How to Charge $546 for Six Liters of Saltwater - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/health/exploring-salines-secret-costs.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 <comment><USER2> Many in this thread are claiming that price fixing wouldn't occur in a "truly free" market. This is misty-eyed naivety.

In a completely deregulated free market, it is even more in the hospitals' interest to form a price-fixing cartel. Any new player in the market trying to set reasonable market prices could be excluded through market pressure tactics (eg, tell distributors don't sell to them or our cartel will no longer use you).

It seems to me that the parlous state of the US healthcare system is in fact a perfect demonstration of the dangers of a completely free market, and claims that "oh no it's not actually free enough" are merely handwaving.

<comment><USER3> How do you explain other free markets that obviously deliver quality products at low prices? I don't feel gouged when I buy a television, a cell phone or lumber at Home Depot.

<comment><USER4> Cell phones are a great example of the terrible results from supposedly free markets.

Plans are deliberately priced to be confusing to compare prices; plans are frequently updated to cause people to be stuck in win-optimal contracts; consumers are gouged on some items (see bizarre cost of sms in UK); and companies collude to defeat market mechanisms - see the use of area codes in auction bids as a method of communication when frequencies were auctioned off.

<comment><USER5> Would this be the same free market that put a Cray 2-class computer in my pocket for $85/month?

<comment><USER6> When you look at how much other devices cost that are comparable but are not mobile phones, then over a grand a year does seem excessive. Comparing the cost of a phone to a cray-2 is fairly meaningless. It would make more sense to compare it to a Raspberry-Pi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's always in the seller's interest to create a complex and opaque system of pricing, especially when the buyer doesn't even pay for the services. This is why free markets aren't the answer to everything. It's free and open markets that drive efficiency out of any process.

The problem here is one of incentives. If I promise to pay you for mowing your neighbor's lawn, and he rarely reviews what you're doing and I rarely check with him, suddenly mowing the lawn gets really complicated and expensive. If, on the other hand, you walk next door and solicit the neighbor to mow his lawn, suddenly it's a very simple transaction. The difference is one of incentives. If the goal is to provide mowed lawns, the neighbor is the guy responsible. If the goal is to provide a rationale for writing a check? Heck, I got all kinds of easy rationales handy. I can play this game all day.

It should be illegal for anybody to pay a medical bill except for the person receiving treatment. If you want universal coverage, that's fine: pay the patient and have the patient pay the hospital and doctor. Once you begin to incentivize other players besides the patient, you're going to create a mess. I'd also recommend completely unbundling hospital services. Patients should be able to buy materials and services on the open market -- and keep the savings they make doing so. Hospitals should provide clean, sterile rooms for independent specialists to work, not form a pricing cabal controlling anything that happens inside the walls and incentivized to game the system.

<comment><USER8> > This is why free markets aren't the answer to everything.

Perhaps I've misunderstood you here but in my opinion the way healthcare works is sort of the opposite of a free market and if a free marketplace for health services were allowed to exist then things like $500 bags of saline solution wouldn't exist.

<comment><USER9> It is not possible to have a "free market" in health care because the "customers" are often on the brink of death, or not even conscious.

<comment><USER10> I've heard this statement used frequently to shut down debates re using market dynamics to improve the healthcare system in this country.

However, the substantial majority of healthcare services provisioned are non- emergency.

It is absolutely possible for us to have a freer market in those services (Lasik procedures are just one frequently cited example) and IMO that would be a huge improvement over the current Frankenstein system we have today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The problem with having healthcare under private enterprise is that these healthcare providers do not operate under the free market conditions we assume they do.

There is no "perfect information" allowing consumers to choose the cheapest price. As the article points out the pricing structure is very opaque. Not to mention the "consumers" want the best product regardless of cost, after all we are talking about their lives here.

Given the lack of free market conditions operating on these healthcare providers it is only logical that they would behave like the extortion rackets they are.

<comment><USER12> It is even worse than that. Lets say you want to open a medical facility that will lower costs. This will end up taking away business from other facilities where patients don't find the higher costs to provide value. In a free market, the new facility goes up, existing facilities have to compete, and consumers benefit.

In 35 states you can't do that. Existing facilities are protected, and you'll need to establish a certificate of need[1] showing that business won't be taken away from existing facilities. The somewhat tortured logic is that they would then have to charge remaining patients more which would raise costs for everyone so this is a cost saving measure.

Like many parts of US business it is good old fashioned protectionism, and not free markets.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am of the firm belief that healthcare is one of the basic goods that should be provided by a government. Some may cry socialism and argue that free markets are more "efficient", but that assumes people shouldn't have equal right to basic healthcare services. It also ignores the fact that many of the generally accepted principals required for a functioning free market are difficult to achieve in healthcare. In an emergency situation, for example, buyers are likely constrained to the closest hospital, at which point that hospital become a monopoly for that particular buyer. When the the good on offer is survival, it's easy to see where problems might arise.

I live in a country that has been rated the freest economy on earth every year since 1995 [1]. Low taxes, small government, minimal regulation. So what does healthcare look like here for the average person? $13/day. Got a sore finger? $13/day. Intensive care? $13/day.

There is a significant parallel private system that offers all the luxuries and perks that a free market can provide (no waiting times, private rooms, choice of doctor etc.). But it competes with the public hospitals for buyers. In providing a competing alternative, I would speculate that the public system limits the type of monopolistic situations that can arise.

No system is perfect and clearly there are enormous differences between the US and elsewhere, but it's interesting to note that the "freest economy on earth" has universal public healthcare, in addition to a freely competing private system.

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

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

[3] [http://www.news.gov.hk/en/record/html/2013/04/20130409_19040...](http://www.news.gov.hk/en/record/html/2013/04/20130409_190409.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER14> One of the big reasons for this problem is Medicare. The reimbursement that Medicare offers is often far less than it costs the hospital. Why does Medicare not cover the cost of a procedure? Usually because it did cover it in the past (to the point of generosity) and providers reacted by shifting their services to maximize the profits.

A good example is the infusion of drugs. Medicare pays ASP+4% (just cut from +6% due to sequestration). If you're a clinic that doesn't get a discount on their drugs (mostly community based clinics) you're often paying _more_ for the drug than the gov't pays you (it's a net loss every time you prescribe the drug).

However, the gov't does pay a lot to _infuse_ the drug. The result? Providers everywhere were starting their own infusion clinics and making a _ton_ of money on it. The profit from infusion clinics would be used to offset the loss from the purchase of the drug. CMS clamped down on reimbursement for infusion services recently, but it's still a profit center.

This happens all the time in the US healthcare system.

So what do hospitals do? They jack up the price on every item they possibly can. Of course insurance companies know what is up, so they negotiate much better rates for all of the items. However, for those who are uninsured, they pay the charge master rate which is very inflated.

The problem with the US healthcare system is not that's a free market, because it isn't. The problem is that's not a free market and it's not a fully regulated market, it's something in between. So what happens is that some regulations are put in place, some of which cause certain procedures to be unprofitable, so providers simply shift those costs to the un-(or less) regulated prices.

<comment><USER15> Sounds like the problem isn't actually medicare, sounds more like it's adding a capitalistic, profit-maximizing middleman into the system.

<comment><USER3> With respect, what does capitalism mean to you? Lassiez-Faire or something different?

<comment><USER15> The current sense of the term in which I use it now is capital-maximizing. If you have money, if you're capitalistic, you should be investing in what can make you the most money, or, if you're bought in to a system, you should be extracting the most "value" from it as possible.

I'm not using it as a political term, rather to describe our current, quarter- profit-maximization system driven by the stock market and public company board + CEO directives for how to run a company.

It's great for efficiently using capital to exploit existing innovations but it's really bad at things like investing in the public, social good of things like healthcare.

<comment><USER16> Try 'mercantile' instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have two active kids and am reasonably active myself. We have probably received medical treatment a dozen times in the last year, a combination of walk-in clinics, personal physicians and emergency room visits, depending on the circumstances. During these visits, the staff have used equipment, given procedures and prescribed medication and have rarely, if ever, inquired about my thoughts on treatment.

When my son jumped off the couch and cut the inside of his mouth open, I wasn't asked my opinion on treatment. And if I had been asked, I would have simply said "you're the physician, do what will make him better the fastest." The same would have gone for when I had pneumonia or had to get a tetanus shot after getting fishhooked while surfing. My goal is simple -- recover the best the fastest.

How does one legitimately comparison shop for a baby delivery? Imagine, for instance, Hospital A says their births average $20,000 and Hospital B says their births average $30,000. Which rational prospective parent chooses the $20,000 option?

Hospital care is not like buying a car, where most people can consider themselves educated enough to make a decision based on competing factors -- perhaps I'm willing to give up some handling for a lower price or I'm willing to sacrifice fuel economy for more power.

The average person knows nada about the medical practicalities of giving birth (or treating pneumonia, or even stitching gums) so they cannot make informed decisions about what are reasonable tradeoffs.

As other people have said, medical treatment is an inelastic need. Parents don't say "you know, I'm cool with 50% less effective treatment for my child at 50% of the cost" and people don't say "you know, 90% functionality of my leg will be just fine if you can bring this in at a discount."

So not only do you have a lack of informed customers, you have a lack of choice in outcomes. A free market solution for medicine is a fairy tale spun by people of certain social and political persuasions.

<comment><USER18> The article focuses on what can hardly be considered a complicated good: salt water. Medical grade saline is highly regulated, and must be one of the most commodity products that exist in the country today. (The article takes pains to establish this.) It takes minimal effort to understand what it is or to compare prices. And yet, as the article says, there is no functioning market for it.

For something like "set this broken bone" sure, it's difficult to talk about the price for this risk vs. that risk. But for the liters of saline used during the procedure? That ought to be trivial to analyze. Yet it is not.

<comment><USER17> But the need is still fundamentally inelastic. You're seriously ill from food poisoning and you've lost a lot of fluids. The ER nurse is about to stick an IV into you and wave your hand weakly and say "Wait, how much is that IV fluid you're putting in there?"

The nurse says $500.

Option 1) You say "no way, I can't pay that." The nurse shrugs and says "well, that's what it costs for IV solution here."

Option 2) You say "holy hell that seem expensive for a bag of salt water." The nurse shrugs and says "well, that's what it costs for IV solution here."

Option 3) You say "I'm really not comfortable paying that. What other treatment can I get?" The nurse shrugs and says "sir, this is the standard protocol for treating acute food poisoning. We put a saline solution into your arm via IV to replace your fluids. There is no alternate treatment. We're really busy in the ER, so I need to put this needle in your arm or get to another patient."

Now let's add a functioning market as you allude to:

Option 3, redux) You say "I'm really not comfortable paying that. What other treatment can I get?" The nurse says "well, we also have this other saline solution for a buck." You, reasonably, say "wait, what? Why is this other one 500 times cheaper than the first one?" The nurse shrugs and says "no idea, I don't make them. They both seem fine to me though." You, still being reasonable, say "then why is one so much more expensive than the other? Will the cheaper one do just as good a job as the expensive one?" The nurse shrugs her shoulders and says "look, I can't promise anything one way or the other. We default to the more expensive one but if you want the cheaper one, that's your choice. It's probably fine. Just sign this form that you're opting for the cheaper solution."

What does a rational person with zero context choose?

<comment><USER19> That depends on what the rational person can afford. When they're thinking "500$ means I don't make my house or car payment this month and I'm not certain how I'll feed my family", they may say "I'll take the 1$ bag", consequences-be-damned. And they're still a "rational" person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> And herein lies the true problem of medicine in America. We have the worst possible healthcare system. It is a privately run industry without any real competition. Almost anything would be better - either public healthcare or real competition. Instead, what we practice in America is an exercise in insanity played out on sick and injured.

<comment><USER21> I agree. When it comes to your or your family's health you will not go with "cheap" even if it is the same level or better service/outcome. This is why the entire system needs to first create a nice feedback loop. Right now there are no metrics on how well certain hospitals are doing that can drive patient selection.

Usually, the patient just ends up going to the specialist their primary care provider referred them to or the closest one home. Until the quality/outcome data is made public there is no hope in steering people to better hospitals/providers.

There are some attempts lately in freeing up this information but I guess only time will tell how effective they will become.

On the bright side, it will only take one good health insurance company (I am thinking more like the type of disruption that a "Virgin" like company may bring to the table) to start using this data and driving some meaningful change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Basically it comes down to we'd rather let people die instead of telling hospitals they cannot do 10000% markup.

Even limiting them to 1000% markup would be "wrong".

Yay 'murica.

Be sure to donate blood while you are waiting for your loved ones in the hospital so they can sell it for 10000% markup too.

<comment><USER23> Population control, maybe?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What's the price of water in the desert? Somebody clearly realized this and appplied it to US healthcare system. Way to go capitalism.

</comment><comment><USER25> There was a really, really good (depressing) article I'd read about a year or two ago talking about how group purchasing organizations worked to influence the costs of devices.

The example case was a guy who'd developed an auto-retracting needle, and was screwed out of business by some major manufacturers pressuring hospitals not to buy it.

Does anyone have a link to that article?

<comment><USER26> Is this the article you refer to?

"How the medical supply industry blocks device startups from selling to hospitals"

[http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1007.blake.ht...](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1007.blake.html)

<comment><USER25> Yep! Good find!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Health expenditure per country (as a fraction of their GDP). The US spends 50% more than France while in France, health care is free and universal.

[https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/rankorder/2225rank.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> Free market decisions will work when the patient has a choice. For example, when going for an outpatient visit to a doctors office that is scheduled in advance. One could argue that the patient has time to review their choices, call different providers and come to a decision. This is not the case when the patient is being urgently hospitalized. They are typically rushed to the closest medical center and are subject to the prices it charges and it's providers charge. Given that they have no choice, whatever system it is that leads to these high prices is unlikely to change - if you are forced to buy something from me, why wouldn't i charge you as much as i feel like for it? The government could get involved and force hospitals to adhere to a certain fee schedule - but why should for profit institutions have to adhere to this? In a truly capitalistic society they really shouldn't. The best ways to deal with this is to maximize insurance coverage, which is one goal of the affordable care act, and then to really use it as insurance and not to pay for every possible medical service a patient may require. Insurance companies will negotiate reasonable rates for hospitalizations. And if it's really being used as insurance and not to cover regular outpatient services, premiums would remain low as well. So would there still be stories of the $4 Tylenol tablet dispensed in the hospital? Probably - but in the grand scheme of things, it wouldn't matter as much.

</comment><comment><USER29> After spending six months in the hospital for orthopedic care for my news it became very apparent that unless you had a negotiated rate with your HMO or were on Medicare, pricing was the wild west. If you could discern what the bills were for via the medical codes, you would become outraged by the overhead. The best part is that hospitals get to hide behind HIPAA as they gouge and steal.

</comment><comment><USER30> And what about these web sites for thousands of dollars? I mean, if I can throw something together in 30 minutes using MS Paint and Wordpad, how ridiculous is it that a designer charges more than 20 USD per hour?

Ah, I see. It's only en vogue to complain if I don't know anything at all about the constraints of the domain and am pulling stuff out of my ass. My bad.

</comment><comment><USER31> So this is by design isn't it? The fact that insurance covers everything and the hospitals do not have to eat up any costs begs for this to happen. If the majority of customers (patients) pay out of their pocket then the hospitals would be incetivized to make themselves attractive to patients. Else why the hell do they care? In fact they mark up prices multiple times to offset any unforeseen costs of eating up costs as well. There is no incentive in price transparency, no incentive to compete among hospitals. Honestly if you are covered then as an individual you don't care either. I am not sure what the solution is here.

<comment><USER32> Serious question: why do you think that hospitals don't have to eat costs?

It's a loaded question in the sense that I've been at various hospitals and they always talk about their budget shortfall which is in part due to non- reimbursed care provided to those who cannot pay and/or have no insurance. But it's also not a loaded question in the sense that I want to understand why people would think hospitals don't eat costs.

<comment><USER31> Oops, I was thinking something and typed something else entirely. I meant to say that since the insured pay for the uninsured (through marked up prices), the hospitals are incentivized to jack up prices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Not to defend the costs or the state of the system, but the justification for the prices of medications in hospitals usually includes the time of the nurses, pharmacists, and techs that make the whole administration process happen safely.

Also, hospitals will bill whatever amount they can get reimbursed. Most insurance companies have contracts with hospitals where they only get a fraction of the billed amount. The rest is written off by the hospital. Uninsured patients can usually work out payment plans for lower amounts as well. That said, healthcare in the US is still pretty damn expensive.

</comment><comment><USER34> I think there are 2 big factors that always seem to be missing from these investigations. The high costs offsets individuals who don't pay for their healthcare. Keep in mind that the hospital must treat anybody who walks in the door and they frequently do not get reimbursed by the government. Also keep in mind that the solution must be perfect when it physically cannot be. Because if there is a .0001 percent chance of failure, every doctor that treated the patient gets sued, the hospital gets sued for several million, the manufacturers gets sued, the middle man gets sued, heck the receptionists probably gets sued too. Think of the costs of insurance for every party involved. Obstetricians often pay $85,000 to as much as $200,000 for malpractice insurance. That's just the doctor.

Reduce the malpractice payouts and shield doctors like other countries do. Make the government absorb more of the costs for care. The price could probably be cut by 200 to 300 bucks.

<comment><USER9> (U.S.) states where malpractice damages are limited do not have lower health care costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> 1\. Does the industry need a few Mannings and Snowdens?

2\. How much progress in the world is stifled by powerful incumbents blocking competition? Taxi lobbyists tackling Uber, car industry impeding mass transit in LA decades ago, etc?

<comment><USER36> The industry already got one actually, I coincidentally came across this yesterday:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-13/florida- pharmacists...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-13/florida-pharmacists- win-597-million-blowing-whistle-on-scheme.html)

The TLDR is that an independent pharmacist treating AIDS patients got run out of business by price fixing competitors. He got the last laugh and sued on the behalf of the government and has so far collected $597M in awards (the government has collected over $3 billion).

The behavior of these (very large) firms was outrageous:

> For example, Abbott Laboratories (ABT) sold its antibiotic Vancomycin 1 GM > FTV to customers for $4 a dose, according to a joint Justice Department and > Ven-A-Care lawsuit. Abbott reported the cost to pricing publishers as $72.48 > -- 18 times the actual amount, the lawsuit says.

This is likely going on for other types of drugs and then also in every other segment (medical devices/supplies being a biggy).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> So if the manufacturer charges a dollar for the bag of saline, and the hospital marks it up a couple orders a magnitude, hospitals must be absolutely swimming in cash, right? Did I miss that part in the article?

</comment><comment><USER38> What a baffling industry. Wish great things to any startup that tries to get through the bureaucratic/legal/insurance hurdles to take a crack at some of this.

<comment><USER39> With centuries of regulatory capture, powerful, politically-connected vested interests with huge war-chests, and a deck full of trump-cards like 'safety' they can play, they might need more than just good wishes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> OT: It's truly a sad day when I have to check to make sure that I'm reading something in a news section and not the op/ed section of the grey lady.

</comment><comment><USER41> They don't clarify though, the costs of running a sufficiently-advanced multiple-effect distiller, dealing with the FDA, WHO and whomever else forces them to... these costs could definitely add up, no?

What do you think the bar is for entering the market of providing water for injection? Who's there to make it costlier, maybe the insurance oligopoly can hold some of the blame for this as well...

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently the bar isn't too high:

[http://www.zorotools.com/g/00107210/k-G4226537?utm_source=go...](http://www.zorotools.com/g/00107210/k-G4226537?utm_source=google_shopping&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Google_Shopping_Feed&kw={keyword}&gclid=COXYmb3vmbkCFVNo7AodNCYA5g)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I keep getting that feeling that something must be done.

Any suggestions HN readers?

<comment><USER43> Turn healthcare into a government bureaucracy. Because that's an effective way to combat waste, inefficiency, and overcharging </sarcasm>

<comment><USER44> Clearly, its a problem a free market will efficiently fix and prices will stay low. </sarcasm>

<comment><USER45> At least price transparency worked for surgeries in a hospital in Oklahoma: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6014794](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6014794)

Perhaps a similar approach could work for IVs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Near the end of my father's life, he needed medical equipment at home. The equipment was provided by a company that has deals worked out with all the local hospitals.

The price for one oxygen condenser is covered after a victim(patient) pays for the device for around half a year.

Looking over some others I know, they are all going through this same company. Referred to them by each of their hospitals.

I cannot fully explain the scheme worked out from the hospitals, but I know it depends on having the often confused patient signing a bundle of documentation while he is being led out the door. I read over the documents and it seemed fair, I just had no time to research all that was needed. My father was in full legal control and he himself just simply followed through with what the hospital asked.

Fuck you, Airway Oxygen.</comment>


Ask HN: Should developers have access to production? - <AUTHOR>

Should developers have access to production?  If not, any efficiency hacks/suggestions? <comment><USER2> NO!

Edit: F--- NO!</comment>


Ask HN: Do tech media/individual bloggers ever cover unknown products? - <AUTHOR> All I can see is either start-ups, that have already been funded or products, that are new, but already quite popular...
Do any of them actually cover new products that are BARELY KNOWN (if at all) to anyone?
Maybe anyone knows a media outlet or individual blog specializing on covering unknown/just-launched stuff... <comment><USER2> It depends on the market sector, but many have trade magazines/web sites which are always looking for editorial and advertising. If you can ghost write the editorial for them, it saves them work. If you advertise with them, they may write about you at another time.

To be effective though you need a compelling story.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you have something really new and interesting you can pitch it to tech sites, bloggers, etc. and get some attention.

A lot of times people are pitching something that is not really that interesting, or they pitch it in a way that reporters cannot turn into a story that their audience can understand. (I've made that mistake!)

Generally if you reach out to bloggers and tech writers you will get some response.

<comment><AUTHOR> > If you have something really new and interesting you can pitch it to tech > sites, bloggers, etc. and get some attention

There is this so-called 'chicken-egg' problem with new products, when a product is interesting only when has a lot of users... And this applies to a really large number of new products... I'm myself in this situation right now with my product... That's why I'm looking for a media outlet/individual blog that could potentially be interested in covering a product with a small userbase...</comment></comment>


How Much Does a Website Cost? - <AUTHOR> http://howmuchdoesawebsiteco.st <comment><USER2> Cool site, would be nice to see a breakdown of how much each answer contributed to the final estimate, though (unless I missed something on the last page).</comment>


Ministry of Silly Runtimes: Vintage Python on Cloud Run - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/di/ministry-of-silly-runtimes-vintage-python-on-cloud-run-3b9d <comment><USER2> > Luckily, I found > [https://legacy.python.org/download/releases/src/](https://legacy.python.org/download/releases/src/), > which includes source releases as far back as Python 1.0.1, which was > released just over 25 years ago on February 15th, 1994.

There's also Python 0.9.1, which I extracted from alt.sources. It's available from [https://www.python.org/download/releases/early/](https://www.python.org/download/releases/early/) . I had to patch it a bit to compile. It works, but last time I tried it it segfaulted on exit.

FWIW, the Python repository goes back to the original commit, so it's also possible to extract a snapshot from any date.</comment>


A Remote Pacific Nation, Threatened by Rising Seas - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/world/asia/climate-change-kiribati.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront <comment><USER2> I am a Pacific islander in the US. While I mostly am "American" in my personality and values, the rest of my family lives on an island not too far from Kiribati. The thing is for any group of people, it's hard to really think with a full heart (that is, will full sympathy) for people outside our eye reach. Moreover, it doesn't help that these are tiny populations. The article says these are thousands of people. The people in my island, Palau number around 16,000. It is problematic, however, that climate change will be effected by nations who will not see direct consequences, at least not early on, so the hope that out of their own self interest or otherwise act to stem the change unlikely.

</comment><comment><USER3> "We are Christians," she said. "So we don't believe that God could have given us this world and then take it away."

Scientists: We're here to warn you about the flood. Locals: No thanks, god will provide. International aid workers: We're here to save you from the flood. Locals: No thanks, god will provide. Rescue workers: Quick, get in, it's your last chance! Locals: No thanks, god will provide. Drowning Locals: God! why have you forsaken us? God: I tried to save you three times. What more do you want?

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting times ahead. The purchase of the tract in Fiji is an ordinary land deal and does not imply a transfer of sovereignty. If the population of the Republic of Kiribati eventually relocates to this tract, what will be their legal status in Fiji? Citizens of Fiji, or refugees?

If the islands of Kiribati are underwater, other governments may come to challenge their claim to vast amounts of the Pacific [1]

[1] Maritime boundaries and claims: [https://imgur.com/KbGj1mC](https://imgur.com/KbGj1mC)

<comment><USER5> My solution would be for the US to purchase Kiribati and relocate the citizens to the Texas coast.

The EEZ would then be turned into a conversation zone. The USN would use it as an MOA to keep out the tuna fleets.

Once Kiribati is under water, those EEZs would turn into international waters. It has been a few years, but IIRC there isn't much impingement of other nations' EEZs on that of Kiribati.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the google maps link: [https://www.google.dk/maps?q=Kiribati&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&ved...](https://www.google.dk/maps?q=Kiribati&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjYiY2wgd3NAhXKAJoKHSafA_oQ_AUICSgC)

Nearby is Jarvis Island, with the sorry story of Squire Flockton that I was drawn to for some reason: [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi- bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=470596...](http://www.findagrave.com/cgi- bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=47059637)

</comment><comment><USER6> Cool thing about the Kiribati language, the 'ti' makes an 's' sound. So if someone is named "Sam", in Kiribati you would spell his name "Tiam."

<comment><USER7> unless written kiribati was natively developed to use the english alphabet, it seems like someone just did a really crap job of romanizing their language.

<comment> guard-of-terra Not necessarily. Maybe this is less than optimal for loanwords, but why have consonants in your alphabet that you never use? Might also have grammatical meaning (e.g. t staying t in every form of a word)

For example, in Russian pronunciation, you might definitely confuse 'ti' for 'si'. If Russian wouldn't have the real 's' consonant (or 'ц'), it would make sense to transliterate 's' as 'ti'.

<comment><USER7> I don't understand. If the people of kiribati (pronounced KEE-ree-bas) have an S sound, then it makes sense to romanize their language so that words endings with an S sound end with an S letter... If they have a "ti" sound as well, then by all means keep the T and the I, or even glyph them together...

But english is (more or less) a phonetic language. If you're romanizing a foreign language, and it doesn't come out more or less phonetic, then.... try again. It doesn't _cost_ anything to keep an "s" in the prospective alphabet.

<comment><USER8> I agree with you mostly but ... shrug. If we went with that then the Q in Chinese wouldn't be pronounced 'ch' (or something very close to that)

A not entirely irrelevant fact about "Kiribati" is that is the same word as Gilberts -- as in Gilberts Islands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can recommend 'The Sex Lives of Cannibals' if you'd like to know more about Kiribati: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sex-Lives-Cannibals-Equatorial- Paci...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sex-Lives-Cannibals-Equatorial- Pacific/dp/0767915305/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467760541&sr=1-1&keywords=the+sex+lives+of+cannibals)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is nothing compared to the people who die from lack of access to cheap energy, each year, right now.

It's interesting in 30+ years that island's might disappear.

But I'd be surprised if it isn't solvable with 30+ year tech. (It's solvable with current tech, just expensive)

<comment><USER2> >This is nothing compared to the people who die from lack of access to cheap energy, each year, right now.

60%[0] of greenhouse emissions don't come from the worst of developing countries, so I doubt that many are in those countries are "dying" from a lack of access to cheap energy. 6000 people is a small number. You do risk losing a culture and people, but is the convenience of billions worth the culture of few thousand? I suppose that is a judgement call.

Regardless, it's not like climate change won't affect the billions, it will. It's more like the islanders here will be the first victims.

[0] Added up the numbers from the top ten emitters for greenhouse gases. Brazil and Indonesia are included in this list for their aggressive burning of forest for farmland. Indonesia and Brazil aren't quite "old world" countries, but I doubt access to petrol is the least of their problems.

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/21/countrie...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/21/countries- responsible-climate-change)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Tuvalu is in similar straits.

<comment><USER12> ... I can't tell if that's a pun or not. Well played!

<comment><USER11> Not a pun, just what this immediately reminded me of :) I've always found it astonishing that people would live on an island with such a low maximum elevation.</comment></comment></comment>


Cargo Cults and Interview Questions - <AUTHOR> http://raganwald.posterous.com/bob-and-carol-and-ted-and-alice <comment><USER3> This fable reminded me of my favourite, unfortunately all to real, cargo cult experience.

I gave a client's boss a copy of DeMarco & Lister's "Peopleware" to read. I was younger and more innocent at the time and thought it would persuade him to change some of his incredibly damaging management practices. He'd produced an incredibly adversarial fear-based working environment that was killing productivity.

For those who've read the book (and if you haven't you should... now... seriously....) this guy was the poster-boy for the Teamicide chapter.

He came back to me after the weekend telling me how much he _loved_ the book. Could really see how it could help the organisation. Would be making changes this week. I walked away feeling smug.

What was the lesson he drew from the book? Of all the lessons that he could learn?

In one chapter there is a brief section on how to spot jelled teams where they mention signs like going out for a drink together after work.

So he decided to take the company bowling on Friday nights.

Attendance compulsory.

Correlation. Causation. So easy to confuse.

(At this point I'm less smug.)

Let us say the result of mandating adversarial teams working fifty hours weeks socialise around a competitive game where alcohol was available was not ideal. During week 1 there was shouting. Week 2 resulted in a fight. There wasn't a week 3.

On the bright side it was the final straw the caused some folk to resign :-)

<comment><USER4> Did this manager spot the causation between compulsory bowling and folks resigning?

<comment><USER5> It sounds like the manager would see the causation between _bowling_ and resigning and just force a different compulsory activity.

<comment><USER6> He hates these cans! Stay away from the cans!

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079367/quotes?qt0271097>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As someone sitting idly in a rather crowded Sunnyvale hotel lobby awaiting my own interview, I'm prepared for a Bob, but I'm afraid I'll get a Ted.

I'm not a formally schooled developer. I don't know a heap about traditional computer science. I don't know all the sorting algorithms off hand (but could throw one together with a little time and reference). I'm not even fluent in all the jargon, vernacular and glossary terms that devs bat around.

I don't know if I'm the best for this job, but I know only 3 short years ago, I was doing graphic design and 3 years before that, I was trying to make good on my degree (and dream) of journalism.

None of us choose how we learn, but I think the best of us just know _how_ to.

<comment><USER8> I don't know how it is with most interviewers, but for interviews that I do: If you don't know a term, just ask. I'm more interested in whether you're familiar with the concept and can apply it than whether you know the appropriate term. Chances are that you're familiar with the concept already and are just not familiar with the name.

If you're in the interview room, I'm not so concerned about book learning and knowing facts, but whether you have the correct amount of knowledge to do the job and the ability to apply it.

<comment><USER9> The best piece of technical interview advice I've ever gotten: It's much more impressive to NOT know something, ask about it, and then be able to understand it and apply it to your answer during the course of the interview, than it is to just already know it.

<comment><USER10> agreed, a few weeks ago I was interviewing and the interviewer schooled me on python generators and cooperative threading (pretty much all my knowledge is around erlang and message passing / explicit threading)

I got the job, and learned something along the way

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps my terminology is off, but as a minor nitpicking point I have never heard of this type of constructor refered to as a copy constructor. A copy constructor is a constructor for type Tthat takes an existing T and initializes the new T to have the same underlying state. So something like

      class Foo
      {
      public:
        Foo(const Foo& other)
        {
          //copy state from other Foo here
        }
      };

What this example is talking about is a normal constructor that can be (perhaps unintentionaly) used in the context of an implicit conversion, so something like

      class Foo
      {
      public:
        Foo(int heyThere)
        {
        }
      };

This allows the C++ compiler to create an automatic conversion (in some instances) from int -> Foo simply by inserting a call to this constructor. So it can cause code like this to compile even if it was not intended

      void HandleTheFoo(const Foo& theFoo)
      {
        //Do something here
      }

      void SomeMethod()
      {
        Foo intended; //assume there is a default ctor available even though I didn't show it above

        int whoops = 5;

        HandleTheFoo(whoops);
      }

Marking the constructor explicit prevents the compiler from using it in an implicit conversion context.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've heard it that implicit conversion is a specialization of copy construction. So you can still use explicit Foo (const Foo& other) if you wish to force all construction of Foos to use the new keyword and not to be passed by value. But I'm certainly willing to accept the suggestion that the two are distinct, in which case my understanding is that the explicit keyword blocks implicit conversion (as described in the story and in your example) and I understand that it also blocks implicit copy construction.

<comment><USER11> Ah, that makes sense. Though technically you don't have to use the new keyword unless you want a heap allocated instance, something like

      HandleTheFoo(Foo(5));

or even

      HandleTheFoo(Foo(otherFoo));

is perfectly cromulent with the constructor being marked explicit. But that is just me engaging in terminological quibbling, I get what you meant/said in spirit and don't disagree that people asking questions they don't have a deep understanding of themselves can only lead to fail.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words. And the reminder about stack variables!!!

I wasn't trying to suggest that Ted didn't have deep knowledge of C++, as we can see his fictional knowledge is far better than my distant memories. I was trying to suggest that he was engaging in copy-and-paste interviewing, and that it's a bad idea for all of the same reasons copy-and-paste coding is a bad idea :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So we're doing this thread again? Stock interview questions don't test real knowledge, they test knowledge of stock interview questions.

In my experience, the most accurate interview processes is to ask a candidate to solve a short (but non-trivial) problem in the language of their choosing (or pseudocode). Ideally, candidates could be interviewed by a few people independently to ensure an accurate sample of that interviewee's knowledge. This isn't always possible (due to time and other constraints) but this process better guarantees that a smart candidate isn't tripped up by a very unusual question, or that a weak candidate doesn't memorize common interview answers.

<comment><USER13> Surely the most accurate would be to ask them to solve a problem closely tied to the sort of job they will be doing (doing variations on FizzBuzz under time pressure does give information, but that information may not be entirely relevant to the job).

And the objective should be to establish a level of capability which is acceptable for business purposes, not to try to optimize on intelligence.

Be truthful with yourself about whether you really want the smartest guy possible. The smartest guy sees the boss's (or company's) bullshit and is more likely to say something about it. This makes trouble. The smartest guy may be a "bipolar" type. The smartest guy, with the mind that needs meat to chew, is more liable to implement things in a clever way than one which average joes will be able to maintain and extend easily. You probably don't want the smartest guy because he probably isn't as good on some other dimensions.

What I see in this industry is that we project intelligence onto the people with traits which satisfy our prejudices (typically people with high class/status). Then we filter on this perceived-intelligence with the rationale that we want a company with people who are as smart as possible. The actual effect is at least as much to favor people with high social status and self-promotion ability and physical attractiveness as it is to favor smart people.

Hiring processes are irrational not because nobody can ever work out the right processes, but because we work backwards from unexamined pictures of "the right candidate" to the processes which will select that candidate.

<comment><USER14> This is pretty much what I've always done - describe the sort of problems they're likely to encounter in the role they're being hired for, perhaps mentioning a few challenges we've had (and possibly already solved), and ask them to explain how they would solve the problem. It's pretty difficult to bullshit your way out of answering a real problem.

Other than adding in some rudimentary skills tests (say, FizzBuzz + walkthrough writing the code with them), and checking if they've developed anything out of their own initiative, I can't see why you'd bother asking anything else.

<comment><USER15> I really like the theory of this, but in practice I have a hell of a hard time figuring out "real problems" for which the explanation and solution would occupy less than an afternoon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Spot on. Asking questions about esoterica (defined as any language feature that's >0 levels above their current level of knowledge!) is useless.

I'd rather get a candidate to write some (relatively simple) code using what they _do_ know about the language, and then we can dive into the code and see if they really understand what it does, and what happens if I poke this or prod that. I don't even care what language they use - although if they pick one I don't know it may be _harder_ for them because I'm going to ask pointed questions about how parameters and equality work in that language.

The interview "question" is just a starting point for a conversation. Trick questions and minutia don't serve that purpose at all.

<comment><USER17> I don't think esoterica is entirely useless in an interviewing context. I've interviewed a few people for language centric positions before and one thing I liked to ask was, "What feature or piece of this language do you find interesting or frustrating?" Someone who's worked a lot with a particular technology is bound to have something meaningful to say. I suppose they could just not be particularly thoughtful about their tools, but I like working with thoughtful people.

<comment><USER18> I've found that I don't think about languages that way. I think of things more like "I want to achieve goal X; what are the interesting or frustrating aspects with respect to that goal?"

For example, someone asked me once about the warts in Python. I started thinking about complaints I've heard others say, like Python 2.x's "print >>fileobj" syntax. I understand the reasons for and against it, but I nearly only use print statements for debugging, so it's not one that I want to bring up. Or there's the lack of block syntax, which Smalltalk/Ruby developers love, but Python has different ways to handle most of the underlying requirements.

So there I'm thinking about the different aspect of Python, trying to figure out which ones I want to bring up, but I hadn't fully considered the other issues with the language, in order to figure out which is the most relevant, but then, I don't know how to rank the relevancy because the question was structured without any rank preference.

Now if you had asked "... when used for systems programming ..." or "... as a programming language for scientists ..." or "... compared with Perl ..." then I would find it much easier to give the thoughtful answer you're looking for.

I had the same problem a couple of years back at our monthly Python meetings. We did a code refactoring exercise: given code, make it better. I had a really tough time because I couldn't figure out what "better" meant. The exercise code worked, although it mixed business logic, database interface, and presentation into a single file. But without an idea of the direction the code was supposed to go for the future, I couldn't figure out why anyone would want to modify working code.

<comment><USER17> Okay, so you go on my no-hire list because you paralyze yourself with questions :P

<comment><USER18> That's okay - I've been a self-employed consultant for 15 years, since that way I can ask people "what's your goal?" and get away with it. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This was an interesting story. Sounds like an astute interviewer, the kind who can really get at the core of technical knowledge. And of course, people have every right to set whatever standard they like in their hiring.

But every time I read about someone like Alice, it does cause me to reflect on the "hiring troubles" companies are experiencing, the "shortage" of top candidates.

She has contributed to open source, shown the ability to learn and write small apps in new languages. She can code, definitely, but she shows some weakness... NO HIRE. Not only no hire, she's a faker, a cargo cult-er, she "pulled the wool over your eyes." She's not just unqualified (by high standards, in my opinion), she's _insincere_.

Please, understand that I'm not saying that hiring standards shouldn't be high, or that weak team members don't do more damage than good. I get all these things. But the bar is high enough that it should be utterly unsurprising that there's a shortage of "qualified" people, and that a lot of people (who might have become good programmers) bail out, get forced out, or want nothing to do with it after their first taste.

I'm ok with these high standards, but I think we celebrate it a little too much.

EDIT: raganwald, jbooth, peter...

thanks for replying rather than just downmodding - unfortunately (for me), yeah, you're right, I misread this.

I'd like to take it down, but once someone has responded, I leave it up with an EDIT...

<comment><AUTHOR> I may have done a poor job of conveying why the story is related to Cargo Cult religions.

 _The term cargo cult programmer may also apply when an unskilled or novice computer programmer (or one not experienced with the problem at hand) copies some program code from one place and pastes it into another place, with little or no understanding of how the code works, or whether it is required in its new position._

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming>

I don't know if this term can be applied to Alice, but I am pretty certain that the story describes Ted blindly copying the surface form of something Bob did in an interview with Carol into Ted's interview with Alice with little or no understanding of how Bob's conversation worked, or whether it was required in Ted's conversation with Alice.

<comment><USER20> The message was clear, some people just see what they want to though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I agree with the story. To interview, you don't turn little details into big questions. You turn big questions into little details.

Interviews are lossy compression of a career, experience, and brain shape, over a noisy channel of whiteboards and human speech. The best you can hope is that your interviewer will recognize the larger pattern.

BUT. There is limited time in an interview, so we try to scry nuances like a soothsayer with a pile of sheep guts. Every detail gets magnified.

Examples:

"You chose to return an error code instead of throwing an exception." Is this an optimization, or have you spent a lot of time on system programming?

"I see a couple of fenceposting errors." Is it nerves or do you not have the right shape of the problem in your head?

"You passed some bookkeeping information in a recursive call that should take care of itself." Do you not understand recursion, or are you misremembering something cool about accumulators and tail recursion?

"You chose to use inheritance instead of composition." Have you ever had to extend or maintain such a design, or did you read about it in a book?

"You used template metaprogramming." Are you a misunderstood genius or do you delight in writing unmaintainable constructs from the dark corners of C++ into production?

"You chose to use Perl but don't know what a hash is." Do you have any questions for me?

<comment><USER22> >"You chose to use Perl but don't know what a hash is." Do you have any questions for me?

This reminds me of someone who once told me they knew C and were proficient at it, but they just "didn't get pointers and I don't use them."

<comment><USER23> Scoff if you like, but I hired that guy. He's a fellow at Adobe now. They bought his startup.

We interviewed a Busuness school Finance senior to help on our COMSTOCK satellite feed parsing project.'Do you know C++?" we asked. "Yes" he lied, then "Can I come in over the weekend to get started?" How enthusiastic! Sure!

Turns out he spent the weekend studying code, learned to program C++. I didn't see him for a few weeks, then consulting on his code over something I mentioned "This would be better allocated". "Yeah, I wondered what the pointer stuff was about". I was astonished he'd come so far on guts and smarts. I explained malloc, pointers, he was off again.

<comment><USER24> Put another way, you had (have?) astonishingly poor interview techniques but this one time you got lucky?

<comment><USER23> You could pretend that. Or you could say, we valued his intelligence and readily-apparent ability to learn over 'fizz-buzz' nonsense questions and cargo-cult interview style.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How do you strike a fair balance between ridiculous interview questions (such as the example here, write code interfacing with some library from memory) and actually finding out a candidate's chops (assuming they don't have an open source history / github account). I think requiring candidates to have contributed to open source to be an unacceptable solution (although I can certainly see lending some weight to candidates with such credentials)

Anecdotally: We had a guy in for interviews a few months ago. In the phone interview prep by HR, it was mentioned that there would be some written "tests," and the guy was extremely resistant. We had him in anyway and he did very poorly. The test was pretty simple: some stuff about magic methods in php, a fizzbuzz type question, and a few jquery selector questions (it was for a front- and back-end position), etc. Were we to granular with the questions? Did we fall into the same trap as Ted here?

<comment><USER26> Simple tests (what is this jquery doing? why is this ruby script failing?) are great as bogofilters as long as you actually use jquery and ruby on the job.

I interviewed somewhere a few months ago and had a former programmer turned product manager grill me about b-trees (this was a Ruby on Rails position). I was not surprised to hear later that he was the one who gave me the final thumbs-down, I assume he thought I wasn't worth it because I didn't work at the same level of abstraction that he did when he was a coder.

<comment><USER27> He was seeing if you had a depth of understanding. I do that too.

I want to see that people are aware of what's going on below them. Not that it's just "magic" to some keyboard basher. ruby on rails attracts an extreme number of keyboard bashers, so they get extra scrutiny.

<comment><USER28> That's very different from grilling someone about b-trees, though. B-trees are fairly irrelevant to Rails development; it'd be like grilling the interviewee on assembly.

That's not to say that you don't need to weed out the people who only know how to recite various incantations to make magic happen; a knowledge of what's actually happening is very important. But at this level of abstraction, the correct focus should be on different, more relevant things: HTTP, caching, security, etc, which Rails (I'm guessing) handles for you but you should still know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not really related but I wonder about this all the time. Most of well known companies (Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo, Google, Facebook etc) have a lot of data structures and sorting algorithm related problems as part of their interviews. They might require you to explain the algorithm or write code for a given data structure problem. Do these companies use data structures like binary trees (with all the variations) and sorting algorithms a lot ?

I'm asking this because, the companies I work for are mostly tier-2 companies which hardly use any of this stuff and generally get away by using proper libraries. So when ever I have to prepare for attending interviews of the tier-1 companies, I'm forced to re-learn most of this stuff - <USER2> knowledge fades when you don't use it.

<comment><USER30> I used to work for Amazon, and used to interview a _lot_ while I was there.

The answer is: it varies, but generally no. There are some roles where you're going to be spinning mad data structures & algorithms day in and day out... but for the most part you write code that isn't overly dissimilar from what's written everywhere else.

This is my own observation and hypothesis: "tier 1" companies have very algorithm and data structures heavy interviews because their signal to noise ratio is _horrific_. Being household names, you have _tons_ of people applying who can't even Fizzbuzz. In this environment the natural reaction is to check, first and foremost, for CS fundamentals, because you can't assume that it exists and is just rusty.

I now work in startup-land, where hiring is _so_ much easier, since people who find their way to your doorstep are overall much more qualified by default.

I'll admit, when I interviewed for Amazon, I _always_ hit with algorithms and data structures questions first, because by my own unscientific estimates, at least 50% of applicants at the phone interview stage do not even understand what a tree is, much less how they might go about crawling one or representing it in data. I'd reckon about 10-15% cannot pass Fizzbuzz.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> No decent company should allow a single interviewer to shut down a candidate. I am a regular interviewer (phone and in-person) and I've got a few pet problems that I throw at all candidates who pass the simple introduction. I would never can someone on and 1 type of question, but I think it's fair to say that missing 2 or more conceptual questions will pretty much end the interview for me. That's why we have at least 2 2-person teams interview in- house -- if they passed the phone screen and make it in our doors they deserve it.

</comment><comment><USER32> Great example and a great follow up to "I don't hire unlucky people" As always a pleasure to read your blog.

</comment><comment><USER33> I entirely agree with raganwald's point point: language trivia is useless. I'd go further and say if someone knows actually knows C, and has a grasp of using OO in a way that's not painful for others working with them (prefer composition over inheritance, etc...), they can learn C++ on the job. If they know all C++ trivia, but lack a strong knowledge of either C, or good OO, they can do harm to a code base.

However, this isn't to distract from importance of using explicit and copy assignment. Here's a public service announcement: really, if your C++ class has a constructor that takes one argument, _please_ use explicit.

Additionally, please disable copy constructor and assignment operator, unless you actually implement them yourself. Here's a free macro for you, courtesy of Google's C++ style guide:

      #define DISALLOW_COPY_AND_ASSIGN(TypeName) \
        TypeName(const TypeName&);               \
        void operator=(const TypeName&)

      class MyClass {

      private:
        DISALLOW_COPY_AND_ASSIGN(MyClass);
      };

I will thank you for this.

<comment><USER34> I doubt anyone knows _all_ C++ trivia, and that if someone even knew most of it, they could be that clueless about OO design.

I work on libraries more than apps. When I want to hire someone to work with me on libraries, you better believe I'm going to look for a C++ expert. And the explicit keyword is crucial in a lot of cases -- sometimes it can mean the difference between code compiling or not, but even worse is the bug where a parameter is missing and an int is converted to be some class it shouldn't be.

Using existing libraries and just assembling bits into apps? Sure, learning on the job can be OK (though honestly I wouldn't trust C++ written by anyone using it for less than a year full time). Though _even then_ if you don't understand C++ well you're likely to shoot yourself in the foot with the language.

But there are some times that I really, really want someone to know the explicit keyword, at a minimum. Your example of DISALLOW_COPY_AND_ASSIGN is also good to know -- and it's likely in the Google style guide so that people don't have to be experts.

But I'd rather have people _know_ why it's important and how it works than people who are just trusting to the compiler and luck to make everything work right.

I've seen C programmers clear a class that contained a std::string with memset(&foo,0,sizeof(foo)), which happened to work on one implementation but failed badly on another. I've seen people take the raw pointer out of a smart pointer and attempt to manage it themselves -- including trying to wrap ANOTHER smart pointer container around it later. I've seen people fight with a bug for weeks because they didn't bother to initialize all their class members (fixed that bug in about 10 minutes on code I'd never seen before).

The list goes on, and the list of "coding standards" we created to try to enable people who weren't good enough at C++ to work effectively with our C++ library got to be so large that no one could remember it all, rendering it useless. [1]

So yes, if I'm going to have someone work on C++ for me, I either want them to have _at least_ a solid year of real experience, or I'm going to want to code review every line before it gets committed to main. Maybe I'll still hire them, but I've seen _so_ many examples of people misusing C++ (and then having to fix their bugs later) that I've been more than a little burned by it.

Even more esoteric than _explicit_ is the _mutable_ keyword. Major bonus points for anyone I'm interviewing to know what that one means and when it's used. But no major negative if they don't know -- it has very few compelling use cases, after all, so I can imagine people not remembering it.

[1] <https://developer.playfirst.com/standards>

<comment><USER35> Huh, your comment makes me wonder if I should look for contract work doing C++ development. I haven't done it seriously since the last millennium, and basically I've learned to program since then [0], but I know all the stuff you're talking about cold. (Except _mutable_ , which took me a few seconds to remember, and then I looked it up to be sure.)

It's just that I feel like higher-level languages like Ruby, Python, or JS are so much more productive for most things, most of the time, despite things like Rachelbythebay's interesting set of posts about hacking together stuff in C++ [1].

But, aside from things like that, I guess there are some domains where C++ is a viable option and Lua or whatever still isn't. And it sounds to me like the average quality of C++ has gone up since I was doing it, to the point that most people have read Alexandrescu and never call delete explicitly, so it might not be quite so painful?

Should I be taking advantage of being one of the Fat Guys Who Know C++? [2]

[0]: [http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen- tol/2007-March/0...](http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen- tol/2007-March/000849.html) [1]: <http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/01/14/blort/> [2]: [http://medriscoll.com/post/9117396231/the-guild-of- silicon-v...](http://medriscoll.com/post/9117396231/the-guild-of-silicon- valley)

<comment><USER34> Great links. I've certainly made a habit of hanging out with those Fat Guys, though at this point I'm in Boulder, so while they still have neck beards here, they tend to be pretty thin. Though honestly we stopped playing Settlers years ago, and have moved on to games like San Juan and Dominion. ;)

To tell the truth, I have a love/hate relationship with C++. Yes, I know it really well at this point. I've learned everything I know because it (at the time) was the only tool reasonable to get the job done. Now I actually avoid using it as much as possible.

The perfect combo for me (in games) is C++ for performant code combined with tight integration with Lua. I hear you on higher-level languages being more productive, which is why most of my game code ends up written in Lua. (I'm far from alone in using this combo -- most major iOS games seem to use the same combo, as do a lot of games in general.)

Why not use one of the three you mentioned? Size and speed both.

LuaJIT is pretty much the fastest dynamic language around, and the overhead of linking into a program is _tiny_ compared to Ruby, Python, or JavaScript. The language itself gives you advanced features like coroutines with upvalues and operator overrides, but at the same time it's super-simple -- to the point where non-programmers _can_ use it to script behaviors.

If you're doing server code you can afford to have things be a bit slower and/or huge (relatively speaking). If you're doing games downloaded OTA on a phone, and you've got a 20Mb limit before they have to use WiFi...well, size is critical (an extra megabyte or two means a lot of assets won't fit any more) and phones are far more processor-bound than most server tasks you'd use a scripting language for. On the other hand, with distributions like OpenResty [1] that hand you an extremely fast server and LuaJIT all bound up together, allowing me to create a cheap server that can handle 3000+ requests per second without barely breaking a sweat...well, since I know Lua ANYWAY, I use it on the server as well.

YMMV. :)

Addressing what you asked: C++ development is in reasonably high demand compared to the number of Fat Guys, so it tends to pay well. Having experience in a niche can also be handy -- by virtue of knowing Android C++/NDK development I've had random people contacting me to ask if I want to work for them, with no real promotion on my part. I don't even want to say what my rate was publicly, though I will say that I expected him to turn me down when I said how much I wanted.

<comment><USER35> Android C++/NDK by itself counts as a niche? That's kind of surprising! I would have thought a profitable niche would have to be a bit more specialized by now... I guess the NDK hasn't been out all that long.

I imagine gzipped Lua bytecode would be quite a bit more compact than gzipped compiled C++; does it work out that way in real life?

Does OpenResty work well with LuaJIT?

[1]: <http://openresty.org/>

<comment><USER34> OpenResty ships with LuaJIT 2.0 beta. You have to add a ./configure parameter to get it to use it, but it works well, yes.

As to bytecode...I think it probably does end up more compact than compiled C++, and it seems like it would have properties that would allow it to compress more tightly, but I don't have any numbers on that.

I tend to strip the source and compress and encrypt it; I could convert it to bytecode first, but the last time I tried that it ended up bigger than the compressed text.

>Android C++/NDK by itself counts as a niche? That's kind of surprising! I would have thought a profitable niche would have to be a bit more specialized by now... I guess the NDK hasn't been out all that long.

A lot of "Android" developers are actually Java developers who are trying to cash in on mobile. Serious game developers almost all use the NDK, but serious game developers are in high demand (myself included). So yes, NDK is itself a niche, in that the number of jobs seems to exceed the number of developers available.

On the other hand, by being able to do games in NDK I'm even better off, but just being good at NDK development is pretty powerful. Keep in mind that you also have to deal with Java and the Android stack -- you can't do everything in the NDK. So you need to be someone good at C++ who also can get around in Java.

<comment><USER35> That's really fascinating information, thanks! Who's a "serious game developer"? I'd think that things like Angry Birds and Bubble Bobble would work just about as well in Jython as in C++, but I guess they're not "serious"?

<comment><USER34> Angry Birds uses C++ and Lua. Haven't looked at Bubble Bobble.

Not saying you COULDN'T write games in other languages. MineCraft is written in Java, for instance. But my statement still predominantly holds true: Most serious game developers use C++, and many use Lua.

For some definitions of serious, anyway. I guess I mean "ones that have been doing it for any length of time professionally." Or maybe I just mean "almost every one I know." Something like that anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Some perennial favorite "interview questions" of mine:

1\. Tell me the difference between final, finally and finalize in Java. (Of course it was completely irrelevant to the discussion that my resume at that time never claimed that I knew Java; The only mention of Java was a library that I had used as a black box)

2\. This is a fairly new one but most software engineers must have seen equivalents over the years :).

Rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 on the following:

\-- Machine Learning

\-- Convex Optimization

\-- Linear Algebra

You know what was really disappointing? The second question was asked to me first by the recruiter (whom I don't blame for asking me the question) and then again by an engineer (after we had just concluded a long discussion on my projects touching upon those topics).

</comment><comment><USER37> I generally believe interview questions aren't a terrible way to screen people. There are, however, stupid questions and good ones. Ones that test how people think or how good they are at designing/accomplishing tasks are good. Ones that test stupid syntactic knowledge or language specific things are dumb.

</comment><comment><USER38> How about.. The interviewee gets to know what languages, libraries, components of the stack you are using a week in advance. They then can implement whatever they like using those technologies. Then, they present what they made to a technical member who can ask them questions which would show they have developed familiarity with at least some parts of what they use. The more specific the position, the more in depth the questions.. The interviewee can also ask questions back to the interviewer from a more level position.

<comment><USER39> In this field, this will probably get you lower quality applicants or kids right out of school. High quality applicants have recruiters banging down their doors, and there are always several other options on the table that won't waste a week of their time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The point, as always, is that intelligent people find other intelligent people to hire by asking questions that aren't uniform or one-size-fits-all, or which only require regurgitation of facts, but rather by probing how and why a candidate thinks a certain way.

This should be obvious by now. Standard CV reviews, colleges and references say nothing about how efficiently a candidate is able to think through new problems or how elegant their solutions will be. Nor does that mean that formal training and real-world skill exist in an inverse relationship as a lot of self-taught coders (myself included) like to pretend it does. They simply aren't co-related, at least not as far as we can tell from most leading posts about hiring on HN.

So if the goal is efficiency, why not just hire people based on their IQ? What else is there that qualifies people for positions where their bosses 2 levels up have no idea how they're actually executing the work that's put in front of them, and rely completely on them to come to the best logical solutions to new problems creatively, quickly and every single time? The only other standard you might want to look for is trustworthiness, but you can't measure that in an interview.

Anyway, it doesn't matter if someone with 140+ IQ has ever coded before. It's probably worth paying to train them. So let's just cut to the chase. You need people with brains and integrity, and the rest of it is just huff and puff nonsense from HR people who don't have a clue, and couldn't do the job their hirees do.

<comment><USER41> firstly, there's legal issues with IQ tests in job interviews in the US at least

secondly, IQ testing covers a number of areas, many of which are not necessarily related to the kind of thinking needed for programming. i think most of the verbal stuff in IQ tests wouldn't relate that much

thirdly, even if someone aces the IQ test, there's still no indication that they would actually enjoy programming if they've never done it before. It's kind of pointless to train someone to code if they're just going to get sick of it and quit in 6 months.

and fourth, an IQ test doesn't say anything about a person's ability to work with other people or prioritize things properly. an IQ test provides no protection against ending up with a prima donna who obsesses over brace style at the expense of getting useful things done.

really, i think the best way to find out if someone can code is to look at something they've coded

<comment><USER40> Is it actually illegal to hire in the US based on IQ? I mean how is that discriminatory more than any other test for employment? Race, religion, political affiliation, disability are obviously all irrelevant in an IQ test... so in a way, isn't it more equitable?

You make a good point about primadonnas and other potentially toxic personality types with high IQs, but you can screen that too. And I mean, I don't care about IQ. To me, pretty much anybody with talent should be able to come in with something awesome and say "look what I did", and if it's great, then who cares? Hire them. Obviously this isn't an argument for creating a new narrow-minded structure to replace the current one; I'm just talking about prioritizing along the essential lines instead of dancing around the real question. Isn't someone who codes and who can give you a fibonacci sequence in realtime more valuable than someone who codes, but can't? I can't do it, but I'd hire that guy.

<comment><USER42> Interestingly, rejecting candidates because they score _too well_ on IQ tests seems to be totally kosher in the US.

Who would do such a thing? Cops.

<comment><USER43> Give me a source for that which would allow for corroboration.

Because pretty much everything I can find on it has the whiff of urban legend, which folk like you repeat because it feed into their worldview.

<comment><USER42> _"Some US police departments have set a maximum IQ score for new officers (for example: 125, in New London, CT), under the argument that those with overly- high IQs will become bored and exhibit high turnover in the job. This policy has been challenged as discriminatory, but upheld by at least one US District court. "_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient>

If there are factual inaccuracies there, please point them out. However just going by the "whiff" of something seems like you're opening _yourself_ up to rejecting parts of reality that do not fit _your_ worldview.

Edit: better source: <http://www.aele.org/apa/jordan-newlondon.html> and here is an interview of the man by CNN: [http://www.postroad.com/news/2000/20000912-new-london- police...](http://www.postroad.com/news/2000/20000912-new-london-police- robert-jordan.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Hey everyone, I just created a new service that sends you a new technical interview question every other day! Check it out at: www.InterTechTion.com</comment>


Microsoft Lays out the Future of Internet Explorer - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/05/microsoft-lays-out-the-future-of-internet-explorer/

<comment><USER2> Looks like preserve-3D support is "in development" for now. I wish there provided more visibility that that.

Why don't they at least say which version of IE they expect that to land in? Does that mean IE12? IE13? Some minor bump of IE11?

</comment><comment><USER3> WebRTC not planned? This is just another confirmation that as a web developer Microsoft will always be my worst enemy. The reason they don't support WebRTC is because it competes with Skype.</comment>


Mass starvation is humanity's fate if we keep flogging the land to death - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/11/mass-starvation-humanity-flogging-land-death-earth-food <comment><USER2> "I am plagued by visions of starving people seeking to escape from grey wastes, being beaten back by armed police."

Excellent. But where are they escaping to?

All countries north of 40th parallel are living far beyond their sustenance level. For example Sweden can maintain population of one million and then the food must as simple as possible, mostly potatoes.

<comment><USER2> This fact comes from history. There were mass famines at that population level around 1000 AD. The reason why vikings started to travel to other countries murdering and pillaging.

<comment><USER3> Actually Vikings invaded much of western Europe as well as Ukraine earlier starting in 800AD in response to Carolus Magnus proselytism, and it is contested that they were "murdering and pillaging". Most probably this vision was propagated by their enemies in the Christian world.

We do not know for the "mass famines", but this time was the Medieval Warm Period (800–1300). It is thought that between c. 950 and c. 1100 was the Northern Hemisphere's warmest period since the Roman Warm Period.

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

<comment><USER2> Ok. "Oppressed people of Ukraine invited vikings (ie russians) to rule them." I do not know much history, but this snippet from Putin's speech from 2014 comes to mind.

<comment><USER4> The historical reality is quite different.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangians#Kievan_Rus'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangians#Kievan_Rus')

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Malthusian fallacy. People have been saying this for centuries. Maybe he can eat grass, but I think I'll stick to my meat.

<comment><USER6> Malthus considered only one very narrow facet of the results of population growth. There are others - most significantly, ecosystem degradation and eventual collapse - that _will_ impact humanity.

So it is vital to consider these factors too, rather than recklessly rejecting the spirit of the argument.

<comment><USER5> I agree that we need to consider those factors. But saying we need to switch to a plant-based diet is ridiculous. Any "solution" that involves everyone just changing their behavior (behavior that in some ways defines us as human) is just flat-out not going to happen.

A real solution is cognizant of human behavior and the tragedy of the commons. A real solution isn't dependent on every human being lowering his standard of living. The solution to whale extinction from whaling didn't depend on everyone using less whale oil, it depended on finding new, better, sources of energy.

<comment><USER7> Ain't that the sad fucking truth of how people think. This is one of the fallacies of capitalism and consumerism culture. The human ego has grown to levels that exceed the single planet we live on. We have the tools to find new and better sources of meat, it's called lab-grown. A simple yet effective solution, taxing the shit out of real cow meat as well as ocean caught fish would cause huge falls in demand, and would create opportunity to develop the lab grown meat technology to ecologically and economically competitive levels. If eating red meat is actually a higher standard of living, we should treat it as such. It makes no sense that a double cheese burger is cheaper than a salad. The same with driving gas guzzlers, tax that shit to hell. Make it economically painful to consume in those markets which are damaging. That is the purpose of government because markets don't regulate themselves.

Our primitive tendency to frame actions into nature can be fixed with education.

If every human being was more aware of how their actions are effecting the world, which is directly effecting themselves, they would realize their vote does matter and it does make a difference. THAT's the real issue with the world right now. People are burying their heads in the sand. Humanity is more connected than ever before with the internet, yet our disconnect with the world is greater than ever before. Even a small reduction in eating meat by everyone, especially red meat, would have huge impacts on the environment.

We need to reframe what higher standard of living really means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > By the middle of this century there will be two or three billion more people > on Earth

..this is only inevitable if we choose to make it so. The laissez-faire approach to population growth prioritises sparing the feelings of current liberal observers over the happiness of the future inhabitants of earth and the quality of the environment. Whatever mitigation measures we take, a global population of 12 billion are inevitably going to have far nastier lives than 3 billion could.

</comment><comment><USER9> Invest in soylent green.</comment>


Xenix tales: 8086 and Xenix 386 networking - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/retrohun/blog/tree/master/dt/xenixtales <comment><USER2> Very cool! Last time I looked at this (and no, I don't remember _why_ I looked at this) the state of the art was that while qemu didn't have a compatible card, MAME's MESS emulator had support: [https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2013/12/09/virtual- xenix-...](https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2013/12/09/virtual-xenix-the- internet/) Getting it working under the qemu accelerator instead of the faithful-enough-for-video-games MAME emulator is a great result.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some people have strange hobbies...

But it is cool that it is possible at all to bring such software back to life. I wonder if we should start to design operating systems and software so that future generations can do this easier. I guess that would come down to writing _lots_ of documentation; especially CPU an computer designers would have to be very open about flaws and subtle idiosyncrasies of their CPUs so it becomes easier to accurately emulate old machines, including things like firmware and any blobs (preferably with source code) needed to get a machine running.

<comment><USER4> Strange hobbies indeed. The latter part of your comment is reminiscent of the goal of the MAME project:

> MAME's purpose is to preserve decades of software history. As electronic > technology continues to rush forward, MAME prevents this important "vintage" > software from being lost and forgotten. This is achieved by documenting the > hardware and how it functions. The source code to MAME serves as this > documentation. The fact that the software is usable serves primarily to > validate the accuracy of the documentation (how else can you prove that you > have recreated the hardware faithfully?).

Those guys are doing a very good job of "documenting" a specialist subset of systems, even without support from vendors.</comment></comment>


Facebook Sucks Up a Ridiculously Huge and Growing Share of Our Time - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2011/09/26/facebook-sucks-up-a-ridiculously-huge-and-growing-share-of-our-time-wasted-online/

<comment><AUTHOR> From the page

" A hint of Facebook's importance in our universe was the rapt attention paid to last week's F8 developer conference, where Mark Zuckerberg announced some earth-shattering changes to profile pages and some new buttons and such. Traffic for the WSJ.com live blog of the event trumped traffic for every other single blog post on the site that day. "</comment>


Don Dodge: 50M Facebook users don't care about OpenSocial - <AUTHOR> http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2007/11/50m-facebook-us.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with Don. Facebook was growing fast and gaining market share before they released their platform, not because of it.

</comment><comment><USER2> OpenSocial offers a way for other social networking sites to implement an API -- e.g. play catch-up with Facebook. Yet playing catch-up isn't the way to beat your competition. These other sites need to find a way to use own unique strengths to differentiate themselves from Facebook (and each other).

Really, the biggest thing OpenSocial has going for it is Google's support and the integration between OpenSocial and the Google "platform". Third-party apps that take advantage of GMail would definitely be awesome. But that's because that plays to Google's unique strengths, rather playing catch-up to Facebook's. Doing the latter would be like Facebook trying to do e-mail and search.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don's right about the "Checkmate" stuff being silly. Open Social isn't going to crush Facebook. It does neutralize the API advantage, however, and lays the groundwork for some other technology to come along and make Facebook irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would agree with Don, but something inside of me feels like playing devil's advocate.

OpenSocial isn't about killing facebook in its tracks, but is a wise move in the long-term. Nobody is arguing if facebook will be around in 1 year, but will it be in 10?

With their platform, facebook defined the scene as "facebook is open for people to make apps, everyone else is closed". With OpenSocial, the frame is "facebook apps use proprietary markup, OpenSocial apps use web standards".

I don't think OpenSocial as it is now is the only thing that's coming out from Google that will affect facebook. If this pattern continues, facebook is in for a PR nightmare.

And let's not underestimate the value of public perception - being seen as "the guys with the proprietary markup" or "the guys with the walled garden" for long enough puts you in the position Microsoft is in now - where people are just waiting for a reason to bash.

</comment><comment><USER5> This guy is such a party loyalist. Microsoft only owns a sliver of Facebook, but DD takes their side as predictably as if they were part of MS.

<comment><USER6> I'd actually say the man is more pro-startup than pro-MSFT (he was an early employee at Napster, Groove, and others). I think he honestly believes Facebook has built a great product and a great community which open social won't dislodge. I tend to agree.

<comment><USER7> I've been reading his blog for a very long time (more than 18 months) and I've NEVER seen him not kowtow the official MS line. Try to find one post in his archives that does not parrot official MS line.

<comment><USER8> I guess you didn't read this one where I rip a Microsoft lawyer for dumping on Google? [http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2007/03/micro...](http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2007/03/microsoft_lawye.html)

I have been in the software business for 25 years and been on the management teams of 5 startups. I have been at Microsoft less than 3 years and haven't drank the Kool-Aid. However, I don't buy the Microsoft is evil argument either.

I rarely write about Microsoft. In fact I write about Google and lots of startups about 80% of the time. That said, if you want to disagree with my point of view anytime...that is fine. It is a free country.

Don

<comment><USER7> Hey Don,

One out of 300 ain't something to be proud of!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the walls to the garden have to come down at some point When major services start using a platform that allows their users to interact with users on foreign services as if they were local, that platform will win. From what I understand, Opensocial could be that platform.

</comment><comment><USER10> The #1 reason why developers are on Facebook is because of growth and distribution. It's the most viral platform in the history of man.

OpenSocial has limited-to-none support for viral channels. It's not that interesting, yet.</comment>


Ask HN: Who at a company gets to decide if a team is moving fast enough? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I read 'Programmers At Work' early in my career. Gate's comment on a single bug indicating that there may be many has always stuck with me...

"Before I sit down to code something, most of the instructions have already run through my head. It's not all laid out perfectly, and I do find myself making changes, but all the good ideas have occurred to me before I actually write the program. And if there is a bug in the thing, I feel pretty bad, because if there's one bug, it says your mental simulation is imperfect. And once your mental simulation is imperfect, there might be thousands of bugs in the program. I really hate it when I watch some people program and I don't see them thinking."

</comment><comment><USER3> The person the team works for and who pays for it.

Now, sometimes the problem is to make that person understand that it is not possible to move faster and why.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ideally, the team.

In practice, management and above.</comment>


Show HN: Scraper that retrieves emails based on Google searches - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kennyledet/Google-EmailScraper

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, any constructive criticism on my documentation is more than welcome. I was aiming for terseness.

<comment><USER2> This just searches on the first page that shows up in Google results? Is there any spidering involved?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the late response. You can specify how many pages to crawl by passing the -pages argument.</comment></comment></comment>


Cloud Anti-Patterns - <AUTHOR> https://speakerdeck.com/caseywest/containercon-north-america-cloud-anti-patterns <comment><USER2> Why's nfs an anti pattern?

<comment><USER3> NFS clients can block on I/O forever if you aren't very careful with your file I/O design. I think it's usually better to use a message queue for every NFS use case I've seen lately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> any recording?</comment>


Unintentionally in YC - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@andrewjiang/unintentionally-in-yc-9dd0ccbaeb44

<comment><USER2> I had the great pleasure of meeting up with Paul and Eric at a Data Science Meetup in SF. Both of them were very smart and driven in their passion. Eric explained to me in great length why and how they were doing -- Bayesimpact.

Wish you guyz all the success

</comment><comment><USER3> Andrew and his team have been working incredibly hard. It's great to see that YC is making an effort to find and support mission driven organizations.

</comment><comment><USER4> """For the first two months in the bay, I slept on a tiny bed, lived off of scrambled eggs and ramen, and worked out of downtown Berkeley in an effort to keep my burn rate low. """

As someone who is married and the sole provider, this sounds (1) enviable and (2) completely undoable without a total life disruption.

Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER5> Well, I would add something to the conclusion: _" For the would-be founders out there waiting for the right time to leave their jobs and build their dream startup, don't wait."_ Don't wait, and don't leave your jobs.

They didn't until they have secured funding and it worked out for them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, just to clarify, I had quit my job well before getting into YC, and it was really helpful to have at least one person be full-time and pushing ahead during the day.

It's true that Paul and Eric didn't quit their jobs until YC, but at the rate we were going, they likely wouldn't have kept them for long given how much time they were spending on Bayes Impact.

My conclusion is just as it is: don't wait. Get started however you can. If you need to stay at your job, start now. If you can leave and devote your full attention, even better - start now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Congratulations on your incredible journey and all the best

</comment><comment><USER7> Loved reading this and will make a donation. So cool to see YC reaching out to startup non-profits that are on their way to making a big difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Ajay! We also have been looking to integrate Tilt for a campaign to our site, would love to chat :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome read. I hope it's inspirational to others with non-profits or those wishing to start non-profits.

</comment><comment><USER9> All the best... Was super excited to read the news about watsi, and Y decided to accept for the program. Happy to see that more and more nonprofits to join the program.

</comment><comment><USER10> Enjoyed reading this Andrew, thanks for sharing. Email headed your way shortly!</comment>


Trump administration is considering nationalizing 5G mobile network - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/28/politics/trump-nationalize-5g/index.html <comment><USER2> The Axios post has more detail.

[https://www.axios.com/trump-team-debates- nationalizing-5g-ne...](https://www.axios.com/trump-team-debates- nationalizing-5g-network-f1e92a49-60f2-4e3e-acd4-f3eb03d910ff.html)

But unanswered questions:

 _America needs a centralized nationwide 5G network within three years._

Why?

 _a single centralized network is what 's required to protect America against China and other bad actors._

Why? How?

Is the concern that the 5G network hardware is all made in China?

EDIT: OK yes that seems to be the concern. From the Axios post: _U.S. has to build superfast 5G wireless technology quickly because "China has achieved a dominant position in the manufacture and operation of network infrastructure," and "China is the dominant malicious actor in the Information Domain."_

<comment><USER3> Nokia and Ericsson make non-Chinese 5G base stations.

The rest of the document still looks crazy though.</comment></comment>


Wait – what is 'fracking'? - <AUTHOR> http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2013/0228/Do-you-know-your-energy-vocabulary/peakoil <comment><USER2> One question has been left off the quiz:

"The purpose of this quiz is to:

1\. Expose the visitor to as many advertisements as possible, by showing only one question per page: ⌧

Choose one answer from the above list."</comment>