Is Tumblr the new WordPress? - <AUTHOR> http://wpcandy.com/thinks/is-tumblr-the-new-wordpress <comment><USER2> I do not understand why successful technology companies, seeing another different but also successful technology, realize "we can do that too" and immediately assume "and therefore we should".

Microsoft sees Google being a search engine and sinks billions upon billions into failing to be one. Google sees Facebook being social and decides it needs to be social (an upcoming disaster). Facebook sees Twitter being real-time and decides it needs a real-time stream too (a bad idea they have since buried under the "most recent" link).

In the CMS world, we have Drupal for complicated content-management, Wordpress for full-featured blogs, and Tumblr for drop-dead-simple blogs. There is no reason one of these products should try to fill all three roles, and no practical way to do so (because it is, I posit, impossible to be both as simple as Tumblr and as configurable as Drupal).

Wordpress is great. It is the leader in its category. There's no need for it to try jumping into another category that would distract from its core competency.

<comment><USER3> _I do not understand why successful technology companies, seeing another different but also successful technology, realize "we can do that too" and immediately assume "and therefore we should"._

Is it really that hard to understand? Most corporations, almost by definition, must grow...often in multiple directions. They must expand market share in markets they already exist in and enter new markets they previously shrugged off.

I wouldn't say companies do this "immediately." In fact, quite the opposite. Microsoft joked about the search market for years before realizing its more than a joke. Ditto for google and social networking...social was seen as a joke at google circa 2006 as facebook was on the verge of exploding.

<comment><USER4> >social was seen as a joke at google circa 2006 as facebook was on the verge of exploding

"In 2003, Google offered to purchase the social network Friendster, but the offer was declined by that company. Google then internally commissioned Orkut Büyükkökten to work on a competing independent project. The result was Orkut. The product launched on January 24, 2004."

<comment><USER3> A _failed_ purchase of a social network only proves my point, if anything. When google really believes in a company, they go to great extremes to grab it. See YouTube.

<comment><USER4> This was 2003. Facebook didn't even exist then. Are you just trolling? Would a big YouTube-style purchase of Friendster have even worked out well for Google?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Tumblr is more than a blogging platform though, it's a _community_ , much like Twitter. Tumblr is more like Twitter than it is Wordpress.

For example, from what I've seen this is the "average" tumblr user: <http://soporslime.tumblr.com/>

That is not a traditional blog, not at all.

<comment><USER6> Looks a lot like old MySpace.

<comment><USER7> At least the defaults aren't terrible.They are actually kinda nice. There is the freedom to be terrible, and that's fine by me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just moved the SproutRobot blog from Blogger to Tumblr for one reason: People share stuff on Tumblr. No one really shares stuff on blogs.

You can add a "tweet this" or "like this" button to your blog posts, but the only way to get Tumblr kids passing your stuff around is to have a tumblr. Moving away from Blogger (or Wordpress) doesn't seem to sacrifice any shareability, which is the singular purpose of blogging.

</comment><comment><USER9> Tumblr is the new Twitter/MySpace/Facebook. Wordpress is a publishing platform. Tumblr is a communication platform.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've had blogs on LiveJournal, Wordpress, Blogger, Posterous and Tumblr, and here's my view on the difference:

Livejournal: The proto-Facebook, for personal blogging and sharing your thoughts/lives with your friends, with a personal connection with the people who follow you.

Wordpress.com/Blogger: Mainstream blogging, letting you share your opinion with the world. I switched from Wordpress.com to Blogger because they inject ads into your blogs. Neither have great editing interfaces.

Posterous: Mainstream blogging simplified, I switched from Blogger to Posterous because it just works. I can write a post insert images and it will come out looking decent (on Blogger/Wordpress I have to spend far longer tweaking layout, etc.).

Tumblr: Single media micro-blogging, Tumblrs support for mixed media blogging is very poor, you have a photo or a block of text, but not both. It's much more about community as well, it's closer to Twitter than to the other blogging platforms. It's all about followers and re-blogging other peoples posts.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't think it's Tumblr, but what about Posterous?

For websites where the blog is just a part of the site and not the central component, Wordpress is overkill. And maintenance of updates and plugin updates is a pain once you start getting beyond one or two installs.

I've been thinking that it's time to reevaluate the blogging options out there rather than defaulting to a big-ass Wordpress install for every client that just wants a simple blog as part of their site.

<comment><USER12> Postereus is pretty much Tumblr for 20-somethings. From what I've seen most of the people who have blogs in Tumblr are the generation prior to Postereus.

<comment><USER13> I would make the argument (as a 20-something) that there are far more 20-somethings on Tumblr than there will ever be on Posterous.

Posterous has always felt, in its design, to be minimal and content based. It is not about posting cool photos you found online, funny youtube clips and a quote out of the book you're reading.

That's what 20-somethings are doing with tumblr.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Has anyone ever looked at the internals of WP? You'll find all of the worst practices known in PHP development (which I find to be a bad practice all it's own). Maybe it's bias, but I can't imagine people who write such poor code being able to compete with a startup that actually uses technology competently (which may or may not be Tumblr).

In this case the question is more about whether Tumblr serves a specific need better than WP and not apparently about technical superiority. Still, again, if you can infer anything about the minds behind WP from the code they write then these guys are creating an app that was cutting-edge innovative maybe ten years ago. For God's sake they don't even have a proper separation of logic from presentation.

<comment><USER15> Though I mostly agree, I sincerely hate this, and this isn't the first time I've seen it:

> but I can't imagine people who write such poor code being able to compete > with a startup that actually uses technology competently

It's a pretty big jump from coding quality to inability to run a startup. You're assuming it's the same people, for one, and history has shown us that code quality has nothing to do with startup success. In this specific case, doesn't Wordpress contribute useful high-scalability software back to the community? I'm drawing a blank but I seem to remember something like that.

<comment><USER14> > It's a pretty big jump from coding quality to inability to run a startup.

Would you say that the general cluelessness of the people at MySpace was totally coincidental to the fact that they were probably the largest user of ColdFusion?

You mised my point: it was not that code quality causes startup fail but that poor technology choices are symptomatic or correlated with fail. For one, it impairs their ability to change the focus of their product.

Take, for example, the ability of their platform to support user-specified data models instead of simply posts, pages and comments. This was an ability that many users were requesting or implementing themselves (or working around) for many versions. It was only implemented in version 3.0, not even a year ago.

This is something that is trivial to support on any system designed around proper MVC principles. A well-designed competitor could have had this years ago.

From all this and more, I conclude that WP is vulnerable to disruption by a technologically superior product.

<comment><USER15> I sense a lot of idealism in you. MySpace was a Microsoft platform in the end and dropped Coldfusion, and there were far more variables related to its failure than its technology stack (contrary to what Scoble would like you to believe). I work for a company that uses Coldfusion extensively, and we succeed just fine, so your grand painting of Coldfusion as a bad decision is flawed with my sample size of 1.

> Take, for example, the ability of their platform to support user-specified > data models instead of simply posts, pages and comments. This was an ability > that many users were requesting or implementing themselves (or working > around) for many versions. It was only implemented in version 3.0, not even > a year ago.

Yeah, I'd rush to commit development to that too. It sounds pretty useless except for people who are molding Wordpress into something it wasn't envisioned to be.

Far be it from me to defend Wordpress's code quality, but they have two things going for them: (1) word-of-mouth and (2) install base. They got there using the code base they had, and it didn't get in their way. With a large install base comes responsibility. Rewriting your system and disrupting a significant plugin install base comes with a list of cons that grows and grows.

 _Proper_ code is a misnomer. There is no such thing as _proper_. Also, MVC doesn't apply to all use cases, and it certainly isn't a prerequisite to "proper" or "well-designed" as you imply (even when MVC is a perfect fit, there are alternative approaches). Wordpress went to market with what they had and they dominate the market.

> From all this and more, I conclude that WP is vulnerable to disruption by a > technologically superior product.

Technologically superior products exist. Wordpress continues to dominate. Why is that, you think?

<comment><USER14> First, this argument is about the successfulness of the WordPress internal architecture. If you haven't looked at the internals WordPress, or written something against their PHP API, then you're arguing from ignorance.

> I sense a lot of idealism in you.

Please do your best to limit yourself to relevant statements.

> I work for a company that uses Coldfusion extensively, and we succeed just > fine...

This is just intellectual dishonesty: you don't reveal at all whether or not the core of your business depends on Coldfusion, which would be important in order to make an apples-to-apples comparison.

You work for Linode, a company that provides VPS hosting. If you make a poor choice of technology on which to base your website, the core of your business is not impacted. Maybe some customers gripe about your dashboard, but your competitors will compete mainly on the superiority of their servers. If you work for a company like MySpace (which depends on its website entirely) and Facebook enters your market, you will not be able to find enough talented CF programmers to fend them off. Talented programmers would not ordinarily elect to use CF, for many reasons.

> It sounds pretty useless except for people who are molding Wordpress into > something it wasn't envisioned to be.

Now you're simply being a contrarian. I don't think you even understand what this feature is or how it works. And yet again, I have to remind you of the point was: _a feature that they wanted_ took a lot of time and effort to implement, when it could have been had trivially _with a better architecture._ In other words the technology decisions created inflexibility when implementing a product feature.

> Proper code is a misnomer. There is no such thing as proper.

First, your college professor might have an objection here.

Second, I said "proper MVC principles", as in, _had they properly implemented MVC principles_. I would be happy if they implemented any sort of architecture. This is one area where, if you had knowledge of the internals of WordPress, we could have a productive conversation, instead of simply negating what I said in the abstract.

> Also, MVC doesn't apply to all use cases, and it certainly isn't a > prerequisite to "proper" or "well-designed" as you imply...

Not implied at all. Had you any knowledge of the internals of the WordPress architecture, it would again be useful to assert that knowledge so we could discuss whether or not it conforms to _any_ notion of design. Unfortunately, you don't seem to want to discuss the actual point of the argument, preferring instead to deal with (ironically) ideal notions.

> Wordpress continues to dominate. Why is that, you think?

Past performance is not indicative of future results.

This kind of argument can be constructed for every company which currently leads its market, but may in the future be overtaken by a competitor. The relevant question is not "why does it dominate now" but "is it threatened by X".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I feel like I have pretty good insight on this issue.

I actually use both. WordPress is my backend for Tumblr. I run a news blog called ShortFormBlog ( <http://shortformblog.tumblr.com/> ), which has content that works well on Tumblr but requires a more robust approach in terms of the creation of the content due to the fact that the posts tend to be more graphical in nature. Which is where WordPress comes in.

It has a lot of benefits. When breaking news happens, I don't have to cover every piece of the story … I can reblog the missing pieces from other news Tumblrs. And if I want to do more detailed posts, I can switch back to my customized WordPress backend, which has a modified version of TinyMCE and Tumblrize to allow me to do more design-heavy posts. I also get to keep an archive of the stuff that took more time so it's held in a non-centralized place.

The overall benefit? At 6,000 followers and counting in just six months, I have a much larger audience than I ever did with the WordPress site. There's much more communication with readers, and since it's centralized as opposed to all over the place, it's easier to latch onto. I also have gotten some media coverage from Mashable and Mediaite, and I've even worked with the Tumblr staff on some things.

WordPress has its uses, but Tumblr has major advantages that you can't get with a self-hosted site. The community is there and it's been well-nurtured. That's as good a reason as any to give it your attention.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have never known a time where Wordpress was not way more bloated than Tumblr is now, and I've been using Wordpress for about 5 years. That being said, the comparison is only valid when comparing them as _services_ \- as far as I know, Tumblr is not available as a platform to use on your own server. (That sucks, because the Tumblr service is extremely unreliable.) As services, though, Tumblr is way more fun to write on.

</comment><comment><USER18> I refer upvoters to my previous comment on this phenomenon:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2178493>

The tl;dr version is that fill-in-the-blank linkbait titles are a bit tedious.

</comment><comment><USER19> >Putting aside the flack Tumblr has gotten for their downtime issues of late,

I love how the author just brushes this off like it's not a big deal. I've tried to use tumblr because everyone goes silly for it, but I wasn't able to even set up an account because the site was down. That's fine for something like twitter but if using tumblr as a publishing tool for my business, what am I supposed to do when it's down?

Tumblr? No thanks. I'll take a wordpress site on my own servers all day long. If I really want some other platform to simply publish on, posterous is drop dead simple and doesn't go down.

But, that's just my .02...

</comment><comment><USER20> It's the new LiveJournal, and I mean that in the best possible way.

</comment><comment><USER21> in an ideal codebase, such as might result from vertical-slice features being added iteratively plus thoughtfully designed features, feature groups and permissions, could a mature product like wordpress not present different levels of simplicity? "enable simple blogging only" v "enable full cms"

I have first hand experience with this and I think it is not only possible, but a reasonable goal for any well designed product. (the advantage of dynamic feature walls is already a huge win)

<comment><USER18> Wordpress, like Microsoft, are bound by the golden anchor of backwards- compatability. One of their big selling points -- the multitude of themes and plugins -- is also what prevents them from making any radical architectural improvements.

<comment><USER22> They're dumping PHP4 and MySQL4 support in WordPress 3.2. You're right, they have to consider support for existing themes and plugins, but they're not chained to the past.

<comment><USER18> They're going to start using PHP 5 features, but that won't remove the large amount of PHP 4 code they already have. Neither will it remove the vast body of plugins/themes from play, most of which are updated quite sporadically.

If there's anything that will cause internal architectural changes, it's the project's general focus on new features over any other goal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As interesting as Tumblr is, I'm extremely wary of switching to it because of the downtime issues they've had:

[http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/12/17/the-most-reliable-and- un...](http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/12/17/the-most-reliable-and-unreliable- blogging-services-2/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Microblogging is the new blogging?

<comment><USER18> Personally I think that nanoblogging will change everything. I'm going to launch a site where the interface consists only of a selection of emoticons.

<comment><USER25> Picoblogging FTW!

<comment><USER18> Seen on HN circa late 2013:

 _Yoctoblogging poised to disrupt Microfacegle (techcrunch.com)_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think it is, it's really easy to create a theme or port a static site over to make it dynamic. Half of tumblr's users are teen girls but they are geeks so they make lot's available for us geeks to use it to hack.

</comment><comment><USER27> If only Tumblr would work well, I would love to switch, and move all my family to Tumblr, too. But somehow the fancy interface never works when I try it.

</comment><comment><USER28> No.

>Remember when WordPress was criticized for being "just a simple blogging platform"?

Have WordPress really ever been called that? The admin/settings interface is ridiculous.

<comment><USER29> > Have WordPress really ever been called that?

Yes it has. When compared to drupal and the like, people used to say it only did one thing (blogging) and did it well. I think this is still true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Nice dialog. Thanks for the good conversation around this topic. Glad it sparked some feedback.

</comment><comment><USER31> No.</comment>


Fighting global warming offers growth and development opportunities - <AUTHOR> http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/03/12/fighting.global.warming.offers.growth.and.development.opportunities <comment><USER2> These folks seem not to have taken Economics 101.

If there's money to be made here, if there is such growth potential, then why aren't greedy capitalists jumping on the opportunity?

If it takes government coercion to get industry to respond, then what is it that industry believes today will yield greater returns? And on what basis should we believe that the incentives from government really will be beneficial, based on past experience and what we know about public choice economics?</comment>


Ask HN: Is going back to college worth it if you already have experience? - <AUTHOR> Though I'm happy with my current position, I'm starting to look towards the future a bit. I have an associates degree and four years of experience as a full-stack .NET web developer. I'm considering going back for my bachelors to make myself more marketable.<p>Have any of you out there without a bachelors had professional doors shut because of your lack of degree, even with experience? <comment><USER2> The people in charge of hiring decisions are as diverse as you and I or anyone. Some of them will say: "I don't like this guy because he doesn't have a degree". There's many more that would still hire you despite not having a degree.

CS is a fascinating subject and great fun to study. But, truth be told, most of the knowledge you gain will be completely useless in your day to day job, unless you become a CS Professor. Just think about it, you don't have a degree and you've already completed 4 years of software engineering experience: that should tell you everything you need to know about that.

If you do, do it, then just get one of those online degrees where you do the minimum amount of work: that way, you can decrease cost and maximize your ROI. At this point, it's just going to be a small line item at the end of your resume, mostly there for checkbox purposes.

There is one exception. If you get a chance to go to a top tier college like Standford or harvard or MIT, obviously, a lot of people are going to like that. And it may open a few doors for you that might not otherwise be open. It would probably give you a sizable advantage in an interview at Google or facebook.

<comment> a-saleh By "unless you become a CS Professor." you probably mean "unless you want a career in academia" :-) Being a post-doc in a good research institution can be fine, and with a good project even rewarding :)

<comment><USER3> He and the OP are talking about a Bachelors degree though. Those are really geared towards fundamentals of computer science and not necessarily applicable skills to software engineering.

OP might want to look at very specific applied technology types of Bachelor programs, like Software Engineering, databases, networking, etc. if he has no intent on a Masters/PhD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> After 20 years experience in software development and no degree, I went back at 39 to get a Bachelors. Firstly, I had always felt as though it was a dirty secret that I didn't have a degree and I never knew which jobs I had been turned down for because I did't have one. Secondly, when I looked at the executive of the organisation I currently work for, every single one had letters after their name. I realised it's very unlikely (but possible) to move up the corporate ladder without at least a Bachelors, if I choose that path. Thirdly, a Bachelors degree is used as a filter for many things - insurance, immigration, bank loans. It helps to be able to check that box.

There is also, of course, the learning experience.

<comment><USER5> How did your resume look without a degree? I always figured just listing a high school degree under education would look kind of barren/jarring? Maybe leave off an education section altogether?

What letters can you put after your name after a bachelors? That seems weird to me.

<comment><USER4> I always just left the education part off. I've been a contractor most of my career and have only been asked once about it in an interview. I don't care about the letters personally, but in Australia (where I am) it's common for executive teams, boards, etc to include their qualifications after their names.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A lot of schools offer certificates, if you are looking for vocational training

[https://extension.berkeley.edu/public/category/courseCategor...](https://extension.berkeley.edu/public/category/courseCategoryCertificateProfile.do?method=load&certificateId=17558767)

(among others)

but my point here is just that college is... not vocational school. Which isn't to say it's worthless, there are lots of good reasons to go to college, and a lot of people feel they get a lot out of it; I'm just saying that if you want vocational education and you go to college, you are not really using the right tool for the job.

I don't have a degree myself, and I dunno, I do pretty okay. I probably would do better if I were the sort of person who went to college; but I do a lot better than a lot of people who are that sort of person, so who knows?

I personally want the non-monetary bits of college, but that's mostly... hobby, you know? I like reading. I like talking about books. It really does sound like a lot of fun.

Monetarily, though, getting a degree wouldn't get me a raise. It might help me twenty years out, say, or if I spent a lot of time unemployed, as a degree loses it's value much more slowly than a job at a prestigious place, but I don't think a degree has a higher value in the short term than a job at a prestigious place.

<comment><USER7> It seems to be a very popular meme these days to declare that college is not vocational education, but that seems to me to be historically ignorant or revisionist, because of how many universities originated as land-grant colleges (e.g. Cornell) or teacher's colleges (e.g. SUNY Albany). Aren't the universities that didn't originate as vocational education more the exception than the rule?

It's as though people want to write out of history the whole political movement to make education relevant to the masses during the industrial revolution.

See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land- grant_university](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land-grant_university) and: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Land- Grant_Acts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Land-Grant_Acts)

<comment><USER6> Huh. interesting. that was not my impression, but I didn't know about the land-grant acts, so perhaps I am wrong. Vetoed by Buchanan - you don't get a much stronger endorsement of a government action than that. It's interesting, and I'm going to read up more on this; I mean, from the overview, it looks like C.P. Snow's "The Two Cultures" thing was a live issue much earlier than I had thought.

Note, I think you might be using the word "revisionist" wrong. I was being ignorant or lying, right? (I mean, I was being ignorant, but you can't tell ignorance from deception at a distance.)

Historical revisionism is a different thing; and certainly not a thing you can do without quite a lot of knowledge about the subject and the historical context. It's not just making things up (any more than the rest of history isn't just making things up) Go read the wikipedia article on it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have heard some people saying that experience is more important than a degree, while others say that having a degree even without the experience is more attractive, because it signals that you're willing to both work hard, and learn

I would say it depends on what you want, if you think you'd be more comfortable having a degree were you to apply for a job on another company, either where you live, or in the same country but different place, or even abroad, you should go for it, you'll probably regret not getting the degree later on

if what you want is simply to become more marketable, maybe simply learning a sought-after technology or framework could help you achieve that more easily, or faster, depending on how much time you'd need to dedicate for the degree (there is a lot of legacy code in Cobol for instance, telecommunications uses erlang, these aren't all that popular, and BECAUSE of that, the few jobs that use them might pay higher than the average job in programming, just to give an example, though some people would prefer something other that better pay, like shorter commutes, better life-work balance, working on something they can truly get behind, etc.)

perhaps I'm biased, because I am in a similar position, I am "taking a break" from my college program for a semester, and working full time as a C++ programmer, and I fully intend on finishing my degree, so I personally would recommend you get the degree, as it might not only make you more marketable, but also give you the opportunity to get a scholarship to pursue a higher degree abroad, if that's something that might interest you (there are a lot of scholarships that get wasted because nobody knows about them)

</comment><comment><USER9> Depends but NO. After running 2 successful companies I was thinking about going back to school and I asked myself the same question but more importantly the staff as me why I would want to go back to school with my real life experienced. They knew of my endeavors. I was applying to get into Boston's most well-known entrepreneurial schools. I sat in on two classes to see what it was all about. I felt like I was in a room with high schoolers. It was total cake. I answered the questions that most couldn't. Felt bad because I had to set the teacher straight a couple of times as you could tell he wasn't doing much outside reading textbooks. At the end of the course, the professor asked if I'd like to give lectures during the semester. I said not right now. But I got the answer to my initial question.

</comment><comment><USER10> I got my degree at 34 after working in the field for 15 years. The university recognized it and I didn't have to take all the courses.This completely cured any imposter syndrome in me and cured other idiots for asking me "but are you really a software developer" or a hobbyist? Also helped a lot with job offers. Do it.

<comment><USER11> How did you start that conversation with your uni? I completed most of a degree and now the thought of retaking all the basic classes is a large hurdle to me going back to actually earn it.

<comment><USER10> I sent a custom application describing my past. UK universities can liberally assign credits for previous experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Software dev as an industry tends to be bifurcated: startups and unicorns tend to be very anticredentialist, at least when it comes to formal education. They'd rather see X years at Y company than really care what school you went to or what degree you got, unless that's all you have to show.

Unfortunately for you, this is slightly less true for Microsoft-centric development environments. Government and big business still value the degree a lot.

Unless your A.S. or A.A. is in basket weaving, getting some kind of BSCS in five years of part-time distance ed would probably be both affordable and worthwhile.

</comment><comment> w0rd-driven I went to college for a bachelor's degree from about 1998 to early 2000. I never finished but I absorbed a breadth of the fundamentals. Once I started getting into assembly and deeper C++ usage I lost interest. This was a little before .NET 1.0 and my CS 101 course made everything coalesce. Prior to that I had cut my teeth on Basic and specifically Visual Basic 3 and beyond but without the fundamentals all I was really doing was creating forms and backing code. It took understanding a different language like Pascal for me to first get into Delphi and then follow the trail to C# where I would eventually land a job as a full time WPF developer from being in primarily an IT focused role.

I think I got lucky and latched onto Pascal at just the right time. I don't think Python or Java would've carried me as far as something about them is actively off-putting. I have no problems reading just about any language and I'm unsure how that happened exactly. I feel like it's likely the result of being mostly self taught with CS 101 bringing about a matrix moment where I finally started seeing the code.

I feel like some of the latter courses in specific languages may be a problem for someone like me but considering I've never completed any, I may be extremely biased. I've often wondered what I may be missing without completing my degree, but for me today that would just be a piece of paper. If I've lost opportunities for something that saddles me with more debt for very little extra return of investment, I'd rather ignore the opportunities that have passed me over rather than do something that feels like appeasement. I admit I could be approaching this all wrong but I've had no problems being gainfully employed for the last 8 years as solely a developer. I know the worth I've brought to the companies I've been involved in even if interview processes in the past have made me feel inadequate.

At the end of the day though it's ultimately going to come down to how you feel. Do you feel you need this? Can you justify the downsides, the extra time and money spent on something you've proven more than capable of handling over the last 4 years? If you can handle the downsides, I say go for it. If you're someone that feels like me, it's probably not worth it.

</comment><comment><USER13> I dropped out of the university a day before defending my thesis — had a conflict with my supervisor. 5 full years, but still no bachelors. I shrugged it off at that point to proceed and have a 15-year career rising to a CTO in 4 years, and building several companies after.

However, now I am in China as a founder of a new company, and in order to self-employ and sponsor a work visa for myself, I either have to go finish my degree or set a ridiculous salary which is roughly 30x times country average wage.

So if you plan on working in other countries, lack of a degree may pose some difficulties.

</comment><comment><USER14> When I was at university, there were a few older students that had come from careers in software development.

They were split into two camps: One would study part-time over several years to boost the knowledge they already have. The other would use it as a "reset", in order to move into different types of development. Given our location near a bunch of defence contractors and big-name engineering firms, many of these developers were keen to get out of that world, and viewed getting a degree as their chance to jump from low-level development to working on web stuff, or in higher-level languages.

I remember one guy that flew through all of his programming assignments, and would spend most of his time chatting to lecturers about C. He was earning money that made student me's eyes water, but he took three years out and moved into building web applications. Within a few years he went from junior to technical manager at a large agency, and now he's heading his own startup.

On the .NET front, some of the best .NET developers I've worked with had no degree, so I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing skills-wise, but I do share your concern that you simply don't know what roles you'll have missed out on due to not having a degree. It's also another layer to throw onto the standard "imposter syndrome" that all developers face. Should you choose to do a degree, my only advice is to budget well. The adjustment from 9-5 to student life is hard enough without having to worry about whether you've got the money to afford that book you really need.

</comment><comment><USER15> "A degree isn't worth anything, but you have to have one to be able to say that."

I went back and got my CS degree after 10 years of programming experience.

From what I've seen, degrees don't matter when the economy is good (as it appears to be at the moment), but the lack of a degree can become a "reason" to lay off, not to hire, or to assign to drudgework projects, when the economy is bad.

This also requires guessing what the economy will be like when you expect to get out, because it's hard to get a good job as a new graduate when times are bad as well.

Ideally, you want your degree and a couple of years of new, full-time, experience before the next recession. Your pre-college experience will become nearly worthless during the 4+ years you're "away" from day-to-day production programming.

What you learn in college is focused on theory, so won't generally be on cutting-edge languages, libraries, and APIs, or the sorts of equipment that will become available out in the world in the interim (Is cloud computing anything more than a specialty elective class yet?).

Longer term, having the piece of paper will show employers that you can stick to something for the years needed to complete it, and you'll vaguely-but-well- enough remember the algorithms that you'll call as existing libraries rather than ever hand-coding again, but mostly your degree will be a check in the box.

Will your dream job require that box to be checked?

Just my opinion, but from having worked both without and with a degree. All- in-all, I'm glad I have the degree, but it took several more years than I originally anticipated to catch up and surpass where I feel I would have been without it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think you should only do it if you have hit the ceiling of your potential. You didn't say anything that indicates that so I would say no. Anecdotally the best performers and best compensated had BS, BA or no degree so it's a no from personal experience as well.

If you want to complete your education in case fundamentals or practical applications there are plenty of courses available online.

</comment><comment><USER17> You can probably always find a job if you're good enough, but there will be opportunities forever shut because of the lack of a degree. I feel this myself even though I have a B.S.

</comment><comment> super-serial Since you're using .NET I'm assuming you work in the corporate world and not the trendy tech-startup world with "unlimited vacation" and nap pods?

A degree would increase your salary significantly in the corporate world. It's worth doing if you plan to stay at your job or go anywhere similar. The alternative is to learn React/Node/Go (trendy tech) and release a bunch of side projects so you can get hired somewhere that doesn't care about degrees. You'll also need to get better at white boarding and understanding algorithms you'd never use outside of a tech interview.

I think the degree is the better choice if you want stability and plan to start a family soon. The trendy tech choice is better if you want to travel the world or do your own startup.

</comment><comment><USER18> I was a resident of New Orleans during Katrina and it was then I realized I needed to be more marketable. I went back to school and got my Bachelors in Computer Science.

Without it, I would not have the position I have now. It was a struggle but I am more pleased with the results than you can imagine.

<comment><USER19> One of my worries about going back to school is that I'll return to the PHP web development class where they were teaching about what GET and POST requests are. I've been a web developer for 10 years, and such a class really feels like a waste of time.

<comment><USER20> It's a total waste of time, but at least it would be exceedingly easy. If you already know the material, homework should be quick and studying should be very, very limited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't know about the marketability aspect, so perhaps this doesn't answer the question. I went to a top tier CS school and enjoyed the curriculum. I never really worried about my GPA, I just took the hard, interesting classes. It was a good experience if you can fit it in. Mostly, I just know little tricks that I never use for problems I never have, like using parser generators for parsing context-free languages and how dynamic programming neatly solves some problems that look really hard arbitrarily close to the perfect solution, map-reduce as a useful programming paradigm to scale things that parallelize easily. Oh, and perfect uniform hashing. One of these days, I'm sure it'll come in handy.

</comment><comment><USER22> The answer is obvious if it is a top tier school.

If it is not a top tier school, a degree might still be useful in these cases - there are companies that will filter out resumes that don't have degrees attached to them. Second and more important, if you apply for work visas in other countries, degrees matter as most countries have some kind of point system and you get points for age, experience, degrees etc. It will also be useful if you want to get into research later on.

One of my friends was making 60K or something, then he did part time MBA from a top tier school. His next job got him 150K, and it was a quick climb both in terms of money and responsibilities from there.

So yeah, degrees are worth something.

</comment><comment><USER23> My 2cents would be if you want yourself to be markatable, anything less then top tier school is waste and won't do any good. But if your objective is to learn and have a new experience then ur good with alot of schools.

</comment><comment><USER24> There are lots of good thoughts here. If the only thing is to make you more marketable, then consider if there isn't something else less time and money consuming that would give you more.

I think college has more to offer, but it really depends on what you want out of it and how hard you want to work.

At the moment, the economy is booming. You could always go back to school during the next downturn. When it's raining soup, put out your bowl and all that.

I have seen professional doors shut because of a lack of a degree, or a lack of a masters, or a phd. It all depends on what you want and what tradeoffs you're willing to make.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think a CS degree would be helpful and is worth looking into, especially if your associates lets you trim off a few courses. Don't look to the degree to make you more marketable, rather, look for the deeper understanding of the math to help you solve problems that others can't.

If you're interested in being the person who builds the tools rather than using them, I think you'll find yourself going further with a degree. In addition, you may get more out of it because you're not starting from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER26> I also worried about the same. But after 15 years of experience, I said to myself: "just grab a copy of Rob Conery's Imposter's Handbook and move on"

</comment><comment><USER27> Having a degree opens certain doors, namely careers in public sector, research or university. It also makes getting a visa for some countries much easier.

If your life plan includes any of these, go get a degree. If not, returning to school will be a waste of time.

Generally, the best way to make yourself marketable is to become ridiculously good at something.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm a Mechanical Engineer that has a degree so I am not sure if this applies to you and my findings are anecdotal.

I work(ed) with a lot of people that did not have degree and moved from the production to design engineer. However, it took a lot of time for them to get there. Also, I find that people with higher degrees tend to get promoted to higher positions. Another big drawback of not having a degree is that it's harder to move to the same position in a different company. I know many coworkers who started at a lower engineering position (and lower pay) because of the lack of degree. They'll eventually get promoted to their previous level because of their expertise but this usually takes a couple years.

</comment><comment><USER29> I have never felt I had any doors shut. Dropped out of CS after my first semester when I got a job doing ops overnight and was being paid to learn more than I was learning at school. Best decision I ever made (almost 20 years ago now). No debt.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think it is worth it. I am currently back in college at 41 for a degree in Economics.

</comment><comment><USER31> Some doors will always be shut down because of your pathway. Accept that as a fact and avoid those people who value what you don't have. You'll miss nothing. The other half of the world is better and more warmful.

</comment><comment><USER32> I doubt that a degree will make you more marketable. But you can learn many things that will advance you way beyond being a .NET web developer.

Unfortunately, recruiters will never tell you why you missed out on a job, so it is extremely hard to determine whether your lack of a degree is the reason for missing out on a job or some other factor.

In my experience, solid experience trumps paper credentials. In companies where that is not the case, you have to ask yourself whether you would even want to work there.</comment>


Squoosh: Google's New Web App to Squeeze Images Down to Smaller File Sizes - <AUTHOR> https://squoosh.app/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's an open source project from Google Code Labs. Here is the Github repo: [https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/squoosh/](https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/squoosh/)

It looks like it uses Web Assembly to compress the images on the client side.</comment>


George Soros is investing $500MM to help refugees in ways governments can't - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/786167/george-soros-is-investing-500-million-to-help-refugees-in-ways-governments-cant/ <comment><USER2> > _The money will go to existing companies, startups and businesses founded by > migrants. And, Soros says, he expects to turn a profit._

George Soros's net worth is approximately $25 billion (according to a quick google search).

I wonder why he doesn't just donate $500 million without the expectation of making a profit. Wouldn't that be a faster way to help refugees than making investments, which require due diligence and business plan analysis and vetting of management and so forth?

I don't get these billionaire philanthropists.

<comment><USER3> I'm guessing Soros doesn't actually expect to make a great deal of money from these. It seems like by making an investment, he will help create a self- sustaining set of business solutions rather than a donation. There is reasonable evidence that "top-down" donations a la Jeffrey Sachs do not work, and that helping people build tools creates an incentive to tackle solvable problems first, then iterate until a reasonable patchwork set of solutions/companies are effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I fail to understand how funding is something that governments can't do.</comment>


The $35 laptop is here. - <AUTHOR> http://www.indianexpress.com/news/The--35--laptop--is-finally-here/650540

<comment><USER2> I will buy this but I highly doubt that the Indian Govt. can really make it available in markets at current prices.

There have been many such products shown to journalists amidst hype in the past and we are yet to see those products.

I am glad it is being done by the Indian Govt. but I feel sad for the private software enterprises who are just sitting on piles of money without putting any of it in producing something truly innovative. One company that comes to mind who can and rather should make something like this is HCL.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe 'tablet' would be more accurate instead of 'laptop'.

Here is a link with video of the device in action. [http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/07/23/india.thirty.fiv...](http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/07/23/india.thirty.five.dollar.laptop/)

Some of the screens shown look like Android might be the OS.

<comment><USER4> I'm exceedingly curious about this little gadget.

Looking at one of the error messages that popped up, it certainly resembles Android, but looking at the full-screen browsing experience, it looks much closer to ChromeOS than Android.

I'd really like to know more about the software on this device.</comment></comment>


The C10M problem (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/5/13/the-secret-to-10-million-concurrent-connections-the-kernel-i.html

<comment><USER2> Lots of great discussion here about a year ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5699552](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5699552)

The line that jumped out at me from the article this time was "It costs 300 clock cycles to go out to main memory, at which time the CPU isn't doing anything." Since the last time I've read this article, I've learned this isn't really true.

First, with current memory and bus speeds (Sandy/Ivy/Haswell), it's closer to 100 cycles (or 150 with a single level of TLB miss, although this miss can often be avoided with HugePages). But more importantly, there is no reason for the CPU to be doing nothing during this latency.

You can have 10 outstanding memory requests per core, so if you queue your requests for an instant you can issue a prefetch ahead of when you need it and continue working on the current request. This way you are only waiting sub-10 cycles for a load from L1 when the request is at the top of the queue. This doesn't speed up the response latency for each request, but it can help a lot with overcoming a limited cycle budget.

<comment><USER3> You can't always prefetch though. Look at linked lists and trees. You have to execute the code and wait the 100+ cycles at every node access because you can't predict where the next node will be.

<comment><USER4> "Doctor, it hurts when I do this!"

If you're hoping to be able to service a request in a few hundred (dozen?) cycles, you'll find your choice of data structures severely limited.

That being said, it would be interesting to see how much smarter a CPU could make prefetch. I know there has been a lot of research over the years into prefetch helper threads[1] that would speculatively execute code along both sides of branches to attempt to pull forward as many memory requests as possible. As I understand it, most attempts to implement this in practical systems have been failures.

[1] [http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~swanson/papers/ASPLOS2011Prefetching...](http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~swanson/papers/ASPLOS2011Prefetching.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Well I'm going to try something like a prefetch thread soon with some common request types that just fetch/modify a single object. It will be interesting to see if that makes any difference to throughput. Something less speculative that helps a lot is just hoist the loads in your code as far away from where you use them as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Besides the discussion a year ago pointed out by @nkurz, there is also this from 77 days ago --

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7250505](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7250505)

<comment><AUTHOR> I must have missed that; thanks for pointing it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article highlights the goals for BareMetal OS ([https://github.com/ReturnInfinity/BareMetal- OS](https://github.com/ReturnInfinity/BareMetal-OS)) - let the app do the heavy lifting.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm surprised things like this aren't more common. Places like google strike me as great candidates for bare metal OS type setups to most effectively serve the billions of requests per days.</comment></comment>


Andrew Yang proposes that your digital data be considered personal property - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90411540/andrew-yang-proposes-that-your-digital-data-be-considered-personal-property <comment><USER2> Andrew Yang has been one of my favorite things about this election cycle. Very focused on issues instead of politics-as-usual, able to explain the impact of automation on the economy in a mainstream way, and presenting proposals that (even if seem strange at first) have rationale behind them.

Even if he doesn't make it to the end, he's already moving the Overton Window.

<comment><USER3> Yang isn't moving the overton window, he's breaking it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is something that absolutely has to happen in today's ever increasing digital world. Companies are making billions from our data and digital footprints, it's time we got a slice of that and a say in how it's used.

<comment><USER5> Exactly there shouldn't be a difference between texts and a hand written letter

Or a photo on my phone or a physical photo.

It's mine I own it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> All the people should be paid who are using Facebook and the other similar platforms as content providers. The better the individual's audience the more the payment should be. This should be the next killer app.

<comment><USER7> Should be? Sure. Will be? Never. Nobody will run a social media site that pays users when a social media site that does not is making money hand-over-fist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There also needs to be laws that let people own imagery or content created in their likeness to prevent things like deep fakes and extortion

<comment><USER9> I think it's odd, I believe copyrights are owned by the photographer. I think they should have specific claim to the copyright, but at any time should be required to take down and destroy pictures when a person in said picture decides they don't want to be in it. Though w/ digital-ness that may be nigh impossible, maybe they could make a DRM image that if you delete the master all images across the web cease to work. That would definitely be an interesting technology.

<comment><USER10> Not sure if implementing DRMs is a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Impossible to enforce.

<comment><USER12> The headline maybe, the actual proposal seems quite reasonable to enforce:

\- The right to be informed as to what data will be collected, and how it will be used

\- The right to opt out of data collection or sharing

\- The right to be told if a website has data on you, and what that data is

\- The right to be forgotten; to have all data related to you deleted upon request

\- The right to be informed if ownership of your data changes hands

\- The right to be informed of any data breaches including your information in a timely manner

\- The right to download all data in a standardized format to port to another platform

Speaking as European this just seems to be "let's copy that legislation".

<comment><USER13> That would just become another ok dialog before the content. Edit-I stand corrected, see below.

People need actual property rights to charge a fee for their data. The monetary value companies obtain from users through advertisers or other consumers is a measure of this value.

It's an entire market that does exist but is being taken from the producers.

<comment><USER12> > That would just become another ok dialog before the content.

No, explicitly not. That is in my opinion one of the great points of the GDPR legislation. Mandatory consent is not consent at all and hence void and websites have to accept "no" as the default answer.

<comment><USER13> Ok so everything you said, and endow people with property rights over their data. They should be able to lease access to this data to websites in turn for goods and services. They should also be able to sue for misappropriation of this property like all other property. Etc etc.

<comment><USER12> > They should be able to lease access to this data to websites in turn for > goods and services.

Should they? Then you get back to same problem as before: "Allow us to spy on you or pay $$$".

Instead privacy is treated as right and you can simply say "no, neither of those". Note that this does not say anything about ads. It is still perfectly legal to show ads, just the whole privacy invasion on top of it is excluded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> We need something like a new bill of rights for the electronic age

\- Ensure Fourth Amendment protections apply to all digital communications

\- Restrict electronic public surveillance and retention of data by the government obtained by electronic means in public.

\- Restrict government access to public electronic surveillance data created by private entities based on Fourth Amendment limits: by warrant only

If the Founders could have anticipated the way we communicate today they would certainly have included electronic data in "papers and effects."

And they also could not have anticipated the ease with which government can now collect data electronically and through public surveillance on millions and millions of people, cost-effectively. While there can be no expectation of privacy in a public space, there is something fundamentally different about your activities in public being recorded, and stored for an indefinite period, without any suspicion of wrongdoing. That should be addressed in law.

<comment><USER3> I'd go a step further and create amendments that self-amend based on developments in technology.

<comment><USER13> I fear lawyers would both love and destroy such an amendment.</comment></comment></comment>


What if Mick Jagger responded to Keith Richards about his new autobiography? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2273611/

<comment><AUTHOR> As far as I can tell, this is a real response by Mick Jagger, not a "what if," as the person who changed the title seems to think. The writing is raw and excellent. It's fascinating to see how MJ juggles the image of the Stones amid the chaos.

Edit: On second thought maybe not.</comment>


Who Is Nassim Taleb? - <AUTHOR> https://www.fs.blog/nassim-taleb/ <comment><USER2> His book on Black swan events is actually the basis for my project. Some claims he made regarding randomness rubbed me the wrong way, and inspired me to prove it wrong. Fat tails as the article put it, should be taken into account for expected values (for statistical models).</comment>


Escape from systemd - <AUTHOR> https://davmac.wordpress.com/2017/06/14/escape-from-system-d/ <comment><USER2> I get the impression that OP seems to just be abandoning systemd to build another... systemd. So it seems like not-invented-here syndrome.

I don't really know about any of the drama surrounding systemd but I've liked using it so far. It's easily the most attractive feature in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

Using journalctl for logs is nice because I don't have to keep looking around for where logs are stored and then tail them. But then again, I don't worry about log rotation and things like that. My guess is that journalctl takes care of it.

I'm sure I've barely scratched the surface of all the things it can do (like auto-restarting daemons, some security stuff, etc).

Am I the exception? Can't be so, if most linux distros have adopted systemd.

<comment><USER3> The basic summary is basically: Developers love systemd, it's much more "developer friendly" and the way it's laid out makes sense to them (e.g. your love of journalctl, which is bizzaro-world for me). No more thinking about ugly operating systems and those silly details!

Old school sysadmins and those who actually get their hands dirty with Linux systems under the hood despise it for what it is. It's the windowsfication of Linux, in my - and many others - opinions. A giant PID 1 that controls everything, re-implementing such basics as ntp and rm, is imo entirely anti- unix-like.

Systemd is _great_ until it breaks. Once it breaks though, good luck. They've re-invented the wheel multiple times over, and as time goes on more and more things become part of monolithic systemd. If you do happen to find a weird bug, prepare to get yelled at and be forced to vigorously defend your bug report. The joke in the office is when Pulseaudio support gets added.

<comment><USER4> > A giant PID 1 that controls everything

Kernel is also a giant code that controls everything. Is this such a bad thing?

<comment><USER5> The kernel is a component that has a straightforward purpose on a system, and interferes as little as possible with the actual usage of the system. You could describe it as "It gets the job done, and stays the hell out of the way"

Even with the kernel there is an element of choice about what parts of it you do / don't use, e.g. you can use ext4, XFS etc. etc. and even have the choice of providing kernel modules so you can bolt on ZFS.

The kernel doesn't start to dictate who or what software does DNS resolution, for example.

systemd keeps taking over more and more control of various aspects of your system and effectively removing choice by making it hard to use alternatives because it starts to make assumptions based on the inbuilt versions.

systemd is presenting you with a "one-size-fits-all" scenario. The problem is one size _never_ fits all.

One of the biggest strengths within the *nix ecosystem has been the fundamental understanding no two use cases are entirely the same, what works well for one purpose doesn't work well for others, and choosing the right software to meet those various purposes is invaluable. It's impossible to make software that is efficient for every single use case.

The freedom and possibility to choose the right tool for the right task is essential to designing and building new, innovative, or even just plain old efficient systems.

<comment><USER6> I hear all this, but I never really see examples of it, which would really help your argument. People hear the 'theoretical', but theoretical doesn't matter if it never makes it to the practical.

<comment><USER5> Okay, so an example:

dnsmas

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One thing I've learned to accept about Linux, in general, is that it likes to go its own way relative to other Unix-like systems.

I've come to accept systemd and actually like it in the sense that, for the most part, it just works and gets out of my way. The more I learn about journalctl's options for viewing logs, the more I like it.

The case of Linux going its own way that drives me nuts though is the replacement of 'ifconfig'. The replacement seems to be in progress, with some distributions shipping 'ifconfig' in addition to the 'ip' and others only shipping 'ip'.

EDIT: Other Unixes have also gone their own way with init systems to meet their own needs. MacOS, for example, replaced initd with launchd. Solaris, way back in 2005 with Solaris 10, replaced init with SMF[0] which does some of the things that systemd does on Linux.

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

<comment><USER8> > One thing I've learned to accept about Linux, in general, is that it likes > to go its own way relative to other Unix-like systems

Solaris is Unix. Solaris shipped SMF over a decade ago.

OS X is Unix. OS X shipped launchd in 10.4, back in 2005.

<comment><USER7> In retrospect, "Going its own way" for init systems is a normal thing in the Unix world. That was actually a terrible example.

At best I could say that the sheer scope of systemd is an example of Linux going its own way. SMF and launchd, for example, don't change how logging is done. I don't believe either of those include their own DNS resolver either.

<comment><USER9> Granted, the DNS resolver is mainly to support networkd, because apparently some units might need to resolve a name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "I have at least briefly looked at a number of them."

So you are wanting to build a new init system from scratch and you haven't taken the time to see all the stuff that already exists? I mean if this is just a project you want to do go for it but if you are seriously trying to build something for others you know whats out there and why people choose one over the other beyond just systemd and sys V.

<comment><USER11> This is a common fault. Not knowing the history and what has already been done long since is an error exemplified in this discussion on this very page, in fact. (One place to start learning from is [http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/](http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/) .)

But in fairness Davin McCall has done more than most. There is a short writeup of xyr opinions of various systems, that comes with the Dinit source code. It gets a number of things wrong about several of the systems and does not go into as much depth as, say, the Debian Technical Committee members did. But it does show that M. McCall _has_ at least looked, just as xe states.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A systemd replacement is going to need:

\- an integrated inetd that can launch non-root processes \- ability to chroot() any application at launch \- inotify capability (path units) \- consistent scripted application startup and control

Just about any UNIX could really use an init that can do all of that stuff (even if they don't have cgroups). If you can't, thanks for playing.

</comment><comment><USER13> You can skip reading this article, it isn't even finished being written, and is more of a product announcement for a systemd alternative in C++.

</comment><comment><USER14> There's also GNU Shepherd.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder why there is no bigger adoption of launchd. It's open source and works fine. Plenty of BSD's have it available for PID1 usage, and it doesn't have the feature creep most init replacements seem to grow on.

<comment><USER7> It looks like the FreeBSD folks have been doing some work[0][1] in that area. Sadly, it doesn't seem like it's actively being worked on at the moment.

FreeBSD's init system works well enough, but there's no question that it could be better.

[0] [https://wiki.freebsd.org/launchd](https://wiki.freebsd.org/launchd)

[1] [https://github.com/freebsd/openlaunchd](https://github.com/freebsd/openlaunchd)

<comment><USER16> "FreeBSD's init system works well enough, but there's no question that it could be better."

Problems or features? I haven't run in to any problems.

From a feature perspective I've run into the system policy bug where the name of a package has a minimal relationship with the name of the file read in /etc/rc.conf.d... For example, say you're installing the package named "isc- dhcp43-server", you need to add a file named /etc/rc.conf.d/dhcpd. Why not a file named something "obvious" like /etc/rc.conf.d/isc-dhcp43-server ? Sometimes the names are close enough to be Extremely annoying, like package name "logstash-forwarder" and /etc/rc.conf.d/logstash_forwarder. Obviously thats not a bug in the init system, thats a bug mis-using the init system. Or is that mis_using? Or misusingd-4.2?

Its the kind of issue thats super annoying one time when you write the ansible script and then you forget about it until next time you're writing an ansible script to do something else.

I have not run into any lack of features problems with freebsd init. Although I admit to having run some end user applications (not system stuff) using supervisord because the end users wanted a pretty web interface for restarting and logs and stuff.

<comment><USER7> The only 'problem' I've had with FreeBSD's init was when an NFS mount was unavailable that the machine hung during boot. The mount didn't have anything required for boot on it, but there were services that depended on those mounts being there. In retrospect, I probably should have added "failok,-t=10" to those fstab entries. This one was definitely my fault.

An ideal init system would have known (or been taught) that services x, y, and z depend on NFS mounts /a, /b, and /c, so the system could have started mounting those in the background and let other services (like sshd!) start up as required.

As to your point about the service names, that bugs me as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> why the c++ hate in comments? because of the memory leaks?

<comment><USER15> because of the hidden magic. Linus has a great message on a mailing list somewhere on this. Basically it boils down to: don't have hidden magic in important OS parts, it's bad and helps nobody except for people that explicitly want to use c++.

<comment><USER18> What "hidden magic"?

<comment><USER19> A C++ line does way more things than a similar looking C line. The developer may not be aware of all those extra things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >I'm making an init system

Awesome, maybe I won't have to!

>C++

Whelp, nevermind.</comment>


An update on our GDC 2020 plans - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.unity3d.com/2020/02/27/an-update-on-our-gdc-2020-plans/ <comment><USER2> At this point it might be easier to talk about who's still going. Are any big players left?

<comment><USER3> Nintendo, Microsoft, Epic Games, Valve, Adobe, Autodesk, Intel, Google, have not announced. Most of them usually have a very large presence at GDC.

<comment><USER4> Microsoft just did I think. [https://developer.microsoft.com/en- us/games/blog/gdc-and-the...](https://developer.microsoft.com/en- us/games/blog/gdc-and-the-wellbeing-of-our-teams-community)

<comment><USER5> They're not attending, though. They're doing online sessions.

<comment><USER4> Hehe yeah sorry that's what I meant, that they have announced that they are pulling out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems like bad news for GDC - I wonder if they will provide discounts on their tickets? I would like to go but sadly my work won't cover the cost for me.

<comment><USER7> I'm kind of ignoring the "human factors" but these companies are pulling out because spreading the infection would be a big PR hit for them and opens them up to law suits. I imagine discounting tickets, or any official way of encouraging more travel (especially in response to transmissions concerns) would be even worse.

GDC isn't the first big conference to get cancelled. World Congress, a huge cell phone conference held in Barcelona every year, was cancelled. It was supposed to happen Feb 24-27. But to your point, there was a #unofficialMWC2020 in response.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> btw Intel Extreme Masters XIV - Katowice 2020 (Poland) was just prohibited from letting in live audience by province governor.

</comment><comment><USER9> Arguably, an unstated reason is that they are still uprooting and replacing/fixing their rendering pipelines, standard assets, having no built- in multiplayer, and the whole dots thing, and I hear they are preparing for an ipo. They are going to be extremely busy this year

Edit: not sure why the downvoted. Their hdrp pipeline doesn't even support terrain grass yet, and you can't use line renderers without it throwing a hundred errors at you. This is a huge year of tech transition and it's been bumpy</comment>


Synthetic data startup Synthesized raises $2.8M in the UK - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/10/insurance-ai-startup-synthesized-raises-2-8m-from-iq-capital-and-mundi-ventures/ <comment><USER2> Great to see investments going into the synthetic data space.</comment>


Ask HN: How to find audience for FOSS project? - <AUTHOR> I have a not-for-profit project, that I enjoy and use extensively. However, it doesn't seem to attract a natural flow of new users. I tried to post about it on Twitter, Google Plus, Reddit, Hacker News. Each post brings tens to hundreds of visits to a landing page, few stars, occasional PRs. I'm sure there are people, who will like the project as much as I do, but how do I find them? <comment><USER2> I looked at the project and I think the issue here is unrealistic expectations.

I think you're doing pretty good in terms of attracting people to your project but, to use startup terms, there is no project-market fit.

It's a tool for people who can write their own recipes and are comfortable running a unix service.

There's a very small number of people who are even capable of using such tool.

On top of that, the value is too low. I'm capable of setting this up but I don't care enough about being e-mailed about Github API release notification (or other scenarios in your docs) to go through the hassle.

As far as constructive feedback goes. If you want to make your project more useful:

* focus on recipes. Each new recipe is potentially additional marketing. Make recipes more prominent in your docs

* make a publicly available instance where people can create accounts and use it without self-hosting. Maybe there's even a business there

* more notification options (Slack seems like a no-brainer). Or even turn it into IFTTT-like system

* keep writing more posts, blogging, using twitter, posting to HN etc. Those are valid marketing tools, just don't expect miracles.

I would still not get your hopes up. You might end up doing a lot of work and still not have a product-market fit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! It's the most elaborative advice I ever received on Kibitzr.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Try finding more specific places to share it - globally broadcasting it on twitter it will just be lost in the noise; find a specific niche community that would really appreciate your project and share there.

However, I will say I think there's probably not much "market" for your app. It seems like it's just a wrapper for what can already be done with webhooks and slack.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll try to better accent on advantages over other existing solutions. I struggled to search for a niche community, my question is a lot about it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just in case, here is the project: [https://kibitzr.github.io](https://kibitzr.github.io)</comment>


The Art of the Start: Guy Kawasaki Salesforce Developer Conference Slides - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/81611/Guy-Kawasaki-Salesforce-Developer-Conference-Slides <comment><USER2> While browsing the slides, you can listen to snippets of some talks on youtube.

The 10-20-30 rule: <http://youtube.com/watch?v=liQLdRk0Ziw>

The right motivation: <http://youtube.com/watch?v=L3xaeVXTSBg>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Without Guy talking, only moderately interesting.</comment>


Every Business Needs the Cloud, Period. - <AUTHOR> http://web.appstorm.net/general/opinion/every-business-needs-the-cloud-period/

<comment><USER2> I don't think the cloud will ever fix poorly organized, poorly ran organizations - just saying.</comment>


Ask HN: Avg. replaced Karma in top bar? - <AUTHOR> Is this a bug or feature? Am I the only one getting this? <comment><USER2> I'm not crazy about average points per comment. If you make a good comment very early on a popular post, you get a lot more karma for your comment than if you make the exact same comment late in the posts's life or worse still on an unpopular post. That's fine, exposing good things to fewer eyeballs is less valuable, and that's why you get less karma for it. But if it gets a few upvotes it's still helping someone, somewhere.

However, average karma per post gently nudges us towards avoiding circumstances where a comment might get low karma, such as on a post that is less popular.

Whereas, total karma encourages users to let a thousand flowers bloom. There's a disincentive to post anything that might get downvoted, and that's fine, but otherwise there's no harm in making a comment anywhere and not worrying about whether your seed has fallen on fertile ground.

You could "fix' things by weighting karma per post by eyeballs, or disregard average karma per post. I choose the latter course as I'm not a moderator and even if I were I'm unsure how the number relates to behaviour HN is trying to encourage.

<comment><USER3> Or you could not just worry about your karma score, or your average and just post when you think you've got something to say and say it. I don't get the obsession with karma and people getting annoyed when they get down voted. Be yourself and if people disagree so be it

<comment> mkr-hn HN is based on karma--you only get access to certain features at given thresholds. It's something you have to care about if you ever want to be able to make full use of the site.

I think a time-based system might go along with karma well. If you stay above a certain level for long enough, you get access to the next feature level.

You still have to work your way up the karma tree, but you're not doing it for the features.

<comment><USER4> wait, what are these levels? I don't know if I have ever been aware of this other than just the downvote privilege based on average comment score.

<comment> mkr-hn I don't know of any others aside from the poll privilege, but it works whether there's one or 100 levels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't worry, it's just an experiment.

Since this may cause people to care about comment averages, here's how they're calculated:

        ; Ignore the most recent 5 comments since they may still be gaining votes.
        ; Also ignore the highest-scoring comment, since possibly a fluff outlier.

        (def comment-score (user)
          (aif (check (nthcdr 5 (comments user 50)) [len> _ 10])
               (avg (cdr (sort > (map !score (rem !deleted it)))))
               nil))

Comment averages are updated asynchronously.

<comment><USER6> As part of your experiments, have you also changed the downvote threshold, or modified it to be based on average karma, not total karma? I ask because I notice that I've lost the ability to downvote - not that I'm especially irritated, as I'm of the opinion that downvotes are generally not an especially good thing, as they can encourage negative behaviors, but just wondering.

<comment><USER7> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1853529>

Downvote threshold now 500. Glad I got to the old threshold (201) in time to see how it worked.

Think my possible upvote demographic for this comment is the set of all Hacker News users between 201 and 500 karma.

<comment><USER8> I'm dissapointed its been increased. I try and only speak when I have something especially interesting to say. But I regularly vote and in my opinion, vote sensibly. Its a shame to be penalised for quietness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's how avg. karma has affected my behaviour (including its before the latest change, moreso now):

My average at this moment is 7.64. By giving all this weight to avg. karma, the message from the site to the users is clear: "higher avg. karma is better, work to improve yours". In my case, this means I should make a comment only if I expect it to get 8 upvotes or more. This in turn means that I should not respond to replies to my comments, as they rarely get to 8+. I should also not reply to articles late in the game as it's unlikely to get to the threshold also. So what will I respond to? Early threads where I feel I can make a contribution. It is also unlikely that I will make 'eccentric' comments that are a risk in terms of votes, but may help break the echo chamber as this behaviour is not encouraged. The only other case I may make a comment is when I feel strongly enough about something that I am willing to take the hit, as in the case of this comment.

Now, many will say that I should ignore karma altogether and that I should just participate in the community as if it didn't exist. For one thing, this is orthogonal to the discussion here. pg has made this change to alter the community's behaviour, therefore he expects it to have an impact. Even if I chose to disregard it, nothing will change in the general case. Secondly, poster avg. karma affects ordering of comments and therefore the impact that your comments have. So it materially affects your experience in this community, and when I have something to say that I feel needs to be said, I benefit from it having the highest possible impact. This makes me care about avg. karma in all other situations.

On the other hand, submitting articles is not subject to such pressures, so I will happily continue doing that.

<comment><USER10> > This in turn means that I should not respond to replies to my comments, as > they rarely get to 8+.

To me this is the biggest negative. A useful but non-controversial threadlet between members towards the end of a submission's life is IMO beneficial to the community overall but will be worse for average karma for participants.

I'll live with the lower average karma if it means still benefitting from the community in a way average-karma-targeting replies don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1853658>

<comment><AUTHOR> Would it be possible to include both karma and avg. on the top bar or simply chose which one to display. I like the karma on top for 2 reasons:

1\. When your karma goes up/down, it's a good indication that you might have replies to your most recent comments.

2\. Karma seems to be updated not so frequently.

I like the idea though of encouraging a good ratio vs total karma.

<comment><USER5> Ok, now both are displayed.

<comment><USER11> Now, if we could only see other peoples average karma .

Total Karma of a user can be seen on his profile page. Afaik there is no way to see another users average karma, unless he is on the leaderboard, which uses total karma as the ranking metric.

<comment><USER5> Ok, now everyone's comment avg is visible in their profile.

<comment><USER12> This discourages people from posting helpful comments that aren't likely to get many upvotes. For example,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1741408>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1485254>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1349459>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1349455>

Those are all comments by me that were helpful to the parent, but which are "punished" by the public display of avg.

<comment><USER13> More is not necessarily better though is it?

<comment><USER12> "More is better" is implicit. If the number has no meaning, then why calculate and display it?

<comment><USER13> I don't get that more is implicitly better. It is pretty clear from a naive glance at the list of leaders that there are diverse average points that correlate to diverse posting styles.

If you want it scaled to fit a continuum of "bigger is always implicitly better", a more reasonable number would be: average of (comment points/parent points)

Even if a number has no [absolute cardinal, > x] meaning, there is still a nominal information value to the datum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like it - I'd really be interested in knowing what the mean and median are for the HN community so I know if I'm contributing a lot or not pulling my weight. Maybe a (+0.65) next to it in the top nav or something to that effect?

</comment><comment><USER15> The current version ("741, 2.41") is nicer. I'm not a karma-whore, but it's nice to know where I'm at.

One feature I'd love to see also, is the # of direct replies to my comments in the head bar. Also, while we're at it, a page listing them all too. That way, I'll know if somebody replies to a comment I made last week/month/year. For example, in 'My dalliance with smart drugs - and the lesson I learned' (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1850750>), a few people have ordered some of the drugs mentioned, but the story will be dead soon, so in a few weeks, when the drugs arrive, nobody will be able to share their experiences.

<comment><USER16> One thing I _like_ a lot about HN's lack of comment replies is that a direct reply to one person is an indirect reply to the parent, and I think that's a valuable thing to keep. It saves re-hashing arguments in separate threads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For what it's worth, I hope this gets changed back. Differences in karma tend to alert me to older discussions where something is still happening. Without either that or a Reddit-style notification when replies are made, it's going to be even more difficult to identify the interesting threads and come back to them after the first visit.

<comment><USER18> That I think is one of the more odd user experiences on the site. The envelope indicator on Reddit is very tiny but extremely useful feature.

As of now, I have to re-read my threads in order to notice any updates.

<comment><USER19> I came here from reddit (I mainly browse here so it isn't as much of an issue) and was surprised that we don't have reply notification. I spent a few weeks ignoring replies because I wasn't notified of them, now my first port of call is my comments page to see if anything has been added as a reply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think this is definitely an improvement. Putting any kind of number up there is a game mechanic that will affect people's behavior. My eyes inadvertently go there every time I open the page.

An average does more to encourage the desired behavior than a total does. Even as I am about to press enter here, I can't help but think of whether this post will make that number go up or down.

<comment><USER21> In that case you are prefiltering yourself in mere anticipation of potential acceptance from others. If everyone did that, no genuine posts would ever appear: everybody would be too concerned about how much others would like them.

<comment><USER20> I'd argue that in this community, there is a better correlation between up- votes and the quality of a comment than between up-votes and how much one user likes another user.

I'd also argue that there are only a few topics that are so polarizing that people up-vote or down-vote based on the position the author takes, and that the majority of discussions here aren't as opinionated, and that the number of up-votes a post receives is based on how interesting and thought-provoking it is.

However, it appears that how to display karma is one of the more polarizing ones :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Going to the leader board and sorting the first 20 by average:

      Order	Who		Total	Ave

      2	edw519		44607	22.29

      39	grellas		11208	19

      45	wheels		10752	12.15

      4	patio11		37809	11.23

      42	mixmax		11064	10.45

      66	timr		8632	9.78

      78	chaosmachine	7829	8.8

      93	niyazpk		6885	8.28

      70	alexandros	8353	7.98

      53	jerf		9873	7.8

      1	tptacek		45718	7.49

      16	mechanical_fish	16598	7.4

      17	raganwald	16421	7.27

      97	maxklein	6751	6.68

      34	ryanwaggoner	11976	6.63

      76	_delirium	7895	6.56

      49	lionhearted	10137	6.49

      87	acangiano	7001	6.39

      22	Anon84		14263	6.24

      9	swombat		21933	6.09

      75	abstractbill	7910	6.09

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> While we're at it with the feature requests, why not add a down vote option to submitted stories? Wouldn't it help get a better signal-to-noise ratio in the "new" section? It would also prevent "throw spaghetti at the wall, and see what sticks" behavior. If this was debated in the past, I'd be curious to hear why it was not implemented.

</comment><comment><USER23> Management of "karma" in systems like Hacker News is critical to long term success. Watching the community, and the flow articles, in Reddit shows that minor changes in algorithms make a big difference.

One further thought: your "karma" in a site like HN is a very serious asset. Access to a post which reaches the front page can make or break a company. I would easily pay $100 for someone to post a choice blog post reference that would hit the front page, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

We also know about Digg's kabal of a few high-karma individuals who tilted the entire news site to the political right.

People don't game a site until it's important, and you don't find out the effects of your site's algorithms until the site becomes popular.

The owners of a site must be diligent, continue to understand how articles are floating to the front page, and be willing to make changes. We as users need to be supportive of the changes & experiments they make - even at the cost of our own "karma" (ie, real-world-dollars).

<comment><USER24> I think there are to distinct issues here. The first is how articles find their way to the front page, and the second is how individuals are rewarded (or punished) for their involvement in those stories.

The reality is that the earlier you post in a story, the more karma you're likely to collect. To me, that just encourages "first!" type posts. A poorly thought out comment in a story that makes the front page will inevitably earn more karma than a well thought out comment that doesn't.

So is this about getting better stories to the front page, or about rewarding users for their participation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I first thought it was some sort of geek joke since the top bar had my username with the number 3.14 after it. :)

"Ah, the karma point system is broken and they're showing the number pi instead, very funny."

<comment><USER26> If that happened to me, I would be thoroughly confused. (see my handle)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The thing where you can suggest something and find that pg, slaving over a hot REPL, has implemented it by the time you reload the front page is definitely a _feature_ of HN.

</comment><comment><USER28> Would it make sense to show average karma on profile page of a user too?

(This is question, NOT a feature request, as I presume that Karma at HN serves the purpose of moderating the quality of content, rather than being a redditesque user-stickiness game)

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm not sure that this will fix anything, but it'll be helpful to me.

I think those of us that care, but occasionally say something bad will be helped a lot by this. I'm always trying to ask myself "will this be upvoted" when posting things, as I'm trying to be as helpful as possible.

However, people that are actually trying to troll or can't tell that they're trolling won't really stop because of this change. I don't really have an answer, either: this is a Hard Problem.

Edit: I should also say that any of us can easily be in the "can't tell we're trolling" camp at any time; it's a per-comment thing, not an "I'm a good poster, what shall we do about those terrible bad ones!" deal.

</comment><comment><USER30> Another aspect to the average is probably timezone, as this post for example which is being written after what would be the prime time hours when most of the discussion has already occurred. I'm sure over time this would effect average.

I don't so much think average is important, possibly a derivative of it would be average amount of posts to receive down votes. We don't want to discourage people replying to threads that are falling off the front page, even if the only person who sees the post is the person that the post was in reply to, that still sounds like a net gain if it was useful or made a good point.

</comment><comment><USER31> I personally will discuss things in the same spirit of information sharing, genuineness, common sense and helpfulness that I have before and after the karma change. I'm new to HN so I don't really even know how I'm supposed to feel about the feedback from the karma. A lot of my posts which I feel are good or important aren't receiving many points, but that's ok. If I really need something, I will ask a couple of my friends who are on HN to look at it and vote it up if they like it.

<comment><USER31> okay I got my first downvote. Maybe I care a little. Was this to see if I care about my karma? Okay Mr. Downvoter, tell me ... what was wrong in what I said? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I feel that if the avg is important, user profiles should have the average in addition to the total.

</comment><comment><USER33> Adjusting the game? Trying to reduce comments and posts? I once posted a story that got 80 points. Unfortunately, the points went to the guy who posted the same story 10 minute later.

</comment><comment><USER34> I am sorry for my ignorance but Avg. of what?

<comment><USER35> Average karma per post. (Total karma divided by number of posts.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm sure it's deliberate; whether it's an improvement or not is open to debate. Personally I prefer seeing the total.

<comment><USER18> Same. I'm a bit more aware of my karma now than before.

Karma doesn't matter as much to me because I come to the site for content, but I like to comment on a lot of new links (especially entrepreneurs wanting some design critiques) which doesn't get nearly as much participation as the front page and thus has a much lower chance of gaining a lot of karma per comment. A total karma score doesn't discriminate against that but an average score does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wonder if this is going to kill the willingness of some people to participate in discussions on less popular postings. Here I also mean the ones that don't necessarily make it to the front page. I'm not sure that everyone even checks to see the new posts. Sometimes small discussions will pop up on those posts.

</comment><comment><USER38> Can we also get thread collapsing ala reddit? Even just on the first level would be awesome.

<comment><USER39> Well, hopefully not as insane as Slashdot, where I end up showing all comments, since filtering completely messes up flow of messages (content- wise).

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Anyone have a greasemonkey script to hide karma? I started writing one but got stuck on something simple. I'd like to no longer see the score at the top, because the instant HN loads my eyes gravitate towards that spot, looking for reassurance.

</comment><comment><USER41> This reminds me of the past short-lived misfeature in which your username changed color if you had high enough average karma per comment. The main difference is that, this time, your average karma is only in your own face, not everybody's.

</comment><comment><USER42> I've been advocating that sites should try h-index: [http://www.quora.com/Should-Quora-ever-consider-using-H- inde...](http://www.quora.com/Should-Quora-ever-consider-using-H-index-for- reputation)

</comment><comment><USER43> 107 comments?!? I can't understand why folks get so wrapped around the axle about these things, especially on HN. Is there some way to monetize karma that I'm not aware of?

</comment><comment><USER44> If you have a high average are your comments better? Are you bad at commenting with a low average? What should this number tell me?

</comment><comment><USER45> I just noticed that about 30 seconds ago. I'm not sure if this is intentional

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope it is not. I like to keep track of my karma because it usually correlates with a discussion below my more recent comments.

<comment><USER46> I typically watch it to remind me to check my threads for any responses. If my karma went up or down, it's likely that someone responded to one of my comments.

<comment><USER21> It would be really helpful to have an icon appear on the top bar when there are replies to my comments in articles. Clicking on the icon would give a list of articles/threads where there are replies, easily openable into a set of new tabs. Re-loading a single article would remove it from the list and when the list would be empty the icon would disappear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> feature, modified by PG based on another thread (this one, i think: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1852560>)

</comment><comment><USER48> Karma is like the star stickers that children get in kindergarden.

</comment><comment><USER49> Karma's a bitch.

</comment><comment><USER50> Be scared. Be really scared.

<comment><USER51> No.

<comment><USER50> Sorry. Halloween fail :)</comment></comment></comment>


John A. Wheeler, Physicist Who Coined the Term 'Black Hole,' Is Dead at 96 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/science/14wheeler.html?bl&ex=1208318400&en=ab3a81da1084d9b6&ei=5087%0A

<comment><USER2> "In the summers, Dr. Wheeler would retire with his extended family to a compound on High Island, Me., to indulge his taste for fireworks by shooting beer cans out of an old cannon."

Awesome! People like to shoot that kind of stuff out of PVC pipes around my parts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sad. He was working on an interesting problem relating to time and the two- slit light experiment, last I heard.</comment>