What's The End Goal for Wealthfront and Betterment? (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://larrysukernik.com/blog/2016/1/1/wealthfrontandbetterment <comment><USER2> Gurley's post [1] (from 2014) gives one possible end goal: "Learning about Yu'e Bao gave us an epiphany that Jack Ma likely had years ago. If you want to truly disrupt the financial services industry, perhaps you need to stop attacking the transactional experience and launch a competitive product on the asset gathering side. Once you have the assets, all the disruptive things that Silicon Valley types want to do will be easy. The hardest part has been getting access to the funds."

[1]: [http://abovethecrowd.com/2014/06/18/disrupting-finance- from-...](http://abovethecrowd.com/2014/06/18/disrupting-finance-from-above- wealthfront/)

<comment><USER3> why don't Silicon Valley firms partner with existing smaller banks looking to do more with their balance sheets? seems like if their ideas are truly disruptive it would be a win-win for both parties.

<comment><USER4> Banks are heavily regulated and the government forbids such investments.

> The FDIC permits insured state banks and their subsidiaries to undertake > only safe and sound activities and to make investments that do not present a > significant risk to the deposit insurance funds

[https://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/bankdecisions/InvestAc...](https://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/bankdecisions/InvestActivity/index.html)

<comment><USER5> There's still room for innovation and partnerships with startups, though, even if they can't do something wildly disruptive*. For example, I originally found out about CreditKarma because my bank had partnered with them in order to incorporate a credit monitoring widget into their online banking portal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Since this is a community of programmers, you _might_ be interested in doings things like this yourself instead. There are a couple of options:

\- Quantopian ([http://quantopian.com/](http://quantopian.com/)): Python based, kinda a little bit open source (backtesting only), live trades on Interactive Brokers or Robinhood. Has a big community for stocks.

\- QuantConnect ([http://quantconnect.com/](http://quantconnect.com/)): .NET based, more open source (includes live trading), live trades on Interactive Brokers, has a similarly sized community but the community's attention is spread to other asset types like Forex as well.

Both have numerous example algorithms you can clone and run without much trouble. An example vaguely suited to investing: [https://www.quantopian.com/posts/modern-portfolio-theory- min...](https://www.quantopian.com/posts/modern-portfolio-theory-minimum- variance-portfolio)

<comment><USER7> I'd just like to quote an old comment here:

>One thing I see every once in a while on HN is people with the belief that they can spend a week or two knocking out an algorithmic trader and start raking it in. In order to break this illusion I would recommend: [http://financial-math.org/](http://financial-math.org/) [http://www.quantresearch.info/](http://www.quantresearch.info/)

<comment><USER8> Thank you for this. My thoughts exactly

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article didn't mention it specifically, but Betterment already put in a rate hike. You used to be able to get 10 basis points if you had over 100k and they just increased that to 25 in a really underhanded way. I had been using Betterment for about 2 years when they did this.

I had been happy with Betterment but it's clear that they want to get as many people in under the low rates and slowly increase it on you, knowing that you can't easily move it around to another provider (especially if you're dependent on their tax loss harvesting etc).

<comment><USER10> Yeah, that was really disappointing. I'd bought into the Betterment kool-aid, and shortly after funding my account, I saw their 'price increase buried in an unrelated product announcement' email.

I think these companies (Betterment, WealthFront, etc) are struggling with really high customer acquisition costs that take quite a while to break even on. I'm sure that not many people noticed/cared enough to transfer out (I'm doing it now, it isn't a small task), so they came out way ahead on it.

Unfortunately, I think it will be easy for them in a year or two, when they need more quick revenue, to look back and say "Hey, not many people said anything when we raised fees by 67%, what's another 10 bps or so?"

<comment><USER9> Yep, I agree. I signed up based on the rates at the time, thinking they wouldn't change THAT often. But it sounds like this is going to become more common.

I'm in the process of moving everything to Vanguard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In the article, it states that Chase is offering 0% funds, yet Betterment claims that their "All-in Actual Cost" for a 100k fund is better than Chase's due to cash drag and a lower expense ratio. (Found here: [https://www.betterment.com/comparison/schwab-intelligent- por...](https://www.betterment.com/comparison/schwab-intelligent-portfolios/))

This is confusing and hard to fact check. Who do I believe?

<comment><USER12> Neither option is better than a Vanguard account with one of their target date funds (or funds targeted by level of aggressiveness).

Vanguard is a mutual company; they exist for the benefit of their users. Hard to compete against that.

Disclaimer: moved from Betterment to Vanguard

<comment><USER13> Could you explain a bit more? Are you making a better ROI? I currently have a Betterment account and would consider switching if there's a good reason.

<comment><USER14> If you moved your money to Vanguard and invested in the same funds Betterment currently invests in for you, and you rebalanced as often as necessary, you would get a slightly higher ROI at Vanguard because Vanguard has lower fees.

However, all of the things Betterment does for you now would be your responsibility, including asset selection, rebalancing, thinking about how to manage taxes, etc.

The bottom line is that you can do this yourself for less money, but you have to do it all yourself. Betterment offers more convenience for a higher fee.

<comment><USER15> I know next to nothing about investing and this is exactly why I'm using Betterment. Even with the recent hikes in fees they're still cheaper than hiring a financial adviser. I really feel like I have very little choice but to stay put. However, how does one get started managing their investment account? I have more than 100K tied up in Betterment and trial-and-error type of learning could be pretty disastrous.

<comment><USER16> Hiring an independent financial adviser was one of the best decisions I've ever made. It's an occasional check-in to support decisions I make around investments with Vanguard and my 401k. Finding an adviser is the hard part, so it's worth talking to a bunch of people so you can find someone that's comfortable with what you want to do.

I got the Wealthfront pitch when I started with my employer, but I feel much better with my current arrangement. Your comment "I have very little choice but to stay put" is never nice to hear in any context, so I hope you can move along from that place.

<comment><USER12> You must ensure that your financial planner or adviser is a fiduciary. Otherwise, they have no obligation to advise or act in your best interests.

[http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/16/is-your-advisor-a- fiduciary-c...](http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/16/is-your-advisor-a-fiduciary- chances-are-you-have-no-idea.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wealthfront has raised ~$100M and Betterment has raised ~$200M. If they are only burning $4M/year to grow as fast as they are, they are doing fantastically well. I suspect though that the author's burn rates are off by an order of magnitude.

<comment><USER18> Agreed. I know the author was trying to be conservative, but I wouldn't be surprised if fully loaded employee costs were about double his estimates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> While we're on the topic of robo-advisors, I'd love to see a robo-advisor that lets clients customize a portfolio allocation and just _advises_ them on when and what to trade to keep their portfolio balanced on a regular schedule, for a fixed fee. That is, instead of these so-called robo-advisors that are actually robo- _managers_ , in the sense that they _manage_ your portfolio and trade on your behalf, and are compensated as such, for a percentage of the entire value of your portfolio.

I'm sure there is enough space in the market for both types of products, the robo-advisor and the robo-manager. Personally, I'd prefer the former.

<comment><USER20> Shameless plug, but I'm actually working on a product that does exactly that. It started as a personal tool that integrated with my brokerage account to take the hassle out of rebalancing and knowing which trades to make with my monthly contributions. It currently only works with Questrade, but I'm looking at adding support for more brokerages.

[https://rebalancr.com/](https://rebalancr.com/)

<comment><USER21> Interesting.

Btw, suspect you'll have trouble getting people to sign-up using such a flight-by-night custodian. Maybe take a look at Interactive Brokers?

Also, would encourage Questrade to fix this: Mixed Content: The page at '[https://www.questrade.com/'](https://www.questrade.com/') was loaded over HTTPS, but requested an insecure image '[http://ads.yahoo.com/pixel?id=2459149&t=2'](http://ads.yahoo.com/pixel?id=2459149&t=2'). This content should also be served over HTTPS. (index):1 Mixed Content: The page at '[https://www.questrade.com/'](https://www.questrade.com/') was loaded over HTTPS, but requested an insecure script '[http://www.questradeaffiliates.com/scripts/track.js'](http://www.questradeaffiliates.com/scripts/track.js'). This request has been blocked; the content must be served over HTTPS.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, I don't expect much mass appeal from supporting only Questrade, it's just the brokerage that I use myself. Good idea on getting them to fix those HTTPS issues, really no excuse for it these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The failure of articles like this is that they take a snapshot of a company at a point in time and assume that the company's business model and reach doesn't change. This is the same mistake that many analyst make on early stage companies.

Companies evolve over time and grow in terms of scale. Take a look at Facebook and Google as an example.

<comment><USER23> I think their growth has slowed though. At least I remember them bragging about 3 billion under management a year ago.

<comment><USER24> This article is from January 2016, by the way.

<comment><USER23> Makes sense, is there any data from 2017?

<comment><USER24> Betterment has $8B as of March 16, 2017: SEC form ADV page 8, "Regulatory Assets under Management"

[https://www.adviserinfo.sec.gov/IAPD/content/ViewForm/crd_ia...](https://www.adviserinfo.sec.gov/IAPD/content/ViewForm/crd_iapd_stream_pdf.aspx?ORG_PK=149117)

edit: Wealthfront $5B [https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/IAPD/content/ViewForm/crd_iapd_s...](https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/IAPD/content/ViewForm/crd_iapd_stream_pdf.aspx?ORG_PK=148456)

<comment><USER23> Thanks. That seems healthy but not enough based on this blog's conjecture. I'd guess they are eventually acquired if I were to bet on their future.

<comment><USER24> I think acquisition is a totally legitimate exit strategy, as long as they're aware of the direction they are heading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think that he's definitely right about consolidation and then acquisition.

I work in HNW wealth management and I think that there needs to be better education on what for example a young person's IRA should look like. An ideal robo-advisor would make buy recommendations, ask you to never sell, and use education along the way to help prevent you from making the same mistakes most people fall trap to. I also think that if any of these companies have a desire to stay around for a while they need to be targetting the IRAs of young, high- income programmers. With a good fee and good education and assistance they can probably retain these customers, encourage them to max out contributions into their IRA (you should!!) and slowly build up a long tail of decent-sized accounts from people that may have only been interested from a tech perspective initially.

<comment><USER25> Sorry for the naive question - but if you're contributing to a 401k, aren't you ineligible for tax-deductible contributions to an IRA?

If so, it would seem like an even better business would be getting into administering 401k plans cheaply with employers and then keeping people on the platform post-employment.

<comment><USER26> I'm pretty sure that contributing to a 401k doesn't make you ineligible to contribute to an IRA, but making over a certain amount of money annually does.

<comment><USER27> Adding to this:

Not a lawyer etc but I don't think a 401k prevents you from making IRa contributions either. Never heard of that.

As for income limits, you can still contribute to your IRA if your income is above the limit (I think that's 125k or so) but the contributions will no longer be tax deductible.

Once you're past that limit, you may as well convert from regular to Roth IRA (this is called a backdoor conversion) so that your money grows tax free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I haven't switched to a roboadvisor product for a few reasons, but one of them is that saving for retirement is a decision you make on a 30+ year timeline. Most startups hardly last 3 years, much less 30. Why would I trust my money to an industry where the typical case is a flameout in only a few years?

<comment><USER29> It's a fair concern. Both Wealthfront and Betterment are Broker dealers and they have legal obligations in the event of going out of business.

Wealthfront spells it out as: "In the unlikely event Wealthfront were to cease doing business, your account would be held by our brokerage partner until you transferred your account to a new broker or chose to liquidate your account to receive a check."

[https://support.wealthfront.com/hc/en- us/articles/211004083-...](https://support.wealthfront.com/hc/en- us/articles/211004083-What-would-happen-to-my-account-if-Wealthfront-were-to- be-acquired-go-public-or-cease-doing-business-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> If you want a good robo advisor with no fees, check out Wise Banyan. I'm a client, but a happy one and that's my only relationship with them.

<comment><USER31> I use Wisebanyan as well and would recommend it

<comment><USER32> According to a link about performance from a comment above, Wise Banyan has done pretty well over the last three years.

[https://senzu.io/investing/robo-advisors](https://senzu.io/investing/robo- advisors)

<comment><USER33> But... you don't want to make long-term (or even short-term) investment decisions based on recent past performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If you guys want to see a comparison of historical performance and fees of the top robo-advisors check this out [https://senzu.io/investing/robo- advisors](https://senzu.io/investing/robo-advisors)

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't use them, but I can tell their strategy is working. My broker (through work) is Fidelity and lately they've been throwing up pop-ups on login, and sending me emails, urging me to try their low-cost funds that they insist are cheaper and better than Vanguard. They're definitely feeling the heat; I don't think companies like this push their low-fee funds on you unless they're up against the wall.

<comment><USER35> Doesn't this mean that Vanguard's strategy is working, not Wealthfront/Betterment?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Charles Scwab does take fees in a way, their robo advisor requires a certain percentage of your account be cash. This cash in turn is invested for their own profits.

</comment><comment><USER37> I looked into these companies but couldn't find a reason to invest through them. I don't understand what value these guys bring. If I am already paying a commission for each fund I don't know why I shypay these guys a cut again.

Eventually I think these guys will and must come up with their own funds. Else it does not make sense for them.

</comment><comment><USER38> The article's scenarios top out at 16B AUM , but vanguard is at 4T with a T. Their problem is not lack of TAM.

</comment><comment><USER39> Why can't I buy VTI and dividend reinvest? I compared that to Betterment since 2004 and it wins handily. What am I missing? Tax loss harvesting sounds fancy but what's the actual bottom line benefit after fees?

<comment><USER40> I don't use a robo-advisor, but TLH saves me 6 figures in taxes every year. Sadly I'm not comfortable disclosing the size of my portfolio. It's big enough to have an account with most bankers, but not big enough to require dedicated staff. :)

<comment><USER39> So you have big capital gains somewhere else in your portfolio that lets you take big deductions from TLH?

<comment><USER40> Yes, absolutely. I also have an AMT overhang, but I doubt that will be used up in my lifetime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I tried out these services, and it just freaks me out too much having $50,000 sitting in an iPhone app. I get that they are insured and legit, but it's just too much money for me to hand over to a startup.

<comment><USER14> Don't you have a broker, or a 401k?

<comment><USER41> Yes, I have Vanguard but decided to give Betterment a try when they first launched.

<comment><USER24> I think twblalock is trying to say there's an app for that: Vanguard by The Vanguard Group, Inc. [https://appsto.re/us/HKO-t.i](https://appsto.re/us/HKO-t.i)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gitless: experimental version control system - <AUTHOR> http://people.csail.mit.edu/sperezde/gitless/index.html

<comment><USER2> A lot of people want to use powerful tools but want it through an iPad-ish interface. If I'm using a space-rocket to get to the moon, I'm certainly going to learn how this shit is working and not fooling myself that if I just know what the buttons _should_ do,I understand the system.

GIT is marvelous if you understand the data-structures, people are too fixated on the commands and think everyone one of them is like magic, but all those commands just function on a handful of data structures. (though some of the commands are not always intuitively named)

Recommended reading: [http://ftp.newartisans.com/pub/git.from.bottom.up.pdf](http://ftp.newartisans.com/pub/git.from.bottom.up.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Well, you can understand the data-structures and still not like git's interface. The data structures or your familiarity with the git internals don't change the fact that the CLI is annoyingly inconsistent. Learning more of internals won't save you from memorising which variation of the option is being used this time. For example:

        git remote add/rename/remove
        git add/mv/rm
        git tag <name>/?/-d
        git branch <name>/-m/-d

<comment><USER4> Exactly. Git's porcelain is just amazingly inconsistent and really badly designed. I wonder why nobody has come up with a better design yet, I can't imagine it would be that hard to do... Maybe I'll give it a shot.

<comment><USER5> Well, there's gitless. :)

<comment><USER4> That is true. Last I tried it, it wasn't very mature. I'll give it another go and see if it's changed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In my experience, if you are to learn Git properly, you need to start off with a GUI.

Some of the concepts behind DVCS, such as the DAG, merging, resolving conflicts, even the staging area, are much easier to understand when you can actually visualise them. I've found that people who try to jump in at the deep end with the command line sometimes don't understand Git as well as they think they do.

These days I tend to use the command line a lot more, and I would strongly recommend people to do so once they've mastered the core concepts, but I still like to have a GUI to hand so I can see at a glance where things are at with my branches, staging area, etc.

<comment><USER7> Whenever I've tried GUI Git tools I've always found them confusing than the command line Git

In trying to be simple they often left me feeling powerless

<comment><USER6> Depends on the GUI tool. Some of them do over-simplify things, for example, by omitting the DAG view. This is misleading because it tries to make the source history appear linear when it isn't. GitHub for Windows and Visual Studio's source history both make this mistake, for instance.

Have you tried SourceTree? That's the one I tend to recommend these days. Alternatively, if you're prepared to splash out a bit, SmartGit is worth considering too.

<comment><USER8> I use a combination of SourceTree and the command line for my workflow, and can heartily recommend it. Some operations are just more intuitive to me when using the GUI such as:

      - staging portions of many files scattered across a directory tree
      - quickly glancing over diffs for a given commit
      - understanding the commit graph and the relationship between local and remote branches

Each developer's experience may vary, but in general I feel like a good GUI tool can help a novice user develop and reinforce the mental model necessary to understand what git is doing. For example, what am I doing when I rebase my commit onto master vs merging it?

<comment><USER9> Exactly! And the cli is much better for the little workflows around rebase and cherry-pick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like the idea of an easier to use Git but I'd wish for a clearer side-by- side explanation how Gitless is supposed to be simpler than Git (for instance, the CoffeeScript website shows clearly how it compares to JavaScript: [http://coffeescript.org/](http://coffeescript.org/))

</comment><comment><USER11> I wish Git would have used a different name than 'branch'. It's completely at odds with branches in any other version control system and only adds confusion for people switching to/from Git. Mercurial uses the term 'bookmarks' for Git- style branches, I feel that would have been a much better choice.

<comment><USER12> cvs, svn, bazaar use "branch". 'Bookmark' is way more awkward to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have waited for a form-fit time to ask if we can experiment with Git using Mercurial syntax as well.

While I have a feeling many would change Distributed Version Control System if there was immediately human translatable command knowledge between formats.

Begs a question of if many software libraries with their typed dictionaries could counter a built-in thesaurus for alternative tool chains, and end a war between literacy.

(What technical limits are aside from fighting for how to pattern match each element and differentiate what is integral to relate.. and committing that a base human localization.)

<comment><USER11> I believe this was a step in that direction: [https://bitbucket.org/durin42/hgit](https://bitbucket.org/durin42/hgit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> After reading the comments I found a few ideas that were not represented, so I write them here:

1\. Git thinks around a commit, Gitless thinks around a file. Comparing two tools on a different basis might result in a flawed comparison. The reason that git uses for considering commits over single files is as far as I know, that you as a developer consider consistent states of your project. Before and after a change a project should be able to build, for instance. Often these changes can not happen in a single file and still be consistent. Therefore a project state is considered a unit, not a set of files that are changed on their own.

2\. The staging area. Gitless thinks the staging area is a problem so it seems to be removed (might be a wrong interpretation by me). The staging area is quite important though. Sometimes I have made many changes, but I don't want all of them in one commit. In another scenario I did many changes that after squashing plus a few edits here and there might be better represented by a much smaller amount of commits. In both cases I need a space that is not the repository space of completed commits nor the workspace to represent a commit in its creation. The staging area might not be the best way to do it (I don't know a better one, though), but completely removing it without an alternative does not solve the problem.

</comment><comment><USER15> So... if I'm reading this right, this is basically Git without the staging area/index? (Or, alternatively, Git where tracked files are always in the staging area?)

</comment><comment><USER16> Git is pretty atrocious, so I like the idea here, but I'm not sure it goes far enough. My main complaints about git are probably

having to commit changes manually (I haven't had to do this in Dropbox)

terrible history and branch navigation (chrome does a better job and that's not even like an important feature of a browser)

confusing command structure and options

history rewriting and the resulting issues

no merge tool (I feel like kaleidoscope is the minimum here)

submodules

Gitless seems to address #3 there but not the others. Actually making a tool that improves git to where it could be would probably be a huge undertaking, and most people do alright with git so maybe it's not worth it. Or maybe there's some graphical git client like tower that fixes all this stuff.

<comment><USER17> At least some of these are what makes git awesome.

* commit changes manually \- I find my self picking individual changes out of the current state of my source & committing them individually all the time, so this is just perfect.

* history & branch navigation. \- Um. Not sure what the problem is here. I can checkout anything I like, hop around the history at will, tag any version with meaningful names etc. Am I missing something?

* confusing command structure. \- Yeah, have to give you this one. It is (slowly) getting more consistent over time at least.

* history rewriting \- this means I can hack & commit away then rewrite my changes into a logically consistent series of changesets that make sense individually before pushing to the main repo. I rewrite history _all_ the time before pushing.

* no merge tool \- but is happy to use whatever merge tool you plug into it, which works pretty well in my experience. (See the git-mergetool manpage.)

* submodules \- Yeah, these are mostly awful.

I think git (or mercurial for that matter) is great for people who see having a clean, well documented change history where every commit makes sense in and of itself as a worthwhile thing to have. If you're the kind of developer who just uses a VCS as a sort of 'source code backup' and your revision history consists mostly of a long series of "Update" comments then all the extra power that git has is just extra complexity that you don't need.

<comment><USER16> Git makes it way harder than necessary to do all these things and has a steep learning curve (generally a euphemism for bad design).

I'm proposing that you can get all the benefits you talk about but in a far more usable manner. I like a clean master branch with atomic sensible commit messages as much as the next man. Git just makes it a real chore to get there.

You seemed confused about the history and branch navigation, so maybe I can explain that one better.

What I want is to visually view the history of a file, and trace, for instance, a function as it moves through my project, into different files, etc. I also want to easily find code that I deleted in the past to use as a reference for implementing a new version of the code, rather than keeping it in some "obsolete" folder in source control. I have seen people who do that. There are ways to do these things now involving searching git logs and viewing diffs or checking out old branches, but the interface is very poor. Even the interface on Time Machine is better than git, and that thing isn't build to source code.

But perhaps you are correct. Maybe most people use git primarily as a backup service for code. If so I guess git should make that a way better process. I will point out that github actually offers a way better interface to git than git does. It just still has a long way it can go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think the problem lies with the expectation that people will just pick up how to use git and how it works.

Wouldn't it be better to provide small classes to people where understanding can be gained, rather than abstract how to use Git with a different client?

</comment><comment><USER19> Would be interested in how this compares to Legit [1] which has been around for a while.

[1] [http://git-legit.org/](http://git-legit.org/)

</comment><comment><USER20> As a novice git user, I can't really tell how Gitless is really different from Git in daily use cases. Any explanations?

<comment><USER5> Merges and simplifies a lot of common cases. For example, creating a new blank repo in gitless is:

        gl init

And getting a local copy of a remote repo in gitless is:

        gl init <url>

Whereas in git, it's:

        git init

and:

        git clone

Similarly, the operations to switch to (and create) a new branch, switch to an existing branch, and list branches, in git, is:

        git checkout -b newbranch
        git checkout oldbranch
        git branch

In gitless, its:

        gl branch newbranch
        gl branch oldbranch
        gl branch

Similarly, git has a somewhat complex situation where files can be staged, changed, tracked, and/or ignored; confusingly files can be odd mixtures of all four, and it can be quite hard to understand how to change the state of a file in some cases.

Gitless simplifies this a bit by removing the "stage", so files are either tracked, untracked, or ignored, with no ability to mix states. And instead of selectively staging changed files and then committing them in two separate steps (as you do in git), you stage and commit in one go.

Gitless is built on git; someone familiar with git can easily tranlate the gitless commands into the underlying git commands. It's not doing anything magic, but for day-to-day use the commands are probably a little more consistent and sensible.

Personally, my biggest pain point with git comes from managing complex branching situations; trying to figure when/how to merge, rebase, and cherry pick can be frustrating. Sadly, gitless doesn't (yet) help with this area.

(Short form: Gitless tries to make git's syntax simpler and more consistent.)

<comment><USER21> So is gitless against working with hunks of files because the docs say that having files with parts in multiple states is a problem? But this actually gives more flexibility. Yes it's more complex but that's the trade-off.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure I'd say gitless is "against" it so much as it's focused on making the tasks people do every day easier. I use git every day, but I think I ended up staging individual hunks of files maybe...twice in the past year?

(And you can still drop back to git if you do need that functionality. As the docs note, gitless and git are entirely compatible.)

<comment><USER21> true...i guess for me it's another potential option for working with git like the prezto git module and git plugins for vim

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> as I see it use gitpylib instead of pygit2, I stopped to give it a try

<comment><USER23> I'm not familiar with either of them. What's wrong with using gitpylib?</comment></comment>


Brightbox announces websockets-based Cloud Server console - <AUTHOR> http://blog.brightbox.co.uk/posts/new-web-based-console-for-brightbox-cloud-servers

<comment><USER2> Uh, it's nice I'm sure, but it's not in-browser Web Sockets. For a start, the majority of new browsers have turned off Web Sockets while a spec security hole is dealt with. Secondly, half the browsers they list as supporting don't have even support to turn off in the first place.

<comment><USER3> It is in-browser web sockets. It falls back to a flash implementation of websockets if the browser doesn't support it natively.

It's also completely over SSL, so the transparent proxy security bug does not apply.

<comment><USER2> Well, that's me told! +1 informative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool indeed</comment>


All about Unit Testing – Minimal Post - <AUTHOR> http://techblog.panghal.com/blog/2017/02/25/need-know-unit-testing-minimal-post/ <comment><USER2> I generally try to stay as far away from mocking and stubbing as possible, and I have the scars to back that up from wasting countless hours on restructuring over-engineered tests to deal with minor implementation changes. Integration testing is where the rubber meets the road, which means more information for less effort.</comment>


Dispute at Harvard leads to a restraining order against a prominent scientist - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/how-dispute-harvard-led-grad-student-s-forced-mental-exam-and-extraordinary-restraining <comment><USER2> This is awesome. The way that (often foreign, often on J1 or H1B or student visa) students are treated in major labs is often horrible. If this destroys Rubin's lab, so much the better. Maybe he can serve as a warning to other PIs.

<comment><USER3> I'm more saddened than anything. Rubin's lab is dedicated to studying Spinal Muscular Atrophy - the leading cause of infant death in the USA. My cousin died of SMA and it was absolutely devastating for my aunt and uncle. If Rubin's lab is destroyed by this, even if justified, it is a setback for SMA research. I wouldn't call it awesome.

<comment><USER2> You think that bogus work doesn't siphon funds away from good quality research? What universe do you live in? With a 10% pay line, even most good research won't get funded. For bogus research to get funded, better work MUST go unfunded. Guaranteed that will lead to more dead kids and a longer wait for effective treatments.

And if Rubin was falsifying data, then so much the better if it wipes him out. Few things are more disgusting than preying on the horrible situation of kids with rare diseases just to crank out research indirects and promotions, mostly on the backs of slave-labor postdocs with no alternative employment in this country.

So, to sum, if Rubin falsified the work, fuck him twice as hard as other frauds for his mendacity.

If he did not, and this is all much ado over nothing, then I sincerely hope he will be vindicated and I wish him the best.

<comment><USER3> I agree. I guess what I meant to say is that either way it's sad. If it turns out he has been doing bogus research / falsifying the data then it's terrible for all the reasons you stated. Good that someone blew the whistle, but really sad. If it turns out he has been doing good research but this dispute means that the lab can't continue to function it's also a setback for the lines of research they were pursuing into SMA. I just, perhaps over-sensitively, took issue with characterizing the situation as awesome.

<comment><USER2> Fair enough, SMA is certainly not awesome for anyone whose kid is dying from it. I should be more measured in the words I choose. "It's a shame that a lab run by a guy who may be an asshole slave driver could negatively impact the perception of SMA research, but if he is in fact playing fast and loose with the facts, it will be better in the long term for him to stop working on SMA, or anything else"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Often, a person accused of misconduct will try to "isolate, humiliate, and terminate" the whistleblower, says Patrick Burns ... But he's never seen a case involving a forced mental exam."

Unfortunately this is certainly not the first time this exact tactic has been used. Adiran Schoolcraft was held against his will in a psychiatric facility for 6 days after exposing corruption in the NYPD.

[1] [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/414/...](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/414/right-to-remain-silent)

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

</comment><comment><USER5> FWIW, 30.5 m is 100 ft which explains the unusual number.

<comment><USER6> That false precision really bugs me. It's _obviously_ not exactly 100 feet - no-one is ever going to get a measuring tape and check it - so 30m is a much _better_ unit conversion!

<comment><USER7> They should have just said something like "100 feet (about 30m)", since that's what the actual court order is. I get that a science-oriented publication would have a convention of converting to MKS units, but in this case I think it was excessive.

<comment><USER8> Broadly, I think it's inappropriate to convert when the specification is tied to units like this.

For a wild hypothetical, imagine the definition of the foot was increased by 10%. The country would burn, of course, but this restraining order would probably expand with the change. If you're measuring a fact about the world, convert as you will. But if you're "creating" a fact like the court is, that should probably be reported in the original terms.

<comment><USER9> The definition of "a foot" was only agreed relatively recently: it wasn't all that long ago that countries differed on their definition. That difference in measuring systems (an Amsterdam foot was 11 inches, a Swedish foot was 12 inches) was attributed as one of the causes of the sinking of the Vasa [1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_\(ship\))

<comment><USER8> I knew the standardization was new-ish, but that's an excellent story. Right up there with building a bridge measured "above sea level", such that the two sides didn't match when they met in the middle.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27509559](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27509559)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> this is a horrifyingly ugly mess up one side and down the other.

nobody comes out of this looking good.

<comment> aaron-lebo I dunno, what did German do to warrant the way he was treated?

Showing up in the middle of the night and forcing him to a mental health facility against his will? Harvard investigators taking his writings? People believing he could be spiking their coffee with poison?

It just sounds bizarre and German seems to be the real victim.

<comment><USER11> > It just sounds bizarre and German seems to be the real victim.

I have no idea since both stories seem plausible. That said, this portion stood out to me:

" In January 2016, a postdoctoral researcher reported that German asked her to perform a tedious task, which she believed was disrespectful, leading to a dispute. German was "red in the face and shaking with rage," she said in her sworn statement. "

Reading the docket NO. 1681CV01640 shows: " The Lab Manager, LaLonde, who would have seen German daily (until May 21, 2016), described plaintiff as "odd sometimes in his behavior, but nothing requiring immediate action, no danger to himself or anyone." " " how they should treat him better and how he deserves things other people should not have. This behavior has lasted for a while. "

That makes me question exactly who is the real victim. There doesn't seem to be enough evidence to know for sure. I've seen both types of things. I've seen advisors sabotage their pupils. I've seen pupils blame their advisors when things didn't go their way.

I'm sure we've all heard how Robert Openheimer tried to poison his tutor at Cambridge. Unrelated, but still worth mentioning is also a suspicious suicide of a former lover of his.

Openheimer got out of trouble, despite the attempted murder because of his parents influence at Cambridge. It is interesting that this article mentions German was with his parents as well. That swayed me a bit against believing that German was the real victim.

<comment><USER12> You're right, both stories do seem plausible, and we're getting both sides presented through a third party who might or might not have an editorial slant as well. Still, here's the part I noticed more than anything:

"In the fall of 2015, he took a refresher course in the conduct of science, which covered topics such as ethics and misconduct. The course reminded him that, around June 2015, a member of Rubin's lab had told him about the alleged data fabrication in the Cell Stem Cell paper."

It "reminded him"? As in, someone told him his supervisor was falsifying data, and that didn't warrant even taking notice until something had to jog your memory? While the general circumstances -- student makes false allegations vs supervisor maliciously treats student -- are both plausible, this one line, if accurate in truth and accurately worded, makes me pretty skeptical.

<comment><USER9>
      >> "In the fall of 2015, he took a refresher course in the conduct
      >> of science, which covered topics such as ethics and misconduct."

      > It "reminded him"?

I wonder what prompted him to take a refresher course in a subject covering ethics and misconduct?

It suggests that he had misgivings, and took a refresher course to determine whether his fears were justified, or whether this was a normal part of academic life. Or perhaps he took the course to give himself a rationale for raising the issue.

<comment><USER13> Strawmen are stuffed full of perhaps. It makes the best kindling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wow, this is an excellent example of unbiased journalism.</comment>


Ask HN: why are we fighting our kids' "screen time" - <AUTHOR>

We hear from the media, schools, and parents that we should limit our kids' "screen time."
I know that while building a rapidly growing business at Aha.io I want more "screen time" not less.
Are we fighting the wrong battle with our kids? It's clear that they are going to be dealing with more "screens" and data going forward anyway. <comment><USER2> > I know that while building a rapidly growing business at Aha.io I want more > "screen time" not less.

Yes, and if you work for Frito-Lay, then it might be your job to get people to develop unhealthy eating habits. But simply because you have an interest in people behaving a certain way, does not mean it is in their interest to do so.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was referring to myself. I want to be online and know who has signed up, who needs support, how the next project is progressing. I am not selling pixels or chips.

<comment><USER2> > I was referring to myself.

Yes, exactly.

You have an interest in people getting a lot of screen time. You wonder, therefore, whether we should be limiting our kids' access to computers. I reply that the fact that _you_ might have an interest in my kids spending a lot of time using computers, does not mean it is a good thing for my kids to do. Nor does it give me a reason to relax any restrictions I might place on them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> To me it is likely a fear of the unknown.

 _Warning: generalizations ahead_

Current parents were raised in an environment where TV and computer screens occupied a small fraction of the time they do of current children. They played outside more and socialized more. We are worried about the consequence of such a change in upbringing.

Such worries probably occur with every generation (and newer technologies) and things tend to turn out alright. That being said, as a soon-to-be parent, I can't say that it doesn't worry me as well.

<comment><USER2> > Such worries probably occur with every generation (and newer technologies) > and things tend to turn out alright.

Do they? I think we just get used to the way things turn out, and thus think of it as "alright", no matter what actually happens.

But consider: everyone knows there is an epidemic of obesity in the U.S. Is seems unlikely that the rise of sedentary screen-oriented activities -- beginning with television -- is not a contributing factor.

Another: since the advent of the telephone, people have been visiting friends less often. Why visit, when you can talk any time you want? But look around on the web, and you'll find an enormous number of articles on how our world is now filled with lonely people. Again, a connection seems likely.

EDIT. A pre-emptive strike on a rather obvious objection: No, I don't want to go back to a world without modern technology. I like being able to learn about places I don't go, talk to people far away, etc. But let's not claim that modern technologies come without downsides -- often big ones -- and let's not dismiss any concerns as mere alarmism.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure if your reply was directed at me, but I specifically used the term "alright" because it is barely and subjectively positive.

I share many of these worries, but also realize that these things tend to have a momentum of their own. We can do what we can with our own offspring, but sometimes it is swimming against the tide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the key is that at a young age, they lack the self-control needed to know when to pull themselves away from the screens. They need to be reminded to go to the bathroom, eat meals, go to sleep, etc. By not being proactive with limiting the time, you risk delaying them learning the basic self- control.

The good news is they gain these skills over time. I can see my 4 year old already gaining this control which she lacked earlier. The thing is it takes some diligence from the parents until they get there.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think the context for limiting "screen time" is very important. For example, I'd have no qualms limiting my future children's time on the television. However, I'd actively encourage them to spend more time on the computer, especially when they're making things.

I find it interesting that the mass media groups computers, phones, and televisions together, when, in reality, vastly different things are happening on the different devices.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not so sure. Playing a game on the TV is equivalent to what my kids do on their smartphones. Now, because their smartphones are Internet connected they do end up discovering new ways to entertain themselves and more importantly research topics they are interested in. However, most of the time spent is still for entertainment.</comment></comment>


I made a small tool to generate SCSS variables and mixins from Figma Styles - <AUTHOR> https://figma-scss.now.sh/ <comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to create a small tool to automatize part of my process when working on a new design with Figma, this takes your color and text styles and generates SCSS variables and mixins for quick frontend development.</comment>


Systemd: hostnamed does not like fqdns with trailing dots - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/6369 <comment><USER2> It does not seem right that the systemd people are labelling Felix von Leitner, author of minit, "that troll".

However, several of the non-systemd people there seem to have forgotten that there are _two_ strings maintained by operating system kernels.

* [http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/set-dynamic-hostname.h...](http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/set-dynamic-hostname.html)</comment>


Australia's controversial anti-encryption bill passes into law - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/07/australia-access-assistance-bill-now-a-law/ <comment><USER2> So much for rot13 :(</comment>


Everyone you know will be able to rate you on the terrifying 'Yelp for people' - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/09/30/everyone-you-know-will-be-able-to-rate-you-on-the-terrifying-yelp-for-people-whether-you-want-them-to-or-not/?tid=sm_fb <comment><USER3> > If you haven't registered for the site, and thus can't contest those > negative ratings, your profile only shows positive reviews.

So, that's a pretty good incentive not to register.

</comment><comment><USER4> For some reason this reminds me of the debacle [0][1] where some site was accepting "tips" from users who wanted to support any GitHub project of their choosing. They did it without explicit opt-in of the project owners (Armin Ronacher in this case).

Quote [2]:

> But nevertheless i think tip4commit should be opt-in instead,

> because i consider the current tactic to be a very intrusive form of growth- > hacking.

[0] [https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/127](https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/127)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542969)

[2] [https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/127#issuecom...](https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/127#issuecomment-60149031)

</comment><comment><USER5> First post from me: rate Nicole McCullough and Julia Cordray 1 star.

</comment><comment><USER6> So instead of signing up for every imaginable libel suit by posting uncontested "negative" reviews, they're going to hold back a little, and just monetize my name and likeness without my permission.

They clearly have a crack legal team.

<comment><USER7> If the company/server is located in a place outside your preferred jurisdiction, then they can do anything they want, I guess :/

On the bright side: you can still post reviews about yourself. Or create hundreds of identities for yourself, and rate them so differently that nobody could ever tell which one is the real you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> this is fine if you have f-u money, but for everyone else it sucks

Your online presence is becoming your new, indelible permanent record. Anything incriminating, so long as it's archived on a major search engine or social network, can and will come back to hurt you. The rich, such as Rap Genius co-founder Mahbod Moghadam who was fired from the annotation service after posting comments about Elliot Rogers, don't have to worry so much about the consequences of reckless online behavior because they at least retain their equity in the said company, so being fired is just like a permanent vacation. Now the 9-5er who gets fired only has unemployment to fall back on. Much worse. But those online comments will also hurt your future job prospects, leaving you with no recourse but to request they be removed (fat chance) or pay inordinate amounts of money to a reputation firm to bury the results. If you're really smart and talented your skills may be so valuable and rare that employers may overlook your past transgressions. So we see with the abnegation of privacy and anonymity, like most changes of the post-2008 economy, primarily impact those who are the most vulnerable, and there's nothing anyone can or will do about it. The only solution is be careful what you post on Facebook, Twitter or elsewhere, and if someone slanders you, there isn't much you can do that won't cost a lot of money and time.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a horrible, horrible idea. I mean, people are already using platforms like Facebook to bully people, not caring it's done in public and under their real name. Now there's a platform optimised ror that mode of interaction. I hope the founders are simply cynically using the shock value to make a quick buck and don't actually think it's a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER10> Apparently Peeple founders are not fond of being reviewed themselves:

[https://twitter.com/sharonodea/status/649575258123579392](https://twitter.com/sharonodea/status/649575258123579392)

Edited to fix typo

</comment><comment><USER11> From the article:

"To add someone to the database who has not been reviewed before, you must have that person's cell phone number."

I don't actually own a cell phone, for personal reasons. But that's looking like an even better choice...

<comment><USER12> "Positive ratings post immediately; negative ratings are queued in a private inbox for 48 hours in case of disputes. If you haven't registered for the site, and thus can't contest those negative ratings, your profile only shows positive reviews."

So you can opt out by not having a cell phone number, the rest of us can opt out only of having "negative ratings" posted. For better or worse, aren't they disincentivizing their potential users from registering accounts with this policy? (I suppose they know their potential users better than I would.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I remember in elementary school the popular kids passed around a survey in which they ranked every student in our grade based on some nebulous combination of attractiveness, coolness, etc.

This will probably not be that much different.

</comment><comment> I-M-S this kind of apps resurfaces every few years... first one that springs to mind is Honestly (formerly known as Unvarnished). it also sparked a huge public backlash when it appeared in 2010, but went nowhere. where these kind of services fall apart is basically numbers: how many people do you know well enough (and care for/hate enough) to write a review for? 5? 6? And how many people would care in what you wrote? 10? 15? Unlike a restaurant, which is frequented by thousands of customers each of which is a possible reviewer, people don't generate enough "traffic" for the system to work (not to mention the overall negative social sentiment, as evident from the backlash - <USER2> public reacted just the same 5 years ago).

pity really, as I think some kind of a "reputation" system would really benefit people in general, both for professional and personal reasons. If quantified it might even replace money in the future ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie)). I am certain that one day the whole concept of a "stranger" will be obsolete - we shall know everything we need to know about somebody upon meeting them (which is probably going to be the reason we are meeting them in the first place). Of course there will still be jerks but they'll just no longer be able to hide it from unsuspecting others.

</comment><comment><USER14> For the same reason as why you shouldn't have a service that locates where sex offenders/ex inmates, this service shouldn't exist. So many things can go wrong with something like this...

<comment><USER11> I was raising four daughters in a nice suburban neighborhood. They were starting to ride bicycles up and down the street. Knowing which house the sex offender lived in (only 3 houses away) let us steer which areas they could ride in (didn't tell them why), and led us to say that they couldn't go out riding alone. I thought that was definitely important information.

Yeah, you can be worried about the consequences to the sex offender. There's a valid argument there. But I'm worried about the potential consequences to my daughters.

And the situations aren't comparable at all. I get to be a sex offender by _doing_ something. I get on the wrong side of this new site by annoying just one person.

<comment><USER15> You can get to be a "sex offender" by annoying just one person, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is one of the gags in the movie _Amazon Women on the Moon_. [1987!]

Guy (played by Steve Guttenberg) goes on a blind date, and the woman (played by Rosanna Arquette) asks him for ID and then performs some sort of database search which reveals his dating history in detail (such as that he had sex with some woman and never called her after that). She refuses to continue with the date, and the skit finishes with him calling some woman that he had dated before. First thing _that_ woman does now is ask him for ID ...

Not so funny any more, I suppose!

</comment><comment><USER17> > "People do so much research when they buy a car or make those kinds of > decisions," said Julia Cordray, one of the app's founders. "Why not do the > same kind of research on other aspects of your life?"

So, what kind of decisions is this supposed to help me make? Whether to be friends with someone? Isn't getting to know them "doing the research" for that?

</comment><comment><USER18> Apparently the tech bubble is going to burst very soon. What a ridiculous and horrible idea.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's interesting this was built by women, since they will obviously be the biggest victims here. I wonder how many reviews will be "nice tits", "great ass", "gives good head", etc

<comment><USER19> They should of just called it Yelp for hot chicks

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!

Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...

The dead rising from the grave!

Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!"

</comment><comment><USER21> So they can detect sarcastic positive reviews?

</comment><comment><USER22> >[your name] it's there unless you violate the site's terms of service.

Well thats a new take on T&C.

</comment><comment><USER23> What, no face recognition? Well, they have to launch with a MVP.

</comment><comment><USER24> This will be handy for raids</comment>


How Fast Is Amp Really? - <AUTHOR> https://timkadlec.com/remembers/2018-03-19-how-fast-is-amp-really/ <comment><USER2> I'm amazed this article didn't get voted up and get more attention.

The tldr; is that AMP pages _are_ much faster than the canonical version of their pages, but effectively the only reason is that they are less bloated. In principle, you can make a faster-than-AMP page by not relying on JS for your critical render path, and by either using a decent CDN or applying certain optimizations yourself.

The difference between AMP and a simply de-bloated page is that you can get a manager to approve AMP, but not a simply de-bloated page. Also, Google boosts AMP pages, but not pages that are fast without AMP.</comment>


Show HN: A websocket mesagepack api framework in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/wma <comment><AUTHOR> This is a very amateurish attempt at making a decent reusable framework for myself. Please comment or guide as you may.

Thank you!</comment>


Ask HN: Depressed and I want to start therapy, but struggling - <AUTHOR>

I am a founder (in the UK) and suffering from mild depression (I believe) and have done so on and off for the last 2 years. The last few months have been particularly hard and I am considering therapy, but I am struggling to get started.
I spoke to my doctor about 6 months ago, who "diagnosed" the mild depression, and gave me a cd to listen to (I haven't), said do some more exercise and see how you go. Because it's "mild" it seems that free therapy on the NHS is not an option.
I would like to try therapy to see if it helps, but I have no idea where to start and the whole thing is quite daunting (not to mention expensive). My cofounder has recommended a therapist he has heard is very good, but I am having trouble evaluating things.
My biggest question is what kind of therapy is appropriate. The recommended therapist deals in "pyschodynamic and NLP techniques", which seems to be different to CBT which I have heard of, and I am sure there are more.
Does anyone have any thoughts on what kind of therapy is appropriate, and how to evaluate them? As always the google seems to just give me a bunch of "scientific" papers and lots of analysis by people selling stuff. Help!
If you would rather email me: email@example.com
Thanks. <comment><USER3> I think it's difficult to simply recommend one type of therapy and expect it fit everybody's needs. Having said that, I would recommend CBT just because as far as I can tell, its effectiveness seems to backed by a lot of science.

I'm kind of in the same boat though. Finding a therapist takes a lot of work, and building up the motivation to do the work is especially difficult when you're depressed. It's a catch 22. When the depression passes, so does the motivation to find treatment.

Maybe if you have somebody close you can confide in, you should ask them to help you find a therapist. If you have any friends who are seeing therapists, their therapists may be able to refer you to others. In the US, many have sliding scales.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> Get your annual exam and see if you can check your vitamin D levels on your blood test. Most people are lacking in it. I'd recommend taking 2000mg a day. There are two kinds of vitamin D. D3, cholecalciferol, is the one you want to take.

Also, like other posters have suggested, try going to the gym. It does wonders for your mood.

You might also want to look into interpersonal therapy in addition to CBT. From what I've read, it's about the same as CBT when it comes to treating moderate depression. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_psychotherapy>

There was a good article in the NY Times about evidenced based therapy. Tl;dr: <= ~30% therapists do pure CBT. [http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/looking-for- evidenc...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/looking-for-evidence- that-therapy-works/)

If you want to find an accredited CBT therapist, search here: <http://www.cbtregisteruk.com/Default.aspx>

Resources:

Moodgym - free CBT course by Australian National University <https://moodgym.anu.edu.au/welcome> A few studies show it reduced depression versus a control group.

<http://www.bmj.com/content/328/7434/265>

<http://bit.ly/XexrR9>

Another free course, recommended by the NHS: <http://www.llttf.com/>

<comment><USER5> Note vitamin d3 doses are in iu not mg. It is very hard to overdose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > it seems that free therapy on the NHS is not an option.

This is a mistake! There is something like "community based psychological therapies" which will be long term talking therapies for people with severe MH problems.

But there's also therapies available under something called IAPT - <USER2> access to psychological therapies. Your local primary care trust should have something called a PCAT (different name in different areas) - PCAT is primary care and assessment team. They have publicity names - so in Gloucestershire they're called "Let's Talk".

PCAT take self referrals, so you don't need to get access via your GP. But you can ask your GP for details if you want.

There are a bunch of therapies. I'm a fan of CBT. This is not medical advice! I'm not a doctor, and have no qualifications. I think a good working relationship with the therapist is important.

You can also get private therapy. Check for BCAP registration.

Short version:

1) Ask a GP at the surgery where you're registered for information about the local IAPT services (or do a web search for them)

2) Have a look at MoodGym (<https://moodgym.anu.edu.au/welcome>) or some books. "Mind over Mood" is often recommended.

3) Consider private therapy. BCAP registration is good. CBT is good. £30 to £40 per session, for about 8 to 12 sessions, seems good. (Depending on area and stuff. )

Please feel free to email me if you want. And good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Sadly it seems that IAPT isn't available in Scotland. They are working on a similar scheme but it is yet to be launched.

Thanks so much for your other thoughts though, really helpful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 1\. regular exercise (find something you enjoy): it's almost impossible, biologically speaking, to feel depressed if you're active.

2\. meditation (if non-religious) or prayer (if religious): to steady and tame your brain.

3\. Do some research about mood enhancing diets. Many pop foods can cause mild depression in the long run.

4\. Therapist and/or friend to bounce your ideas off of. You need someone to tell you that reality is not as bad a you think it is. It seems silly but it makes a tremendous difference.

5\. Most important --> baby steps

</comment><comment><USER8> I think your first step should be counselling. If you try one and it doesn't 'click', try another. Counselling can be unbelievably helpful.

Someone said to me once that she thought _everyone_ should see a counsellor once every few years. She meant it as a joke, but after sitting with a good counsellor once myself, I agree completely.

A good counsellor can help you put everything in perspective. One helped me out of an EPIC rut a few years back. Really: JUST DO IT.

</comment><comment><USER9> NLP has its roots in Ericksonnian hypnotherapy, and can be good for thinking in new ways and a very effective tool for a therapist, but is clouded by the claims of so many new-age bullshit practitioners that it struggles to gain credibility, which is a shame.

CBT is good for mild disorders, but requires a lot of conscious effort to make work.

The difference is, CBT works by "overwriting" the thought processes that result in the depression by repetition of new behaviours and thoughts. It takes time, and works.

NLP / Hypnotherapy works by discovering what leads up to those thought processes (which, a lot of the time, is out of our conscious awareness) and changing that, so the depression never kicks in.

From personal experience, both work, and both don't, depending on the therapist, which studies you read, and how committed you are to making them work for you. However, it's much more important that you find a therapist that you can connect with personally and trust. If you have that, the exact modality of a therapy will result in pretty much the same outcome - some kind of turning point in your own thoughts and outlook which sets you on the mental path you wish to go down.

(source: I train NLP and Hypnosis, practise CBT, and have seen hundreds of clients.)

</comment><comment><USER10> In my experience, the question "what kind of therapy is appropriate" is less important than it seems. What matters more is the personal chemistry, or lack of it, between you and the therapist. An empathetic connection creates a space where things are able to change and heal. Conversely, lack of it makes the work more mechanical and one can keep at that for years without improvement. Not everyone can help everyone.

If I were you, I'd look around until I found a practitioner that I felt a connection with. That doesn't mean finding someone who tells you what you want to hear. It's more whether you have a grain of feeling that this person might be able to help you through whatever process you need. That seems to vary a lot with who _they_ are (edit: or rather with the tuple _< you,they>_). Best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER11> The best therapy for me personally is taking some time off. Just go some place where you can relax, leave your cellphone inside the safe of your hotel room and don't try to think about work.

There were times in my life when I thought I had it pretty good and felt pretty good. At that time we went on a vacation and there I noticed how stressed out I really was. So being stressed was 'normal' for me. Just don't go spiraling into a negative loop where you walk around thinking constantly about how depressed you really are. Try to focus on the positive things in your life (there are more than the negative ones, really).

If it's a light depression, my advice is to just get away from things for a while and come back refreshed.

</comment><comment><USER12> Which sort of therapy would be appropriate depends on your depression and on your personality. You should get assessed by a mental health professional and then recommended a particular type of therapy based on that. (I am not a mental Health Professional.)

(e.g. When I had depression I was eventually given a course of Cognitive Analytic Therapy, which is similar to Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, but more suited to people which more analytical personalities, such as me.)

(Btw, I am surprised your GP did not offer you Prozac as a first resort.)

</comment><comment><USER13> plesae go and see a medical doctor first before you get mixed up in some strange unappropriate therapy that costs you an arm and a leg and enriches no one but the therapist. they will do some tests to rule out things like vitamin deficiencies or other things that may be causing these feelings. go to a medical doctor and tell them everything and let them decide whats best for you. it will be cheaper and youi will get where you want to go faster good luck

</comment><comment><USER14> I solved it for myself by looking directly into depression for what it is, looking into feelings and where and how exactly they are being felt.

This is akin Eckhart Tolle teachings, I guess. Worked magic for me.

</comment><comment><USER15> Depression is work. If you haven't done the things your doctor has told you to do, and at least given them an honest effort, that should really be your first step.</comment>


Disable Google Instant Preview - <AUTHOR> http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2010/11/hide-google-instant-previews-with-an-adblock-filter/ Add these filters to AdBlock Plus to make them go away. <comment><AUTHOR> Alternate method use https on Google searches: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/06/encrypt-web-https- ever...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/06/encrypt-web-https-everywhere- firefox-extension)</comment>


It's Talos all the way down - <AUTHOR> https://www.talospace.com/2020/06/its-talos-all-way-down.html <comment><USER2> It's not advertised very well, but Raptor has a cloud you can test put POWER systems:

[https://integricloud.com/](https://integricloud.com/)

I have played around with Digital Ocean and AWS, and this felt very different working with it. For one, you don't get charged for data in or out. I actually enjoyed working with it. Sadly, I stopped using it because the only cloud service I use is a VPS for Jitsi Meet (I self host otherwise). Jitsu Meet as compiled doesn't work on the POWER ISA, and I was unable to get it to compile on it.

<comment><USER3> I haven't been able to figure out how to get an actual system running on this: I've tried several times, and hit roadblocks each time.

I'd really like a cloud vendor for POWER and Linux on Z

<comment><USER4> idk about Z, but i, AIX or Linux on PowerVM

[https://cloud.ibm.com/catalog/services/power-systems- virtual...](https://cloud.ibm.com/catalog/services/power-systems-virtual- server)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting, Talos seems to be about avoiding using CPUs like x86/ARM with the built-in priveleged blobs/firmware?

[https://www.raptorcs.com/content/base/faq.html](https://www.raptorcs.com/content/base/faq.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Barely on-topic here, but is it just me or did the price for the entry level workstation at [https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TLSDS3/intro.html](https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TLSDS3/intro.html) go up?

I could have sworn I saw an option for something like $2.2k a year or so ago.

<comment><USER7> Are you thinking of the Blackbird? [https://www.raptorcs.com/content/BK1B02/intro.html](https://www.raptorcs.com/content/BK1B02/intro.html)

<comment><USER6> Hm, that doesn't ring a bell but maybe? I thought I remembered a complete entry level system (case, RAM, etc) for that price but middle age rather sucks, so I could be wrong.

Will these things take a standard RDIMM or does it have to be theirs? Because another $650+ per 32GB is kind of insane. Otherwise, shit, one bright side to COVID-19 is that my chances of eventually scoring a decent paying remote gig went way up. If that happens I could finally spring for one of these!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> By the nine!

<comment><USER9> Divines smile on you, friend.</comment></comment>


Where to go after dedicated hosting - <AUTHOR>

We are a medium sized business with about 250,000 registered users and up until this point have done fine with a Dedicated Server at HostGator. I have become fed up with their impersonal support (a different person responds to every support request) and am now facing our second hard drive failure in 3 months, which they remedy by taking the site down for 6 hours to do a hard drive and OS re-install.
I am now looking into Managed hosting solutions, primarily with HostWay and Rackspace.
I'm not a server admin by any means, but it seems to me that in order to avoid the down time associated with a hard drive failure that 2 web servers and probably a load balancer are required. Is that true?
Generally speaking, what is the next step for hosting when a dedicated server doesn't cut it anymore from an availability point of view? <comment><USER2> What about a RAID 1 setup (mirrored). If a hard drive dies, you just have to schedule a swap out, which shouldn't take that long, and you could schedule during a lull in your usual traffic.

That would just defend against an abrupt hard drive failure, and is probably the cheapest short term solution unless you want to mirror a second server or on-demand cloud hosting. I run a large vbulletin server, and in my most recent server upgrade, I've configured my attachment server in this config for that reason.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We do have some clients that are very concerned with security (fortune 100 banks), so I am hesitant to go the cloud computing direction.

Our current server is powerful enough, but the challenge with a dedicated server is, how do you keep your site up if the hard drive fails?

As far as EC2 I'm used to developing on a LAMP stack and I'm not sure what that transition would look like.

We're a small shop (it's essentially me working as a full stack developer) so we don't have that many resources.

Thanks for your insights!

<comment><USER3> With servers of even the low end of the middle, there should always be redundant system disks. The next step up in servers from what you have should use RAID-1 mirrored disks.

Availability is a sliding scale in terms of reliability and money. You don't pay for stopping things that will happen, you pay to stop things that /could/ happen. The additional cost of a real RAID card plus an additional disk is insurance against the single drive failure that would make your machine unavailable. Your redundant power supplies do the same thing. As do your redundant NICs.

Disaster planning is the art of asking, "What if..." and having answers. Of course, for every answer, a certain amount of money is required.

My advice to you is to either go to the cloud now, before you invest more money in a physical infrastructure, or if thats not possible, buy "real" hardware and don't use what are essentially glorified laptops in a server case.

Get a server that is rackmountable, has redundant hard drives (and if the server has system disks and data disks, configure it so that the system disks are a mirrored RAID-1 pair, and the data disks are not RAID-5), that has redundant power supplies, and redundant network cards.

It really does sound expensive when you list it out like that, but those features are so standard that you can't really avoid them if you buy middle- class or higher servers.

Here's a guest blog post I did on redundancy last year for SysAdvent: <http://sysadvent.blogspot.com/2009/12/day-13-redundancy.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you thought about Amazon EC2? With careful planning you can have scalability, DR, and availability.

</comment><comment><USER5> You may not need a load balancer yet.. you can't just get a new, bigger server?

We use rackspace's managed hosting solutions as well as their cloud. I wasn't here for the set up of everything, but I can say for certain the support is very, very good.

I would look into moving into the cloud as well if you don't have legal reasons for not doing it.</comment>


France Becomes First Federal Postal Service to Use Drones to Deliver Mail - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/-france-becomes-first-federal-postal-service-to-use-drones-to-deliver-mail <comment><USER2> Technically it's the National Postal Service, France isn't a Federal government. (Apparently it's a _Unitary Government_ [1] )

[1] [http://www.lewishistoricalsociety.com/wiki/tiki- print_articl...](http://www.lewishistoricalsociety.com/wiki/tiki- print_article.php?articleId=136)</comment>


Compression-oriented programming - <AUTHOR> https://mollyrocket.com/casey/stream_0019.html <comment><AUTHOR> A similar point of view to John Carmack's post (currently the top post on HN) on inlining functions.</comment>


Raspberry Pi automated setup - <AUTHOR> http://simonemms.com/2017-11-22/raspberry-pi-automated-setup <comment><USER2> You can also build a completely customized os with yocto/bitbake. Takes a while but very helpful to build a minimal distro when targeting a platform with minimal resources</comment>


Ask HN: Do you (developers) manage your own servers? - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to get some insight into how common the ask is for developers to also manage servers. Do you have a devops person or infrastructure person for this or are developers handling it? If you are a developer doing this, how has your job changed? <comment><USER2> Yes, as a solo-preneur or on a small team I've always managed or shared the responsibility. It can be fun, but it is amazing how much time devops takes away from product delivery. I can spend hours getting logging setup, or figuring out Azure resource group template files...

Thats why I've been gravitating to Openshift/Heroku/Dokku style push to deploy. And for the things that don't deploy nicely there I can just spin up a docker-compose.yml file and deploy that way.

I'm only a few months into this new workflow, and it is paying off. New ideas and projects are easy provisioned and even bootstrapped with a few commands. Sure I spend more in compute resources, but I'm glad to have my time back.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure if you had a subset of audience in mind, but in the "Enterprise world" (However loosely we define it:), it's extremely uncommon. The roles are highly delineated, and developers are usually insulated from underlying platform and technology. I've worked public sector, finance, retail, manufacturing, and have rarely seen a developer even interested in anything beneath a high-level programming language and SQL.

<comment><USER4> I presume this was downvoted for "even interested in," but the kernel is simply true: the larger the organization, the more specialization.

But most are trend-followers of corporate (and broader business) cultural norms--much like open offices or similar concepts, once ops becomes part of "what they (we) do," the more typical and expected it will become.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes, currently approx 80 servers, fully automated, they mostly manage themselves.

The only involvement I have is the weekly security patches, I review the upgrade list and then confirm it myself before it is deployed. This way I know if any services will automatically restart, which can have some implications, this is rare though

</comment><comment><USER6> I think I can answer this question partially from a slightly different stand point.

We host (the fully managed kind) several clients' projects (small and medium). It isn't atypical to have some clients hire us for server "management" as insurance. Meaning we only dive in when something awry happens to their stack and they need that jack-of-all-trade tech who can pinpoint the culprit quickly. ~$30/mo as insurance is peanuts compared to potential revenue gaps.

Others want a turnkey solution where we document the details of their stack and we manage the ops part in coordination with the dev. I think this is where the most value is captured by our clients.

There are other interesting outlier cases but it's likely OT :)

</comment><comment><USER7> No, I don't handle the whole server, but I think I do more than many. I write all of the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and SQL, including the DDL. Further, I must customize all of the config files for Apache, PHP, and PostgreSQL from stock.

There are other teams that handle: installation and upkeep of the Linux OS, back-ups, virtual host, physical host, and of course, the network.

I work at a large company whose official standards are Microsoft SQL, Microsoft IIS, and even Microsoft Team Foundation Version Control. I get away with using an open-source stack because it was established long ago, it supports several important web applications, and my stuff is down much less often than other teams' stuff, keeping me out of sight, out of mind, most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER8> One of the things I wonder, in reading the comments... I wonder if there would be a viable model for someone to manage the devs servers for them.

I'd love to do this, but I wonder what a good pricepoint would be? (so that it's beneficial to both parties)

<comment><USER9> Price is not the point. _Trust_ is. "Let there be a race to the bottom for the root holder" is a terrible idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not fully a developer nowadays, but I either self manage or use cloud services.

Lately I have been thinking about hiring a freelancer to optimize some servers, but other than that I control the servers for my business. I should probably pay someone to help me since I use my servers for tracking/redirecting my campaigns, and if a server goes down I am just losing 100% of money.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yes. I manage the servers for a small startup I'm working on, we sell our software to the enterprise and have to do a custom deployment for each one of them which is very time consuming. I'm considering installing cloud foundry and doing all the deployment through that

</comment><comment><USER12> For my side project, I manage my own VPS servers. I had to do all the install and security for them.

</comment><comment><USER13> I am not a full time dev, but do write little scripts and web apps to help out my team members. I have a server that I have to support for this (no external support) and I actually like it that way.

</comment><comment><USER14> We have a mixture of dev-managed, and ops-managed servers here. However, we are exclusively moving to a model where dev create chef scripts for servers, but ops manage them.

</comment><comment><USER15> At my job? No.

My sense is that it depends on team size -- when you are big enough that there's full time work in DevOps, I think you should have a specialist.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have to manage my servers (dedicated and VPS both) myself as I don't have money/resources to hire a dedicated devops person.

</comment><comment><USER17> I do, and I actually enjoy it. A lot of management today is controlled by scripts (at least in my env).

</comment><comment> ely-s I work at an early-stage startup where we all do a bit of devops, but I end up doing most of the configuration.

</comment><comment><USER18> As a developer with personal projects, I do all system admin stuff for my side projects.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm a Freelancer and run my own business. I do most of my server administration.

</comment><comment><USER20> I am a freelancer, I manage about a dozen client servers and couple of my own VPSes.

</comment><comment><USER9> I used to, but ain't nobody got time for that. Unless it's a three-people shop, in come the devops (developer time is far more expensive than devops engineer time, at least around here, so making a dev wear a devop hat is wasteful on several levels - comparative advantage and all that).

</comment><comment><USER21> Yes, but we are a small group with modest needs.</comment>


Show HN: Math Mystery - Yet Another Brain Game for Android - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.RightShiftGames.MathMystery1 <comment><USER2> Decent game... I wonder why you haven't received much downloads.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your encouraging words. Probably because we didn't do any paid marketing.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who's Looking for Co-Founders? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Same thread topic was posted yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21327217](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21327217)

</comment><comment><USER3> That'd be me. Mostly interested in building a SaaS in the data analytics space or a service where data is close to the core.</comment>


Learn Java in Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/java/

<comment><USER2> I'm learning Java in my spare time just because in the same sense it pays to know C if you dig Unix, I suspect it pays to know Java if you dig the JVM.

The _language_ has not proved to be too disturbing, happily, but I'm finding the _tooling and ecosystem_ to be rather arcane and difficult to get a grip on at first. Build tools, a choice of JVMs and JDKs, "enterprise" this or that.. it seems all the stuff _around_ the language is the real minefield than the relatively simplistic language itself.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. The hard part of Java is not the language _per se_ , but the myriad of IDEs and XML configuration files.

<comment><USER4> To be honest, as a Java veteran, there is very little XML any more apart from a bit of Tomcat config usually. It's all gone in favor of annotations which are much better.

It ain't J2EE 1.4 days any more (thank fuck).

The only thing I've done involving XML recently was setting tomcat 7 to serve a war file from the root site and that took about 2 minutes to work out.

<comment><USER5> I haven't used an XML config file in literally years. Either use embedded Jetty directly or use a nice thin wrapper like DropWizard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think we are getting into spam territory with this site.

<comment><USER7> It may be perceived to be spammy with the frequency of front-page posts, but the site is anything but "spam". I find the site quite useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't seem to understand if people really do think they can learn a language in X minutes. It takes countless hours of writing code in a specific language to learn it, and many months of writing on it to call yourself a good programmer in that language, or expert. </rant>

<comment><USER9> It's getting tiresome to always see this same comment on every post of this kind. Let's keep the semantics arguments off HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It should be obvious to anyone that you won't learn JAVA by simply looking over this.

The point is that for learning it is very important to

1) Get a basic overview of terminology and a general feel for the domain (traditionally you pick up three or so books on the topic, browse through them and note similar/repeatet patterns on a very high level)...then you can break down the learning into subcomponents

2) Find a way to get started and just do it

Creating your own checklists, flash cards, high level presentation on the topic are great starting points and usually step 0 before practice, practice, practice.

This looks like an excellent first step for anyone that wants to start with JAVA.

<comment><USER11> Like someone else mentioned, they are essentially cheat sheets. Very useful if you already know some other programming language.

I especially like pages that map the features of one programming language to another (that I already know). The recent AlloyUI post was an example comparing it to jQuery and YUI: [http://alloyui.com/rosetta- stone/](http://alloyui.com/rosetta-stone/)

And also see Rosetta Code [http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code](http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> All these Learn x in y minutes are really good cheat sheets. They are also pretty nice to check out before you start on a longer tutorial.

</comment><comment><USER13> This looks like a great cheatsheet for those doing into to programming at uni (in java). Quick place to check on syntax without having to open a book, browse through slides or googling and ending up on a page from 1990 about how to make good coffee.

</comment><comment><USER14> Convert integer to string...

      "" + 123;

<comment><USER15> This makes my eyes bleed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> A lot of libraries these days come with a Docco[1] annotated code and examples [2]. This looks very similar, but could make use of Docco.

[1][http://jashkenas.github.io/docco/](http://jashkenas.github.io/docco/) [2] [http://documentcloud.github.io/underscore/docs/underscore.ht...](http://documentcloud.github.io/underscore/docs/underscore.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm actually trying to learn java from a C# background. Two questions that immediately jumped out at me:

\- Do experienced java programming concatenate a bunch of strings together, or is there a format method? -Is anyone actually using Arraylist over Generics?

Also, is including 'switch' worth the screen real estate?

<comment><USER18> > Do experienced java programming concatenate a bunch of strings together, or > is there a format method?

Yeah, I've seen this a lot. IIRC, String concatenations with the + operator are compiled to use a StringBuffer for efficiency. There is also a static method String.format that works with C-like format strings.

> Is anyone actually using Arraylist over Generics?

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this. The following is pretty standard Java, if you want a list of Strings.

        List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();

The following gives you a list of Objects (the base type for all objects in Java):

        List list = new ArrayList();

If you put Strings into this list, then they come out as Objects. You'll have to cast to use them as Strings or the compiler complains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19>
      // Import all "sub-packages"
      import java.lang.Math.*;

Nope, you don't import all subpackages with this, you import all the static methods defined in the java.lang.Math class

<comment><USER20> For static import you would need to do

      import static java.lang.Math.*;

The current version would just import all the classes defined in package java.lang.Math (which does not exist, but java.math does).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> looking forward for a Javascript version :) ...it would be serious fun to read, knowing all the horrible language gotchas that will soon byte a beginner that starts coding Js after reading only such a guide.

<comment><USER22> See [http://bonsaiden.github.io/JavaScript- Garden/](http://bonsaiden.github.io/JavaScript-Garden/)

<comment><USER9> Great reference. I've been programming Javascript since 2005 (back then it was more copy/pasting Javascript snippets though) and still go back there once in a while (mostly for some stuff like type coercion).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you are learning that's a good source. They never said that this would make you become an expert. thumbs up. If you already know the basics just don't read it. But everybody one day was a noob.

</comment><comment><USER24> The faster you learn something the faster you forget it.

<comment><USER25> That's why guys who finish bottom of their class remember the most.

<comment><USER24> Well I'd be willing to bet that for the things they manage to learn and imbibe they would be quite proficient. And no matter how smart you are if you learn something as complex as the Java Syntax within just 5 minutes then you're not going to remember it well enough to apply it for very long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The class name should really be upper camel case...

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm surprised that anybody would be interested in learning Java after seeing the poor stewardship Oracle has put into the platform.

<comment><USER28> And I'm surprised you made this comment. I'm no fan of Oracle, but they've done a lot more for Java then Sun did since version 6 came out in 2006. Actually, I'm interested in why you feel this way, would you care to elaborate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Peter Norvig said otherwise [http://norvig.com/21-days.html](http://norvig.com/21-days.html)

<comment><USER30> [http://norvig.com/jscheme-design.html](http://norvig.com/jscheme-design.html)

"I decided I didn't want to spend more than 20 hours on this exercise of learning Java, learning the IDE I was using, and producing a Lisp interpreter."

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Uff, I got spoiled by Python's simplicity last week when I checked its page... Java is way more complex to follow through.

</comment><comment><USER32> Seems like the author forgot to learn the conventions of the language. The site looks like a good reference though

<comment><USER33> My thoughts to. Indentation was all wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I feel like this might already exist, but a sheet like this for vi/vim and emacs would be tops.

</comment><comment><USER35> I would really like to see a "Learn C++ in minutes" post.

</comment><comment><USER36> .. and then forget it in seconds.

</comment><comment><USER37> you learn it and forget it.</comment>


The Satanic Temple Sues Netflix, Warner Bros. For $150M - sahin-boydas https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/08/the-satanic-temple-sues-netflix-warner-bros-for-150-million.html <comment><AUTHOR> That gave me a chuckle.

I watched that series out of sheer boredom. It was a very strange blend of Harry Potter + Heathers + so many other movie plot tools... Seriously, you can map every character to a character from Harry Potter. They conflated Wicca, Shamanism, Satanism and Voodoism.

That said, if they continue the series, I will watch it!

</comment><comment><USER2> When I was watching the series I was honestly surprised when I saw the statue. All I could think was "Wow, how did they get permission to use that!?" Guess now I have my answer!</comment>