Ask HN: How to measure if it is "worth it" to accept a job with less coding? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN.
I have a dilemma. I will get an offer transitioning me from developer to developer team lead at my company. This is being described as being a job with more responsibility and more administrative work (i.e client communication for example). It is also described as being higher paid. My boss knows me very well, and knows I like to code more than to write emails and following up my co-workers. But I also see his motivation, as I am the most obvious candidate for it.
Now, in the conversation where the management wanted me to know this, I recognised it as an opportunity (nice on my CV and such), and said I would have to see the offer before I finally said yes.
So my dilemma is this. Being a less interesting job-title, I feel there is a certain amount of salary increase required for me to accept the job. If it was only to look good on my CV I would have said no right away. But I am not sure what the lowest level of increased salary would be. Would love to hear some thoughts on it.
I guess my question is:
What would be the minimum (for example in percentage) increase in pay you would recognise as good enough for you to take a job that would look good on your CV, but be less interesting on a day-to-day basis?
A little context: - I live in Norway. - My salary is around 480K NOK (currently 55.3K USD) - I work as a web developer (5-6 yrs professional experience, no tech education). <comment><USER2> I would say, life is too short, try doing what you love te most. Also, beware that making more money will encourage you to spend more money so you will feel the need to make more money, again. Maybe a better question is: Who do I aspire to be like and which decisions can get me there?</comment>


History's deadliest air raid happened in Tokyo during World War II - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/07/asia/japan-tokyo-fire-raids-operation-meetinghouse-intl-hnk/index.html <comment><USER2> One reason the Japanese response to the Hiroshima and then the Nagasaki atom bombs was fairly low-key was that the damage was not as significant in terms of lives lost and total destruction as the Tokyo fire-bombing was.</comment>


Hopscotch – easy product tours by LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> http://linkedin.github.io/hopscotch/#what-is <comment><USER2> Interesting. If you've ever signed up for patio11's free training video, he talks a bit about how product tours gave a big bump in conversions:

[https://training.kalzumeus.com/](https://training.kalzumeus.com/)

<comment><USER3> > Give me (Patrick McKenzie -- patio11) your email and get the rest of it, > totally free. (This advice has lead to 20%~100% increases in sales at 3 > companies, and normally I charge five figures for it.)

That sounds both scientific and like a great deal, the very definition of legit. I'm signing up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's very cool, but also very complicated. I created a demo for my app recently[1] and I used intro.js[2]. It was very simple and only involved you changing html tags. This seems way more customizable, but also might be overkill. Still cool though.

[1][http://www.streakflow.com/demo](http://www.streakflow.com/demo) [2][http://usablica.github.io/intro.js/](http://usablica.github.io/intro.js/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I worked at linkedin last summer, and I remember seeing a project exactly like this at one of the hackday presentation. It's nice to see that it turned into something.

</comment><comment><USER6> Thank you for all the great work! Good to see more Open Source about this. (Apache licensed)

There is much more out there in the same spirit, here is a short collection of the alternatives:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5427851](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5427851)

\- jQuery Impromptu [http://trentrichardson.com/Impromptu/](http://trentrichardson.com/Impromptu/)

\- Zurb Joyride [http://foundation.zurb.com/docs/components/joyride.html](http://foundation.zurb.com/docs/components/joyride.html)

\- Intro.js (js only) [http://usablica.github.com/intro.js/](http://usablica.github.com/intro.js/)

\- Bootstro.js - [http://clu3.github.com/bootstro.js/](http://clu3.github.com/bootstro.js/)

\- pageguide.js - [http://tracelytics.github.com/pageguide/](http://tracelytics.github.com/pageguide/)

\- chardin.js - [http://heelhook.github.com/chardin.js/?hn](http://heelhook.github.com/chardin.js/?hn)

</comment><comment><USER7> Foundation already did this with Joyride -- and is a much simpler plugin. What's different about this one? [http://foundation.zurb.com/docs/components/joyride.html](http://foundation.zurb.com/docs/components/joyride.html)

<comment><USER8> Joyride is good. Hopscotch is being used as a component already on LinkedIn, and it was part of an incubator project which is the reason for the (public) announcement and reason to open-source it ([http://engineering.linkedin.com/incubator/creating- product-t...](http://engineering.linkedin.com/incubator/creating-product- tours-hopscotch))

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, this [1] happens for me on Safari Version 6.0.5 (8536.30.1) and FF 24.0. Not sure if anyone involved reads this. If not, I'll post a bug report.

1\. [https://www.dropbox.com/s/fskploj3t0z4gw5/ocd.png](https://www.dropbox.com/s/fskploj3t0z4gw5/ocd.png)

<comment><USER8> What is happening, exactly?

<comment><USER9> Sorry. The reply to yours is correct. It's not centered. For me, this was so glaringly obvious and distracting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are there any product tour libraries that can detect interaction with the application being presented?

</comment><comment><USER11> This must be the fifth "touring" library I've seen. Stop it..</comment>


Ask YC: Anyone using Google Site Search? - <AUTHOR>

I'm researching different alternatives for implementing search in my site. For a while I have been thinking of implementing it using Zend_Search_Lucene. But one interesting alternative seems to be Google Site Search ( http://www.google.com/sitesearch ). It would cost $100 annually (for < 5k pages) and is a bit customizable. Time is a bit of an issue for me, so $100 is preferable to implementing search at this point, I would definitely spend more time on it at some point in the future though.<p>Has anyone tried it out or has anything to say about it? What do you use for search on your site? <comment><USER2> I looked at it a few years ago and ultimately just wrote my own. Back then I had more time than money also...

I've been to sites that use Google Site Search and it's just fine for what I've wanted. I don't think less of the company or anything - I know Google, I trust that their search results are good. I'd say it's probably a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER3> Use a JavaScript mashup to do a Google site search by emulating a Google search of the form

findthis site:mysite.com

So the user enters "findthis" in a form field. On submit your JavaScript performs an XmlHttpRequest for URL: [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=findthis+site%3Amys...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=findthis+site%3Amysite.com&btnG=Google+Search)

and returns the result to the user.

Downside: User's browser must have JavaScript enabled.

<comment><USER2> All fine and good until Google "catches on". What if they actually don't want you doing that? I don't know - just asking. What would the potential penalty be - delisting? Maybe I'm being paranoid but $100/yr vs the risk of "One day Google may decide to change things..." is worth spending the $100.</comment></comment>


How to ensure freelance transaction is safe on both sides? - <AUTHOR>

I'm finishing up a WordPress site for a client on Elance, and it's a fixed-price job with all of the payment being released at the end. However, this client would also like me to set up the site on their hosting account as part of the job. From the client's profile, they have paid multiple people for work, so I trust him, but I want to protect myself. How do I ensure that I get paid and he gets what he paid for? Do I send him half the files for the site for 50% payment and then send the other half shortly after for the other half? I was thinking maybe I could upload the site to my own server so he can view it, pay me 50%, then get the other half after setting it up on his hosting account. <comment><USER2> I like the way Alan Weiss has on his book The Consulting Bible. It basically says that half the fee is due on acceptance, with the balance due in x days. Alternatively, offer a 10 percent professional discount when the full fee is paid on acceptance. Make it non-cancelable and that the agreed-upon payment terms are due as described. Let the client postpone or delay any part of the work as they think it's necessary. Guarantee the quality of your work and offer them a full-refund if it doesn't.

</comment><comment><USER3> How much are you making for a Wordpress site on Elance nowadays? edit: I don't mean you specifically, I mean people in general. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER4> If I'm not mistaken Elance guarantees the payment for certain types of projects by using an escrow account.

</comment><comment><USER5> What could a product or service do that would solve this problem for you?</comment>


The Cryptographic Doom Principle - <AUTHOR> http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/the-cryptographic-doom-principle/ <comment><USER2> If you believe that "don't roll your own crypto" is some kind of absurd mantra the security industry uses to keep us in business, I recommend that you roll your own crypto, and keep us in business.

<comment><USER3> Schneier's Law comes to mind

"Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can't break."

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/04/schneiers_law...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/04/schneiers_law.html)

<comment><USER4> Oh, that's what that is!

I had found a similar thing making my own puzzles, "It's easy to make a puzzle you can't solve, but it's hard to make a puzzle that's fun."

Well, that' not entirely the same thing, but they overlap I guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think there's a more fundamental cryptographic principle. Don't implement cryptography, unless you are an absolute top expert. Even then, think twice, and get another absolute top cryptography expert to check your working. Use a pre-existing cryptography package that has been written properly instead.

<comment><USER6> This is a common idea and it's flawed.

Let KC be a well-known and implemented cipher and CC a custom cipher written by you. Instead of communicating like this:

A -> KC-encrypt -> transport -> KC-decrypt -> B

You can use:

A -> KC-encrypt -> CC-encrypt -> transport -> CC-decrypt -> KC-decrpyt -> B

The advantage is it breaks automated cryptoanalysis in case KC is broken.

A better idea than the one you stated is: don't rely solely on custom cryptography.

<comment><USER7> This is almost always less secure than KC alone, when KC is a well-known secure cipher.

A simple example would be a CC that hex-encodes the plaintext before applying some transformation on the data (before you laugh, this exists in enterprise systems today). This means CC would effectively expand the underlying data 200% (0xA1 -> 0x4131) and substantially degrade the security of a block-based cipher (32-bit block -> effectively 16-bits).

Here's a link to a practical case of unsafe composition (in hashing): [http://blog.ircmaxell.com/2015/03/security-issue- combining-b...](http://blog.ircmaxell.com/2015/03/security-issue-combining- bcrypt-with.html)

A bit more detail on randomly composing encryption algorithms: [http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2012/02/multiple- enc...](http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2012/02/multiple- encryption.html)

edit: It would be better to compose CC(KC(P)) so CC can't leak any information about P or degrade KC. Any reluctance to show the world the output of CC should suggest the low-practical-value of CC.

<comment><USER6> CC doesn't get to see the plaintext in the construct I explained.

CC is just a bijective function on (blocksize of KC) bits.

The author of the mentioned blog ignores the fact that cascading ciphers like I described breaks automated cryptoanalysis which is a necessity for mass surveillance in a world with wide-spread cryptography.

<comment><USER8> I think cascading ciphers might be a good idea, but if you're following Kerckhoff's rule, if your system achieves significant use and there is a cryptographic weakness, you should assume an adversary will exploit it even if it's different from the weaknesses of other systems.

I guess there's an economic argument to be made that _millions_ or _billions_ of pairs of communicating parties could develop their own individual means of at least obfuscating their communications so that nobody could expect to find searchable plaintext after decryption. But the economic effort that the pairs of parties invested in creating their obfuscations may have been wasted because if the same level of time or effort had instead been spent to improve mainstream cryptography, it might have yielded major qualitative security improvements for the "official" stuff.

<comment><USER6> I'm well aware that it doesn't stop a devoted attacker. But it needs a devoted attacker. That is the import point which you also recognized (beside many others). Even a devoted attacker has it harder because cracking a code with known algorithm and unknown key is easier than cracking a code with unknown algorithm and unknown key. Even more if the unknown algorithm is not available.

I think your argument that the effort put in custom ciphers maybe should be put in mainstream ciphers instead is interesting.

Tinkering around with custom ciphers can teach you a lot. Maybe you have not the knowledge or no idea how to attack/improve mainstream ciphers.

However, if you can make a difference for mainstream ciphers, of course that's what we need.

<comment><USER8> Just to put the issue in an extreme perspective, suppose that the best mathematically possible attacks against AES-256 in some setting only reduce the attacker's work by the same factor as the best mathematically possible attacks against AES-128. (There's no proof of this now, but it's conceivable that it's true.) In that case, the decision to use AES-256 in a particular application instead of AES-128 improves security against cryptanalysis of AES by a factor of 2¹²⁸ steps for the attacker. (Maybe cryptanalysis of AES isn't actually the weak point anyway, but let's set that aside because that's what inventing new ciphers tries to address.)

If this hypothesis is true, the work that Daemen and Rijmen did to invent AES-256 and the work that a particular implementer did to implement it will produce an almost inconceivably vast security benefit against this particular threat.

The reason this is important is the kind of disproportionality between the effort of Daemen and Rijmen and the AES reviewers and implementers, and the magnitude of the resulting security benefit. They might have spent a total of 500 person-years on making AES-256 work well, and received a security improvement of 340 trillion trillion trillion trillion-fold _relative to whatever the security of AES-128 is_. Whereas a homegrown cipher that isn't very mathematically sound might be developed with 1 person-year of effort and end up make an attacker do, let's say, 100 trillion operations. In my hypothesis, Daemen and Rijmen and other folks then got somewhere between a trillion trillion trillion and a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times better security return on their effort.

Now you might reasonably point out that if you use a standard, known cipher, the attacker's costs for a direct brute force attack are purely computational and don't involve research and development, or attempting to suborn or hack your correspondents or colleagues to discover the principles of operation or your system. Whereas if you do have a homegrown mechanism in play, an attacker incurs these other _kinds_ of novel and sort of one-off costs, notably including making other human beings think about stuff more.

The point that I've taken from a lot of the security experts who've talked about this, though, is that the scaling benefits are the important factor here, again especially if you want to make a system that many people could use for a long time. When the limiting factor is computer time, which is really only likely to be true for systems created, refined, and reviewed by experts, you can sometimes get the really absurd security ratios that are hard to even think about, and require your adversary to spend more money than exists in the world, build more computers than can be made from all the silicon on Earth, consume more energy than the Sun outputs, etc., etc. When the limiting factor is human reasoning, you might say "but that would require human cryptographers to think about my system for 1 year!". But if that's so, that may actually happen, and in any case you can't easily get the order of magnitude of the costs and resources required up to "inhuman" levels.

The point I'd take from your idea is that it could be valuable to try to make adversaries incur _diverse_ costs in attacking your system, especially if you don't know what capabilities and resources your adversaries do and don't have. This is kind of akin to what's happened with key derivation, where people have proposed KDFs that are very CPU-intensive and also KDFs that are very memory- intensive, and if there are other sorts of resources that you could make an attacker burn, there are probably people trying to invent KDFs that burn those, too. It's not clear to me that there's a genuinely scalable way to require human analytical effort as one of those resources, but if there is, that could be a useful property for communications systems to have for defense in depth. But making up a new cipher by hand for every system is probably not going to provide that property very reliably, or be a very effective use of resources, again when other uses of resources can improve security to a staggering extent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The "Don't roll your own crypto" mantra is overly ambiguous and enforces the culture of elitism in information security. I hope that something displaces this regurgitated "advice" with something more helpful. I know Moxie's article is a few years old but it is a step in the right direction regardless.

\--EDIT--

I don't think I was perfectly clear in my original comment. I attempted to expand on my position in a follow-up comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=9376131](https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=9376131)

<comment><USER10> The modern argument isn't "don't roll your own crypto". It's "don't build with crypto until you've learned how to break crypto". There are plenty of resources for people to learn how to do that online. Skipping that step and then shipping weak crypto is inexcusable.

<comment><USER11> What about using existing crypto libraries (such as OpenSSL) to add crypto to an existing project? I'm adding encryption to an open source backup tool I'm working on, planning on using AES from OpenSSL. Would it be enough to document exactly what I'm doing, and put out a call for an audit of the methods that are being used? I really want to make sure I get this right.

<comment><USER10> Same as "rolling your own crypto"; in fact, that's generally, except in extreme cases, exactly what we're referring to when we talk about people rolling their own.

<comment><USER11> So what are my options then? I could put out an initial version that shows what I want to accomplish, then either have it reviewed heavily, or see if I can get someone who's more of an expert to give it a go based on those specifications. Here's the problems I have so far, which I know I'm out of my depth:

1) In order to keep the backup software's deduplication functionality (and to minimize the server trusting the client), I need to have the IV (initialization vector) be a computed value based on the file's contents (so that multiple copies of the same file on the clients will encrypt to the same contents going to the backend server). I know that _This will leak some data_ (i.e., you may not want an attacker to know that a given set of files are the same contents). So I plan on making this optional -- either the user gets to take advantage of dedup, or better encryption.

2) To do number 1 above, I was planning on taking a hash of the file, encrypting that with the users key, then using that as a predictable IV. You will still have a unique IV per unique file, but I don't know enough to see if this can leak any other data. It looks like RFC 5297 describes an approach similar to this, but I think it is for a different use case.

3) I need the backup server to know which version of an encryption key the client used. That is, if the client changes keys between backups, I need the server to instruct the client to do a full backup, not incremental. So I can either have the client provide a version number for the key (or if using a keyfile, use the datestamp of the file as a version string), or I can encrypt a given string using the key, and use a hash of the encrypted string as the key version number. (Note, in no case will I ever be storing a hash of the plaintext of the client's files on the backup server, as that too can leak information)

My apologies if the above makes any experts here cringe, but as I mentioned my constraint is to have same-content files encrypted to the same target contents (for dedup purposes), although I will give the user to turn that off and use a random IV for better security (and give up dedup).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would happen if most of the money was in index funds? - <AUTHOR> So Warren Buffett has been telling laypeople to put their money in index funds in every Berkshire Hathaway annual report I've ever read. As I understand it, the allocation of funds in such an investment strategy is primarily influenced by the activities of actively managed investment funds. How would index funds work if they had a majority of the money? Or a supermajority? What if they had all of it? <comment><USER2> At a certain point, active strategies that attempted to avoid the bad and only pick the good assets would become effective again. I suspect we'll learn during the next crash that this has become the case, that some companies really are more productive than others, and that indexing simply results in an everything bubble. S&P 500 seems like a particularly arbitrary example, because it's an actively managed list of companies. Any time you have consensus, it's safe to assume that the pendulum has swung too far.

</comment><comment><USER3> In principle, this is a good idea. But look carefully and you'll notice that in most developed markets, there's just too many index funds, and too many indices. You can find all kinds of specialized indices - most of which may actually be unsuitable for you.

If you read earlier advice from Buffet/Graham, they talk about being long term optimistic about the overall US economy. So if you really want a good passive way of doing things, just stick to the major market indices, like nasdaq100, snp100, etc. Be sure that the index you pick is liquid enough.

On a more practical note, talk to a financial advisor, at least initially, if you're inexperienced/untrained in this stuff.</comment>


In 2005, a college student made a million dollars by selling pixels online - <AUTHOR> http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ <comment><USER2> Here's a BBC report on him from 2016: [http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20160914-the-man-behind- the...](http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20160914-the-man-behind-the-million- dollar-homepage)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Mirrored FAQ: [https://web.archive.org/web/20060306132156/http://www.millio...](https://web.archive.org/web/20060306132156/http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/faq.php#1)

</comment><comment><USER3> A then he became co-founder of calm.com

Not bad.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm sure he made a bit less... Taxes, Operating costs (AWS wasn't around back then), etc..

<comment><USER5> A million dollars in revenue still fits the definition of "making" a million dollars.</comment></comment>


I Want Palm's WebOS, just not on a phone - <AUTHOR> http://embought.com/blog/show/21?t=Why-I-want-Palm%27s-WebOS%2C-just-not-on-a-phone.

<comment><USER2> Why necessarily limit it to a physical device? How about also putting it on some sort of web applet? To make this slick, you'd have to keep the virtual/emulated Palm Pre synced up with the physical one. But if the software on the Palm Pre can integrate all of my disparate social networking data, this would be very useful, maybe even a killer app. If you come up with a way to get GPS location data or the equivalent into the web app, then you turn any netbook into an interface for your "Mobile OS" and _netbooks in general become a selling point for your phone_. Heck, if you do it well, _every web browser connected to broadband becomes a selling point for your phone_.

Basically, you'd be going one better than MobileMe. Considering the weakness of that part of Apple's offerings, that seems like a good battle to pick.

Some would be afraid that the netbook would prevent the phone sale. If that were true, then people would be buying netbooks instead of phones. It's actually the other way around.

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/half_of_all_iphone_usag...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/half_of_all_iphone_usage_wifi.php)

</comment><comment><USER3> From the article:

"Hopefully Palm will think about opening up their software to 3rd party manufactures so we can see it on some other devices"

People have been making this argument about OS X for years, and all have failed to realize the importance of hardware/software synergy.

Palm would be better off engineering this tablet device themselves. 3rd parties are nothing but trouble.</comment>


Checkm8: Unpatchable bootrom exploit for 100s of millions of iOS devices - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/axi0mx/status/1177542201670168576 <comment><AUTHOR> Main thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21099996](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21099996)</comment>


Amazon hires Charlie Kindel, ex-Windows Phone exec - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2013/joke-amazon-hires-windows-phone-vet-charlie-kindel-something-secret/

<comment><AUTHOR> Speculation of course is that this is the foreshadowing the arrival of Kindle Phone.

A more intriguing possibility is that Amazon is setting stage for its next move in Platform Wars. Between his gigs at Microsoft & Amazon, Kindel was an advisor to the Buddy mobile cloud platform. (See [http://www.geekwire.com/2011/exmicrosoft-mobile-exec- charlie...](http://www.geekwire.com/2011/exmicrosoft-mobile-exec-charlie- kindel-joins-advisory-board-buddy/) ) Many other startups (such as parse.com, ubran airship) are attempting to build this layer, most of them built right on top of Amazon AWS, but it is hard to imagine such a product going mass-market amongst developers without the trust of a brand such as Amazon.

Amazon is in great position for this. AWS is probably the best-regarded major cloud platform amongst developers, in contrast to Apple's trouble in wooing developers to use its cloud platform ( [http://rms2.tumblr.com/post/46505165521/the-gathering- storm-...](http://rms2.tumblr.com/post/46505165521/the-gathering-storm-our- travails-with-icloud-sync) .) While Google has enormous cloud resources, they are mostly there to serve Google's own purposes, not to mention its "spring cleaning" practices which make the developers less than comfortable. This leaves nice space for a flanking campaign by Amazon: to create a universal mobile cloud services API that works well across all platforms.

If true, this could move the basis of competition away from the device and toward the cloud (and in Amazon's favor) and may lead to the establishment of a third (and thus different) mobile platform beyond iOS and Android. Note that this approach mirrors Amazon's Kindle consumer strategy: to sell their own hardware, but also to proliferate their platform on all other devices.

Interesting times to come...</comment>


Why Outgoing Spam Filtering should not be done transparently - <AUTHOR> https://blog.spamexperts.com/2016/04/29/why-outgoing-spam-filtering-should-not-be-done-transparently/ <comment><AUTHOR> If you know of any companies which apply transparent filtering, let us know! We'd love to start a public discussion on what behavior for outgoing email filtering is acceptable, legal, technically valid, and preferred.</comment>


Show HN: Takes.io, collaborative layer for Vimeo, YouTube and more - <AUTHOR> http://takes.io

<comment><USER2> When ? Need it now, looking great !

</comment><comment><USER3> Fantastic product ! Great idea !

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, let us know if you need any help!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A really fresh idea!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, great to have support. You can email me at firstname.lastname@example.com if you have ideas or feedback :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> promising

<comment><AUTHOR> We hope so ;) You can reach me at firstname.lastname@example.com if you have any ideas!</comment></comment>


Help HN: Vim text editor install on mac - <AUTHOR>

I'm finding it a little dificult to instal Vim on my mac, can anyone point out some good resources or a step by step.<p>thanks <comment><USER2> A console version of Vim is part of a standard OS X install, is it not?

<comment><USER3> Seems like it. I just typed "vim" at a Terminal prompt in Leopard and was greeted with VIM 7.0.234.

I certainly didn't install that myself -- I use emacs on my local machines, although I admit I've been struggling to learn enough vi to do editing on remote servers.

I guess it's theoretically possible that vim came along with Xcode or MacPorts, but I can't imagine what I might have installed that had _vim_ as a dependency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is also <http://code.google.com/p/macvim/>, although it has to be built from source.

<comment><USER5> This is my favorite version of vim on OS X. It uses Cocoa and is fast. There's a pre-built .app in the tarball on that site and a script to launch macvim from the command line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://macvim.org/OSX/index.php>

</comment><comment><USER7> 1) Use MacPorts 2) Send whatever error message you get to the package maintainer 3) Profit!

</comment><comment><USER8> I used macports and porticus and installed vim-app.</comment>


Consumer drones are coming, and they will change everything - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/12/01/consumer-drones-are-coming-and-they-will-change-everything/ <comment><USER2> So much more they could have said but did not. When do we see the first set of drones that fly into AT&T Park and land on a ledge somewhere letting someone outside the park watch the game? When do we have a drone at 399' run out of charge and fall down doing property damage or injuring someone and the owner never claims their drone back? When do we get Papparazi chasing celebrity weddings with drones? (I believe I read a report of this already, at least on the property of a celebrity). Fly it up to the roof of your target at night and then just settle in for a day's worth of filming? And of course when will we have a bad actor use a drone to assassinate a world leader or opposition leader, flying up to them and detonating a small directional charge.

Yes, they are going to change everything and it will be equal parts good and bad. I expect them to end up being illegal for non law enforcement to own.

<comment><USER3> How about insect-sized assassination drones? [http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/06/wha...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/06/what- is-the-political-equilibrium-when-insect-sized-drone-assassins-are- available.html)

Excerpt:

"Not bee drones, rather drone drones, with military and terrorist capabilities. There is already a (foiled) terror plot using model airplanes. How easy would it be to stop a mechanical "bee" which injects a human target with rapidly-acting poison?"

<comment><USER2> Well you can fantasize of course :-) Actual small flyers with both useful range and telemetry are still science fiction. The number to watch is the energy density / energy consumption ratio. Dragonfly like devices can currently get airborne and fly a few 10s of meters, but that is without any cargo capacity at all.

Not that someday it won't happen, rather that today you could carry a 12 ga shotgun shell around with a camera that lets you see where you are. All of that tech is 'off the shelf' today. Hence the more immediacy of the change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article is shallow, but the title is right! I have a DJI Phantom (1) with a GoPro attached to it, and it's fantastic. What's fantastic also is that since the arrival of the Phantom 2, the price of model 1 has dropped by about 40%.

It's a really cool machine because it flies high and far away (unlike the Parrot which is just a toy).

</comment><comment><USER5> If you think cheap drones for consumers won't be abused, note there are many thousands of incidents of people purposely pointing green lasers at aircraft in the USA each year.

<comment><USER6> Why is pointing a laser pointer at a plane a big deal?

<comment><USER7> It can blind the pilots.

<comment><USER6> Huh, I always assumed that was just more security hysteria, but it looks like you are right.

[http://www.laserpointersafety.com/page52/laser- hazard_diagra...](http://www.laserpointersafety.com/page52/laser- hazard_diagram/laser-hazard_diagram.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't wait for the drone delivery businesses to pop up.

Food from across town, delivered hot in 15 minutes. EBay now: now only $.75 per delivery thanks to near zero human delivery labor.

Couple a drone quad copter with a google self driving car and we've got the makings of an excellent robot slave industry.

<comment><USER9> I've always fancied the idea of drone-waiters. There won't be any need of truck/cab drivers soon too.

A lot of jobs will be lost in the future, because of automation. I don't know if that's good or not, however.

<comment><USER8> Every time human labor is replaced by machines this question gets asked. So far, over many centuries, the answer has unequivocally been: over the long run, replacing humans with machines is incredibly good. The bad is short lived but real - people have to switch jobs, often for lower work because they are too old to amortize new skills training.

Short of skynet, I celebrate humans being supplanted.

<comment><USER10> It only works until 51% of the population is unemployed and in the streets cold and hungry.

The pitchfork business is going to boom at that point.

<comment><USER8> Over the past 150 years or so we went from ~90% of the labor force working in agriculture to between 1 and 10% working in agriculture.

That's a shift of about 80% over two generations.

<comment><USER10> We were also able to find jobs for those who no longer worked in ag. It appears there is concern (quite a bit, actually) that we may no longer be able to find jobs for those displaced by software and robotics (automation).

If you continue to automate jobs, there will eventually be very few jobs left. How the result of this is handled will be interesting to say the least.

<comment><USER8> The concern is not new. It's been around for centuries.

<comment><USER11> Sure, but there is reason to believe it is different this time around. We are close to automating away all blue collar jobs outside of the service sector. We are also making inroads in white collar jobs too like law and medicine. At some point, minus an apocalypse, we will be able to automate away most meaningful work for everyone. This was not the case 150 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "It's illegal to use drones to make money." Any specific reasoning behind this?

<comment><USER13> Probably for similar reasons why you need a commercial pilot license. If you're going to be doing it for money, you should have more training than someone just going to wal-mart and picking up a drone. However, as such a training regimen has not been defined yet, the FAA has decided that it's safer just to say it's off limits for now.

Personally, I'd love to see more effort into setting up such a commercial program, as there are a lot of dangerous jobs that could be made safer through drones. For example, there are dozens of crop duster accidents each year where someone's injured or killed. Pulling someone out of the pilot seat, and onto the ground can make that job a lot safer and more accurate. But, we can't get there until we do the studies to figure out how to do such safely.

<comment><USER12> It's odd that you can fly them around the city and bump into buildings freely, but when the money aspect is implemented it somehow changes everything. A sandwich or other small food delivery service seems innocent enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> On a related topic check out the following libraries to program your 'drones':

[http://www.artoo.io](http://www.artoo.io)

[http://www.cylon.js](http://www.cylon.js)

[http://gobot.io/](http://gobot.io/)

<comment><USER15> [https://github.com/felixge/node-ar-drone](https://github.com/felixge/node-ar- drone) (powers my in-browser air traffic drone augmented reality app: [http://lemondronor.com/blog/indexphp/2013/5/augmented- realit...](http://lemondronor.com/blog/indexphp/2013/5/augmented-reality- display-of-air-traffic-for-drones))

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If one of those things, for whatever reason, blacks-out and kills someone they will be permanently banned.

A way around this would be to permit them to fly above specific areas, via predetermined, controlled routes, that pedestrians should avoid to minimize the risk of accidents.

But the technology for the police (or any authority) to ID those _vehicles_ and control what they are transporting (or state of transporting) it's already here, someone needs to put the pieces together and it's ready to go.

<comment><USER17> Um, as long as government gives permission, one death will be only statistics and won't make a change.

Only this thanksgiving there was a little girl (civilian) killed by mistake in Afganistan by US drone (I cannot find news on it somehow).

This is a good read as well:

[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-afghan-civilians-killed- by-...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-afghan-civilians-killed-by-drones- in-2012-un-says/)

<comment><USER18> Oh, but that was a brown person somewhere far away. Everybody knows those aren't _real_ people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> sean-duffy The idea of legislation concerning civilian 'drone' use concerns me for one reason: if there was such legislation, where would the line be drawn between a 'drone' and a recreational RC aircraft? Could this effectively outlaw an entire hobby?

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd be upset to see drones banned from our airspace before we get to realize their full potential for good.

If this happens I think in-home drone solutions could still provide very cool solutions. I'm sitting here on my couch and I could sure use a drink :P

<comment><USER20> I think they're already mostly banned - RC copters have been around for a while.

I struggle to see what they can be used for right now - maybe in the future, with a robotic hand attached to it, it can clean my roof :-), but right now it's just an expensive toy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Clicked link, searched for _airworthiness_ , came back to comment.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is really no more of a change then telephoto lenses.

Cool as hell, but a flying security camera is hardly revolutionary.

</comment><comment><USER23> These days everything changes everything. It's a dreadful phrase that should be retired.</comment>


A Practical Introduction to IoT Using Arduino, Node.js and Plotly - <AUTHOR> http://adilmoujahid.com/posts/2015/07/practical-introduction-iot-arduino-nodejs-plotly/

<comment><USER2> A good introduction, but a couple simplifiers:

1) You can read a photocell directly from a PC without an Arduino. The PC serial port and a couple of passive components can be used as a simple analog- to-digital converter for a cost of pennies. One of many examples can be found here: [http://www.cedarlakeinstruments.com/blog/archives/10](http://www.cedarlakeinstruments.com/blog/archives/10)

2) Similar idea using a Beaglebone or Raspberry Pi would eliminate the Mac/PC for a more compact solution.

<comment><USER3> Those aren't simplifications. Those are optimizations. They actually require more hardware and technical know how than the original.

This article is a fantastic little recipe for what might be the easiest path to a first IoT project. It puts the maker in a perfect position to go on to add a second sensor or switch and further experiment. There needs to be much more of this type of thing on the web. Props to the author for writing this up.

Cleverly optimizing out the arduino or adding a fancy SBC to the mix are great suggestions. After you've got the basics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I always like seeing how other people connect their arduino to the internet. I did something similar using python to read the data and then post it to Thingspeak. (my blog post: [http://smallsciencebigadventures.com/arduino-temp- sensor.htm...](http://smallsciencebigadventures.com/arduino-temp-sensor.html))

</comment><comment><USER5> Seems nice but something is weird with the layout of the article: [http://i.imgur.com/qKi4JNR.png](http://i.imgur.com/qKi4JNR.png)

<comment><USER6> what browser is that? I just checked IE and Chrome on Windows and Safari on OS X and it looks OK.

<comment><USER5> That would be the other one, Firefox.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Our take on the "Open Education" problem ... - <AUTHOR> http://www.pensieve.net

<comment><AUTHOR> I've just launched a course publishing platform called Pensieve, and I was looking for feedback / criticisms, as well as tips on how to get some traction.

The platform makes it so that anybody can put together a course with videos, embedded documents, assignments, quizzes, and all sorts of interactive widgets. When they publish the course, anybody else can start studying it in a systematic way. I love the Khan Academy, but there is no reason its as unique as it is - the idea of the company is to truly democratize education by giving individuals the tools for publication.

Specifically, one of the neat thing on the site is a screencasting tool, which lets people talk and draw on a canvas in their web browser (wacom compatible), and records that as a video that they can embed into their courses. There are also browser drawing and audio recording tools as well.

Feedback? Suggestions? Right now, the the biggest work is solving the chicken and egg content generation problem, and getting some initial traction.</comment>


Making ePaper easy to use for developers - <AUTHOR> http://repaper.org/

<comment><USER2> So when is someone going to release a Kickstarter for a small laptop with a 10.2" [0] ePaper display so I can finally work out in the sun?

[0]: <http://www.pervasivedisplays.com/products/panels>

<comment><AUTHOR> Hell, if this comment gets enough upvotes, I'll launch the KickStarter. Raspberry Pi-ePaper laptop?

<comment><USER3> We'd also need an epaper aware Window Manager

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Out of curiosity and because i am too lazy to pretend i want some and request a quote from the vendor, does anybody know what is a ballpark figure for the cost of those displays?

<comment><USER5> <http://www.adafruit.com/products/1346>

2.7" with the dev kit for $40, so not too expensive overall. I'm requesting a quote from another company at the moment since I'm curious :)

<comment><USER6> Let us know what they say! :)

<comment><USER5> So far, $250 for the 7.4" "EVAL" kit (from pervasive displays). A heck of a lot more reasonable than the last time I looked at e-ink screens ($10,000 for a single 6" dev kit). I'm not quite sure I grasp what it includes, but it sounds fairly barebone:

> _The 7.4" EVAL kit includes the 7.4" EPD panel, a timing controller, a > pattern generator and interconnect cables_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Doesnt look like this supports displays larger then a couple inches. I would love to get a largish e-ink display so I could code outside (slow refresh rate is fine, just needs to support a terminal).

Anyhow, is a step in the right direction to have small hackable eink displays.

<comment><USER8> I noticed that there was a 10.2" display on the PDI website. It looks like it's not supported by the current prototyping kits, but I am hoping that will change down the road; I'd love to hack around with something that big!

On the other hand, it could be a fun challenge to try to integrate a bunch of the smaller displays into a single large one--though I imagine the novelty of coding on something like that would wear off pretty quickly ~wry grin~

<comment><USER7> I saw that, 10.2 would be a workable size I think. Then a bunch of smaller ones surrounding, for a sort of tiled wm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > To get started with ePaper development you will need a display and the > RePaper Extension board

As someone new to ePaper development, where/how do you get a compatible display?

<comment><USER10> The next sentence says:

"The EPD extension board supports driving PDI's 1.44, 2.0, and 2.7 inch E-Paper display (EPD) modules."

"PDI's" links to: <http://www.pervasivedisplays.com/products/panels>

<comment><USER11> "Get a quote", I bet you it's not easy to get _one_ display from them. Maybe if you buy >100...

IMO RePaper should buy a batch of them and let me order it with a few simple clicks.

<comment><USER12> We're selling our displays through Adafruit. Sorry that wasn't clear. I'll rework the site's text. Appreciate the feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I worked with Visionect to create an interactive menu using their ePaper Development Kit[1]. The ePaper technology itself has refresh speed limitations, but great resolution & power-saving advantages. Their SDK exposes a JavaScript API for handling display refresh, which was easy to implement in Backbone.js render methods. You should try this if you want to build an MVC App[2] on an ePaper device.

[1] [http://electronics.visionect.si/products-hardware/epaper- dev...](http://electronics.visionect.si/products-hardware/epaper-development- kits/6-rapid-epaper-development-kit/)

[2] <http://geoffrey.si/>

</comment><comment><USER13> Wonderful, wonderful stuff. ePaper has been an interesting technology paired with a closed ecosystem for way too long.

I had seen the displays for sale on adafruit but to see the whole picture is really great.

</comment><comment><USER11> So far it has been really hard buying E-paper displays as a hobbyist, with Sparkfun[1] being the only easy option. Crap, scrape that... it has been retired.

I once tried to get some people together and make a kit[2], but that project never went anywhere.

[1]: <https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10150>

[2]: <http://wishfulcoding.nl/epaper/>

<comment><USER12> Agreed. We're looking to change that. Hope you can try our kits and let us know how to improve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks pretty neat. I can't find it on their site, but will this work with Raspberry Pi? I presume so, but it's not listed under their fully supported list.

<comment><USER15> It will, but they don't provide code examples. This display is interfaced via a SPI connection, and the RPi has one SPI bus (see: <http://elinux.org/RPi_SPI>). I expect that a community driver will be written presently now that there are eyeballs on this project.

<comment><USER12> We are working on a proper Linux driver but it's a few months away. For now, you can run the Sketches on Raspberry Pi. These guys did it based on our code: [http://www.embeddedartists.com/products/displays/lcd_27_epap...](http://www.embeddedartists.com/products/displays/lcd_27_epaper.php)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've had a few things I've wanted to do with ePaper but have never found a decent development kit -- everything I found when I searched last year was along the lines of a small, thin strip. No big panels like you'd find in a Kindle.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have always wanted a e-Ink display connected to my iPhone, perhaps now we can make one ourselves! Interested helping me out? please email me at giovanni dot donelli at gmail

<comment><USER17> or even better connect with me here: <http://www.linkedin.com/in/gdonelli>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What I really want is epaper that can refresh fast/high-res enough to code with pen input. Any idea if this will ever happen?

<comment><USER19> They were working on some interesting stuff at Bridgestone of all places, called Aerobee, but that was two years ago.. it's not profitable when there are only a couple big buyers of the things and you don't make much margin since they're all budget devices. I think the tech will stay around in a low key way until a major breakthrough, and you'll hear about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Qualcom has been working on Mirasol [0], an alternative to ePaper for a long time now. I saw it 4 years ago at Mobile World Congress and it really looks nice. Full colour screens and the more light you pump in, the better it looks.

Sadly, so far they are nowhere near a commercial rollout.

[0] www.qualcomm.com/mirasol

<comment><USER11> I thought they actually gave up on that product because the production costs are to heigh.

<comment><USER20> i thought they started some small productions of products in asia, ereaders etc. I think they still work in it, but there is no upcoming product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _> If the history of the Internet has proven anything, it is that open technologies lead to unbounded innovation and unprecedented value added to the entire economy._

When has that been true for _hardware_? It seems to me that the most exciting hardware innovations have been proprietary models.

<comment><USER22> So Arduino does not count for anything?

<comment><USER23> Nor the Raspberry Pi?

<comment><USER21> Agreed! Either would have been a better example for this project, I think.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Inside the PlayStation 4 With Mark Cerny - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/191007/inside_the_playstation_4_with_mark_.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Great overview of simplifying development with standards focus (x86, unified memory, less tech hurdles to focus on gameplay over tech). Ultimately this will decrease development costs to focus that time on making better games.

>> That situation led directly to the PS4's design philosophy: "The hope with PlayStation 4 was to have a powerful architecture, but also an architecture that would be a very familiar architecture in many ways."

In fact, this is something Cerny returned to again and again during the conversation. "We want to make sure that the hardware is easy to use. And so having the familiar CPU and the familiar GPU definitely makes it easier to use," he said.

Later, when asked about whether Sony considers the fact that many third party developers will also have to create versions of their games for the next Xbox, his response was, "when I say that our goal is not to create puzzles that the developers have to solve, that is how we do well in a multi-platform world."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Cerny approached the design of the PlayStation 4 with one important mandate above all else: "The biggest thing is we didn't want the hardware to be a puzzle that programmers would be needing to solve in order to make quality titles."</comment>


Vizualizing what ad networks know about you - <AUTHOR> http://bynamite.com/

<comment><USER2> I just installed the extension out of curiosity. Someone should write a greasmonkey script that does something similar.</comment>


Eliminating the Human - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608580/eliminating-the-human/ <comment><AUTHOR> I had noticed this trend myself, but I always presumed it was more an emergent property of people, that we actually don't want to spend a huge amount of time with other people, in particular strangers.</comment>


Brave is promoting etoro affiliate program and scamming its users - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/8793 <comment><USER3> For a browser which prides itself on being the ethical and privacy-focused choice, farming its users out like this seems bizarre.

<comment><USER4> The genius play was having their own cryptocurrency, so they get all the bag- holders to defend them unquestionably. Live in this thread!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This title should be changed. The user is clearly on a mission to defame Brave. The title does not match the GitHub post.

This post here by JamesTheHacker is slander at best.

<comment><USER6> I see posts attacking the messenger quite often whenever someone points out yet another cryptocurrency scam. Can you respond to the actual content of the thread?

<comment><USER7> Brave isn't actively scamming anyone. You have to sign up and put your own money in the pot with etoro for anything to get a cut.

If you're willynilly giving people money for complex financial instrument's, you probably shouldn't have control of your own money.

<comment><USER8> That's a very "brave" position. We will show you ads without following laws of the land (Ctrl-F "FTC" in the github thread). If the user falls for our unlawlful ads, then it's the user that's stupid?

<comment><USER7> I understand that Brave is supposed to show the affiliate disclaimer. Which they should.

But is etoro an illegal company?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> OK, I suppose this is good reporting, but it is not the scandal you think it is.

Also, etoro does a lot more than cryptocurrency-trading.

Edit: This is a repost too. Interestingly the title of the other post "Brave Browser earning commissions promoting high risk blockchain platform" less click-baity got 2 points, 1 comment.

<comment><USER10> It is not good reporting, though. What new information is being brought to light? Brave makes it clear they generate revenue via ads, and this is an example of an ad.

<comment><USER9> I was being non-confrontational.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Using a browser that the company depends to make money on

Who thought this was good for the first place?

<comment><USER12> > Using a browser that the company depends to make money on

Mozilla gets paid roughly 500m/year for letting Google be the default search engine.

<comment><USER13> Not that much, by my estimate (I have no inside knowledge).

How many of you work for free, BTW? No hands, huh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't see the problem with this. Etoro is not a scam and CFDs are not shady in the least bit. It's just an ad, which other browsers have as well. I don't think this guy really knows what he's talking about or if he does, maybe he should state more clearly what he finds objectionable. Ads in brave? The kind of ad?

</comment><comment><USER15> Calling this a "scam" is misleading and inflammatory. eToro is exactly what it claims to be: a cryptocurrency exchange. Certainly there have been scammy exchanges that run off with people's money, but the author hasn't presented any evidence that eToro is one of those.

Brave has been completely up-front about their "sponsored images" advertising program, as you'll see if you read the entire GitHub thread. They are easy to disable, or you can choose to leave them on and get paid for having to look at them.

</comment><comment><USER7> You have to be participating in Brave Rewards to see the ad.

If you're participating in a crypto token rewards program, you should hopefully have your head on your shoulders tight enough not to blindly sign up for everything you see.

If you don't, well you probably will after you lose a few bucks.

</comment><comment><USER16> There a way to remote the ads from Brave? They are quite annoying.

<comment><USER17> There's a toggle "Show Sponsored Images" in the dashboard settings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This guy seems to be on a crusade against Brave. Huge drama in the comments, all from one account. Incendiary title and tone, was doomed never to be constructive. Now it's on HN to get what, more views? A mob?

TLDR: Brave advertises for eToro. Is that ethical?

The way it's framed: brave scams its users.

There is probably a good discussion to be had about the ethics of advertising for a trading platform by Brave, but you won't find it here.

</comment><comment><USER19> brave is a terrible business model. terrible. yet another private - <USER2> garden - solution to a common problem.

why people can't just understand what the internet is and how it works?

<comment><USER20> If anyone "understands the internet and how it works" — it's Brendan Eich.

<comment><USER21> If he understands the Internet and how it works (I doubt it), he's chosen to pervert it. Read "Where Wizards Stay Up Late" to get a better history of the real geniuses behind the Internet.

Look to people like Alan Kay to remind you of how far we've moved from the potential that was inherent in the medium. A platform designed for decentralized robustness and rapid information exchange perverted into a delivery medium for ads, surveillance and centralized control.

<comment><USER7> Yeah that first noble idea was running on free academic and government research money.

Things change when you don't have a patron.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Opportunities for startups in health insurance industry - <AUTHOR> http://itleaderstoday.com/opportunities-for-startups-in-the-health-insurance-industry-with-tahasin-alam/

<comment><USER2> I was in a start-up in the health insurance industry (we just got acquired by a much larger company). While I agree there are some opportunities, mostly in the areas of information, what most people don't realize is that health insurance is highly regulated and hence a very expensive business to be in. It's not like you can just throw up some web site and start selling insurance. It's much more complicated than that.

<comment><USER3> I think most people realize that the medical industry is highly regulated and that's why they overlook the opportunities there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are opportunities for startups all over the place that are mostly ignored because your average 20-something hacker/founder has no idea these problems exist.

Also, transcripts would be nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'll start putting up transcripts in the next few weeks.

<comment><USER4> Great breakdown and appreciate that you're responding here - would also request HTML5 format video for iphone / ipad viewing for future episodes :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow! That's a great suggestion - I'm going to look into it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was unaware that the health reform that passed created a more powerful consumer market. Lack of preexisting conditions banning means you can get individual insurance, but most people would opt to get it through an employer for cost reasons -- no?

The measure to create a consumer market -- shifting tax benefits to individuals not corporations -- never was introduced.

(I could be wrong. After 50,000 iterations, I don't think anyone knows what passed.)

<comment><AUTHOR> The current uninsured group are mostly low-wage earners (McDonald's workers), self-employed, small businesses or unemployed. Except for the low-wage workers, the rest of the consumers will likely be buying insurance directly from the health insurance companies.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Last week there was a post on HN about being addicted to information. I am one of those people and this project (IT Leaders Today) is an attempt to make a living on my information addiction. I would appreciate the community's comments on making it better. My nod to Andrew Warner of Mixergy, who is the inspiration behind this project.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think few of the problems in the health insurance industry are technical

<comment><USER7> Well, how many problems do you need?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's certainly a lot of opportunity, specifically in enabling the physicians office with more powerful and usable software. Remember, most healthcare in the US still happens within the walls of a small medical practices.

<comment><AUTHOR> One area that doctors' offices are hurting is in billing to the insurance companies. Its a whole bunch of paperwork specific to each insurance companies. If a site is created that allows the doctor's office to electronically enter each claim and then that claim is automatically submitted to the insurance company, there would be quite a bit of efficiency at the doctor's office.

<comment><USER8> raheemm, this is precisely where our company fits in: www.carecloud.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Mike, I just checked your site! Would you be interested in sharing carecloud's story? Please ping me at raheemm1 at yahoo.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What Slack, Gusto, & Monday can't do for startups, this new app can - <AUTHOR> https://www.snackv.com/what-slack-gusto-and-monday-cant-do-for-founders-snack-can/ <comment><USER2> Terrible headline BTW. Define yourself by what you do, not by what you don't do.</comment>


Why I Made a Stupid iPhone App - <AUTHOR> http://nicholas.zaillian.com/blog/4

<comment><AUTHOR> Longtime lurker, first time OP. Apologies if it's poor form to post your own writing. I was motivated to write by an HN comment to the Fiplab guys a while back: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2979091>

<comment><USER2> Congrats on releasing your app.

Sure it's a stupid app, but you learned so much and had fun. When you have an idea for your next stupid app the whole process will seem so much easier.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yes, I've already found that to be the case while working on the successor project. Plus, though I didn't mention it in the piece, there are many things peripheral to actual development that were a big time sink but that now are just done and I don't need to think about (incorporation, associating my individual-type Apple dev program account with the company, contracts etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I feel the same way when I hack around with my trivial Rails Applications. It is not the destination that matters, but the journey.</comment>


Examples of using dispatch tables in perl - <AUTHOR> http://f00li5h.pin21.com/blog/Examples-of-using-dispatch-tables-in-perl.html

<comment><USER2> This looks more like perl scripting than perl programming.

If I put all those functions into a class and then called $class_object->can($method), I get the same effect, only without the crazy hash. Perl has built-in dispatching.

I can add new methods to my perl classes at any time. Better yet, if I do it all with Class::MOP (and/or Moose), I can make it cleaner, since then I can choose to add methods to the object vs the whole class. In addition, my "dispatch tables" get the potential benefits of inheritance, roles, and other abstraction tools.

It might be a good starting exercise in rolling your own dispatch tables, but you would probably get a lot more out of reading Art of the Metaobject Protocol and trying to implement a good class system (aka reimplement Moose).

<comment><AUTHOR> I did cover "with some objects" ... although it was far from a complete treatment of all the things one can do with an object system, that's for sure.

I'm really not sure what the difference between "scripting" and "programming" is ... could you point me at a rant on the topic?

<comment><USER3> <http://www.perl.com/pub/2007/12/06/soto-11.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm pretty new to perl scripting but most of my cgi's at work look like this near the beginning. How is that crazy bit of code better? (Post_only is just a function that returns the function or a 404 if the request isn't a post)

      # Dispatcher
      my %action = (
        'search'      => \&controller_search,
        'view'      => \&controller_view,
        'save'      => post_only(\&controller_edit),
        'delete'    => post_only(\&controller_delete),
        'index'     => \&controller_index,
      );
      if(exists $action{$q->param('do')}){
        $action{$q->param('do')}->();
      }else{
        $action{'index'}->();
      }
      exit;

<comment><USER2> Two quick questions... Why is the name for the function "controller_edit" instead of "controller_save"? Why is post_only checked as part of the dispatch and not inside the two functions?

Quickie older-style perl alternative structure where I use AUTOLOAD to figure out the exists/can situation:

       use strict;
       use warnings;

       package Controller;

       sub search   {...}
       sub view     {...}
       sub save     {...}
       sub delete   {...}
       sub AUTOLOAD {
           # Do index stuff
       }

       ...

       package main;

       ...

       my $method = $q->param('do');
       Controller->$method;

<comment><USER5> Beware this could have a huge security hole if you are taking method names from the user like that -- they can include a qualifying package name (normally you see SUPER:: used in this context, but it could be anything loaded).

In your example not so much, but if the params to that call were also under the user's control. Say IO::File was loaded and I went to 'do=IO::File::open', I might be able to read/write files.

<comment><USER2> I agree wholeheartedly. Never trust input.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://hop.perl.plover.com/book/pdf/02DispatchTables.pdf>

<comment><AUTHOR> yep, HoP is much better than my writing is now ...

nothing wrong with helping others up onto the shoulders of giants though...</comment></comment>


Innovation in Education is Easy, Unless You Make it Difficult - <AUTHOR> http://ajjuliani.com/innovation-in-education-is-easy-unless-you-make-it-difficult/

<comment><USER2> IMO, the only stuff that everybody needs to know is how to read, how to write (or more generally communicate) and math up through about Algebra I or Geometry. After that, everything else is an elective. Simply structuring the schools to make sure everybody got that core down by 8th grade, and then make high school nothing but electives, would go a long way towards making the education system much more effective.

That could be done within the constraints of the existing public school system. I've read Holt and Gatto and generally agree with them. (Both my kids were homeschooled K-12). However, what they are talking about is less redoing school and more redoing society. It's too much to ever get done. However, cherry picking the ideas that can work with what we have now is a much more doable project.

</comment><comment><USER3> And administrators and politicians make it their business to make it difficult. You can always find a few flowers growing in the cracks in a parking lot but that's hardly a trend. Most public school teachers I know have no time or budget to do anything other than do what the school board and state and fed guidelines demand of them.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's hard because in every class you need to accound for the opinions of a teacher, students, parents and administrators to account for. One person's "innovation" is another persons waste of funds.

I'm hardly a Luddite but when my kids' middle school rolled out a 1:1 iPad program I was uneasy and not a bit resentful about having additional parental responsibilities heaped on me. The last thing my kids need is another screen to stare at and now I'm in the position where I have to monitor what they are doing.

I think the most innovative thing we could do in our classrooms is to give teachers only a blackboard and chalk instead of trying to compete with all the online distractions our kids are dealing with already.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sugata Mitra's new experiments in self-teaching -

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk60sYrU2RU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk60sYrU2RU)

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord The problem with proposed solutions for improving education is that they all beg the question in a somewhat subtle way. They all assume the contemporary system of public schools, classrooms and standardized testing is correct and simply needs refinement.

This is incorrect, in my mind. Compulsory schooling is an obsolete remnant from the days of Prussian militarism, and later revived by the large industrialists so as to breed a workforce that will fill the necessary quotas for such a society to work.

 _The day of combination is here to stay. Individualism has gone, never to return._

\-- John D. Rockefeller

\-----

 _We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks._

\-- Woodrow Wilson

\----

 _In our dreams, we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning, or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample supply…The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are. So we will organize our children and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shops and on the farm._

\-- General Educational Board, Occasional Papers No. 1, 1913

\----

So on and so forth.

Compulsory schooling was never about intellectual satiation or real learning, but to instill a Pavlovian routine and to raise citizens within a framework that rulers at their respective times see fit.

All attempts at educational reform that try to "fix" the problem within the confines of the current system are doomed to failure. It's insane just how well people have been raised to think that classrooms and strict routines are the only conceivable way to educate people. Not so, and the famous quote "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education" rings even truer today.

Nowadays with the rapid technological advancement of society, the necessity to abandon antiquated and ineffective compulsory schooling practices and replace them with more natural concepts: free schools, democratic schools, the deinstitutionalization of pedagogy, is more critical than ever.

But most important is to breed a strong feeling and desire for autodidacticism in people. This is what is truly lacking. Achieve this, and the problems will be solved more smoothly.

To figure out more about where I come from, read the works of John Holt, Ivan Illich ( _Deschooling Society_ ), John Taylor Gatto, Charlotte Iserbyt and others. I cannot recommend them enough, especially the middle two authors.</comment>


Ask HN: Were you affected by Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> Now that half of the world population is under lock-down which extended in some countries for weeks, and that several industries are badly affected; I'm wondering how guys in HN are copping with Covid-19 and Covid-19 implications.
This is a thread to vent about your situation and how you are doing.
For me, I'm staying alone at home with around 1 month of food reserves. I occasionally go outside in the neighborhood for a walk. Close family is living in other countries and we talk semi-daily over Skype. I didn't see/talk to anyone for over a week but being an introvert it wasn't that hard to overcome.
Work-wise my productivity took a hit but getting some stuff done. Financially, I have enough savings unless inflation goes through the roof. I don't have social media accounts and barely have any idea what's going on outside. Overall it's okay for now. <comment><USER2> Similar situation for me. Software industry, at least from what I work on, hasn't been too affected yet. Less productive but gettings things done. Setup a gym in the basement and cycling is still allowed. Already worked from home for years in the past, was easy to get into the rythmn again. Slowly running out of Netflix shows to watch. If anything I consider me and family lucky.

> I don't have social media accounts

That's where everybody vents about their situation. Lots of memes. Plus TV and newspapers' coverage seems to be 50% covid-19 related. A bit less on HN, certainly what makes it to the frontpage. Now after 6 weeks of news coverage I limit myself to daily updates (my city's homepage, a local reddit subreddit, [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9IOB2TExg3QIBupFtBDxg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9IOB2TExg3QIBupFtBDxg) , [https://old.reddit.com/r/supplychain/](https://old.reddit.com/r/supplychain/)). Can't stand the national or international dashboards, that's information overload.</comment>


Data Scientists: This Is Not Your Grandmother's C++ - <AUTHOR> http://phdp.github.io/posts/2016-06-28-not-your-grandmother-cpp.html <comment><USER2> I would love to write modern C++--the language looks remarkably usable; however, the build system and tooling are still overwhelmingly bad (at least for cross platform projects). When something like `cargo` or the `go` tool appear (in the mainstream), give me a call. The build system is the deal breaker for me, not the language.

<comment><USER3> I've found this quite helpful:

[https://github.com/Akagi201/learning- cmake](https://github.com/Akagi201/learning-cmake)

<comment><USER2> I've used CMake + C++ for several years professionally. I know it well enough to know that I don't want to use it if I don't have to. The other aspects of C++ just aren't compelling enough to suffer CMake. In other words, even though I already know C++ fairly well, I would rather abandon it entirely and start fresh with Rust than "invest" more time into CMake. My hobby time is too limited to spend it on frustrating tools.

<comment><USER3> I just found all online documentation for CMake a bit incomplete, except for this repository, particularly the PDFs.

But of course I understand your frustration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow Modern C++ is really different from old C++

The main issue comes up with compiler standards compatibility.

In the past with very large C++ projects, we've wanted to move towards newer C++ programming idioms but cross platform compiler compatibility has held us back. More specifically not all of these are on the same page when it comes to standards compatibility to use these features:

\- GCC

\- MS VCC

\- xlC

\- Clang

Standards compatibility is one thing, good performance with standards compatibility is another.

So unless you're only targeting a single platform, it'll be a while till everyone has full support for modern C++.

In cases like these, Python, Java, Go or any other VM based language just makes sense unless performance is absolutely paramount.

<comment><USER5> With data analysis, performance can really help even when it isn't paramount. If I am doing some exploratory analysis and it takes 20 minutes to run instead of a couple seconds, I can iterate much, much faster. This is huge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That is good to know. I have enjoyed writing C++ in the past - I like the clarity and forced obviousness of specifying whether you're talking about a variable value or a pointer reference to it. When switching languages I always have to remember which types and assignment operations duplicate values on assignment vs just copy references.

Maybe I'm just bad at it, but one of the big things that keeps me from writing more C and C++ is getting a dev environment setup, though I did find it a lot easier once I left the Windows Visual Studio ecosystem (ambiguous missing msvc103kd.dll error messages and the like) and drove gcc straight from the command line in a Unix environment.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been wanting to learn C++ (as a data scientist), but never know where to start. There are so many books that were about modern c++ when they were written, it's impossible for an outsider to know what's up to date. Is the book the article mentioned a good one for learning modern C++?

<comment><USER7> [blog author here] I learned C++ a while ago so I never got to read an intro to modern C++ cover-to-cover. However, a friend asked me to suggest a book and this one seemed to both cover everything you need to understand the language and provide several useful examples for scientific computing (e.g. there's a nice example of gradient descent in the preface).

It's definitely not the only good option. "C++ Primer" is probably the most popular introduction and the language's creator wrote an intro to programming with C++ ("Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++"). They all cover modern C++.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Suggest some good (free) template for personal website on GitHub pages - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I use Clean Blog ([https://github.com/BlackrockDigital/startbootstrap-clean- blo...](https://github.com/BlackrockDigital/startbootstrap-clean-blog-jekyll)) on mine ([https://ruairidhwm.github.io](https://ruairidhwm.github.io))</comment>


Singularitarianism vs. Totalitarism - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/singularitarianism-vs-totalitarism-b2bce9fcbb2 <comment><USER2> It's a two edged sword. As we decentralized, we create a bigger opportunity for 'bad players' to take advantage of individual sectors. Decentralized services also means deregulated or at least unregulated applications. Remember the salad days of Napster?

I'm not calling for a centralize regulating board. We need individuals and groups to be informed and inform consumers what they are getting into. Those same consumers have to be personally responsible for their actions. Otherwise, we will slip in totalitarian in a very short time.</comment>


Show HN: Collapsible Comments (Chrome Extension) - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hockhafcdegocajmjhafgjncjpodihkd

<comment><AUTHOR> Adds reddit-like [+] and [-] links to collapse and expand comment threads.

Based on the bookmarklet code by niyazpk. [https://github.com/niyazpk/Collapsible-comments-for- Hacker-N...](https://github.com/niyazpk/Collapsible-comments-for-Hacker-News)

</comment><comment><USER2> This is great! There are so many of these HN related projects/websites/tools out there that get lost after they hit the front page, I'm wondering if there's a directory of everything? I asked today but didn't get any feedback: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1987756>

</comment><comment><USER3> Good job. It was very slow the first time I reloaded a page (this one), but after that it was fine, regardless of how many comments. Simple and unobtrusive, and something I have wanted for a while.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is great. I usually don't want to read a whole subthread because of location higher in the page.

</comment><comment><USER5> awesome! any way you can enable this for the domain hackerne.ws?

<comment><AUTHOR> Done, version 1.1 has hackerne.ws support.</comment></comment>


Omnispeak – A Commander Keen Reimplementation - <AUTHOR> https://davidgow.net/keen/omnispeak.html <comment><USER2> Even though the second Keen trilogy had richer graphics, I really loved the first Keen trilogy for the gameplay. The jumps and movement felt so much more physical. Keen would make this tiny pause as if winding up for a jump each time he jumped. The later Keen just did big floaty isometric jumps that didn't have the same snap. That said, I loved and played every single one of those games.

<comment><USER3> They were super cute. Boy genius builds a space ship powered by a car battery, fuelled by your parents wine and .. yea I forgot all the other things you had to collect in the first one.

They were all good, but I think one of my favourites was Keen Dreams with the giant potato monster at the end.

<comment><USER4> The Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket was fueled by Dad's Everclear, as I recall, and propelled with the vacuum cleaner.

<comment><USER5> Yep, and you needed the car battery and the joystick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh man, I loved the keen games. As a young lad in the UK, it always frustrated me how hard buying the full version of shareware software was - the buy screens always had US address/phone numbers for purchasing, and back in the early 90s convincing one's parents of the legitimacy of such a weird foreign transaction was no easy task.

I think I eventually managed to get floppies with the full versions of most of Apogee's catalog through various friends/acquaintances.

<comment><USER7> Ha, True! The strangest thing was that you could often buy games on floppies at the stores but they were almost always shareware, with just a single level to play. Never did we get original games, at least, not in the stores. Floppies were traded like crazy, legal games just didn't seem to be available back then. (At least here in the Netherlands, in the early 90's)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Holy smokes!! Commander Keen takes me back to when I first discovered hacking, clear back in the early/mid 90s. I actually met a good hacker friend of mine on a completely different continent on a train. He was playing Commander Keen on a laptop and playing the music super loud. I recognized it and introduced myself. That was almost fifteen years ago and we still work on projects together!

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm sorry if I seem a little obtuse here, but... why? If you need the files from the actual game, and the actual game comes with the tools to run it (i.e. DOSBox), what is the benefit, or in fact the real purpose, of this project as- is?

<comment><USER10> Dosbox is slow; you need a relatively powerful computer to run most things. That also means it's not really something that you want to run on battery for a long time.

Even if that weren't true, I find value in documenting the old file formats and having readable implementations of the games that used them. From the point of view of the developer, it can be incredibly satisfying to see the functionality come together, and to get a picture of how things were done 25 years ago.

<comment><USER9> Thank you for putting it this way. I think the documentation's been done and released by the Apogee/Id guys, though - but I can understand someone else just wanting to be able to mess around with it. But I will say that I've never had any problems with DOSBox, personally speaking; even in terms of battery life.

<comment><USER10> Implementing the game is a good proof of the documentation ;-)

I'm obviously biased in favor of efforts like this. Part of the reason is that I'm going through another DOS game with a disassembler and trying to understand, document, and reimplement the game engine (it's going glacially; I'm no reverse-engineering expert, and I don't have much experience in assembly). To me, it's a fun subject for a hobby. And I don't like that a game that would run on a 25MHz 386 natively won't run at full speed in Dosbox in a computer built 10 years after the game's release (or on my various ARM machines, a modded game console, etc). Something feels "wrong" about that. I have the same feeling about the game being unmodifiable. I've seen how much came out from the open-sourcing of various id engines, and it would be great to see modifications, enhancements, and remixes of the other classics, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there a word for that deep realization of your mortality and existence; almost pain, that comes nostalgia?

<comment><USER11> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudade)

<comment><USER12> Nice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It looks very cool! How does it compare to Commander Genius? [http://clonekeenplus.sourceforge.net](http://clonekeenplus.sourceforge.net)

<comment><USER10> I kept running into bugs while using Commander Genius (even before entering the first level, I managed to get Billy stuck "behind" the map. This one feels exactly like I remember.

<comment><USER14> Pretty funny that you mention that. You should know that a lot of Omnispeak Code is in Commander Genius. Not sure what version you tested, but you should take another look. Also the developers were part of the CG team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Omnispeak requires a computer with OpenGL 2.0 support

That is the strangest requirement. I could see requiring OpenGL 3.1+ Core for someone who _really_ wants to use a GPU (despite how unnecessary that would be) and thinks that glBegin is Teh Devil. I could see requiring OpenGL 1.1 for someone who still wants to use the GPU but doesn't want to bother with GLSL or any of the later more complex APIs.

But why OpenGL 2.0? I could see it if the games needed some special effects or something through GLSL, but all Keen games do is basically blitting pixels around (and from a quick glance at github, all the pixel shader code in the source does is to draw the bound texture, nothing else), so they don't need that (nor the code does anything more than that).

<comment><USER16> OpenGL 2.0 was released over 10 years ago. Why is this requirement a problem?

Anything that is supposed to work should be tested, I can see why people don't want to test against more-than-10-years old APIs.

<comment><USER17> Because it's unnecessary, and precludes it from running on fun platforms otherwise fully capable of it - like the Zipit Z2 I am currently hacking on (which come to think of it is probably even fast enough to run the original inside Dosbox).

It's just less fun.

<comment><USER18> I think I still have one of those with an Emacs 23 install.

Watch out you don't leave it on the charger too long with a battery in it. The charge limiter is lacking or nonexistent, and the battery will overheat and swell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow, takes me back to the BBS days of 28.8. Good times.

</comment><comment><USER20> This link leads to an HTML full of garbage data that automatically downloads for me. What am I missing?

<comment><USER21> This is old so I guess it was probably a momentary problem for me, but it works fine in Vivaldi 1.8.770.25 on Windows for me.

<comment><USER10> Yep, it worked fine when I got home, a few hours later. There was a while where it was "wonky".

The header looked fine, the body started like this: <body>^_<8b>^H^C¥XÛrÛ8^R}¶¾¢<87>^OñLE"}M%^N]¯¥x<q¢<94>í©ÔÖÖ^Vdb$Ê$Á^E@Ë<9a><9a><87>ù<88>ýÂý<92>= r7;<89>3µ~<90>%^BÝèËéÓ="" Æ?<8c>&ç·<9f>?<8d>)we1ìÅü<

Oddly, there was random entified data in there:  ^V[^P¿8û0þpöé&<

<comment><USER21> That's... absolutely bizarre, I've never seen anything like that before. Garbled characters, but the hex in chevrons I've never seen, that combined with an intact body and html entities too...

I guess the server sharted and that was the result? Haha.

<comment><USER10> The hex is just the way that the editor chose to display it. I think it's just random-seeming binary data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How does the copyright work with a Re-implementation?

<comment><USER3> The dev is just re-implementing the game engine. I think the Ep4 game files only included because it was a shareware release.

Still, I'm not entirely sure what the legal ground for the engine here is. It goes back to the whole issue with formats like mp3s/H264 (If you write a decoder entirely from scratch; do you still have to pay party x?)

<comment><USER23> I think the answer to the mp3/h.264 question today is yes, you do have to pay party X. The payment is for the license of the spec, I believe, and not the implementation.

<comment><USER24> for the patent you mean? if you didn't read it use the spec, but did a black box reverse engineering of the format, you'd still have to pay for the patent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> amazing</comment>


Ask HN: How can I increase my 'clock speed' in problem solving? - <AUTHOR>

I'm getting increasingly discouraged at how long it takes me to solve technical problems, whether it's during programming interviews or doing puzzles on the internet.
I know the most common advice is to practice practice practice and that is what I have been doing - online puzzles, TopCoder etc etc, but I don't seem to be getting better. I have friends who are always able to solve these things much faster than me, seemingly without any practice.
This is holding me back from getting the job I want because I'm always so slow to come up with an answer during interviews.
The sad thing is that I have a PhD in CS from a top university, and an IQ in the high 130's, so on paper I'm not exactly stupid... But I always rationalize this and say that the only reason I got accepted was because of good grades due to excellent rote learning skills, not smartness.
Does anyone have any pearls of wisdom? <comment><USER2> My advice is reading: "The Introvert Advantage", Marti Olsen Laney. It may not fit your general character (you may be an extrovert, it's hard to tell at this point), but the book has some very good hints on how to make an advantage of such thinking style.

Regarding finding a job, solving puzzles that one forgets ten minutes later is rarely a major part of a technical job. You should better stick to building proofs of your skills (e.g. portfolio).</comment>


A color picker. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yields/colorpicker

<comment><USER2> Kind of fun - clearly not designed to pick a particular color (since I can't see any colors until I move the mouse).

I do like movement based feedback though.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! i might solve the problem in the future.</comment></comment>


Reveling in Constraints - GWT is an end-run around Web development obstacles - <AUTHOR> http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1572457 <comment><USER2> I remember when you asked that question at google i/o.

We're using gwt for a reference implementation of itemscript, an open source json schema project. It does take some time to get it set up right, but when you do...

GWT is reveling against it's next constraint right now, the support of a growing developer base, not all within Google.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've always been interested in GWT but I have never hear of someone successfully using it or even preferring it over just writing js.

<comment><USER4> I used it on a large project, and enjoyed using it despite some rough edges. Most of these rough-edges turned out to be not based upon what GWT is, but how I was using it.

First, GWT is free-form and it's up to you to have a good internal architecture for your large, complex application. Fortunately, Ray Ryan gave an excellent talk at Google I/O this year which addressed all of the architectural questions that came up during my first project. My team is now embarking on an even larger project, and we have implemented the pattern described in Ryan's talk - and it is fantastic in terms of flexibility. We're very confident that we'll be able to tackle whatever ambitious requirements come up.

[http://code.google.com/events/io/sessions/GoogleWebToolkitBe...](http://code.google.com/events/io/sessions/GoogleWebToolkitBestPractices.html)

I've made myself watch this talk about 12 times, and each time I keep pulling out some essential bit of wisdom. Now, there's a lot of stuff in there that might be obvious to someone who uses other languages/frameworks for making GUI applications. The HandlerManager eventBus that he's using is really the same thing as NSNotificationCenter, for example.

But for someone coming from a web or JEE background, this presentation was pure gold.

The second way in which I was using GWT wrong in my first project was I was compiling my app each time rather than staying in hosted mode. The reason for this, however, was because we didn't understand the value of hosted mode early enough in the project...and so programmers committed changes that made hosted mode stop working (through missing configuration that made hosted mode need to connect to an app server in order to debug). Had I known a bit of Ray Ryan's wisdom, I would have written a single RPC call following the command pattern and mocked up a dummy service for use in GUI development.

Another minor thing was that we were using Netbeans rather than Eclipse. While I love Netbeans, and hate Eclipse, the GWT team has made Eclipse a well-worn path and it's really slick. The GWT4NB plugin gives one the impression that they need to go through an agonizingly long build process every time they make a change. Turns out, this was not true.

<comment><USER3> Thanks a ton for this!! I think I will look into it.</comment></comment></comment>


My regrets as a 46 year old, and advice to others at a crossroad - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/2livoo/tifu_my_whole_life_my_regrets_as_a_46_year_old/

<comment><USER2> The grass is always green, etc.

Someone else, also 46, could make a similar post talking about how they wasted their most productive years on trivialities and as a result they now struggle to pay their bills, and regret never having a "career."

Obviously 9-7, missing fathers funeral, having no relationship with your own family is an extreme example, but the OP wants us to think about how that could apply to "our" situation. I think for most people it won't.

The OP's story is a great allegory. And just like all great allegories you have to crank it up to 500% to make its inherent "truth" more self evident.

As an aside: The 10 year cheating wife is a scumbag. The OP takes that on the chin but she is clearly a very bad person in SO many ways. It is one thing if she cheated on a whim and then left him, 10 years ago, it is another thing entirely to keep it up for that period.

<comment><USER3> Yeah its easy to blame the wife. The wife who slept alone every night. That's like a 10-year prison sentence of celibacy. Why so hard on her, for essentially keeping the family together for 10 years? Would we be blaming her if she left after only 1 or 2 years of neglect?

<comment><USER4> To be honest, we don't know anything about their relationship, but calling the last 10 years a prison sentence to celibacy is a bit ridiculous. Also, having a husband that is too focused on providing for his family financially is certainly not neglect.

As you say, there is more to love and marriage than sex - but both are built on trust. If she was unhappy she needed to voice her unhappiness, not destroy the trust on which the rest of their life was built. That's why she deservers the entirety of the blame. Cheating on a long term partner is one of the worst betrayals of trust there is.

<comment><USER5> I would argue that being focused on money at the expense of seeing your family is absolutely neglect. You can spin it as "being responsible" all you want, but it's far more important for a kid to have a father that's present and engaged than for the kid to be financially well-off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I work hard while I'm at work, but I only work 8-hour days, max. Most of the time, more like 6-7 hour days. I've got a side project that might turn into a business, but I'm taking it slow and letting it develop organically. And if it stops being fun, I'll stop doing it.

Next year, I'm going to take 5 months off of work to hike the Appalachian Trail. This is whether my side project takes off or not; if it's doing well, I'll totally leave the management of it to my co-founder while I'm gone.

I'm taking improv and sketch comedy writing classes. I don't have nearly as much free time as I used to, but I feel like I'm actually alive now.

Some people think that working 10-12 hours a day is living. They're hoping for a big payoff in the future based on slaving away now. I think living in the moment and exploring all the awesomeness this world has to offer is the best thing I can possibly do for myself.

My boss once asked me, "what's more important to you: doing your job or having fun?" I laughed and said that's the dumbest question I've ever heard. Obviously, having fun. I work in order to facilitate having fun. Work is not the end, just the means to the end.

</comment><comment><USER6> As a guy in his mid-20s working in a high-pressure, high-paying 9-8 job...

Its all a tradeoff. Yeah I'm working very hard during the week - I don't really have time for anything besides work+gym during weekdays, and some weekends I need to work as well. BUT I'm able to provide for my single mother, live in a very nice area in my city, travel wherever I want to go on vacation, eat at nice restaurants, buy expensive toys, etc etc. Coming from a family where the the nicest place we ever went out to eat was hometown buffet, this financial freedom is pretty damn great.

Plus I would argue that I actually have more freedom to do what I want to do during my free time, despite having less of it. I went to NYC for a weekend last week, was in vegas 2 weeks before, and I'm traveling to Japan over Christmas and NYE to snowboard in Hokkaido. You just cant do stuff like that if you don't have any money, especially when you need to help support your family.

Anyway just my 2 cents. Every job has a varying degree of intensity, and mine, despite the long hours needed, is still pretty flexible in terms of when I can take time off and such.

</comment><comment><USER7> Enjoy the rat race guys, your wife and her boyfriend will love you for it.</comment>