Tricks to make yourself effortlessly charming - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170627-the-tricks-to-make-yourself-effortlessly-charming <comment><USER2> Concepts I've found effective and powerful:

* Given them your attention and listen closely. Ask considerate questions.

* Practice empathy. People usually don't want advice, they most often simply want someone else to understand their experiences. If they are open to advice and you have a tidbit of wisdom, share it kindly and with obvious humility

* Channel your optimistic/zen side. All bad experiences are temporary, we can't change the past, and our mindset greatly affects how we actually feel about any scenario. The future is in front of us, how do we want to proceed? These attitudes can be contagious as well.

* Try to find common ground, even if you don't share their viewpoint. With a stranger, there isn't usually a foundation of rapport and mutual understanding to support adversarial debate.

* If you strongly disagree, respectfully acknowledge what they have said, and then shift to a more amicable topic (unless they specifically ask for your view)

* Pay close attention to body language and other subtle cues. Listen to what is _not_ being said. Keep in mind all relevant context. The specific words that are spoken usually reflect a small portion of the actual information being communicated.

Practice, practice, practice. These skills come naturally for some, but we can all use improvement. Being actively mindful of these aspects of communication/social interaction is valuable for anyone.

<comment><USER3> I think using your analytical mind to affect your attention and behavior in social situations isn't the best way to learn social skills, because it's too easy to come across as creepy if you don't have the right "feel" for doing these things. My own approach is more about unlocking another part of your mind, to which socializing makes sense natively. It's a bit more inwardly focused, but still supposed to be used in social situations, so you can see the automatic change in your outward behavior. It goes like this:

Learn to notice and nudge the emotional state that your entire body is _actually_ projecting at any given moment, using slow breaths as a focus.

<comment><USER4> I think these techniques are initially analytical in nature, and may seem forced, but eventually it becomes habit, and you don't have to think about it on a moment-to-moment basis.

Your last sentence is interesting, but quite a cliffhanger. Can you expand upon your technique or point us to some resources?

<comment><USER3> I'm not even sure it will work for anyone besides me...

The overall approach was inspired by the book "Drawing on the right side of the brain" by Betty Edwards. It starts with some simple exercises that don't teach you to draw per se, but get you into a strange inner state where drawing makes sense. (Repeating real world curves and angles with your pencil without looking at the paper, redrawing a sketch upside down, etc.) It works incredibly well - an adult with zero artistic skill could do these exercises for a couple hours and get a strong sense of "holy shit, I can draw anything I want!" It really feels like you're unlocking a part of your brain that was always there. And the upgrade sticks with you for life.

The point is that I think many skills, especially those with a bimodal separation (you either get it or don't), are really about your inner state. The right inner state is hard to teach, but it _can_ be taught, and then you gain the skill quickly and almost miraculously. For example, all those infuriating people telling you to "just be yourself" are referring to some kind of change in inner state, but haven't found the key to communicating it. For drawing, Betty Edwards has found the key. For social skills, no one has found the key yet. I'm skeptical that my approach will work for everyone, but I'm certain that self-experimenting on your inner state when around other people is more fruitful than trying to force things with them (bravely approach! pay attention! ask them about their job!) It might take a long time though. For me it took years, and only after I stumbled into the right state a few times by accident.

===

Anyway, if you want to follow me, here's what I would suggest. All training must be done while you're around other people, and the first step is noticing just how much information you're sending out. Many nerdy folks don't even fully register their own mood - how good or bad they feel at any given moment - even when everyone around them can see it plain as day. To me it felt at first like a firehose of information, much of it negative, that I couldn't help but blast at whoever was close. (Not through words! Through my pose, my eyes, etc.)

One way to notice it is by contrast. Watch a clip by Sean Paul, and imagine that everyone around is constantly comparing you to him. _That 's_ the firehose. It's very hard to change, because it feels like "water", a part of what you are. And it's hard to accept that the true reason people don't flock to you is your low-grade depression. It feels unfair! But becoming hyper-aware of it is the first step you must take.

When I'm socializing, the focus of my mind is being aware of that firehose of information. It's easy enough to redirect when it feels nasty (just turn it away from other people). And if I deliberately ignore what I want from other people, and focus entirely on making my firehose a bit less off-putting to them, I can slowly affect change. Breathe out, breathe in slowly, don't lose touch with the immovable object, and very carefully make it move.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article mentions getting someone to like you unnaturally fast to divulge information.

This happened to me once. I was a character reference for a friend who needed security clearance for a position in the UK, and they sent a a guy to come and interview me. About 45 minutes later I came out of the room and quickly realised I'd been mined for information (all good, luckily for my friend). While it was happening it felt like we were having just a nice chat. Afterwards I was totally exhausted. A very strange experience.

<comment><USER6> You can see that principle at work in the interrogation of Reality Winner. [https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000015e-c5e7-ddab-a57f-cfe7d...](https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000015e-c5e7-ddab-a57f-cfe7d5b50002)

<comment><USER7> If the FBI shows up at your door, and act very nicely, very friendly... but they have a search warrant...

It's not a speeding ticket, you are not gonna out talk them out of searching your house... so you should... not talk?!

<comment><USER8> They are professionals with a single goal in mind and years of combined training and practice to learn how to acheive it. If you think you can somehow talk them out of doing what they came to do and not put yourself in a worse position than what you began with [1], you are either a very good criminal lawyer or are being naïve.

[1] e.g. by making a false statement in violation of 18 USC 1001, and trust me, they will be counting on it and have planned for it)

[https://www.popehat.com/2007/10/26/shutupshutupshutupshutup/](https://www.popehat.com/2007/10/26/shutupshutupshutupshutup/)

[https://www.popehat.com/2011/03/18/just-a-friendly- reminder-...](https://www.popehat.com/2011/03/18/just-a-friendly-reminder- please-shut-the-hell-up/)

[https://www.popehat.com/2011/12/01/reminder-oh-wont-you- plea...](https://www.popehat.com/2011/12/01/reminder-oh-wont-you-please-shut- up/)

<comment><USER7> I meant the OP as she should have been smart enough (spoke 3 ME languages IIRC) to realize she should stop talking.

IF she did something illegal, she must have thought a day like that may come and had prepared herself.

It's interesting that people who should know better keep falling for these techniques, e.g. General Flynn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Be careful with this. Attempting to be charming in this way means you've taken one branch over an alternate branch. And at least in the U.S., very few people will be willing to tell you the costs once you've made the decision, _especially if_ you are _extraordinarily bad_ at being charming.

For example: at the beginning of "The Little Prince", the narrator describes his childhood drawing of a snake eating an elephant which he uses to test the people he meets as an adult. If the person tells him, "that is a snake eating an elephant," he knows he is safe to talk about "important" things in life. If the person instead tells him, "that is a hat," he talks about superficial things.

But it's actually worse than that, because in the book there is only a single person-- the narrator-- who is judging the character of others. But when someone attempts to "work" a room by being charming, they immediately telegraph their intentions to the entire room at once. And everyone else _immediately_ adjusts their behavior accordingly.

And Americans will not only gloss over the inneffectual charms of others, they will _actively lie_ to avoid the conflict of calling someone else a phony. So if you try to charm, there's no way to get trustworthy feedback on your progress.

On the other hand-- if we're discussing something I care deeply about, there is little to gain by you staring at my irises for the correct amount of time. Beautiful smile or not, at some point you're going to respond in words to what I'm saying. At that point you're either clearly demonstrating your comprehension and interest, or you are so quick-witted and devious that I probably want to get to know you anyway out of sheer fascination (at least on a short-term basis).

</comment><comment><USER10> One tip mentioned is to raise your eyebrows. As example: when you first meet someone, raise your eyebrows slightly (or one), smile, and tilt your head and greet them. Making someone else feel special makes you charming.

Along the same lines: I find that voice cadences, and inflection, work pretty well for being charming! Take time to enuncicate the whole sentence you want to say, throw emotion into your words. _And_ if you happen to do the eyebrow trick at the same time - it's charm overload.

Surprised audio cues weren't mentioned more :-)

<comment><USER11> How grossly manipulative

<comment><USER10> I can see how one may think that!

I see charm as a way to make connections with others (which is awesome!). It's also _crazy_ fun to inflect your voice. Everyone has a better time when you're okay being silly.

Would you treat a new acquaintance like they had the plague? Probably not. Is it manipulative to be nice to someone? I don't think so. Being silly with inflection, or using any of the tools described in the article, for me is just another way to relate to others.

I won't deny some may use the tools for manipulation - but the practice isn't inherently manipulative in my opinion.

<comment><USER12> Beyond being manipulative, it's coming across in your descriptions as childish and weird. How about you just act how you feel? That seems a lot more relatable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Any good book recommendations on engaging small talk and authentic first impressions? I'm headed to a weeklong NYE retreat that has a tendency to dredge up high school cafeteria level social anxieties.

<comment><USER14> A while back I read _Never Eat Alone_ [0], and found it to be fruitful for framing casual social interactions.

Additionally, most other people do not look forward to "mindless smalltalk with strangers". Since it's possible that everyone in the group shares equal anxiety about being there, _you_ can provide a gift to _them_ by asking pointed questions. If it's easy for them to answer, and gives something interesting for everyone else to listen to, it's actually a lot of pressure off the whole group.

The go-to question I use is:

      what's the best book you've read in the last year or so? Why?

_Note: This works for me because I am a voracious reader, and am always on the hunt for more good books, so if they can make a good book recommendation, I benefit. YMMV._

Since not everyone reads, that question can be amended to "best movie/tv show/documentary".

I'm often the new guy in certain work situations, and that question has saved me a lot of discomfort.

good luck!

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H6JBFOS/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H6JBFOS/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

<comment><USER15> Totally off topic- why is it people always use "voracious" to describe their reading habits?

<comment><USER16> It's funny how some adjectives always seem to be followed by certain nouns, huh? I think about this whenever I heard about "bodies strewn on the street" on the news.

Reading (and watching) seems to be compared to eating all the time: \- I devoured that book \- I binged that season

Then there's that term, "consumption" which seemingly applies to every piece of media.

<comment><USER17> You're looking for the linguistic term 'collocation,' and these are good examples of idiomatic usage of English. Further, words located in proximity with each other is a big part of the distributional hypothesis: "you shall know a word by the company it keeps". This is in turn a key component of how language models like word2vec or GloVe can be effective.

<comment><USER18> [https://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/analogy....](https://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/analogy.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Many seem to claim that using these methods are manipulative. One could also argue that knowing these methods put those that lack inherited social skills, or find it scary to interact with others, on equal footing with those that use these techniques naturally. Look to someone you think is killing it in all social circumstances without effort. These people will smile (with both the eyes and mouth), show interest in others and mirror the physical behavior of their talking partner. Most of these people aren't trying to manipulate. It comes naturally. You could improve yourself to just become a natural by realizing these signs.

</comment><comment><USER20> A harsh fact is not mentioned. Good looking people have it easier than others. There's a natural charm in for looks.

<comment><USER21> > "While some things, like dominance, are highly related to morphological > features, there are things like trustworthiness and even attractiveness > which are highly dependent on facial expressions," says Todorov

> Of course, while you may not be able to control the physical features of > your face, it is possible to alter your expressions and smile.

I'd say that is mentioned.

<comment><USER20> Ok, the language somewhat confused me. It's mentioned somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> While some of these may be good tips, they don't exactly sound effortless.

Also does refocusing your eyes actually make you look engaged? Sometimes people I talk to appear to be doing that and it comes off a bit shady.

<comment><USER23> > While some of these may be good tips, they don't exactly sound effortless.

No kidding. I can barely even imagine juggling verbal language _and_ body language _and_ facial expressions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> A good guide to become a likeable "nice guy" chump... unfortunately, multiple studies show that even narcissism is more correlated with success and attractiveness than trying to show you're likeable, non-threatening person.

While things in this article are mostly factually correct, they don't work as the author claims.

One thing to consider is that many people who write these books and articles are usually thinkers, very biased and likely to interpret these findings (like smile signals you're not a threat) to conform their ideal world view.

To see just how much of a BS this is in terms of effectiveness, if you're a heterosexual guy, try interacting with women (or other men) with non- threatening smile and raised eye-brows.

See how far it gets you.

<comment><USER25> What are you trying to say?

<comment><USER24> That none of those "tricks" will make you more charming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Iwonder if the existence of said "tips"is why many people find others insincere.

<comment><USER27> People tend to find others insincere when it seems like the other person is trying or practicing rather than just acting naturally. Unfortunately, social interactions are a skill, and for many people this skill could use some work, so this becomes a catch-22. Trying or practicing is a prerequisite for getting better, but it seems unnatural and/or awkward at first.

Of course, some people just rattle off canned lines and don't pay attention to others. They're insincere, because they can't be bothered to give other people their attention and respect.

In my experience, people who are actively trying to get better at social situations are usually in the first category, but not always (read PUAs). And maybe there are other categories!

<comment><USER28> It's really a question of intent. One of my favorite observations was a comment made by Day9 (a pro Starcraft commentator) on the topic of strategy. He said that, when he was younger, he used to think that strategy was just "whoever had the best trick." But as he grew and improved at the game, he began to understand that strategy was more a matter of focus, consistently good decision-making, and occasionally some deep situational insight. I think working on your social skills is similar. If you are just trying to learn "one simple trick" to manipulate other people, you're really missing the point and being kind of a bad human being to boot. You'll almost certainly sabotage yourself and head down a bad path. But if you're genuinely trying to improve your interactions with other people and to understand why conversations may not go as smoothly as you would think, and if you have good intent, I think these sorts of things can be very useful for people that are not intuitively skilled at meeting strangers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > "Suzanne de Janasz, an affiliated professor of management at Seattle > University, says interpersonal skills are becoming increasingly important in > the workplace as organisations have done away with older, hierarchical > structures in recent years."

Yup. "Flat" organizational structures don't exist in reality; you're just replacing a formal hierarchy with an informal hierarchy of charisma.

<comment><USER30> You might enjoy the essay The Tyranny Of Structurelessness, which articulates this exact point, if you weren't already referencing it [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7409611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7409611)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> These techniques are very similar to those used in social engineering.

In order to social someone, you need to get them to trust you. Charm, charisma, and likeability are all related and essential when you want to get something out of someone. That may sound transactional and it is.

Unfortunately, I've realized that no one is a friend to you out of the goodness of their heart. That simply does not exist anymore.

<comment><USER32> And at which point in history would you say such goodness did exist?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Also dont be unattractive. I think its called the halo effect.

</comment><comment><USER34> On a related note, Sky News body language review of 2017 is quite fun.

[https://youtu.be/l4n67_dbaC0](https://youtu.be/l4n67_dbaC0)

It's interesting how the eyebrow flash and the smile are promoted in this BBC article on charm, yet perhaps did not do Hillary Clinton so much good in this age of the strongman. Women have it tough getting the tone right in politics and business.

</comment><comment><USER35> Ironic they'd choose George Clooney as the cover subject.

He's basically the poster-boy for inherited privilege and wealth (and a card carrying Weinstein-enabler), but he's credited with 'charm'.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'd be cautious with that kind of advice. Rapport is established over time. Even if you make a terrible first impression you can make up for that during a course of an interview (for example).

</comment><comment><USER6> > So now you have made your entrance – hopefully without gurning like a maniac

TIL the verb "gurn," "make a grotesque face."

</comment><comment><USER24> One of the least attractive behaviours is trying to be liked. Don't follow the advice in that article.

</comment><comment><USER37> I wish the writer would have used a spell checker.

</comment><comment><USER38> Why are these framed as tricks?

<comment><USER39> So you click on it. It worked.

<comment><USER38> Heh, yea, that's fair. The tone of the article is quite off-putting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Tricks to make yourself look like a sleazy salesman to anyone who sees through your bullshit. It's like the "developing your 'personal brand'" concept those without personalities use on social media, but applied to real life situations.

I prefer not to interact with people who need to use "tricks" to make themselves _seem_ trustworthy. The fact that you're faking a personality (aka lying) already tells me all I need to know about your trustworthiness up front.</comment>


'Attacker' profits –$350k using flash loan and shorting on Ethereum - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/dsearch3r/status/1228658354488324096 <comment><USER2> This thread once again proving that no one defines their acronyms on first use. The twitter thread reads like gibberish. What is bZx, who is dydx, what is a WBTC, what does "half~ half" mean, what is uniswap? is this $350k? or is it 350K cryptocoin equivalents?

Oh and btw, the title says -$350k, but the thread says ~$350k. But what's _700 thousand dollars between friends_.</comment>


Show HN: CodeUpStart – Learn Python/Flask by Cloning Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.codeupstart.com/project/build-kickstarter-with-python-and-flask <comment><USER2> Just a little rant from me.

How's Flask holding up?

\- No new version for 2.5 years.

\- almost 1000 commits since then.

\- More than half PR's are more than 6 months old.

\- I heard documentation is lagging behind for the features implemented (?)

But it's still popular and recommended for beginners (many tutorials and such). I understand it's use for micro services, though what if your micro service or small app expands? AFAIK, plugin ecosystem is healthy, though do all plugins are ready if v1.0 would be released tomorrow? So all in all , personally, Flask looks in rather chaotic state.

I am just genuinely curious.

<comment><USER3> The original author (mitsuhiko) replies to that same concern here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/3xi6o9/whats_the_fu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/3xi6o9/whats_the_future_of_flask/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sadly, this is a total ripoff of Code 4 Startup: [https://code4startup.com](https://code4startup.com)

Not just the same idea, or similar design.

Look at their projects!

It really bothers me that this is getting so much attention and that they're backed by 500 Startups, who didn't do their due diligence.

<comment><USER5> Based on code4startup this is a copy. [https://twitter.com/Code4Startup/status/678340473614761984](https://twitter.com/Code4Startup/status/678340473614761984)

What's weird is the founder/ceo of codeupstart used to work for code4startup.

<comment><USER4> November 30th, she's retweeting about Code 4 Startup: [https://twitter.com/JoeMinock/status/671395288830107648](https://twitter.com/JoeMinock/status/671395288830107648)

December 3rd, she's tweeting about CodeUpstart joining 500 Startups: [https://twitter.com/CodeUpStart/status/672509204737822720](https://twitter.com/CodeUpStart/status/672509204737822720)

<comment><USER6> I think code4startup is also stole idea from [http://www.codingfounders.com/](http://www.codingfounders.com/) It does not matter in idea it is matter to execution. I hope codeupstartup will remain free so that many users and student can benefit from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't want to be a downer here, but after looking at the curriculum, it doesn't seem like you handle key components of Kickstarter, such as handling payments or being able to message your backers in bulk.

These are features which make Kickstarter Kickstarter IMO. From the curriculum list, it looks like you basically teach people how to save a form that has a couple of fields to a database.

Is the curriculum still a WIP, or is this only 5% of the course where the rest will be behind a paywall?

<comment><AUTHOR> No worries at all! This currently is a starter version and after validating demand we're hard at work now producing the full version with payments, pledges, etc. WIP. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This page refuses to load if you are blocking tracking web services. If you are using AdBlock or Ghostery, you will need to pause them, or at least disable blocking of Disqus. A tad weird, because the Disqus chat only shows up in the final tab of the entire page...

<comment><USER9> No issues here, using uBlock with default filters.

<comment><USER10> I use uBlock Origin and also block all cookies except an explicit whitelist.

It's a blank page for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like tutorial but I'm personally not fond of videos. I would enjoy the tutorial if it was a simple html page or even a pdf.

Is it just me? Or most people prefer videos ?

<comment><USER12> I'm with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a great project idea! Cloning existing websites feels way more motivating than just typing away on interactive terminals. Looking forward to more projects.

<comment><USER4> The sad irony is this startup is a "clone" (rip off) of [https://code4startup.com](https://code4startup.com).

<comment><USER14> That is hurtful to say. While the two products are in a similar space, neither can claim to have a monopoly on internet-based tech education. Project-based learning like this is a goldmine for anyone looking to get into web dev. It makes sense to have a wide range of providers of such training.

<comment><USER4> While you're statement is true in a general sense, in this specific situation, CodeUpstart was founded by someone who worked for Code4Startup for only a few weeks.

I follow Leo on Twitter, and there's plenty of evidence.

Working together: [https://twitter.com/gilliantee/status/659751559622885377](https://twitter.com/gilliantee/status/659751559622885377)

Not working together: [https://twitter.com/eugeneteo/status/678373859838459904](https://twitter.com/eugeneteo/status/678373859838459904)

A similar idea is fine, but this doesn't look like a coincidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yeah, just as others mentioned - content won't load if you have Ghostery on. Content is tied to Disqus which has to be loaded for content to be shown.

</comment><comment><USER16> You should get a version of this on Udemy.com (can't be the exact same, due to their policies). Nothing wrong with a little passive income, eh?.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm just getting a page about something called "iron:router".

</comment><comment><USER18> The site pages load for me, but not the linked-to page. Click the logo.

</comment><comment><USER19> Looks broken to me?

<comment><USER20> Broken how? Works fine for me.</comment></comment>


Silicon Valley Start-Up Cost Cutting & Restructuring Action Plan - <AUTHOR> http://blog.foundvalue.com/

<comment><USER2> An excellent post ... a must read for every entrepreneur, especially CEO, who are still trying to figure out the potential impact of the current downturn. In the spirit of sharing experience, the following was my own. Thanks again.

[http://furrier.org/2008/10/10/beware-entrepreneurs-and- start...](http://furrier.org/2008/10/10/beware-entrepreneurs-and-startup-ceos- prepare-now-read-this-post/)

</comment><comment><USER3> You know what's fucked up? Writing about cutting back an engineering team as if the worst part about it was all the effort you put into recruiting the engineering team. Best part: "You can also use this opportunity to _upgrade your team._ Take a few months, see how you do with a smaller team and if you have the luxury to hire again, you will probably find some great people."

Here's a great new question to ask during your next engineering job interview: have you ever "cut back" your engineering team? Did you continue taking a salary?</comment>


Ask HN: Invoicing for contractors - <AUTHOR> As a contractor what tools do you use to manage your tasks, track time spent for each client, and then charge your clients. <comment><USER2> I built my own time tracking tool ([https://logmyhours.com](https://logmyhours.com)) for tracking my time and creating invoices for any side freelancing I was doing. I'm actually hoping to go full time on this in the next 6-12 months.

I use a bit of Trello and Freedcamp for my todos and planning.

I also use RescueTime to make sure I'm keeping productive. I'm actually exploring adding integrations with RescueTime with LogMyHours, to see how productive you were for each timesheet, and reporting period.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks solid!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have a LibreOffice spreadsheet which I fill out my hours in. I also have a Writer document with my invoice layout and an embedded spreadsheet which lets me add line items and automatically calculates taxes. Easy enough to export to PDF. I keep all invoices in a specific directory, their filenames starting with the date and client name for easy discovery. I add the word '-PAID' to the filename once the invoice is paid by the client.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.getharvest.com](https://www.getharvest.com) works well for me. Web plus a native osx app and ability to log and remove idle time in case you leave it's timer running.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Looks pretty perfect.

<comment><USER5> I second Harvest as well. Been using it for several years and it's great. The native time tracking app that lets you start timers with a few key presses is handy.

I would 100% recommend you do _not_ use a spreadsheet or make your own software for this. Invoices are just far too important. Screwing up your time sheets, invoicing twice or forgetting to invoice would be horrendous. Harvest is only around $100 a year when you need the paid plan (it's always free for around 2 ongoing clients I think, the option is a little hidden). It might look simple enough that you could get away with a simple spreadsheet for example but Harvest makes it much harder to make mistakes (Did you put something in the wrong cell? Did you remember to mark an invoice as sent? Paid?) and a single mistake can be costly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use Trello for task management and Harvest for time tracking and billing. I sometimes get envious of people with more tightly integrated and automated systems but so far I have needed the flexibility that comes with looser coupling much more than I've missed the added time required by my current setup.

</comment><comment><USER7> I use [https://wakatime.com](https://wakatime.com) to automatically show how long I worked on each project. The invoicing tool is in private beta right now, but it's basically an easy way to create a PDF for sending to clients.

</comment><comment><USER8> I built Bx - it's a fair bit more than just time tracking, but it covers time tracking nicely. Try it out at [https://usebx.com](https://usebx.com)

</comment><comment><USER9> FreshBooks.</comment>


Anonymous Threatens "Electronic Holocaust" Against Israel - <AUTHOR> http://thenerfherder.blogspot.com/2015/04/anonymous-threatens-israel-with.html

<comment><USER2> Yeah... um... if Anonymous really understood what the Holocaust was, they wouldn't think they can do anything that fits anywhere close to that category.</comment>


Abandoned America - <AUTHOR> https://www.abandonedamerica.us/ <comment> King-Aaron I always feel sad seeing the photos of US Air Force dismantling yards. It seems like such a tragic waste that they don't just give me a F4 Phantom.

<comment><USER2> You couldn't afford the miles per gallon on it.

<comment> King-Aaron I'd just sit in my yard and stare at it :)

Off topic, though I plan to own a Porsche/Ferrari one day, but also likely won't be able to afford the operating costs. But I've got the plan in mind to buy a shell, paint it really well, and hang it on the wall of the workshop. It'd be a good way to have that piece of art/industrial design, without needing to worry about head gaskets and oil changes :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: When did you first get confirmation that you were doing the right thing? - <AUTHOR>

I am nowhere as far down the line as most people that frequent this site, in terms of skill or of success at a startup, in fact I am still at the very start of earning my CS degree. But today I received confirmation that I am following the right career path by working towards one day building a startup.
Let me fill you guys in.
About a week and a half ago I had an idea to take the freely available information from my university's Student Employment Center (http://www.finaid.wwu.edu/studentjobs/index.php) and create my own site that would let student job hunters actually filter the jobs based on pay rate, on- or off-campus, category, employer, etc... Which the Student Employment center is pretty lacking in. In fact the Student Employment site is pretty lacking in any sort of usability; it is essentially just a list. I decided to focus on catering to what student job hunters need out of a list of jobs. Mainly easy but strong filtering/browsing and usability, usability, usability!
I made a quick and dirty site in my free time (http://western-jobs.com) but I didn't finish almost all of the features that I wanted to. Why? Because I realized that the Student Employment site does have some of the main features I wanted to implement (durr) such as automated emails and browsing jobs by category (not pay though) but they are hidden away in the corners of the site. Again, highlighting how it is not very end-user friendly, and lacks usability, but they already had all the eyeballs and I felt defeated.
I figured I might as well just throw what I had together and put it out so I could be done with it, and move on to the next thing. So I posted it to the WWU forums (http://forum.wwu.edu/node/4203) and that was that.
That was yesterday, today I received a phone call from the head of the Financial Aid department (which runs the Student Employment Center) offering me a job, and we had a good conversation. Unfortunately, due to privacy concerns, they are blocking incoming traffic from my site. No hard feelings, I am not joining their team because I already have an awesome job, but I agreed to sit down with their developers and share my opinions on what their site is lacking, and let them do all the work. Now I can have a positive influence on many more students than I ever could have by running my own site.
Sorry, I know this is a bit long but it feels really good to get noticed and receive attention, something that I haven't done with web development yet.
This elated feeling I have can't be unique though, so I pose a question: When did you have your moment of confirmation?
I'm sure there are some great stories of motivation out there. <comment><USER2> Don't settle!

The privacy excuse sounds bogus. Probably they just don't want to look bad when a student makes a better website than theirs in their spare time. If you just give them your opinions, they will nod politely, take notes, and then never make anything better, because it's the laziest, easiest thing to do.

Find a way around the block and keep your site running!

<comment><AUTHOR> The privacy concerns that he had were that because they assure employers that post jobs that they don't share contact information with anyone but students that visit the site, and I was making browsing by employer possible, that their policies were being broken.

I think that the right thing to do right now is try to work with them to get their site up to par, because I could help many more students by proxy than I could with my site. However, if they fail to act in a timely fashion after I speak with them, I will definitely try to work around their block.

Right now they are just blocking incoming traffic with a referral from my site. What is the best way to get around this? Could I just forward traffic through a redirect from a different domain I have registered to the same server or is the block most likely the whole ip? (I'm at school right now and can't test anything out but it would be great to get some ideas bounced back to me)

<comment><USER2> That isn't really a "privacy" concern.

The block is most likely based on the referer header. Probably if you redirect from some other domain it will work.</comment></comment></comment>


Live Coding Prototype Based on Bret Victor's Talk "Inventing On Principle" - <AUTHOR> http://livecoding.staticloud.com/

<comment><USER2> I don't think this has much to do with the principles outlined in Bret's talk. It provides no immediate feedback regarding what the code is doing and how the individual parts affect the output, just that the output passes the tests.

See this: [http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/02/26/connecting-to- your-c...](http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/02/26/connecting-to-your- creation/) for something closer to Bret's vision.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, it's not quite the same. I talked about this on the blog post. When it comes to general-purpose programming (not drawings or simulations), test results seem to me the best way to get visibility into what the code is doing.

<comment><USER2> Bret demonstrates what immediacy means for general purpose programming at 16.45 in the presentation. It is like a perpetual debug mode.</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter: 1 Billion Items Delivered A Day Is Nice, Google+. We Do 350 Billion. - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/15/twitter-350-billion/ <comment><USER2> I wonder how long it took twitter to get to a billion.

</comment><comment><USER3> Google+ delivers 1 billion items a day as closed software, it's not even open to the public yet.

<comment><USER4> Not to mention that Google+ is delivering photos, large blog posts, videos, link previews, etc. in any given item, whereas Twitter delivers at most 140 characters.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Free master's degree? - <AUTHOR>

My family has generously offered to pay for a master's degree, should I choose to go back to school. If you could get a degree in anything, what would it be? I am a self-taught programmer with a weak CS background, and one of my goals is to be an entrepreneur. My A.B. is in Psychology and in college I also took a lot of math electives (real analysis; abstract algebra; discrete math). I do not have a strong chemistry, biology, or physics background. <comment><USER2> If I had a free ride for school, I would finish my bachelor's in environmental resource management, get a master's in urban planning and then get additional (advanced) training in GIS. But that's _me_.

I concluded I wanted a bachelor's in environmental studies and a master's in urban planning after having an eye-opening experience and realizing I wanted to do something with the built environment. I then went through college catalogues (which might be easier today, with the internet) and made a list of majors that had something to do with the built environment (including civil engineering and architecture). I eliminated civil engineering because it required so much calculus (a class I dropped out of and never want to see again) and I eliminated architecture because it would involve basically starting from scratch when I already had a couple of years of college. I don't recall what the other majors were, but I thoroughly looked at the requirements for each before finally settling on urban planning (then life got in the way and I have been sidetracked for some time and have no even finished my bachelor's).

Perhaps a similar approach would help you pick a major?

Good luck with this.</comment>


Show HN: Fun Flash Cards – React Native app I built for my daugher - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/KensoDev/fun-flash-cards <comment><AUTHOR> It's been a few months now that I've been teaching my daughter (6yrs old) to code.

She's in first grade now and learning to immediately identify words.

We've been using paper flash cards to practice with her and I thought it's gonna be a fun idea to create an application with her.

We sat down together to plan, sketch, think and design. Credit is 100% hers. It was an amazing experience and I enjoyed it a lot.

My first mobile app as well

Stack: React Native Redux Principium Starter project used to start it (shameless plug).</comment>


Tether: $200M issued in under 24 hrs, $350M total issued in the last 4 days - <AUTHOR> http://omniexplorer.info/lookupadd.aspx?address=1NTMakcgVwQpMdGxRQnFKyb3G1FAJysSfz <comment><USER2> Starting in the midst of a plunge, this looks really hard to explain. It's entirely feasible that the Tether project exists to prop up the price of Bitcoin and to protect the Bitfinex margin float.

<comment><USER3> If you were going to legitimately buy >$100M BTC, would you not wait for a dip in the price? The speed at which Tether responds to market conditions is suspicious, though.

<comment><USER4> If I were legitimately going to spend a 100 million on bitcoin my first step wouldn't be to buy 100 million unredeemable tokens from a sketchy exchange with no access to the banking system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Was this thread flagged? It was momentarily the top post.</comment>


Ask HN: Customer wants access, what should i do? - <AUTHOR>

Hi Guys,
Need your are help, m in tricky situation. Potential customer wants access to private beta.  If he likes it, straight way he want to use it for their production.
Product is not yet very polished from UI prospective. As they said first impression matters ,What should i do ? Shall i give customer access as it is or wait  for some time ? <comment><USER2> Well, if it's beta, you are already showing it to people, so I would definitely show it to someone with a high chance of being a customer.

If they don't like it, you can always email them / call them to have a second look when you feel you've made noticeable progress.

EDIT: If using it in production carries a lot of risk for this customer, don't pussyfoot around and advise him to wait.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, we are not yet public beta. We are still in private beta. But this customer is in need of solution, and want to try it out asap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd say go for it if a.) the core functionality is intact and b.) you set the customer's expectations. I am in a similar situation at my company and we have begun letting customers use our product. My basic feeling is that the more people you can get using the product the better - they will provide you with feedback and help you test how things scale early on. If the only problem is small UI things, it shouldn't matter so long as you manage is expectations correctly.

<comment><USER4> I agree. If this guy is a customer instead of (friends, family, etc) for private beta, he's going to represent part of the people paying you for this.

Congratulations. You're basically getting early feedback by someone who really really wants this. He wants a beta to use in production, and he knows that. That's how much he wants it.

Lay down the ground rules as far as production support and bug fix turnarounds based on what you can manage without trying to spend every waking minute keeping them happy. They may not get every new feature request they ask for, and , like you said, some UI might change.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Interesting papers on weather prediction? - <AUTHOR>

The other day I was watching the weather forecast on TV, and started wondering exactly what kind of algorithms those meteorological boffins are running on their supercomputers to predict whether or not it will rain tomorrow.<p>Can anyone suggest some good papers to serve as a technical introduction to information processing/algorithms for weather prediction?<p>(Target audience: I'm a professional software developer with a working knowledge of data mining and related fields, and a barely-remembered knowledge of high school physics.) <comment><USER2> You might want to start with:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_weather_prediction>

You say you want "some good papers", but I think you need a book, not an article or articles.

It's a big field, very broad, very well-developed, and quite technical on many levels (physical modeling, numerical propagation of PDEs, filtering/data assimilation). An international cast has contributed results and ideas for decades.

You might be able to find a survey article, but such an article would tend to be written for specialists. It tends to look like this:

<http://people.sc.fsu.edu/~inavon/pubs/Springer_book.pdf> [PDF]

The current state of the art in NWP is probably the ECMWF:

<http://www.ecmwf.int/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, especially for telling me the name of the field that I am looking for!

I think you're right in saying that a proper book is in order.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_attractor>

Lorenz, E. N. (1963). "Deterministic nonperiodic flow". J. Atmos. Sci. 20 (2): 130–141

One of the papers that are related with weather as a chaotic phenomenon

</comment><comment><USER4> Not a technical journal per se, but this site looks* like an impressive resource:

<http://www.theweatherprediction.com/>

*I know nothing about weather prediction</comment>


Lax regulation made it cheaper for China to outsource pork production to the US - <AUTHOR> https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-is-china-treating-north-carolina-like-the-developing-world-w517973 <comment><USER2> > This is due to less-expensive pig-feed prices and larger farms, but it's > also because of loose business and environmental regulations, especially in > red states, which have made the U.S. an increasingly attractive place for > foreign companies to offshore costly and harmful business practices.

Come on. Chinese government does not give a shit about "offshore costly and harmful business practices". The price of pork in China is 3 times of that in the US not because the Chinese government has some stringent environmental protection scheme regarding hog farms. It's because corn is _extremely_ cheap in the US. And yes, China is now also importing cheap corn to raise hogs domestically: [https://www.agriculture.com/markets/newswire/china-buys- up-t...](https://www.agriculture.com/markets/newswire/china-buys-up- to-700000-t-of-corn-for-import-as-domestic-prices-rally)

And if you read Chinese: [http://finance.sina.com.cn/chanjing/cyxw/2016-04-07/doc- ifxr...](http://finance.sina.com.cn/chanjing/cyxw/2016-04-07/doc- ifxrcizs6967689.shtml)

<comment><USER3> Isn't it surreal that the people who yell and scream about the government regulation and interference are the same ones with their hands out looking for government money to subsidize the animal feed they use? Is it cognitive dissonance? Or are they that delusional they cannot see the connection? These people will occasionally feign righteousness over government regulation and spending unless its spending in their district for their stuff.

<comment><USER4> > Isn't it surreal that the people who yell and scream about the government > regulation and interference are the same ones with their hands out looking > for government money to subsidize the animal feed they use?

It probably is a facet of, or closely related to the Fundamental Attribution Error: If I'm benefitting, it's because I deserve it to balance-out unfairness out there, when some other moocher out there gets a hand, it is a waste of money and a symptom of the bureaucratic nanny-state.

Exhibit 1: "I've been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No."[1]

1\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwpBLzxe4U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwpBLzxe4U)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the things this article doesn't touch on is the very deep roots of hog farming in rural NC and the general prevailing attitude of "This is how we've always done it and I don't want no gubment telling me what I can and can't do with my land!" There is a sense of pride in being a hog farmer like your daddy and your granpappy and your uncle and you hope to pass down those roots to your sons some day. As to why there's a blind eye to the literal rivers of hog shit flowing into the creeks/rivers every time it floods, that I have no idea- I don't understand why people who live in that part of the state will cut their nose off to spite their face by accepting huge hog waste lagoons as a fact of life with hog farming. Being from NC I absolutely see Southern Stubbornness at work here.

Driving down the interstates in the eastern part of NC you see multiple billboards both pro- and anti-hog farming, with arguments ranging from "Hog farming keeps my children fed!" to "Hog farming is destroying our environment!" It reminds me of the pro- and anti-coal arguments currently underway in West Virginia.

<comment><USER6> I'll not argue the point you are making as I don't disagree.

I would just like to say I find it highly annoying when people denigrate people from the south by using 'words' like 'gubment' and 'granpappy' as some sort of assumed indicator of intelligence level of the subject being discussed. You being from NC and using this same backhanded insult troubles me even more TBH. Do people from the south use those words, or ones that sound like that, in conversation? Sure, sometimes. But your usage of them isn't in an effort to be accurate but more to signal some perceived superiority of intellect. You allow a difference in speech to sway opinion on your subjects possibility of knowing what they talking about.

I was born in the south, raised in the south, and currently live in the south. Whilst I find the southern twang of the people around me amusing (I don't have much of the southern speech patterns for some reason), I would never let their words and pronunciations cloud the fact that there are super smart people amongst the crowd, just like any other part of the country.

And just in case I wasn't clear, using words like 'gubment' and 'granpappy' naturally in your own writing isn't my issue, it's using them as a signal about your subject that bothers me greatly.

<comment><USER7> 100% agree. It's become so commonplace to stereotype southerners in a particular way in the media and by Hollywood. I live in NYC now and have to deal with constant judgement whenever I mention I'm from Alabama. The most ironic thing is that it's typically from the "tolerant" left.

<comment><USER8> When I lived in Vicksburg Mississippi, I got a lot of flack for my weird yankee (actually neutral midwestern) accent as well as typical northern stereotypes (and I'm a westerner, not even a real yankee). I guess you could say that should be expected from the less tolerant right, but it definitely goes both ways.

<comment><USER7> I went to school at All-Saints there in Vicksburg, small world! Yes, there is definitely a stereotype in the south towards yankees (which is pretty much anyone not from the south as you alluded). I just expected more from highly educated folks with a wider world view in NYC.

<comment><USER8> I had friends that went there, but I was in public school (WCHS).

I think you'll find people are insular everywhere. The only thing that might be different in NYC is that more people didn't grow up there and are transplants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This has always been what sticks in my mind when people talk about "job creation" to help rural Americans. We go to these old timey industries (farming/mining), update the technologies involved in them to better help the businesses, and then exploit the living hell out of some human labor to keep profits very high and the cost of the product super low.

Regulations aren't there to "kill business", they're there to keep us from backsliding into serfdom and child labor. A byproduct is hindering business, but useful regulation should weigh the societal costs and determine that the businesses need to be slowed/hindered for the greater good.

</comment><comment><USER10> "More than just America's environment and human health is at stake. "Low- paying jobs, like hog slaughtering and breeding, will remain in places like Duplin County, but the higher-paid executive and marketing jobs will be lost," says Usha Haley, a professor at West Virginia University who has studied the Chinese takeover of American agricultural assets for a decade. "

So... exactly like how many products are designed and managed in the US, but manufactured in Chinese factories? Globalization goes both ways, especially since we seem to be competing in a race to the bottom, with looser and looser environmental and labor laws.

</comment><comment><USER11> Laugh all you want, but I just got done talking to one of these NC pig farmers yesterday and he is in the process of converting the sewage into methane gas for electrical production. Local, community electricity, with a lower CO2 footprint than Methane!!?!

<comment><USER12> This is what I was hoping to see when I clicked on the comments thread. If you can find a valuable use for the waste, then you can make it profitable (or at least less expensive) for the farmers to keep the sewage out of the water table.

One man's disgusting pig shit is another man's profitable pig shit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Globalization: it works both ways! We can exploit rural Chinese and they can exploit rural Americans.

<comment><USER14> Exploitation? I thought this was the miracle of an unregulated free market uplifting people from economic depravity.

Also the article does eventually make your point, but it's unfortunately buried in the conclusion:

> American economic philosophy has long centered on the idea that deregulation > is good for businesses, whose growth will provide jobs and prosperity, which > will make America strong. But that thinking was based on the assumption that > we would always be holding the big end of the globalization stick.

<comment><USER15> Not your parent, but the verb "exploit" is frequently used in a non-negative manner, especially when talking about natural resources. It simply means to make use of.

[https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/exploit](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/exploit)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me a bit about a story retold from the book Stangers in their Own Land, a former oil worker who ratted out the oil industry dumping poison in the water supply. And the coal industry in WV. There are people who will put up with cancer causing chemicals for jobs, but dammnit any government control is beyond the pale.

I don't know how you reason with these people. It's not limited to the southern region of the US - it happens when people in PA and Upstate NY fight over permissions for fracking on private land. However it does seem like wherever there are knowledge economy opportunities people will prioritze health and welfare, while in areas that are not as advanced will fight tooth and nail to let these companies do what they want, even if it means it will kill them. I can only shake my head.

</comment><comment><USER16> The current method of hog farming is basically the worst possible version of traditional farming evolved through technology. Quonset huts, gestation cages, and fecal lagoons. Instead we could have mob grazing free range pig farming integrated with agroforestry, leading to animal waste going directly where it is the most useful i.e. as manure. Even the existing system could be set up to use natural swamp permaculture techniques to filter the waste or even capture in a biogas plant. Instead of lagoons of pig shit we could have useful forest products and methane fuel. Monoculture hog farming is showing it's limits environmentally and agronomically.

The barriers right now are the incumbent methods of farming subsidized by BigGov on behalf of BigAg and BigChem, and the lack of suitable off the shelf technology to make any of these ideas feasible for the average hog farmer. Until then they are going to keep putting up quonset huts and digging shit lagoons.

<comment><USER17> Hog and wild boar grazing destroys ecosystems because they eat roots and even tear up the roots of plants and trees they don't eat. Hawaii's forests are being killed by boar ([http://hawaiianforest.com/wp/species/](http://hawaiianforest.com/wp/species/)).

The vision of Hog Cowboys is nice, but how do you ensure the grazing is light and the hogs stay controlled? If they get loose feral boar is a completely different beast than feral cow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > _Why Is China Treating North Carolina Like the Developing World?_

Because of karma?

(Not to mention the "the developing world" as used in the phrase, is quite snotty).

</comment><comment><USER19> If you are blocked by trade wars from selling produce in an economy, but are able to legally buy the means of production inside that economy, then whilst it has lower direct employment outcomes to doing it at home, Surely as a business and investment opportunity, it stands on it's own merits?

China has been buying farms in Australia for some time. Many people make cynical comments about it, but it looks to me like a legal, and profitable way of operating with Australia, as a foreign investment opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER20> Very Easy solution: Classify this type of meat manufacturing business as highly polluting and TAX it a lot until they become clean and green, ONLY then lower taxes. Yes short term it will increase meat prices, so what? Folks will be forced to eat more veggies which is a good thing.

<comment><USER9> Oh man, you had a great point until you went off and decided to become a self- righteous douche at the end there. Just couldn't stick the dismount...

To your point: I think the better mechanism isn't taxation, but regulation/fines. And there was regulation in place, but one of the points of the articles is that government officials in these areas 1- tend to be controlled by these massive industries and 2- push legislation to gut the regulations in the interest of "job creation" (read- increased corporate profits)

<comment><USER20> Fines do not work. Look at the banking sector: HSBC, JP etc. they get slapped with fines all the time but continue business as usual.

Heavy taxation is a very quick way to make these types of socially and environmentally polluting business to change or to go away all together.

<comment><USER21> Fines do work, but they have to hurt. If people only got fined $1.00 for speeding rather than the usual $300, there'd be a hell of a lot more speeders. With the banks and investment institutions, the fines are typically only a small percentage of what the net of the move was. ($1.00 vs $300).

Of course fines, only work so much. People still used drugs during the 80s and 90s when punishment was over the top (and still is).

<comment><USER22> it's also important to consider the probability of actually being fined.

if the fine for using a freeway's high occupancy vehicle lane without any passengers in your car is over $350 but the police rarely ticket violators, you get Los Angeles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Bizarre headline. North Carolina has been an agricultural extractive export economy with all that goes along with that since the founding of the state. This isn't China, this is NC doing it to itself.

It doesn't help that NC has developing world levels of corrupt gerrymandered politics.

<comment><USER24> We've changed that title to the (presumably) more representative subtitle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't care what the article says, couldn't the headline have used "shit", "bad" or anything else instead of "developing world"? (despite being thick- skinned) I find it offensive

<comment><USER9> Sure, but the idea of "developing economies" is an actual thing in economic theory. And what the industries are doing is being exploitative in the same way that many nations use globalization as a way to exploit poorer, less established economic players.

There are nations who came to the globalization table later or who haven't put together an economic plan that provides a high quality of living for their citizens. What would you prefer we call those nations?

<comment><USER25> so you are saying USA provides high quality standard of living for all it's citizens?

<comment><USER9> let's just walk right past THAT straw man and get to the meat of the issue: "Developing nation" as a slur.

The World Bank has said that "developing/developed" duality isn't fitting anymore and now breaks nations into 4 catagories: Low, Lower Middle, Upper Middle, and High income nations based on citizen income. The UN says that there's no specific metrics for a Developed vs Developing nation, and uses the terms for convenience.

There's no set specific definition of what a developing nation is, but generally it's assumed that the types of things I mentioned in my last post (higher quality of life, more money, as well as higher life expectancy, lower birth rate) are associated with Developed nations. MOST people agree these things are good, and MOST people assume that the absence of them is therefor bad.

The point of the title of the article is that deregulation has allowed a Developed nation to contain pockets that look more like a less developed country with less regulation, more exploitative labor, lower overall income, and little regard for the health of its citizens. A quick way to say that would be that it looks more like a developing nation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Well.. Between the economy, the health sector, the infrastructure, the political developments, the education, the state of civil rights, the widespread religious influences at all levels of society and a culture of armed violence ...

Who's to say that the US, by and large, _isn 't_ a developing nation?

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us- develop...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-developing- nation-regressing-economy-poverty-donald-trump-mit-economist-peter- temin-a7694726.html)

<comment><USER27> I'm British. I've visited the USA a few times (CA, NY(C), MA, RI properly, a few more incidentally), and also Kenya.

Many of my fellow British say similar things about the UK as you say about the USA, unfairly in both cases.

Once you see a place that really _is_ developing, it becomes clear how advanced our nations are. We complain about potholes, they complain the road fell off when it rained. We complain about civil rights, they have to deal with post-election violence. We complain about our schools, they only got free high schools a decade ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Oh man, the irony of America turning into the dumping ground of the world. As other countries get richer they seem to start caring more about the environment, poor people, national health etc.

The US in contrast seem to regress. It seems to be heading back to the dirty old days of the industrial revolution with high income inequality, poor enironment protection, an unhealthy underclass.

It is bizzare watching a country deliberately turning itself into the 3rd world.</comment>


3D printed rocket – operational tests - <AUTHOR> http://rocketmoonlighting.blogspot.com/2012_03_01_archive.html

<comment><USER2> That was interesting. I feel like I've seen an X rated movie that was edited and pixellated to make it PG-13. Lots of tantalizing bits, not a lot of narrative, and details hard to ferret out.

The basic notion that you could use metal sintering to create a rocket combustion chamber that included the cooling jacket is pretty neat. That lets you run reasonably energetic fuels without having exotic materials (tungsten for example). I can also see why going too far down that path might lead to untoward interest by third parties.

<comment><USER3> Suppose someone wanted to take this hobby farther down the path, and start a rocket company similar to SpaceX. How would one avoid negative attention in doing so?

<comment><USER2> Well there is a pretty large amateur rocketry group in the Bay Area [1] that goes out to the Blackrock desert and launches rockets. Generally such clubs are great resources for understanding the regulations and if pursuing things professionally the requisite licensing. I was related a story about how the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) stopped one team from launching because they had used a solar tracker attached to steerable fins to keep the rocket on track, the story went that once you had it tracking a heat signature with steerable fins it went from being a model rocket to a munition. I can't vouch for accuracy of the story but the teller was someone I respect and is quite an enthusiast so I give it a good chance of being basically true.

So generally one considers the various elements of creating a rocket propelled munition and if you got too close to describing how someone could build one, I would not be surprised in the least if that person was approached by the BATF or the FBI asking you to limit what you publish. Or approached by people seeking to build such a device from 'scratch.'

Even doing something as simple as hobby robotics I've had folks email me out of the blue on how to create a circuit that would let you activate a switch remotely but was hard to jam. It can conceivably be used for robotics sure, it can also be used for ill. I generally point people to Horowitz and Hill's Art of Electronics and tell them its all in there (which it is, but you have learn it to use it) but perhaps out of a surplus of caution I don't design such things for folks.

[1] [http://science.kqed.org/quest/video/amateur-rocketeers- reach...](http://science.kqed.org/quest/video/amateur-rocketeers-reach-for- the-stars/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks interesting, but could somebody please explain this like I'm 5?

<comment><USER2> Well it is rocket science. I can strongly recommend any version of "Rocket Propulsion Elements: And Introduction to the Engineering of Rockets" Knowing calculus when you read it is helpful but not essential.

That said, rocket engine design is a tradeoff between how much energy you generate in the combustion chamber and your ability to direct the resulting hot gas in the direction you want it to go. Highly temperature resistant materials like ceramics can take a lot of heat, but they don't have a lot of tensile strength, things like metals which are very tough generally become weaker the hotter they get. Combined with the fact that combustion chamber shape determines how the gases will burn, and you find yourself trying to design something that is very durable, can withstand significant pressure, and can take a lot of heat. Model rocket engines basically consume themselves as they burn being their own combustion chamber, but liquid or gaseous fueled rockets have to deal with the heat. The kicker is that if you don't get enough energy in the combustion chamber, you can't generate enough thrust to counteract the force of gravity so you can't even get off the ground.

The Space Shuttle's engines use tubing that runs through the engine 'bells' that cryogenic liquid runs through prior to being burned as fuel. This keeps them cool enough to contain the engine burn without melting or losing structural stability. That isn't something someone can build on a 'whim'.

This guy made something similar using a 3D printing process on metals. Assuming that the metal's tensile strength is sufficient post printing, this sidesteps a huge barrier to amateurs making liquid/gaseous fueled engines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Will be curious to see the whole stage printed :) Of course electronics, wiring, probably ignitors, electric actuators and some other stuff can't be printed, but it removes a lot of pain from the process.

</comment><comment><USER6> What part of the rocket is printed? I see a lot of metal there.

<comment><USER7> This post here seems to be more informative: [http://rocketmoonlighting.blogspot.com/2011/03/what-its- all-...](http://rocketmoonlighting.blogspot.com/2011/03/what-its-all- about.html)

To save you a trip to Wikipedia, DMLS is Direct metal laser sintering -- 3D printing with metal.

<comment><USER8> This an example of such a printer: <http://production3dprinters.com/slm/direct-metal-slm>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Now we just need a printed turbopump.</comment>


Why Build Solutions with Fulcro – Tom Toor (Clojure/Conj 2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMbGhgVf9Do <comment><AUTHOR> Rails were successful in the 2005-2015 era of server-rendered HTML but today MVC + REST API might not be enough anymore for solo founders to compete in multi-platform, client-rich reality.

After spending of +4 years working professionally with Ruby on Rails I've grown aware of its limitations. I've spent a long time searching for its successor in my programmer's toolbelt. I've waded through numerous Javascript frameworks yet every one of them proved to disappoint me after taking it for a spin. I've finally arrived at Clojure at the beginning of 2019 and it has been really refreshing. I love how well designed the language is, how mature the community is and I am amazed by the quality of the ecosystem.

You can see my repo-graveyard made along that journey here: [https://github.com/roterski/sonder- syncrate](https://github.com/roterski/sonder-syncrate)

My personal bet for the next killer-app in web development is: Clojure[0] + Fulcro[1] + Pathom [2] + Crux [3].

[0] Love Letter To Clojure - Gene Kim (Clojure/conj 2019) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mbp3SEha38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mbp3SEha38)

[1] Fulcro links and resources: [https://www.reddit.com/r/fulcro/comments/dtzhsm/fulcro_links...](https://www.reddit.com/r/fulcro/comments/dtzhsm/fulcro_links_and_resources/)

[2] The Maximal Graph - Wilker Silva (Clojure/conj 2019) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS3i3DTUnAI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS3i3DTUnAI)

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

</comment><comment><USER2> Related: The Maximal Graph - Wilker Silva (Clojure/conj 2019) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS3i3DTUnAI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS3i3DTUnAI)</comment>