Ask HN: How can I make an extra 30-50k a year? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
One of my goals this year is to increase my income by 30-50K. I am currently employed full time and am looking for guidance from the thoughtful and capable  HN community on ways to do that. I can code and design. I have been part of a small team running a startup and have worn many hats on the technology and client facing sides. My biggest strength is to be able bridge business and technology. I can talk technology to non technical folks and talk business to technical folks.
Thanks for your help !! <comment><USER2> If you can design, code, and talk business goals with non-technical people, it is _highly_ unlikely that the W-2 rate paid by your current day job is in the near ballpark of what you'd reasonably expect to achieve by going into consulting at an appreciable fraction of full-time. Quitting your job and hanging your shingle as a consultant-who-solves-business-problems-with- technology will trade a lot of the certainty of your biweekly paychecks for more occasional payments on invoices which would blow your mind.

If you add the constraint "I want to keep my day job", then I'd suggest negotiating with them (and, er, not mentioning that you're unwilling to leave them prior to having that conversation).

There are many people who have, in recent memory, made appreciable fractions of your goal numbers by taking one service offering which they'd be really good at as a technologist -- say, designing iPhone apps or what have you -- and wrapping that service into a teaching product. There are a variety of form factors: book, video course, in-person training event, online webinar, yadda yadda. This does not get less viable if you mix substantial business expertise into the offering or your promotion of it.

If you want to execute on that, I'd start building up a mailing list of people who have given you permission to talk to them about $BROAD_OUTLINE_OF_YOUR_TOPIC post-haste. Virtually no plan for building products gets worse if you have 100, 300, 500, etc people who are willing to hear from you about it.

<comment><USER3> Let me put your point in plain words:

Consulting currently pays a lot of money. You can make 6 figures without much hassles. Don't quit your job to start consulting without having a group of prospect to sell to. Build your prospects list first, by doing content marketing and networking in site like linkedin.

If you want to take the business route, you can make that amount of money by automating tasks and selling the software. What should you automate? Everything that has to do with lead capturing is worth its zeroes and ones in gold. Start there.

Anything else?

Yes! Start blogging. About your skills. About your projects. Get people reading about you. Even if you don't have an idea at the moment, people will gravitate towards you and give you good ideas.

Whatever you do, realize that this _will take time_. At the very least, two months of work. Worth it? You bet!

Good luck.

<comment><USER4> If you can, just meet with people. Sit down, talk about their problems, and how you can help them. Far more direct than blogging and hoping someone reads it.

<comment><USER3> I don't disagree with your point, but blogging has a purpose. Which is to define him/her as a an expert in the field. When you go in to a business meeting, your credibility plays a big part. Through blogging, you develop your credibility. Same as publishing a book (even if its self-published). Being a published author makes a huge difference. I've had people contact me from the other side of the planet asking for a consultation. All through books and blogs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to do freelance web development on the side in addition to a full time job, and I pulled in the income numbers you're aiming for, but I must admit it was hell. There's little worse than coming home from a stressful 9 hour day at the office and realizing you need to work another 5 hours for a bitchy freelance client. Or telling your friends, no, once again, I can't come this weekend because I have to work.

If you can design and code then you've got more skills than I had (I am code only), so I'm sure with a little effort you could put together a decent side business. Just be prepared for the life sucking that comes along with working 100+ hours/week. But it isn't all bad, working for yourself, sometimes, provides its own satisfaction.

Eventually my freelance business grew so big I quit my full time job--that was always my goal and it is the reason I was willing to suffer so much at the beginning.

<comment><USER6> Probably the most common question. Where do you get clients?

I have two clients for some freelance and I do web application for them, earning me $19k over last 2 years ( plus $8k finishing in another month). They run their own businesses and they are very happy with them, but I am not sure how to expand past them. I don't think I will ever do it full time, but if I can choose the right gigs, could definitely be worth it.

<comment><USER5> I got all of my clients via word of mouth. It sounds weird on the surface, but honestly, as a web developer, I didn't even have my own website. I can't think of a single client who didn't approach me first.

I guess it is a bit of a chicken and egg problem, but there's always a way to get those first couple clients. Reach out to your personal network, everyone knows someone who needs a website. Price the first couple of jobs cheap, do good work, and your name is bound to get passed around. Also after you build your first dozen sites, many of them are bound to require maintenance-- eventually you end up with fairly consistant work even if you aren't closing new deals all the time.

After a year or so I had enough work to support me full time, and after 2 years I had enough work to bring on a second person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You didn't state your current salary. If you are making $40k and want to make an extra $30-50k the answer will be very different than if you make $250k and want to make an extra $30k.

My suggestion. Hire a maid. That will save you 8 hours a week. She (yes I'm sexist it will be a she) will make $15 an hour and work 4 hours saving you 8-12 hours. You can work at Radio Shack and earn $22 an hour. Working 12 hours a week that will make you $13k. Use your discount to buy things you were going to buy anyway save another $4k a year. That is 17K and you will have only spent $3k to get that. Netting you $14k for the year. If you want $30k double your hours to 20 hours a week.

<comment><USER8> This was an odd post. And nobody at any radioshack makes anywhere near $22 an hour.

<comment><USER9> The manager doesn't make anywhere near $22 an hour? Really? That's lousy even by retail standards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How do you look in lingerie?

On a serious note, never stop looking for the next job. If it comes up, move. It'll add more stress to your life, but not only will you learn more about software, you'll learn more about how organizations work and what you can do to maximize your perceived value to the company.

<comment><USER11> Thanks, you just made me spill my drink.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What is your full-time job? How long have you been there? Does your boss trust you? Is there a way you can contribute more value to your current employer? For example, is there an important but difficult project waiting for someone to step up and take ownership? Or do you have an idea for a side project that if you successfully implemented it, would improve your efficiency or even that of your entire team?

Promotions and raises are more likely to come when you "step up to the plate" and show how much value you can create. And then you can simply ask to be rewarded accordingly. If you really did your boss a solid, and he's a good manager, he will recognize it and might even give you a pay bump without you even having to ask.

If your boss shoots down your ideas, or lets you implement them and then doesn't recognize them or takes all the credit for them and rewards you with nothing, then update your resume and move to another place where your value may be appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER13> I would say not having a goal of "increase my income by 30-50K" might be a start.

Moneys not everything, it probably shouldn't be a goal.

Instead by focusing on making yourself happy you'll be better off and probably be earning more.

Just a theory.

<comment><USER14> You know, I'm about to rant on an ideal that I hold. So what about money? Money is everything if you think about it. The second you stop having money is the second you are on the street without anything. So money is _something_.

You can go through and live in a decent house with a decent car and you'll be happy if you make yourself happy but I just don't see how people can argue that money doesn't make you happy or happier. I get that in and of itself if you fuck yourself over and you don't keep your friends or family or kids and you work so much that you will be unhappy even with money, but money can make you happier even if its indirectly. You may be one to sit at home and do nothing on the weekends and I get that, but having money allows you to go out and experience things. It buys experiences that you normally couldn't have.

Having no money does limit what you can do in life. The case can be made that you are happier not doing things but I think if you are the least bit adventurous money can buy you pleasure, joy, experiences shared with loved ones, and in the indirect result happiness. I believe family and friends are more important, but saying money should't be a goal is just silly in my opinion. Why not have both as the girl on the taco shell commercial would say?

With no money there is a slew of problems that come your way..late rent, bills, struggling to always be on top, etc. With a lot of money I'm sure there are issues as well..but I'm pretty positive you can't find anyone that has a lot of money that has good relationships that would trade their large bank account to gain more happiness and be more free. If it's not your personal goal then that's your decision and your life.

I'm NOT saying that chasing money should be your only goal. Working crazy hours in a field you don't like while ruining relationships is not healthy and isn't good. But strategically gaining money by working hard and smart and taking risk isn't such a bad thing. I'm a big believer in doing what you love and being the best at it and getting money that way, I'm not a fan of getting a degree in a field and working your life in that field just because of the money.

Happiness starts with you and ends with you. Whatever you surround yourself with should be things that make you happy. It's also not relative. Having more money shouldn't just make you automatically happier, but it should cut out some stress to let you be free to be happier and enable you to do more things that make you happy.

/rant

<comment><USER15> Money might not buy happiness, but poverty sure buys a ton of unhappiness.

<comment><USER14> One of my points exactly. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You could start by putting your email address in your profile ;)

</comment><comment><USER17> Mobile apps. Pick a few niches and research them and the apps. Slam out some MVP apps and see what sells. Go all-in on a bigger app in the best niche, even if you have to pay a developer and/or designer. Bonus: when you stop working on it, the app(s) keep making money for quite some time.

</comment><comment><USER18> Subcontracting could get you part of the way there. If we assume you keep your full-time job and have a restricted number of extra hours to devote, you could probably handle a mid-size project where you're managing/overseeing/architecting while subcontracting to 1-2 other developers that you trust. Depending on your margin, you could hit that range. I'd recommend sticking to local developers in your circle that you can work well with, as opposed to off-shoring, which has a higher margin but a higher probability of backfiring. It'd work well for your skillset since a lot of freelance developers don't tend to market themselves aggressively, and are happy to be subcontracted to.

I did this for a few of my own freelance projects - it worked ok, although I also found that as a solo freelancer, the clients that were interested in hiring me tended to have budget restrictions that made them nervous to commit to sums of money that necessitated subcontractors. So it was an occasional thing for me.

</comment><comment><USER19> Have you thought about possibly using your communications skills for profit via workshops? You could teach a business boot camp for techies that covers some common issues and pitfalls that tech folk may encounter on the road to developing a successful business.

</comment><comment><USER20> I would suggest domain name and website flipping, particularly to someone with your skill-set.

[http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/03/18/the-neil-patel- guide-t...](http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/03/18/the-neil-patel-guide-to- buying-and-selling-sites/) <http://www.dotsauce.com/2010/10/21/how-to-sell- domain-names/>

Also, if you invest in generic term domains for the 2013-2014 GTLD landrush for quality extensions like .blog, .cars, etc. you stand to make a quick profit during the GTLD launches. Please do your research first, of course, I wouldn't want you to lose money.

<comment><USER21> Please don't listen to this guy and leave domains alone.

In my books, professional domain squatters are scum and the rules that unfortunately allow this should be changed. You should not be allowed to squat like that on a public resource that is scarce and getting scarcer, this is a net loss to everyone else (except maybe the registrars, which are in on it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> On other websites, many commenters seem to have a sister who is unemployed, but makes $87/hr on the computer - up to $12345 per month, in just a few hours. Perhaps you could look into one of these schemes.

</comment><comment><USER23> "I can talk technology to non technical folks and talk business to technical folks." This sounds like you haven't chosen your base yet.

<comment><USER24> No, he's describing consultancy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Buy bitcoin while everyone else is selling ;-)

<comment><USER26> Please don't do this. This is the worst advice here.

<comment><USER27> It's great advice, but mostly for Nym's speculative hobby.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Teach courses. Udemy, Skillshare, etc. If you're in a big city, see if the co- working spaces also offer classes, then you can go teach there.

You may not realize it, but relative to ten years ago, you know a lot more, so put that knowledge in an ebook or course and sell it to people ten years younger than you.

Build mobile or web apps.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm surprised no one mentioned investing. You can make decent money from investing if you have the time to do the research.

And an understanding of how accounting/finance is better than being to do all the math since many of the stock information websites help you out with any kind of information you want to know.

Also using programming you can grab data from sites using Yahoo API or other APIs or simply webscraping(if they allow it) and produce your own tests on market information to prune information for resulting trades.

</comment><comment><USER30> 1\. Job hop 2\. Contracting 3\. Consult 4\. Kickstarter for something ??

<comment><USER31> Profit

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> (1) ebook : business 101 for programmers, (2) a micro start-up, (3) ebook: pickup something new (a hobby) and blog about it and work hard to make the blog sucessful

<comment><USER33> and get stuck in endless cycle of learning and buying more ebooks

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Job hop to a larger company and get a more senior title.

</comment><comment><USER35> I think OP you are on the right track trying to leverage your skills in one area by applying them to another.

I'm in the process of transitioning from IT to Law. This obviously takes longer than a year and it's certainly not for everyone. However I expect to be able to use my technical background (though not expertise per se) in legal work.

</comment><comment><USER36> Night manager at McDonalds.

<comment><USER37> Depending on your geographic location, this could be a lot of fun and really open your perspective. I've considered moonlighting as something similar to this (minus all the American Beauty connotations).

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> write a HFT bitcoin bot

<comment><USER39> The exchanges charge 0.5% per trade. This isn't feasible once you look at the numbers.

<comment><USER40> Why wouldn't it work if the spread was high enough?

<comment><USER41> Sure. It would also help if the exchange took less than 10 minutes to execute trades.

<comment><USER42> Exactly. I'm writing a (low-frequency) arbitrage program in Clojure for fun, but the long confirmation time for BTC and the inability to move non-BTC currencies between exchanges greatly limits this in practicality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> 1) Think of a SaaS Product 2) Build SaaS Product 3) ??? 4) 30-50k/yr

</comment><comment><USER44> <http://fourhourworkweek.com>

<http://lifestylebusinesspodcast.com>

<http://startupbook.net>

<comment><USER45> oh that's your answer to everything. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Find paid speaking gigs.

</comment><comment><USER47> Start by asking for a raise, a 15 minute conversation can usually net you a decent chunk of change.

After you get your raise phone some recruiters, ask for more from the new company.

If you get a raise and another offer you've probably got your 30k.

<comment><USER48> This is the easiest and most foolproof option. But reverse fleitz's chronology: first get another offer, then go talk to your boss.

Edit—To imsofuture's point below: Yes, come to your employer with another offer that you would actually take, but with a real preference to stay (otherwise, just go). Ask for a raise, and if the discussion doesn't go anywhere, describe the decision you face between more money elsewhere and a preference to stay if the money were not a differentiator.

This is not extortion, and a reasonable employer will not treat it as such. It is the way you find out what you're worth and get paid commensurately. Changing jobs is not the only way to get a raise, and it's certainly not the best way—for you or for your employer.

<comment><USER49> Don't do this. Well, do this, but don't use your offer as a negotiating chip -- use it as a backup plan if you don't get a raise.

You _will_ be the first up against the wall if you accept a counter offer to stay.

<comment><USER50> Not up against a wall. You'll be out the door as soon as your replacement is trained. You'll probably be the one doing the training, too. And then instead of your income going up, it'll go down to zero.

<comment><USER51> Have either of you witnessed this happening in real life? There's always a comment to this effect in every "raise" question I've ever come across, but never have I seen any proximate information.

<comment><USER52> It definitely does! Take it from someone who's been responsible for giving the layoff list to HR as well as being a small business owner. Business leaders look at developers as a commodity. Why do you think so many companies still hold Java in such high esteem?

<comment><USER51> I don't doubt that out-of-band raises can put someone over the cost-line such that they'd get the axe at layoff time, but I think that's different than the company gunning for them as soon as they give a raise in response to a cherry- pick offer to the employee, to be actively hiring for this person's replacement ASAP.

<comment><USER50> First hand, it happens. Not every CEO is a wonderful caring person, and some can get very vindictive when it appears that an underling is threatening the operation of their company by (in their view) holding the job hostage for more cash.

<comment><USER9> More charitably, by talking about offers from other companies, you are indicating to them that your continued employment is in question. Businessmen like predictability. So from that perspective, when they see you have one foot out the door, it makes sense to alleviate the uncertainty by getting the other foot out the door and bringing in somebody who seems more predictable.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hacking into Internet-Connected Light Bulbs - <AUTHOR> http://www.contextis.co.uk/blog/hacking-internet-connected-light-bulbs/ <comment><USER2> That reminds me of a little accident I had with my home automation interface.

In an effort to make the UI accessible from the outside (for me), I forwarded the Raspberry Pi's HTTP server port to the server where I host my normal web stuff. Only I screwed up the proxy rule in the NginX config. All of a sudden, lights and blinds went haywire all over the house.

Turns out whoever visited any of my domains at the time got the HA control panel instead. And people clicked on the devices!

<comment><USER3> Add a webcam and turn it into an art installation :)

<comment><USER2> Surveillance cams are part of the setup ;) They're old, modified Android phones, actually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have the pleasure of having been involved with one of the first network protocol reverse-engineers of the LIFX [0], and off the back of that hacked together a NodeJS library and a Wireshark dissector. I've updated the NodeJS lib to handle the new firmware (it does more over UDP, whereas it used to use a mixture of UDP and TCP) but not the dissector yet.

There's absolutely no authentication on the network protocol at all; as long as you're in the same network as the bulbs then you can send UDP packets and control the bulbs. I imagine this is a good and a bad thing; XBoxes automatically setting mood lighting when playing games etc... I'd rather they had to ask my permission before doing that, though.

[0] [https://github.com/magicmonkey/lifxjs/blob/master/Protocol.m...](https://github.com/magicmonkey/lifxjs/blob/master/Protocol.md)

<comment><USER5> They're a member of the AllSeen Alliance, so in the future they will probably support AllJoyn for control.

Disclaimer: I work on AllJoyn.

[https://git.allseenalliance.org/cgit/lighting/service_framew...](https://git.allseenalliance.org/cgit/lighting/service_framework.git/summary) [https://allseenalliance.org](https://allseenalliance.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is the purpose of internet connected light bulbs? Is the internet of things a way to spy on people who remove the batteries from their mobile phones or what?

Is it just some excuse to con investors into buying stocks in some insanely valued IPOs?

I don't mean to be negative and I understand the value of information in our economic life, but how much info is required from the internet of things to support our home life of eating, drinking, fornicating, watching TV and going to bed at the end of day?

who keeps all this info and what to they do with it?

<comment><USER7> I'm pretty sure the intersection of people worried enough to remove the batteries from their cellphones and willing to buy internet-connected lightbulbs is indistinguishable from the null set.

As for their purpose, well, to the company it's too make money, to the buyers, that's explained by this classic¹ strip of C&H: [http://assets.amuniversal.com/6e921050df960131725e005056a954...](http://assets.amuniversal.com/6e921050df960131725e005056a9545d)

¹ yes, it's redundant, I know

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A _light bulb_ has more processing power than the PC I used in the early 90s. What an interesting world we live in.

<comment><USER9> Just remember that back then your computer was unreliable and your light bulb was reliable.

Now your light bulb is unreliable as well as your computer :)

<comment><USER10> The light bulb halting problem, pre-IoT: Will it turn off? Yes.

The light bulb halting problem, now: Will it turn off? Impossible to say.

<comment><USER11> "Lightbulb, compute to the last digit the value of pi!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Due to the technical challenges involved, specialist equipment required and > general perception that it would be the hardest, we decided to begin our > search for vulnerabilities in the intra-bulb 802.15.4 6LoWPAN wireless mesh > network.

Sentences like that make me happy. I love the hacker spirit.

<comment><USER13> Wait, _intra-_ bulb? There's a wireless mesh network within different parts of the bulb, not just between the bulbs?

<comment><USER14> I suppose it's a typo or a mistake between _intra_ and _inter_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I just bought 3 Miilight bulbs, and obviously after installing them I was like. Man my neighbours could probably control my lights... I also have a RF remote which operates on 2,4ghz and does not require network authentication. The Wifi bridge does require authentication however. I was thinking of building an RF "cannon" with a directional antenna and see how far I can go. I also got a DVB-T dongle. I should be able to "catch" the signal, right?

<comment><USER16> I can't seem to find anything on the Googles for that product.

Is it spelled correctly? Can you give me a link to it? I'm interested in home automation, but all the ones I've looked into so far don't really do it for me.

<comment><USER15> Thanks guys, typo indeed. [0]

Here is a article [1] describing a setup involving this type of RGB light and the raspberry. It also covers some other type of RGB lights.

The wifi bridge has been sitting on my desk for a while now. not bothered yet since the remote is sufficient for now. So can not really comment on that. Otherwise happy with one of the cheaper alternatives. No problems as of yet. Waiting for my lights to get switched on and off though :D The remote doesn't require line of sight as its RF, and already has quite the range.

[0] [http://www.milight.com/](http://www.milight.com/)

[1] [http://iqjar.com/jar/home-automation-using-the-raspberry- pi-...](http://iqjar.com/jar/home-automation-using-the-raspberry-pi-to- control-the-lights-in-your-home-over-wi-fi/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The LIFX guys should asap enable the lock bits on the micro conrollers. Reading out the firmware from a product is a no-go.

The TI CC2538 should be safe against attacks in which the flash could be obtained even after a chip erase like in older modules [1].

[1] TI CC2430 Attack [http://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh- usa-09/GOODSPEED/BH...](http://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh- usa-09/GOODSPEED/BHUSA09-Goodspeed-ZigbeeChips-PAPER.pdf)

<comment><USER18> They're distributing the firmware on-line (for updates) -- why prevent reading the firmware from the chip itself?

<comment><USER19> Distribute encrypted firmwares instead so that hackers have to first extract the (in this case globally distributed) private key.

<comment><USER20> Ruining the fun for everyone of us :(.

Seriously, I dislike this trend of making everything a closed and encrypted black box accessible only through official channels (that will disappear in 3 years anyway) for reasons mostly related to money-making and not really security. I think this is will, if continued, slow down the rate of technological progress and development of new ideas.

To quote pg,

" _It is by poking about inside current technology that hackers get ideas for the next generation. No thanks, intellectual homeowners may say, we don 't need any outside help. But they're wrong. The next generation of computer technology has often—perhaps more often than not—been developed by outsiders._"

[http://paulgraham.com/gba.html](http://paulgraham.com/gba.html)

<comment><USER17> The hacker in me totally agrees with that point of view. It would be awesome to have a chance to decompile firmware and analyse and hack the communication protocols.

But then security is important (which is true for almost all wireless stuff), things are quite different. It's pretty hard to build embedded devices which provide basic means of security without having a poor user experience.

<comment><USER18> If the security of the system relies on the system be secret, as opposed to the keys being secret, the system isn't secure... As have been shown again and again, you can't give someone the code (obfuscated, compiled, encrypted along with the decryption key) and also not give them the code.

So you'll slow down reversing, and probably deter most hobbyists -- but not anyone with anything tangible to gain from breaking your system. Personally I think "obviously insecure" is better than "might be somewhat safe".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> At the end a new secure on-boarding mechanism is mentioned. How does this now work?

<comment><USER22> Presumably you have to use a smart phone to connect to each bulb when you install it and send it a non-fixed key.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> But who would want to hack a lightbulb? [http://www.gunpointgame.com/](http://www.gunpointgame.com/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Great stuff. And yet, all I can think of is:

CRASH AND BURN</comment>


Amazon RDS with Oracle available now (May 23rd) - <AUTHOR> http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2011/05/23/amazon-rds-for-oracle-database/

<comment><USER2> An interesting move given AWS' current core market (web based companies, startups, students etc - ppl who generally have no interest in Oracle databases)... wonder what kind of uptake there will be. AWS still has too many ToS issues to be seriously usable by large enterprises, who else is going to be using RDS for Oracle in earnest?</comment>


12 Surprising Signs You Could Be an Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://m.entrepreneur.com/article/224791 <comment><AUTHOR> Couldn't help but created a mental checklist

Score : 10/12

What's yours?

</comment><comment><USER2> I can't help but feeling that this is a list of 12 things about the author, not 12 things that mean you could be an Entrepreneur.

For Example:

"1. Hate the Status Quo – It doesn't make sense to you that something has been done the time-honored way with no explanation why. You are not someone who wants to just go through the motions or sit by idly. Nor do you like following the pack."

Could be titled: "Sees Deficiencies in the Status Quo" with the explanation: "Seeks to understand the why's of commonly accepted actions which can lead to discovery of better processes."

"3. Fired from Jobs – You're too creative for your own good when it comes to working for others, and you may have some history, as I do, of losing jobs. Being just a cog in wheel is very difficult for you because you want to create something others can be inspired by and contribute to."

I think the spirit of this paragraph could easily be included in the rewrite of point 1. However, Being fired does not provide any indication towards being a good entrepreneur. Often entrepreneurs have to deal with processes that are in contest with their view of how things should be done. An entrepreneur should be able to choose their battles effectively.

"4. Labeled a Rebel - You know that greatness resides outside the lines of conformity and don't think that policies, laws and regulations apply to you. You have been described as a rebel and rule breaker and would defy gravity if you could.

5\. Resist Authority - You have a lifelong record of resisting authority from your parents, teachers and bosses. You don't go along with the agreed upon norms of the group or community you work and live in. "

The spirit of 4 and 5 go hand in hand with point number 1. Questioning commonly accepted processes a large percentage of the time often gets you branded as a troublemaker or resistant to authority.

"6. Ready to Improve Everything - You always see how you could do things better. In addition, you are opinionated and freely give your two-cents about your better way of doing things--even when you're not asked. "

Honestly I don't see the productiveness of pushing your viewpoint when not asked or at least tangentially referenced. However, "Ready to Improve Everything" is a valid quality but is essentially an extension of point 1. If you're questioning commonly accepted processes you typically have an interest in improving those processes. Potentially this could be changed to a capacity to help others.

"7. Bad at Making Small Talk - You have difficulty making the kind of small talk that so many people get comfort from. This social pattern of relationship and rapport building seems like a waste of time to you and makes you uncomfortable."

This is an interesting point, because it could mean you've spent time developing a different skill set which could aid you in your entrepreneurial quest. However, placing difficulty entertaining social interactions on the same level as not seeing the need for social interactions is conflating two ideas. It is fairly necessary to be able to talk to others about your ideas and building a rapport with people you expect to work for you is important.

"8. Bullied in Your Youth - You may have been heavily criticized, picked on and even bullied as a child or teenager. This has caused you to be driven to excel and to prove to the world that you are indeed a force to be reckoned with."

Change this to having determination, which is essential to any entrepreneurial quest.

"9. Obsessive - You may have been labeled obsessive/compulsive because when you get started on something you have difficulty letting go. Don't let anyone convince you that this is a disease or deficiency. All of the great entrepreneurs become completely immersed in their vision. Howard Schultz stuck with Starbucks even when his family tried to persuade him not to."

Obsession is a fairly negative attribute. Controlled determination and vision is what I think you're reaching for in this paragraph.

"10. Scared to Go Solo - The entrepreneur in you is scared of going out on your own—and also terrified of not doing so. This fear is so common in our society because we've been conditioned to think that entrepreneurship is much riskier than getting a "good job." The reality is there is instability in both. "

Fear is a useful data point, but having fear has little positive benefit to being a successful entrepreneur. Eventually you'll have to kick past the fear.

"11. Unable to Unwind - You can't go to sleep at night because you can't turn your thoughts off. An idea may even manifest itself in your dreams. The next morning you find yourself still consumed with that idea, distracting you from the job you're supposed to be doing."

Being unable to control your thoughts is a fairly bad thing. That's not to say interesting ideas can cause the phenomenon described, but as a constant state of mind it reminds me of being obsessive. A high level of interest is important, inability to sleep is not.

In conclusion I present a list of the top 5 qualities that could mean you are entrepreneurial minded in the article:

1) Determination

2) Vision

3) High Levels of Interest

4) An Inquisitive Mind

5) A Novel Way of Seeing the World</comment>


TorrentPeek – Query inside torrents without downloading them entirely - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lmatteis/torrent-peek#torrentpeek <comment><AUTHOR> Author here.

I see potential for this specifically if combined with BEP46 ([http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0046.html](http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0046.html)).

Essentially, if we can update torrents via DHT mutable items, we can have distributed sites - similar to ZeroNet.

However this brings something new to the table, sites that can be queried without having to fully download them.

Since SQLite also supports FTS (full text search), you could literally also have a search engine -- imagine Wikipedia releasing their dumps in this fashion. Users could not only help host it, but also query for info in a timely manner - even full text search queries.</comment>


Make Marketing Your SaaS Easier - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@HelenRyles/make-marketing-your-saas-easy-4f79156b32c9 <comment><USER2> Love this!

Having "Method" that supports your strongly held "Beliefs" // it's a nice mix to have your original marketing support the product

</comment><comment><USER3> Article for us as for SaaS. Thanks</comment>


America's DIY Phone Farmers - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3naek/how-to-make-a-phone-farm <comment><USER2> 3 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20589870](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20589870)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that - I thought HN automatically deduped submissions.

<comment><USER2> Doesn't matter, it should and if it doesn't it's not your fault. Never blame the user ;)

<comment><USER3> Just out of curiosity, how would you write software to catch that those two URLs pointed to the same thing?

<comment><USER2> If you pressed me for an answer: similar to how Stackoverflow suggests possibly related questions.

Start with a distance function from url to url. Easiest would be based on simple URL string distance (would have shown this as very similar). If you want to get fancy, fetch the content and do a distance function on that. I guess you can endlessly tweak that distance function, incorporate <meta canonical, etc. Probably unnecessary.

Then: order by distance asc limit 5, ask users "is your URL a dupe of any of these?"

Although a pretty solid alternative solution is: let the community deal with it. It's not a huge problem at the moment, I don't think anyone particularly minds (?). HN doesn't do all it "should", and (personally) that's precisely what's enjoyable. So what if there's a dupe? Someone posts the original, problem solved :D

As long as nobody feels bad, everything's rosy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The idea of "watching" ads for profit has always amused me a little --- what if your mind is somewhere else or you're not looking at the screen? I suspect that those who don't all-out farm but still do such things are not really paying attention anyway. Of the people I know, no one _actually_ pays any attention to ads even if they don't block them.

Also, when profits decline, you can still use the phones to host an Android app-testing service...

<comment><USER5> The demographic seems off to me for this: How much revenue is there to make from a customer that willingly spends their time watching ads? Is that the person you want to invest in? What's the ROI of paying people to watch your ads?

<comment><USER6> It's a form of ad fraud. P&G isn't paying ad farms intentionally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Phone farming is actually easy to be banned if the investors apply appropriate fraud detection strategies such as IP/device ID collection or user behavior classification. I wouldn't think phone farming is as profitable as it used to be.

<comment> ga-vu Great... another way to waste electricity for some stupid reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks like it's more profitable than altcoin mining!

<comment><USER9> Yes, but what is the break-even point, considering that each phone costs at least $50?

<comment><USER10> Doubt they use new phones, used can be gotten a lot cheaper

<comment><USER11> And used with broken screens are cheaper yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would it be possible to just run 100 instances of an android emulator?

<comment><USER13> Emulators would be immediately identifiable. This method can only work if the fraudstee has no fraud detection mechanism at all.

<comment><USER14> How though? With Bluestacks you can emulate a few different types of phones including Google Pixels.

<comment><USER13> For native apps blacklist default emulator MSIN and similar attributes (and let the cat and mouse game begin).

For mobile web various fingerprinting techniques are available. As a fun (and quite irrelevant) example, you can immediately tell chrome, safari, firefox and node apart just with:

      atob('Ψ')
      x

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It would be wonderful if clever scammers could figure out a way to wreck the entire Internet advertising economy. Burn the whole thing down.

<comment><USER16> It would be wonderful if clever mortgage fraudsters could figure out a way to wreck the entire housing economy. Burn the whole thing down. It will make housing more affordable.

Actually that happened in 2008 and caused a terrible recession that effected more than just bankers.

Perhaps introducing regulation would be a better way of dealing with unscrupulous ad firms.

<comment><USER17> What regulations would you propose? Ad-tech is doing what advertising does, only better. They've taken the industry to its logical conclusions; a catastrophic surveillance system deployed to sell you shit.

The problem isn't ad-tech, it's not the surveillance, it's not even the data leaks or viruses; advertising _itself_ is the problem. There's no amount of regulation that is going to make it "good," at best, it will remain a tumor on our free market system until it is excised once and for all. That is, assuming it doesn't kill it outright in its seemingly endless race to the bottom.

<comment><USER6> Banning advertising would be the greatest imaginable victory for big brands and the end of small B2C business. The advertising that has already happened would get culturally locked in forever (would anybody forget Coca Cola?) and it would be illegal for new market entrants to change it.

<comment><USER17> I mean, this is just the logical conclusion of capitalism. A few monstrous companies dominating industry. It was held back from eating itself some time ago when a bunch of massive corps were broken up, but that doesn't happen anymore. Ironically, big business propaganda about how great big business is has swayed the public so far away from regulating it that there's now nothing standing in the way of capitalists destroying the capitalist system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a strangely framed/toned article given the subject is run of the mill Fraud and not entrepreneurship as implied.

<comment> J-dawg I know the term "fraud" is used throughout the article, but is this actually fraud in the legal sense? (I assume not).

I certainly don't see it as anything approaching fraud in the ethical sense. Advertisers are paying for clicks / "views", and that's what they're getting. If people want to game that system I see that as entirely fair game.

<comment><USER19> The article is fairly careful not to call phone farming of inctivized add apps "fraud" directly (except for the first line).

I'm not sure I would include the behavior discussed in the article under "Ad Fraud". Usually "Ad Fraud" refers schemes where someone hosts an Ad and then fraudulently delivers fake traffic/clicks to that Ad to get paid.

My guess is that the real money and real players in this space are not running incentivized ad apps, but being paid to generate traffic for REAL Ad Fraud.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> surreal to think a simple tasks can end up with individuals making over 2,000 USD on the side by phone farming.

<comment><USER21> Was probably a fun hobby that also earned money. They probably learned a lot in the process about how things work.

There's a lot of transferable skills gained, but it can be hard to sell it to most employers.

Nobody cared about my hundreds of EBay sales on my resume in my late teens, but it taught me a lot:

Working with customers, how to sell and differentiate your product, managing money, managing inventory, getting cut out by Chinese competition with pricing you couldn't possibly match...</comment></comment>


Why You Should Hire Computer Science Majors - <AUTHOR> http://stephen-brennan.com/2015/08/30/why-you-should-hire-cs-majors/ <comment><USER2> I would like to hear their opinion once they graduate and get some years of experience in the field.

Software engineering is predominantly problem solving and the important traits are analytical and logical thinking. 4 years of education doesn't govern these. Some people have natural pre-disposition to these skills and filtering out people based on majors will reduce your pool significantly.

I've seen a lot many good engineers coming from the Philosophy, Physics and Mathematics majors. And I think this could be true for other majors too.

In short, smart people will easily catch up with what is taught in 4 years and hence given an average employment period of ~30yrs it's ridiculous to decide employment based on a major.

<comment><USER3> Some of my personal experience with non-CS majors can be summed up with three words:

Hardware Ex Machina.

Perhaps I'm biased, but I suspect a smart person from a CS degree background will probably think about performance more than a smart person who never learned about "irrelevant" things (to quote the author this post is addressing) like Operating Systems.

Someone without a CS degree can learn about how to write code which is memory and CPU-efficient and scales well. But if it's never a problem they have to come across, they may never even think about it. CS students are forced to think about things like that in their degree.

<comment><USER4> I've worked as a developer for 10 years. My anecdotal experience is that 4 years of undergraduate Computer Science does not impart any special skills regarding performance. I found myself routinely refactoring code written by CS-degreed programmers who would do silly things like put a database query inside 2 nested for-loops.

I even had one case where a degreed dev looked at perfectly fine code and said "Oh there's a faster way to do this..." then proceeded to implement a solution that was literally 500x slower, but checked it in anyway, not bothering with any before/after performance benchmarks, just assumed his stuff was magically faster. The culprit: His solution was very greedy with network traffic (but was arguably more computationally efficient). Didn't matter tho, it was slow as dog.

Undergraduate Computer science will teach you how to _measure_ how much arbitrary work it takes to complete something but AFIAK it does not seen to teach you a very good job of how to actually look at a specific problem and optimize the work, memory, or external latency-intensive resources... that must be learned by critical analysis of actual code.

<comment><USER3> > that must be learned by critical analysis of actual code

I agree fully, and won't ever deny that many students simply either never do this or never do it effectively.

There are courses which teach this however (such as OS), and many of them are required for a degree. I feel that the likelihood that someone with a CS degree has had these good practices ingrained in them is higher than someone with no background in CS. In other words, it's a safer bet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article is a counter argument to some guy who says you should not hire computer science majors.

Choosing to hire or not hire based on whether or not someone did or did not major in computer science is just a pre-judgement about an individual's ability as a computer programmer. It makes alot more sense to treat people as individuals rather than pre-judging against some broad criteria that classifies individuals into types.

It's often non programmers who make broad pre-judgements like this because they don't understand software development well enough to work out what strengths and weaknesses an individual programmer actually has.

Another word for pre-judgement is prejudice.

Not all prejudice is illegal. Saying that "all people who fit into category X or category Y are not suitable for employment with this company" is entirely legal but foolish prejudice, presuming of course those categories are not defined as illegally discriminatory in the country that you live in.

<comment><USER6> You're not using the top-line definition of prejudice, which is when your opinion is formed without reason.

You can only spend a finite amount of effort on hiring, and you have to phone- screen some people before you phone-screen others, so you've gotta create expectations of people based on imprecise information like their major, GPA, former employers, etc.

<comment><USER5> I don't agree that the criteria you mention are effective ways to work out if an individual is a good computer programmer. They are just more pre- judgements.

For example I can't see any way in which working at a particular company defines whether or not someone is a good programmer. Can you quantify in detail why working at company X means someone cannot be a good programmer? A detailed explanation?

Can you explain to me precisely how you can measure someone's capability as a computer programmer via their GPA? And I mean in a really quantified way, not just hand waving.

Even what someone majored in.... can you say exactly in detailed terms how this defines whether or not someone is a good computer programmer?

Pre-judgements like this are just voodoo recruiting.

It's how to recruit when you really have no idea how to work out if someone is a good computer programmer or not.

<comment><USER6> It is possible to operate on information without rounding beliefs to either 100% certain or 100% certainly not, and without collapsing imprecisely specified heuristics to simple If X then 100%-certain-of-Y conditionals.

You didn't respond to the blog post. You responded to a version of it that has been rounded off in this manner. Likewise, you haven't made a response to my comment: I never claimed these criteria were effective ways to work out if an individual is a good computer programmer. You've rounded the idea that some people are more likely worth interviewing to a different meaning, and responded to that.

Likewise, using the word "prejudice" under one definition to pick up the negative connotations of one of its other definitions seems like the same kind of thing -- a similar obliteration of nuance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think the article is an argument that as a hard rule CS majors are predetermined to be great job candidates. In fact, the author draws a line between students who take on side projects and are passionate about the material and students who are doing it for the supposed payout.

Recruiting software engineers is about finding the passionate engineers who are proven problem solvers regardless of programming language or given tools. Those people might be computer science majors, and they might be non-majors (or non-students) who have a passion and skill for problem solving.

I've worked with and learned from great engineers who did not formally study engineering and those who have devoted their life to it. It's ultimately about having the drive to pursue (software) engineering. Those people tend to self identify by enriching their education with their own side projects.

Ultimately, Computer Science education is (and should be) exactly what it says. The science of computing. It doesn't require a computer, and it isn't software engineering. By studying great algorithms, data structures, design techniques, etc, you are well on your way to skill set of a successful software engineer, not because you know about splay trees or automata, but because you have practiced advanced problem solving, which is at the core of any engineering.

<comment><USER8> Am I the only one who always feels that the search for "passionate engineers" really means "cheap, doesn't know his value, works for rent and pizza"?

What about competent? Professional? Experienced?

Nobody looks for a "passionate lawyer", that would even be a red flag, indicating that he can't evaluate a legal situation objectively.

Nobody looks for a "passionate basketball player". As long as he shoots those three pointers, who cares whether his secret passion is really boardgaming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Don't you just hate those selfish Universities that won't churn out enough people with exactly the skills needed by start-ups so the start-ups can then pay them below the going rate they could have achieved otherwise.

Anyone would think it was the students paying for the education. An education that allowed them to maximum their income over a career than spans a decades. Instead the students should be paying to get the skills needed to help start- ups make their founders rich.

</comment><comment><USER10> An important thing that articles like these miss when talking about the "fundamentals of computer science" is that a CS degree doesn't actually teach you of lot of the necessary fundamentals that people use in the real world.

For example, what about the fundamental of building a website, or building an app?

I'm not arguing that "colleges should teach students rails or X technology that will be outdated in 2 year".

I'm saying that colleges do not teach you a lot fundamental computer science concepts, such as "How do I design a scaleable rest API/website". Or "how do I use a MVC framework (regardless of which MVC framework it is)", or "What design decisions do I need to make when building a mobile app".

These are all very important concepts, that I use in my day to day job, and they have NOTHING to do with "learning hip technology X". These are problem solving fundamentals that colleges don't teach!

<comment><USER11> The concepts you mention are fundamental and important to web and mobile programming, but a lot less fundamental to CS.

Programming != CS, and that's fine. We need CS to push the boundaries of what we know and can do, and we need programming for the day-to-day work. The trick is knowing what the overlap is for the position you need filled.

<comment><USER12> > Programming != CS, and that's fine

Can't agree more.

When I took my first job after graduating with a CS degree, I often complained that my degree hadn't taught me really anything useful about how to program with real teams, building real things to real timescales.

Some years later my opinion changed. Of course my CS degree didn't teach me these things, but nor should it have. It was partly a foundation in the principles behind programming, partly an education in how to think about problem solving on a fundamental, quite abstract level.

The things I gained from it provided a great base from which to learn how to write software in industry, and whether I realise it consciously or not, everything I have learned and continue to learn is augmented with the knowledge of the fundamentals behind it, which is really, really valuable.

My opinion, and I'm more than willing to be challenged on this by anyone with counter-examples, is that learning to write software in industry, with teams, huge-scale systems, bosses, and deadlines, can only be done on the job. It's not something that can be simulated in a university, and indeed one actually never stops learning even once in industry.

Things that are helpful on the job can only really be learned the hard way, by doing the job, failing, and seeing that a better way exists for next time, in a similar situation. There's never such a thing as 'the right way', only 'the right way for this situation' \- and there are too many permutations and edge cases on what that could mean to be taught in a structured way in a degree. Therefore I don't think universities should be in the business of even trying to accomplish this. They _should_ be in the business of producing graduates who are able to learn professional programming with a broad and deep knowledge of the fundamentals as a base, which is a very valuable thing.

I think what the GP is describing is more like an apprenticeship than a degree, and who knows, maybe that (combined with at least some study of the most directly-related fundamentals) could be one future path for learning programming as a young school-leaver, in lieu of going to university. Perhaps a four-year apprentice would be quicker out of the blocks in their first 'real job' than a 4-year CS degree grad, and perhaps that's a much better, more economically viable way to train new programmers for standard, forms over data style web development or application development work.

My point is teaching to the job is a completely separate thing from learning the mathematical and logical underpinnings of CS from nearly first-principles, and should be approached as such. Let a CS degree be a CS degree, don't try to morph it into a programming apprenticeship.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Mr. Gelernter doesn't look for computer science majors, because schools don't teach them what he values in a developer. The teaching is "10 years behind in a field that changes every 10 minutes."

\--Web dev changes a lot, but some things like Java were used 10 years ago and are still used today.

"The courses focus on things he considers irrelevant (like operating system design) without providing experience with working on real development teams."

\--Really? I'm going to be taking 2 capstone software engineering courses that focus on building real world applications in teams.

"There are few courses on practical skills like mobile app development."

\--Took a class on iOS development already, taking another class for android development this fall. I have literally no clue what this guy is talking about. Maybe its your idea of what computer science students are learning that isn't changing. And why would it, when you don't hire any..............

</comment><comment><USER14> 'The teaching is "10 years behind in a field that changes every 10 minutes.'-which is a good reason to not overemphasize practical stuff like mobile app dev. But really, even to do something like mobile app dev at a professional level, you need a solid programming background-you learn the fundamentals, which can be pretty dry and staid (like data structures) in order to be able to successfully do stuff like mobile dev.

</comment><comment><USER15> Great rebuttal to an originally insane WSJ anti-thought piece.

Some awkward points from the original WSJ article:

 _University computer science departments are in miserable shape: 10 years behind in a field that changes every 10 minutes._

When did the WSJ author have time to sample the 4-year curriculum from every CS department?

The author complains about "no iOS development" in universities. There's always a balance to strike between being a trade school and a knowledge institution. It's not the place for a university to pre-train your employees exactly to your specifications. You probably don't need the pumping lemma to develop Angry Angry Badgers XXV, but you still need exposure to how and why everything can even work the way it does.

The rebuttal post makes a great point about how, if iOS development is so important, universities should have been teaching Flash development extensively up until about five years ago. That would have worked out well for everybody.

 _Computer science departments prepare their students for academic or research careers and spurn jobs that actually pay money._

Unsubstantiated fuff. Computer Science departments are the only departments expected to churn out semi-productive workers by their second semester of study. Not many pre-med majors are getting hired as junior doctor interns their 6th month into study.

 _They teach students how to design an operating system, but not how to work with a real, live development team._

Operating system design courses focus heavily on practical data structures and the reality of programming physical hardware. But, counter argument, it's all invalid in the cloud!

As for "real, live development team," that's one of the _benefits_ of going to a school. You get to work in different project groups over the course of a few years to figure out how things work, how other people work in a group, and how you yourself respond to group dynamics.

 _Mr. Gelernter is the CEO of the tech startup Dittach._

Based on his rant, I'm assuming Dittach is just a thin glue layer on top of a dozen open source libraries with no actual development involved?

<comment><USER16> I think there's a balance to be struck. People shouldn't limit their search to people with the correct credentials, and people shouldn't discount education. Hiring is hard, and likely will continue to be hard.

A computer science degree tends to be about 2 full semesters worth of college credits, or one year of education. ___Calling a 4-year degree a "computer science degree" is the first misnomer. It is still a liberal arts degree with a major in computer science._ __Of course one shouldn 't expect a fresh grad to have all of the needed skills for commercial software development if they stuck only to their coursework. Internships help, but the intern is at the mercy of the company when it comes to what they get out of it.

Even self-taught people can't learn everything in a single year, and have to specialize if they want to find employment, limiting their job opportunities and appeal to employers. Specialization can also increase their expiration date if they picked the wrong stack, but can increase their appeal if they know the right technology at the right time.

People also don't differentiate between self-taught programmers who already have a liberal arts degree, and those who do not. What percentage of coding bootcamp graduates have no college education, and what results do they see?

If companies want people who have all the skills and experience your company demands, then pay more for senior developers instead of expecting people fresh out of college to fit that role.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The way I like to think about it is this: a student that goes to baking or cooking school isn't going to be a better candidate if he/she doesn't bake on his/her own time. I would probably hire a self-taught baker that bakes on his/her own time over a formally-trained student of baking who doesn't bake on his/her own time. However, a baker that is formally trained and bakes on his/her own time is going to be quite formidable to the self-taught baker.

That's the same way I view developer candidates with respect to those with and without a CS background. The weakest candidates don't hack on their own time.

<comment><USER18> Bad analogy. The school-taught baker will almost always stomp the crap out of a self-taught baker. There are things you just can't learn at home, and how to bake at volume is one of them.

<comment><USER17> OK, how about self-taught cook? I've seen a number of restaurants opened by those without a formal cooking school background, but the common thread is working from restaurant to restaurant. I have a friend who was picked up by Alice Waters and is a sous chef at Nopa having cooked at Chez Panisse for years despite the lack of a formal cooking school background.

<comment><USER18> Then it invalidates your previous example. There's a difference between someone who gets vocational training on the job and someone who just decides they can cook well at home so they deserve to be a chef. Learning at home can't replicate scale or timeliness. There's no substitute for a live kitchen, and all cooking / baking students spend PLENTY of time in live kitchens before they graduate.

<comment><USER17> I'm sorry my initial analogy wasn't clear. When I meant self-taught, I met on the job vocational training as well as personal time devoted to pet projects. Hopefully, with the clarity added, you will find my analogy better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I disagreed with the article mentioned by Stephen too. Computer Science is not about learning to code, it is a degree in problem solving. It teaches one how to think about problems. In that, it's almost liberal arts. It's a science of process. It is not a degree in coding. Too many people can code.

Yes, it is entirely possible to learn the fundamentals of problem solving in an alternate field. But if not, computer science degree is a damn good way to get there. Long term love of coding is no substitute for it.

There are a lot of great ideas in Computer Science that are very hard to learn all on our own in a short amount of time. One cannot just hire a long-term user of telescopes as an Astronomer.

Besides, even if the position disregards the importance of problem solving skills, CS teaches a lot of underlying stuff that almost none of the self taught programmers I know have yet learned. That might not be important, but is incredibly valuable when shit hits the fan. Maybe there should be simpler resources to learn computer systems on our own. Knowledge of what's going on is not very common.

<comment><USER15> _CS teaches a lot of underlying stuff that almost none of the self taught programmers I know have yet learned_

There seems to be two approaches to knowledge acquisition: school method vs. self-taught method.

School method: learn everything you can, then learn to ignore what doesn't matter since you probably know a lot of things now.

Self-taught method: know nothing, only learn exactly what you need. (e.g. try to do something. learn what you don't know. make one thing work. now you have a very narrow knowledge. repeat process until your goal is obtained.)

The self-taught method still produces capable people, but sometimes their capabilities and experiences are more narrow than others who have been through purpose-designed curricula.

The self-taught method is also a favorite of YC. Who needs business school when you can learn it as you go and pay people to understand parts you don't comprehend? You probably won't hire a YC self-taught-CEO to run Bank of America or JPMorgan, but they can competently bounce around startups for the next 20 years with no problems.

<comment><USER19> I agree on self-taught method, don't get me wrong. Which is why I said I wish there were better resources.

But what is missed from the argument is that any good CS program _includes_ a lot of self-teaching. You're expected to write an OS, large torrent softwares, networking protocols, parallel systems that run on supercomputers, distributed databases like Hadoop, web apps like Twitter. And that is just the top of my head. And most of these extended projects don't have any top end requirements. They only have minimum requirements which is pretty high. And people usually try to one up everyone else.

Not to miss that self-taught method almost completely neglects theory method, a lot of the times. Ask a self-taught programmer if his algorithm could be made better, then wait a couple years till he learns huge amount of discrete math, complexities, and proving optimality before his answer can be trusted without everyone else looking.

Again, not everyone values these skills. And that's OK. The article was written in reponse to a guy who said he won't hire CS graduates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've hired both CS folks and non CS folks for, predominately, web development in Java, PHP, Python with accompanying skills in devops and sql. In my experience, I haven't seen it as a positive or a negative, I've had both CS and non-CS fall on their faces and seen both excel. These days the things I am looking for are experience and a well used GitHub account.

<comment><USER21> The skills of computer scientist and computer programmer are largely orthogonal and are usually categorized by various government agencies as such.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> For me going to school and majoring in CS was a exceptionally enjoyable experience. I did not think about jobs. I didn't even think of being a programmer. I took a liberal arts view to computer science - it taught me how to think about complex problems. And school was so much fun, both MIT and UC Berkeley. I remember feeling that I was getting smarter every day.

</comment><comment><USER23> A CS degree obviously is not meant to give people 100% of the skills they need to work in the real world. It builds a foundation of core knowledge about the field that does not usually come from a hacker bootcamp or independent web dev study.

Having a few friends from the school of "who needs college?! I taught myself everything I need to know about coding and I'm on the cutting edge of the field and I have a great job!", I sometimes see a lack of understanding of general principles. Sure, people who really love computing often dive deep enough to learn this stuff themselves, but there are a lot of people who love development that just don't even know what they don't know about it. Most development jobs don't require this knowledge, but you'll sure miss it if you're in a position that does.

</comment><comment><USER24> > As I go through college, I'm starting to learn to distinguish who else is > infected by this "coding love", and who is here because they thought they > could get a good job with a degree in CS.

That's a bit simplistic. There are some people, myself included, who at that time knew they were interested in CS but had not yet come across the right project, language or instructor to help them discover their passion. I was a late bloomer as a developer. I did not keep at it just because I knew I could land a job.

</comment><comment><USER25> So we're just comfortable with the idea that the purpose of a college is to train you for a job? Have we without question chucked out the main objectives of a liberal education - creating educated thinkers who have the capacity to learn?

Of course! The purpose of college is to produce tradesmen who come pre-trained to... uh... work at startups that help people "find attachments easily". That's what education is about.

What farce.

</comment><comment><USER26> At the last place I worked, we were looking for an entry-level developer and routinely turned down computer science graduates. They knew their theory, big-o, algorithm names, and such, but could not code at all in any medium. (And we weren't looking for any specific language--just enough background that they could learn our internal test scripts.)

There is a sharp difference between "Computer Science" and "Computer Engineering" though colleges often conflate the two. The article's author sounds like the latter, and with his personal background in programming, I would expect him to do fine in the position we were trying to fill. But many other graduates with CS on their diploma will have written just enough Java to pass their one programming course and have no interest in learning any more.

You don't need to know everything about the field, but you do need the ability to learn the practice. "Computer Science" on a resume (without some sign of personal projects) is too often a flag that the person lacks that ability.

<comment><USER27> > There is a sharp difference between "Computer Science" and "Computer > Engineering" though colleges often conflate the two.

Whenever I've seen "Computer Engineering", it's in reference to the engineering domain of _building_ computers, chips, etc. Software Engineering is the "practical" version of Computer Science you are probably referring to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm self taught and have been a working developer for almost a decade now and a degree in computer science has nothing to do with anything from what I've seen. I've worked with guys with MASTERS degrees in computer science that couldn't understand how to get a "hello world" come up on the screen much less design a proper back end. I've also worked with brilliant guys who have CS degrees but also guys who are self taught like myself that are incredibly talented. The true difference (which is a point this article does make) is the love of coding. You have to love it to be good at it and you are going to figure it out one way or another if you do. In my opinion, its about getting out there and getting your hands dirty. There is more freely available resources out there than I can mention. Its a bit overwhelming but it sure beats throwing $50k (at least) in the hole.

</comment><comment><USER29> A lot of startups only think in terms of "hey let's make a simple app/website and let AWS do all the work!".

They don't realize how deep computing and computer science truly are. Data Structures and Algorithms, Computer Architecture, Operating Systems, Machine Learning, Computer Graphics, Databases, Compilers and Languages, etc. etc. all require a deep knowledge of CS.

Pretty much anything you use or build on was developed because of years and years of CS study or PhDs. When you use something like Google Maps, Chrome, iOS, Linux, AWS, Facebook (yes even Facebook), etc. it is because of the work of CS grads and professors over a long period.

Do you want to have deep knowledge of various systems and truly solve problems or just want to hack out another webapp or mobile app? Maybe that defines the difference between a CS major and "just-another-dev"

</comment><comment><USER30> I think having a computer science degree is not a good indicator if you love coding. However, there are most certainly lots of people who love coding and have a CS degree.

However, if you find someone good at coding and they got there because they were self taught, then it is probably a better indication that they love coding because otherwise they would have not taught themselves the skill and got good at it.

So I think it is definitely easier for our mind to stereotype people and just look for the higher probability of success method. But you then cut out a huge portion of potential candidates.

So spend a little extra mental energy to judge the individual based on more than just a binary criteria. I'm sure your hiring process will greatly benefit from it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Interestingly, the CEO's LinkedIn shows him graduating with a BA in music from Yale. Granted, _any_ Ivy League degree gives you a heads up that a graduate of Chico State with a CS degree doesn't have, but it does provide some interesting background.

</comment><comment><USER31> Google and Facebook, which Gelernter says the very best people go to, have interview processes that filter out people who don't have a good command of fundamental topics taught in formal computer science college programs. Presumably the people who get into Google or Facebook are also passionate and self-motivated, most likely from an early age.

That implies to me that the self-taught+formally-trained people are in high demand and paid accordingly. Thus, Gelernter gets to choose among the people who are only self-taught or only formally-trained, and his sweeping viewpoints are based on his experiences with a subset of the workforce.

<comment><USER32> From what I've read, Google & Facebook focus too much on algorithm & data structures minutiae.

Not to say this isn't an important topic. But my CS degree involved some areas that I would argue that are at least as important for the kind of work these companies do, like process algebras for distributed systems or static program analysis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I tend to agree with most points. I always credit my undergraduate CS education with teaching me about how to think about a variety of computational problems using a variety of languages as lenses. I actually think that is why I've been able to succeed in a number of different development roles (Web Developer, Mobile Developer, Reverse Engineer). If I had had multiple semesters of learning only language/framework-X features, I think I would have been worse off for it.

That being said, it did take me a while to appreciate that this was what my education gave me and obviously, no approach works for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm a late comer to coding as a professional and it keeps me humble and always seeking: 1) to work with people smarter and more experienced than I am 2) with open hands, to always accept any critical feedback that helps me understand what I don't know or what I could understand that would help me face the world of problems in-front of me better.

That's been enough for me to surpass many of my peers of assorted educational background etc.

</comment><comment><USER35> A Computer Science degree taught you to write a counter-argument blog post that says nothing original or compelling, because you read one you disagreed with.

Way to illustrate the point.

</comment><comment><USER36> Link without the paywall for the original WSJ article.

[https://archive.is/1BqTf](https://archive.is/1BqTf)

</comment><comment><USER37> Reason #1 you should hire computer science majors:

The author is one.

</comment><comment><USER38> Oddly enough, the most of the good programmers I know are CS faculty dropouts.

</comment><comment><USER39> As a Computer Science major, and programmer, and soon to be college graduate, I don't like the fact that people can go to a "coder bootcamp" and after they "graduate" from it, they expect to get the jobs that CS grads get. I don't think these people should be paid in to the same level as college graduates with CS degrees. A CS degree is the best investment to make at this time if you're not already part of a well connected network of family that can get you into old money, or work for a family member.

<comment><USER40> As an engineer in the industry for going on 6 years with no CS degree, I don't like the fact that people can go to "college" and after they "graduate" from it, they expect to get the jobs that people with half a decade of on-the-job experience get. I don't think these people should be paid in to the same level as experienced engineers with proven track records. Working in the industry is the best investment to make at this time if you're not already part of a well- connected network of college graduates that can get you into old money, or work for a family member.

(The above tongue-in-cheek should NOT be read as a defense of coding "bootcamps", as I think they're leading to a glut of barely-competent programmers flooding the market, but should be read as a criticism of degree entitlement. I know my algos, can calculate time and space complexity easily and correctly, have designed several mission-critical systems that have withstood the test of time, all without the college degree. At the very least a bootcamp'd developer will have some hands-on exposure to the tools being used in the industry today.

A degree does not a competent engineer make.)</comment></comment>


'Show HN' bombed, but this got me on the front page - <AUTHOR>

On 3/18, I posted this, with the title "Show HN: Correlated - Help us discover surprising correlations":
http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=2340921
It got 3 up votes, and they were all from my friends.
Then, a day later, I posted this, with the title "Explained: The MySQL query that powers Correlated":
http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=2342664
That made it to the HN front page.
Part of it was probably the timing (Thursday afternoon versus Friday evening).
And part of it was probably the teaser headline.
But I'm curious what others think: Could it be that many HN readers are tuning out "Show HN" submissions? <comment><USER2> Timing is everything. If you don't get noticed once, post again at a different time.

Correlated is an interesting idea. Have you considered hooking into the various social networks' APIs like Hunch, Twitter, FB, 4sq etc? There is a wealth of data to be explored.

Make your signup even easier. Get rid of First name, ask me later when you get to know me better :-). For now, just let me in.

I think you don't even need to explain why I have to sign up, just ask for email and pwd and click sign up. Reduce clutter.

Also, you've got a branding and mission problem with "Help us discover surprising correlations". It's not about you, it's about me me me. Change it to "Discover surprising correlations."

See <http://headrush.typepad.com/>

<comment><USER3> Is it really ok to repost? What about tools to manage and automate reposts, would people care for a tweetlater for hacker news?

There's a banning offence some way down this slippery slope, but I don't know where that line is drawn.

<comment><USER2> I've seen lots of people repost Ask HNs. If you are genuinely looking for help and just got the timing wrong the first time, why not?

I wouldn't go near autoposts, that's a recipe for spam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had the same problem -- I posted a "Tell HN" that bombed, but that was probably because I posted it on Saturday morning on St. Patrick's Day weekend without realizing it.

There are definitely ways to game the system and post at times that will get you the biggest, most active audience... but in your case, I feel like the topic titles also made a difference: the first title asks for participation, but the second title says "Hey, look at this!"

<comment><USER5> When do you think is the best time to post?

<comment><USER4> I wish I knew. I'd guess late afternoon from Monday to Thursday, but I don't know which time zone the majority of the upvoting users are in.</comment></comment></comment>


1859 Carrington Event - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.com/2019/01/22/the-1859-carrington-event/ <comment><USER2> As I said over in the hackaday thread, many people both there are here are having trouble confusing the geomagnetic storms from flare ionizing light, geomagnetic storms from coronal mass ejections, and EMP from fast nuclear fission xrays interacting with free charges through compton scattering.

Geomagnetic storms from coronal mass ejections will not hurt small disconnected electronics or transistor junctions. The timescale of the rate of change in the Earth's magnetic field is not short. There are not high frequency components. Only long conductors like oil pipelines, telecommuncations wires, and power lines and the backbone transformers will be effected. The integrated circuits in your smart phone will not be.

Also, like I said in the hackaday thread, in most of the ways that matter (ie, geomagnetic effect at earth) the 1989 CME that blacked out part of Canada was significantly stronger than the Carrington event. We, as Earth, haven't really added that much more long distance conductors since then. I wouldn't worry.

That isn't to say there's no danger. Certainly trying to replace the backbone transformers when the electrical infrastructure is down would be very hard. Those things take months to make, ship, and install in a well operating society. A CME that knocks out the power grid everywhere would be devastating.

<comment><USER3> Good point about people confusing geomagnetic storms and flare ionizing light. To add to the last point about a CME that knocks out the power grid, I heard a presentation while I worked 2 summers ago at the frontier development lab, ([https://frontierdevelopmentlab.org/fdl-2017/](https://frontierdevelopmentlab.org/fdl-2017/)). I was on the solar-terrestrial interactions team.

One of the points in the presentation is that there are only one or two companies in the world that makes these transformers and there aren't a lot of these transformers just siting around waiting for a Carrington level event.

One of our goals for the summer was to use a LSTM neural network to forecast what would happen and possibly give warning when a CME slams into the earth. We could forecast a little bit into the future using geomag data. One of the subgoals of this work was to bring awareness and potentially help warn parties involved with the world's infrastructure.

A key point out of this is that there are dedicated researchers in both the public and private sectors that study sun. They are busily trying to understand how the sun works and help create systems that help warn satellite and power grid operators.

Two presentations from that year worth taking a look at might be of interest.

Solar-Storm Prediction: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T_lHUwxTes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T_lHUwxTes)

Solar-Terrestrial Interactions [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5QQnZLjSBE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5QQnZLjSBE)

Applications for this year's FDL summer program can be found at. [https://frontierdevelopmentlab.org/apply/](https://frontierdevelopmentlab.org/apply/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >Some [telegraph] operators, in an attempt to spare their networks from further damage, disconnected their batteries from the lines, only to find that they could still send messages using only the current provided by the storm.

That's one of my favorite versions of "if life hands you lemons, make lemonade" stories.

Knowing what we know now about CME's, I wonder if it has ever been surmised that one option that might spare some expensive parts of the electric grid is a massive grid-wide disconnection prior to the CME arrival. This wouldn't save everything, but I think it would save a lot of blown megatransformers were they to be removed from transmission lines, reducing induced currents through them.

</comment><comment><USER5> Everyone should read the Lloyd's analysis of a potential second event [1].

>The total U.S. population at risk of extended power outage from a Carrington- level storm is between 20-40 million, with durations of 16 days to 1-2 years. The duration of outages will depend largely on the availability of spare replacement transformers. If new transformers need to be ordered, the lead- time is likely to be a minimum of five months. The total economic cost for such a scenario is estimated at $0.6-2.6 trillion USD (see Appendix).

>While the probability of an extreme storm occurring is relatively low at any given time, it is almost inevitable that one will occur eventually. Historical auroral records suggest a return period of 50 years for Quebec-level storms and 150 years for very extreme storms, such as the Carrington Event that occurred 154 years ago.

Bear in mind, this report was authored six years ago.

[1] [http://www.lloyds.com/~/media/lloyds/reports/emerging%20risk...](http://www.lloyds.com/~/media/lloyds/reports/emerging%20risk%20reports/solar%20storm%20risk%20to%20the%20north%20american%20electric%20grid.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Having been through a multi-day power outage in the 2017 Tubbs Fire (where many transmission lines + tformers had to be replaced over weeks): I can honestly say that I don't think we can fathom what would happen during a multi-week or month power outage.

Imagine: No phones. No internet. No cell or data. No fresh food. No running water. Can't get gasoline to go somewhere else... The tension is literally palpable.

It was by far the most mind-altering experience I've had in terms of making me realize how thin the veil of society really is.

<comment><USER7> > I can honestly say that I don't think we can fathom what would happen during > a multi-week or month power outage.

Pretty much anyone living in a rural or semi-rural area where freezing rain sometimes happens in the winter or hurricanes sometimes happen in the fall has experience with a week or longer power outage. It wouldn't be "business as usual" but a lot of people would be fine. The intersection between those people and people posting on HN just happens to be low.

<comment><USER8> A week-long outage is annoying. A month-long outage would be disastrous, even for those areas. There are many things you can do without power, but e.g. drugs require refrigeration, and we have people whose life depends on drugs (think insulin, for starters).

But also, urban areas would be harder hit precisely because they rely on their infrastructure more. And those areas are also the ones with more people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I was going to become a doomsday prepper, this is about the only thing that could do it. The article ends by talking about two years of power outages in the US. That would basically end society as we know it. No communication, no cars, no clean water, no shipments of food, it'd be chaos. And since it'd be world-wide, we couldn't even just hold on until the Europeans shipped us new parts for our factories.

<comment><USER10> Likely only half the world, given how it arrives -- which probably wouldn't save us given the interconnectedness of all the supply chains. Could half the world plausibly build a cell phone?

If you wanted to buy a city-sized transformer today you'd be put on a list for delivery sometime in the next few years. Trying to replace a continent's worth is a non-starter.

<comment><USER11> Probably yes, just not the latest model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The idea of the fall of civilsation following such an event is ludicrous.

Given emergencies, governments can setup the necessarily laws and contingencies to put focus on rebuilding the electrical infrastructure. The army has generators, which can be used to bootstrap building more and setting up makeshift transformers. Building transformers is not black magic. Nationalising eletricity-related patents and some companies to put resource on what matters and gearing up the rebuilding can be voted on rapidly.

<comment><USER13> Have you run any numbers to back up your beliefs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> For those who enjoy war-gaming how to survive a massive EMP, Jonathan Hollerman's Survival Theory is a good read.

[https://www.amazon.com/Survival-Theory-Preparedness- Jonathan...](https://www.amazon.com/Survival-Theory-Preparedness-Jonathan- Hollerman/dp/069267280X)

</comment><comment><USER15> It would probably end a lot of programming jobs in an instant. Wouldn't it? The needs would shift to the reconstruction of the infrastructure.

<comment> 52-6F-62 I guess make sure you get your exercise in so you can handle a shovel, eh?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> General response info at [0]. Tech description of impact of space weather on electric grids at [1]

I know from work (don't have links, sorry) that some distribution and transmission network operators include solar disruption in their incident response planning.

[0] [https://www.ready.gov/space-weather](https://www.ready.gov/space-weather)

[1] [https://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/spaceweather.pdf](https://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/spaceweather.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER17> Can someone put into rough terms the probability of encountering a Carrington event within the next 10 years? E.g., you're more likely to be killed by a swarm of killer bees in Maine than be hit by a Carrington event.

<comment><USER18> From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection#Future_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection#Future_risk):

> According to a report published in 2012 by physicist Pete Riley of > Predictive Science Inc., the chance of Earth being hit by a Carrington-class > storm between 2012 and 2022 is 12%.

<comment><USER19> Is it still 12% then?

<comment><USER20> Depends on whether that figure is based on a point sample of expectancy for an event of that scale, or if it's based on the expectancy due to the time elapsed since the last event.

As it's an independent probability (i.e. the time elapsed since the last event does not affect the probability of reoccurrence), it's likely the former, and therefore the same expected value - 1.2% in any given year.

<comment><USER21> You're looking at something like the geometric distribution.

The chance that the event does _not_ happen is 88%. And since years are independent and identically distributed as you say, 88% = q^10 so q~= 98.7%; therefore the chances that it does happen are ~=1.3%

(As it turns out, your approximation works because as the time-grid becomes finer and finer, the geometric process becomes a gamma process. It does fail dramatically for 2-7 years.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > the previous solar flares had cleared the space between Earth and the Sun to > make the plasma cloud travel faster

Is the matter in space such a slowdown on the plasma cloud that once cleared it allows that cloud to travel much faster?

<comment><USER23> Think of it more in terms of the shape of the pulse than of the absolute speed. (And take it for granted that dumbing things down a bit is, unfortunately, normal for the popular press. It's usually just as easy to give a more accurate description in less-technical language, but for whatever reason, it's rarely done.)

<comment><USER22> Ok, the "dumbed down" theory sounds more legitimate. I was wondering why a cloud of ejected plasma would travel substantially faster once you "clear the space" in front of it. Especially since much of the distance traveled is before hitting the magnetopause and Earth's magnetic field. Not much to slow it down out there, certainly not something a previous flare could clear up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you knew it was coming and had a few minutes to prepare, would putting your HDDs and SSDs in a Faraday cage protect them from damage during such an event?

<comment><USER15> Wouldn't disconneting from the grid/any other longer cables be enough?

<comment><USER24> I don't think you need to be on the grid. A sufficiently large CME would induce currents in any unshielded electrical device. Kind of like an EMP bomb would break most cars by destroying the starter motor.

<comment><USER15> Yes, but those voltages/currents may be negligible. You can find some numbers online from the past events, like 4V/km of a power grid. That would not kill anything I have at home.

<comment><USER24> Interesting. Getting quantitative is a great way to put things in perspective. I would love to know that "unplug your stuff" is enough to save it from CME damage.

How extreme would a CME have to be for it to "fry" things that are not connected to any power source, like a disconnected, powered-off computer? Is it even possible?

<comment><USER25> It would be extreme enough that the earth would be sterilized of life due to radiation from the solar event, so your electronics won't be a big deal in comparison. The good news is that this won't ever happen.

Induction is going to be more or less proportional to the area enclosed by a conductor, which essentially means long transmission lines are the things to worry about. And this is length scales on the order of 10^5 or 10^6 meters, versus 10^-1 meters for your devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/851876.The_Sun_Kings](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/851876.The_Sun_Kings) Despite cover and book jacket hype IMO a terrific book on the history of human sun observation and the Carrington event

</comment><comment><USER27> Backup to DVD. Get a wood stove.

<comment><USER20> If you've ever stuck a dvd in the microwave, you'll know this is a non- starter. Flux of the magnitude we're talking about would cause arcing within the substrate, destroying it.

Back up to paper.

<comment><USER25> That's not true. Only long conductors are affected significantly by these events.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> To say such an event would be really bad if it happened today is an understatement.

</comment><comment><USER29> how many nuclear reactors are hardened against this event?

<comment><USER30> Western reactors are designed to fail safe in the event of a complete failure like this, they'd just scram them.

Of course the same time as the electrical storm trashes the grid shutting down all the baseload nuke plants would just add to the chaos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Bullets would explode. I wonder?

<comment><USER32> The powder in ammunition burns, not explodes. A necessary bit of pedantry because something has to ignite it, which is the primer. And a primer needs a sharp blow from a sharpish object (I've hammered primers practically flat without them going off).

In summary, ammunition will not go off.</comment></comment>


Dave Conservatoire - my attempt at a Khan Academy for music - <AUTHOR> http://www.daveconservatoire.org

<comment><AUTHOR> Just wanted to share where I'm up to with this - and would be really grateful for any ideas and feedback.

Also if there were any keen hackers out there who would be interested in donating their time and skills to the project, that would be excellent.

I'm a musician and only a relatively new hacker and so I could certainly do with some help to make the site's software more robust!

<comment><USER2> Will you put videos about computer music and signal processing? Perhaps this package might be useful for that: <https://pypi.python.org/pypi/audiolazy>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd certainly like to get to covering computer music and sig processing at some point - and will definitely check out audiolazy. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Amazing idea. With today's technology, anyone with enough motivation can write music for an orchrestra from a bedroom. What we see is many newcomers realizing they are going to need some music theory an harmony if they want to be any good (myself included). I think there's a market for this.

How do you plan to monetize it?

<comment><AUTHOR> No plans to monetize - want to stay free and open for everyone. Will look for funding and donations as a non-profit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool idea. It's comes along just as I've ordered a pile of music theory (for newbies) books - but they wont turn up for another few days.

It'll be good to work through these videos at the same time =)

I'm up to part 9 of the basic lessons and so far they're looking pretty good!

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't have a musical bone in my body (except playing the recorder in elementary school), but it's time I learned!

Very well done so far, you've obviously worked hard on this and it shows.

edit: curious why you chose the french version over the english 'conservatory'

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Really appreciate the feedback. In the UK, conservatory tends to mean a glass room on the back of your house - we use conservatoire for music school!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is great.

Just a minor note (ah!): the number "1" on the left on my name on the top right corner made me think I had some welcome message in my inbox so I tried to click it.

Ok, time to watch some videos. I'll use this as teoric complement of justinguitar.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah ha - so that's your current score. It isn't a fully fleshed out feature, but they idea is you'd get points for completing exercises etc! But yes, at the moment it looks like a message in your inbox!

Dave</comment></comment>