Show HN: I made a browser extension that fixes Hacker News' block formatting - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/corollari/fixedHackerNews <comment><USER2> Here is an example of the problem this extension fixes:

      Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

My _"solution"_ is to add asterisks around the text to make it _Italic_ , like so:

> _Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod > tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, > quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo > consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse > cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat > non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est > laborum._

Here are the official formatting guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)

<comment><USER3> Here is the correct fix for that:

> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod > tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, > quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo > consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse > cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat > non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Lines starting with four spaces are for code, not for quotations. In that situation you usually really do want a horizontal scroll bar rather than line wrapping, and this breaks that for actual code. That's also why it uses a fixed width font, which makes no sense at all for quotations.

Hacker News is deliberately very light on formatting, and I prefer it that way. The only thing that needs fixing is a bit of user education not to misuse the block formatting feature. Maybe there should be a list of formatting options below the reply box, with the idea of just sticking a text annotation on quotations mentioned explicitly. (A comment preview would also be nice, mostly so you could read your comment back in a proportional-width font before you post it.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Describing your advocacy against the official position as "fixing" is playing political games with framing and will worsen the site experience for the rest of us as users install and use it.

The official policy says:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)

> This is intended for code.

</comment><comment><USER5> The Stylus addon is a more generic solution, it works on phones: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/styl- us/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/styl-us/)

As a bonus, you can fix the '[-]' comment collapse link by making it five times wider. And crank up the font size.

The primary annoyance with this approach is that you can't look up the tag hierarchy and classes on a phone, at least I haven't found an extension that would let me do it even on the desktop (even though I think I've seen some, years ago).

<comment><USER6> An even larger hammer you can use is injecting arbitrary JS using Violentmonkey; that lets you do pretty much anything. It also works on phones.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/violentmonkey...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/violentmonkey/)

<comment><USER5> I'm using the classic GreaseMonkey, but I find that my attempts don't match Stylus: the styles get applied after the page is already loaded, so everything is reformatted and jumps away from my view (in cases of heavier formatting, e.g. changing fonts). So basically, Stylus encapsulates accumulated knowledge of properly applying styles in an extension. Plus, it can change them without reloading the page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Am I "missing" something? I don't get those scrollbar comment layout... Where is the problem being fixed?

<comment><USER3> It's only really a problem on mobile

<comment><USER7> I wasn't aware you can use extensions on mobile Chrome... Anyway, I use an app for HN on mobile. Much nicer experience. (Materialistic is the client du jour)

<comment><USER8> To my knowledge, you can't. You can use many, if not most, Firefox addons on mobile (I use ublock on FF mobile, which is nice). This extension is for Firefox.

I'm not really sure if Firefox addons/extensions work well in iOS. I can imagine a few reasons it might be more limited, but I don't have an iPhone to test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why isn't HN open source? It is after all hacker, news

<comment><USER10> An older/vanilla version of HN is. Since then, secret sauce algorithms have been added. If it was public, it might be easier for someone to game the system.

It's written in Arc (a dialect of Lisp) and included in the Arc distribution:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1390685](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1390685)</comment></comment>


My Way into Clojure: Building a Card Game with Om – Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.railslove.com/stories/my-way-into-clojure-building-a-card-game-with-om-part-1

<comment><AUTHOR> In order to gain hands-on experiences with functional programming, I wrote an HTML5 card game with Om, a "JavaScript MVC" written in ClojureScript. This first post starts our journey travelling down the Clojure rabbit hole. I'll share my experiences getting started with Clojure, introduce the language's features and explain why its LISP syntax is a logical consequence of its deep infatuation with simplicity.</comment>


Skype publishes SILK audio codec source code - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Skype-publishes-SILK-audio-codec-source-code-955264.html <comment><USER2> Original post from the Skype blog: [http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2010/03/advances_in_audio.ht...](http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2010/03/advances_in_audio.html) Link to SILK on Skype Dev Zone: <https://developer.skype.com/silk>

</comment><comment><USER3> It's worth noting in relation to the HTML5/Theora/VP8/H.264 shenanigans that Skype currently use VP7 as their video codec.

I like this summary of why royalty free audio codecs makes business sense for them:

 _"1. Technological progress saturates.

2\. Patents expire.

Therefore, the performance advantage of royalty-bearing standards diminishes with time, and high-quality, royalty-free standards are unavoidable. I'm convinced that today we have reached this point of commoditization for audio and speech coding technology._"

from [http://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/codec/current/msg00897....](http://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/codec/current/msg00897.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> What I don't get is them on one side pushing this at the IETF to "convert" it into an RFC and at the other side requiring that license agreement to be signed.

Doesn't the IETF disallow something like that? I always thought that specifications defined in RFCs were free to implement by anybody.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder what happened to the hinted-at open sourcing of the linux GUI a couple of months back. I really hope this is not it and we still get that.

</comment><comment><USER6> When I make a Skype call, I always seem to get G729 and not SILK.

Is SILK only use for calls between Skypes (and not Skypeout)?

<comment><USER4> I'm guessing here, but as a Skypeout call at one time has to go into the classical telephone network, probably using some existing VoIP infrastructure in between, the higher sampling rate of SILK would not be of any advantage and the audio would have to be recompressed (probably to G729 anyways if the call goes over some "classical" VoIP network.

Considering that stacking up lossy compression algorithms is never a good thing for the quality, they might opt for encoding to G729 right at your end of the call.

<comment><USER6> That makes sense. I just called the Skype Test Call and it used SILK_V3, so that would be further confirmation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do you think that Skype might be losing out by providing this under a non- commercial use license? It'll now surely get reimplemented by a free software group (ffmpeg comes to mind...) and that'll probably become the defacto implementation by reason of freeness of license. This means that Skype may lose on some commercial support opportunities since the implementation most use will come from another vendor. Any thoughts on this?

<comment><USER3> I get the impression they are in a transitional period and they will make the code and the patents freely available. At the moment they seem to be sending mixed messages and indeed even non-commercial use isn't currently allowed beyond testing without an IP licence agreement according to the download page.

On the other hand perhaps they intend for this codec to be entirely replaced by the output of the IETF codec work they are participating in (which may be roughly the same codec, or a descendant/hybrid of it and other codecs) in which case they don't actually want anyone to use this codec as it will then be a competitor to their first choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought it was a simple algorithm:

voice + crackles * importance of call</comment>


EEG feeding Neural network can record what you see - <AUTHOR> https://scitechdaily.com/image-reconstruction-from-human-brain-waves-in-real-time-video/ <comment><AUTHOR> I wonder.. if this can also be used to record dreams or visions... Or is it dependent on the input stimulus from the optical nerve?</comment>


What Are the Benefits of CBD? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/style/self-care/cbd-oil-benefits.html <comment><USER2> High profit margins</comment>


Show HN: Roofmapper, simple way to map roofs. My first webapp - <AUTHOR> http://www.roofmapper.com

<comment><USER2> You might want to explain what this is actually for?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I probably should have gave it a bit of explanation.

This was actually made for my dad. He is a roofer and needed a quick and dirty way of generating a map of a place. The map can then be printed and to mark locations of leaks and other such information. Getting screenshot straight from google maps etc. was one option, but I feel that my way makes it cleaner and easier to pinpoint exact locations.</comment></comment>


The Astor Place Opera House Riot of 1849 - <AUTHOR> https://theoutline.com/post/8659/the-astor-place-opera-house-riot-of-1849-was-lit <comment><USER2> In similar vein, rumour has it that the Belgian revolution of 1830 started at the opera in Brussels, during a performance of "La muette de Portici" (The mute girl of Portici). I'm sure the story is much embellished, given that Belgium was already in open revolt against the Dutch, and independence wasn't far behind.

<comment><USER3> Zero mention in the article - zero - of the fact that most of Europe had been engulfed in civil uprisings for the better part of the previous year, and many of the crushed leaders had emigrated to America.

<comment><USER4> Any good references on those uprisings?

<comment><USER5> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_(podcast)#Season...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_\(podcast\)#Seasons)

The excellent "revolutions" podcast covered it in 33 episodes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting piece of history! But I disagree with the assessment on the part of the author:

> There's something both grimly funny and profound to me about the riot... all > over the personal jealousies of two vain and insecure actors

No, it was not over the personal jealousies of the actors. That was just the spark. If you look carefully at the text, it was over an act of genocide on the part of the British Empire (the Irish famine, in which a million people died), and over increasing inequality culminating in the Gilded Age (I should say now, the first Gilded Age) in which, every time the GDP went up, most of the population were condemned to even more miserable and desperate poverty. Put that way, the riot doesn't seem so ridiculous, does it?</comment>


First production release of Ceylon language - <AUTHOR> http://ceylon-lang.org/blog/2013/11/12/ceylon-1/

<comment><USER2> There's a language overview at [http://ceylon- lang.org/documentation/1.0/introduction/](http://ceylon- lang.org/documentation/1.0/introduction/) if you're looking for some code examples.

</comment><comment><USER3> Gavin, it looks great at first look, am a big fan of your work on hibernate, Seem, and Java CDI and JPA JSRs, and you and your team did an amazing work on Ceylon. feels very easy to move into it from Java, Scala or Javascript. Loved the in / out covariance / variance notation for generics, makes it much clearer than scalas + and -. Seems like a very good language (would probably have been huge if it was released 5 or more years ago...)

However, as a Scala fan (I'm behind scalatutorials.com) what do you think is a killer feature that might convince me to try Ceylon instead of Scala in my next project? (except the fact Scala JS compiler is still in very early stages)

I mean, they feel comparable (though I would miss implicit conversions) but I already have Scala, what is the biggest benefit I will get from Ceylon?

Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I guess two killer features that we think make all the difference are:

\- the central place that modularity plays in the whole architecture, and

\- the fact that the JavaScript VM is a first-class citizen.

While I don't doubt that you'll find things you miss from Scala (implicits, if you insist - though IMO they're generally harmful, pattern matching, maybe, or higher-order generics, perhaps), I'm sure you'll find things in Ceylon that you'll love. For example, I _know_ you're going to love the things you can do with union/intersection types. I think you'll really like how we treat null, and our approach to flow-dependent typing in general. You might also dig how the language treats tuple and function types, and how you can just naturally abstract over the arity of a function/tuple type. And you might find runtime metaprogramming with reified generics and the typesafe metamodel a whole lot of fun.

I hope that's at least half an answer...

<comment><USER3> Thanks, you had my curiosity, now you have my attention :) Will sure give it a look on my next project.

I saw it has very nice HTML DSL, but I assume I can't consider Ceylon as a full stack framework yet? anything in the making? is there a Node.js / Rails / Seam migration project that someone works on at the moment that you know? it might be an interesting open source project to contribute / follow.

Thanks again, and all the best

<comment><AUTHOR> No, we've still been concentrating on getting the underlying bits-n-pieces of a platform together. Hell, we still lack some little things like, oh, um, i18n ... text formatting ... transactions. Little things like that. Ahem.

There's at least two live attempts to build a web framework for Ceylon, so if you're interested in contributing, I know for sure that Julien Viet or Daniel Rochetti would appreciate the help. Join us on IRC or ceylon-dev. :-)

<comment><USER3> :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A command line tool to check HTML pages for accessiblity issues - <AUTHOR> https://asciinema.org/a/104903 <comment><USER2> I'd really like to use this if it were just a simple command line tool as advertised. As it is, I can't really figure out what part of the source distribution to run.

The whimsical naming of files and tools IMO drives potential users away more than it helps in engaging people. Mostly it just makes it hard to find out how to use something.

The fact that zookeeper also is the name of another (completely unrelated) software project does not really help, either.

Other than these points, thanks for caring about making the web accessible! All too many websites completely disregard that aspect and ignore users for which these things are deal breakers.</comment>


I was a $200K VC, now I'm a $0 entrepreneur – first thoughts - <AUTHOR> http://tryingtohackit.tumblr.com/ <comment><USER2> Leaving a $200K position where you developed a network of people who's business it is to fund companies in two of the biggest tech environments in the country is hardly starting from the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good luck.

One alarming thing IMO in the post is the focus on getting funded vs. validating (or even selling) a product

Funding is just an ingredient (not even required always) in the recipe. The final product is the cake.

Bootstrap if you can -- build something people want (sorry for the trite startup advice) and charge for it.[1]

Don't mean to be pedantic. I just find the narrative on getting funding as a pre-req for success which has become the norm to be a bit overblown.[2]

Notes:

[1] I'm a co-founder of a bootstrapped 7-figure recurring revenue SaaS business in NYC.

[2] 2/3 of last year's tech exits were not institutionally funded -- [http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/trends/global-tech-exits- repo...](http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/trends/global-tech-exits-report-2013)

<comment><USER4> He was a VC previously. VC generally has a very strange concept of entrepreneurship that seems to boil down to VC being some kind of gate keeper over who they allow to be successful by throwing money at them. It's also why most VC companies are terrible at both advice and actually making money for their investors.

The good VCs realize that they're just a minor part in helping an already successful business expand rapidly. These are the kinds of VCs who end up funding companies like WhatsApp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A few notes regarding failures (because I think the linked quora post didn't do justice):

\- Bill Gates and Paul Allen's first venture was Traf-O-Data, attempting to process traffic data. They built machines as part of this. On their "demo day", their machines didn't work. Eventually, Washington State obviated their business and they moved on to form Microsoft

\- RH Macy failed _seven_ times before founding the biggest department store in the world (I wish the number 7 was included in the response)

\- Akio Morita's first product was a rice cooker, which was a self-described "memorable failure", selling less than 100 units. He then partnered with Masaru Ibuka to form Sony

<comment><USER6> Scott Adams champions "fail till you succeed" quite a bit. He's had a string of interesting failures too (listed out at the bottom): [http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230462610...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304626104579121813075903866)

<comment><USER7> There was a guy who failed 10 times...and never made it. I don't who he is because he didn't make it. Sometimes if you fail a bunch it really is time to pack it up and get a steady job.

<comment><USER8> I don't think so. You never know, he could have been successful in his 12th attempt but how could he have known if he did not try.

That's the thing about success. You know its there, you just don't know how many tries it would take you to get there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "being a pre-funded entrepreneur SUCKS"

You don't have to go for funding. You seem to be psyching yourself out. I don't know the details, but given your previous job, well-managed expenses should readily allow for bootstrapping.

<comment> k-mcgrady Unless he's doing a 'get lots of users, think about money later' product. With the money he probably has set aside bootstrapping a SAAS business of something with a business model from day one would be easy and probably not require funding but otherwise he'll need funding eventually. Given his previous job and likely connections though getting some seed funding shouldn't be too hard.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sold on 'get lots of users, think about money later' products. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady It's interesting seeing how difficult the author finds it being an unfunded entrepreneur. Offers some perspective on how difficult it is for entrepreneurs starting off with nothing. At the very least the author probably has a decent amount of runway from working a well paid job previously. Not to mention the connections to the VC world. I'm not trying to take away from the authors struggles but trying to point out if it's that tough for them just imagine how tough it is for the rest of us.

</comment><comment><USER10> > When I go to parties and people ask me what I'm doing

I know I'm being a little cynical here, but you should be working on your startup, not attending parties.

If you're going to sacrifice to do something, go all in.

I went through a similar process: I left a well paying engineering job to be a technical co-founder at a startup, with a 6x decrease in salary.

I had exactly $30k in savings, not including retirement, but was lucky to make an income of $24k right off the bat.

I cut my expenses to the bone--short-sold my house and moved into low-income housing, took my clothes to a seamstress to repair, bought from second hand stores, racked up credit card debt, did a couple side gigs to get a free gym membership, basically everything to conserve my cash.

It was great to get my expenses down, but it was not fun having to make tough decisions.

Ultimately, I ended up parting ways with the startup, and rejoined the workforce as a dev, but not after whittling my savings down to nothing, and racking up $10k in debt.

And

I would do it all again in a heartbeat, because it was one of the best experiences of my life (also being a part of TechStars helped).

<comment><USER11> > _I know I 'm being a little cynical here, but you should be working on your > startup, not attending parties. If you're going to sacrifice to do > something, go all in._

This is ridiculous. Devoting every waking moment to your job is a quick road to burnout and permanent failure. You _need_ personal time to relax and blow off steam, whether that's going to parties or quietly reading in your living room.

<comment><USER10> > Devoting every waking moment to your _job_

I agree.

But a startup is more than a job. The mentality I had as an employee is much different than what I had as a founder.

Some start-ups are like rocket ships, and they just take off and wildly successful.

More often than not, most startups don't have that amazing trajectory right off the bat. My personal belief is that taking that extra hour to perfect a feature, or refine a pitch, or do customer outreach, or test your product, is what separates the rest of the startups--ones that make it to the next level, with those that don't.

There is some element of luck and skill involved, but it's that championship drive that is required.

Do you need time to ensure you don't crash and burn-yeah, I'm totally with that. Perhaps the poster's way to let off steam is to go to parties, which seems doubtful--though I suspect he probably doesn't really go to a lot of parties, and that it was more of a figure of speech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _I feel VERY uncomfortable about not being the [insert respectable job title > at respectable company here], and now am a pre-funded entrepreneur._

> _TLDR: being a pre-funded entrepreneur SUCKS in a lot of ways, but I'm > pretty sure if I ever "make it"_

This guy needs to get his head out of the funding bubble. He sounds like the only goal and metric of success for his startup is to get funding. Getting funding won't make you successful; running a startup with funding that isn't growing sucks even more. In fact it will escalate the pressure and your work/life balance may get worse.

</comment><comment><USER13> Seeing how he has (presumably) an extensive network from his VC days, and (presumably) a decent enough cash runway from having just left a well-paying career.. I would hesitate to call this "starting at the bottom".

Still.. good luck. Coming from that background it might be a bucket-of-cold- water awakening of what it actually takes to get a startup off the ground.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is the type of post that appears on HN from time to time that reminds me of the days in the 50's and 60's when college students apparently would compete to write to Dear Abby with a story believable enough to get published. [1]

HN has absolutely nothing to go on to show that this isn't completely made up fiction and not worth the time to comment on anymore than if someone wrote "hey I wonder what it would be like if a VC left a 200k job and decided to do a startup".

Separately if this really was a former VC [2] earning 200k would seem that the publicity value of actually giving your real name would be well worth the hit on your ego.

[1] Sorry can't find a link to support because this is from memory of way back (not that way back I'm not that old..)

[2] Hey look it could be but it wouldn't surprise me at all to hear that this is complete fiction.

</comment><comment><USER15> Despite myself, I'm impressed. I'm lucky that I'm averse to the trappings of success. For somebody who enjoys that to walk away has got to be hard. And I expect that there will be a lot of humbling experiences ahead. I look forward to hearing what happens.

One minor nit that I mention because it's a pointer to a broad problem in the industry. The writer refers to themself as "a pre-funded entrepreneur". A lot of people act as if professional investor funding is the only option. As somebody who has started businesses both with and without investor money, I strongly encourage entrepreneurs to at least keep an open mind. Be a "pre- revenue entrepreneur" or a "pre-profit entrepreneur". A culture of treating investment as a success proxy is useful for VCs, but dangerous for entrepreneurs.

</comment><comment><USER16> I read this and had a mix of emotions.

First I kind of felt sorry for the guy, then I quickly realized there are much worse perdicaments to be in.

I was living in Louisiana as a college dropout who had sold one company and (fairly easily) making about 200k/year between one full time job and some side work.

In Louisiana that is good money, like REALLY good money, I could've easily lived for a very long time and saved a lot on that, my mortgage there is only about 1k month with all the utilities paid too.

But several months ago, I quit my job, stopped consulting and moved across the country to CA to work on my next startup.

after about 5 months I started to get very nervous, my accounts were seemingly dwindling and reveue still seemed a ways off for the startup.

So naturally we started looking for funding only coming to realize noone wants to fund a startup simply because they need the money.

Then I realized something far more important.

I have skills. I consistently made very good money before. I was capable of this again. I put a few feelers out and quickly got to help build out an awesome new product for a really great guy with deep connections.

Fast forward a few months and our little startup now has strong revenues, things are looking up on several fronts and that little consulting gig I took let me earn several thousand dollars, pay off bills and build a great relationship with someone who is sure to be a very successful first time entrepreneur (he's already had a successful career in finance).

All that to say if this guy was making 200k/year before chances are he has a good skill or set of skills and he should be looking to that to dig him out of this hole not to investors for funding for what sounds like a failing endeavor.

Most people aren't as fortunate as I was or as it sounds like this guy is. Many people in a similar situation to mine would not have had the skillset or network to pull of what I was able to and they would have likely had to get a regular job somewhere or move in with friends etc. When you have a skillset that allows you to generate large amounts of income your life just is not that hard.

Sorry for the rant, but someone should tell this guy to get over himself just a bit. Whether he believes it or not, he's a pretty lucky guy

<comment><USER10> > In Louisiana that is good money, like REALLY good money

200k is really good money everywhere.

But yeah, with the cost of living in LA, 200k/yr REALLY goes a long way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> He seems to be a victim of his own pattern recognition. This can be a paralyzing effect.

</comment><comment><USER18> you will likely never view this time as 'the best time' you have ever had, maybe the most motivated. With all the urgency we had the whole time trying to build our company, it wasn't until the bank account was actually hitting 0 that we finally did what was necessary to get to profitability. The lesson we learned was that anything that requires time to build is not really possible as a first time entrepreneur, you need to find something that will require the least effort to get traction. I would strongly focus on getting revenues rather than getting funding.

<comment><USER19> definitely not good times IMO... the one good thing I can say about the times before being self sustaining... you don't forget, so everyday I remember just how bad it was is a huge motivating factor to keep it the way it is now - better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > if I ever "make it", I'll look back on these days with fondness as the best > time I ever had

Even if you fail you will look back at these days as some of the best times you ever had.

</comment><comment><USER21> Good luck! Is this a stealth project because the service or product wasn't mentioned? If not, I would suggest to use the exposure on HN to get some feedback.

</comment><comment><USER22> "I'm writing this because there's a lot of widely read blogs from people who have had amazing success, but very few from people like myself, who are starting from the bottom."

$200K a year? That's the new definition of "starting from the bottom?"

<comment><USER23> Guess he lost all of it and now back to zero.

<comment> k-mcgrady I read that as his yearly salary not savings he'd lost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Welcome to the other side of the table!

</comment><comment><USER24> Why no name?

</comment><comment><USER25> About the only reason he would need to "know where all the free WiFi spots in the city are" is if he is homeless or living in a weekly motel that has no wifi. If that is the case, then he has no business trying to be an entrepreneur right now. A recent scientific study on successful people (I don't have the link handy) concluded that _" success boils down to serially avoiding catastrophic failure while routinely absorbing manageable damage."_

So, he has either A) fallen on extremely hard times, in which case he should go take a job, even if only for a few months while he builds up enough money for Wifi at home and at least a month-to-month apartment or B) is being overdramatic. In this case, I'm guessing it's B. That's bad, because it discourages entrepreneurship when people mistake difficulty in starting any business for poor planning or a flair for the dramatic on the part of a specific individual.

<comment><USER26> > he is homeless or living in a weekly motel that has no wifi

Yikes, you guys can be so harsh.

Some people don't like to work at home all the time.

<comment><USER25> The post implies that he _must_ know where the wifi is and that his money is dwindling down to nothing. I have a problem with it because there are lots of people on HN thinking "maybe I can start a business" and stuff like this is needlessly discouraging. Further, if he is successful, he will have shown a wrong and very dangerous approach to starting a business. Going "all in" on something as failure prone as a new business is something no one should do unless they simply have no choice.

<comment><USER27> The only thing the author really shares is that they've quit their job, they work from cafes, and they know how much runway they have.

Nowhere do they say they plans to work from the cafe forever or the plan is to keep going until the bank account actually reaches zero. And if that is the plan, so what? The reality is there's always risk and there's no right/wrong way to start and grow a successful company.

What is important is that they're chasing something and documenting the experience from the very beginning so that others can learn from it. That's encouraging and deserves some credit.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Now showing: Older Tweets in search results - <AUTHOR> http://blog.twitter.com/2013/02/now-showing-older-tweets-in-search.html

<comment><USER2> This will be useful. I wanted to build this but stopped.

[http://www.ex-prj.com/post/40318453692/400hashtags-keep- an-e...](http://www.ex-prj.com/post/40318453692/400hashtags-keep-an-eye-on- your-interested-hashtag)</comment>


Show HN: Rewardist – Digital loyalty cards for coffee shops - <AUTHOR> https://rewardist.io/?ref=hn <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone! Excited to share Rewardist.io with you all :) For some context, I'm 15 y/o and I live in Melbourne, AU so there's a bunch of cafes around here, and they'll always give me some kind of loyalty card.

I'll almost invariably lose it the next day, they take up space in my wallet, there's normally only one reward on there and sometimes I don't even want it. Not to mention the hassle (and expense) for businesses to print and maintain their loyalty cards.

Rewardist offers digital loyalty cards, meaning customers use their smartphone to scan a QR code (on a tablet) get "stamps" and redeem rewards rather than be given a physical card that gets actually stamped. Flexible, hassle-free, simple, and profitable :)

</comment><comment><USER2> This is brilliant. Esp in favor of the part that no app installation is required.</comment>


Reverse-engineered Linux driver for the Broadcom 1570 PCIe webcam - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie

<comment><USER2> I doubt the actual name of the product is a "Broadcom 1570"; 1570 is just the PCI device ID. Compared to other webcams this does seem a rather hairy beast - looking through the source, it appears to have its own DDR controller that needs to be calibrated, and requires firmware loaded upon initialisation for it to work. Very different from the USB UVC webcams that are "set and forget" from the perspective of the host.

</comment><comment><USER3> The project owner also considers the Retina driver. Nice. (See the issue tracker.) But is it illegal?

<comment><USER4> Why would it not be legal?

(Come on HN, downvoted for asking questions?)

<comment><USER5> Apple has rather draconian anti-reverse engineering fine prints in most of their eula.

<comment><USER4> An EULA is a license agreement - a contract of sorts. Breaking a contract you agreed on is punishable in court under the right circumstances, but it's not "illegal" (otherwise, you could literally make up new laws). EU courts often find EULAs unenforceable due to a host of reasons (we're very consumer- friendly over here).

Furthermore, you are only breaking the contract if you accepted the contract in the first place; so it only covers what you can do with the product iff you purchased the product (and accepted the EULA that comes with it). So if you are doing blackbox reverse engineering, there is nothing the company can do to prevent you from figuring out how their physical product works.

Finally, as another comment noted, in most parts of the world reverse engineering for interoperability purposes is protected by law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How well does Linux works on a MacBook air these days? I have a mid-2013 one and thinking completely making the switch to Linux.

<comment><USER7> I've been running Fedora on a mid-2013 MBA (i7-4650U) since April last year, and I love it. I grew up on RedHat, switched to Ubuntu around 2010, but after Unity I've switched back to the other camp, and Fedora has been really stable for me.

I used this as a guide to get the install going: [http://mattoncloud.org/2014/02/05/fedora-20-on-a-macbook- air...](http://mattoncloud.org/2014/02/05/fedora-20-on-a-macbook-air/)

Although, I don't use the custom packages, because most things worked out of the box. The only thing I have to do manually is update the display backlight driver after every kernel upgrade, but I do updates once a month, and it's a simple "make;make install" and an extra reboot.

I gave OS X a shot for about 2 years, but could never quite get used to some of the quirks.

Fedora on this MBA has been super stable.

<comment><USER8> I had some issues with the usb bus triggering the system to wake form suspend on fedora22 but it was easy enough to fix .. and random HDPI issues but nothing to bad

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not a 'Apple FaceTime Driver'. Its a Linux driver for the build-in Broadcom 1570 PCIe webcam (Macbooks mid 2013 and later).

<comment><USER10> We updated the submitted title, which was "Building Apple FaceTime Driver for Linux".</comment></comment>


How Much the Government Would Have to Spend to Make Public College Tuition-Free - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/heres-exactly-how-much-the-government-would-have-to-spend-to-make-public-college-tuition-free/282803/ <comment><USER2> I gotta flag this, and it's not because I disagree with it.

Reading the title, the answer is obviously "zero". Government could by fiat decide that college education is anything it decides it to be. No money required at all.

But then the author comes up with this 62 billion number, which isn't the cost to make college tuition-free, it's the current private cost of tuition, which is a completely different animal. Hell, it might require an infinite amount of money to pay the tuition on everyone in the country for the next four years -- demand simply outstrips supply. So the article doesn't answer the question.

Finally, the author seems to think this is all just basic math, which I find odd after having screwed the pooch so badly thus far.

It's just a mess of a piece: linkbait headline, confusion of issues, poorly supported thesis, and rambling ending. I don't see it contributing to an interesting discussion on HN, and I wouldn't want to see HN full of articles like this.

<comment><USER3> How could the gov't make it cost nothing by fiat? Professors will house themselves and eat how exactly?

<comment><USER4> With money the government prints for that purpose. Yes, I know. Some will claim that's a hidden tax, but then, some people will run around yelling "Keynes!" and claiming we come out ahead anyhow, so, _shrug_. Politicians will certainly claim this is a "free" education, so I'll just settle on that definition of "free" as good enough for this hypothetical thing that will never happen anyhow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I attended the University of California at Berkeley in the fun 1960's, there was no tuition for in-state students. Zero. There were 27,000 students at that time just at that one campus.

It would be hard to quantify the return on investment to the taxpayers, but free quality higher education must have contributed to the thriving California economy and culture.

Of course, our costly rival Stanford has also contributed much, to Silicon Valley in particular. But we have twice as many Nobel laureates :)

</comment><comment><USER6> In terms of my favorite unit for this kind of discussion, that's a mere .01 - .03 Iraq Wars[1]

[1] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/14/us-iraq-war- annive...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/14/us-iraq-war-anniversary- idUSBRE92D0PG20130314)

<comment><USER7> The BBC used a good unit during the 2012 US presidential election: F35 fighter jets. [1]

[1] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us- canada-20105913](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20105913)

[EDIT] 1 F35 being $212M means this proposal would be 295 F35s

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Baloney - Lets do a quick BS Detection.

""" In fiscal year 2012, public 4- year institutions and administrative offices received 21 percent of their revenues from tuition and fees """

So What your saying is the government could foot the bill for ~20% of college education by doubling its education spending. Also this is assuming that you don't change the value equation of going to school by making it free. How much more demand would you have for those public schools if you made them free ? So lets play a quick mental game here. You make "public" schools free. That means the demand to get into those schools increases. That also means that demand at those private schools will decrease. Kids who would look at both a public and private instuition and might choose to spend marginally more on the private school will choose a public school that has an almost as good program if there is no cost associated with it. Kids who today are getting into public schools paying less and still getting a good education will be forced out by better preforming peers and will either pay _more_ to go to a private school or go without college at all. Good job you just made it so lower income students can't go to school at all. Congratulations.

Note: If your response to this is well the states would build more capacity remember that ~80% of public university funding already comes from the states so every extra student they make space for is money out of their coffers.

<comment><USER9> I think you underestimate how much rich people loathe being in the same place as the poor. You also have a bias that higher performers go to private schools....

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The issue then would obviously become sustainability. You'd have to institute strict entrance exams similar to what Germany and many other European countries do.

<comment><USER11> That would probably be a good thing, along with doing away with legacy admissions.

<comment><USER10> I agree, but only if there were good/reputable/affordable technical institutions for anyone who couldn't get into a top tier college.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Note that the Federal Reserve is buying $85 Billion each MONTH as a way to prop up the banks/financial system.

<comment><USER13> Which is bloody-stupid, since they could just be sending that money to citizens in a helicopter drop to help them pay for loans, rent, and pizza -- all of which stimulate the economy more directly than bank bailouts have proven to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm still undecided on whether higher education should be free or not. There is an issue that needs to be dealt with (or solved) before we should considered making tuition free, though.

I see the sky high college tuitions as a side effect. The real problem we need to tackle first is how these institutions are structured and what they're spending their money on.

From what I learned of the university I attended, huge (HUGE) amounts of the budget go towards administration, and relatively smaller slices go to teachers and facilities.

Before we start subsidizing, or trimming degree programs and services, lets make sure we're re-aligning our higher education institutions around the original mission: education! Once we've gotten our schools back to providing the best possible education, and fostering good teaching faculty, then we can start talking about subsidizing the cost. Then we will know as a society, that we are truly paying to make our citizens more powerful in their pursuit of happiness.

As the state of our education system stands right now, I would not want to subsidize it.

<comment><USER15> I think you've got things backwards. College tuition has risen so rapidly _because_ of the vast amount of subsidization from the federal government.

<comment><USER14> I think you've missed my point. -- I'm saying before even beginning a conversation about subsidies (for or against, doesn't matter), we need to resolve the systemic structural problems of universities. Perhaps also move forward the debate of what constitutes a good education, so we have clearer targets to work towards.

<comment><USER15> I disagree with your point. If the subsidies go away, those structural problems quickly go away.

<comment><USER14> hah, your point is completely oversimplified.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I agree the way things are set up now the for-profit sector cashes in big time. (Quite a succesful lobby, I suppose). But would the costs not rise if attending college became free? Wouldn't everyone want to get in?

<comment><USER17> _Wouldn 't everyone want to get in?_

I'm having trouble thinking of a downside to this.

<comment><USER16> Good remark. I was thinking the costs would rise quickly.

<comment><USER17> Isn't there existing data based on highly-subsidized university attendance programs in e.g. the EU?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am disappointed by the shallow analysis of the article. It doesn't consider the monopsonistic effects that would result from 100% government-paid education.

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't public K-12 school paid by the government (i.e. taxes)? How would the effects be different, including the role of private schools, compared to the collegiate level?

<comment><USER19> The pedigree required to work at Starbucks goes up, indeed. Half of my friends with degrees do not have jobs in their respective fields.

Easy federal loans got them into an upside down situation from which they may never recover.

I got paid to go to a public university through scholarship, with money on top of free housing and tuition. I could have paid for college, or probably convinced someone to give me a loan given my career track.

There's way too many people who are destroying value by attending college right now, and the bubble will pop. 12 years to get an art history PHD and manage a gas station is not an efficient use of time or work energy.

<comment><USER20> HALF?

I'd say I only know of 1 person I knew in high school who went to college and now works in the field they got their degree in. 1. (Except me!)

The rest of my friends do random stuff you don't need a degree for and earn very little money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> ...plus cost of living for students...

</comment><comment><USER22> Free post-secondary education is a reasonable idea for the advanced economies of today. However, if the public pays for post-secondary education, then the allocation of majors should be in the public interest. Graduating a surplus of English majors does nobody any good.

<comment><USER11> In a post-labor economy, poets might be the only people left with a job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This confuses costs. Tuition costs are only part of the cost of attending college...

</comment><comment><USER24> I went to college years ago, and felt 80-90% of my classes were better than working, but not worth paying for--I only took them because the college required them for the degree.

If I had a kid I would make sure they were introduced to programming(including web developement) and the financial markets at an early age; We would also go to church. Yea--I think church matters. The world has enough Trumps and Zuckerburg's(yes--I think he stole the idea, but college taught me we all steal it's called Behaviorism, but I feel Mark went farther than subconsciously thinking he came up with a good idea. ). I think I flunked grammer though?

One more thing about school. I went to Chiropractic School and lasted a little over a year. With in a few months I realized I made a huge mistake(their are no Subluxations, well maybe a handful of real subluxations caused by accidents). I had one teacher tell the class, "there are over 17 different upper cervical techniques,--And they All work equally well". I was floored. It works on a placebo level. I went home had a break down, and dropped out. Paid back the 12 grand to the government. I has a break down for other reasons than the lie of Chiropractic School, but What always amassed me was the amout of denial among the students.

I couldn't figure out if they didn't know about the Placbo Effect, didn't want to admit they were duped, didn't care as long as it was legal, or they just wanted to be called Doctors?

I had one classmate die of a stroke while biking on a Sunday. He was a nice Midwestern kid. He was going to Chiro school along with his wife, but she was beyond cool. The ironic and sad part of his early death is I think he was seeing a Chiropractor weekly, and getting "adjusted" by a technique called a Rotary(snap your neck ligaments--Gases escape?), but patient believes bones are moving. This is what Sharon Stone was having done to her when she had an extremely rare bilateral stroke. I heared the only reason she is alive is because by luck, a visiting vascular surgon happen be in San Franciso on attending a conference? Some how the hospital got him to repair the vessels.

I was looking for some "truths" while I went to college, and all I took away from the experience was summed up too well in the movie Superstar, by Molly Shannon, "a bunch of cliff notes, and a lot of drinking". That was an extreme statement, and I think finishing a bachler's degree in anything is important, especially for low income families. Rich kids can fall back on their parents, or use their parents connections--usually.

I'll stop. I'm still confused, and just venting, and praying I have a few more healthy years.

<comment><USER25> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSUXXzN26zg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSUXXzN26zg)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage your life, which tools do you use? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for a better way to organize my life. At first I started with multiple ToDo lists, and after a few years I switched over to Trello. I'm quite happy with it (well I'd like to self-host it, but didn't find a good solution), but I'm missing some features of a software project management tool like a better history, dependencies between issues, time tracking, fancy graphs and so on.
At the moment I'm seriously considering setting up a self-hosted Jira instance (for 10$ as I'm the only user) for tracking my personal life (short-term appointments, university assignments, ToDos for my homelab, random thoughts I want to look up later).
What are your tools and workflows to keep your life organized? <comment> user-on1 For me Google Keep takes care of all the organizing stuff. With Google Calendar at times.</comment>


Simulation of light passing through a raindrop - <AUTHOR> http://jasmcole.com/2014/09/20/all-the-way-across-the-sky/ <comment><USER2> Aren't rain drops more egg shaped due to air resistance?</comment>


Facebook unveils new News Feed design - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57620011-93/facebook-goes-back-to-basics-for-new-new-news-feed/

<comment><USER2> It's all very nice. Except that I'm still stuck like 3 design in the past.

Stop creating new versions and roll out the ones you have already...</comment>


Ask HN: Why GitHub is so often down? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It's an enormously complex service with extremely high traffic.

Building nearly every piece of software requires pulling some dependency from GitHub.

</comment><comment><USER3> Updates are done at Monday noon. At night you would not recognize it, but you would not have all the analysts to find out what went wrong. Updates always fail.

</comment><comment><USER4> Micromanaged software.</comment>


The computer rig of the Philip Glass Ensemble - <AUTHOR> http://www.plogue.com/philipglassensemble/

<comment><USER2> [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ywTfBwP...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ywTfBwPZh1sJ:www.plogue.com/philipglassensemble/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a)

interesting article, I've seen the ensemble over the years, and still mean to spend time seriously studying his works, as well as Reich, Terry Riley, John Adams and others. Also (HN angle) it's one of the best vocal-less headphone music for coding/debugging (esp. the debug phase when you need to calm down).

<comment><USER3> My favorites by Phillip Glass are his Violin Concerto[1], the soundtrack to Koyannisqatsi[2] and The Hours[3]. Minimalist Classical is sort of a precursor to modern day electronic music and I fell in love with the genre instantly after having a great professor at my University introduce me to it while taking an elective in Music Theory.

Another great Minimalist Composer is Max Richter[4][5]. Richter did a revision of Vivaldi's Four Seasons in a minimalist style that's quite good[6].

Minimalistic Classical is also one of the few genres I can write code while listening to and not have it distract me as well. Like the OP, I definitely recommend checking it out if one is looking for new genres of music or simply learning more about Minimalistic Music. The genre and Phillip Glass himself are highly underrated.

[1] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsioM3GaAAY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsioM3GaAAY)

[1a] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7ZPWiUXYPg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7ZPWiUXYPg)

[1b] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJoClZ7JosM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJoClZ7JosM)

[2] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opqn- w_4DgA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opqn-w_4DgA)

[3] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpTaACZxoc4&list=PLkUUnZ2-hGV...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpTaACZxoc4&list=PLkUUnZ2-hGVm4_wpJLKQ6tgZ8sLQpV0hN)

[4] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0CVMpaQoVY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0CVMpaQoVY)

[5] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bb0k9HgQxc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bb0k9HgQxc)

[6] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i9Xqr6ZFOs&list=PL6wSqc1bLqP...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i9Xqr6ZFOs&list=PL6wSqc1bLqPB0Pw5Gr8-dgGKVYzoKww7c)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the Richter recommendation! Another good minimalist album is In C by Terry Riley[1].

My favorites by Glass are Glassworks[2] and Einstein on the Beach[3].

[1][http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K9P8gG_MHE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K9P8gG_MHE)

[2] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Stu7h7Qup8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Stu7h7Qup8)

[3] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezOI3sPqWPU&list=PL37FBBBABCF...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezOI3sPqWPU&list=PL37FBBBABCF9A7FC2)

Edit: I just stumbled upon the IBM Glass Engine... This will keep me occupied for a while: [http://www.philipglass.com/glassengine/](http://www.philipglass.com/glassengine/)

<comment><USER5> While we're recommending things, allow me to share one of my favorite contemporary minimalist composers, Lubomyr Melnyk: [http://youtu.be/FuiUhnDf- qA](http://youtu.be/FuiUhnDf-qA)

And, more impressionist, but Harold Budd is great: [http://youtu.be/w61vMYCd- sY](http://youtu.be/w61vMYCd-sY)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Heh. I just saw Einstein twice in the last week. Great show, and I remember reading this article last year. They are incredible players.

<comment><USER7> Seriously jealous, and irritated that I always seem to find out about much- desired shows just days after they happen. Wish there was something that gave heads-up notices about looming events, like Amazon cross-correlating my music purchase history with Ticketmaster offerings in my area.

<comment><USER6> I met Michael briefly after the gig, lovely chap and keen cyclist. Did you catch the Qatsi trilogy at Hamer Hall last year?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm getting an _' Error establishing a database connection'_. Anyone getting similar problems?

<comment><USER9> Try:

[http://www.plogue.com.nyud.net/philipglassensemble/](http://www.plogue.com.nyud.net/philipglassensemble/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> bidule is fine but max/msp is much more interesting from a audio software/programing environment.

<comment><USER11> If you look at the screenshots of the bidule patches in that article, they really aren't doing anything too sophisticated in terms of audio processing. The interesting things you can do with Max never come up.

What they are doing is hosting a bunch of plugins (mainly instances of FM8 and Kontakt) and letting bidule handle audio and MIDI routing. That's sensible, as this rig is replacing one that featured a dozen or so analog, hybrid, and digital hardware synths.

Anyway, Mr. Reismann addresses this topic directly: "Among products considered were Max-MSP, Ableton Live, Mainstage, Rax, and Forte (on PC).

I thought we might have to end up using Max-MSP due to the complexity of the patches we would need, but as I looked harder at Bidule and explored its capabilities fully, I came to see that it could do everything I needed to do, and furthermore, it was elegant and efficient, and its learning curve was gradual enough to be inviting to someone coming to it for the first time, as would be the case for our sound crew and anyone else I brought in to help with the migration."

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm also getting it. Could only get to the google cached version.

</comment><comment><USER13> Sad that there's not even a short clip of what the performance sounded like.</comment>


Inequality In The Robot Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2013/05/13/inequality-in-the-robot-future/

<comment><USER2> "Robots will likely be sentient because the easiest way to get a human intelligent robot is to take human brain, slice it apart and copy all of the connections into an electronic format."

What in the actual fuck is this guy talking about?

Anyway, I believe our "robot future" poses huge economic problems we are currently not ready to deal with, but I don't think robots being economically marginalized is the primary concern or even in the top 1,000 problems that we may have to worry about then.</comment>


Ask HN: Why does Hiring thread always top out at developer? - <AUTHOR> Who is Hiring each month seems to almost entirely be filled with positions for stack specific developers.  Python dev here, React dev there.<p>"Engineer" shows up over 500 times in the March thread.<p>"Architect" shows up 23 times.<p>I know VPs that read HN.  Where are the more senior level jobs for folks who have climbed the ladder out of writing code and are now architecting, managing teams, managing managers, directing divisions, etc? <comment><USER2> Probably a combination of reasons.

\- A large portion of the posts are for startups/small companies where senior positions are too expensive or not really needed yet

\- A lot of companies prefer to fill senior positions via internal promotions/network hires rather than external postings

\- There tend to be relatively few _open_ senior positions to start with at a lot of companies. Competition for these roles is ridiculously intense, so they fill really quickly compared to lower level dev/engineer roles

\- There's a (justified in my opinion) perception that most of the HN crowd is more suited to dev/engineer hiring than it is to more senior hiring, so the postings are going to naturally reflect that skew

In a similar vein, you could ask why Who's Hiring has so few posted positions for non-dev technical roles beyond entry-level product managers. The reasons are pretty similar to the above.

</comment><comment><USER3> The higher title, the more selective the recruiting process.

The Hiring threads cast a wide net. In my direct experience, the average respondent to a hiring thread post is already a reach. For example, the majority of responses to my company's last Hiring thread post were recent graduates and bootcamp grads looking for their first job.

If you're higher up in the org chart, you need to work hard on building a solid network for yourself. The best job opportunities won't appear in the comment section of highly trafficked websites.

</comment><comment><USER4> I will respond as the most Sr. Engineer at my company:

Architecting - you do that while coding. And have your team follow by example and code reviews (with good debates and team buy-in).

Managing Teams - Teams? Team. One team.

Managing managers - Again, a eng manager? We don't have the resources for that.

Directing Divisions - Divisions? We have founders to do that, we don't have enough people to fill 1 division.

Hence the problem.

The most valuable person to us is a Sr. Full-Stack engineer. They won't scale you to 100m users daily, but they need to know how to build a functional and flexible product where the only guarantee is change.

</comment><comment><USER5> From what I've seen, the _Who is Hiring_ thread consists of companies that already have CTOs / VPs that post their dev roles.

I instead used the _Who Wants to be Hired_ thread to find a VP / CTO role (but no luck yet):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19800051](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19800051)

</comment><comment><USER6> In my own experience, hiring for VP and senior management roles tends to happen within the (closed) circuits of the current business leads / board members specially for small and medium sized companies.

</comment><comment><USER7> > I know VPs that read HN.

This is akin to confirmation bias. Most VPs don't have time to read HN. (OTOH, people that are _looking_ for a VP job probably do have time lol)

</comment><comment> Lorenz-Kraft Where exactly do you get your stats from? Maybe you are just looking the wrong places ...

<comment><AUTHOR> Ctrl + f on the page [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22465476](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22465476). Seems pretty trustworthy to do a word count.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> for every developer there are 10 VPs.. or wait, is it the other way around?

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, but then there should be about 10 VP positions on the Hiring thread (since there are a hundred dev positions). Not sure I've ever seen even one.</comment></comment>


Belkin Explains Why Its Routers Stopped Working - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/08/belkin-explains-why-its-routers-stopped-working/ <comment><USER2> Wasn't it Belkin that got caught doing MITM shenanigans with HTTP connections in their routers some years ago as well?

[http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2003/11/07/belkin-...](http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2003/11/07/belkin- routers-hijacking-websurfing/)

<comment><USER3> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't get it... why would a router block access to the entire internet because it can't talk to the manufacturer's servers? Why is it talking to the manufacturer's servers at all?

<comment><USER5> It didn't shut off all internet access. The DNS resolver on the router checked for connectivity. If it couldn't resolve Belkin's domain, it disabled the DNS service because it assumed the Internet wasn't really connected.

Edit: see the workaround here [https://belkininternationalinc.statuspage.io/](https://belkininternationalinc.statuspage.io/)

<comment><USER6> OK, this is much less scary than I thought reading the article. Probably wouldn't hurt to diversify it a bit and use some major provider like Google or Amazon (or both?) for the check, but at least it doesn't look as bad as the vague description in the article that made me think some vital router functions and not simple DNS check depend on external infrastructure.

<comment><USER7> Amazon/Google might be a little annoyed if every Belkin router on the planet started pinging them.

<comment><USER6> They probably get much more legit traffic than that. Router doesn't need to do it that frequently, only when it needs to find out if internet connection is alive. Which is usually on boot and maybe on infrequent occasions after that. So they wouldn't even notice.

<comment><USER8> No. Terrible idea: [http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~plonka/netgear- sntp/](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~plonka/netgear-sntp/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [http://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-TL-WR703N-Wireless- iphone4-and...](http://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-TL-WR703N-Wireless- iphone4-android/dp/B005VEJ3GM) .. This small little fella works perfectly for me with OpenWRT and even if you are not a techie you can use the chinese default firmware which works well as well .. More info on [http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl- wr703n](http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr703n) in case you want to install OpenWRT .. Plus this little fella just costs $30

<comment><USER10> i managed to eventually brick one of these so be careful.

<comment><USER11> Little soldering and serial-uart makes unbricking them quite easy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Source might be this. TC adds nothing: [http://community.belkin.com/t5/Wireless/Belkin-Routers- Inter...](http://community.belkin.com/t5/Wireless/Belkin-Routers-Internet- Outage/m-p/5796)

</comment><comment><USER13> > caused a false denial of service

Huh? Does this mean "the service thought it was DoS'd but it really wasn't"?

<comment><USER14> Yeah, the article is extremely vague, not an explanation at all like the title says.

Another comment in this thread explains:

> It didn't shut off all internet access. The DNS resolver on the router > checked for connectivity. If it couldn't resolve Belkin's domain, it > disabled the DNS service because it assumed the Internet wasn't really > connected.

By sp332, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8429287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8429287)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> 1) there is still no explanatation for the rational of doing so, and the origin of the black out ! 2) there is still no valid reason to add a useless point of failure. 3) talking about security, the continuity of service is AS important as anything else (imagine you had two belkins set up for redundancy and multihoming, because internet is used to check credentials, you have a loss of a critical services. A useless SPOF IS a security risk! ) 4) It is not Belkin role to make sure «internet» is available and take measure when not working. A router needs an IP connectivity including a DNS resolver, these are clearly checks that are the ISPs responsability. 5) there is no arm in letting a router not being able to resolve a DNS server (they can be statically configured on the hosts or by a DHCPd server, routers at best acts as a DNS cache and they are less efficient than tons of other solution even a stupid dnsmasq). 6) it means blackholing the IP to the cloud of Belkin is an efficient way to disconnect any user from the internet using their router. Is it a feature made for Russia, China and USA (I mean any place where privacy is considered a crime)?

Clearly Belkin has been bricking their gears when they are not connected to internet. Why? Why have a killswitch of the internet?

I cannot see any good reason for spending THAT much money in terms of investment and recurring cost. Someone planned this feature, and found smart to spend recuring money on obviously unneeded feature.

Facts don't add up. Companies are here to make money. They spent a hell lot of money to insert and plan and release this feature in their equipment. What do they gain of bricking any devices not able to contact their «cloud»?

</comment><comment><USER16> I cannot fathom why this kind of "phone home" behavior is necessary to operate a router. Lets call it what it is, a kill switch.

<comment><USER17> iOS (and presumably Android) has a similar functionality, but at least in iOS's case it's to find out if the device should consider this wifi to be 'working' (and send traffic via WiFi) or 'blocked' (and continue using the mobile data network).

I can't think of any reason to have this failover behaviour on a consumer router that isn't multihomed. It's not the router's job to ensure that my internet is working according to some predefined rules, when there is no tangible benefit to doing so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> One thing I cannot tell is that Monday my Belkin n600 router started crapping out intermittently every few minutes. I would unplug and plug in the router again, and it would work until it went down next.

Was I actually affected by this issue?

The description of this issue makes it seem like the routers were completely unable to make a connection vs. the intermittent behavior I experienced so I'm really confused.

I reflashed by firmware at Belkin's advice later that day and it seemed to resolve the issue, but this can't just be coincidence...

<comment><USER19> If your computer was using a combination of working DNS IPs and your Belkin router's IP, it's a plausible explanation for intermittent outages.

So if you had 18.104.22.168, 184.108.40.206, and 192.168.1.1, 1/3 DNS lookups would time out. Specifics are up to your operating system and lookup configuration, but you would almost certainly notice the problem, even if it was just minor annoyance. Lookups will usually be retried after a few seconds, so it might have just seemed like everything was extra laggy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> ""One of our cloud services associated with maintaining router operations was negatively impacted by a change made in our data center that caused a false denial of service."

Well, that's a non-explanation explanation. What "cloud services associated with maintaining router operations" are being performed? "Lawful interception", perhaps? Somebody needs to record the traffic between the router and Belkin HQ.

<comment><USER21> While the conspiracy theories are fun, what actually was happening was that the router pinged a heartbeat server they had to detect whether it was connected to the internet, and when it wasn't, it would shut off the dns resolver so browsers would get the "internet is not connected" error messages, rather than some other random one.

<comment><USER20> That's what Reddit says. ([http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2ik43h/belkin_fi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2ik43h/belkin_firmware_update_1072014_crashing_many/)) Belkin, though, didn't say that. Some people thought that Belkin did a remote firmware update on the device. Belkin's own site indicates that firmware updates must be performed through the device's web interface, which, hopefully, can't be reached from the outside network.

Belkin routers apparently talk to "heartbeat.belkin.com", which is really an Amazon AWS instance.

<comment><USER22> Apparently they moved it to AWS in the past day, perhaps to recover from the outage.

During the outage heartbeat.belkin.com resolved to 184.108.40.206 which is held by Sungard.

We (and several other ISPs) got our customers back online by putting 18.104.22.168/32 on a loopback interface on one of our routers so it would always respond to pings. Other ISPs put overrides in their caching DNS servers so heartbeat.belkin.com always resolves to 127.0.0.1 (belkin.com doesn't roll DNSSEC).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> [http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index](http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index)

Problem solved.

<comment><USER11> [https://openwrt.org/](https://openwrt.org/)

Though, dd-wrt's website looks a bit more user-friendly. Though, OpenWRT is where the most of the development and porting is happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Totally creepy and unacceptable that a private piece of equipment can be affected remotely. What's not to say that many routers (and the devices attached to them) couldn't be attacked if (or now when with this information coming to light) Belkin was compromised by an external party?

<comment><USER25> They can, they are, and that is what you get for buying a proprietary black box and centering your network around it, in most cases.

openwrt / ddwrt / that fsf firmware project / etc exist for a reason, and nowdays hundereds of routers support open firmware to such a degree it is your fault to buy some backdoor infested unworkable disaster.

<comment><USER26> I'd make that statement the other way around- open source firmware supports hundreds of routers. It doesn't look like the openwrt folks and others get much help from the router manufacturers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Great. I thought my Belkin router croaked the other day, so I'm already out of $200+ for a new router plus overnight delivery. I was going to return it when I saw the old one was working again, but after reading this I'm getting rid of the Belkin on principle.

<comment><USER28> Did you remember to buy a router that can have open firmware?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This gave me a hell of a time the other day - I was perplexed as to what was happening and equally perplexed when it started to work again.

This has definitely spurred me to take another look at my home networking, this kind of thing simply should not happen.

</comment><comment><USER30> What the hell are they doing? How is this added value in any sense? I'm very glad that I run OpenWRT which avoids me a lot of the worry.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hey... has everyone forgotten the Smart TV issues that were unable to connect internet due to the company service went down due to fire.</comment>


Ask HN: What should I create for my Coding Bootcamp Final Project? - <AUTHOR> ?
I'm currently approaching the end of a 12-Week bootcamp, and lack the creativity to come up with an original product/idea.
I have 3-4 weeks to build a data-heavy/web app product using the following tools:
Python -Data Science Libraries -Machine Learning Libraries
Django
HTML/CSS/Javascript <comment><USER2> A system that gathers data about the current weather, date, time, weight, height etc. to...

...suggest you your breakfast, lunch and dinner.

"you probably need a pizza today"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. Looking for something a bit more difficult? Preferably creating a solution for a trivial problem?</comment></comment>


How to inspect iOS's HTTP traffic without spending a dime - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuaw.com/2011/02/21/how-to-inspect-ioss-http-traffic-without-spending-a-dime/

<comment><USER2> The real WTF in that article is the trace of DropBox issuing calls to its API over HTTP instead of HTTPS.</comment>


Here's how Google Android could really take down iPhone 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4268146.html

<comment><USER3> I don't like apple that much. They have some good ideas, but the general attitude of the company makes me suspicious. The iPhone is pretty good, but i don't like the way apple sells it. I wont be able to put my hands on one of those, because at least for now apple is not selling iPhones in Bulgaria. I like the macs too. I messed around for an hour or two with a friend of mines macbook. I like MacOS X but its not that better than Ubuntu(i prefer kubuntu though) Buuuut its too expensive. Its pricey to begin with, and when a few companies redistribute it from the US to Spain, and then to central Europe and then to Bulgaria it gets really expensive for me. MacOS x is not that good to make me buy a really expensive laptop. A Dell with ubuntu is pretty decent and i might get one in the fall(or maybe an eeepc) Anyway the iPhone is going to have some tough competition in many of the countries its going to ship. Especially with that activation thing. People in Romania are not going to be that patient, and if it had shipped in Bulgaria patience was going to be even a bigger problem. And the price for us is high, what's left for Nigeria. I admire the hackers at apple. There geniuses, but the marketing guys annoy me, maybe its just my Balkan scepticism and distrust. If you try to make a Bulgarian pay too much for something and make him wait until you make sure he does what you want him to do you are going to get your self a middle finger before you see $199 so its smart that they don't sell them here :D As for Google, I haven't read enough blogs about it's phone yet.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to see Android give iPhone a run for it's money, but I'm not seeing it happening in the early term. We still haven't seen Android in the wild. Android doesn't have a strong obsessive, visionary like Jobs.

And you can't underestimate the thundering power of the AppStore. Like iTunes, Apple is going to make it dead simple to add apps to your phone.

<comment><USER5> AppStore is one thing that Google could do just as slickly as Apple. It would be right in their core competency.

<comment><USER6> I was going to post something similar, but then I wondered: If building something like the AppStore in Google's core competency, and the AppStore is similar to iTunes, why isn't Google already doing something like iTunes? Is it simply lack of a locked-in hardware platform like what Apple has?

<comment><USER5> In the case of iTunes, they've chosen not to compete. In the case of Android, they have chosen to compete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Android will NOT take down the iPhone. It won't happen.

What I think will happen is that Android will offer a compelling alternative in a way that Apple's iPhone and iPod line have never seen before. While the iPhone will still be popular, we'll have a duopoly rather than the iPod's monopoly. Just my prediction, but maybe I'm just sick of the winner-take-all markets that technology has become.

<comment><USER8> Then maybe Canonical will run a marketing campaign and future people will have an OS duopoly of OSX and Ubuntu.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting, but for me, I'd still happily use the iPhone for the same reason I have a MacBook and not something with linux installed.

I can see android being hugely successful for people who want to learn, tinker, and develop - just as linux is. But if you want to just get stuff done, I'd say MacBook/iPhone wins against Linux/Android.

Also I don't think Android has _that_ much chance against the lure of the iPhone. There's a clear upgrade path/leverage system from iPods (which pretty much everyone has) to iPhone.

<comment><USER5> Right. The developers might balk at Apple's restrictive ways. But the end- users are probably going to be delighted with quality of the upcoming apps. It's all about controlling the seamless user experience, and what Apple's doing amounts to a subtle quality control on the 3rd party apps.

As the article points out, not everyone wants to wade through a deluge of untested applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think they're sort of opposite ends of the spectrum, and that it's probably not a winner take all market. Just as Linux completely dominates MacOS X for applications where you need real control (servers, embedded, etc...) Android will be popular for many people and companies. On the other hand, the qualities of the iPhone in terms of user experience are pretty obvious, and will win a lot of people over... but probably won't dominate the market, which has never seemed to be an Apple goal in any case.

</comment><comment><USER11> I can think of the first thing Google could do in their fight against Apple: set fire to that godawful-ugly demo phone shown in this story. It reminds me very much of all the me-too iPod "competitors." Creative, Dell, et al: "Hey, we can make one of these things cheaper, and with more features!" Then they turn out an uninspiring piece of junk not unlike that google phone, which quickly fades from view.

This popular mechanics story is tone-deaf, which is true of almost all mainstream articles written about Apple. It really amazes me how often the press and Apple's would-be competitors get it wrong. But the comments it has generated here are good, so I voted it up.

Apple customers are not interested in the highest number of features crammed in the ugliest box. They want a device which looks and feels nice. Something that's easy to figure out, that does what you want it to without having to hunt through the manual. Something that makes a nice addition to your life.

</comment><comment><USER12> ... By not requiring $90 a month plans.

</comment><comment><USER13> Compared to the iPhone the android just falls short because of design flaws that arn't folded well into the handset. To really be a true competitor (iPhone killer), the android platform would need to be implemented on a device that can rival the iPhones features/look (i.e. nokia s60 touch or the n98 concept).

</comment><comment><USER14> Can you develop for free to the Android? You have to buy a developers package for the iPhone right?

<comment><USER15> You only have to pay a $99 (more for enterprises) yearly fee to actually deploy native apps to the iPhone. You can download, develop, and test in the simulator iPhone code today for free.

<comment><USER6> For free, provided you already own a Mac, I'm guessing.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure the SDK runs w/ XCode which is free but I believe OS X only - <USER2> language is Objective-C so it could be built on a PC but I'm not sure how you'd emulate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Judging from the pictures and having tried neither the iPhone looks a lot slicker and nicer. The Android has too many buttons to look appealing.</comment>


Ask HN: Recommended OCR? - <AUTHOR> I'm OCRing a bunch of TIFF files with tesseract, and while it works to some degree, it's nowhere near as accurate as I'd like it to be.  Perhaps I'm doing something wrong and I could tune it to my liking, but I can't find too many resources on tesseract.  Am I missing something?
Any other recommendations for OCRs?  Ideally it would be free, but I'm willing to pay if it's not too pricey.
I've been trying out the trial version of FineReader, and it seems to work pretty well, so I may go with that.
Any help is greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> I've had really great success with finereader. I tried out every free OCR tool I could find and after poor results went for finereader.

Spend some time on their website so you get the right product, they have multiple prices for the same products, too. I got the latest Finereader (after a coupon code I found on google) for between 130-150.

(I'm mostly scanning books)

</comment><comment><USER3> Finereader is what Project Gutenberg has been using for the last decade or so.

</comment><comment><USER4> what about gocr? its opensource see <http://jocr.sourceforge.net/>

<comment><USER5> tesseract is way better than gocr, and is also open source

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fujitsu ScanSnap

</comment><comment><USER5> One thing that improves Tesseract's performance dramatically is giving it grayscale tif images. Do

mogrify -type Grayscale *.tif

and run them through tesseract to see the difference. No idea why no one mentions this in the documentation.

<comment><USER7> I've found that Tesseract's accuracy was much improved when I converted my grayscale images to bitmaps with GIMP's Threshold tool.

(Those pictures were not-very-hight quality snaps of a few pages of a book taken with a 3.2 Mpix digital camera.)

<comment><USER5> Tesseract really wasn't made for camera pics, but it could use some help with the thresholding :)</comment></comment></comment>


Wave goodbye to global warming, GM and pesticides - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/wave-goodbye-to-global-warming-gm-and-pesticides-29525621.html

<comment><USER2> Crackpot, snake oil. Radio waves don't penetrate water. Whole thing is nonsense.</comment>