Millennial Men Leave Perplexing Hole in Hot U.S. Job Market - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-02/millennial-men-leave-perplexing-hole-in-a-hot-u-s-labor-market <comment><USER3> > _Weary of long days earning minimum wage, he quit his job in a pizzeria in > June. He wants new employment but won't take a gig he'll hate. So for now, > the Pittsburgh native and father to young children is living with his mother > and training to become an emergency medical technician, hoping to get on the > ladder toward a better life._

Perplexing? The opening of this article gives a pretty straightforward answer: people in that demographic aren't buying the narrative that a minimum-wage job will necessarily come with growth opportunities. So instead of getting pigeon- holed, they are trying to jump into a career with better growth opportunities. Sometimes that requires leaving immediate money on the table.

<comment><USER4> It's exactly this.

I'm a member of this group.

I was told growing up by first-generation college graduates that any degree was better than no degree. I had persistent doubts, but was told by those same parents year after year before and during college that "You may not want it now, but you won't regret having it in the future."

So not knowing better and not being _told_ any better by the university I attended, I got a history degree and tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. When I graduated in 2012, I was reluctant to leave the town that I grew up in (where there were no jobs, being essentially only a university town) and could only find service sector work. The same baby boomers that told me to put myself in debt to secure a degree now told me that any job was better than no job at all.

I eventually was able to get a job at a call center after being a temp (twice) at the same corporation. Yet within a year, I hit a hard income cap. In this job that I had worked so hard to secure, I could only pay off my debt over more than a decade throwing all my disposible income at it. And the job was soul-crushing. All my coworkers were warm-bodies that life had shat upon; my bosses were all sociopathic and incompetent PMPs that could barely open Outlook and constantly took the credit for any and all off-paper work that I did. For some reason, I started drinking heavily.

I was fortunate enough to be able to support my wife while she learned how to code and through fate, diligence, and diversity metrics, she was able to secure an IT job. She convinced me to quit soon afterwards and try to follow in her footsteps, but with apparently less favorable odds. Who wants to hire an unemployed self-taught 30-year-old white male with an unstable work history in an entry-level role?

And now, if looking down the barrel of economic obsolescence wasn't enough, I have to deal with baby-boomers, who by their own admission waltzed with ease into careers, constantly looking down on me for not gladly and immediately selling what remains of my youth to pernicious corporations whose five-year plans inevitably include either automating my position or shuttering because of the brick & mortar apocalypse.

Yes, it's a very perplexing hole, this lack of participation.

Our pipedream at this point is for me to be a stay-at-home dad and develop FOSS software when I'm not caregiving or doing home economy, with the eventual goal of buying a farm somewhere where we can both be doing what we really want (i.e. living as ethically as we possibly can in a dystopian hellscape far, far away from the gods of the Marketplace). I don't think this feeling is in the minority.

<comment><USER5> I don't know who gave that advice, but I'm ten years older than you and was frequently told that a history degree would get me little.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anytime the issue of millenials and jobs comes up, I think you have to talk about what the structural differences in the economy and business world are now:

"Thirty years ago, she says, you could walk into any hotel in America and everyone in the building, from the cleaners to the security guards to the bartenders, was a direct hire, each worker on the same pay scale and enjoying the same benefits as everyone else. Today, they're almost all indirect hires, employees of random, anonymous contracting companies: Laundry Inc., Rent-A- Guard Inc., Watery Margarita Inc. In 2015, the Government Accountability Office estimated that 40 percent of American workers were employed under some sort of "contingent" arrangement like this—from barbers to midwives to nuclear waste inspectors to symphony cellists. Since the downturn, the industry that has added the most jobs is not tech or retail or nursing. It is "temporary help services"—all the small, no-brand contractors who recruit workers and rent them out to bigger companies."

From the fantastic [https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor- millenn...](https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-millennials/)

<comment><USER7> Doesn't this mean that middle-men are just being inserted who are absorbing some of the productivity (earnings) of the worker?

It seems like this would only make economic sense if the end company isn't using them on a regular basis, so overall efficiency goes up by multiplexing an employee out to multiple companies as needed. It seems implied by "Rent-A- Guard", but I'm musing out-loud. I haven't had a chance to read your article yet.

<comment> barrow-rider > Doesn't this mean that middle-men are just being inserted who are absorbing > some of the productivity (earnings) of the worker?

Essentially, yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> People love to talk about privilege, but being a male millenial in 2018 is anything but that. The media says you're a sexual predator. They say you're toxically masculine. That is, the very hormones imbued within you are to blame for a host of problems. If you're white they say you are constantly oppressing people of color. If you're in tech, then you're worst kind of man possible - <USER2> tech bro.

Couple the prevailing sentiment with a change in the type of available jobs. Physically demanding work is less common now, and manufacturing, long a mainstay of male occupation, was moved overseas. Office work is more about people relationships, which generally favors women. Our education system is similarly biased against men these days.

I'm at the old end of the millenial generation, but if I was 25, I don't think I'd be too motivated either. I'm not surprised when these young men favor sitting in a basement playing video games over getting a job. Or watching porn instead of going after a girlfriend. The culture has shifted. For some people it's a huge win and there are a wealth of new opportunities - but it is a zero sum game, and now we're seeing the losers.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm a 29 year old male. I've been trying to get a new job since March, and I've been unemployed since August. I have an MEng in Electronic Systems Engineering, and over 3 years continuous relevant work experience.

I have tried applying through Seek and TradeMe, and got no response. I tried writing custom cover letters and applying on company websites. I've rewritten my résumé several times based on contradictory advice. I updated my LinkedIn, and made a second LinkedIn profile to add strangers. I asked recruiters for help. I put side projects on the web, especially Show HN, to try to get attention. I asked friends who I worked with at Fisher & Paykel Healthcare when I was there before. I found random people on Github and offered to work for free on open-source projects just to get an introduction. I contacted computer repair shops and asked them to put up posters advertising data migration services that I could do with my old Apple II. I've contacted every Apple-certified repair person in NZ/Aus/Can to ask them for help. I've tried praying about it. I've tried spamming the companies that have emails readily available, from the accredited employers list. I posted a desperate plea on Facebook, and followed up on advice (+1 introduction) from friends. None of these methods are working. I've had only two interviews. Most companies don't even send rejections. I've lowered my standards so now I'll accept any kind of job, anywhere.

This is a cry for help. I know I'm doing something totally wrong. I just don't know how to contact companies. Please tell me what to do. Please tell me email addresses of people who care.

<comment><USER10> I looked at the résumé linked from your profile, too. I agree with ac29, plus the following suggestions:

* Remove all the logos/links. They're not helping the first impression, and they'll almost certainly confuse the systems that are used to scan/store your résumé.

* Take out the reference to military technology in your objective. If you get an interview you can ask them if they do military work and explain your reservations.

* Simplify your work history. Try to make it as sequential as possible, with as few gaps as possible. If you have a lot of work experience that is not directly relevant to the position you are seeking, consider changing the format and just list "Relevant Experience".

* Make your education section simpler. Just list your most advanced degree, or include your Bachelor's degree if it is in another field. Don't show your GPA, but include any academic honours you received while obtaining your degree.

* Remove all the icons on the second page, including the flags.

* Condense your charity work/hobbies/extra-curricular activities to a short list. Do list any directorships you held/hold. Don't list specific job titles unless they directly relate to the position you seek.

* You might consider just saying "References available upon request."

Your résumé comes across as kind of "all purpose". Maybe that's just because it's the one you include in your profile. If you aren't creating a focused résumé for each opportunity, you might want to consider doing that.

<comment><USER9> The problem is not the résumé. The problem is that nobody is receiving it. I have 3 résumés and I'll make another according to your guidelines. I want only one thing from you.

Email addresses. Please tell me somebody who can give me a job if I do this right. I need somebody who can help. Not somebody who will complain. Somebody who cares. Somebody who can give me food and shelter, a minimum wage. Anything.

<comment><USER11> You appear quite desperate and perhaps this desperation is coming through to the people you talk to and the interviews you do. As a hiring manager I can tell you, desperation is a massive turn-off and red flag.

Change your resume as the others have directed you and keep applying. Perhaps take a look at remote work options as well. But you need to dial back the desperation.

<comment><USER9> I am desperate. Please teach me how to write something that isn't desperate. I don't know how.

Keep applying which way? Nothing works! Keep sending emails? Keep using job listing websites? Keep using LinkedIn? Which one will perform differently after I scale up to thousands instead of hundreds? I need email addresses of people who care. I need to be introduced to someone who can provide food and shelter.

<comment><USER11> Hiring managers aren't interested in feeding and clothing you. They want to hire skilled workers to perform a service. The fact you even bring it up is a huge red flag.

If you're not getting job interviews when you apply, then you need to tailor your resume to what they're looking for. You've gotten good advice on how to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _" If you get to the point where you're turning 30, you've never held a real job and you don't have a college education, then it is very hard to recover at that point."_

I've raised this point to a fair few of my friends and colleagues recently. I think it is becoming increasingly hard to contribute to society, because everything is so gosh-darn technical.

Companies _scream_ for developers - but not junior developers, or people who they can teach to program - but developers with 5+ years worth of experience.

I think this will only get WAY worse in the future. Unfortunately, I also think it will mean that people who fail to get a job after taking their degree will be worse off than people with little or no education, who has always had a job (no matter the type of job).

So if you're done with college/university (which is when you're around 25-30 y/o in Europe), and you can't get a job, and you can't put your education to use. You're pretty much shit out of luck in most cases. Of course you can always dig yourself out, but doing so would most likely mean working a min- wage job for 8-10 hours a day, and then spending all your free-time and weekends learning a useful skill, which doesn't leave much time for friends or family (or making a family).

<comment><USER13> On the other hand, how many people can you train to become programmers?

<comment><USER12> Are you asking if it would be feasible for companies to take in well-educated people, and teaching them the programming/dev-craft?

I don't know. But right now, companies are trying to solve the problem in other ways, which is ultimately not addressing their core need.

I just feel like some sort of educational system (bootcamp'ish) would be able to make a good business case for most companies.

<comment><USER14> When I finished my undergrad education, my first job was with a big consulting firm. Early 1990s. They did have a 6 or 8 week "boot camp" and they taught new hires how to program. Many of them had had no significant prior background in programming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's not perplexing at all. People forget that the market for labor is just like other markets.

If you're selling a thing and the market price is lower than the thing is worth, then you don't sell it.

If the minimum wage kept up with the increase in worker productivity over the last 50 years, today's minimum wage would be about $19.50.

So workers who refuse to take dead-end jobs are simply rational economic actors refusing to sell a large fraction of their existence for a pittance.

If employers have job openings they can't fill, while workers are idle because they won't work so cheap, then shouldn't the market-clearing wage increase? If not, what's preventing it?

<comment><USER14> > If employers have job openings they can't fill, while workers are idle > because they won't work so cheap, then shouldn't the market-clearing wage > increase? If not, what's preventing it?

Other workers will work cheap. See, it doesn't matter what you _think_ your time is worth. The supply of people willing to work is what determines what it _is_ worth.

Minimum wage jobs can literally be done by almost anyone who is not mentally or physically handicapped. You can "refuse to sell" your labor at that price, but when you have nothing in the way of skills or experience to offer, you really are just choosing to be unemployed.

<comment><USER15> The key point is that employers have job openings they can't fill [1].

If you are correct that other workers are willing to work that cheap, then the jobs would be filled.

Workers exist but are unwilling to work that cheap, so they're idle while employers have unfilled jobs.

Whenever you see a news story that says "employers having difficulties finding qualified workers," you can safely replace that phrase with "employers are unwilling to pay the market rate for labor."

[1] U.S. job openings hit record high of 7.14 million [https://www.investing.com/news/economic-indicators/us-job- op...](https://www.investing.com/news/economic-indicators/us-job-openings-hit- record-high-of-714-million-1646316)

<comment><USER16> Indeed; they're either unwilling to pay the market rate for the labour _or_ they are unwilling to train.

Any time an employer states that they cannot find a _suitable_ candidate for a position it is an admission that they are unwilling to train.

<comment><USER17> I think you are excluding other scenarios:

A business may not be able to pay minimum wage and training costs. The solution there is more qualified people (but they take better paying jobs), lower wage (legally impossible), pass increases on to consumers (higher wages paired with higher costs). Wage increases can't magically be absorbed, especially in service industries with plenty of substitutes. Customers will just disappear.

The best example I can think of is restaurants closing in NYC because the increased wage costs due to increased minimum wage requirements made certain business models unsustainable: [http://thefederalist.com/2018/07/16/15-minimum-wage-hike- wre...](http://thefederalist.com/2018/07/16/15-minimum-wage-hike-wreaking- havoc-new-york-citys-dining-sector/)

<comment><USER16> You gave many reasons why an employer may be unwilling, but it's the same outcome regardless: an unwillingness to train or pay more.

<comment><USER17> I don't think that is an accurate summary of the situation at all. In particular your characterization asserts indirectly that that the employer is doing something wrong, that if only they were "willing" the problem would be rectified. But it is nonsensical to think that a business is going to willingly make choices that go against its own self interest, that hurts its business.

It makes no sense to hire an employee for $X/hour if that won't increase revenue by at least $X/hour.

It makes no sense to raise prices to cover an employee's wages/training for $Y/month, for example if revenue goes down by more than $Y/month (higher prices => less sales)

<comment><USER16> I don't believe I asserted that the employer is wrong in being unwilling to train or pay market rates for labour. There are many valid reasons to be so unwilling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Men -- long America's economically privileged gender

It depends on how you look at it. Don't get me wrong, men have had lots of privileges, but they have long been _expected_ to work. Those social expectations are rapidly disappearing, and somewhat shifting to women, and we're seeing rates of depression and suicide rise for women in roughly the same time frame. Calling it privileged is a very one-sided way of looking at it, as the "privilege" comes with lot of responsibility that quickly becomes burdensome. With affordable home appliances, online services through your phone, video games, Netflix, and PornHub, the house wife/husband is obsolete. Why take on the same burdens your fathers did when little to none of that existed?

With wages being stagnant since the 1970s, the ridiculous housing market, the materialist debt-slave culture, the decline of marriage, and the decrease in sustainable jobs, why exactly should millennial(and increasingly Gen Z) men bother working as much as their fathers? I come from a very wealthy area and only one of the dozens of men my age, with whom I grew up with, own what their fathers did when they were their age. Millennial men are rife with disenfranchisement that flies under the radar because the economy has enough shit jobs to allow them to scrape by, and the media is generally not compassionate to the issues of men. I mean, just look at this article which is clearly written as an underhanded criticism of young men.

Let me repeat the question in the last paragraph:

 _Why exactly should millennial men work as much as their fathers?_

<comment><USER19> I'm looking at a $400 bill after insurance for a 15 minute doctor's visit. Nothing fancy he took my blood pressure and listened to my lungs and sent me on my way. I'm fortunate that I can easily pay this, but what if I was living paycheck to paycheck? It would crush me. When wealth is so fleeting as to be taken away by such a minuscule stroke of bad luck, why would people bother chasing it?

I'm literally going to have to "shop around" for my next appointment should I need one.

<comment><USER20> There surely is a middle ground here between living paycheck to paycheck and not making work the most important thing in your life.

<comment><USER21> For those that don't have the luxury of having an education combined with training in a relevant skill, that middle ground is just wishful thinking.

<comment><USER18> Or minimalism, which is becoming a trendy topic on places like YouTube for that reason.

<comment><USER21> > Or minimalism

No, not really. Economic constrains are the real issue. It makes no difference if a person decides to live spending less if he is never constrained by what he can afford. On the other hand, if someone needs something (say medical care) but can't afford it then there's a problem.

<comment><USER22> Minimalism doesn't really buy you a whole lot when just rent is already half of your paycheck, anyway. There likely just isn't much left to cut. The things I already own don't add to my cost of living, I already own them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This article was pretty bad. "Hot" labor market huh? isn't it mostly low income service jobs and degree required jobs that are "hot"? I wouldn't know from this article, because it chooses to ask questions rather than provide info.

I weep for the one young man who is studying to be an EMT. I learned recently that that job, which is tasked often with saving lives, pays ~12 bucks an hour. The "hot" labor market is a farce.

<comment><USER24> EMT is entry level, though, and you are basically competing against a workforce where most people have gone past that to become paramedics. Not to say that a paramedic salary is all that lucrative itself, but it's about 10K higher than EMT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> While the article did a lot of pointing at men not working, it did little to show what the Hole in the "Hot U.S. Market" was. Maybe the people they were talking about would benefit from that information.

<comment><USER26> There are a TON of Blue collar jobs that are only getting higher pay in the Seattle area right now. Entry level Electrician, 25/hr. After the Apprenticeship 50/hr (2 years I think). I believe plumbing, construction, etc are in the same boom right now.

That's a really awesome job for someone who is struggling to make ends meet at a pizza joint (example from article). This is 100% anecdotal and regional. So take it with a grain of salt.

<comment> barrow-rider Similar prices to be had around NoVA / DC. Data center electricians with 2 years experience were at 35/hr, and the Master electricians with experience were roughly double.

No shit, I was a data center manager then and contemplated switching jobs.

Source: I hired both union and non-union (union guys on the side) for electrical work in DC area data centers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some interesting things in this article. Given what appear to be changing attitudes to men ("long America's economically privileged gender"), is this situation really surprising? When one considers diversity and inclusion goals, hiring more men seems like a lower priority.

I was also amused by the comment, "I'm very quick to get frustrated when people refuse to pay me what I'm worth." This seems like a conversation I have at least once a quarter with someone. You're worth what the market is willing to offer you, not what _you_ think you are worth.

<comment><USER27> > You're worth what the market is willing to offer you, not what you think you > are worth.

This is an absurd statement, the market is not a god. It does not have a value system.

<comment><USER21> > This is an absurd statement, the market is not a god. It does not have a > value system.

The word "market" is just a convenient tag to refer to a collection of individuals like you and me looking to buy/sell goods and/or services, and deciding what's best for them given the choices available, their priorities, and the information they have.

Thus, when anyone refers to what "the market is willing to offer", they are referring to what the individuals like you and me who are shopping for a good/service are actually willing to pay in exchange for it.

Are you willing to pay a philosophy major a 70k/year salary for him to research a topic? No? Neither is anyone else. Thus, in short, the market for philosophy research is not willing to pay for that.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, but there are two sides to that (voluntary) transaction. The person bidding for labor and the person offering their labor. If the buyer and seller can't agree then the transaction doesn't take place. The value of the labor is subjective.

<comment><USER10> Yes, and no. The value we place on our own labour is subjective, and the value that a buyer places on our labour is also subjective. You may value your labor at $100/hour, and if no one agrees to pay that price that doesn't mean you are wrong, it just means that there's no market for your labour at that amount.

At the same time, we can say that there is an objective value for labour of a certain type (I'm thinking of commodified labour), which is the going market rate. Just as there is, at any given point in time, an objective value for a share of Apple Computer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The millennial generation is also the first one in history to have mass exposure to the success of others due to social media websites. This could be a reason they want to seek better opportunities than the minimum wage jobs available to them. Retraining in schools does seem like a reasonable approach to pursue such better opportunities. Don't feel like millennials are in the wrong here.

</comment><comment><USER29> The part that made me wonder about the millennials in their job search is:

> Butcher has a high-school diploma and a resume filled with low-wage jobs > from Target and Walmart to a local grocery store. He's being selective as he > searches for new work because he doesn't want to grind out unhappy hours for > unsatisfying compensation.

I believe that having a job that you love is a luxury. It is something to look at once basic needs are met.

There are jobs out there, and even jobs that train entry level in a trade. No, it may not be the job you love... but as Stephen Stills said:

> If you're down and confused And you don't remember who you're talking to > Concentration slip away Because your baby is so far away

> Well, there's a rose in a fisted glove And the eagle flies with the dove And > if you can't be with the one you love, honey Love the one you're with ...

That doesn't mean one should love that unsatisfying job, but recognize that not everyone will have that dream job.

<comment><USER30> >He's being selective as he searches for new work because he doesn't want to grind out unhappy hours for unsatisfying compensation.

I think this is a large part of the issue here. I only have my experience employing millenials to go by, but they're a group that seems to be less focused on compensation and career advancement than generations before them. They're version of the American Dream is also different than generations before them. It's not get job, make money, get a house, have kids, etc. There's nothing wrong with any of that. Society has changed, and the economics have changed.

I graduated college in 1997 with $30k in debt, which was a lot at the time. Now, that'd be below average. I was the only one of my large group of friends that didn't own a house within 5 years of graduation. Contrast that with the cohort of millenials I've managed, and I don't think a single one out of several dozen have owned their own home. It's either not a high priority or seems so out of reach when student loans and the high cost of ownership in this area (Boston) come into play. Sure, they could maybe buy a place in suburbia, but again that's a smaller priority than in was before them.

My tl:dr; for the article is that they're less willing to work "just because" and have different goals than generations before them, and that's hard for people to grok.

<comment><USER29> Judging by various new grad looking for a job forums for CS that I've seen (and yes, that is self selecting to a particular set), it is either someone hyper focused on compensation (has sent out 1000 applications... 100 to each of the top 10 tech companies, looking for a job that pays significant six figures for a new grad) or is looking for a place where they will feel needed and can change the world.

I've seen the "I've been looking for a job for six months and a recruiter contacted me about a position at {finance, defense, public sector, back office retail}, but I turned them down because I don't want to work in that industry."

Sometimes its a "you keep saying that you're looking for a job, but you aren't applying where there are openings."

I've worked big tech before the layoffs in '09\. Since then I've worked back office retail, GIS logistics and now public sector... I won't say that any of them are jobs that I would say that I love (they aren't the dream job), but I am able to find meaning in them and enjoy the work that I do because there are hard problems to solve. When I was looking for a job, I took my time picking, but I didn't say "no" when they had an offer and I was unemployed.

One of the things that the line that I mentioned above...

> Butcher has a high-school diploma and a resume filled with low-wage jobs > from Target and Walmart to a local grocery store. He's being selective as he > searches for new work because he doesn't want to grind out unhappy hours for > unsatisfying compensation.

Switching jobs every few months trying to find one that is satisfying means that the next employer isn't going to invest as much to train that person and isn't as likely to chose that person for promotion to those higher paying jobs within the company.

One may claim that they value their (in this case just a high school diploma job) at $40/h, but if they can't produce $20/h of value for the company, well, they're not going to get hired at $40/h.

Follow your passion (that seems to be something many millennials have as their version of the American Dream sounds great... but really should be "Find the hard work you're willing to do" (see [http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2018-1...](http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2018-10.html#e2018-10-21T09_53_29.htm) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "So for now, the Pittsburgh native and father to young children is living with his mother" In the past that wasn't so much of an option. You had to survive. I grew up with parents working jobs like the one he eschewed. They wouldn't dare try to live with my comparatively much more wealthy grandma.

So now living with your parents into your 30s is like taking basic income. This is all fine if someone is truly doing this to invest in more education to get out of the unskilled labor market, but bad when it is just an excuse to be lazy. I too worked low wage jobs when I was a teen and in college to pay my way, I find that when people leave the upward trajectory by leaving school or their job for "something better" they end up becoming lazy and end up worse.

<comment><USER14> Don't know why you're downvoted. It's very easy for a person to rationalize sitting at home by telling himself he is holding out for a job that will "pay what I'm worth" but not doing anything concrete to make that happen.

When I was in my late teens/20s I never thought moving back home was an acceptable option. Working at McDonalds or delivering pizza and living with roomates felt more honorable than moving back in with my parents.

<comment><USER30> IMHO (and I emphasize that), the main difference is that when I was that age, getting a job, making money, and being independent were my goals. For the younger generation, they came into the world at a time of economic turmoil and skyrocketing student loan costs. By the time things recovered, housing markets in many areas were back to the races before they could catch up. Throw in more of an emphasis on doing, making, and experiencing things, and hustling for a buck is less of a priority.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is there a good explanation for the bar chart that shows labor force participation being down or flat for just about everyone other than young women and old men?

</comment><comment><USER33> I know a bunch of beautiful, accomplished women with great jobs who can't find good men to start a family with. Young mens' failure-to-launch is becoming a big problem....

<comment><USER34> Maybe men are smartening up. They don't want to be saddled with a divorce, alimony, child support, or several hundred thousand in college tuition costs down the road.

<comment><USER35> Both genders. Raising kids is expensive. Student loans are retarding marriages and house purchases.

<comment><USER36> Good point. I wonder how many people out there look at a $12/hour job and realize they can't afford to live off that after loan payments. Maybe they are holding out for something better, or perhaps are exasperated and given up?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Calling All n00bs – Learn How to Code with Code Academy - <AUTHOR> http://tech.li/2011/12/learn-to-code-with-code-academy/

<comment><USER2> It would be awesome if someone came up with a class that used Skype or some multi-user video/audio remote solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> This idea is what codelesson.com does. Taught online and instructor-led.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Other startups, like TeamTreehouse and CodeCademy, are trying to teach programming online, but Griffin says that just doesn't work."

What data does he base this assumption on?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think what he was getting at is that they are "not as effective" in teaching people how to build web applications. There are people who can learn this way, but for beginners, it is really difficult.

In terms of data, we have tried them all. Not just Treehouse and Codecademy, but the web apps already out on the market (in-browser tutorials, ebooks, screencasts, physical books, etc.). And a lot of the students we have in Code Academy have tried them as well. They told us they wanted something more than just doing these online tutorials by themselves. They wanted a learning environment where they could learn with other people who are passionate about learning web development, get instruction from a professional software developer, and have mentors who can help them with the learning.</comment></comment>


How to get the programming passion back after turning manager - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I've been working in IT consulting since 2004, having gone up the ladder from junior programmer to manager since.
Coming from a computer science background, I love programming, but I find it increasingly difficult (if not impossible altogether) to work on the stuff I love, i.e., building solutions from the ground up. I get lost in status meetings, status reports, hr, budgeting, and all the managerial stuff.
I have to admit that the pay is interesting, but the job is not that interesting anymore.
How can I get back the passion I used to have during my programming days? Can I go back to programming without seeing much of a hit on my paycheck? <comment><USER2> My experience with programming managers is pretty crappy. I don't like many and the few that I do like, I can't work with.

Of those managers that I do like, they did all the status meetings, etc... and actively participated with the team. Reviewed code, made suggestions, hot fixed a problem or two. They were never condescending about the suggestions or fixes, in fact, the changes were welcomed.

From this anecdote you can take this away. Don't be the manager that sits around and shuffles paperwork all day. Do some interesting stuff with the team. If a couple devs are taking a little longer than normal, odds are they are stuck and are too embarrassed / head strong to ask for help.

Your job is what you make of it. If you feel like it's shit, it probably will remain that way until you change your thinking.

<comment><AUTHOR> That, in fact, is something that I used to do quite a lot, but I seem to get less and less time to keep doing. It seems I just have to keep on pushing... Thanks for the feedback anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just to add some more background, I'm from Portugal, 32 years old.</comment>


Apple, Microsoft, RIM, and others join forces to bring down Android  - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailytech.com/Can+Microsoft+and+Apple+Kill+Googles+Android+with+Lawsuits/article22114.htm

<comment><USER2> Gripe about 95%+ of the articles that mention Apple, Android and rim: They all talk about winning, like if apple/android/rim don't do x, apple/android/rim will "win". This article makes the case that Android has already won.

When I play a game, and someone wins, everyone stops playing. There is a winner. No point in playing. That is not what is happening here. Apple, Android, and even Rim all have profits that are growing. No one has lost.

Rim might be in trouble, in that their growth looks like it isn't sustainable, and their product appears to be falling behind. But even if rim is eventually going to "lose", it is a long way off. To talk about android or apple "winning" at this point is absurd. Both sides are making far too much money to even begin considering giving up.

<comment><USER3> Both RIM and AAPL profits are going down for the first time in many years:

[http://www.google.com/finance?q=TSE:RIM&fstype=ii](http://www.google.com/finance?q=TSE:RIM&fstype=ii)

[http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:AAPL&fstype=ii](http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:AAPL&fstype=ii)

<comment><USER4> AAPL's profits go down after the Christmas peak _every_ year. (I wouldn't be surprised if RIM's do too. RIM's problem has been that it has continued growing and getting more money despite falling deeper into a huge technical quagmire. The former allowed it to ignore the latter.)

I'd rather have Apple's graph than Google's:

[http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:GOOG&fstype=ii](http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:GOOG&fstype=ii)

(Not saying Google is in any trouble either, but flat after not much growth...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If anything, I hope this kind of litigation forces the US government to overhaul the patent system.

Also, what if Google simply Open Sourced the small amount of Android that isn't already Open Source? The Linux community would surely embrace it, integrate the bits not in the mainline kernel that should be, and move forward.

<comment><USER6> _what if Google simply Open Sourced the small amount of Android that isn't already Open Source? The Linux community would surely embrace it, integrate the bits not in the mainline kernel that should be, and move forward._

This only changes things if manufacturers start making 'empty' phones and require users to download and install their own free operating system.

Furthermore, many of the patents cover the phones themselves and not just the software. So even if some version of Android was 100% patent unencumbered, the phone manufacturers would still find themselves in "negotiations" with the patent cartel.

<comment><USER7> > This only changes things if manufacturers start making 'empty' phones and > require users to download and install their own free operating system.

Actually this is a very good idea. Phones could be sold with just a tiny 'installer' that downloads the OS directly from Google.

The first benefit would be that there is no software to sue the phone makers about. Microsoft, RIM and Apple would have to sue Google itself.

The second benefit would be that the phone uses stock Android, not modified with crapware.

<comment><USER8> Stock Android is also not modified with any handset-specific features that genuinely add value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Part of the article seems to be predicated on the idea that Google only bid $900m for the Nortel portfolio. What happened to the stories about bidding assorted mathematical constants up to $3.1415926bn?

<comment><USER10> They were ignored by people who can't fit that into their narrative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11>
      > as Google was beat by a shadowy bidder
      > calling itself "Rockstar Bidco".

Rockstar Bidco was competing against "Ranger". Can I now call "Ranger" (Google + Intel) shadowy too?

</comment><comment><USER12> Coke and Pepsi are competitors, but they're quietly pleased with their duopoly. Apple and Android should just squash the other guys and then worry about fighting over their 50/50 market share later.

<comment><USER13> Generally speaking, one brand of cola can serve as a drop-in replacement for another (notwithstanding vendor contracts and so on). Coke and Pepsi products aren't particularly subject to positive network externalities - it's not as if you can only mix a given brand of rum with Coke and not Pepsi.

<comment><USER14> Some years back Coke took many bars to court that were serving Pepsi with rum as most customers said they want a "rum and coke" even if they didn't care it was Pepsi as the mixer. Coke argued (and won) on the customers behalf that they should be given what they asked for.

Afterwards some pubs put signs up saying "we only serve Pepsi" which covered them but most just started serving Coke coke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is par for the course for RIM, Microsoft, so no surprises. I get the sense lately that Apple is unraveling. They're starting to make decisions based on fear, not evolution.

<comment><USER4> Yes, it's sad to watch Apple thrash around, hastily releasing half-assed new versions of Mac OS X and iOS while its competitors produce superior, polished products at their own pace.

(That was sarcasm and ridicule, in case it wasn't clear.)

I'd say the fact that Apple is simultaneously releasing the best stuff in all the categories it competes in, making huge profits, increasing or maintaining market share, and aggressively suing the heck out of everyone, while not having anything approaching a monopoly in any market except perhaps audio downloads is a pretty good sign (for Apple).

<comment><USER15> I think you took it too far, perhaps in completely other directions.

Apple's products are brilliant, innovative and fun to use. iOS is a great ecosystem for developers and users alike. Apple continues to make incredible gains in profits and pleasing it's customers.

(That was me agreeing with you, despite the fact that these points have nothing to do with what we're discussing, in case it wasn't clear.)

Dissension of Apple is valid in this case. Apple has a history of doing things _different_. Innovative. Progressive, even. The approach they are taking is none of those. We expect better.

<comment><USER4> Companies design water pistols and patent the designs. Apple spends millions rethinking the design of the laptop and is promptly imitated (badly) by every other company in the business and gets no benefit.

I think that innovators feel they are entitled to protect their ideas from thieves. (Just as Nokia probably feels about all the GSM innovation it has done that Google and Apple take for granted.) Sometimes the law backs Apple up, sometimes not. But I don't think it's "panic" so much as an emotional, visceral response (insofar as corporations are capable of such) to doing brilliant work and having it simply copied or stolen.

<comment><USER15> I can appreciate that point of view. Evolution of technology, to me, as a consumer, is much more important.

Apple is one of few companies that are _worth_ copying. I feel that we all benefit in the long term when manufacturers of technology must one-up each other, especially if in order to compete they are forced to raise the bar. You can kinda think of Apple as an incubator of evolutionary technology and design, if you will.

Google is probably Apple's only real competitor when we talk about quality and design. Others may _try_ to copy Apple's designs or technology but I've yet to see the same quality.

Look at the iPhone, for example. Multitasking done right. Folders done right. While other manufacturers were adding these features immediately and doing things status quo, Apple had real-world examples of what to avoid and made those features better while highlighting why they were better.

I think getting involved with these lawsuits serve only as a distraction to their core philosophies. I'm concerned that Apple's shareholders will start seeing these lawsuits as personal victories and demand they are carried out as they see fit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How is this not unethical?

</comment><comment><USER17> I believe Apple's plan is to bring down Android by making their devices better than Android devices. Kinda crazy, I know.

<comment><USER18> One of the big wins with android, is that you can choose from literally 100s of phones. From loads of different manufacturers. You can get a basic pink square phone, or a massive phone with HD display.

That's never going to happen at Apple. The iPhone fills a certain need, but it's only 1 phone.

<comment><USER19> Why is that a win? I just don't see it. It sounds great for geeks like us, but this is the same fragmentation we find in the PC market, where brand x thing doesn't work with brand y thing. I bought a Samsung phone last year, and 4 months later they decided I'd get no more firmware. My friends can all run Google Music on their phones. I have to wait because I chose "the wrong phone."

Apple's one device works well for non techies... in fact out of the non-geeks I know, it's about split between Android and iOS devices - the folks with iOS say they have an iPhone. The others say they have a Samsung or an EVO.

I think the "one device" works pretty well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> anyone remembers nokia?

what killed them? patent fights, or crappy software?

<comment><USER21> Let's bury Nokia when they are no longer the biggest mobile phone vendor in the world.

<comment><USER22> Well, the context was smartphones. And "biggest" isn't necessarily a sign of health, as quite a few Finnish software developers recently found out.

Given the huge lead that Nokia had in smartphone tech and their current trendline in the smartphone market, I don't think it's premature to at least reserve a burial plot.

<comment><USER23> General Motors comes to mind.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Software Forge Performance Index - <AUTHOR> https://forgeperf.org/ <comment><USER2> Not surprising at all that SourceHut came out on top, but the gap between Github and Gitlab is interesting.

This is probably too much to ask -- it would be great if in the future this page would be expanded by location where the lighthouse was run on. I would be curious to see if there's any variation found across countries.

In my experience running lighthouse locally vs Google's PageSpeed Insights gave non-trivially different results, never did figure out if that's purely because of different location this is being run from, or if I just failed to exactly replicate the configuration of the run PageSpeed Insights uses.

<comment><AUTHOR> I ran this from Philly, in the same datacenter as SourceHut. Simulated network conditions in Lighthouse should level the playing field, but to be sure I had a friend run the same tests from Europe and got results which were not meaningfully different.

[https://www.netbsd.org/~joerg/report- de.tar.xz](https://www.netbsd.org/~joerg/report-de.tar.xz)

Would be curious to see more results - it's pretty straightforward to run these tests yourself:

[https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/forgeperf](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/forgeperf)

Here's someone who ran a small subset of the tests against their personal Gitea instance:

[https://radical.town/@adasauce/104014456097931550](https://radical.town/@adasauce/104014456097931550)

<comment><USER2> I've ran it (from London) and you seem to be right -- nothing significantly different from the other results.

[https://gofile.io/?c=vRdxAZ](https://gofile.io/?c=vRdxAZ)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Disclaimer: This website is maintained by SourceHut.

Note that I'm not insinuating that the data is incorrect ... sometimes comparisons like this omit unflattering data though. It's open source so if anyone sees KPIs that should be added they can submit patches.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried to avoid this, for example deliberately including blame - which sr.ht does not support - and a few hard pages that we slip out of the 90-100 range for. I am definitely interested in expanding the test suite with harder stuff. I want to use this to set goals for performance improvements and feature development - not just to show off how fast sr.ht is. I also want to get those accessibility numbers up - right now, Bitbucket has consistently impressive scores across the board on that metric.

<comment><USER3> I'm not really enough of an expert to know what operations were missing and/or what might have really different implementations on the different systems. It "seemed" pretty consistent to me ... and leaving the yellow-orange values in the SH column was a good sign too. I have extensive experience with both Github and Gitlab and I can say that, in general, the performance on the operations match my experience. I don't want to say that's a fair comparison either as we self-host Gitlab and the performance (or lack thereof) could be our own fault.

In any case, thanks for putting this together and kudoes to allowing the community to help add, adjust and comment on the metrics you've chosen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Codeberg servers for example are in Germany. But this was run in the USA on SourceHut itself, so it's no wonder SourceHut has the highest performance score when things like TTFB count in. That seems a bit unfair to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I spoke about this here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22900649](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22900649)

Basically, (1) simulated network conditions in lighthouse should account for this, and (2) the results are not substantially different when run from Germany:

[https://www.netbsd.org/~joerg/report- de.tar.xz](https://www.netbsd.org/~joerg/report-de.tar.xz)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Codeberg is basically gitea, right? I thought gitea would perform much better, because it looks fast, compared to gitlab, equally as github. Bitbucket performs slow even unbenchmarked.

</comment><comment><USER6> I agree that bitbucket provides a nightmarish experience, but does it take in account that it's a Single Page App and thus after the initial loading the traffic will be much less?

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure if it does or not, but either way it seems like initial page load is the important part. SourceHut is not a single page app, so to compare apples to apples you'd want to load each page individually. Also, it still takes forever to switch between things on Bitbucket after the initial page load. In general for simple things like this with distinct pages, I'm pretty convinced that "single page app" just means that you've made your site infinitely more complicated, more likely to have issues, and more likely to have accessibility problems, for both developers and users for no benefit other than using some trendy new thing.

<comment><USER6> The idea of SPA, is to not have to send 'useless' data at every page change (like the HTML layout), but only the strict necessary data with a JSON payload. Especially coupled with good caching. Also it offloads computation done on the server to clients (templating).

So generally yes SPA are heavier, but they are more powerful. It's a matter of tradeoffs.

<comment><USER8> As long as they've existed, SPAs have been faster, but only in theory ;)

I don't think I've _ever_ seen one that's faster than the normal webapp it replaced. Except possibly for Google's first attempt on gmail, which was pretty snappy. Fortunately they've since replaced it with a sluggish behemoth, so order has been restored to the universe.

<comment><USER7> With the possible exception you mentioned (I switched to FastMail long ago to get back to that snappy feeling) my experience with SPAs is that they all add 10 megs of JavaScript up front and several dozen kbs of JSON or similar per click to save a couple tens of bytes per page of HTML. I pulled those numbers out of the air obviously, but I'm not sure that they're even exaggerations…

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is the bitbucket server in Australia or something?</comment>


Who holds the copyright to a picture taken by a monkey? - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2011/07/18/who-holds-the-copyri.html

<comment><USER2> I await the resolution of this problem eagerly, so we can establish a precedent for the copyright on _code_ written by monkeys.

<comment><USER3> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s8S7QxpjeY>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This discussion is a great point demonstrating the utter absurdity of copyright itself.

As soon as people start arguing whether the monkey, the monkey owner, or the photographer has some _rights_ to the photo that was taken, someone ought to bring in the sanity and everyone's feet back to ground.

Nature itself doesn't seem to reflect on intellectual property: it does so with physical property. If the monkey had stolen the photographer's picture, it would make sense to argue that the picture belongs to him and he deserves to get it back. That's all natural and simply manifests in the photographer no longer possessing the picture as soon as the monkey had stolen it.

But, for intellectual property there is no natural manifestation that is observable. There are just endless semantic arguments about what it means to own rights to something.

In the end, the picture taken by the monkey just _is_. There's nothing more to that.

<comment><USER5> Your argument broken down goes like this: "If you can't touch it, it isn't natural, therefore disregard it"

First of all, what is "natural" or not does not matter. What nature does should not be measure to what we do. I see no reason for that, just because 'nature' has a positive connotation nowadays, doesn't make it a logical end to strive for. "Natural" is a contrived word, and to further elaborate on this completely nonsense word and draw consequences like say "it's invalid" or "it's wrong" because of a self-proclaimed lack of the attribute you call natural, is even more so not understandable. If I may provoke a comparison, you argue with the mind of the so called 'pro-life' proponents. That is a very simplistic view of the world. Just because my idea (=photo e.g) isn't immediately transferable to physical properties, doesn't mean it's any less "real" or "natural". If I tell a guy my idea, and he implements it trivially with huge profit, then the loss is very real to me.

Your naive views translate very well into the last sentence: "the picture taken by the monkey just is". You don't appear to have any will to solve the issue at hand. That's like giving up to solve the problem at all.

<comment><USER6> It is not about 'nature' as some mystical attribute. It is about the basic physical limitations of reality.

The restrictions instituted by normal property are grounded in the actual restrictions of physical reality. The restrictions instituted by 'intellectual property' have no such grounding.

> If I tell a guy my idea, and he implements it trivially with huge profit, > then the loss is very real to me.

It is not real at all, and it justifies nothing.

If something is physically taken from you, you lose it -- whether there is any law or not. If someone else makes money, you lose nothing -- the idea of loss you present is entirely dependent on _assuming_ there is a law supporting it. A law cannot be justified by itself; that is circular.

<comment><USER5> See, again you are using a definition of real that suits you. This doesn't mean it's correct or even that it makes sense. What your argument boils down to is: "Thoughts are not real". Is that a really a stand that you want to take?

edit: Maybe I should give you an abundantly clear example of how your interpretation of reality is wrong: Imagine two businessmen come to you with the same idea, but you can only give one of them funding. Did the other man lose anything tangible? No, all that money was never real by your definition. For him it was hypothetical money. But no one in their right minds would argue that the second man didn't lose _anything_. The same way software pirates argue: "We aren't taking away anything. There was never any real money to begin with." That may be, but they lost the opportunity to make money which is just as real.

<comment><USER7> You're chasing your own semantic tail here. The point that the parents are making is that copyright is an artificial subjugation of immaterial goods to behaviors and laws that naturally apply only to material goods.

Ideas and expressions, _by nature_ , entertain no notion of scarcity. Copyright is an attempt to artificially introduce scarcity and grant control to the newly rarefied goods.

This process is, _by nature_ , fraught with contrivance, and thus prone to abuse and ludicrous corner cases, such as the case where a monkey steals a guy's camera, and the guy then claims ownership of the monkey's work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As one commenter points out, it's actually pretty reasonable to give copyright to the owner of the camera— Who owns copyright on the abstract art produced when my Roomba knocks my paints over on the canvas?

Another points out it's not really different from the common practice of wildlife trap photography; the monkey wasn't "trying" to take a picture, it just triggered the mechanism accidentally.

Arguing that the owner of the camera shouldn't have copyright because he didn't intend to take the picture seems highly dangerous to me— you're throwing out a lot of photography there.

<comment><USER9> Correct. Most people who give a camera to a monkey do so with the intent that a picture is taken.

Another issue that is often omitted is "selection". Most photographers take thousands of photos and then choose only a few picks. This selection process is every bit as creative (if not more) as pointing a camera at some subject and pressing a button. A picture taken by a monkey is rarely the only picture -- most of the interesting pictures that were not taken by photographers themselves are actually the rare few in long series of misses. The fact that a photographer was smart enough to choose "the one" hit should be rewarded.

Finally, the "copyrightability", believe it or not, is subtly determined by who the artist is, as was demonstrated countless times by pop art stars such as Warhol and Lichtenstein. Since we here are gentlemen of precision so to speak, think of it this way: there is an "intent" factor X which is multiplied by the "stature" factory Y (meaning stature of the artist/photographer in the art world -- terribly hard to determine, I know), which results in some "copyrightability" value Z. It is incredibly unfair to the lesser known artists of course, but such is the nature of fame and art. It's a winner- takes-all world.

<comment><USER10> >Most people who give a camera to a monkey do so with the intent that a picture is taken.

Not what happened here: "David Slater has already admitted that the monkeys found a camera he had left out by accident and that he did not have anything to do with setting up the shot."

>The fact that a photographer was smart enough to choose "the one" hit should be rewarded.

Then, are the other pictures not copyrighted?

<comment><USER9> > David Slater has already admitted that the monkeys found a camera he had > left out by accident

But he still picked up the camera. He still decided not to trash the photos.

> are the other pictures not copyrighted?

It's subtle. They are copyrighted of course. However, if you repurpose someone's work in a way that is completely different from the intended (Andy Baio's case wasn't different enough, btw), you may claim copyright. See Richard Prince's Marlboro man.

<comment><USER11> I was swimming in a river and picked up a rock. I like it's shape. I must own its copyright! _insanity_

<comment><USER9> Not insanity at all. Look up "found object as art" (Marcel Duchamp's readymades etc.) The whole concept of art in the 20th century was redefined by this idea.

Copyrighting ideas is deeply entrenched in contemporary art. As a matter of fact, contemporary art is entirely about ideas as opposed to craft.

<comment><USER7> Good grief.

Duchamp didn't just pick things up and put them on display. That's not what Found Art means, and it never has. Duchamp's art depends crucially on his creative modifications. Same goes for his Dada contemporaries and even moreso for later surrealists.

How about this: go find yourself a rock, tell some people you own the copyright on its shape, (or better yet, its "idea" as you say) and tell us how they respond. Yes, you are allowed to use family members.

      > As a matter of fact, contemporary art is entirely about ideas as opposed to craft.

Dare I ask you to back this one up?

<comment><USER9> > Duchamp didn't just pick things up and put them on display.

The very act of "picking up" is art. As a matter of fact, everything associated with an artist is art. When an artist farts, it could be considered art if the artist intended so. Please, don't tell me that those "modifications" were somehow more important than the very act of recognizing/curating. Important -- yes perhaps -- but more important than "picking up"? No.

> Dare I ask you to back this one up?

I spent roughly five years studying contemporary art and it is a very general conclusion, a piece of "wisdom" so to speak, that I came to through my experience with contemporary art. I doubt that any single example I bring up will satisfy you (you will then claim that it's anecdotal evidence). Perhaps this piece of "wisdom" has been mentioned somewhere by some art critic, but I don't have any literature at my hand right now, and scouring Google could be too selective (you can usually confirm anything by performing a Google search).

Basically, you have to take what I said at face value (or consider how many years you spent studying art and whether to go along with what I said or come up with your own piece of wisdom).

<comment><USER7> Wow, so let me get this straight. Anything an artist touches or otherwise considers qualifies as art. Since any representations of such are immediately and automatically copyrighted, I am threatened with the prospect that my own art is inevitably infringing on countless copyrights. Sort of gives new meaning to the phrase "maximal copyright" doesn't it?

Thankfully, reading the second part of your comment reassures me. It's rare that I encounter an appeal to authority where the supposed authority is the party appealing. 5 years of study not withstanding, your comment below about "anyone who understands art" gives me enough information to properly categorize your arguments.

<comment><USER9> > Anything an artist touches or otherwise considers qualifies as art.

Not literally, but that's the general gist of it. It all depends on context.

> I am threatened with the prospect that my own art is inevitably infringing > on countless copyrights.

Look. If you are an artist, not only do you infringe on countless "copyrights" (have to use quotation marks because I am not talking about literal copyright), but many other artists also infringe on yours. There.

EDIT: Have to expand a bit on copyright. The reason I wasn't talking about copyright in a literal way is because art has its own system for dealing with "copyright" infringement (actually a superior one, one that is closer to how free market works than to how law works), distinct from legal action. Legal action usually only comes in when (a) there is significant money involved, (b) when hard evidence could be readily used, and (c) when dealing with low-end and mass markets such as popular photography. Hard evidence in art is usually very difficult to come by (as you might have gathered from my "appeal to own authority" response). The system for dealing with copying is simply that when a work is labeled derivative by a large enough number of people in-the-know, its value in the high-end market evaporates. Most other spheres (e.g. tangible goods market) don't have such system in place and therefore have to rely on the legal concept of copyright.

ANOTHER EDIT: Seems like you are a kernel hacker, so my hat is off to you. Just want to let you know that the concepts we are talking about in art do not translate well into software (derivative software is still useful, often more so than what it was derived from, while unoriginal art is just that).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You so want the answer to this to be "the monkey", but because of our humanocentric maleocracy, the answer is "nobody".

<comment><USER13> Well, we don't hand out rights to animals who aren't smart enough to understand them. The monkey was smart enough to use the camera, I dunno...

<comment><USER14> Ooh, that's a _dangerous_ line of thought. We certainly _do_ respect rights of _people_ who aren't smart enough to understand them; we also protect the welfare of animals in other ways despite their not being able to comprehend that we generally choose to treat their health and comfort as a "right".

The personhood horizon doesn't lie on a speciation boundary, and "rights" as extended by us go _much_ further.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> At TechDirt <[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110713/11244515079/can- we...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110713/11244515079/can-we-subpoena- monkey-why-monkey-self-portraits-are-likely-public-domain.shtml>); they argue that by default the photos are in the public domain. We don't want to fall into the trap of assuming everything must have some copyright owner.

</comment><comment><USER16> Suppose there were an AI program that could write short stories indistinguishable from those produced by a human. Further assume that the AI operates independently of any human control and generates stories using rules it has discovered by "reading" human stories using machine learning. The creative process used by the machine is not unlike that used by a human. Does the law preclude stories created in that fashion from being copyright? And if they can be copyright, who is the author?

<comment><USER17> If a human purposely set the chain in motion, it's presumably the human's. If you made an AI with no intention to create literature, then its work would be uncopyrightable (public domain?). That's why your binaries are copyright, but the monkey's accidental photographs are not.

If you write a chat bot, which interacts with (and learns with) other humans, it might be more interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice to see it's already been added to the relevant page on Wikipedia:

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

</comment><comment><USER19> The owners who set up the experiment. Or if it's just fooling around with stuff, then nobody. The monkey isn't capable of rational decision making so it can't be responsible.

</comment><comment><USER20> Gotta agree the comment on the article by acitrano - they probably do own copyright to the picture, but to reveal why outside of court would needlessly undermine the trope which has made it famous.

Indeed, I presume that surfacing "the legal angle" was a motivation for sending lawyer letters in the first place.

After this press hit and the "bird absconding with camera" video, I'm sure there are a lot of wheels turning about how to spin another viral play on animals "stealing" products to use themselves. You won't have to wait long to see the next one.

</comment><comment><USER21> Do Creative Commons licenses cover non-humans?

<comment><USER22> No license covers non-humans in the way I think you're implying, they don't exist as legal entities in any way that would allow them to the required legal rights.

(Note I'm not saying that the law doesn't recognise their existence at all - it obviously does in many ways - just that they don't have the same rights as a human in terms of making contracts, owning property and so on).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's cre-ape-tive commons. :D

<comment><USER23> Woah - downvote, just because it's not funny! Bit harsh.

<comment><USER24> Attempts at humor typically get downvoted at Hacker News. HN is more interested in discussion than humor, so it's downvoted as noise.

<comment><USER23> Point taken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Animals won't have rights until we can objectively prove that they are conscious and sentient just as we are. Probably 20 years or so.

<comment><USER26> At which point does a critter stop being sentient? I could easily accept a proof (that I couldn't understand or verify without years of study) claiming that a chimpanzee is sentient; I doubt I could be convinced that a mouse is sentient; and the yeast on top of my fridge is certainly not sentient, unless it mutates into some sort of collective.

<comment><USER27> >I doubt I could be convinced that a mouse is sentient

Having met plenty of humans and plenty of mice, there are definitely members of the former who are less sentient than members of the latter.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say exactly, but we should not be judging the sentience of creatures by the degree of ignorance we have. How would you react to a proof that the yeast on top of your fridge is indeed sentient?

<comment><USER26> > we should not be judging the sentience of creatures by the degree of > ignorance we have.

Considering that we're usually unaware of our degree of ignorance about nearly everything, this evaluates to "we should not be judging anything since we may be ignorant about it". Which is obviously bullshit, because it would just put us in a deadlock about any decision.

And I'd probably be fairly shocked, and then I'd hope that I didn't do anything to piss it off, or to infringe on any rights I would presume it to have - which I would assume to be the same ones that I have.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: check-out my new startup, KyMaLabs - <AUTHOR>

http://www.kymalabs.com/
We're an all new bootstrapped startup and we've just launched our first product, a mail scheduling app called Momentomail. It's just reached a state where the core functionality is pretty solid and we're looking for feedback on the product and the site. We have tons of ideas on how to move this product forward as well as some ideas for other products if this is all successful.
We haven't yet announced anywhere else publicly, only our friends, colleagues and family members are using the service to date in testing (and loving it) but we're looking for objective feedback from the startup community and want to slowly watch usage and gauge costs vs. revenue (all adSense at the moment) to refine our business model from this version 1.0 iteration.
Let me know if you have any questions and I'll try and answer them here!
(Full disclosure, this is actually my wife's bootstrapped startup, I'm her part-time co-founder.) <comment><USER2> From the terms of use:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. _By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give KyMaLabs a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services._ This license is for the sole purpose of enabling KyMaLabs to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for KyMaLabs to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom KyMaLabs has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

<comment><USER2> I don't want my emails reproduced, adapted, and published world-wide...

<comment><AUTHOR> Removed! Thanks for the feedback. If you find anything else objectionable let me know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Based on some email we've been getting. Right now we require you to have a Google account (we use google for user authentication and account creation). But we're looking at using others as well.

We're trying hard not to setup our own user mgmt facilities (who needs one more user/pass to remember) and riding on the back of other services let's us setup accounts more or less automatically.

</comment><comment><USER3> Clickable: <http://www.kymalabs.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I wanted to make sure to put some text in, but couldn't get the URL clickable (it's one or the other).</comment></comment>


Email is the new Private Messaging? - <AUTHOR>

I think I saw an article on ycnews a while ago that talked about how you shouldn't add a private messaging system to your site and should simply use email instead.  Does anyone know where that article is? <comment><AUTHOR> Could this be it? I feel like there was something more compelling?

[http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/09/16/why-private-messages- suc...](http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/09/16/why-private-messages-suck/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anyone?</comment>


Quantum Computing Since Democritus (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/ <comment><USER2> This is a book too, and it is excellent.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the most interesting and most intuitive set of lectures I have ever seen on this subject. I now understand things that have eluded me for years.

</comment><comment><USER3> Loved reading the book.</comment>