A Perl toolchain for building micro-services at scale - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.semantics3.com/2016/06/15/a-perl-toolchain-for-building-micro-services-at-scale/ <comment><USER2> I've just started tinkering with Mojolicious, after spending some time playing with a variety of other frameworks in other languages (I'm starting a new web project, and wanted to make an informed decision about how to build it). Mojolicious gets so many things right in such a tiny package, I'm surprised more folks aren't using it or talking about it.

The real-time support is awesome; setting up Websockets is stupidly simple; coding non-blocking services is, I think, easier (at least more concise) than in Node.js (though it uses a similar callback model); testing is just perfect (Mojo has a user agent and DOM support, so you can write super concise tests for web services); building multiple outputs (like HTML for humans and JSON for API) for the same routes is excellent. So far, none of the frameworks I've looked at has been as concise or as...neat, I think might be the right word. So many things about it have me saying, "Now, why didn't someone think of that earlier?"

It's pretty tightly focused on just doing a few things really well, so it's not like a Rails, or even Django, experience...you have to make your own decisions about what ORM to use (or not to use an ORM), front end (though because it is agnostic about front end, you can use whatever you like pretty readily...so, React/Redux, Angular, whatever), and even nitty gritty stuff like authentication and accounts and such. I occasionally find myself wishing it had a _little_ more batteries included, but mostly I like that it doesn't take days of doc/code spelunking to grasp the whole system.

Anyway, I'm not a Perl fanatic, though I like the language OK; especially in recent versions. So many little warts have gone away in recent years. But, the web service ecosystem in Perl is surprisingly strong and modern, given how unpopular it seems to have been in recent years. It's been a while since I really dug into what goes into building a new Perl system, and a lot of cool stuff has been completely off my radar. Mojolicious, in particular, is one of those things.

<comment><USER3> > what ORM to use (or not to use an ORM)

do you have something to recommend ?

used Rose::DB in the past, then I discovered SQLAlchemy and it's difficult to look back...

<comment><USER4> 1 point by ashimema 0 minutes ago | edit | delete

Love DBIx::Class.. but it's not a good/perfect fit for Mojolicious by a long way.. it's blocking by nature and thus doesn't play too nicely if your aiming to write a non-blocking mojo app. reply

<comment><USER5> For the few queries where you need async (most should be fast enough in the first place), there's no reason you can't use $rs->as_query to get hold of the SQL and bind values and then feed those into Mojo::Pg.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice post! At my most recent job, we used perl daily for processing scripts and many other functions. After initially having similar thoughts about it being "obsolete" and a "dinosaur", I quickly realized how resilient and flexible the language is (I know the flexibility can come with some criticism).

We investigated a lot of other options (go & python specifically) when building new projects, but found that perl was the best solution. It's flexibility allowed us to develop a custom and durable solution that surpassed our expectations.

We ran into some environment/portability issues and resorted to using docker, carton, and gitlab CI to solve these problems. It is incredible how reliable and easy it became to modify and deploy code to a variety of systems (new or old).

<comment><USER7> "After initially having similar thoughts about it being "obsolete" and a "dinosaur", I quickly realized how resilient and flexible the language is (I know the flexibility can come with some criticism)."

Not obsolete - can affirm. All of the Oh By[1] back end is written in perl, circa 2016. We use apache + mod_perl and are very happy with this environment ... just like we were in 1998.

[1] [https://0x.co](https://0x.co)

<comment><USER8> Any thoughts about switching to plack? It seems like maybe you could get some low effort performance/developer experience improvements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I fully resonate with this article! For the last few years I've been trying to do the same thing and in the last 2 years I can say that we successfuly managed to create a similar thing using Perl. More than this we are developing all our web services with Mojolicious we are running them on top of Mesos using Docker. We use Module::Build for packaging the app and to be honest I find it more reliable than using any other tools. I'm gald to see that there's somone else who believes in Perl's abilities to deliver a modern application.

<comment><USER10> In much the same way that PHP has a reputation for being "bad", Perl has a reputation (ill-deservedly!) for being line-noise, or obsolete.

I've continued to be productive by writing applications, microservices, and websites in Perl. Though these days it seems few people care to hear about the details as it isn't the flavour of the day.

Mojolicious is cool, although I've usually stuck with Dancer instead (which is itself a clone of Ruby's sinatra).

<comment><USER11> I think the fastest way to convince yourself that Perl is obsolete is to try to hire for good Perl programmers. It's a fine language if you treat it well, but it's going the way of COBOL.

<comment><USER12> Perl programmer here of 17 years. I'm happy to look into new projects.

<comment><USER8> I don't have nearly justinator's experience, about a year of heavy Perl use, but I would love to get back into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A key component of the network side of our ([https://scalableinformatics.com](https://scalableinformatics.com)) SIOS layer is handled by Mojolicious running on Perl. Has been for a while (about 5 years).

I've taken some steps to do a re-implementation in node, but the perl version "just works" with very little fuss, under fairly heavy load, and is pretty easy to debug when I need to.

This is very much a microservice: tailored PXE environments as a service based upon a database, and the booting mac address as a key. A programmatic/database-based backend to a PXE server. It allows us to boot effectively anything that is bootable by modern hardware, from Linux, Windows, SmartOS/OpenSolaris, through FreeDOS, and other more esoteric systems. A number of our customers use this as a configuration tech underneath their own orchestration layers.

All Perl based, and using as modern techniques as possible.

We stopped using system Perl many years ago. Red Hat seems to like to ship not merely obsolete versions, but versions actually past their end-of-life, so that they are not really supported upstream anymore. They have a similar issue with Python and other languages. So, reluctantly, about a decade ago, we started building our own toolchain. First with Perl, then adding in Python, Julia, R, Octave, and other analytics codes. Our analytics tools use all of these as part of our SIOS rambooted appliances ([http://scalableinformatics.com/fastpath](http://scalableinformatics.com/fastpath)), so we needed the updated toolchain. We are looking at Rust as well for future work, and have looked at incorporating Go, but we don't have any Go code developed/planned as of yet.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have been using Perl to do similar things. I build everything internally in the same manner as one would a CPAN module, and this is checked into a private git repo.

From there it is simple to call custom tools to build and deploy services in Perl.

My favorite feature about Perl is that version 5.x is compatible with each release and our code has worked without issue for over a decade.

I recently integrated some Go code into part of my module and wrote a post about how to compile it as part of the build process here : [http://www.tysonmaly.com/programming/go/using-go-perl- makefi...](http://www.tysonmaly.com/programming/go/using-go-perl-makefile/)

</comment><comment><USER15> It's often heard that CPAN is Perl's Killer App. No argument from me!

I believe what's even more impressive in the Perl ecosystem is CPAN testers.

When you upload a module to CPAN, lots of neat things happen. Of particular interest is all of the testing that gets done. For example:

[http://www.cpantesters.org/distro/M/Message- Inform.html](http://www.cpantesters.org/distro/M/Message-Inform.html)

As you can see, that's a pretty wide swath of OS and Perl versions.

This is an example of a failure report: [http://www.cpantesters.org/cpan/report/e93a7034-cf3f-11e5-96...](http://www.cpantesters.org/cpan/report/e93a7034-cf3f-11e5-9695-d3f3f0af5a77)

This is an powerful resource. I've had random people approach me with suggested fixes to test failures on CPAN in the past. It's amazing!

I believe the Perl community is _serious_ about testing and reliability in ways that few others are. For example, the default module installation command ($ cpan <module name> or $ cpanm <module name>) will NOT install if there are failures in any of the tests.

By modern standards, Perl5 has some silly characteristics, no doubt. But as others have said, the community is _rock solid_ , and more lively than ever:

[https://metacpan.org/recent](https://metacpan.org/recent)

</comment><comment><USER16> Perl is also one of the fastest things out there - if your problem is doing lots of string handling. I have this little test that does a lot of string concatenation and garbage creation, which I recently pulled out of the closet to compare Javascript on Node and Javascript on Nashorn (and also native Java, since it was already there). Even on Java 8, Perl still blows it away.

That said, I hate working with references in the Perl debugger, and, I would be lynched at most worksites, at least in Sacramento, if I suggested a Perl back end. ...Which is too bad - Java/ORM, "COBOL-fingers", bondage and discipline forever...

<comment><USER15> Can you expand on what you've run into with references in the Perl debugger?

<comment><USER16> print $ref

REFERENCE$HASH

Or something like that, it's been a while. I'm spoiled by the Javascript debuggers built into Chrome & Firefox, although I'm not sure about the Node.js debugger.

Is there a shell (either graphical, or "Borland Turbo Debugger for DOS" style) for perl -d ?

(even the "view locals" command in gdb for C presents data more quickly than the built in perl debugger)

<comment><USER15> Try 'x' instead of 'print':

ddiederi@lomin:~/t$ cat p1 #!/usr/bin/perl

my $a = 'hi'; $a = { hi => 'there' }; print "Done\n"; ddiederi@lomin:~/t$ perl -d p1

Loading DB routines from perl5db.pl version 1.49 Editor support available.

Enter h or 'h h' for help, or 'man perldebug' for more help.

main::(p1:3): my $a = 'hi';

      DB<1> n

main::(p1:4): $a = { hi => 'there' };

      DB<1> x $a

0 'hi'

      DB<2> n

main::(p1:5): print "Done\n";

      DB<2> x $a

0 HASH(0x29e6eb8)

       'hi' => 'there'

      DB<3> n

Done

Debugged program terminated. Use q to quit or R to restart,

use o inhibit_exit to avoid stopping after program

termination,

h q, h R or h o to get additional info.

      DB<3> exit

ddiederi@lomin:~/t$

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What's microservice-specific about that post? It's mostly about pretty standard perl packaging and deploying, most of which would apply to monolithic equally well (even more so, if your dividing line is DarkPAN-backed modules and not HTTP-isolated (micro-)servers).

<comment><USER18> You are absolutely right!

The post's equally relevant to a monolithic setup as well. In such a setup, a code artifact (as mentioned in the post) will probably just be a script or a library (now I include a service too).

A toolset like this is a good-to-have for a monolith but a pre-requisite for micro-services (if you want to reuse code as much as possible i.e.), I feel.

The post has been written from a micro-services angle because that's what the setup is like here at Semantics3.

<comment><USER17> One the other hand, I've seen and read about companies where some forms of reused code are actually seen as code smells in this context. Especially when it comes to models, as one's service idea of what constitutes a 'Customer' might be different from others. Managing that (and redundant data stored in each microservice's private area) requires some heavy tooling...

So I'm always interested in the more specific approaches to communication and storing data when it comes to microservice architecture, which might be an idea for a sequel article ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It surprises me Perl isn't dead yet - in fact, German Bundeskriminalamt built a website for people having information about the German nazi hool riots during the France EM 2016 in Perl: [https://www.bka- hinweisportal.de/](https://www.bka-hinweisportal.de/)

<comment><USER20> Why would this surprise you? Perl continues to improve and is battle tested. More Perl is written today than ever before (that said, much more software in general is written than ever before, and there is no doubt Perl's share has declined). Particularly if you're doing lots of text processing Perl remains a great choice.

<comment><USER21> Two great talks when it comes to the questionable greatness of Perl:

[https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6243_-_en_- _saal_1_-_201412292...](https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6243_-_en_- _saal_1_-_201412292200_-_the_perl_jam_exploiting_a_20_year-old_vulnerability_- _netanel_rubin)

[https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7130-the_perl_jam_2](https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7130-the_perl_jam_2)

<comment><USER22> These are really not great talks at all. The speaker doesn't seem to actually know much about Perl, and it seems like the flaws he's found have little to do with Perl, and more to do with just writing insecure code.

See [http://blogs.perl.org/users/joel_berger/2015/12/response- to-...](http://blogs.perl.org/users/joel_berger/2015/12/response-to-the-perl- jam-2.html) for one response and some discussion in the comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is one of the first articles that clearly and consistently lays out the actual concrete benefits of microservices instead of the cargo cult Medium drivel that usually plagues the ecosystem.

(Of course, these are still only arguments for SOA and there's no clear differentiation between SOA and microservices, because there is none.)

<comment><USER2> The term SOA was poisoned by the baroque standards that spun up around it several years ago. There's nothing wrong with the concept of a service oriented architecture...but, when someone said SOA a few years ago, it usually meant something that was very "enterprisey", for lack of a better word (and enterprisey isn't a very good word, either). Big XML schemas, extremely complex APIs, etc. were the hallmarks of the first round of SOA stuff. At least, that's how it looked to me. I didn't work with it at the time; maybe it wasn't as bad as it looked from outside.

But, small pieces inter-operating is very UNIX-y, and excellent for all sorts of tasks. I think the difference between microservices and SOA may just be the direction it's coming from. Microservice architectures are coming from the Open Source web and cloud culture; SOA came from enterprise and government and finance. But, the over-arching concepts, I think are the same. (I'm definitely not an expert on either, however. Just my gut feeling.)

<comment><USER24> It's not "punk" it's "new wave"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is a great writeup. I especially like that you make the actual concrete case for micro-services instead of the hype driven garbage we usually see.

Do you have trouble hiring qualified perl devs?</comment>


The Twilight of the Indoor Mall - <AUTHOR> http://www.theawl.com/2014/11/the-twilight-of-the-indoor-mall <comment><USER2> Two fun links:

[http://deadmalls.com/](http://deadmalls.com/)

Dead Malls has been cataloging dead malls for a long time now. Lots of great descriptions and pictures.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba1s3VG8yFU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba1s3VG8yFU)

Howard Davidowitz is a retail consultant and analyst who was quoted above ( _"What's going on is the customers don't have the fucking money."_ ). He's awesome at breaking down what's wrong with retail and telling it honestly and efficiently. Listen to his stuff sometime (link above is a recent interview about Amazon). When he's on fire...watch out. Jump to 15:00 for an example.

<comment><USER3> Heh, I was arrested for going into an abandoned* mall and walking around and taking pictures with my friends.

*Turns out it wasn't as abandoned as we thought. Someone was doing something there, and someone or something called the police in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Its a standard trope to never discuss security theater and teens as a threat at the mall, but anyone here between the ages of maybe 30 and 50 has surely been harassed by security as a teen and made to feel VERY unwelcome at their local mall.

Oddly enough 20/30 years later I have fat stacks of cash and when I spend them I remember how I was treated at the mall, and never, ever return. And I was a relatively conformist non-minority appearing kid well spoken perfect English (edited: better than I write when I'm tired, LOL) and well groomed, god only knows what the minorities and punks had to go thru at malls in the 80s.

The hilariously blunt yet accurate quote in the article about not having money is also accurate. A good computer analogy is DEC digital equipment corporation was in a perfect position to own the microcomputer market in the 70s/80s but they couldn't understand the market price collapse. The same thing happening in retail with the demise of the middle class. You can sell plenty of $200 sweaters to $75K/yr machinists in 1984 at the mall, but you can't sell $200 sweaters to $8.25/hr temp workers in 2014.

<comment><USER5> In the 80s? Its gotten MUCH worse since. All the malls i went to growing up now have mall cops standing at the door IDing people who look younger than 50 and won't let people under 18 in without a parent or guardian. Kid you not! This all started about ten years ago. I just... its absurd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Meh. Around here, at least, (Huntsville, Alabama) they're just making newer and different malls. They're still malls though.

When I first moved here in 2005, the bigger of the two malls in town (Madison Square Mall) had just received a major renovation and was bustling. A few years later (I think this was about 2007) they announced this new major construction project called Bridge Street[0]. It was just about two miles away from Madison Square.

It was essentially an outdoor mall, with all the same stores you would expect to find in any mall. Just outside. Within the last six years, pretty much all the stores that were at Madison Square Mall have relocated to Bridge Street. In fact, Bridge Street just underwent a big expansion so that one of the department stores at Madison Square could move in.

These days, everyone goes to Bridge Street, and Madison Square Mall is mostly empty except for check cashing places, blacklight golf places, and, strangely, a Sears that just hasn't moved yet - which is pretty much the only reason I even go to Madison Square any more at all. There may be one other department store there hanging on too. But other than that it's mostly empty. The escalators were even turned off when I went in there a few weeks ago.

Madison Square Mall was built in the mid 80s, and started going down hill after about 20 years. The other mall in town was built in the late 90s and is still doing "mostly okay" but you can tell Bridge Street hurt them some too. So I figure it's only a matter of time before Bridge Street starts to go down hill and all those same stores move on to whatever the next trend in shopping is.

And, just like Madison Square, leaving a blighted landscape of mostly or completely abandoned buildings in their wake.

They're still building malls. Just calling them different things - "lifestyle centers," "outdoor entertainment complexes," etc. But they're still malls.

[0] [http://www.bridgestreethuntsville.com/](http://www.bridgestreethuntsville.com/)

<comment><USER7> So what I can't figure out is if the new outdoor malls are just a fad, or if they represent a different shift in retail planning that will stick around for a long time. I will admit that I like the outdoor ones that have multiple avenues built in for wandering around, and it feels like the shops are more substantial then mall stores.

The article mentions that when an anchor leaves a raditional mall, the disease spreads, are outdoor malls immune to this effect?

<comment><USER8> The industry will be moving from the lifestyle format to the outlet format almost exclusively over the next 20 years.

The C malls referred to in the article are just that, C malls. Malls that may have been B malls in the past but have depreciated to a point where scrape and rebuild or relo are the only options.

There are currently about 50 new malls/outlets on the books for this year and next with another 50 on the following 2 years nation wide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The trend has certainly been toward more "outdoor" style malls, like Santana Row here in the SF Bay Area or the Shops at Wiregrass in my former home of Tampa. But I suspect there are a couple major factors in the Dead Mall phenomenon that this article doesn't really touch on.

First, whenever a region is seriously overbuilding residential space they're usually also seriously overbuilding retail space. In Florida, the overbuilding of retail seemed to come _first_ in some instances. When the retail spaces are big shopping centers, there's an awfully good chance they're going to start cannibalizing one another. The worst case scenario -- which I saw happen in Florida more than once -- isn't that all the customers leave Mall A for Mall B, but that the customers are _split_ between Mall A and Mall B and _neither_ mall ends up successful.

Second, it doesn't seem to me that "anchor tenants" are as important now as they once were, and the malls that are most in trouble are the ones that were organized with the assumption you were _really_ there to go Macy's or Nordstrom's and the other stores would survive on your impulse buys as you walked between the department stores and the parking lot. Santana Row here -- and to some degree Tampa's International Plaza, which is a mix of indoor and outdoor -- have fashioned themselves less as shopping destinations than entertainment destinations. The best way to avoid having a dead zone around a closed department store is to not have -- or need -- a department store.

</comment><comment><USER10> Urban planners have been predicting the demise of malls for years. 10 years ago James Kunstler gave a hilarious, biting talk on "the ghastly tragedy of the suburbs" in which he suggests some great ways of repurposing them for urbanization. It's a fantastic video: [http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu...](http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia)

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands Its interesting to see this cycle in the Mall of America. The upper fourth floor was non-stop through the late 90's and into 2001 or so. Then the whole floor died, suddenly.

Of the seven or so bars, they all went under within a few years of 2000 and the whole floor has been more or less completely dead for almost a decade now. Planet Hollywood pulling out in 2003 was the last death knell for the floor. Only Hooters survived the mass extinction.

These days, more bars are opening, but its not the same. There's a Corona Catina which took over the vacated Fat Tuesday's (which was shut down after repeated warnings from the city went unheeded) and Knuckleheads Comedy club. There's a smaller comedy club which took over the Gator's nightclub spot, but it's half the size of the original club. There's some new restaurant where Planet Hollywood used to be. Hooters is still kickin, but the rest of the bars (still 3-4 spots) are completely vacant.

It's an interesting dichotomy since the majority of the rest of the mall is still doing very well. Camp Snoopy has been renamed twice now, but is still super busy on the weekends. The rest of the floors during the holidays are flooded with eager shoppers. And yet, the fourth floor is like an attic nobody wants to go to anymore. I think its partly due to the newer, hipster bars opening in other parts of town which have drawn a lot of the suburbanites away. Also, a lot of the college kids who used to live in the area, are now moving to second and third ring suburbs now.

</comment><comment><USER11> Ah the Collin Creek Mall, in which City of Plano was planning to sink a ton of money for renewing or rehabbing it. I live few miles away from Collin Creek, and the author is giving the most accurate picture possible. It is a dead mall, and there are many reasons for it including accessibility from the highway (US-75), shift of the center of wealth to mostly West and North of Plano, away from Collin Creek area. All in all DFW is over-saturated with malls but they are still building malls because of the North-ward expansion near Plano area. Trust me a movie theater is not going to save this mall.

For now the Mall is collecting some checks from the City and Management which claim to protect jobs and sales tax base. When they run out of that trick, it may very well close. At one point they were talking about sinking $75 million into some project around collin creek.

[http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/collin- county/...](http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/collin- county/headlines/20121002-plano-works-with-developer-to-revitalize-collin- creek-mall.ece)

<comment><USER12> The only problem is that there are two other malls for residents of Plano to go to, Stonebriar and Willow Bend, and they are both doing just fine. The "outdoor malls" of Firecreek and the Shops at Legacy are also doing well. Insofar as Plano is concerned, it is only Collin Creek that is suffering.

So TFA is being slightly hyperbolic. There are many malls who have done poorly, and the mall at the heart of the article is one of them. But there are also many malls who have done quite well. It doesn't speak about those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This mall is right by my house. It is on life support and it's been known about for years. The article is right that Dallas suburbs have a lot of options for shoppers with new multi-use development sites popping up on every major intersection. Curious the article writer made no mention of online sales and their effect of department stores.

</comment><comment><USER14> They just let many of these malls die, mainly because it wasn't a destination anymore.

They could have made them into co-working spaces, training centers, anchor stores that close into mini convention halls, arcades, learning centers, places to meet clients, part of it into a skate park, pools, community sports, basketball courts, awesome indoor gardens, concert areas, bar row, just something. They did not try to change enough.

It seems like they tried to get people out of the malls when that was their magic, they were yes pre-internet but you could still bring the business side in. That alone would have kept food courts alive longer, maybe changed the game in part or half of a mall. But it is a depressing thing to go into a mall with even one anchor store gone because it is just a matter of time. Part of the problem is they were a unit, when there was only a few closed stores the mall felt depressing. They rode that dead model to the end.

<comment><USER15> This is happening to the mall near where I grew up.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Town_Center](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Town_Center)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm happy to see the death of fake public space. Would be nice to see a plaza* built but I know that's asking too much of the USA.

*A pedestrian only square with surrounded by shops, restaurants, etc

<comment><USER17> It has happened already:

[http://www.thegrovela.com/directory.php](http://www.thegrovela.com/directory.php)

[http://www.americanaatbrand.com/directory.php](http://www.americanaatbrand.com/directory.php)

[http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/articl...](http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_large/hash/56/0e/1373584886_1107_statue.jpg?itok=PybzFaLe)

The security at the latter has hats and green uniforms like park rangers. You can almost forget that it's all private land.

<comment><USER16> If it has goofy security and its on private land, its still fake public space.

<comment><USER17> Yes, precisely. But this is what we're building these days. It's not gated, it's open to the street, but it's not a public plaza either. There is even something in their agreement with the city that they can't filter people out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Compare to the Stanford Shopping Center, an outdoor mall on the SF peninsula. Parking is difficult when the weather is nice, and sometimes even when it's not.

It's a nice place to walk around outdoors and designed to be pedestrian- friendly (once you park, of course).

By comparison, I went to the Hillsdale Shopping Center a few months ago on a weekday around noon, and the Sears lot was near-deserted: I saw about six cars in it. The food court was also empty and depressing. I don't think the difference is primarily the neighborhoods: both are on El Camino and in upscale areas (Palo Alto is expensive, sure, but Hillsdale serves San Mateo, San Carlos, Burlingame, and Hillsborough, which aren't cheap).

I think the difference is the mall itself: Hillsdale is a traditional massive indoor mall of the sort that this article describes, and Stanford is a better- designed outdoor mall, with segments split up, that's just nicer to walk around.

</comment><comment><USER19> The twilight of poorly located and planned suburban indoor malls.

</comment><comment><USER20> My town just built a "Premium Outlet Mall." I was dubious of the wisdom of that plan, but I just visited it last weekend, and it seems to be pretty popular, even with the Mall of America just minutes away, and with Internet shopping available at the swipe of a smartphone or the click of a mouse. It's not an indoor mall, which I also find curious, here in the Land of 10,000 Snows, but it does have a free indoor parking garage just across the street. The projections are that the outlet mall is going to siphon off about 4% of the take this holiday season. (The article I read was pretty vague as to what size pie that was 4% of, to my chagrin.)

<comment><USER21> Interesting thing about the Eagan outlets is that there are non-outlet stores mixed in. I also found the outlet prices to be above that of other outlets (north of the cities). With that location I guess they don't need to be that cheap.

<comment><USER20> I didn't realize there were non-outlets there. The prices are strange--I've bought a handful of items, and they were all stickered at or below nearby retail, but when they rang them up, the actual price was even lower. While I love to get a deal, I prefer to know what the deal is before I hit the register. Anyway, that _should_ be a good location, easy access from three interstates and a couple major trunk highways, but then, that's where Cedarvale was, and that died a slow painful death too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is really the death of the mid-market mall, which are being replaced with 2 extremes - the outlet mall and the high end mall.

In warm climates, malls become outdoor is the trend, but that certainly isn't the case for cities with harsher winters.

<comment><USER23> It certainly is the trend here in New England, where winters are reasonably harsh. And the new outdoor malls aren't very walkable, either. They're separate stores, or sometimes chunks of stores, that you almost have to drive between. With an Olive Garden or an Applebee's in the middle of the parking lot.

<comment><USER24> I see those in California too. I really don't understand the phenomenon; my best guess is that there is some sort of incentive from the developers or city zoning for shops to open there, but nothing as cohesive as an actual mall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been to the mall in the article. It once was the destination, and short of specific stores (like Apple), people aren't interested. In Houston, there's quite a few dying malls, but there's also some that are still thriving. For instance, The Woodlands Mall, which is in the midst of an area with an outdoor ampitheatre and upscale outdoors shopping.

</comment><comment><USER26> They emptied the mall and put up an Amazon Slot

With a working hell, a geek And a sweltering com dot

Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you've got Till it's gone They emptied the mall and put up an Amazon Slot

They took all the middle class Put 'em in a middle class museum

And they directed their chauffeur a mile and a half just to see 'em

Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you've got Till it's gone

They emptied the mall and put up an Amazon Slot

Late last night I heard my phone alert scream

and a big yellow Uber Took away my all my old dreams

Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you've got Till it's gone

They emptied the mall and put up an Amazon Slot

</comment><comment><USER27> I suspect that any urban architecture trend has a limited lifespan--maybe 20 years or so.

This isn't so much "death of the mall" per se, as death (and replacement) of 80s-era malls.

</comment><comment><USER28> > As these old malls die off, they're being replaced more and more by upscale, > outdoor shopping centers...

Well, and the internet.

I wonder if it'd be viable to turn these giant chunks of real estate into some kind of entertainment venue for a while. I'd play paintball in a dead mall, or race go karts around in one.

There's got to be something worth doing in that giant space.

</comment><comment><USER29> I haven't heard anyone mention that perhaps Malls aren't just being killed by Amazon, but also by Wal*Mart. Go to smalltown America and see...

</comment><comment><USER30> Sunrise to the Outdoor Mall?

The evolution of the "mall"

</comment><comment><USER31> I've been to the mall from the article. Every time I go there I just feel bad.</comment>


Show HN: CertMagic – Caddy's automagic HTTPS features as a Go library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mholt/certmagic <comment><USER2> You're the best mholt! This was definitely the much needed piece of the puzzle ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> So just adding that one line automagically sets up all HTTPS-related headaches for you? Amazing.</comment>


Enso's zenPad is vaporware, get refunds while they last (update) - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/09/ensos-zenpad-is-vaporware-get-refunds-while-they-last/ <comment><USER2> What's the update? This is from 12 days ago.

I ordered one near the beginning of April. So far I've received one (1) generic response to my enquiries. So we'll see, I guess.

<comment><AUTHOR> A person that lost some money to enso just mailed me the link so I posted it.

Has anybody here actually ordered and received one?

<comment><USER2> How exactly did he lose it? The 45-day PayPal chargeback window is still open.

<comment><AUTHOR> The email did not detail, maybe I should interpret it as that she has given up on getting any money back.

Also not sure if paypal was the only way they accepted funds.

It's funny how the guy keeps changing his story and thinks that's perfectly ok, in fact threatens lawsuits left right and center. I still haven't heard from his lawyer, maybe he forgot ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Are admins developers too?  - <AUTHOR> http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/macvittie/archive/2009/05/13/are-admins-developers-too.aspx

<comment><USER2> _Are admins developers too?_

If you're lucky they are. I was fortunate to work at a company where one of the admins knew just as much as (if not more than) most of the developers about how the application worked. This was a good thing since A) you couldn't BS him and B) when something went wrong (something always goes wrong) he could help you find out what it is. A good admin will also make his or her job easier by creating tools. And that my friends makes them a developer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Speaking as an "admin" by way of job title (but developer by way of formal education, work history, and personal interest):

Yes, or at least they should be. :)

(I was going to write something much longer, but it's probably preaching to the choir here.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Developers: manipulate the state of bytes in a text file

Admins: manipulate the state of bytes in a running system</comment>


Stop shitting on Wall Street - <AUTHOR> http://bsiscovick.tumblr.com/post/849658406/stop-shitting-on-wall-street

<comment><USER2> Wall Streeters are only human. If you want to fix Wall Street you have to design a _system_ that works better, taking human nature into account. One big difference between Wall Street and startups is the heavily regulated nature of the financial industry. The public already has the control, but our government doesn't use it effectively.

I worked on Wall Street for many years before becoming an entrepreneur. My fingerprints were taken several times. No I wasn't being arrested, everybody's are taken--a holdover from the days of physical securities. I took 5 major exams over the years and many minor ones, in order to be permitted to do my job. Oh yes, the content of the exams had little to do the products I worked on, which were all invented only yesterday. Our company had offices set aside for regulators to use whenever they visited. The public never, ever heard or saw the results of those visits. Our P&L had internal and external auditors looking at it all the time. Only the internal guys were good, since it protected managers from rogue traders. Our capital was regulated, which capped our risk only in a very vague way. I could go on.

What did all this regulation accomplish? Nothing in the end. Why? Regulation pits bureaucrats against highly paid professionals. Some bureaucrats are highly motivated and intelligent (I know, I used to work with a few of them when they worked on Wall Street). But their bench is not deep and the stars show up only when there are investigations to lead and headlines to grab.

We need a _system_ that pits the smart against the smart every day. It starts with opening up bank operations to public scrutiny. The balance sheet you and I have is open to creditors to inspect. The reverse positions, held by banks, should be visible to the public. Only then will privately employed bank analysts have a prayer of calling bulls__t in a timely manner. If you think this is some kind of socialist plot, think again. Even Friedman and Hayek knew that markets can't clear without adequate information. Where do you think all this volatility is coming from?

Will we get this kind of transparency from the new financial reform law? Afraid not. All we did was put the A-team of regulators in charge--but they will move on after a while.

<comment><USER3> We don't need a system that pits the smart against the smart, we need a system that pits the smart against nature. I'm sick of zero-sum competing to leech a bigger share of money out of the system rather than giving it to investors or investees.

Smart people should be creating things. Discover/fund a new market and get rich? Great! First one to see a big trend and have the guts to bet against it, lining up market pricing? Good, I hope you get rich.

But playing video games in order to nip the largest number of pennies off of actual investment is just a giant waste of time, talent and money.

<comment><USER2> Ideally, the efficient allocation of capital _is_ the smart against nature. However the nature of the current system injects too much noise into the markets, since trades and positions are generally secret, except as occasionally viewed by regulators or post-mortem as in the Madoff case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Stop shitting on Wall Street"

No. Wall Street has not been shat upon enough. Banking and finance have a proper place in a well-run market, and that place is much, much smaller than they currently are, with much less lobbying power. Until the financial sector is drastically reduced in size and power, we need to shit on them _much, much more_.

<comment><USER2> I think vitriol plays into the hands of the industry. It appeals to anger, which will fade and is not focused. I think we should be analyzing _how_ to shrink the industry's size and influence, and design what should replace it. After all this site's readers are nothing if not problem solvers.

<comment><USER5> Well, the shrinking of the size of the financial sector is happening all on its own and I'm not sure we need to do anything to help that (and it's a fantastically dangerous and inherently politicized thing to do anyway, by definition "picking winners and losers").

What I'd prefer concentrating on is reducing firms that are "too big to fail" to "small enough to fail". Except that that wouldn't have prevented the 2008 financial crisis, it just would have changed its shape. People have this unfortunate pattern of group betting AKA manias that regularly produce financial bubbles and that's a system problem for which I don't see any solution.

What have we learned since the Tulip Mania, the South Seas Bubble, etc. etc. etc. other than that we don't learn from history?

As for shrinking their influence, how do you do it to the people who are handling your money? Buying your bonds (government (e.g. the Federal primary dealers) and corporate)? Etc.

As for replacing it, with what? What type of institutions or economic system?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Okay. Meanwhile, 17 bailed-out banks overpaid executives with tax payer money. If my startup failed, man it sure would be nice to get a $MM exit. [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1287195...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128719536)

Wall Street needs to return to partner-driven approach like law firms instead of taking risks with other people's money.

<comment><USER7> Subjectively, I think the executives are overpaid in general. However, bailed out bank executives are objectively overpaid for the reason you stated: you can't have capitalism without losses.

In fact, I don't think they shouldn't have been bailed out at all. The banking system probably had to be rescued, but bailouts mangle capitalism. Banks that needed bailout should have been nationalized with the very explicit constraint that they be re-privatized after the storm had passed.

(Note: I mostly just parroted Nassim Taleb's argument from two years ago.)

<comment><USER8> _Did_ they have to be rescued? We already have FDIC to ensure the little guy doesn't lose his shirt.

Sure, top financial experts claim that if some those big insolvent banks failed then the economy would die. Well, maybe or maybe not, but most of the top experts testifying to congress had an a tremendous conflict of interest with regard to their personal careers and holdings. We don't have any example of what would have happened... somehow I doubt people would just stop producing though.

Also, even if we accept that a bailout was necessary, then the taxpayers should have owned those banks. The government should have seized them, purged the toxic assets, and then re-privatized when the books were clear. This is, as far as I know, the textbook way that the World Bank recommends bank insolvency be handled, recommended over and over again to third-world countries, but somehow never got seriously considered when it's big American banks.

<comment><USER5> Actually, plenty of them _didn't_ have to be rescued; note this from the report:

" _Payments largely from firms that have reimbursed taxpayers: Eleven of the seventeen firms the Special Master has contacted regarding his proposal have fully reimbursed the taxpayers. Of the $1.7 billion in payments identified by the Special Master, more than 90% were made by firms that fully repaid, or were taken into consideration in the Special Master's determinations regarding "exceptional assistance recipients."_ "

I don't know what the last of that means, but the rest suggests that most of these "overpaid executives" worked at firms that never needed a bailout, but were e.g. part of Paulson's "you are not exiting this room until you sign this agreement" 3rd World dictatorship riff, which was done so that the public at large wouldn't know which companies were actually in deep trouble (a strategy that was necessarily well publicized at the time).

<comment><USER9> Yes, _in 2010_ , a lot of these companies have been able to pay back the government. But _in 2008_ the whole system of credit was seizing up because lenders and investors, not knowing when the next pile of shit would hit the fan, were panicking. We can't send a time machine back to 2008 and announce, "we are from the future and we certify that you can lend to these guys at 5%".

<comment><USER10> > But in 2008 the whole system of credit was seizing up because lenders and > investors, not knowing when the next pile of shit would hit the fan, were > panicking.

That's true, but it doesn't imply that Wells Fargo, to pick one example, needed a bailout in 2008.

Note that much of the potential for panic came from a regulatory decision to exempt certain obligations from normal bankruptcy rules. That made an orderly shutdown of Lehmann impossible.

<comment><USER5> It's hard to imagine any "orderly shutdown" that would have resulted in their bonds being worth much, especially during the process (that's Leahman's commercial paper AKA ordinary borrowing, not anything exotic or toxic they were selling). The Reserve Primary Fund's inexplicable overexposure to Lehman bonds then caused them to "break the buck" which started the cascading failure of the world's financial system.

<comment><USER10> Lehman's bonds went to 0 because all of its assets went out the door with its derivatives. If the derivatives had had the same status as other debts, including said bonds, those bonds would have been worth >0.

<comment><USER5> Are you really sure Lehman's bonds went to zero? _No_ one was willing to take a chance they'd be worth something when everything was sorted out? I doubt that and would like to see some evidence of it.

The problem for the Reserve Primary Fund was that their value dropped precipitously; I suspect it wouldn't have mattered if they ended up at 0, 1, 5 or 10 cents on the dollar.

As for the derivatives, when it came time to settle them, as widely predicted they mostly canceled out with only (from memory) 6 billion US$ changing hands.

<comment><USER10> > Are you really sure Lehman's bonds went to zero?

The official story is that market essentially froze, that no one would buy. I'd have bought everything I could get my hands on at fractions of a cent (and possibly more), but they didn't ask me. (After they let individuals back in, I thought that all of the bargains were gone, so I didn't go bottom fishing. Big mistake. The great deals were gone, but there were still some opportunities left even when I got around to looking.)

The money that left with the derivatives may have kept the bonds at 70-80 cents. Unless Reserve Primary was 100% Lehman, that might have been enough.

> As for the derivatives, when it came time to settle them, as widely > predicted they mostly canceled out with only (from memory) 6 billion US$ > changing hands.

Yup, but no one knew that when the derivatives were being made whole while everyone else waited to see what was left.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm honestly amazed at how quickly everyone has stopped throwing sh_t at the various financial institutions that caused the chaos of the last couple of years.

In the UK, where most public spending is being cut by 25% there are a _lot_ of unhappy people who blame this mostly on the £850B bank bailout (of course, it wasn't just the cost of the bailout, but it certainly didn't help).

I think things could potentially get a lot uglier before they get better.

<comment><USER12> Not "could potentially" but "will definitely."

There is a one word description that suffices to describe the problem: corruption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The author tries to explain the benefits of Wall Street, but unfortunately the benefits he describes are individual in nature, "what did _I_ learn". It's all about the skills the author gained will working in that industry, but what good are those skills for? A critic of Wall Street might think that these skills are only "as value extractors rather than value creators". Edit: I'd rather see a more detailed explanation of how Wall Street creates value in a post defending them.

<comment><USER14> I agree, the better title seems to be "Stop Shitting on Wall Street Employees".

For the defense of Wall Street, a small start might be the capital marketplace argument:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=973663>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm not at all sympathetic to wall street. They relied on bad math and bogus assumptions, and ended up ruining a lot of people's lives in the most unprofessional manner imaginable, whilst absconding with a huge amount of tax payers money which future generations will be paying for.

</comment><comment><USER16> A number of comments have hinted at it, however, I think that the key issue with the article is that it does little to break down Wall St. as a _career_ as opposed to Wall St. as a mis-regulated _industry_.

I would agree with Ben that many in the startup community focus far too much vitriol against the profession of a financier on the Street. There is significant value in facilitating financial allocation and increasing market efficiency.

However, given the financial regulatory environment that has not allowed banks to fail, I think that it is legitimate to take issue with the fact that Wall St. as an industry is far too large and riddled with players that should have been washed out by both the S&L crisis as well as the most recent financial fracas.

</comment><comment><USER17> I responded: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1541442>

Wall Street and Big Co. are the competition. We compete with them for talent and mindshare every day. And precisely because they are so appealing and have so much to offer, especially monetarily, we try to detract from their power and allure by spreading fear and talking shit. We try to make people afraid that joining Google or Goldman will lead to a forfeiture of their soul. Is it 100% rational or true? No, as he adroitly pointed out. But it is strategic and accretive to the startup ecosystem for us to talk such shit. It is marketing in its most pure and basic form.

</comment><comment><USER18> Let's make a deal: I'll stop shitting on them when they stop shitting on me.

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for writing this; it's been bothering me for sometime now.

Commonly, the arguments are Wall Street "doesn't create value," "merely moves money from A to B," or "just exists to extract wealth." Wall Street produces pricing information. Wall Street produces this pricing information by moving money in markets from A to B, and extracting _some_ money as payment. All businesses exist to extract money from somewhere!

Good pricing information is extremely valuable. Bad pricing information is devastating. We just had a crisis caused by bad pricing information that had multiple origins, including Wall Street. However, the majority of the information produced by Wall Street is still good.

Wall Street gets the brunt of the animosity because Wall Streeters make a lot of money. Furthermore, there is a severe asymmetry between positive and negative perceptions. When markets are well-functioning, their success is easily obscured; When markets are poorly functioning, their failure is center- stage.

Before someone accuses me of conflating Wall Street with markets in general, I would like to counter that Wall Streeters are the maintenance men of markets. Some of those out-sized returns on short-term trading operations help pay for the fundamental research that helps produce good pricing information.

<comment><USER8> You're right that Wall Street serves a valuable function.

The reason for all the animosity is because they did a _piss poor fucking job of it_ and then used their influence at the highest levels to convince the government that a bailout was necessary, enriching themselves instead of taking their lumps. In 1929 wall street men were jumping out windows. In 2008 they were jumping out planes with golden parachutes paid for by the taxpayers while vast swaths of America were losing their homes and jobs.

Bottom line is, Wall Street fucked up and they should have taken their lumps for it. That doesn't mean everyone on Wall Street is to blame, but it means that generally yes, Wall Street does deserve our scorn (as well as congress).

<comment><USER19> Wall Street has already taken their lumps. I'd like to see feel-good government policy take its lumps now. Specifically, the kind of policies that encouraged and/or forced banks to make loans to uncreditworthy individuals.

Any time you hear a politician shitting on a bank, it's because they're trying to distract from the role the policies they advocated had in all this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The funny thing is that there is a lot of innovation within large companies that will never see the light of day elsewhere. These inovations are viewed as a competitive advantage so will never emerge. Sometimes engineers have invented things within corporate confinement only to take those ideas and refine them within the freedom of a start-up. Then there are those who speak of things within companies like Google who swear what they have seen in open- software pale in comparison to what happens behind their closed doors.

Speaking of Wall Street, people need to realize that there's just as much emphasis on learning, evolving, and discovering new science there as there is in many smaller companies. The problem domain is more geared towards the maths, data mining and currently low-latency systems.

</comment><comment><USER21> He is right--- bankers at the level he speaks of certainly don't deserve the crap handed out by the tech community. That said I'd still apply the 'Shakespeare' solution to the rest of the corporate pyramid just after handling the lawyers.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wall street adds value to Govt. Start up adds value to the society.

<comment><USER23> Well said. Startups add value to society.

But society quickly discards anything that is not of value. How come Wall Street still thrives? Surely there must be something that they offer?

It's Government that doesn't add value. It failed miserably at its job of regulation (whatever was left after glass-steagall, that is), passed highly unpopular policies whose results have been questionable, and now passed another monstrosity that it hasn't even finished, but will leave it as an 'exercise for the readers'.

I would say Wall Street is an ugly manifestation of the perverse incentives that Congress helped create.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Some say Wall St is a "Ponzi scheme". If that was accurate, certainly one could argue big changes are in order, but is it accurate?

In a Ponzi scheme, you have an organization that takes peoples money, does some complicated things with it that are difficult to understand, pays internal people handsomely, pays back early "investors" handsomely, then suddenly collapses and all the investment the later investors thought they had is gone. This happened in 2007 before the governments of the world contributed in $3,000,000,000,000 keep the scheme going.

The difference between the Wall St. Ponzi scheme and your average couple- million Ponzi scheme is three-fold: the organizers are still running it instead of being in prison, it is a million times bigger, and scheme insiders are running the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury.

This is be made out to be a natural consequence of the complicated modern financial world, but was it unavoidable? The $3T bailout works out to about $10,000 for every person in the U.S.

<comment><USER25> Also the Fed can print money. Which is how the story inevitably ends.

It seems to me that the problem is created by economists winging it. I'd rather see a financial system designed and run by engineers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> eh, I think the real problem isn't wall street... the real problem is that we subsidize investing to sell over investing to hold through lower capital gains tax rates... If I sell my company, I pay less than half as much taxes than if I continue to hold the company and just pay out profits to myself.

this encourages short-term thinking.

If we still want to give preferential tax treatment to investing vs. working, you can do that without forcing people to sell by removing the double taxation on dividends... simply allow corporations to write off dividends as they would wages, and charge owners the existing capital gains taxes. this would allow owners to extract value at the lower capital gains rate.

</comment><comment><USER27> "I spent two years and a summer as a junior banker. I knew from the get-go that I never wanted to be a career Wall Streeter. I viewed my time in banking as a continuation of my education. And you know what, from that perspective it was incredible. The nearly undeniable reality is that the skills and knowledge acquired in banking are remarkably valuable and broadly applicable throughout ones career. Contrary to uninformed opinion, it is not all about spreadsheets and powerpoints - it's about understanding flows of cash through companies, analyzing markets, thinking critically about strategy and competition, and importantly, identifying and valuing opportunities."

This is so far from the truth. Most junior bankers come away learning little relevant or valuable towards actual business and the startup world.

<comment><USER14> I can't speak for bankers, but I can confirm a similar situation from my hedge fund days.

I interviewed lots of interns and junior full-time folks who worked in IT or infrastructure groups supporting trading desks. They all claimed it was a great experience learning how markets work, how their asset classes behaved, etc, and wanted to move to front-office. Sadly, the vast majority were completely clueless of how the asset class worked or even what instruments their code was pushing through databases, booking systems, and PNL calculators. Keep in mind I'm not faulting them for being ignorant of the actual trading strategy (which by design the front-office keeps a secret).

Fresh college candidates fortunate enough to play around with an options- enabled eTrade account during undergrad have far more market knowledge and passion for finance than say, a 2nd year infrastructure or trading platform coder at a bulge-bracket bank.

It stinks that the IT guys get pigeon-holed into the least glamorous part of finance, but after trying to keep an open mind for years, I can understand now why firms are so reluctant to let their back-office shift their way to front- office. For anyone trying to make the move, my advice is take the extra time to learn about the liquid you are plumbing through the system, get truly passionate about the underlying finance and math, and then change firms, because your current one likely won't let you make the leap.

EDIT: Responding to comment below. Hard work and a high threshold for pain will get someone pretty far in finance, but I suspect not far enough if there is no underlying passion. Anyone who really wants big bucks and prestige must eventually earn the pilot seat, or at least be in the cockpit (as a co-pilot). Maybe the saddest part of finance is that far too many people want to be pilots and not enough are happy being flight attendants and mechanics.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure that "market knowledge and passion for finance than" translates into big bucks and prestige, which seems to be what most people going to Wall St. are seeking.</comment></comment></comment>


Neighbourly by Google - <AUTHOR> https://neighbourly.google.com/ <comment><USER2> I have been thinking a lot about creating localized versions of services like reddit and facebook so that people could be more in touch with what is actually going on around them instead of this kind of national narrative.

It seems unfair that there is only room for so many famous people, so many inventors, so many journalists, because all of the attention (money) aggregates towards the top.

If you could have, say, a local Martha Stewart that actually can subsist and become quite wealthy by sticking to a couple counties in a State, the whole system becomes much more valuable to each individual who participates.

The way it is now your value is almost nonexistent, there is such a high barrier of entry to virality, it's like winning the lottery. What if it was easier to go viral in your own home town, build a career off of it, and never have to make the front page of any national website?

Sorry, bit of a rant, but services like this hint that other people are thinking similarly. I'd like to see a much bigger push into fragmenting the web, and moreso fragmenting the attention share. It moves much like the economy, trickle up.

<comment><USER3> [http://nextdoor.com](http://nextdoor.com) is the leader in this space.

<comment><USER4> I didn't like having to give them my real address or phone number. I hope the Google version of this is a little more lenient, but I doubt it will be.

<comment><USER5> Would you prefer all users be allowed access to any neighborhood group they choose?

<comment><USER4> No, I would prefer that they just use my geo-location.

I wouldn't even mind if they asked me every couple of months or so to verify my location.

<comment><USER6> Spoofing geolocation is possible too.

<comment><USER4> Big deal. How many people are actually going to go to the trouble to do that to talk to people in my neighborhood where they don't even live?

I could have easily tricked Nextdoor into doing whatever I wanted to. But shouldn't have to waste my time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So Nextdoor will have a competitor soon. I was honestly wondering when this would happen because the geographic based reviews and advertising approach totally aligns with the type of service that Google would NOT kill after a couple of years.

Maps, business reviews and advertising...only makes sense.

<comment><USER8> Why isn't Facebook competing more actively in this market? It seems that the data they have access to is better suited for this scenario.

<comment><USER9> They used to have a neighborhood feature, but I am guessing it just fizzled. Also I don't really want my neighbors to have a view into my Facebook profile

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hopefully this doesn't become the same toxic hell stew that NextDoor can be....

[https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/racial- profiling-i...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/racial-profiling-is- still-a-problem-on-nextdoor)

<comment><USER11> Racist busybodies were nattering racists long before they had a social media platform. If anything, platforms like Nextdoor are helping the issue by shining light on it, allowing the nutjobs just enough of a safe space to feel free to talk while letting the rest of us see what they're doing.

Regardless, Nextdoor in my area is hardly toxic. It's actually pretty stale -- mostly a mix of home services referrals and junk for sale. They've cranked up the ad content very significantly over the last year without really bringing/encouraging much in the way of better neighborhood content. I don't know if Google is going to do it any better, but some competition in this space certainly couldn't hurt.

<comment><USER12> It's true that nuts existed before but social media can have an amplifying effect when it helps them find fellow travelers and convince themselves that their views are common and normal.

Anyone building platforms needs to take that problem seriously since it leads to both serious real-world negatives (e.g. antivax) and driving more reasonable people away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> NZ has, [https://www.neighbourly.co.nz/](https://www.neighbourly.co.nz/) which looks like a local competitor with same name. Things might get a bit confusing here if Google's stars to pick popularity

<comment><USER14> Interesting that Google are using the non-US (British, Aus, NZ) spelling as well...

<comment><USER15> All the examples (people and neighborhood names, the question about the salwar suit) sound South Asian to me, so maybe it's launching first in India?

<comment><USER16> In the mission, it mentions Indian cities specifically "In big cities across India, it's getting harder to get good answers" [https://neighbourly.google.com/mission/](https://neighbourly.google.com/mission/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I can't wait for them to suck at this and then quit eventually.

I really wish they would just become a Platform company and let the next doors of the world build on them and let goog take 30% of revenue.

They are bad at network/human stuff. As evidenced by this site "coming soon."

<comment><USER18> What's worse is that by network effect certain bad Google products killed good non-Google products. Then the Google product was retired or never evolved and so forth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Prediction: This app is just an A/B test between A = asking the users of the Google Maps app structured questions and B = This app doing so with machine learning & user-powered Q&A.

Depending on how that goes one or the other will be removed within a year.

<comment><USER20> They already sort of do some checking of their location services with follow up queries in the Android Rewards app. I would swear a large percentage of stores/location it asks me if I have visited recently are stores that I have never heard of but it either thinks I visited or is doing some sort of sanity check to make sure I am answering honestly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Google has been doubling down on the q&a approach of asking users common questions and turning those into datasets and features. This follows suit.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wonder if it'll get content like [https://twitter.com/bestofnextdoor](https://twitter.com/bestofnextdoor)

Nextdoor is a hive of NIMBYism.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm seeing comparisons to NextDoor and/or other hyper-local apps. While this service has the focus at a neighborhood level, the premise seems to be more quora-meets-yelp-meets-neighborhood.

I question these content-generation-as-process apps, and whether users are exhausted of them. One of the reasons I believe NextDoor works so well is that it doesn't try to be the neighborhood reference guide. This is opposed to starting with the premise of answer-a-question, as this service seems to drive. I'm also speaking from the standpoint of my little neighborhood in Seattle, so as with everything -- your mileage may vary.

Just an observation: reading through the mission posted on the site, this seems to be geared toward cities in India? The footer allows for language change and lists "UK English", "India English", and other non-English languages. I wonder if this service intends to support other countries when they release.

</comment><comment><USER24> Anyone else seeing India specific examples on the landing page? I'm British Asian, and was quite surprised when the first example was a question about a local salwar kameez tailor...

<comment><USER16> It mentions Indian cities specifically in the mission page "In big cities across India, it's getting harder to get good answers" [https://neighbourly.google.com/mission/](https://neighbourly.google.com/mission/). I'm a European living in the US, so it's unlikely to be doing some kind of special targeting.

<comment><USER24> Wow, that is very India focused indeed... They even mention the deluge of good morning messages typical of Indian WhatsApp groups!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Not a huge issue but... why is the entire page of marketing and examples East Indian? What is a "salwar suit"?

Is this a feature that's coming out globally or just in India?

<comment><USER26> India? Oh boy, as if there wasn't enough neighborhood gossip going on there, now it's going online.

<comment><USER27> Making neighborhood gossip easier is worrying on many levels.

A hack that has been used in the past to scale totalitarian social control is to employ what is essentially a viral enforcement mechanism: basically, getting people to inform on their neighbors. It only takes one or two visible instances of this behavior with a violent outcome and it replicates quickly, following an exponential growth rate until the population is saturated with informants.

Reporting on neighbors and peers is much of the glue which has held together the worst authoritarian regimes: DPRK, East Germany, Nazi Germany ... as well as being a primary strategy for causing the revolutions which put those regimes in place.

A platform like this:

\- lowers the friction of informing

\- is vulnerable to anonymity / spoofing / automation / remote manipulation

\- allows for stories of informing to persist in the community memory as always-online posts, increasing their effect across time

\- is connected to a de facto surveillance apparatus (the internet) to boot

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I assume this is a response to NextDoor?

I look forward to the next 'bear in the neighborhood' scare hosted by Google ;)

<comment><USER29> Wild animal activity is relevant to some people. We've had mountain lions kill deer within 100 meters of our property. Better to keep the dogs in when they're around.

NextDoor and email lists are a terrible way of disseminating scares. I'd rather have a "apex predator weather" feature that tells me, day-by-day, whether to keep the dogs in.

<comment><USER28> It is a valid thing to be aware of.

Unfortunately / fortunately in my area ... there was no bear (at least no evidence) and it was HIGHLY unlikely to have occurred (bears haven't been around these parts for decades).

But there was a siting, and lots of photos of bear (deer) poo, and trampled flower beds as evidence!

<comment> j-c-hewitt A baby bear killed six of my chickens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Yet another google service that will be dropped in one of their "spring cleanings" in a few years.

<comment><USER31> The secret of Innovation is to keep on trying and failing. Not everything is always a win. Midas touch is a fable, not reality.

<comment><USER32> The problem is Google's size.

1\. Try out new business

2\. Take over the market due to Google's name/search power

3\. Decide business isn't worth it and pull out

4\. No one is left, people have to start from scratch again

<comment><USER33> Which of the businesses they've dropped is this true for? Few of the examples I can think of were market leaders when they were dropped, and none of those were monopolising the market completely.

<comment><USER34> Google Reader? The diaspora that followed is often considered to be the "death" of RSS, and certainly the "death" of "Social RSS". RSS usage in general did tank after Google Reader.

Though, there's a correlation/causation question there. Google Reader shutdown to entrench Google's attempt at a walled garden social network, but Google was considered late to the "walling in your garden" party at the time, so market forces (Facebook, Twitter) what they were at the time, it's possible that even if Reader didn't shutdown, RSS probably was "doomed".

Similarly, Google Talk? For a brief period _everyone_ was using XMPP (whether they knew it or not), to the point where even Facebook capitulated to using XMPP for real-time communications, partly to integrate with Google Talk, just in time for Google to drop most Talk support and XMPP support in the "upgrade" to Hangouts.

Again, things are washy in the correlation/causation question. If Google had pushed Talk longer, would XMPP be more of a thing today? Or was the walled garden communications network too tempting to the market that it would have gone that way anyway?

Personally, I think Google losing a lot of its "roots" in trying to use standards to best fit (RSS, XMPP), versus rolling everything internally/proprietarily was a key change in the web at the time, and I'm willing to ascribe it more to the causation side of things, but there's certainly a healthy debate to both sides.

<comment><USER35> Hmm.

This comment gave me an idea: what does Trends say for RSS?

It has two results:

\- For the search term: [https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=rss](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=rss)

\- For the "computer file format": [https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0n5tx)

Both charts are nearly identical.

There's a noticeable blip in March 2013 when the closure was announced, but that blip sits within a concretely downward trend.

I had to dig a bit to locate the very tiny downward slope in July when Reader actually shut down; there's nothing noticeable there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> So there's a whole card about how safe it is and how no contact info is shared, and right above it is a card where someone has posted with their picture visible, a location marker and a time since they were there. Maybe I'm reading a lot into one example on their marketing page, but I really hope Google _has_ thought through security.

</comment><comment><USER37> So little to go on, but the big challenge will be how to get value from the inevitably idiotic questions people will ask. This is a massive problem on Google Maps, it's inundated with questions that are either:

1.answered in the place description that questioners clicked right past

2\. not suited to crowd sourcing, such as things that require a rep from the business to approve ("Can I get a children's cot put into room 643?")

And there's the Amazon Q&A issue with answers too: so many responses with "no, I don't know how to answer that", because people don't think enough to realise that not answering is a more appropriate response when you don't know on sites like that!

</comment><comment><USER38> That's kinda nifty for advertisers, if Google will allow advertising there (which I assume they will). Hyper-local advertising surely has its perks: low cost/high success I think are quite possible.

<comment><USER39> Hyperlocal advertising is the space that tries to gather up the long tail as the efficacy of mainstream adtech is questioned.

Ad money is dominated by spray-and-pray big name brand awareness whose correspondence to conversions is opaque, but most of online adtech is about tracking metrics for particular targeted ads, and big buyers are frustrated about their opaqueness and questioning their value [1]. Then there's the long tail of everyone else, from a small band to a local restaurant, who are just trying to get their names out there, but lack the clout to lobby Facebook's ad policies.

This hyperlocal advertising is what many Facebook ads have been tending towards. It's only natural that Google would try to corner as much of it as it can, with services that are more content-driven than Maps.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16362705#16363374](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16362705#16363374)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Twitter tried this (jelly.co) and it didn't catch on.

I think the challenge is that the question base is so broad and most local experience revolves around things to see and do, which is largely a solved problem between Yelp, StubHub, Google Maps and Google Search.

Also, I've found that if people don't want to use the massive number of local reviews already on those sites, they tend to ask their actual friends. Why ask a single random person a question when dozens or hundreds have already posted a review about a local experience?

</comment><comment><USER41> Interesting. Although the mobile gold-rush is considered over, I think there's still real potential in 'hyper-local' realtime information. There are some examples of this--Waze for traffic, the 'Citizen' app for crime--but there's so much more that can be visible. Power outages, roads needing repair... of course it's (relatively) easy to make an app that tracks all this but the tough part is giving people a reason or incentive to post the information.

<comment><USER42> I liked Yik Yak a lot before they destroyed it. It provided this type of information and allowed people to ask local questions like what this looks like it aims to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It mentions Indian cities specifically in the mission page "In big cities across India, it's getting harder to get good answers" [https://neighbourly.google.com/mission/](https://neighbourly.google.com/mission/). I'm a European living in the US, so it's unlikely to be doing some kind of special targeting.

<comment><USER3> Look at the photos and screenshots, and the language options the bottom-right corner of the home page. It's an app for Indian women, at least for now at launch. (Indian Orkut?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I looked at nextdoor years ago, but they weren't willing to let users log in from Australia. They said that would be coming real soon now...

Nabo is an Australian system, but lacks the features of nextdoor - notably the ability to have subgroups specifically for apartment blocks.

There's a few other systems out there, but they're usually non free, or rubbish, or both.

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm calling it now: google will discontinue it and it will be looked back upon just like google reader/wave.

</comment><comment><USER45> S̶o̶f̶t̶w̶a̶r̶e̶ Google is eating the world.

I'm actually surprised that they aren't pulling back a bit. Antitrust case is not near in this climate, but it will happen eventually and it's becoming harder with their ever growing tentacles to avoid or reverse. They are going to be their own worst enemy in the end.

<comment><USER46> Doubt you will see them pull back. Glad they don't and keep pushing.

The big one was yesterday ordering 62k cars for the Waymo ride sharing service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Google maps already has the _Local Guide_ feature and _Ask the community_ section which is very similar to this.

</comment><comment><USER48> Google probably see that many people are searching on Google for such information and they plan to steal the users from current sites. I wonder if this is Google's new growth strategy - find out what is hot by looking at what people are searching for, then try to enter that market.

</comment><comment><USER49> Is that competitor for Nextdoor? It would be interesting to see Nextdoor's reaction to this launch.

<comment><USER50> In the two years I've been a home owner and on Nextdoor, the only feature I've noticed they introduced was ads.

<comment><USER51> I'm also a user and I've noticed significant changes.

In that time I've noticed Real Estate, Ads, Marketplaces, Interest groups, completely redesigned apps, etc. and probably a bunch of stuff that I haven't noticed as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Interesting - and on the same day as another (hyper?)local app: [https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/31/area-120-subway- pigeon/](https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/31/area-120-subway-pigeon/)

</comment><comment><USER53> " Any affordable maths private tuition around here?"

1\. Doesn't sound like proper english

2\. Is this targeted towards indians or something? Everything I am seeing seems to indicate that. Such as " ayurvedic chemist " and "salwar"

<comment><USER54> Maths is perfectly standard Indian or British English.

The neighborhood mentioned in the screen shots, "Andheri East" is in Mumbai. Mumbai's lingua franca is Hindi, and Marathi is the state language of Maharashtra which Mumbai is the capital of, so it seems likely that they're starting the rollout in Mumbai, given that these are two of the language choices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> This isn't just a competitor with Nextdoor. It might also compete with Quora, or at least fill the local need that Q&A platform can't address. Might also be a less scammy alternative to Craigslist.

</comment><comment><USER56> Looks like an ideal tool for local drug deals. Could this be a new Instagram?

<comment><USER57> That's what Facebook Marketplace is for.

<comment><USER56> It is funny how LE focused on darknet meanwhile the real market runs just fine on regular internet through popular sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I hope someone from Google answers this - why should I use this? Is there any guarantee that this will be around 3 years from now once the original team gets promoted and moves on?

</comment><comment><USER59> [https://i.imgur.com/K4YLt6E.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/K4YLt6E.jpg)

It looks to me that Google applies some kind of personalization to my landing page.

<comment><USER35> Are you in Russia?

(I am _very_ curious about your account, btw. This is your 2nd comment ever, after the first in 2009.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I was wondering when something like this would come out. My community uses a Facebook group, and I've seen others do something similar (or even email listservs)

</comment><comment><USER61> It's possible that this could be killed off in a few years, but more likely that it will be absorbed into Google Maps and/or Reviews

</comment><comment><USER62> I wonder when the day will come when we admit that we have to call the Web "Googlenet".

</comment><comment><USER63> It seems like the concept of local guides on Google Maps is getting to a new level.

</comment><comment><USER64> More reason to be glued to phones instead of actually talking to neighbours?

</comment><comment><USER65> Dear Google HN readers, "stiching" is misspelled in the second screenshot.

<comment><USER66> As long as we're reporting issues, the language chooser at the bottom right is white text on a white background when I actually click it. Whichever one I put my mouse over becomes white on blue, and I can read it. This is while using Chrome on Linux.

<comment><USER67> Seems to be a native dropdown on my computer, so are you sure it's not your theme affecting it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Communication problems need to be solved with protocols, not apps.

</comment><comment><USER69> "Coming soon to your neighbourhood" Is it though?

</comment><comment><USER70> Who will own the data? Google or the community?

</comment><comment><USER71> Anyone know how this integrates with Maps? I could imagine some really cool innovations by applying machine learning or somehow connecting the data from this app to Maps users.

</comment><comment><USER72> Slight tangent, but what's with the Yahoo purple?

</comment><comment><USER73> I'm annoyed as hell that a US company is using the UK spelling of "neighborly".

<comment><USER74> Are you also annoyed by Under Armour?

<comment><USER73> You bet, haha. I don't think it's a useful reaction, but it's my reaction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Great name. /s</comment>


Ask HN: How do I learn JavaScript after using it for years - <AUTHOR> I find myself in a spot I never thought I would find myself: I want to learn JavaScript.
After using it professionally for quite a while now, and going through some weird process resembling the stages of grief I decided it's past time to learn the language.
I first started using it and I thought it was a horrible language. I kept using it for basic scripting tasks and I still thought it was a horrible language preferring to do most of the application logic in the back end. I learned some degree of AngularJS and used it in quite a few projects while complaining about how this would be so much easier in other languages. Now I have a project where we used JavaScript exclusively and the more I dig into the language the more I realise that you can do some really cool stuff in it if only you put in the time.
A stark realization hit me like a cannon: JavaScript isn't a shitty language, I'm a shitty developer for never bothering to learn properly it and writing it off.
Having decided to learn JavaScript I thought I would ask you all for advice on books/courses/anything in between. The only condition would be that it focuses completely on the language itself and touches no frameworks, just pure JavaScript. Bonus points if the book is relatively newer and touches on ES5/ES6 and maybe ES7.
Any help is greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> Are you heavily focused on getting a book, because there can be a few downsides to that, the most important being losing out on a lot of changes the language is going through. A video course sounds like a much better option. Anyway, I would recommend the entire series of You don't know JS by Kyle Simpson. I would recommend the video courses by him as well. You can find them on frontendmasters.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Not biased towards books at all. Any kind of resource would be fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The canonical text is probably Douglas Crockford's JavaScript: The Good Parts published by O'Reilly.

<comment><USER4> I can second this, I really enjoyed this book and it was an excellent starting point for me.</comment></comment>


Millennials are about to trigger a major 'changeover point' for the US economy - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/14/millennials-to-trigger-changeover-point-for-the-us-economy-bill-smead-says.html <comment><USER2> "So, we have got 89 million people in between 21 and 38 years old that are about to start their lives, form households, do incredibly economically impactful things..."

I hope he isn't holding his breath. Might want to look at Japan for his future.

</comment><comment><USER3> Whilst I wouldn't claim the point made is incorrect, I feel Mr Smead hasn't really made the argument that it's a changeover point. Where's the evidence that this isn't just going to be a continuation of a relatively steady state? He hints that there are others moving up in the cohort behind millennials (whatever they'll end up called) and presumably there's a generation further advanced,but if this is to be some significant changeover then why isn't he talking about how the earlier generation's behaviour differs?

</comment><comment><USER4> >He said this will mean young adults will soon start to move away from buying "Apple devices, craft beer and Chipotle burritos" and instead spend their savings on big-ticket items such as houses and cars.

Where is this "savings" I keep hearing about? Is it something you're born with?</comment>


Show HN: CLI Using Chaos Engine on K8s to Validate Autonomous Monitoring Tool - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zebrium/zebrium-kubernetes-demo <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone - I've been playing with a new Chaos Engine from Maya Data called Litmus to create incidents in a Kubernetes cluster for an Autonomous monitoring solution to detect.

The purpose of this repository is to build a realistic app environment running multiple services on a Kubernetes cluster. And then run a series of chaos experiments to see if an Autonomous Monitoring solution (without any pre- configuration) can automatically detect any incidents caused by the chaos experiments.

For those of you wondering what Autonomous monitoring is - the key difference with current monitoring tools, is instead of you having to tell the monitoring tool what to look for through setting up and maintaining a long list of alert rules, the monitoring tool figures out what to alert on using Machine Learning. You just send your logs/metrics/traces to it and it figures out when an incident is occurring and its root cause without you having to tell it (configure) anything! This approach is becoming more important as environments become more distributed and complex and dynamic making it harder to know what to alert on.

You can get it up and running in just 2 commands to spin up the cluster and run all the Chaos experiments end to end. It provides a good example of running Chaos Experiments in Kubernetes, and also demonstrates where state of the art machine learning has got to in the monitoring space today!

<comment><USER2> Gavin from Zebrium here. Thanks for doing such a great job with this. I played with an earlier version of this and it's come a long way. I love how you've made it really easy to setup and run experiments with the Litmus Chaos Engine ([https://litmuschaos.io/](https://litmuschaos.io/)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for this. It's pretty smart of Zebrium IMO to reach out to and embrace chaos from Litmus to show off and I guess educate your smart monitoring.

<comment><USER2> We love Litmus because it gives our users a way to quickly and deterministically inject failures into their app so they can test the effectiveness of our solution.</comment></comment>


Hiding a message in an image PHP&GD - <AUTHOR> http://stunjelly.com/imgmsg-hiding-a-message-in-an-image-phpgd/

<comment> mike-cardwell Wow. A blog which you can't even _read_ without javascript enabled.</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to improve my chances of a support job? - <AUTHOR> I have worked in a tech role for several years but my position was somewhat unusual, there was no real chance for progression so i have been applying for support positions. From the few interviews i have had i was told i was more suited to a second line role than a first line due to my technical knowledge.
In my previous role i have worked with all sorts of technology, General IT support, im very capable with linux, windows and android, im a former level 3 mobile repair engineer, i have my CompTIA A+ and a lot of other various skills including CCTV, data recovery and destruction, the list could go on and on, you might say im a jack of all trades and master of a few
However i have now sent over 100 applications and had only 2 face to face interviews which i did not get so i have been wondering what may be the best path to improve my chances of getting a job (preferably with the possibility of training and development) but im not sure what is the best course of action, the possibilities i have come up with do far are these:
Have my CV Professionally rewritten in the hope of getting more callbacks
Complete CompTIA Network + and security +(i have already done the learning for them and can easily pass the practice exams i have access to but it seems that CompTIA certs are worth less than those from the likes of Microsoft or Cisco
Study and take exams for Microsoft MCSA, i should be able to pass these exams relatively easily but thee are around 6 exams in this path which is quite expensive
im not sure which path to take, id love to be able to do all of the above but i cant really afford it so i need to find the most effective way of getting noticed. if anyone has any other ideas id be very grateful <comment><USER2> My 2 cents is that, even being in tech and having a similar background, I don't understand your "resume" as posted here.

You jump between stating high-level, vague qualifications (General IT support, capable with linux, various other skills) to very specific qualifications that I frankly don't understand in the slightest (level 3 mobile repair engineer, i have my CompTIA A+, including CCTV, data recovery and destruction).

If the cover letters and/or resumes you send out look like this, the people receiving them likely don't understand either. My honest first reaction is that you don't actually understand what you're writing, simply because of how it's been stated.

I recommend writing 1-2 sentences that clearly state your value and then organizing your application to clearly support the image you want to convey - ideally demonstrating mastery over your key skills (described so a layman would understand them) through concrete accomplishments (best) or descriptions of courses you've passed (not ideal).

Good luck! Keep in mind that I'm just a startup Software Engineer who started in tech support (business-to-business) for a mobile tech company; it sounds like I'm in a very different industry, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

</comment><comment><USER3> For a good 2nd level support job:

Forget CompiaTIA. Seriously.

Remove CCTV and phone repair stuff from your resume.

Learn Linux. Go deep. Take a LPI or Linux Foundation certification.

Next (or in parallel) learn cloud computing. Doesn't matter much which one but AWS might get you more attention.

You might want to take the CCNA cert too if your understanding of networks isn't great.

Learn a programming language for automation. Python is a good choice. Golang too. Participate in open source projects if you do that.

For a crappy 2nd level job:

Leave all the low level skills in your resume. They will be looking for that.

Work on what I said above in parallel.

<comment><USER4> > For a good 2nd level support job: > Forget CompTIA. Seriously.

This is bad advice in places like South Carolina and Georgia where your employer is probably going to be a contractor working with GSC, General Dynamics, Raytheon, etc, and your resume simply has to get through that grunt level HR person before anyone will talk to you.

Some of them won't even let you touch their systems without A+ or Network+, as terrible as that is. Having a CCNA/JNCIA is a better alternative. It's changing, but slowly.

It might be worth doing the "worthless" certification just once to get some better work experience. I definitely wouldn't advise anyone refresh that certification ever though. That would be a red flag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just some general advice, but you should tailor your resume to the job you're applying for. Never submit a general resume that attempts to capture your entire career. That you apply to hundreds of jobs tells me that you aren't making those key adjustments to your resume that will get you noticed.

When I see a resume that lists tons and tons of technologies, I just think it's BS, and frankly, most companies only work with a handful technologies, so listing ones they don't use is just noise.

<comment><USER6> I agree. Listing many skills not needed for the job can be distracting. I always had my sister (H.R. Director) fine tune my resumes. I recommend finding someone that can help you do the same. It also helps avoid making you look like a "jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none". Determine exactly what kind of support a company is looking for, and write your resume for that job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Have you been interacting with the hiring managers directly? Most people don't know why they're not getting hired/called for interviews, or how to get "better." And employers aren't giving any direct feedback due to time restrictions. But hiring managers know they need to get better at telling people what they're looking for, and we're been working on facilitating that interaction. Exactly why we started Edvo (www.edvo.com) and applied to YC!

Please email me at email@example.com - We've just started so our current employer network is small but we'll earnestly try to direct you to places or facilitate the interactions with hiring managers so you can know what they're looking for.

If there's anyone else that feels this pain, please comment/reach out! The more we learn, the better we can be and the more people we can help.

</comment><comment><USER8> The good news is that it does sound like you are well qualified for a support position.

If you are being told that you are _over_ -qualified for the positions you might need to "dumb down" your resume a bit. Take out the parts that don't apply directly to support. It might be really amazing that you coded an internal billing system in Pascal but it won't help you land this specific job.

Also, if you are a hard worker and knowledgeable, a good company will quickly promote a Level 1 support person to their appropriate level. Getting in the door via Level 1 support then working your way up is almost always easier than going straight into a more advanced position, since you are competing with internal applicants who likely know their system better than you.

Just my thoughts. Hope the feedback yelps!

</comment><comment><USER9> Two pieces of advice as a former hiring manager:

1) Write a cover letter specific to the job that highlights that you like helping others.

2) Apply to places where you have friends or acquaintances who can pass your resume along. Go to networking events if you just. Weak connections can help just as much as strong ones. Employee referrals make the screening process much easier for HR and Hiring Managers.

</comment><comment><USER4> What market you're in will influence a lot of how this question should be answered?

Are you somewhere like the southeastern US where a large portion of tech jobs are government or government-supplier contracts? If so, you want to get your certifications to get your foot in the door.

If you're somewhere like NY or SF it will probably have the opposite effect.

</comment><comment><USER10> You mention that you've had 2 in-person interviews for 100 applications. How many tech/phone screens did you get? To really give some good advice, it would be good to know if your resume is failing to impress, or if you aren't succeeding at the phone screen.</comment>


Linux.org gets snapped - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux.org <comment><USER2> Seems someone registered the domain again, presumably because `linux.org` expired [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dtxoe8tVYAAldNm.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dtxoe8tVYAAldNm.jpg)</comment>