What Do Millennials Spend All Their Money On? - <AUTHOR> http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/05/what-do-millennials-spend-all-their-money <comment><USER2> This boils down to the baby boomer generation doing a terrible job at saving for themselves outside housing, and demanding millennials buy them out of their investment. When they don't, they scream "stupid millennial, why don't you just have more money" ... so they can ultimately get that too. They are largely not very desperate, yet still so afraid that even in their later years they horde wealth.

In the Bay Area, I feel like rent or buy, I'm just working hard so the older generation can continue living well off our backs. The vast majority of them have made no intelligent investments or savings other than property. And they are now incentivized to make life as miserable as possible for the next generation, so they can live out their remaining years as well as they are accustomed too. My landlord whined about how she makes so little, whilst attempting to hold onto 2.8mm USD in property.

I find it hard to swallow... but also inevitable.

<comment><USER3> The cohesiveness of existing communities is always going to be at odds with the ability of new communities to form and take hold. It's _almost_ heartwarming that Boomers built lives they love so much, they're willing to go to such lengths to prevent any change.

I expect the Boomers would have faced the same thing from their parents and grandparents. What saved them was, rather than pushing inwards to city land already occupied by the powerful, they pushed outwards to sprawl, or into racial minority neighborhoods which didn't, at the time, have a legal mechanism to meaningfully resist.

When society saw how destructive this was, it made it much harder to repeat. This is, often, the history of downzoning and the origin of those processes that notify and invite busybodies to stop development. There _are_ moral justifications behind these controls (particularly as they apply to disadvantaged neighborhoods), and to get anything done, we'll have to engage with them.

We're completely screwed now because the door is closed to "urban renewal," _and_ sprawl is at its natural limits (under the levels of investment in public transit currently contemplated), _and_ the impetus to live in cities with these problems is more economic necessity than personal taste.

<comment><USER4> > they pushed outwards [...] into racial minority neighborhoods which didn't, > at the time, have a legal mechanism to meaningfully resist.

AFAIK in the boomer years the prevalent phenomenon was the opposite: minorities moving into formerly majority neighborhoods, and the majority moving out. This was known as "white flight".

<comment><USER3> You're right, I'm talking about the (mostly stalled) attempt by Gen X to walk back white flight in the 1970s, which is where much of the current thinking and policy around gentrification comes from.

<comment><USER5> According to Wikipedia, for Generation X "demographers and researchers typically use starting birth years ranging from the early-to-mid 1960s and ending birth years ranging from the late 1970s to early 1980s."

So any members of Generation X were still children in the 70s or not yet born. I think you mean a different cohort or a different time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The debate annoys me. Housing has become more expensive and food, including eating out, has become cheaper. Yes, a totally financially responsible person should be minimising eating out in order to save. I do this. I'm on close to average full time wage. Even though I'm saving very carefully, it's still going to take me a lot longer before I own my own home than an average wage earner from the previous generation.

Yes, stop buying avocado every day, if you do. But also, Australian housing needs to come down in cost if you don't want people like me to be renting forever.

It's not the end of the world if I rent forever, but it is a bit sad. Everyone else got to own a home, why should that be so much harder for me?

Not to mention that it takes considerably greater qualifications now to earn an average wage compared to the past. So I'm starting later and with student debt.

I don't want to completely absolve myself of agency. I plan on doing the best I can with my situation and I will probably own a home one day. But is it unfair? Yes. There really is no argument.

Us modern folk have it easier in many ways, but in terms of home ownership we're not hallucinating that it's harder. Wages aren't going up as fast as house prices, and that's really what it comes down to.

<comment><USER7> > why should that be so much harder for me?

And my friends*. My social group (25-30yo) is generally pretty morbid about the whole situation and most are resolved to wait for some sort of bubble to burst in Australia. Investing in other markets which are stable and easy to enter in the meantime.

It's interesting to read an American perspective from outside of the largest cities. I wonder if Australia's more spread out nature and few high density cities skew the problem more here.

<comment><USER8> I'd propose a hypothesis that yes it does, for a couple of main reasons:

1\. Concentration of job market - a lot of industries only exist (or at least, in a large enough volume) in the larger cities (e.g. financial services, tech). I'd say this is largely coupled to the location of higher education, where there is (relatively) less tertiary education once you leave the major cities.

2\. Desirability of location - infrastructure and general "way of life" tends to lead people to wanting a more coastal existence. Australia didn't have the boom of city development in our regional centres, look at towns that are considered large in rural Australia, and they barely compare to even the outer suburbs of the major cities.

As much as our deputy Prime Minister would argue "just move to the country", it's not a realistic statement without addressing massive shortcomings in the long term planning of our rural areas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn't buying smashed avocado for > $19 and four coffees at $4 each," he said. "We're at a point now where the > expectations of younger people are very, very high. They want to eat out > every day; they want travel to Europe every year.

The modest house where I grew up in the D.C. suburbs (1,150 square feet, three bedrooms, built in 1950s, okay school district) is estimated on Redfin around $600,000.[1] That's a $120,000 down payment. According to the article, millennials spend $3,100 a year eating out. Even if they cut that out entirely, it'd take them decades to save up that down payment.

The cost of housing and rent has gotten so out of control in major metro areas that the usual frugality tips don't make much of a dent. What good does cutting out your $4 latte out do (maybe $100 per month), when your rent is $2,500 month for a 1BR?

[1] My parents bought it in 1990 for $175,000. People in my dad's line of work certainly don't earn 3.5x more than what they used to back then.

<comment><USER10> To be fair you don't actually need 20% down. It's recommended but hardly the norm. Plenty of people will do 5 to 10% down. Veterans need as little as 3%.

<comment><USER11> As a veteran homeowner I can tell you I paid 0 down on a Fixed rate.

<comment><USER12> That used to be very easy to do, but got harder after 2008.

<comment><USER11> Did mine in 2013

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's the part of the article where they answer the question in the headline:

 _About $1,000 more on health care.

About $1,500 more on pensions and Social Security.

About $2,000 more on overall housing (rent, maintenance, utilities, etc.).

About $700 more on education._

<comment><USER14> Healthcare, higher cost because of aging boomers. Pension/Social Security, boomers again Housing, caused by over investment by boomers that is encouraged by generous tax incentives by boomers.

Seems boomers are to blame.

<comment><USER15> Not sure why you're being buried. Part of the ACA was to increase the burden on younger, healthier people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Every time I mention to people that a home is almost always a depreciating asset in Japan, someone always thinks that's stupid and inefficient and obviously a bad thing. But if your housing is an appreciating asset then so is almost everyone else's. That means your primary cost of living is going up, and your wages (or return on other assets) better keep up with that rate of increase. That's a lot of pressure on new entrants, especially in a country where family has an ever-diminishing willingness (and ability) to take care of its own.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm a millennial, who's just leaving university and coming into the job market. I was lucky enough to pick a degree with actual job prospects, so I'm earning a decent wage.

However, there is no chance of me buying property in my country anytime soon (probably for at least a decade, if I'm lucky). At the current rate I could max save at, I'll only come within striking range in 50 years.

<comment><USER18> I have no idea where your native land is, but you could go against mainstream with a house boat. I'm trying to get a SV refugee camp here in North Florida around housing in the St Johns. In Florida if you are a resident, you can park your boat on the river. So if we can co-op a boat community on the river complete with WiFi broad band, I think we could all live happily ever after.

You can get a liveable boat with out a shower, used without a shower for 7k US. Think microhouse with Manatees in the winter.

If you'd like to live in Palatka FL contact me: virmundi at gmail.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would like to see median incomes compared instead of averages. I suspect that the trend indicated in the article would become even more pronounced.

</comment><comment><USER20> lotta knee-jerk boomer hate responses so far.

I'm not a boomer.

I have recently bought a house and will be a slave to the bank for decades.

But: I don't live in a major tech city = house prices are cheaper.

I rented for years and years slowly building a deposit before looking for a house.

I had ZERO expectation of buying a house on leaving university. Why would I expect to do that?

I didn't and don't buy retail coffee every day. (in fact i don't buy retail anything everyday day).

In my twenties computer games used to cost approx the same as aaa console games, none of this freemium/app pricing schemes also DVDs/CDs were full priced, no free streaming. And because I couldn't afford more stuff the answer was to just buy less.

slowly slowly.

<comment><USER21> yeh but you also just said youve resigned to being a slave, and I'm not going to bash our generation for wanting to imagine a world where we are not slaves to a bank forever.

<comment><USER22> I chose to live in a village in another country than my native country with one of the reasons being I could pay my house cash. This world is already there if you are more flexible about your location. Luckily I do not generally like cities at all and never did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > It's not because houses are more expensive: the average house costs about a > third more than it did in the 80s and early 90s

For what it's worth, this whole 'Avocado toast' thing comes from the "Australian Housing Affordability" 'crisis' that's going on at the moment, where housing prices have raised 70% just in the past 5 years alone.

<comment><USER24> What's the cause of the increase?

<comment><USER25> Inorganic population growth by immigration. There are heaps of millionaires in China and the banks are giving them quite some leverage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It is really rather funny moving to the bay area and making a very high salary that still comes nothing near the kind of money you'd ever need to buy a house. People are buying houses cash and bidding over asking and it would still take me over a decade just to make the 20% downpayment. It makes me really not sweat 10-20$ spent on something I might enjoy, like a coffee or ice cream.

<comment><USER27> Yeah it use to be IPO and buy a house.. harder nowadays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Rent

</comment><comment><USER14> Real estate in Australia is a giant house of cards, that appears to be slowly reaching its peak. Eventually something will give.

\- higher interest rates

\- change in government taxation

\- inability for people to pay higher rents

</comment><comment><USER29> Rent and student loans

</comment><comment><USER30> So, it seems millenials are quite frugal after all, and previous generations aren't as much.

</comment><comment><USER31> I save most of it. Stock market etc.

</comment><comment><USER32> >In the Reagan era, this age group spent 91 percent of their income. Today's millennials spend only 81 percent of their income.

What the _what?!_

<comment><USER6> I guess it means they are saving a greater percentage of their income. Is that so surprising?

Not clear if it includes compulsory retirement savings though. In Australia you get 9% of your salary paid into a retirement savings account. If the "income" figure includes things like that then that might explain the higher apparent savings rate.

<comment><USER32> I think both numbers are _really_ high.

<comment><USER6> Really? I'm a millennial on about average wage and I save about 35 percent of my income. I consider myself quite frugal. My biggest expense is rent, which is about 25 % of my after-tax income. It seems pretty hard to do much better. I could provide a breakdown of my finances, which I track fastidiously. I cook all my own food and bring lunch to work every day. My weekly grocery bill is $70 USD. Those savings rates seem normal to me.

I have the added expense of flights every now and again since I'm working in the US but my girlfriend and family are in Australia. It's a temporary arrangement. But without that my savings rate would only be a little bit higher. Maybe 45% instead of 35%.

<comment><USER33> >My biggest expense is rent, which is about 25 % of my after-tax income.

Yeah, you're not on average wage. HN is awfully biased, and I'm certain almost none of us here have actually lived on minimum to average wage for a long time.

Include comment about personal experience under this post.

<comment><USER34> Well, it is technically possible he is at the national average income (not the median wage) and lives in a place where rent is way more affordable than the cities most of HN lives in. U.S. GDP per capita is $55,836.79. That is $44,558 after taxes in Knoxville, TN (I am picking a city, but it could be more extreme, he could work remotely from a rural area in the U.S. or from, say, Belize). This means 25% towards rent is $1163. So, in Knoxville, Zillow says that is a 3 bedroom home.

More realistically, that same amount is a small studio in e.g. Austin, TX.

Now, the trick is that the average income might be $55,836.79, but the _median_ personal income is ~$41,520 [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Avocado toast

<comment><USER35> _Artisinal_ avocado toast.

(Artisinal? "It's like stuff you would normally buy, but it costs a lot more. And it has ingredients from places I haven't even heard of, like Detroit.")

<comment><USER36> > _And it has ingredients from [artisanal] places I haven't even heard of, > like Detroit._

Ah, yes, 'du-twah'.</comment></comment></comment>


Countries That Don't Exist - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20151103-the-countries-that-dont-exist <comment><USER2> I thought this was going to be about the excellent BBC series "Places That Don't Exist"[1] that covers Somaliland, Transnistria, Taiwan, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karabakh.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Places_That_Don%27t_Exist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Places_That_Don%27t_Exist)

Simon Reeve himself has posted it on youtube, so I guess it's OK to link it here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRET1fHLWdE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRET1fHLWdE)

<comment><USER3> Was the video working when you posted this? I just see "This video is unavailable." (in the US though--but it doesn't say it's blocked in my country?)

<comment><USER4> Surprisingly it's available from Germany.

<comment><USER2> It is working in UK. I wonder if he set it to EU-only then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know way too much about this subject, some favorites are...

Åland Islands, an autonomous region between Sweden and Finland which belongs to Finland but is Swedish-speaking. What makes it notable is that it's a demilitarized zone. Something that is more usual for conflict zones like in Korea or far away places like Antarctica. It also holds an VAT exception from the EU which makes it possible to buy tax-free goods on the ferries between Sweden and Finland. TLD: .ax

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85land_Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85land_Islands)

San Marino, a microstate in Italy claiming to be the oldest sovereign state in the world that for some reason enjoy the best visa rules to China of any country. Presumably because China will generally give you the same visa rules as you give its citizens. Like many other microstates it's hard to become a neutralized citizen, requiring having lived there for at least 30 years. TLD: .sm

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Marino](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Marino) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_microstates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_microstates) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_China)

Bir Tawil, an area between Egypt and Sudan that is, because of disagreement over borders, claimed by neither of them. Supposedly the most non-remote unclaimed territory on earth. TLD: not yet.

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

<comment><USER6> I just have to ask, given your name, are you from Gozo? I visited once about 7-8 years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it!

<comment><USER5> No, few people are. But I've been there and, although probably not Gozo, I'm looking to move to Malta in a few months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Don't forget frozen conflicts.

South Ossetia, Nagoro-Karabakh, Donetsk People's Republic, Luhansk People's Republic, Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, Abkhazia... these are just the post-Soviet ones.

Then there's the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, of course. Legitimate or not, it's very much a state.

<comment><USER8> The funny thing about depictions of ISIS' areas of operation and control on maps provided by, say... The New York Times, is that they're always shown as wispy red tendrils curling along main highways and around towns, and that level of spin is a bit silly.

The point being that there's some sort of psychological effort being made, to assert that while all the main roads are under control, and all the main roads certainly surround much larger areas, ISIS only controls the first 25 feet outside of the roadway, as if it's bound by some sort of municipal Iraqi or Syrian zoning ordinance.

<comment><USER9> ISIS doesn't have an Air Force; they can't really defend the desert they don't occupy event if it's terrorist with little strategic importance.

Had the maps shown ISIS with more territory someone might suggest a psychoigical effort was being made to scare people into supporting a more direct conflict with ISIS.

I do think it would be interesting to know how journalists draw these maps though.

<comment><USER8> I dunno. Technicalities of vertical envelopment aside, once something is surrounded it's usually considered ceded to those who have it surrounded.

An inability to defend, contrasted with an unlikely target to be attacked, leaves you with ease of access as a defining quality of possession.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Strange they mentioned the Republic of Lakotah while not mentioning the Navaho Nation[1] as the latter is an actually functional government, though the fact that it doesn't try to claim statehood doesn't help, the fact that it actually operates does give it a leg up on Lakotah.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo_Nation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo_Nation)

</comment><comment><USER11> Taiwan is probably the largest "invisible" country. 23 million people Army personnel : 290,000 Tanks: 2,005 Total aircraft: 804 Submarines: 4

<comment><USER12> Greetings from Taiwan. :) It's pretty much a "let's pretend we cannot see you" sort of diplomacy one the side of most countries (including my birth country in Europe) - most just set up a "trade office" and conduct things almost like an embassy.

Living here for ~7 years and thinking quite a bit about it, I believe statehood defined by membership of "club" that is the United Nations is quite laughable. There was no such thing a hundred years ago, and while the UN does bring a lot of good things to the table, this misrepresentation of reality (for obvious powerplay reasons) is just awful...

<comment><USER13> Some change this week:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=Taiwan&tbm=nws](https://www.google.com/search?q=Taiwan&tbm=nws)

(I don't pretend to understand how meaningful it is, but it was the first such meeting)

<comment><USER14> Many people (including my friends here in Taiwan) believe it's an attempt by the PRC to influence the elections which are being held here in about two months. The KMT (Ma's party) are going to get annihilated according to polls.

The political situation here is interesting, to say the least. There's also this funny video about the meeting: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEn3xqrMasc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEn3xqrMasc)

<comment><USER15> >Many people (including my friends here in Taiwan) believe it's an attempt by the PRC to influence the elections which are being held here in about two months.

How would that even work?

1\. Most people in Taiwan hate the Community Party of China

2\. KMT and CPC arrange a meeting to show that they're frenemies with each other

3\. KMT loses in the election, which hurts both the KMT and the CPC

So it's conspiracy to between the CPC and KMT to sabotage themselves?

<comment><USER14> I honestly have no idea. There were some thoughts in English by a Taiwanese I found here: [https://frozengarlic.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/quick- reaction...](https://frozengarlic.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/quick-reaction-to- the-ma-xi-meeting/)

Ma promised when he was re-elected that he would never meet with the PRC as head of state. It's also likely this meeting is unconstitutional (Chinese text): [https://tw.mobi.yahoo.com/home/%E7%AB%8B%E6%B3%95%E9%99%A2%E...](https://tw.mobi.yahoo.com/home/%E7%AB%8B%E6%B3%95%E9%99%A2%E6%87%89%E5%8D%B3%E5%BD%88%E5%8A%BE%E9%A6%AC%E7%B8%BD%E7%B5%B1-%E9%BB%83%E4%B8%9E%E5%84%80-210000647.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting that Western Sahara isn't mentioned. It actually isn't a country, but it looks like one. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sahara](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sahara)

</comment><comment><USER17> The micro nation Sealand is brilliant.

[http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150414-i-rule-my-own- ocean...](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150414-i-rule-my-own-ocean- micronation)

<comment><USER7> Hasn't been legitimate for a long time, though. England's maritime boundaries were extended a while back. If they try something, English police will descend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> And here's a new one, on the west bank of the Danube between Croatia and Serbia.

[https://liberland.org](https://liberland.org)

<comment> nommm-nommm Would Republika Srpska be considered one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The amateur radio organization, American Radio Relay League (ARRL), has its own definition of a country. I can't locate the exact definition on the web but in general it is stated that each discrete geographical or political entity is considered to be a country. Many of these 'countries' lack even population but are considered so for awards purposes. Hams schedule trips to put these countries on the air.

Here's the ARRL list:

[http://www.arrl.org/files/file/dxcclist.txt](http://www.arrl.org/files/file/dxcclist.txt)

<comment><USER20> The Travelers Century Club maintains a similar list. Feel free to compare and contrast:

[http://travelerscenturyclub.org/countries-and- territories/](http://travelerscenturyclub.org/countries-and-territories/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The paragraph about Christiania is bullshit.

It is not legal to smoke or sell cannabis there, and the police have done several raids over the years. Most people don't even consider it a country, but more like a borough for the hippies. Copenhagen is mainly social democrat, with some areas even more left wing, and clearing out Christiania would be a very unpopular idea, because a large majority of their voters support Christiania.

<comment><USER22> I'm not sure about how large (or how solid) the majority that support Christiania is, most Copenhageners seem divided on the issue.

Cannabis is _de facto_ legal in Christiania: people buy, sell and use it openly there without repercussions. This seems to be widely regarded as a good thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The area of the midwest referenced in this article is a fascinating area. It's essentially undiscussed and unthought about in mainstream American thought. But it's so interesting to drive around out there, so much land, few people, and when you do come to towns, everyone in them is Native American. It's just different than anything I've experienced on the east or west coasts.

</comment><comment><USER24> Reminds me of an email I once wrote that started out talking about Georgia as an imaginary place. Countries, states, counties, cities -- these all have to be dreamed up first in a way that, say, a continent or river does not need to be dreamed up. A continent exists whether we define it and name it or not. Not so with a politically defined "place."

</comment><comment><USER25> After playing Eu4 for a while, I'm kinda disapointed the knights aren't mentionned.

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Ma...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Malta)

</comment><comment><USER26> It's sad that they don't talk about Uzupis: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U%C5%BEupis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U%C5%BEupis)

A nice little artsy pseudo-country in Vilnius, Lithuania.

</comment><comment><USER27> Libya and Iraq can effectively added to this list.

<comment><USER28> Yes. And many African and Middle East countries are inventions to various degrees of the colonial powers. See Nigeria, Transjordania ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Having a state not based on a geographical boundary would be interesting for democracy. You could join such a state based on your political alignment, and pay/not pay your taxes to them. It would be like working abroad.</comment>


SaaS Startup mistakes #1: watch out for whales - <AUTHOR> https://receptive.io/blog/2015/03/10/watch_out_for_whales.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi I'm the author of the post, on my 2nd SaaS startup, trying to share some lessons learned the hard way, let me know what you think, cheers Dan</comment>


Ask HN: How much does education matter? - <AUTHOR>

Someone in a previous thread mentioned that they noticed that many of the people from YC companies come from Harvard, Berkley, MIT and other top schools.
Does going to one of these schools make you more likely to be accepted by YC?
What if you did not go to college at all?  I graduated high school early and started working for software companies; does this make me less likely to be accepted into YC? <comment><USER2> We make a conscious effort not to be influenced by it.

<http://paulgraham.com/colleges.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems more like correlation than causation. A lot of ambitious people go to top schools so you also see them doing startups, but there are really no secrets they learn at those schools that give them an edge business-wise.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, but for the same reason it seems like that means it is a good place to meet other ambitious people if you are looking for cofounders, the children or possible investors, or other forms of networking in general.

Of course, that is my opinion as someone who has neither founded a startup nor gone to a prestigious school.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have yet to see this make a difference. The VCs that I work with look at the team, that's for sure. It won't hurt if you have a good education. But the focus is on the business, how well the team works as a team and how solid the business is put together.

Given the choice between a startup done by 3 guys with degrees from some prestigious university but with no solid business behind it or by 3 high school drop-outs with a can-do attitude and a lot of drive I'm pretty sure they'd go for the latter.

Where a university will help you is that you usually have access to the 'old boys network', if none of the co-founders has such access it may take a bit more effort to get the doors open.

</comment><comment><USER6> I can't speak from experience regarding what actually makes a difference to YC, but I think if there's any group in the world that places more emphasis on real talent and experience, and less emphasis on a degree from a prestigious university - it's hackers.

<comment><USER7> In my opinion this is a good argument for getting a degree in something somewhat unrelated to computer science like math or engineering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not an investor so take this with a grain of salt, BUT:

Investors care about 1 thing: will you get them a return on their investment. They may say they care about a lot of other stuff too, but that's thing #1, always.

A degree can help them determine whether or not you've got the goods; but that's not the only thing - it's just a factor.

When they talk about investing in a team, not an idea; they mean "Will these people be capable of using our money as leverage?" and "Will they get results?". If you don't have the pedigree then you'd better be able to show them _something_ to tell them that you've got what it takes to get shit done.

</comment><comment><USER9> A startup I worked was started by HBS guys and hired professor from MIT as their first employee. They pretty much interviewed and hired folks from the top 5 math and computer science schools only.

I looked up to these guys because of an inherent bias that, I never went to these schools and these guys must be gooood. After working with lots of them for a few years, if there is one thing I can tell you its this. HBS didn't teach the founders anything about startups or the business world. Ivy league schools didn't teach much about how to deliver a product to the guys.

BTW, The worst _hacker_ in the group was the professor :-)</comment>


Jebson CMS - <AUTHOR> http://grimmdude.com/jebson A content management system based on static files aimed at ease of use and swift load times. <comment><USER2> Great job! Probably the simplest flat file CMS to use raw HTML and PHP, even compared to Pico, Kirby and Statamic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Posix Abstractions in Modern Operating Systems: The Old, the New, the Missing [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~vatlidak/POSIXpaper.pdf <comment><USER2> It shows that we need a better IPC api, and also some primitives for dealing with graphics cards (Linux deals with it through ioctl, for example, which is a hack).

<comment><USER3> Frankly everything is a hack at some level or other.

<comment><USER4> Then we can say it is a rather poor hack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yep, just the usual portability issues.

POSIX is stuck in the days when UNIX software was plain CLI or daemons, with keyboards and teletype as devices.

<comment><USER6> The good old days, you mean. Long may they continue.

On a more serious note, this is not happening because POSIX is bad or irrelevant but because people a) don't know about it and b) even if they did, reinventing the wheel is more fun.

<comment><USER7> I would argue passing around all data as text is suboptimal, not only from a performance point of view but also in terms of robustness. Parsing plain text using regular expressions and suchlike can lead to some useful outcomes but it's easy to derive false positives from this. On the other hand a binary- based object-oriented approach can give better performance and make it easier to parse data.

This is just one example of where the old ways aren't necessarily the best. I'm fairly confident we could come up with something better than POSIX if we were willing to make the effort.

<comment><USER8> > On the other hand a binary-based object-oriented approach can give better > performance and make it easier to parse data

please, no. OOP approach means that my process needs to know how to communicate with other processes via very specific protocols, which aren't very well defined (any process could describe its type of object). This is the exact opposite of flexibility. The usefullness of tools like grep or sed would drop drastically, and we would fall back to big blobs of software.

Since I'm just passing data, do I really need the behavior attached to it? How would state persistence be handled?

The text (bytes as ASCII until line ending) approach may seem ugly and dirty, but in fact you can pass list, tuples, maps, trees or just text and is up to the receiver the responsibility to make sense out of the data.

Need data from A but B can't understand it? Use C (which operate on text) to format A's output as B needs. With object how many "translator" (C in the example) would you need to acheive the same result?

<comment><USER9> > OOP approach means that my process needs to know how to communicate with > other processes via very specific protocols, which aren't very well defined > (any process could describe its type of object).

That's why we have IDL -- interface description language for RPC calls. An IDL-to-X (usually C) compiler generates the necessary glue so that anybody can talk to the program in question. IDL is also the basis of MS COM, which I quite like from the design standpoint.

> The usefullness of tools like grep or sed would drop drastically, and we > would fall back to big blobs of software.

So you teach grep to take an IDL file, invoke an IDL compiler and dynamically load the parser for the protocol in question. Also, if the broker were a standardized, perhaps in-kernel component (dbus, kdbus), you could attach "idlgrep" to _any_ process to trace its calls. You wouldn't be restricted to pipes.

> Since I'm just passing data, do I really need the behavior attached to it? > How would state persistence be handled?

The parent's wording was a bit unfortunate. You can have interfaces and interface inheritance and versioning (the "OOP" part), but there's no behavior send between processes.

> With object how many "translator" (C in the example) would you need to > acheive the same result?

Exactly one: the IDL compiler.

<comment><USER10> > So you teach grep to take an IDL file, invoke an IDL compiler and > dynamically load the parser for the protocol in question. Also, if the > broker were a standardized, perhaps in-kernel component (dbus, kdbus), you > could attach "idlgrep" to any process to trace its calls.

So you introduce a huge load of accidental complexity because the text interface has some perceived inefficiency? I'll choose simplicity and accessibility over this mess anytime.

<comment><USER3> Ok, now i am confused. On the one hand you rail against complexity, while on the other you favor systemd.

<comment><USER10> Yes, systemd is complex. But much of its complexity is justified. I rail against unnecessary complexity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for sharing this!

Here is our project site: [https://columbia.github.io/libtrack/](https://columbia.github.io/libtrack/)

and our repository github repo: [https://github.com/columbia/libtrack](https://github.com/columbia/libtrack)</comment>


Air Force study say Government should get serious about reusable rockets - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/05/air-force-study-says-us-government-should-get-serious-about-reusable-rockets/ <comment><USER2> Remember the last time the Airforce butted heads with NASA? They almost lost their entire space program. To better justify the Shuttle during its development, NASA demanded that all air force payloads ride on it. The air force pushed back because they needed polar launch and wider landing capabilities. NASA knew the Shuttle design would fail to meet its performance and cost promises, so it agreed to modify the Shuttle design (making it worse in most ways) for the Air Force in return for locking down Shuttle political support.

The airforce was forced to wind down its space program until, the Challenger explosion. Then they were forced to scramble to restart it.

Now the Airforce is advocating for a technology that is directly counter to the interests of NASA, its funders in the Senate, and the SLS, which is the main reason for that funding. NASA and its congress critters aren't going to like this, they still want to pour massive amounts of pork into their districts with the SLS and any government employee publicly pointing out its missions could be done far cheaper is going to get whacked.

<comment><USER3> Excuse me, NASA ran the COTS program for commercial resupply contract to the ISS, and they also ran another program for commercial space vehicle.

After all, NASA help made what SpaceX is today.

Of course, there's probably a faction within the NASA and aerospace contractor community that don't like SpaceX, but it is inaccurate to say that it run contrary to the interest of NASA as a whole.

<comment><USER4> Right, wouldn't NASA be SpaceX's largest customer? They gave them $1.6 billion for those resupply missions (right when SpaceX needed it to stay alive) and a further $3 billion for that crewed vehicle development you mention.

<comment><USER5> Commercial Crew was $2.6 billion to SpaceX and includes 6 flights, I believe. Yes, NASA is SpaceX's biggest customer, but SpaceX also gets a lot of revenue from launching commercial communications satellites to GEO -- a business that US launchers have not been price competitive at for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It probably makes more sense for the Air Force to stay away from subsidizing particular systems and just buy whatever is cheapest for a particular level of demonstrated reliability. If reusable rockets pan out economically (which looks like a pretty safe bet, at this point), that's what launch providers will build.

The problem, over the last 50 years or so, is Congress wants to dictate which companies get contracts (and subcontracts) so the right districts get jobs. If that doesn't stop the subsidization of this or that technology isn't going to make much difference.

<comment><USER5> If NASA had done that for commercial resupply or commercial crew, they would have spent more for less. Because they instead competed pre-buying launches, essentially, 2 new less-expensive launch vehicles were created.

It would be smart for the Air Force to compete pre-buying heavy launches. It would remove a lot of the uncertainty in today's market.

<comment><USER6> >If NASA had done that for commercial resupply or commercial crew, they would have spent more for less.

I don't see why you think this is true.

<comment><USER5> The numbers speak for themselves: these block buys paid for development of F9 and Antares plus their flights. ULA lost round 1 of the cargo contest and won 1/3 of the second cargo contest.

<comment><USER6> How is this not covered by the statement "...just buy whatever is cheapest for a particular level of demonstrated reliability."

<comment><USER5> It makes a huge difference whether you buy 1 flight at a time, or a bunch. Which is the point I was making.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> From a historical perspective, it is important to remember that the military has _always_ wanted low cost access to space. Back in Reagan's 'star wars' program one of the key technologies was 'single stage to orbit' or SSTO. Also re-usable craft. Then the Space Shuttle came along which was supposed to be a 'space truck' mostly re-usable and flying up and down into space so often and regularly that you could decide to build a satellite and get it into orbit a month later.

If SpaceX can work out a plan to get the second stage of the Falcon 9 back on the ground in an undamaged state, it really sets the stage for relatively "low cost" missions.

In some ways it is a stronger capability than having weapons in orbit, as you don't expose what you can do until one day suddenly you install them up there because you need or want them.

It will be interesting to see how this stuff works its way into the whole space launch fabric of things.</comment>


Hey Rails, nice Rack! - <AUTHOR> http://brainspl.at/articles/2008/04/25/hey-rails-nice-rack <comment><USER2> Interesting how the domain is shown here with an extra period at the beginning "Hey Rails, nice Rack! _(.brainspl.at)_ ". I am guessing it must be coz it is a bare domain (no www) and pg is working his way backwards from the first single / (or eol) and he expects at least three parts: TLD, domain name and subdomain name and puts "." between each.

Update: Did a quick test.

Submitted: <http://127.0.0.1/this/that>

Showed up as: (184.108.40.206) !

Wow that is totally not what I expected.

<comment><USER3> That caught my eye too kirubakaran.

When I submit <http://127.0.0.1:3000>, I got "0.1:3000"

I submitted <http://localhost:3000> and ended up with ".localhost:3000"

Going with <http://192.168.1.104:3000>, I ended up with "1.104:3000"

When I go with a bare <http://127.0.0.1>, I also get the unexpected "126.96.36.199"

<comment><USER2> I am wondering what code could have this effect.

Off topic: I just signed up for FeedFlix. Looks really cool! Great job! (update: submitted it to yc news)

<comment><USER3> Actually, someone suggested I look at the source code rather than submit a ton of URLs and try to reverse-engineer the logic by looking at the results. Here's the relevant code fron news.arc:

(defmemo sitename (url) (let toks (parse-site url) (if (isa (saferead (car toks)) 'int) (tostring (prall toks "" ".")) (let (t1 t2 t3 . rest) toks (if (or (mem t1 multi-tld-countries _) (and t3 (mem t2 long-domains_ ))) (string t3 "." t2 "." t1) (string t2 "." t1))))))

; Minor bug: can have both google.at and google.co.at. Same for jp.

(= multi-tld-countries* '("uk" "jp" "au" "in" "ph" "tr" "za" "my" "nz" "br" "mx" "th" "sg" "id" "pk" "eg" "il" "at"))

(= long-domains* '("blogspot" "wordpress" "livejournal" "blogs" "typepad" "weebly" "blog-city" "com"))

<comment><USER2> Thanks. I was being lazy too :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Minimum Wage Still Can't Pay For A Two-Bedroom Apartment Anywhere - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/06/affordable-housing-minimum-wage-rent-apartment-house-rental/592024/ <comment><USER2> This article like so many others makes a critical mistake in using a median price for minimum earners.

A minimum wage earner is not and should not be in the market for a median priced home.

A median wage earner would pursue a median priced home.

A bottom quartile earner would pursue homes priced in the bottom quartile. Not the median.

The title of this article is false. Minimum wage earners can often afford two bedroom homes priced at the lower end.

<comment><USER3> > Minimum wage earners can often afford two bedroom homes priced at the lower > end.

[citation needed]

Looking around the bay they appear to simply become homeless, especially if there's any interruption in work, and if they're lucky they're able to move away before this happens.

<comment><USER4> Obviously not in the Bay Area. People making six figures can't afford homes in the Bay Area.

But homes are cheaper almost everywhere else in the US.

<comment><USER3> ...and that's the economy _working_ , where you can be run out of the city because a rich person wants your house?

<comment><USER4> No, that's NIMBYist government regulation preventing the economy from working by building high density housing in a city that needs it.

<comment><USER3> YIMBY pro-developer stances like Weiner's SB-50 aren't going to help working class families and individuals either. I am very pro-development but we need high allocations of affordable and social housing to make the development work for the existing community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm all for people earning a fair wage but I find reports like this a bit disingenuous. A minimum wage person can't afford a median apartment? Ok but you would expect that minimum wage workers would seek out bargain low-end units, and leave the median apartments to median income families.

So while acknowledging that in many cities including my own there is an overall affordability issue, I have a problem with being presented with misleading statistics, even if for noble reasons. About 5 percent of workers make minimum wage or less. A straightforward and honest question would be to ask if they can they afford available apartments in the bottom 5-10% range of rents? Maybe they can't, and that would indeed be a problem. But in terms of this report, we have no way of knowing.

</comment><comment><USER6> It seems that minimum wage is not, in fact, supposed to support a person 100%, not especially a family.

<comment><USER7> I am not sure why people think minimum wage must be enough to afford a two- bedroom home. Ideally minimum wage should comfortably allow one person to support... Themselves, minimally. Which means a studio or one bedroom.

People should not aim to remain at minimum wage long, but use it as an entry point for somewhere better.

<comment><USER8> Eh I'm not positive it should even be able to support a single person... Why do we insist on raising the bar for employment so high? If a 16 year old wants to get their first job, they shouldn't be required right of the bat have a productive output sufficient to support themselves. That's not the point of minimum wage jobs - or at least it never was until we started arbitrarily setting a minimum value.

<comment><USER9> That's all well and good if 16 year olds are the only ones making minimum wage.

And if their parents haven't kicked them out of the house already because they got pregnant too early.

Or have a sexual orientation that their parents don't agree with.

Or..

<comment><USER10> Do we need to handle those edge cases by mandating what employers have to pay ALL employees? Maybe there is a better way to help people in needy situations without distorting the labor market for everyone.

<comment><USER11> 16 year olds working min wage is the edge case. The average retail worker for instance is 37.

[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://familiesandwork.org/downloads/TurnoverAndRetail.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwidpaCDl_biAhXGqlkKHUFuBjQQFjABegQIDxAG&usg=AOvVaw2QfCizk_emgU0YIDzaDwgO)

<comment><USER10> Not all retail workers make minimum wage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> On the other hand, if this weren't the case I think it would be even more strange.

"Law requires companies to automate or illegally hire any job worth less than a 2-bedroom home"

<comment><USER13> Is there anything wrong with this? If a job can't provide for a person at some (philosophically debatable) level, it's not a job worth doing, free market be damned. We could take this to a logical extreme and think of all the jobs that could exist in the absence of a minimum wage and basic human necessity, but the reality is both of these exist. Either it's "worth" more for an employer to pay them more, or automating it becomes more competitive. Both of these drive innovation and advance society. This is why I've supported a higher minimum wage.

<comment><USER12> Yes, there is plenty wrong with this. It is a strange economic intervention that distorts incentives and rarely helps low-wage populations or innovation. Unfortunately there are other options besides "automate" or "pay more".

For example, you can pay people under the table, outsource, close down your business (as many restaurants do), change your business model to require less labor (many restaurants in the US are switching from full service to counter- serve). None of these are good for workers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Minimum wage should provide a minimal lifestyle. Not penury, but perhaps a room in a shared accommodation. Why would the legally minimal wage support housing an entire family?

</comment><comment><USER15> The actual report: [https://reports.nlihc.org/sites/default/files/oor/OOR_2019.p...](https://reports.nlihc.org/sites/default/files/oor/OOR_2019.pdf)

Some notes:

\- Those earning minimum wage are unlikely to be in the median rental market

\- The report doesn't include the impact of any tax credits like child credits, EITC, LIHTC

\- They don't adjust minimum wage by local jurisdictions. For example, minimum wage in Chicago is $13/hour but they only list the Illinois minimum wage ($8.25/hour). This is particular distorting given that cities (with higher minimum wages) are home to most renters

</comment><comment><USER16> Several co-related factors affecting this:

Worker productivity increases cannot be legislated. Such productivity increases can only come from workers improving their skills or technology that increases their productive output (as simple as an electric drill to as advanced as an exoskelleton with a HUD). Minimum wage laws are effectively bans on low-productivity workers. By making labor artificially expensive through legislation, demand for it drops, total economic output decreases, production costs increase. There's no reason to believe that the home- production industry would be able to reduce costs / increase output with minimum wage increases; in fact that opposite is the case.

Legislation can only reduce the permitting costs of housing production IFF it becomes more permissive. In the regions of the US that I'm familiar with, all the areas that have high housing costs pass legislation that increases permitting costs or transactional costs to bring housing to market. This can only result in a price increase globally with some politically-connected group receiving a benefit.

Legislation and corporate-bank policies artificially increase the money supply to the greatest degree with housing loans. Typically these workers are not minimum wage and in addition to the above effects, the Cantillon effect gives an undue subsidy to these higher wage workers [https://www.aier.org/article/sound-money- project/cantillon-e...](https://www.aier.org/article/sound-money- project/cantillon-effects-and-money-neutrality)

</comment><comment><USER17> Minimum wage workers can't afford a 1 bedroom apartment or studio where I live.

<comment><USER18> So perhaps they should split a 2/3 bedroom with roommates?

If someone makes the absolute legal minimum, why does every expect them to live alone?

<comment><USER19> Or maybe we can actually pay people a wage allowing them to lead some semblance of a decent life? Why does it fall on them, instead of the actual businesses paying them?

<comment><USER20> I share a house with three other people and I don't have any kids. I quite enjoy my life right now and if I had thinner skin I might take offense from your implication.

<comment><USER19> I'm saying that if people are not able to have a certain standard of living due to their income, why should it be framed as their fault? Obviously I'm not saying someone should be able to live in a 3000 sq. ft. house when I say "certain standard of living."

In your case, you probably made the choice of your living arrangement, not a choice your employer made for you. That's different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > And only in 28 of the country's counties can a 40-hour-a-week minimum wage > worker afford a one-bedroom [home]

So where _do_ they live?

<comment> temp-dude-87844 One or more of the following:

\- Living in units where the rent is far below the median rent.

\- Working multiple jobs.

\- Living in a multiple-income family.

\- Living with roommates and pooling rent money.

\- Payday loans.

\- Behind on rent.

\- Living in a house and not directly responsible for mortgage payments.

\- Living with others in an informal arrangement and not legally responsible for payments.

\- Homeless

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The obvious response to this is that the minimum wage is simply not supposed to be a sole source of income for a person living on their own.

The bigger problem with this particular article is qualifying affordable as less than 30 percent of income. That is a great rule in most situations. However, if you are on a limited income the percentage housing will be expected to be higher. It is one of the least elastic expenses, while things like a car or entertainment can be cut back or substituted for alternatives like public transportation. I don't know what the percentage should be, but 30% is unrealistic.

If you think about it, the opposite will also be true in many situations. If my income doubled from 100k to 200k overnight, I would consider upgrading apartments but from 1k a month to 1.3k a month. My food and entertainment costs would scale much quicker as a percentage of income.

</comment><comment><USER23> > Minimum Wage Still Can't Pay For A Two-Bedroom Apartment Anywhere

Was it supposed to?

</comment><comment><USER24> I get roughly $1,500 for a couple per month, at 30 hours a week, post tax, but before government assistance programs. There's no place in Oklahoma where you can't find a 2 bedroom for $700/month. I'd bet that most of the surrounding states are similarly priced. In my city you can find single bedrooms, with all utilities plus washer and dryer included, for $350/month.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why should it pay for 2 bedroom? It should pay for the minimum shelter. Which I would say is a studio.

</comment><comment><USER26> Mm, yup. Solid navy within the DC Beltway area. That feels about right.

<comment><USER27> New Hampshire is even worse since it doesn't even have many good paying jobs to drive that cost up. Any area that's within a reasonable one day drive with a family of the Boston area (i.e the max distance many people will consider for their "vacation cabin") is just solid navy. The people of NH and ME always complain about MA money driving up the cost of land. It looks like they're not wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why would a minimum wage worker be trying to buy a 2-bedroom home?

Edit: Meant to say rent instead of buy

<comment><USER28> They aren't. The article is about renting a 2-bedroom home. And nowhere do they limit the definition of "home" to "free standing, detached dwelling" \- I believe their figures include 2-bedroom apartments as well.

<comment><USER18> Apologies- I meant to write rent. Even if their numbers include 2 BR apts, my point still stands: a single person affording rent for a 2 BR apt is _not_ a reasonable baseline for a _living wage_.

<comment><USER29> It's not, but what's your argument for why it shouldn't be?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why should minimum wage be enough to support anything? It's not like we have requirements that employers provide 40 hours of work.

<comment><USER31> A worker could get multiple jobs if one doesn't "provide" enough hours.

<comment><USER14> Not always, since a lot of jobs demand that you're "available" way more than they actually schedule you, and ready to come in at a moments notice. They are trying to legislate this though.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A single app for notes, tasks and passwords - <AUTHOR> https://bluenote.io

<comment><USER2> I only say these two thing to be helpful.

1) your cert isn't signed by a known cert issuer 2) your mobile zoom is pretty wacky

only trying to be helpful.</comment>


My short history of Engine Yard and my Resignation - <AUTHOR> http://brainspl.at/articles/2010/08/13/4-years-at-engine-yard-what-a-long-strange-trip-its-been This is the story of my startup experience of a company that took $38million in funding in 3 rounds. I am almost fully vested and I've just resigned and here is my story. <comment><USER2> Not to turn HN into a gossip site, but here's some dots to connect:

Alex Payne quits Twitter, moves to Portland, cofounds BankSimple, an attempted game-changer if there ever was one. - [http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/17/alex- payne-twitter/?utm_sou...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/17/alex-payne- twitter/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29)

"Wow. @banksimple just leveled up. In the last 24 hours we signed on four of the best engineers I know. Can't wait to announce the team." Alex Payne - 8/11 - <https://twitter.com/al3x/status/20905067927>

"What comes next for me? Something truly awesome and even more challenging then Engine Yard, but that will allow me to work from home in Portland. I cannot yet reveal where I am going to work next but I can promise it will be another game changing project and I am chomping at the bit to get started." Ezra, 8/13

<comment><AUTHOR> nice guess but I promise it is not BankSimple

<comment><USER3> The VMware deal fell through...they couldn't get Engine Yard, so they'll just have to settle for you. Sound about right?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I pretty much called this one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _That is the new way to build companies, College degrees don't matter much IMHO anymore, for developers anyway. It's more how you interact with the open source community and what you release yourself. Your github account has become your new resume and what you say on Twitter and in various IRC channels are more likely to get you the best jobs then any recruiters ever will._

I'm interested in education, hiring, and matters of accreditation. Those last few paragraphs really got my attention. I'm glad I read all the way to the end.

<comment><USER5> That's a terribly short sighted thing to say (by the poster). I know HN users don't seem to value education, but a college degree has a lot of value outside of the education component. Living with others, compromising, group work, social life, classes outside your area of focus, etc. I'd rather hire someone who has been through this than a hacker who has only spent time in the echo chamber of forums and fellow geeks.

As of July 2010, unemployment rate for college grad was 5.0% while for HS grad was 9.9%.

<comment><USER6> In my ten year career, I haven't found there to be a correlation between having a degree and being a good developer. I've worked with a number of awesome people, most with degrees, some without, and plenty of bad people, most with degrees, some without. To me, a degree isn't a positive nor a negative signal for anything. You can talk about value of the intangibles outside the education component, but in my experience, a degree doesn't necessarily confer this either.

EDIT: Actually, thinking about it further, I haven't come across many bad developers without a degree. This is surely selection bias: bad devs with a degree can hide in the bowels of BigCo with HR departments who don't actually know how to hire good people, but absolutely require a degree. The bad devs without a degree can't get these cushy, hard to be fired from positions, and therefore don't last very long and probably find another line of work.

<comment><USER7> In my experience there is no direct correlation between a developer being good or bad based on whether they had a degree or not. However, what I did find was that someone who had completed their undergrad is generally capable of thinking at a higher level and can work through harder problems. IMHO, a University shouldn't be about training students to go into the workforce but to teach them how to effectively think and solve problems, regardless of discipline.

<comment><USER8> I would argue the presumption that college is critical to developing higher critical thinking is a damning indictment of pre-college schooling.

<comment><USER9> Why? It's a pretty simple system - elementary, middle school, and high school are about laying the knowledge foundation for critical thinking. University (grad school really) is about actually practicing that.

You need a body of generally accepted knowledge to actually be a critical thinker. Most people I meet don't lack the critical thinking, they lack the body of knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Now is the time for me to focus on spending as much time with my son and family as I can and I can no longer commit to 100 hour weeks at Engine Yard. I also wanted to move to Portland where my folks live so my son can grow up near his grandparents and my wife and I can have trustworthy babysitters so we can have a social live of our own(even if it's just a little bit;)_

This is a man with his head on his shoulders. My only comment is I wish that more people had this level of dedication to their families.

<comment><USER11> I don't understand the whole 100 hour week business (unless it's an exaggeration). Even at 7 days per week, that works out to 14 hours a day, or 9am - 11pm. I could pull off those hours for a few days (and sometimes I do), may be a few weeks if really necessary, but no human being can do this consistently and do even remotely creative work. We run a startup and meet fairly aggressive schedules at half the hours. Why could they possibly need to work 100 hour weeks?

Yes, sometimes it's necessary. Yes, sometimes team spirit takes over and spending fourteen hours a day at work feels like fun. Yes, sometimes there's a creative burst and one could easily pull of a fourteen hour session. But I cannot believe someone could consistently put in an honest day's work and pull off those hours for more than a few months.

<comment><USER12> FWIW, I've done 100 hours a week for several weeks in a row.

I felt pretty productive since I could intermix the kind of work I was doing. 11AM-6PM would be meetings, interviews/recruiting, etc. Dinner break w/ hulu from 6-7. Then program myself for basically a full day (~7PM-2AM).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You might as well just link to the blog entry directly: [http://brainspl.at/articles/2010/08/13/4-years-at-engine- yar...](http://brainspl.at/articles/2010/08/13/4-years-at-engine-yard-what-a- long-strange-trip-its-been)

<comment><AUTHOR> I meant to but I pasted the wrong link. Can I edit the link to change it to the direct link? Or can a moderator please do that?

[edit] looks like I cannot change the url myself. if a moderator can change irt I'd appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "We just were victims of our own success and could not deploy customers fast enough to get free time to build the automated system that AppCloud is today."

This is a _really_ hard problem IMHO. Obviously it depends on your business model, but I've found it at times an unsolvable problem...

<comment><USER15> hire contractors (or setup a team) and isolate them from the rest of the business. happens in both small and large companies all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I still don't entirely get their model. They have all this rails deployment expertise, but you pay a more less flat fee every month, whether you're drawing on their knowledge a lot or a little.

I think I'd prefer to pay less for hosting, and have some experts on retainer for when they're really needed.

They're cool people in any case, and I wish them good luck.

<comment><USER17> A. If you are paying a monthly fee, what difference does it make if that fee is called a _hosting cost_ or a _retainer_?

B. You will ultimately either pay more, or get less value, if you decouple your expert support from the specific hardware platform that your expert support understands best and lives with every day.

C. If you only pay your experts when there is an emergency, there is no incentive for anyone to help you avoid having emergencies. Nor will there be anyone but you to look out for emergencies before they happen, or prevent emergencies by doing routine work like testing and applying patches. And you will have to get really good at finding freelance experts and convincing them to drop everything, reorient to your system, and fix your problem in a matter of minutes _as your server is in flames_ ; you may have to pay premium prices for that. It might be cheaper to just pay the insurance bill.

Disclaimer: I work at Acquia on Acquia Hosting, a product which is like an EngineYard for Drupal.

<comment><USER16> > A. If you are paying a monthly fee, what difference does it make if that fee > is called a hosting cost or a retainer?

I have more latitude when I put the pieces together: hosting here, retainer there.

> C. If you only pay your experts when there is an emergency, there is no > incentive for anyone to help you avoid having emergencies

That's a fair point, but on the other hand, it also seems that if you're paying an 'expert surcharge' on your hosting, your incentive is to get as much out of that as possible, whereas the experts, getting a flat fee, can't act as de-facto consultants without eating up all their margins that way. There's something of a conflict there. How do you guys define exactly what your role is?

Also, presumably someone is developing the code to be hosted there. The better they are, the more likely it is that they'll be able to do a good deployment and monitor it on an ongoing basis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well written. I had never heard of the author or his company, yet unlike so many of the articles that come through here, it had enough context baked in that you could follow it without a Google search.

I found it surprising that Rails needs this level of hand-holding to keep it running though. Rails devs, is this really the experience you have deploying your applications?

<comment><USER19> Rails doesn't need any hand-holding any more. Apache+Passenger take care of most cases, Nginx+unicorn/mongrel take care of the rest.

Big, heavy traffic apps require special attention, but then that's the same for all big/heavy apps.

<comment><USER20> The only issue so far ive seen is that there arent any rails/ruby sites that have complex interfaces. Twitter is barebones. ONce theres a site that has heavy traffic and a more complicated interface its possible the perspetion of the technology will change.

<comment><USER21> justin.tv, check their traffic/interface lately? scribd.com, though maybe that doesn't qualify on interface. shopify.com, basecamp.com

<comment><USER20> None of those have interfaces on par with say amazon or ebay or even facebook. ALthough i know facebook uses mostly ajax anyway. IN fact justin.tv and scribd really are just a cms that pushes the video rather then the site being based around the interface as it is with facebook.

Its not really that important just something that ive noticed. THen again there arent really any java sites that i can think of that are high load sites that have complex interfaces either. Meaning newer sites. MAybe they just arent in fashion anymore. Or everybody is just moving to ajax front ends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You created Merb in the first place. Didn't you? Its missing from the story!

<comment><USER23> Are you thinking of Yehuda Katz who works at EngineYard?

<http://yehudakatz.com/>

<comment><USER24> No, he's not. Ezra first wrote Merb. Yehuda has been the lead developer for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Ezra, thanks for all your help while at EngineYard. I recall many times where you would help out when I was having problems with client sites. Looking forward to hearing what your next project is.

<comment><USER26> Ezra and team helped a client of mine accept HTTP chunked transfers back in 2007, for custom uploads from a mobile Java app. That might be simple today (or more likely, unnecessary), but in 2007, virtually no one had done it. Googling returned the HTTP spec and one (1) incomplete howto article. They spent a ton of time getting this set up. Thanks, Ezra!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Oh wow, memories... my first sysadmin job had our servers in the same datacenter, in 2000. It was originally called Wavve, and had been built with dot-com VC, so they had all the toys -- biometric identification, massive stacks of batteries, Starbucks-inspired architecture, riot-proof glass...

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there anything in this

"Oh the stories I could tell if only I could. But I feel that telling this positive story of the history of EY is the classy way to go out and I wish Engine Yard all the best in the world"

Any unrest?

<comment><USER29> I don't think anyone would leave right before their stock was about vest, without a solid reason. :) But the key term is classy.

True story: in the early days of Merb, before it had really gotten a lot of attention, I once hit a show stopper - hopped on IRC, told him about my problem, he found the bug, fixed the bug, pushed a new release in something like 15 minutes IIRC, and stayed cool about it the entire time.

Best of luck to him!

<comment><USER24> > _I don't think anyone would leave right before their stock was about vest, > without a solid reason._

I wouldn't assume that there's some hidden reason for him leaving. First of all, leaving right before his stock is about to vest just means that he's leaving a little bit of stock on the table. As he said, the vast majority of his stock has already vested (as one would expect after 4 years), and he gets to keep that. It's the 5%, or whatever, of his stock that hasn't vested that he's losing.

I read this as "I've been working startup hours for way too long, and I'm tired of it, especially now that I have a kid I want to spend time with".

<comment><USER30> I've seen startups handle the "all my options are vested" motivation problem with what's called an evergreen program. An evergreen program keeps issuing options such that your monthly vesting rate remains constant after the initial 4 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> We have been a loyal EY customer since Jan 2009, over 1.5 years now. I'm glad that EY is still growing and doing well and it's sad to see a cofounder leave. I hope Ezra the best.</comment>


How HHVM Uses Modern C++ for Fun and Profit (2014) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqK8Yuoq4ig <comment><USER3> I don't like how C was completely ignored when talking about languages with comparable performance. :p

The Zend Engine 3 (aka the stock PHP 7 interpreter) is, according to one HHVM developer, 'embarassingly competitive on the test suites', and it's written in C.

/rant

C++ is probably much nicer to maintain, though. C ends up being macro hell.

<comment><USER4> He did not ignore C, he said C++ is much easier to maintain and lets you use friendly features when it's not performance expensive. They use template as much as possible over macros, C++ debuggers, lambdas, ref counting.

<comment><USER3> I haven't watched the last 10 minutes yet, but there's no mention of C in the talk before that. The only comparison is to Assembly.

<comment><USER4> And I can't really rewatch the first half hour, but I distinctly remember he mentioned C at least two times at the begging, slightly before and during "Why C++" part. The examples of template usage also imply things not possible in C.

<comment><USER5> I watched it last night and can confirm that C was not explicitly mentioned once.

<comment><USER4> Wow, I guess I must have filled in some blanks... when he said 'other languages' or something...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remember someone from Facebook saying that ( can't find the link ATM ) when HPHP was being built there was a competing project to trans-compile PHP to Java. In the end they compared the performance and found that the C++ was faster and went with it. Is it true ?

If it is, I wonder how they feel now that they have given up speed improvements and built a VM in search of other advantages. At least if they had chosen the JVM they could have taken advantage of interoperability that JVM provides with other languages to convert at least part of their code base to JVM languages, thereby possibly improving maintainability.

<comment><USER3> Are you possibly referring to Quercus? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_%28software%29#Quercus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_%28software%29#Quercus)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I was expecting a talk about how cool C++11 features are. It was actually a talk about how C++ lets you be super close-to-the-metal and do ridiculous performance hacks. Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nobody uses C++ for fun. Unless they're a masochist.

<comment><USER8> I do, and I'm not a masochist. I use it to write small games on my own time.

I used to loathe C++, but the C++11/14 dialect makes things much more pleasant. There's still a lot of details you need to worry about, but crucially these are details that other languages rarely give you a choice about. The only real alternative was C, but I'm tired of reinventing wheels and C++ has the STL. C also doesn't have the same support for value types which C++ does, and value types are _really_ nice to use.

<comment><USER9> Value types, as opposed to polymorphic types, ie pointers (including references)?

struct IntForFoo { int value; };

when you use it you write a function that takes an IntForFoo as one of its arguments and you get type safety over other ints. Gently snarl at anyone who does a .value outside such a function. Include a constructor function, an assignment function... Remember that that typedefs just lie to you about the type, they don't change it for type checking...

If you need to generate code, do it, macros and templates are just really crappy ways of generating code; you can do a lot better when you need to. But how often do you _really_ need to and how often are you worshipping at the false idol of "must be general so can be used for 100 years" when that's really not the purpose of the code?

Polymorphism and templates are overrated by C++ designers you don't actually need them and they encourage some awful designs.

<comment><USER8> One of the problems with structs in C, is that you must explicitly call the destructor function if you have non-memory resources. In C++, a scope's closing } always takes care of that for you.

As for the generated code bit, I assume you're referring to the STL. Writing my own data structures is explicitly what I don't want to do anymore. STL has it? Great, I use it and move on.

<comment><USER9> Sure use it if you understand it, ie vector where you reserve the memory up front to avoid future allocations and pointer/iterator invalidations or you don't care in which case use a friendlier or more powerful language maybe?

Writing datastructures is much of what programming is, I know that's not what you meant and you use the basics of STL to build the real datastructure you want, but you care about performance and with STL it's not targeted at your case so when you get beyond prototype you have to rip it out anyway.

Automatic destructor calls on leaving scope is the nicest part of c++ - <USER2> it interacts with exceptions so nastily that nobody understands how it works. "Exception safe code" yeah, right, not in c++.

Generated code - you can use macros, you can use templates. Or you can use anything that generates text and does what you want, more nicely than that.

<comment><USER10> > Sure use it if you understand it, ie vector where you reserve the memory up > front to avoid future allocations and pointer/iterator invalidations or you > don't care in which case use a friendlier or more powerful language maybe?

std::vector implements one of the simplest data structures in computer science. If somebody doesn't understand the difference between, say, an array (however you want to call it) and a linked list, I don't want them on my team.

> Writing datastructures is much of what programming is, I know that's not > what you meant and you use the basics of STL to build the real datastructure > you want, but you care about performance and with STL it's not targeted at > your case so when you get beyond prototype you have to rip it out anyway.

What are you talking about? More than a decade ago, there was a lot of interest in what kind of penalty there was in using C++ compared to C. There were several benchmarks run and papers written, including one from Alexander Stepanov (main contributor to the STL) that became an appendix to the standard ( [http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC22/WG21/docs/PDTR18015.pdf](http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC22/WG21/docs/PDTR18015.pdf) ). The conclusion from the various experiments was that C++ performance was on par with C, and C++ often provided opportunities to optimize more than C did (e.g., passing a pointer to a function in C to the more common C++ practice of passing a functor with an inlineable operator()). The STL relies on those features that allow for a very efficient implementation. In fact, the main complaint I've seen is that the STL struck the wrong balance of preferring efficiency over generality ( [http://www.open- std.org/JTC1/SC22/wg21/docs/papers/2007/n227...](http://www.open- std.org/JTC1/SC22/wg21/docs/papers/2007/n2271.html) , [http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2005/n185...](http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2005/n1850.pdf) ).

> Automatic destructor calls on leaving scope is the nicest part of c++ - > shame it interacts with exceptions so nastily that nobody understands how it > works. "Exception safe code" yeah, right, not in c++.

A decade ago, there was a period of maybe six months where people thought it might be impossible to write exception safe code in C++. It was solved, and the solution was to use destructors. You may have heard of RAII ( [http://stroustrup.com/except.pdf](http://stroustrup.com/except.pdf) ). Alexandrescu even made it incredibly simple to do ( [http://www.drdobbs.com/cpp/generic-change-the-way-you- write-...](http://www.drdobbs.com/cpp/generic-change-the-way-you-write- excepti/184403758) ).

> Generated code - you can use macros, you can use templates. Or you can use > anything that generates text and does what you want, more nicely than that.

So I have a choice between using templates, which provide syntax checking and type checking, or generating text in an ad-hoc way? And you actually recommend monkeying with text generation?

For what it's worth, I do like C. But when I work in C, I need to rely on something like Apache's APR or GNU's glib to provide me with useful data structures. While those have been ported to all architectures I care about, there's something to be said for having data structures in the core library.

I like C11. I like using _Generic in macros. I like variable argument macros. But if I'm working on a project where I need variable argument macros, I'm much more likely to pick C++ than to try to convince myself that I'm generating correct source code through macros.

<comment><USER11> > std::vector implements one of the simplest data structures in computer > science.

It may "implement" one of the simplest DS, but this particular implementation is anything but trivial to use. You can get a pointer to an element in it, and keep using the vector, and the pointer will point to the correct element... until you push_back() one too many element, it resizes, and then suddenly your pointer is invalid.

But if you reserve() the right amount of space, you can keep it valid! If you are very careful. But then you don't want to call reserve() too often because it may actually turn your O(N) algorithm into O(N^2)! (Basically, calling reserve() N times on O(N) length vector takes O(N^2) time, while doing push_back() N times is guaranteed to be O(N).)

Sure, std::vector is useful, and I use it all the time, but it is anything but simple. It's C++ after all. :)

<comment><USER8> You have the similar problems if you build your own resizeable arrays in C, unless you resort to an extra level of indirection (e.g. an array of pointers, or pointers to array chunks).

std::vector has a series of gotchas, but any generic resizeable array which has similar performance will have similar gotchas; std::vector wasn't made that way just for giggles.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What We Know About the F-35's First Crash - <AUTHOR> https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/what-we-know-about-the-f-35s-first-crash-1829455598 <comment><USER2> TL;DR

> Here's all we know so far.

> Thankfully, there were no deaths or injuries in the incident which saw the > pilot eject to safety.

> The cause of the crash is unknown and remains under investigation at this > time.</comment>


Slack Calls: Now with video - <AUTHOR> https://slackhq.com/slack-calls-now-with-100-more-video-50bf365a0d98#.tdyzbe5fc <comment><USER3> I hope screen sharing comes soon. They bought Screen Hero a while back, and said they were integrating it.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, right?! I had the exact same thought when I saw this. Okay, video... that's cool. But, we've been waiting for the ScreenHero purchase to turn into Slack screen sharing for ages.

<comment><USER5> You probably already know but until they finish the integration you can sign up for a screenhero account from Slack. I'm not sure if you need a paid account or what tier you'd need but it's definitely available on ours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Has anyone else noticed how pristine the audio quality of a Slack call sounds? I wonder how they optimized it. My company's voip, and Lync, and Skype all fail to deliver the same kind of call quality. I've only noticed / admired better call quality when making a call within Cisco to another employee.

I don't use video much but I hope they've done as good of a job as they did with audio.

<comment><USER7> Slack's audio quality is on par with GoToMeeting, I think.

Of all the different solutions I've visited (Google Hangouts, Skype, Slack, Zoom, Join.me etc.), G2M has been the most reliable and best-sounding one that I've found. It's got things like native Mac app, screen sharing (just one presenter, unfortunately), audio/video recording, telephone dial-in, calendar scheduling, and persistence (i.e. you can reuse the same meeting every day). It uses little bandwidth and behaves really well on a low-bandwidth connection. And unlike GH, we've never experienced any issues connecting or staying connected.

The only thing I miss is the ability for it to pipe back a little bit of my own audio, the way I believe phones do, so that you can talk while wearing earbuds or a closed headset. (Without this, you won't hear your own voice, which I find too unnerving.)

<comment><USER8> You can generally do this in your computer's sound settings by specifying that you want to listen to your recording device.

<comment><USER7> Not on macOS, I believe. According to the other commenter, this is called sidetone, and requires external hardware [1].

[1] [https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2016/03/22/gotomeeting-audio- ha...](https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2016/03/22/gotomeeting-audio-hardware-for- a-busy-office/)

<comment><USER9> I believe you can use Loopback [1] for this (paid). If not, JACK [2] would certainly work but it's a bit of a hassle to get everything set up.

[1] [https://www.rogueamoeba.com/loopback/](https://www.rogueamoeba.com/loopback/)

[2] [http://www.jackosx.com/](http://www.jackosx.com/)

<comment><USER10> I also have not tried it myself, but it appears the LineIn tool on their freebies page is exactly what is needed:

[https://www.rogueamoeba.com/freebies/](https://www.rogueamoeba.com/freebies/)

 _hear the sound coming in through a microphone_

Edit: It is specifically called out in the Citrix blog referenced above as not working well enough. Not sure if the Loopback software would be any different, but it does offer a free trial.

<comment><USER7> The LineIn page says:

> New in 2.3: A long-standing issue with latency in LineIn has finally been > cured! We've also added a menu item for toggling play-thru.

I'll try it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> lovely.

the sooner i can remove skype from my life the better.

that said, why can't any of these phone systems deal with the use case of two people trying to call each other and then simply auto connect the two calls? why does one side have to drop the call and answer the other?

<comment><USER12> Because if you're calling someone you expect them to say hello. It's not that easy to explain to a user that the call they just placed was dropped and they're really now answering a call.

<comment><USER13> I doubt thats the actual reason.

<comment><USER14> Telephone use case has been around for a over a century. Fucking with the UI won't go over well.

<comment><USER13> To paraphrase all the other recently disrupted industries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We constantly have problems with Slack audio calls, they seem not to be stable even over very stable internet and wifi. I wonder if being in Europe is a factor

<comment><USER16> We don't have problems with Slack calls, we're based in Copenhagen, Denmark and I frequently have full-day sessions with a colleague in Spain

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does Slack have a phone bridge for voice calls? Would be helpful for participants who can't use Slack.

If not, I wonder if their APIs allow a bot to join a voice call and get access to the audio...

<comment><USER18> This is the last thing we require before moving our team over from hangouts (which is the only thing we use even though we pay for the whole g-suite).

Either a way to call-out, have external people call-in, or just allowing a connection of a 3rd party service (paid or otherwise) that lets us connect a phone line.

<comment><USER19> Why don't you just use normal Hangouts? G Suite isn't required.

<comment><USER18> We were using many of the gsuite features previously, and just over time moved off one by one.

Really we only have it now because it's nice to have support if needed, and having our work emails associated with the hangouts we do with people outside the company is nicer than everyone using their personal emails (with their personal profile pictures).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Counting number of options I might have when trying to do a video/voice call with someone:

1\. Facetime

2\. Skype

3\. Hangouts

4\. GoToMeeting

5\. Slack

6\. Facebook

7\. WhatsApp

The fragmentation / lack of standards we had with IM is now a reality in video/voice calling as well.

<comment><USER21> fragmentation carries some negative connotation, but in this context it's a great simple way to maintain some division between your communities. my skype account gets given out to customers and various random people i need to connect to at work. video calls with co-workers happen using hangouts. whatsapp is for family.

i don't really want to merge all of those contact pools into a single app.

<comment><USER22> If we used standard/open IM/AV call protocols (lets say XMPP, and XMPP Jingle) you would just have two accounts, just like you have a personal and a work email address.

You can then choose to either:

\- use a client that supports multiple accounts/profiles (either one at a time or multiple concurrent logins); or

\- use two separate apps.

"I want to keep my private and work life separate" is not a good defence of fragmentation. By your logic, we should encourage every single email provider/software vendor/project to use their own subtly different protocol, and require the use of their own client software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I feel video calls are the new email in Zawinski's Law

</comment><comment><USER24> Only screen sharing and a dark theme are missing. Then it has everything I want as a developer.

</comment><comment><USER25> bad enough that I can be reached after work via slack and get calls while I'm on a commute (which is never compensated for aside from general salary), it'll have video?

also, this only works in Chrome and on mobile, which is really messed up considering that Firefox is also a bleeding edge browser.

<comment><USER26> Just set your Do Not Disturb hours... you won't get the calls.

But I agree... more apps need to factor in if you are moving or not before placing calls or messages. I wish there was a way to say, "I only want music and maps when I drive..." on my phone and have it kill the connection and updates for everything else.

<comment><USER18> The new android-auto app for your phone can do exactly this.

It overlays a nice "car UI" that's much larger and easier to not only see but also hit while driving, and basically only has phone, maps, and music.

It hides all other notifications, it "silences" other sounds, and there's a setting to optionally run the app once you connect to a specific bluetooth device.

I'm pretty happy with it.

<comment><USER26> Really?! Ugh, wow... I'm not going to own any Apple products a year from now, am I?

<comment><USER18> If you are in the market for a phone, I can't recommend the Google Pixel enough.

It's hands down the best Android phone I've ever owned. From the build quality, speed, features, and usability it just fucking nails it in every way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> One small question here. With their "Instant emoji reactions" looks like they are doing server side shape recognition, so Slack video-calls are not P2P (i.e. if I'm calling my colleague in my office the streams are going to the Slack servers before going back)?

<comment><USER28> As I understood, this part with printing emoji was just a joke :)

What they are saying is that you can use regular emoji reactions while a video call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This just made slack 10x better.

</comment><comment><USER30> Anyone try this yet and compare it to Hangouts on a poor connection? I'm constantly dealing with colleagues in another office where the internet connection is sub-par.

</comment><comment><USER31> Slack calls have been broken in linux for a while--even though they worked when calling first launched. Is a fix for that on the horizon?

<comment><USER32> If you're using RHEL, you've got a version of GLIBC that's too old, we're trying to figure out what to do about this without asking users to install a bunch of crazy stuff

<comment><USER33> I know dynamically linking to libraries is the Linux way, but wouldn't just bundling the correct version of glibc with the Slack app solve the problem? Sure, the app gets bigger, but a missing feature is worse than that, I would imagine.

<comment><USER34> You cannot sanely statically link glibc.

This is because libnss effectively has to (by definition of how /etc/nsswitch.conf works) be able to `dlopen` arbitrary files you don't know about, so statically linking it has no meaning or breaks that (you pick!).

For this reason, it's painful-to-difficult to bundle glibc with a program, and it _WILL_ break some networking configuration options if you do it, which is probably worse than messing up a feature on an ancient linux no one should be using :)

The _right_ solution to this, which for some dumb reason they don't want to do, is ship a different version of slack depending on your (distro, glibc) combo. For old RHEL and old Ubuntu, they just need to ship a version that is built against those old glibc versions.

It's trivial if they just open source their application and ask Redhat and Canonical to maintain packages of them and provide sufficient motivation (read money) to convince them to also package them for these old distros.

I don't know why the no-brainer idea of forcing redhat/canonical (who are experts on this glibc stuff and making debs and rpms in general) to maintain the slack packages for those distros hasn't occurred to them

<comment><USER32> > The right solution to this, which for some dumb reason they don't want to do

WebRTC requires GCC >= 4.9, which doesn't ship on RHEL or old Ubuntu, and upgrading to it would also upgrade the built glibc, which defeats the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Excellent. I do hope it's better than Hipchat's attempt, which I found to be terrible -- delayed audio and stuttering video.

</comment><comment><USER36> With video (again). Since they had it in 2014 and then yanked it out.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm looking forward to the promised threaded comments ability

</comment><comment><USER38> I had two colleagues suddenly have the chat text field filled with Chinese characters and emojis today so they were told to clean their pcs. Different environments and location but both using slack... heard of this ?

<comment><USER39> Note that Chinese characters are the vast majority of characters, so (at least from your description) my guess would be "random bytes being interpreted as Unicode" instead of "Chinese hackers who like using emoji". If it's _only_ Chinese characters and emoji, that's different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think the next step here would be screen-control from the Screenhero acquisition?

Off-topic: The guy's beard looks like a Snapchat filter haha.

</comment><comment><USER41> The call emoji support is a great idea for streamlining communication in a video meeting.

Does video calling work in Slack's web client?

</comment><comment><USER42> Does slack feel like IRC to anybody else?

Sorry I didn't mean for this to be divisive or rude. I wasn't aware this was a common observation. I'm not trying to be negative or incriminate the product. I use and enjoy slack every day.

<comment><USER43> Wow quick to the low effort Slack is just IRC comment.

In my opinion Slack does something that is often very undervalues and easily overlooked, it is like the opposite of a death my a thousand cuts - superiority by a thousand minor improvements.

When taken individually or even in handfuls none of the features are that impressive, but cumulatively it creates a much better product. This was very apparent to me at least when I switched from HipChat to Slack. Just reading features or looking at screenshots they are nearly identical, yet with actual use Slack seems like a significant step up.

So yes IRC is to Slack, as the Ford Model T is to a Mercedes S-Class.

<comment><USER42> The one thing that I liked (and still like) about IRC is its federated server model. Maybe I need to do more research, but I guess I am assuming that slack is a for-profit company with private servers that they own somewhere that everyone uses ... or am I totally off?

<comment> vertex-four If you're looking for "a better IRC" while still not tying your communications to a single data silo, Matrix[0] with the Riot[1] client is currently the best experience.

The brilliant bit is that you can set up your own homeserver which holds all your chat logs, can authenticate against whatever you like (internal username/password, LDAP, or even CAS single sign-on), and allows you to communicate with people and rooms on other homeservers without having to manually connect, create a dozen different accounts, etc.

I think right now, 50% of users are on the matrix.org homeserver and 50% are on their own homeservers. And the upside of everyone being on a homeserver is that everyone essentially has their own bouncer by default - no more having to set up ZNC on some random VPS on a user-by-user basis, you can always message anyone and they'll get your message whenever they reconnect.

Because of its federated model, you can also use it to communicate with other companies and customers as well as internal communications - <USER2> Slack/etc aren't really chasing after.

[0] [https://matrix.org](https://matrix.org) [1] [https://riot.im](https://riot.im)

<comment><USER42> Alright let's go further ... so how is this different from XMPP rooms? ([http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0045.html](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0045.html))

XMPP can support all the other things you've mentioned.

<comment> vertex-four While XMPP is wonderful in theory, in practice, it's very difficult to assume that any given set of client+server can support anything, especially once you're talking to people on other servers. Even things like the features allowing messages to be delivered to multiple clients, rather than only one, are rarely implemented according to the standard. Matrix has a reference server and client which supports the entire protocol, so any other implementation will hopefully wind up implementing at least the majority of it, or won't be used.

<comment><USER42> XMPP hasn't really played out to its promises. Pity, it's such a great set of technology.

There's something to learn from this - there's likely a "right amount" of anarchy, some goldilock zone where people can still be creative and unburdened but not so much that things become fractured, fragmented, and incoherent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> yay, more distraction! now in video</comment>