anywhere in the world. Norway is more expensive than Turkey, but I can travel to both.

We had a team member for a secondment that came from a country with lower salaries. Our company had a policy where you pay first and then you get refunded. He needed to get all expenses pre-paid because of his full salary not being enough to pay for the expenses.

If you can buy a house in your country for 2,000 dollars. I can also buy a house in your country at that price. Probably I can buy a few of them once I have my basic needs covered in my own country.

So, there are more interesting data points than purchasing power in dollars. But it is relevant when we talk about wealth distribution.

<comment><USER8> What is a secondment?

<comment><USER15> > _" Secondment is the assignment of a member of one organisation to another > organisation for a temporary period. The employee typically retains their > salary and other employment rights from their primary organisation but they > work closely within the other organisation to provide training and the > sharing of experience."_

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

The more common usage I've heard of this word is that someone has been seconded to another group.

<comment><USER16> Another form is "so and so is on secondment to [the new organization]", as in "She is actually a naval officer, but is on secondment to the Air Force as part of an project to standardize repair procedures."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> But isn't the implication that half of all adults in the world have MORE than $2300 actually more incredibly awesome?

<comment><USER18> It really isn't all that awesome, because that isn't very much net worth at all. At a minimum, you'd want everyone's net worth to be at least the average value of a car, I'd think.

<comment><USER19> >It really isn't all that awesome

70% of the world's population lives on less than $10/day. And that is a significant improvement over most of history. If it's really half of the world that has $2300 that sounds very promising to me. I guess "awesome vs not awesome" really amounts to "compared to what?" Compared to the fantasy in my head of how life could be, it's terrible. Compared to real world history, it sounds pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I did a lot of manual excel work in sorting and filtering the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report after I received it.

An important thing to know here is that this is net wealth, not gross wealth. IF you have a $500,000 house and a $400,000 mortgage and nothing in the bank and no student loans and so on, you have $100,000 in net assets.

This is why 33% of Americans and 90% of Russians have less than $10,000 in assets. Massively, massively in debt, or massively, massively income deficient relative to someone from New Zealand or Switzerland.

</comment><comment><USER21> This article is confusing to me because it conflates two things I tend to keep separate in my head - the changing income inequality within one country, and the income inequality of the entire world, mixed together.

Within a nation you can measure and track inequality with something like the GINI coefficient, and for nations like the US, inequality has worsened over time.

Within the world, we've seen massive improvements over time (at least that was my impression reading Hans Rosling) and it seems rather inexorable that globalization will make it improve even more over time.

I'm guessing the problem there is like how "privilege can make greater equality feel like oppression" \- if the levels continue to normalize over time, then the richer countries will get (relatively) poorer. But if the richer countries have higher inequality, then that burden will be mostly felt by the richer countries' poor.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is from 2016. Can we update the title?

<comment><USER23> Yeah the pace of change lately has me mentally filtering out and avoiding any articles / posts / news / documentaries older than about 6 months at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What I've learned from many people is that land is a valuable asset to have. Land is naturally scarce with a fixed supply, so it is a decent vehicle for storing wealth.

Would be cool if you could transfer land titles via blockchain, then you don't need a middleman. If you can provide tiny lots to purchase for people who don't traditionally invest in land, it could potentially be a great way to help those who are in poverty build a bit of wealth.

</comment><comment><USER25> Wealth, is wider and more complicated but if we narrow things to "money," there's an accounting tautology to take note of.

You borrow a dollar from the bank. You buy something from me for a dollar. I put it in the bank.

I have a dollar in the bank. You have -1 dollars, a debt to the bank. $0 net dollars between us. $0 average money-wealth. This is what most money is, debt. The average amount of debt-created money.

If you keep borrowing from the bank, buying from me, and I keep putting money in the bank... both sides of our combined balance sheet will keep growing. For every dollar in my account, you will owe another dollar. The average & sum will always be 0.

So.. if we are looking at just the money part of wealth, it never grows in total.

If you borrowed to spend on consumption, then the story ends here. If you borrowed to buy non-money assets, then you still have those durables. For example, say you borrowed $1 to buy a house. I built it for you. I have a $1. You have -$1 _and_ a $1 house.

In reality, it's hard to differentiate between real assets and money assets. What is a security, really? This part gets hard so I'll leave it at that.

The upshot is that a lot of our collective wealth adds up to $0. For every dollar someone somewhere has in the bank, someone else owes a dollar. In the currently prevailing banking/money/governance system, a lot of the debt is owed by governments so they take a big chunk of the negative side. This leaves more room for people to own rather than owe money.

If you subtract each persons share of national debt from your median person, I would expect the number is negative.

<comment><USER26> > If you subtract each persons share of national debt from your median person, > I would expect the number is negative.

But that would make no sense because that debt is also owned by other people, including a lot of citizens.

<comment><USER25> Median is generally below average.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Forget the 3rd world, half of all US renters have less than $5200 in wealth: [https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf17.pdf](https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf17.pdf) (page 13)

</comment><comment><USER28> Did it factor currency value too? An average Indian has a salary of 400$ or lesser, with which he pulls off a family of 4.

</comment><comment><USER29> More of us who know a thing or two about financial systems should get in the wealth redistribution business.

<comment><USER30> How do you define "wealth redistribution" that you can think it is a business?

<comment><USER31> It is a business whereby politicians buy votes.

<comment><USER32> Then they've been doing a very shitty job at it, compared to their deals with corporations.

<comment><USER33> They don't have to, because they get the votes anyway. Promises and sympathy seem to be all that's required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Are all the offshore banking deposits counted in the Swiss wealth?

If so that's a huge difference maker.

<comment><USER35> How is that a difference maker?

Are you saying that there is a large group of people who have less than $2,000 of 'wealth', but also have Swiss Bank accounts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> [https://www.gobankingrates.com/banking/savings- account/62-pe...](https://www.gobankingrates.com/banking/savings- account/62-percent-americans-under-1000-savings-survey-finds/)

> The overall results from the survey show that 62 percent of Americans have > less than $1,000 in their savings accounts, and a third of those under- > savers have no savings account at all. The portion of savers with balances > over $1,000 is 29.1 percent.

<comment><USER37> This is because savings accounts are an anachronism from another era and serve no modern purpose. It is misleading to conflate savings accounts with savings; no one I know puts their savings in a savings account and many people with plenty of savings don't have one at all. It would be surprising if most Americans had and used a savings account in 2018.

In the US, the median disposable income -- money you can either save or spend on luxuries after all typical living expenses -- is about $1000 _per month_. Savings are not an issue for the majority of Americans. Unless you define it as having a savings account with money in it.

<comment><USER38> What do you do with your cash if not put it into a savings account?

<comment><USER39> Not the OP, but I keep 1-2 months of normal spending in a checking account, and any excess income beyond that goes into investing in index funds. In the rare case that I need to have a lot of cash available for a big upcoming purchase, I'll either just keep that in my checking account too or in a money market account to generate a bit more interest. I do technically have a savings account, but I can't think of a good reason to use it.

EDIT: maybe if my savings account paid meaningful interest I'd use it more, but most retail banks these days don't.

<comment><USER40> What interest rate does your savings account get?

Most of my savings are for short-term things currently (tuition mostly) and so it sits in a savings account with one of the higher APY banks (Ally, Alliant credit Union, and the like). However, when it's money I wouldn't have to pay back somewhere soon, it would definitely go to index funds.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ignore Windows 8 at Your Peril - <AUTHOR> http://spottedzebrasoftware.com/blog/ignore-windows-8-at-your-peril/

<comment><AUTHOR> I meet many developers who seem to be developing for iOS "just because". It seems that iOS gets a free pass for a number of reasons. In my opinion, if you're a small studio or one-person company you're doing yourself a disservice by targeting iOS first. In this article I try to make the case that small, independent studios should target Windows 8.</comment>


Fabricator – modular website design system - <AUTHOR> https://fbrctr.github.io <comment><USER2> Great! Looks quite extensive and deeply thought-out at first glance. Respect for the discipline required to ship something like this by yourself. Keep at it :) Iterate till you win.

Some constructive criticism, if it helps: it takes a while to understand what this is. On the home page, if you can have two panes, some code on the left with your framework and output on the right to quickly get a grasp perhaps?

Good luck!

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback. I'll see what I can do to make the purpose of the project a little more clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My two cents: I work for a medium-sized company that has used Fabricator to build UI component libraries for clients. In each project where Fabricator was used, the deliverable source code (CSS and JS) has been both messy and inconsistent. This is due to that fact that Fabricator does not assist or guide the developer when they develop CSS and JS for their modular design components. (See [http://fbrctr.github.io/building-a- toolkit/assets.html](http://fbrctr.github.io/building-a-toolkit/assets.html)) This diminishes any ability to reuse components/widgets/atoms etc across projects.

The tool does enforce and encourage atomic design architecture when it comes to HTML. At best, I'd describe Fabricator as a static-site/documentation generator. However, I wouldn't recommend using it Fabricator to generate documentation in the 'toolkit' way that's recommended in it the docs because it tightly couples that static site/documentation generation to UI library source. There are plenty of static site generators that work well for generating docs that I'd rather use (jekyll, hugo, etc).

I'd encourage developers considering Fabricator to proceed with caution. Although, it boasts ease of UI development based on atomic designs, the tool does not aide in code modularity or UI component re-usablity.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. Looking around at the source now, it looks like it's not optimized to imply that sort of architectural thinking. That's a bummer. I'd love to have seen it take the React style approach of co-locating all the relevant parts to a module together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is Fabricator? A framework?

Edit: A UI toolkit-toolkit for building design systems.

<comment><USER3> It's really a set of tools to help you build a design system/toolkit. My goal was to bootstrap the development of (Twitter) Bootstraps for clients.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice looking design, but I had no clue what the tool was because I had clicked though too the documentation first! Also, say something about what problems pertaining to design guides this tool solves specifically somewhere front and center.

<comment><USER3> Yikes. I haven't revisited the site copy/design since I launched it months ago. I'll see what I can do to make the messaging more clear. You're right, it takes a bit of digging to discover what Fabricator actually does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like the logo!

<comment><USER3> Done by the super-talented Abby Putinski [https://dribbble.com/abby- putinski](https://dribbble.com/abby-putinski)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> why?

<comment><USER10> Because a big part of learning is reinventing the wheel. Bonus points for creating a whole new taxonomy for things that have decades-old names in the industry :).

<comment><USER11> Which "decades-old names" are you referring to?

<comment><USER10> For instance:

[http://fbrctr.github.io/getting-started/what-is-a- toolkit.ht...](http://fbrctr.github.io/getting-started/what-is-a-toolkit.html)

Reading this I see a lot of things described by new names that we're used to know as "components", "modules" or "widgets".

<comment><USER12> And the page calls them "modules". Where is the new "taxonomy" you describe?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scientists identify main component of brain repair after stroke - <AUTHOR> http://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/scientists-identify-main-component-brain-repair-after-stroke <comment><USER2> This is important news that's analogous to stem cell therapy for stroke patients... like my mother.

This work was supported by grants from the NINDS (NS085019, NS086431) and the American Heart Association (09SDG2310180).

<comment> ezequiel-garzon Has she made progress with this therapy? I'd heartily appreciate as much commentary as possible. My mother also had a stroke many years ago. Best wishes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why is this of particular interest? I work in a neurology research lab that specializes in stroke. There are dozens of proteins that have similar effects, BDNF, EGF, VEGF, NGF, etc., not to mention miRNAs.

This is just one small component of brain repair.

Oddly, it seems that I am seeing more of this on HN lately.

<comment><USER4> How early does these trigger growth ? I find it a bit paradoxical that in a time of resource denial growth should occur. Obviously I'm missing something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Link to article: [http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.41...](http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.4146.html)

Link to pdf: [http://www.nature.com.sci- hub.club/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurre...](http://www.nature.com.sci- hub.club/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.4146.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> >"We found that GDF10 caused many different neurons in a dish to grow, including human neurons that were derived from stem cells," said Dr. Carmichael.

NGF (Nerve Growth Factor) is added to dishes nearly every time such experiments are done to get neurons to grow. I'm sure they plated them on laminin or whatever substrate works best for those neurons as well. I haven't read the paper, but from the layman's description this sounds like hype.

</comment><comment><USER7> Im not sure if this is a new find. Doctors in Japan and Karolinska Institutet in sweden did something similar when they took samples from patients who received cord cell transplants. The findings suggested suggested that brain function can be improved using mesenchymal cells that secrete growth factors and cytokines which activate a mechanism that leads to improved neuro function,neurogenesis and angiogenesis. The issue is that the results should be able to be verified with long-term follow ups to evaluate functional outcomes and possible harmful effects.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11988611](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11988611)

[https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=stem+cells+AND+s...](https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=stem+cells+AND+stroke)

[http://stemcellthailand.org/therapies/stroke-ischemic- hemorr...](http://stemcellthailand.org/therapies/stroke-ischemic-hemorrhagic/)</comment>


The mysterious Japanese company behind the world's best zippers (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/business/2012/04/ykk-zippers-why-so-many-designers-use-them.html <comment><USER2> Shows how one can be a market leader in an old technology that is "commoditized."</comment>


Hacker Monthly Breezed Past 2,000 Paid Subscribers - <AUTHOR> http://hackermonthly.posterous.com/hacker-monthly-breezed-past-2000-paid-subscri <comment><USER2> So that would be a max of $15,363 monthly income or a minimum of $2,416.

Since he collected a year up-front, he has generated a max of $184,360 to a minimum of $60,755.

<comment><AUTHOR> A portion of the number comes from contributors, students* and AppSumo bundle.

*We've been offering students free digital subscription, but not yet publicly announcing it (still figuring out the best way to implement it).

<comment><USER3> Could you verify the same way facebook used to, via active .edu email address confirmation?

<comment><AUTHOR> That would probably be the best way. The downside is that some people would continue using .edu email address even after they long graduated (any solution for that?).

<comment><USER4> not perfect but filter for /alumni/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Im quite impressed. I never thought it would actually make it. Congrats guys!

I thought it would be just another side hack and be left to nothing, but surprisingly, it worked.

Now all you need is to hit Barnes and Noble Magazine Shelfs to hit it big. haha

</comment><comment><USER6> It was difficult to find the main site from the posterous blog. Resorted to editing the URL to hackermonthly.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, added.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how many of those new subscriptions came from the AppSumo deal that they were a part of last month - I bet a significant number, which means they aren't full paying customers, because of the reduced rates on the deal.

</comment><comment><USER8> Amazon.com lets you self publish. You should look into getting it into the Kindle store. I'd love to get it streamed into my iPad and read it on the Kindle application.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will look into it later. Currently, the best way to read it (both PDF and EPUB) is directly drag them to iBook. Also you could try the MagCloud app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's the split of digital / dead tree edition?

<comment><USER10> Let's guess. I guess...92% digital, 8% print.

<comment><AUTHOR> Way less than that (the print proportion), partly due to the high international shipping fee ($10/issue). Most readers are just happy to get the digital edition and print it out.

<comment><USER11> i was wondering about that, UK is $2 whereas NL is $10, seems unfair for how close they are compared to san francisco - new york

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I suppose this would be an argument in favor of the print industry _not_ being dead.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not. In fact, it probably it might be the next big thing, again, if done right. To see another example other than HM, check out 8faces (<http://8faces.com>). They sold out their first issue within hours, and currently in the progress of selling out 2,500 copies of their second issue.

<comment><USER12> In essence, is the transition from print to electronic actually cyclical? As in, will print journalism full transition online only to realize that people still want print?

Why would anyone want print when they can get the same information online? Another way of looking at it is, "Why would anyone hassle with reading news online when they can get it delivered to them in print?"

There will always exist a market for physical content. I will always prefer to read news off a newspaper than on a screen. Print may never be delivered in "real time" but in the end, do I really need to read articles _as they are written_?

The gradual transition to online nowadays comes as a result of print journalism generally sucking. HN Monthly offers a print subscription to _quality_ news, and that is why it is succeeding.

In sum, the argument has nothing to do with convenience or "real time". It's all about content. No matter which delivery method you choose, deliver great content and you will succeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a real example of crowdsourced publishing done right. Well done!

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't understand this -- are the article authors compensated in any way or only cc type articles chosen to be printed?</comment>


Api.ai – Speech API for apps and devices - <AUTHOR> http://api.ai/ <comment><USER2> Use it for some time, very good!</comment>


What can we learn from how compilers are designed? - <AUTHOR> http://www.tedinski.com/2018/03/13/how-compilers-are-designed.html <comment><USER2> That's why I like Clojure's philosophy of a few data structures and many functions operating on them.

Of course Alan Perlis wrote "It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than 10 functions on 10 data structures." in 1982.

But pipelining outputs into inputs (you'll see it a lot in F# too) is just a simple, flexible concept.

As Rich Hickey once said, "We're data processors".

I think we somehow took a wrong path when OO got embraced as wholly as it did back in the 90s or so.

<comment><USER3> > That's why I like Clojure's philosophy of a few data structures and many > functions operating on them.

Which in practice means that a few data structures that are _not_ perfect for solving a specific problem are forced (with repeated hammer blows) to bend to the problem. Like the old style LISP AList's used as a map. Probably the _worst_ possible structure for representing a map. But yeah it kinda works as long as you don't have much data.

<comment><USER4> > Probably the worst possible structure for representing a map.

Not really.

But native hashtables had been added to Lisp in the 70s...

<comment><USER5> Under the right circumstances, a lookup table could be worse. In a simple interpreter, I would hate to pass down a vector of pairs for the environment representation; it would have to be wholly duplicated to extend the environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For my main compiler project I've actually been moving away from this "pipeline" style because it's inflexible and not great for incremental operations.

Inspired by the Forth dictionary, gradually I've arrived at a design where the compiler behaves like a database server—it takes requests in the form of program fragments and produces responses in whatever form you want by querying the database and generating intermediate results as needed. The pipeline is still there, it's just not hard-coded, and modelled in a more relational way. (I plan on doing a detailed blog post on this after I land the code.)

Ordinary compilation? Push a bunch of files and pull the generated code of anything referenced transitively from the program entry point or library exports. Documentation or TAGS generation? Pull the appropriate metadata. Syntax highlighting? Pull the lexical classes and source spans of the tokens—no parsing needs to happen. In general, if you want an intermediate result, you can just ask for it—there's no hard-coded code path for "run the pipeline up to this point and bail".

The advantage is that this is amenable to producing partial results even when there are program errors—a lexical error doesn't prevent parsing, it just produces an "error" token that can be displayed in an editor without compromising higher-level features like syntax highlighting, autocomplete, navigation, &c.

<comment><USER7> Many pipeline approaches include error tolerance. I specialize in incremental lexing and parsing for IDEs, and even have experience with some state based error recovery (so, for example, unbalanced braces remember previous brace associations, or a bad transient parse error doesn't destroy the good trees on the precious run). I don't see how a database approach would help, you just need to incrementalize the structures in your pipeline (or have reproduceable persistent markers like Eclipse's elastic positions).

<comment><USER6> Ah yeah, you can have incremental structures without an incremental pipeline or vice versa, they've just worked well together for me.

<comment><USER7> You can make your pipeline mostly oblivious to the incremental nature of each stage, which has some SE benefits. However, I like to run all my phases as damage/repair work lists after the initial incremental lex stage: token changes dirty trees associated with them, putting them in a list for releasing, which then can cause retyping of those nodes, causing those to go on a work list, though the parsing worklist is cleaned before the type checking one before the execution (for incremental live programming) one.

I've never seen two IDE-oriented incremental compilers use the same approach actually, there is a lot of diversity here.

<comment><USER6> That's an interesting approach. Are you generally working in imperative languages? Last I recall you were using…Scala?

I'm new to it, but it seems like there's a lot of innovation quietly happening in this space.

My approach is more like a declarative build system, I guess. To add TAGS support, for example, you add an output that can generate a TAGS file, and declare that it depends on a resolved AST (one with fully qualified names). Then you can make queries like "pull tags from {this set of files, the whole database, everything in this namespace, &c.}". Dependencies are resolved, and errors reported, mostly automatically unless you want to change the default behaviours.

If you want to _regenerate_ tags after changing some input, then as an optimisation you can compute only the diff resulting from whatever dependency was changed upstream (usually a file, ultimately) at the memory cost of caching intermediates (which right now means leaving the server running).

<comment><USER7> I haven't done anything with Scala in a long time.

Tree incremental is important for large projects with < 50 ms response times. But it does require memoizing lots of information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a good article. Indeed, compiling a programming language is such a complex job that is frankly quickly dismissed and taken for granted. My view is that learning and writing a simple compiler will make most of developers on notch better. The very least you'll understand why parsing HTML or XML with regex is such a bad idea :)

Another golden resource is the Dragon book: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compilers:_Principles,_Techniq...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compilers:_Principles,_Techniques,_and_Tools)

<comment><USER9> Can I ask, as somebody that hasn't dived into Compiler's yet; not out of not wanting to, but more a 'so much to learn' scenario

How does it make a developer better? I see this repeated often, but I don't really see how.

<comment><USER10> For example: once you see what the compiler does, you can write readable code without sacrificing efficiency.

When you don't really know what's going on under the hood, consciously or unconsciously you write code based on assumptions, which a lot of the time are wrong. It's very hard to exemplify because the mental model programmers have about programming can be very different, and therefore the benefits of a better understanding provided by learning about compilers can have different effects on different people. And still, everyone who has tried recommends learning about compilers.

Programming languages are our most fundamental tool as programmers, and yet it's pretty much impossible to make a fair assessment of why they are designed the way they are, why they work the way they do, why they provide the abstractions and structures they provide, until you try for yourself. Understand programming languages better => use them more naturally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find this interesting from the perspective of the design mentality. I've read so many comments of people here starting with "I am a PL researcher" and "I am a compiler designer" often with a qualification of "but not the other one", it seems like unless you are doing a Forth style language you're almost never both...?

My interpretation of the authors main points are: breaking compilation down into a pipeline of blocks has obvious advantages, but much like when we break any large implementation problem down into blocks, we can loose sight of the whole - in short, it's important to maintain a holistic view while simultaneously making decisions of where to "cut" your problem. But that holistic view to me seems to mostly end at the intersection between compiler and language.

When I started my job it involved a lot of one way design implementation, as these became more adventurous I gradually found myself questioning the designs more, until now where I see basically no division between design and implementation - when a "design" for something comes my way I basically pull it to pieces and interrogate the author in order to understand all of the decisions behind the design and then rebuild it (with the author) with implementation and practicality in mind, it always benefits everyone involved. I feel like this previous division that i destroyed is quite similar to this division in compiler and language, but I am mostly an outsider to that world so i could be wrong.

</comment><comment><USER12> Compiler design is somewhat unusual just because there are so many different cases to deal with. An AST might have 20 different kinds of expressions, and anything traversing it needs to deal with them all.

This means that whatever solution you come up with needs to scale to lots of cases, more than you can comfortably remember. And for a language that's not stable, you need to update all the tools when the AST changes, to handle the new construct.

(Lisp isn't immune; it calls them special forms and they're uniformly represented as lists, but you still have to deal with them for any kind of deep analysis.)

<comment><USER7> You can traverse the AST via internal functions (in OO terminology, virtual methods that make the case matching implicit on this). It really isn't much of a problem if the functions are typecheck, codegen, execute, etc...

I don't really get the appeal of using giant mega case matches in a compiler.

<comment><USER13> AST transformations are a exemplary instance of the Expression Problem. Solutions in mainstream languages, eg the Polyglot framework for Java, lead to ugly overengineered code. Writing AST transformations with multimethods might be nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the OO part is a bit ranty, but other than that it's a nice article: Software engineers can really learn a lot from compiler design. Never regret I did take that lecture (we excluded C typedefs and some other meanies). If you're bored and want to learn, write a LLVM frontend, and maybe a simple optimization (e.g. constant propagation or dead code elimination).

There is a tutorial for a functional language in the LLVM docs, or just do a subset of C, or your own DSL ;)

</comment><comment><USER15> This all assumes that you want most code to have the properties of compilers, but this seems misguided to me. Compilers don't handle complexity well, they're unreliable and not stable against small random purtubations, naïve approaches tend to be inefficient and complex ones global, etc. A lot of this is just that they're solving a difficult task (converting terrible C code into less terrible assembly), admittedly.

<comment><USER16> I wonder if there are any ways to build simple to compile but still useful languages outside of just doing Lisp or Lisp-like.

<comment><USER17> Almost every language is less thorny than C because of C's context-sensitivity and the preprocessor. Pascal is a classic language that's useful but easy to compile. Any of Wirth's successor languages are too (occam, etc.). SML is a step up, but still not intractable. Java 1.0 might be fun.

<comment><USER16> Hm fair point. BTW I'd just like to say thank you for Crafting Interpreters, been going through it (in c#) and enjoying it immensely.

<comment><USER17> Thank you! That's great to hear. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another place where lexing and parsing interact is JavaScript. Consider the lexer encountering the text "/x;".

If it occurs in code like:

       let a = /x;

then it needs to continue lexing a regular expression.

If it occurs in code like:

       let a = b /x;

then it needs to lex it as division sign, identifier x, semicolon.

<comment><USER19> At least it's not bad as Perl, where the _same_ code can be parsed as division or a regex depending on the 'type signature' of a function it names:

[https://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=663393](https://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=663393)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Regarding splitting lexing and parsing, I argue the opposite point here:

 _When Are Lexer Modes Useful?_ [http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/12/17.html](http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/12/17.html)

I assert that scannerless parsing is a bad idea, for reasons of efficiency and code complexity. He's making some argument around generated parsers which I don't understand.

I believe he's conflating the issue of whether you generate your parser with whether you have a separate parser and lexer. (The OSH parser is hand-written, while the lexer is generated. This is actually the opposite of what you see in many languages -- e.g. in Python the parser is generated, while the lexer is hand-written.)

There's no reason that you can't produce good error messages with a separate parser and lexer. In fact I believe you'll get better error messages. I use a "lossless syntax tree" representation which allows good error messages:

 _From AST to Lossless Syntax Tree_ [http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/02/11.html](http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/02/11.html)

(On the one hand, it's like a parse tree, but less verbose. On the other, it's like an AST, but it doesn't lose information.)

\----

Regarding intermediate representations, I had a lot of success with Zephyr ASDL, which is a DSL for using algebraic data types in procedural/OOP languages:

[http://www.oilshell.org/blog/tags.html?tag=ASDL#ASDL](http://www.oilshell.org/blog/tags.html?tag=ASDL#ASDL)

I also don't really see the strong contrast betweeen OOP and FP he's making. Oil uses both styles -- the IR is at the center, using a functional style (data without methods), but the other components are objects/modules/interfaces/encapsulated state/data hiding.

IMO OOP and FP are the same thing when done right: they're about being principled about state. The way I see it, a pure dependency injection style is pretty much equivalent to functional programming.

Python is described with ASDL: [https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/master/Parser/Python....](https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/master/Parser/Python.asdl)

ASDL has some relation to "Stanford University Intermediate Format", which sounds like it could have been a precursor to LLVM IR. In other words it happens to be used in interpreters right now, but it was designed for compilers.

[https://www.cs.princeton.edu/research/techreps/TR-554-97](https://www.cs.princeton.edu/research/techreps/TR-554-97)

[https://suif.stanford.edu/suif/](https://suif.stanford.edu/suif/)

\---

I also wrote about "the Lexer Hack" here: [http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/12/15.html](http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/12/15.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> The use of middleware seems to embrace this concept too for very flexible systems. Just pass it along the assembly line and you don't care who's next in line or who was before you.

</comment><comment><USER21> The parser/lexer separation feels especially useless in a Lisp interpreter, where the parsing is trivial.

<comment><USER5> It's there. E.g. ANSI Lisp has the concept of a token. Reading multiple objects until a closing ) via _read-delimited-list_ is like parsing. The actions which accumulate token constituent characters into a token and produce some object from it, like a number or symbol, are like lexing.</comment></comment>


Accept-Charset Is No More - <AUTHOR> http://hsivonen.iki.fi/accept-charset/

<comment><USER2> "There is no way for any non-UTF-8 encoding to represent something more, since everything gets converted to UTF-16 internally."

Internally in what? Certainly not servers, but do all major browsers use UTF-16 internally?

Also, does Unicode include all characters from various east Asian encodings now?

<comment><USER3> The DOM and ECMAScript both assume that strings are sequences of UTF-16 codepoints. So while a browser could use non-UTF-16 internally it wouldn't help much because you would have to convert to UTF-16 in all the externally- facing APIs anyway.

<comment><USER4> Nearly 100% true, but not quite: <http://mathiasbynens.be/notes/javascript- encoding>

<comment><USER5> '𝌆'.length == 2

ಠ_ಠ They did the same kludge as the old narrow builds of Python.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Chrome 16.0.912.77 m is sending Accept-Charset:ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 for me.

<comment><USER7> I was wrong to claim Chrome didn't send Accept-Charset.

Before I wrote the post, I opened another charset-related test case in Chrome (on two operating systems even) and after opening that URL and the relevant URL in various browsers thought I had opened the relevant test URL in all browsers I was testing, but apparently I hadn't opened it in Chrome on any OS.

Very embarrassing. Sorry.

So 4/5 OK, 1/5 still to go. Not quite newsworthy yet. :-(

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone know the historical justification for charset negotiation in the first place? I guess the idea was that the browser and the server would agree on what encoding they'd use and the server would auto-translate for the web visitor. But I can't imagine that ever being used in practice.

<comment><USER9> The idea wasn't necessarily for the server to translate because back when this was invented, there was no Unicode and no UTF-8, so there might very well have been no way to losslessly translate.

The client would send an Accept-Charset header to tell the server what it supports and the server would send either the content in the appropriate encoding (if available) or a "406: Not Acceptable" error.

<comment><USER8> I think Unicode predates Accept-Charset. Unicode 1.0 was published late 1991. Accept-Charset was formalized in the HTTP 1.0 RFC (1996). Usage presumably predates that, but it's not described in the HTTP 0.9 docs (which say ASCII only!) <http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP/AsImplemented.html>

But what really matters is widespread acceptance of Unicode and UTF-8 and that was definitely later in coming. Thanks to dchest below for referencing a transcoding server. It's interesting the HTTP/1.0 docs characterize Accept- Encoding as a way to signal the client could handle something other than ASCII and ISO-8859-1.

Google started favoring UTF-8 in search result pages somewhere around 2002 or 2003.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Huh, is this a hoax? My installation of Chrome still sends Accept-Charset for every HTTP GET request.

<comment><USER3> It seems like a weird thing to perpetrate a hoax about :)

A more reasonable conclusion might be that the author made a mistake when testing Chrome. Having passed on the reports that Chrome still produces the header, the author has verified that this is indeed the case. I guess he will update the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting. Related: Can anyone explain to me how different versions of Unicode are handled?

<comment><USER12> It isn't, they are backwards compatible.</comment></comment>


LookSharp, an Internship and Job Listings Platform, Acquires Readyforce - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/02/looksharp-readyforce/

<comment><USER2> Super excited for these really talented teams to work together!</comment>


Ask HN: What happened to https://www.stockfighter.io/? - <AUTHOR> It seems that the ssl cert is expired and the domain is returning a 504 timeout. <comment><USER2> See "We're winding down Starfighter" (twitter.com)[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12415786](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12415786) (112 points, 163 days ago, 33 comments)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I did the search using only 'Stockfighter' and I got no results.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Instantly make any Netlify form PCI DSS compliant - <AUTHOR> We are big fans of Netlify [1] (it powers our website and blog!) and we wanted to scratch our own itch to comply with GDPR, as well as various upcoming data security regulations [3]. So we, Very Good Security [2], just released an add-on that lets you securely collect sensitive data (e.g. payments, PII, SSNs, identification, etc.) via web forms on Netlify.
With the new add-on, Netlify customers are shielded from data liability, breach risk and the compliance issues that come with holding sensitive data. So you can inherit PCI compliance from VGS (a level 1 service provider) and can fast-track other compliances like SOC2, HIPAA, etc.
You can read more about our add-on for Netlify on VGS' blog:
https://blog.verygoodsecurity.com/posts/securely-capture-sen...
and on Netlify's blog:
https://www.netlify.com/blog/2019/06/06/very-good-security-a...
Watch a quick video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtYzLdpSeJo
Try it out and let us know what you think! We'd love your feedback.
[1] https://www.netlify.com
[2] https://www.verygoodsecurity.com
[3] California Consumer Privacy Act
[3] Colorado Protections for Consumer Data Privacy
[3] New York's SHIELD act (https://www.nysenate.gov//legislation/bills/2019/S5575) <comment><USER2> Very cool, will try this out! I've been doing a fairly extensive integration with their primary VGS tokenization service and it's been a solid, though young platform with a few missing pieces they have promptly addressed. The use of a programmable tokenizing L7 proxy seems to me the best path forward to isolate sensitive data in systems for regulatory and security purposes. If you store sensitive data in your application, you really should look into it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am not 100% but I believe that 'Sure name' should be Surname [https://www.screencast.com/t/VmRZ1dlH0T](https://www.screencast.com/t/VmRZ1dlH0T) [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/surname](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/surname)

<comment><AUTHOR> Eagle eye! Well spotted. Flagged it to be fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If I ask someone to place a diamond in a safe at Fort Knox, and then publish the name and password to retrieve the diamond on a billboard, is the diamond safe?

</comment><comment><USER5> This is interesting, but one thing I didn't understand from the video demo (which shows a background check form and a payment form)

Aren't these SaaS tools like Stripe (payments) and Checkr (background checks) already built in a way that allows you to never have sensitive PII like payment info or SSN touch your servers?

<comment><USER2> Yes they are, BUT if you use stripe(or any processor) for monthly recurring charges or tokenization, the card data is permanently locked to processor. So what happens next year when you decide you need to use a different processor for some reason? Well you're out of luck and will have to force all of your customers to re-enter payment data to change processors.

<comment><USER6> Stripe supports migrating your customer data to another processor:

[https://stripe.com/docs/security/data- migrations/exports](https://stripe.com/docs/security/data-migrations/exports)

And it looks like they also support importing data from other providers:

[https://stripe.com/docs/recipes/switching-to- stripe#migratio...](https://stripe.com/docs/recipes/switching-to- stripe#migration)

<comment><USER2> That is good and some gateways do this as well but many don't and, having the tokens under your control means you don't have to co-ordinate a transfer between 2 other parties, but just proxy a new outbound request to your new provider and be done with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this new service HIPAA compliant as well? Can I collect patient health info, have it stored in a separate vault from all my other data.. and have it be encrypted at rest?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! Thanks for asking.

If you have questions about a specific use case, feel free to email me (info in my profile).

(disclaimer: I work for VGS)

<comment><USER7> Excellent.. I will be in touch ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is great, thanks! The first two links are truncated and broken, however. Please update!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for catching. Not sure why it truncated. Should be fixed now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting, blog seems broken, bad copy paste?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for flagging. Looked like it was working at first, but must have been truncated & cutoff. Should be fixed now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice work VGS team!</comment>


My horrible experience at FedEx Kinko's - <AUTHOR> http://www.renownedmedia.com/blog/my-horrible-experience-at-fedex-kinkos/ <comment><USER2> These days I use Hellofax when I get something that would typically require printing, filling out, scanning and emailing. You can skip the printing part and do the rest through their site...works great! I've used it for leases, bank account applications, state mandated registration forms, address change forms, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> I printed something at a FedEx Kinko's once. Hopefully never again.</comment>


Will Yahoo Try to Get Its "Cool Again" by Doing a Deal for Tumblr? - k-mcgrady http://allthingsd.com/20130516/will-yahoo-try-to-get-its-cool-again-by-doing-a-deal-for-tumblr/

<comment> k-mcgrady Personally I've seen Tumblr's growth increasing rapidly in the last 12 months or so. It still seems to be used mainly by creative types (artists, musicians etc.) but more and more tech companies are using it to host their blogs and I've noticed a lot of techies have also started hosting their personal blogs on it. I think the Dashboard works best with visual content rather than written content and this might be something holding Tumblr back from growing quicker (although changing this could lose them their USP).

It would be interesting to see how the 'modern' Yahoo would handle the acquisition of such a popular site. I don't think there's anything this big that they've purchased in the last few years.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yahoo can't even get its mail & homepage to sync correctly via the ajax calls it makes - I don't see it being overly successful at much, to be honest

</comment><comment><USER2> I don't know if this will make Yahoo cool again but if Aol can remain a successful internet company then Yahoo probably can too.

</comment><comment><USER3> If they did, I wonder if they'd censor it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yahoo stinks of uncool while Tumblr is hip, addictive and growing fast. Never the twain shall meet.</comment>


Cryptocurrency startup Prodeum pulls an exit scam, leaves a penis behind - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/01/29/cryptocurrency-prodeum-scam-exit-penis/ <comment><USER2> the techcrunch thread on same topic is bigger (but with a less obvious title): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16269884](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16269884)

</comment><comment><USER3> the word "penis" is seriously censored on this site?

Unreal.

<comment><USER4> OP likely self-censored.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, I posted the title and HN removed the word silently leaving an awkward title. I then edited the post and added [censored] in its place so it wouldn't look weird.

<comment><USER5> I can't remember what the code does in that situation but you could probably just have restored the word itself. I've done so above.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip and edit!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>