Developers: How to get Hired by Every Startup You Contact - <AUTHOR> http://3degreesnation.tumblr.com/post/23655371280/hey-developers-heres-how-to-get-hired-by-every <comment><USER3> Getting hired is easy, the tough part is working on your own stuff. For me the cycle is usually like this:

1\. Make a cool pet project

2\. Show it to The Internet

3\. Get a little exposure, feel awesome, decide this project is going somewhere and you'll work on it for months on end because it's just that awesome

4\. Freelancing offers[1] start raining in

5\. Realize you actually don't have any money, are a student and don't have a lot of time next to classes

6\. Accept one or two freelancing gigs

7\. Pet project dies a miserable death

8\. Rinse and repeat a few months later

[1] I freelance for startups, always for startups. Usually I'm the guy they go to for "Hey, so uhm, I hacked this prototype together in two weeks now there is more than 1 user. Everything is breaking. Halp."

<comment><USER4> Eh, you're doing better than I am. In general I don't make it past step one.

<comment><USER5> It helps if you pick a pet project that uses the technology of people that are likely to hire you.

If some decent looking startup publishes a new API, jump on that. If your app is any good, they'll be excited to try it and help you promote it.

This is how I was extended an offer for good freelance work recently.

<comment><USER4> Actually, I was lamenting the working-on-my-own-stuff part, not the getting hired part :)

I tend to build what I think is a cool pet project, then completely fail to put it in front of anyone other than friends who happen to be in the room while I'm tinkering with it. Usually by the time I've managed to build anything substantial, I no longer think it will be interesting to anyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How to get hired by the startup that you want to work for:

       1. Figure out what you think is the most important thing
          to be doing in the world right now.
       2. Learn the requisite skills to do it.
       3. Find somebody who's doing it already and write a carefully
          crafted, enthusiastic email explaining why you think what
          they are doing is important and why you are uniquely suited
          to be part of it.
       4. Show some evidence (produced in step 2).

If you don't know what you think is the most important thing to be doing in the world right now, then somebody else is deciding for you.

</comment><comment><USER7> "You won't be the only developer after that job. Second, it won't be like this forever. Supply and demand are out of whack, and people are catching on and catching up"

Seems like a nice way to kick off an agenda with a bit of fear mongering but its rather the non-technical founders that are exploding in size. On top of it the actual thing that developers are catching on to is that it doesn't make any sense in this environment to become a CTO of a very small startup when you can just start your own and have proper equity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate the comment - I didn't mean it as fear mongering, just pointing out that the landscape will likely change over the next two years. Great developers will still be great developers and will have tons of job offers, I just imagine there will be a bit of a squeeze in the middle. I may be wrong. As for developers starting something on their own, I'm all for it if they've got the idea. They'll run into the same challenges any single founder will, but will definitely start from a better spot than a non-technical founder. I was more targeting this towards people who didn't have the idea yet and were looking to join something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Surprised this guy didn't write an article on how to sell his position to developers. In spite of claiming to understand the current labor market for development talent, it appears he's still got it backwards.

<comment><USER9> Totally agreed. It seems he made some interesting choices about how to setup a startup for success before bringing on a technical co-founder, and as a technical co-founder I would be interested to hear 1) what he did and 2) what he thinks would be useful in convincing someone like me to come join him

<comment><AUTHOR> I certainly tried to find a CTO before building a product - it's nearly impossible these days if you don't have funding, especially if you're founding your first startup.

So, I raised a small FAF round and outsourced my MVP to two awesome dev shops. Now I'm raising a second round of funding and can afford to bring on someone full-time. It's definitely not ideal, but it was the only way I could do it. I'm hoping the idea, the flexibility of the job, and the above average equity piece are intriguing to a potential CTO. Would be interested to hear suggestions on how to make this more attractive?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I generally disagree with what this guy is saying. This is reasonable from the perspective of, "How to pitch yourself to a non-technical founder."

A. Programming languages do matter. Talking to other programmers, a good way to find people who actually love programming is to ask people what languages they use. People who have experimented with haskell or clojure are usually people who love programming more. PG has a good essay on why it makes sense to start a startup based around an esoteric language. I know for a fact that Jane Street uses their heavy reliance on ocaml as a recruiting tool. Your life will be much, much easier if you can hire better programmers. Hence, the startups with the really good engineers will want to know what programming languages you know. So yes, I agree that resumes are not that interesting, but also, programming languages are useful indicators for certain kinds of employers. The recruitee's github should reflect this. [1]

B. Sending links to apps or websites is all well and good, but as another commenter said, for some startups, it is basically useless. If you are trying to be the CTO of a company like 10gen (their CTO is a co-founder, but bear with me) you will want to know about their systems skill, not how pretty they can make a website. Backend talent, or understanding of algorithms is something you absolutely cannot get from this.

So at startups where backend technical skill is not highly valued, and the founder is very non-technical, this might be useful. If you are trying to work at a Palantir or a DropBox, you should probably ignore this advice, although admittedly, both are much further along than this guy is thinking of.

[1] <http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment - lot of good stuff in here. As for the languages piece, broad knowledge on languages definitely shows something, I agree. And I want to know what the applicant knows. I just meant that I could get a lot of that from the github account (as you point out), and that it doesn't need to be displayed in a resume. A resume telling me you know things is one thing, a github acct showing me you know things is another.

The links note is a good point. I was tailoring this towards my specific startup, and really early startups in general making their first "tech" hire. Once you've got a CTO or someone technical on staff, they'll handle the technical hiring and will understand the process and applicants far better than a non-technical founder ever will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find it interesting that the OP seems to think that being a lead developer and being a CTO are the same.

<comment><USER12> Indeed. If he is hiring for a CTO, why has he made the technical decisions up front? I realise he has had a MVP built in Ruby, but that shouldn't dictate the technical platform - leave that for the future CTO to decide.

<comment><AUTHOR> I made them so I could get something built quickly, and the development team I clicked with happened to build Ruby applications. I'd certainly be open to a change once I hire a CTO. I honestly don't know how hard it is to switch from one platform to the next, I assumed "very" so I looked for Ruby devs only. Maybe a bad assumption?

<comment><USER12> Oh, I'm with you on the "get a prototype up and running, using consultants" part. Definetely a good investment. But depending on how much work was poured into this, it's probably relatively trivial to re-implement. It is a _minimally_ viable product after all, I hope?

There are three reasons why I would suggest that you don't emphasise the proficiency in Ruby. The first is, as mentioned above, that you're probably overestimating the effort required to switch platform at this point. The second is that a good programmer who just happens to have no/limited experience with Ruby will probably be able to adapt pretty fast, provided he has experience with similar technologies. By limiting your search to those that already know Ruby well, you're avoiding a lot of potential.

But the main reason why I think it's a bad idea, is because you are making decisions that I believe is the domain of a CTO to make. By doing so, you are sending a signal that you don't respect/trust him to make that decision. That is going to make the type of person you'd want onboard think twice about joining. I'm not suggesting that you actually feel this way (I don't know you, so I couldn't pass that judgement), but you should be aware of the way it will read to - at least some - people in your target demography.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh, good. One of these again. It's been almost a week since I've read the last guys guarantee on how to get a job.

Regardless, the proper title for this piece is: "How to get hired by me." Nothing more.

The best way to get hired? Follow the instructions on applying provided by the company. If they fail to provide proper instructions, they'll probably fail at a lot of other things as well.

</comment><comment><USER14> Another post saying that if I don't have a highly populated Github and a well- trafficked blog, I'm worthless as a candidate to a startup. Good to know; my employer will be disappointed.

Nearly all of my work is behind the screen of an NDA. When I am looking for a job, I'll send code samples, but I get the feeling that's no longer good enough. Is this correct?

In any case, I am noticing these things and will probably force myself to start a blog at some point, even though it's completely counter to my nature.

<comment><USER15> I'm sure it depends on the startup, but I was perfectly happy to get code samples instead of a github link.

In that case, though, you should work a bit to demonstrate your engagement with the field in some other way. The kind of people who I most want to hire at a startup are the ones who would still be coding on something even if that weren't the job. I strongly want to avoid clock-punchers who only program because that seemed like an easier job than dentistry.

Note that a blog isn't the only way to show your engagement. A bunch of good Stack Overflow answers. A very thoughtful cover letter. A link to some personal tech project you did. The presentation you did for a local user group. Mentioning the time you spend volunteering with the FIRST Lego League.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I got an impression that author is looking for the specific experience that his company needs at the moment - this is OK for quick contract or one-shot jobs, but in general, I think it is quite short sighted. I wouldn't favor someone because of twitter or facebook integration experience or similar.

Regarding not sending resumes - this is quite in hype now, which is bad - <USER2> prefer structured text over some heart-touching tale - and not everyone is great at writing. What author is looking instead of resumes, it is actually called a cover letter - so it can be sent _with_ a resume, not necessary a replacement.

</comment><comment><USER17> Generally good stuff. Not sending a resume is interesting -- I bet there are people who would expect one and argue the opposite.

What really struck me were two things:

\- Outsourcing the MVP. I've seen a few people do it but it seems a very expensive way to get started. Wouldn't it be easier to pitch for funding/a technical partner without this?

\- Building a recommendation engine in Ruby? Really? I've never used Ruby for numeric code but I wouldn't think it would be particularly fast and it doesn't have libraries equivalent NumPy AFAIK.

(Don't feel you have to vote this up. I'm on 666 karma right now. ;-)

<comment><USER18> I think outsourcing the MVP is a great way to go in the current climate. Pitching for funding without a technical co-founder is impossible beyond a friends and family round, at least in the established startup hubs. It's also very hard to find a good technical partner without already having demonstrated some traction: this makes sense as good technical partners have many options and want to see that you can deliver the non-technical side of the business (40% of a company worth 0 is still 0!).

So in this context spending a little savings on an MVP is a great way to go, it lets you show traction to get the funding or technical partner and can be done by raising from friends/family or working nights at another job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here we go.

 _There's just no real barometer – it's not like being a Doctor or a Lawyer where you can check the applicant's college, GPA, and Bar Score (is that a thing?) and know the person is proficient._

If you're hiring technical staff and you clearly understand what you need these people to do on a daily basis and why you need them to do it then there is absolutely no excuse for not having even a basic set of minimum technical criteria.

If you don't clearly understand what you need them to do on a day to day basis then I think you may need to re-assess why you need them, or it's possible that someone else in the business should be handling the first stage of this hiring process.

Now to your 6 key points

1\. Don't send a resume - That's a huge statement and your supporting points are severely lacking in elaboration. _listing all the different languages you know is really only interesting to you and your peers_ Refer to my first point above.

2\. Keep an updated blog - Sure. I can see this. What about the fantastic developers who don't have sufficient time to blog? Some of the best developers I know have a blog, most of the best developers I know don't.

3\. Link to your previous work - Comfortably the best piece of advice in the entire article and I can't support this advice enough. I was recently looking for an iOS developer and the amount of CV's I received from people claiming to have amazing apps published in the app store yet no links to said app was just baffling.

4\. If you're not from the US (or the country you are applying for a job in), let me know what that means - Sorry but if you're my employer, the onus is upon you to be familiar with international hiring policies.

5\. Show you're interested in the product, and the process - _if you could show that you're interested in the business and aren't going to leave when the next startup comes calling, that's great_ That's one of the many reasons to interview someone. It's an opportunity to find out how much they truly know about you and your company. If you think you can derive this from an initial application, then again, I feel you are misguided.

6\. Have a good answer for why you're leaving your current job - _This won't be in the initial email, but is important, so I had to include it_ This should be in the initial email. This is always one of the first questions I ask prior to interviewing someone. If they tell me the reason they want out is because they are bored, then the obvious next question is 'why do you find it boring'.

This article should be titled _How to make life easier for a non-technical hiring manager_ as I can almost guarantee your approach will contradict the thought process of most decision makers within the tech start-up community as opposed to getting a job offer from 'every company they apply to'.

Sorry to be so scathing as there are some useful pieces of info in your article however the title angered me.

<comment><USER20> So much this

The "startup ninja hacker" world is in need of a reality check

The "tradicional hiring" methods has some glaring defects, but people don't realize it's got a lot of things right as well!

I want your resume, yes. You don't need one if your name _really_ rings a bell like Gosling, Stroustroup, Torvalds. Not "built JQuery UI plugins" famous, sorry.

Also, it's great if you can link to a previous work, but if you can't it's ok. Projects go offline (happened to me), are sold as part of a product (yes), or are part of a really expensive product (yep).

"Sorry but if you're my employer, the onus is upon you to be familiar with international hiring policies." I lost count of how many "recruiters" contacted me offering a job in the US (residents only). But you know, in the same place you got my email there was a disclaimer "need sponsorship to work in the US". So if you ignore this, I'm gonna assume it's a poor job offer (and it usually is)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I enjoyed the post, and it reaffirmed a very interesting transition away from resumes and toward actual work. Now that blogs and github are so easy to start, why would I want to read that someone has extensive programming experience and good writing skills? If you do, it'll already be on display.

That said... I actually generally get an interview with many of the startups I contact through a traditional resume and cover letter. I've been hired by some, rejected by others, but I believe it usually comes down to how well I handle a series of difficult technical interviews. They're usually around algorithms and data structures, and often test recursion. Threading is also a commonly tested subject.

Are these tests highly rigorous? All I can say is they're pretty tough for me. I've run the questions by other programmers, some say it's tough, others say it's not so hard, many just get so interested in the problem that they start working on it.

Anyway, I'd still say that the best way to get hired by every startup you contact is to be a pretty badass programmer, with a very strong grounding in algorithms and data structures, recursion, threading, and be ready to show you can apply that stuff in a very short amount of time under some pressure at the white board. It's just my opinion, but I believe I know very, very talented programmers who have been passed over because of their performance during these interviews.

Here's something good to take from this blog post - if you are a good and productive programmer who has trouble with the tech grilling, definitely make an effort to put some work out there on blogs and github, it might make the difference. Maybe the threshold for the technical grilling is more forgiving when the hiring team has more to work with, better examples of a candidate's ability?

</comment><comment><USER22> Generally agree with this. Whenever I hear about people not getting job offers, there is mention somewhere in there about sending resumes. I have never sent a resume to get a job or a gig, however I do sometimes attach the PDF output of my LinkedIn profile which comes out in resume format. Other than being an attachment, I only mention it as a one-liner. Not sending resumes is probably not intuitive since that's what everyone has been doing to get jobs in the U.S. for decades.

I disagree that the lack of supply is temporary. I'm not even sure that's really the case. For one, there will always be more demand than supply for "A level" developers. This is a field where people have to really push themselves to keep up with the game and continue expanding their skills, and most people don't want to go through that effort. All you have to do is run faster than the average developers and the bar isn't very high. Also, there will always be "niche" areas where developers are hard to find and well in demand and those niches are everywhere.

<comment><USER23> How is it possible that you've never gotten a job from sending a resume? I'm generally curious how that's possible, unless you're doing all freelance work?

<comment><USER22> Networking and / or visibility. Job offers come from people who either already know me or they have come across my name through the ecosystem.

Make sure that you are doing more than just sending out resumes. Get your name out there by being visible in places where employers might be looking for developers. Use Twitter, LinkedIn, create a tech blog and generally help people out. The more your name is out there, the greater your "luck surface area."

Freelancing is also a great way to land a job for a lot of reasons. When you are looking for a job, you have to sell yourself to the employer. With freelancing, you can get a lot of practice with selling and generally you will get more immediate feedback for your efforts because hiring a freelancer is far less risk / commitment than hiring a full time developer. Freelancing is also good for possibly meeting your next employer, if you are a great fit, then your freelance gig might turn into a full time position. Freelancing is also good for building up experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Just a personal viewpoint based on the limited information available (and not meant as a personal knock on the OP since I don't know him or his particular situation in detail):

I would be extremely wary about joining a tech start-up that has to go through an open job application process for a CTO. If the founder can't make enough of a believer out of someone within his or her own network to join, I would see that as a bad sign -- not just in terms of the start-up's idea but also the founder's ability to sell his or her idea. If it's the case that the founder doesn't know viable candidates in his or her own network, then I'd be doubly concerned: it's a tech start-up and a strong network within tech circles will be necessary for other resources down the line (future engineering hires, advice, potential investors that add value to the company, etc). Additionally, if s/he isn't really plugged in to the tech community, I'd worry that s/he doesn't truly understand the business, my skills as it relates to the business, and the value that I bring to the table. And in this particular case, I'd also be concerned that social networking is _what this start-up revolves around_ and the founder (again, from my limited view on the outside) doesn't appear to be able to network effectively enough to at least get introductions to suitable CTO candidates through secondary connections.

I'm not saying that this is necessarily the situation here but that's my thought process just based on the information available. I consider things like sales ability, existing network and hiring ability to be essential things for a non-technical founder to bring to the table before I would consider working for him or her -- otherwise, I'm almost as well-off starting my own thing and own a hell of a lot more equity.

There are a handful of non-technical people I know that I would join in short order if one of them ever called to talk about a job at his or her start-up. And if I declined I would refer them to other people I know that might be interested because I know no matter what he or she is doing, s/he has a great chance of succeeding. If you're not the kind of person that inspires that level of loyalty, being a lone non-technical founder at a tech start-up seems like it would make an already arduous journey _incredibly_ difficult.

</comment><comment><USER25> Send them your portfolio and tell them why and how you can be very helpful to them. Easy ?

<comment><AUTHOR> For front-end dev, absolutely. Back-end is trickier to judge for someone less tech-savvy.

<comment><USER26> How about showing portfolio of open source application like how many our commits in Github? Is it relevant?

<comment><USER27> If you have it , sure.

Of course this causes a class divide between:

A) People who are paid to contribute to open source (either as part of their job or in some cases their whole job) and therefor have many commits.

B) People who write a little open source code on the weekends.

C) People who already work 60-80 hour weeks on proprietary/in house software and have other commitments for the rest of their time.

Also the "you need to contribute to open source to get a new job" thing has a perverse incentive for companies. If they know that having you contributing to open source makes it easier for you to either leave or demand a higher salary (because it is easier for you to get hired elsewhere). It is then in their interests to stop you doing it whenever possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is pretty interesting, regardless whether you agree with it. It's always useful to listen to and engage with people outside your direct area of responsibility to see things from other perspectives.

</comment><comment><USER29> I really wish someone would post one of these related to students still in school (we need to work too). Or is the field so competitive the posts would make no difference?

<comment><USER30> There's probably plenty of startups or consulting gigs that would be happy to have a student. Full-time developer positions maybe not so much just because you wouldn't be able to show up to the office 9-5 every day and still go to class.

My advice would be to build up your portfolio with personal dev projects, fork projects on github, etc. The more of that you do it's likely people will even start contacting you with offers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hey don't tell everybody about the resume thing. It'll stop working ;)</comment>


Constitute: The World's Constitutions to Read, Search and Compare - <AUTHOR> https://www.constituteproject.org/#/search

<comment><USER2> I was expecting side-by-side comparisons at first. Then I saw the format and realized it's EVERY constitution. Wow.

</comment><comment><USER3> Where is Lithuania constitution?

</comment><comment><USER4> It would be educational to highlight and comment on every sentence which is either contradicting another sentence in the same document, or suppressed by some actual law and regulations, or suppressed de-facto by actual actions of the lawmakers, police, army and courts.

My personal impression is that all modern constitutions are very much like bible or similar religious scripture. It has some universal values with many contradictions, and people in charge always bend the rules in their favor.</comment>


3 Faces of Business Dysfunction - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/eric-schurenberg/3-faces-of-business-dysfunction.html

<comment><USER2> As much as I hate the term Synergist, he has a point. There is natural friction in different strong personality types, and value to a leader who can create an environment where people co-exist.</comment>


Ohh Canada! How to move an entire government to a new digital platform - <AUTHOR> http://buytaert.net/how-to-move-an-entire-government-to-a-new-digital-platform <comment><USER2> The United Kingdoms, Gov.UK had similar plans. The site, designed by the Government Digital Service, combines all of the UK government's websites into a single domain and has been executed very well. Department by Department, Service by Service it was/is being slowly moved over.

It is possible and so much it won the Design of the Year in 2013.

Deyan Sudjic, Director of Design Museum said: "GOV.UK is a remarkable success on so many levels. It makes life better for millions of people coping with the everyday chores, from getting a new passport, to paying their taxes. It's a reflection of the government understanding how to communicate with the country in a way that works, it's simple, direct, well mannered, all the things that we would like to take for granted from the government, but in a sea of red tape and jargon, usually can't. The rest of the world is deeply impressed, and because it has rationalised multiple official websites, it saves the taxpayer millions, what's not to like?"

Government Digital Service [https://gds.blog.gov.uk/](https://gds.blog.gov.uk/)

They Keep it Simple, a lot of white space.</comment>


Gamified Platform to Code Bots for Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://www.aigaming.com/?utm_source=TH99&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=campaign%26r%3DTH99 <comment><USER2> Cool!</comment>


Robert Boyle's to-do list (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.royalsociety.org/history-of-science/2010/08/27/robert-boyle-list/ <comment><USER2> That's a fantastic find. Interesting how some of these we now take for granted and some we shall likely never have. Modest ambitions too! My own todo list is a bit less interesting.

The one that jumped out to me as likely unattainable was "A Ship not to be Sunk", as much on the wishlist then as now and so much harder to achieve than to talk about that I think it will be forever beyond our reach. Oceans are fierce.

<comment><USER3> At the time, it must have sounded of similar complexity or attainability as a ship to sail with all winds, but motor boats have been a solved issue for ages now, but ships can still sink.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Pleasing Dreams and Physicall Exercises by the Egyptian Electuary and by the > Fungus mentioned by the French author.

anybody know what "the Egyptian Electuary" and "the Fungus mentioned by the French author" is? and who is the french author

<comment><USER5> Maybe this guy? [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233679918_Robert_Bo...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233679918_Robert_Boyle_Georges_Pierre_des_Clozets_and_the_Asterism_a_New_Source)

<comment><USER6> There's something about the story that is famiilar to students of modern VC- funded flim-flam:

[https://blog.oup.com/2014/04/georges-pierre-des- clozets/](https://blog.oup.com/2014/04/georges-pierre-des-clozets/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "A Perpetual Light". There we have limitless options: photovoltaics, radioluminescence, piezoelectricity. And are even on the cusp of inertial containment of fusion reactions.

How astounding to be able to reach back in time and pluck out a Newton or a Boyle or a Faraday, and plop them onto a jet airplane ride in the early 21st century! Space exploration, quantum teleportation, time dilation, gene manipulation. The doctrinaire scientific orthodoxy of our day must appear absolutely heretical to their minds.

</comment><comment><USER5> Seems like the fungus might do it:

" _Potent Druggs to alter or Exalt Imagination_ , Waking, Memory, and other functions, and appease pain, procure innocent sleep, harmless dreams, etc." And "Pleasing Dreams and physicall Exercises exemplify'd by the Egyptian Electuary and by _the Fungus mentioned by the French Author_."

<comment><USER6> Do we have any idea what, specifically, the Egyptian electuary or the fungus were?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> An excellent find.

Most of the rest I can understand, but this one has me stumped:

"The Attaining Gigantick Dimensions."

Are we talking large humans, turning people into giants? Did 'Gigantick' mean something different back then?

<comment><USER9> It was submitted a couple times in the past.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=boyle+list](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=boyle+list)

There are lots of valuable links that never gained traction.

<comment><USER8> "There are lots of valuable links that never gained traction."

Content is king, there's probably a great website to be made {hoover|dyson|vacuum}ing up amazing lost links.

<comment><USER9> A daily "Best of Missed HN"

<comment><USER2> What a great idea.

<comment><USER10> Weekly would be better

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _The Emulating of Fish without Engines by Custome and Education only._

Could someone explain what this means?

<comment><USER12> Swimming?

<comment><USER13> Freediving

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> First on the list:

"The Prolongation of Life."

He'd probably be disappointed that we've gained so much knowledge and have made no progress on this.

<comment> w-m That depends on how you look at it. You could also call it a great success: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#/media/File:Li...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#/media/File:Life_expectancy_by_world_region,_from_1770_to_2018.svg)

<comment><USER14> That mixes the massive improvements in child mortality rates with the modest improvement in "age of mortality when child mortality is excluded".

<comment> w-m Sure, but all of these children got to live a full life instead of dying early, so "prolongation of life" applies there as well. A job well done, time to cross it off the to-do list? :)

<comment><USER9> Nope, from his second item on the list, I'd say you missed his point.

" The Recovery of Youth, or at least some of the Marks of it, as new Teeth, new Hair colour'd as in youth."

<comment><USER2> That's a different entry.

<comment><USER9> Yes, the next entry. it naturally follows.

First prolong life, next restore some aspects of youth.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google launches wedding planning site - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/more-i-dos-less-to-dos-wedding-planning.html

<comment><USER2> Its not actually a wedding planning site, its just a collection of their existing tools packaged together as a something you can use to plan your wedding. Nothing new here but interesting marketing strategy nonetheless.</comment>


Why Time and Newsweek Will Never Be The Economist - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2009/04/when-will-magazines-stop-trying-to-copy-the-economist.html <comment><USER2> From 1993 to 2003 I read the Economist religiously, cover to cover, every week, for the regular reasons. This was from high school through college, grad school and early career.

Then came Iraq and WMD. WMD was so clearly a cover story, such obvious propaganda. I'd open up the Economist, expecting to read some scalding critique of GWB, and instead find them pushing the same damn line. WTF?

I'd beware of it. The corruptive power of intelligent yet intellectually _dishonest_ argument should not be underestimated.

<comment><USER3> Your profile says you're new here.

Without judgment of your claims about WMD and the Iraq War, I'd recommend that you take a look at the HN guidelines on comments and submissions:

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

It's pretty hard to have only a lukewarm opinion on these issues, and there's sufficient diversity of views around here to ensure that arguments on political topics are fractious and unenlightening. So we tend to avoid those.

I highly recommend these articles, which describe a similar thought process:

<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/02/politics_is_the.html>

<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/03/policy_debates_.html>

<comment><USER4> And there are plenty of objective facts about the Iraq war that are known. Not all in the world is a matter of opinion, no matter how much some wingnuts (on both sides) wish it were.

We ignore this at our peril. But overall, you're right. Little is ever gained from political debate, and this probably isn't the place for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another thing those magazines can never compete on, anonymity.

The Economist doesn't run bylines. This is unthinkable for most journalists and publications. Without bylines, then you actually have to pay your people a decent wage. Also, without bylines, historically the Economist has been able to get contributions from people who'd rather not be recognized, foreign ministers, state department officials, people who actually know what's going on.

<comment><USER6> That's a double edged sword - if you've read their blogs, they don't have just one blog writer and at times writers actively disagree with each other. It just gets downright bizarre. Further, the lack of a byline also results in a lack of accountability/ability to deny responsibility. Frankly, I've also found their quality has gone down over the last few years since writers like Megan McArdle left.

<comment><USER7> How do you know she left? (Seriously)

<comment><USER8> [http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlDC/the_revolving_door/mca...](http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlDC/the_revolving_door/mcardle_leaves_the_economist_for_the_atlantic_64634.asp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> <http://www.theonion.com/content/node/34138> Ooh, look at me, I read the Economist. :) But seriously, I laugh because everything in the onion article applies to me.

<comment><USER10> I think the original article misses a critical point.

I WILL make time and gladly pay for any truly intelligent publication. At least in my case, it's not a fixed sized market.

But intelligent work is hard to find. You can't fake it, it's hard to buy and that's why there's so little intelligent reporting and writing. And that's why I read the economist.

I read the economist online edition. Hacked into it when I was a broke college student. I had recently arrived in the sates and resorted to hacking because I was poor and shocked by the lack of hard news in the US.

That was many years ago and now I can easily afford a subscription. I keep thinking I really should get one, it would be the right thing TM to do.

But I'm a cheapskate and I keep forgetting to pay for the Economist. Which means you'll never see me carrying an issue, or reading one. And because my memory for anything other then code is crap, I'm not going to tell you I red this or that in the Economist. You'll almost never hear me mention the Economist. Except in this post - The Economist :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Economist and The Financial Times are the only two publications I've subscribed to in the last decade.

I'm not completely convinced people are uninterested though. Before we met, my wife wouldn't have given the Economist a second glance. Now she's a more regular reader than I am. Often you just have to give people a chance.

<comment><USER12> Concur to both.

The Economist is a necessity for my commute. I find my wife stealing before I can get to it most weeks :)

The FT is harder to justify if you have a good set of financial rss feeds but the economist has no real substitute.

<comment><USER13> What is a good set of financial rss feeds?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> And if you can get over the absolutely massive amount of wasted paper in each issue, Vanity Fair is a far better subscription to have than Time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, agreed. When is someone going to port Adblock Plus over to the offline world?

<comment><USER5> What if you set up an intermediate magazine service? People subscribe to magazines through you, paying a hefty premium. They get their magazines with all the ads town out of them a day later than usual.

<comment><USER15> I doubt that model would hold considering the fact that ad-blockers are too cheap to subscribe to a service like that, but why not just pay the magazine a little more in subscription fees?

The aura of anti-advertising among the tech crowd is somewhat sad. The ads are on consumers' side in terms of keeping the price of content down. That being said, I too use Adblock. :) Advertisers need to bring the annoyance level down a notch (especially with those automatic-popout-video-player-banner-deals- with-broken-mute-buttons).

<comment><AUTHOR> Stupid question - does HN have ads? I've never looked at it without Adblock!

<comment><USER15> Nope. I don't think pg cares about generating any kind of financial gain from HN aside from leads to successful YC companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I like the economist but find the density of information in there is overwhelming (I can't seem to find the time to read the whole thing in a week). Additionally, I feel the stories hold more importance than from other news sources.

<comment><USER17> Yes it's overwhelming but that's why I always bring a copy when I fly. Great time killer, because you end up reading stuff you wouldn't read elsewhere. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I used to, as another poster has mentioned, pick up a copy whenever I flew anywhere.

Now I subscribe to the audio edition, which is of a fantastically high quality. Amazingly, there's more content (length-wise) that I can reasonably get through in a week of commuting, so I find myself skipping stories I'm not interested in.

Unfortunately, they don't expose their audio feed as podcast. It's available as a zipped download full of individual MP3s for each section. I've written a script which scrapes and processes it weekly and turns it into an RSS feed so I can easily consume it.

The audio really is high-quality, and their turn-around time for putting out a new edition each week is really impressive.

Every now and then their editing process slips up, and you can hear what should have been out-takes in the audio. Stuff like the speaker repeating sentences, or having a number of tries at a particularly difficult word - pretty funny, really :)

</comment><comment><USER19> It's not just Time and Newsweek. I get complimentary subscriptions to both Fortune and Money, and I find it almost impossible to read either of them. It's like a bad television transcript.

(17 page rant about the failings of most media and media consumers implied)

</comment><comment><USER20> I actually consider their pervasive editorializing to be their weakest point, not only because they can be quite wrong (The Iraq war as others have pointed out), but also because it actually gets highly repetitive and tiring. I like reading about political malaise in Japan or the energy industry in Brazil, but I don't like them putting the same opinion in both articles. If they left their opinions only in Charlemagne/Lexington/Bagehot, they'd be a much better magazine.

<comment><USER21> I have to disagree. Since the advent of blogging, I now prefer that style of writing. For example, the writing style in this article illustrates precisely why I no longer care for the standard journalistic style:

<http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10226746-92.html>

Can you imagine a standard technology coverage piece in your daily newspaper saying "kudos to Ubuntu 9.04: you got game"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have been looking for a while for a second magazine subscription I actually like, the first being The Economist. Still no luck; the closest I have come were Wired and Seed. Any advice?

<comment><USER23> The Atlantic, Harpers, The New Yorker, EDGE (UK games mag), and The New York Review of Books (technically a newspaper) are good.

<comment><USER3> MIT's _Technology Review_ is always interesting.

I also like "top-level" academic/professional journals like _Communications of the ACM_ , _IEEE Spectrum_ , _Science_ , and _Nature_. There are so many sub- specialties in these fields that authors put in a lot of exposition to keep everyone on the same page. The result is usually surprisingly readable, and there are a lot of implicit pointers to more information if something really catches your eye.

They're not cheap, though.

<comment><USER24> I used to chuck _Communications of the ACM_ until last year's total revamp. It's really good now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> You can read Newsweek, Economist, Time, VF and others from the 'Media' top menu of my website: <http://twitya.com/> eg: <http://twitya.com/#theeconomist> <http://twitya.com/#Newsweek> and make up your own mind about any. Last time I checked, The Economist tilts to the left.

<comment><USER26> What's the point of that?

<comment><USER25> The point is to read, think and progress.

<comment><USER26> Of course. But what I meant was, why go to your site? Why not go directly to economist.com to read, think and progress?

<comment><USER25> Save time for one. And, hit other mags too.

<comment><USER25> Well, for me it works anyway. That's who I built it for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm holding off on my Kindle purchase until the Economist is available on it.

</comment><comment><USER28> Anybody here read Prospect?</comment>


Deep Neural Networks for Acoustic Modelling and Speech Recognition [pdf] (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/171498/HintonDengYuEtAl-SPM2012.pdf <comment><USER2> What is the current state of open source speech recognition?

It would be immensely useful to be able to run a monologue or dialog wav file through a program and get more-or-less good text, even if there are some errors. As far as I know this is still quite a difficult problem, requiring an immense amount of data, and good language models, but I wouldn't be surprised if today there are some pre-trained models available that can be run using one of the many machine learning Python toolkits?

<comment><USER3> This tracks the current state of speech recognition. [https://github.com/syhw/wer_are_we](https://github.com/syhw/wer_are_we)

<comment><USER4> Cool. We need more projects like this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Given the Baidu work, I think we can safely say that Hinton et al's forecasts 4 years ago were on the money. Deep approaches are now clearly dominant and have yielded fantastic performance.

<comment><USER6> Huh?

The linked paper is 4 years old. DNNs have been dominant in speech since 2012. No one uses GMM systems anymore.

Baidu's approach isn't even the best (IBM's system tends to beat theirs on accuracy, and google tends not to publish numbers on known benchmarks), it's notable mostly for its use of RNNs to do pronunciation and language modeling (although they also tack on a mod-KN LM).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Needs a (2012) tag

<comment><AUTHOR> there you go. :)</comment></comment>


Microsoft turns two-factor authentication into one-factor by ditching password - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/microsoft-turns-two-factor-authentication-into-one-factor-by-ditching-password/ <comment><USER3> This is _less_ secure. You're down from requiring Something You Have and Something You Know to just Something You Have. Meaning, anyone who has your phone and opens your browser history can find and access your Outlook account.

<comment><USER4> Clearly, moving from two-factor to single-factor is going to be less secure, but that's not really the question for me. I want to know if this more secure than user-originated passwords?

User-originated passwords can be socially engineered, or just plain guessed. They can be sniffed with a key-logger, or over a non-secure connection. You can steal password databases and run them against rainbow tables, or brute- force them GPU farms. Password re-use also means that you don't have to defeat Microsoft's security to get at the password, you just need to defeat the security of the weakest vendor where that password is used. Some people will even just straight-up tell you their password if you ask them.

Using an authenticator app to generate one-time passwords means there is no database of password hashes to be stolen and leaked, nothing for the user to remember, no password to re-use with weaker vendor, and nothing for an attacker to brute-force. Because the passwords are single-use, a key-logger is of limited value too.

It also reduces the attack surface down from any script-kiddie who can break the security of the weakest vendor, down to people who physically have access to your phone (or can get malware on to it).

Yes, anyone with access to your phone has access to your Outlook, but chances are anyone with access to your phone has that anyway, and your device is probably locked with TouchID or similar.

So, I agree this is weaker than two-factor, but I don't think that's the point.

<comment><USER5> Empirically, it's more secure over the whole user population than user passwords.

<comment><USER6> Do you have a source for that? (not arguing, just want to read more about this)

<comment><USER5> No, just experience training organizations for this stuff. User passwords are extremely bad.

<comment><USER7> How do you feel about reversed 2FA flows?

1\. Install a client cert/pairing token/SSH key/etc. onto each client device;

2\. ask the user to configure a password, with a recommendation that that password be _short_ and _memorable_ rather than _long_ and _unwieldy_ ;

3\. either encrypt the device-credential with the user-password, or send the server the password to hash and store;

4\. if the password challenge-response is on the server, have the server validate the device credential "before" or "outside of" accepting password- auth challenges (e.g. in the case of a client cert, validating the cert at the TLS level before the auth request can even reach the backend.)

In other words, systems isomorphic to the financial chip-and-PIN system: the chip is something you have, while the PIN—something you know—is _only_ there to prevent robbers from using the chip, rather than to provide any cryptographic security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >The Authenticator app is available for iOS, Android, and Windows 10 Mobile, but regrettably, while the first two include the new feature, Microsoft has not seen fit to add it to the version of the software that runs on its own platform, citing low usage. The eternal chicken-and-egg situation of low usage both causing weak app support and being caused by weak app support continues to be something that Microsoft has little interest in fixing.

Is this really still surprising people? Hasn't the messaging that Windows Phone is a dead platform been loud and clear for years now? The still haven't released the current-gen Outlook client on it.

<comment><USER9> I think that has been clear to most people for a long time. But one would still hope that a software vendor would support their own software.

<comment><USER10> Nadella inherited Windows Phone at 6-15% in most markets.

His actions, and inactions sent it's market share to 0.+%.

AFAIK this feels like intentional sabotage to please Wall Street and a few vocal shareholders - the same people who wanted to kill/sell Bing, Xbox and even Surface.

Outrightly canceling WP would have cause a massive protest but strangling it and dropping it for "low usage?"...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow the comment thread on the original MSFT blog post (direct link: [https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2017/...](https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2017/04/18/no- password-phone-sign-in-for-microsoft-accounts/)) is just painful. It's mostly a collection of people who use Windows on their phone crying out about the lack of support for Windows.

Microsoft won't support their own platform (phone) with this. If that's the case then why would any other developer write apps for Windows? Also, I thought the big push was for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps that ran on mobile, desktop/tablet, and Xbox. I can understand that you may not want to write a custom app for a platform with tiny market share but "big" Windows still has a lot of share.

This is a great example of how to erode trust.

<comment><USER12> "A few people have asked if this works with Windows Phone version Microsoft Authenticator. Windows Phone makes up <5% of the active users of our Authenticator Apps so we have prioritized getting this working with iOS and Android for now. If/When it becomes a big success on those high scale platforms, we will evaluate adding support for Windows Phone." [1] - <USER2> never to buy a Windows Phone #387.

[1]: [https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2017/...](https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2017/04/18/no- password-phone-sign-in-for-microsoft-accounts/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if this might have anything to do with pushing legal liability for breaches onto the user and/or reducing fallout from future hacks.

If Microsoft stores passwords (salted and hashed, of course) which are later stolen and cracked (for example due to something wrong with the way they handled hashing), then Microsoft could perhaps be on the hook for damages (I'm thinking in the US, at least). It could also potentially be a _lot_ of users affected, which means bad press.

If Microsoft only uses a OTP app that runs on the user's device, then the responsibility to secure that device is on the user - it's up to them whether they use a PIN, password, PIN pattern, fingerprint or indeed nothing at all. Also, if a bad actor needs to gain access to a user's device to access their account, the bad press of hackers stealing thousands or millions of credentials is avoided.

</comment><comment><USER14> This seems to be _less_ secure. I noticed yesterday that my iPhone's Microsoft Authenticator app emitted at least three notifications to "Approve sign-in request...ABCDE".

I almost never log into my Microsoft LiveID account, the only identity that uses that app for 2-factor. I thought it was a little screwy, so largely ignored the first request. By the time the second and third notifications came in I had read the news about MSFT's move to go to a simple "Approve/Deny" single-factor. An attacker could just go through a list of LiveID's and try and authenticate. With a large enough list, a few folks will just hit "Approve", I'd wager. I doubt the app use any other factors like GPS or IP address. NB: There does seem to be a timeout.

Or am I missing something here?

</comment><comment><USER15> "Microsoft Account passwords also appear to still be restricted to a mere 16 characters."

I've used 26+ character passwords for at least 2 years

<comment><USER16> Are they meaningfully more secure than 16 character ones?

<comment><USER17> 16 char passwords provide around 30 bits of entropy while 30 char passwords give you 46 bits of entropy according to old NIST pdf [0].

[0]: [http://csrc.nist.gov/archive/pki- twg/y2003/presentations/twg...](http://csrc.nist.gov/archive/pki- twg/y2003/presentations/twg-03-05.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not only that.I recently caught MS lying - When I bought XBox One I had to create Live Account. When I did that I was then asked to provide my cell phone number because "Recent spam activity from your account" required me to verify the account. The problem is that between creation of the account and that supposed spam, there was only 3 minute difference.

<comment><USER8> ...and this has what to do with the posted article?

<comment><USER18> Yeah I probably could be little more clear on that .. Basically I think that it shows that companies like Microsoft do stuff that makes us less secure and violate our privacy and they are have no problem with lying to use to get the information they think they need.</comment></comment></comment>


87% of American Adults Now Use the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/02/27/the-web-at-25-in-the-u-s/

<comment><USER2> The 13% that doesn't use it is what amaze me. Mostly sick people and seniors I would guess... ?</comment>


Clang vs. GCC – code coverage checking - <AUTHOR> http://rkd.me.uk/clang-vs-gcc-coverage.html <comment><USER2> Am I reading this right? He says he is comparing clang 3.8, which is a month old, to gcc 4.8, which branched over 3 years ago. I would rather see what gcc 6 does with this. That release should happen in a month or so.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't read too much into the article. It's just a blog post of a dude reporting what he saw when he recompiled his code with a different compiler.

<comment><USER4> Aye, but it shows something important. Testing your work with other toolchains and toolings can help discover weaknesses not only in your code, but in the rest of your tooling. Strength in numbers is useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I need to ask a stupid question. What does one _do_ with code coverage data?

Like, I know what it _is_. What I'm asking is, on what occasion would the presence of code coverage data be more useful than stepping through the code in a debugger. What is something you do differently having this data than not?

Like, is there a code review gate that forbids the code coverage figure to go below 80%? Or do developers consult the reports in a self-motivated way for some reason? Regularly? What is the step between "collect code coverage reports" and "profit"?

We recently got this feature in our compiler, and I guess it seems obvious to everyone why to use it, but I must have missed that day in class. So everybody's really excited to create the report, but I can't figure out what they do with it afterward that explains the whole exercise.

<comment><AUTHOR> We actually hook it into our build process. Basically:

* we have 100% code coverage except for some well-defined exclusions (e.g. // LCOV_EXCL_LINE comments to exclude code that is logically unhittable)

* on each checkin, our continuous integration server (Jenkins) runs the tests and checks that coverage is still 100%

* if not, it fails the build

This means that _every new checkin_ either has unit tests that exercise all the code, or // LCOV_EXCL comments that make it obvious to a code reviewer what isn't covered (and they can then sensibly judge the risk). It's a good way to keep our code quality high, and avoid the possibility that we quietly skimp on unit tests when under deadline pressure. Also, if new members of the team don't realise how important good unit test coverage is, they'll find that out on their first checkin when the build breaks, rather than several weeks in.

<comment><USER6> With all-due respect to other philosophies than mine, that sounds like a nightmare. And I like tests. But everything has a cost, and I can't imagine ever getting anything significant done with such a straight-jacket, I'd spend all day tracking down weird compiler quirks.

I do a lot of cross platform stuff, and just having warnings as errors (a good idea) means a lot of build fixing because clang and MSVC disagree on things. If I were writing code in MSVC and I had to deal with code coverage reports from clang breaking the build, I would be paralyzed.

"Code quality" isn't a thing that can be trivially measured, and in my experience people that fixate on certain metrics tend to miss the forest for the trees.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can see that it wouldn't always be ideal, but on this (admittedly relatively niche) codebase - core telephone network infrastructure, which we only support on Ubuntu and which we build with GCC - the kind of clang/MSVC incompatibilities you talk about aren't a problem, and the reliability requirements are high enough that it's worth having CI check for 100% test coverage.

I think it's a question of field rather than philosophy - someone else in this thread said they do the same thing in avionics.

<comment><USER7> Claiming coverage has anything to do with reliability is just fooling yourself, at least if it's done on line or branch level. Will your 100% line coverage catch the divide by zero bug in this function?

        int foo(int x)
        {
            return 1 / (5 - x);
        }

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Build your code with more than one compiler" was good advice 20 years ago, and is still good advice today :-)

</comment><comment><USER9> Dear God, now I remember why I do not program in C++ anymore (Go and C# all the way!). That pre-11 code looked awful. If networking was nicer, I might actually start considering recoding some of my projects in C++.

<comment><USER10> If you have £40 or so, and a few evenings free, get the C++11 version of the Stroustrup programming language book and see what's changed. Modern C++ looks entirely different to older C++. Templates still a bit scary, so learn them or ignore them.

<comment><USER9> Yes, but are there still tons of boilerplate? Or is there a 11/14/17 library that incredibly decreases the amount of code needed? For example a HTTP listener with routing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A good way to represent a branch coverage miss.

</comment><comment><USER12> I love stuff like this. Short, understandable.

</comment><comment><USER13> please look [http://www.expcov.com](http://www.expcov.com)</comment>


NSCAI Eric Schmidt says Mass Surveillance killer tool/opportunity pg 88-99 [PDF] (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://epic.org/foia/epic-v-ai-commission/EPIC-19-09-11-NSCAI-FOIA-20200331-3rd-Production-pt9.pdf <comment><USER2> This presentation is actually titled "Chinese Tech Landscape Overview." It's from May 2019. It contains candid evaluations of American technology companies' strengths and weaknesses along side those of Chinese companies [1].

I originally intended to jump forward to the pages 88-99 that were highlighted by the submitter. Instead, I read or skimmed every page in the document. This is the most riveting presentation I have seen in years. Mass surveillance coupled with AI is only one of many sections.

It also addresses:

\- China's homegrown digital innovators

\- China's dependence on imported semiconductors

\- AI in transportation and medicine

\- Banking and payment systems

\- The future global manufacturing landscape

\- The future of global development and governance

Among others.

[1] _Mostly_ candid. I found it a bit self-congratulatory toward Google's TPU technology and Waymo.

<comment><USER3> I agree, being fascinated by the confluence of tech, economies, and global struggle.

I have no idea how COVID-19, global power struggle, effects of quantitative easing, etc. will play out but I will enjoy watching the show.

<comment><USER4> Is it a comedy or a horror? I'm having trouble interpreting.

<comment><USER3> Well, it is the world we live in. You and I have little control over the world but we can control our reaction to it.

In a crazy world, it is up to us as individuals, family groups, and friend groups to make life as good as possible given constraints we live in.

My wife and I have a strategy for investing a small amount of money as donations for the upcoming elections. Doing that and voting is all I can do, so otherwise it is kicking back and watching the show.

Sorry if my previous comment sounded cavalier in any way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mass Surveillance is a killer tool for societal control and not much else. 15% faster ambulances for complete loss of privacy? Is it worth it? Would this sort of system even be faster in a less dense area (like most of US vs China)? There are a lot of spurious conclusions drawn from this data. Is WeChat superior? Do I really want my whole life to run through one app? No, no I don't. In fact, I've gone on a social media diet and I feel like my well being has improved dramatically. I also like having a mix of companies to choose from for engaging in commerce.

From my perspective, AI seems to have more draconian potential than liberating potential. I get that it's a technology we should pursue, but it's got loads of ethical risks that China will pay no mind to. Will that recklessness and wanton disregard for human rights (including the right to privacy) lead to Chinese dominance in AI tech? Maybe.

Will we be at a strategic disadvantage without draconian AI tech? I'm not so sure.

<comment><USER5> Quick correction - 15% faster was overall, it was 50% faster for ambulances.

<comment><USER4> Point still stands. In the U.S. our ambulances are equipped with remotes to trigger light changes to improve speed. The roads are also much wider, with bigger shoulders that are less dense, etc. This is a very dubious claim, to be able to achieve 50% faster response times in the U.S., an ambulance would have to on average travel twice as fast, which is not necessarily even safe or desirable from present speeds traveled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just to add some context to the people who put this presentation together back in 2019-09-11:

[https://www.nscai.gov/about/commissioners](https://www.nscai.gov/about/commissioners)

Eric Schmidt, Chairman Schmidt Futures

Robert O. Work, Vice Chairman TeamWork

Safra Catz Oracle

Steve Chien Jet Propulsion Lab

Mignon Clyburn MLC Strategies

Chris Darby In-Q-Tel

Eric Horvitz Microsoft Research

Andy Jassy Amazon Web Services

Andrew Moore Google

William Mark SRI

Gilman Louie Alsop Louie Partners

Jason Matheny Georgetown University

Katharina McFarland Chair, National Academies of Science Board of Army Research and Development

Ken Ford Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition

José-Marie Griffiths Dakota State University

</comment><comment><USER6> On p41 of the .pdf:

> Paytm may not be a direct competitor building a search engine, but all of > these use cases are _user journeys that never touch Google_.

Emphasis in the original. I found this interesting given the target audience of this presentation and what we know from Snowden about the American intelligence community's integration with Google.</comment>


Zealandia: An eighth continent under New Zealand? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39000936 <comment><USER2> Finally. This same story from various sources has been submitted a half dozen times at least, glad it finally got some traction.

Poor Zealandia is _always_ under-appreciated.

[http://worldmapswithout.nz/](http://worldmapswithout.nz/)

<comment><USER3> yus! rest of the world, we are big damnit! BIG I tell you! we have our own whole continent, it's a bit wet...but, still :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of this subducted tectonic plate: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farallon_Plate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farallon_Plate)

<comment><USER5> The fact that this is apparently consensus and not a crackpot theory is the most amazing thing about it. The little kid in me is kind of wishing I had gone into geology...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It would be cool to have another ice age. I prefer the cold and you would get to have land masses like this suddenly surface!

<comment><USER7> Where would like half the earth's population move to, if things happened quick enough for you to experience the results of a new ice age? Like Half or Eurasia and North America would be covered in ice...

<comment><USER8> The Day After Tomorrow shows Mexico offering refuge to the USA. Shame someone's building a massive wall the length of the border…

<comment><USER9> You are aware that "The Day After Tomorrow" was a fictional movie, right? It's a dramatisation set in the real world. Fantasy Mexico can do all manner of things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Aren't the other seven continents the dominant land-mass on a separately defined tectonic plate? According to the article there's no agreed upon definition.

In general, it's pretty easy to reclassify almost anything if you're willing to promote a new definition.

<comment><USER11> it might be a coincidence but all names of continents start and end with the same letter, the new one doesn't quite fit with this rule either.

<comment><USER12> It's easy just drop the last letter in New Zealand

<comment><USER3> which is kind of how we say it. Kiwis are "optimized" speakers, we don't like words that make our mouth do too much work, so we optimize by smoothing out big changes. In this case it's common to hear the 'd' almost completely gone. Nu Zeelun :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It kind of looks, from that map, that is could also be classified or considered a part of the Australian continent, given the "continent" mostly falls within the Australian plate.

<comment><USER13> The paper disagrees. Quote:

 _The edges of Australia and Zealandia continental crust approach to within 25 km across the Cato Trough (Fig. 2). The Cato Trough is 3600 m deep and floored by oceanic crust (Gaina et al., 1998; Exon et al., 2006). The Australian and Zealandian COBs [continent-ocean boundaries] here coincide with, and have been created by, the Cato Fracture Zone along which there has been ~150 km of dextral strike slip movement, linking Paleogene spreading centers in the Tasman and Coral seas (Fig. 2; Gaina et al., 1998). This spatial and tectonic separation, along with intervening oceanic crust, means that the Zealandia continental crust is physically separate from that of Australia. If the Cato Trough did not exist, then the content of this paper would be describing the scientific advance that the Australian continent was 4.9 Mkm2 larger than previously thought._

<comment><USER7> I wonder whether geologically they are separate or was that trough created after the plate formed --that is is it a contiguous mass with an eroded trough or were these separate masses mashed together via tectonics?

<comment><USER13> See their Figure 5 [1] where they hypothesize how Zealandia was formed from the breakup of Gondwana, before which it did in fact lie adjacent to what later became a separate 'Australia' continent. Some of the definitions are complicated by the fact that continents join and break up, and their continuity across multiple continental cycles is not a given -- but that of cratons is, which are sort of an inner core of really old rocks that managed to survive all sorts of tectonic abuse. Zealandia has yet to be shown to contain a craton, presence of which would probably result in its undisputed acceptance as a continent. All of today's "classical" continents are amalgamations of contiguous continental crust around one or more neighboring cratons. See the 'Geology' section for discussion.

[1] [https://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/27/3/figure/GSAT...](https://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/27/3/figure/GSATG321A.1-f05.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Real continents [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tectonic_plates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tectonic_plates)

</comment><comment><USER15> So, what I'm wondering is, why is this its own continent, and the Indian subcontinent isn't considered one?

<comment><USER13> India is a former continent underlain by its own craton and its own tectonic plate that has collided with the much larger Eurasian plate in the epic Himalayan orogeny [1]. Eurasia is a multi-plate continent that forms a continuous expanse of continental crust that has geologically interacted with parts of itself for millions of years.

On the other hand, Zealandia is a continent which broke away from Gondwana (much like India did) and has since stood independently apart, not accreting to any other continent.

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

<comment><USER16> So it's because it's moving away from Australia, rather than towards it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If it's mostly underwater, why not call it Atlantis?

</comment><comment><USER14> Geologists trying to gain relevance by toying with definitions. Not unlike, and even less significant than, the astronomical reclassification of Pluto as a dwarf-planet. Sign of the times I suppose.</comment>


PHP-PM grows up to be a credible option for high performance PHP - <AUTHOR> https://www.symfony.fi/entry/php-pm-grows-up-to-be-a-credible-option-for-high-performance-php <comment><USER2> It's really impressive but it's still at a really early stage of development (for example it's using react/http which is far from stable) and PHP-PM will cause a lot of memory leaks as they say in the readme. Impressive anyway, looks like nodejs/v8 with php.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone else getting Google account recovery notifications recently? - <AUTHOR> It seems someone in Vietnam, or someone using a proxy in Vietnam has been trying to recover my account.  I did a google community search and found the same thing happening to others, so I'm wondering if it's just random or if there is a common denominator.<p>https://support.google.com/accounts/thread/38457636?hl=en <comment><USER2> This happens nearly 24/7.</comment>


Ask HN: Storing and processing less than 1TB of unstructured data? - <AUTHOR> Many HN folks deal with data problems, so I thought I'd ask: if you had to store and index less than 1TB of unstructured (plain text) data, what would you use?
I have a bunch of text files and HTML pages that I'd like to dump into something and then be able to search over it, maybe even be able to find relationships (common terms, phrases, etc) between the various docs. I've heard of things like hadoop, but that seems to be overkill for the amount of data I have. I'd also like to keep things as low-cost as possible as this is just for personal use. I've looked at a few of the cloud providers but am honestly not sure what I'm looking for, so I find myself walking away more confused than when I started.
This seems like an easy problem, but for whatever reason I'm getting wrapped around the axle on it. <comment><USER2> I recommend the book "Managing Gigabytes", which while dated is still relevant. The title doesn't indicate this, but it's heavily focused on data structures for indexing text documents.

But Elasticsearch running on a cloud VM with an attached EBS volume would be a fast way to get work done.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1tb is nothing these days. If you insist on cloud the hetzner could be best bang for buck. Otherwise a similar desktop system can be acquired for less than 1000 usd.

I'd start with solr or elasticsearch and a simple indexing script (home rolled python script).

Then you can use solr admin or something like Jupyter for iterative querying.

I'm not an expert on index tuning, but you might even be able to dump it all into postgres with json types.

Best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the amount of data is pretty small in the grand scheme of things, maybe that is why i'm getting so hung up haha. Elasticsearch was actually the first thing I thought of so maybe I'll just go with that and see what happens...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> coming back, i stumbled over this while looking at options: [https://docs.alephdata.org/](https://docs.alephdata.org/). It is a bit more heavyweight than plain elasticsearch, but it has some nice additions that might make it worth it depending on your situation.</comment>