Let me tell you a little story about the American medical system, circa today - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ECMcLaughlin/status/1102349459747270656 <comment><USER2> This is a non-ironic post, but this is good and is Obamacare's design. Give me a few sentences to explain before you get angry...

A good chunk of Obamacare was to get price transparency out into the public. People are beginning to realize how bad our drug prices are. Under Obamacare, a High-deductible plan will require the consumer to pay the full price of drugs until the deductible is covered.

This means for the first few months each year, everyone gets to see the true price of drugs. Later, when the deductibles are covered, insurance takes over the cost. But the sticker-shock is part of the design, we can't have a free market unless people actually see and understand the prices of the goods and services that they get.

America can't fix the healthcare system until people realize what our healthcare actually costs. Seeing the actual cost of drugs is step #1. Now that people are seeing what drugs cost, now we can move on to step #2, and try to figure out what to do about it.

Go back 10 years, and nobody would have known about these prices. Today, we actually can start discussing the pricing of health services.

\</comment><comment>--

Now obviously, the price of American Drugs sucks. But at least we know this fact today. This is a far better situation than a few years ago.

<comment><USER3> Is it really that opaque? I do get mail from my insurance company itemizing the cost of things (both to me and to them). It never felt like it was a secret that things are ridiculously overpriced.

<comment><USER2> How many times have you heard the owner of Epipen (or Shkreli) say "But that's not the price people ACTUALLY pay for their medicine" ??

Obamacare removes that argument. Now its actually the price people pay (at least, before the deductible is reached). Perhaps its not completely direct but its better than what it used to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So much of this story doesn't make sense, and of course she shuts discussion down by saying those that are questioning her are "mansplaining."

</comment><comment><USER3> Stories like this seriously make me consider moving back to Canada.

> my insurance, which I pay (wait for it) $1182 a month

> ...

> This was our total bill today. ($498.73)

>

> It took more than seven hours to get the basic medicine

Just to put into context how absurd these costs are, she could conceivably have spent less money and time by _flying from NY to Toronto and paying for a doctor visit out of pocket there_ instead of relying on her insurance in this case...

<comment><USER4> This is giving rise to direct primary care. You pay a general practitioner $50 a month for unlimited visits and access to wholesale medications and labs.

The GP doesn't have to deal with insurance and has a much smaller patient load.

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

Example pricing: [https://www.dpcwestmi.com/services/](https://www.dpcwestmi.com/services/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find the whole urgent care diagnosis a bit suspect. I don't see how they could instantly identify a specific bacterium, especially one that needs such a narrow-use, rare antibiotic as the lone treatment option, let alone how all 3 got identical conclusions in one UC visit with no lab work.

</comment><comment><USER6> Australia. Triple bypass surgery. $0.00

<comment><USER7> A had a friend in a private hospital and it cost him thousands for this "elective" surgery, he promptly ended his private cover after that.

Now I just wish the government could stop trying to force people to buy private insurance, the industry is a scam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> She should feel proud about all the medical research she just helped fund through those inflated prices. Because as long as some percentage of it goes into research, any price is justified.

/s

Edit: You downvote, but "high prices are OK because they enable medical research" is an argument that inevitably pops up in these threads.

<comment><USER9> Nothing will stop baby neck-beards with gold plated employer insurance and uncomplicated health from splaining how the current system is the best of all possible worlds.

While random Europeans chime in with short comments about how this is inexplicable madness.

Frankly I think the health industry (spit) knows the barbarians will soon be at the gate and are trying steal the silverware and other valuables while they still can.</comment></comment>


Why I Hate Five-Star Ratings - <AUTHOR> http://davidcelis.com/blog/2012/02/01/why-i-hate-five-star-ratings/

<comment><USER2> You might want to customize your octopress blog some. It helps it to stand out. [http://zacharymaril.com/blog/2012/02/24/please-please- octopr...](http://zacharymaril.com/blog/2012/02/24/please-please-octopress/)</comment>


MIDI City 2000 - <AUTHOR> https://midicity-2000.glitch.me/ <comment><USER2> Based on the intro I thought I was going to build a SimCity style city, then have it played as a song.

It's more of a way to display midi files, and some sliders that can suppress some of the data.

Not what I expected, but interesting on its own terms.

I hadn't heard of glitch.com before. Is it a common project site for these sorts of experiments?

<comment><USER3> It's a thing from tech blogger Anil Dash. You might have seen his post on Twitter verification: [https://anildash.com/2013/03/01/what_its_like_being_verified...](https://anildash.com/2013/03/01/what_its_like_being_verified_on_twitter/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A Whole New World MIDI version, nice.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hmm, uploaded a few midi files. It showed one building and then no buildings or anything at all below the play (stop) button. What kind of midi data is this expecting?

<comment><USER6> It seems to be expecting Type 1 MIDI files (with instruments on multiple tracks). It does well with those, but doesn't seem to split out notes by channel from a Type 0 file.</comment></comment>


The Hidden Power of Twitter Custom Timelines - <AUTHOR> http://xdamman.com/the-hidden-power-of-twitter-custom-timelines <comment><USER2> I, and many of the people I follow don't use hash tags in that way. Many never use them at all. For me, hash tags are useless as metadata. They are often solely used as jokes.

<comment><USER3> Most popular uses I've seen for hashtags, in order.

1\. Jokes / irony

2\. Abortive attempts to astroturf by advertisers

3\. Everyone's at an event and they've been told to use a particular hashtag

<comment><USER4> 4\. public figures using twitter who don't understand how it works.

"I #love twitter and my #followers!" "We had #pickles at the #Senate cafeteria today lolz!"

<comment><USER3> @seji That must have been #expensive lol! [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eric- pickles-i...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eric-pickles-i- didnt-spend-10000-extra-on-biscuits-8966933.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is the original twitter dev blog post if anyone wants to see it [1]. I hope this does not come off an condescending and negative, but my honest reaction is "What took so long"?? It blows my mind that it took 7 years to realize/implement this feature.

One of the main reasons I don't regularly use Twitter is because there is too much white noise. It's hard for me to find information of value because the comments are all over the place. Even when I follow a strict set of People specific to an Industry or a Topic, create specific lists, etc; it's still too much white noise (example; interesting post right next to what someone else had for breakfast).

I am actually quite frustrated with the entire thing. Being someone interested in Development and Solving Problems, I know this can be better. And on that front, it's great to see that this feature finally exists. But there is so much more that could be done to make it even better. It's frustrating because the issue relates to a core Twitter experience, which (under [2] API v1.1 Developer Rules of the Road section 1.5) cannot be replicated. So the end result, I'll probably just have to wait for the customer feedback loop process to complete (which likely takes a long time). Hopefully in the future I'll see some of the features that I had once hoped to build myself. Until then, I probably won't be a regular Twitter user. Frustrating.

If anyone at Twitter reads this, I would be more than happy to describe in detail some of the ways that I think the timeline can become more relevant and valuable. I've talked about it here on HN (project name is InfoStream), and it basically relates to a correlation of GeoLocation Data and Time with relation to Real World Events.

[1] [https://dev.twitter.com/blog/introducing-custom- timelines](https://dev.twitter.com/blog/introducing-custom-timelines)

[2] [https://dev.twitter.com/terms/api- terms](https://dev.twitter.com/terms/api-terms)

<comment><USER6> What Twitter needs to do is implement tweet filtering using regex for your own timeline. I do this and it's really nice to see regex search results at the end of the day and not really miss much. It's not as engaging, but who has time to read every tweet anyway?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This actually will be very useful for following products/news/webcomics/etc online if they develop a convention for using a hashtag on a new release.

Obviously Twitter is a poor-man's RSS, but it's better than nothing.

</comment><comment><USER8> Twitter is subtly trying to encourage users to add topics (in the form of hashtags) to their tweets. It has advantages at both ends - from a user perspective : you can pick and choose topics to follow and from an advertiser's perspective : you now have more contextual information about the tweet. It might help you serve better ads and recommendations. However, if this encourages such a behavior there is a very good chance of lists becoming obsolete. Rather than lists one would simply create a timeline of users (with a given hashtag) and share it to the world.

</comment><comment><USER9> The first use for Custom Timelines I thought of was the kind of themed collection of tweets you see people retweet sometimes, like this collection of people who didn't get what they wanted for Christmas a few years ago:

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/people-who-didnt-get-what- the...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/people-who-didnt-get-what-they-wanted- for-christm)</comment>


Whatsapp now has as many users as Gmail. Goodbye, email - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/whatsapp-users-gmail-goodbye-email <comment><USER2> Because GMail is all email? And WhatsApp can do everything you can do with email?

Either something drastic has changed while I've been asleep or this is a really stupid comparison to be making to infer the death of anything.

Even if you combined all chat services, email still has a place. As long as domains exist, it always will.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great comment. Let's all drop a test and tried open standard to adopt a closed-platform that is centralized on a single provider.

btw. Agree with other commenters, gmail is not the whole email so the comparison is moot from the beginning.

<comment><USER4> GMail not be all email, but it's damn close! It serves 1bn[1] users out of an estimated 2.7bn total[2].

[1] [http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/1/10889492/gmail-1-billion- go...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/1/10889492/gmail-1-billion-google- alphabet) [2] [http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp- content/uploads/2015/02/Email-...](http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp- content/uploads/2015/02/Email-Statistics-Report-2015-2019-Executive- Summary.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am a "active Whatsapp user". But i maybe write a message a day. And write and write multiple emails a day. IMHO thats not a valid assumption.

</comment><comment><USER6> i'm so totally waiting for alerts, notifications, confirmations, newsletters and everything else to come via whatsapp. so that i can't find anything anymore.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's not either/or.</comment>


Rich Kids Who Want to Give Away Their Money - <AUTHOR> https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/money-and-power/a29008841/rich-kids-revolution-resource-generation/ <comment><USER2> I'll believe it when they give away enough that they have to get real jobs and work for a living. Maybe that's overly snarky, but to me something rings hollow about people sitting in a multi-million dollar loft in Manhattan pontificating about pronouns and privilege. Like, the privilege isn't all _that_ bad, is it? I mean it's not like you're trying to give it up. You aren't renting a run-down office in Toledo so you can maximize the amount you're giving away. You aren't really looking to inconvenience yourself in any way, just trying to assuage some guilt.

I guess it's better than spending it all on cocaine and hookers. Would it be worse to invest the money in a way that employs people fairly even if makes a profit for yourself? I don't think so.

<comment><USER3> Spending it on hookers would directly remunerate the "working class" though, no?

<comment><USER4> Your comment is a tad snarky and strays off topic within the snark... But for real, why not recognize sex work as a legitimate profession?

<comment><USER5> As the recent Epstein revelations are proving, there is so much coercion and trafficking in sex work that deeming it a legitimate industry is not plausible.

<comment><USER4> Isn't that an argument for recognizing sex work as a legitimate profession?

Exploitation can happen in any number of professions up and down the value chain. It's one reason why we have corporate & labor law and why we don't have young children working in mines any longer.

<comment><USER5> No? Your child labor example shows exactly why. At some point, the inherent tendency for a certain type of work to be exploitive means that the correct solution is to ban it entirely. We didn't regulate child factory labor, we banned it. (Of course, we prosecute factory owners who use child labor, and not the children, but we could do that with sex work too.)

[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J189v02n03_03](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J189v02n03_03)

> We interviewed 854 people currently or recently in prostitution in 9 > countries (Canada, Colombia, Germany, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand, > Turkey, United States, and Zambia), inquiring about current and lifetime > history of sexual and physical violence. We found that prostitution was > multitraumatic: 71% were physically assaulted in prostitution; 63% were > raped; 89% of these respondents wanted to escape prostitution, but did not > have other options for survival. A total of 75% had been homeless at some > point in their lives; 68% met criteria for PTSD. Severity of PTSD symptoms > was strongly associated with the number of different types of lifetime > sexual and physical violence.

Decriminalization doesn't fix these problems. [https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does- legalized-...](https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized- prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/)

> Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human > trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited. The > scale effect of legalizing prostitution, i.e. expansion of the market, > outweighs the substitution effect, where legal sex workers are favored over > illegal workers. On average, countries with legalized prostitution report a > greater incidence of human trafficking inflows.

That's why I bring up Epstein. Consider Stallman's defense of Minsky: "she probably presented as willing." What does the regulatory regime look like? Does requiring a license guarantee that women are willing, and not merely presenting as willing? Do inspectors come around and check that pimps aren't physically abusing women or plying them with drugs? Legal prostitution gives cover to illegal prostitution. And it creates demand that can be satisfied by either legal or illegal prostitution, but where customers have no way to discern the difference.

<comment><USER6> It's not that some work has some "inherent tendency" to be exploitive. It's just that some lines of work are extremely vulnerable to exploitive forms masquerading as non-exploitive, to the point where the whole "market" unravels and only the exploitive form dominates. Child labor also falls into this, basically. But prostitution is even more obvious.

And no, people haven't really shown how to fix the issue. Maybe it could be done via strict regulation _combined_ with a high price floor, to purposefully turn it into a manageable, "niche" industry where qualitative factors are prized and discourage opportunistic entry. But while that might be okay even to many self-identified 'sex workers', let's not pretend that plenty of people wouldn't be disappointed by such an approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel like Bill Gates's idea of giving away all your money so children won't die is the only rational and sane thing to do.

I cannot imagine having billions of dollars and being like, "Nah, forget the children. I need three more yachts." I genuinely don't get it.

<comment><USER8> Bill Gates come from multi-generational wealth and his kids are not any different. They will inherit $10 million each as well as expensive education etc etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> going from billions to 10 million is a big downgrade though

<comment><USER9> Inheriting the Gates name is probably worth a lot more than $10mm.

<comment><USER10> And if they're smart, they can make that 10m make them even more money. I just cant imagine ever needing that much money unless I did my dream of travelling and staying somewhere new all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> At first I think "oh yeah, really noble...give away your birthright money you didn't earn".

But really if it's that instead of becoming a social media influencer, starting a ridiculous furniture or clothing line...I think I'm in favor of this.

</comment><comment><USER12> The only way you'd be willing to get rid of all your money is if you'd never experienced being poor.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is really great. It would be even better if the money was distributed earlier to the workers that made their parents and grandparents excessively wealthy

</comment><comment><USER13> I have plenty of solid ideas if anyone wishes to direct their excess resources my way. :)

</comment><comment><USER14> "Zacchaeus, come down from that tree immediately. I must stay at your house today."

</comment><comment><USER15> "I wish it wasn't something that I had to do voluntarily."

I think this is the crux of a major philosophical difference. Someone made a bunch of money, and decided to put trust in _you_ to do what you thought best with it (give it away, invest it, whatever). The sentiment expressed by this individual in the article is a delegation of that trust - they would rather have someone else (presumably, the government) decide for them the best way to use that money.

At the same time, it's not like anyone in this article is really giving it all away. Last week, Catholics celebrated the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. He would be a useful role model for anyone who feels like they have too much privilege of how to actually give away all that you have (and still not have birthday vacations and lunch at Le Pain Quotidien).

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm not holding my breath. I would rather they spend it excessively, living a life of complete hedonism. This is perhaps the most efficient way of distributing their wealth throughout society.

</comment><comment><USER17> These are trust fund kids.

</comment><comment><USER18> Stuff like this always makes me laugh, mostly out of the insanity of it. Most of these types have never had to file bankruptcy, or worry about paying the month past due bill(s), or how they're going to eat or feed their children. They have no idea what people need. When they want to play philanthropist to 'save the world' I just can't help but laugh.

You want to make a real difference? Find some people, give them a monthly stipend, tell them it'll last x years and they should use it to improve their situation.

Say you have 1 million dollars you want to do something with:

\- Find 15 people

\- Give each one $500 a month for a decade as a stipend/annuity.

\- Take the other 100k and give four $5,000 scholarships a year for 5 years.

You'll radically change 20~ lives profoundly. For me $500 a month would be another week and change of take home pay every month, over the course of a decade it would be 35-45% of a house here around Indy.

Hell, I only need 700k to retire with a 3% safe withdrawal rate if I do not have kids (34 and not married so doubt that's happening). You could take that 1 million and give 10 people 100k and say "congrats, I just put you a decade closer to retirement!" and the impact it would have would be drastic for those individuals, and if you're worried about them blowing it on stupid stuff, just spread it out, 1k a month for 8 years and change.

Have a financial planner create a document that gives them suggestions on how to invest it into retirement vehicles or educational programs, or just point them at the /r/personalfinance sidebar and ask them to write you an update each month on what's going on in their life. Feel good for the better part of a decade.

\---

I don't have a college degree, EVERYONE wants a college degree. I had a multi- millionaire, that at the time was running not one but TWO companies tell me he was sorry that I was running into a wall for not having a degree and that he was sorry it has become a "de facto union card". I begged, and begged, and even suggested things I could do for either company or some other endeavor of his and "I'm real busy right now" was all I got.

Last summer this individual that flew me clear across the country and put me up in a hotel for 2 days, to talk to me face to face for less than 1 hour - while they worked on their laptop the entire time. I spent all of my Sunday, Monday and Tuesday finally getting home at 8pm, having arrived at the airport here 8am Sunday, so they could talk to me for maybe 40 minutes face to face... the money they wasted on that was about 2 weeks of my take home pay.

I imagine they didn't think anything of it. "Hey I'm busy, I'd like to meet this person, I'll have them journey across the country so we can have a meeting since they aren't local" probably didn't think anything of it. but to me I thought they were finally going to give me a 'trial' job and wanted to do it face to face. Nope. Just wanted to meet me. I was devastated. For a week or so leading up to getting there I was like "This is it, this is it!!!" and then just "hi, nice to finally meet you"...

People with this sort of wealth, simply have no concept of reality for 'normal' people.

<comment><USER9> It seems pretty clear that the trip was an interview and you didn't pass?

I also disagree that being rich doesn't mean you're oblivious to how the world works for most people. It doesn't take a genius to realize a lot of people struggle to put food on the table.

<comment><USER18> >It seems pretty clear that the trip was an interview and you didn't pass?

I don't know how interviews work in California but here in the midwest someone that's been playing email tag for you with a year doesn't fly you out, put you up for two nights, and talk to you about random stuff between meetings with their feet up on the table with no mention of either company they run.

>It doesn't take a genius to realize a lot of people struggle to put food on the table

There's a world of difference of going "I know some people can't afford food" and understanding what it is like to actually be in that position. Unless you've been there, you can't claim that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> At last, an article that fully explores the aspirations of trust fund kids! I had no idea they are so virtuous!

</comment><comment><USER20> They can give away their money, as long as they don't force others to do the same, which is typical of socialists.

</comment><comment><USER21> I am excited for the era of millineal politicians. I think we'll possibly get more non-greedy than greedy ones.

<comment><USER7> Will we? Boomers were the generation of love and social change, but they integrated into the system just like everyone else.

<comment><USER22> True. From "Love and peace" in the 60s to "Greed is good" in the 80s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> That's great. Rich people often give their money away, I'm sure it helps them feel good about themselves.

If these kids are so inclined, more power to them. I hope they pick great causes.

<comment><USER24> It actually feels good giving away money. Try giving away $100, it doesn't need to be a million.

<comment><USER18> >Try giving away $100

That's a day's take home for some of us.</comment></comment></comment>


CSS vs. JS Animation: Which is Faster? - <AUTHOR> http://davidwalsh.name/css-js-animation <comment><USER2> The main benefit of using CSS Transitions and Animations on the accelerated properties (transform & opacity) is that the animation will be run by the compositor (at least in WebKit browsers; I think Blink's new animation engine changes this).

Running the animation in the compositor means:

1\. You avoid a style recalc on every frame (which can be a big deal).

2\. The animation keeps running even if the WebProcess gets contended (by painting new content, handling slow JavaScript, GC).

It's fine to mess with transform and opacity from JavaScript, and for gesture handling you have to, so it needs to be fast, but it has more overhead than a CSS Animation would have.

<comment><USER3> This is generally true in Gecko as well, although neither Gecko nor WebKit are guaranteed to run animations on the compositor if they decide that it isn't worth it in some circumstance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also to note, it's often more performant to use translate3d instead of translate2d even if you only want a 2d animation because translate3d off-loads to the GPU.

[http://jsperf.com/translate3d-vs-xy/28](http://jsperf.com/translate3d-vs- xy/28)

</comment><comment><USER5> The author of GSAP made essentially the same argument over a year ago, with somewhat different points:

[http://css-tricks.com/myth-busting-css-animations-vs-javascr...](http://css- tricks.com/myth-busting-css-animations-vs-javascript/)

</comment><comment><USER6> The main benefit of using CSS _anything_ is less code. Less javascript to maintain, less code to test, less bugs. A compile error in javascript means your entire site doesn't work. An error in CSS means a single definition gets skipped.

<comment><USER7> I agree. A much more interesting topic for me would've been: "CSS or JS Animations: does it matter?" I would say if you have so much animations that CSS can't handle it it's too much. But thats just a rule of thumb from my gut feelings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how it's compared to AngularJS ngAnimate? ( [http://www.nganimate.org/](http://www.nganimate.org/) )

<comment><USER9> nganimate doesn't handle the actual animations, it just adds css classes or calls js at the proper points in the DOM fragment's lifecycle. The example site is using CSS3 for the animations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why is it that so few articles on how to do this or that in some HTML/CSS/JS way do not actually just do it? Where is the JS Fiddle?

</comment><comment><USER11> you guys may be interested in an issue i opened a bit ago, some interesting perf jsfiddles in there to ponder.

[https://github.com/julianshapiro/velocity/issues/6](https://github.com/julianshapiro/velocity/issues/6)

also, plz contribute to the discussion there if you feel inclined.

</comment><comment><USER12> This Adobe post has an excellent summary of browser render paths for animation: [http://blogs.adobe.com/webplatform/2014/03/18/css- animations...](http://blogs.adobe.com/webplatform/2014/03/18/css-animations- and-transitions-performance/)

</comment><comment><USER13> [http://css-tricks.com/myth-busting-css-animations-vs-javascr...](http://css- tricks.com/myth-busting-css-animations-vs-javascript/)

</comment><comment><USER14> what about the third option? neither.

less is more when it comes to the web. it really is.

<comment><USER15> Neither is faster? Each one is slower than the other?

 _head explodes_

<comment><USER16> > Neither is faster? Each one is slower than the other?

For regular comparable x & y:

        not (x > y) and not (y > x) --> x = y

So "neither is faster" means "they are equally fast", not "each one is slower than the other".

<comment><USER17>
      const x = parseInt("CSS");
      const y = parseInt("JS");

      if ( (!(x > y) && !(y > x))  !=  (x == y) )
          console.log('Sometimes "neither is faster" is not the same as "equally fast"');</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stories and Tips: Interviews with Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Others - <AUTHOR> http://blog.robertelder.org/50-interviews-with-facebook-twitter-amazon-others/ <comment><USER2> Interviews suck specially for senior developers. Why should I have to prove myself over and over again by doing idiotic basic algorithm type of questions on the whiteboard? After having worked for over 25 years as developer in major companies, shouldn't interviews be about a conversation? \- can you imagine interviewing medical doctors the same way we interview in the tech industry? DR. Smith, please show me how you do open heart surgery in this dummy here... (because most interviews happen at the whiteboard)...

<comment><USER3> I'm a pretty senior developer. I really don't mind doing coding questions. after all, thats what we do, isn't it? As someone mentioned there are plenty of people that are good at projecting experience without actually being very effective at their jobs.

Whats annoying and disappointing is if the questions are at such a low level that there is little room to shine. You leave after your day not feeling as if the employer gained any understanding about you, and you certainly weren't able to get a read on your prospective peers.

The purely conversational interviews almost invariably lead to disappointment for me. The company is so desperate to fill a slot that they ask you probing questions about your work style. They spin grand portraits of exciting collaborations, novel development techniques, fundamental problems of concurrency and consistency. In the end they just want someone to respond to minor bug reports in their massive taped together codebase and make sure the servers stay up.

<comment><USER4> The part that I fear is the seemingly cookie cutter questions for CS grads, not for developers for that position. I've been doing software dev for almost 3 years. Never had to implement a red black tree. Nor could I, since I never took CS at school.

I'm very good at my job but would bomb the technical part of many of the traditional interviews.

<comment><USER5> I'm not the biggest fan of the algorithm-theory centric hiring regime, but "implement a red black tree" is a straw man. Even the most CSy interviews are at the level of contiguous vs. linked data structures, binary trees, and recursion, not at the level of very specific algorithms with intricate details like red black trees.

<comment><USER6> > I'm not the biggest fan of the algorithm-theory centric hiring regime, but > "implement a red black tree" is a straw man.

I think it comes from the "Get that job at Google" blog post[1] by Steve Yegge. It is not clear what Steve means here, but he wrote:

      You should be familiar with at least one flavor of balanced
      binary tree, whether it's a red/black tree, a splay tree or
      an AVL tree. You should actually know how it's implemented.

I understand the gist of a R-B tree, I can probably write the immutable one on a whiteboard, but I don't think I will ever be able to implement the mutable insert/delete methods on a whiteboard. I have never been asked it in an interview yet, though.

[1]: [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at- goog...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > If you spent one day working at Google, in the worst case you can now be > called a "former Google employee". Next time you hand out resumes, you can > just hand out a blank sheet of paper that says "I worked at Google" > scribbled in crayon and you'll still get interviews.

Pretty funny and also sadly true. The author is the same person that is currently building a C compiler for the one page CPU: [http://recc.robertelder.org/](http://recc.robertelder.org/). Suffice it to say this person should just be hired on the spot. Any interviewing is a waste of time for both parties.

<comment><USER8> Sure, definitely. If the employer can afford them and wants what they are willing to work on, and either is ok with that person working on their own or is confident they can fit well with the team. But yeah, otherwise, all unthinking praise be to the rockstar programmer.

<comment><USER8> No. You know, this is important stuff. I'm going to say something serious.

I worked on Wallstreet for 5 years and this is the exact same attitude reserved for Goldman Sachs types, and that pervades Wallstreet in general.

But do you know how most people get into GS? Because GS says, "I like the school on your resume and the friends you keep."

But do you know how most people get to go to that school and make those friends? Their parents. Their parents move to Westchester, living next to other well-to-dos, and then send their kids off to exclusive colleges and grad, very often on the basis of letters of recommendation from neighbors.

Yes, many of these students will be smart and well educated. But they have almost without exception bought into and willing, consciously or not, to perpetuate the system that provided them their privileged place in our society.

This the polar opposite of what Silicone Valley was supposed to be. But it's not turning out that way. Sadly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Having gone through similar experiences as an fellow undergrad @ waterloo ('14), I wish I had read this back when I was in first year.

"During your interview, your interviewer is likely to be testing the limits of your ability, and not just whether you meet a certain bar. Naturally, they will pick a problem that they think they know better than you do. If they stump you, or point your mistakes, the way you react is likely more important than the fact that you made a mistake. "

I couldn't have said it better.

<comment><USER10> My last interview at Google .. the interviewer behaved like a prick. His attitude was .. oh .. u have a PhD ... let me show you how much smarter I am than you. This was very clear from the first 2 minutes of the interview. What is funny is that the area I was interviewing for is my forte and Google isn't leading there. Anyways .. it pissed me off so bad that I am saying no to future interviews. Life is too short.

<comment><USER11> I've been interviewed by "bar raisers" who apparently have the goal of insulting you.

One kept asking me the question incorrectly. Mostly because I was baffled, afterwards I googled the question. Ah, correct answer was "Naive Bayesian Classifier", like used for spam filters. Of course. Nothing about the job or my resume was related to spam filters.

After much grilling, another ultimately told me that my extensible grammar that handles many dialects of SQL was trivial, because ANTLR did all the work. Unfortunately, I shot back "Ya, and my C compiler writes all my code for me."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _> the interviewer asked "What is your favourite language?". My head wasn't in the right place at the time, and I said "Latin", and I went on to describe why I think Latin is such an interesting language._

Hire this man. Stat.

<comment><USER13> This is the only correct answer if you wanted to work as a programmer at the British Civil Service. This is why GCHQ can never hire anyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My recommendation for preparing for tech interviews at the big tech companies is to answer as many questions as you can from here:

[http://www.programcreek.com/2012/11/top-10-algorithms-for- co...](http://www.programcreek.com/2012/11/top-10-algorithms-for-coding- interview/)

Use coderpad.io to write code for practice passing the phone screen.

<comment><USER15> My recommendation is to write a polite reply saying why these are a waste of time and why you won't be doing it, and ask them if they are still interested in interviewing.

<comment><USER2> I actually did that a few times, most of them run away from me. I said I don't have patience to do linked lists, determine if 4 points form a square type of questions, etc, as that does not prove anything. It is easy to game the system to pass these questions, but then most people that passes writes the most horrible un-maintainable code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My favorite is the ONANDA interview: the first time they ask about cycles in linked list and he tanks completely... then the next year he tries again, they ask the exact same question and he aces it.

So the trick to a good interview is... know the questions in advance so you can google them beforehand?

<comment><USER17> I'd say that this is kinda okay - if they'd asked him the same question, and he hadn't improved, it would've shown that he doesn't have much in the way of curiosity / doesn't want to improve.

<comment><USER18> But they've just wasted 1 year. They should have tried to figure out if he has the required curiosity in the first interview itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow. That seems like a _lot_ of work to get a software job. This guy seems pretty knowledgeable too. Has it always been this hard to get a job as a programmer, or is this just a symptom of the times?

<comment><USER20> No, the process is horrendous, especially for the competitive companies. Just look at Google's process: talk with recruiter, 1-2 phone screens, 5 on-site interviews, and then a couple phone calls with teams. All before you get an offer. Absolute nonsense.

<comment><USER21> A friend of mine interviewed with Google up here in Boston. Got flown out 4 times because of blizzards closing the office before they just flew her out to Mountain View all before telling her that they weren't going to give her an offer because none of the teams had space.

<comment><USER22> I think that's the worst part about Google's hiring practices. You nail the 5 interviews, pass the hiring committee, the executive committee, talk to teams and then someone finally tells you "we don't have any position for you, sorry". A very standardized process isn't always a good thing, not everyone is an interchangeable cog, fresh out of college.

<comment><USER23> I think this is unusual for Google though. I'm not saying it can't happen but I don't think this is the common case.

<comment><USER22> True, their hiring process is data driven (like everything else) so it must be rare.

But it's not the first time I hear such story and I'm sure it must leave a pretty bad taste in your mouth. Nothing similar happens in Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple... AFAIK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Well I just reading about Jan Kuam and how he was rejected at Twitter and Facebook and then founded WhatsApp. And came over here to see interviews stories. I guess the process is not that great. I have interviewed with a few big companies myself including Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! and must say that sometimes the result of interview depends upon who is interviewing you. So I guess the lesson here is to keep giving interviews till you find(or make) the job that you want.

</comment><comment><USER25> > I will claim that startups (say less than 20 employees) are more likely to > be seeking talent

I've always had the impression that start ups are looking for skill because they can't afford to pay someone while he/she ramps up on the technologies used.

</comment><comment><USER26> I am 42 years old and own and manage a successful bootstrapped online business. I "grew up" in an IBM community, going from IBMer, then the business partner community, and I haven't been on half this many interviews in my entire career.

</comment><comment><USER27> I love the comment about being prepared for many types of interviewers.

I had an on-campus interview with Microsoft last year for a pm internship. The interviewer immediately said, "your resume says you know F#, implement xyz algorithm with this function signature." He had a thick Russian accent and a mean face. Normally I would have had no problem answering, but I was caught off guard and panicked. Its good to be prepared for that kind of unusual circumstance and I will be next time.

He ended the interview with 'Maybe try again next year.' Ouch.

</comment><comment><USER23> The author brought up some very valuable points I thought which aren't often talked about. Namely whether the requirements are skill based vs talent based and the time horizon of the employment. They also have a good sense of humor. This was a good read.

</comment><comment><USER28> As an incoming CS student who is terrified of interviewing this is an absolute treasure-trove. But this also makes me wonder--should I forego interviewing until after having taken an algorithms and data structures course?

<comment><USER29> Yes. Do the course first.

<comment><USER30> Or read a book and implement and understand the basics. You don't necessarily need a course to learn algorithms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> For the caliber of companies on this list, overall that's a really shitty experience.

The takeaway: treat interview prep as simply learning the realm of possible questions. (Sounds impossible, but not really.) Rote memorization FTW!

</comment><comment><USER32> The author is a great writer and in addition to this article, I also enjoyed his biographical write up of his time at the University of Waterloo and his co-op terms:

[http://www.robertelder.ca/my-uw-journey/](http://www.robertelder.ca/my-uw- journey/)

I like his anecdotal style, punctuated with his perspectives. He's quite humble, despite clearly being quite smart (in my estimation) and hard-working. I particularly liked his section on Interviews.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is very well written. Thank you very nuch on this! I will read it few more times and write thinga down in my notebook as a reminder!

</comment><comment><USER34> My own story of how I got hired at Amazon, back in 2008: [http://brunozzi.com/2008/05/22/how-i-got-hired-by- amazoncom/](http://brunozzi.com/2008/05/22/how-i-got-hired-by-amazoncom/)</comment>


Corporate takeover defense strategies related to Tesla going private - <AUTHOR> https://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/08/corporate-takeover-defense.asp <comment><AUTHOR> I found this article interesting. There is a lot in the article I found to be related to Tesla for example:

"If management wishes to protect shareholders from a "dinosaur" with an outdated business model or core product, the correct stance may be to defend the company to the end. Such an acquirer, whose own growth is in decline, would bleed the acquired company and dilute shareholder value."

And many other points in there are similar.

If you are unfamiliar with what a hostile takeover bid is you can read here: [https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hostile-takeover- bid.as...](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hostile-takeover-bid.asp)</comment>


Reddit.com is doing SQLi in its Server HTTP header - <AUTHOR> http://monosnap.com/image/JLubWhA3RuXCZ8kqotQ6SmM8U

<comment><USER2> An enormous screenshot of a browser window with the Network tab open in the bottom is hardly a sensible way of communicating the content of a few bytes of HTTP header.

        $ curl -I "http://www.reddit.com/"
        HTTP/1.1 200 OK
        Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
        Server: '; DROP TABLE servertypes; --
        Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2013 13:35:50 GMT
        Connection: keep-alive

<comment><AUTHOR> A link to a pastebin (the only alternative that comes to my mind) would have required more verification effort, I guessed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Old discussion regarding the same: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1352858>

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://xkcd.com/327/>

</comment><comment><USER5> It's a joke.</comment>


Driving for Uber and Lyft - <AUTHOR> http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2017/11/22/mr-money-mustache-uber-driver/ <comment><USER2> This article rests on the premise that operating a car costs a fixed 50 cents a mile. But several uber drivers have told me the economics work out pretty well for them because they already need their cars, so IMO using 50 cents a mile is an unfair assumption.

Looking at the operating cost of a car is complicated with many variables, but the standard 50 cent estimate is NOT a marginal cost, i.e. you don't actually spend an extra 50 cents to drive a mile. The annual AAA driving costs brochure puts the per mile cost (gas + maintenance) at 14 cents a mile for a small sedan, and 17 cents for a big sedan, plus ~3 cents a mile for depreciation (see "decreased depreciation"). Moving from 50 cents to 20 cents a mile brings his estimate pay from 7 dollars an hour to 12.40.

Brochure link: [http://exchange.aaa.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/08/17-0013_Y...](http://exchange.aaa.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/08/17-0013_Your-Driving-Costs-Brochure-2017-FNL-CX-1.pdf)

edit: to be clear this math is if you already own a car and are driving on off-times for additional income, which (in my experience) is what a large % of uber/lyft drivers do. It's also what Mr. Mustache was doing in his test.

<comment><USER3> Quick and dirty math. Let's say a new Kia Soul has 200K miles of useful (as an uber car) and costs $20K USD. The driver drives 2500 miles per month, getting 25 miles per gallon $4/gallon. Insurance is $100/month. And every 5000 miles there's $100 of maintenance to do.

20,000 USD / 200,000 miles - 10 cents per mile.

200,000 miles / 25 mpg = 8000 gallons

8000 gallons * $4/gallon = $32,000

$32,000 USD / 200,000 = 16 cents per mile

200,000 miles / 2500 miles/month = 80 months

80 months * 100 insurance/month = $8000

$8,000 / 200,000 miles = 4 cents per mile

(200,000 miles / 5000 miles) * $100 maintenance = $4000

$8000 maintenance / 200,000 miles = 2 cents per mile

10 + 16 + 4 + 2 = 32 cents per mile.

That's my best guess while typing on my phone in a Chipotle. 32 cents sounds like best case, so 50 cents seems like a conservative & realistic plan. Cars have ways of eating ones money in expected ways, and I didn't account for costs associated with driving for Uber/Lyft, such as needing a good cell phone plan, self employment taxes, etc. Did I make any math errors? Anyone wanna tweak those numbers to be more realistic?

<comment><USER4> Gas is not that expensive in most parts of the country. It's been a while since it hit $3/gallon where I live. That portion likely should be 10-12 cents/mile.

Maintenance/repairs is always hard to predict...

<comment><USER3> True. Gas prices can be spikey, and a few years ago I was paying over $5/gallon, so I went up a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So in a way driving Uber is like taking a loan from your future self. You have a car and need money. Uber gives you good gross pay. 5 years down the road when you have to sell or repair your car, that's when you have to pay up for all the wear and tear.

It's really a shame to see who gets rich off this. As a rider, these services are incredibly convenient. But I wish I wasn't basically relying on unpaid labor.

<comment><USER6> Something I don't think people really think about in the Uber equation. Driving also has a massively higher risk of dying than sitting on the couch, so it's part loan part Russian roulette.

It's not just traffic, Taxi drivers have double the risk of being murdered as cops, without any of the benefits. [http://www.syracuse.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/01/by_the_num...](http://www.syracuse.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/01/by_the_numbers_job_with_the_number_1_murder_rate_taxi_drivers.html)

<comment><USER7> When it comes to finances, people have a shockingly hard time figuring out the true cost of things. I've seen this a lot with things such as driving and income taxes. As he mentions, this informational asymmetry works to Uber/Lyft's advantage, so I doubt we will see any changes from them.

<comment><USER8> Can you explain what people confuse about income taxes?

<comment><USER7> In my experience the confusion surrounds 2 things. How brackets and deductions work. Many people don't understand that once your income goes into a higher bracket, you are only taxed at that higher bracket for the income that pushes you into it. For deductions, I've met a lot of people who think that it works essentially as a credit, rather than just saving you your tax rate on that portion.

<comment><USER9> It's wording like that that's confusing. Once your income goes into a higher bracket, you are only taxed at that higher bracket for the income _that falls within that new bracket._ The income that _pushed_ you into that bracket is taxed the same way.

(and AGI does affect deduction phase-outs so there's that complication...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There are two major problems with the sharing economy that most people don't mention when they write articles about it.

First, the overwhelming majority of gigs don't teach you any marketable skills whatsoever. So over the course of your contracting, you may as well be unemployed. This hurts most people's chances of finding gainful employment, and ends up being a massive hidden cost above and beyond car maintenance and similar expenses directly related to running the gigs.

Second, because you make so little, you also save very little, if any, for retirement. Since saving for retirement is all about compound interest, people who run gigs while young instead of looking for full-time employment are in for lots of pain and discomfort later in life. In fact I suspect we're witnessing the creation of yet another underclass, consisting of people who will probably have to work until they die. Lots of Baby Boomers (who were unfortunate and/or made poor choices earlier in life) are already in this situation and it will only get worse.

As an aside, one thing I don't get about the gig economy is how the workers can afford health insurance. I assume most don't have any, or they are on their parents or spouses' plans because even the cheapest plans are really expensive and I doubt your average Uber driver can afford them.

<comment><USER11> 1\. They're young so they go without or buy the cheapest possible one.

2\. On their parents' plan

3\. Don't make enough and get huge subsidies from the marketplace.

Retirement and lack of any marketable skills is the bigger issue, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> $0.50 of vehicle costs per mile does not compute. If you're spending $30 a day on gas and driving 250 miles, you can just rent a car for the week at a daily rate of $30 or less, and come out with $60/day in costs rather than his stated $125, which makes the whole thing quite a bit more profitable. Probably profitable enough that my poor as shit unskilled and unemployed college self would have been better off doing that than tutoring during the summers.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER13> ~$.50 a mile isn't a made up number, it's what the federal government has calculated as the cost of driving for business purposes. Actual value is 53.5 cents a mile.

[https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/2017-standard-mileage-rates- for...](https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/2017-standard-mileage-rates-for-business- and-medical-and-moving-announced)

Students are usually under 25 thus largely are unallowed to rent cars.

I doubt using a rental car for this type of business is allowed under the terms of a rental contract or under Uber's rules.

Insurance isn't free.

<comment><USER14> I don't think it's necessarily appropriate to use that figure to calculate your actual costs as an Uber driver, especially if you're not driving full- time. It seems like the 53 cent figure is amortizing the entire cost of the vehicle, fuel, and maintenance over its entire lifetime. If you're in college and just drive for Uber on occasional weekends, it doesn't make sense to include all of the fixed costs of the vehicle in your profit calculations. Note that the IRS figure for variable costs per mile is 17 cents.

<comment><USER13> I don't necessarily disagree with you but I certainly couldn't afford an "Uber eligible" car when I was in college. Are college students overspending on cars just to drive for Uber?

<comment><USER15> Is it feasible to pass their inspection in a borrowed car and actually drive something else?

<comment><USER13> That would be a terrible idea. It obviously violates Uber's driver's agreement so you risk getting kicked off the platform or at the very least confusing your passengers who are looking for a red ford focus and you're driving a white Chevy Cavalier. Not only that but if you get into an accident with a rider you're going to be in a world of hurt. Uber's insurance company would certainly deny the claim and so would yours, assuming your insurance policy covered ride sharing in the first place.

<comment><USER15> > It obviously violates Uber's driver's agreement

As if Uber is a poster child for following rules and regulations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> TL;DR: What everybody expects: You basically don't make money if you really calculate the whole cost package.

I honestly believe that it must be lower than $5/hour so I'd say even MMM might've forgotten something.

<comment><USER17> I think he's actually wrong.

It's definitely higher than marginal $5/hour, it's just not $5 net profit per hour. You take into account the fixed costs of owning and maintenance on the vehicle (which don't entirely vary directly with mileage driven) and it becomes a smart economic choice to drive Uber even if you're "losing money" each hour - because your marginal gross profit is higher than if you were sitting on the couch.

<comment><USER18> I think you're right, and the article's claim that the drivers' ignorance is being taken advantage of is an unpleasant thing to say. It assumes that the drivers are financially naive, when in fact there are many legitimate reasons why they choose to drive.

Many of them are supplementing their income in between other gigs, or enjoy driving more than other jobs available to them. Others have done well out of the referral, bonus schemes and tips that the author mentions. There are various other factors and incentives which the author does not seem to have taken into account. Much as I dislike the corporate practices of Uber, implying that the drivers are miscalculating the cost of driving and are therefore ignorant is a smug overgeneralisation.

<comment><USER13> That's Mister Money Mustache's writing style. I don't care too much for him myself either but he writes for his audience.

<comment><USER19> I liked when he talked about being a retiree, but also about being able to work like an executive from the back of a car to the airport.

<comment><USER13> [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/13/mr-money- mustache-...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/13/mr-money-mustache-vs- the-internet-retirement-police/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think one of the reasons that he writes this is that cash in the hand is extremely appealing if you are not in a good economic situation.

For instance, I have some savings, so I can keep the wolf from the door, and I have friends and family so I always have a place to stay and at least something to eat. I won't freeze or I won't starve.

Cash on the barrel every night is extraordinarily appealing to those who have to buy antibiotics for their kids right away, or who have to make the rent that day.

I've never driven Uber, but I am given to believe that they settle up debts every day. Just like why waiters/bartenders like doing what they do. They get a fistfull of cash every day.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, they offer instant cash out: [https://www.uber.com/info/instant- pay/](https://www.uber.com/info/instant-pay/)

Your post was a good one, highlighting the problems the "unbanked" / "uncredited" face that something like Uber is an antitode for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've used Uber and Lyft a lot in the last ~4 years, and I've realized that there are essentially two different types of drivers: professional, full-time drivers who hyperoptimize, and part-time/after-hours drivers that do it to pull in a little bit of extra cash. The hypothetical driver best represented by this article is of the second type, and no doubt that working this way doesn't really make you a good hourly wage, especially after the hidden costs mentioned.

I'd like to see an analysis of profitability for drivers in the first category. I have met drivers who specifically bought Priuses to drive for Uber/Lyft because of the 50+ mpg and low-ish maintenance costs - just look at the ride-sharing section of the SEA-TAC parking garage and you'll know what I mean. Speaking with this sort of driver, they seem to have done the math on maximizing return based on surge pricing (i.e. driving in the city Friday/Saturday 7pm-2am), practice driving that maintain vehicle quality and fuel efficiency, and are extremely time-efficient in parts of the ride that are within their control.

If even this sort of driver can't make a good wage, then the system is certainly unsustainable. But if it's possible to make a good wage in this fashion, I hesitate to pass judgment before seeing a breakdown of the distribution of hourly earnings across all drivers.

<comment><USER23> I had a lyft driver tell me that there was a MPG requirement to pick up passengers at SEA-TAC, which is confirmed by the Lyft web site:

"the Port of Seattle will only allow Lyft vehicles with a blended MPG rating of 40 or higher to pick up passengers at Sea-Tac."

[https://help.lyft.com/hc/en- us/articles/217879848-Washington...](https://help.lyft.com/hc/en- us/articles/217879848-Washington-airport-information-for-drivers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> " _...but I have seen bonuses pop up on my app offering between $100-$500 to refer other drivers._ "

Whoo hoo! Multilevel marketing!

" _Provide drivers with the details of where the person is going, or at least how long of a ride it is. Right now, Uber has all this incredibly useful information at the time of booking, but deliberately withholds it from the driver._ "

And have all drivers ignore assignments for short rides?

<comment><USER25> And fall into the exact same issue that people have brought up with cabs forever - they just won't go to some neighborhoods/pick up some groups of people. That's a very real selling point for ride share companies to people who live places or are members of groups that get discriminated against in that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is interesting. So why are there so many Uber/Lyft drivers? Is it because there is a glut of unused cars in America and they provide a way to monetize it?

That is, if you aren't actually paying for the car's costs, then it IS your profit.

<comment><USER13> Because

1) People don't understand the true costs of ownership and driving and think they are yielding the entire cost of the fair.

Or

2) They enjoy driving, getting paid for it is a bonus.

Or

3) They don't/can't have "regular employment" for whatever reason and want to make some money in their spare time, even if it's just a little. Like some in college who only works during breaks or weeks when the courseload is smaller.

Or

4) Someone who is employed but only drives when they are bored on the weekends rather than watching Netflix or going to the pub.

Of course #3 becomes self perpetuating at scale.

For #1 - story time: I had already decided I was going to buy a new car, which car I would buy, and that I was going to finance it. I was trying to squeeze another year out of my current car first tho. My sister was absolutely baffled by this and couldn't understand that this would save me money. No matter how much I tried to explain it she didn't "get" it.

From TFA: >"Imagine developing a company specifically to take advantage of people's ignorance of how expensive it really is to drive their own car. What would this company look like?" (the answer is of course that it would look like very much like Uber or any other ridesharing company)

<comment><USER26> But my question is how people live in the Bay Area on $5 an hour. Where is the difference coming from? Debt, parents, unused car etc.?

<comment><USER27> They don't live there, they just come there to drive. [http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/When-Their-Shifts- End...](http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/When-Their-Shifts-End-Uber- Drivers-Set-Up-Camp-10876374.php)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One more thing.

Uber is pouring huge amounts of money into this business. And it's not profitable.

I shudder to think what will happen when all the subsidies are removed. If you don't have any assets besides a clean driver's license and a recent car, you got nothing coming.

<comment><USER28> I'm not sure they can realistically cut what the drivers are earning by much. What seems more likely is that fares rise to $2-3 per mile (or whatever number), which puts them more in line with traditional cabs, and let ridership fall where it may.

<comment><USER20> Maybe that matters psychologically, but not in bottom lines.

Drivers might be fooled for a bit, but once the fares rise, I'll be willing to bet the driver network collapses. They're not that stupid. If slinging burgers is more lucrative than driving Uber, they'll be slinging burgers.

<comment><USER28> That's fair. Less work for no more money on a per-ride basis. The driver network will certainly decrease. Not clear what the overall dynamics look like. I do think that prices need to get to breakeven in the fairly near future and self-driving isn't going to make a difference in an interesting time horizon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> the author makes the implicit assumption that someone can find a better way to make money and that driving for uber comes with a large opportunity cost, but that is not always the case. $5/hour driving pays more than an hour watching TV ding nothing.

</comment><comment><USER30> A friend of mine is about to start delivering/shopping for Shipt, I'd like to see a similar breakdown.

Heck, I'd like to see what pizza delivery drivers costs are as well.

</comment><comment><USER31> "Imagine developing a company specifically to take advantage of people's ignorance of how expensive it really is to drive their own car. What would this company look like? "

This has always been my #1 complaint about Uber.

Their business model is like payday loans. It's not that 'it . can only work' like this - but given human nature and competitiveness - 'it will effectively work' like this.

Too many drivers will forgo the 'wear and tear' calculation and drive the price down.

It has an effect much like migrant labour (nothing to do with the 'migrant' aspect per sey - just that they are paid under minimum wage) - once a few farms start doing it - the rest of the farms are forced to follow suit or go out of business.

It's just bad for everyone.

I wish there were a way to make sure that drivers were comped a min gas + wear and tear + servicing and THEN wages - and if that was not above min. wage then Uber would have to up the comp.

<comment><USER21> Driving full time for Uber costs $214 a week in maintenance and depreciation costs (minus Hertz' profit): [https://www.hertz.com/rentacar/misc/index.jsp?targetPage=Ube...](https://www.hertz.com/rentacar/misc/index.jsp?targetPage=UberFAQs.jsp)

That is way less than the 50 cents a mile that the author cited.

Agree Uber could calculate that and provide that info to drivers, which would be useful.

<comment><USER31> Surely it's below 50 cents a mile ... but it's 'something' an whatever it is, I suggest that drivers will delay the costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Interesting. So they are not only hurting the entire society by weakening the rule of law (google "greyball") but their drivers as well. Wonderful company.</comment>


What It's Like To Be In Entrepreneurial Hiatus - <AUTHOR> http://cemagnifique.com/2011/08/12/what-its-like-to-be-in-entrepreneurial-hiatus/ <comment> james-fend I'd rather be stressed out and thinking all the time on what to do next than do nothing and 'waste' my life...</comment>


Show HN: Web3anywhere: write and run web3 code from the browser - <AUTHOR> https://web3anywhere.herokuapp.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, I want to share with you a simple webapp I built to write, host, run web3 code from the browser. As I started learning Solidity and playing with some of the existing protocols (for example uniswap or compound) I felt the need an easier way to experiment with web3, which didn't require starting a local server/ truffle/ ganache etc. The tool allows you to write javascript on the fly and call any smart contract function directly from the browser.

To get started, just copy/paste 1) the contract address and 2) the ABI of the smart contract you want to interact with, then click on "Start interacting" – it will ask you to connect with MetaMask. If you want to start with an example, click on "Example: interact with Uniswap", it will load up the Uniswap contract so you can play with it. Next, you'll be able to write code in the editor and run it live. For now the tool works with contracts in mainnet only for now, but I'm thinking to add testsnets too.

I built this as a side project for myself and I hope you will find it useful too. It's currently in beta and pretty bare bone, but I'd like to expand it if people are interested. If you decide to give it a spin and have any feedback I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[https://web3anywhere.herokuapp.com](https://web3anywhere.herokuapp.com)

<comment><USER3> Hi, trying to view the site on my Android phone w/Opera & Chrome; when holding it vertically it just shows the background and upper bar, but rotating the phone horizonal allows you to see the text "Welcome to [...]"

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm sorry about this, thanks for spotting this. It should now be fixed - <USER2> tried from my iphone with Opera and it seems to work ok now. Have you been you using web3 for projects?</comment></comment></comment>


10 Great Games Released in 2016 on Linux - <AUTHOR> http://boilingsteam.com/our-2016-linux-game-picks/ <comment><USER2> Check out hyperlight drifter</comment>


8 Mindblowing Technologies from CES 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupceo.co.za/2012/01/14/mindblowing-technology-ces-2012/ <comment><USER2> As I watched the demo videos, what I imagined was a veritable army of psychotic individuals, each thinking they were a reporter, each armed with a plastic microphone, wandering from booth to booth to record their two minute impression.

On the other hand, the Samsung Kitchen Window is nice, but really seems impractical for most kitchen windows that are usually 18" or more behind a counter. The Samsung Kitchen Window needs mounting somewhere else closer and/or to be integrated with a Kinect.

Personally, I would probably mount it on some sort of track so that it could swing around in the kitchen always being in line of sight. (Donations accepted to make this wish a reality.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Samsung's Smart Window is the most useless thing I've seen in a long while. Mindblown by the fact that someone would devise and actually implement window blinds for a computer screen...

<comment><USER4> Perhaps I misunderstood, but I don't think it's simply a computer screen. I think that was actually a piece of glass with widgets being displayed on it (and a mockup landscape to simulate the view). The speaker mentioned that it was "a one-way pane" so that no one on the other side could see the things that you were looking at.

<comment><USER3> I thought it could be that too, but the reporter called it "a computer screen"... Not sure.</comment></comment></comment>


Researchers harness DNA as the engine of super-efficient nanomachine - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2016-07-harness-dna-super-efficient-nanomachine.html <comment><USER2> I hope that such technology will work to the benefit. Maybe one day thousands of people will be safe because of this machine. Thinking about human size manipulation. How far away from it do you think we are?</comment>


Stephen Hawking says there is no theory of everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/09/stephen-hawking-says-theres-no-theory-of-everything.html

<comment><USER2> Well, Gene Ray's going to be mad to hear that there's no theory of everything.</comment>


It's Dark in the Box (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://www.josephpalmer.com/view/box.shtml

<comment><AUTHOR> The post about the revamped Amiga made me think of this. I'm a hardware nerd as well, but ultimately, hardware is a means to an end, isn't it?</comment>


What it means to be a developer is changing - <AUTHOR> https://vicki.substack.com/p/taking-the-shine-off-the-apple-and <comment><USER2> A lot of sterotyping buzzword dropping. Looks like someone scrapped hn comments and have summarized them into some analysis of where we are and going.

It reminds me of reading magazines about music (like rolling stones). Abusing adjectives limits in english peppered along with the surface level traveling common timeline points that when a number of words are hit they reach a premature conclusion and the reader is left wondering what they even read feeling less informed.

"They all now have cool laptop stickers, go to conferences, and are all legally required to wear nice glasses. (Guilty, guilty, and guilty, btw.)"

<comment><USER3> I saw "cool" developers in nice glasses hacking on sticker-encrusted laptops at conferences as a discrete subset back in 2007 or earlier. When was this written?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is such an incoherent rant about a tiny fraction of history of software industry. Being a developer was always being in a constant flux. The punch card developers were a different breed from the mainframe programmers (mostly women BTW). The age of minicomputers, DOS/Amiga revolution etc were uniquely different from it's preceding conventions. It goes on and will continue it's flux.

If the author had peered past the software industry prior to the advent of HN/reddit, it would've been clear to them.

<comment><USER5> I agree, as a non-SV-based dev, it seems to me that the author can't see past their own bubble

<comment><USER6> I used to be an SF dev and honestly, the bubble is almost impossible to see past. I can't even describe it, like a combination of hyper-competitiveness and forced social norms in tech that make you blind to anything but the way that we do it in SF. There's like an attitude of "we have it better than anyone else" in a lot of people I meet.

Sometimes I like to mess around and tell them about programming consultants that chill out in Utah and make 500k/yr working maybe half the year (we're really insecure about salary up here) and see an existential crisis fly cross my friend's faces, it's priceless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The mistake this article does, is presume developers care about the consequences of what they co-create for huge international corporations. Clearly, judging from HN posts, they do not. Those who do, won't stay in those jobs (myself included).

Now, it was a boring read and more about disappointment in politics and corporate promises, so kind of a catch-up of what has been warned about since late 90's and introduction of Facebook. Maybe not many today relate to the reference to "Brave New World", aside from HBO shows, ironically also provided by huge international corporations (not worth the watch IMHO).

It's simply not what developers care about, and that's truly sad and horrifying, but not surprising in the least. It's just not what professionals are paid to care about, or even relevant to the hobby-side of programming.

</comment><comment><USER8> >where it has become not only cool, but sexy and desirable to be a developer.

developers make a lot of money in comparison to society at large, and it is one of the few occupations relatively open to people not already equipped with all the advantages of a middle class lifestyle. This is the fundamental underpinning of the rest.

<comment><USER9> Right. Also you don't need fancy certificates or liscenes to become developer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A fair portion of this reads like someone recapitulating TechCrunch hype/gossip articles from the early/mid 2010s. "Hyper-orgiastic" Silicon Valley? Maybe for some people, but not for most.

</comment><comment><USER11> I worked for company that created one of top 10 crypto currencies.

We were fully remote scaterred around the globe. On january 2018 (crypto peak) we organized company meeting to get together. Most employees shared rooms to reduce cost.

Dont believe everything you read in newspapers.

<comment><USER12> > top 10 crypto currencies

I don't mean any offence to you or your former employer, and assume it's not so dear to you you'll take it as such, but isn't that really scraping the barrel? The whole sector is really still at the 'proving its relevance' stage, and there are... One, maybe two currencies (BTC, maybe ETH) that people outside it have heard of?

It's like saying you used to work at one of the top 10 flying car R&D centres, isn't it?

<comment><USER13> On the other hand huge amounts of dumb vc money went into blockchain related companies. I was seeing a lot of top dollar points job ads looking for block chain experience.

Also its not fair to say this is a flying car. The crypto, even the less known ones, are widely used in various illegal markets from drugs to tax evasion. Shame about the lack of other applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> All that Silicon Valley chick / bro culture was never what programming meant to me.

<comment><USER6> I feel you, it was just fun to do, where did all the extra stuff come from?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> People writing about culture in and around software development are like movies "based on a true story". That is to say: might as well be pure fiction.

It attaches reason and meaning to actions for the purpose of presenting a compelling drama, not for accurate portrayal. It extrapolates from tiny sample sizes and makes blanket statements. There were radically different development subcultures across two buildings set 500 ft away from eachother within one company I worked at. And this washes away the very obvious subcultures based on geography, business domain, tools used by a team, and how much time you spend on Twitter.

It elides parts of culture that aren't easy to write about. Of which there are many flavors: social truths that we understand deeply but do not speak about in polite company, or conflict with the authors thesis, or innocent facts that also happen to carry weight for unfavorable political opinions.

But the end result masquerades as something more meaningful than a nice piece of fiction and creates a feedback loop. Participants in the culture can strongly disagree with the description, and still go on to adjust their behavior expecting that they might encounter it at their next job, their next client, or maybe even with their next hire. And it sets a frame of reference for the next commentator, who will be starting farther from the truth.

</comment><comment><USER16> Contrary to most people I found this an interesting opinion, if only because it centers so much on SV culture. For those of us working in other countries and in unglamorous companies it has always been a very different kind of culture. Typically SV pioneers new ideas and new ways of working, and then over the next 5 to 10 years this slowly permeates global programming culture, but watered down.

Covid has changed this dynamic because for once everything is changing everywhere all at once. I noticed two major changes already. The first thing was freelance work drying up, because new projects were put on hold. With most of the economic consequences (and bankruptcies) still to happen, this could go either way. Either the tech sector has a lot less work, with wages falling and everyone trying to get the security of a salaried position, or there is a boom of software with businesses trying to retool and freelance work coming back with a vengeance. The second thing is obviously the shift to WFH. This move could conclude with everyone being ordered back to the office (once vaccinated), or with structural WFH being a thing for always, and many if not most developers rarely seeing the inside of an office. I don't think anyone knows where it is headed, but the global impact of covid makes it that for the first time the changes to programming culture are likely to happen everywhere at once, instead of happening first in SV and then slowly rippling out. That levels the playing field, and it makes for interesting times.

</comment><comment><USER17> This reminds me of Friedman's book The World is Flat.

Best practices of remote work will spread. Eventually salaries will flatten as someone in a lower cost of living will be able to do the same job as someone in a higher cost of living.</comment>


Show HN: The app that will help you achieve your daily goals - <AUTHOR> http://www.checkmarkapplication.com/

<comment><USER2> Been using it for about a week now, it's definitely helped me focus on daily tasks

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks slick. Just downloaded. Looking forward to testing it out.

</comment><comment><USER4> Pretty sleek and easy. Downloaded and tryin it out.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks great and works great!</comment>


Ask HN: Do you send transactional emails using Gmail API? - <AUTHOR> So I find sending emails with services like mailchimp, mailgun, etc. very non-personal. So I've been using Gmail api to send emails. Wondering if others do the same. <comment><USER2> Instead of switching to Gmail I'd rather think about what exactly makes an email non-personal. For me, it's not about if the senders adress is "firstname.lastname@example.com" rather than "email@example.com" but rather what's written inside the mail. Mailgun etc. let you write just normal emails like you would do in gmail as well.

I think the annoying thing about those services is that they are mostly used for mass-mailing. It doesn't matter if you send the same email to thousands of people via gmail rather than anything else - it will still be a poorly customized email for the recipients.</comment>


France signs a five-year national deal with Elsevier - <AUTHOR> http://scoms.hypotheses.org/301 <comment><USER3> Genevieve Fioraso, French Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, had declared just 18 months ago:

"Au regard de l'importance des enjeux, sur les plans scientifique, économique et sociétal, le gouvernement français réaffirme son soutien au principe du libre accès à l'information scientifique."

Or

"Given the high stakes - scientific, economic and societal - the French government reaffirms its support for the principle of open access to scientific information."

Reference: [http://www.enseignementsup- recherche.gouv.fr/cid66992/discou...](http://www.enseignementsup- recherche.gouv.fr/cid66992/discours-de-genevieve-fioraso-lors-des-5e-journees- open-access.html)

Shame that she didn't follow through!

</comment><comment><USER4> As a Frenchman, this is a real disgrace.

I just don't get it. These editors offer no real added value (paper formatting and a website is not worth 172 Million a year), and we do nothing about it?

<comment><USER5> As an author, the added value is the name of the journal. The pedigree of the journals you have published in is one of the primary qualities that grant and hiring committees look at. The whole system is obviously a scam, but you have to play the game if you want a career in science.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is why we have to fight for the right Open Access model.

Most publishers offer "Gold Open Access", which is "authors pay" instead of "readers pay", and of course the price is decided by the publisher…

This is not what Open Access means, and it doesn't solve the main problems.

Diamond Open Access focuses on the real problems.

1- It should be free to publish, free to read, free to reuse. The Diamond Open Access model implies free licenses such as Creative Commons BY for articles and data.

2- Rather than being owned by publishers, the journals have to be owned by their editorial board, which itself has to be a legal entity of some sort. This would avoid problems such as prestige inertia which forces researcher to publish with asshole publishers: if the scientists actually running the journal own it, they could have switched to open access and/or to a different publishers when needed.

Apart from that, we of course have to fight against bibliometrics…

<comment><USER6> And where does the money come from?

<comment><AUTHOR> Instead of having each university pay millions each year to subscribe to privately owned journals, we use (a part of) this money to develop and maintain the necessary infrastructures (servers, software developers, librarians, …). The rest of the money could be used for additional research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if it'd be possible to short-circuit this process? It'd be difficult, but many states have public document laws. If the manuscript is written physically using state-university equipment, I'd hope there's a nexus for the public to get that document. To try this I'm thinking about submitting a request to my alma mater for one such document. The request might need to be massaged and resent a couple of times. At that point, what's preventing me from asking for say the top 100 papers that are cited on GScholar? Hacking the system in this way could be pretty interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, it should be checked by a lawyer, but it is entirely possible that the copyright transfer agreements that scientists sign when publishing in asshole-publisher owned journals have no legal value in France. The reason for that would be that: 1- the form is only signed by one party (the authors), 2- there is no counterparts to the copyright giveaway, and 3- the signature of a single authors is sufficient to give the consent of all the others, who may be from a different institution or even country.

<comment><USER8> Normally, scientists retain the copyright to their work, but sign an exclusive license to publish the work.

Often this license is based on the additional work done by the journal (minor proof-reading and formatting), that's why preprint servers always serve the unformatted version (or in the format of the preprint server).

For Science, for example: >Authors can immediately post the accepted work to their personal or institutional archive. >The accepted version is the paper that was accepted for publication by AAAS, including changes resulting from peer review, but prior to AAAS copyediting.)

Source for Science: [http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/contribinfo/prep/lice...](http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/contribinfo/prep/license.xhtml)

Same goes for Nature: >NPG does not require authors of original (primary) research papers to assign copyright of their published contributions. Authors grant NPG an exclusive licence to publish, in return for which they can reuse their papers in their future printed work without first requiring permission from the publisher of the journal.

[http://www.nature.com/authors/policies/license.html](http://www.nature.com/authors/policies/license.html)

<comment><USER9> I don't know that it is normal yet for authors to retain their copyrights. Certainly, Elsevier's policy is to require a copyright transfer unless the authors pay an open-access fee.

[http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and- re...](http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and- responsibilities)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While France signs with Elsevier, many scientists around the world have been protesting against Elsevier in a movement called "The Cost of Knowledge".

The Open Journal ([http://theoj.org](http://theoj.org)) is an example of doing open science well and efficiently. All the papers are hosted in arXiv, which means they are publicly accessible. And the review is performed using their own open source platform.

</comment><comment><USER11> Genevieve Fioraso, French Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, had declared just 18 months ago:

"Au regard de l'importance des enjeux, sur les plans scientifique, économique et sociétal, le gouvernement français réaffirme son soutien au principe du libre accès à l'information scientifique."

Or

"Given the high stakes - scientific, economic and societal - the French government reaffirms its support for the principle of open access to scientific information."

Reference: [http://www.enseignementsup- recherche.gouv.fr/cid66992/discou...](http://www.enseignementsup- recherche.gouv.fr/cid66992/discours-de-genevieve-fioraso-lors-des-5e-journees- open-access.html)

Shame that she didn't follow through!

</comment><comment><USER12> A solution would be for universities to host the journals. They can hire salaried staff for proof reading/marketing etc. Scientists can volunteer for peer review. The journal can be as selective as it wants. Once an article is accepted for publication, it's hosted on the university website.

The indirect costs from grants can cover the salaries of the admin staff - <USER2> very few staff are needed because the authors themselves can give the staff a good head start by using latex to prepare the manuscript.

Why can't this be done?

</comment><comment><USER13> Also relevant, an article from earlier this year: [http://www.bibbase.org/network/publication/poss-altmeyer- tho...](http://www.bibbase.org/network/publication/poss-altmeyer-thompson- jelier-academia20removingthepublishermiddlemanwhileretainingimpact-2014)

</comment><comment><USER14> WHY ARE THEY DOING THIS?! This is disgusting.

</comment><comment><USER15> What makes them think that Elsevier will be publishing _any_ scientific articles in 5 years from now?

<comment><USER16> Because it has survived for more than two centuries, publishes several hundred thousand scientific articles a year, and has huge profit margins? There are problems with the Elsevier-model of scientific publications, but longevity doesn't appear to be one of them.

<comment><USER17> I do not disagree with the gist of your argument, but Elsevier isn't centuries old. It was founded in 1880. Also, it only entered the scientific publishing business in 1933.

<comment><USER16> Today I learned, yet again, that I can't do simple subtraction. Thanks for the correction.

<comment><USER17> I thought you were thinking of the Elsevier family, who started printing in 1583 (the modern Elsevier company recycled the name; see [http://www.elsevier.com/about/history](http://www.elsevier.com/about/history))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Elsevier? Aren't they the bastards who hijacked scientific publishing? We should all boycott them.</comment>


Webmention: Simple web standard to notify any URL when mentioned across the web - <AUTHOR> https://webmention.net <comment><USER2> Also Microformats:

[http://microformats.org/](http://microformats.org/)

And micropub:

[https://indieweb.org/Micropub](https://indieweb.org/Micropub)

Webmention + microformats + micropub = distributed social comments, likes, reshares, etc, with blogs.

</comment><comment><USER3> 15+ years later, we will try to standardize something that's barely used anymore

> This is a similar "Linkback" mechanism to the ones of Refback, Trackback, > and Pingback. It uses a different protocol, though, and thus should be > discoverable through its own link relation type.

<comment><USER4> Pingbacks, during the WordPress glory era, where killed by spam. Everything that is unauthenticated or weakly authenticated messaging without centralised censors will turn to a spam channel. How do new protocols avoid this?

<comment><USER2> At minimum Webmention requires the originating site to be hosting content that actually references the mentioned page.

Spammers would then have to host the location where the spam is located, and then you can block them.

But, frankly, this isn't actually a solved problem yet. I'd imagine building a spam blocking engine on top of a service like webmention.io is an obvious next step if/when this becomes an issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I heard about indieweb I implemented h-entry stuff for my blog but half- way through doing webmentions I realized it sucked.

Webmentions requires receiving x-www-form-urlencoded data. Why they chose this convoluted and complexity increasing way is beyond me. Embedding (or encoding) it in the URL string itself would've been infinitely easier for everyone with no downsides. But no, with x-www-form-urlencoded variables you need to actually be doing some dynamic scripting to handle it. If not actually some script listening for that location/endpoint then at least a series of complex nginx directives and modules to get x-www-form-urlencoded logged with all the rest of the request. This additional complexity makes running a static website that supports indieweb standards like a tail wagging the dog in terms of the webmentions receiver's relation to the static http site.

microformats2 h-entry markup is cool though. Just using class names for html elements to make some info parsing "standardized".

<comment><USER6> Using a hosted service like webmention.herokuapp.com webmention.io or mention.tech is an option for a static site, or running your own instance of one of these (they're all open source).

<comment><USER5> Lets pretend this is an option and I'll stop hosting my website from home for the first time in 20 years to use someone else service.

How would you receive webmentions on one of these? It's two variables submitted as a POST as x-www-form-urlencoded data.

<comment><USER6> You point the rel=webmention at the service, and then show the webmentions client side with js. Webmention.herokuapp.com example at kevinmarks.com Mention.tech example at tumblelog.xyz

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 3 links to 3 docs all with the same title, so requires typing to save them. W3C "standards".. cough.</comment>