Ask HN: USA-based SaaS and Candian payments? - <AUTHOR> I am bootstrapping a SaaS company and we have our first customer. We're based in the USA, they are in Canada. We have a year of checks to deposit for the monthly fee. This is fine but I have to go into the bank and deposit via a teller due to CAD funds. Our monthly fee per customer is $650-1300 USD.
Is there an easier way to accept payments from Canadian customers? We do have a business banking account with Chase in the USA. I see options like TransferWise.com and it actually comes out cheaper than Chase due to the exchange rate being more favorable (even with the 1% fee). But it doesn't look like it is setup for recurring payments. I'll go ask them. We could use something like Stripe but the fees are higher and I don't know if our customers want to pay by credit card (I don't know B2B payment conventions in Cananda).
I am asking here to possibly get advice/suggestions based on experience as there appear to be a lot of options. <comment><USER2> I've used VBCE.ca where in Canada I transfer EFT (online billing or Interac payment, or direct payment if Royal Bank/TD) to one of their local bank accounts, they convert to USD and pay out the US company in a local USD cheque or ACH but depends on amount/fees [https://www.vbce.ca/business/importers](https://www.vbce.ca/business/importers) but they also accept mailed cheques/couriers so you could set up an account there and just collect payments likely, customer only knows where to mail the cheque or where to send Interac B2B payment.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would go with Stripe, more fees but also more convenient for you and the client.

Or if they want to pay by check require them to pay annually. It's pretty standard in SaaS to give a discount for annual usually 10xMonthly for annual. But at your price point it might not be necessary.

Fees/exchange rate is just part of the cost of doing business,. Most SaaS could raise their pricing with out losing sales so if you want just increase your pricing slightly to cover the fees when you setup your online pricing/payment page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points. At a certain point, the convenience is well worth it. But you raise an interesting point about an annual check. We do sign year long (well, sometimes multiple year) contracts so we could increase our monthly price enough to make the 10 month discount the current annual price. That would let us offer flexibility in payment.

I do hope Stripe Canada gets EFT and that includes a gateway to ACH. I can guess there might be lots of red tape. But that would be excellent.

But I'm going to do what you suggest -- over an annual check-based payment schedule or a monthly credit-card based schedule (with basically the costs to do so rolled in).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Your Canadian customer should be fine with credit cards and that's probably the more seamless way to do it. We do use credit cards for B2B transactions. The downside is that you'll be hit with not-so-great exchange rate.

You can also check out Plooto ([https://www.plooto.com/ca/](https://www.plooto.com/ca/)), which specializes in B2B recurring payments internationally.</comment>


Lack of Sleep Increases Weight - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/health/27real.html?ref=science <comment><USER2> This is true if you stay up all night trying to finish a project and then you have to go into the office the next day. The only way to keep yourself awake and alert is by consuming a higher amount of caffeine and calories than you normally would.

<comment><USER3> Or modafinil - which seems to have attracted a bit of interest in posts around here recently :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The conclusion of this article seems dubious to me.

"Losing sleep may increase appetite and, as a result, weight."

If you lose sleep you are, by definition, awake more which, it would seem to me, would cause your body to require more energy for functioning. Logically it would ask for this energy by stimulating appetite. Eating more is not strictly correlated with weight gain, you have to look at the types of calories being consumed.

<comment><USER5> Calories in - calories out is a remarkable good predictor of weight gain, though.

I have a coworker who recently wanted to lose 15 lbs. so she could fit into her wedding dress. She did up this spreadsheet with goal weight, predicted weight, and actual weight over the several weeks leading up to her wedding. The three curves matched up _exactly_ , down to the pound. We were teasing her a little about just how scientific she'd made the process, and she said that it really came down to calories in - calories out. Once you know your body's basic metabolic rate over typical exercise conditions, every X calories above that will result in gaining one pound, while every X calories below that will result in losing one pound. The reason most diets fail isn't that the formula doesn't work, it's that most people don't have the willpower and anal- retentiveness to count calories like that.

<comment><USER4> You don't give human metabolism enough credit, as though you don't think that our bodies respond to different amounts of energy intake/usage. The main problem with the calories in = calories out myth is that they are assumed to be independent variables when they are self-evidently not. When you work out more, your body demands more energy by stimulating appetite. When you eat less than your body needs, you get cold and hungry.

The other problem is that it overlooks the role of insulin in weight gain. Insulin is the primary regulator of fat storage, this has been known for 50 years or more. Eating foods that stimulate insulin secretion are going to cause you to put on pounds - that's the job of insulin! If every type of calorie we consume contributes the exact same effect on the body, why do marathoners (or any other athelete for that matter) carb-load before challenges? Why not fat-load because everyone knows that fat has twice as many calories per gram?

My main point is that not all types of calories cause the same types of effects. Cutting calories below expenditures does not lead to long term weight loss, it leads to hunger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This ties into the ugly cycle with obstructive sleep apnea. People who are a little thicker around the neck tend to stop breathing and interrupt their sleep. Of course, if you're not sleeping well, you'll have more trouble functioning, let alone getting proper exercise, so you'll just get thicker and thicker around the neck, you'll just make it worse and worse until you're so tired when you get up in the morning that you physically hurt.

My advice (from personal experience) if you're tired and cranky all the time, you've been told you snore, and your dress shirt size > 17'' or so, you should see a sleep medicine specialist.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well the point is that sleep increase appetite, but who slept less actually burned more calories. If when you are craving for a snack you go for a carrot instead of pizza I'm sure results would be quite different.

<comment><USER8> According to the link, those who slept less had an increase in appetite, which is the opposite of what you claim in your first sentence. From the article:

> "After the night of abbreviated sleep, the men consumed more than 500 extra > calories (roughly 22 percent more) than they did after eight hours of sleep. > ... Some studies pin the blame on hormones, arguing that decreased sleep > creates a spike in ghrelin, a hormone that stimulates appetite, and a > reduction in leptin, which signals satiety."

I think what you want to say is that the studies have shown a correlation, but it might not be a causal relation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Both studies took into account increased calorie expenditure in addition to intake: <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20357041> <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19056602>

Never debate some journalist's summary on these type of articles, just click through to their sources and read the actual conclusions.

</comment><comment><USER10> When you are going without sleep there are usually more important things (short-term) than healthy food choices so you favour easy to prepare and easy to consume "meals". The fact that you have diminished short-term memory means you tend to prioritise decision making which again favours the "easy" option.

Your appetite does go up but anecdotally I wouldn't say 36 hours of waking appetitite was significantly more than two sets of normal 18 hour appetites.

</comment><comment><USER11> Well I slept less than 5 hour per day and got a result totally reversed from what they said, thanks to my high metabolism

<comment><USER12> I also know someone from college who had some sort of thyroid condition, and she slept very little and was very skinny. She was also awake and hyper so much, she sewed all of her own clothes. (Yes, that's just like the girl in Real Genius!)

However, I also lost 10 pounds recently by doing just two things: sleeping 7 hours a night instead of 4 or 5 and cooking my own meals instead of eating out.

<comment><USER13> I still want Lazlo Hollyfeld's closet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not only does lack of sleep increase caloric intake, but you use up MORE calories while sleeping: [http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sleeping- angels/200906/l...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sleeping- angels/200906/lose-weight-while-you-sleep-real)

</comment><comment><USER15> It is relatively well-known that lack of sleep increases weight.

</comment><comment><USER16> Looks like they just had a dry monday over at the NY Times and had to fill the empty space with something old and "sensational" :P This was taught to me 16 years ago in high school biology back home in Sweden.</comment>


Env0 announces $3.3M seed to bring more control to Infrastructure-as-Code - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/21/env0-announces-3-3m-seed-to-bring-more-control-to-infrastructure-as-code/ <comment><USER2> [https://www.env0.com](https://www.env0.com)</comment>


Playing games in class - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010/01/playing_games_in_class.html

<comment><AUTHOR> To counter my own points being made in this thread ...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1058361>

Here is an item about using games in class. I note, in my own defence, that they are not being used as motivation to study math (or anything else) but are being used as vehicles for the material being studied. To my mind there is a big difference. I'm all in favor of using games to carry lessons. I am less convinced that the majority of kids would see the games as motivation to study math.

</comment><comment><USER2> I homeschooled my two sons. Games were a part of their curriculum. I think games can be useful in that regard, but, like anything, can also be misused.</comment>


Ask HN: Feedback on blogpost - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to get into regular blogging and I'd appreciate any feedback on my blog.  Here is a sample blogpost:
http://www.tjbarbour.com/post/WhyFluentWins/
I'd love any feedback on the post or my blog in general.  I'm mostly trying to be more active online to help in my job search for a remote position.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Link for the lazy:

[http://www.tjbarbour.com/post/WhyFluentWins/](http://www.tjbarbour.com/post/WhyFluentWins/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that, I'll remember to add that myself in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd seen the syntax before never realized it had a name.</comment>


E: textmate for windows - <AUTHOR> http://www.e-texteditor.com/index.html <comment><USER2> Just buy a Mac and use the real thing. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been contemplating a mac laptop for a while - textmate was almost what put me over the edge on my decision. Guess I can stick to Windows for a bit longer now :)

<comment><USER4> Why is textmate interesting?

I've been using Eclipse for java development and have been very happy with it.

<comment><USER2> Honestly tough to answer this. It's one of those things where you just have to use it for a while to realize how supportive it is of programming. All of the bundles (mostly developed by third parties) certainly helps. You can basically automate/script the application any way you like. There are bundles for different frameworks/libraries that can speed up common development tasks.

<comment><USER4> But is it better than Eclipse in terms of sophisticated language support? For a dynamic language, maybe that's not so important. But for a verbose statically typed language such as Java, it's critical.

BTW, if you have not checked out Eclipse lately, see:

http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/drops/R-3.2-200606291905/new_noteworthy/eclipse- news-all.html

<comment><USER2> I don't see it as a tool which can be compared easily. Eclipse (in my view) is more of a complete IDE. Same with Visual Studio (also superb).

Textmate is a seemingly minimalist programmer's editor. When you get into it and start hacking you start to see how much is really there. Definitely not an IDE though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've got a mac :) just for all the tempered souls who are waiting for leopard to come out and have persuaded themselves not to switch... (like my cofounder..shh)

</comment><comment><USER5> I had been using Komodo for the last few months which is a nice IDE, but this looks promising.

I've tarballed the latest bundles from their repository and renamed all ":?*\\\|" characters to DOS friendly characters, if you want to try out a bundle that isn't included with E. You can grab it from: http://www.bigheadlabs.com/~jason/Bundles.tar.gz

</comment><comment><USER6> FYI: The win32 version of gvim is very good.

</comment><comment><USER7> On the surface it might look like TextMate but after trying to use it for about 10 min, it fails to live up to this moniker. It doesn't do 20% of what TM does.

Note: I use TM to edit the RoR files.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the more interesting issue is that they're charging money for beta software.

(Of course, most things are more interesting than a Vi/Emacs/whatever holy war)

</comment><comment><USER9> http://intype.info/home/index.php

Check out intype too. Found it through Digg. Not as polished as E-Text Editor though.

</comment><comment><USER10> I may be blind, stupid, etc., but I couldn't print. Couldn't find the menu item and ctrl+p didn't work.

</comment><comment><USER11> Integrating revision control with the editor seems interesting. Anybody have details on that?

</comment><comment><USER12> I run emacs over cygwin. Seems the feature set is nothing new. Am I missing something ?</comment>


Analyzing honeypot interactions - <AUTHOR> https://labs.mwrinfosecurity.com/blog/high-interaction-honeypots-with-sysdig-and-falco <comment><USER2> Great to see sysdig and falco used in this way! For another earlier discussion of monitoring the behavior of intruders using sysdig, check out [https://sysdig.com/blog/fishing-for- hackers/](https://sysdig.com/blog/fishing-for-hackers/).</comment>


Why Chicago Doesn't Produce Innovative Startups: Midwest Mentality - <AUTHOR> http://www.pandodaily.com/2012/03/18/the-midwest-mentality/ <comment><USER2> It's insulting to be lumped into a stereotype, so it's hard for me to not get defensive. Chicago is one of the greatest cities on the planet. The population is very diverse. It's why I moved here in the first place and why I just bought a house here. So it's pretty strange for me to hear someone say we're all "midwestern". But we're used to name calling in the Windy City, so I'll let it go.

Bottom line the startup ecosystem in Chicago doesn't have it's fair share of Webvans for one simple reason: people go where the money is and the money is in Silicon Valley. It's an accident of history that all the money is in Silicon Valley. "Midwestern culture" has nothing to do with it.

Or maybe everyone is starting up in Silicon Valley because of the weather, I think PG mentioned this once. Well to that I say it's 70 degrees and sunny in Chicago as I type this...in the middle of March. Maybe global warming will mean we get a few pets.com here in the midwest.

<comment><USER3> As we say in Minneapolis, "The weather keeps the bums out", but we're usually talking about Chicagoans ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As a midwestern startup-y guy, with coastal exposure, and a number of friends and acquaintances who are trying to, and/or have landed vc, some of whom have moved to the coasts, some who have not: I think this article is more self- congratulatory bullshit from coastals who thing the sun shines out of their nether regions.

Some points:

1\. It's _very_ hard to raise vc out here. We like it that way (at least I do). There, I said it. The pie in the sky bay area nonsense ideas just don't hold water here. Nor should they there, but they do. Twitter couldn't happen in the midwest, it shouldn't have happened anywhere else either.

2\. Stealth mode. anything you do here is stealth mode. Probably forever.

3\. LOTS of startups move from here to the coasts when they start to pick up.

4\. As a midwestern startup, you need business presence on one or more coasts, so there are significant efficiencies to be gained by moving your entire operation there. Unfortunately, everyone else has the same idea, so rents are huge, and the giant money you have to pay the local talent just winds up in landlords' pockets in the end.

5\. If you can do startup-y stuff from the midwest, for coastal clients, you will live like the king of france, in your giant, and incredibly cheap house.

6\. Many people dislike California, and/or Californians.

7\. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.

8\. Many natives of the coasts have never even been to the midwest. Ever. The midwest is an enormous geographical area, full of enormously different people. To paint the midwest with a single brush is incredibly ignorant and patronizing.

9\. Many midwestern families haven't lived on farms for hundreds of years. Just thought I'd mention it.

10\. Working insane hours just means you're young. Kids do that in flyover country all the time, usually to make up for the crap quality of their code in volume.

</rant>

<comment><USER4> Any insight into the dislike of California and/or Californians? (I've noticed that too while visiting the Midwest.) Your eighth point about stereotyping of the Midwest seems to be what people are doing about California.

A slight replacement to your sentence "California is an enormous geographical area, full of enormously different people. To paint the midwest with a single brush is incredibly ignorant and patronizing." California is mostly agricultural land. It has some large cities on the coast. Los Angeles is one of the most diverse cities in the U.S. with wonderful cultural pockets all over the place (Koreatown, Chinatown, Little Ethopia, Little Tehran, Little Osaka, etc.)

Also, a lot of people's travel is predicated on a need to travel somewhere. If you don't have family in a place, or do a school trip there, or business trip when you're older, there is a good chance they won't vacation there.

<comment><USER5> It's mainly sour grapes. California has ascended while the Midwest has declined.

On the farm front, there was a bit of a migration of second sons from the Midwest to California in the 50's, I believe. Some of those who left (abandoning their Midwest roots, traitors) became rich; some of those who stayed became poor. The poor cousins on the family homestead in Minnesota or Indiana look at the rich cousins on new farms in California and say, we wouldn't want to live there anyway.

Economically, in the last thirty years the Midwest has turned into the Rust Belt, while California has become Silicon Valley. More resentment builds.

On the wine front, the Ohio River Valley was once wine country, centered around Cincinnati, perched to rival the Rhine. Now it's all Napa, Napa, Napa.

But hey, at least in the Midwest you don't have to put up with _Californians_.

<comment><USER6> Hey, how's that state budget doing ([http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2010/bud/fiscal_outlook/fiscal...](http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2010/bud/fiscal_outlook/fiscal_outlook_2010.aspx))?

And those friendly gun laws? And quality police force?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think pinning this on a "Midwest mentality" is really missing what is probably the biggest reason. _There is no tech industry in the Midwest_ If your starup fails there isn't another cool startup down the street you can work at instead (a la SF, NY, Boston, etc...) Startups here (I'm in Kansas) are real small businesses that either make money and allow you stay or fail and force to you move. You simply can't wait two years to figure out your business model or hope for a buy-out. It's just that simple.

<comment><USER8> I'll go ahead an disagree here from Madison, WI as well. In fact, there are no less than three cool startups within a block and a half (Murfie.com, ContextClothing.com, Asthmapolis.com) of our offices. There is plenty of opportunity to land if your startup suddenly goes away.

And that doesn't even take into account the option of working remotely.

<comment><USER7> But none of those companies are "twitter-like". They all have fairly low-risk and clear business models. The lede of the article is essentially why aren't there more businesses like Twitter starting in the Midwest. If a number of high-risk twitter-style startups descended on Madison tomorrow do you think it could absorb all the out of work employees when/if they got laid off?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is hard to take this guy seriously while looking at that profile pic.

I find it kinda funny that he states that midwesterners focus on profit to the exclusion of innovation, and cites Twitter as an example of a company that couldn't have been create there. Yet Twitter is hardly what most would consider an innovative startup, and it actually gained most of its early traction in Austin, Texas, at SXSW. All this while ignoring companies like Apple, Intel, Cisco, and HP that really built what we consider the high-tech startup ecosystem of Silicon Valley that we think of today. Does he really believe that these companies weren't worried about making a profit?

I think it is kinda dumb to loop a company like Twitter, which is really not all that innovative at all with the companies that produce hardware and health care solutions. Most people pursuing startups could build the exact same web or smartphone app anywhere else. Chicago, Seattle, or Kansas City. Location is really an excuse. I know plenty of people who have moved to the Valley to pursue startups simply because "if you're serious about your startup, you have to be there." Or because they are hoping to find cofounders, or funding or some other thing they view as a prerequisite for success. The reality is that great innovators made SV, not the other way around. If people think they are going to go some place and morph into brilliant entrepreneurs because of their environment, they are misguided and probably going to be disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER10> As a Nebraskan, I resonated with this - big time. My first question is _always_: "How does it make money?", and I've shied away from ideas that had no clear money-making potential. It is likely the predominant 'agricultural' culture.

<comment><USER11> > It is likely the predominant 'agricultural' culture.

Ironically, farming is kind of like a startup. You raise millions in capital to get started, and then you work for many years without making a cent in hopes that one year you'll finally hit it big.

With that said, I farm in Canada. Perhaps the subsidies you American farmers have access to changes the dynamics.

<comment><USER12> Pardon my ignorance, but how does a farmer hit it big?

<comment><USER11> Exceptionally high yields, combined with unnaturally high prices. It happens sometimes. The people growing white beans in my area did amazingly well last year, seeing $1,000/acre in net profit, where normally you make little to no profit.

Others bank on the sale of all the assets when they retire. A farm that cost $25,000 30 years ago is now worth $1.6M. But when you are starting out, you have no idea what the future will hold. Just as many defaulted on their loans for those $25,000 farms and are no longer in the business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So funny to hear "Chicago" and "the midwest" in the same sentence. Chicago is different enough from the Midwest that usually organizations serving both have both in their name to make it clear they serve and understand the differing needs and mentalities. Though Chicago and the midwest share the same geography, they do not, thank goodness; share the same mentality. I can say that as a proud Midwesterner.

</comment><comment><USER14> Clearly the author can make broad sweeping generalizations after having talked to a few people in a city of 9.8M.

The logic that 9 to 5, work, life, kids and profitability can't lead to anything "revolutionary" (whatever that may actually be) seems dubious.

Finally, assuming everyone there operates under a single "midwestern" mindset and philosophy also seems ignorant.

<comment><USER10> I don't think that is the authors point. I think the point is that the _majority_ of startups you see on the coasts wouldn't _likely_ succeed or originate in places like Chicago, Omaha, Kansas City, Minneapolis because people are less open to risks of that nature. There are new businesses / startups in the Midwest but the majority worry about the business plan from the outset, rather than later. I didn't read the article as negative on the Midwest, rather, showing the differences in the areas.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps it was the journalistic tone that the author presents while relying on stereotypes and massive generalizations that makes it difficult to take seriously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was rather looking forward to why Groupon was such an exception to the rule ("more on that later")

Sadly, "more on that later" turned out to be Pandospeak for "That doesn't fit my argument, so I'm going to gloss over it."

</comment><comment><USER16> That actually sounds pretty great. The Silicon Valley Mentality is what it is because it advantages the venture capitalists and the small number of companies who "made it." I think for a lot of the rank and file, not to mention the 90% of entrepreneurs who don't make it, it is a net loss.

</comment><comment><USER17> another way to phrase this is that not everyone drinks the silicon valley kool-aid that raising money equals success.

</comment><comment><USER18> Counterpoint: <http://37signals.com/>

<comment><USER19> 37signals had an obvious business model and revenue stream on day one.

It's pretty much the perfect example of the difference the author is trying to draw: google and twitter were highly experimental ventures with no visible means of support in the early days. 37signals was explicitly a paying business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As somebody who has lived on the West Coast my whole life but has married into a very large family in St. Louis I've spent a lot of time there over the past five years. Anecdotal evidence disclaimer.

I think there isn't so much a fear of failure as much as a fear of risk. I think people doing the startups aren't afraid of failure. It is their friends, families, and community that might not view taking a risk as an intelligent move. When I was discussing the side company that I was trying to start I was immediately dismissed by a few people. I think their mindset might still be in the brick and mortar style of business. Some people might take that negatively while others embrace it as a challenge. I'll show them!

One other thing that I've noticed is that there is a certain energy in some cities that I haven't found in St. Louis. There is electricity in San Francisco, Portland, Los Angeles, New York, and London that isn't there. One that feels to me that maybe the person sitting at the table next to you in the coffee shop might be a great connection. That you're always one chance meeting away from a great opportunity.

I'm not sure if Chicago is like this but many people in St. Louis (well into their 30s) still form opinions based on what high school you went to. In fact it often the first question out of their mouths after introductions. With my background I find that custom weird if not unhealthy.

Also, it does seem to me that people as a whole do get married earlier there than on the West Coast. At least among the people that I have met. Having a family and doing a startup is tough (particularly if it is on the side of a 9-5 job) but people make it work.

<comment><USER20> I have heard about the high school thing from others from St. Louis (or people who have lived there.) I believe that is unique to St. Louis. In Chicago, we do ask what high school somebody went to, but more often than not it results in a good nature ribbing than anything else (kind of like the South side vs North side, all in good fun.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> his point about the work ethic being a strong point rings for me. chris wanstrath is from cincinnati, ohio and pj hyett is from north dakota.

the midwest would be a great place to build startups, as long as you tailored them to the pragmatic mentality there.

for example, what i'd like to do if i get the money to become an angel investor is start something like an incubator there, but do it differently. instead of buying a small amount of equity in a team to work on their cool idea for a location-based mobile social realtime group deal game platform service API framework, i would pay people a decent salary (which is still significantly lower than a startup salary in silicon valley) to work on building niche services for particular established industries. as they worked, they would gain equity that would provide dividends. i would position this company primarily as an alternative to college - you'd get paid in both salary and equity to learn to program, instead of putting yourself tens of thousands of dollars in debt to study amortized analysis of fibonacci heaps - which is awesome but kind of impractical at the moment.

so instead of building a generalized web analytics platform and trying to compete in that large space, build a platform tailored to the construction industry, with feedback and metrics designed just for them. couple it with an ipad app for foremen and you have a product that will never be the next google, but can earn money from day one.

if you can develop a reputation for building lots of profitable companies that serve real needs (something else midwesterns are big on), you could attract a lot of funding from investors in the area (they do exist) who are more interested in serving human need than earning lots of money.

</comment><comment><USER22> I can sum it up in three words: Prarie Home Companion. Listen to that and you'll understand. Especially the part where Garrison has a fake phone conversation with his mom. We aren't raised to be innovators, we aren't raised to be on the edge. We're raised to do well in school, help our family, and just be good people. Can't say that about Zuckerberg. He dropped out of school. Not supposed to do that. Mom? Mom?....

</comment><comment><USER23> As a Chicagoan trying to build a social network, I can say that this article hits a little too close to home; our ecosystem is completely dysfunctional. Go to a start-up event, and you'll see mostly service providers and FTEs that aren't willing to get engaged in anything new unless there's an income attached to it. Talk to investors, and they're mostly looking for traditional income streams or cashflowing properties. Any tech talent is either still in college (not terribly useful), or happily employed at corporations and NOT looking to change their disposition. It's been an ongoing struggle.

I worked in Santa Clara for 1.5 years and I love the Nor-cal energy, and while I there are plenty of pluses to Chicago (and the Midwest) in general, I must agree that a Twitter or FB would probably never have been successful here. For any Midwesterners reading this that disagree, I would ask if they've ever tried to rally Midwest resources around a project that isn't creating revenue within 90 days of launch.

Btw, if your an HNer in Chicago, or a tech/design resource interested in chatting let me know :)

<comment><USER24> Reach out, happy to network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've commented about this in the past. A Chicago angel investor friend of mine once made the comment that the local investment community was always looking to talk, but not willing to follow through. There is a conservatism here that allows people to hide behind the conventional; it's practical, ergo the right course of action.

I have friends and family who think I "lack experience" and "don't know about the world" because in the past 8 years I have been a trader, been involved w/ two start-ups, and went back to trading; all that effort for little (actually no) financial reward. What they can't grasp is all that is involved with the entrepreneurial enterprise. In the Chicago area, an entrepreneur is someone who buys a franchise or an existing small business (this is not a knock against those folks.)

That is why I'm moving to Austin (not the Valley, but not Chicago either.) I also want make clear: I love this town, but it's becoming like New York (a great place to live if you are rich and a great place to visit.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Also, I should point out, the VC who realizes there's a vast, fairly untapped pool of talent in the midwest, will make a killing.

</comment><comment><USER25> I suspect Silicon Valley industry has shaped Silicon Valley culture more than the other way around. After all, much of California was settled by displaced midwesterners during the Dust Bowl. Silicon Valley (does anyone there even touch silicon anymore?) became the tech capital in much the same way that Detroit became the auto capital: historical accident. Once tech became established there, it became a virtuous cycle as employees of successful startups cashed out and became the founders and investors for the next generation. Now there's a mature network of venture capital, skilled workers and emergent tech culture that would be difficult for any other city to catch up to.

</comment><comment><USER26> Interesting. I'm camping out in Chicago for the next few months doing some consulting for my $dayjob, and I'm hoping to learn more about the Chicago startup scene while I'm here. If the locals really do have that "pragmatic, Midwest mentality" it will be interesting to talk to them and see how their viewpoints contrast with those of us from North Carolina. I'm actually wondering if some of the investors here might not be more friendly to the kinds of things I'm interested in (enterprise software) than the investors back home.

At any rate, it's going to be fun meeting some Chicago based HN'ers and hanging out a bit.

<comment><USER27> There is an hn-chicago mailing list, but it doesn't see any traffic. The last meetup that I know of around here was in December but it had a pretty decent turnout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This article might be something other than a massive troll if it actually included an objective framework for what constitutes 'innovation'. As it stands it's a tautology, it isn't even wrong.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's down to the weather.

But this is not a bug, but a feature.

Team an Idea Man from the Valley up with an Ops guy from the Midwest and you'll have excellent software on infrastructure that won't melt.

And you'll always have good backups.

</comment><comment><USER30> Having lived in the Midwest most of my life, a lot of the talk about the culture does ring true. At least enough to make me smile. But I'm not sure the problem of a startup ecosystem that won't take off is because of that culture, because it's not unique to the Midwest...

Serious question: is there _any_ region that regularly produces "tech first, business model second" startups apart from Silicon Valley? New York, maybe? (Though you get "Why New York Sucks" posts too.) If this particular brand of lightning has only struck once or twice, the question isn't "why does everywhere else suck?" but "what kind of bizarre conditions made Silicon Valley happen in the first place?"

I suspect that this is a strongly path-dependent phenomenon: part culture and attitude, but part historical accident. If so, it's going to be very difficult to duplicate.

 _Edit: typo_

</comment><comment><USER31> tldr; stereotypes are stereotypes.

</comment><comment><USER32> it's just noise guys. the writers will keep writing, and the builders will keep building.

</comment><comment><USER33> Can we make it part of the midwest mentality to discourage linkbait overgeneralizations?

</comment><comment><USER34> Chicago isn't mid-west. It's east, if anything.

</comment><comment><USER35> VC. Or, lack thereof. What VC there is goes into older, more established companies and founders.

There isn't a lack of talent. Far from it, in my experience. (Actually, I think Minneapolis and Chicago would be great places to start a startup, on account of talent and COL. If the three worst things about a place are December, January, and February, you live in a great location.) Nor is there a mentality problem among the people who would be founders. It's a funding and access problem.

It's not just Chicago, of course. This funding problem is the reality pretty much everywhere and for everyone except extremely well-connected, upper- middle-class kids in California.

If I had the money, though, I'd drop a wad of cash on a Midwestern city like Madison or Minneapolis and try to build a Silicon Valley there-- not that there's anything wrong with the existing one, but just because I don't think it's healthy to have most of our innovation in one or two locations, and a place with low COL and high QOL might be a great place to start trying to do something new and different.

<comment><USER36> Couldn't you dump the money on some place warm? Nobody is going to work in a garage in Minneapolis.

That might actually have something to do with California -- even if you are broke the weather is still quite good.

<comment><USER35> The Minnesota winter is not as bad as it's made out to be. Yes, it's very cold, but you learn how to dress for it and you do stuff outside anyway-- such as an 8-mile hike I did in -10 F under 3 layers. Also, by this time of year it's 40-50 and you can do pretty much any three-season outdoor activity.

IMO most Northern European winters are worse than Minnesota's-- not nearly as cold, but longer (in Europe, it starts getting cold in October), darker, and much cloudier.

<comment><USER36> I am European and I can remember winters that were so cold that I would forget how it felt being warm (Scandinavia, not Siberia).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Convicted hacker (weev) starts hedge fund - <AUTHOR> http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000270881

<comment><USER2> Yes hello, weev here. Happy to answer any questions about TRO LLC. Contact info on our website: [http://trollc.com/](http://trollc.com/)

<comment><USER3> Hi, weev.

Do you have any statistics on the average 'hit' a security takes when a vulnerability is made public? What's legal precautions do you plan on taking? I'd imagine publicly shaming a business (or their systems) for personal gain will ruffle a few feathers.

<comment><USER2> The average hit is not representative of potential market performance. Generally, depends on the quality of the compromise and the media campaign surrounding it. A rule of thumb is that datasets and social outrage garners headlines.

I have retained some fine counsel that specialize in securities and CFAA issues and they are partners in the venture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have 2 questions:

1\. Why would anyone at S/C consider what he's doing slimy? He's not exploiting anybody, he's just shorting the stock and making the exploit known. If you think shorting stocks is slimy that's one thing, but would you rather have him short the stock and then NOT tell anyone about it? It seems like the only IMAGINABLE slimy thing is that he then tells people, making the short more valuable, but fuck is he supposed to NOT tell people? That would be SUPER wrong!

2\. Why isn't this on the front page? It has enough upvotes in enough time, has it been flagged? Is "Weev" a flagged word?</comment>


Ask HN: What is a reasonable salary for an image processing engineer? - <AUTHOR>

I've been interviewing for jobs in image processing as a researcher/developer and I'm always asked what are my salary expectations. Now I've been interviewing for entry-level jobs for people with a Master's or a Ph.D (I have a Ph.D in CS) and I'm not sure what a reasonable estimate is. I live in British Columbia, Canada and the cost of living is pretty high here. I estimate a reasonable range to be between $70k - $75k but I'm always low-balled to $60k - $65k as a counter-offer. Can somebody advise on what a reasonable range is? Assume there are no additional benefits to the salary package. The basic responsibilities are to develop computer vision/ image processing algorithms in C/C++ with an aim towards later porting them onto FPGAs with the camera sensor. I'd appreciate any comments/advice/links to resources. <comment><USER2> Rule #1 for devs during salary negotiations:

      Don't answer questions about salary expectations.

Any company worth working for already knows the value of the work you are offering to do for them to their bottom line.

You, on the other hand, do not.

The best outcome for both parties is one where the salary you get paid corresponds to the value of the work you are doing.

For the company, it reduces systemic risk by providing a critical diagnostic for management decisions. Any company unable to reliably hire people to produce the product they are selling at this rate has a huge problem which will not be solved by creating opportunities for competitors to poach their staff by offering marginal pay increases.

For you, it provides a shared context within which to negotiate future salary increases with the company you love working with and not needing to go through the soul-sucking process of finding a new job every 12-18 months.

</comment><comment><USER3> $100k +/- $20k in a major US city at a minimum.</comment>


Woman who claimed was 'allergic to Wi-Fi' gets disability allowance from court - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/11834670/Woman-who-claimed-she-was-allergic-to-Wi-Fi-gets-disability-allowance-from-French-court.html

<comment><USER2> Was there a double-blind test to determine whether her sensitivity could be observed?</comment>


The universe DIDN'T begin with a Big Bang, new theory suggests - <AUTHOR> http://metro.co.uk/2015/02/11/the-universe-didnt-begin-with-a-big-bang-new-theory-suggests-5058953/ <comment><USER2> Infinite regress. What caused what caused what caused the beginning of existence?

Next.</comment>


The great California Exodus - <AUTHOR> http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_71.htm#.UN33BInjlsw <comment><USER2> The Manhattan Institute is an explicitly conservative political organisation. That doesn't inherently invalidate any of the conclusions they draw, but readers should be aware that they have been made with a pro-free market, anti- big government mindset. Others may draw quite different conclusions from the same facts.

<comment><USER3> I don't think this is relevant. The reason that people for the most are leaving is not politics or taxes, but high cost of living. The biggest expense for most people is housing. From 1930-2000, almost everyone who moved to CA made money on exploding real-estate values, eithe directy or indirectly. This extended massively peoples wealth, so they lived in houses and with a lifestyle they could never afford based on their "day jobs". Now that the elevator of home-equity is no longer subsidizing cost of living, most people realize that there are a lot more $1MM houses in CA than $300K/yr jobs. And where there are those kind of jobs, a $1M house doesn;t get you much beyond the basics (like in SF/palo alto etc).

<comment><USER4> I think it obviously does matter. The conclusion of the paper was clearly written before the rest of it. Gems totally unsupported by the preceding evidence include "California has cut taxes in the past, most dramatically with 1978's Proposition 13, and when it has done so, prosperity has followed. Ballot propositions this November aim to do the reverse, raising taxes on business owners while the state is still struggling to hold its own against more aggressive, confident rivals. The results will send a strong signal, whichever way they go: the state's voters will be deciding to continue on the path of high taxes and high costs—or to make a break with the recent trend of decline" and other whoppers. Even the title is ridiculous unless you are willing to define "exodus" as "growing at the same pace as the nation as a whole".

<comment><USER3> The point is taxes are second order. Locally (st.city) are based on either property values and incomes. (1) if incomes cannot support paying the housing costs, they cannot support higher taxes, because there is no excess earning power; (2) if people cant pay the rent, then they are likely to move away to "somewhere more affordable". Most people spend ~30 pc of their income on tax and another ~30pc income on housing. So those are material numbers. When housing was going up=up=up, the mismatch of income to consumption was masked. Lower income supported higher living b/c the real-estate capital gains was not taxed and the grand-fathered real-estate became a lower % of income as salaries rose proportionate to real estate. So, if you had a 10 year house, you had $500K appreciation in the bank (no tax) and maybe a morgage taking only 15% of income b./cause it was bought cheap. this leaves a lot to pay taxes no problem. But same people cannot make math work if they need 30 pc after tax to pay rent, and 30 pc to pay tazes. 40%r residual for save/consume vs 55% is almost 1/3 drop, and a big difference. If gov;t ups taxes anothe 5%, then 55 to 35 is even bigger hit. But without the 500k in appreciation per decae accruing to savings, the 35% needs even more to be allocated to savings. So spendin cash mabed is only 20-25% from 55% in this example. In other words, that is a huge pay cut doing same work, etc. And that knind of pay-cut (1/2 order of magnitude) will cause people to look for new places to live. The taxes issue is more a problem for businesses (who are next in line after consumers to get taxed), but it is the residential people moving out that is the focus of the discussion for the most part here.

<comment><USER5> The funny thing is the counties where people weren't leaving (SF) had the highest housing prices.

<comment><USER6> I think there might be some nuance in the composition of the leavers vs the comers. This is purely speculative, but one could imagine that in SF:

\- leavers are mainly people with established jobs, thinking of starting a family, who want more house per dollar (and more post-tax dollars per salary dollar)

\- comers are mainly early 20s unattached aspiring professionals who aren't hit as hard by high real estate prices (price to rent ratios are still very high in SF), and who also don't yet have a large income against which to evaluate the tax impact

This kind of dynamic would result in a "perpetual churn" as each generation matures through their professional lifecycle, each time opening new jobs and housing opportunities (and thus the near-zero net migration).

Again, very speculative. But your observation made me scratch my head for a bit and this was the best explanation I could muster aside from "people just like SF and don't leave despite economic pressure".

<comment><USER5> That makes sense. The Bay Area also has a lot of H1B and other (legal, not tied to agriculture and thus inherently migratory) immigrants, too (in the tech sector), relative to the rest of California.

OTOH, it's pretty safe to say Californians outside of the Bay Area and maybe LA tech industry are struggling at all ages, so if you live in Redding, and don't own a productive farm or something, jumping up to Oregon or Nevada isn't a big compromise.

I can kind of justify California taxes and other expenses if you get the benefits of industry concentration, and maybe even if you are tied in with UC somehow, but for a person working in a fast food restaurant or light machining job or something, there's a lot less to tie you to California vs. a place with faster growth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> At the high end of moving out (rich people), California is unappealing because it's budgetfucked. Education, transportation, public services, and everything else will suffer for a long time. This leads to their crazy high state income tax and crazy high sales taxes and municipalities doing insane additional taxes for businesses on top of everything else.

The Bay Area may be the best place to create Show Me Your Food 13.0, but I think you can build things elsewhere with nicer conditions.

<comment><USER4> "In other words, the highest-income Californians were less likely to leave the state after the millionaire tax was passed."

[http://www.stanford.edu/group/scspi/_media/working_papers/Va...](http://www.stanford.edu/group/scspi/_media/working_papers/Varner- Young_Millionaire_Migration_in_CA.pdf)

By the way, the reason the state is "budgetfucked" as you eloquently put it is because of low taxes, not high taxes. You may be interested in reading about Proposition 13, a scheme under which people who are sitting on massively valuable assets are taxed at lower rates than those who actively acquire and dispose of much less valuable assets, and where assets held by corporations are taxed static amounts (in terms of absolute magnitude, not rates) in perpetuity.

<comment><USER7> Quite true. Prop 13 is an abomination. Instead of only homeowners paying reasonable real estate tax, they've essentially made everybody in california subsidize low-tax-locked real estate owners. Now you get to have the fun of paying virtual real estate tax without owning property.

It turns out, we have the ability to _not_ live there!

It's not quite sane to take a multimillion dollar exit in California when Seattle has zero additional overhead. Though, it is an absolute dickhead move to build your company in California then "establish residency" in a zero- income/capital gains tax state solely to avoid California tax harassment.

<comment><USER8> It's California's stupid fault for picking that tax system. It's not like residence-based income taxes were decreed by God as the only way to fund a government.

<comment><USER3> residence based taxation is a stealth wealth tax. us is illegal wealth tax directly. problem was in 1970s, people bought 10k house on 3k/ye wages. 10 yes later, it was million dollar house. 3k/wages cannot pay taxes on million dollar house. so that is why they passed such a law. otherwise, people would have all had to sell house for capital gains and move out of california in 1970s.

This is not justifying system, but explaining how these thnings come about. Again, it has to do with people not being able to afford the either the real- estate (at market values) or the taxes based on their incomes. taxes just second order effect though.

<comment><USER4> You will have to excuse me if I don't sympathize with the taxation problems of people who are sitting on unrealized million-dollar capital gains.

<comment><USER3> The politicians were showing sympathy with the grandma on social security liing in her house she bough in 1940 with no plumbing, etc. It was not her fault NASA moved in next door to send men to the moon, etc. That, at least was the context. I don't have sympathy for entitled people either, particulalrly those we are talking about who "developed" and paved over CA with freeways. But before them was a genration of home-steaders, who had no income because they were modest people. They took a lot more risk and invested a lot of sweat equity to make CA a better plave to libe, so perhaps worth showing them some respect...etc. or not YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems like there are several additional ways one could spin the data in this report.

From a selfish standpoint, should I, as a Californian in a booming industry that looks like it will remain a central part of the economy for the forseeable future, be too broken up about a lot of people moving elsewhere for jobs? Should I want the metro area I live in to be seeing double-digit- percentages population growth over decades (I don't think that would make it any cheaper, or would make traffic any better)? And even then, the overall populations for the parts of California I'd want to live in are still rising, and jobs and new companies are still being created, and I'm meeting a ton of smart people who've moved here from all over the country.

I certainly have no intention to move back east any time soon. I've found a lot more interesting stuff being done out here, and the weather is worlds better, and the high population density allows a ton of things I like.

<comment><USER10> It's perfectly fine to live in California as a salaried employee, you're likely not to get screwed.

For an entrepreneur, where you might subside 7 years on Ramen noodles to (maybe) have a large windfall during the 8th year, California places an unreasonable penalty on that once-in-a-lifetime event.

Therefore from selfish standpoint, if you start a business, grow it fast somewhere else, and then, when growth plateaus, bring it to California (let's face it, it's still a large consumer market).

[http://allthingsd.com/20121204/what-proposition-30-means- for...](http://allthingsd.com/20121204/what-proposition-30-means-for- californias-entrepreneurs/)

<comment><USER11> This makes about as much sense as someone living in a trailer voting to ensure their own tax rate is higher than a billionaire's, "because I might win the lottery one day".

<comment><USER10> Except moving to another state is not "living in a trailer", it's more like living in a house next door, unless you feel particularly superlative about California.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So that's why my rent here in the SF Bay Area is decreasing! (Not).

I admit it was kind of nice after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 and the dot-com bust in 2001 to have some breathing room. Alarms about hordes leaving California have the opposite effect on me, as I look forward to uncrowded hiking trails and affordable real estate.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, that's the joke. It's a place where nobody wants to live, where all the houses cost a fortune and there's a waiting list for every apartment.

The funny thing is there's a big generational shift underway right now. People born around 1980 and later are much more likely to express a desire for a real urban environment, like that found in San Francisco, New York, and throughout Europe, instead of the suburban environment favored by their parents. Now, far be it from me to judge anyone, but it seems to me that anyone leaving California for Nevada is clearly expressing their preference for the suburban or even rural lifestyle. That lifestyle, being extremely energy intensive, is the definition of non-sustainable. If other states are attracting residents because they have lots of that unsustainable development, I think they can pretty much have as many of those people as they want. I far prefer to see California investing in real cities, attracting the kinds of people who prefer to live in those real cities, and building a future that actually has a future.

It won't be very long (certainly within fifty years) before non-places like Las Vegas and Phoenix are viewed as bizarre, obvious mistakes of our past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this has a lot less to do with taxes than it does with the prices of real estate. Buying a house in California is prohibitively expensive for most people, which eats up a huge amount of everyone's disposable income. In Texas, you make less money, but houses and rent are a factor of 2-4 times cheaper for what you get.

I think there are two main reasons for this: proposition 13 and CEQA. Prop 13 keeps property taxes really low, which makes buying and holding onto single- family homes really cheap. This is a giant subsidy for people who have lived in California for a while, but jacks up the prices for everyone else who gets in after them, since low ownership costs translate to high upfront prices.

The California Environmental Quality Act has a different effect that also raises housing prices: empowering NIMBYs. Because any new development can be pretty easily be slowed down/made more expensive/stopped altogether by a bogus CEQA request, new housing isn't getting built in nearly as much as one would expect given the demand. This makes existing housing more valuable, which increases prices even more.

In addition, some municipalities, notably San Francisco, have an insanely regulated rental market that makes renting incredibly difficult for a landlord, which makes it more attractive for people to buy housing instead of rent. This means there's less rental housing to go around, which makes the rent in SF absolutely insane.

</comment><comment><USER14> Seems odd to try and focus only on domestic migrations. In 1990 the population of California was 29.9M, in July 2011 it was 37.6M. The total population has continued to climb - [https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=kf7tgg1uo9ude_&...](https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=kf7tgg1uo9ude_&met_y=population&idim=state:06000&dl=en&hl=en&q=california%20population#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=population&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=state:06000&ifdim=country&tstart=333612000000&tend=1311832800000&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false)

The net draw to California still seems to be in place.

I moved from California to Utah in 2007. The reason? My wife wanted to be closer to her family there and my job didn't care where I lived.

</comment><comment><USER15> Their conclusion about density is bullshit, supported by bullshit assertions. Population-Weighted Density is what people experience, not geographic density. Nobody moves out of their 10 acre farmhouse in San Bernadino county because Long Beach is too crowded. Even the Census acknowledges as much. [http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2012/10/americas- tr...](http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2012/10/americas-truly- densest-metros/3450/) Furthermore, there are plenty of dense cities that are growing more densely as well as in absolute. In fact, the city that is densest (by a factor of 2x), is doing exactly that.

<comment><USER16> While it's true nobody moves out of a 10 acre farmhouse in San Bernadino because Long Beach is too crowded, the low density parts of the state don't have any jobs and aren't particularly nice places to live to start with. So density in the nice, employment rich places matters.

San Francisco is an outlier. It attracts people who want to live in a dense urban environment and has a reasonable public transportation system. In most places higher density directly translates into less free time as a result of longer commutes.

<comment><USER15> High density doesn't directly translate into longer commutes. It directly translates into better jobs. Since people are willing to travel longer distances for better jobs, longer commutes are an indirect result.

<comment><USER16> In the long run that's true, but if you're already living somewhere and the density increases you're going to have a longer commute, most likely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seriously considering Seattle or Las Vegas, or farther afield, Hawaii or New Zealand, in 2013+.

<comment><USER17> The problem with the great California Exodus is the people leaving CA end up trying to re-create CA wherever they move. Just look at the Californication of Seattle, Hawaii and Denver.

<comment><USER7> Anecdote: Walking around Seattle, I stumbled into an olive oil/butter shop (think: wine shop, but not). In this shop was an 8 year old girl. She, in the shop without a parent or guardian, asked the attendant, "Which one of these is the organic butter? I only eat organic."

Who knew the insanity started so young?

<comment><USER5> Expensive/organic/artisanal food is a native Northwest thing, though -- it's not just a California import.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> After just roughly scanning the graphs I'd speculate that the ageing society plays a role. Which could explain why less liberal states are experiencing a rise of population, while the more liberal states are experiencing a decline.

Which is just my hunch (without any source or proof) that people get more conservative with age. And another one, that they prefer to live in places with like-minded folks.

Just wild guessing though. I am not even from America.

<comment><USER19> "Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains."

― Winston S. Churchill

[http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/95528-show-me-a-young- conser...](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/95528-show-me-a-young-conservative- and-i-ll-show-you-someone)

<comment><USER20> This quote doesn't add to the discussion and is also incorrectly attributed to Churchill.

[http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/quotations/qu...](http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/quotations/quotes- falsely-attributed)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This exodus is occurring in Illinois as well (shown). Both states share similar budget problems along with predictable leadership responses -- higher taxes and reduced services.

What Illinois needs is genuine growth and that doesn't happen overnight. In the meantime, people get fed up and leave -- unless they have to sell their home or business.

<comment><USER11> I would disagree with your assertion that "growth" is what's needed.

The problems we're seeing, in many places, are the result of pursuing "growth" -- some seemingly-smart people show up and say that if only the local government will provide, up-front, a bunch of infrastructure and tax breaks right now, it'll all be made up in "growth" from businesses and people moving in and creating jobs and wealth.

Of course, what actually happens is the businesses and people move in, take advantage of everything provided, and then scream bloody murder about "expropriation" and move away when finally presented with the bill for all the services and breaks that enabled that "growth".

What is needed is a responsible expression of some kind of actual social contract, with obligations and benefits for both sides. But good luck rallying support for that on HN, where short-term lottery-syndrome has everyone blinded.

<comment><USER21> Illinois is 13B+ in debt with 80B+ in long term obligations that take the form of pensions and entitlements. The social contract is there -- and constitutionally protected.

The scales are out of balance, the corn crop has failed, Caterpillar wants to move, gas is the highest in the nation, gang violence is increasing, the schools are struggling, and everyone feels the weight.

We need to grow, we need to export, and we need to sustain it for a prolonged period of time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Along with this study it would be enlightening to see if someone could correlate it to a decline in California's jobless rate:

[http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mo-california- sheds-38...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mo-california- sheds-3800-jobs-in-november-jobless-rate-falls-to-98-20121221,0,6802816.story)

Of course, you have to take the jobless rate with a grain of salt as it does not take into to account people who have just given up looking all together. I still wonder if population decline in California could contribute to lower unemployment (more jobs open for the people that stay in the state).

</comment><comment><USER4> Would rather have more parks and forests than more people. Carry on.

</comment><comment><USER23> There was a recent KQED forum podcast on the rise and fall of California:

<http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201212271000>

</comment><comment><USER24> tl;dnr

It's so crowded, nobody goes there anymore (after Yogi Berra)</comment>


Medicare for All – The Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren Health Care Plans - <AUTHOR> http://healthpolicyandmarket.blogspot.com/2019/10/medicare-for-allthe-bernie-sanders-and.html <comment><USER2> I agree that short term providers will likely take in less money with a "Medicare for all" solution, but I think the problem presented by this blog post is overstated/misrepresented: 1) The "Over 65" demographic visits the hospital more than other demographics so comparing raw number of people is an apples to oranges comparison (65+ somewhere between 3-10x more likely to utilize an inpatient stay, [https://www.hcup- us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb235-Inpati...](https://www.hcup- us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb235-Inpatient-Stays-Age-Payer-Trends.jsp)) 2) Roughly half of all administrative costs in US hospitals are associated with billing. Administrative costs are lower in single payer systems because hospitals don't need to bargain and coordinate billing with multiple parties. Doctors will still be needed by hospitals, but hospital workers/sales people/VPs who bargain with insurance companies will be less necessary. This is a significant percentage of hospital expenditures [[https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/reports/2...](https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/reports/2019/04/08/468302/excess- administrative-costs-burden-u-s-health-care-system/)] Administrative staff seem much more likely to see paycuts or staffing cuts rather than necessary staff like doctors/nurse.

</comment><comment><USER3> The reason candidates feel a need to propose anything related to health care is that the costs are too high. Anybody expecting lower costs without cutting, you know, costs isn't engaging reality.

So yes, any serious proposal to address the cost of health care in America will include cuts to the costs of health care in America, which includes hospitals, doctors, and so on. This seems blindingly obvious.

The linked blog post seems to want the current system to be preserved as-is, with no cuts to anything. Which is a viewpoint, but not a very popular one.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the enlightening thing is that higher costs have been driven by government funded programs. I have to pay taxes for Medicare directly and there is a hidden tax in the form of higher healthcare costs in the private market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes. The plan is to cut payments to providers. This includes doctors. I'm sorry.

<comment><USER5> Healthcare has become a huge portion of our economy, in fact the largest at 18%. Doctors account for about 750k jobs in the US, compared to 16 million in the segment total: they account for only 4.5% of healthcare jobs.

Healthcare is also the fastest growing employment sector.

There are huge inefficiencies in the US healthcare system. We pay more to provide equivalent service as other first world countries.

However, switching to a single-payer system with a snap of one's fingers will not solve those inefficiencies, and will create massive upheaval in just about every Americans life, and our economy in general.

The article is pointing out that if the government sets prices _at which all companies decide they cannot profitably render services_ , 20% of our economy and 16 million jobs just vanished. No candidate has addressed this issue.

<comment><USER3> I find it hard to believe that someone who has spent a large chunk of their life in the field of medicine is going to choose unemployment over continuing to practice with less remuneration.

If the jobs you describe are necessary, then they will continue. If they are not, they might go away. That's how things work.

We've had a long time to find these inefficiencies you describe, and yet all they've done is multiply. Cutting rates means leaving less room for inefficiencies, and is the most certain precursor to eliminating them that I know of.

<comment><USER5> Those conclusions are taking the available detail of the current proposals to conclusion.

I seriously doubt that any proposal would pass that results in such a conclusion. The point the article is making is that the proposals need to consider the facts that result in that conclusion (ie, _current Medicare /aid rates cannot support the current industy_), and need to offer proposals to counter act such a conclusion. Any proposal that doesn't is not a proposal, but a platitude.

<comment><USER3> Supporting the current industry is not the goal. The current industry is failing too many people.

Proposing too many details before a candidate is even elected would be foolish. Any particular detail can be distracting from the overall goal.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask PG: Less items on each page? - <AUTHOR>

Just wondering when and why you changed it from 30 to 25 items per page - mostly the why. Cheers :) <comment><USER2> Probably related to the MSM stuff that caused HN to get really slow yesterday. See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2865985>

<comment><USER3> He actually stated in the above referenced post that it was related to the traffic spike.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where did he state it, I can't seem to find it?

<comment><USER3> "I turned on comment thread pagination to decrease the load. I'll turn it off tonight."

<comment><USER2> Comment thread pagination is not reducing the number of items visible on pages (eg, /newest, /ask, /news), it's splitting up comments onto multiple pages. Completely different things.

<comment><USER3> I took it to mean comment and thread pagination was turned on and or increased and therefore fewer items were shown on each page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> * Fewer</comment>


Why you must learn to love DNSSEC - <AUTHOR> http://www.circleid.com/posts/20180619_why_you_must_learn_to_love_dnssec/ <comment><AUTHOR> FWIW: submission is not endorsement. I think there are tons of flaws in this argument.

For example, they mention TLSA would have prevented this. TLSA would not have prevented this. Not only did the attackers not succeed in acquiring a TLS certificate (every DV CA knows about partial BGP hijacks), no browsers actually implement TLSA or have indicated an interest in TLSA.

I don't know if the article refers to TLSA as "pinning" because they don't understand what TLSA is or because they're trying to obscure it, but "pinning" does not generally mean "replacing your issuance system and trust root wholesale with an obscure system controlled by whatever organization controls your TLD".</comment>


Ask HN: Any Moscow HNers? - <AUTHOR>

I'm going to be in Moscow next week and would love to meet up with some HNers while I'm there. <comment><USER3> Might want to give HackerNewsers a try: [http://hackernewsers.com/users.html?User[city]=moscow&Us...](http://hackernewsers.com/users.html?User\[city\]=moscow&User\[countryId\]=643&User\[timezone\]=&yt0=Search)

<comment><USER4> There are only two results, one of whom is me, and I am 350-400 km from Moscow, which is kinda far, even to see a fellow HNer.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Gosh everyone - I just got here a few hours ago - thanks for the replies - <USER2> few people emailed me - I'm at firstname.lastname@example.com. It seems like getting together on the 24th or 25th is good for some people as a starting point. Is there a place in Moscow that is good for an informal meetup?

I'm near the Dobryzinski(?) metro terminal but can meet anywhere I can get to by metro.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hello all:

Danil has organized a lunch meeting:

We are meeting up on April 25 at Digital October's Progress Bar at Noon. Please, come by everyone! <http://digitaloctober.com/progress-bar>

This is a Thursday - I look forward to meeting up with all of you!

</comment><comment><USER5> If anyone is in St. Petersburg, I'm in town for an academic conference and would love to meet up sometime this weekend!

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow! I thought there's lot more HN-ers in Moscow. I'm one of them, anyway. email@example.com, Alexander.

</comment><comment><USER7> Drop me a line too. firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER8> Hey-hey! Moscower here, my email is in the profile.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'll be there on 24 & 25th. danil[at]danil.cc

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm here for the next month or so. @ZackMaril

</comment><comment><USER11> Hello! Drop me a line email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER12> hey! drop me a line at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER13> I live in Novosibirsk, Russia. If any HNers are out here in Siberia (unlikely), I'd like to meet them!

<comment><USER9> Ha-ha, I'm on it! Let's meet up!

<comment><USER13> email me: email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> HI I Love moscow</comment>


The patent on SIFT expired yesterday - <AUTHOR> https://patents.google.com/patent/US6711293B1/en <comment><USER2> Does this mean that OpenCV will be able to now include SIFT in the "free" modules. Or are there more roadblocks before including it?

<comment><USER3> I'm not a lawyer, but as far as I know expired US patents enter the public domain. After their expiration the described invention can be freely used by anyone for any purpose [1].

So I think the answers to your questions are yes and no.

[1] [https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-long-is-my- paten...](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-long-is-my-patent- protection-good-for.html)

<comment><USER4> Perhaps there are still patents in other regions (?)

<comment><USER5> As others commented, the only countries where software patents work are the US and Japan. So it'd be just Japan that could have a patent in place? Don't know theh details, and IANAL.

OTOH, I'd really like the patent to be inactive, it'd allow me to work worry free in a lot of things that I've had an interest in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale- invariant_feature_transf...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale- invariant_feature_transform)

</comment><comment><USER7> Evolution Robotics (later acquired by iRobot) was the first licensee of this patent for robotics applications. It was very cutting edge for the time and allowed our robots the ability to recognize real world objects. Having the robot follow a book that you carried in front of it was trippy in 2002.

Later we applied it to loss prevention in grocery retail with cameras at ground level watching under the cart. If we recognized anything in the 'bob' (bottom of the basket) we would automatically add it to the receipt.

Good memories.

Edit: typo 'tea' -> real

<comment><USER8> wait... the concept was to have video cameras on the ground point _upward_ in a supermarket setting?

Did anyone involved in this ever stop to think "what would a person wearing a skirt say to this?" It's not exactly the kind of thing you'd expect to be able to explain away with "oh no but we really don't use it for that" no?

<comment><USER9> A more charitable reading is that the cameras are at ground level and stay aimed at ground level. I got the impression he's not talking about the main basket of the shopping cart, but the storage right above the wheels where you might forget pet food or bulk paper goods.

<comment><USER8> okay, that might be my non-native English comprehension. I parsed "bottom of the basket" as the flat underside of the main part of the cart. And you'd have to point the cameras upwards to see that.

If it's horizontal, that's a different topic.

<comment><USER5> I had the same impression upon first read. And from a programmers perspective of what the ideal conditions for such a software would be, I also thought of a ground placed camera, pointing upwards in a way in which id could see the basket an find items that were "forgotten" in it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How much money did the University of British Columbia actually earn from this patent?

<comment><USER11> I suspect that many patents are to stop others from patenting your work. It is a worry.

<comment><USER12> Open publication (at least in western jurisdictions) serves as prior art. If you don't intend to patent, just write about what you're doing openly and often!

<comment><USER11> Can any publication serve as prior art? Can I use a personal blog or do I need a certain type of publication? I know of people who have sent copies of their work in the mail to themselves to prove prior art.

<comment><USER13> Any publication is fine as long as you can provide evidence. In fact the only thing special about publication is that it is a convenient way to demonstrate evidence of the prior art. What could be tricky about e.g. a personal blog post is proving that it was published when you say it was and that time stamps are genuine.

<comment><USER14> For those who are interested and doesn't know already[0] this is one of the places where blockchains and similar, older technoologies are actually useful: to provide irrefutable proof of knowledge at a given time.

Note however that similar services has been done for years[1] before Bitcoins and blockchains became a thing but since they neither need multi-Gigawatt- Proof-of-Work [2] nor any kind of "Coin" that can be pumped (and dumped) it wasn't cool.

[0]: [https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/) (and hi to todays lucky 1/10000! : )

[1]: See here for an article that describes it: [https://www.vice.com/en_nz/article/j5nzx4/what-was-the- first...](https://www.vice.com/en_nz/article/j5nzx4/what-was-the-first- blockchain)

[2]: but, it kind of works anyway since it would take quite some work to find the majority + the archived ones of a certain days New York Times papers and change the classifieds section.

<comment><USER15> I'm somewhat sure that prior art requires _publication_ , and not just _knowledge_.

The internet archive has long been used as evidence for such publication-at- time claims, and they even have a paid service allowing you to trigger snapshots IIRC. There's a FAQ regarding the use of their data in court cases that is somewhat interesting to read.

I know the cryptocurrency community has this absurd notion that nothing without cryptographic proof could or should ever be regarded as evidence. That trusting institutions, people, or processes marks you as a gullible fool, and that the Federal Reserve is conspiracy by private banks to keep the gentile from the levers of power[0].

So this is the not entirely novel situation of crypto being proposed to solve a problem that doesn't exist, and failing due to the lack of (usually: active hostility to) subject matter expertise.

[0] last point unrelated to this specific situation and just included for completeness

<comment><USER14> > I know the cryptocurrency community has this absurd notion that nothing > without cryptographic proof could or should ever be regarded as evidence. > That trusting institutions, people, or processes marks you as a gullible > fool, and that the Federal Reserve is conspiracy by private banks to keep > the gentile from the levers of power[0]. So this is the not entirely novel > situation of crypto being proposed to solve a problem that doesn't exist, > and failing due to the lack of (usually: active hostility to) subject matter > expertise.

It reads like you count me in with the cryptocurrency community.

If anyone else does: don't.

I'm pointing out one single place were blockchain can be useful and then immediately pointing out that it isn't strictly necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reddit discussion on this - [https://www.reddit.com/r/computervision/comments/fednny/sift...](https://www.reddit.com/r/computervision/comments/fednny/sift_patent_expires_today/)

</comment><comment><USER17> More info about what this actually is: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale- invariant_feature_transf...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale- invariant_feature_transform)

\---

Also, reading the listing, I see

2020-03-06 - Anticipated expiration

2020-03-08 - Application status is Active

Is "active" some kind of obscure reference with a nonintuitive meaning, or did the patent owner reapply for the patent?

<comment><USER18> You can't reapply for patents like that, but I don't know what that status means. Patents often get an adjustment to their term and last a bit more than their nominal 20 years (due to delays being issued, etc.). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Anyone know other major patents expiring in the next few years? ( or that have expired recently?)

It could make an interesting hn thread.

</comment><comment><USER20> SIFT works really well.

We use it for aligning input documents onto templates for OCR.

Super cool.

<comment><USER21> how did you go about licencing the patent?

<comment><USER20> Didn't, was just RND.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One time on caltrain I was amused by some very drunk people trying to explain how SIFT works to each other.

</comment><comment><USER23> You can still download the autostitch app - have used it several times for one-off panos:

[http://matthewalunbrown.com/autostitch/autostitch.html](http://matthewalunbrown.com/autostitch/autostitch.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> To what extent were the SIFT patents enforced?

As an undergraduate I worked as an RA for some (IEEE published) research at my uni for some robotics work and I gather that violating the SIFT patent was somewhat common when it wasn't obvious SIFT was being used, e.g. when SIFT was being used as a fungible solution:

Self-driving car demo that recognizes road-signs? No, that's too obvious.

Object recognition primarily using HOG or other approaches but using SIFT as a fallback or for determining a confidence value? Go ahead.

And SIFT was used in a lot of private projects (proof-of-concepts, etc) or lab workers' weekend personal projects. This was in academia, but I'm curious if this attitude extends to industry anywhere.

<comment><USER25> The way patents are enforced is the patent holder sues for damages. This obviously means there needs to be some damages, i.e. they claim they lost sales or something. If you aren't using the patent to make products or money, just to do research, this is a hard case to make. I wonder if it actually ever happens in academia.

Note that everything you "invent" that builds on the prior patent, including what you publish, is still blocked by that patent. And even if you ultimately remove the patented part, they can claim it was needed in the research process. So wantonly infringing on a patent in your research doesn't hurt the patent holder anyway.

<comment><USER26> The research exemption used to be quite broad especially for universities who would often use it as carte blanche, but was narrowed significantly by Madey v. Duke University.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There have been many better feature detectors introduced in the mix over the past fifteen years. This change won't make too big a difference for people in the CV community.

<comment><USER28> Mhhhhh, I'm a researcher in the field and I'd say it's a mostly inaccurate statement. The root-SIFT detectors and descriptors are still really good. If you try to match images in different conditions (day/night), then CNN based approaches are OK.

Which one were you thinking about?

<comment><USER29> I would argue more that SIFT was valuable in introducing a new paradigm of feature extraction/matching. It is a staple of many computer vision courses. But yes the main algorithm I'm sure is quite (practically) performant as well

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30>
      2020-03-09
      Application status is Active

Not anymore

<comment><USER31> I don't understand what this means. US Patents are 20 years, right? And it was applied for in 1999, so it must be expiring?

<comment><USER30> Perhaps. I'm just pointing out (badly) that when this was posted (March 8th depending on Timezone) to HN that new status may not have been there. That latest status updated just happened March 9th.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> TIL SIFT was patented. I wonder if SURF was as well. Not that it matters nowadays

<comment><USER33> yes it is

>In computer vision, speeded up robust features (SURF) is a patented local feature detector and descriptor.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is sift still relevant today?

<comment><USER35> There's a good paper on this:

[https://demuc.de/papers/schoenberger2017comparative.pdf](https://demuc.de/papers/schoenberger2017comparative.pdf)

"Our evaluation confirms that, as expected, learned descriptors often surpass SIFT on all evaluation metrics. However, we also observe that advanced versions of hand-crafted descriptors perform on par or better than the state- of-the-art learned feature descriptors, especially in the more complex SFM scenarios. As such, our paper demonstrates that there is still significant room for improvement for learning more powerful feature descriptors."

<comment><USER28> This paper is a bit "old" by the way. An excellent paper was released a week ago : [https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.01587](https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.01587)

Findings are mostly the same. For day/day images, with a properly tuned pipeline, SIFT is really good.</comment></comment></comment>


Could social discovery apps spoil true serendipity? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/06/messing-with-fate/8979/

<comment><USER2> The Amazon reviews of Keen's book (linked from the article) are priceless.</comment>


Open source tool to build synthetic data - <AUTHOR> This is a great open source tool to generate synthetic data to train ml / ai models to preserve privacy in user and sensitive data. https://github.com/gretelai/gretel-synthetics <comment><USER2> Training tutorial and Google Colaboratory here: [https://medium.com/gretel- ai/create-artificial-data-with-gre...](https://medium.com/gretel-ai/create- artificial-data-with-gretel-synthetics-and-google-colaboratory-2e36609bf192)</comment>


PDF (vector) icons in Xcode 6 for iOS and OS X app development - <AUTHOR> https://icomoon.io/#blog/post0

<comment><USER2> At my current job a collegue created a shell script to achieve the same result. The tools used by the shell script are Inkscape[0] and cpdf[1].

The core functionally is done by the following 2 lines of code:

      $INKSCAPE --export-area-page --export-area-snap "$SVG" -A "$PDF_TEMP"
      $CPDF -scale-page "0.625 0.625" "${PDF_TEMP}" -o "${PDF}"

It might be a nice alternative approach compared to a GUI tool.

\---

[0]: [http://brewformulas.org/Inkscape](http://brewformulas.org/Inkscape)

[1]: [http://community.coherentpdf.com](http://community.coherentpdf.com)</comment>


How Larry Page Built Google Into The World's Most Important Internet Company - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/how-larry-page-came-to-run-google-2012-12?op=1

<comment><USER2> "On being famous I like the fact that I can meet anyone now and have a conversation."

So... You have to be famous now to meet anyone and speak with them? I'm not entirely sure what Page is trying to say.</comment>


Being a programmer will make me a better doctor - <AUTHOR> https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2020/03/18/why-being-a-programmer-will-make-me-a-better-doctor/ <comment><USER3> The thing I've learned dealing with professionals in other fields is that they just don't care as much as you do. The economics of their profession simply don't allow it.

In software if you spend 8 hours fixing a bug that bug will be fixed for all future users of your software. Someone spending 8 hours to diagnose a medical condition will surely be meaningful to you but won't help the rest of the people in the waiting room. Further most people do not have exotic illnesses or needs so rarely is such detailed diagnosis necessary.

If you want someone to fix your car right rather than just replace random parts, or to give you detailed medical attention be prepared to search a long time to find someone willing to do so.

<comment><USER4> It must depend on the industry. My experience is the opposite.

I've had programming jobs where every single day consisted of me running into a bug and wanting to fix it, and my manager saying there's no ROI in that and I need to add new features instead like The Roadmap says.

After switching to the physical world, there's definitely an understanding that while we shouldn't be slow, we should take as long as needed to do the job right. If we screw up, people could die. As they say: "OSHA regulations are written in blood."

<comment><USER5> What about your experience with medical professionals, mechanics, etc.? It's all relative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is one of the frustrating things about what I have when I go to the doctor.

As a developer, I generally want a lot of information in order to pose theories about what is going wrong. They always seem really annoyed by this.

<comment><USER7> Mainly because it is genuinely exhausting for any medical practitioner. That lots of patients "enjoy" googling symptoms and coming up with far-fetched self-diagnoses is a given. But couple that with the perceived intellectual superiority of (software) engineers and you get a recipe for disaster. It's the equivalent of a doctor leaning over your shoulder while you're coding and telling you to remove random keywords.

<comment><USER8> Yeah I don't buy this.

Like any field I think there is a spectrum of quality and there are some really great doctors that know a lot, some really bad ones, and a lot of mediocre ones.

I've had a doctor (in the bay area) tell me that I should smoke a cigarette instead of having coffee if I'm having trouble sleeping, but want to keep working on something. Another talk positively about the butter coffee guy. I think the main reason they don't talk about a lot of options is probably time constraint and the common case being right most of the time. This means if you're actually not a common case you're probably better off investing your own time to try and figure things out too.

I like this article though, I think there is some similarity of style in troubleshooting software and disease diagnosis (just very different things to reason about).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have family who are MDs and I have been working with MDs for over 5 years. I have always felt the same, but usually MDs don't agree that much - <USER2> special is part of the meme I guess.

I do feel, however, that the converse would not work as well: most MDs I met do not practice the "abstract" thinking that is required to be a successful programmer. But that's just my experience.

<comment><USER10> They sound more akin to kernel programmers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't think most programmers I know would have a very winning bedside manner.

<comment><USER12> Neither have many doctors I've interacted with. The God-complexes in some of those people is just incredible.

<comment><USER11> I'm just saying - poor bedside manner is a known problem, work on improving that, not bringing in another discipline that for some reason or other seems to have problems with sociability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Eh, as a doctor with an engineering background who does a lot of programming projects on the side and feels confident in both roles, they're very different skill sets and I wouldn't say it makes me a better doctor. If you go into a non-patient facing area like radiology or pathogy you can leverage it into improved toolchains with AI assistance, but you also don't have to be a programmer to incorporate technology into your practice.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Based on the patient's past history of seasonal allergies and the high pollen count that day, most signs seemed to indicate that there was nothing to worry about. But--in order to rule out the unlikely "edge case" that the patient had contracted an acute viral infection that could become serious when his immune system was suppressed by chemotherapy--my advisor made sure to run tests for several common bugs before starting treatment."

And that's the problem: thinking like this as a programmer is cheap and fast; as a doctor it is slow and _very_ expensive. I for one would prefer a very cheap doctor that didn't think like this most of the time. Unfortunately, massive malpractice settlements will always hinder the goal of cheap healthcare.

</comment><comment><USER15> The huge, and frustrating, difference is that software is (almost always) deterministic and (in principle) can be fully understood. With enough time and money, I am positive that I can fix _any_ bug you throw at me. Human illness on the other hand sadly often leaves one without a cure.

</comment><comment><USER16> Another example of the "everyone should learn to code" frenzy.

<comment><USER17> Programming, like spoken language, is one way to express yourself. A lot of value is lost because otherwise apt people, with profound skill or potential in a given vertical like medicine, cannot express themselves in digital terms. Moreover, non-technical people use Excel in amazing ways. It would be better if they knew how to program. The volume and distribution of technical labor is becoming more and more of a bottleneck to innovation. Every year that we don't systematically introduce people to programming is another year where we forsake large amounts of innovation, and the economic value lost compounds, just like investments compound. There must be a large national effort to introduce young people and adults to programming.

<comment><USER18> There is a curse there though.

I've found fluency with how the computer actually works creates a great deal of friction with regards to trying to communicate with other people.

I'm so tuned to there always being an underlying cause that even my day to day communication takes on aspects of subconscious Neuro- linguistic programming; I end up trying to constantly tease apart or divine the nature of the underlying semantic/experiential construction of relatively high level communication done with a new person. It's gotten so bad, I can't really comfortably engage in small talk, because to me, it feels like I'm fuzzing the other person and being fuzzed by them in return to the point I end up getting frustrated at the complete failure to set up meaningful communication.

What this ends up looking like, is that with someone I _know_ I can get into high throughput, deep conversations. If I don't know someone though, I end up having to noodle around and pry to desperately scrabble together enough information to put forth a credible attempt at meaningful communication where we both come out saying the same thing about the same thing to a high enough degree of confidence that I"m comfortable we formed a shared understanding.

Also, any person that outright frustrates that calibration phase, or demonstrates excessive volatility in terms of being able to reliably recall things (see compulsive deceivers/gaslighters/liars) quickly finds themselves on a low priority tier for further communication in many instances. I don't like doing that, but every time I relent in the practice, I tend to get hurt.

<comment><USER17> Let's say, arbitrarily, that you automatically connect with 20% of people, 50% of people take some work, and the other 20% aren't worth it.

The 20% that aren't worth it can be further split into people who are very different from yourself, wallflowers, and antisocial individuals. If you are not eager to please, you will identify the last 20% easily. The trick, though, is that you can't automatically dismiss them. You must assess their importance to work or personal goals, and tread lightly if they are important. With the 50% who take some work, I've found that de facto talking to them like we're already friends helps unlock great conversations. I consistently take the small risk of seeming eccentric in order to get past small talk in my first conversation with strangers. I don't even do that to form lasting friendships. It allows me to make "temporary friends" wherever I go, making for a more pleasant day if nothing else. It also helps me have a stronger sense of identity. I feel more "generic" when I talk about generic things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Replace "programmer" and "doctor" with almost any other professions and it would be just as true. Strategies like "Break problems into sub-problems" is in no way specific to these fields. You might as well say "Being a carpenter will make me a better CEO", and for exactly the same reasons.

</comment><comment><USER19> I presume that you mean "medical" doctor. I also presume that this is a hypothetical statement. You have not completed your medical training.

Would be very interesting to read about your experiences once you have become a doctor and then putting the two professional experiences into relative context.

</comment><comment><USER20> Whatever happened to Barack Obama learning how to code?

</comment><comment><USER21> ... but a worst surgeon. Too much of nintendonitis and you are out of the game.</comment>