Slack Incident Resolved – Degraded service affecting multiple features - <AUTHOR> https://status.slack.com/2020-08/960bbb3c9d49a3cc <comment><USER2> AWS Status page[1] shows a couple of issues in _eu-west-2_.

 _Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (London)_

Instance Connectivity

3:21 AM PDT We are investigating instance connectivity issues in a single Availability Zone (euw2-az2) in the EU-WEST-2 Region.

 _Amazon Relational Database Service (London)_

Small number of instances unavailable in a single Availability Zone

3:36 AM PDT We are investigating connectivity issues affecting some instances in a single Availability Zone (euw2-az2) in the EU-WEST-2 Region.

[1] [https://status.aws.amazon.com/](https://status.aws.amazon.com/)

<comment><USER3> I don't quite understand this. Aren't the availability zones denoted by a letter?

My Aurora instances are in eu-west-2a/eu-west-2b/eu-west-2c, so what is euw2-az2?

<comment><USER4> The letters are different per-account.

<comment><USER3> thanks, first time seeing that

<comment><USER5> It's so the load is evenly distributed across AZs because I bet most people just select -az-1.

<comment> tedk-42 As another commenters mentioned, the AZ letter different per account.

<comment><USER6> [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ram/latest/userguide/working- wit...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ram/latest/userguide/working-with-az- ids.html)

"To identify the location of your resources relative to your accounts, you must use the AZ ID, which is a unique and consistent identifier for an Availability Zone. For example, use1-az1 is an AZ ID for the us-east-1 Region and it is the same location in every AWS account"

So each separate AWS account will have a different AZ name that maps to use1-az1, but use1-az1 is a region-wide constant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What are good current open source (self-hostable) alternatives? I have the following:

[1] [https://rocket.chat/](https://rocket.chat/) (Works well, sadly the mobile client is no longer native and it shows)

[2] [https://matrix.org/](https://matrix.org/) (More IM than workgroup chat)

[3] [https://mattermost.com/](https://mattermost.com/)

<comment><USER8> [https://zulipchat.com/](https://zulipchat.com/)

Probably the best I have used, easily prefer it to Slack but it's hard to convince people to use stuff other than Slack.

<comment><USER7> I'm just not a fan of React Native mobile apps (same with rocket chat). Specifically Android, they are large and slow.

I recently looked into an online banks APK (also some JS framework) and there was one 100k line JS file with hundreds of lines of "if IOS" in it, on android...

<comment><USER9> I have no problem with any chat apps written in React Native. I've used Discord's mobile app and haven't heard of any complaints from anyone using it and the 4.5 to 5 stars from its users on iOS and Android show this.

Their Electron desktop apps however, just like the rest of the chat clients from Slack, Element, Keybase, Zulip, Rocket.Chat are a complete horror show. Feasting on my poor MacBook's RAM and disk space like an all-you-can-eat-for- free buffet until the disk and RAM is full. Waste of resources for a chat app on the desktop.

With Mac Catalyst, there is no excuse for this carnage on macOS. Other solutions are less mature but I would rather have React Native maturing on the desktop for Mac, Windows and Linux as an alternative to Electron.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> EU west 2 AWS has been having issues this morning. We've had a load of outages ourselves, they could be experiencing something similar.

<comment><USER11> From London, Slack was resolving to a load balancer in eu-west-2 earlier during the outage. It now resolves to eu-west-1 and I have no issues connecting to Slack.

      $ nslookup edgeapi.slack.com
      Server:  126.96.36.199
      Address: 184.108.40.206#53

      Non-authoritative answer:
      edgeapi.slack.com canonical name = prod-haproxy-edge-nlb-eip-038c466f971aa8b8.elb.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com.
      Name: prod-haproxy-edge-nlb-eip-038c466f971aa8b8.elb.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com
      Address: 18.104.22.168

      $ nslookup edgeapi.slack.com
      Server:  22.214.171.124
      Address: 220.127.116.11#53

      Non-authoritative answer:
      edgeapi.slack.com canonical name = prod-haproxy-edge-nlb-eip-1bffe8d4fbdf4b94.elb.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com.
      Name: prod-haproxy-edge-nlb-eip-1bffe8d4fbdf4b94.elb.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com
      Address: 22.214.171.124

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Back to back with the Zoom outage no less.

<comment><USER13> And the gmail attachment outage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Was Zoom outage yesterday related to this? AWS has become sort of a single point of failure

<comment><USER15> Why doesn't Slack fall over to another AZ?

<comment><USER16> They did eventually, the ingress point was originally eu-west-2 but got changed to eu-west-1

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Images on our site haven't been loading for customers most of the day, related to this.

This doesn't explain why slack has been generally terrible most of August though.

<comment><USER18> Humble guess, some people don't work during holidays

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> All most instances in London are down

</comment><comment><USER19> Anyone else thinks slack web version is very slow ?

</comment><comment><USER20> Don't Put All your Eggs in One Basket (AWS)</comment>


Battery Reality: There's Nothing Better Than Lithium-Ion Coming Soon - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-03/battery-reality-there-s-nothing-better-than-lithium-ion-coming-soon <comment><USER2> Western Australia, the Saudi Arabia of lithium, currently producing half the world's lithium and more coming on line.

Albermarle are building a LiOH plant in WA that will add 33% capacity to current world production on it's own, plus the Tianqi plant adding maybe 15% is half finished construction right now.

We are the also the Saudi Arabia of gas/LNG, plus as a state produce a metric fuckton of the worlds gold and iron ore, but a pity our state and federal governments practically give all our minerals away for trivial royalties and tax the sheeple to the hilt on personal tax...

(plus we have a homeless and public mental health problems due to "lack of funding"" in one of the richest mineral states in the world with only 2.6 million people in an area almost size of Western Europe).

<comment><USER3> Maybe Australia should follow Norway sovereign fund idea:

"I don't think anyone expected the fund to ever reach $1 trillion when the first transfer of oil revenue was made in May 1996."

From: [https://money.cnn.com/2017/09/19/investing/norway-pension- fu...](https://money.cnn.com/2017/09/19/investing/norway-pension-fund- trillion-dollars/index.html)

<comment><USER4> In theory every country rich in natural resources should follow Norway's example but in practice the presence of natural resources tends to exert a strong corrupting influence on both the economy and the political system:

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

<comment><USER5> Norway only dodged this because we had a supremely visionary Iraqi visit the authorities, and managed to convince them of this danger while the industrial influence was still small enough for government to manage. It's a remarkably lucky coincidence.

<comment><USER6> Planet Money made an episode about this [http://www.podcasts.com/npr_planet_money_podcast/episode/301...](http://www.podcasts.com/npr_planet_money_podcast/episode/301_norways_got_advice_for_libya)

<comment><USER7> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It depends on the application.

There are plenty of applications where Li-ion is not the optimal solution. Li- ion is not the defacto standard for a myriad of reasons in various sectors. Certain massive installations have requirements that li-ion cannot work for. For consumer electronics, maybe li-ion is the best thing we have but for other applications there are breakthroughs made on yearly basis.

Enerpoly for instance have prototyped Zinc-Manganese batteries that have great life-cycle, are rechargeable and have great power output for less than 40euro/KWh. In the next few years you will see more and more solutions targeting specific industries and needs. Li-ion is not a silver bullet as its production cost and lifetime is not the greatest of all the solutions offered.

[http://enerpoly.com/technology/](http://enerpoly.com/technology/)

Full Disclosure: I know the CEO of the company and this is not an ad or anything like that. I just want people to pay more attention to upcoming improvements in the sector.

<comment><USER9> This. For example, for people with old fashioned ICE cars like me, Li-ion isn't going to replace my lead acid battery for SLI (starting, lights and ignition) any time soon in -30 degrees C temperatures ;)

<comment><USER10> We will regulate your entire car out of existence. Soon.

<comment><USER11> Even if parent were making the comment you thought you were relying to, you're in a bubble if you genuinely believe that ICEs are going to be regulated out of existence any time soon.

<comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase- out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase- out_of_fossil_fuel_vehicles#Countries_with_a_full_ban_enacted_into_law)

Costa Rica has banned new combustion vehicle sales as of 2021, Norway 2025, and other countries 2030-2040. As EVs go mainstream, I expect those deadlines to be pulled forward.

<comment><USER11> Costa Rica installed their first public charger in 2017, and has a $10k GDP per capita. The details in this Clean Technica article are damning for this claim. It's pure post election puffery and the plan will be quietly set aside.

Norway is aggressive, but the rest of Europe is generally targeting 2030. I'm not expecting the US to even come close to the EU, as range is a much larger factor there.

[https://cleantechnica.com/2018/12/31/costa-rica-is-on-the- br...](https://cleantechnica.com/2018/12/31/costa-rica-is-on-the-brink-of-an- evolution-cleantechnica-exclusive/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Zinc based batteries seem to have promise for grid energy. Enerpoly was mentioned yesterday [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19586068](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19586068) and NantEnergy have been making them: [https://www.altenergymag.com/article/2019/03/zinc-air- batter...](https://www.altenergymag.com/article/2019/03/zinc-air-battery- technology/30652)

>The raw materials that we use are nearly 17 times lower cost than materials used in lithium-ion

which suggests they could end up cheaper than Li Ion when production scales up. Nant who claim $100/kWh say:

>We feel that $100/KWh is just the tipping point, as our fundamental raw material cost of zinc is just $2-$3/KWh. Today, commercially available zinc batteries are already below $30/KWh. Long term, we see a clear path to a very low-cost battery option that would be disruptive to the entire energy industry.

I guess the 30/KWh are non rechargeable ones. Enerpoly say 40euro/KWh but I've a feeling that's projected rather than realised.

<comment><USER8> Hey Tim, you linked to my Enerpoly post from earlier.

Enerpoly actually have a working massively rechargeable prototype produced for way less than 40. We´ll have to wait and see the final cost at scale but the whole thing certainly looks promising!

<comment><USER14> Could you elaborate on the state of the prototypes and the remaining challenges to scaling to production units? Curious as a material scientist what type of issues arise with rechargeable zinc/manganese!

<comment><USER8> I am not an expert on the topic. All I know is that the production procedure is almost the exact same as regular zinc batteries. Any facility that can produce regular zinc batteries today can produce these. The difference is just in the chemical compounds used. The prototype is currently being tested 24/7 to ensure that they can deliver what they promise in terms of life cycle and output over an extended period of time.

Enerpoly is planning on mass-producing and selling these battery cells within the next few years (R&D + business and production line takes time to setup). My understanding is that the scaling process is relatively easy as industry standards will apply here due to their technology´s backwards compatibility with existing production methods.

If you have any specific questions that you´d like me to forward to their CEO, feel free to shoot me an email and I will put you in touch.

<comment><USER13> I'm curious what edge your guys have over NantEnergy. CNBC have an interview with their "billionaire LA Times owner" CEO by the way. He seems quite an interesting character [https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/09/26/patrick-soon- shiong-on...](https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/09/26/patrick-soon-shiong-on- holy-grail-zinc-air-battery-nantenergy.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article states:

1\. The price of Lithium will drop by half in the next five years: "prices, which averaged $1,160 per kilowatt hour in 2010, reached $176 per kWh last year and could drop below $100 in 2024".

2\. Tweaks to the formulation "could boost the energy storage of a lithium-ion battery by 20 percent or more".

3\. Supply is going to increase: "Capacity now stands at 302.2 gigawatt-hours, and plants with another 603.8 GWh are planned to open within the next five years."

So there _is_ something better coming: in a few years we will have vastly more batteries, which worker better, and cost much less. It's just that they'll be an evolution of lithium-ion rather than a brand new technology.

<comment><USER16> Tesla is already at $100-150/kwh.

<comment><USER17> Source?

That ultimately reflects better on Tesla's bottom line than current or near term electric car production across the industry. They're not selling their batteries at cost to other manufacturers. Until the rest of the industry is at their level the full effects of those lower prices won't be realized in the market.

<comment><USER10> Nissan accidentally leaked their battery cost for the Leaf, $140/kwh. But they don't do cooling so their batteries die twice as fast as they have to ... Panasonic was livid about this ...

<comment><USER15> Our 2015 model year Leaf has not had any observable loss of range, FWIW.

<comment><USER18> Apparently they had a reformulated chemistry, that might help.

However, I think the climate you live in has a profound effect:

[http://www.electricvehiclewiki.com/wiki/battery-capacity- los...](http://www.electricvehiclewiki.com/wiki/battery-capacity-loss/)

scroll down to the battery aging table depending on location.

If you live in Juneau, Alaska you're probably good for a _while_.

Maybe taking steps like not charging to 100% and not discharging below 20% will help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I went to article hoping to read some story like researchers have spend X million hours looking at Y thousand chemicals and nothing better is found. Instead the article sounds like directly published by lithion-ion lobby essentially saying that there is too much legacy now with us and nothing new would be accepted so don't even try. Right. If someone found battery that produces 10X more kWh in 10X less form factor, I'm sure this can easily be changed.

<comment><USER20> Completely agree, a battery with 10x capacity would be huge. Imagine having mobile devices that only need to be charged once a week or so.

There's one promising approach using fluoride that's being investigated right now. It's only a matter of time until this or something similar comes to market. [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6419/1144](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6419/1144)

<comment><USER21> > Imagine having mobile devices that only need to be charged once a week or > so.

In practice we would have devices consuming 10x more power. The battery from your phone would probably power a phone from 2005 for more than a week.

<comment><USER22> Didn't phones from 2005 last for a week :)

Joking aside, a blackberry bold from 2011 had 1200mah and the samsung s10 has 3400.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here's an interesting argument WHY you still might choose lithium ion (or whatever you use for automotive storage) for stationary storage instead of some other technology.

Total electricity generation in 2012 was ~21k TWh. Say you need ~8 hours of battery storage daily (i.e. 1/3 of daily use). That works out to about 19k GWh of battery storage, assuming you can recharge daily. For reference, Tesla's Gigafactory produces ~35GWh of batteries per year currently.

Total oil consumption for road transport was ~2k Mtoe in 2012. That works out to 23k TWh of energy. Assume you only need half of that when you go from a heat engine to an electric motor. Now you've got 11.5k TWh of total use. Now assume that you recharge your vehicle nightly. The world would need ~32k GWh of batteries to hold all of the energy currently used for road-going vehicles (given the above assumptions).

The market for whatever battery technology that works for automobiles is the same order of magnitude as the market for grid-scale storage. If you're a battery maker, you can increase your total addressable market by selling into both automotive and grid-attached storage.

</comment><comment><USER24> The good thing is we don't really need anything better than lithium ion for most applications (aerospace excluded). Solid state electrolyte lithium ion will get us to 400Wh/kg, which is more than enough for cheap cars with 400+ mile range.

<comment><USER25> I think the average BEEFY desktop PC uses 300 to 600 W in practice (idle or full load). Let's call it 400 W.

1 kg is 2 lbs.

Also, an iPhone 5 is 0.112 kg.

If 400 Wh/kg is the best lithium will take us, then we'll never have iPhone 5-sized or weighted devices capable of the same power as a desktop PC, and if we did they'd need to have a battery weighing 1 kg to be capable of it for even one hour. So the mobile and desktop ecosystems will be forever apart. That's sad.

Also, what kind of mileage does 400 Wh/kg get you for artificial hearts? (It may be good; I don't know; but, whatever it is, you'd probably like it to be better if you had one.)

<comment><USER26> A mains powered a 400W iPhone 5 sized device seems impractical from a heat dissipation standpoint.

<comment><USER27> Heat is a by product of design flaws.

<comment><USER26> All power ends up as heat. If a device consumes 400W of power it is going to put out 400W of heat in some form or other. Fix the design flaw so it puts out less heat and it will consume less power and no longer be a 400W device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I predict this title will not age well. The progress is accelerating. Material science is getting revolutionized by cheap computation and large-scale simulations.

<comment><USER29> There's only so much room at the top of the periodic table.

<comment><USER28> So? Alloys, compounds, and metamaterials give you an almost infinite search space.

<comment><USER29> There are limits to electronic charges found, period.

Adding additional elements increases mass.

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=AdPqWv-eVIc](https://youtube.com/watch?v=AdPqWv- eVIc)

<comment><USER28> So? We don't know what we don't know. We might find some way to store energy within chemical bonds like fuel (39,405 Wh/kg limit of liquid H2) or nuclear (8,700,000,000 Wh/kg of Pu-239) or matter-antimatter interaction (24,965,421,631,578 Wh/kg).

Current lab records of 1000-2000 Wh/kg are just a start, we're far far away from hitting any limits.

<comment><USER29> In this case, we do. Really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The problem isn't that we don't know how to make more powerful batteries right now, the problem is safety. The more powerful your battery, generally the more dangerous/flammable/explosive it is when it fails. The only reason we can even use lithium ion batteries as much as we do is their exceedingly low failure rate. So not only does any new and better batteries need to hold more power, they need to be more stable and have more graceful failure modes.

<comment><USER17> Agreed, which is why I always look to see stories about solid state lithium batteries. The documentary I saw on them made them look ready for use.

<comment><USER31> Sadly solid state is not currently ready on a large scale. There is still significant work to be done in large part to use a solid state electrolyte.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The article says nothing about technologies formulated for larger scales (literally "cheap as dirt") like molten salt.

[https://blog.ted.com/reinventing-the-battery-donald- sadoway-...](https://blog.ted.com/reinventing-the-battery-donald-sadoway-at- ted2012/)

We may have to wait for utility scale storage using Li-ion to become big, to spur investment for alternative utility scale storage which could beat Li-ion cost at scale.

</comment><comment><USER33> I remember hearing about a sugar powered fuel cell battery that was being developed a few years ago. Supposedly would be able to bring energy density up close to hydrocarbon fuels. I guess it didn't go anywhere, though, as there doesn't seem to be any news around it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_battery)

</comment><comment><USER34> It is useful to look at what it took for Nickel Cadmium to be replaced. (NiCd used to be the dominant rechargable battery tech which had replaced PbSO4). Nickel metal hydride came in and replaced the "big" negative of cell memory for NiCd (so it took out a big user facing 'gotcha' to the tech.) LiOn replaced the weight of NiMH which was a big user facing gotcha.

The next battery technology will have to be as light as LiON, have similar power densities, and be impervious to catching on fire I think (that is the current 'gotcha' of using LiON batteries today).

<comment><USER35> The current user-facing gotcha isn't fire, it's capacity.

Consumers aren't walking around worrying that their headphones, watch, or phone might explode (except for the brief galaxy note stint). They are worried their phone is going to die before they get to a charger, will their laptop last through the meeting, will their headphones die mid-flight

<comment><USER34> I think those are the same problem :-) But I may be looking at it in a way that is slightly different than you are.

The way I see it, capacity is unbounded if size is unbounded, you can just have giant batteries. But if size is bounded (as it is in cell phones, laptops, cars, etc) then capacity is a function of energy density. And the 'flaming battery pack' problem is a function of energy density. The more surface area, and thinner the electrolyte layer, the more dendrite development you get and the those are the things that start fires.

The Galaxy is a good example of the trade-off, they made a battery with as much capacity as possible, that lead to a an area that was 'pinched' which allowed for dendrites to short, which caused phones to catch on fire. If the battery had 10% less capacity (the fix as I recall) the dimensions can be smaller and the fit better. No pinch, no fires.

<comment><USER36> IMHO the experienced future is likely to continue seeing improvements for a good many years without battery technology changes, for the smaller consumer devices. Vehicles aren't going to get hugely more efficient without something massively disruptive like an efficient levitation technology but for a lot of electronics now, things like backlit screens present a bottleneck, and these can be tackled at multiple layers:

* Changing the types of device(screenless device, external display with its own battery, wireless peripherals)

* Improving average-case device environment(further standardization of charging methods, external displays as part of furnishings)

* Miniaturization and efficiency improvements of the internal hardware and software("battery with a phone attached" becomes increasingly true year over year and I have been living with an all-day battery phone for several years now)

Although energy density is a critical enabler, and we could definitely benefit from some jet-fuel-grade density in our alternate energy sources, the larger- scale stuff is also just a lot harder to tackle in a short time frame because it's more infrastructure-dependent. Rethinking our cities is a necessary step, one way or another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Bad news for electrically powered aviation. Cost is coming down, but the specific energy (kWh per kg) is not going up.

So, probably no useful "flying car" anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER38> Didn't we just see last year that a stabilized sodium-ion battery is partway through productization work[0] and proofs of concept are available? I can't find any mention of this fairly important and rapid work in the article?

Lithium Ion batteries will be cheaper for a while, but once sodium ion batteries can be produced at scale it'll greatly reduce global dependence on very specific regions for high yield lithium mines. The net result will be cheaper batteries.

[0]: [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180912111913.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180912111913.htm)

<comment><USER39> There's a couple hundred dollars of lithium in a 100 kw-hour battery. It isn't particularly driving the cost.

<comment><USER38> And if that was 10 dollars of sodium, that sounds like a pretty big cost reduction to me? Sodium is cheap to extract from all sorts of sources, less toxic to humans than lithium pre-processing, and you don't have to move it around the world.

Sodium batteries don't just replace the lithium, they also use phosphorus electrodes. Also easy to source.

<comment><USER40> The most important benefit of sodium batteries is safety, they don't suffer from the runaway thermal failures of LiIon. The 10% or so cost advantage itself is not compelling.

<comment><USER38> The ability to source parts globally and without scarcity seems pretty damn compelling.

And the lack of thermal runaway means you can have cheaper charging and regulation features on the battery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> When could we get a Lithium-Ion Solid Battery or is that a pipe dream? I once read it was used in extreme small quantities, sort of in AAA Battery size for Military purpose, but it was not a well known source of publication. And I could not find other evidence.

While it is important to further drive down the price for EV adoption, the price of battery makes little different to devices I am interested in, such as Phones, Tablet and Notebook. We want higher energy density, and even the optimistic projection we could get only 30% more from better formula in the next 5 years.

Battery is already the taking the largest volume in these devices, Not only do I want my iPhone thinner, ( The current iPhone is thicker, I prefer it to be iPhone 6 ~6.7mm or even iPad Pro 5.8mm thick ) I want it to have more battery. Which means we need to increase the battery density by at leat 50% compared to today to hit a useful battery life improvement while having a thinner design.

Then there is other improvement we want such as rapid charging and higher cycle counts.

<comment><USER42> Still the most promising I've heard of is Solid Energy Systems. They claimed to be selling batteries to the aerospace field already. In their last presentation it seemed like their challenge is cycle life, but that it's improving. But there's been a while since there's been any news from that company.

[http://www.solidenergysystems.com](http://www.solidenergysystems.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> If a new battery tech like fluoride batteries has much more capacity but is more expensive because it's not produced at scale yet, a solution is to do exactly what Tesla did in the first place: put it first in expensive high-end cars and gradually work down the value chain. It'd be easy to charge a premium for an electric car with a 1500-mile range.

<comment><USER44> If a car with 1500-mile range will become a reality with any chemistry, it will not appear first. These (fantastic) batteries with 4-5x the energy density of modern li-ion, will go into a much more profitable use: electric airplanes.

Not sure if these ever appear though. This seems to push not just the limits of technology, but even the laws of physics.

<comment><USER45> An airplane usually spends 1-2 hours in the airport between flights. During that period it needs to be recharged.

<comment><USER46> Or the battery needs to be swapped out with one that was charged while it was in the air.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> In terms of electricity, this company is still refining its design, but most energy used in industrial is heat energy and these guys are solving it. [https://1414degrees.com.au/](https://1414degrees.com.au/)

<comment><USER48> Can the stored heat can be converted to electric power or is it intended to be used as such?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> "The annual output of Tesla's Gigafactory, the world's largest battery factory, could store three minutes' worth of annual U.S. electricity demand. It would require 1,000 years of production to make enough batteries for two days' worth of U.S. electricity demand. Meanwhile, 50–100 pounds of materials are mined, moved, and processed for every pound of battery produced."

[https://media4.manhattan- institute.org/sites/default/files/R...](https://media4.manhattan- institute.org/sites/default/files/R-0319-MM.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER50> "It's not going to handle a day, a week, a month, a season," said Moniz

I believe that way solar thermal based approach is going to be future; energy stored in form of intrinsic heat of a liquified salt solutions (by the concentrated solar beam), or may be for that matter simply inside heated stones (by solar CSP), and then passing water to convert in steam and run turbines!! But ya that will be for grid level solution, not the mobile electronics' power source.

</comment><comment><USER51> I've always liked the idea of batteries based on ATP. It's the energy currency of the cell, why not use it to power out batteries.

</comment><comment><USER52> Forgive my ignorance, but what are some of the "less good" options? I ask since it's my understanding L-ion supplies are not infinite, so it's probably good to think about alternatives if the price spikes.

(For example, I'm not an EE, but is it possible that if you're willing to tolerate a bulkier rig for a device to store charge in capacitors?)

<comment><USER53> Lithium is widely available, it's the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust.

<comment><USER54> Lithium is not the fourth most abundant element in the Earth's crust (that would be iron). Lithium is #33 (by mass), at about 20 ppm.

<comment><USER55> What's interesting to me is that neither of you provided sources for your claim. On what basis should I accept either of them?

Not trying to be a jerk :) And I know not every statement deserves footnotes. Just thought it interesting that even in the case of refuting someone else's information it doesn't happen (often). :)

<comment><USER52> >Not trying to be a jerk :) And I know not every statement deserves footnotes.

Do you think these statements deserved footnotes? Did you attempt to verify the claim and find it difficult to find a corroborating source?

Sources are good, but many people use "have a source for that" as DOS attack on civil discourse.

<comment><USER55> I think in the case of a rebuttal, particularly when the original statement didn't provide any source, it is a useful practice to provide some type of source - even if was a simple reference. eg 'wikipedia' or '1st result on google!'.

Otherwise it's just a really uninteresting he-said-she-said back and forth, no?

I really don't think every statement of fact needs references - this isn't scientific paper writing. But where someone is calling out something specific as incorrect, I think its often worth a little bit extra effort to avoid things degenerating into something not much more interesting than name calling.

That said, neither of those folks owe me anything. :) I'm just happy I get to learn new things once in a while on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Current lithium-ion technology in the pipeline will probably get us to 400watt hours/kilogram and $50-100 / Kwh. Just having that would give us 700 mile range electric cars. And if the glass substrate stuff dr. Goodenough is doing pans out we could see charge speeds 10x faster. So like 300 miles of range in the time it takes to pee.

<comment><USER57> The problem is, however, the longevity of these batteries. In the smartphone world, we've seen a huge emphasis on "50% charge in 10 seconds" but I like to believe batteries weren't designed with that in mind.

I refuse to use 'fast charging' since I believe it will reduce the life span of the battery (which I guess is what they want so you buy a new phone).

If it can be proven batteries can charge much faster AND have an acceptable life span, that's okay. But I don't think that's going to happen any time soon.

<comment><USER58> I have started viewing the batteries in my electronics the same way that I do the tires on my vehicle. Sometimes it's fun to push the limits which eats up the tires faster, but they're not that hard to swap out when they're depleted. I refuse to buy electronics that can't have the battery swapped with half an hour of work and some tiny screwdrivers (no glue!).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Every time you see one of those "amazing new battery technology" articles, just do a Find on the word "patent". If the creators don't think it's worth patenting you can skip reading the rest of the article because it has no chance of real world application.

<comment><USER60> We all know the story: someone's uncle invented it. The government refused to give him a patent, and then he died before he could tell anyone about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Super capacitors are where the real innovation is going to come in the next few years.

Look to see them implemented in high end performance cars like the Tesla Roadster within a year or two, and then make their way into the mainstream through the Tesla Semi, Y, S, X the generation after.

</comment><comment> chroem- They use the same Li-Ion chemistry, but structural composite batteries are on the near term horizon. You get extra capacity "for free" since they also serve as the physical structure of the car/cellphone/aircraft.

<comment><USER62> That sounds potentially incredibly scary if you get into a fender-bender.

<comment> chroem- They use LiFePO4 so it's chemically inert, and it's protected from shorting out due to mechanical damage because the entire composite acts as a thermoresettable fuse.

<comment><USER63> The next question is how do you repair damage in that scenario?

<comment> chroem- Composite structures don't tend to be very repairable in general, but if it's localized damage usually you will just glue a patch in place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Let's hope that lithium becomes economic in the future. Currently recycling lithium costs five times more than mining it and it's not done in large scale.

</comment><comment><USER65> Does anyone know status of mechanical accumulator project. I've heard that flywheel could be promising, while it has its flaws.

</comment><comment><USER66> The article's premise is that Li-ion can't be disrupted because of the amount of current infrastructure built to produce them. I can't help but hear a little desperation in this line of argumentation. I'm no expert, but isn't this actually the kind of thing that we imagine vested interests in every entrenched industry saying just before they're disrupted?

For example, if flow batteries take less capital to produce. Or, if they take different equipment, maybe their capital would be cheaper, given a lack of demand?

<comment><USER67> the TL;DR is economies of scale favor li-ion for the next few years even if other technology is superior in principle

<comment><USER17> There are probably some examples of how economies of scale discrepancies can be overcome by external market conditions from the WWII/I days. (Steel? Aluminum?) Basically government or significantly increased demand for those alternatives could push past the benefits of economies of scale of existing tech. Pricing carbon emissions or political outrage from the effects of climate change could do it.

<comment><USER68> That's basically what happened with PV. Germany invested in it, costs came down and now it's profitable in the private market. Turns out our governments (and the free market) don't invest enough into promising technologies and if they do they will see great progress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Personally to me the weird thing is that most people on hacker news or even in general make up their mind about something and stick with it. I have noticed it the most when it comes to solar and battery news as the tech is improving at such a breakneck speed that what you find out today might no longer be true 1-2 years from now.

</comment><comment><USER70> I am surprised to see a competent opinion on a technical topic in a popular business journal

</comment><comment><USER71> I just did a quick search and it looks like the consumer price of li-ion is more like $250 to $400 per kWh by 1000 * dollars/(volts * amphours), so the bulk price of $176 from the article is believable:

[https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=lithium+ion+battery+48V...](https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=lithium+ion+battery+48V+50AH)

I challenge the idea that Li-ion is the lowest price though, because it's one of the densest storage options.

The actual cheapest (lowest density) energy storage known is gravity, at a potential energy of E = mgh, so we get roughly 9.8 J per kilogram-meter of height. 1 kWh = 3.6e6 J, so with something like a 95% efficiency winch generator, that's E/(g * efficiency) = 3.6e6/(9.8 * .95) = 387,000 kg or right at 175 metric tons (cubic meters of water). A 90% efficient one-way trip with pumped hydro storage would be 408,000 kg or 185 metric tons. Note that round- trip effiency is the square of one-way, so remember to take the square root of any reported round-trip efficiencies when calculating displacements.

An olympic swimming pool holds 2500 cubic meters of water, so that's 2500/185 = 13.5 kWh per meter raised. The average US home uses just over 10 kWh per day. So a good rule of thumb to remember is 1 olympic swimming pool raised 1 meter powers 1 home for 1 day.

After writing all of this out, I think that the cheapest energy storage will be to pump air down tubes to big bags under the ocean (or lakes) to displace water. Since volume grows by the cube but surface area only grows by the square, this is the only scalable energy storage system that doesn't require access to a reservoir or oil well. Also since it only requires 1 atmosphere of pressure per 9.8 meters of depth, the low compression might be close to an adiabatic process by not raising the air temperature much, and could get close to an 85% one-way (72% round-trip) efficiency. I feel like by PV = T, for each doubling of pressure but halving of volume, the temperature should stay the same. Maybe someone more experienced with entropy can provide an equation for what percentage is lost per atmosphere of compression, say at 50 F (10 C) ground/water temperature:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage#Adiabatic)

Hey it looks like they're already doing this in Toronto:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GicQwXbNnv0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GicQwXbNnv0)

But I think it's always good to derive an idea from first principles instead of taking someone's word for it. So I'd put money on this as an alternative to batteries. And just so we have it, about 4 of the $600, 2400 WH Chevy Volt batteries at a total cost of $2400 would also power a home for a day (not counting inverters).

<comment><USER68> If your gravity battery isn't based on water then it's just vaporware like the thousands of other gravity batteries.

<comment><USER55> Did you look at the linked video of the pilot in Toronto? That doesn't seem like vaporware to me? It may or may not meet its goals, but it's a pretty simple concept to execute on I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I've joked in YC before that it's about time for the semi-annual mind-blowing battery technology announcement, so this was a bit of a surprise.

</comment><comment><USER73> What happened to those train batteries?

</comment><comment><USER74> Elon knew it 10+ year ago. Also given amount of intellectual and monetary capital being employed, I think sooner or later, Li batteries with the help of combined efforts will beat gasoline in energy density.

</comment><comment><USER75> I have nothing to add except that the title "Batter Reality:" would have been objectively better.

Enjoy your weekend :)</comment>


Your display setup? - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious about the display setups people are using for programming and this is probably the place to ask. So, what's your setup? 2x 23" HD screens, one pivoted? A 27" 2560x1440 screen?<p>I'm especially curious if someone has tried an ultrawide such as the Dell U2913WM? It looks like an interesting setup for programming but then again it might not be. I find 2x 23" widescreens too wide for comfort so it might hit the sweet spot. <comment><USER2> My home setup is 2x 24" IPS displays at 1600x1200. At work, I am running a 27" 2560x1440 along with a cheap 19" to the side (hoping to eventually replace the 19" with something else). At a previous job, we ran a 30" 2560x1600 with a pivoted 24" 1600x1200 on the side (matching the 1600 pixels was essential).

After all that, I would say, go as big as you can. Going to at least the 2560x1440 27" monitors can make a huge difference. If you can go all the way to 30", even better. Personally, my first choice (aside from waiting for a 30" 4k monitor) would be 2x 30", followed by 30" \+ 24", followed by 27" \+ something (ideally, another 27").

</comment><comment><USER3> Four or six (depending on my work) Dell 30" LCD displays at 2560x1600 oriented in either landscape or portrait or more often, a combination of landscape and portrait. Each monitor is mounted on Humscale M8 monitor arm.

An early image of my setup is here: [http://www.otakunozoku.com/my-new- monitor-layout/](http://www.otakunozoku.com/my-new-monitor-layout/)

<comment><USER4> What's your development environment like? What are you working on in that picture? Which programs are running in that picture?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I currently have a 27" IPS (FSM-270YG / 2560x1440) and a 21" LCD (1600x900). I mainly do web development so the 27" will very comfortably fit sublime, terminal and chrome with dev tools. The 21" is my spotify/google/hn monitor.

I used to spread my workspace over two 21" monitors, but now having everything on one large monitor is much more comfortable.

</comment><comment><USER6> 2 older Dell 19" 4:3 monitors, I prefer the square space more for programming and layout work than having the width. Right monitor is on a 4 unit KVM so I can switch between my Linux box, Mac Mini Intel, Mini PPC and whatever machines come my way for work. So when I'm working on one of the non-Linux machines I can still watch movies or read instructions on the left monitor.

</comment><comment><USER7> 27" iMac @2560x1440 in the middle, with a 23" Dell LED monitors @ 1920x1080 on either side. Total 3 monitors

[http://www.dell.com/ed/business/p/dell-s2330mx/pd](http://www.dell.com/ed/business/p/dell-s2330mx/pd)

</comment><comment><USER8> At the moment a single IPS display at 1920x1080. I'm about to get 4 more panels (not IPS, and not as big) so I'll have two portrait mode to the sides of the main display.

Not sure what I'll do with the other two monitors. Maybe kludge them into a nightmare all-in-one with an old laptop.

</comment><comment><USER9> A 27" 2560x1440 screen. One of those cheap IPS panels that came out of the box with a couple dead pixels. It's on a monitor arm from Monoprice.

When I get home, I hook my 11" MacBook Air up to it. Portable when it needs to be. Tons of screen real estate when I need it.

</comment><comment><USER10> One 27-inch screen, as it's a mid-2011 iMac.

The horrible thing is that I actually find myself wanting more screen space, now and again. (Part of that might be using 16pt Consolas as my emacs font, but I work with so many people who need glasses.)

</comment><comment><USER11> 2x NEC 19" 5:4 1280x1024 monitors at work, nothing special. Used for coding in Visual Studio/SSMS.

At home I have a single Dell 24" IPS monitor, used for photo editing and lighter coding, in addition to general home usage.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have three 23" monitors, none currently pivoted. When I'm doing web development I have a tmux session on one screen, an auto-refreshing web browser on another, and then another web browser with google on the other. I love it!

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm using a single monitor right now. I have 2 iMacs and 1 Macbook Air. The main one on the middle, and at my sides the rest of the setup. Including the iPad and the iPhones.

</comment><comment><USER14> My main work setup is 2x22in (non-ips) at 1680 _1050 , home setup is 2x24in ips at 1920_ 1080\. I use an old macbook as my "burner" machine when I go out and about.

</comment><comment><USER15> At work I mostly use 2x Dell U2412m (1920x1200) on my laptop, neither rotated.

I would love to switch to 1x 30" 2560x1600 and 1 20" 1600x1200 pivoted.

</comment><comment><USER16> Two 27" Thunderbolt displays (2560x1440) hooked to a Mac Mini (which is essentially a top of the line MBP for half the cost) and a MBA off to the right.

</comment><comment><USER17> One Dell 3008WFP (2560x1600) is doing the job for me (connected to my 11" MBA) - but i have to admit a second one of it would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER18> 3x24" screens at 1920x1200 each.

More and more thinking I may be better served by a single 27" or 30".

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell One 14 inch Lenovo Thinkpad laptop screen

</comment><comment><USER19> Dell 3007WFP (2560x1600) to the right of a (raised up) 15" retina MBP (effectively 1440x900)

</comment><comment><USER20> 3 x 24in 1080p Acers

</comment><comment><USER4> 1 CRT 15" for competitive Counter-Strike and BroodWar. Yes I am living in the past.

3 * 24" for media.

2 * 16" portrait mode for coding.

1* x120e laptop for work.

1* macbook pro to look pretty in public.</comment>


Looking for Hosting For My Project in Ruby on Rails - <AUTHOR>

I preferred it in India if its possible , I am open to other suggestions also.<p>Let us know your experience etc. <comment><USER2> I'm just starting with Rails and I've found Heroku the easiest Rails hosting provider. They don't give you a shared server machine, you upload your application directly, and there's even a free usage tier if your app is low- traffic.

Using git, you just push the app to Heroku with your credentials and you're set.

Also, you can upgrade or downgrade the maximum performance as needed by the spikes of traffic so you never pay for more that you use.

</comment><comment><USER3> We've been using EngineYard for 8 months and have been very impressed. They're built on top of AWS.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've found webfaction.com to be a great host.

</comment><comment><USER5> Rails Playground has been good to me.</comment>


Ask HN: Saving the results of client-side JavaScript processing - <AUTHOR>

Let's say we have server D (for Data). Data is encrypted. We jave server K (for Key). The client (your browser) requests D and K to do their decryption magic and would like to store three results (which may be large) on the hard drives.
Implicit in this is that I don't really trust Server D.
I can do the decryption using nifty libraries, but I don't know how to persist the content to the hard drive.  Anybody have have any good ideas"? <comment><USER2> You can use local browser storage. There are couple of options: Sqlite, HTML5 Web Storage, Google Gears plugin database, AIR/Flash/Silverlight storage etc.</comment>


Best approach for self-taught developer looking for job? - <AUTHOR> I have a degree in social sciences and after several years of unfullfilling employment at various jobs I started learning some programming and found I really enjoyed it. I taught myself some basic python and django and have been getting some freelance work to pay the bills however I would much rather get a full time programmer job. I have been applying but have not been having any success. I have a github account and developed a site however I do not seem to be gaining any traction. What technologies/skillset should I focus on to get an entry level job? What is the best way to demonstrate proficiency in a technology? Any help would be much appreciated. <comment><USER3> Pulled up your github account. Aside from you accidentally adding your home directory, you're making good progress. If you're looking to get a job quickly, I'd encourage you to focus on one area and I think your shortest path is the front end technologies. Pretty much every firm I know of in NYC is hiring front end developers and the main limitation is finding people who actually know javascript.

If you know (not just read, know):

<http://bonsaiden.github.com/JavaScript-Garden/>

<http://eloquentjavascript.net/>

And you can demonstrate it by sticking something on github (fix a ticket on stylus/express/some other node.js project, write a jquery plugin, help out with the django admin) then go to some meetups in SF and talk to people who say "we're hiring frontend developers" which is pretty much everybody. Being able to design entire applications isn't generally required since what people are usually looking for is someone they can say "go make this new dialog" and you go do it using their established design patterns. It is crucially important, however, that you can demonstrate knowledge since I have yet to meet a developer who doesn't "know" javascript.

If you do this and want to work in NYC, shoot me an email. I'll at least give you feedback and probably give you a referral for contract to hire. Nobody cares about your education/work background as long as you can get the job done.

This assumes, of course, that you actually like front end development since quite a few people don't.

<comment><USER4> I'd be interested in shooting you an email (similar situation).

<comment><USER3> Feel free to get in contact. I'm not too busy to help people out.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Eloquent Javascript book is excellent, thanks for the heads up. Definitely helping to expand my mind as I work through it. For anyone else here trying to learn I have also been using it conjunction with this tutorial here <http://ejohn.org/apps/learn/> that has lots of interactive examples but not so much on explanations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was in the same boat. I graduated from a liberal arts college with a degree that no one has ever asked about. After lots of non-profit work after school I was tasked with 'updating the website' one day. Cut to 3 years and $100+ in library fines later and I've been the lead developer on Fortune 50 websites and now work for for a 'rent a Rails shop' company. Here's the advice:

Learn how to interview well. Knowing what github is, having actually launched a site, and wrangling some freelance work together puts you ahead of 90% of the people I worked with at my Big Co. job, you just need to be able to prove it and convince people of it. The competition for most positions consists of bored CS grads from Java schools who never learned how to use version control and for whom programming is just a job. You have passion it appears, and that can't be overrated.

I was willing to be aggressive with my first interview, noting that I would be able to accept a lower-than-market rate if they would do a salary review shortly after I started. Not everyone is in the position to do so, but I took a 'whatever it takes' attitude to get started, with the confidence in myself that once people saw how effective I could be, things would get better. Programming is as close to a meritocratic profession as exists, so get in a position to prove yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply, always nice to hear about liberal arts majors that have walked the road ahead of me. I think I need to improve on the confidence as I feel less sure of myself now than I did six months ago, something of a more you learn less you know scenario. I do have a ton of confidence in my abilities to get a job done however so maybe I should tap that part of my psyche during interviews.

<comment><USER6> I was a Philosophy major (yay Lewis, Kripke and Quine) and didn't really get into programming until I wanted to build websites for my friends. Back then we didn't have jQuery, so I learned PHP.

But I agree with this thread -- keep pushing on JavaScript. CouchApps are a great way to learn front end while having the back end more or less taken care of for you, but most apps are gonna require an extra degree of freedom on the back end. You'll find that your JS skills travel well, especially now that node.js is viable.

If you haven't read this article yet, read it an grok it: <http://javascript.crockford.com/remedial.html>

If you know this stuff cold, then the only thing standing between you and a well paying developer gig is personal networking and a bigger open-source portfolio. Go to node.js and Couch meetups, they are vibrant welcoming communities that value beginning coders as much as veterans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Assuming that this project on GitHub is yours <https://github.com/cirsteve/courseslate> and you show it to potential employers, I would recommend you to learn pip/virtualenv, read about django best practices, (<http://lincolnloop.com/django-best-practices/>) Also I would recommend to cleanup your repository from files that are not completely necessary (varios .tar.gz files, .ssh folder, .bash_history, etc.) Those things give you away as a beginner.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Andrew, virtualenv is next on my list as my system is starting to get mucked up with different packages and you are absolutely right that I need to clean everything up. Thanks for the input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Go to conferences and meet people! Make a network in your city/closest metro area and use it.

Having a github is a great start, that's one thing I want to see before I bring you in for an interview. andrew_k has good advice as well.

</comment><comment><USER9> You'll probably need to start with a small company, bigger companies usually aren't willing to give someone their first "big break". I started out just doing my own projects and then did some work for relatives, etc, then, finally I was able to find someone who was willing to hire me a few hours a week to do remote development. From there I just kept incrementally jumping to the next better opportunity I could find. Its not necessarily the smoothest path but you can progress quickly if you keep pushing yourself. Basically, don't think of anything as being beneath you as long as its related to development, take the first job you can find with a company that will even give you half-time to where you can go into an office each day and work. A lot of companies are weary of letting people "short on years" work on development so its an uphill battle, but even working in a QA position could lead to a solid developer job as you usually can expose yourself to the application's code (some QA guys do and want to become developers, some don't). If you're a QA guy who reads code and finds bugs then... to the next job you apply to you can say you were a junior developer, and so on

</comment><comment><USER10> I come from a similar situation. I graduated with a degree in commercial art and illustration. After slinging coffee for a year, and trying to get freelance work started unsuccessfully, I threw in the towel.

I went into programming, as it was a good fit for me. Since I too had no formal experience, I got involved with open source as a way to gain experience and learn from people who were more experienced and knowledgable. Getting involved in open source, was probably the single best move for my career that I ever made. It opened opportunities I would have probably never had, allowed me to talk to really brilliant people, and gave me visible experience that has helped me land all of my employment. I highly recommend contributing to an open source project as a way to get experience and exposure.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats a great idea. I am a big believer in/user of open source technologies and would love to contribute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm a self taught developer as well.

I started with the front end because I had a decent design sense and attention to detail. If you can care about pixel perfection, I think it's a good route. JavaScript, HTML, and CSS aren't the most difficult technologies to start with, and you get a little more leeway to make mistakes or write sloppy code in the beginning, learning as you go.

It's a good time to be doing this. There is need for developers enough that if you can prove that you're smart, a mid-sized or smaller startup may take a risk with you.

Try putting up a personal website. Set up your own server if you can, write your own code, and get something up showing what you can do.

At this point, do whatever you can to show that you've taught yourself a decent amount. You want to prove that you can learn, not so much that you're already a pro.

</comment><comment><USER12> Well, I've been working as a full time dev for 3 years now and never went to college.

What I did was start low as a jr. system admin for linux systems. I'm not very social so I never made 'connections' so I hade to improve my skills. So from jr I went to sr, and within a couple of years got my first job as a jr. dev for a small company.

It's at these kinds of jobs that you will learn the essentials:

MVC Databases HTML/CSS/Javascript Message Queues

From here, it's up to you to keep improving your skills and building projects. Managers don't like github profiles, so I highly recommend you have your own app (not just a website.)

From there you can move on to things like: Mobile Apps Function Languages Socket Servers Low Latency Systems

Of course, always make sure you study and learn the basics. Such as basic sorting algorithms, working with bits/bytes, etc.

And so on.

</comment><comment><USER13> Try <http://www.djangogigs.com>, I get contacted frequently through that site. Also you may want to post you resume online, like <http://www.cvstash.com>.

The best way to demonstrate your python and django expertise is to create a web app using that stack. Find some cheap hosting and you're set. Who knows, your app might even be a hit and you can skip the job seeking routine altogether.

</comment><comment><USER14> Another self taught developer here who found work just after I started to take it really seriously and let my ambition take hold.

You say you have been getting freelance work. Put all that on your CV if you haven't already. And work on building a _proper_ online portfolio using your current skillset. The benefits of doing this are thus:

1\. Professionalism. You're a bona-fide freelancer ostensibly running a business under your own name. Taking advantage of this shows you _mean_ business.

2\. Publicity. Potential employers can find your website (after pimping it out everywhere and making it known wherever you can) and have all the information they need to consider you as a candidate right there. It also helps for contracts until you find full-time employment.

Speaking of your site/portfolio, it's _dreadful_. Setting a proper site up for yourself and identifying what makes a good portfolio would be a good thing to do.

Finally, and being totally honest, the last thing I would do when looking to hire a developer is trawl through a potential candidate's github account, finding out what sort of contributions were made to the JS flavours of the month. I'm not interested in seeing code samples right off the bat, I'm more interested in seeing how you sell yourself - how your website and portfolio and demonstrable skills* paint a picture of the sort of person you are - <USER2> how enthusiastic you are about getting a job.

I'm interested in you, the person, and the specifics of your work (eg. the code samples) and other contributions would come up later in interview.

I don't mean to be overly harsh but your online presence and how you present yourself/your work are, in my opinion, key to better finding the work you want.

*demonstrable skills not as in bug fixes on github but as in the work put into your website.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback but perhaps you can give me more insight into what is dreadful about my site/portfolio. When you say site/portfolio, which are you referring to? Is it the design, usability you find dreadful or did it crash on you? Developing a web application requires many different skills and this is where I am trying to get some feedback on. I appreciate your feedback that it is dreadful but perhaps a bit more insight into what would make it less dreadful beyond improve it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Don't focus on the end goal, focus on the journey. I'm a self-taught web developer (used to be a self-taught designer) and I learned my way through development by simply building stuff. I've had stable jobs for over 5 years now.

Once you've built some useful projects (I built Backbone Todos amongst other things), people are going to find you through them and contact you with opportunities all the time.

You've already started putting your work out there on Github, now you just need to market yourself a little better. a Github account isn't enough. Blog about your experience, build a Twitter following and other promotion techniques.

Maybe extract some smaller bits out of your bigger projects. Those are usually more useful and get more popular quickly. Abstract some of that application- specific code and release it. It's both an exercise in programming and marketing.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why don't you come interview, we're hiring smart motivated people in San Francisco. <http://chartboost.com/jobs>

As far as general advice, I'd say if your skills are not good enough to get you a full developer's job right now, try to get hired as an intern, or as a community manager or something that doesn't require coding, at a startup. Suck up the bitch work for a while, try to automate a lot of your work using scripts, learn as you go and make it clear your end goal is to move to development—if you're smart, you'll be promoted in no time. I have some friends who've come in knowing nothing about development, and been promoted to junior developer within 6 months.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is definitely the type of role and organization I would like to join. I am in NY right but will be back in the bay area soon and would be interested in an interview. I am certainly open to an internship, do you know if internship opportunities are paid?

<comment><USER16> Yeah, internships are definitely paid. Shoot me an email, email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Awesome! I think you're on the right track.

I'm a big believer in public portfolios. When I've been on the hiring side of things that's the first place I look. Now it's just a question of improving the both the quality and quantity of projects you're showing off.

How about getting a mentor to review your project(s)? You're not in an organization yet, but you can pretend you are--request a code review from a programmer you look up to.

Teaching others has helped me learn myself in the past. You didn't mention activity on stack overflow--answering questions there can improve your skills and visibility since SO is integrated with SO Careers as well.

Great luck to you!

</comment><comment><USER18> The github account is nice, but it requires effort to explore, and you're trying for an entry-level position. You may need a better presentation of your skills.

That probably means an online portfolio with tools, summaries and screenshots. It's not hard to put one together, but here's a really simple "step-by-step" one that you can push to Heroku within about 15 minutes: <https://github.com/noahgibbs/bobfolio>

ETA: My own portfolio is here, for comparison: <http://angelbob.com/portfolio>

</comment><comment><USER19> I was in similar situation. I've learned most things on the job but it's good to know some basics about hardware, operating systems, and the network.

You might work as a programmer and do only that but software development is much more than just programming. There are framework, libraries, and architectures. Not just fancy words but ways to do more in less time. And of course: testing, debugging, and rewriting. The last three make good programmer great.

I come for humanities and I can say that programming is not much different than writing a book: read a lot and write a lot ... I think Stephen King said that.

</comment><comment><USER20> Help us build the Permabank project for #occupywallstreet! <https://github.com/FLOSolutions/permabank>

It's a Django gifting platform that will be pretty well-trafficked once we launch it in a couple weeks, that we hope to turn into a full-blown alternative economy platform one day soon. We could use dev help and have lots of people down here who could offer pointers for dev job opportunities to good coders. We're on irc.freenode.net #nycga-iwg. Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER21> Same here. I'm really trying hard to get into freelancing but since I'm not really good in networking I haven't come around to get a decent project yet. My current plan is building a strong online portfolio, which is hard to do without find any gigs.

If anyone is looking for a jr. front-end Dev., Wordpress Dev. or beginning Rails Dev. drop me a line. I'd appreciate it :) Languages: JS, Python, Ruby, PHP

</comment><comment><USER22> Learning front end languages is essential as an employer wants to know that you can get a site live when the ____hits the fan. If you can't slice up a PSD and build a basic site there MIGHT come a point when you're useless to them.

I'm self-taught and found learning HTML, CSS, JS and a bit of PHP and MySQL was more than enough to get a job in the UK.

Build some sites, get some experience.

</comment><comment><USER23> In a previous experience, I found that companies hired me without even glancing at my CV or portfolio after I started my development company.

There was some level of pre-created trust purely because I had a business operating in the field.

It's not hard to put a nice looking website together, choose a business name and start operating on the side.

It might make it easier for you too.

Goodluck!

</comment><comment><USER24> Use the same approach that works well for classically trained engineers:

Make something good, keep learning. Then show you are doing both of these.

Hired.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm in the same boat as the OP except I'm just about to finish high school with 2 years of part-time experience in a web dev shop.

The main problem I'm having is not even being able to land an interview. Where should I look for a dev job in Australia?

<comment><USER26> Meetups: eg roro, cocoaheads, sydjs, etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Make an iPhone app, make some money, and never get a job.

I would recommend you either make a Bible app, or a Menstruation Calendar app. Those would both not require any server-side programming, and they are proven ways to make money.

<comment><USER28> I see so many people suggesting this, and I just don't get it. A very small percentage of iPhone apps even get into the high four-figures. That's not even quit-your-side-job money, much less quit-your-day-job.

<comment><USER27> Most people don't try and build apps that they know will suit an audience, and most people don't try for long enough (as with anything).

I believe that anyone who works on an iPhone app in their spare time for a year, and who picks a known winner category (GPS tracking, bible app, free book downloader, offline city maps, etc.) can make a living.

Remember - most people who try at everything fail. Right now, the mobile market is red-hot, and it's a good way to make a living. It's got to be the easiest way to sell software and make money, with a much higher success rate than making a website or a Facebook app.

Moreover, you can command ridiculous rates as a contractor right now for iOS expertise - much better than for JavaScript programming on average.

<comment><USER28> I don't mean to be argumentative, but I still think you're making it sound a lot easier than it is. For example, I know more about iPhone dev than most people who aren't full-time iPhone devs, but I have no idea what is a "known winner" category or even how I'd go about guessing. AFAIK, Apple doesn't release the kind of numbers I'd need to figure out what categories are profitable. With a web app, we can use analytics, keyword tools, A/B testing, etc.

This feeling — that releasing for the iPhone is a crapshoot and that anything I release would probably be crowded out by the absolute flood of junk in the App Store — is why I've never bothered with the iPhone, despite having done Cocoa development since the early days of OS X.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm hiring developers for handl.it and I look for a concise summary of your objectives and skills.

Feel free to send me a message with this info and I'm happy to give you feedback. Good luck to you!

</comment><comment><USER30> Get a helpdesk job at a company with an internal helpdesk. (NOT a call center). Those jobs truly are entry level, and will hire people without experience. Once you are there, start building tools on the side to help your department. If you do well, they'll see the value and give you more programming work. If not, at least you now can put real IT experience, including programming on your resume.

Admittedly, this is not an exciting path, nor a fast one. But it is an effective one.

<comment><USER31> Please, take this advice under no circumstances. This might well be the worst career advice for programmers I've ever seen.

<comment><USER30> ...says the student to the 20 year veteran who lived this path.

If all you care about is startup work, yes this is bad advice. If you want a solid career in technology, this is a viable path. You don't have to agree, and I don't expect anyone to like it, but denying its viability is just short- sighted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Where are you geographically located now? From your prior comments, I've seen NY and SFO.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats where I spend most of my time. NY right now for the holidays.

<comment><USER32> I'm curious if you've considered work that isn't 100% dev focused, but a combination of tech/people focused. e.g. systems/sales consultant? Do you like to travel? Can you talk to people? Do you desire to be deep in dev, or more surface level?

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny you should ask. I come from a sales/marketing background and can talk to people. I do not need a 100% dev role but also do not really like sales however something that included consulting and really providing value I could be interested in.

<comment><USER32> You can be very technical and still involved in the sales process and add value! In fact, the combination of people skills and tech skills is very rare and commands a pretty good salary. If you're totally turned off by the sales process, you can go into professional services and be much more technically involved, but still work with people. Professional services requires almost 100% travel, and isn't for everyone. Let me know if you're interested in either of these and I'll reach out to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Contact the people you have interviewed with and ask for their feedback.

</comment><comment><USER34> Work for $10/hr.

</comment><comment><USER35> Hopefully Im not rehashing a bunch of the information people have already tried to give you here, but I happen to be a self-educated programmer with zero college, now going on two years experience, and my third opportunity at promotion (read: third new job) in that timeframe(never been fired). This time, it's for a highly successful software engineering company, so I like to think I'm making the right choices.

Step one is getting grounded, for me, that was understanding the basics of web development, how web pages work, and how to get them onto the web. Full stack development even with static sites can be very valuable: know how to bootstrap a brand new project, add it to version control, set up a production stack(e.g. Apache/passenger), have a basic workflow set up for yourself, do diverse things and solve stupid problems you're having for yourself. Got freelance clients? Give an invoicing app or client portal a go, it won't hurt for people to see you fix problems and don't dally with newnew technologies for now.

Try to stand out, for me, a lot of developers I meet don't grok photoshop and basic UI/UX, so I made it a months long focus to be able to design static mocks and live sites from scratch, and trying to make them as elegant and experience friendly as possible. Knowing HTML and CSS extremely well also has helped, for every programmer I meet who is a DOM wizard with JS, they don't understand modern HTML standards or how to write elegant CSS. I also understand photoshop as well as most graduates from Ringling(I know, I'm marrying one) and took serious time to grow my tool set(like using bash and vim effectively). Make yourself stand out, grok shit engineers aren't interested in or don't have the desire to fully learn(JavaScript is a fair example) you'll be thankful for it come interview time.

Finally, be modest. Once you have a professional looking online presence, you've done all you really can to make a good first impression. The rest is all desire to make shit work, to do something you've never, ever done before. Don't act like you can be put in over your head, know that the nights and weekends for many young people in technology are when you catch up to senoir peers.

I tend to agree somewhat with the 'get Into the community' observations people have made, but am employer has never asked me 'which meetups do you enjoy?' or 'what kind of open source things have you contributed?' - they honestly largely do not care in my experience, it can help you get a strong recommendation from someone inside the company, but this is unusual so don't lean on it, look at it as a badge or ribbon to accent your developer coat.

Which leads me to my last point, my best opportunities so far have come from very strong software engineers who appreciate my attitude, attention, and willingness to ask Smart questions while trying to explain what I do understand. They go to bat for me when they have an opening in the company, and that's huge for me. Something insane like 80% of professionals received a recommendation from family or a friend to land their position; in fact just a few weeks ago there was a forrst post from a UK kid who needed a rails job, he had a so-so online presence, but a bunch of people went to bat for him, saying that he showed real competience and that someone should really give him a chance; within the same day as the original post, he was employed( p.s. he had a compsci degree).

The market is starving for competent developers, I must get 5-10 hits every month from recruiters for all kinds of positions in San Fran and NY, so there's hundreds of people looking for new talent. Ask yourself why they haven't called you for an interview yet, and take example from the people you admire who are getting those calls.

Addendum: Just for the sake of clarity; these tips aren't necessarily the way to get into an entrepreneurial company, or one that's particularly very small. A lot of those opportunities, in my experience, come from open source visibility. Engine yard really nailed it here([http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2011/the-number-one-trait- of-...](http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2011/the-number-one-trait-of-a-great- developer/)) -- but some companies _want_ a Jack; decide which one fits you better, though, because it's difficult(impossible?) to be both.

<comment><USER35> Just to elaborate after looking for you on Google; I'm assuming this is you: <http://ropeadopeandwink.com/>

The comments below are pretty accurate, this is kind've a terrible (mostly design) site. If you're not a retarded strong developer(read: compiler tweaking or core lib contributions, etc.), this kind of lapse in design and usability really stands out. Do you know enough about CSS to remove the underlined text decoration property from an anchor wrapped in H1? Why didn't you? Lets take a look at a pretty strong vanity domain for a developer (who needs to update their shit, but that I follow on Tumblr) not seeking employment: <http://matthewmachuga.com/>

Did you notice some instant difference? Did you notice his site design is a template from Tumblr? Was it easy to read and scan for information? Check out <http://www.tumblr.com/spotlight/developers> for some more examples of easy, but strong, blog examples. Detest the idea of using a service for this kind of thing? How about <http://zachholman.com/about> \-- pretty strong site, compared to yours, don't you think? This kind of stuff is /just/ intended to get you in the door, to show that you're serious and that you're not coding only for a job, you're coding because you have a passion for the web/mobile/whatever-device-your-potential-employer-is-producing. Don't over think it, but don't produce design like <http://ropeadopeandwink.com/steven- ciraolo/> or <http://courseslate.com/> \-- it's hideous, hard to scan, and people will have an extraordinarily hard time getting over those facts to try and give you a chance(especially if they need their developers to wear UX/UI or design hats from time to time). If you need to use things like Twitter- Bootstrap, do it, but don't be a capable coder who does not understand shit about design or user experience; like I said above -- stand out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight. I agree ropeadopeandwink.com is an ugly design I will go in and clean it up shortly, font sizes especially need help. Comparing it to the blogs you suggested I honestly do not think my design is that far off from those but definitely needs improvement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I was in the same boat as you for a while. The short answer is, don't look for a job, make one. In my case I'm in a CIS college program with a concentration in web development but I'm not too far in and so far have taught myself more than the classes aside from the C++ I was taught there. While you build your skills there's a huge market for local businesses that need some cheap web dev stuff done and you can make a great living off it. In my case I've increased my income tenfold. Of course my first job was free and the second was o ly $400 but the work comes in consistently with a minimum of 2 jobs a month and an average of a 2 month turnaround per job. It's not much to start but you can build it and I really encourage it to anyone so long as you don't set the client's expectations higher than what you can achieve.

You say you learned Python and Django and I think that's a great place to start. Add on to that with a solid font end knowledge and you're good to go until you get hired.

If you're in the Chicago area you should get in touch with me as I'm looking for help as we speak.

<comment><USER37> Absolutely agree. Find customers, not a job. It may lead to a job, or you may fall in love with the freedom if being able to fire your boss (namely your customer) and make it a permanent lifestyle.

It's what I did and I never looked back.

Oh, and don't worry. If you go this route you will find a niche which will challenge you, stretch your skills, and so forth. I never knew when I started that I'd become the primary developer for an open source accounting package (LedgerSMB).

Happy hunting, and may fortune smile upon you!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's your dev teams git multi-environment setup workflow like? - <AUTHOR>

I've been scouring the web for different git workflows to find one that would work for my development team.  I'm looking to add development, staging, and production remotes.<p>I'd like to hear about your workflows entailing multiple environments, as I haven't locked down on any one particular solution.  If you have any links, those would be appreciated as well. Thanks! <comment><USER2> We are using 3 remotes with Git on a team with 5 people. Here's how we do it:

* "dev" branch: This branch holds all development code and code being tested on our development site

* "master" branch: After code has been fully developed and tested, it's moved into the master branch. This code sits on our staging site.

* tags: We tag commits on the master branch, which represents a production release. We tag releases using the format YYYYMMDD.##, so if there was a release today, it'd be 20100929.01. If there was another, the ending number would increment.

All development is branched off of master to start in a feature branch. Once it's ready for testing, it's merged to dev. When it's considered ready for release, the topic branch is merged into master. After final testing, master is tagged and the feature is released into production. We use a shared central repository on the network, rather than trying to manage branches between one another.

One consideration you might want to think about is "dead" code in your development branch. We have had instances where, for whatever reason, code was developed in a topic branch, merged into "dev", then development stopped. It could have been changing priorities, changing requirements, "oh never mind, we don't want that", or whatever. To combat the issue of "dev" having a bunch of junk (which confounds testing), we "refresh" it monthly. An automated process on our continuous integration server simply deletes the "dev" branch and re- creates it off of "master". Then, an email is sent to developers telling them to do the same thing and to merge their topic branches back into "dev". Of course, this means that "master" and the topic branches must have all our code, no development must be done in "dev" directly.

To automate all this, our continuous integration system (Hudson) monitors the "dev" and "master" branches. If there is a change, it runs some basic checks (lint, unit testing, etc), then rsync's the code to the appropriate web server automatically. For production releases, it's (intentionally) a more manual process. Tagging must be done manually and a programmer must go into the CI server to kick off the production release by specifying the tag to release. If we need to roll back to the previous release, the process is the same.

I think having a central repository and a system automate deployment to the remotes is essential and probably more important than your particular git branching scheme. It's made our lives much easier and has caught countless problems (and spammed us via XMPP) that we might not have noticed if programmers were just "git push"ing to the web servers.

</comment><comment><USER3> In a nutshell:

      1. All developers push to the remote master
      2. Acceptance testing is done against the master
      3. Once accepted, the release is tagged
      4. The release is exported to production
         with `git archive` or `git checkout-index -a`

For larger teams you might need fine-grained control, but it works great for our small team.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input. I've been noticing a pattern of "don't use version control in production" which makes complete sense with the export. Do you guys have any kind of staging environment where things get final approval from a third party? I'm in a situation where we have a client approval process which requires another intermediary to production. It basically sits on the same production box but is used for testing prior to going live.

If it helps with anybodies responses, my situation is particular to web development.

<comment><USER4> staging would fit well within the work flow outlined above: you just branch out a staging branch, and export that. If the client needs any fixes, you fix it on the stating branch, and merge it back to master.

That way, further development on master won't disturb staging.

Once the client is happy, tag staging and export it to production.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We use this:

<http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/>

<comment><AUTHOR> How would one take this git flow model and add a third environment, staging, to sit between master and develop?

My initial thought would be to not change anything in the structure and to simply run a deployment script to export to the staging site using scp/ssh/rsync and ensure things are working properly before doing the same thing on production.

<comment><USER6> Just think of the release branches as staging branches--once something's ready to move from develop to staging, you make a new branch, so you can keep working on develop while you test staging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Concurrent development with maximum flexibility:

It might be a bit hard to follow, but this is the branching strategy we follow. [http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=15wi351&s=7](http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=15wi351&s=7)

We use jira for managing our code changes and requests. Each ticket has its own branch. Everyday we merge the tickets we want to go out into a release branch, as you can see in the image. Release, then merge into master once we are satisfied with the release.

The benefits of this strategy is having maximum flexibility in releasing any code change. A request can be made, completed, and released in the same day, often in combination with changes that have been in progress for weeks.

The draw back is managing which branches are going out when, more so with teams greater than 20. It takes knowledgeable team leads and release managers.

</comment><comment><USER8> This isn't exactly what you are looking for. But this is what we use to handle our tagging and deployment to staging/production. <http://github.com/apinstein/git-deployment>. It's a capistrano multi environment recipe that automates a lot of the tasks.

</comment><comment><USER9> I understand that git is the new hip version control, but if everyone uses it with a 'master' branch... why bother? Why not just use subversion? It defeats the whole purpose of using a distributed version control system.

<comment><USER3> Fair question. Two reasons (at least):

1\. Git is much, much faster than Subversion. A real-life example: merging two branches with about 2,000 commits worth of changes (~250K lines added, changed or deleted) took over _6 hours_ with svn but <15 minutes with git. It's not just network overhead, our network is plenty fast.

2\. Though you push to a remote master, that doesn't mean you can't branch locally. You can and you should; it makes it easy to work on multiple features simultaneously.

Then there are things like `git stash` and `git archive` that make life just that much better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is how we do it. [http://reinh.com/blog/2009/03/02/a-git-workflow-for- agile-te...](http://reinh.com/blog/2009/03/02/a-git-workflow-for-agile- teams.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Does Anyone Know What Text Editor Digital Ocean Use? - <AUTHOR> Recently came across this article on digital ocean.
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/how-to-install-zip-in-ubuntu
Their text editor at the bottom is lovely. Had a quick look a source but can't work it out.
Anyone know or can recommend something very similar for wordpress? <comment><USER2> Seems very similar to this: [http://iphands.github.io/Meltdown/](http://iphands.github.io/Meltdown/)

<comment><USER3> Since the classnames have meltdown in them I'm guessing this is it.

<comment><USER4> I tried that but the demo is terrible - surely that isn't it

<comment><USER5> Would you say the demo had a meltdown? :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Verizon agrees to buy Ireland-based Fleetmatics in $2.4B deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.businesspost.ie/verizon-agrees-to-buy-fleetmatics-in-2-4-billion-deal/ <comment><AUTHOR> Exactly half what they paid for buying Yahoo this week.

We don't have many tech "unicorns" (I don't like the term) in Ireland.

I guess Fleetmatics are obviously one of them. Intercom are fast becoming one if they aren't already and Movidius. Baltimore Technologies and Trintech are the two legacy unicorns I can think of. People often suggest Ryanair and Paddy Power or even Stripe but for different reasons I don't think of them as "Irish tech".</comment>