First U.S. Coal Plant in Years Opens Where No Options Exist - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-11/coal-s-final-flicker-1st-new-u-s-plant-since-2015-set-to-open <comment><USER2> What a strange article.

From my understanding it's an article about a family owned business supplying coal for a newly launched coal power plant in a remote Alaskan college town.

There were 4 quotes from the article: 1- From a representative of the college (good) 2- From an analyst who did not participate in this situation making a report that is totally unrelated to this news piece 3- From an analyst commenting on the news piece 4- From the company's website

There were no interviews with the residents. Nothing about the business supplying the coal. No comments from students. No mention of town halls or different sides.

Am I just becoming an old crabby guy or was this... lacking something?

<comment><USER3> The focus of the article was on the question of why this particular facility makes economic sense when coal generation as a whole is declining in the US.

<comment><USER2> Oh I get that.

But it was lacking any depth.

It seemed one sided. But I can't even call it that. It didn't even give a side. It was more like... hearsay with a single interview, probably on the phone, with 1 person on the ground. Even then, they could have published the interview for some depth. But not even that. Hell, probably browsing local facebook groups/reddits or calling their local municipality/college associations you could find more information with a few hours of free time. It's... surreal in terms of how shallow it was.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd fully expect a tabloid to publish trash rag stuff, but... I'm seeing it more now in major publications, and even oddly shared on sites like this.

I'm just... I just find it odd.

<comment><USER4> Feels more like a small-town newspaper writeup.

Could be that an overloaded author, sitting at a Bloomberg desk, was assigned the story ... with no experience in energy, and given nothing to to work with but a couple of local Alaskan newpaper clips. Maybe muttering to himself while he typed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The project, financed with university and state-municipal bonds, replaces a coal plant that went into service in 1964." Does it really count as a new one if it's just replacing an old one?

<comment><USER6> I think it does when nearly everywhere else coal plants are being replaced by other kinds of power generation.

<comment><USER7> Not exactly. Newer powerplants are more efficient and have got better at handling emissions. So even if it is replacement it could be a strict improvement on the existing option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> $245 Million for a _17_ megawatt plant seems insane - the Georgia and Kansas plants both are in the neighborhood of $2.5 billion a pop, and are ~50 times as powerful. I get that economies of scale are huge in power and that Fairbanks isn't exactly Georgia, but wow.

<comment><USER9> That was my first thought too. At $1/W, 17MW of solar power would be $17mm + supporting infrastructure and that would be very expensive for solar at that scale. I don't know what coal plants typically cost but this seems an order of magnitude too high.

<comment><USER10> Alaska gets quite a bit less sun than the rest of the US and would need maybe 2x over-provision. And no idea what people will do for electricity the other 20 hours a day where solar panels are either useless or nearly useless. Also, cloudy days.

<comment><USER9> I wasn't trying to say solar was a good solution in this situation. I was giving a cost comparison to highlight how high this seems to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The trend is that coal use is declining in the United States. Trends have outliers. This news is not sensational.

</comment><comment><USER12> Uhhh it's still not running yet[0]. Headline says "Opens", but article says "open in April". It was slated to open last fall.

More details on the "cleanliness" of this new plant[1]:

 _3%_ less CO2 than the old plant

"very low" PM2.5 emissions

[0][https://fm.kuac.org/post/problems-discovered-during- testing-...](https://fm.kuac.org/post/problems-discovered-during-testing- delay-uaf-power-plant-going-online-til-march)

[1][https://fm.kuac.org/post/irony-arctic-climate-change- researc...](https://fm.kuac.org/post/irony-arctic-climate-change-researchers- still-conflicted-over-uaf-s-coal-fired-powerplant)

</comment><comment><USER13> I had an interesting meeting with some politically connected tribal elders from Alaska. Right now they use a lot of diesel generators, so bringing a coal plant online is probably a better option than that.

There is a few areas in super remote locations within Alaska where the ground is literally on fire. Building geothermal plants would be a clean way of capturing and producing power for the entire state. The problem is that the areas are so remote that running transmission lines would cost ~$1M/mile and go across some pretty inhospitable land.

I had the idea of building the plant and then housing cryptocurrency mines, on site in containers, to literally generate the revenue to build the transmission lines. The problem being of course that in order to that, it would require quite a bit of capex based on a pretty volatile market. Not really an ideal investment.

Anyway, just thought it would be a fun story to share here. Cheers.

</comment><comment><USER14> >The university's new plant is a combined heat and power generator...

At least it's efficient.

Under "bio-mass" did they consider burning local wood? At least it would be carbon neutral...

<comment><USER15> How is that carbon neutral? Aren't you taking carbon that was otherwise sequestered and burning it?

<comment><USER16> New trees happen quickly, and remove carbon in the process. New coal not so much.

<comment><USER15> "Carbon neutrality" isn't about preserving known reserves of fossil fuels. It's about net-zero emissions by balancing new carbon emissions with carbon reductions or sequestrations.

Regardless, burning a tree is only carbon neutral if you actually plant more trees, and probably a LOT more trees, since the tree you burnt was presumably more mature and it still takes a long time for trees to grow. Moreso, you can achieve carbon neutrality with fossil fuels through the exact same mechanism - burn coal, then plant trees.

<comment><USER16> And lots of tree farms do plant new trees, making it neutral. Coal is more carbon-dense, so you need to plant more new trees than already exist and there probably isn't room for them unless you clear a forest first, and then what are you going to do with that wood?

Obviously other sources of energy are better than burning wood, but efficiently burning wood is better than burning coal or oil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> they said "nothing penciled out" but I would be curious to see an actual explanation of the costs of various energy sources... I can't imagine natural gas would have been that much more expensive, and in terms of indirect financial costs would likely have been a better choice (creating much less localized pollution)

<comment><USER18> My understanding is that natural gas has to be trucked in from the south, as the North Slope doesn't export it overland. I could easily imagine the local coal mine being cheaper, especially accounting for winter supply mitigations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Especially ironic that it was paid for with money from oil and gas profits.

<comment><USER20> What was that money expected to be spent on?

<comment><USER19> This is a perfectly valid thing to spend the money on, I just find it ironic that of all things it's oil and gas money.

<comment><USER20> _Ironic_ means that it was contrary to expectations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not sure if it's a coincidence but I read a report on BBC how most insects will die/vanish in 100 years except for cockroaches and other insects that thrive on human waste; butterflies, bees and other insects being too fragile for human pollution. Sobering

<comment><USER22> Insects and other arthropods thrived in prior warm high-carbon eras, what you read was a sensationalist pop sci report about pesticides specifically.

<comment><USER21> Your reply is simplistic

(1) This is not pop sci : [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00063...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320718313636) \- it's a research article resulting from a collaboration between 2 universities

(2) The paper mentions pesticides but also mentions climate change (global warming due to high-carbon), also mention intensive agriculture.

(3) usage of pesticide is highly linked with C02 pollution and climate change. You cannot consider one without not considering the other.

(4) How do insects thrived in warm high-carbon eras? I'd be happy to read papers on this</comment></comment></comment>


Languages are rapidly disappearing - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/daily/chartgallery/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13307780

<comment><USER2> Dying languages seldom get the attention that monuments and historical artifacts do even though they are more indicative of history and culture

</comment><comment><USER3> I've always found beauty in obscure languages that are spoken by less than 1,000 people. However I can't say I've done much to popularize any!</comment>


Correctly value your startup job offer - <AUTHOR> http://timolshansky.com/2013/02/04/know-your-value.html

<comment><USER2> Converting from options to cash at current valuation seems like it should work but it actually doesn't. That's because options are precisely what they say they are: options. Basic finance states that an option on a purchase is more valuable than the purchase itself and the value of the option is dependent on the volatility of the underlying asset.

Let's use a simple example to illustrate the point:

Assume you have a market worth of $100K per year and you're offered a job at a $5M valuation startup for $50K per year + 2% vesting over 4 years.

Using the naive math, 0.5% of $5M = $25K so your total compensation is $75K which does not make this a financially preferable deal.

However, let's say you estimate the startup to have a 90% probability of being worth $0 in 1 year and a 10% probability of being worth $50M in 1 year.

We can draw out 3 scenarios:

      You don't work for the startup: You earn $400K in 4 years
      You work for the startup and it fails: You earn 50K + 0.5% equity in your first year, then $100K the next 3 years at another job, for a total of $350K + 0.5% of nothing.
      You work for the startup and it succeeds: You earn 200K of salary + 2% of $50M = $1.2M.

Your total expected value is 90% * $350K + 10% * $1.2M which is $435K or $108,750 a year, aka: slightly financially preferable.

Using option pricing instead of valuation pricing makes this deal seem 45% more valuable.

Note: I've deliberately ignored issues like dilution, preferences, non-linear utility of money and a bunch of other things in order to simplify the example. These also need to be taken into account if you're debating an actual offer.

</comment><comment><USER3> The math is missing another important point:

"Given that your stock options are valued at the current company valuation"

That's a bad assumption for an employee. The current valuation is for what investors get per share. Keep in mind they have preferred, not common stock, which generally comes with liquidation preferences. Their shares are worth quite a bit more each than yours. This means if you're getting $50k of the company at current valuation, you really should assume you're getting more like $10 or $20k.

</comment><comment><USER4> When I made the leap from BigCo (ClearChannel) to startup, I got a 37% raise, better hours, more freedom, and the chance to learn more exciting things. True, the stock options may not amount to much, but I will consider them a gift if they do. The benefits are not the greatest...no 401k, only 2 weeks vacation, free basic health coverage, but isn't much worse than ClearChannel (aside from the 401k).

</comment><comment><USER5> tl;dr ~ Don't work at a startup for the money. Most of you knew that.

</comment><comment><USER6> great post, but the math at the end is illogical. when you join a startup, the mean/average/net/etc all don't matter, as you aren't joining "all startups". so realistically, the 0.5% of $100M exit is worth $500K, period (though yes, divided up over four years).

THEN, you adjust the above based on your own odds of the company winning. if you think you have an 80% shot, then you are playing for $400K. if you think its a 20% shot, its $100K. etc.

FURTHER, you really should go back into the space and look at what the exits there are like. does that industry see a lot of quick $20-$40M flips? does it see infrequent, but not impossible $500M exits? or is it mostly just acquihires?

having worked at/joined/founded 4 startups (plus a half-dozen side projects), i can say they are all different, and each exits radically differently...

<comment><USER5> > _(though yes, divided up over four years)._

Don't forget also to dilute the 0.5% by a significant amount.

<comment><USER6> true - should assume about 1/3 dilution

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the very first paragraph, the author derides people for not making these types of decisions from a mathematical standpoint. He then goes on to say that 15% of $125,000 is $25,000.

</comment><comment><USER8> The article points out that you "should know what you are worth". That seems like a great idea, but how?</comment>


One of my domains could be worth a lot – what's the best way to sell it? - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN, as of subject, I just discovered that one of the domains I own (very short, named after an emerging technology) could be very worthy.
Could sound stupid, but an evaluation website evaluated at more than 84 k$ and I would like to dig deeper in the topic.
The question is: besides GoDaddy's auction system, what is the best way to sell a domain and make the most out of it?
I'm mainly interested in auctions, but everything is welcome.
Thanks in advance,
--
SnoopyBBT <comment><USER2> If it is as important as you feel, and you're not too desperate, it could be worth simply showing that the domain is available for sale and waiting for an offer, rather than rushing out and trying to chase it (you'll likely lose out a little on this).

Then again, depending on just how great it is you may never get an offer at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.flippa.com](http://www.flippa.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> Ha those evaluation website tools are worthless BTW.

I would suggest posting it on dnforum.com. There are some knowledgeable members there and they may be able to give you a better estimate on it's worth.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sedo could work or flippa but those evaluation websites are generally worthless in their evaluation. The best way is generally finding a potential buyer and selling it to them ie cold calling/emailing or using a broker.

</comment><comment><USER6> I can give you a realistic valuation - I have been helping open source project acquire domains for their projects for 15 years and would love to help. Contact me Hacker AT myusername dot ORG

</comment><comment><USER7> Domain appraisal tools are mostly worthless and could easily be an order of magnitude off the mark. You need to talk to a real domain expert to get a realistic estimate of the value.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sedo.com is the big name in this space.

<comment><AUTHOR> 10% to 20% commission... omg...

<comment><USER9> But you will attract everyone's attention by putting it on Sedo. Rather then just parking it with a for sale sticker on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why not mention the domain?</comment>


The @supports CSS rule - <AUTHOR> http://www.lottejackson.com/learning/supports-will-change-your-life <comment><USER2> Site down, cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.lottejackson.com/learning/supports- will-change-your-life)

<comment><USER3> This is ingenious front end design. Thank you for posting the cached version.

It does continue to prove that your backend is extremely important too. Delivery is hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the fact that this exists, but it seems like the kind of hacks that go against the philosophy of progressive enhancement.

The thing that I like about progressive enhancement is that it "forces" the HTML documents actually represent the content. I should be able to render any site (excluding web-apps, I guess) with CSS and Javascript disabled, preferably with semantic HTML. This makes that site not only accessible to humans, but machines as well.

I see a bunch of websites that have 2 versions of certain elements (for example, navigation menus) in the HTML that are hidden with @media rules to make the site "responsive". I'm scared that this @supports rule will be used in the same way.

Disclaimer: I am not a frontend web developer, so my understanding of progressive enhancement might be wrong.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not mentioned, there is also a CSS.supports() method available in JS:

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/CSS/support...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/CSS/supports)

</comment><comment><USER6> According to MDN, `@supports` is part of the CSS3 spec, defined in 2012. In 2016, it's time to start using it. Web development in a nutshell.

<comment><USER7> IPv6 spec was 1996.

Four years is not really a very long time in the greater scheme of things, the pace of modern web development just makes for an impatient populous with short attention spans.

<comment><USER8> I don't think that you can compare a backwards-incompatible change in a low layer of the stack that runs the internet with a feature of CSS parsers that was standardised 4 years ago. Some things are expected to take more time than others.

<comment><USER9> If v6 were widely deployed in the early 2000s, then the Windows botnet phase would have been _so much worse_ , many other issues aside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While it's nice to not need Modernizr, or JavaScript at all, it's generally only useful for features added _after_ the @supports support landed. As others have mentioned, there's also the problem of false positives, and you could end up with a lorra lorra @supports statements if you include vendor prefixing as well — not a problem JavaScript has to put up with, because you can just define a prefixing function and save many lines of code.

Here's the problem vis-á-vis compatibility. CSS Animations are supported back to Safari 4; @supports landed in Safari 9.

For instance:

      @supports (-webkit-animation-name: blink){
        .cursor {
          -webkit-animation-name: onoff;
          -webkit-animation-duration: .9s;
          -webkit-animation-timing-function: cubic-bezier(.4,0,.2,1);
          -webkit-animation-iteration-count: infinite;
        }
      }

That's actually damaging, because there won't be a browser that supports @supports _and doesn 't_ support CSS animation. This statement will activate the animation only in Safari 9+, despite the feature enjoying support beforehand. By conditioning the animation on support for _animation-name_ , we're actually preventing the feature from showing up where it ought to.

Of course, @supports is very useful for bleeding edge stuff like animation- play-state, which just landed in Chrome (and I dare say Firefox) as a byproduct of the Web Animations API.

 _animation-play-state_ let's us control whether an animation (let's say an infinite one) is paused or playing. So, if you imagine a scrolling marquee (for the sake of irony), for instance, you could conditionally pause the marquee on hover by setting:

        @supports (animation-play-state: paused){
          .marquee:hover {
            animation-play-state: paused
          }
        }

You may be thinking "that's effing ridiculous, I could just add that CSS property anyway and if it's not supported it won't work, simple" — and you'd be right to say so.

It would be equally pointless to write this:

        @supports (will-change: transform){
          .element { will-change: transform; }
        }

because if the property is not supported, it simply won't do anything, and it will not affect anything else or prevent CSS parsing. @supports is pointless as a mere wrapper because there's no need for containment.

However, @supports is not for applying potentially unsupported properties only; it's for conditionally activating/altering entire aspects of your website based on there being support for a _crucial_ feature.

More useful code might look like this example:

        @supports (animation-play-state: paused){
          .marquee {
            white-space: nowrap;
            animation-name: marquee;
            animation-duration: 20s;
            animation-timing-function: linear;
            animation-delay: 1s;
            animation-fill-mode: forwards;
            will-change: transform;
          }
          .marquee:hover {
            animation-play-state: paused;
          }
        }

This would be useful if, for instance, it would harm usability to have an unstoppable marquee of images/products, so with this sort of code you could have that marquee display as something more mundane, like a grid of items, and if the ability to pause the animation is supported, then convert it into a scrolling marquee gallery of items.

It's also potentially useful for things like _mix-blend-mode_ , if you want to apply some kind of fancy effects with a fallback to a simple, one colour overlay:

        .overlay {
          position: absolute;
          top: 0;
          left: 0;
          width: 100%;
          height: 100%;
          background: radial-gradient(rgba(31,10,25,.2), rgba(3,81,176,.6));
        }

        @supports (mix-blend-mode: difference){
          .overlay {
            mix-blend-mode: difference;
            background: radial-gradient(rgba(31,10,25,.2), rgba(176, 109, 3, 0.6));
          }
        }

See, if you wanted to apply the difference blending mode but have a similar colour theme, the background of the overlay would need to be basically the opposite, so you can use a @supports block to conditionally change the colour to suit whatever the blending-mode requires.

<comment><USER11> "@supports (-webkit-animation-name)" would actually test true in pretty much every modern browser. See [https://compat.spec.whatwg.org/#css-simple- aliases](https://compat.spec.whatwg.org/#css-simple-aliases)

But yes, your larger point that @supports is easy to misuse when targeting old prefixed stuff is certainly true.

> animation-play-state, which just landed in Chrome (and I dare say Firefox)

animation-play-state has been supported unprefixed in Firefox since Firefox 16, 4 years or so ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://web.archive.org/web/20161010115605/http://www.lottej...](https://web.archive.org/web/20161010115605/http://www.lottejackson.com/learning/supports- will-change-your-life)

</comment><comment><USER13> This seems like a reduction in readability from either declaring properties in an order such that browsers which don't support the syntax will still have a fallback declaration:

        .foobar {
          background: red;  /* fallback declaration */
          background: poorly-supported;  /* preferred declaration */
        }

or using platform-specific property prefixes.

Personally, I'd rather see the entire definition block for a selector in one place than have to consult multiple conditional declarations.

<comment><USER14> yes, tbh it reminds me of #IFDEF. not entirely sure how i feel about that: it _kinda_ makes sense but i think the fallback version is better. (unless the css ends up really different, then the ifdef approach makes sense)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Key question; are there a subset of these nextgen(?) css features supported in browsers that don't support @supports?

<comment><USER16> Guess the idea is future css releases. But well i most likely wont use it ether.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Tl;dr - We can use @supports instead of Modernizr to check whether a browser supports a particular CSS property. Though @supports itself is only supported by 77% of browsers, in unsupported browsers, the @supports blocks are ignored making them effectively supported everywhere. We can use this in production today.

<comment><USER18> But if the requested _feature_ is supported in a given browser even though _@supports_ isn't, it will act as though the feature is _not_ supported. That seems like a major flaw.

<comment><USER7> This will affect a small percentage of features, in a small percentage of browsers, _of_ the 23% that don't support @supports (all three of which are shrinking percentages).

That coupled with the fact the features are likely to be non-functional aesthetic elements makes it a very minor flaw imo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This looks cool. But does anyone else think that the circular text wrapping around the example image is super ugly? It makes it much less readable for me.</comment>


Englebart's Violin (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.loper-os.org/?p=861 <comment><USER2> I got really excited about chorded keyboards and did some research in the past.

The chorded keyboard is not as efficient as two handed QWERTY. Englebart reported getting 35 words per minute with his right hand and 25 WPM on the left after extensive training[1].

Granted, this is a good speed for having one hand free to use another type of input (pen, mouse, touch screen or whatever).

A chorded keyboard is also a promising idea for mobile computing where a dedicated physical qwerty keyboard is unwieldy.

I wasn't able to see enough of a benefit to try building one or purchasing some of the existing products. At the right price point, I definitely would try it as a novelty.

It seems there is a chicken and egg problem of inputs and software that makes you efficient using them.

[1] [http://www.billbuxton.com/input06.ChordKeyboards.pdf](http://www.billbuxton.com/input06.ChordKeyboards.pdf)

<comment><USER3> You need to do some more research. Stenotypes can write faster than people can talk. There are studies of expert Twiddler users who can write at closer to 100wpm.

<comment><USER4> I really wish someone would come out with a nice, not-too-expensive-but-not- too-shitty USB steno keyboard.

<comment><USER5> Check [http://www.openstenoproject.org/](http://www.openstenoproject.org/) \- they have some pretty great ideas and alternatives (and the software to run them)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One part of me thinks it's terribly romantic to envision a world where the professional gets to use the big, grand tools to practice his craft, but I think it's actually more comforting to know that anyone with access to the most basic tools can create. It might seem like we're all forced down to the lowest common denominator, but I think the playing field might be better for it.

The article mentions Emacs (and I would add vim) and throughout I could only think about these two. They are the tools that reward learning and multiply your efficiency. It doesn't all have to exist in hardware.

You can always get one of these(0).

0 - [http://www.dx.com/p/fs3-p-tri-pedal-usb-foot-switch- controll...](http://www.dx.com/p/fs3-p-tri-pedal-usb-foot-switch-controller- black-142964#.V3Nvl_l96JA)

<comment><USER7> > _You can always get one of these(0)._

I did. Sadly, they suck :(. First of all, there's a problem getting firmware that would run on Windows. Secondly, getting the pedals to simulate raw control keys is tricky (but can be done). But thirdly, the construction isn't too solid - I had them in the office for a while, and somehow someone (I suspect the cleaning crew) managed to break off one of the pedals. :/.

<comment><USER6> I smell a market ripe for the taking... Or maybe not.

With that said, I actually thought about buying one of these, but I ended up just revamping some of my Emacs bindings. Then I ended up switching to vim, so chording became less of an issue in general.

(When I still found myself wanting the Emacs operating system I went with Spacemacs. It really is the best of both worlds.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I suppose this is an eloquent defense of APL.

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for posting this 'DanBC, this is golden! It captures exactly the issues I sometimes rant about in UI/UX threads on HN - that the IT industry is focused on producing toys, not tools.

The article focuses on hardware, but its point is more general, it touches software too - basically the solutions developed both "by developers for developers" and those created for non-tech users. There are lots of things that worry/sadden me about this.

Within the industry, I'm tired of hearing comments like "don't use advanced feature X, it's hard for the junior programmers". Like, "don't use lambdas / streams in Java 8; it may be more readable for you, but it isn't for the cow- orkers who don't know lambdas". Well, one would think that it is expected of a professional to occasionally _learn some stuff_. But what I see instead is "best practices" aimed at the lowest common denominator creating a culture of code monkeys.

As for end-user software, I'm tired of ranting about it, and - as I learned from this post - Erik Naggum (like usual) does a much better way of explaining the problem. So I'll just end with a graph.

      power                                                                    /--
        ^                                                                 /----   professional
        |                                                             /---          software
        |                                                          ---
        |                                                         /
        |                                                        /
        |                                                       /
        |                                                      /
        |                                                     /
        |                                                    /
        |                                                   /
        |                                                  /
        |                                                 /
        |                                               //
        |                                             /-
        |                                           /-
        |                                        /--
        |                                      /-                             "user-friendly"
        |                                    /-                                  software
        |                                  /-                         /</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---
        |                       /</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
        +</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----      /-
        |                        /----
        |                 /</comment><comment>
        |         /</comment><comment>-
        |  /</comment><comment>
        |--
        +</comment><comment></comment><comment>--+</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-->
                       |                                                                 time
                       |
                       |
             point where companies make their sale
        and beyond which they don't give a shit anymore

We could be doing _so much more_ with the power of computing if only we gave up on the expectations that people have to master of their software tools in 15 seconds since first seeing them...

<comment><USER9> A similar issue is for the commodity hardware handed out to developers. The desktop setup gets standardized to the lowest common denominator, managers/IT do not get the argument that saving 1k on a developer's desk setup is not good business practice.

I get the same kind of hardware as a developer/researcher than a secretary, some low-end lenovo laptop with a single standard sized screen, running the same IT-provided windows image with performance-crippling endpoint and scanner software. All my development happens through a VM which connects to a remote server, via ssh/emacs tramp. Of course this invites the argument 'you are using your desktop as a terminal anyway, why do you need something more powerful'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Engelbart, not Englebart

</comment><comment><USER11> I replied to this: [http://www.loper- os.org/?p=861&cpage=1#comment-16138](http://www.loper- os.org/?p=861&cpage=1#comment-16138)</comment>


The high modernism of social media companies - <AUTHOR> http://calnewport.com/blog/2018/04/11/the-disturbing-high-modernism-of-silicon-valley/ <comment><USER2> _When confronting the utopian side, by contrast, the relevant question becomes sharper: Should these companies even exist at all?_

I am coming towards this conclusion as well. As _individuals_ , the easier and more frictionless our communications with others, the greater our opportunities to live, love, learn, and collaborate. As a _species_ , we have evolved to live in small social groups with radically different norms and life patterns. That's a survival and evolution benefit, not a bug. As long as we can remain peaceful and not harm one another, we want the maximum possible diversity in humanity, not some utopian norm for the entire species.

We have a wonderful example of large numbers of people instantly communicating with one another. They're called mobs. Because at some point in scaling, and it happens probably between 75-500 people, powerful emotions are the only thing that can sustain the instant feedback loop we've created.

We want friction in communicating. Not only do we want it, we have to have it.

<comment><USER3> What you're basically saying, I think, is that there shouldn't be any easy way for ordinary people to communicate directly with each other and organise politically. That it's too dangerous to allow them to do this without the press acting as gatekeepers first. That certainly does seem to be the underlying subtext of a lot of the recent criticism of Facebook. It's also an astounding line of thinking, because it basically says that it's politically unacceptable, even a danger to democracy, for ordinary people to actually have power and not just the illusion that they do.

(Edit: to be fair, I should probably add that the press wouldn't be the only powerful institution that has the ability to enable or gatekeep activism and organising, just one of the most important. The more fundamental difference is whether you need to have one of those powerful institutions backing your cause.)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for your comment because I am not saying that at all.

All I'm saying is that a certain amount of friction is a necessary part of our survival as a species. I'm not making any comments about the press or people organizing or any of that.

Some message boards, including HN, have a delay between the time you read a comment and when you are allowed to form a reply. This cuts way back on flame wars. It's also a nice example of purposely introducing some friction for a larger good.

I don't know how much friction is needed or where it should go. I'm just now reaching the conclusion about Facebook and social media. This utopia they've all been preaching is actually a dystopia, a horrible thing indeed. I'm nowhere near having any thoughts about a solution.

<comment><USER4> One interesting book in this context is Neiwart's "Alt America". [1] Neiwart is a journalist who spent decades tracking the armed US fringe, including the "patriot" militias, sovereign citizen movements, conspiracists, and white supremacist groups.

It's his view that the alt right didn't come out of nowhere. Instead, the low- friction communication of the Internet allowed these formerly scattered, always-falling-apart groups to connect and recruit in ways that were previously impossible.

I also don't think it's a coincidence that the rise of the alt-right happened when social media companies in some sense took friction _negative_. In the world of websites and blogs, you at least had to actively seek the next site, the next writer, the next article. It wasn't much work, but it was at least a little.

Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter were eager to give you an endless stream of content, so as to maximize User Active Minutes metrics. So their algorithms would pull up anything that they thought you'd be interested in. The theory being that any engagement must be good, which implies that total obsession would be best.

In retrospect, that theory seems to have some flaws.

<comment><USER2> If you'd like to join me in speculating a bit, let's take an imaginary look at ten years from now.

Good news! AI has advanced enough that it is now possible for you to have a customized bot that handles all of the crappy and mundane parts of life: scheduling travel, getting groceries, making sure the house is clean, and so on. The bot learns about you and is able to anticipate your needs.

And because we have this tech, we also have bots that will play your emotions like a finely-tuned fiddle. Think Elvis never died? Afraid that lizard-people in the government are controlling your thoughts? Well, now there's a bot that will find others like you and deliver to you a continuous stream of information confirming your beliefs -- and warning you of the dangers lurking out there.

Now guess which of these bots makes more money for its creators, the one scheduling airline flights or the one keeping you emotionally-connected with 400 people just like you and making sure that all of you are living a dramatic life on the edge where you're fighting the bad guys?

<comment><USER4> Definitely. It's the kind of manipulative dystopia that might have been designed by timeshare salesmen and propagandists. But the weird part to me is that conscious design seems basically unnecessary. It's dystopia metastasized.

I've interviewed the occasional person looking to leave Facebook, and one of the surprising things to me is how small everybody's job is. They're all optimizing micro-metrics for micro-gains, with very little thought as to the systemic impact. Those micro-metrics in turn roll up to plausible-sounding things like revenue, DAU, time on site, and engagement. Yay engagement! How could that be bad?

But I've never heard anybody from Facebook, employee or exec, say, "Gosh, could we be acting like tobacco company execs or slot machine designers?" They don't even seem to understand addiction as a topic, let alone a concern. It's very much as Upton Sinclair said: ""It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

<comment><USER5> I think it's because we don't understand systems as well as we should. This article ([http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article207841309.ht...](http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article207841309.html)) is a decent intro to what modeling shows about engagement and polarization. The paper it refers to ([https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.06009.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.06009.pdf)) goes way deeper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> After reading his books Deep Work and Be So Good They Can't Ignore You, I feel like Cal Newport has become sort-of a guru for me, not pure computer science, but the larger view of how to live a good life.

I am sharing this article with friends and family to maybe help them understand why I don't want to use social media, rather, I want to talk on the phone, email directly, and travel to see people.

I manage a machine learning/AI team so I am not against technology, but technology truly needs to serve human needs.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well Zuckerburg didn't create the thing because he had some deep belief in high modernism or connecting people. People lie to themselves about their motivations. That's a messy human thing too.

<comment><USER8> Am I the only one that remembers that back in, oh 2006ish, one of the core features of Facebook was a hot-or-not picture rating game? Or that one of the other big features was "poking" people?

Whatever Facebook has become, it started out as a MySpace clone, without custom CSS, created by some Ivy League young men. Mythologizing it into some world-changing, higher purpose origin story is asinine.

<comment><USER9> I was a relatively early adopter to Facebook, though not Harvard- or Ivy League-early. It didn't have a hot-or-not style rating at that time. Poking was a feature, but I'm not sure it was ever that popular.

<comment><USER10> It's a site that predates Facebook: _Facemash used "photos compiled from the online facebooks of nine Houses, placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the "hotter" person"_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook#FaceMash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook#FaceMash)

<comment><USER8> It was definitely still part of Facebook when it started rolling out beyond colleges to high school students around 2005/2006\. I remember people spending way too much time rating randos in study halls back then.

<comment><USER11> Are you sure that wasn't hotornot.com or something similar? I've been on Facebook since back when it was still segmented by college (connections with people at other colleges were clunky), and I don't recall it ever having a built-in "hot or not" feature.

<comment><USER12> I think I recall what he might be talking about. I remember several third party apps within Facebook that served a similar function being popular back in the early days of Facebook. It's totally reasonable that someone might fuzzily confuse one of those for core features after a decade or so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Again with blaming Facebook and Google. Why not blame ourselves?

We aren't acting as adults: we can't look at something shiny and say, "I want it, but it would be bad for me, so I'll leave it alone." At least some of the dangers of these things are obvious: unnatural levels and kinds of sharing, contrived, manipulative reactions, vast potential for privacy violation and misuse of data, and tons of time lost without compensation of any kind. Why don't we all refuse?

I didn't, and I should have. I've recently dropped Facebook entirely and am paring back my reliance on Google. Looking through my Facebook data download, I'm shocked at my foolishness, especially in the first couple years: I was old enough to know better! I hope I've learned my lesson, and that others do too, before we seriously mess up our society --- if we haven't already.

<comment><USER14> Adults aren't infallible nor manipulation resistant just because they are adults. It's true that we can do better but criminalising semi-aware victims doesn't help. Bias and gamification and manipulation and curiosity and herd mentality are a thing.

<comment><USER13> Note that I wrote, "acting as adults;" there's a difference between _being_ an adult and _acting_ as one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Facebook and Zuckerberg will tell you that they disagree with Boz's comments.

He wasn't fired.

He wasn't demoted.

He was _promoted_.

His responsibilities were _expanded_.

If that's not a silent endorsement, a message to the rank and file about where the company's values stand, I don't know what is.

<comment><USER16> I agree. They claim that the Boz memo was effectively a straw man argument. However, after reading the memo in total and the fact that they subsequently deleted it does not give the appearance of impropriety to that claim. As an organization I don't believe Facebook had any corporate values outlining their position either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is not so different from the arguments behind what motivated the Unabomber. One key difference is that Ted Kaczynski saw it as necessarily political.

People should read Kaczynski's manifesto. It's rough at parts, but it's really an interesting perspective.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/national/longterm/unabo...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm)

<comment><USER18> An ideology that requires killing random people always seems flawed to me.

<comment><USER19> This is a nonsensical comment. He used bombs to gain the notoriety to get published in the New York Times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _From this perspective, the user is merely a pawn in the game of revenue projections and market expectations._

I've been in the IT/software game since the mid 80's, where fresh out of engineering college I started my first software company, writing add-ons to BBS's in C using btreive as our database and I'm not sure if a "user" has ever been anything but...

<comment><USER21> I respect your profit orientation, but it's disingenuous to suggest it's the only path.

Next door to you, the folks in what we're currently calling the FLOSS community were trying to arm and empower those same users, instead of constraining them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Again, reminds me of [http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html).

It's funny, even before the Cambridge Analytica scandal started I made a presentation at a local meetup, comparing Zuckerberg to Escobar. The title is more attention-bait than anything, but I found it especially relevant in current times.

[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mrR4tE7KSjpy7U4NnBqH...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mrR4tE7KSjpy7U4NnBqH-B8En21jDz4mcZfK3pi6qoY/edit?usp=sharing)

</comment><comment><USER23> Wasn't that memo a rhetorical device by the author to raise that kind of opinion (one he does not agree with) as a conversation point inside Facebook?

I don't like Facebook as much as the next person, but being willing to write things in that style and get discussions going sounds really healthy to me.

</comment><comment><USER24> Have the same thought quite often when google io is happening.

It was and is still typical to be shown something cool and useless which works perfect in San Francisco and thats it.

I think only 1 or 3 years ago, they talked about google services which have a light version so countries like india or areas with low bandwith can use them properly.

Not shit sherlock.

Android got bigger and fatter than after ages they announce go.

Nexus Q? 'this device has high end cpu etc. and for only 300$' and it should be in every room? Srsly?

The mindset of an silicon valley developer who has everything on hand, trusts his/her environment etc. is a very unique experience. I would compare it to an university. You working and living with your pals. After all lots of conflict potential things are gone: No one has to clean up, no one has to make meals, there is probably no theft and everyone earns more than enough money.

Than there is google io and protesters outside.

While google has an huge impact, facebook only does data handling. And it has such a huge responsibility which shouldn't be even allowed on our earth. But who are those pepoloe who build it? Those are anyone and noone. You don't need to pass any ethical moral test to become part of it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Disturbing High Modernism? More like disturbing high mindedness. The author here is making claims that can be summarized to "I don't like Facebook and it's different from how we've usually done things, therefore we need to get rid of Facebook-like services."

The author, in other words, is trying to argue that, because they think that _other people_ can't handle Facebook's "frictionless communication", no one should be able to use it because it'll do _something bad_ to society. What that bad thing is isn't clearly specified, instead the author only claims that "tribalism, authoritarianism, extremism, disinformation, and hyperbolic outrage" has increased on these platforms, and implies that they think this outweighs the positives these platforms have also provided or that this is a change relative to how a world without Facebook would operate.

The author makes no concrete or quantifiable argument in this piece, only parrots the opinions of others they consider authorities. This text is the same sort of technopanic rhetoric that was used by luddites to oppose things like the printing press and electricity. We can argue about the ethics behind Facebook's method of funding itself, but the author here is conflating that with an argument against free communication.

<comment><USER26> > What that bad thing is isn't clearly specified, instead the author only > claims that "tribalism, authoritarianism, extremism, disinformation, and > hyperbolic outrage" has increased on these platforms

[gestures broadly to the western world in 2018]

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Carlos Bueno expresses the general problem brilliantly: [https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/05/09/priest-guru-nerd- king/](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/05/09/priest-guru-nerd-king/)

(Excerpts below)

Corporations do not want to legislate, let alone enforce, more of humanity's behavior than they need to. They have better things to do. The universe isn't going to dent itself. But because they are outpacing traditional governments in their ability to predict & shape human behavior, they walk right into stupidly impossible situations over and over again. Software isn't eating the world so much as larping it.

The governance problem is not about dealing with governments as such, but about accidentally adopting or creating arenas of human behavior that you then have to govern, with "externalities" that don't remain external. Starting a ride-sharing service? Congratulations, you're now an urban planner. Want to disrupt shipping logistics? Get ready to do your part to curb terrorism and slavery.

The problem of governance arises wherever "move fast and break things" runs right into an older saying: "you broke it, you bought it".

Sometimes things blow up squarely on your turf. Think about what it takes to enforce a social network "real names" policy across hundreds of cultures. One account per person, one person per account, authentic names as used in real life. Zuck's buddy Calvin can post pictures of himself holding pounds of weed but he can't use the name he's known by, Snoop Dogg.

</comment><comment><USER28> This reminds me of the religion of "dataism" found in Yuval Noah Harari's _Homo Deus_. We're moving towards a world where the free flow of information is valued above all else.

This religion was foisted upon us...I think we need to consider more whether or not we choose to accept it.

Bill Gates's notes on _Homo Deus_ : [https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Homo- Deus](https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Homo-Deus)

<comment><USER29> What's your name / anywhere I can read more from you? Your HN comments seem pretty interesting. Feel free to send me an email firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The quote from the memo that really irritates me is

> The natural state of the world is not connected. It is not unified. It is > fragmented by borders, languages, and increasingly by different products.

This is such a load of crap. The natural state of the world is actually very connected (whether we consciously assent to it or not), and specifically, humans are one of the _most_ social species. Humans have deep societal and psychological needs for interpersonal interaction.

What Facebook does through "engagement" is replace richly rewarding and deeply needed face-to-face interaction with a _veneer_ of connection. Actually, Facebook's effects are even more insidious--it addicts us to a "feeling" of connectedness with dopamine hits, which prevents us from even realizing we aren't getting what we need.

Facebook is not a community, it is software. Software can enhance what is in the real world (ie, real community), but it cannot replace it. Zuckerberg's new world order of community is a mirage, and cults have been built on lesser falsehoods. The article's link between that mirage and the modernism that gave rise to communism is not theater.

</comment><comment><USER31> "Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."

<comment><USER3> One of the other big criticisms of Facebook and other social networks is that they're "filter bubbles" which make sure people don't see any information or viewpoints from outside their own social circles and perspectives. The main unifying aspect that the "filter bubble" criticism and the "connecting people" criticism seem to have in common is that both involve Facebook taking away some control of the culture from the press, the media, and other powerful groups and giving it to the populace; other than that, they should be contradictory.

<comment><USER32> > The main unifying aspect that the "filter bubble" criticism and the > "connecting people" criticism seem to have in common is that both involve > Facebook taking away some control of the culture from the press, the media, > and other powerful groups and giving it to the populace

No, it's giving it to a new powerful group, specifically, Facebook. Just as Stalin stated, "I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how," so, too, is it true of social media; power doesn't lie with the people who can press "Like" (etc.), it lies with the people who select and continuously tweak based on observed effect the algorithm by which Likes and similar actions are used to shape the flow of information to and between users.

<comment><USER33> >power doesn't lie with the people who can press "Like" (etc.), it lies with the people who select and continuously tweak based on observed effect the algorithm by which Likes and similar actions are used to shape the flow of information to and between users.

Interesting. So no matter how much apparent power is gained by people connecting politically on social media, the "(wo)man behind the curtain" who controls the platform and it's algorithm will by default always be more powerful?

<comment><USER32> Yes, if your power comes from someone else and continues only as long as they choose to maintain it, the person directing power to you has the greater power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Somewhat unrelated, but it's quite aggravating to see the memo-writer (and the author of this article, by extension), using "de facto" good instead of "ipso facto" good.

If you choose to use flowery expressions, particularly Latin ones, you should at least be accurate.

</comment><comment><USER35> What does it mean to "connect everyone"? It seems like a meaningless statement. Not only is it not feasible in the literal sense, but wholly undesirable.

</comment><comment><USER36> Anyone curious about the "High Modernism" referred to in this article should definitely read Scott Alexander's review of "Seeing Like a State" [0]. It sums up some of the attitudes of the High Modernists involved in things like architecture and urban planning in the 20th century:

>First, there can be no compromise with the existing infrastructure. It was designed by superstitious people who didn't have architecture degrees, or at the very least got their architecture degrees in the past and so were insufficiently Modern. The more completely it is bulldozed to make way for the Glorious Future, the better.

>Second, human needs can be abstracted and calculated. A human needs X amount of food. A human needs X amount of water. A human needs X amount of light, and prefers to travel at X speed, and wants to live within X miles of the workplace. These needs are easily calculable by experiment, and a good city is the one built to satisfy these needs and ignore any competing frivolities.

>Third, the solution is the solution. It is universal. The rational design for Moscow is the same as the rational design for Paris is the same as the rational design for Chandigarh, India. As a corollary, all of these cities ought to look exactly the same. It is maybe permissible to adjust for obstacles like mountains or lakes. But only if you are on too short a budget to follow the rationally correct solution of leveling the mountain and draining the lake to make your city truly optimal.

>Fourth, all of the relevant rules should be explicitly determined by technocrats, then followed to the letter by their subordinates. Following these rules is better than trying to use your intuition, in the same way that using the laws of physics to calculate the heat from burning something is better than just trying to guess, or following an evidence-based clinical algorithm is better than just prescribing whatever you feel like.

>Fifth, there is nothing whatsoever to be gained or learned from the people involved (eg the city's future citizens). You are a rational modern scientist with an architecture degree who has already calculated out the precise value for all relevant urban parameters. They are yokels who probably cannot even spell the word architecture, let alone usefully contribute to it. They probably make all of their decisions based on superstition or tradition or something, and their input should be ignored For Their Own Good.

The result being, of course, the creation of hideous planned cities that no one wanted to live in.

[0] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing- like...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-like-a- state/)

</comment><comment><USER37> disturbingly

</comment><comment><USER38> I think the author completely misunderstood the Boz quote. I interpret it as him questioning the core belief that connecting people no matter the consequences is right.

<comment><USER39> The cited fragment does suggest that interpretation, that the de facto goodness should be scrutinized. But the entire memo frames terrorism and bullying as unfortunate side-effects which must be tolerated for the sake of ever greater connectivity.

\--- [Newport quote in brackets] ---

Andrew Bosworth June 18, 2016

The Ugly

We talk about the good and the bad of our work often. I want to talk about the ugly.

We connect people.

That can be good if they make it positive. Maybe someone finds love. Maybe it even saves the life of someone on the brink of suicide.

So we connect more people

[That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.

And still we connect people.

The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is _de facto_ good.] It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned.

That isn't something we are doing for ourselves. Or for our stock price (ha!). It is literally just what we do. We connect people. Period.

That's why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it.

The natural state of the world is not connected. It is not unified. It is fragmented by borders, languages, and increasingly by different products. The best products don't win. The ones everyone use win.

I know a lot of people don't want to hear this. Most of us have the luxury of working in the warm glow of building products consumers love. But make no mistake, growth tactics are how we got here. If you joined the company because it is doing great work, that's why we get to do that great work. We do have great products but we still wouldn't be half our size without pushing the envelope on growth. Nothing makes Facebook as valuable as having your friends on it, and no product decisions have gotten as many friends on as the ones made in growth. Not photo tagging. Not news feed. Not messenger. Nothing.

In almost all of our work, we have to answer hard questions about what we believe. We have to justify the metrics and make sure they aren't losing out on a bigger picture. But connecting people. That's our imperative. Because that's what we do. We connect people.</comment></comment>


Carota - Rich Text Editor With HTML5 Canvas - <AUTHOR> http://earwicker.com/carota/ <comment><USER2> This is exactly what I have been looking for! Rich text editing in webpages is complicated, and I haven't find a good solution until now. Google doc ends up with thousands of divs and span elements, TinyMCE uses iframe. While both of them seem to work, they are not elegant and sometimes I experience bug with incorrect text cursor location.

Another reason I like about canvas implementation is the flexibility. I have been working on a text rendering engine for Japanese for some time, and found that DOM is simply not good enough for special layout. Here are some examples:

1\. Writing direction. CSS does have the writing-mode property, but that doesn't work well in different browsers.

2\. Ruby tag support in vertical writing mode sucks.

3\. No browser supports hanging-punctuation yet.

More to be listed... It should be the browsers' job to fix these problems, but anyway, I finally end up with using canvas to calculate the position for every single character, that gives me flexibility that DOM doesn't have.

Keep up the good work!

</comment><comment><USER3> i have no idea why this doesn't get any attention here on hacker-news. it looks like a very nice start to me. (and i'll have higher praise if i can push it hard and have it do well, but i haven't had time to stress it.)

on the whole, i don't see much value in json, however.

and part of the reason is that you're just storing the presentational information (font, size, color, styling), and not the structural (a.k.a. "semantic") information. (which is the problem with any wysiwyg approach today.)

rethink your philosophical approach on that issue, and make your save-to-file output some light-markup format, either restructured-text (blah) or markdown (blah blah) or my z.m.l. (zen markup language), and i think you'll be on the way to having a definite winner on your hands.

-bowerbird</comment>


Low-code, no-model recommendation system with GPT3 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/gpt3-empowered-recommendation-system-ba4bad29276b <comment><USER2> I wish there was a light version of gpt3 with maybe like 100 api query limit per day so just amateurs like me got to play with this API too on weekends.

I have no agenda of changing the world and I have nothing substantial to fill in the gpt3 invite form but sometimes the best ideas come from tinkering and I just wish they gave some limited access to everyone.

<comment><USER3> I thought they have a free tier from October? [https://twitter.com/hardmaru/status/1301362995356774401](https://twitter.com/hardmaru/status/1301362995356774401)

Not sure what the 100k tokens translates to in terms of query limit

<comment><USER4> That's 3 month max though

<comment><USER3> would be nice if it was longer, but should have decent ideas in 3 months. And having another go with a throwaway email probably not that hard

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Recommendation system is so successful in many products and services we interact everyday" ->

"Recommendation system[S] [ARE] so successful in many products and services we interact [WITH] every[ ]day"

I'm sorry, but four errors within the first sentence is just not good enough - did the author even read this themselves just once before hitting publish? Show just a little bit more respect toward the people who give their attention to what you've written.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing out the errors. I got them fixed in the blog. This is also a good use case of GPT3, checking grammar and spelling. I might build an application for this.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for fixing them - and sorry if I was overly harsh. Sharing your writing with the world is nerve-wracking enough already without having the spelling and grammar shot down on HN. Truth be told, my first thought was "maybe this is some example of text created by GPT-3?" But I think you're right that it would actually serve well as a combined spelling and error checker to catch things like that - I hope you do build an application for it, that would be neat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Given that "Open" AI API is very pricey, Im waiting to see how economical is it to use this as it is heavily marketed by all these blog posts.

<comment><USER7> For anyone else curious, the pricing according to gwern [1]:

        Explore: Free tier: 100K [BPE] tokens, Or, 3-month trial, Whichever comes first
        Create: $100/mo, 2M tokens/mo, 8 cents per additional 1k tokens
        Build: $400/mo, 10M tokens/mo, 6 cents per additional, 1k tokens
        Scale: Contact Us

Expensive but (unfortunately) pretty standard market price for cloud NLP stuff. The price is about $40 per million tokens.

For comparison, cloud translation costs per million characters range from $6 (Azure bulk pricing) to $20 (Google/AWS without bulk discounts). If we assume the average BPE token length is 5 characters, GPT-3 will cost about $8 per million characters.

[1] [https://old.reddit.com/r/GPT3/comments/ikorgs/oa_api_prelimi...](https://old.reddit.com/r/GPT3/comments/ikorgs/oa_api_preliminary_beta_pricing_announced/)

<comment><USER8> In one of the Reddit comments about a service (PhilosopherAI.com) using the API outlining the possible total costs:

> That makes for 400 million tokens in 2 or 3 weeks, which puts me at like > $4000/mo minimum

Oh dear, that means...

> Scale: Contact Us

So while they are using the API for free for now, by these metrics, they are least going to be soon having a running cost of at least $4K+/mo. That is an expensive toy. The same goes for AI Dungeon.

> App Store earnings will be used to cover OpenAI costs & develop new > features. Thank you for your support.

Well I will be seeing a tsunami of complaints from OpenAI projects that they can't pay up for their "game changers" since they will be priced out quickly. OpenAI Wins, Everyone else loses.

If this is for simple projects, then I wouldn't dare build an entire startup based on someone else's API. OpenAI will win by default here.

<comment><USER9> I was thinking about Ai dungeon the other day. I can't imagine it really is sustainable with those 10$ subscriptions covering the free play folks too. What happens whenever they get featured on some bigger website?

<comment><USER10> AI Dungeon has already scaled up to over 1,000,000 players and managed costs. They have a whole article about it here:

[https://medium.com/@aidungeon/how-we-scaled-ai- dungeon-2-to-...](https://medium.com/@aidungeon/how-we-scaled-ai-dungeon-2-to- support-over-1-000-000-users-d207d5623de9)

An important note, as others have said, is that not every player gets the same model. Free players, as far as I'm aware, only get GPT-2 ("only" is a strong word, as up until GPT-3, GPT-2 was the state of the art in text generation and is still extremely impressive in its own right).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> GPT3 really is remarkable.

If you told me in 2015 that I can give just a few examples of movie recommendations, on a model trained for general text, and get perfectly coherent recommendations, I wouldn't have believed you.

<comment><USER8> Indeed. But now OpenAI has become more like another DeepMind, but starting to rent out their APIs to its users, indicating that they probably won't ever release models for their research.

They might as well rename to Standard AI.

<comment><USER12> I don't fully disagree, but I also think there is a layer of complication here that goes beyond OpenAI's hopes of monetization (which are clearly a factor).

I maintain an open source ML deployment platform, and I've interacted with a bunch of teams that have used it to deploy GPT-2. It was actually the platform AI Dungeon built their app on. GPT-2 is a beast to deploy—it's huge (almost 6 GB fully trained), requires GPUs, and scales fairly poorly. You need to autoscale GPU instances aggressively to handle any kind of real time inference situation with it, and even with spot instances, that gets expensive quick.

GPT-2 is 1.5 billion parameters, and at the time, was scandalously large. GPT-3 is 175 billion. For a model that large, there's real questions around whether it's even feasible for the average team to use it if it is not hosted somewhere else as a third party API.

From that perspective, I think the value OpenAI captures with the API is less about the exclusivity of the model itself, but the exclusivity of their infrastructure. Because of that, I wouldn't be surprised to see them open source the model for research.

However, I 100% agree that the fact that the model still isn't open is concerning, and it casts some doubts on whether or not it will ultimately happen in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice as a stunt, but feels like taking a 40 ton truck to get your lunch sandwich from the bakers.

<comment><USER14> If this turns out to be easy and convenient, it won't matter whether the tech is overpowered.

A family car is really overpowered for most trips to the bakers.

Yet people take the car all the time, instead of walking or cycling, because it's just more convenient and easy, and people are lazy.

You can't write just this off as a stunt.

If you described how YouTube renders cat videos to Tim Berners Lee in the mid 90s, it would also seem like a 40-ton truck.

And yet here we are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Serendipity is another GPT-3 based recommendation engine. Check its about page. [http://serendipityrecs.com/](http://serendipityrecs.com/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Hey, cool, you built the same thing as me but with less code: [http://serendipityrecs.com/](http://serendipityrecs.com/)

One thing that's cool about GPT-3 is how versatile it can be, so I'm exploring a natural language search interface, which is something that traditional recommendation algorithms can't do.

Are you planning to incorporate GPT-3 into your startup? I'd love to hear about what use cases you envision it solving. If you're interested in connecting, my email is in my profile and my website.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! I will drop you a message or catch up with you on openai-api slack.

There are a couple of features we see GPT3 stands out and potentially benefits the product features.

Currently we are evaluating the end to end quality and cost versus our traditional ML based recommendation and semantic search pipeline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well it's a _no-model_ AI system if the interface is a HTTP endpoint that's out of your control...

</comment><comment><USER18> Very creative use of the technology. I wonder when GPT3 will evolve to handle more languages, and what if any steps they take to reduce cultural bias? If I was in Japan these recommendations would certainly be less useful. :)

<comment><USER19> Given this blog post I have no idea if it even works well for English. Sure, the demo video contains sensible recommendations but what gives? Most of those I've seen seem to be included in the training data shown in the image below. If you have the term "AI" in your blog's blurb readers might expect the author to actually perform an evaluation of stuff they write ads about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Presumably when a new movie (not included in GPT3 training data) comes out the recommendations are not going to be too good, unless someone spends a lot of money retraining the underlying model?

<comment><USER14> This will be the case for everything built on GPT-3, but you've got to imagine it's possible for them to keep refreshing it, eventually training or fine tuning it on a daily basis as their web crawl updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I am curious how much it actually thinks and how much it simply uses text from recommendation engines that got crawled.

<comment><USER22> A neural network can't think, please stop cargo culting neural networks

<comment><USER23> Panpsychism is a serious philosophical position.

<comment><USER22> Could you please give an explanation of panpsychism applied to software that make sense? Spoiler: you cannot and it's totally refuted empirically. If I code a hello world, what kind of cognitive abilities does this have?

BTW I guess panpsychism researchers should start talking to rocks maybe one day they'll find one that is an AGI! /s

<comment><USER24> The position is that information not physical matter is ontologically primary and that substrate independent integrated information processing is identical to consciousness.

A hello world program and a rock are not integrated information processing systems. The former is an automata which can be contained in an integrated information processing systems and the latter is a more arbitrary construct which does very little information processing at all (much less integrated).

<comment><USER25> Sounds like the ether in physics around 1900 or the four elements in Greek philosophy.

Non-falsifiable dreams.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Intersteller (with -er, indeed)? How did it pick that one up as an alternative for Inception? There is something with that title, but no information in IMDb.

Anyway, for the rest it looks similar to Netflix' recommendation: similarity in actors, directors, keywords. A toy.

<comment><USER27> A2:B10 (including the results for Intersteller{sic}) are the prompts, it's very confusing in the video. The results for "The Irishman" are from GPT-3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> No model? What? Of course this is a model, it's just a pre-trained one.</comment>


The FBI Says It Can't Find Hackers to Hire Because They All Smoke Pot (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-fbi-cant-find-hackers-that-dont-smoke-pot <comment><USER2> Well look. It's a federal crime to buy, sell, or possess pot. Unlike the CIA, whose mission is to break (foreign) laws, the FBI's mission is to enforce US laws. How can you hire a federal law enforcement officer who is also a scofflaw? Very problematic. The solution is probably to use some sort of contractor classification to hire hackers indirectly. Obviously the FBI has no problem working with confidential informants who are criminals of the worst sort. So probably a white hat hacker who partakes in the weed is not that difficult to reconcile with policy, as long as that person is not an actual agent.</comment>


Medium vs Svbtle. Who will win?  - <AUTHOR>

Medium and Svbtle. Two similar services, Started around the same time. In the end win do you think will win? What their changes will be in future maybe? <comment><USER2> The first one to gain any significant market penetration outside of Silicon Valley?

Seriously, both can be successful for the niche markets they serve. After all, for tech news, we have The Verge, Engaget, Gizmodo, CNet, TechCrunch, etc....there's likely plenty of room in the market for compelling content and delivery mechanisms.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder the same thing but even Twitter started like that used mainly by tech guys in the begining. But now everyone using Twitter.

But i don't know how they'll work this out in the future. Like if everybody started posting on Medium or Svbtle like Twitter it'll be a mess

<comment><USER3> I don't think so. They're both just blogging platforms with some sort of editorial system to pick pieces and put them on the front page.

In terms of which I think is better/more likely to gain a wider audience, I think Medium's organization into collections gives them an edge. It feels like it's less about the authors and more about the community. I also really like their inline commenting system.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yah true but like without getting more users to post content will it be successfull as a platform? Even tumblr had hard time making money even with their content creators

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the biggest draw they bring to the blogging world is quality content in a largely clutter-free reading environment. The designs on both are minimal, extremely readable, and fairly well curated. Medium, to me, holds the edge with collections, but I am sure both will continue to grow and add more content while retaining the underlying minimalist interface.

</comment><comment><USER5> I can't say I know the greatest amount about medium and svbtle, but after looking at their sites multiple times, it seems like they don't have much to offer past each other, or any other blog delivery platform...

And even worse, they would easily become quickly less useful than some sort of pointed aggregator

</comment><comment><USER6> I feel so good bloggin on my own server, with my own markdown files and running Jekyll as a platform. I have no regrets and I feel confortable not being tied to a service.</comment>


Jewish-Arab Love Story Excluded from Israeli Classrooms - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/01/world/middleeast/borderlife-dorit-rabinyan-israel-ministry-education.html <comment><USER2> This headline and title shows the New York Times' bias very succinctly.

Look at that title: " _excluded from Israeli Classrooms_ ", as if it was banned to read, or even possess.

The fact of the matter then leaks out in the opening line: "(The M.E.) has decided not to include a novel about a romance between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man _on the list of required reading_ for _Hebrew high school literature_ classes.

So, all that happened is that the book won't be _assigned_ as _required_ reading in _Hebrew literature_ (!) class.

Does the title resemble the truth of the story?

In contrast, is this book even _allowed_ , let alone _assigned_ , in schools on the Palestinian side of the border?</comment>


Pattern matching for Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alexpantyukhin/go-pattern-match <comment><AUTHOR> Hi! I continue play with Go ) This is my pre-alpha variant of another one pattern matching fo Go ) [https://github.com/alexpantyukhin/go-pattern- match](https://github.com/alexpantyukhin/go-pattern-match) What do you think guys? Is it good or not? what can be improved?</comment>


A pattern language for microservices - <AUTHOR> http://microservices.io/patterns/ <comment><USER3> I have been doing microservices for 4 years now and I can tell you something: do not go there. The tools are simply not there.

Although I am working on one platform like that right now (see [https://github.com/1backend/1backend](https://github.com/1backend/1backend)) the reason I started it was more the fact that I could not easily deploy a custom tiny service and call it easily.

We have solved both problem with 1Backend: launching a new service is as easy as creating a git repo on GitHub, and calling them is just like calling a library with the autogenerated clients.

That being said, until a project like 1Backend matures, anyone who starts their startup on a microservices architecture instead of a simple monolitic one is out of their skull.*

I have personally watched millions and millions of dollars burnt on building on such platform while our competitor (Uber) became one of the biggest unicorns the world has ever seen.

Don't be that startup! We managed to screw it up with 100+ million dollars in funding, which was (is) extremely exceptional in Europe. Of course the tech was only part of the reason for failure, still: there are better way of spending money than chasing bugs across hundreds of services and building instrumentation.

*Edit: this sentence of mine was very unfortunately worded and said the exact opposite of what I meant. Hopefully the tons of upvotes I got was because that the upvoters correctly inferred from the context that I advice you to start with a monolith, and not with microservices. Thanks.

<comment><USER4> it depends on your reasons.

\- if you need to scale the number of teams working on the same product you need to introduce microservices to make the teams work independently from each other.

\- if you need to scale the (monolith) service and it is too expensive to just scale it n times. microservices can help because you can scale each microservice independently.

\- that's said the overhead is real. There have been quite a few publications and advocates (like Randy Shoup) that staying monolith is fine until you have pain that a microservice architecture can ease.

<comment><USER5> > if you need to scale the number of teams working on the same product

You can do that by several different ways. Overall, if one wants a "one size fits all" answer to how to break code into teams, it is by breaking the code into libraries, not services. Services are a niche tech here, to be considered when the others won't suffice.

> if you need to scale the (monolith) service and it is too expensive to just > scale it n times.

Again, nearly every time this happens, the correct answer is to refactor the monolith so replicating it scales. Services are only for those cases where this won't suffice.

I don't think I disagree with how you think. But I do think your comment is easily misunderstood and harmful without those qualifiers.

<comment><USER6> I've seen the library approach in practice. It is works to a certain point, but it isn't too long until having a single deployable[1] artifact becomes as much of a bottleneck as having a single codebase, if not more. Taking this approach makes it harder to do other things that are just as important, such as continuous delivery, empowering development teams to take ownership of operational excellence, or even ship updates in a reliable and timely fashion.

Most of the hatred towards microservices is probably better directed at REST, which is a good paradigm for serving documents to web browsers but is overcomplicated for microservices. RPC is a good alternative, and gRPC is a good implementation of it.

[1] My phone autocorrected this to "deplorable", which is also a good adjective for a monolithic web application that contains lots of libraries and is only deployable as one artifact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Having done "microservices" for more than a decade, I think most of these patterns are horribly overengineered or incomplete. As with the GoF design patterns, it's almost always a bad idea to implement these patterns as-is.

Rather, look at these patterns as solutions for problems that worked for other people, and try to adapt that to your own situation. You're almost certainly going to come up with something more simple and reliable in the process.

<comment><USER8> I was just about to make the exact same comment. As principles, even the GoF patterns are fine -- a lot of good engineers independently derive and use those patterns without ever knowing their names. Problems arise when engineers who don't understand the principle somehow match a pattern to a problem they have an implement it literally, right down to naming classes after patterns. That's not what patterns are for.

<comment><USER9> How do you name your classes instead? I ask because I'm now mostly in favor of naming classes after the patterns, at least when there's no relevant term from the domain to use. That is, when the alternative is to invent a _new_ abstract name, I think it's better to use the one that comes with the design pattern. The resulting names are often ugly, but at least they clearly communicate the intent to people also familiar with the pattern.

<comment><USER8> If there's no relevant term from the domain, that's an indication (at least for me) that the class hierarchy is wrong. I've been programming for 15 years and I've never found myself without a proper domain-oriented name for a class...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I converted a set of quasi micro services to a monolith 14 years ago, and the results were incredible in the truest word: you probably won't believe them.

100-1000x better performance, 10x reduction in machines used, ~100x reduction in number of processes, >100x improvement in reliability, deployment changed from "oh my god" to "copy this jar here", output improved, quality improved, development times improved etc.

[https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-9299-3_...](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-9299-3_11)

There _can_ be good reasons for microservices. There rarely _are_. The Fred George piece that (I think) introduced micro services as a distinct concept specifically pointed out that they must be independent, that is, if one of the services fails you don't get that one service and that's it. Almost all real- world instances either fudge this or just blatantly disregard it.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting to contrast the distaste and horror for microservices in this thread with the respect commonly shown for Erlang and similar systems.

Isn't an erlang actor basically a microservice, or perhaps nanoservice? Is the difference simply that the Erlang runtime takes care of logistical issues like addressing, marshalling, and deployment that are big time sinks in a "normal" microservice architecture?

</comment><comment><USER12> The more you look at microservices, the more you'll appreciate basic TTL logic design with buffers, blocks, latches, and sequential logic. I wrote a paper about this subject a long time ago. Everything I've seen since further convinces me that this is the path forward for software.

[http://blog.encapsule.org/early-encapsule-project- history/20...](http://blog.encapsule.org/early-encapsule-project- history/2003-encapsule-aurora-platform-whitepaper/)

<comment><USER13> Do you see change management as a problem with the state of current runtimes? If so, how do envision this issue being solved? I know there's been attempts with things like OSGI but that sort of failed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm watching some OOP videos from mid-eighties right now. Can't shake the feeling that the original notion of OOP was solving the same problems as microservices try to solve today, but with far more elegance and more coherent theoretical framework.

(Example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjJaFG63Hlo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjJaFG63Hlo))

<comment><USER15> Spot on. Objects were meant to be close to microservices, although with the limitation of being implemented in the same language. RPC was meant to allow objects running on different hosts send messages to each other.

That, before OOP turned into the ConfigurationParserSecureProviderCollectorGeneratorFactoryFactoryFactory disaster.

<comment><USER14> Interestingly, it seems RPC was one of those older ideas that was resurrected and replaced remote message passing when Smalltalk was phased out.

Alan Kay on RPC: _" The people who liked objects as non-data were smaller in number, and included myself, Carl Hewitt, Dave Reed and a few others – pretty much all of this group were from the ARPA community and were involved in one way or another with the design of ARPAnet->Internet in which the basic unit of computation was a whole computer. But just to show how stubbornly an idea can hang on, all through the seventies and eighties, there were many people who tried to get by with "Remote Procedure Call" instead of thinking about objects and messages. Sic transit gloria mundi."_

Source: [http://mythz.servicestack.net/blog/2013/02/27/the-deep- insig...](http://mythz.servicestack.net/blog/2013/02/27/the-deep-insights-of- alan-kay/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't like it when I open a technical website and the first thing I see is the bio of some guy and his picture

Makes me feel like this is about content marketing more than about defining a standard.

</comment><comment><USER17> I see similar issues here as with big data tools and NoSQL. We read how companies like Netflix and Uber are doing things and take advice. Yet they are operating on completely different scale than most other business.

Preparing to scale may be good, but those technical choices tend to add their own complexities (as random example, see the Saga pattern [1]). Need to think if you should be building platform that can manage 10M active users or is it more important to add features that get you the first 100.

Couple of days ago there was a discussion on HN about Instagram. Somebody pointed out why they went with Python instead of something more suitable for large codebase. This seems to be quite common theme - companies who made it big facing growing pains because of doing things "quick and dirty". This led me thinking if this "let's get it running and worry about growth later" thinking is the reason why they outperformed their competition.

[1] [http://microservices.io/patterns/data/saga.html](http://microservices.io/patterns/data/saga.html)

<comment><USER18> Relevant: You Are Not Google [1]

[1] [https://blog.bradfieldcs.com/you-are-not- google-84912cf44afb](https://blog.bradfieldcs.com/you-are-not- google-84912cf44afb)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's amazing how many service-oriented projects continue to add basic patterns like security, observability, and reliability after the fact.

This looks like a great set of templates for setting the tone and expectations on a project. Will definitely use.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't understand the microservice hype. To me it seems like you are trying to solve something that, at least for me, were never a problem. However when people have been trying to solve that problem a lot of nice tools have emerged, and that's a good thing. But most of the supporters I've spoken with seem, to me at least, base their ideas and beliefs from having a poor eco system/platform or structural inabilities and tries to solve that with breaking things apart.

<comment><USER21> It is most likely solving a real problem at Netflix.

Most people don't work at a company like Netflix though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sorry, is this in the same vein as GraphQL or SOQL of SalesForce.com?

<comment><USER23> Nah, looks like another iteration of UML.

<comment><USER24> "no design necessary" kind of folk, eh?

<comment><USER25> Proper design has little to do with drawing hundreds of little boxes and arrows.

I've seen a lot of horrible designs bundled with visio diagrams made by "architects" and good designs described in a txt file made by system engineers.

<comment><USER26> Cargo Cult, "Design" edition. Take a bad idea chosen for unclear reasons and then detail the heck out of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A lot of hate for microservices in this thread. I think you'd be surprised how much some major tech companies (Google etc.) are and have been relying on microservices and that style of architecture for many years now.

I think the biggest conflict here is scale of the services involved. For smaller scale - which is what most people are familiar with - <USER2> architecture can offer distinct advantages. At scale though? Monoliths have been relentlessly excised for years because of all the very real scaling and maintenance problems that go with them.

<comment><USER28> > I think you'd be surprised how much some major tech companies (Google etc.) > are and have been relying on microservices and that style of architecture > for many years now. [...] I think the biggest conflict here is scale of the > services involved.

I wouldn't be surprised that Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, etc. use microservices heavily.

But I think it's more, the scale of the companies, rather than the scale of the services. When you've got a lot of developers—thousands or tens of thousands, on hundreds of teams—having independent microservices is surely the way to go.

But, when you're a small company, with ~10 developers? It's not.

<comment><USER29> Yep, last time I worked at a company w around 13 devs, everything had to be done "the microservice way", because all the cool guys are doing it and it is the way to go.

Microservices is the new snake oil :D Now downvote me into oblivion :)

<comment><USER28> > Microservices is the new snake oil :D Now downvote me into oblivion :)

Downvotes definitely won't be coming from me :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hired helping 5000+ D.C. Engineers leave their government jobs for startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2015/07/08/hired-officially-launches-its-marketplace-for-tech-jobs-in-washington-d-c/

<comment><USER2> This sounds like a fantastic idea. I was in that market for most of my career, and it is filled with extremely competent people with resumes that don't convey much. The "you want to see the code I worked on? Uh, that's a felony for both of us" type thing. (there is also the fact that resumes written for that job market are filled with jargon that doesn't convey much to outsiders). It was really hard dealing with companies that didn't want to 'get' that former point when I left that sector. Fortunately for me my current employer was very cool about it.

I would suggest there is a lot of money being left on the table for a business willing to work with the ~95% of programmers this is leaving behind...

</comment><comment><USER3> LOL, love it!

</comment><comment><USER4> Awesome!</comment>