America's government shutdown: No way to run a country - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21587211-land-free-starting-look-ungovernable-enough-enough-no-way-run-country?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/nowaytoruncountry

<comment><USER2> The economic explanation is good; the conclusion that the country needs legislation to take control of the Gerrymandering makes you want to smack yourself in the face.

Yes, we KNOW that. Except, the only people who can pass that legislation are the people benefiting from the current situation.

The fact that even a such an august publication as the Economist can't come up with a better solution than that is terribly depressing.

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't the obvious solution be a constitutional amendment proposed by the states through a constitutional convention leaving congress out of it altogether?

<comment><USER4> If I understand correctly, the problem _is_ at the state level. The national congress doesn't draw district boundaries, mostly state legislatures do (though there are exceptions who have independent redistricting committees).

As the state-originating path to a US Constitutional amendment requires the participation of state legislatures, it's unlikely it could be used to fix the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The mess we are in today can be avoided if we didn't have the legislative contrivance of a 'debt-ceiling'. [1] If our representatives have voted on appropriations, then that's money that we have already committed to spend. The source of that money should be already debated and taken care of in that measure, so there's no benefit to having a separate check in the form of a debt-ceiling.

How does it make sense to vote for appropriations without a way to fund them? All it does is provide for the kind of legislative blackmail that we are seeing today where the funding is not provided unless some unconnected amendments are included.

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_debt_ceiling#Legi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_debt_ceiling#Legislative_history)

<comment><USER6> If Congress had to agree on a source of funding for every deficit-running budget they passed, the budgets (or continuing resolutions, in the case that they can't pass full budgets) wouldn't pass.

The debates over continuing resolutions to fund the government implicitly cover where to get money for the deficits (issuing more debt, obviously). The frequency of debt limit adjustments serves as a reminder to Congress about just how fast they're inflating our currency. Do you really want to do away with that?

<comment><USER5> >> If Congress had to agree on a source of funding for every deficit-running budget they passed, the budgets (or continuing resolutions, in the case that they can't pass full budgets) wouldn't pass.

It doesn't really make sense to commit to spending without knowing where the money will come from. If they had to argue about the source of funding when they passed appropriations, then we wouldn't have to go through the same drama later.

<comment><USER6> They know where the money is coming from: issuing more debt. If they had to acknowledge that more directly when debating the budget (aka continuing resolutions), I don't think budgets would sail through as often as they do, but it would also make it easier for the government to spend _more_. The ritual of raising the debt ceiling is a more concrete step to make them feel bad about blowing through the last debt increase so fast. What's wrong with that as a psychological tool, and as a separate opportunity for the public to influence their representatives and voice their opinions?

You want to make it easier for the government to increase debt as a percentage of GDP. I'd rather it was more difficult.

<comment><USER5> I fail to understand why a dysfunctional system is better than one where expense proposals are matched by revenue/borrowing plans.

This is the government of the United States we are talking about, not some teenager's budget where we have to come up with ways to make them 'feel bad' about spending.

>> You want to make it easier for the government to increase debt as a percentage of GDP. I'd rather it was more difficult.

No, I want to make sure that those who pass spending bills are also responsible for finding the revenue. It does not preclude the possibility of keeping debt in control - if they feel that debt/gdp ratio should be in check, then they should keep their spending proposals in check too. One cannot approve large spending, and then complain when the payment is due.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "They should also vote to raise the debt ceiling (or better yet, abolish it)."

Well there is. The whole problem with publications like this is that they like to provide answers without explaining the consequences. The Economist is especially bad since its title proclaims it as an expert but if we did we what it proposes there would be no limit to the amount of debt the US could borrow and thus no limit to the amount of poverty we would leave to future generations.

Currently the US accrues 2.5t in tax revenue per annum and spends 3.8t or it overspends 1.3t a year. So it should be clear to anyone with the most basic understanding of math the US needs to cut spending. Raising the debt limit is the exact opposite of that and would be equivalent of trying to lose weight by letting out your belt.

<comment><USER8> > The Economist is especially bad since its title proclaims it as an expert > but if we did we what it proposes there would be no limit to the amount of > debt the US could borrow and thus no limit to the amount of poverty we would > leave to future generations.

There's no practical limit to the amount of money the US can borrow. All eliminating the debt ceiling would do is reduce the number of _different_ votes that have to happen to operate the government when running deficits. All spending has to be _authorized_ by a law -- this is often a one-time, long- term act establishing a program -- and _appropriated_ by a law (typically, in "normal" operations, by an annual budget, but sometimes we get periodic CRs for shorter periods, and some things are subject to multiyear appropriations.) The combination of what is authorized and appropriate vs. the revenue from taxes (also set by laws passed by Congress) sets the level of borrowing that is going to happen to fund it. The debt ceiling is essentially redundant with other Congressional action, and either is completely irrelevant (under most normal conditions) or, as has been the case recently, is an excuse for stunts which do nothing but harm the country's credit.

> Currently the US accrues 2.5t in tax revenue per annum and spends 3.8t or it > overspends 1.3t a year. So it should be clear to anyone with the most basic > understanding of math the US needs to cut spending.

Ignoring that that's not really the right two numbers to compare (since even if you look at the right comparison, the ratio between debt payments and GDP, there is a clear need to do something about balance) the suggestion that that has to be cutting spending ignores the revenue side; given that the overall trend over the past 50ish years has been of tax cuts -- particularly on the richest -- its not entirely unreasonable to suggest that to the extent that the tax/spending balance needs to be addressed, no small part of that is on the tax side.

> Raising the debt limit is the exact opposite of that

Raising the debt limit is essential even though long-term tax/revenue balance needs to be addressed (the target shouldn't be naive budget balance, but establishing a stable and reasonable long-term average debt:GDP ratio, and good practices that let it run above that average when government spends countercyclically during economic downturns, and below it when government spending is less necessary during private sector expansions.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> An article from the past(1990) worth reading: "The Perils of Presidentialism"[0] by Juan Linz, who died Tuesday. It notes that the United States is exceptional in having a long-lasting presidential system, and also in having political parties which are not disciplined and ideologically cohesive. We're now experiencing the kind of conflict that many Latin American countries have faced in the past.

[0] [http://www1.american.edu/ia/cdem/pdfs/linz_perils_presidenci...](http://www1.american.edu/ia/cdem/pdfs/linz_perils_presidencialism.pdf)</comment>


File sharing is not not stealing. - <AUTHOR> http://danhau.posterous.com/not-not-stealing

<comment><USER2> This is a well spread around graphic: and makes IMO a pointless point. It is often used to try and legitimise illegal file sharing - which I dont think is a fair argument at all. Yes distribution of copyrighted material is not theft. It doesnt make it not illegal.

I feel justified in calling it theft though: the legal definition of theft is old and out of date for starters (same with copyright law: these sharers cannot have double standards on that surely).

What we call it is immaterial: recognising the problem is potentially more important. And I believe if calling it theft makes people consider it a crime much more than copyright infringement then that is, surely, a good thing.

And at the end of the day it _morally_ feels like theft. :D

I approve of the effort to highlight the differences between the activities. But as an attempt to legitimise piracy and illegal file sharing I think it is wrong and highly misleading (the suggestion being the last of the 3 examples is not illegal).

<comment><AUTHOR> I liked the skill of being able to explain something with a simple drawing.

I find the author cautious enough to have drawn around the difference between file sharing and piracy. Details such as "not not stealing" and the non smiling face enforce this idea.

I just wanted to promote the way of explaining things with drawings just like the <http://commoncraft.com/> series.

<comment><USER2> that is a fair point: I apologise I guess.

The image has been doing the rounds in the regular "copyright it evil" discussions as legitimisation of copyright infringement. I think I might have been guilty of a knee jerk reaction.

Though I think my analysis still stands :)

EDIT: and wow I totally misread the title. All the versions I have seen dont have the second Not. I apologise for missing the subtlety!! :(

<comment><AUTHOR> That's cool ErrantX, always nice having a conversation with fellow HNers. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


IPad's used to create complex light-paintings.  - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/14958082

<comment><USER2> You beat me to it, fantastic experimental use of ipad.</comment>


Why Wait for Apple? Try the ARM Desktop with a Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/consumer-electronics/gadgets/why-wait-for-apple-try-out-the-original-arm-desktop-experience-today-with-a-raspberry-pi <comment><USER2> As soon as the 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS is fully baked I'll give it a try.</comment>


Which Tech Giants Birth the Most Successful Startup Founders?  - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/07/27/startup-founders/

<comment><USER2> My money is on Parc (A Xerox Company) <http://www.parc.com/services/industry- contributions.html> (3Com, Adobe, Nortel...)</comment>


When Silicon Valley Takes LSD - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/25/technology/lsd-psychedelics-silicon-valley/

<comment> xkcd-sucks "And I took LSD and I just realized, 'Wait, the problem is in the hardware. It's not a software issue at all.'"</comment>


Custom Cursor – Make Your Website Pop - <AUTHOR> https://customcursor.com/

<comment><USER2> They couldn't find more tasteless examples for their demos, couldn't they? I'd be highly annoyed by any website that did it like that.</comment>


NASA Scientist Explains We Could Have Reached Mars in 1970s, Why We Didn't - <AUTHOR> https://www.inverse.com/article/20563-real-answer-is-mars-wasn-t-ready-for-sick-sideburns-on-70s-astronauts <comment><USER2> My father-in-law worked on the Rover project, a nuclear engine intended to get us to Mars. In much less than 180 days because it wouldn't be a ballistic orbit, it would be powered.

A test burn had a coolant problem (nothing wrong with the engine; the test fixture coolant) and it melted down on the pad. They had to blow their budget on cleanup, and Congress was de-funding space and they didn't get any more money.

So sad.</comment>


Note-able Ecommerce - <AUTHOR> http://blog.olark.com/notable-features

<comment><USER2> Interesting note: DODOcase was founded/executed by a W08 YC Alum (one of the founders of the WebMynd team!). Huge congrats to Patrick!

clickable: <http://www.dodocase.com></comment>


Marathon of the Mind: Competitive Computer Programming - <AUTHOR> http://thecore.uchicago.edu/Summer2014/features/marathon-mind.shtml <comment><USER2> Why are students from foreign universities, particularly those in Russia, China, so good at these competitions relative to their peers from the US? I understand it allows for good job placement and its harder to get a job as an immigrant, but does that really explain the vast difference? Is there a big divide in technical standards?

<comment><USER3> 1\. They practice much more. It would be difficult for anyone, regardless of the country, to take up programming contests as a minor hobby and expect to compete against people who take it seriously.

2\. There is maybe a greater emphasis on theoretical aspects with more rigour, which makes these contests more approachable to start with. But this is nothing compared with sitting down, reading CLRS for an introduction, and then solving some puzzles yourself. This is something anyone can do, just most people aren't very interested in doing it.

<comment><USER4> I would second this. Think of it like interviewing. If you do five to fifteen programming interviews you really get a feel for how programming interviews are conducted, the type of problems, the amount of time the problem should take. Most importantly you get a feel for the questions that are asked can for example abandon a solution that while it would work would take longer than the interview time and thus can recognize that there must be a faster solution you should look for.

Simply by doing a number of practice and real interviews you will be much better at interviewing. You as a programmer are probably not that fundamentally better, but you the interviewer are.

And if you don't like programming interviews just go lookup how people prepare for Jeopardy, most that appear on the show don't just show up, but have methods for training.

<comment><USER5> > Simply by doing a number of practice and real interviews you will be much > better at interviewing. You as a programmer are probably not that > fundamentally better, but you the interviewer are.

That is true, but I see that as a serious weakness in programming interviews rather than a feature. If you can, or even need, to train yourself in things that have no bearing on the job you are being hired for, the interview is flawed. I understand that, to some degree, this is unavoidable. It seems like there is a drive to structure interviews like programming competitions or Jeopardy. However, the latter two are games; an interview should be a well- constructed test, not a game. I do think a large number of non-US people participate in these competitions because of their relationship to current hiring practices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This sounds like heaps of fun - does anyone know if there equivalent competitions (even online challenges) for non-students? I don't work in a programming field so it would be nice to have a good problem set to work through.

<comment><USER3> Google and Facebook organize their own contests, I believe. And you can find problem repositories with judges that let you submit your solutions online. These are slightly tricky to use for learning, because they wouldn't tell you what went wrong with any particular solution. Some places, like topcoder and codejam, will post analyses of their contests that explain how to solve the problems. Topcoder also has many of these analyses going far back, so you can read them to learn about algorithm design.

Links:

      http://www.topcoder.com/
      https://code.google.com/codejam/
      https://www.facebook.com/hackercup
      http://www.spoj.com/
      http://uva.onlinejudge.org/

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That sounds insanely exciting. As a student entering college this fall, this is my new most anticipated activity for the year.

<comment><USER8> My school offers a two quarter hour class(that can be taken twice) called Problem Solving for Contests and focuses on the basics of these competitions. I'm taking it this fall. Looks super interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I disagree that competitions like this test programming mettle. While they may be beneficial for programming, programming under time constraints is different from typical programming.

<comment><USER10> Your conclusion doesn't follow. Just because something isn't representative of a typical situation doesn't mean that it can't accurately predict performance in that situation.

I'm not sure why you (and others, it happens every time this sort of thing gets brought up, not a personal attack) seem to try to take away from the achievement of the kids that take part in this. It's really first rate problem solving, and so far as I can notice (at a skim) no one actually tried to claim in the article that it's the same as standard software engineering.

To address your main point, my personal experience (I know four people who have performed strongly in such coding competitions) is that it correlates really quite well. That's mere anecdotal evidence, but furthermore, your point is dubious because this type of coding competition shows an extreme aptitude at a certain type of programming, as well as enthusiasm, dedication, high stress performance, teamwork - which are all in general useful qualities in normal software engineering.

Of course, you won't be able to take someone with an incredibly high capability for understanding complex graph algorithms and plonk them in to every job (front-end stuff might go poorly), but chances are they'll be able to find something to their liking at Google, Facebook etc fairly easily.

At risk of sounding like one of those recruiters that sends me all the emails on LinkedIn, if you're world class at a certain type of work (as a significant proportion of the people referenced in the article presumably are), someone will probably hire you to do that work.

<comment><USER5> > extreme aptitude at a certain type of programming

If you are hiring for aptitude in that type of programming, great. If not, it really doesn't tell you much.

> enthusiasm, dedication, high stress performance, teamwork

It is definitely a good way, but not the only way, to show these intangibles.

> Of course, you won't be able to take someone with an incredibly high > capability for understanding complex graph algorithms and plonk them in to > every job (front-end stuff might go poorly), but chances are they'll be able > to find something to their liking at Google, Facebook etc fairly easily.

And yet Google makes their hire/no hire decisions on all software engineers using the exact same interview gauntlet. They give the impression that a software engineer _is_ someone they can plonk into any job. That is my frustration with the industry in its current state. Software engineering is a complex area of practice and, in my opinion, has outgrown the notion of the universal software engineer. Software engineering needs to develop true specializations, like electrical engineering, and evaluate people based on their area of expertise. The type of coding these programming competitions exercise is just one specialization, albeit a very important specialization for certain classes of problem.

For the record, I am not trying to belittle the achievements of those who excel at competitive programming. In fact, I think its awesome and these kids will be valuable contributors to the profession later. My argument is against the notion that programming like this should be viewed as prototypical and expected of anyone who wants to be considered good at software engineering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Five hours in programming is more analogous to a one-rep-max weight lift than to a marathon.

<comment><USER12> I don't want to split analogy hairs but 5 hours of intensive programming is orders of magnitude more exhausting than any single max weight lift.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What slows you down most when starting new programming projects? - <AUTHOR> <comment> non-entity Normally: getting a proper development environment configured.

Recently: I've been trying to start a few project where I always hit an early roadblock with an issue only being solved with purchasing and installing new hardware

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you mind sharing what are those recent projects?

When you say "proper development environment configured" \- what were the most annoying things?

<comment> non-entity Sure, I've most recently been trying to debug and patch a kernel driver, but in order to run kgdb (gdb kernel debugger) I have to have a serial connection between 2 machines of the same architecture. Unfortunately not too many modern PCs have serial ports and I've been running through different motherboard connectors and pci cards with no avail. I've had similar hardware issues doing kernel projects and often by the time I get what I've need, I've lost interest in the project.

As far as "proper development environment" goes, I have a bad habit of wanting a perfectionist environment with everything cleanly structured before I start writing serious core. If course this always bores me to death and prevents me from actually getting anything done, as opposed to just immediately starting to hack away

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I'm usually really good at starting things.. and even up to deploying something minimal that does a thing. That's when I hit the slow/stop zone. My initial curiosity itch has been scratched and a proof-of-concept made and possibly deployed using some new infrastructure gizmo.

My question is how do you keep going? Show friends/coworkers, post on sites, get users? I even went as far as setting up a landing page and figuring out auto signup/provisioning and payments, then lack the motivation to market or continue development. I probably need a co-instigator that's not so dev-only.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not thinking things though.

As an example, recently, I've been thinking of building a list of ski resorts near where I live, so that I may then compile it into a kind of weather, snow forecasting site.

The first step was 'compile and create a list of resorts'. Which was easy to do, but doesn't lend nicely to the second step, rather, _what_ second step?

I had a huge urge to just code something, _anything_. I didn't spend enough time thinking about how it might develop.

<comment><USER2> I'm not following. It sounds like you'd be further along if you just went with your gut to just code something, anything.

My solution to getting started or continue going is to build the next thing I'm motivated to do, no matter how small. If I'm not motivated to even do that, I just create a setup where I can later start on the next thing, no matter now small. Usually once the setup is done, it's so easy to start that I usually do it in the same session as the setup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Writing lots of well-tested prototypes and benchmarks to grok the capabilities your building blocks have. Working with things you don't understand is very slow, so I feel doing all of this up front leads to much better results than doing it incrementally every time a new strange bug appears.

</comment><comment><USER5> Creating a front end. I actually _really_ enjoying laying out a beautiful design in HTML, but...

I hate hate hate hate hate working in JS. Just throwing up a MPA with a templating engine is not enough functionality for what I want to offer. No matter how many times I try to start using React, Angular, Vue, or just do it with vanilla and maybe jQuery, I just don't _get_ it

In my ideal world I would have a front end engineer friend who wanted to work on all the same things I did and I could just serve up APIs all day.

<comment><USER2> I also used to hate making front-ends, from jQuery onwards. This changed when I started using Vue. The components are so lightweight, I'll make ones to do simple output formatting. And with TypeScript it's so nice, almost like back- end code. Oh when using Vue, I avoid the whole redux/vuex whatever and either use local state, vue-stash, or similar simple machinery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For me it is the get everything setup to work correctly in a "Windows" environment. Compilers, system variables, command lines (powershell, cmd and bash) and editor/debugger setup take a lot of time. Almost every new project I am forced to use a fresh machine so getting all this setup each time I start a new project is consuming (never mind downloading all the packages/libs I'll need).

</comment><comment><USER7> Deploying to a server, or figuring out the best way to transition from prototype to production! (Django + JS development)

</comment><comment><USER8> Trying to figure out the project name. I name my projects no matter how small they are. It somehow makes the project important enough for me to come back to it a few days later.

<comment><USER2> One step further, finding the perfect domain name. I have a long list of expired after 1 year, unused domain names. Sometimes I'll even register a better name for a project I still haven't started.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Figuring out where to start. The first brick is the hardest.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where to start as in what direction start building the project? Or something else like "what technologies do I need to do X"?

<comment><USER9> More about what the project should be. Projects are about solving problems. Problems can be big and split into smaller ones. Which subset of a problem do I pick?

E.g. I wanted to make a random world generator. Continents and terrain are often done. Culture generators have been done too. Plots are rarely done, and they're the easiest, but aren't particular interesting on their own. Plots needed interesting characters. Character generation is common, but rarely clicks. So what flaws in existing character generators are easiest to tackle?

This whole process took me about 3 months before I got it down to a dropdown and a button. Before that it was endless iteration and experiments that went in a direction that wasn't particularly interesting, or too difficult.

Anything worth doing has nobody else go down the same path. So you start to question whether it's the right path and worth dedicating energy to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am willing to guess a lot of people here would say time is their biggest slow down. Finding time. Making the most of the time you do have.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, I didn't think about it that way. Sure, I wish I had more time for projects I want to build once I have that time what annoys me sometimes is how much things keeps me from the real development.

What I had in my mind were things like setting up tools, configuring your project, etc. Basically, things that keep you from real productivity programming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Although I like writing tests but following Test-Driven Development slows down the development of side-projects.

</comment><comment><USER12> Too much research for me.

</comment><comment><USER13> Setting up the environment is usually the major thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there any specific part that you setup most often across your projects?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Overengineering :)</comment>


Silicon Valley's Crown Is Up For Grabs - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8003499.stm

<comment><USER2> Whats with UK reporting today? First the independent kvelling about wolfram like they hotter than sliced bread, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=591015> (ok they have something but will not be displacing google any time soon - if ever) and now the bbc heralding the end of the valley. seriously?

is anyone doing any fact checking over there? tom siebel, bbc's primary (and only) source proclaiming the passing of the valley, has his own startup - first virtual group - headquartered where? the valley of course! <http://www.fvgroup.com/about_us.htm>

</comment><comment><USER3> If you associate Silicon Valley with IT and enterprise, this is more convincing. As it stands, though, there are lots of emerging technologies that are finding their homes in the Bay Area.

I don't see why the maturation and commoditization of the "IT industry" means the downfall of Silicon Valley.</comment>


Foss.technology – a Pleroma instance for FOSS communities and projects - <AUTHOR> https://foss.technology/ <comment><AUTHOR> I meant to link the about page: [https://foss.technology/about](https://foss.technology/about)

If you're a manager of an open-source project, you can sign up here to communicate with the rest of the Fediverse, which has been discussed on this site many times previously.</comment>


This Pizza Cost $750,000 in Today's Bitcoins - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/this-pizza-is-worth-750000

<comment><USER2> This pizza is not "worth" $750,000, it simply cost that much in terms of delayed value of bitcoins.

<comment><USER3> Does it state anywhere in the article that it is?

<comment><USER2> It was the original title of both the linked article and the HN headline. ("This Pizza is worth $750,000")</comment></comment></comment>


CS Alert (1890) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CS_Alert_(1890) <comment><USER2> Meta HN question (I'm sorry if this is inappropriate). Normally, in HN "{Title} ({Year})" signals that the article is written in "Year". So when I read the title, I thought the article will be from 1890, but then realized the article is named "CS Alert (1890)". In this case looks like "(1890)" is added to the title to disambiguate it from other "CS Alert"s i.e.: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CS_Alert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CS_Alert)

I initially thought it would make more sense to name this article as "CS Alert" since it wouldn't matter as much as Wikipedia if the title is ambiguous. But then I disagreed with myself since other "CS Alert"s are all named of the form "CS Alert ({Year})" so it could still be ambiguous even in HN context. Maybe the title could editorialized to "CS Alert 1890" or "CS Alert, 1890" or something, but I understand that HN rules are against editorializing titles. It's an interesting problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe wikipedia should be exempt from the dating rule, since, what's the publication date on a wikipedia entry?

<comment><USER3> I think the problem here is that the literal string "(1890)" is part of the original title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting that they cut the lines instead of tapping them. Maybe the technology wasn't there yet, or they were in too much of a hurry.

<comment><USER5> It would probably be obvious if there was always a ship over the cables.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if there are cases where it's better to cut an enemy cable, as opposed to tapping it. I can't think of any, but this isn't my field.

<comment><USER6> Tapping the cable still allows the enemy to talk.

Sometimes, if the enemy is trying to be sneaky, it's better to overhear them and thwart their efforts.

Other times the enemy might be trying to coordinate a massive attack for which timing is key. It wouldn't matter if you overhear because you need to disrupt the attack before it starts. In that case it's better to not let the enemy communicate at all.

<comment><USER7> Still doesn't explain why layer 1 encryption isn't used for oceanic cables.

Edit: I mean this from a timeless perspective, and slightly from the present day.

<comment><USER8> In 1915!? Because mathematically sound encryption and the computational machinery to employ it did not exist back then.

<comment><USER9> Hmm...sound encryption did exist: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One- time_pad#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad#History)

And computational machinery to implement it, at least for telegraph seems to have quite likely existed in 1915: [https://patents.google.com/patent/US1310719](https://patents.google.com/patent/US1310719) (filing date 1917).

<comment><USER10> A one time pad is not "sound encryption", as it lacks message integrity.

<comment><USER7> Layer 1 encryption doesn't involve message integrity.

<comment><USER10> That's a weird assertion, but okay.

My only point was that by the modern standards we take for granted, OTP/XOR is not really a cryptosystem but better thought of as a primitive. IMO for those just learning crypto, it's a red herring that hides the core functionality of modern cryptography (see: the common amateur reinvention of using a PRNG as a OTP).

My answer to your main question is because encrypting layer 1 adds negligible security properties to the whole system (can't tap that link, but you can tap anywhere else), everything should already be encrypted at a higher level (for the previous reason, as well as integrity/authorization/etc), and that the bandwidth is too high (the entire point of packet switched networks is to do as little as possible in each node).

Applied to the existing Internet, the only thing it would gain is hiding addressing metadata from an attacker who directly taps a link.

A more effective general way of doing this would be something like onion source routing, where each router only knows the next hop. But once again the scalability problem, so the desire is better applied to an overlay network rather than convincing backbone providers to take this on - there is barely the impetus for IPv6.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: good books about military strategy? - <AUTHOR> The only books in that vein I know are "The Art Of War" by Sun Tzu and Clausewitz' "Vom Kriege". I suspect german book shops don't tend to stock as many books on war as some other countries (I remember seeing the "military" section of a bookstore for the first time in London).
Anyway, I would be interested in more detailed stuff, like how to use tanks, planes and so on. Maybe analysis of historical battles would be good, too.
I guess it won't help with a startup, but for some reason I have wondered about this (maybe for strategy game development...). <comment><USER2> I used to have a lot more time for non CS reading and actually made an Amazon list on this topic back in 2005:

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/2INJSM38...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/2INJSM38IDMDZ/ref=cm_sw_r_de_lm)

1\. On War (Everyman's Library (Cloth)) by Carl Von Clausewitz

2\. Leadership: The Warrior's Art by Barry R. McCaffrey

3\. Small Unit Leadership: A Commonsense Approach by Dandridge M. Malone

4\. The Defense of Hill 781: An Allegory of Modern Mechanized Combat by James R. McDonough

5\. The Art of Maneuver: Maneuver-Warfare Theory and AirLand Battle by Robert Leonhard

6\. Strategy: Second Revised Edition (Meridian) by B. H. Liddell Hart

7\. The Art of War by Niccolò Machiavelli

8\. Hagakure: The Book of the Samauri by Tsunetomo Yamamoto

9\. The Emperor's Handbook: A New Translation of The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

10\. The Art of War (Shambhala classics) by Sun Tzu

11\. The Prince (Bantam Classics) by Niccolo Machiavelli

12\. Evolutionary Game Theory by Jörgen W. Weibull

13\. On Guerrilla Warfare by Mao Tse-tung

14\. The History of the Peloponnesian War: Revised Edition (Penguin Classics) by Thucydides

15\. The Histories (Penguin Classics) by Herodotus

16\. The Persian Expedition (Penguin Classics) by Xenophon

17\. Plutarch: Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans (Modern Library Series, Vol. 1) by Plutarch

18\. Plutarch's Lives, Volume 2 (Modern Library Classics) by Plutarch

19\. Livy: The Early History of Rome, Books I-V (Penguin Classics) (Bks. 1-5) by Titus Livy

20\. The History of Rome from Its Foundation, Books XXI-XXX: The War with Hannibal (Penguin Classics) (Bks. 21-30) by Titus Livius Livy

<comment><USER3> To those, I would add this:

MODERN WARFARE

A French View of Counterinsurgency by Roger Trinquier

<comment><USER4> Along these lines get "The Battle of Algiers" on netflix. When Iraq started going badly they actually had a huge screening in the pentagon.

<comment><USER3> Too bad that the tactics that served the French so well in Algiers can not be applied in Iraq.

<comment><USER5> They "served" the French for a while, as they might serve the US in Iraq... for a while that is. But remember that just when the French thought they'd suppressed Algerian resistance, it erupted violently and the result was a long and extremely bloody civil war.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A quick read is Wikipedia's summary of Miyamoto Musashi's "Book of Five Rings" - it's about Japanese swordsmanship in the early 1600's in a variety of situations: Full-on combat, a duel, outnumbered, with high/low ground, etc. It's strategic more than tactical, and if you like Sun Tzu you might dig it.

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

The story of his life, "Musashi," is one of my favorite books of all time and has good strategic and philosophical discussion mixed in with some really riveting action and social commentary. Musashi had a lot of potential at a young age, but was extremely undisciplined and constantly had it out with the law, society, and people whose motivations he couldn't understand. The book chronicles him becoming the greatest swordsman in Japanese history. An incredible read, especially for anyone who was bright at young age but questioned a hell of a lot of society's rules.

Amazon (no affiliate B.S., just a great book): <http://www.amazon.com/Musashi- Eiji-Yoshikawa/dp/4770019572>

<comment><USER7> The book of 5 rings is a nice book. Here's another: Arthashastra by Chāṇakya has some chapters on war - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthashastra>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Martin van Creveld writes some serious analysis. Consider...

Supplying War -- on logistics (as in "professionals study...")

Command in War -- on communication, information, and the importance of local autonomy leading to quick action

The Transformation of War -- has strategy's biggest buzzword right there in the title, but this was written back in 1991. On the growing role of low- intensity and asymmetric conflicts.

His books tend to be short, but very dense.

<comment><USER9> The first book I checked to make sure was included in this tread was "Supplying War". There are many standard texts on conflict, but that one somehow misses many lists. I think the examination of conflicts from the point of view of logistics serves two very good purposes: it's an essential education in making sure a force is supplied and it's a good perspective of looking at a conflict as a long term temporal and spacial endeavor.

"Command in War" is also quite good, and I have not yet read "Transformation in War".

</comment></comment><comment> bjelkeman-again My absolute favourite in this class of books is:

Infantry attacks, Erwin Rommel: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infantry_Attacks>

Don't let the word "Infantry" in the title fool you. It is an engrossing account on how to use armed forces to your advantage. He supposedly was working on "The Tank in Attack", but never made it that far. A good substitute is The Rommel Papers, which was published posthumously by his family.

The Rommel Papers <http://books.google.com/books?id=JE8VFsdxNGgC>

<comment><USER10> Patton - "Rommel, you magnificent bastard! I read your book!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Along with the _Anabasis_ and Caesar's _Gallic Wars_ , I particularly recommend Johnnie Johnson's _Wing Leader_ , Hanson's _Western Way of War_ , and Oman's _Art of War in the Middle Ages_.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Warfighting", hands down:

[http://www.amazon.com/Warfighting-U-Marine-Corps- Staff/dp/96...](http://www.amazon.com/Warfighting-U-Marine-Corps- Staff/dp/965006043X)

It won't teach you how to drive tanks and lob grenades, but it is one of the best military strategy books I've read.

If you just want the PDF, it's freely available here:

<http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/service_pubs/mcdp1.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER13> My favorite (copied from Wikipedia):

The Unfettered Mind (Japanese: 不動智神妙録 Fudōchi Shinmyōroku) is a three-part treatise on Buddhist philosophy and martial arts written by Takuan Soho, a Japanese monk of the Rinzai sect. The title translates roughly to "The Mysterious Records of Immovable Wisdom". The treatise was written as correspondence to Yagyū Munenori, inheritor to the Yagyū Shinkage-ryū school of swordsmanship. Written for the laity, the book makes little use of Buddhist terminology, but instead focuses on describing situations followed by an interpretation. Its contents make an effort to apply Zen Buddhism to martial arts.

Available in PDF form here:

<http://www.daikonforge.com/downloads/TheUnfetteredMind.pdf>

<comment><USER14> Takuan Soho is also the one who brought enlightenment to Musashi, according to the stories (much about Musashi is fictionalized).

He also has a pickled daikon named after him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The best I have read is by B.H. Liddell Hart:

[http://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Meridian-B-Liddell- Hart/dp/04...](http://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Meridian-B-Liddell- Hart/dp/0452010713/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233240383&sr=1-3)

He also wrote respected volumes on the world wars and biographies of Rommel and Scipio Africanus, among others.

<comment><USER16> Liddell Hart is good, though sometimes he reads like he's giving his subject a reach around when writing about him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You can try downloading some of the army manuals that you can find on the net. I know there are some for the soldier level, so there is probably some for the general level too.

Then you can go back and try finding books written by generals or about them. i.e. I figure something written about Patton would have tank tactics there too.

</comment><comment><USER18> Have you read Clausewitz On War? That was one of my favorite books last year.

This is more general than you are looking for and it stops a bit short of air war but it helped me to put historical events into a global context.

The outline of history; being a plain history of life and mankind. Rev. and brought up to date by Raymond Postgate and G.P. Wells. With maps and plans by J.F. Horrabin.

Wells, H. G. 1866-1946. (Herbert George), Garden City, N.Y. Doubleday 1971, Book. 1103p., D21 .W4 1971

I'd say definitely search for books written about Iraq and Afghanistan, that should give you some information about current strategies.

<comment><USER19> If you want to understand the context behind all other books on military strategy written since Clausewitz (any book written in the last hundred years), you must read Clausewitz. If you want to understand why the US Army was so dead set on failing to anticipate the next war and continued to train for symmetric war until very recently, you must read Clausewitz. If you want to understand why the new Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual written by General Petraeus, Lt General Amos, and Lt Colonel Nagl is so celebrated, you must read Clausewitz.

You should also read Petraeus et al's Counterinsurgency Field Manual. The difference in tone and scope is staggering. If you want to understand military strategy going forward, you must understand Petraeus's book. I assure you, it is on the nightstand of the President and every military officer (and not because it says that on the cover, but because I'm one of them).

If you are running a startup, read the Petraeus book as though _you_ are the insurgent. If you are at MSFT or Google, read it as though you are in the US Army.

<comment><USER20> FM 3-24 MCWP 3-33.5

COUNTERINSURGENCY

DAVID H. PETRAEUS

<http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-24.pdf>

<comment><USER19> I think you will find the Chicago Press version a bit more readable:

[http://www.amazon.com/Marine-Corps-Counterinsurgency- Field-M...](http://www.amazon.com/Marine-Corps-Counterinsurgency-Field- Manual/dp/0226841510)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [http://www.amazon.com/War-Nerd-Soft-Skull- Press/dp/097966368...](http://www.amazon.com/War-Nerd-Soft-Skull- Press/dp/0979663687)

Certainly not dry. I can't vouch for his accuracy, but he knows a lot and could point you to some interesting battles/periods to study.

</comment><comment><USER22> I like the Defense News periodical, and have heard good things about Jane's Defence Weekly.

There are a lot of Field manuals available (e.g., see [http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/f...](http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/)), but those are (in my experience) more about tactics than strategy.

</comment><comment><USER16> I highly recommend John Boyd. His presentations are a bit dense, but you might try reading the biography of him written by Robert Coram first.

<comment><USER23> "Dense" is generous; you could go as far as "unrigorously terse". Sometimes they just don't make sense. But he got results.

A good collection of his presentations is at <http://www.d-n-i.net/dni/john-r- boyd/> and there's low-quality video of his "Conceptual Spiral" on YouTube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I can't think of any books, but you can find good descriptions of strategy used in famous battles on wikipedia. Some interesting battles.

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

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

<comment><USER25> This one kept me up one night: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae> \-- and I almost never read history/military books.

<comment><USER26> Theres a downloadable Stanford lecture on Hannibal, wich is great; the archeologist guy who gives the talk was involved in a student expedition across the Alps, with a real elephant!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "Black Swan" had some pretty good insights into the "unknown unknowns" of military combat.

<http://www.wajapi.com/books/80>

</comment><comment><USER28> "The Art Of War" is great, I read this version when I was 13 but I would still recommend it as a good place to start before getting another translation or other books:

"Sunzi Speaks: The Art of War"

Tsai Chih Chung

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0385472587>

Some online reading that you might find interesting:

<http://www.ingber.com/combat97_cmi.ps.gz>

[http://www.ndu.edu/inss/Symposia/joint2008/papers/Hoffman%20...](http://www.ndu.edu/inss/Symposia/joint2008/papers/Hoffman%20Paper_Panel%203.pdf)

[http://www.ndu.edu/inss/Symposia/joint2008/papers/Warden%20P...](http://www.ndu.edu/inss/Symposia/joint2008/papers/Warden%20Paper_Panel%203.pdf)

<http://www.dodccrp.org/files/Smith_Complexity.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER29> Hmmm, guess no-one here is in the military? The (American) military branches all publish their own reading lists, updated annually, that'd be a great starting point. <http://www.af.mil/library/csafreading/> <http://www.history.army.mil/reference/csalist/csalist.htm> and the National Defense University has a big compilation: <http://www.ndu.edu/library/readinglist/PMReadingList.html>

</comment><comment><USER30> A lot of the suggestions here seem to follow the philosophical advice from generals meme, like the people who read Sun Tzu to learn how to better manage their sales team and etc.

The best book I know of in the "detailed stuff, like how to use tanks, planes and so on" area is James F. Dunigan's "How to Make War". It's a little cold- war oriented but still pretty applicable, and the first chapter is helpfully titled "How to Become an Effective Armchair General". Given that wars are usually massive economic and logistical operations, it has a lot of charts and tables to that effect, showing the number of shots per soldier killed over the centuries, tonnage of explosives per plane, etc.

Just by glancing over the charts you can see the basic history of military activity -- the Civil War being the first "modern" war in terms of slaughter, economic mobolization, and etc; then a period of regression to small wars, before WWI and so on.

As far as "how to use tanks" and so on, that is often considered tactics not strategy. There are books written on that stuff, however; how many people should be in a small platoon and how they should move, leapfrogging each other so one moves while the other keeps the enemy ducking; how two tanks can use their light machine guns to clear each other's close-in areas that they can't see or shoot at themselves; the strategy of having a tank attached to a platoon of infantry so they work together; etc.

But I don't know of one single book that collects all that. If I had to find them I would probably look at the some of the publications of the Army War College, and I would go to a gun show and find that guy who is always there with a lot of field manual publications, and ask him.

</comment><comment><USER26> You can google the field manuals (FM) of the US Army and Marine, they range from operation of guns and marksmanship to strategy, to leadership. All great reads.

<comment><USER31> I found all these US Army manuals in the emule network. They still must be there. One very good manual to have is the Seal fitness training one (if you are into this).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I would recommend: 1) The Art of War by Niccolò Machiavelli (read by Napoleon) 2) Certain to Win by Chet Richards (talks about OODA loop by John Boyd)

<comment><USER33> I second "Certain to Win".

Game theorists might define a strategy as an approach to optimal decision- making while you are surrounded by other actors whose actions interact with yours. Chess strategies are a good example.

The author of Certain to Win, Chet Richards, takes a different approach. He defines strategy as "a scheme for creating and managing plans." It is a means to generate, act upon, and discard plans. Strategy is how you "plan to plan." OODA loops are a good example of this approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been waiting years for someone to ask this question :)

Wishlited this last night on amazon: Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power by Victor Davis Hanson

Have read these and enjoyed these:

General Warfare theory: History of Warfare by Keegan

Intel: Intelligence and War by Keegan

Counterinsurgency: "Ghost Wars" by Steve Coll. For a really enjoyable experience read "The Great Game" by Hopkirk first.

The Civil War deserves it's own category. Watch the PBS dvds, actually buy them. If you're hungry for more dig into "The Civil War" by Shelby Foote is hefty but it's satisfying.

1776 is a classic.

"Blind mans bluff" is a great book about submarine warfare.

For more current stuff Robert Kagan is probably the most informed pundit on war and military strategy.

WW-II "The Last Lion" books 1 and 2 are about Churchill and they involve lots of military strategy. You should also check out "The gathering storm + the other six books Churchill wrote on WWII.

Man I could go on forever. I have "Panzer General" and "Caesar's Conquest of Gaul" on my nightstand...

Enjoy...

PS: Once you're well versed you'll hear people referring to Clauswitz a lot. When you're sick of hearing his name and you want more than the wikipedia entry go read "On War." Art of War goes w/o saying as well...

</comment><comment><USER34> War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today by Max Boot. Just published in 2006.

[http://www.amazon.com/War-Made-New-Technology- Warfare/dp/159...](http://www.amazon.com/War-Made-New-Technology- Warfare/dp/1592402224)

I don't agree with the guy's politics, but his view on the melding of technology and military history is pretty interesting.

"My major conclusion? Simply that it's not enough to acquire first-class technology. You also need the right organizational structure, training, and leadership to take advantage of that technology. Today, the U.S. is the undisputed leader in high-tech hardware, but our government bureaucracy is still designed to fight mirror-image adversaries from the Industrial Age--not nimble, decentralized foes like Al Qaeda." -- Max Boot

See also: <http://www.cfr.org/publication/10313/war_made_new.html>

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm reading The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene now and am enjoying it, I have also previously read the 48 Laws of Power by him which is written in a similar fashion. Very extensive and uses a lot of historical examples from both military and other fields such as politics and business.

</comment><comment><USER36> Check out Tom Clancy's non fiction books.

Very well written and I believe exactly what you are looking for.

</comment><comment><USER37> You sound like you're looking for something like Jones' _The Art of War in the Western World_ :

<http://www.amazon.com/Art-War-Western-World/dp/0252069668>

Or just go there and follow Amazon "related" links.

Jones is of the "very broad" school of military history. It can be a little bit dry, but it certainly tries to be comprehensive: It's like _Civilization_ in that it starts with phalanx and then moves slowly forward through the history of strategy and tactics.

You might like the works of John Keegan, another famous military historian who takes a general approach. He's got a _History of Warfare_ that's like a lighter-weight version of Jones -- I might recommend starting with that, actually. His one-volume histories of WWI and WWII are probably decent.

Keegan is British, so it wouldn't surprise me if his histories were heavy on the Western front. If you want the _actual_ history of WWII you need a history that's more about the Eastern Front, which is pretty much where the war in Europe was actually decided. Unfortunately, the history on that subject lags decades behind, because the surviving Germans didn't exactly want to dwell on it and the Soviets weren't exactly forthcoming. (Many of the key Soviet figures either got disappeared by Stalin or lived under the constant fear of being disappeared by Stalin.) I'm not sure what the best current general history of the Eastern Front is, but I do know that the big Western expert on the subject is David Glantz, who has spent the last twenty years digging through formerly-sealed Soviet records of enormous battles that were covered up for years. I'd probably start with:

[http://www.amazon.com/Slaughterhouse-Handbook-Eastern- David-...](http://www.amazon.com/Slaughterhouse-Handbook-Eastern-David- Glantz/dp/097176509X)

because I don't know any better and it comes up first on Amazon.

If you want something written by a gamer try the works of James Dunnigan, founder of SPI and author of a whole pile of famous simulation board games. I read most of his _Dirty Little Secrets of World War II_ and it was interesting. A much breezier style than the heavy-duty military historians. And he's got books that cover contemporary military stuff as well as history.

Nobody should read about war at the 10,000 foot level without also reading about what it's actually like on the ground. Obviously, the great modern literary works on the subject are _Slaughterhouse Five_ and, even more so, _Catch-22_. In the realm of nonfiction, Fussell's _Wartime_ was interesting, but it led me to Eugene Sledge's _With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa_ , which is even better: a very good book by a guy from the front lines in the Pacific who is not shy about telling you _exactly_ what went on. Comes with an endorsement by PG! (from the last time I mentioned it on HN.)Don't read it over lunch if you're squeamish.

(I haven't actually read some of these, but my dad is a military boardgamer and military history buff. He's got several bookshelves _packed_ with books like these.)

</comment><comment><USER38> <http://www.microworks.net/PACIFIC/battles/index.htm> has very good accounts of naval battles against the Japanese.

Highlights: <http://www.microworks.net/PACIFIC/battles/vella_gulf.htm> <http://www.microworks.net/PACIFIC/battles/savo_island.htm> <http://www.microworks.net/PACIFIC/battles/leyte_gulf.htm>

</comment><comment><USER39> The best I've read wasn't a strategy book per se. 1776 - <http://www.amazon.com/1776-David-McCullough/dp/0743226712> by David McCullough was full of useful insights on General George Washington and how he used his smarts to defeat the enemy. He wasn't a great strategist, but very pragmatic (like counting the number of shoes on the feet of his "army' to asses their battle readiness) and willing to take risks. It book was also entertaining as Hell.

</comment><comment><USER40> Military strategy? I'd like to hear your startup pitch :)

</comment><comment><USER41> analysis of historical battles

I'd love to see a book of this nature concentrated on the Civil War.

</comment><comment><USER42> There was a post recently on a class that examined Starcraft strategy. That might help.

<comment><AUTHOR> I read that, and if it was nearby, I would definitely pay them a visit. Hope they'll make some materials available online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Che Guevara's book, Guerrilla Warfare, is quite good.

</comment><comment><USER44> The 33 Strategies of War (Robert Greene)

</comment><comment><USER45> What are you up to?

</comment><comment><USER46> > for some reason I have wondered about this (maybe for strategy game > development...).

It's OK, you can be honest here. Your Kraut blood is imbuing you with an inexplicable and overwhelming drive to invade Poland. Reclaim your heritage!

<comment><USER47> Uhm, honestly, I consider that comment really inappropriate. Someone asks about books and you tell him that he must be a Nazi. Note for future reference in dealing with Germans: jokes where you call them a Nazi == not funny.

<comment><USER48> Most Germans I've met have been quite relaxed about that and even joked about it themselves. I guess one should be careful on internet forums though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> "War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning" is the best book on the psychological dimensions of war that I'm aware of.</comment>


Ask HN: Resume check and critique - <AUTHOR> Since the school year is coming to an end, I think a lot of students are starting to apply to jobs. So, I think it would be really helpful if they got feedback on their resume from the industry itself.
Those looking for a job: please post a link to your resume.
Everyone else: help someone out! <comment><USER2> Would really love some help with mine: [http://synclairwang.com/assets/resume.pdf](http://synclairwang.com/assets/resume.pdf)

I just started looking for jobs and haven't had much luck. I bought into the craze of coding bootcamps and although I learned a lot, I feel like it isn't enough to stand out. Would appreciate any tips and thinks to change/remove/add into the resume.

And in case anyone wants to give some input on my portfolio site as well: [http://synclairwang.com](http://synclairwang.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> * Your layout is a bit confusing. It's kind of difficult to figure out what title is the company name and your job title. I suggest you keep the EXPERIENCE and EDUCATION labels on the left and move everything else to the right. I've done a rough mock: [http://imgur.com/a/g2t0c](http://imgur.com/a/g2t0c)

* I'm not a fan of the design, but that's just my opinion. You can search for better resume templates

* Add a section where you point out what languages you know

* Another section for all the frameworks, tech stack, experiences and etc.

* "Netted over 700 hours...", I'm not sure if quantifying something like that is a good thing. 700 hours is kind of arbitrary, even as a developer I don't know that that really entails. You should just say you know how to build web apps, you're a full stack eng. and etc.

* "After learning about this word from a friend...", totally irrelevant. I don't think a recruiter cares about this. It is a good story to tell in an interview, but just not an a resume. Just get to the point as fast as possible while describing what the app does

* Overall the resume tells me what your projects do but it doesn't tell me too much about you. Tell me what you did, what you learned, obstacles you overcame, etc. This is a good area to quantify things. i.e. "Used CSS to develop convolutional neural network to improve efficiency by 100000000%"

* I'm not sure if your other two work experiences are relevant for a web dev, but you did a good job in making it sound relevant to who you are

<comment><USER2> Alright noted! Thanks for the input. Time to revise!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am actually working on web app that walks you through building a solid resume based on my own UX opinions. Then at the end you can print out the pdf. This is my resume (rather outdated now) and my opinionated design. [http://resume.kristoffersen.io](http://resume.kristoffersen.io)

Thoughts on a resume builder web app? Want to see one exist?

<comment><USER4> Sorry, but that resume looks absolutely terrible.

Lots of redundant content, looks messy because of all the images/logos, sub- header 'blocks' take up too much space, font sizes are all over the place, could be condensed to 1 page, etc.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the input! Yeah the logos are terrible. However, from a UX standpoint, what I was going for is an easy to skim resume. So less important content get reduced, more important content gets increased to get noticed more. This is because you only have a few seconds to catch the readers attention before going in the circular file.

This is one of those things that I have A/B tested quite a bit :-)

<comment><USER4> A/B tested on who? I see hundreds of resumes throughout the year and your resume is one that I would likely pass over because, frankly, it looks like something a young student slapped together real quick in MS Word compared to the average resume I see.

When it comes to design, I immediately notice that the font size for your name is much too big (especially compared to the email address). Then there is the page header (Qualifications) which takes up around 10% of the page on its own. Under the 'Related History' section, the name of the projects take up way too much space while the font-size of your job title and duration of stay are hard to read. Why do you need that empty white block next to the name of the projects? All this wasted space not only makes the resume's layout ineffective but also makes it look very unprofessional.

Content-wise, the core of your resume should be what you have under 'Related History'. I want to be able to get a good idea, quickly, of what you did in your past positions. Based on that information I can get a good idea of pretty much everything you have under 'Qualifications'. I would cut all of 'Qualifications' out and summarize everything in there into 3 - 4 bullet points/short sentences. Also, why did you bold seemingly random words like 'CMS' and 'infrastructure'?

Honestly, I would just stick to something like [https://www.careercup.com/resume](https://www.careercup.com/resume). Remember, the key point of your resume is to quickly communicate your past experience and highlight relevant information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have been unable to find employment, minus a short contract, since graduation. I practically get rejected at every company. So any feedback is helpful.

[http://docdro.id/p9Rei3K](http://docdro.id/p9Rei3K)</comment>


Fearless Felix trying to break sound barrier by freely falling from space - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2213679/Felix-Baumgartner--Fearless-Felix-try-break-sound-barrier-free-falling-space.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

<comment><USER2> The mission's web site: <http://www.redbullstratos.com/>

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Baumgartner>

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger></comment>


"Who is Jon Paris" and other questions - <AUTHOR> Since I was personally singled out for ridicule (albeit relatively gentle) in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10093590) but cannot comment there I thought that those who commented might appreciate a response. I'm apparently limited to 2,000 characters so there will be a lot left out.
<quote>Oh boy! Who is Jon Paris, and what is this article? It's as if somebody was writing about python circa 1997.</quote>
I'm a 45+ year computer professional and spend my waking hours trying to introduce my peers to new concepts. Python is not news to me, but it is new to the IBM i as an official offering. Note "AS/400" hasn't been made for over 15 years.
<quote>Very odd. It's like somebody's been hiding in a cave since 1995 and just discovered python, object-oriented programming and HTTP.</quote>
Been writing web programs for over 20 years. Done Smalltalk, Java, PHP, ... But like many of my peers find it hard to "think" in OO and have never had 6 or 8 months to do nothing but OO. Real world Procedural programming kept getting in the way.
<quote>He's previously been writing RPG for the AS/400. That's pretty much exactly like living in a cave since 1975.</quote>
That's just silly. Modern RPG IV would not be recognizable to anyone who learnt 1975's RPG . It is a good language for writing core business applications. Those boring ones that need to do precision math with numbers that have decimal places. Things like bank accounts, inventory, etc.
 IBM i is a highly integrated platform and because of that many customers are unwilling to use anything not "blessed" by IBM. I personally find that frustrating but I understand it. There has been a version of Python 2 available for many years which was ported by a group of users. But it wasn't sanctioned and so few use it.
There are many other comments I could respond to but I'll leave it there for now. Happy to continue the conversation if anyone cares. <comment><USER2> Hi Jon, welcome to Hacker News. (I'm a moderator here.) I'm sorry that you felt singled out for ridicule—the comment I think you're referring to was indeed dismissive and supercilious and exactly the sort that we _don 't_ want on this site. Most of us are fascinated by computing history and have deep respect for the contributions of others.

I'm going to open that old thread so you can respond in it. But I also hope you'll stick around and give the better side of this community a chance to show itself. Getting newer software to run on older hardware is actually a common theme here and some of those posts are among the most interesting. It sounds like we have a lot to learn from you, so please feel welcome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Since you mention an interest in history dang, you and others might find this article of interest. My partner and I wrote it to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the IBM i. [http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/ibmi/developer/rpg/RPG_25/](http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/ibmi/developer/rpg/RPG_25/).

More recently I have been authoring a "behind the scenes" review of the birth of the current version of RPG. It discusses evolution of the language of which I was one of the "fathers" during my time with IBM. The series is not yet complete but starts here: [http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/Blogs/iDevelop/June-2015/The- Bi...](http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/Blogs/iDevelop/June-2015/The-Birth-of-a- New-RPG/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting to see your reply. I spend some of my time working with IBM i and z machines that are running web apps written in Java.

FYI: The reason why you couldn't comment in the original thread was because it's too old - comments on articles get disabled after a few days.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the info. I found out in another thread that it is shut down 14 days after the last comment. I just saw it all too late since I don't frequent this board/list.</comment></comment>


Towards Crystal 1.0 - <AUTHOR> https://crystal-lang.org/2020/03/03/towards-crystal-1.0.html <comment><USER2> I tried Crystal for a small hobby project a few months back, and was generally impressed by the stability, ease of use and documentation. I found the type- system very straight forward, and with less mental overhead than Rust, obviously with all the design tradeoffs that entails. For the use-cases I'm interested in, Crystal has a little ways to go in terms of mindshare and ecosystem support, but it's a fun language to learn and try.

</comment><comment><USER3> I generally like Crystal. However I think there's a some unfortunate choices that make it hard to use. I'd really love to see them addressed (or planned for) before 1.0:

\- global inference is more trouble than its worth. some way to opt sections of code out of global inference in exchange for faster compile times and better type error messages would be wonderful

\- conflicting/duplicate C bindings in libraries aren't easy (or even possible sometimes) to reconcile

\- a lot of standard library interfaces to system stuff (e.g. sockets) are hard to extend for additional uses. there's a number of reasons for this, but among them: enums wrapping simple integer based enums, but not actually covering all the values.

\- parser is hard to reuse outside of the compiler itself, which is an impediment to making neat tools.

\- some strange choices around co/contra-variance when dealing with arrays

<comment><USER4> > global inference

I think this is long-gone isn't it? It's local now.

> parser is hard to reuse outside of the compiler itself

A problem we repeat again and again!

<comment><USER3> I think it's maybe less global than it was previously (and in a way that helps pave the way for improving compile times), but there's still a lot of ways to cause spooky type errors at a distance due to the assignment type inference rule.

      module Example
        def self.some_method
          "string"
        end

        class Foo
          getter :var1

          def initialize
            @var1 = SomeUtilities.something
          end
        end

        module SomeUtilities
          def self.something
            Example.some_method
          end

          def self.do_something_with_string(input : String)
            puts input
          end
        end
      end

      Example::SomeUtilities.do_something_with_string(Example::Foo.new)

If you change Example.some_method to return :symbol, you now get a type error on the final line.

<comment><USER5> I like that behaviour. Normally you don't get to pay the overhead of having to spell it out but it is a nice tool to have, being able to gradually add type information to fence in errors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would any crystal users care to comment on how the editor story is now with crystal?

I tried it a few months ago and scry was not giving me any autocomplete in vs code.

<comment><USER7> Editor story is a bit rough still. I'm using scry (the Crystal Language Server) with coc-nvim. It seems to be a little bit smarter than simple "words in buffer" completion, but not much. Sometimes it just quits and I haven't investigated why. Currently I'm just writing spec tests and simple data structures/algorithms. (the typical thing I do when learning a language) I did start a Lucky project this past weekend to see what that's all about. If I get more into it, I'll probably break down and figure out how to fix autocompletion/go-to-definition/show-references/etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any heavy users? As a Ruby/Rails dev, do I have something to gain from learning this?

<comment><USER9> Depends on if you have any cpu-bound endpoints. At my previous employer we moved a very intensive check (high dimensional vector nearest neighbor search) into a separate Crystal microservice and even with RPC overhead it was easily 100x faster than the ruby version. This with code that any Ruby dev could instantly read, unlike if we would have gone for a C extension. That said, Ruby still has a massive lead in available gems, so don't uninstall Rails yet.

<comment><USER10> In my experiment, the Crystal version ([https://github.com/nukata/little- scheme-in-crystal](https://github.com/nukata/little-scheme-in-crystal)) was 38x faster than the Ruby version ([https://github.com/nukata/little-scheme-in- ruby](https://github.com/nukata/little-scheme-in-ruby)) and comparable to the Java version ([https://github.com/nukata/little-scheme-in- java](https://github.com/nukata/little-scheme-in-java)). Indeed, it is in the fastest group. See [https://github.com/nukata/little- scheme#performance](https://github.com/nukata/little-scheme#performance)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As another person mentioned, the main thing keeping me from Crystal is proper editor support, and more specifically proper debugger support.

I really like the experience working in python in pycharm, mainly for the integrated debugger.

It would be great to see an open source editor for Crystal with proper Debugger support and code reference lookup.

<comment><USER12> Though I have a long history with IDEs I feel just as comfortable with the console, or the lighter-weight, electron-based IDEs.

For the last couple of years I've lived pretty much exclusive in the Ruby/RubyMine, Python/PyCharm, Scala/IntelliJ worlds.

However, I recently finished a medium-sized Crystral project only using VSCode. For debugging, I wrote unit tests and kept Sentry running. The compiler pretty much catches everything else. The combination worked out very well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't yet use Crystal, but it's kind of painful that Windows support is in the "What can wait? - after 1.0" section. Cross-platform support is one of the reasons I've been diving into Rust.

However "we integrated a CI for Windows to ensure we continue moving steadily forward" sounds like a good compromise for limited resources.

<comment><USER14> I find it a little sad that windows support is considered essential (and its lack is a dealbreaker), but linux support is not, even though developers predominantly use macos and linux.

<comment><USER15> Why do you believe more devs are on mac than windows? What country are you in?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wrote my blog using Crystal 0.33 (plus kemal and bulma) and it's great! [https://ejstembler.com](https://ejstembler.com)

</comment><comment><USER16> Is it just my browser or is scrolling broken on mobile on the Crystal site? It only breaks after 10s or so. Weird.

</comment><comment><USER17> how does Crystal compare to Nim ?

<comment><USER12> I actually started writing my blog in Crystal, took a little break, and started writing it in Nim. I really like Nim a lot. Some of the code came out more concise in Nim. I like how Nim handles nils better. Options instead of temp var shadowing. I would've finished my blog in Nim had I not ran into an issue with embedded-style templates. Think eRb in Ruby. Crystal handles this by compiling and embedded. Nim doesn't support that. I had to resort to something like Mustache which I didn't want to use. Ultimately, I went back to Crystal and finished it.

<comment><USER18> Nim string templating is very powerful. What is your unmet need, precisely?

<comment><USER12> I couldn't get embedded templating to work for nim. Something similar to Ruby's ERB: [https://ruby- doc.org/stdlib-2.7.0/libdoc/erb/rdoc/ERB.html](https://ruby- doc.org/stdlib-2.7.0/libdoc/erb/rdoc/ERB.html). Or Crystal's ECR: [https://crystal-lang.org/api/0.21.1/ECR.html](https://crystal- lang.org/api/0.21.1/ECR.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google, Facebook Battle For Computer Science Grads. Salaries Soar. - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/30/stanford-computer-science-grads-getting-95k-offers-from-google/ <comment><USER2> I'm confused about this whole situation. Why exactly are new grads dying to go to work at Facebook? Google at least creates interesting and serious technology, while Facebook makes a pretty uninteresting webpage.

<comment><USER3> Facebook is pre-IPO so even if it is boring, there's a chance to cash out big time later. Googlers no longer have that option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can at least confirm that a year ago, Google's base salary for starting engineers was in the reported range, some 25% short of this year's alleged number. Seems like a big jump.

</comment><comment><USER5> I guess it's a good time to be graduating.

</comment><comment><USER6> "If all you get from your job is an oversized paycheck..."

</comment><comment><USER7> Sometimes i wish i hadn't gone to business school :-\

</comment><comment><USER8> That's whats up.</comment>


Hey.com - <AUTHOR> https://hey.com/how-it-works/ <comment><USER2> I hope I get an invite soon, very keen to try it out as I've been moving out of gmail for almost a year now. Very happy with fastmail, but it seems Hey will bring new stuff to the table!

Unfortunately, no contacts/calendar for now.. so probably I wont be able to switch just yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> They seem to have included a lot of the popular GMail plugins by default but also came up with some amazing features too - [https://hey.com/features/](https://hey.com/features/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Also hoping for an invite. Would like a bit more clarity on its security vs. Protonmail, etc., though

<comment><USER4> Looking forward to seeing the results of their external security audits. This page may be of interest to you: [https://hey.com/security/](https://hey.com/security/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who hires french JAVA developers in Shenzhen (China)? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> What an oddly specific question.

Angellist (angel.co) has 21 startups listed in China (from what I can find). Couldn't see any that were hiring for Java at the moment, but might be worth a shot.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does it matter if they are french? I mean, Java is Java, regardless of your native language or nationality.</comment>


Ask HN: What accomplishment are you most proud of? - <AUTHOR> This could be developing a piece of software, creating a website or webapp, writing a book, founding a company, obtaining a credential, or whatever else you're most proud of.<p>Tell us about it! Inquiring minds want to know... =) <comment><USER2> My parents came from a third world country extremely poor. They struggled to ensure that my siblings and I received a good education along with good values. My own family is now in the top 1% of earners in the US, so our family tree went from poor to well-off in one generation.

When my parents come to visit us, I know how proud they are and I'm proud that I didn't squander the opportunity that they worked so hard to give us.

I'm not sure what my kids will do but I intend to instill the same values of education, working harder than anyone else, and having good values into them.

<comment><USER3> Congratulations for your hard work and achievements :)

I presume you know other people with your background that haven't managed to achieve this, do you have any insight into what the differences are?

Innate abilities? specific values? good luck? - I can imagine the general differences, but the specifics are really interesting to me.

<comment><USER2> Emphasis on education, but a lot of very hard work. Intelligence will get you some of the way, but hard work is everything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I managed to tell my dad how good of a father he was to me and how much I appreciated everything he gave me and taught me... one day before he passed away. An honest deposit like this isn't as easy as it sounds.

<comment><USER5> I'm really happy you did. I hadn't had this chance with mine, suddenly died from a stroke on his way to work. I really, really hope that he had the time, in that very fraction of a second, to realize how great he was. And speaking of "things you're proud of", I really wish time stopped for one more fraction of a second that day to give him the chance to look back and feel proud of what he did, one last time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I dropped out of this scene after burying myself in technology/networks/programming for over 10 years. I didn't realize it, but my one-pointedness on programming harmed almost every other aspect of my life. Sure I could tell you how to do amazing things with a computer, but could I successfully get your number? Not a chance in hell.

Instead I picked up a paintbrush, got a night job at a hotel and now I oil paint for 5-6 hours out of my day. I'm exercising, talking to friends, being social. And just like my terrible paintings, my other skills are improving.

I did have a close second though, a little project called Samsara that brought zero-click downloading to iTunes. Once set up, getting new music is as easy as plugging in your iDevice. It is written in Go, binds Last.FM, TPB and Transmission together and runs a daemon. The gist of the program is that it grabs your recommended music, scrapes TPB for it, Downloads it, Shovels it into your iTunes library, and auto-syncs it with your devices over wifi. It's been running for the past few months with no errors, and my music is fresh. Even has an option to constrain the downloads to releases in the past two years. InstaHipster.

I never got around to packaging it up as it was the last real project I was working on. Just trying to find drive to work on it was a pain. If anyone wants the code, send an email to firstname.lastname@example.com , If someone wants to take the project off my hands and polish it up properly and release it. It's all yours.

<comment><USER7> You could link that to shazam somehow to get some real magic. Imagine, you hear a song, tap a button, it records, recognizes, finds, downloads and files it away into a new music playlist ready for listening at your leisure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My Ph.D. dissertation.

Although the sheepskin, title, and bound book are neat, the real prize is the dissertation. After years of struggling with the unknown, I teased out from nature a small secret that no one else in the world knew. Telling that story through the dissertation (and defending it!) was a life-changing experience.

</comment><comment><USER9> Getting my first start up job. I couldn't afford to stay in college. Had zero professional experience in anything related to software. Bought an HTML book and got a photocopy of a JavaScript one, created a demo site on a floppy disk (1998) and showed it at my job interview. Was hired for the lowest rung position, worked my up to Web team lead.

I will always be grateful for my boss for taking a chance on me, which is why all the bullshit, risk-averse "hiring process" discussions always get to me. I try to give people the same break I got, and it's surprising how often it works.

<comment><USER10> I had a similar experience in 2009. I'll never forget that one guy who took a chance on me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Overall: Getting out of my hometown. Almost everyone is born there, lives there, and dies there. I wanted to get out from an early age, and I managed to do it at 17, after dropping out of school to take a job.

Personal: Managing to keep my bipolar in check (more or less) and be happy. I have a girlfriend who means the world to me; few things can match up to that.

Career: Discovering and disclosing the Onity hotel lock vulnerability. The remediation of that bug may have legitimately saved lives; it's certainly saved property.

<comment> tuna-piano Honest question. I just read a bit about the Onity lock vulnerability, and it states that the hack was released to the public before Onity had a chance to fix it. If true, wouldn't that put people and property at risk?

<comment><USER11> Yes, it did put people and property at risk -- and also forced their hand. It cost them an enormous amount of money to fix the bug, and if I had not gone public with it and put substantial pressure on them, it's very likely that we would be in a courtroom right now, as they attempt to keep it secret.

The bug existed for nearly 20 years, affecting over 4 million hotel rooms. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they knew about this vulnerability at least 10 years prior to my disclosure, having seen proof of that (in the form of a diagnostics device for dumping the memory of the locks, produced by TESA, the precursor to Onity). I've never seen proof that it was known before then, but given the nature of the bug, I'd be amazed if this wasn't known when the protocol was designed.

In short, this was the only way that I knew to guarantee that people would be made aware of this bug. Three years later, I couldn't be more confident that I made the right decision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Most proud of? I think the fact that I'm married to a person who loves me and is happy to be with me.

Accomplishments I've enjoyed on hindsight– getting my band on a pretty established local stage, doing standup comedy and getting a great response, giving a lecture to a group of University students about ecommerce marketing (I've never been to University myself, so that felt awesome), having blogposts I've written get to the frontpage of HN and widely shared on Medium, etc.

But mostly– earning the respect of people I respect. It's an ongoing process, of course, but probably the most fulfilling.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is tough for me.

Career wise, I'm currently working on Cachet ([https://cachethq.io](https://cachethq.io)) and am blown away by being able to provide software that thousands of people actively use.

Although it may seem silly, I stopped a small, young lad from being picked on by some bigger lads. They were hitting him and calling him names. It hit home because I remember being in the exact same situation and nobody helped me. I got out of my car, told them to leave him alone and took him home in the car, which I didn't think anything of until afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER14> Leaving a negative, zero-opportunity home environment with about $200 in my pocket and putting myself and my wife through college, university and grad school while working full-time in career progressing employment that's gotten me involved in deeply impactful work.

After years of skirting close to poverty and receiving no help from either of our families, and coming out more educated and wealthy than anybody in my family history, through nothing but determination, hard work and a few sprinkles of luck. I now own a great home, in a fantastic neighborhood, am _almost_ debt free (house and all). But being able to also enjoy life at the same time, to follow some of my passions, travel, enjoy food and art and wine.

I've now found myself in a position where I've done the career, and I'm backing off a bit to relax, learn and enjoy pure simple work for a change.

The life I live in now has exceeded any possible life I ever expected to live as a child. I'm incredibly proud of it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Well back a few years ago I got 1500 people a better pension.

In terms of my day job IT Fixing a 2 mill shortfall for BT and Finding a bug that was costing total jobs 1/2 a mill a week.

</comment><comment><USER16> I am most proud of my kids. They will be positively impacting the world's issues long after my passing. And as a result of being a parent I've come to appreciate that creating a good practice for solving a problem is much more durable than solving the problem, because problems are never "solved" they mutate like viruses and re-appear in a slightly different form which is resistant to the previous solution.

</comment><comment><USER17> I got over my fear of talking to homeless people by making a movie about them: [http://graceofgodmovie.com/](http://graceofgodmovie.com/)

<comment><USER18> Great work! You should add some sort of social sharing widget.

<comment><USER17> Thanks! Yes, I should do that :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am proud of being married to my better half. Over the course of the last 2 years I learned that no job, money or any other success in career can make you happier than the person you love.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm a 15-year-old who wrote a fairly successful (800+ stars on GitHub!) wrapper for Git.

<comment><USER21> That's fantastic!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was working as an accounting intern, making $80 a month in a third-world country. I taught myself how to code, dropped out of college, and make a good 6-figure living.

Before the age of 22, I earned my freedom, and discovered what I truly love in life.

</comment><comment><USER23> That I after (too) many years of trying a lot of different theories, finally found a way to manage my employees without me having to sleep poorly and be unhappy.

I have told several others about the way I run my business now and everyone reponded very positive (7 companies are running using the method) so of course I am turning it into a business at www.timeblock.com

<comment><USER24> Looks really interesting on the surface, but there are few actual details. Guess I have to wait for the mailing list content.

A note: your email address signup form doesn't appear with AdBlock on. I had to open an incognito tab to sign up. ([http://timeblock.com/sign- up/](http://timeblock.com/sign-up/))

Finally, I'm digging the innovation coming out of the Nordic countries. Had the pleasure of studying abroad in Sweden last year and took quite a few trips to Copenhagen.

<comment><USER23> Thanks, I hope it will continue to be interesting when you dig deaper, let me know if you want to know more.

It is strange about the adblock!

If you are ever in Copenhagen, ping me and I'll offer you a cup of coffee!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been fortunate enough to enjoy success in the tech field, but by far the accomplishment that I'm most proud of is that I was able to bring friends with me. This isn't something that I ever would have envisioned starting out that I would be this proud of.

I grew up in a very small town in the US with not a lot of opportunity and lucked into getting hired by an information security firm in a bigger city back when many companies had never heard of firewalls. I had close tech savvy friends from back home that were struggling and was able to convince my employer to hire them.

Since then, they've become very successful in their own right. Yes, they are very smart and have worked hard, but knowing what I do now about the power of networking and getting the right opportunity at the right time, I like to think that how I was able to help them made a huge difference in how their lives turned out.

<comment><USER26> That is really cool, I know some really good people that I hope I can help some day too

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Being married 24 years with two college age kids who appear to be turning out just fine.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm most proud of my compiler for my programming language, it's still in the works, but the fact that it does somewhat work and I made it from scratch makes me happy :)

</comment><comment><USER29> 1) Endurance and the understanding that "this too shall pass" in both good and bad situations.

2) Teaching myself programming (LAMP). Not because it was a major accomplishment, but simply because it taught me everything else can be learnt, from Economics to Philosophy to Arts to Biology to Quantum Mechanics.

</comment><comment> bjelkeman-again Getting over a hundred thousand wells mapped in government and NGO programs in Africa, Asia and South America. And this is only the beginning. Soon to be released as open data sets. [http://akvo.org/blog/over-one-million-surveys- collected-with...](http://akvo.org/blog/over-one-million-surveys-collected- with-akvo-flow/)

</comment><comment><USER30> For all time: That I still stretch myself, even when it's painful.

Right now: How far we have gotten with Realty Africa, a property crowdfunding platform dedicated to Sub-Saharan Africa. The response we have gotten on the ground has taken us completely by surprise and the potential market is massive. (Shameless plug: we are raising the final money for our startup costs at [http://igg.me/at/PCA](http://igg.me/at/PCA))

Software: reverie/CMS. Currently at the end of a rewrite, but I'm fairly pleased with how far it's gotten. Writing a cache manager is a serious puzzle though! ([https://github.com/emil0r/reverie](https://github.com/emil0r/reverie))

Family: My wife. She's amazing :)

</comment><comment><USER31> Making sure my family (better half and three kids) got to do everything they normally did while I was doing my MS program. Big shift from Finance to Engineering and the learning on all fronts constantly, both family power and computing power has been amazing!

</comment><comment><USER32> I taught myself to code by post/mail.

I didn't make the smartest choices when I was young(er), but I turned that around, found a career, ended up co-founding a company and making a cool game ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nethernet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nethernet)) then started a new company to help people figure out wtf they can do with their lives ([https://www.somewhere.com](https://www.somewhere.com)).

Saying that though, the stupid robots I built, the side-projects and the articles in Hack Circus mean just as much.

Of course, pride comes before a fall so, yeah, cheers.... ;)

</comment><comment><USER33> I got in to CMU for my Masters. Mustered up the guts to quit my job and do it full time. Because I wasn't a citizen (or PR) back then, I didn't get any aid and had no savings at all. I got myself five credit cards and paid my fees with that and then managed to do balance transfers between them and maintained a low interest rate (< 4%) and paid it all within 3 years.

I mentioned this as my "hack" in one of my YC applications and the few who reviewed my app (prior to formal application) all said, "oh this is a known trick. it has been used before". Anyways, I am still happy and proud that took the plunge, did my masters and I am better for it.

</comment><comment><USER34> When I was 13 years old, my dad had a heart attack and was admitted in hospital for 2 months. My mom had to accompany him in the hospital and we did not have an earning member in the family during that period. We also didn't have health insurance to cover the hospital expenses.

We owned a shop where me and my younger brother used to help my mom during weekends. With that experience, we ran the shop and took care of the hospital and living expenses. That's one accomplishment I am proud of till this day.

<comment><USER18> I think those are the real accomplishments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I see myself as a a producer and at the same time there's not anything I've produced that I'm very proud of. But at the same time I feel in my future is still my time to shine, so I keep working on improving myself.

With the above in mind, I guess I'm currently most proud of my decision last year to become freelancer. I feel as a freelancer it will be easier for me to reach my goals in producing some great software in the future.

</comment><comment><USER36> Lately the thing I would honestly say I'm "proud" of is my ability to keep a consistent A+ on the Qualsys SSL server test. I know that sounds weird, but the effort is far outside my normal skillset. For things that come relatively easy for me or things that I am motivated to do and work really hard at, I don't ascribe any "pride" to that.

</comment><comment><USER37> Most proud of? Having been truly happy during some moments of my life.

Happiness is the ultimate goal. To achieve it, all areas of your life must be positively aligned. Even if luck might have an important role in some of these "positive alignments", is improbable that luck is taking care of all of them. So, it means that, at least, you must be doing some things really well.

<comment><USER18> That's an accomplishment reserved only for the enlightened ones. Maybe you're onto something :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Made LightPaper, Octohub, and SpyGlass apps [1]; all side projects. Some of these even made to the front page of HN. Also, first one from my family from a third world country to go to college and get a degree (in Computer Science).

[1]: [http://www.ashokgelal.com](http://www.ashokgelal.com)

</comment><comment><USER39> Swam upstream so a few kids had a connection from their Pacific island-nation. Two would be in this 100 — [http://www.articulab.justinecassell.com/projects/jrsummit/in...](http://www.articulab.justinecassell.com/projects/jrsummit/index.html).

</comment><comment><USER40> When my grandfather's caretaker embezzled multiple 6 figures from his estate and his kids mismanaged it...I stepped in, took over, and fixed everything. Knowing how thankful and proud my grandfather was made the feeling of success and accomplishment so much more visceral than anything else I've done.

</comment><comment><USER41> Either being 21 years old with a degree and a company or becoming a proficient musician as a self taught guitarist.

</comment><comment><USER42> One of them is having created a game, submitted to HN, received positive feedback and stars at the repo :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8886897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8886897)

<comment><USER43> wow, is the CPU perfect? I cannot beat it. I keep ending up in a situation where the AI can beat me on its next turn in 2 different ways so I can't block both.

<comment><USER44> Try playing columns 4,2,3,4,6,2,3 - seems to play always the same up to here but then sometimes plays different, but it's trivial to win after this state - the AI seems to "give up"

<comment><USER42> It's not perfect. Yeah, I actually don't know why the AI seems to "give up" randomly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> [http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=7520](http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=7520)

:-)

</comment><comment><USER46> Making a wordpress plugin that got 120k downloads. Someone deploying it as a software service offering. Felt good.

</comment><comment><USER47> linux tool that i wrote without adequate knowledge of file-system and internet connection. Later Receiving FOSS awards and featuring in Linux magazine(Jun-2008 edition) [http://www.giis.co.in/LFY.png](http://www.giis.co.in/LFY.png)

</comment><comment><USER48> The fact that I have failed so many times, but thankfully live in the US, where opportunities are abundant.

</comment><comment><USER49> Living with dignity.</comment>