Awful Amazon Interview Experince - <AUTHOR> I just wanted to share my recent experience interviewing with Amazon. I hope it helps everyone.
About myself:
I am a Ph.D. candidate in computer science, work at a financial company as a senior engineer, and teaching part-time at my university courses such as compiler, algorithm and data structures. I live in the midwest, USA. I love doing interviews and solving algorithm questions.
Background:
I interviewed at Palo Alto, CA office about a year ago and although it went well and I answered all the questions I was told: "this position wasn't a best fit for me" ...
A few weeks ago I was reached out by an Amazon recruiter about an opportunity in the Seattle area and I was told the previous recruiter did not find a best match for me and she apologized for wasting my time. She said they would like to do a another round of interviews. As I love challenging myself, I said yes and I did a screening which I was given 2 algorithm questions and about 2 hours and I solved both of them and all my unit tests passed.
For the second round of the interview, it was all online for 4 hours and I solved all questions and my code passed all unit tests for all their algorithm problems.
Today I got a call from the recruiter saying that I was rejected because "my technical skills were lacking". I didn't want to argue with the recruiter so I accepted the feedback. I just wanted to share my story because I always saw these interviews with Amazon and Google as a challenge but now I feel like they are a complete joke.
People who interviewed me were so arrogant and clueless. They had no clue how to calculate time complexity. No clue why provided unit tests were not enough and etc. They were just looking at the solution and thinking they know everything.
I am so disappointed at Amazon and their interviewing process. <comment><USER2> Some of your complaints lack credibility.

For starters, I find it odd that you claim that the recruiter gave you feedback, and on the technical skills of all things. If you reached the last round of interviews of a FAANG, that round does not focus on technical aspects and it's more focused on soft skills and personality traits that emerge during the interview. In fact, I know for a fact that they don't look at the solution at all, and look at the process that the candidate follows such as how he takes suggestions and how he attacks problems or how he adapts to changing requirements. Sure, there are technical questions, but they barely fill 30% of the interview time, and even then their main goal is to gather info on the candidate's personality traits.

With that in mind, it's easy to believe you bombed your interview if you are the type of person who opens a discussion on a public forum attacking your interviewer with accusations of being too incompetent to evaluate you and too immature and having no clue about how great you are and how awesome you did. Just from this post alone I was readily convinced I would hate to work with someone like you, and apparently so did your interviewers.

If you ask me, they've clearly dodged a bullet.

<comment><AUTHOR> She gave me one-sentence feedback. Why should I lie? what will I gain? I wanted to share my experience. That's it.

I got all the unit test passing for all their algorithm questions. I didn't bomb the interview. Maybe we have different definitions.

<comment><USER3> You're responding to a comment claiming that technical questions are not as important by saying you passed all the technical questions. I was on the fence about OPs theory, but this comment does not help your case. You didn't really process the feedback, even if you don't agree with it. They might look for that.

<comment><USER4> Yup. Not to point towards OP's case specifically, but it's a usual trap a lot of exact science majors (and many PhDs) fall into. I'm not saying it's limited to exact sciences BTW — personality is also a factor. There's a joke here that we should stop our startup and start a business coaching PhDs navigating the job market. There's money there I tell ya :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why is this getting flagged? Are large tech companies now somehow shielded from criticism?

This experience actually sounds both common and unavoidable.

FAANGs have x10 candidates for every position. So the interviews are indeed both difficult and arbitrary. And after a rejection they can always call you after 6 months and restart the whole shtick. So why not. Sigh.

As someone who interviewed 100s of software engineers - its just the system doing its best, and there is usually no bad-intent on either side.

<comment><USER6> I doubt that it is getting flagged because HN users are so in love with Amazon. More likely because if OP displayed as much of an entitled attitude as they displayed in the submission, they dodged a bullet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Everyone knows that interviews are imperfect and interviewers even more so. It is mostly about getting a question which you have seen before. However, what piqued my interest is "recruiter saying that I was rejected because....". How does one get such specific feedback on their interview? Throughout my career all I ever got was "unfortunately we do not share feedback".

<comment><USER8> The secret of these big places is that some corners really suck. Although they have incredible, warm, intelligent people, they also have a lot of immature people, too, who who have solid cognitive ability, but don't necessarily have a lot of heart, capacity for introspection, or general kindness and merely care about working and getting ahead. People who are immature do what they're asked and put their heads down to be successful, but can be egoistic when around people they are interviewing, when around less senior colleagues, or around more senior colleagues they don't report to (due to jealousy). Although there are awesome, wonderful people, too, I would try not to take it too hard. If you're a Ph.D. and as smart as you sound like you are, another role with a different group either inside or outside of Amazon will make you much happier in the long term (though I can relate to how much of a bummer it can be to not get to be a part of a place that you want to be a part of).

<comment><USER9> Amazon VP Resigns, Calls Company 'Chickenshit' for Firing Protesting Workers

Tim Bray says the company has become 'toxic' and the firings are 'designed to create a climate of fear.'

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3bjpj/amazon-vp-tim- bray...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3bjpj/amazon-vp-tim-bray-resigns- calls-company-chickenshit-for-firing-protesting-workers)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _" People who interviewed me were so arrogant and clueless. They had no clue how to calculate time complexity. No clue why provided unit tests were not enough and etc. They were just looking at the solution and thinking they know everything."_

They were probably running through a standardized interview with you, with the goal of making it a more objective process and to allow comparing results.

Such interviews can appear to be about technical tasks, while actually some other things are evaluated, e.g. how you approach solving issues, how you interact with others, how opinionated you are, etc.

If they had "no clue how to calculate time complexity", I'd guess the interviewer played this role and expected you to explain how to do it, patiently and without any judgement. How did you respond?

</comment><comment><USER11> Don't feel too bad. I had an interview with them recently and a week later the recruiter told me I was going to get an offer the following Monday. It's been almost 2 weeks and no word on any offer. I haven't bothered the recruiter though since I don't want to work there but it's still kinda strange.

</comment><comment><USER4> Could it be both true that there are indeed companies who are bad at hiring AND that you haven't picked on more subtle hints about what the problems were? I'm interviewing a lot of people. Our company makes it a fundamental part of interviewing to give honest, action-driven feedback (e.g. we recommend pieces of training, books, even competitors sometimes as we think they'll be a better fit there). One of our selection criteria is the candidate's reaction to feedback. It seems you disagree rather strongly with some assessments. There might have been other selection criteria. Either they were not transparent enough about them, or you were not listening.

</comment><comment><USER9> 1\. Sure, maybe you're fabricating or exaggerating this

2\. Sure, maybe Amazon interviewers are all consummate professionals with zero character flaws, zero personality disorders, and a consistently applied and unimpeachable conceptualization of "professionalism"

And yet, your story completely comports with my Amazon interview experience and every subsequent experience I've had with an Amazon recruiter. (In ways that are remarkable because they stand out relative to experiences with other companies.)

The signal is clear to me at this point: to Amazon, you're cattle.

Anyway, thanks for posting this.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ok, so you got rejected and didn't receive meaningful feedback, so you are venting on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Venting not because I got rejected, I hate complaining. I was so looking forward to the interview and I love doing interviews.

I am venting here because I expected more from a company that is so proud of its interviewing process and I am disappointed.

<comment><USER6> By "expecting more", do you mean "get an offer"?

 _People who interviewed me were so arrogant and clueless. They had no clue how to calculate time complexity. No clue why provided unit tests were not enough and etc. They were just looking at the solution and thinking they know everything._

If you displayed this type of disdain at the interview they might have caught on to it.

In the famous Joel quadrant of "smart and get things done". You might have come across too much in the "smart" and not enough in the "get things done".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's a lot of variance in the employment processes of $$$MEGACORPs. Your attitude to give it a go and maybe learn something is admirable. I suggest you incorporate risk/variance into your time investment formula next time.

And, from your experience, you learnt that there's many imperfections, even at "the world's best companies". But possibly yourself too, as feedback from failed employment applications is always incomplete.

</comment><comment><USER6> Everyone thinks they are above average. Is an interview experience awful every time that someone gets rejected from a job they think they should have had?</comment>


What makes babies laugh? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150728-why-do-babies-laugh-out-loud <comment><USER2> TL;DR: Babies laugh in an interactive or social context. When adults around them laugh, they laugh with them for example. They look at cues that others are laughing and are happy, so simply watching someone trip and crack their head on the floor won't be funny usually (it would probably register as dangerous and scary).

Of course the important thing that is not mentioned explicitly is that it makes adults, especially parents, happy and it rewards them, so laughter becomes a bonding experience. Parents like to hear their baby laugh, they make the baby laugh, they are happy and baby is happy. And as a result baby bonded with their caregiver.

I don't remember when my daughter made her first steps on her own, or the moment she said "daddy", but I remember vividly the context when she belly laughed for the first time. For whatever reason that was a very wonderful and memorable moment that I hope I'll never forget.

</comment><comment><USER3> I vividly remember the first "joke" I shared with my infant son when he was about 1-1.5:

He was pointing to colours and my job was to say it out loud. At one point, I deliberately called black as "green" and he instinctively skipped to the next color but quickly did a double take and jumped back to the previous one, thinking he misheard it. I repeated "green" and he looked at me and started laughing (I was expressionless).

Mind, this was the first time I had done something like this in any context. And he got it! It was a joke.

Now, at about 5, he gets puns and sarcasm is hit'n'miss. As a side-note, the whole thing as to how his appreciation for jokes is evolving is interesting. But the most important thing for me as a parent is enjoying these moments of laughter.

<comment><USER4> Wow, impressive story! To myself, understanding that particular joke requires quite a lot of high level cognition. What an enjoyable moment that must have been. :) I wonder if sarcasm/irony detection is at least partially an inborn trait.

<comment><USER5> The baby didn't have to understand the joke, it could have just picked up on unintentional cues. This is something humans and many animals are able to do very early on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a 10 month old and this feels right but I have zero data to back it up.

One thing I tried as an experiment turned into something good. When a baby falls, bumps their head, hits themselves in the face (remember: no motor control), their first impulse is to scream. Sort of.

I noticed that when ours falls, sometimes he looks at us before reacting almost as if he's waiting for a clue on how to react. I clap and cheer and instead of freaking out, he just smiles and goes back to what he was doing.

This only seems to work when surprise and not pain is the cause. If he bonks his head, it's still the end of the world. ;)

<comment><USER7> Worked on me. Falling into stinging nettles? No reaction. Bee sting? No reaction. Scratching up knees and arms on a gravel road? No reaction.

In contrast. Teacher panicking over a bee landing on my arm? And now I'm uncomfortable with bees and its ilk.

Of course, it could also be that I have some sort of mental illness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _" Via his website he surveyed more than 1000 parents from around the world, asking them questions about when, where and why their babies laugh."_

I hope this is just confusion through the lens of the BBC, but... It sounds like they had people self-report when they observed babies laughing, and found that babies laugh when being observed?

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not really sure I'm convinced by the results. I'm not a researcher on infant laugh but in my son's case I think it's mostly due to him trying to mimic the expression his parents have. If you smile an infant smile if you make a sad face he'll be sad. At least that's my it from my experience

<comment><USER10> How young is your infant? Early on, smiles are often imitation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This explanation seems overly narrow. Some novel sensations are just funny to babies, like the sound of ripping paper [1], tickling their brain as it were. (Okay, I wouldn't be surprised if could devise a study to show that the sound of ripping paper alone doesn't make a baby laugh.)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP4abiHdQpc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP4abiHdQpc)

<comment><USER12> I took it as discovering an unexpected, seemingly uncharacteristic quality of something important.

A baby that sees elders consistently and intently look at paper, fold it carefully, put it in important places, then all of a sudden sees one purposefully break it would give a jolt.

Either way, I love that video and have wondered what else might give a baby a similar experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Joy pressing the button.

</comment><comment><USER14> Though my 7 month old isn't a baby anymore, it's pretty clear to most people that she knows that she has a great sense of humor. Not only does she understand what's funny and what's not (subtleties in expectations and anticipation), she makes up her own jokes, as well.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I accept a Convertible Note? - <AUTHOR>

Founder of a startup would like me to join the team as CMO. He is offering a convertible note, and a reasonable startup salary (represented by the note– let's call it $75k). Can anyone help me with some do's and don'ts here? Is this advisable? <comment><USER2> A convertible note keeps you and the founder from actually having to price the value of the company today (which no-one can really do anyways). Do: See if the shares convert to common or preferred (you REALLY want preferred, thats what investors get - and at this stage you're an investor, of your time). Also protect both of yourself with goals that are well thought out, and make sense. Also remember that tasks like "Grow top line revenue by 30%", etc can actually be very difficult to do at first. Potentially make it based on # of quality hours put in. Do Be ok with the fact that there is only a 1/10 chance that you'll see much if any money out of the deal. Do ask about existing other shareholders, a plan for revenue, and the sales approach. Do look at the revenue model.</comment>


Deploying a TypeScript and Node AWS Lambda Function with Serverless - <AUTHOR> https://blog.shovonhasan.com/deploying-a-typescript-node-aws-lambda-function-with-serverless/ <comment><USER2> Cool article. I am trying to learning AWS Lambda, it will help to build something .

Thanks for sharing.</comment>


Proper way to ask more per hourly for your part-time freelance gig - <AUTHOR>

Along with my full-time developer position, I started doing some contract work for a guy's company I used to work with since last November. This is the only freelance client I have right now.
I really enjoy the work and the reason I took it was to learn a lot more about front-end development.  At the day gig, I do a lot of back-end work, along with about 15-20% client-side technologies - Silverlight (dead), WPF, and some MVC/Razor/Kendo stuff.
The part time gig is great.  I enjoy working with the guy who is my contact at the company and the learning experience has been great.
But I'm wondering if I'm also selling my self short.  I'm only charging $65/hr.  There was a throw-away comment that the guy brought me aboard had made that leads me to believe that I could have gotten more, and the CIO has been impressed with the speed and quality of my work, so I've been thinking about how much I'm leaving on the table.
Now I live in the midwest (St. Louis) and have a very good base salary (120k/yr), and I'm doing about 40 hours on the freelance gig.  The freelance gig consists of ASP.NET MVC 5, typescript, controller code, but also more of a consulting role as in "best practices", like "don't string concat a bunch of markup in the controller", and other such things.
In any case, we plan on buying a new house soon that might cost a pretty penny, so I'd like to bump up the rate to at least $80/hr without ill-will feelings on my part or their part if it doesn't go through...or even them begrudgingly giving me the money but having "secret hate".
There's lots of work to do still and I think they have deep pockets, so I (a) would love a high-paying job with them where I could work at home, so (b) don't want to generate ill-will, but (c) all gigs eventually come to an end so want to maximize my revenues while its hot.
Any advice is appreciated. <comment><USER2> You are definitely selling yourself short. This is one area where you absolutely must not trust your instincts; they will give you wildly wrong answers.

A rule of thumb to start off with for calculating freelance/contract/consulting rates is to assume 1000 hours/year and figure how much you need to charge for what you want to be earning. By that rule of thumb you should be charging at least $120/hour - arguably more because this is your precious free time you're giving up, placing your health and happiness in danger, and you don't really need the freelance gig. If they balk at $120, they were never going to replace your day job and you're better off without them.

</comment><comment><USER3> First, think of what you will do if your client refuses to increase your rate. What is your BATNA? Are you prepared to walk away?

If, after rejection, you plan to continue with the client at the same rate, you will need to make sure the negotiation process does not sour the professional relationship moving forward. This means making sure that you're emotionally prepared to be rejected and also negotiate in a manner that does not come off as aggressive or manipulative.

The best way to ask for it is to highlight the clear benefits you have delivered already and to paint a vision of continued benefits moving forward and then ask for your new hourly rate. Ultimately it's as simple as that.

You will need to overcome objections be referring to the "market rate" and positioning yourself as referring to objective external standards.

</comment><comment><USER4> Similar to getting a raise at a full time job, the best way to walk up your rate as a freelancer is to get a new client and charge more.

In lieu of that option, I'd suggest finding a good stopping point (say after a feature is completed) and talk to your client about pursing further work at a different rate. Since they like both you and your work, I wouldn't be nervous about creating animosity—developers are in EXTREMELY HIGH DEMAND and they will be happy to properly compensate you now that you've proven your value.

I will say that it's still much more difficult to get a raise from the same client. Even if you like working with them you should at least see what else is out there for no other reason than leverage during negotiation.

</comment><comment><USER5> Only $65 per hour?</comment>


Does the West Want Democracy in the Middle East? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-34857789 <comment><AUTHOR> This article is a provides a summary of the events in and since the Arab Spring at a reasonable length. There were requests for more information from some HNers about the issues after the Paris attacks, so I am posting this again.</comment>


Second Life swamped by coronavirus-themed accessories and virus-spreading games - <AUTHOR> https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2020/03/second-life-corona-virus-game-marketplace-fashion.html <comment><USER2> I'm mostly surprised that Second Life is still around!</comment>


Sexism in IT - The JavaOne incident - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/110635974610895095726/posts/fTygidL33cx <comment><USER2> Adam probably didn't mean to be offensive, but that is perhaps worse. The folk who laughed at the joke weren't meaning to be offensive either, but again, that's not a good thing.

There are no easy ways to deal with a situation like this - one group will advocate a quiet word with the speaker, and while that educates him, it does little for all the other potential future speakers in the room who learn from that session (or worse, put the joke away for use later on.) A public display of offense makes for an uncomfortable moment, which in turn should lead to at least more awareness that some material is offensive.

Incidentally, one measure of how offensive it is, is to replace the group in question with the most "politically incorrect" group you can. So had the phrase been "explain it to a black man" would it be funny? I think perhaps not.

As a rule you should never make fun of any group, of which you're not a member, from the podium. Just. Don't. Do. It. Self-deprecating humour is almost never offensive, even to the group you're a part of. Well almost. Clearly we can all imagine some exceptions to that rule too.

Yes the computing industry is enormously sexist, and it's behooves both men and women to point out instances of this sexism when they occur. Only by being vigilent can we educate people. Small steps that hopefully will lead to an erradication of this.

well done Shifra.

<comment><USER3> Though the situation is quite bad in the industry, and female developers might be feeling alienated but in this particular scenario, I feel that the speaker is been bashed out on proportion. The speaker is reported to have publicly apologized at talk and later of twitter. Still continuously and personally blaming/quoting him as done by Shifra and later commentators on the linked thread seems unnecessary. Quotes like "Weasel talk, +Adam Bien." really make the conversation less friendly and less fruitful.

 _Incidentally, one measure of how offensive it is, is to replace the group in question with the most "politically incorrect" group you can. So had the phrase been "explain it to a black man" would it be funny? I think perhaps not._ "Explain it to Java Programmers" or "Explain it to your mom/dad" are acceptable and are used quite often. The former is considered a really amusing anecdote and used really frequently at Python Conferences. Now, I was a Java developer sitting in a Python conference who was already familiar and decently comfortable with the fundamentals being presented on stage - the presenter was not a Java developer (so not a self deprecating joke) and still if I stand up and make the person apologize and then repeatedly blame him of _languagism_ (?), it would not be welcomed by both Java or Python developers!

[edit: typos]

<comment><USER4> Both of my parents are IT professionals and former CS professors. If you're substantially older than I am (I'm 24) it's not hard to imagine assuming that everyone's parents are clueless about programming, just for generational reasons, but you're not going to be able to assume that forever.

<comment><USER3> I am not, I am just 22. And while my parents are professors (no CS), they are not so comfortable with computers as I am. Now, this is true for most parents - and when someone uses the phrase "Explain it to your mom/dad" it is not meant to be interpreted as "Explain it to dumb cavemen" and it is not, in most cases (if the content of the actual explanation is not dumb). If some one has Bill Gates, Dennis Ritchie or Steve Jobs, they are (1) Lucky (2) Minority. I am not sure whether the statement "Explain it to your mom/dad" would be offensive to them. Point I am making is this:

1\. Explain it to X. Where X is _known_ to be a minority should be an acceptable statement. If substituting X with "Black people", "women" etc are the only cases, where the statement becomes offensive - it is unnecessarily tabooed.

2\. (Also in reply to the other sarcastic reply to my comment) The mom/dad example is not the one where you have choice. The context of the statement has little to do with the choice and more to do with numbers in the industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Making fun of/uttering/referencing prejudices targeting women == Sexist.

Using prejudices targeting men == Witty and Feminist.

I am a man. I am not a rapist looking for victim. I am not a bumbling buffoon who can't change a light bulb without falling off a ladder. I do not beat children and women.

I work hard, I go and do risky and unpleasant shit (digging through human excrement to unclog the sewage, etc.) so the rest of my family doesn't have to.

I also make more than I spend and generally try to make myself as useful as possible. I also like kids, though I don't have any of my own yet, I like to hang out with other peoples kids.

And I am sick to tears of my gender being portrayed as monsters preying for our next victim.

<comment><USER6> What on earth are you talking about? At which technical conference were such accusations or jokes about men? Where in the technical community are men characterized as buffoons or monsters to general feminist approval?

<comment><USER7> The parent did not say that the jokes about men were at technical conferences. I believe he was referring to all domains, not just programming / technical conferences.

<comment><USER6> This is hacker news, so I would expect we would target technical arenas. I'm not going to argue the other stuff, because it is completely off-topic, derails the conversation, and is generally uninteresting to other readers. I have also found that internet arguments about men v. women get ugly and out of control very quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> His joke compared communicating with an alien to communicating with a woman. And then according to her own comment she decided to take extreme offense and disrupt the entire conference.

> _"I actually got up and made him apologize for his stupid and offensive > joke. On the way out, one woman thanked me and one man told me I should > "relax." (I told him he should shut up.)"_

I would never, ever want this sort of person at a conference or a workplace. Equating the communication with opposite sex to an alien is a common, common theme. Reaching down, coming up with the worst possible way to take it and then cutting him off, disrupting the conference, gloating online is just bad behavior. She even recounts her belligerence to a fellow member of the audience who probably just wanted to hear the presentation.

Explaining to the speaker afterwards how his words could be taken would probably have had a genuinely beneficial effect. He might even feel some empathy for what she had to say and come up with a new joke. But he probably feels very little empathy for her at all after her attempt to turn a molehill into a shitstorm.

It's exactly this sort of PC-motivated antagonism that I miss least about America.

</comment><comment><USER9> This type of reaction seems a little extreme to me, it was just a silly joke, I wonder if the opposite would have happened how would the men have reacted?

I like jokes like these: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BxckAMaTDc>

By all means women speakers should make similar jokes instead of overreacting.

I get the feeling that some women just can't take a joke. Of course there are more serious cases, but stuff like this should be ignored.

I understand that the lack of women in tech(especially open source) is a barrier to entry for women, but reactions like these only make that barrier wider. I once read a story about someone who said will never hire a black person, because if he ever fires him for some reason, the guy will come back with his lawyer and say he was fired because he was black.

<comment><USER2> Voidr,

>> I get the feeling that some women just can't take a joke.

Your sentiment will no doubt be shared by many. The point with offense though is it's not up to the joke-teller to determine if a joke is offensive or not. It either offends a group, or it does not.

You're right, Adam just made a silly joke. You see it as a silly joke. However, and this is the point, now that you've been educated to the fact that the joke was offensive, what is your response?

Your reaction, that they should not have been offended, is unreasonable, because the joke was not at your expense. Would you become the aribter for racial jokes? Native American jokes? How about child pornography jokes? Religious jokes? Why then jokes about a minority gender group?

I suspect, and I mean this with respect, we could find some sensitive area in your life, or anyone's life which would be "just a funny joke" to some, but which are deeply offensive to others. Yes, we live in a "politically correct" world, but there are still lines as to what is ok, and what is not.

And the receiver is the one that determines those lines, not the sender.

<comment><USER5> How do you propose a world will look, where we have gone so far, that offending other people is made taboo?

I honestly propose that some people should realize, that life is not all unicorns and cute puppies.

Or as it goes: If you think that I have an attitude problem, perhaps you should check that you don't have a perception problem.

<comment><USER10> There's a pretty strong distinction between generally offending people in a social situation and specifically offending a minority in a professional situation. Life's not all unicorns and cute puppies. But when someone goes to a professional event, they shouldn't be told that some aspect of their biology makes them less capable in that field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "it's just a joke!"

Nope. It's joke after joke after joke, and also inappropriate behavior in the workplace, in conferences, in pubs. Day after day. What is just one post in HN for us happens _constantly_ to a lot of women in our industry.

Such bringers of the future we are.

<comment><USER12> Agreed, the women in the audience weren't offended by the joke. They were offended by the laughter.

No one cares if one idiot is sexist, racist or whatever. They care that the industry is a boys club for men with the social maturity of 12 year olds and it's absolutely pathetic when there's guys on HN saying essentially "I don't get whats wrong with that joke".

I don't care if I get downmodded for saying this: HN is the best community on the web because of the sheer intelligence displayed on a daily basis by our regular commenters. If our regulars genuinely think there's something okay with this Adam guys public idiocy then I've lost a huge amount of respect for this community. In fact if the IT community really thinks this way, then PG should probably quit his efforts to better it and use his great talent elsewhere that needs it.

You're a scumbag when you make fun of the vast minority. You're a comedian when you make fun of the vast majority. Adam isn't a comedian, he wasn't telling a joke he was making a public display of patheticness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Calling out the speaker and making him apologize - Gutsy move, well done

Making an official compliant to the organizers for _story about a mildly offensive joke_ that was never actually made at said conference - Bordering on overreaction but maybe ok

Writing a G+ post "...JavaOne Incident" publicly slamming said person repeatedly in spite of multiple apologies - Overreaction gone nuts (possibly hurting the original cause - leading to - "this woman can't take a harmless joke" in the minds of more than a few people)

Ageism/sexism/*ism needs to be certainly discouraged but proportional response has its own merits.

<comment><USER14> Some might even call it attention whoring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I heard many times women making jokes about men and especially their common incompetence in fashion. Interestingly, I never thought about that as sexism, although I should.

<comment><USER16> Are you suggesting that slighting the intellect of women and doing likewise in respect of the fashion sense of a (minority/majority?) of men are equatable wrongs?

And if you are (p.s. they're not), then what relevance does it have to this topic?

Should the original author not have taken offence the 'joke' she heard during a work conference because at various points history an unspecified number of women laughed at the shirt you were wearing?

As an aside, would you be cool with this sort of advertising in 2011: [http://www.oddee.com/_media/imgs/articles2/a96674_ifyourhusb...](http://www.oddee.com/_media/imgs/articles2/a96674_ifyourhusband.jpg)

[http://www.oddee.com/_media/imgs/articles2/a96674_Blowher.jp...](http://www.oddee.com/_media/imgs/articles2/a96674_Blowher.jpg)

Or do you accept that the world has moved on from these sort of visuals in advertising, and thus it is not unreasonable to expect the same to apply to the telling of [____]ist jokes in professional/work settings?

<comment><USER17> > Are you suggesting that slighting the intellect of women and doing likewise > in respect of the fashion sense of a (minority/majority?) of men are > equatable wrongs?

He wasn't slighting the general intellect of women, he was slighting their intellect in regards to java best practices. Saying a gender isn't knowledgeable about java best practices seems equitable to saying a gender isn't knowledgeable about color/design complements. Please explain how they are not so.

<comment><USER16> Perhaps because one (an individual's fashion sense) is entirely subjective (and ultimately fairly trivial) and the other is not.

Anyway, my main point was that introducing the existence of another perceived injustice is completely irrelevant to whether a wrong was perpetuated in this case.

Or are you suggesting that the underlying premise of the initial comment was not: "man up love, you lot are just as bad"?

<comment><USER17> I'm suggesting that insulting someone (male or female) on their supposed lack of intellect in regards to (what is perceived to be) a masculine interest is taken different than insulting someone on their supposed lack of intellect in regards to (what is perceived to be) a feminine interest. Cultural we perceive these masculine interests to be of greater importance (both male and female).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There seem to be two kinds of sexism in IT: politically incorrect and insensitive jokes (basically frat boy culture), and a semi-underground culture of men who think it is ok to stalk women online and pass them over for promotions.

Both are bad but the second is far worse. "The JavaOne incident" is probably the wrong battle to fight. Regardless of whether Adam's joke was appropriate, attacking him for it provokes a defensive reaction from the frat boy culture (I'm going to keep calling it frat boy culture for lack of a better term). Some people won't see the big deal about how the joke was offensive and will instead be repulsed by the reaction to it. In fact, Adam's joke seems to be just the kind of push back you would expect from a frat boy tired of being told to be more sensitive to his female colleagues.

Most men are like this. We make inappropriate jokes to our friends and aren't afraid of offending them because they give as good as they get. When a woman complains about this the hypothetical frat boy gets defensive because now he can't "be himself". It creates a culture of us vs. them which is not at all healthy.

The real creeps thrive in an us vs. them environment. Now they feel justified to harras women. They go out of their way not to hire women, because "all women do is complain". They can get away with, because the average rank and file frat guy doesn't feel any need to stand up for the feminist who has aligned herself against him.

</comment><comment><USER10> Men don't generally spend their entire lives being told that they're less able to do a job, so jokes targeted at men are generally less offensive. Women in the technology industry have generally spent a significant part of their career being told that women are less good at it, and so perpetuating that perception (by implying that women are, in general, less capable of understanding technical subjects than men) is offensive.

Argument to symmetry is only effective if both groups are equal. That's clearly not the case here. If you want symmetry, ask male nurses whether they think they find jokes about them having somehow given up their masculinity for their career are amusing.

<comment><USER19> _If you want symmetry, ask male nurses whether they think they find jokes about them having somehow given up their masculinity for their career are amusing._

Two of my martial arts instructors (as well as a student) work as male nurses for their day job. They make such jokes themselves, so I assume they find them amusing.

Of course, it's easier to laugh at such jokes when they obviously don't apply to you.

<comment><USER10> Self-deprecating humour is in no way comparable to having the majority direct the same joke at you. You know you didn't mean it. Do you know they didn't?

<comment><USER19> Well, at my company, everyone makes fun of the ethnicity of everyone else. Southerners made fun of the bling bling on northerners, people made fun of marathi's homely attitudes, etc. Once I showed up, americans also became a topic of humor [1]. At companies which have gujus, their mercantilist habits are a topic of humor.

No one really cared since it was all in good fun and Indian's don't have the same culture of victimhood that we do in the US.

[1] "Don't make fun of Chris, Americans will sue you if you tell a joke."

<comment><USER10> It's always interesting when someone blames all of this on the "Culture of victimhood in the US", because I'm not from the US and I still don't think it's acceptable. Personally, I've never felt sufficiently slighted by another to complain. But when a coworker tells me that they're unenthusiastic about continuing to work in the field because of this kind of shit, I pay attention.

If your specific social situation allows this kind of behaviour, then that's fine. I really don't have any complaints at all. But if there are people who are in your social situation who are unhappy about it, you don't get to just tell them that they're oversensitive. That's not actually something that makes things better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A lot of the arguments I hear about why making jokes of women in computer fields is wrong is that these jokes make women (and some men) uncomfortable which is irreproachably wrong.

I couldn't respond to the thread directly on google because I was uncomfortable expressing any sympathy for Adam. I felt people I know would judge me in a negative light if they saw it in their feed. I feel here, the thin layer of anonymity/indirection is enough to say this small tidbit.

I don't think Adam woke up that morning, or any morning in fact, and thought to himself that he wants to hurt or harm anyone, physically or emotionally. I think Adam is a good person as are the vastly overwhelming majority of the human population.

I feel the continuation of being hostile towards him by some posters (including Shifra despite accepting the apology) after he apologized is unwarranted and furthermore, unproductive. Adam ate a huge piece of humble pie by posting that, regardless of whether the joke was meant in good faith or not and for others to come back with more negativity just encourages others that make a similar mistake in the future to not acknowledge it as such. People that want to participate in a reasonable debate focused on results can have their voices oppressed by a feeling of discomfort.

I'm not sure if I have anything of real value to add to the women in IT issue (and I'm sure most people that do also doubt the value of their own ideas), but I can say I am one person who is dissuaded of trying to help the issue because I don't want to offend people or alienate them and make them uncomfortable.

<comment><USER21> _I feel the continuation of being hostile towards him by some posters (including Shifra despite accepting the apology) after he apologized is unwarranted and furthermore, unproductive._

I went through 22 months of withdrawal from medication fairly publicly while a member of an email list. I was incapable of keeping both feet out of my mouth and it seemed to not matter how hard I tried, things just came out all wrong. I wrote many heart-felt, sincere apologies. I had no agenda in terms of my public reputation or whatever. My only intent was to take genuine responsibility for my actions in spite of the burden I was living with and to try to take away whatever hurt I had done.

The result? I became the list scapegoat and if some asshole attacked me out of the blue for no apparent reason on some flimsy excuse, the entire list went "there she goes again!" It's been, oh, maybe six or eight years since then. Some of those folks have never forgiven me. I no longer feel responsible for their on-going hostility. They have a personal issue.

I'm a lot less apologetic than I used to be. Someone once said (in essence) that real justice must mean justice for both sides.

<comment><USER20> I saw the line you edited out. I hope that means there was some minor mis- communication because as far as I can tell, we're on the same side of the fence!

<comment><USER21> No miscommunication (that I'm aware of). It just seemed extraneous -- beating a dead horse. I'm the sort of person who "would have written a shorter letter, but didn't have that much time". So, yeah, I sometimes go back and snip a little. No big.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The comment the speaker made was in poor taste and it was inappropriate. Simple as that.

The speaker should recognize that and simply say as much. Not a lot more needs to be said. There's no way to defend or explain the comment.

And as for @DuncanIdaho who thinks this is vilifying all men. No, it's just calling out a recurring trend at tech conferences to do things which make women feel unwelcome. That's wrong and needs to stop.

</comment><comment><USER12> So let me get this right. Adam originally titled a slide "Explain it to a woman" and got criticism for it being sexist, so he changed it. So in front of a convention audience he decided to tell everyone this anecdote and was too stupid to predict how this would go over. Wow.

If you tell 10 people and you get enough shit that you have to change a title. Don't tell 1000 and expect a better response. I don't think the big news here is that this guy is sexist, because I honestly doubt he is. I think the big news is that this guy is a fucking idiot.

Here's a heads up to everyone who doesn't know "why the women are offended". It's not that he made the joke, it's that people laughed. Sexism isn't offensive, it's the culture that's offensive. 1 guy thinking women are stupid is just pathetic, it's that people agree with him and think there's nothing wrong with it.

Every time I hear of incidents like this all I can think is that these are pathetic little men who haven't grown up socially since middle school. It's that they've allowed themselves to be so socially isolated that in their group they get away with sexism.

I work in construction, it's a 99% male industry and yes sexist jokes get made between the guys. What happens though when a woman comes along who can do the job is that they get 10 times the respect. Why? Because when you physically are the weaker sex, it takes a lot of character to balls up and get the job done. I like when women come into the industry because they actually want to learn and work. I don't like when guys come into the industry because they're lazy idiots looking for enough cash to buy more drugs or to work enough time to get on unemployment for another 6 months.

Women coming into IT should be exalted, because when they're the 1% it means that 99% of them got into the business to try to become great. When you're 99% of the people in the industry, it means 98% of you are simply there to earn a pay check.

<comment><USER23> I totally agree with what you're saying about minority group entrants into industries dominated by another group - and I've seen this myself, they are generally quite talented and driven. However I think this comes at the cost of being scrutinised to a MUCH higher degree than everyone else (lets not argue chicken and egg here).

A friend of mine put it perfectly - "when you're amongst the dominant group, you can get away with being mediocre" (i.e. the 98% you're referring to). Meaning that when you're the minority group - your every move will probably be scrutinised/analysed/categorised more closely.

That said - I'm not sure if the personal attacks ("fucking idiot") are completely warranted here (though I suspect you wrote that in the heat of the moment). We all go through learning experiences, some of our learnings just happen to be on a much larger scale than others (and for Adam this was unfortunate). I know I've certainly offended people without meaning to ("it wouldn't have offended my friend Joe - and he's Asian too!"), but now I've learnt the fine art of holding my tongue with regard to such jokes amongst crowds that I don't know too well... sure, I guess I was an "idiot" too in that moment, but no more or less of an idiot than Adam here - despite the difference in scale.

<comment><USER12> Adam would have just been an idiot had he made a mistake. He's a fucking idiot because he self-admittedly remade the mistake. IE he had the learning opportunity he said he had to change the slides name, but did so repeating the same insult.

You had a learning opportunity, and you self-admittedly learnt. You didn't then go in front of a hundred-fold bigger crowd and repeat the same mistake.

Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.

I've been an idiot, many many times. I don't repeat mistakes on a much grander scale expecting a better result. I don't try putting out a candle with my fingers and burn myself and then try to snuff out my gas stove with my hand. There's a logical progression that if a small scale attempt fails, just abandon it.

What I'm wondering is whats wrong with this guys brain that he got burned in his small scale and then thought "I know, this will surely go down great in a convention hall!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hm, this is odd to me. I thought it was pretty common for people to say that men and women don't understand each other?

<comment><USER25> Yes, but the 'joke' doesn't say that, it suggests that women have a lesser understanding of programming concepts, which is outright discrimination.

<comment><USER24> It explicitly replaces "women" with "alien", not "retard".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is definitely wrong. But the other side of the story is women make sexist jokes about men, all the time (fashion, shoes etc), nobody complains about that, why the double standard?

Sexist behavior is wrong, whoever does it.

</comment><comment><USER27> Most racism and sexism appears mildly offensive to those who are racist and sexist. If you watch a non-US television station with subtitles (or if you understand the language), you may be very surprised to see the amount of racism and sexism (depending on the country) that occurs regularly.

It's easier to see it when it's outside of our own culture. It's often very hard to see the significance when it's coming from the people that we identify with.

I was not at the JavaOne talk but the statement made is clear. I understand why these statements can be made. If a technical person is boring and goes on enough dates, it is easier to blame the opposite sex rather than blaming himself or herself. If a person is comparing women to space aliens, that probably says it all. It's easier to say that 'they' are space aliens rather than admitting that dating makes him feel like a space alien.

He could have easily made his point without reference to a space alien. He could have said: explain it to a nontechnical person or explain it to a child. These points become more clear, if we focus on the point on hand and the best way to express it in a non-offensive way.

</comment><comment><USER19> The original comment was mildly amusing. The (over)reaction to it is hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER26> May be it is time for conference organizers to explicitly make it clear that sexist, racist etc behavior won't be tolerated. If one makes an inappropriate joke on the stage, ban that person for the next 1-2 years from the conference or something.

This should apply equally to both men AND women (and transgender etc). People are naive, if they think only men make sexist jokes.

However, if someone apologizes for stupid behavior, I don't see a point in continuously making noise about his/her behavior, even after the apology. This only adds noise, and doesn't contribute anything.

</comment><comment><USER28> One of the early comments says that women don't study engineering because of stuff like this. While I agree this attitude is a problem and the joke was tasteless, is that really the reason? I just can't see a young person rejecting a field because it's too sexist. It could be a reason for switching to a different field, though. I wonder what percentage of women who start in an engineering discipline end up somewhere else.

<comment><USER16> "I just can't see a young person rejecting a field because it's too sexist"

In the field of law (which is my original background) you can pretty much walk into any sizeable firm, look around for the female partners and know you have identified the family law or employment law team.

Is this because all women who become lawyers have a burning desire to handle divorces or employment tribunals?

Perhaps?

Or perhaps was it the case that historically law firms (then run exclusively by men) were most willing to admit females into the partnership in areas deemed "feminine" before they did likewise for macho stuff like construction or commercial litigation. Thereafter, a meaningful % of female trainees looked around on their first day and figured out where their most likely root to a partnership lay. And so the cycle perpetuated.

That this cycle is increasingly being broken in the legal sector is, I'd argue, as much because of the sheer weight of numbers (more than 50% of law grads are women), as it is down to a more enlightened approach by male partners.

In the abstract, I'd argue that it is not sexism that puts people off choosing a career path, but rather it is a combination of not wanting to fight against the current (not everyone fancies being a trailblazer) as well as the innate human desire to belong to a tribe that physically resembles themselves.

Or to put it another way, I greatly enjoy the company of women, but if I had walked into a lecture theatre and been the only guy present, I'd have felt very much that I was in the wrong room no matter how much I loved the subject (or the attention!)

(Edit: Despite what I wrote in the last paragraph, I must acknowledge that currently I am working in a 4 person startup, three of whom are female including the technical lead.)

<comment><USER18> The importance of trailblazers cannot be overstated.

My wife is a surgeon. Surgery twenty years ago was far more sexist than IT ever was. But in medical school she was taught by some incredibly badass female surgeons who dealt with far worse sexism than bad jokes. They inspired her to be a surgeon while most of her peer went into pediatrics.

Surgery can still be sexist. While interviewing for residency, my then fiance was advised to take off her engagement ring. Apparently some programs won't hire a woman they think will take time off for pregnancy. But it is getting a lot better. Her current residency class is majority female.

IT needs some badass women who can ignore the sexism and just write awesome code. It is the only way to change the culture.</comment></comment></comment>


Sounds of Siberia - <AUTHOR> http://www.calvertjournal.com/features/show/8674/sounds-of-siberia-how-novosibirsks-shalash-record-label-created-a-beautiful <comment><USER2> After discovering it by accident, 'beat tapes' is the only music I _actively_ listen nowadays.

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=beat+tape](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=beat+tape)

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lofi](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lofi)

</comment><comment><USER3> I had the pleasure of camping on the shores of the Ob sea several times, not far from the mentioned village. It is an amazingly beautiful place.

</comment><comment><USER4> Where can one listen to this? I did t see any links to music in the article.</comment>


Prosperity contributes to societal isolation - <AUTHOR> http://andrewoneverything.com/prosperity-contributes-to-societal-isolation

<comment><USER2> This is an interesting thought, and to a large extent, I would agree with the author. I don't have a roommate because I can afford to not have one. However, I can also argue that prosperity may also help people in finding social connections. For instance, it's easier to hang out with friends for dinner or drinks more often. Also, one can afford to join hobby classes to meet people with similar interests.</comment>


Canadian government is buying the video game industry - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2009/12/04/canadian-government-is-buying-the-video-game-industry/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Venturebeat+%28VentureBeat%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> This isn't exactly an uncommon practice for the Canadian government, nor for its provincial governments. First the federal government has an incentive because #1 it boosts revenues, #2 it boosts educated immigration (Canada, like the US and many other countries just need to get most European immigrants into the country and they'll find they love it in seconds) as most game firms hire internationally, and #3 it makes good publicity. The provincial governments are offering their own subsidies for much the same reason.

Canada has a high rate of fluent English and French speakers, which makes it an ideal place to develop games for the international market as both languages can easily be done 'in house'.

</comment><comment><USER3> My husband works for a well-known game developer with offices in Quebec. Thanks to the subsidies, Montreal is the only city in the world where a programmer costs less to hire than in Shanghai. As a result, they have a virtual hiring freeze anywhere except Montreal, where they can hire as many developers as they like.

The main drawback is that the language laws in Quebec essentially require managers to be bilingual, which makes recruitment more difficult. (Employees in Quebec have the right to be managed in French, if they choose)</comment>


Plink, a multiplayer HTML5 music game - <AUTHOR> http://labs.dinahmoe.com/plink <comment><USER2> This is incredibly fun. When others joined and started making music together it immediately brought a smile to my face.

The greatest part about is the music created isn't terrible.

<comment><USER3> To me it sounds as if the reason for the music not sounding like total crap is, that the author uses pentatonic scales, which are also used in improvisations. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentatonic_scale>)

<comment><USER4> I agree, I noticed that almost immediately. Also, the rhythms are quantized and the tempo is fixed.

It's still a very cool demo, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's really clever how the game makes it very difficult to NOT sound good! The timing of the notes seems to snap to the tempo exactly (e.g., there's a delay when you hit a note too early) and the limited scale of notes all sound good together.

I've played a few HTML5/Flash music games lately, and all of them give enough flexibility with sounds to easily become messy when played with multiple players (especially with trolls!). This game makes the player feel like they're good at music. Great work!

<comment><USER6> +1 creating a game that involves collaborating with strangers and creating music could be tedious. This overcomes that handicap pretty well. I love the concept, great work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey, I'm a pianist and I have a few ideas you might consider.

1\. Let me pick the colour with the numbers 1-9. 2\. Let me play notes with the keyboard. (I'm not sure the best way to assign the keys, but I'm sure you can come up with something). 3\. Let me play chords.

That would be _awesome_. Great work so far!

<comment><USER8> Sounds like you are asking for the ultimate band-roulette :)

<comment><USER7> Well now that you mention it... Haha! :) Actually I was thinking, and perhaps adding to many features would make it harder to be musical without any previous experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> seriously the coolest thing ive seen in ages - had a really great time jamming out with a bunch of strangers just like that ... awesome effort

<comment><USER10> Came here to say exactly that; so much fun :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is amazing, and not only as a demo of the API. I was waiting for a uniform raw audio standard to be implemented by all browsers, but after this I'm motivated to start playing around now. There are so many interesting possibilities for musical improvisation interfaces.

</comment><comment><USER12> Love it. Needs one feature pronto. Channel mode, so me and my friends can jam out together in a private room.

</comment><comment><USER13> Having been through the Director, Flash and now HTML5 fads, I dream of a day when this title would suffice on HN:

"Plink, a multiplayer music game"

This is just to say - I enjoyed Plink very much and would have just the same regardless of the technology.

</comment><comment><USER14> It felt out of sync. I could move up and down, and clicking made the circles solid, and there were some other players, and some sounds. I suppose moving up and down and clicking changes the sound, but I'm not sure how.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow, this is amazing.

I completely ignored HTML5 audio after a couple of abortive attempts at using it to make something for an iPhone web toy, but seems to show it's not quite as terrible anymore.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Oops! Your browser doesn't support Web Audio."

Meanwhile, Adobe just announced that the Unreal Engine runs in Flash Player 11. That's AAA quality 3d gaming in the browser (and not just Chrome). I am so bored with "HTML 5" game (that aren't even HTML 5 official spec) announcements getting such a ridiculous amount of play.

Imagine if someone went out to E3 in 2011 and announced that they just came up with this crazy TV game concept called Pong, but it only works on Magnavox TVs. Absolutely no one would care.

<comment><USER17> The Quake Engine has been running inside browsers for ages.

Also if you speak about portability. Flash really isn't very portable when you compare it with the platforms supported by Webkit. Flash has always been a huge mess when it comes to this. Webkit and Gecko are pretty much up to date, but many people hardcode browser checks instead of just asking whether the browser supports certain stuff. I think that's the biggest problem - well, besides the market share of outdated IE versions of course.

<comment><USER18> What portability. I mean, Web Audio API is supported by only Chrome and Safari (so that's not "webkit". Sure Flash ain't better. But hey! None of this is standardized.

And why should Gecko support Web Audio API? You see, they got Web Audio Data instead. Not compatible of course. None are standard.

So flash does beat them and HTML5 on that very topic.

<comment><USER19> The Gecko API is very basic, it just gives you access to sample buffers in Javascript, so everything must be processed in Javascript.

The Web Audio API is a much more fleshed out API, built on the higher level audio APIs used in professional sound apps. You can use it to process raw buffers, but you can also use it sequence and compose many effects on audio buffers with very low latency timing requirements without having to write time critical javascript DSP code and hope for the best that no delays or scheduling skew creep in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Pretty awesome! I just played for a couple of minutes (well, that was the original aim - it turned into 6-7 minutes all-too-quickly!)

</comment><comment><USER21> Just played this for 5 minutes. Absolutely fantastic! I had a riot, and seemed to play some music with other people. Really cool!

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder whether, if there were all 12 tones on the Western 12-tone scale, it be more cacophonous. Somehow, with two octaves of only white notes, as it were, and the tendency of users to move about constantly (because it looks pretty and you get the exciting perceptual feedback of changing the sounds), most of it doesn't sound bad. Great idea.

<comment><USER23> Pretty sure this the pentatonic scale actually - so all black notes. It almost certainly woule be more cacophonous even if it was just all white notes, never mind the full scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is surprisingly addictive and the music actually sounds cool too. It would be nice to hit notes without sliding though.

</comment><comment><USER25> Very nice!

Funny, I've been spending this last week (off from work) working on an Audio API/Node.js multi-user drum machine. So it's very cool for me to see another similar idea pop up at this point. As a long-time software synth/VST/music guy, I can't wait for the browsers to catch up on audio as fast as they are visual APIs.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is amazing. Even with a bunch of random people doing random things the music still sounds great!

</comment><comment><USER27> Fantastic! Great use of web sockets and though there was some obvious latency (unavoidable) it did not at all deter from having a great time. I love that all the sounds in the set work together well and you could take this in a million directions.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've wanted to dabble in a few audio experiments myself, however I keep coming up short trying to find single sample tones for all the notes on a scale. Not sure exactly what to search for. Any tips for good source material?

</comment><comment><USER28> I was delighted to see how people automagically give others a chance to try other instruments and switch with some kind of intuition.

Also the most pleasure gave me an idea of playing a bass for a while and watching others improvise.

</comment><comment><USER29> Very cool. This reminds me a lot of playing around on a korg kaossilator, a very nifty toy with an xy pad where you can pick a scale, bpm and an "instrument" and jam away without worrying about hitting wrong notes.

</comment><comment><USER30> I could play this forever.

</comment><comment><USER31> Pretty cool. A time-quantised version would probably have the potential to sound better though, as the latency makes it difficult to get any kind of rhythm going in this version.

</comment><comment><USER32> Am I the only person this isn't working for right now? It loads, I enter a username and then it tells me I've been idle too long. I guess the servers may be overloaded due to HN?

<comment><USER33> How do you solve this?

<comment><USER34> I used a proxy server in US and it works now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is so great, that I really hope it catches on so I can go and jam out with others whenever I want. I spread this site as far as my little network will go. Awesome job!

</comment><comment><USER8> I am hooked! Who was i playing with? Need keyboard shortcuts. Sometimes there are too many guys playing (sorry guys, some of you suck :P), have separate rooms.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is the kind of things I could lose days to. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER37> I love it. I'm musically challenged but feel like I can actually make reasonably not-horrible music. And it's like a video game. Love it!

</comment><comment><USER38> Is the Web Audio API actually part of HTML5? It looks like it's still just a proposal that only works in Chrome. :(

Very cool demo though. Feels smooth.

<comment><USER39> I think it's just a chrome proposal right now.

Firefox also has an implemented proposal. Not sure if one or the other has any particular advantages?

<https://wiki.mozilla.org/Audio_Data_API>

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Instant addiction.

</comment><comment><USER41> Unfortunately doesn't allow my Chromium-browser

<comment><USER17> Same for my Firefox Aurora, even though I think it supports the Web Audio API (not sure, though if it's really up to date).

<comment><USER42> I run the Firefox Nightly and it doesn't support Web Audio either. Shouldn't that be happening soon?

<comment><USER43> Firefox was the first with a Web Audio API. Google has an alternate API. Neither one is a standard. Both are great ground for experimentation though.

<comment><USER18> Google named his one Web Audio API and Mozilla named is one Audio Data API.

Mozilla's Audio Data API is available since FF4.

Web Audio API has been enabled in Chrome 13 or 14, before it was off by default. Probably appeared shortly after FF4 (?)

Such non-standardization sucks balls if you ask me.

These guys should make HTML5 standards and stick to it. Not make the standard evolve every NEXT day saying "oh look its what HTML5 is now!"

That's absolutely non-standard and annoying as hell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Really really impressive - surprisingly fun.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is really nice. Well done. It'd be great if you could create your own private games and invite your friends over.

</comment><comment><USER46> Seriously good fun! Wasted too much of my time today playing on it when I should have been working. Thanks :-)

</comment><comment><USER47> Super fun. I'd like to see some keyboard suport, like up and down arrow keys and space bar to play a note.

<comment><USER22> And maybe keyboard support for 'notes' - every letter on the keyboard assigned to ABCDEFG and the black notes in between. Then you could, say, plug in a written text and see what happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I enjoyed creating a song with it (lyrics/melody), but I didnt understand the gaming mechanics.

<comment><USER48> Interesting one of your clients created a drunk alarm clock app itunes.apple.com/se/app/fyllekameran/ . Not sure how it works? Do you you record a video when your drunk and that's what wakes you or is it your friend's creating drunk wake up greetings that are your alarm sound?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Very nice. It took me a moment to realize there were other users who were creating sound too!

</comment><comment><USER50> Awesome... is Google Chrome the only browser with this API level?

</comment><comment><USER51> Addictingly amazing!! Is there I way to record my jam session?

</comment><comment><USER37> This needs to be an iPad app ASAP. When can we get it?

</comment><comment><USER52> This is seriously fun. LOVED it! Thanks for making it

</comment><comment><USER53> Whoa. That was heaps of fun!

</comment><comment><USER54> Wow, really cool. Great fun

</comment><comment><USER55> This is awesome :)

</comment><comment><USER56> Love it!!!

</comment><comment><USER57> While it's very cool, it's worth pointing out that the idea is derivative of a Unity-based game called "Planck" (as in Max, size, etc) that's been in development for quite awhile. See: <http://www.shadegrowngames.com/>

It's hard to believe the authors of Plink aren't aware of Planck...

<comment> adam-a Whilst Planck looks very cool (extremely cool), it is a bit of a stretch to say that Plink is a rip off of it. They both have generated music in them, but I can't see much similarity beyond that.

<comment><USER57> I didn't mean to say it's a rip off. It's different enough, and plus it's cool. I'm just speculating that the Plink coders must know about it. I got to play with the Planck alpha, and Plink "feels" similar in certain ways. The way the notes are displayed as ripples, the way motion across the play area triggers notes on a scale with different instruments (which in Planck are "weapons"), and the way the notes are quantized. In Planck, the notes/loops happen when you hit something you're shooting at, but the point isn't so much to hit things as it is to create rhythmic loops between the gameplay and the music you're generating. It makes some interesting compromises to keep the music on tempo and still give the sense of hitting the targets instantly. Really, I just wanted to know if the Plink guys had heard of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> There is a photo of the guys of dinahmoe next to the definition of awesome. Seriously, and i just had an overflow of ideas about online music creation.</comment>


Minority Life in Israel - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/opinion/rula-jebreal-minority-life-in-israel.html?_r=2&referrer&referrer=

<comment><USER2> Considering there is a war between many Arab entities and Israel, the different parts of Israel get along pretty well.

In Israel, there are Moslem and Druze cops, soldiers, judges, doctors, nurses, and so on. If peace ever breaks out, things will improve.

The rules in Moslem societies are terribly discriminatory. Look up the history and meaning of the word Dhimmi. Non-Muslims cannot testify in court and cannot even visit the city of Mecca.

One of the reasons a Jewish State was established is that Islam forbids equality between Muslims and non-Muslims. Other reasons, of course, involve Europe and Christendom.</comment>


Ask HN: Does your team use a "programming cookbook" solutions for common tasks? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Even though everybody in the company is also a developer we have a set of markdown documents for common tasks. E.g. "Customer want to upgrade from monthly to yearly payment" or "Quarterly cost review". Mostly checklists and links to documentation. The idea is that a new person to the team will be able to perform tasks. Also helps us to agree on processes.

</comment><comment><USER3> What do you mean by programming cookbook?

<comment><USER2> Probably the the style some programming books are written in, e.g. [https://www.packtpub.com/virtualization-and-cloud/ceph- cookb...](https://www.packtpub.com/virtualization-and-cloud/ceph-cookbook) "100 effective recipes"</comment></comment>


A few things I've learned about outsourcing to India - <AUTHOR> http://trekdek.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/a-few-things-ive-learned-about-outsourcing-to-india/

<comment><USER3> I would highly discourage a non-technical person from trying to manage a foreign outsourced software project. For what it's worth, I've managed a few such projects over the years with developers in India and China. My experience has been that you absolutely must have a technical person in house who should expect to spend a significant amount of time very thoroughly documenting and verifying their work. For a smaller project, it really doesn't make sense because you'd be able to finish the project yourself in the amount of time it takes you to manage an outsourced team. For larger projects, expect them to spend and bill at least 2-3x the hours (and 2-3x the number of developers) that you'd find with a local dev team. Also, don't expect any creativity or initiative to fill in gaps in your requirements... you will have to be very specific and explain every minor detail of functionality and behavior in order to get the project done right.

<comment><USER4> _Also, don't expect any creativity or initiative to fill in gaps in your requirements... you will have to be very specific and explain every minor detail of functionality and behavior in order to get the project done right._

Completely agree with this.

But here's another way to look at it: why would the outsourced team show any creativity or initiative? They're basically being treated as a commodity, because typically the projects that go to such places do so because these projects are 'cost centres' - some business guy decided to get the 'i have an idea, the rest is implementation' part done as cheap (or "cost-efficient") as possible.

When the programming team has no engagement with the idea or the organisation or even the product they're contracted to build, why would they expend any creativity or initiative for it? Not everyone is personally driven by a sense of excellence, sometimes people just want to get the job done. And my experience in such places is that a lot of the programmers there aren't in it for the love of software/IT/tech, and more focussed on just getting a job done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > I eliminated the ones who immediately asked for a list of features and gave > me a quick price quote. It seemed as if they were in for quick cash and > wanted to meet the minimum requirements only.

I think you might have eliminated a fairly large group of good experienced contractors who care about their bottom line. The really good ones can't afford spending too much time discussing details with people who don't have a very clear idea of what they want to build and a specific budget.

Good, experienced contractors will want to snatch projects that are well- defined and with a good budget, then build them quickly and efficiently. Hence the question about your list of features and the quick price quote — they want to know whether your budget is in even in the same ballpark and whether it is worth their time to bother negotiating.

</comment><comment><USER6> No offense meant to the author, but he sounds like a bad client and personally I'd turn him down in a second.

The problem with being both penny-pinching and feature crazy is you will quickly scare away the people who know what they're doing and can actually get your project done. This leaves you the people desperate enough for work that they're willing to put up with you.

If you approach the collaboration as if you were haggling with a car salesman for a better model, it won't matter whether you outsource or go local, capable people (who are generally in demand and can afford to decline clients, regardless of where they're based), will sense that you aren't worth the hassle and wait for something better.

The way to get good work done is to pay well, give clear directions about what you want, and most importantly, limit the goal to a core set of features that are realistically achievable in the proposed budget and timeframe. This is actually the cheapest and most reliable way to obtain something decent that works well in a reasonable amount of time.

Underpaying is much worse than overpaying. When you overpay, you can be more confident in the estimates you get and that the quality will be there, and the developers will be more motivated to do a good job for you (which can be critically important). Underpaying gets poor quality, will make the project take much longer if it even survives, AND the people responsible for your entire system will rush through it and might even have a grudge against you due to previously mentioned penny-pinching and feature crazy habits.

Summing up: aggressively seeking the most features for the lowest rate will paradoxically net you a poor result with a large bill.

</comment><comment><USER7> This was a great read, in a "Plan 9 from Outer Space" sort of way.

We have the story of a naive first time entrepreneur with his first attempt at building a website and his first experience with eLance, with the sort of unbridled optimism that you only ever see in people who've never tried to outsource anything on eLance.

I love the authoritative "this is how it works" tone of the article, as it outlines his stumbling along, misunderstanding pretty much everything, getting bait & switched, watching his deadlines go past while his only meaningful communication is with the guy asking for more money. Better still is going out to find the end product (<http://trekdek.com/>), now that his "final, definitely finished" date has passed.

Priceless. Thanks for putting a smile on my face this morning.

<comment><USER8> No need to discourage someone trying to be helpful. If he's learned something helpful along the way, I'm glad he's sharing it.

I loved your awesome "Book a flight" blog post - [http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2008/05/laid-off- one-t...](http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2008/05/laid-off-one-thing- you-absolutely-need.html) \- (also full of unbridled optimism) - <USER2> needing to research how well that's worked out for you or not. I didn't need you to be a travel agent or very experienced traveler to share what you've learned.

The reader is the point, not the messenger.

<http://sivers.org/you-not-them>

<comment><USER7> I think the key with a post like this is the tone. If you're writing a "my first experience trying X", you should avoid trying to sound like you have any advice to give or lessons learned. You don't know what lessons you've learned until much later. If he'd wrote it from the learner's perspective, it would have been a much more interesting read.

We all had experiences like the author's during our first try at this. I made just as many mistakes from just as many bad assumptions on my first for-profit site. The thing is, I waited several years until I had some perspective before I was ready to write that experience up in a way that would be useful to other people.

[edit: this is the article I refer to: [http://expatsoftware.com/articles/2007/01/6-things-that- kill...](http://expatsoftware.com/articles/2007/01/6-things-that-killed- waifmail.html) . You can only imagine how comical it would have sounded had I spouted off about how all this stuff was going to work back when I was doing it.]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hmm .. Not sure if you are aware, but there's a failure of reasoning in your writing:

> I eliminated the ones who immediately asked for a list of features and gave > me a quick price quote. It seemed as if they were in for quick cash and > wanted to meet the minimum requirements only.

...

> However, you should make a point to include as many features as possible for > the given price.

See, these guys are trying to meet the minimum requirements because they are being pressured to include as many features as possible for the given price. They are merely playing your game.

<comment><AUTHOR> I should clarify: the ones I filtered out immediately because the dialogue would end with a list of a features and a price quote.

With the ones I liked, the dialogue was a meaningful back and forth and exchange of ideas. In the end I of course maximized the number of features I wanted for a given price so I wouldn't be charged later for wanting to add stuff that wasn't in the initial feature list. The ones I liked seemed too have more ideas for the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised he's writing "lessons learned" before they have a product shipped. I see the date's slipped from March to May...

<comment><AUTHOR> Excuse me, "lessons learning"

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> So I've been reading all of your comments and I'd like to address the issue.

1\. Cost was/is a big issue. If it hadn't been, I would have hired someone locally. I picked the best (or what I thought was best) team at the time based on price and the intelligence questions I received from them.

2\. The company knew I was a non-technical founder. I made is explicitly clear that they would have to use their best judgement to implement the required features without having me to review the code.

3\. I actively encouraged them to use their best judgement. As things became viewable on the front end, I would give feedback and they would tell me what they thought would work.

4\. The primary issue is a communication issue on two levels:

        a) Communication between a non-coder and a coder
        b) Actual messages not coming through (status updates sent on schedule, not being online at the right time, etc)

After multiple attempts to solve the issues myself, I decided the best thing I could do is find a coder co-founder. I did, and he is feeding back shorter, concerte, assignments to the outsourced team. We are also focused on iterating the release which means I hope to god we get rid of the godaddy landing page soon. This is to be followed by the primary component of the site and then we will assess from there.

As far as motivating the team again, that is a far more difficult thing to do. I think the best thing for morale is to make progress (that way they can be done with this blasted projected). I can't justify throwing more money their way (nor do I have money to throw at them). When I was in Egypt I was even thinking about flying to India and head to their office to see if I could help there. It didn't happen.

For those of you who are criticizing the way I handled the whole thing, fine, there are definitely areas where I made mistakes. If the whole thing collapses it was worth it for the learning experience, however, I am firmly committed to leveraging the outsourced team as much as I can via my co-founder.

Thanks for all the feedback,

Dale

PS: This is the most blog hits I've ever had (which isn't saying much).

</comment><comment><USER11> I've never had luck outsourcing development to India (for a variety of reasons), though I know people who have. I'm curious about how those who have been successful managed to succeed, and if it was more than just sheer luck.

<comment><USER12> I know of one case. Two founders, one American, one Indian (my brother), both highly technical. They were almost running out of money but also needed 5-6 programmers and someone to manage them, so they could take care of the business aspects. They took investment from angel investors, and my brother opened up shop in his home town in India, which is a small city. IMO the key to their success was that they were able to find this one guy who bootstrapped the entire business in India and managed it very well. Also, since this was a small city, they were able to find stable employees at reasonable salaries, unlike cities like Bangalore, Mumbai etc. which are very expensive and people keep switching jobs for salaries. Eventually the startup got acquired by an American Corporation and the operation in India is still going quite well.

<comment><USER9> Sounds like the key point here is that your brother is himself Indian and technical. Most people don't have those benefits.

<comment><USER12> That is certainly true. But I would like to emphasize the importance of having a solid manager over in the India operation. Because even if you are Indian, it becomes difficult to manage from a long distance.

<comment><USER13> I agree, i know of an entrepreneur who wanted to build a wildfire like app and hired some indian developers, but the project kept getting delayed and some stupid technical decisions were made. For his next project he went through references and also through drupal forums to find the developers. He then met with them personally and was in constant touch(it helped he was in india a lot) till the launch of the project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A fresh startup requires extensive attention to detail. The merits of outsourcing are cost benefits. If putting in a few months of work into learning the software tools would get you to build it -- then put in the time and effort to do it. Build your baby yourself.

</comment><comment><USER15> This article contains terrible advice.

Here is how to do it better: Search the coder's completed work pages on the freelance site using google's inurl: and site: search operators to limit your search to the pages showing coders completed work.

Target 10-15 coders who have completed something exceedingly similar to what you want, in the framework and language you expect, and received a high rank. Look for individuals, not companies, otherwise you can't be sure the expertise is still in-house.

Detail your specs exhaustively. Invite these coders to a private auction. Award the bid to the person who asks the most intelligent questions, regardless of price, as long as it is anywhere in the ballpark.

edit: The article's point about checking in frequently IS a good one, however.

</comment><comment><USER8> Great article!

For what it's worth, here's my take on the same subject: <http://sivers.org/how2hire>

Similar problem, different perspective, some similar solutions. Hope it helps.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think his expectations for what it costs to create any sort of social networking site are unrealistic. I've seen projects in the U.S. quoted out around $5000 that have failed miserably, and the ones I've seen succeed have spent about $40,000 on initial development -- and unless you've got incredible luck, a talent for viral marketing, or some kind of "edge" (preferably all three) you can easily spend that kind of money on marketing too. (Ok, in this case the "money" might be you doing 6 months FTE doing PR and sales)

You can get away with shoddy U.I. work if you do "enterprise" development because the people who buy the product won't use it. Social web sites need to seduce users, so fit and finish matter a lot. If you make people click too much or the design looks cheap, you can put people off.

If the site gets traction, he'll quickly discover that a social system becomes a trouble machine which will require the need to solve technical and "people" problems quickly, and the $3800 programmers can't help him with that.

</comment><comment><USER17> A lot has been written about outsourcing and shared on HN. I think one way that may help you outsource better is to start with a prototype built with the help of someone who is local and available close to you. A wireframe with complete mock up flows of all pages or even better a static html website that mimics all user interaction for the web app you want to build. ( Refer - <http://www.svproduct.com/high-fidelity-prototypes/> by Marty Cagan. He was previously VP Product Management at ebay)

Of course you will still have to find out a good offshore development team, but you will be making it lot easier for the potential service providers to come up with better cost and time estimates.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is it just me or this should have been a crazy rant about how much outsourcing sucks?

I don't want to sound like a racist(don't take this the wrong way), but I had a lot of projects where the client previously employed Indians to do it, who conveniently took the money and left a poor excuse of a product in it's place.

Most of the code Indians leave, is simply trash, no I don't mean bad code, I mean trash something that you will be forced to throw away.

Indians may be cheaper in the short term, but they won't be able to build your product.

These Indian freelancers give the rest of us a bad name(including the other Indian freelancers who are good coders).

</comment><comment><USER19> > Trekdek was supposed to be launched in November. It is now supposed to be > launched by the end of January. I'm thinking this won't be launched until > March.

For an overall better experience I would suggest paying by the hour. Cause once the project gets delayed, the developer starts losing interest in the project, since he/she won't be making any more money from you. You would obviously expect the work to be finished without paying them more, but the developer on the other hand wants to make more money. So this becomes a chicken and egg kinda situation.

</comment><comment><USER20> My own experiences with eLance haven't been great, but I'm sure for some people it's worked out. It's best to work with local talent, even if it's going to be more expensive.

I'm guessing trekdek hasn't worked out since if it were going to launch any time in the near future, a coming soon page of some sort would be in place of the GoDaddy landing page. But that's ok - I've done many things which haven't worked out as well. You should regroup and try again, you will find you have learned a ton from the mistakes you've made in the past.

</comment><comment><USER21> One can argue that good code is good code no matter where it comes from, but I think this guy should hire an engineer with whom he can discuss the big picture stuff and can edit when the outsourced code returns. Engineers are useful for their feedback on the technology too, and he could probably greatly improve the sight and explain in detail what kind of technology is at play. I think a CEO should be well informed about his own technology even if he's contracted it out, and should have a close ongoing relationship with engineers.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey all!

So the outsourcing wasn't going so great as a non-hacker so I found a co- founder to start managing them (the India guys). I'll be uploading a blog post about new things I've learned soon.

<comment><USER22> So... at what point do you become expendable?

<comment><USER23> Come on. The world doesn't revolve around programmers, despite what we read in the NYT and LA Times. It doesn't revolve around anyone. The fact that the fellow doesn't program doesn't mean that he's a newborn infant in the woods. It takes many hats to make most anything succeed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for coming to my defense. It's true at this early stage I tend to feel like a worthless turd, however someone has to learn marketing, sales, finances and all the business shenanigans. A programmer could do that too, but since he is occupied with managing the important part, I figured I'd make myself somewhat relevant.

<comment><USER21> If any programmer thinks they can pull off a solid VC investment without excessive research and data supporting their product's potential for success, they may as well just sell their code off to someone more informed. You're as necessary as anyone.

<comment><USER24> Not all people calling themselves business co-founders are great at this either. (Not saying in this case just in general)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've kept laughing up until "... weekly Skype date." To get my sanity back I've had to listen to <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA1NoOOoaNw>. Now I am back and lucid :-)

</comment><comment><USER26> Wouldn't a HN related freelance board provide much higher quality work at a reasonable price?

<comment><USER27> Agree! the HN hiring thread or the contractor spreadsheet might have helped too (but I doubt the " _reasonable price_ " part :)

I definitely did not feel good after reading the post. (Most of) these guys on the freelance sites seem to be undoing the good work by others from the same geographic region by providing such poor service and thereby allowing others to define the stereotypical " _Indian developer_ " by the poor quality of services offered. I personally know fellow good programmers who would be offended by kind of service offered by these people.

IMO, the author of the blog post should have taken help from a technical friend to choose the contractor(s).

In the couple of interviews I've gone thru (and even while making friends), the opensource code I've written and the a reference at the startup I did my internship at, has come to influence the other party's decisions and outlook towards me.

I sincerely hope, that the author has his project completed at the earliest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I give props to the guy for trying. I've been the non-techie trying to build software, and it is a biyotch!

</comment><comment><USER29> you get what you pay for.</comment>


Offer HN | I got time and I want to help doing conceptual mockups - <AUTHOR>

Hey There I have some time available with me after work and I'm want to help anyone who needs help with conceptualizing a solution.
I have in the past helped people by brain storming what a possible solution could be. For e.g. I worked with someone to come up with suggestions for how to make health based app more sticky for the users.
I can also do screen mockups.I can be contacted at firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> What do you use for doing mockups?

<comment><AUTHOR> Have used Visio, Powerpoint, Axure - prefer Visio however.</comment></comment>