Why is the dropout rate so high for Computer Science? - <AUTHOR> https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/g7ul54/why_is_the_dropout_rate_so_high_for_computer/ <comment><USER3> Because actual Computer Science is not writing a VBA script, or putting together your own PC. There is some common misconception that Computer Science = Being good with computers.

At RIT, the Introduction to CS cources (CSCI 140 & 141) were designed to be hard to get people who assumed CS was "computers" to switch to SWE, GameDev, IT, Security, EE, or Systems. The courses weeded people out who thought CS was just programming, because the upper level courses get heavy into math, science, and theory.

There is no easy way for people to figure out if they are just interested in computers (IT), like to write software (SWE), like to make games (GameDev), or are actually into the lower level concepts such as memory management (and others). You need weed out courses to get people to think about what they actually want to do.

<comment> Spartan-S63 In that case, I admire (from the outside looking in) RIT's program because my own college conflated CS and SWE together. We did get into theory, but it was largely rooted in writing code and SWE.

<comment><USER4> Is it really admirable though? If you remove the tether of software engineering, then CS is just math.

I think what I like most in CS is when theory comes in support of SWE. Having something that is elegant and practically useful.

(And I don't know about RIT, but overwhelming, schools don't teach pure CS theory, but rather CS/SWE.)

<comment><USER3> At RIT, this statement holds true: "You don't learn how to write software in CS, you just learn it by proxy." The CS course is focused on concepts, involving writing assembly programs to understand how stuff works. And yeah, it turns into heavy mathematics towards the end, which is why I gave it up after the first year. It turned into applied theory. If the course was in Networking (for example), you would spend your time learning the theory behind it while implementing something to apply the theory. My friend did a whole bunch of this stuff in C++/Java. He never learned how to write practical software, just enough to complete the assignments.

Most people move to Software Engineering- the first two years of the CS/SWE program are virtually the same. You fairly quickly figure out which side of the fall you want to fall onto.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A paper linked in the comments there suggests that dropout rates aren't relatively super high for STEM [0]

>Attrition rates in non-STEM fields were as high as or higher than those in STEM fields. At the bachelor's degree level, students in humanities, education, and health sciences had higher attrition rates (56−62 percent) than did those in STEM fields (48 percent), and students in business and social/behavioral sciences had comparable attrition rates (50 and 45 percent, respectively) as did students in STEM fields. A closer look at how students left their fields reveals that proportionally more students in education (42 percent) and health sciences (35 percent) switched majors than did students in STEM fields (28 percent).

It goes against the trope of "STEM is just super hard and I'm smart because I made it through."

[0] [https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2014/2014001rev.pdf](https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2014/2014001rev.pdf)

<comment><USER6> or STEM has a selection bias that pre filters those who would drop out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure if I buy the interest bit. It's common knowledge that CS is lucrative and lot of students will grind through programs they don't enjoy for the paycheck at the end.

My experience was that some people are cut out to be programmers and some people are not. I wish I had a more comfortable explanation but I really don't. Some students will breathe through CS101 like it was second nature, others spend every evening in the computer lab and just barely get through it. Many more just drop out half way through.

I encountered a lot of 4.0 highschool valedictorians who struggled to get their homework done by the third or fourth week. They could memorize all the tools and intricacies of the language but were completely unable to figure out the steps between knowing what their program was supposed to do and implementing the code to do it. It's something about problem solving, I think. I suspect the real unifying trait among programmers is the ability to solve puzzles more than anything else.

I don't think our CS101 class was particularly tough although I do think our school did them a favor by not babying them through the basics so they could go on to fail their data structures class. I'll stress that these kids were very smart and most went on to have very successful careers in other majors. It's not about intelligence or ability to work hard. I think we just have a very poor understanding of what makes programming so obvious to some and so inscrutable to others.

<comment><USER8> I don't think programming is something binary - either obvious or inscrutable - but there are certainly environments which make programming seem more like one or the other to the vast majority of people who would fall in between those two extremes on the spectrum.

One such finding by Cantwell Wilson and Schrock:

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.88....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.88.4671&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

Math background and formal programming classes before their CS101 class helped, but the dominant factor was "comfort level"

* how they perceived the difficulty of the course

* how they perceived the difficulty of completing the assignments

* how they perceived understanding the concepts of the course compared to their classmates

* asking questions in class, in labs, and in office hours

Students who felt "comfortable" in these areas compared to those who did not had a strong positive correlation with grade performance.

From my own experience you get a looooot of mileage when teaching others programming or even basic computer literacy skills out of:

* making "mistakes" yourself to show them the machine won't (literally or figuratively) break

* tell them that error messages are actually the wise words of a sherpa left behind by the developers to help you up the mountain

* Following all the awesome advice in Phil Agre's How to help someone use a computer ( [https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/how-to-help.html](https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/how-to-help.html) )

I studied chess quite a bit, and one time I complained to my instructor that I was great at tactics but couldn't apply it in my games. He wisely pointed out, "That's because you know when you're in a tactical puzzle that there is a concrete solution."

For people who find computer science "obvious" I think it's in large part because they are "convinced" \- by assumption, by proof, by experience - <USER2> the thing in front of them was _designed_ to do things ... that you're in a puzzle, basically. So no matter how many wrong things you enter, bugs you encounter, hacks you endure, logic bombs you build ... there's an answer, and you can find it, key by painful key if needed.

And a lot of people feel more like they've been flung into the middle of a chess game, and there's no certainty at all that what's being asked of them can even be done.

"Convincing" people of that they're in a puzzle is the first step. If you fail it, they will always feel that computer science and software development and all things computers are "inscrutable."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it comes down to students having a different expectation of what CS is all about. Students think that if they like to use and troubleshoot computers then they will like CS. Well, surprise, CS has a lot of math and a lot of theoretical work which is a drag if you are not ready for it. Even if you are ready it's still a drag.

Math is a large component of the degree. I remember that most CS students in my school would minor in math since it only took 1 or 2 more classes to complete the minor. Any way you look at it, it's a lot of math. Many people aren't ready for it.

I think economics is one of those majors that has a large dropout rate too. Again, the amount of math is a huge reason why people drop out.

<comment><USER10> I'd be surprised that it would be because of the math - I'd think some math would be expected, I'd guess it's because you have to think for yourself and problem solve basically immediately.

Pretty much every other class just has you follow rote steps until you get to upper classman years or even graduate school. Some form of recognize the problem type and then implement the procedure of explicitly taught steps for that problem.

In computer science introductory classes you get introduced to programming languages as tools, but you have to figure out the procedures largely on your own.

I think this is the first time a lot of students have had to actually think for themselves when solving a problem, and I suspect the transition is too much for a lot of them and they drop out.

<comment><USER11> All of my friends who dropped out did so because of the math. The actual computer science courses were enjoyable. Discrete math was particularly challenging on purpose and so was our specific calculus classes we had to take. This was just to weed people out I heard. I would have guessed your reason too as that's why people didn't like AP computer science when I took that, but in my experience it seemed like math is what gets people and honestly that's what I struggled the most with too. It was just an absurd amount of work on top of my other classes and it wasn't enjoyable work either.

<comment><USER10> That's interesting - I would expect CS drop out rates to not be significantly different than engineering/STEM in general if that's the case since any of those are likely to have similar levels of math.

If CS rates are higher then I'd expect something unique to CS, if they're not then CS isn't really unique among more difficult degrees anyway.

If the person is comparing engineering degrees/dropout percentage to liberal arts degrees, well - there's a reason the liberal arts stereotype exists. Those classes are way easier.

<comment><USER12> > That's interesting - I would expect CS drop out rates to not be > significantly different than engineering/STEM in general if that's the case > since any of those are likely to have similar levels of math.

The level of math in most engineering fields stays within the bounds of applying techniques from calculus, and rarely involves proving much if anything. Most engineering degrees don't require any math courses beyond calculus and statistics. CS is one of a small number of degree programs where undergrads are likely to be exposed to a significant amount of proof theory, along with topics like algebra and graphs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A big factor people haven't mentioned yet is that job prospects for non- graduates are extremely good. I know plenty of extremely talented people who got >£100k/y offers with half a degree.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm going to guess it's because lots of people took it just because programming careers pay well, then realised they hate it or are terrible at it.

<comment><USER15> I think so too. the other side of this question is why do so many people sign up for cs majors

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> A Professor in 101 put it as: "Programming is just a tool, CS is a study that just so happens to use that tool now and then."

Without reading through every year's syllabus you will come across supprises (and very few students seem to do this)

Its expectation versus reality, CS seems to be taught very differently depending on where you go ie different levels of maths focus is a big one, another is if they teach "reality" like common industry tools, software development methodologies, software ethics etc

Often there can a problem with elitism "this course is for knowledge, not your career" that changes many students minds on if this huge amount of debt is worth it vs just finding a job right away.

<comment><USER17> As my professor put it: "Computer science is as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes."

<comment><USER18> So it's science that happens to involve a computer? Maybe I misunderstood what CS truly is. I thought it was the science of computing. And while I used a lot of books and paper to study it, without the machines it would not have been of much use.

<comment><USER3> It is the Science of Computing. Memory Management is a great example of this. You learn the theory behind memory management, physical vs virtual memory, pages, swapping, with the goal of being able to understand how modern computing handles memory. And down at that level, it's all theory and math. You don't actually need to use a computer to understand it. Something like sorting lists at an algorithmic level can be applied without a computer. Part of CS is understanding the most efficient way to sort or traverse a data structure- a computer isn't needed to apply it.

It's like Medicine. You can know how the human body works down to a cellular level without ever touching another human. It's not very useful without another human to apply it to, but the science and application of that science can be two distinct topics.

<comment><USER18> While technically true my experience is that doing makes learning easier. Whether it's chemistry labs or running modified examples through a computer the process helps things click for me.

<comment><USER3> Oh agree 100%. Theory doesn't help much if you can't apply it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think the paradox of programming is that it's both easy and hard. It's easy for a few people who manage to get over the "hump" and become self sufficient at it. But it's prohibitively hard for most people, even very bright people with technical degrees. Nobody knows why. It doesn't matter whether it's "just" programming, or the theory of programming.

"Because math" isn't a good explanation, because most programmers I've known are average at math, and yet are good programmers.

</comment><comment><USER20> Society tends to aggrandize kids these days as the "technology generation" and so on, but those kids don't have an understanding of all the devices they're using. It's just rote learning of applications and interfaces.

If you ask them how they think the underlying systems work, you'll get a simplistic estimate or something that amounts to "magic."

That's why entry level courses are designed to weed out candidates who don't know what they're getting into.

It's working as intended.

<comment><USER21> > It's working as intended.

By whom, to what end? Who is served by poorly-taught courses designed to turn students away instead of helping them become enthusiastic learners?

What's the point of a "course" that can only be passed by students who either already know the material or learn it entirely on their own without assistance?

<comment><USER20> Where I went those courses weren't exactly difficult. But they started at a low enough level to say "this is how things are built." It's not intended to frustrate students, but to help them realize what the major is about, and removes illusions they might have had about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What kind of post is this? This question presupposes that CS dropout rates are "so high," but I am not convinced.

</comment><comment><USER23> One reason is it's a discipline that you can't really start in college. Unless you have a fair amount of tech experience of some sort under your belt by then, you'll never be more than mediocre. Ideally, it's experience you got by scratching and clawing. If someone served it up to you on a platter, it's not going to be worth much.

It probably doesn't help that people are being directed into the field for reasons other than that they simply _really_ want to do it. Those people will fail at a high rate.

Finally, as many have observed, there's a knack to it. If you don't have it, you're not going to do well. (I lack the knack for a lot of other fields, and having tried a bit, there's not much way to get past that.)

</comment><comment><USER24> I took night/weekend college classes in CS, often alongside teenagers. For our computer graphics class, one kid was excited, anticipating he was going to find out how to point and click his way to make a dragon appear in a video game and that sort of thing. In class, we learned things like the Phong reflection model to calculate the illumination of a surface point. Or matrix addition, multiplication and transposition to reorient the points of an object in three dimensional space.

Even for myself, we spent a semester learning graph theory, and I had no idea why we were doing so. I understood the next semester as we worked with tree and graph data structures like heaps, DAWGs, Dijkstra's algorithm etc.

</comment><comment><USER25> As someone who just finished their undergrad in CS I can say that the majority of the people I know who dropped did so because of the workload and the nature of it. Coding up a robust LZW compression algo or a small version of BASH in a week and a half on top of other classes can make for a stressful time. But every school is different of course.

</comment><comment><USER26> Because it's hard, and a lot of people think it's about computers.

Computer science is a cleverly disguised math degree.

</comment><comment><USER27> Over the years I've heard that a number of people mistakenly go into CS, thinking they'll learn how to program and develop stuff like games and cool programs. I can imagine how disillusioned some people can become after they realize what CS really is.

</comment><comment><USER28> CS requires a lot of practice. Both in terms of theory and practical aspect.

Without it is difficult to make connection between theory and actual stuff you can run on computers.

And the subject is vast, making it difficult.

</comment><comment><USER29> When I studied ECE (focused more on EM), it seemed like anyone who couldn't manage the math/physics/engineering/etc. moved into CS.

</comment><comment><USER30> Because 2 years of experience is worth more on the job market than a degree about math concepts that are abstracted away by compilers, so why waste the time and money?</comment>


Is the secret of productivity really just doing what you enjoy? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/oct/05/secret-of-productivity-time-management-theory <comment><USER2> I don't know whether this is really an implementable method (at least for most of us), but I want it to be true.

It reminds me of the Grazing Principle, from _Beyond Success and Failure_ (Beecher):

"The Grazing Principle is at the root of all great discoveries, and it is the path of our enlightenment. It might be called 'horse sense', since every horse is a fine exponent of the principle. If you turn him loose on a roadside, he begins to graze immediately. He sees a clump of grass and starts to eat. While he is nibbling this clump, he sees another not more than a half-step away. He reaches for it, and as he is cropping it, his eye falls on yet another clump just a short step ahead of him. And that is all he does all day! But by nightfall, he is miles away from where he started. Without any thought of 'getting ahead in life', he has moved into new grazing areas continuously. And most of all, he has enjoyed every moment of the process. No fuss or anxiety. No need for rewards or recognition outside himself."

</comment><comment><USER3> No, the secret is doing what you find compelling. Sometimes that's what you enjoy but often it's difficult but worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER4> I was reading today, the key to productivity is doing what you do not enjoy. Instead of working on projects you would like to be doing, pick the ones you don't want to do and get them out of the way.</comment>


The Gig Economy (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://zerohplovecraft.wordpress.com/2018/05/11/the-gig-economy-2/ <comment><USER2> I do not do drugs because of physical and mental health reasons beyond what I am prescribed. But I have heard that the darknet markets are quite advanced in their distribution - to the point that dealing a large amount of drugs is essentially risk-free. Such pharmacists will, say, put a gram of cocaine in a soda can and place it in the woods and save the geo coordinates. Then when they sell the drugs, they give the user the geo coordinates to pick up. Furthermore they can put a piece of paper containing a code in the soda can which will allow verification of retrieval.

The internet, anonymity protocols, and cryptocurrency have made the world an interesting place...

<comment><USER3> Risk free, until you buy drugs from "undercover" police who arrest you the second you pick up that soda can in the woods!

But for the dealer, it can be quite close to Risk free if they are careful enough.

<comment><USER4> I'm always reminded of Zoz's awesome talk "Don't Fuck It Up!"[0]. There's a ton of sketchy shit you can unfortunately (or fortunately depending on who you are) do online but not getting caught is still a non-trivial task. Successfully hiding is dependent upon the people who you're trying to hide from and your sophistication in hiding.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1q4Ir2J8P8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1q4Ir2J8P8)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a work of fiction that is _tremendous_ because it may not be a work of fiction.

</comment><comment><USER6> It reminds me of Daemon[1] book by Daniel Suarez, which inspired the creation of smart contracts in Ethereum.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6665847-daemon](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6665847-daemon)

<comment><USER7> This is one of my favorite books. Do you know anything else like it?

<comment><USER6> Sadly, no. I quite recommend The Peripheral[1] by William Gibson, and Jean le Flambeur[2] trilogy if you want a modern cyberpunk with the action of a sheer scale. In the second story, the gaming community also contributes a significant part to the plot.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20821159-the- peripheral](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20821159-the-peripheral)

[2] [https://www.goodreads.com/series/57134-jean-le- flambeur](https://www.goodreads.com/series/57134-jean-le-flambeur)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's wild that this was posted 3 times last year and is only receiving front- page attention now. Fourth time's a charm eh?

<comment><USER9> This happens more often than you'd think.

If you think an item is worth posting, you can resubmit it, or ping the mods that something is high quality. They're pretty receptive. (email@example.com)

Take a look at the "new" queue when you can. There's a lot of good content, and a ton of dreck. HN's hive mind is pretty good, most of the time.

I find it helpful to poke through particularly good users' submissions to see what they've offered up that hasn't been voted up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How do I get access to the other pieces on this blog? This is great.

<comment><USER11> [https://zerohplovecraft.wordpress.com/](https://zerohplovecraft.wordpress.com/)

<comment><USER10> Thanks, but several of the posts are password protected. I was wondering what the deal was with that. Googling didn't turn up a Patreon or some other way to get access. I guess they just aren't for the public?

<comment><USER12> you can follow 0HP on twitter: [http://www.twitter.com/0x49fa98](http://www.twitter.com/0x49fa98)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Brilliant. Worthy of a Hugo. And at the same time, I feel like I've been infected by it.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is the best thing I've ever found on Hacker News.

<comment><USER15> I actually enjoyed the prose, but his/her understanding of what a blockchain is grossly inaccurate if you actually understand the tech. Its really just buzzword laden non-sense, if I'm honest, which I'm willing to overlook for entertainment reasons.

But that aside, its pretty witty. 'Hikkikomorphically cacooned' is a phrase I long to be able to use in a sentence now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> whoa

</comment><comment><USER17> This is one of the most frightening things I've ever read.

</comment><comment><USER18> Reminds me of the writings of Jorge Luis Borges.</comment>


Customizing Your Bash Prompt  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.twistedcode.org/2008/03/customizing-your-bash-prompt.html <comment><USER2> There are all sorts of easy to use online prompt generators.

[http://xta.github.io/HalloweenBash/](http://xta.github.io/HalloweenBash/)

[https://ddg.gg/?q=bash+prompt+generator](https://ddg.gg/?q=bash+prompt+generator)

But it's not so difficult to customize your prompt yourself. Read the man page for whichever shell you're using. I don't care for any of that oh-my-zsh, or powerline stuff, etc.

Back in the early 1990's, when I did most of my work in MS-DOS, I used ANSI.SYS and escape sequences to add colors, info, and positioning, and the same basics still apply in most of today's Unix-like systems.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've gone with Powerline, here is a sample[1]. I like it because it shows me what branch I'm on when I'm inside a git repo and whether or not I need to commit. The theme I'm using is Tomorrow Night Bright[2].

[1] - [http://i.imgur.com/86B9B5N.png](http://i.imgur.com/86B9B5N.png)

[2] - [https://github.com/chriskempson/tomorrow- theme](https://github.com/chriskempson/tomorrow-theme)

<comment><USER4> Wow, that's quite busy. Have you checked out `tmux-powerline`? I know it's deprecated but it still works very well.

Here's a screenshot of my setup for reference: [http://cl.ly/image/3m2k1p1T2S2Y](http://cl.ly/image/3m2k1p1T2S2Y)

<comment><USER3> I haven't checked that out, but I definitely will. What happens when you go into a directory that's very deep in the tree?

<comment><USER4> The working directory will be truncated with ellipses a specified length. The default is 40 but it, of course, can be changed. :)

[https://github.com/erikw/tmux- powerline/blob/master/segments...](https://github.com/erikw/tmux- powerline/blob/master/segments/pwd.sh#L7)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're interested in oh-my-zsh-style themes and plugins for bash, checkout bashit.

[https://github.com/revans/bash-it](https://github.com/revans/bash-it)</comment>


Amazon cloud outage takes down Netflix, Instagram, Pinterest, & more - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/29/amazon-outage-netflix-instagram-pinterest/

<comment><USER2> From the article - "The outage underscores the vulnerabilities of depending on the public cloud versus using your own data centers."

No it doesn't. It underscores the vulnerabilities of not understanding your hosting and accepting the "no outages" slogans of ANY cloud. A single data centre is always susceptible to outages like this, it doesn't matter who owns it. If any of those sites had owned a single data centre that was hit by storm damage, the impact would be the same. I know this is supposed to be the year of the cloud backlash but even so...

<comment><USER3> I thought both Heroku & Netflix had fairly robust multi-AZ deployments, so I'm hoping they share any of their learnings from this outage.

Either way, that quote is ridiculous.

<comment><USER4> Netflix does, but considering the time, running out of capacity after loosing a zone might have been more of an issue.

<comment><USER3> Definitely a possibility - I was actually watching Netflix when my phone started rattling with all the alerts.

I was able to finish out the episode, so their CDN was working for the actual media, but everything else was dead for me.

Another useless anecdote: A coworker was watching on his xbox, and it apparently cut mid-stream for him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's funny, the more I think about I think this is actually a good reason to host on the cloud. From a technical standpoint it's terrifying to see all these big players down at once. But what the average user likely sees is "something is wrong with the internet". So rather than seeing that your site X is down and users being angry with you, users are probably likely to think "well instagram is also down, oh and so is netflix, something big must be broken, I'll check back later" the same way users don't blame you if the power goes out.

<comment><USER6> Interesting thought. A couple users may be empathetic because the actual problem is somewhat visible but I'm not sure if that is an real benefit. It is of course a negative perception when they see that youtube is up and then perceive all the down sites as being less technically competent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's interesting how AWS outage didn't take down Amazon.com.

<comment><USER8> That would be because Amazon.com doesn't use AWS.

<comment><USER9> No, it doesn't. Even the name servers of Amazon.com belong to UltraDNS and Dynect, instead of their own Route 53.

<comment><USER10> Route53 uses UltraDNS.

<comment><USER9> No it's wrong.

> "I also wanted to clarify that Route 53 is an Amazon-built and operated > service. It is not a re-branding of a third party DNS service. Over time > you'll see various parts of Amazon move over to use Route 53."

[https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=209251#...](https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=209251#209251)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you are hosting on a server(as everyone is) it will, at some point fail. You have to choose a service that has minimal failure combined with quick resolution times. I think AWS fits this description...

<comment><USER12> AWS has had far more failures than my servers at any data center ever have. Running in 'the cloud', you're taking all the unavoidable points of failure (power, network, hardware) and adding in a bunch of proprietary ones (all the software that manages EC2, EBS, ELBs, internal routing between them, etc) that have all failed spectacularly at least once already with hours- to days-long resolution times.

<comment><USER13> Yes, risk still exists, and risk profile shifts a little, but I find it to be a toward the better. Here's an anecdote:

I run applications on EC2 and RDS. I'm using Oracle. AWS has recently introduce Multi-AZ Oracle, but I haven't enabled yet. Before it was available, though, I set up a poor-man's procedure that consists of running data exports and dropping them on S3.

Now, when everything went to hell in the east, I lost an RDS instance. I couldn't do point-in-time restore, and I couldn't snapshot (both are still pending since 7 AM or so).

Luckily, I was able to spin up an RDS instance in the west, pull down the latest data from S3, and do an import. I repointed my apps at the new database, and now I'm back up.

The process took about 45 minutes. Setting up the backup scripts took about 20 minutes about 2 years ago. Now I'm just sitting on my hands waiting for the AWS ops team to fix everything. This is work I'd normally be scrambling to do myself. I'm quite happy to let those talented folks deal with it. When it's all back up and running, I'll check integrity and consistency, and I might have to restore some interim data, but for now I'm operational.

I'm sure there are worse scenarios, but the major outage last year and in the past 24-hours were quite easily mitigated.

There's something to be said for being part of a giant machine. AWS really is utility computing, so even the small guys get the benefit by virtue of standing next to the big guys.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Instagram is still down! However Netflix & Pinterest seem to be back.

</comment><comment><USER15> Google, MS, Rackspace etc. ought to give a good look at all the middle layer libraries like boto, and support them to make it a matter of configuration to switch cloud service providers.

This already works well for email providers.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's to keeping all the eggs in one basket!

</comment><comment><USER17> Just use rackspace already, they hardly have an outage.

</comment><comment><USER18> If Pinterest is down, then there may be a net gain for the internet.</comment>


Popcorn time is back - <AUTHOR> http://www.time4popcorn.eu/

<comment><USER2> Caution: This is the closed source fork and not the fork from [http://get- popcorn.com](http://get-popcorn.com) or [https://github.com/popcorn- official/popcorn-app](https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-app).

Copied from Reddit ([http://www.reddit.com/r/PopCornTime/comments/232xmf/a_list_o...](http://www.reddit.com/r/PopCornTime/comments/232xmf/a_list_of_popcorn_time_clones_and_android/)):

        We advise you to not install Time4Popcorn. We will not link to their software anymore from this thread, i did not want to take a side in this but since the application seems to send data to unknown servers and they steal code from other projects... That is what has made me decide not to delete it off the list. No that would not help anyone, i would like everyone to know how bad of a piece of software time4popcorn currently is. Their Mac version currently even links to the Official Popcorn Time version, which is odd? Why would they do that? Oh yes because they can't create their own versions. I have collected several comments from our community about the current suspious activity that time4popcorn has shown us.
        I advise you to not install or to delete the app immediatly if you did install it. The developers do have a chance of getting back here in the list, they can send me a PM and prove that i am several other people are completely wrong. On this moment we will strongly advise against the use of this software. We will also delete any and every link to their website and or download pages.
        Be warned!
        @cesasol commented:
        After checking the source code, i could see there is no software beyond nodewebkit under popcorn4time binary, instead they work on this "cloud" http://app.time4popcorn.eu/[25] *deactivate js before going to this link And there is a couple of binary files with the extension php, wich is more than suspicius. After checking in a vbox, they send random data to that server and another two, not only the torrent seeding.
        @Sharkiller a Popcorn Time dev has also showed his doubts:
        @Foxito they steal code, dont release them, put features that dont work only grow up their userbase who knows for what. for weeks they do interviews for a lot of pages to gain more and more userbase even when their code never works(tvshows). in the code you can find suspicious images to track the users, they don't even are from analytics. after a few weeks they "release" a source code in github that is a clone of the popcorn-official repo, even the links go to that repo. with the commits of the same day. They don't even do a fork only a renamed code. If that is not fishy to you then use it.
        @traplover69 commented: The download links on http://get-popcorn.com/download/mac[26] and http://time4popcorn.eu/Popcorn-Time-0.2.9-Mac.tar.gz[27] point to the same file. Both give a shasum of fc00796208ca412b01c3715fb44af191d937ba8a. Any ideas whats happening here?
        So be carefull with Time4Popcorn

<comment><USER3> Better formatted:

—8<–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—

 _We advise you to not install Time4Popcorn. We will not link to their software anymore from this thread, i did not want to take a side in this but since the application seems to send data to unknown servers and they steal code from other projects... That is what has made me decide not to delete it off the list. No that would not help anyone, i would like everyone to know how bad of a piece of software time4popcorn currently is. Their Mac version currently even links to the Official Popcorn Time version, which is odd? Why would they do that? Oh yes because they can 't create their own versions. I have collected several comments from our community about the current suspious activity that time4popcorn has shown us.

I advise you to not install or to delete the app immediatly if you did install it. The developers do have a chance of getting back here in the list, they can send me a PM and prove that i am several other people are completely wrong. On this moment we will strongly advise against the use of this software. We will also delete any and every link to their website and or download pages.

Be warned!

@cesasol commented:

After checking the source code, i could see there is no software beyond nodewebkit under popcorn4time binary, instead they work on this "cloud" [http://app.time4popcorn.eu/[25]](http://app.time4popcorn.eu/\[25\]) _deactivate _js before going to this link And there is a couple of binary files with the extension php, wich is more than suspicius. After checking in a vbox, they send random data to that server and another two, not only the torrent seeding.

@Sharkiller a Popcorn Time dev has also showed his doubts:

@Foxito they steal code, dont release them, put features that dont work only grow up their userbase who knows for what. for weeks they do interviews for a lot of pages to gain more and more userbase even when their code never works(tvshows). in the code you can find suspicious images to track the users, they don't even are from analytics. after a few weeks they "release" a source code in github that is a clone of the popcorn-official repo, even the links go to that repo. with the commits of the same day. They don't even do a fork only a renamed code. If that is not fishy to you then use it.

@traplover69 commented: The download links on [http://get- popcorn.com/download/mac[26]](http://get-popcorn.com/download/mac\[26\]) and [http://time4popcorn.eu/Popcorn- Time-0.2.9-Mac.tar.gz[27]](http://time4popcorn.eu/Popcorn- Time-0.2.9-Mac.tar.gz\[27\]) point to the same file. Both give a shasum of fc00796208ca412b01c3715fb44af191d937ba8a. Any ideas whats happening here?

So be carefull with Time4Popcorn_

—8<–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—–—

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> New version, new domain name, new github repo. I've already lost count on how many there were.

Perhaps _PirateBay_ can host it and then it won't have to move so much.

On plus side, TV Shows are surely to attract a wider user base.

</comment><comment><USER5> Which is the real Popcorn Time, [http://get-popcorn.com/](http://get- popcorn.com/) or [http://www.time4popcorn.eu/](http://www.time4popcorn.eu/)?

<comment><USER6> The real and only one is [http://get-popcorn.com/](http://get-popcorn.com/)

Time 4 Popcorn is closed source and probably full of spywares.

</comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Does this need to be posted every single time the site disappears and reappears?</comment>


Explainshell – match command-line arguments to their help text - <AUTHOR> http://explainshell.com/ <comment><USER2> What a great idea. One of those clever ideas that are immediately obvious once you see them (but not before).

I find man pages a chore to read, and that has definitely held back my skills, so if this actually works—i.e., you can type in any command and get a readable layout of what it does—I can definitely see using it.

Edit: It might be tricky to make this robust enough across all valid commands. I tried a few variations and they didn't seem to work as well. Beware the cherry-picked example.

Also, everyone asking for pipe support is dead on. It's how most commands actually get used, so it's really needed. Plus it would take this tool to a whole new level of coolness.

Edit 2: Who made this? I think if you wanted, you could turn it into a new kind of learning environment for the shell. It already is that, in embryo, but there are a thousand directions it could go. The trouble with learning the command line is the overwhelming mass of information with no way of navigating it or distinguishing what's important from arcane detail. What's badly needed is a simple organizing principle that feels good to work with and lets you learn what you care about right now (and hides the rest). You've got that here.

An it-just-works interactive tool is a really promising way to go. There are countless tutorial articles and books, but they're one-size-fits-all, and once they get too complicated they suffer from the same problems that man pages do. A tool that can actually be used to play with and learn interactively would be a real contribution. But it might be a lot of work to turn this into that. I doubt that the corpus of "all standard Unix commands plus all their options" can be sucked up and re-presented by any generic script; the variations are too unpredictable. There would probably have to be a lot of attention put into important special cases, and a lot of careful design to get it to it-just- worksness. And that is a must-have for beginners.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for reviewing it.

I definitely went into this with a 'let's start with something good and useful for as many commands as possible', so I haven't focused on accuracy for those edge cases. But from what I played with it so far, results have been pretty good.

Agree again on the pipe et al. support. It's not easy, hence why I haven't added this right out of the gate. I basically have to build a parser for bash, although I can probably get away with handling only a small subset of it that is interesting in this context, such as pipes, redirections, etc. I still have to figure out how to display multiple commands, because chunking them all in one page isn't going work visually.

I'll be happy to hear more about turning this into a learning environment. It might not work for this particular tool, but maybe it can use the foundations.

<comment><USER4> Is it possible to use the parsing in this to generate autocomplete rules?

<comment><USER3> It's possible, but I'm not sure how robust it will be. There are a lot of heuristics being used to guess what the options are, if they expect an argument, etc. So when feeding it with a command that was typed by someone, which is most likely correct, it's fairly easy to look up each option in all the possibilities. Not to mention some commands have a very complicated set of rules (e.g. find), and the position of some options is context sensitive, which explainshell isn't (it could be, but that would require a lot of manual work).

It's interesting because I had an idea once to do the opposite: see if explainshell could use completion files from bash/zsh/fish as another source of options besides the man page.

<comment><USER4> Completion scripts from bash are far too much of a kludge to extract information from.

Most tools are written in C, and the standard way to parse options in C is with getopt(3) or getopt_long(3). I actually looked into searching the compiled binary for the getopt_long structure, but that wasn't so easy. Since these functions have information on all the possible options, it would be nice if there was a standard way to get them to spit out the option list.*

See my reply to your comment in another thread. It would be a killer app to have better autocomplete support, but I can't offer assurance that it's feasible.

* I had another idea: you could use ELF tricks (LD_PRELOAD) to load a different version of getopt/getopt_long that would spit out the specifications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Author here, thanks for the feedback guys!

\- adding support for shell syntax is definitely the next thing on my todo list. It's a bit tricky since Python's shlex (which I'm using to parse the command line) is fairly limited in functionality and pretty much only handles quotes. So I'll have to write a mini bash parser which isn't trivial.

\- the automatic options extractor isn't perfect and requires manual corrections here and there

\- add an API for command line tools

I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have.

<comment><USER5> I'm a pretty fair hand with regexes, if you would like any assistance, please feel free to drop me a line.

<comment><USER3> The regex is already getting out of hand ;) [https://gist.github.com/idank/6382427](https://gist.github.com/idank/6382427)

At some point I wanted to convert it to a DFA because I thought it will give me more control and flexibility and be more maintainable over time. The thing to look out for is not make it too permissive so it starts catching things that aren't really options.

<comment><USER4> The occasional tool, like find, is beyond the capabilities of a DFA, because it's based on a context free grammar (e.g., it counts parentheses).

<comment><USER6> True for official regular expressions, but not for the ones used in most programming languages. [http://nikic.github.io/2012/06/15/The-true-power-of- regular-...](http://nikic.github.io/2012/06/15/The-true-power-of-regular- expressions.html)

<comment><USER4> True. Perl-style regexes have grown capabilities far beyond regexes in formal language theory. Note that I was referring to DFAs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those like me who want to call it from their zsh, add the following to your .zshrc:

explain(){ curl -s $(echo "[http://explainshell.com/explain/$1?args=${@:2}"](http://explainshell.com/explain/$1?args=${@:2}") | sed -e 's/ /+/g') | sed -n '/<pre/,/<\/pre>/p' | sed -s 's/<[^>] _> //g' | sed -e 's/^ _//g;s/ *$//g' | grep '.' | cat }

and call it, for example like: explain git status -s

<comment><USER8> Perhaps I'm missing something, but this doesn't work for me:

% explain git status -s

explain:1: no such file or directory: [http://explainshell.com/explain/git?args=status](http://explainshell.com/explain/git?args=status)

curl: no URL specified!

sed: -e expression #1, char 11: unterminated `s' command

<comment><USER7> It's probably hn's formatting. I just tried copy/pasting from my post and I get the same error.

Try copying it from there: [https://gist.github.com/ekyo/6383547](https://gist.github.com/ekyo/6383547)

I can't edit my previous post anymore, if someone can maybe add something like "EDIT: copy/paste friendly version [https://gist.github.com/ekyo/6383547"](https://gist.github.com/ekyo/6383547") or better, fix the formatting so it works...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> ... I want this integrated into the shell on my ubuntu machine. Give me a big freaking sidebar panel with this thing on it.

<comment><USER10> Agreed something like

        explain tar xzvf archive.tar.gz

would be great.

Author: Do you have an API?

<comment><USER11> Once the source is released, it should be possible to make such a client without needing to connect to a web service. These breakdowns are figured out by the Python code written by the author.

<comment><USER10> That's of course great but as a child of our time I want my explain command _now_ ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very nice!

p.s. it looks like pipe is not supported:

[http://explainshell.com/explain/cat?args=text.txt+%7C+grep+-...](http://explainshell.com/explain/cat?args=text.txt+%7C+grep+-v+%22this%22)

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice. Positional arg descriptions are probably hard to automatically find - e.g. [http://explainshell.com/explain/tr?args=-sd+G-Z](http://explainshell.com/explain/tr?args=-sd+G-Z)

<comment><USER3> Yes they are, and most of the time require manual tagging. I fixed 'tr', try again ;).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks awesome. Is it possible to list explanations in the same order as they are in the command line? For example, options for "tar xzv" are listed in the "v, z, x" reverse order.

<comment><USER3> The order of help blocks is determined by their position in the command and if they're on the left or right side of the lines.

If you always keep the order, lines would have to cross each other which looks less pretty and pretty confusing.

<comment><USER15> When I resize my browser the display order switches back and forth from xzv to vzx. Their lines connect on the left side.

In the original order the lines cross.

The f-argument is always on the bottom with its line on the right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is no substitute for reading source code.

grep -A20 -ri "usage:" src-directory

should get you started. But if you rely on looking only at usage(), you'll miss "undocumented" features. Try reading the OpenSSH source for example. There is at least one undocumented option.

If the source code is so voluminous and the organization of the project so convoluted that it is prohibitive to scanning through the source to figure out what the program does, then that in itself tells you something.

The smaller the program (and its source code), the easier it is to master it, in my humblest opinion.

Generally, the larger the program, the higher the probability of bugs and vulnerabilities. This, you might say, is the cost of adding "features".

I prefer small programs where I can read the source code quickly and easily. They need not have many features. The less output the better. As long as they do one thing well enough, and reliably.

Not to mention what it does to ease of use every time you add more "features" to a program. Look at the OpenSSL binary. It is like they are going for the World Record on the number of options you can cram into a single command line program. Insane.

</comment><comment><USER17> Any reason why this is stuck in browser? I've got most oif the raw data (man pages) already on my machine and the closer this is tied to command line the more likely I am to use it. For instance I'd love to be able to do;

      explain !!

in my shell to work out what just happened!;)

Good work by the way.

<comment><USER18> This should work:

        #!/bin/bash
        cmd="$(cut -d ' ' -f 1 <<< "$@" )";
        args="$(cut -d ' ' -f 2- <<< "$@" )";
        url="http://explainshell.com/explain/$cmd?args=$args"
        explanation="$(curl -s $url | grep '<pre' | sed -E 's/<\/?[a-z]+(\ [a-z]+=\"[a-z0-9]+\")*>//g' | sed -E 's/^\ +//g')"
        echo "$explanation"

Example:

        ~$ tar xzvf archive.tar.gz
        ~$ explain !!
        explain tar xzvf archive.tar.gz
        The GNU version of the tar archiving utility
        -x, --extract, --get
        -z, --gzip, --gunzip --ungzip
        -v, --verbose
        -f, --file ARCHIVE

Save in /usr/local/bin. Gist: [https://gist.github.com/backus/6387485](https://gist.github.com/backus/6387485)

<comment><USER17> Beautiful. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Absolutely fantastic. That's going to be SO helpful.

I really like what you've done with the colour coding and the lines to link up the boxes of explanation with each argument, but it is still a little difficult to see what's going on when you've got lots of args. With an example long command line [1] (the sort this is really useful for) I kept having to scroll up and down from the whole command line to the explanation.

Perhaps when you do the hover over, rather than just greying out the other options, you could hide all of them and only show the relevant one. It would be right at the top, on the same screen as the argument (assuming you had the res). You'd get explanation of the particular arg, along with it's position and context.

[1] rsync -vzrc -e ssh --exclude .svn --exclude *~ code/ target:/root/application

</comment><comment><USER20> Loved it.

Just a tip: when the command got a long man page you can't really see the line matching the option in the top of the page and the man section down on screen.

If you guys could keep the command on the top of the screen even when scrolled down that would be superb.

<comment><USER3> I actually experimented with that but getting the lines to display correctly when scrolling was tricky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is amazing! Reminds me of [http://www.regexper.com/](http://www.regexper.com/).

I hope you made it maintainable, there's going to be a lot of feature requests coming your way :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Awesome, thanks for that.

I almost never use my browser full screen, often it's snapped with 50% width. In opera chrome and firefox, the width is a tad too big for that. It'd be nice if it was more fluid.

Well that improvement wouldn't be that useful for me tough, I'm going to integrate your website in zsh and emacs if someone doesn't do it before me.

Also, if you can make it so that the input area is still there when showing results, it saves a frequent 'back' in the case someone wants to check multiple commands.

<comment><USER3> Will do, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is really awesome, but what would be awesome as well would be the inverse, which is the ability to find potentially relevant options from man pages based on keywords.

This site is a great idea for when you want to find out what some command line black magic is, but the inverse would be great for "I know this command line tool can do this thing, but I don't know the options".

</comment><comment><USER23> Hey, this is great! I've got a few ideas for improvements:

1\. Fix the layout. At least in Safari, you can only see the beginning and ends of the colored lines.

2\. Pipe support (as mentioned by Ecio78)

3\. Additional Unix flavors. Red Hat and Mac OS X would probably be the top suggestions.

<comment><USER3> I don't have a Mac but I hope once the code is open someone will jump on it.

Re other flavors: do you know if there are easy ways to get a dump of all man pages, similar to Ubuntu's man page archive?

<comment><USER23> It would probably be easiest to extract them directly by running the OS in a VM. But I suppose crawling them is your next best option.

Fedora: [http://linuxmanpages.net/manpages/](http://linuxmanpages.net/manpages/)

OS X: [https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Simple script to call it from command line. Uses bash, works from other shells as long as its installed. Require curl to be installed.

[https://gist.github.com/ekyo/6389069](https://gist.github.com/ekyo/6389069)

</comment><comment><USER24> How well does it handle differences between various shells and their common tools?

Since it's called "explain /shell/", I just had to try inputting some basic powershell as a test - Sadly it's not supported yet :P

<comment><USER25> At least for PowerShell such a thing should be trivial as the shell knows about its commands and parameter parsing is consistent for every command.

I'll probably try hacking something together on the weekend for PS.

<comment><USER24> Awesome, thank you! :D

<comment><USER25> Not progressing as fast as I'd like. Stumbled over a few roadblocks regarding parameter binding. The rules are complex (and underdocumented, I might add. E.g. why man gci displays three parameter sets, or why -fi always binds to -filter and not to -file is unknown to me. CmdletInfo.ResolveParameter sounds like being great in theory but is unusable in practice. At least when I'm done I might be able to revisit parameter binding in Pash. Preliminary repo is at [https://github.com/ygra/ExplainPS](https://github.com/ygra/ExplainPS) – once parameter binding is done the rest is just fetching information from Get-Help which is the actual trivial part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It appears to be incorrect with oddities like ps aux, which isn't the same as ps -a -u -x since -u expects a user list (and then reads in -x as a user). But this is a weird case because of backward compatibility.

</comment><comment><USER27> A nice-to-have would be to have explanations for non-option arguments: for example, for "sed -e s/foo/bar/", give "replace foo with bar", and even feed foo into a regex explainer.

</comment><comment><USER28> The fish shell does some (if not all) of this interactively at the terminal.

<comment><USER29> What's the name of this functionality in fish? Might be worthwhile to install it just for that.

<comment><USER28> Not sure, but you just hit tab, i.e.:

        echo -<tab>
        --help        (Display help and exit)  -E  (Do not use backslash escaped characters)  -n  (No newline)
        --version  (Display version and exit)  -e         (Use backslash escaped characters)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Nice. It's a shame it can't break down the more complex ssh/scp parameters such as -L [bind_address:]port:host:hostport Those are the commands I'm _always_ Googling...

</comment><comment><USER31> Oh wow, this is great. Many thanks! I intend to use it :) I see you already have most of my requests listed, so I'll just leave it at that and say "awesome work".

</comment><comment><USER32> Such a very useful service, thanks! :)

It would be nice if it could detect inner commands and do a recursive parsing. Example command:

find . -name ".txt" -exec iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 {} \;

</comment><comment><USER33> Cool I also like it!

A couple of things that it should also support (or simply ignore):

\- shell variables

\- shell constructs (for, while, | & > ...)

\- arguments followed by values without space (e.g. gcc -O3 -lmath ...)

<comment><USER3> An argument to an option without a space does work. When they don't it's because the option was incorrectly analyzed as having no arg.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Which open source license would you recommend I use?

<comment><USER34> The GNU GPL.

It allows you to share your code with other people who share their code, but not people who don't. Afterall, why would you want to share your work with someone who doesn't share theirs?

Great work, thouGh. Seriously, nice job!

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> this is super cool.

curious where to submit bug reports? for the heck of it I put in a long ffmpeg command; it detected the "-i" argument twice and the lines look a bit crazy.

here's the line to reproduce the error: ffmpeg -i infile -s 640x480 -vcodec h264 -r 30 -b 450k -profile:v baseline -tune film -bufsize 2000k -maxrate 550k -an -t 16.0 -passlogfile infile.mp4.passlog -pass 1 -y outfile.mp4

<comment><USER3> Hi,

I'll open source the code sometime in the future so github would be the place for bug reports.

As for long commands, yeah they're a bit crazy right now since they get wrapped. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to display it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is freaking amazing for educational purposes. I wish I had this years ago in software engineering.

</comment><comment><USER37> Will show this tool to my students in the Shell course. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER38> Wow! This is a genuinely new and very useful idea! Congrats

</comment><comment><USER39> Useful, thanks!

I will send this to a friend who needs to learn the basics.

</comment><comment><USER40> Great idea, nicely done. Went to my bookmarks!

</comment><comment><USER41> brilliant!

</comment><comment><USER42> awesome! very good job!</comment>


A Perl test suite that checks everything is ok in your home dir - <AUTHOR> http://g14n.info/2013/10/prove-improved/

<comment><USER2> I don't get it. Is this intended to run unit tests on all my personal shell scripts and dohickeys? Or to run things like make sure none of my co-workers typed something silly into my .zshrc?

Serious question.

<comment><USER3> It looks like you write your own tests, in the folder ~/t/ and this is a wrapper for running them all.

"Now it's time to fill your t/ folder with tests, you can start with a simple one: t/01_compile_scripts.t. It checks that every Perl script in the bin/ folder compiles. It has the following content. "

and

"Every test you will add in your ~/t folder will run every hour. App::Prove remembers failed tests, using ~/.prove file, and after login you will run only failed tests, so you will know which problems are going on."</comment></comment>


Marketing is what hurts startups. If you have a loyal tribe how hard can it be? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.omgponi.es/post/131741428/marketing-startups-without-a-tribe <comment><USER3> I think this problem is specific to today's web: I don't think slashdot and yahoo (or google) had a tribe.

That is, another approach to marketing is to build something that is just really good - much better than the alternatives. But this is extraordinarily hard to do, and it's much easier if you're in early, before it's mined out.

That said, whenever it seems that a market is stable and _everything that can be invented has been invented_ , that's the very time that is ripe for something unexpected, perhaps coming out of left-of-field (eg. a disruptive tech).

</comment><comment><USER4> Hey. What happened to good old fashioned "make something people want" - <USER2> tribe will build itself, as long as you're solving someone's problem! :)

</comment><comment><USER5> someone had to write it down. brilliant. perfect question to ask is if you can't build the tribe, then what?

<comment><USER6> -social proof your service, so it looks like you already have a tribe (reddit)

-make something so useful that a tribal following is inevitable (duckduckgo)

-make a viral app that caters to human vices (hotornot)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> No one is making millions selling water in a desert.

<comment><USER8> Well, they build Las Vegas out of an Oasis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is true that a lot of startups underestimate the value of marketing ("creating a sale for tomorrow"). It seems that most people's idea of marketing is to contact bloggers back to back.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's not only buzz-creation. Website copy and usabilty is often overlooked or bad executed.</comment>


Ask HN: What do I need to get complete screenshots of my app from a designer? - <AUTHOR> I'm working on a web app, for which I have a very good idea of what it is supposed to work but no clue at all regarding how things should appear on the app or how would be a good way to interact with the app. What would I need in order to be able to hire a designer or ux in order for them to create screenshots or high fidelity mock-ups of the app? A specification sheet? Is there an industry format? Plain English description of the app, goals and features?<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> There is no standard format. Plain english is good, just make sure you put any constraints together up front too. What I like to do is give pre-conditions, communication points, actions, errors and goal of each page I think I need -- and tell them to feel free to challenge or adjust as needed. This gives them basic data points of what your goals are per page, and the pre/post conditions tell them how to get to the goal of the page in the least number of steps and what designs might be best. Also, if you know you have a data structure you have to present that is complex and would work best in a certain style of control, tell them that up front so they can design around it. This can make a major difference in time to market.

And as new_guy said, always point them toward a few different apps/websites you like the design for so they can get a feel for the design.

Also, if you have a color pallet give it to them early, like if you have any brand standards etc, then they can incorporate that all up front. I have had many designers on my staff over the years and this is a major sticking point for them when clients would give us projects. It sounds stupid, but sometimes you can't just change the color in a design and have it look right, it requires a different layout etc. So just be up front if there is something to avoid or something you really want.

</comment><comment><USER3> Plain English will be fine, it's literally their job to translate that into design. Also point them to similar apps that do what yours does so they can get a feel for the space.</comment>


Mint.com removes users ability to delete accounts - <AUTHOR> https://mint.lc.intuit.com/questions/1913014-account-deletion-not-working <comment><AUTHOR> They moved it from inside their app to inside the intuit website and ask that you wait 45 days to view any data they might be deleting, and then actually deleting the account takes another 45 days. In other words to preview your data and then delete it takes 90 days.

All of their help articles still reference the now removed method of account deletion. How is it legal for companies storing massive amounts of personal information to not have a reasonably working account deletion mechanism? and out of date help articles to boot.

Is this a common practice these days?</comment>


Left Job Today, looking for co-founder - <AUTHOR>

Today I left my job, and I am looking for a co-founder in SF to define a new social media company.
I have been working in social media for a number of years now, and it's time to make something happen.  With the right co-founder I am confident I can raise money quickly on the ideas I have.  I nearly raised money before the crash, and now that capitol is flowing again I think the time is right.
I have worked at Manpower as a consultant to the VP of Global Solutions developing their social media strategy.  I worked at Hi5 and MySpace working on OpenSocial and OpenID, and just left a growing company like Unity, because I believe that Social Media is just tipping the iceburg and i was not going to be able to purse it there.  You should be very passionate about social media.
I am a charismatic guy and love building stuff.  I have worked at every layer of the software and systems stack from hardware to front-end design.  I am weakest at the systems infrastructure level, so, I know what a shell script is and can read and hack at one, but I would not claim to be an expert at writing them.  The perfect co-founder loves linux, and knows how to build back-end infrastructure.  They should know mysql, but have been experimenting with Cassandra, MongoDB or something similar in the NoSQL/ Graph space.
So, if you are interested in grabbing coffee ASAP my email is email@example.com <comment><USER2> Not sure that I'm the right fit for you, but we should meet up. I left the game industry in November, and I'm about to launch a social/mobile web startup. Might just be good to trade stories/knowledge.

<comment><AUTHOR> sure, send me an email and we can meet this weekend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What is social media? Can you be a bit more specific?

</comment><comment><USER4> Congratulations on your newfound independence! I would highly suggest watching the Founder Dating events—they definitely seem like something you'd be interested in.

</comment><comment><USER5> David,

I have been looking for a co-founder with your profile for my start-up as well. Looks like you have complementary strengths. We should at the least talk. Let me know if you would like to chat up and I will send you my contact info.

my email is firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER6> Your areas of interest overlap with my own (machine intelligence/interfaces) but I'm tied up on other projects in the near term. Good hunting Justin

</comment><comment><USER7> Good lucky with that and I hope you have success in it. I won't apply as I don't feel I'm hacky enoght :)</comment>


Bayes and Big Data: The Consensus Monte Carlo Algorithm - <AUTHOR> http://research.google.com/pubs/pub41849.html <comment><USER2> Any hint as to how this differs from other parallel Monte Carlo algorithms? Or is it an application of those methods to big data? (People were doing parallel Monte Carlo at least as far back as the early 90s - my own research topic on exact nuclear calculations was basically obsoleted by the superior scalability of that approach)

<comment><USER3> it's first author is a Googler, and its posted on a Google domain.

EDIT: haha I am downvoted for speaking the truth. The parent and I have both read lots of papers like these, there is only a modest contribution of this paper. It basically says we fudged the inference and the end results look similar so its a good optimization. However, there will be probably lots of specific models that "need" the mixing freedom the approximation removes, and hence the algorithm will only work for a specific subspace of MCMC problems. MCMC is basically impossible to debug, so we dunno how well it works overall. THIS IS THE SAME CONCLUSION OF EVERY OTHER MCMC APPROXIMATION PAPER. The only reason this is on HN, is because of its heritage. I do not think this paper is revolutionary (unlike some other papers coming out of Google).

EDIT 2: evidence Modern: "Fully Parallel Inference in Markov Logic Networks" \- Max-Planck "Hybrid Parallel Inference for Hierarchical Dirichlet Process" "A split-merge mcmc algorithm for the hierarchical dirichlet process" Old: "Parallel Implementations of Probabilistic Inference" a 1996 review paper!

You might say these papers are not exactly the same, ok, but the final justification for the given paper is:

"Depending on the model, the resulting draws can be nearly indistinguishable"

NOTE kewords: "depending" and "nearly"

<comment><USER4> I have no idea if you're right or not, but I really hate how people downmod on HN instead of stating their disagreements.

<comment><USER5> In general so do I, but in this case the initial reply was a content free snipe. In that case I'm not surprised it got a downvote without investing the time in making a more complete reply.

The subsequent edit was useful, although the attitude is, well, "sharp".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can anyone explain cases where the Monte Carlo optimizations wouldn't work in a distributed manner? Most of the examples of Monte Carlo that come to mind are path dependent pricings of financial instruments. That seems to be an easy one to distribute the computations. As long as each path gets it's own processor, you can average the prices at the end.

What's a good example of where this breaks down? I'm thinking weather simulations, but I don't know the domain well enough.

<comment><USER7> Most Monte Carlo methods used to calculate Bayesian posterior distributions are iterative, you can't parallelize each draw since it depends on the previous draw. Moreover, each draw depends on a function of all the data, so if your data is larger than can be stored on a single computer it gets complicated.

This paper doesn't look like it has a magic solution though. It seems to propose an adhoc sharding approach and then shows it sometimes works.

<comment><USER8> MCMC isn't strictly serial; you can run multiple chains in parallel and get decent results (provided your break in period isn't too big), and this is commonly done for multicore.

The "all the data" problem is interesting. It seems solvable if each node summarizes the likelihood function for part of the data. I'll have to read the paper and see if that's what they did.

<comment><USER7> All of it's definitely solvable, it's just harder than lots of Monte Carlo problems that are embarrassingly parallel.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Traveling salesman uncorks synthetic biology bottleneck - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2016-01-salesman-uncorks-synthetic-biology-bottleneck.html <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, the travelling salesman problem has NP time complexity.</comment>


The Alexandria Police Department is taking pictures of everyone's cars - <AUTHOR> http://capitolcityproject.com/police-are-keeping-records-of-when-i-visited-my-girlfriend/ <comment><USER2> While I don't like mass surveillance (feels uneasy), I don't like the idea of forbidding someone to remember things they've seen (heard, received, observed - whatever verb's appropriate).

My belief is - if one wants privacy - they should park in the backyard (i.e. area restricted to general public), shield the license plates (if that's illegal while the vehicle's parked at appropriate place - it's another issue) from observers or do whatever seems reasonable to not _emit_ information. If you don't emit anything, there's nothing to receive thus nothing to store - privacy problem ultimately solved. Otherwise, there's a tricky issue to recognize where lies the barrier between "that's okay" (say, neighbors notice a car and unconsciously recognize the pattern - one really can't complain about that) and "that's violation of my privacy."

Oh, and I presumed he parked in a publicly observable place, like a public parking lot or on a driveway just in front of the house or something like that. If PD'd would've used special hardware to peek into private areas that are inaccessible to a "naked eye" \- that would be another (tricky) issue.

State keeping track of their citizens from their funding (taxes) is another issue, but it's not about privacy anymore.

<comment><USER3> Would you be bothered if someone followed you daily on the sidewalk, noting your paths? I would.

Would it be any better if, rather than one person following you, it was one guy on every street corner, who collaborated to reconstruct the paths you walked, and kept a record?

For me, that would be just as offensive. Now consider that by collecting data points from every car, anywhere, the police can do this kind of tracking to everybody. I don't find that any better than hiring one stalker per citizen.

You remembering that you met me in a coffee shop wouldn't bother me. You following me everywhere _certainly_ would.

<comment><USER4> I'm not the grandparent commenter, but your first example would indeed bother me, while the second wouldn't. The scenario of someone following me around holds worrisome import quite apart from the mere knowledge of what I'm doing or where I'm going (which I used to worry about, but tried to avoid worrying about after I realized that in a decade or two, there would be no way of knowing if someone had a camera (other than their eyes, of course...) pointed at me).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Obligatory: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc)

(Summary: the job of a police officer is not to 'solve crime' \-- it is to apprehend suspects and assist district attorneys in obtaining convictions; hence, if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, the more information they have about you, the greater the danger to your freedom & safety).

</comment><comment><USER6> There is an inherent conflict in the demands of the citizens. We all want to be kept safe from crime and have law enforcement and state protection actually keep us safe, vindicate us when falsely accused and resolve our case when we are hurt. We also don't want them to have data that they could misuse.

As this community knows well, you can't solve problems without data and data collection for policing historically was anecdotal and varied wildly by jurisdiction. beat cops would walk around and use their own internal sensors to take data and make correlations. This of course is subject to all the common human failings and would more often than not fail the community more than it helped - but it was rarely considered invasive.

So we have two options: Build and apply to our civic lives effective tools for persistent collection/analysis of public data and take the chance that oversight is improper or that the data will be misused. Or do we accept fewer resolved cases of homicide/speeding/kidnapping/parole etc... and have a higher probability that our PII is only kept within private companies?

<comment><USER7> Most low-performing police departments, in terms of solution rates, have more serious problems than a lack of data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a precedent for this in the United Kingdom[1]. The nationwide Automatic Number Plate Recognition system (ANPR) tracks vehicles in real time.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police- enforced_ANPR_in_the_UK](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police- enforced_ANPR_in_the_UK)

</comment><comment><USER9> How much do repo men pay for access to the license plate DB? So if he declines to pay his loan, the repo truck drives past his GFs apartment...

</comment><comment><USER10> For the curious, the EFF has a post on a similar situation in Los Angeles which addresses some of the legal implications of mass license plate data collection: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/03/los-angeles-cops- argue...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/03/los-angeles-cops-argue-all- cars-la-are-under-investigation)

</comment><comment><USER11> License plates were _designed_ around identification. The whole point of having license plates is so the police know who your vehicle is registered to.

Combine that with the fact that you're driving around on publicly funded roads, and you find yourself without any right to privacy whatsoever. You're in _public_ , the very definition of "not private".

Where your car goes on public roads isn't private, even if you want it to be. It never has been.

That being said, just because your car is somewhere doesn't mean you are. Any competent defense lawyer in a criminal case would point that out. In some states, traffic cameras can't be used to issue tickets unless the camera has a clear picture of the driver.

</comment><comment><USER12> Machines are mindlessly obedient. The technology is not an actor here.

What matters is who controls the data. That person is the one effectively performing the surveillance. If you eliminate the force multiplier as a separate entity, what you see is that one or more Alexandria cops are ruthlessly hounding everyone that enters their city.

I presume that the collected data are not being published freely, probably using "ongoing investigation" and "officer safety" as a cover. I further presume that the data are being correlated and mined for the purpose of identifying criminals and assembling evidence against them, and the algorithms in use do not likewise search the records for exculpatory evidence for those who already stand accused.

The failing is not that cops are using powerful technologies to aid their work. The failing is that the police departments themselves have no technology remedy for their long-standing human failings. Rather than tracing a verifiable harm from victim to perpetrator, focusing on the facts of the case, and leaving matters of justice to the mechanisms of the courts, cops are increasingly filling quotas for their citations and encounters, punishing people on their own prerogative, and enjoying an asymmetric relationship with the public.

You want to watch us? We must ask qui custodiet custodes? Before training your cameras on the public, first point them at yourselves, and show us that you are trustworthy. Are cops prepared to confront the video evidence that they engaged a prostitute while on duty and then took a nap in their patrol car? Stop pretending that a smartphone camera is in any way equivalent to a gun. Before I am willing to tolerate in any way the trappings of the panopticon, every last cop out there, from bicycle patrol rookie to the city commander, should be willing to have a camera on his badge and uniform from the moment it is donned to the instant it is doffed, with an uncut record freely available at some point to the public.

Now, I wouldn't like having someone hanging over my shoulder all the time making sure I'm not reading HN at work, either. But sometimes you have to experience it personally before you can empathize with the person you intend to inflict that upon.

</comment><comment><USER13> Across the Potomac, DC also tracks plate information. They at least use this technology to track new DC residents that fail to register their vehicles with the District. I once received a "warning" because my car had been parked overnight on the street X number of times with VA plates. I was told to either register my car with the city or get an Out Of State Registration[1]. My girlfriend lived there at the time.

[1] [http://dmv.dc.gov/service/registration-out-state- automobiles...](http://dmv.dc.gov/service/registration-out-state-automobiles- rosa)

</comment><comment><USER14> How about the CCTV cams that are appearing at every single *^#% intersection in the Bay Area? Obviously they are recording everything and probably running the same license plate detection as well.

It's like someone (Homeland Security grants I assume) figured, we have all these mounting points already wired (traffic signals) might as well add a camera.

I figure the camera will just be built into the traffic signal in the future, and the whole unit will be IP addressable. Saves on having two different things to mount, and the light's probably already at the right orientation.

</comment><comment><USER15> Side note: mousing over an image should not make it _harder_ to see

<comment><USER16> Clicking on the images darken the whole page. Looks like they have a broken implementation of an image gallery. The page dims but the larger image doesn't appear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I read recently that some startups are collecting this data and providing it back to police departments. So you could search on a license plate number and receive hits on every where and every time it was used. Of course, it's only available for LE and they have to promise not to talk about where they got the data from.

Just imagine a similar system using facial recognition and Google glass/FB/G+/Instagram/etc.

</comment><comment><USER18> troubling, but i can't see any way in which this is illegal on the part of Alexandria PD.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is why I ride a bike. That way no one can take a picture of it!</comment>


Show HN: Whistlegraph TikTok Compilation [video] - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/pfqz5-MQmWc <comment><AUTHOR> Ex dev here. I have been making these little experimental audiovisual programs for kids on TikTok that they can memorize and re-perform in their notebooks.

They are inspired by my years of playing video games and telling computers what to draw with creative coding environments like Processing. My audience is starting to compose and post their own too, which has been great!

I know most HN people probably aren't on TikTok so here is a little compilation with some commentary at the end.</comment>


The anti-bubble of 2001-2004 - <AUTHOR> http://cdixon.posterous.com/bubbles-and-anti-bubbles

<comment><USER2> They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. \-- Carl Sagan, _Broca's Brain_

The final message of the article is "When the mocking gets the loudest, double down on your investments.", but that only applies if you think your investments are the right ones.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think "internet money" was stuff like Flooz.

</comment><comment><USER4> A little bit of selective choosing. For all these winner ideas there is at least 20 failed ideas.

Not saying that investing in internet companies in 2001-2004 was a bad idea, it just wasn't as great as the author is portraying it.

<comment><USER5> And for each winner idea there is one successful implementation still thriving, versus 1000 failed attempts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> """Us old timers remember 2001-2004 when anything related to the internet was ridiculed as a ponzi scheme. The conventional wisdom was no internet company would ever make money and all the ideas of the dot-com boom were stupid."""

No one was saying that in 2001-2004. People were saying, "Man, we made some stupid investments in 1999." There's a world of difference between the two.

<comment><USER7> Plus, he misidentifies his 'eggbrain computers' example as newegg when it clearly is a reference to Egghead Software who did go for a pure virtual storefront/auction site and failed anyway.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the podcasts you guys listen to? - <AUTHOR> Hi guys, just wanna know what are the podcast channels you guys listen to on a regular basis and how you guys are listening to it? iPhone or Anchor or some other app like that. <comment><USER4> I'm subscribed to a lot of podcasts, and I'm too lazy to copy the list, so here are some:

Development related:

       - JavaScript Jabber
       - Turing Incomplete
       - The Stack Exchange Podcast
       - Software Engineering Daily
       - Developer Tea
       - The Google cloud Platform Podcast
       - Codepen Radio
       - The Changelog

Other podcasts:

      - Accidental Tech Podcast
      - The Allusionist
      - Answer Me This
      - Back to Work
      - Analog(ue)
      - Security Now
      - This Week in Google
      - Everything Sounds
      - <USER2>
      - 99% Invisible
      - <USER3>
      - Hello Internet
      - Reconcilable differences
      - Under the Radar

<comment><USER5> Do you listen to all this while you sleep? How do you find time

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://manager-tools.com](http://manager-tools.com) [http://podcast.ft.com/s/listen-to-lucy/](http://podcast.ft.com/s/listen-to- lucy/)

Visit URL once per week, download, listen. Focusing on what someone's saying, I find important, so I listen at my desk, via laptop speakers, and don't multitask anything. Then forward (via email) to any friends that may be interested in the content.

</comment><comment><USER7> These are the podcasts I'm subscribed to:

Tech related

        - hanselminutes (Interviews with developers)
        - software engineering radio (Interesting software dev topics, but man the audio quality is bad)
        - a16z (Interviews with founders/devs topics range from mobile, VR, bitcoin etc.)
        - programming throwdown (About development)

Startup related

        - startups for the rest of us (Talks about bootstrapping your own startup )
        - the startup chat(Hiten Shah & Steli Efti talk about sales/marketing)
        - founders journey (Baremetrics blog articles in audio form)
        - rogue startups (Currently a really interesting series about finding a market and launching a WP Plugin)
        - Startup (Podcast about startups, every season 1 startup, great storytelling)

Other

        - the great debates (Comedy podcast, really funny)
        - surprisingly awesome (Explains why some seemingly boring things are actually cool)
        - 99% invisible (Talks about the "design" of all kind of things, really interesting)
        - reply all (Stories about the internet)
        - hardcore history (3+ h long episodes about world history e.g WWI)
        - serial (great storytelling)

</comment><comment><USER8> \- [https://laravel-news.com/category/podcast/](https://laravel- news.com/category/podcast/) (Laravel News)

\- [http://hanselminutes.com/](http://hanselminutes.com/) (Hansel Minutes)

\- [http://99percentinvisible.org/](http://99percentinvisible.org/) (99% invisible)

\- [http://www.se-radio.net/](http://www.se-radio.net/) (Software Engineering Radio)

\- [http://www.laravelpodcast.com/](http://www.laravelpodcast.com/) (Laravel Podcast)

Various randoms from the always awesome [https://player.fm/featured/web- development](https://player.fm/featured/web-development)

</comment><comment><USER9> Check out Risky Business. Very well produced podcast on security / infosec, both amusing and informative. They know what they're talking about and are active in the industry. Makes me regret ever listening to Security Now:

[http://risky.biz/netcasts/risky-business](http://risky.biz/netcasts/risky- business)

I'll also give a plug for Bootstrapped.FM:

[http://bootstrapped.fm](http://bootstrapped.fm)

<comment><USER10> If you like riskybiz, you can also try [http://www.defensivesecurity.org/](http://www.defensivesecurity.org/) It is more rough analysis of some events during the week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Tim Ferriss Show - [http://fourhourworkweek.com/podcast/](http://fourhourworkweek.com/podcast/)

Learn from the best!

</comment><comment><USER12> I usually find lots of good podcasts under "Software How-to" category. [https://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/podcasts-technology- softwa...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/podcasts-technology- software/id1480?mt=2)

</comment><comment><USER13> My current favorites are Talk Python to Me and Startup School Radio.

I have a repo to share my summaries & notes by episode:

[https://github.com/tedmiston/notes#podcasts](https://github.com/tedmiston/notes#podcasts)

</comment><comment><USER14> Product Hunt podcasts. Lots of entrepreneurship relevant content: A16Z, HN, as well as their own maker interview series ;)

[https://www.producthunt.com/podcasts](https://www.producthunt.com/podcasts)

</comment><comment><USER15> The best podcast I've found in years is Scott Carrier's Home of the brave (homebrave.com)

Some of his episodes are the best audio pieces Ive ever heard.

I listen to my podcasts using Overcast for iPhone. I used to use Beyondpod for Android. They are both great.

</comment><comment><USER16>
        * Inquiring minds
        * Waking up
        * Hardcore History
        * Rationally Speaking
        * The Tim Ferriss Show
        * Very Bad Wizards
        * You are not so smart

</comment><comment><USER17> Related question: _When_ do people listen to podcasts? I can't listen while I work, and my commute isn't long enough to get through many podcasts.

<comment><USER18> Bathroom/shower time, driving, laundry, smoke breaks, cooking dinner, cleaning.

<comment><USER19> Hm. Those are all my thinking time. When else do we get a chance to just cogitate on things? The modern urge to anesthetize ourselves with sound at every opportunity to think, makes me wonder if we've become afraid to be alone with our thoughts.

<comment><USER18> Or you could only listen during half of those things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Android / Podkicker Pro

\- Techzing (basically HN-like talk)

\- Kalzumeus software (although it seems to be dead now)

\- Paul's security weekly (because of work in security)

\- Escape pod (great scifi stories)

</comment><comment><USER21> Subscribed to : \- Snap Judgement (Story telling, with a beat. It's awesome!) \- Criminal \- Tim Ferris Show \- Planet Money

</comment><comment><USER22> Business-related:

\- 99% Invisible

\- Britstrapped

\- Chasing Product

\- Freakonomics Radio

Other:

\- The Allusionist

\- Imaginary Worlds

\- Heavy Metal Historian

Plus some Dutch language podcasts to brush up on my Dutch:

\- Echt gebeurd

\- deBuren

\- Radioboeken

</comment><comment><USER23> \- hidden brain

\- 99% invisible

\- radiolab

\- only human

\- planet moeny

\- criminal

\- from scratch

\- ted radio hour

\- talking machines

\- data skeptics

\- In our time (BBC)

Listen through Iphone podcast app during commute to work.

</comment><comment><USER24> I use Stitcher to listen to most things:

\- This American Life

\- Serial

\- The Moth

\- Startups for the Rest of Us

\- The Business of Freelancing

\- Freakonomics Radio

\- The Fat Burning Man

\- The Dave Ramsey Show

</comment><comment><USER25>
       - The Raywenderlich.com Podcast
       - Startup School Radio

</comment><comment><USER26> right now my favorite is Side Hustle Nation. It gives me some ideas for great side businesses that I could start in my spare time.

</comment><comment><USER27> -Econtalk

-Nakedscientist

-Londonreal

<comment><USER28> Econtalk is really high quality. Very interesting!</comment></comment>