RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/radioshack-prepares-bankruptcy-filing-1421279360 <comment><USER3> A lot of people think RadioShack should have made the transition to internet sales, but I think that they actually started failing earlier, when they expanded into a non-technical market.

In the 80s and 90s I could go into a Radio Shack and buy resistors, fuses, soldering equipment, breadboards, various controllers and sensors, hard drives, processors: everything I needed to assemble an electronics project, fix a computer, _make_ something.

But in the mid-late 90s they started switching over to a more general consumer model. Bins of parts were replaced by shiny cell-phone display cases. Knowledgeable fat bearded nerds were replaced by skinny college students working a retail job until they got their degree. The last time I went into a RadioShack I just wanted a potentiometer and they literally didn't have any electronics parts.

The tragedy here is that this transition completed at about the same time the maker movement started to emerge a little after the turn of the millennium.

<comment><USER4> What's even more tragic is that Radio Shack realized they needed to get makers back, and when they started expressing a desire to do so a lot of makers were initially enthusiastic.

But I don't think they ever really grokked what makers would want out of a local brick-and-mortar. They never did fix the sorry state of their loose component selection. The parts drawers are still stocked with 50% stereo equipment parts they haven't been able to sell since 1992, 20% automotive fuses they haven't been able to sell since 1995, 15% standard capacitor sizes for ancient stereo equipment, and 15% components a modern maker might actually need. They should have written all that stuff down and then taken a look at adafruit.com to see what components a 21st century maker wants to buy.

Yes, they did expand their selection of microcontrollers and kit projects, but that's all stuff we've long since gotten used to ordering online. It won't drive feet through the door. They needed to be backing that up with the kinds of stuff a DIYer might want to buy on short notice. A 2015 DIYer, not a 1985 one.

<comment><USER5> They'd still go out of business. Not only is that market for components like that small, the profit margins are too. You'd have to stock a very wide selection of items.

<comment><USER6> And there's established mail order dealers with cheap overnight shipping and cavernous warehouses (i.e.: Digikey) that have the volume to keep those margin _very_ thin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nobody seems to have a good answer for what RS should become to avoid shutting down. The most common answer is to go back to its roots and embrace the maker market and stock up on things like 3d printers, breadboards and arduinos. I think this is the wrong idea, since the market is nowhere near large enough to support the vast amounts of stores RS has.

I think if I was the CEO, I would focus on being a boutique shop for neat stuff. Kind of like a brookstone for electronics. They would have google glass, nest, wearables, smart home stuff. They would have things you cant buy at best buy like high end headphones and microphones. Not only that, but it would have knowledgeable staff who could tell me why I should go with the Denon headphones and the Fiio amplifier and skip the sonys. Broadly, alot of the type of stuff you see on kickstarter would feel like their inventory.

Yes, you would have 3d printers and filament in the store also, but the new RS store would not revolve around that- It would be there because it was 'cool'. I would much rather see way less capacitors and fuses and more fuut hammocks and 4th design titanium iphone cases.

But you would also see high end stuff you normally cant buy in best buy because its too expensive to have the inventory floated to all their stores. There is a surprising amount of laptops that are 'too high end' to ever show up in BB and only rarely appear in microsoft stores. That is also the case with audio equipment in spades.

Thats a store I would go to.

I write a bit more about this here : [http://harknesslabs.com/post/108193041064/how-to-save- radio-...](http://harknesslabs.com/post/108193041064/how-to-save-radio-shack)

<comment><USER8> While this is a cool idea for a store, does it really fit with the assets that Radio Shack has? Here's what I see they've got to work with:

\- lots of retail stores in crappy locations. There's no way I'll hear the difference between a Grado and a Sony when the juicer at Orange Julius is echoing down the hallway. It would be perfect for 3d printers, though.

\- Cheap, non-committed workers. I'm not sure it would be worth training everyone there how to use a 3D printer if they only stay there a year. Also, not everyone there would be able to sell hifi; definitely not better than the blue-shirts can.

\- A good supply chain of custom-branded products. This used to be their bread-and-butter, but no one wants Enercell batteries anymore.

\- A brand name that has been diluted. I know Brookstone is great for craptastic stuff, but it would take a lot to re-educate people on the new RS.

<comment><USER7> I think the point is, there current business model of catering to low end clientele is NOT working. They need to reinvent themselves and this is what I feel has the most legs of keeping them alive. The margin for high end goods is much more palatable than selling power strips.

The long and the short of it is, RS needs to radically change everything about themselves and go for broke. Trying to do slow changes while holding onto a legacy business will just leave them in a situation like compusa.

<comment><USER9> Right. So close down the legacy business and start something new. Whether you do so within the existing corporate structure is for the lawyers and investment bankers to decide. Pop quiz: What's Woolworth's these days?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Last time I was at a Radio Shack, I was just starting to learn electronics. I bought parts to build a battery-powered guitar amplifier: LM386 IC, a small loud speaker, a handful of capacitors and resistors, a roll of wire, a project enclosure, a couple of potentiometers, knobs for them, and a switch. Just the sort of stuff one would _expect_ to find at a Radio Shack (though, increasingly, cannot find). The store manager checked me out and made some crack about, "what are you making? Some kind of bomb?"

This was around the time that the city of Boston decided to go completely nutso and assume everything that had a wire sticking out of it was a bomb, find the people who made it, and then destroy their lives for "making a bomb hoax", regardless of what the item actually was. I had a flash of an image in my head of some soccer mom walking by the store in the mall, hearing the "bomb" quip, and calling the cops to send in the SWAT team.

I didn't expect the manager to know that speakers and amplifier chips don't go in a bomb. I mean, he was a manager at a Radio Shack, we're not talking about the cream of the crop here. But I did expect him to have a little tact and not make the sort of stupid jokes that our trigger-happy, security-theater- conscious society has demonstrated a gleeful willingness to destroy lives over.

</comment><comment><USER11> I worked at RadioShack for 2 years in college in 2003 and I can say with out a doubt that the upper management lead the downfall of that company. They abandoned their core customers of electronics hobbyists and turned there employees into salesmen. I got paid $5.50 an hour but was told that was OK because I made commissions from cell phone sales which maybe upped my pay to $6.00 on a good day. No wonder there constantly rated as one of the worst companies to work for... If they would have paid employees better they may have been able to get people that could actually help customers and they might still be around today. Good bye RadioShack, I won't miss you.

<comment><USER12> Funny, I applied to work there around the same time. I was working at a deli at the time, making $7/hr, thinking "man there has to be something better." I thought of how I liked going to Radio Shack when I was younger, and how it might be a good experience to work there.

The day I went to apply, they asked if I'd be OK making commissions. I asked what the base was, and they replied something similar to $5/hr. I asked what commissions came from, the manager said "everything!"

On my way out, one of the employees stopped me and told me they collectively barely made any commissions and to stay where I was. I went in there quite a few times after that and never saw the same people working. I guess they had a lot of turnover.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Having moved to Australia in recent years, I was very happy to see that JayCar, their equivalent to Radio Shack, seemed to be doing quite well. This is judging by what I've seen of the stores in what is considered a fairly backwards part of Australia (Queensland).

The difference seems to be two-fold. First, Jaycar didn't go through an insane expansion (there are only 12 or so locations per state). Second, they've grown "out" from their core market of electronics hobbyist instead of betraying it. Just a few examples: custom car stereos, solar panel accessories, camping/RV electronics, boating electronics, and DJ-stuff like laser projectors. This is all in addition to the arduino and 3D printing stuff that you'd expect. There's a huge amount of cross-over between these markets, which works out great for Jaycar.

There is one additional factor keeping Jaycar healthy that probably shouldn't be underplayed. Due to mining and a less crypto-facist view of unions, Australia has not (yet) completely gutted it's blue-collar market and culture. Jaycar advertises almost exclusively to this "tradie" (as the Australians call it) demographic. Jaycar is marketed as a "manly" thing, not a "nerd" or "tech" thing. In fact, it's even drummed up minor controversy from feminist as being exclusionary with ads focusing on "leaving her to go to your man-cave" and whatnot. This part of Jaycar's success probably can't be replicated stateside. The market of people who have the skills to fix a small electric outboard motor _and_ can still afford one died with the rest of blue-collar culture and jobs.

<comment><USER14> Another thing that probably helped is that Dick Smith Electronics moved out of that space and became Yet Another Consumer Electronics Store.

<comment><USER15> It's almost as if Dick Smith made exactly the same mistake as RS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One of my favorite writers covered his tenure at RadioShack back in the early/mid augts

[http://www.sbnation.com/2014/11/26/7281129/radioshack- eulogy...](http://www.sbnation.com/2014/11/26/7281129/radioshack-eulogy- stories)

It's one of the funniest/most heartbreaking articles I have ever read, but also explains a lot about RadioShack's slow spiraling collapse.

<comment><USER17> This is a wonderful story. A management clusterfudge all the way.

I'm confused by him saying that you don't get commissions until hitting a threshold that he "barely" hit once, and then a paragraph later he talks about someone returning phones that got him a $40 commission (so he now loses that commission).

<comment><USER18> It is actually likely as bad as you'd imagine. Think about how you could rationalize paying minimum wage, but then docking the pay. Give up? Read the comment by `pud in another thread a couple months back:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8665082](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8665082)

The shorter seems to be that they were always on commision, with a default of minimum wage. Should a return occur, the commision would be removed, _even if that dropped them below minimum wage_.

EDIT: Note further in the thread that a Canadian worker always got minimum wage. So it's possible the sleaze varied by region.

<comment><USER19> In countries with working legal systems, minimum wage means what it says, so removing the commission to drop pay below minimum wage levels would be illegal, and likely to be enforced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Let's stop with all the nostalgia for the Radio Shack of old. They haven't been that way for 20 years. Their management has completely misread the market, they abuse their employees, they offer nothing you can't get elsewhere, usually at better prices, and, frankly, they have become like your crazy uncle: prone to doing something odd, smells bad, and is constantly embarrassing the family.

Stick a fork in them, they're done. They won't be missed because there is nothing there to miss.

<comment><USER21> Even at 35, I have a weird feeling like I'm walking into a religious cult or being watched when I'm in these stores. I've avoided going into them since I was young and this has persisted to this day. It has to do with the creepy, overzealous way the employees interact with you and the panopticon-like layout of the stores. I only go to Radio Shack as a last resort and won't miss them.

On the plus side, having lived in California and seen the magic fun that is Fry's, the minor vacuum left behind by RS might leave door open for something better. If not, I suppose I can wait a whole 48 hours for something from Prime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm amazed they lasted this long. There's a Radio Shack two doors down from my office. I go in about 5x/year to buy batteries, USB cables or such stuff. Each time there's a new manager. Or a new clerk. Some are polite; some don't bother -- but nobody has a clue.

The stores seem totally dependent on weird promotions (buy 16 batteries; get 8 free) or copycat cell-phone deals in an era where there's always a specialized AT&T or Verizon store within a two minute walk. Meanwhile, they've deskilled the places to the point that customers can get much better advice from the reviews on Amazon than from a Radio Shack clerk.

<comment><USER23> A new RadioShack store JUST opened around the corner from me a few weeks ago. I assume it was a short term holiday season thing.

<comment><USER22> Typical big-company clumsiness. The store-opening expert didn't get the memo about a possible bankruptcy filing. Or if it did arrive, our go-getter decided that the best way to avoid getting fired was to be right in the middle of a project that couldn't be canceled.

<comment><USER24> I'm assuming that upper management wants things to be "business as usual" until the filing, otherwise the news would leak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Radio Shack cannot make money selling hobbyist things to support their expensive retail locations. We all love that kind of stuff but admit it, that business has gone online to places like Adafruit. Even hardcore electronic component retailers that were in low rent industrial parks, or in my case a guy that operated out of his basement when he could not afford the rent in his industrial park have closed.

For years cell phones and people not smart enough to order cables from Monoprice and the like had powered their business. People like me would go to Radio Shack to buy emergency things like a common transistor, or solder, and also to gobble up their ancient hobbyist stuff on clearance.

There is no model for small electronics stores anymore selling any type of good. Hell even the big box places like Best Buy are under immense pressure from online retailers.

<comment><USER26> I live in Toronto, Canada where there are a bunch of independent stores that sell hobbyist electronics and seem to make a good profit doing so, so the market isn't dead. I like to buy stuff online but there have been plenty of times where I've been stuck needing a sensor, resistor, or things of that sort, and don't want to wait for 2 weeks for it to ship from China. It's a false premise to say that electronic component sales moved online when these isn't much in the way of a flagship brick and mortar location to purchase these goods. RS made a choice to move away from a potentially growing market, a market that they owned and could have expanded, and inevitably pushed their customers online.

Just my 2c, but I'm amazed that they thought they would move in on BestBuy (and FutureShop in Canada) territory and be able to compete.

<comment><USER27> I don't disagree, but there is a scale issue Radio Shack has. As a quick example:

Population of Toronto, Canada: 2.5 million.

From [http://wheretobuy.klab.ca/](http://wheretobuy.klab.ca/) I see seven stores mentioned for electronic components.

Population (not including the large college population which perhaps adds another 33%) of the county where I live: 155,400.

Number of Radio Shack stores at present: 3. (There used to be two more.)

Even assuming the list for Toronto is only half of the relevant stores, Radio Shack would have to close down a lot of stores to resize similarly for the hobbyist market.

<comment><USER28> There was, at their peak, around twenty Radio Shack stores in Toronto. They were one of the few retailers in the 1980s and 1990s that would sell you one of something. Larger distributors were harder to deal with, and were geared towards thousands.

Now there's about a dozen stores that sell components to the hobbyist community and university students that need parts for projects. They have a selection way better than Radio Shack ever did.

It's not how many people live in a town that's the factor: It's how many university students you have. The more universities, the more likely you are to have an electronics savvy population. Perhaps the unusually high concentration where you are is due to that factor.

<comment><USER27> I'll note they're closing one, and of the three, it was the one that still had electronic parts bins. (Admittedly, one of the two others stocks a number of computer parts one might be desperate for, notably replacement power supplies.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I graduated from high school in the 80s. My first computer was a TRS-80 WITH a cassette tape to save my programs to. How RS went from being ubiquitous to a laughing stock is beyond me, but I remember seeing the downfall during the 90s when they started offering really cheap toys (like remote controlled cars).

They almost became embarrassing.

<comment><USER30> While I share your sentiment, in actuality they were likely already a laughing stock in 1985 when this Jobs interview ran, "Radio Shack is totally out of the picture. They have missed the boat. Radio Shack tried to squeeze the computer into their model of retailing, which in my opinion often meant selling second- rate products or low-end products in a surplus-store environment." [http://longform.org/stories/playboy-interview-steve- jobs](http://longform.org/stories/playboy-interview-steve-jobs)

<comment><USER9> I find there's a lot of romantic nostalgia. I accept that there are doubtless examples where Radio Shack stores were hubs for ham radio or electronics activity or whatever. And, certainly, the average skills of Radio Shack employees are a lot lower than they were at one time. But Radio Shack always sold huge quantities of crap (e.g. laughable stereo gear) to people who mostly didn't know any better along with generally overpriced cables etc. at a time when random components weren't necessarily all that easy to find elsewhere.

I remember Radio Shack being useful when I needed an adapter or a cable. But I can't say that I ever particularly loved the place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Radio Shack has a warm place in my childhood: the Radio Shack Battery Club.

As a poor nerdlet in the early 80s, all my electronic projects were built with scavenged parts. Even so, I needed batteries. Batteries were not cheap - <USER2> compared to buying a gallon of milk for the family.

So, I had my parents and siblings sign up with me for the Radio Shack battery club at the two Radio Shacks nearby. These battery cards entitled you to a free battery once a month. My family supported my habit - and between the two stores and our cards - I had a steady supply of batteries. Those batteries powered my devices and my development as an engineer.

The first time I saw Fry's and WeirdStuff in the Bay Area in the early 90s, I think my heart skipped multiple beats. Seeing a DigiKey catalog for the first time had a similar effect.

I haven't stepped in a RS in more than a decade. I am sorry to see them go.

</comment><comment><USER32> Are paywalls ok on HN?

[http://uk.businessinsider.com/r-radioshack-prepares-to- file-...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/r-radioshack-prepares-to-file-for- bankruptcy-wsj-2015-1?r=US)

<comment><USER33> A tip: Try searching the title on Google. They seem to give you some free articles per day when you come through a Google search.

<comment><USER34> I've also had success searching for the exact URL in Google. It usually appears as the first link and you can bypass the paywall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> As a Geezer Geek, this breaks my heart. When I was eight years old, my mom dragged me along to the Tandy Leather Company so my sister could buy some leather for some stupid project. In the corner of that huge store was a section with all kinds of electronic parts. I was fascinated. My mom bought me a crystal radio kit, some books and a CK722 germanium transistor, and later, an Ocean Hopper shortwave receiver (all of which I still have). For another generation, it will be the TRS-80 that was their first love, electronically speaking. Before they lost their way, Radio Shack started a lot of engineers down their career path and it is very sad to see this outcome.

</comment><comment><USER36> Why couldn't they just stay a hobbyist store instead of schlepping cell phones? This stuff is cyclical and we're on the up-cycle now as they are going bankrupt. Instead of having their employees push plans they could have had them grow and share their knowledge of electronics. Sad, this place was near and dear to me for a bit.

<comment><USER37> A couple years ago I needed a capacitor _right now_ and bopped down to the local RS. The components were located in a the back of the store, in a bin they obviously were not proud of having. I found my part and went to the register.

The clerk just waved me off and told me to take the capacitor and leave. He wasn't interested in ringing it up.

Radio Shack is full of rot, from the top to the bottom, and I am surprised they have lasted this long. They will only be missed when you need that twenty cent part _now_ , for two bucks.

<comment><USER38> I don't know how much this is true recently, but RS used to be full of microoptimizing incentives which would encourage this kind of behavior, such as incentives tied to average sales size or percent of sales that included particular categories of items that the company wanted to move.

So, I can see why a small ticket sale that would bring down those kind of metrics for an associate would be against that associate's rational self interest, while letting someone walk out of the store with a capacitor -- even though it might make _store_ metrics look worse after the next inventory, and certainly isn't better for the corporation -- would be considered less harmful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Good riddance. May whatever small void it leaves be filled by a diversity of mom-and-pop electronics stores. There's one such store in my area that seems to do well enough catering to the professional/hobby markets, with a couple locations, and has been around for decades. (Oddly it also has free popcorn.)

<comment><USER40> Agreed, in Santa Cruz there's Santa Cruz Electronics, which has tons of microprocessors/microcontrollers, tons of bare components, higher-level electronics, etc. It's what Radio Shack used to be before it turned into a consumer electronics reseller with outrageous markups and one tiny section tucked away in the back that has maybe 4 resistors and a couple of switches.

I haven't been in SC electonics for a few years, but last time I was there I was like a kid in a candy store.

However, it always sucks to hear people will be losing their jobs. I feel for the Radio Shack employees.

<comment><USER41> I'll have to visit that store next time I'm in SC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I live in Australia, so when I was a kid it wasn't called Radioshack here, but rather Tandy Electronics (same company though, different name). You could by electronic components; resistors, LED's, hobbyist kits, breadboards and all kinds of electric items. Then they started moving out of the space into more consumer focused electronics, eventually you couldn't even buy a a packet of LED's like you once could. Eventually forgoing non-consumer focused electronic components altogether.

Such a shame that a company as iconic as Radioshack is filing for bankruptcy. Would things have been different if they stayed in the electronic component/hobbyist side of things? Who knows. They obviously got out of the components game for a reason. Here in Australia we have Jaycar Electronics which is exactly how I remember Tandy being when I was a kid. Electronic components, educational breadboard/electronic kits, weird gadgets, DIY kits and more. They seem to be doing fairly well and best of all: no televisions or computers in sight.

</comment><comment><USER43> Lack of vision; blinkers on and plow forward. Of all the customer bases out there you would think that most Radio Shack customers would be far more favourable to ordering via the Internet and preferring delivery. I'm a bit surprised they didn't move more towards a RS / Farnell business with the occasional small shop front combined with a warehouse model (a la Argos).

</comment><comment><USER44> This bankruptcy has been long anticipated. It's time.

There was a time when it was hard for hobbyists to buy parts. Even in Silicon Valley. I used to have a commercial account with Hamilton/Avnet just so I could order and pick up at will-call. The alternative was ordering from Allied Radio, with two week delivery and a 5% error rate. Now, anybody can order from Digi-Key, and get delivery tomorrow if you pay for express shipping. There's not even a minimum order.

If you're looking for a business model, consider a hobbyist front end to Digi- Key and Mouser. Digi-Key has about 40 options for a 1/10 watt 100 ohm leaded resistor. This overwhelms many hobbyists. (Do I need flame resistance?) Octopart does some of this, but a social component is needed. Something like Github for hardware, with design files, bills of materials, issue tracking, etc.

<comment><USER45> Sam from Octopart here. Our Common Parts Library is an effort to distill commonly used components for connected device applications, [https://octopart.com/common-parts-library](https://octopart.com/common-parts- library) .

But the list doesn't have common prototyping components like radially leaded resistors (it's almost all SMT parts). I could imagine a "Common Parts Library for Prototyping". I'd love to hear feedback on something like this.

Also, check out our lightweight Bill of Materials Manager, [https://octopart.com/bom-lookup/manage](https://octopart.com/bom- lookup/manage) It has built in collaboration features - it can be collaboratively edited much like Google Docs.

</comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit The day before Christmas I found myself at a Radio Shack looking for jumper wires to go with an Arduino/breadboard kit I bought my daughter for Christmas. (A mix up with my wife's Amazon order left us suddenly without jumpers. Desperate times, desperate measures.) What a sad place. I ended up with some crappy jumpers that cost 2x more than the good ones we wanted from Amazon. The component section of RS is a joke. They used to be my go to in college (early 90s) when I needed components for a project. Now they are just trash. I left there Christmas Eve thankful I had some jumpers but they have now joined Walmart on my list of places I will only go if I am truly desperate and have exhausted all other options.

<comment><USER46> May I ask why is it that Walmart (for you) belongs in the same bin as Radioshack, in terms of the variety of offerings and availability?

Do you prefer Target or some other store for a greater selection or does your household mostly shop at Amazon?

I've heard Walmart was making a shift to smaller, approachable and more centrally located stores and was curious to see if this was the reason why.

<comment><USER47> Walmart makes me feel depressed. Piles of awful, consumeristic shit everywhere. This, plus the fact that it is owned and run by truly terrible (in my opinion) people mean I go there only as an absolute last resort. I try to buy most things at non-chain or smaller chain stores (especially those that are known to treat their employees better) when I can.

<comment><USER48> I prefer not to shop at a place where the employees don't look like they can make ends meet. I'm not sure that is helping or hurting people on the whole, but it makes me feel better.

I wish places which underpaid their staff allowed you to pay a surcharge that would be distributed to the staff (plenty of supermarkets, petsmart, etc. will try to hit you up for small charitable donations -- I'd much rather add a few dollars to my bill to pay the employees better).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I was building an electronics project last year and found it to be very helpful to go to my local RadioShack and just browse the components. Although they didn't have a huge selection and the employees knew nothing about any of it, any selection is greater than the selection anywhere else. For people who don't live in a big city, many don't have access to electronic components offline. You can get stuff on Amazon and SparkFun, with much more selection, but sometimes it's nicer to just browse in person, even if it's tucked away in the back corner.

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm late to the game on this but Radio Shack has one thing the rest of us don't, and that's access to capital. I think they should sell the company to their employees and form a collective with borrowing power in order to fund some of the more compelling technologies that are sorely needed today like rooftop wifi meshnets or burner wimax cell phones that can be used to tether laptops for free. There are so many crowdfunded projects that would benefit from a technology co-op taking the place of institutional investors.

Then go back to their roots as a local store that keeps certain niche products in stock. For example, when I need parts from microchip.com, I should be able to have them sent to my local Radio Shack and pick them up the next day (if they aren't already there). So basically their business model would be to be a local subsidiary of amazon.com that specializes in up and coming technology. The information about who's buying what and what they are building could be more valuable than sales.

I guess to summarize they would be a farmer's market for technology, where people could buy shelf space and showcase their creations, which as far as I can tell doesn't exist in most cities. We came close where I live during the Great Recession when big box stores were closing like crazy and the space was converted to bazaars. Unfortunately there were a lot more nicknacks than crafts because nobody had any money to buy anything. It would have been so awesome to be able to buy things like solar panels or hydroponics garden kits but usually we'd spend our money on a chair or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER51> With the maker movement picking up, I almost feel that RadioShack could have done so much more in the hobbyist electronics market. They could have had Arduino kits and additions, 3D printers, drone parts etc, instead of just the go to store for cables.

I can almost see the RadioShack of the bygone days that hosted electronic clubs which could have had a comeback.

<comment><USER52> They tried to do this, at least over here (North SF bay). The local RS has (had?) Arduino and Propeller kits. At crazy prices, sure, but there have been a couple of "Dammit, it's Sunday and I need to finish this thing by Monday morning" saves for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Last time I was in RadioShack was in the 90's in Washington DC, and I went there for a connector, and there were literally 20 people in line all buying minutes for cell phones, with only one person in the store. I thought this was some sort of hidden camera reality/joke tv show. I just put the item down and left.

<comment><USER54> I remember going to RS stores to buy a 99 cent part and the clerk having to write, in long hand, on a triplicate form, my name and address and the item, before entering the amount on a cash register. I refused to give my info, and he said he could not sell me the part without it, so I said: "OK, my name is John Doe at 123 Main Street". He looked at me quizically and then wrote it down on the form without a word.

For a long time I avoided Radio Shack stores because I did not want to go through this charade. Only when desperate ("I need this connector right now"). The desperate-user scenario is not one for business success, especially when selling 99 cent parts.

<comment><USER17> Radio Shack was infamous for collecting customer information. "No, we can't sell you without this information."

RS will be beloved by business-school types for how many different big mistakes it made.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> How soon until Amazon buys the entire chain in order to get a distribution presence across the country?

<comment><USER56> As far as I know Radioshack doesn't own any of their stores so they're just leasing the retail space. Amazon would be better off opening new retail fronts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Everyone is thinking about the consumer retail service of Radio Shack. But there's a lot of small contractors who basically use them as an outsourced inventory. Phone techs, alarm and AV installers, three out of five times I'm going to see Radio Shack connectors and resistors in their tool kit. I imagine the reason most stores keep those parts is not for amateurs but professionals who don't want to have to wait for UPS and deal with an impatient client.

That must be a business opportunity. If a Radio Shack store near you closes, stock up on F connectors, solder, and the most common resistor sizes then call around to contractors letting them know you can supply parts on demand.

</comment><comment><USER58> I wonder if the proliferation of component types, even for hobbyists, would just be overwhelming for a brick and mortar store. As a kid, I shopped at Radio Shack all the time. I designed things around the parts that I knew they had, but it was still a pretty small selection.

When I got my first Digi-Key catalog (remember when it was about 1/4 inch thick?) I was just astounded by the variety of parts that I had no idea even existed, such as interesting IC's. Jameco and Mouser each had their own spin on what goodies I might like to have.

So I wonder if brick-and-mortar hobbyist electronics parts really still makes sense in this day and age.

</comment><comment><USER59> I know a lot of people here will defend RS for selling phones/plans because "They had to" but it marked the LAST time I set foot in a RS when I went to buy some parts I needed and they tried to sell me a Voyager because "It was better than an iPhone" (Verizon's "iPhone" they released soon after the iPhone released). From that moment on I have just ordered what I wanted online.

That coupled with the fact that they stopped staffing with people who knew anything at all and instead staffed them with people who could sell more phones.

</comment><comment><USER29> RadioShack _could_ make a comeback if the Heathkit resurgence ever comes to fruition: [http://www.heathkit.com/](http://www.heathkit.com/)

They should partner with them!

<comment><USER60> Not going to happen. [https://www.adafruit.com/blog/2014/12/22/update- heathkit-has...](https://www.adafruit.com/blog/2014/12/22/update-heathkit-has- updated-their-facebook-page-heathkit-heathkit/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> It was mentioned by someone here or on Reddit previously that there is a lot of financial bets going on on whether RadioShack survives or not. In many cases in the past those who are betting that they survive have given RadioShack a lifeline in terms of loans and financing in order for them to survive so that the investors win their bets. I'm sure this is still going on still and it is no longer a question of fundamentals for RadioShack and rather a high stakes power game in the financial markets.

</comment><comment><USER62> _Nearly three years of losses and sales at their lowest levels in decades had forced the electronics chain to turn to debt investors for financial lifelines to stay in business. Objections from some of those same lenders prevented the company from closing hundreds of stores it felt it needed to shut down to stay afloat._

Sounds like they want to asset-strip the business and only lent money in order to have more leverage than they would get by purchasing equity on the open market.

</comment><comment><USER63> This kinda sucks because, even though Radio Shack has always sold kinda cheap quality components, there were always there when you needed an adapter or plug or cable immediately.

It seems like there are a lot of good ideas here about what market radio shack can go after, from the 3D maker crowd, to boutique electronics, etc. I think it would take quite a visionary high up in the RS corporation to make that happen, but it would be cool.

</comment><comment><USER64> It's a shame. RS doesn't really have much anymore in the way of electronics components, but they have some parts which cater to the arduino/maker community which helps when in a pinch. I really missed being able to get just about any electronic component when I moved from the southbay to SF. RS is now the only place where I could get the bare essentials in San Francisco.

</comment><comment><USER65> If I were CEO, I'd become the Linux Store to compete with the Apple Stores and the Windows Stores -- there are some of those aren't there? There is a market for main-stream Linux and there's no retail presence.

Going further Radio-Shack has a computer brand, "TRS". Get some low-end white- box laptops, slap Ubuntu on them and hire a few one-eyed-man-in-the-land-of- the-blind Linux "gurus" and have at it. It's the modern analogue of HeathKit but with a more fundamentally useful demographic.

Their real-estate holdings are a match for computer shops - second and third tier retail space with small footprints. Apple has validated the idea that computer shops are viable...it's not just the Apple branding that makes them work, it's also the fact that if you're looking for a computer, you're not in a place with most of its floor space devoted to televisions.

The other big change is that smartphones and tablets have proved that operating systems are not that important to users. A lot of people are fine with an old version of Android rather than something more polished...never mind the Kindle's success...or all the variation between website widgets and app interfaces . People have been exposed to a lot of variation, and have learned adaptation techniques. A computer doesn't need to look like Windows or OSX to keep people from freaking out.

RadioShack has the experience in high-touch sales and the infrastructure to pull it off. All that's needed is the will.

<comment><USER66> You should send the RS board a proposal. Maybe they'll hire you.

<comment><USER65> Doubtful, undoubtedly.

I'm not cut out for schmoozing wealth.

Just for expressing the idea that there may be a space for computer stores.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> The best part about this thread are all the recommendations for websites to replace RadioShack.

</comment><comment><USER68> RadioShack sounds like an incredible opportunity for a blue chip software company wanting to get into hardware with a brick and mortar presence. Thousands of retail locations ready to go, all across the US has to be worth something to somebody.

</comment><comment><USER69> Late to the party, but it may be interesting if Best Buy buys them and turns them all into their Best Buy Mobile stores.

RS already sells a ton of cell phones. Their locations are set up well for this, and the staff already trained to sell them.

</comment><comment><USER70> I wanted to get a Beagle Bone Black over the holidays for some project. Didn't want to wait the 2 days for amazon, I wanted it that same day.

They wanted $100... So I got mine off of amazon for $54. Nuff said.

</comment><comment><USER71> This is very sad. Radio Shack was my toy store as a kid, and bears some of the blame for making me who/what I am today.

</comment><comment><USER72> Urh, anyone think Amazon might buy them? It would be nice for Amazon to have a physical store to demo Fire products.

</comment><comment><USER73> If you live near Seattle, I recommend Vetco on the Eastside. It's what RadioShack should be.

</comment><comment><USER74> What happens to the franchise stores when the parent company goes bankrupt?

<comment><USER75> Not sure in their case. But the Sbarro's around here all turned into generic pizza places, as far as I can tell everything tastes about the same.

<comment><USER76> Huh? Sbarro's still exists...

<comment><USER77> Yea man! It's my favorite pizza place in NYC :)

<comment><USER78> If THAT's your favorite pizza in _NYC_ , of all places, ... well, you need to sample the local wares more. Or you have no idea what "pizza" means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> It's about time - the RadioShack I grew up with died years ago.

</comment><comment><USER80> It would be sad to see my go-to electronics DIY-spot go away.

</comment><comment><USER81> I still miss Heathkit

Radio Shack not so much in the age of the internet.

</comment><comment><USER82> The clearance sales will be fun.

</comment><comment><USER83> time to grab an arduino for like $10 just before the local one closes its doors lmfao

</comment><comment><USER84> farewell old friend

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Apologies about the link to a restricted site. I didn't notice it since I landed on the article via a search.

Out of curiosity, since several comments here complained about the paywall ("paywalls are nsfl"), and an equal number or more on HN run adblockers and/or openly dislike ads in general (the whole "you are the product" meme), how _do_ you think news sites should monetize?

Seems like newspapers still add value in our lives (I know the WSJ does for me), but if they don't find a way to make money, either through paid subscriptions or advertisements, they'll be out of business just as fast as RadioShack.

<comment><USER85> People who use adblock are just entitled. They are manipulating the tragedy of the commons and then absolving themselves of any responsibility.

They'll defend their right to use adblock militantly and then go pirate a game using the same defense. It's a personal moral defense rather than a logical justification.

<comment><USER86> Or, you know, we just don't want to have to deal with bad ads cluttering up our content, or ads that spy on and track us, or ads that start playing sound for no apparent reason, or ads that break our browsers.

Yeah, no, on second thought--it's probably that we're actually pirates. That's a much more obvious answer.

<comment><USER87> This isn't a rebuttal against the tragedy of the commons argument. Commercial fisherman "just don't want to have to deal with" catching less fish, but overfishing is still a problem.

<comment><USER86> If I put a bowl of M&Ms out on my front lawn, and then complain that nobody else refills it from time to time, is that the tragedy of the commons, or me just being a fool?

<comment><USER88> I would gladly fill your bowl with m and ms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Even CEO Can't Figure Out How RadioShack Still In Business

[http://www.theonion.com/articles/even-ceo-cant-figure-out- ho...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/even-ceo-cant-figure-out-how- radioshack-still-in-b,2190/)

</comment><comment><USER85> Can we not link to stories behind the WSJ paywall?

<comment><USER90> Agreed, but for this one you get free access if you are referred from Google:

[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCEQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fradioshack- prepares-bankruptcy- filing-1421279360&ei=nua3VM_kCZb_sATjoILoBA&usg=AFQjCNFopuCPFpIHxRkKjDhAPTnV5PqK1g&bvm=bv.83640239,d.cWc)

<comment><USER91> Doesn't get me in. (UK)</comment></comment></comment>


Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/ <comment><USER2> LISP sympathizer here:

I don't need yet another theoretical exercise in how to do computation in LISP, I need a concrete example of how to load and use getopts LISP code to construct command line programs in CCL (for example with CLON and CCL). Programs written in ANSI Common LISP which behave like every other program found in /usr/bin and /usr/sbin.

What LISP needs is more concrete examples solving everyday problems, like how to prop up a LISP web server? How to run LISP applications from one? How to perform string manipulation? Data extraction? How to connect to an Oracle database? SQLite database? How to package one's finished application into a pkgsrc or an RPM package? And so on, and so forth.

I'm over the concepts, but that doesn't mean I know how to solve everyday problems with the language, especially a programming language significantly different from any other programming language out there.

I spent countless hours trying to figure out how to get the shell program's getopts equivalent in LISP without writing my own getops implementation from scratch. No joy. The learning curve for writing a useful program is steep, and examples would give LISP adoption an enormous boost, like the Practical Common LISP book does (but it only solves one practical task throughout the entire book). Most people using a computer want to solve everyday tasks, so the examples should be task oriented, not to mention that dissecting the finished product is a great way to teach the language and the concepts, as well as doing things the LISP way. The link between UNIX and LISP knowledge is missing.

<comment><USER3> If anything on the BEAM ecosystem interest you I highlight recommend you check out LFE! (=

There are no symbols! you have lots of little processes with lots of connections between them and you change the strengths of the connections and that's how we learn things.

<comment><USER2> I have no idea what you're writing about.

<comment><USER3> [https://github.com/rvirding/lfe](https://github.com/rvirding/lfe)

<comment><USER2> Interesting project.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Vegas - A jQuery Plugin To Add Beautiful Fullscreen Backgrounds To Your Webpages - <AUTHOR> http://vegas.jaysalvat.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> via: [http://functionn.blogspot.com/2012/12/vegas-jquery-plugin- to...](http://functionn.blogspot.com/2012/12/vegas-jquery-plugin-to-add- beautiful.html)

The plugin effects are stunning. You can specify static backgrounds or a series of images to cycle as a slideshow.

The plugin itself is released under the MIT License or GPL.</comment>


Analyse Asia #16: Dim Sum and Startups in Hong Kong with Casey Lau - <AUTHOR> http://analyse.asia/2015/02/07/episode-16-dim-sum-startups-hong-kong-casey-lau/ <comment><AUTHOR> Episode 16 synopsis: With Casey Lau (@casey_lau) from StartupsHK.com in this episode, he share with us the origins of the interesting nascent Hong Kong startup ecosystem and why Hong Kong is now a port of call for prominent investors out there. We discussed the culture, infrastructure & the type of start-ups (financial tech, logistics and ecommerce) that are exciting in the Hong Kong ecosystem. From the top 5 he has picked in 2014 to the hot exits in Hong Kong, we also discuss other notable companies such as 9GAG which are changing the landscape considerably. Casey also helps us to navigate the investors, the co-working spaces, the networking groups and the conferences which form part of the ever vibrant and active Hong Kong startup scene. Finally, we discuss the comparisons between Singapore and Hong Kong and the next port of call where Hong Kong startups will scale to.</comment>


Engelbart and the Dawn of Interactive Computing: 40th Anniversary Celebration - <AUTHOR> http://www.sri.com/work/timeline/engelbart-dawn-interactive-computing-40th-anniversary <comment><AUTHOR> The videos are at [http://www.sri.com/newsroom/videos/content/6815](http://www.sri.com/newsroom/videos/content/6815).</comment>


Glances - an easy CLI overview of your system (CPU, mem, I/O) - <AUTHOR> http://nicolargo.github.com/glances/ <comment><USER2> The app looks really nice visually, a few points though:

except Exception: pass

is generally considered to be a code smell. The problem being that when you're catching all exception information and throwing it away you will never know what went wrong and where. If you're doing a try/except Exception nested inside another except Exception then I would humbly suggest that you really need to think about refactoring and restructuring.

Also, anywhere that you see a repeating pattern, you might be better off wrapping it in a function or method rather than typing it out each time. For example in your __update__ method starting at about line 400 you've got pretty much the same code in two places with just a variable different between the two.

<comment><USER3> Besides upvoting for agreement with all the above (I didn't review the code but certainly all this is worth fixing if present), I'll also say that you probably shouldn't recommend people using `sudo` to install your thing in your README / landing page.

<comment><USER4> What is preferred?

<comment><USER3> Typically you just leave off the sudo and recommend people to just run pip install mything. That's the only thing required, unless you have a Python that has its `site-packages` directory in a place that isn't user writable, for which people who are in this situation are generally aware of the proper solution (which I'll mention in a sec anyhow).

You should essentially never use sudo to install any package, since even _besides_ any security issues, it can clobber things on your system that are necessary for your OS (by say, upgrading a package that your OS ships with).

I happen to not use my system's shipped Python at all, since I'm on OSX, but if you are using it, you want to use `pip install --user mything`, no sudo necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I will definitely try this out! Just from browsing the webpage it looks nice.

The psutil library doesn't use process accounting, does it? Without it, Glances will miss processes whose lifetime is within a single check interval.

As always when this topic comes up, I have to give a recommendation for atop. This LWN article goes into why it is awesome- <https://lwn.net/Articles/387202/> . The logging and interactive examination of historical process-level metrics is the killer feature for me. Here are some screenshots- <http://atoptool.nl/screenshots.php>

</comment><comment><USER6> If you like this, you might also like htop, which is similar but markedly faster at starting up.

<comment><USER7> nmon is another favorite of mine.

Of course, nothing beats tools like Munin. I even put business metrics there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just curious, is Glances the python script taking up 100% CPU and 1 GB of RAM in that screenshot?

<comment><USER9> Doubtful. I have glances running on a server at home updating on the default 1s timer, it uses 5% CPU. I should probably change that to a longer update interval, but that server doesn't do much processing so it's not a big problem.

You can also launch glances.py directly so if it is going to show up on the process list it will be as 'glances.py' and not just 'python'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> First, this is cool! Good job!

Would you run this or would you run htop? I'm not sure when I'd use one over the other.

Maybe someone less dense than I knows more and can tell me what the differences are?

<comment><USER11> htop (and by extension top) is for CPU / memory / load information only.

Normally to get network and disk stats I have to run a combination of dstat, iotop. A simple screenshot comparison: <http://i.imgur.com/eQPuQ.png>

OTOH htop takes up ~2MB per instance, while glances is taking up ~13MB. Glances also doesn't have the ability to sort by columns except by CPU/mem %. You can't kill browse or kill processes from the list either.

<comment><USER12> For anyone who doesn't know, htop actually does a fair bit more. For example, go to a process (arrow keys or "/" to search), then press "l" to show open files (with lsof) or press "s" to show a strace. You can also renice processes and send sigterm or other signals to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not sure how this would work from a UI perspective but it'd be nice if you could add other servers to be monitored. So instead of me having 20+ terminal windows open, ssh'd into each box and running this app, I could run this app from a central server that's showing all of them together.

Again, I have no idea how to present that nicely.

<comment><USER9> If you have 20 servers, it's probably time to move on to a more robust monitoring solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks very nice. I'm a very happy user of iStat Menus for similar monitoring on OS X.

One thing that iStat menus lacks, and I was hoping Glances had (but appears not to) is a "top" like viewer for what is using bandwidth. Both applications only give the overall bandwidth usage. I'll see my bandwidth shoot up hundreds of Kbps out of nowhere and quickly try to determine what's using it through combinations of looking at open programs (maybe they're updating in the background), lsof -i, nettop if I can remember the name, but haven't been particularly keen on any of them. Any recommendations?

<comment><USER5> Nethogs (<http://nethogs.sourceforge.net/>) does what you want, but it's linux-only.

<comment><USER4> Not Mac-able because it depends on procfs.

uch a tease:

The excellent Amit Singh rants about how useful procfs is and how Mac doesn't have it, but then says it's not really needed, and then almost builds it anyway, then gives up due to unrelated hardware problems:

<http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/ancient/procfs/>

(2003)

This case is one of the more blatant demonstrations showing the superiority of The Unix Way of "everything is a file. "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks good. For cpu and memory checks I find htop to be more lightweight and functionality wise is pretty good too. It doesn't show disk stats though, for which something like atop should be used.

</comment><comment><USER16> Glances looks great. Also we love `htop`. <http://htop.sourceforge.net>

</comment><comment><USER17> Pretty sweet. One nitpick: any way of including disk wait?

</comment><comment><USER18> You should apt-add glances-stable instead of glances-dev (the latter doesn't seem to work) on debian/ubuntu.

i.e.

        sudo add-apt-repository ppa:arnaud-hartmann/glances-stable && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install glances

</comment><comment><USER19> Seems to run decently on my Mac 10.8

<comment><USER20> Could you share how you got this to work on your Mac?

<comment><USER21> Another way to install this on OSX if you use Homebrew package manager.

1\. Install Homebrew if you don't have it already

      http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/

2\. Install the brew-pip package

      brew install brew-pip

3\. Add Homebrew's pip path to your PYTHONPATH environment variable (you probably should add this to some sort of shell initialization file like ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc)

      export PYTHONPATH=$(brew --prefix)/lib/python2.7/site-packages

3\. Now install any pip pacakges with Homebrew!

      brew pip Glances

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice! I like how it shows all the vital information in very little space. I've been using nmon for a while, which has some interesting features like graphing, but doesn't utilize all the screen space very well.

</comment><comment><USER23> Seems cool but I could not get this to install on Ubuntu 8 (old I know) ... even trying to do a wget gave me this error

"ERROR: Certificate verification error for github.com: unable to get local issuer certificate"

<comment><USER24> Use wget with --no-check-certificate or change https to http

<comment><USER25> This seems like such a bad idea... certs exist in repos for very good reasons.

<comment><USER24> Sure, but if you're simply downloading a shell script (whose source code you can see) from github (a site you can trust), I don't see the issue.

<comment><USER26> If it can't validate the cert, it could be the sign of a MITM attack. Likely? No, but I wouldn't take content with cert issues and run it as root. At least not without validating it in some other way.

<comment><USER24> You're right. It very well could be a MITM attack. But I guess you could see the source code for yourself after you've downloaded it right?

Anyhow, I agree that using --no-check-certificate is usually a bad idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Runs well on my FreeBSD 9.0 box. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER28> dstat(1) is another of this ilk, also Python. I prefer it because new results are printed under old, giving history in scrollback. If on a machine where these aren't available, `vmstat 1' is the standard historical fallback.

</comment><comment><USER29> You could create a nice desktop widget out of this by piping it to Conky.

<comment><USER30> Or you could just use conky

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is it on yum for centos?

I was playing with htop but it's not really any better than top.

<comment><USER5> Try atop. There's an overview at <https://lwn.net/Articles/387202/>

It's available through the EPEL yum repository [http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/repoview/atop....](http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/repoview/atop.html)

<comment><USER32> Not in its documentation, but atop requires root. If you're on a VM somewhere, you might be happier with htop or glances.

<comment><USER5> You can run atop without root, it just won't use process accounting so you may miss some processes (but so would htop and glances).

I'm not sure what being on a VM has to do with anything.

It would be nice if there was a way (e.g. a command-line argument or atoprc setting) to disable the ability to kill processes from within atop; then it would be safer for an admin to make it executable as root by regular users.

<comment><USER32> Apologies, I based my comment on atop's README:

        For interactive use it is sufficient to install ATOP with the command (as root):

            make install

I wouldn't have guessed the reference to root was optional! Thanks for the pointer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Just a thought - ethtool and miitool provide link status for a network interface. I didn't study the code to see how this gets the network speed, but if it isn't using something like ethtool/miitool, you might want to.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is extremely nice. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER35> Using it now, thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER36> Wow... Kudos on a great job!

</comment><comment><USER37> You'll probably want to change the name. HP/UX has similar performance monitoring tools named Glance and GlancePlus that are unlocked via license keys. These tools have been around for at least 15 years, they are installed with the base OS (and thus are well known within the community), and perform the same functions as your software (performance monitoring).

<comment><USER38> Also it looks like the font the interface uses is a bit rounded. I'd recommend something blockier to prevent litigation.

<comment><USER39> explain?

<comment><USER9> Threadshitting about Apple.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lego Porsche Crashtest in Slow-Motion - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCPWPj4JHqg <comment><USER2> Fun! I'm not sure how the scaling works, but if this was a 1:8 model moving at 46kmh (29mph) isn't that equivalent to a crash at 368kmh (230mph)? At which point the damage seems pretty reasonable

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, c't said that the "realistic" scaling wouldn't be fun, so they did this speed.

Lego was pretty humorless, though. They demanded that c't never publishes anything about this without calling it a "fun test".

Actually, the bricks themselves held up very well. A few were actually damaged, but the vast majority simply disconnected and survived just fine.

<comment><USER2> Lego seems so weirdly disconnected at times, I understand where they're coming from, but this made want to buy the Lego Porsche.</comment></comment></comment>


BlackBerry PlayBook takes the lead to Apple iPad? - <AUTHOR> http://www.ihelplounge.com/blackberry-playbook-takes-the-lead-to-apple-ipad/

<comment><USER2> Flawed article. Misleading Headline.

How many of those Playbooks were returned after christmas and swapped for a Kindle Fire that actually works?

"PlayBook managed 160,000 units. All iPad models combined sold 203.000 units."</comment>


Critique my project: Reviewing Restaurants by Dish - <AUTHOR> http://gustatio.us

<comment><USER2> I think your well on your way to a workable prototype.

Some things I would add:

Landing Page (<http://gustatio.us/>):

1\. Needs some kind of call to action (what do I do when I land here)

2\. Add signup/Login Info to homepage.

3\. Maybe add some of the latest reviews to your home page.

4\. Site Search

Location Pages:

1\. Address / Contact Info?

Reviews:

1\. List the username and time-stamp when/who made review.

Also, try cleaning up the URLs to use meaningful permalinks. EX: /categories/taco

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure I like that it makes me pick where I am from a list with one element. I'm also not sure that I like that it makes me pick where I am before it tells me why. That being said, it does add an element of suspense. Otherwise, it's kind of a neat idea. I'd use that in NYC if it had more content. At the same time, I don't know if I'd ever write a review for it. Maybe if you made giving feedback easier to do - like just allowing the upvoting of particular restaurants or something.

</comment><comment><USER4> This tab based layout for the selection of dishes will break, when you add more of them. Simply not enough space.

Needs a search function.

Needs a google map to get directions/distances. "Show me best burger place from my current position"

If I select "burgers" and then in the list of burger places select on I don't want to have to select the "burger" again in the restaurant view. Program should remember that it's in dishes mode now. The whole UX has something nasty "circular", where I have the feeling that I must provide the same information several times to get results.

<comment><AUTHOR> Should I make it so the reviews of a particular restaurant with respect to a particular dish are available directly from the page that ranks restaurants by that food then?

<comment><USER4> Yes, if I select "Burgers" I get restaurants that have reviews for their Burgers. If I select the restaurant I see these reviews, instead of having to select "Burgers" again. Maybe the "Burgers" tab should be highlighted then, so I know where I am.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Real talk this is the illest website to hit the net since f-book</comment>


GDB tricks - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/entry/8_gdb_tricks_you_should <comment><USER2> These are all useful, and I would even say fundamental, commands. But, as such, these are also very basic commands, not tricks. If you're looking for something more advanced, you'll be disappointed.

I strongly suggest to anyone using gdb to just read the manual [0]. Or at least skim it quickly and find a dozen of such useful "tricks" in as many minutes. The time gained in debugging later is well worth knowing and mastering your tools.

Here's a quick summary of the article, most of this stuff is covered in the first few chapters of the manual :

1\. conditional breakpoints, yes, they exist

2\. execute commands each time a breakpoint is hit, yes, that's possible

3\. pass commands to the program directly from gdb's command line

4\. define source directories

5\. debug macros with the right compile options

6\. you can use the results of commands, and even define variables !

7\. you can access cpu registers

8\. you can even examine memory

[0] [http://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb.pdf.gz](http://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb.pdf.gz) : it looks big but a lot of it is annexes at the end, or how to extend GDB with your own scripts, which can be interesting but can easily be skipped in the beginning. The important chapters to begin with would be :

\- Getting in and out of gdb

\- gdb commands

\- Running programs under gdb

\- Stopping and continuing <\-- breakpoints 101, learn about conditional breakpoints (you can also set the conditions after setting the breakpoint), hardware breakpoints on data (called watchpoints in gdb), how to skip quickly (to end of function|a whole file|...), etc.

\- Examining the stack

\- Examining source files

\- Examining data <\-- very important, discover the joy of artifical arrays, casting with @ or {type}, configuring the display etc.

\- Altering execution

<comment><USER3> I found constructing small problems and solving them with GDB when _not under pressure_ greatly expanded my working knowledge. Trying to learn GDB while attempting to solve a time critical production bug is not possible for me.

<comment><USER4> Have you got any of those problems written down or any pointers for creating them? That sounds like fantastic material for a tutorial.

<comment><USER3> on mobile ... play with a running program like wget, step through nginx request, debug a python script. wget is by far the richest playground. setup a site on local host for wget to spider, modify bandwidth, wait time and kinds of links to follow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > By Ksplice Post Importer on Jan 24, 2011

Heh. When interning at Ksplice/Oracle in 2011, I was tasked to import all of the blog posts from the old Ksplice Wordpress blog into Oracle's system. By hand, because they didn't want to turn on the Apache Roller API, or something.

I couldn't set a custom author for each post, so instead I changed my name to "Importer, Ksplice Post".

<comment><USER6> I would have left my internship if I was tasked with that.

<comment><USER7> Bad engineers are only effective when given tasks that are interesting to them. Good engineers are those who are equally effective when given tasks that aren't so exciting. If you're at the intern level and you're already picking out which tasks are worthy of you and which tasks are beneath you, you may want to think about a different line of work.

<comment><USER8> While not disagreeing entirely with the core of your argument, an internship should be about learning rather than handing off the work no one else wants to touch. Is is unreasonable to expect, in a position which is reasonably considered a part of your education, that mentorship, controlled exposure to production systems, and legitimate work will be provided?

An internship is not some magical excuse to hire someone likely overqualified to do extremely tangential work for low pay, its a partnership between the intern and the company to perform work that is useful for both the intern and the company.

Its not about being a good or bad engineer, its about the work being relevant. Tasking an apprentice welder to change the oil in the fleet of company cars would be more akin to the scenario described: somewhat related but utterly useless beyond a piece of paper saying they did an internship at X.

<comment><USER9> Knowing lwf, I suspect this took a day or two out of the whole internship...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would add the skip command to register a function or file as something you don't want the step command to go into in the future. Really handy for all those trivial operator*s you get in C++ smart pointers and such.

</comment><comment><USER11> My favourite one:

        attach to the process in question using gdb, and run:
            p dup2(open("/dev/null", 0), 1)
            p dup2(open("/dev/null", 0), 2)
            detach
            quit

From: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/593724/redirect- stderr-s...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/593724/redirect-stderr- stdout-of-a-process-after-its-been-started-using-command-lin)

<comment><USER12> reattach without gdb [http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/4034/how-can-i- disow...](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/4034/how-can-i-disown-a- running-process-and-associate-it-to-a-new-screen-shell)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Oracle blogs is experiencing technical difficulty. We are aware of the issue and are working as quick as possible to correct the issue. Please try again in a few moments.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."

sounds like a perfect time to whip out that debugger Oracle, or upgrade to faster DB engine?

</comment><comment><USER14> This lack the best option: ctrl-x a

Don't bother having a external GUI, just use the built-in Ncruses one.

<comment><USER15> The QtCreator debugger is actually pretty decent, and I prefer it to gdb -tui and cgdb. The debugger in the early-access version of CLion looks promising, but it lacks essential features like a disassembly view and a memory view, and sadly they aren't mentioned on the current 1.0 roadmap.

Emacs's gdb-mi mode has the potential to be the best out there. Unfortunately it has some critical weaknesses in its current form. The biggest is that it uses the awful speedbar extension for its watch window. And gdb-mode's local variables window is useless as it won't allow you to inspect any aggregate types like structs and arrays, so you're forced to use the aforementioned awful speedbar-based watch window just to inspect local variables. I'm hoping to fix this or rewrite it entirely when I have time.

<comment><USER16> Rocky Bernstein's GUD rewrite may be of interest: [https://github.com/rocky/emacs-dbgr](https://github.com/rocky/emacs-dbgr)

I don't think it has a watch window yet, or a disassembly or memory view. It has a cleaner architecture than the original GUD though, which might make it more pleasant to do major development on. It supports more backend debuggers, multiple concurrent sessions and attaching to a debugger session in an existing Comint buffer (presumably that means it supports attaching to existing processes as well; don't know if the original GUD gdb mode does that).

It does have the nifty idea of a minor-mode that is activated in source buffers that makes the buffer read-only and maps debugger commands to single keystrokes, eg. n for next, s for step, etc. ('Insert' toggles it off in case you actually want to do some editing).

The gdb support seems currently a bit basic. For example if you highlight an expression and press 'e' it sends "eval <selection>" to gdb when of course it should be "print". (It sounds like the main dev effort has been on the Ruby debugger so far). I get the feeling it might just need a little TLC to make it great.

For now, I agree the speedbar, and the experience of a watch window in it, is awful. Having seen how powerful gdb's print command is (doing very well with aggregate types, and now with the latest gdb you can switch on some Python- based pretty printing for it as well), as a temporary personal init-file hack I brought the single-key mode to the original GUD making sure to include 'p' to 'print' and capital 'P' to 'print*' the currently highlighted text, or the current word if nothing is highlighted. If the gdb buffer isn't visible, it prints to the minibuffer, else if the gdb buffer is visible, it goes there, and then I can move the cursor around and use seperate Emacs folding commands to collapse and expand the braces. It's still a bit raw but I'm so pleased with it that I already don't miss Visual Studio (the supposed gold standard for user-friendly debugging, yet even in the latest version I find it distressingly weak at inspecting common STL types).

I might try and contribute to Rocky's mode myself when I have the time.

<comment><USER15> Thanks, I didn't know about the GUD rewrite.

After I wrote my post above, I started work on a GDB mode from scratch. So far, I have the process management and a PEG-based parser (peg.el is great) for MI output working. I'm not sure if you've looked at gdb-mi.el's code, but it was written by a GSoC student and does vile shit like munging MI output with regular expressions so it can be fed to json.el and parsed as valid JSON. In similar lazy fashion, it uses GUD just for process management. I don't feel there's anything worth salvaging or building on in there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The one feature that has been present in almost all the other debuggers I've used, and is apparently missing from GDB, is a standard hexdump - addresses, byte values, and ASCII. It's possible to emulate this with a bunch of extra steps, but the omission of such a simple feature is surprising. All the times I've had to use GDB the feeling I get from it is "makes very difficult things easier, but makes very easy things more difficult."

<comment><USER18> It requires a little getting used to, but quite powerful:

[http://www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/gdb/gdb_56.html](http://www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/gdb/gdb_56.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Seems like here's the right time and place to ask. How do I comfortably inspect variables of types like std::vector<std::vector<boost::optional<string>>> with gdb ?

<comment><USER20> GDB 7.0 and up can be expanded with Python pretty printers to do exactly this. See here: [https://sourceware.org/gdb/wiki/STLSupport](https://sourceware.org/gdb/wiki/STLSupport)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Isn't lldb better option now? Commands are more structured.

FWIW, gdb on OSX is a pain to setup, and attaching processes is broken.

<comment><USER10> On osx, perhaps. On Linux it's still a little rough. Or was last time I tried to use it. That said, I do look forward to using it more. But most importantly, I look forward to the tooling that can be built around it, since it's much easier to treat it as a library than gdb.

<comment><USER22> I heard they recently bit the bullet and implemented GDB/MI so lldb can be used by all mainstream IDEs. This doesn't stop lldb-specific targets in IDEs, but it does make them less likely is my guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Buried lede: Oracle uses GDB.

<comment><USER5> This blog post was written 6 months before Ksplice had anything to do with Oracle.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are a large proportion of legit posts being marked [dead]? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I had the same thing happen twice earlier today. I hit a huge milestone on a product I launched on HackerNews about two months ago, spent a few hours writing a blog post about it and lessons learned, and posted it on HackerNews around 11am EST.

Within 50 minutes it had 17 points and had climbed up to about #13 on the front page when all of the sudden it disappeared [1]. I signed out of my HN account and checked the comments link and sure enough the page was blank, indicating that it had been killed.

I was talking to a friend on GChat at the same time this was going on. He reposted it, thinking that it was killed because of an algorithmic fluke (which was probably true) [2]. The new post gained 9 points in 10 minutes and then was killed as well.

The only thing I can think of is that because that friend upvoted the original post (and he's upvoted some of my previous posts), combined with how quickly it shot up the front page, somehow caused it to be flagged and automatically killed.

I'd still love to repost it both to share my product's milestone and to get feedback from the community, but I'm afraid it will be killed again. Any recommendations?

I'm all for stopping spam and voting rings, but it shouldn't be at the expense of legitimate posts.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3788402>

[2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3788806>

Edited to add: I noticed a lot of the new posts around the same time had several points within a few minutes of being posted. Almost none had 1 point, which I thought was odd. I think someone might have written a script to upvote articles from multiple fake accounts, thereby causing HackerNews's voting-ring algorithm to mistakenly identify the posts as spam.

<comment><USER3> Wow, what a waste. That's a really good post and it is a pity that it became the subject of this nastiness. Maybe you could petition PG for a re-run? I'm sure lots of people would like to read what you wrote.

(If you're interested and can't find the link, the article is here: <http://www.leandomainsearch.com/2000> ).

<comment><USER4> I realize its not the best thing to happen to HN but do we really think its fair/appropriate/considerate to _"petition"_ pg every time someone's submission is flummoxed?

<comment><USER5> > _do we really think its fair/appropriate/considerate to "petition" pg every > time someone's submission is flummoxed_ //

As it appears this is the only way to appeal against what appears to be a bad algorithmic story rejection then IMO yes this is fair and appropriate.

If there were moderators or a user moderation process then these sorts of issues would get picked up there.

Of course PG is perfectly within his rights to ignore any such submission, depends on the purpose of the site really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think we're not being let in on a silent war happening here. It seems bogus points are being assigned to submissions and they are then being killed. It started several hours ago.

See first hints here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3788069>

And someone else noticed: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3788740>

<comment><USER7> This is most likely what's happening. I submitted an interesting book review. The kind that would get routinely ignored on HN. It immediately got 8 points. Very odd. I expect it to die any time now.

<comment><USER6> I've rarely had submissions killed. But I was surprised when mine got ten points within moments of posting it. That made me suspicious and since then it's the likely reason for submissions being killed: Someone is giving everything bogus points.

<comment><USER8> You guys are more on the ball than I am. When my post got instant upvotes I thought, "How pleasant that so many people are interested in dataflow computation".

Probably HN's software is detecting the suspicious voting and killing the posts.

<comment><USER3> I've seen the same thing happen on this article that I wrote last friday:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3775365>

It went up like a rocket and disappeared just as fast. I didn't submit it so I have no clue whether or not the submitter gamed the system but it sure looked weird.

Given the subject of this thread that's actually an on-topic link :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is- or has been- something very strange going on lately. At the height of the GeekList mini-controversy last week the HN thread discussing it[1], which was in third place on the front page, was flagged and killed. The second discussion that was created[2] was also killed. Then I posted a blog entry[3] which also got to the front page, then was also flagged and killed. At that point I just gave up, because what can you do? It seems like the flagging mechanism is far too powerful- just a few reports and the entry gets shunted back seven pages. A few more and it's gone entirely.

It's worrying for two reasons: one, that original Geeklist discussion had some great points being made, and a lot of users were obviously engaging with it before a minority decided to dispose of it. Two, there's a clear minority on here that would like to see discussions about sexism in tech removed from HN.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3739913>

[2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3740378>

[3] [http://blog.untogether.co.uk/post/19740556298/why-are- posts-...](http://blog.untogether.co.uk/post/19740556298/why-are-posts-about- the-geeklist-controversy-being)

<comment><USER10> If you think about it, the relationship of the GeekList incident to HN was pure coincidence. Some company had a video with a scantily clad girl in it. That's the content of that news item. Would you have considered it related to HN if the company would have been making beer, or hovers, or cars, or whatever? The only assumed relationship was that the company carried the word "geek" in it's name. It's 2012, so I wouldn't even assume that every HN reader is automatically a geek anymore - in fact, does geek even still have much of a meaning?

But anyway, the point is: that story really was not HN material at all. The policies for HN clearly state to refrain from political discussions.

<comment><USER9> _Would you have considered it related to HN if the company would have been making beer, or hovers, or cars, or whatever?_

Of course not. But it wasn't about any of those things, it was about a tech startup where "all bad-ass code monkeys around the globe can communicate, brag, build their street cred and get found". It's a site both made and used by exactly the type of people that make up the HN audience. How could it _not_ be relevant?

And I'm confused by your comment about political discussions- the GeekList discussion certainly wasn't political.

<comment><USER10> Don't blame me or others for what one company does. That is just ridiculous. Even if they claim they represent "us". They don't represent me, so I felt entitled to flag their story. It certainly doesn't provide any statistics on the sexism of geeks. It is just a bad anecdote (a company claiming to cater to geeks behaves in a sexist way -> all geeks must be sexist).

<comment><USER9> Why on earth do you think I am blaming you? I'm not. I'm not suggesting that their actions represent the actions of "geeks", either. All I am saying is that GeekList is a company made by techies and used by techies- and article about them might be of interest to techies. I don't think that's a giant leap in thinking. Aside from anything else it was an instructive tale on how (not) to deal with customer complaints.

<comment><USER10> Fair enough. Perhaps that article only had the bad luck to be washed in with a whole wave of sexism discussions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems to go beyond individuals killing story. A few hours ago ALL stories were killed...

This is a screenshot of the /newest (page 2 now) that shows the gap in submissions: <http://i.imgur.com/hLkwa.png>

</comment><comment><USER12> <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=michaelkscott>

Notice his karma is lower than his highest ranked post right now. In a now deleted post he claims he lost 900+ karma overnight.

Be warned guys. If you post here the chances of you getting hellbanned are non-zero.

EDIT: And if anything like that happens on a mass-scale and PG doesn't have a transaction rollback in the wings...

<comment><USER13> PG can't roll back, because he isn't using a database backend.

As for being hellbanned, well I have 3 after my name for a reason.

<comment><USER12> >PG can't roll back, because he isn't using a database backend.

I was afraid of that...

May I ask why? Too much resource usage? Arc doesn't have a DB API?

<comment><USER14> Via email, I asked PG about this 7 years ago.

me: "I've read in your essays that you (and yahoo) chose to store all your information in files rather than a database. I am curious if you would make the same decision now that excellent oss databases are available (mysql, postgresql, etc)."

PG: "I'd do the same thing. It was a huge win to use alists (a lisp construct) and just write them to files. Then if anything went wrong, or data formats changed, I could just munge the raw files. Nothing was wired in."

<comment><USER12> Thank you for answering. At the same time however, I'm not really sure what to think about that. On the one hand future proof is a massive win. On the other no rollbacks seems like a risky way to operate. I hope he keeps regular backups of the data files.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Some people just submit a lot of posts.

Not pointing fingers, but here's one:

(<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=daegloe>)

30 posts in less than 3 hours.

<comment><USER6> Wow. Maybe he needs a blog or linkblog. I think one day I did 5 and I felt bad but I thought all were germane to hacker interests. Generally I am not submitting everyday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I had a similar thing happening to a submission I made the other day. It quickly climbed up the ranks, then it dropped to 27 then it vanished.

However, about 20 minutes later it got re-instated and spent most of the afternoon on the homepage. No idea what went on.

</comment><comment><USER6> What worries me now is this. Recently some people showed how points could be assigned to posts by clicking on a link. Now I wonder if maybe some of us have been somehow infected and are somehow contributing these points without knowing? Is that even possible?

<comment><USER17> Do you mean a XSRF-style attack on upvotes? Could be, but I can't imagine why...

<comment><USER4> You can't imagine why Eve would want to trick Alice and Bob into upvoting one of her submissions she had an interest in?

Or you can not imagine why Eve would want to trick Alice and Bob into upvoting other submissions so that they got killed and her submission received more attention?

<comment><USER17> I can't imagine how it would be worthwhile to go to that much technical effort for the sake of ranking on HN.

<comment><USER4> Really? Think about the exposure a fledgling starup can get from being on page 1 for an hour or two. I think a post from malda said HNed was the new /.ed...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now I'm beginning to think that perhaps some accounts here might have been compromised:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3789224>

Those who run HN might want to check out all those fake poll submissions today for likely suspects.

</comment><comment><USER18> I read with showdead on, so I always see the comments from the hellbanned.

If I think the comment is worthwhile, I upvote it anyway. I don't know if it does any good, or if it maybe eventually leads to them being unbanned, but I try to help out if they're contributing.

</comment><comment><USER6> OK, look at this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3788970>

That's like the tenth frikkin poll that's shown up here today. Are individual accounts hacked too?

</comment><comment><USER6> And now we get _another_ poll submission:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3789065>

Something is happening here and it's very bad.

</comment><comment><USER6> I thought things were calming down. As of 2:08PM EDST, I'm seeing almost every submission on New immediately get points again.

</comment><comment><USER19> They will be resurrected Monday coming.

</comment><comment><USER20> I submitted this NYT article, "Does the iPad Have One Button Too Many?" <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3788937>

It got five votes in 3 minutes -- I know HN'ers love Apple talk, but that's a little fast. And the submission is not in the top 100 of submissions. It could also be that I'm just autobanned for some reason.

edit __: FWIW, about half an hour ago, the submission was revived. Thanks(?)

<comment><USER21> It sounds like people are using bots to upvote other peoples' stories so that they get autokilled, thus making it more likely that their own stories reach the front page.

<comment><USER12> That's...brilliant. Sort of reminds me of my concern about bots artificially inflating google rankings for competitors to get them banned. (Which apparently turned out to be unwarranted.)

EDIT: By "brilliant" I mean brilliant in that twisted security breaker kind of thinking that slightly creeps most people out.

EDIT2: As the post below points out, in retrospect it's pretty weak. But then, most things of this nature seem pretty weak in retrospect. In my opinion the fact that it's so weak is the whole beauty of it. It's a simple oversight that wasn't obvious until pointed out.

Regardless the perpetrator is an asshat.

<comment><USER21> Meh, it's weak at best. Because HN follows zipf's law, you can fix 85% of problem just by making it more difficult to flag submissions by the top 250 or so users.

Plus it's just annoying. The yc partners are supposed to be reading applications this week, and now they have to deal with this crap.

<comment><USER22> Interesting. There was a post about different data analyzed towards Benford's law which caught my attention - about a year ago I think. Would you mind elaborating what you mean by 85% of the problem can be fixed in relations to zipf's law (I thought I was aware of the law, but perhabs I'm missing some intuition since I don't quite get your point?).

<comment><USER21> The #1 HN user has 10x as much karma as the #10 user. The #10 user has 10x more karma than the 100th user. The #100 user has 10x more than the 1000th, etc. Essentially the vast majority of highly upvoted submissions come from a tiny group of already trusted people, so by fixing the problem for just 1% of users you are actually fixing the problem for ~85% of content. It's almost impossible for a bot to make it into this group, and if they do then it's trivially easy to ban them.

<comment><USER23> Your fix is self perpetuating in a bad way. If only the top 100 users can get on the front page, only the top 100 users are going to get upvotes. It's impossible for real people to make it into this group.

<comment><USER21> Yeah it definitely wouldn't be good if that were the only thing done, but as one of several things it would make a lot of sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It appears that duplicate submissions are getting through as well.

</comment><comment><USER25> Maybe the algorithm was modified to give some initial karma based on the users past submissions and this is running into the spam filter settings?

</comment><comment><USER26> Wake me up when I can downvote. Until then this discussion is moot.

</comment><comment><USER27> I lost 4 karma points off a dead post.</comment>


Give me examples of C++ work I can do to land me a junior C++ position - <AUTHOR>

Give me examples of C++ work I can do to land me a junior C++ position. Please. :-( <comment><USER2> If you are just trying to get a junior or intern position in a c++ environment, then a basic understanding of c++ oo principles should suffice. You might want to look at my favorite c/c++ interviewing slide show: [http://www.slideshare.net/olvemaudal/deep-c](http://www.slideshare.net/olvemaudal/deep-c)

Did you know most of these things before watching the slide show? Great you are ready to work! Did you need to look a few things up but got excited about what you were learning? Great you are ready to work! Did you think this was stupid and that you already know enough, why should you bother looking these things up? Ut oh, you are not ready to work in this business.

That being said, it seems like you have an underlying concern about getting into a job at all. Have you applied to some junior c++ positions and been rejected? Are you living in an area where there are few positions or the competition is very high? Giving us a bit more information about your situation will help us to know how to help you.

</comment><comment><USER3> As I have also had trouble in this field, although mine is more concerned to game programming, what comes to mind is fundamentals, like what trcollinson linked. Some of the most important things to know about any programming position is the language in question. This seems simple in theory, but much of what programmers need is fundamentals such as algorithms and language semantics. When I first went for an interview for a game programming I was asked a question about how to find if a point is in a triangle (find the area of the original triangle and the area of the triangles created by the points of the triangle and the point you are looking for, if they are equal than the point lies within the triangle). I could not answer this question at the time but some of what was the problem was not knowing the fundamentals of c++ and not just math.

If you are going for a junior position and it's dealing with information based programming then dealing with string literals is very important. Many companies, namely google and micorsoft, love asking questions dealing with problems with string.

If I had to lay out the steps to getting the job, trcollinson's link is very good, I would then after knowing not just the slides but the importance behind the ideas presented I would then learn some fundamental algorithms in dealing with arrays, string literals, sorting, etc. All of which can be found at wikipedia: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_algorithms](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_algorithms)

Also equally important is a good cover letter and resume so here is a link to a story posted by peteretep on how to write these: [http://www.slideshare.net/perlcareers/how-to-write-a- develop...](http://www.slideshare.net/perlcareers/how-to-write-a-developer- cvrsum-that-will-get-you-hired)

</comment><comment><USER4> Hey there,

Just go through a good programming interview questions book and solve everything using the language of choice... in your case it would be C++11.

In case you need some help, I'm in a similar position myself, I could send you a programming question to your e-mail once a week or so, so we can then discuss it a bit. That would improve your confidence for sure.

Cheers :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah sure. What's your email?

EDIT: Do you have Skype rather?</comment></comment>


Simplicity Is Highly Overrated - <AUTHOR> http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/simplicity_is_highly.html

<comment><USER2> It's not about simplicity, but rather about productivity. In a way this could be considered in a similar manner asOccam's Razor, i.e. if you want provide x amount of productivity, the simplest way to do so is usually the best.

Too often, software developers/teams thing productivity = functionality which is usually not the case, at least in my experience.</comment>