Git tips from the trenches - <AUTHOR> https://ochronus.com/git-tips-from-the-trenches/ <comment><USER2> My personal favorites:

> git-rerere

will prevent you from getting stuck resolving the same merge conflicts repeatedly, by remembering how you resolved them the last time.

Also, instead of passing any arguments to "git-log", I usually just use "tig", an ncurses display of the commits: [https://blogs.atlassian.com/2013/05/git- tig/](https://blogs.atlassian.com/2013/05/git-tig/)

Finally, when I was first taught Git, I was told that I should never need to comment out code again. I never understood how this was possible until I learned how to use 'git add -p' and 'git rebase -i' in tandem.

<comment><USER3> > Also, instead of passing any arguments to "git-log", I usually just use > "tig", an ncurses display of the commits: > [https://blogs.atlassian.com/2013/05/git- > tig/](https://blogs.atlassian.com/2013/05/git-tig/)

+1 for tig. Definitely my favourite git interface. Its status view is also very handy for viewing diffs, and adding/removing files to the index, as well as reverting changes.

Also, it now has mouse support. I know this, cos I added it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My all-time favorite git tip is adding the '\--graph' flag to git log, which will show the log with a branch graph. But while you're at it, might as well go all the way:

git log --graph --abbrev-commit --decorate --date=relative --format=format:'%C(bold blue)%h%C(reset) - %C(bold green)(%ar)%C(reset) %C(white)%s%C(reset) %C(dim white)- %an%C(reset)%C(bold yellow)%d%C(reset)' \--all

(Kudos to the unremembered internet person who posted this in the first place)

<comment><USER5> I think we have benefitted from the same stackoverflow thread =) [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1057564/pretty-git- branch...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1057564/pretty-git-branch- graphs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to mention a feature that's been making my life oh so much easier:

      git bisect

If you're ever looking for "the commit that broke feature XYZ", git bisect is your trusty minion.

<comment><USER7> Git bisect is wonderful. TortoiseHg also has a bisect command in the Workbench. (But command line hg doesn't seem to have it.)

Here's a tip for anyone using bisect with a Rails app (or any system that uses database migrations):

I do a rake db:migrate after a pull to make sure the database schema is up to date. So the first time I used git bisect on a Rails app, I figured I would use db:migrate after each bisect step.

On this project, as in many Rails projects, schema.rb is checked into git along with the migration files.

Somewhat mysteriously, after some of the bisect steps and db:migrate operations I was seeing an uncommitted schema.rb that was different from the one in git. That shouldn't have happened, I thought.

I finally figured out what perhaps should have been obvious: db:migrate was working fine when bisect moved forward in the history, but it was messing up when bisect moved _backward_ across a migration.

Rails experts will know what went wrong here: After bisect moved backward, the db:migrate had no way of knowing which database changes to reverse, because the migrations that were now in the "future" relative to the latest checkout were _removed_ before I ran the migrate.

I fixed it by using db:reset instead of db:migrate, at least after bisect moved backward in time.

Another bisect tip: Sometimes it can be advantageous to run the equivalent of a bisect manually instead of automatically. For example, you may have some pretty good hunches about which commits may or may not be related to the problem. Or you may want to do a db:migrate _before_ moving back in time to avoid the problem I described above, and by doing the checkouts manually you will know which migrations to reverse before doing the checkout.

In my case, I was looking at a somewhat intermittent bug. As I narrowed down the possible bad commits I wanted to keep track of the specific ones I'd looked at, and git bisect doesn't do this for you. So each time I checked out a different commit I created a local branch first on the commit I'd determined to be (likely) good or bad, giving them names like Good1, Good2, Bad1, Bad2, etc.

This way I could just look at the history as I went along and see at a glance which commits I'd investigated so far.

I guess this trick would work with git bisect as well - just create a local branch before each bisect step.

There may be some better way to do this, but it worked pretty well for me.

BTW, I use SmartGit/Hg and really like it. I know everyone likes their command lines, but I greatly prefer a visual way of working with a source code repo.

<comment><USER8> If you need to more fiddling to get things working in each bisected commit, you can launch the process manually with 'git bisect start', then pass in refs to 'git bisect bad' and 'git bisect good' to indicate a known-bad and a known- good commit.

At that point, git will check out the "middle" revision and you can do whatever's needed to decide if you should mark it as either good or bad with 'git bisect [good|bad]'. This will check out the _new_ "middle" \- lather, rinse, repeat until you get down to one commit.

When you're done, 'git bisect reset' will take you back to the present.

While this isn't quite as quick as the automated version, it's a lifesaver when tracking down a regression in a library whose dependencies have changed radically (finding what b0rked your tests between Rails 3.0 and 4.0, for instance).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > $ git branch --merged | xargs git branch -d

      does this actually work? `git branch --merged` for me also
      returns '* master', which when xarg'd would include the '*'
      and also 'master'. I don't want to delete master, and I
      certainly dont want to delete * if it globs.

__EDIT __: made this into a code block as I have no idea how to make asterisks display.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, didn't think about that, could be tricky if you're on another branch. Nice catch!

</comment></comment><comment> cool-RR Worth it just for this:

        git rev-list --all | xargs git grep '<YOUR REGEX>'

<comment><USER10> `git grep` is such a weird command: it defaults to being pointlessly redundant with `grep` (with a few default ignores). Contrast with hg grep, which defaults to searching the whole history (although it stops after finding the historical first match, `—all` will display all matches).

<comment><USER11> "git grep" is a lot faster than grep in a large codebase. One obvious reason is that "git grep" ignores non-checked-in files in the project directory. But I also notice a speed difference even when the project directory is clean.

<comment><USER10> By default grep is going through all of the .git directly, which is the part `git grep` filters out. `ag` also filters them out (and is only slightly slower than git grep by default, with all the colors and stuff), or you can tell grep to only check relevant files with e.g. `grep $PATTERN $(git ls-tree --full-tree --name-only -r HEAD)`.

On my machine, using postgres's repository, I get the following:

        > time git grep foo > /dev/null
        0.22s user 0.25s system 151% cpu 0.312 total
        > time ag foo > /dev/null
        0.85s user 0.19s system 174% cpu 0.596 total
        > time grep foo $(git ls-tree --full-tree --name-only -r HEAD) > /dev/null
        0.13s user 0.10s system 93% cpu 0.255 total

grep's faster than git grep. In fact, grep is already as fast as git grep _just ignoring .git_ :

        > time grep foo -r . --exclude-dir=.git > /dev/null
        0.15s user 0.16s system 91% cpu 0.338 total

<comment><USER11> You need to take the effect of the page cache into account. Since you are not clearing the page cache after each test, the test after it benefits from the contents. So running 'git grep' first disadvantages it, compared to everything else.

I ran a test on a large repository and here are my results. The repository was Hadoop, and is available from git://github.com/apache/hadoop-common.git.

      cmccabe@keter:~/hadoop4> du -cksh .
      375M    .
      375M    total
      sudo -- sh -c 'sync ; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches'
      cmccabe@keter:~/hadoop4> /usr/bin/time git grep 'class TestDefaultNameNodePort'
      hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/TestDefaultNameNodePort.java:public class TestDefaultNameNodePort {
      0.11user 0.34system 0:00.74elapsed 61%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 60512maxresident)k
      260256inputs+0outputs (19major+9718minor)pagefaults 0swaps

      sudo -- sh -c 'sync ; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches'
      cmccabe@keter:~/hadoop4> /usr/bin/time grep -rI --exclude .git 'class TestDefaultNameNodePort' *
      hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/TestDefaultNameNodePort.java:public class TestDefaultNameNodePort {
      0.13user 0.56system 0:02.40elapsed 29%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 5584maxresident)k
      252792inputs+0outputs (2major+414minor)pagefaults 0swaps

So you can see that it is faster, even when excluding the .git directory.

Running grep a second time without clearing the cache gives a bogus result:

      cmccabe@keter:~/hadoop4> /usr/bin/time grep -rI --exclude .git 'class TestDefaultNameNodePort' *
      hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/TestDefaultNameNodePort.java:public class TestDefaultNameNodePort {
      0.03user 0.04system 0:00.08elapsed 97%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 5584maxresident)k
      0inputs+0outputs (0major+416minor)pagefaults 0swaps

This is because the data is all in the page cache at that point, so we're not actually accessing the disk.

I was curious about the true source of the speedup, and so I checked the output of the 'perf' tool. git had 1,922 CPU migrations, whereas grep had 52. Following up on this, you can see that git is spawning a bunch of threads, whereas grep only has one thread.

      cmccabe@keter:~/hadoop4> strace -f -e trace=clone git grep 'class TestDefaultNameNodePort' 2>&1 | grep -c '] +++ exited with '
      8
     cmccabe@keter:~/hadoop4> strace -f -e trace=clone grep -rI --exclude=.git 'class TestDefaultNameNodePort' *  2>&1 | grep -c '] +++ exited with '
      0

I also think git might be cheating and using a simpler regex engine than grep, but at this point I got bored. Case closed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One that I use the whole time is:

git status --untracked=no

This shows only files that are tracked. I tend to do a lot of work which leaves files that I don't want to check in lying around in my git repo, this eliminates these and lets me see exactly what I have been working on. The slight caveat to this is when you are working on a new file that you have not yet checked in ever.

This goes hand in hand with:

git add -u

Which only adds untracked files. With aliased commands this usually results in a flow like this:

> git stu

> git adu

<comment><USER13> Is there a reason for not adding such files to your .gitignore?

I'm a neat-freak when it comes to file placement, and have a ~/tmp directory specifically for dropping one-off files without cluttering up repos and such.

Are the things your repo isn't tracking mostly temporary/build files? or things that are going to be checked in eventually?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My git shortcuts (in my bash_profile):

alias g='git'

alias pull='git pull origin master'

alias push='git push origin master'

alias gc='git commit -m $1'

alias ga='git add -A'

# Adds all and commits (gg 'Commit message')

function gg () {

      git add -A;

      git commit -m "$1";

      git push origin master;

}

alias gs='git status'

alias gd='git diff --color'

alias gdc='git diff --cached'

alias gstat='git diff --stat'

<comment><USER15> I don't like the idea of your gg function, but I add files to the index using git add -p exclusively since it gives me a chance to review my changes as I'm adding them, as well as let's me ensure I split up different logical changes into separate commits. Likewise, I think git commit -m encourages lazy git commit messages (see: [http://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit- messa...](http://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit- messages.html))

Mostly because this helps me keep a clean history, which is something I value highly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's a git extension, sure, but git-wtf[0] is indispensable for getting a high-level overview of your feature branches.

[0]: [http://git-wt-commit.rubyforge.org/](http://git-wt- commit.rubyforge.org/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I liked this one:

        git blame -w

Ignore the whitespace if a block was [un]indented, attribute to original author instead of person re-indenting due to control structure change around block.

<comment><USER10> The truth is that command-line blame is a pain in the ass. Blame is great for finding out where a piece of code comes from, but (especially on big projects with many contributors) there's a lot of small churn with code being moved around, slightly altered, etc… CLI blame requires an extensive danse of "blame to find out last change before $(rev:tip)" "log with patch to find out if it's the change I'm looking for" "get previous revision", rinse and repeat until step 2 yields a match.

And for all the GUIs available, most of them either don't even touch blame, or just return the output of the CLI blame command. The only GUI I've seen so far which makes it easy to traverse history through blame is for bazaar (qblame/qannotate).

<comment><USER7> SmartGit/Hg has a great interactive blame display. You can hover over commits to see the commit message, click on them to go back, etc. If you put the focus on the "View commit" select, then you can use the up and down arrows to go through the commits. You can also select different previous commits for the comparison window. Very easy to use and flexible.

IntelliJ IDEA also has a pretty nice blame panel. It's not as full-featured as SmartGit, but it's right there in the editor for any file with a quick Alt- G-N.

I would definitely recommend trying out SmartGit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My tips: [http://www.nicoschuele.com/posts/learn-to-use-git-and- remote...](http://www.nicoschuele.com/posts/learn-to-use-git-and-remote- repositories-in-15-minutes)

...and a tool to work faster with Git: [http://qwikgit.nicoschuele.com](http://qwikgit.nicoschuele.com)

</comment><comment><USER19> My fav: "gitbr" alias, which goes:

for k in `git branch -a|perl -pe s/^..//`;do echo -e `git show --pretty=format:"%Cgreen%ci %Cblue%cr%Creset" $k|head -n 1`\\\t$k;done|sort -r

</comment><comment><USER20> I recommend you check out [http://seasonedgit.com/](http://seasonedgit.com/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Thanks for sharing. Git has some osom hidden commands!

<comment><USER22> (awesome)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Absolutely wonderful article, but am I the only one who was confused when there was no relation to the gittip service ([http://www.gittip.com](http://www.gittip.com))?

</comment><comment> daf- "After a few years with git everyone has his own bag o' tricks..."

So "everyone" (every developer, ever) is a "he"? I'm not here to bash the author, but remarks like this (whether or not they're intentional) really don't help make the field of software engineering, which is already quite the boy's club, any more accessible to non-male people.

<comment><USER24> English is not his first language. No need to write a novel about it.

<comment> daf- So two thoughtful sentences now count as a novel? I should really look into getting published.</comment></comment></comment>


Companies start implanting microchips into workers' bodies - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-microchip-employees-20170403-story.html <comment><USER2> Is this worth it?

\- Health complications, however rare [1], could arise from this.

\- It sounds like microchips bond with your tissue. The implictations for removal should be obvious.

\- They'll almost certainly need replacing, either due to failure or the technology becoming redundant.

\- Far from being cool, early adopters are normalising the idea that employers can tag employees. I'm not OK with this.

That's even discounting the privacy issues:

\- People you don't know will be able to scan you for a unique ID, without your consent.

\- People will do so.

\- Startups will emerge getting licensing deals to put NFC readers in public places and sell the data. And so on and so forth.

These things accomplish less than you can do with a phone. Which most of us never leave home without anyway. Or face recognition, or ID cards, or a pin attached to your coat/shoes.

[1] [https://www.avma.org/KB/Resources/FAQs/Pages/Microchipping-o...](https://www.avma.org/KB/Resources/FAQs/Pages/Microchipping- of-animals-FAQ.aspx) . Suggests 1 in 10,000 rate of adverse events. Suggest Epicenter gets a good lawyer ;)

<comment><USER3> > microchips bond with your tissue

Eh, not really. They stimulate a foreign body reaction from macrophages, creating a synovium-like cyst around the object.

> The implications for removal should be obvious

You'll end up a granuloma (collection of macrophages), which may calcify or slowly resolve down to collagenous scar tissue.

So, _I_ wouldn't lead with the biology, at least not when pitching your concerns to scientists. The privacy implications are pretty horrific though.

<comment><USER4> I just read a NYT article that some breast implants were linked to causing cancer. So, while I appreciate your analysis of what the expected biological response is, there is still room for things to go wrong too, in ways we never foresaw - or simply neglected.

But yes, the privacy and precedent implications of this will far outweigh the medical ones.

<comment><USER3> The cancer you're talking about, Breast Implant-Associated Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma (BIA-ALCL), generally resolves with removal of the implants, though it's a new entity, so we're certainly still learning about it. The odds that breast implants are unique in causing this peculiar biological response seems low, from a basic science perspective.

I thought about mentioning it in my original comment, but it's so rare that it seemed somewhat sensationalist to even bring it up.

<comment><USER4> > The odds that breast implants are unique in causing this peculiar biological > response seems low, from a basic science perspective.

which is why i mentioned it!

> but it's so rare that it seemed somewhat sensationalist to even bring it up.

fair enough. although there can be a sensationalist reaction to the news as well. I believe only 9 cases were found? I find it's worthwhile for my own expectations of reality, to respect that nothing is a sure thing, and that much comes with a big asterisk next to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am not religious, but I got enough religious programming in Sunday school that this scares the shiznitz out of me. When this embedded human chip becomes a requirement, I'm moving to an underground bunker

Revelations 13:16: And the second beast required all people small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, 17: so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark—the name of the beast or the number of its name.…

<comment><USER6> >I am not religious, but (bullshit nonsense from Revelations about the Mark of the Beast)

You appear not to understand how "not being religious" works.

<comment><USER7> I don't see why quoting the bible is any worse than people constantly quoting other dead people.

Just think about how often Franklin's "Liberty vs Safety" is quoted here and around the rest of the internet.

Or how often people like to compare the world to 1984 or Brave New World.

<comment><USER8> The most obvious difference:

When quoting the bible you're not quoting from the direct source, but a translated and interpreted version.

When quoting Franklin it is actually his words.

<comment><USER7> Albeit misinterpreted words:

[https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered- be...](https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-benjamin- franklins-quote-on-liberty-vs-security/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is as dumb as QR codes. Obviously there will be better ways to identify people for access control in the future. For example, face recognition is plummeting in cost. Systems should adapt to humans, not vice versa. This will be obsolete and the users will feel dumb for having gone through it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Because it's too inconvenient to carry a badge? Or make the badge smaller/nfc- tag-like?

<comment><AUTHOR> That was my first thought, if you want smaller than a badge, then maybe a ring or bracelet should be tried before an implanted device!

<comment><USER11> I can't think of any benefits here that a ring/bracelet wouldn't provide, plus the added benefit of removability without surgery.

<comment><USER12> Conditioning.

[& p.s. since HN doesn't like single word replies]

They are normalizing mechanisms of maximal control. Just like the perp walk of innocents in airports. Chipping is what we do to cattle. And of course, a simple hospital style bracelet would afford a substantially larger surface area for embedding of technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >And for me it's just a matter of I like to try new things and just see it as more of an enabler and what that would bring into the future

Please do not normalize this shit and drag the rest of us down into your dystopian horror film with you.

<comment><USER14> calling it "shit" that needs to be "normalized" without any basis for this claim whatsoever sorta makes it seem like the dystopianism is within you, and not in the thing itself, huh?

<comment><USER13> My value judgments are my own, yes. That's obvious (another value judgment). I'm not making any claim except that employees willingly submitting to having tracking devices implanted by their employer gives me the creeps. The potential for evil is just too great for me to want this to become mainstream.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't think this should be made illegal. If you can get an implant to make your job easier -- hmmm, maybe? However, making this a condition of employment should _definitely_ be illegal. This crosses a significant line from non- invasive drug testing to invasive surgery.

But then... What happens when performance is used to determine hiring and firing and you _can 't_ perform as well without an implant.

I understand these are currently just for ID purposes (easy password). But these NFC chips already have a certain amount of storage. What happens when that storage is used to store context information that improves 3-5 operations rather than just login?

</comment><comment><USER16> It's like they're _trying_ to anger Christian conspiracy theorists.

</comment><comment><USER17> And at what point is a well meaning company going to do this and have someone object on religious grounds (due to other comments in this discussion?). Then they'll be fired, and sue due to not wanting the mark of the beast.

This has all the trappings of a great popcorn worthy story.

</comment><comment><USER18> It would be interesting if such a device had to be enabled for reading by, say, touching the tips of your thumb and finger together (like an "OK" gesture) so you had control over who could read it and when.

</comment><comment><USER19> I got one of these implanted in my wrist around ten years ago. AMA?

<comment><USER20> Does it use active RFID, or passive? If the former, when does the battery die? If the latter, is it possible for someone to burn you from inside by emitting the right microwave frequency with enough power?

<comment><USER19> Passive.

Not sure but it sits right under some thin skin so if they have a powerful enough microwave beam on that location it'd probably burn me equally from both sides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> martin-adams I can log into my Windows device just by looking at it. Surely there are less intrusive ways of authenticating a person before we start embedding technology.

</comment><comment><USER21> Every single one of the privacy concerns listed are exactly the same as for an ID badge. No one is up in arms about ID badges. If I worked somewhere where they said "you either have to carry your ID badge with you everywhere on campus, or you can get this implant", I'd get the implant. If they offered a ring instead I'd get that though assuming it wasn't hideous.

<comment><USER22> The difference is you can choose when you wear your ID Badge / ring outside of work hours. The potential to have your location outside of work hours (by having readers secreted in places) is an invasion of privacy. Most likely requires cooperation from the 'other venues' and I'm not sure what their value proposition would be, but my lack of imagination doesn't rule out the possibility of nefarious uses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> >"On the other hand, I mean, people have been implanting things into their body, like pacemakers and stuff to control your heart," he said. "That's a way, way more serious thing than having a small chip that can actually communicate with devices."

People don't get pacemakers for fun. They get pacemakers because they're medical devices that ensure their hearts beat properly.

<comment><USER18> Don't you think that's what he means by "way, way more serious"?

<comment><USER24> No, I think he means that putting something into the chest cavity is much more invasive than a rice-sized subdermal chip in your hand.

The point of that quote is to say that putting something unnecessary into your body is a big step, but that it's also a much smaller risk while still providing something interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This has been done for entertainment reasons as far back as 2004: [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3697940.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3697940.stm)

</comment><comment><USER26> Nope, I refuse to ever take part in anything resembling this horse shit.

</comment><comment><USER27> WHY NOT JUST USE BIOMETRICS AND WIFI TO DETECT MOVEMENT?

Invasive idiocy.

</comment><comment><USER28> But can I plug in USB devices ? [https://xkcd.com/644/](https://xkcd.com/644/)</comment>


New research reveals how gut bacteria can control our genes - <AUTHOR> https://newatlas.com/gut-bacteria-alters-gene-activity/52923/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a link to the research: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02651-5](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02651-5)</comment>


Blue Origin: Images and Videos from Our First Flight - <AUTHOR> https://www.blueorigin.com/news/multimedia/images-and-videos-from-our-first-flight <comment><USER2> Finally something concrete from these guys! They've been working for over 10 years on this and shown almost nothing.

The capsule looks nice; big curved windows and no RCS thrusters tell us that this is not an orbital capsule.

The 1st Stage reuse concept is interesting; the ducting near the capsule connector is quite novel. There are 8 large spoilers that protrude into the airflow to help slow descent. I wonder if these can be modulated to give some kind of stability control?

It's interesting to note that although the capsule landed successfully, they make no mention of what happened to the launcher. I presume that it failed to land, but I didn't see any smoking wreckage in the background of the capsule landing video, so maybe it made it down in 1 piece? I'm sure they would have told us if it had.

Anyway, a good day for the US space industry; Blue Origin finally have something cool to show and have proved that they're not just purveyors of vaporware. I'm looking forward to seeing what else they can come up with.

<comment><USER3> As as you mentioned RCS thrusters I thought, "but reaction wheels are cheaper and don't require fuel, for all but the largest vehicles they are not needed", then I realized this was real life and not Kerbal Space Program.

<comment><USER4> RCS is essential for docking.

<comment><USER3> Helpful, not essential. If you are willing to use smaller engines or can be careful with the throttle (and throttle shutoff) on larger engines you can dock plenty of smaller ships.

I wouldn't want to try it with something with a 180 degree turn time of 30+ seconds.

I wonder if any of this is true in real life? Doesn't a spaghetti rocket just explode in real life?

<comment><USER5> Rocket restart is harder in real life than in KSP. Typically a rocket is designed to be started a limited number of times, this is where RCS fills the gap.

<comment><USER3> That is fascinating. Why is that the case?

Is it simply easier to build something disposable? Or are there fundamental restrictions like the inability to stop a solid rocket motor?

<comment><USER6> In addition to the other replies, there's also the problem of simply igniting the flame. For example, a Falcon 9 uses kerosene and liquid oxygen, which burn real nice when ignited, but won't do anything if you just mix them together and let them sit. Just like lighting a stove, you need something to get the process going. With a Falcon 9, this is done by injecting a small charge of two chemicals called TEA and TEB. They're hypergolic with each other, meaning they ignite on contact. This then starts the combustion of the actual propellants. The amount of TEA and TEB carried on board is limited, so you can only restart a certain number of times.

Using hypergolic propellants solves this problem. The trouble is that hypergolic propellants are inherently dangerous (they'll explode if they come in contact, that's the whole point) and are typically highly toxic. They're OK in small quantities, thus they show up in RCS systems, but making an entire orbital launcher using hypergolic propellants is a massive pain. It has been done, but the result tends to be more explodey than usual.

<comment><USER2> > but making an entire orbital launcher using hypergolic propellants is a > massive pain.

I think Russia might disagree with you. Wikipedia describes the Proton launcher as "one of the most successful heavy boosters in the history of spaceflight."

Proton: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_(rocket_family)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_\(rocket_family\))

<comment><USER6> It can work well, but I bet the folks who have to handle the propellant would still say it's a massive pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ok, that 307,000' landing looked a bit painful (pretty big whumph at the end there) of course it hits the ground at 16mph if I did the conversion from 24 fps correctly.

But the really really odd thing for me is listening to the callout in feet and feet per second rather than meters and meters per second. I've gotten quite used to velocity in particular being called out in m/s.

I wish they were a bit more open with the progress they were making.

<comment><USER2> Their website says that they employ solid landing rockets just before touchdown, similar to the Soyuz. The 'big whumph' is probably just dust kicked up by these rockets.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> FYI, this particular cute little rocket is aimed at space tourism. Sub-orbital flights only, to just above the Kármán line.

<comment><USER8> _Sub-orbital flights only, to just above the Kármán line._

This seems to be ideal for transport as well? That is, if we're trying to get from Tokyo to NYC quickly, we never want to actually go into orbit, do we?

<comment><USER9> A suborbital trajectory is an ellipse that intersects the ground, and it will do so twice within less than half the world's circumference. If you can make it halfway around the world, you're orbital.

New York to Tokyo is nearly half that circumference, so the energy required is nearly that of orbit.

<comment><USER8> _A suborbital trajectory is an ellipse that intersects the ground, and it will do so twice within less than half the world 's circumference. If you can make it halfway around the world, you're orbital._

My experiments with Flappy Space Program contradict this. b^) It is perfectly possible to miss orbit even after a complete circumnavigation. Trajectories are shaped like parabolas, not ellipses.

 _New York to Tokyo is nearly half that circumference, so the energy required is nearly that of orbit._

Well it's more like a quarter, but even if it were half it would take significantly less energy than orbit.

<comment><USER9> > It is perfectly possible to miss orbit even after a complete > circumnavigation.

Yes, if you have a source of lift, and you're within the atmosphere, then you can circumnavigate the globe without reaching orbital velocities. A ballistic rocket generally has no significant source of lift and spends nearly all of its time in space.

> Trajectories are shaped like parabolas, not ellipses.

All orbits are conic sections: either an ellipse, hyperbola, or a parabola (the limiting case between the two). But a parabolic or hyperbolic trajectory has escape velocity, whereas only an elliptic trajectory is planet-bound. The apogee of the ellipse is locally approximated well by a parabola, which is why for _non-orbital_ mechanics ballistic trajectories are often modeled by a parabola, but all suborbital trajectories are actually ellipses, not parabolas. If the Earth were flat and the gravity vector were constant, then they would be actual parabolas.

Orbital mechanics is very counterintuitive. I recommend _Fundamentals of Astrodynamics_ if you'd like to learn more, or play KSP rather than FSP.

> Well it's more like a quarter

On this you are correct, the map I looked at deceived me. :)

<comment><USER8> OK, thanks for the knowledge. Given all that, and the fact that there are several ICBMs with ranges longer than Tokyo-NYC, I still suspect that the speed-energy-distance combination will eventually work out for some segment of the travelling public.

<comment><USER9> Yes, but even one quarter the way around the world turns out to be very close to orbital energy, because your delta-distance per delta-v increases rapidly as you increase energy. Nearly all ICBMs are multi-stage rockets for this reason. Vehicles designed for suborbital tourism like Spaceship Two, Lynx, and New Shepard aren't traveling more than a couple hundred km without a second stage.

Math:

Reaching the edge of space requires 100 km altitude, or 1,000,000 m^2/s^2 of specific energy, which is 1,414 m/s velocity. Redirect that to a 45° angle and you have 1,000 m/s in both the vertical and horizontal direction, which comes close to maximizing your distance. That gives you 200 seconds of flight, which puts you 200 km downrange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Love seeing that American flag on the side of American spacecraft. This is truly a land of freedom, technological innovation, and unprecedented human happiness.

A few people alive today have forgotten that, but most people alive today have never known it.

edit: HN, I just typed a long response to a comment below but can't post it becuase I'm "submitting too fast." Cut the crap and tell me about that _before_ I write a long comment.

<comment><USER11> Most Americans take our assets and advantages for granted, as we've not known anything else.

There are a number of good places to live in the world, and the United States is one of them.

<comment><USER12> You really think so? I personally think the US is going downhill recently with the violation of basic human rights (NSA, police brutality, arm-twisting to please minorities, etc.) Corporate interest (Monsanto, fracking, military complex, law firms, etc.) is above people's, conflicts are still stirred around the globe and military aggression is still ongoing. Innocent people are killed by drones abroad and others labeled as "terrorists" assassinated without trials. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are allies. UN is often ignored. Cold War 2.0 is being brewed as 1.0 was fun and profit. As a First World country with such bold claims, many basics need to be taken care of before this baseless patriotism.

My hopes were in Ron Paul, but this great American will never be let make the much-needed changes to truly justify the "democracy" label!

<comment><USER13> Police brutality has gone down significantly over 40 years. The rate at which police kill black people has dropped by between 50% and 75% over 40 years, depending on the age group. The rate of police killing all other races, hasn't changed in 40 years (as in, it hasn't gotten any worse).

What you're seeing are actions by the police that would have previously gone unreported, or otherwise not been widely exposed to a large population via eg social media.

Obviously the NSA reference is spot on. As would have been a point about incarceration and SWAT deployments.

It's also worth noting that the war on drugs is finally beginning to end. That is an improvement, and will lead to less police brutality almost by default as pot is fully legalized across the US, and other drugs start to be de- criminalized in favor of treatment.

Corporations are far more regulated and controlled today than they were as recently as the 1960s or 1970s. The EPA didn't even exist until 1970. If you think corporate interests are running rampant today, you really would have hated the first 150 years of US corporate history.

And of course the US has been militarily aggressive since WW2, with Korea and Vietnam being larger military actions than Afghanistan and Iraq. Not much has actually changed there in 70 years.

<comment><USER12> Well, I'm sure there are improvements, but the status quo is not good enough for me personally - it's 2015. It doesn't serve America best to say "we're great, there's no better". On the contrary, we should always strive to improve, and avoid the patriotic circle jerks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So is this the first time they have release any footage of their rocket? This looks rather impressive.

I remember Elon Musk ridiculing Jeff Bezos sometime back. The only thing I knew about Blue Origin by then was they are making a new engine for United Launch Alliance to replace their Russian RD-180 engine on Delta rockets.

<comment><USER6> Musk (or rather, SpaceX) has been putting stuff into orbit for paying customers for some years now, and has made five successful launches so far this year, which is a pretty much unprecedented launch pace.

Blue Origin, on the other hand, having been around even longer than SpaceX, just had their first _ever_ test launch, of a sub-orbital rocket.

It's cool that they're doing this, but I wouldn't call it impressive (yet! maybe it could get there) and certainly doesn't seem to counter Musk's ridicule.

Edit: just confirming your memory of ridicule: [http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/09/26/elon- musk...](http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/09/26/elon-musk- unicorns-will-dance-before.html?page=all)

"If [Blue Origin] do somehow show up in the next five years with a vehicle qualified to NASA's human rating standards that can dock with the Space Station, which is what Pad 39A is meant to do, we will gladly accommodate their needs. Frankly, I think we are more likely to discover unicorns dancing in the flame duct."

<comment><USER15> You're right that Blue Origin is older than SpaceX, as it was founded in 2000 vs 2002 for SpaceX

However, SpaceX is using off the shelf russian engine designs, if I recall correctly (possibly off the shelf engines in the early days?[1]) Blue Origin, on the other hand, seems to be developing its engines from scratch.

SpaceX's strategy certainly should have gotten it to market faster, and has. Blue Origin's in theory should give it a technology lead (engines designed now rather than 50+ years ago.)

It appears that in the 2020s we'll see when both companies (I believe) start launching heavy lift vehicles. SpaceX will have more launches under its belt then, but maybe Blue Origin will have caught up?

[1] I remember reading a blog post that the Merlin engine was based on a russian design, but I can't seem to find evidence of that now. Maybe I'm mistaken.

<comment><USER16> >However, SpaceX is using off the shelf russian engine designs, if I recall correctly (possibly off the shelf engines in the early days?

That was Orbital Sciences with their Antares rocket, which uses refurbished Soviet-era Kuznetsov NK-33 engines (1960ies to -70ies).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antares_(rocket)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antares_\(rocket\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is there a ballpark of how much each flight will cost per person?

</comment><comment><USER16> Is it just me or does that rocket just launch like a bat out of hell off the launchpad? Other launches seem much more...majestic.

Wondering whether that may be a visual illusion, something to do with the flight profile (light vehicle, lower altitude) or just me.

<comment><USER18> The Blue Origin rocket is unusually short as man-rated rockets go. The only figures I can find for the dimensions gives the height as 49 feet (15m) [1]. Now compare this to 224 feet (68m) for Falcon 9 [2].

So basically a rocket like the Falcon 9 will appear to be traveling much slower than a much shorter rocket like the New Shepard for the same reason a 747 on landing approach looks like it is traveling much slower than a 737 traveling at the same speed.

[1] [http://www.astronautix.com/craft/newepard.htm](http://www.astronautix.com/craft/newepard.htm) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9#Comparison](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9#Comparison)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How does the first stage reuse work?

<comment><USER20> It didn't work this time, but it will land vertically under thrust. Here is a earlier vehicle from the same company:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NANePoo_p30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NANePoo_p30)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It looks like a penis.

I'm not trolling. I have no judgement about that either way. But it is strikingly phallic.

<comment><USER6> Pretty much the entire field of rocketry is unbelievably phallic. I think you're supposed to just keep quiet about it.

<comment><USER21> Rockets are phallic, but this one is exceptionally so. The proportions are very similar to a human penis. The payload on top flares out like the glans of the penis.

I saw a video of it being lifted from a horizontal to a vertical position and it looked like a penis getting erect [1].

I think if a sex toy was made out of this design, it would be more agreeable to its users than one modeled after the Saturn V or a Falcon.

[1] [http://gfycat.com/GorgeousScentedChinchilla](http://gfycat.com/GorgeousScentedChinchilla)</comment></comment></comment>


A Visual Introduction to Function Kernels - <AUTHOR> https://www.dhruvonmath.com/2019/04/04/kernels/ <comment><USER2> Enjoyed this post. Ive taken linear algebra before, and it does seem obvious that f(v+k)=f(v) just by linearity, but I had never considered the geometric meaning of that before!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi! I'm the author of this post. Would love any feedback on how to make it better. Thanks!

<comment><USER3> z=y/3 should be z=-y/3

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixing! Thanks for the catch.</comment></comment></comment>


Mapping SSH and Telnet Bots - <AUTHOR> https://hackertarget.com/cowrie-honeypot-analysis-24hrs <comment><USER2> Had Windows RDP at a recent client visit. According to the logs it was getting hammered. Anyone know how 3389 compares to 22 in terms of volume.</comment>


Ask HN: Legal startups? - <AUTHOR>

What legal tech company is out there that's trying to level the playing for small firms to compete against bigger and better sourced firms? <comment><USER2> Yesterday somebody said they wanted to start such a company in the Bay Area [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9060067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9060067)

</comment><comment><USER3> A friend recently started Legal Hero, which seems to be in this space: [https://www.legalhero.com/](https://www.legalhero.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: People who did coding boot camps, what did you think? - anthony-j-c What were some of the positives or negatives? Why did you initially enter, and did you feel like it gave you whatever tools you felt were necessary? <comment><USER2> I did one back in 2013 and went in with very minimal experience-- I could write simple loops in python but had no idea how to actually build something. At the time I wasn't even sure if that's what I wanted to do for a living. I knew I wanted to try something in tech since it's everywhere in SF. At a bare minimum, the bootcamp would give me an idea of how the engineering process works.

All of the bootcamps I know of focus solely on web dev. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Plenty of places need web people, and you can always keep learning and transition to something else if you want.

Here's the advice I usually have for people that ask me if they should do one:

* what did you do in college? I found that people who did some sort of STEM major caught on much more quickly than those who did something like Art. Basically, if you've had a lot of experience with problem solving and critical thinking things should come easier to you

* go in with a project in mind. Learning with a purpose and intent (I want to build X, what do I need to learn to do that?) is much more effective

* don't believe the job placement numbers. Prepare to be on the hunt for 6 months after you finish

* try to talk to people who did the specific program you're interested in. This is a big one. LinkedIn is your friend.

* if you do go, don't mention it on your resume. Plenty of people just throw bootcamp resumes out. Just say you're self taught.

* you won't learn to code just by simply showing up to class. It takes a lot of effort outside the classroom

That's all I can think of for now. I had a tough time finding my first job, but if I had to do it all over again I'd do it in a heartbeat. Feel free to shoot me an email if you have any questions.

<comment><USER3> I've consistently found this to be a game-changer: "* if you do go, don't mention it on your resume. Plenty of people just throw bootcamp resumes out. Just say you're self taught."

Yet so many of the bootcamps are telling their students to list the bootcamp on their resume.

The whole job placement numbers thing is a sham. I've helped dozens of bootcamp grads improve their online presence during their job hunt and many have to take shitty jobs to start after struggling during the job hunt for months.

That said, the bootcamp grads I worked with a few years ago who kept at it are doing really well right now.

<comment><USER4> Where I'm at we hired a person with only bootcamp development experience and so far they have worked out great. They also linked us to their bootcamp work on github. With that said we mostly hired said person because we thought they were extremely intelligent. They were pursuing a PHD and just found that they were not interested in their field after their first job so they made the jump to something they thought they would enjoy more. With that said I think bootcamp alone on a resume is not going to get you in the door at a good development shop. You have to bolster that experience with something else. Anyway I agree if you don't have something on your resume that would be attributed to someone with an above average intelligence definitely say you are self taught over placing the bootcamp you just went to on your resume. It stands out more for companies who weight intelligence highly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Did one in Boston.

It was a total scam.

Billed itself as a RoR shop, would teach you Ruby, and then Rails, in a few months, and you were "sure to get a job". The kicker is that they asked for a bunch of money, or, if you didnt have it, a (terrible) loan.

It's fine right? They told me "You'll leave here with a job paying you 80k +, and you'll get a bunch of money from us if you stayed at that job for 6 months, great! Not so much. The RoR market is saturated, and you had to lean on the Bootcamps connections to get you a job, connections that cost the company money. The people they had to place you were essentially really bad recruiters, and the teachers where just the "best" from the previous cohort. The person who ran the Bootcamp treated them like trash, and you could see it when the teachers would get black out drunk every Friday. The 99% placement rate was, as I found out after, was a lie. My cohort was 15 or so people, I was one of 5 who got a job within the first 3 months. 5 more would go on to be extremely underpaid living in near poverty as "support" or "QA" trying to pay back crazy loans, and the last 5 either went back to their old jobs, or are still looking.

All that being said, I did get a job after working there. I went from working odd jobs to doing something I love, and got my start there. I think Bootcamps are unnecessary, but I didn't know know that recruiters existed before. I truly believe most of them are scams, and you'd be better off trying to teach yourself over the course of a year, and putting small projects on github for recruiters to show off.

If a bootcamp gives you no guarantee, run like the plague.

<comment><USER6> I would never give a guarantee even if I ran a great bootcamp. Opens them up to too many lazy people trying to get into tech who feel entitled to a job but don't put in the work needed.

<comment><USER7> Agreed - additionally, a guarantee means only so much. A job at $10/hr chopping up emails is a job - but is it a job you want after completing a bootcamp?

(Disclaimer: I work for General Assembly - views are my own, and does not reflect those of my employer)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I did a coding bootcamp and it was a very positive experience. I transitioned from a PM to a software engineer and have been working full stack for 2 years.

Here's some advice:

* don't start the bootcamp without any practice on your own. Everyone successful at my Bootcamp had spent months / years practicing and learning to code beforehand. You won't be successful if this is your first attempt * you don't get really any job support. That will be your job * your "graduation" means nothing as an employer; it has no brand (or maybe negative) unlike a cs degree. The bootcamp gives you minimum skills to be competitive in an interview but it gives you no brand.

* My program had a strong curriculum. specifically our JavaScript curriculum was awesome and actually was a lot better than online resources. I actually understand key concepts like hoisting, this, and prototypical inheritance that a lot of people don't understand about JS. However quality of curriculum varies widely by program

* the job hunt will be brutal. You will rejected a lot and the hunt can last a long time. One of my colleagues took 9 months. if you don't have any pedigree on your resume (good school, good company, etc) many employers won't even interview you. You need a way to stand out of the crowd of bootcamp grads

<comment><USER9> I wonder how much "side projects" would help in the job hunt. Build things, put them on github, write 500 words about it, add to resume, repeat.

Maybe I succeeded despite working like this, but I tend to think I succeeded because I worked like this.

<comment><USER10> I think those are the best possible thing you can do to get employed. I recommend to everyone I meet - teach yourself to code, build a few things of increasing complexity as you go, and put em online. Preferably things a potential employer could look at.

There's a night and day difference between asking a newbie engineer about their ideas in an interview vs talking about something they've built before.

I made a bad chess game in JS before applying for jobs after college, and ended up talking about it in half my interviews - either describing it, or, in a few cases, finding that the interviewer had played it before I showed up (in one case he found some bugs! I brushed it off, saying that I had quit the project after getting basic functionality down and hadn't thoroughly tested pawn promotion...).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recently graduated from Hack Reactor Remote and actually landed a job even before my program ended. I would say the only two bootcamps that are worth doing are App Academy in New York and one of Hack Reactor's many campuses.

Things I can vouch for:

* The curriculum is fantastic: you definitely get your money's worth in terms of learning things that you can't just pick off the web or even from paid courses

* A bunch of my cohort mates already have jobs and we've been out for less than a month. All their salaries are definitely in line with the Hack Reactor statistics listed on their site. They are pretty transparent about their salary numbers.

* You have to bust your butt off for 3 months. I was coding a good 10-12 hours each day and really burnt out near the end of the bootcamp.

* Don't let people tell you you can't do it. I came in with ZERO programming experience before 2016, but self-taught myself Javascript in order to get into Hack Reactor and pass their technical interviews. None of my friends thought I would be able to do it and I had some major doubts and imposter syndrome every day of bootcamp. But, I not only graduated Hack Reactor, but got a freaking awesome job as a fullstack dev at a super legit company.

* If a bootcamp doesn't have a rigorous admissions process, probably not worth doing (ahem General Assembly, Iron Yard, etc.) unless you're restricted by geographic constraints.

* Trust their career advice process. They are very rigorous with resume work (they help minimize the bootcamp footprint on your resume and help you spin it well on interviews). Their alumni network is fantastic and also I was very prepared for algorithm based tech interviews.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

</comment><comment><USER12> I felt the bootcamp really exaggerated outcomes. They said like 95+% got jobs. In reality, probably only roughly 30% got "real" coding jobs (a bunch got support or testing jobs at well.) Some ended up empty handed, one of us is working at Trader Joes.

Bewares statistics! They can be easily manipulated.

<comment><USER13> How did they manipulate 30% to "95+%"?

<comment><USER14> OP didn't say anyone from his cohort is actually unemployed. The job at Trader Joes may not be what that person was envisioning, but it is a job.

Even if they claim something more specific than literally any job at all, they'll probably count anyone doing something related to IT (if only for a week).

I've also read about boot camps hiring their alumni as teachers/tutors for a bit if they can't find a job. I always assumed that's mostly to be able to count those people as successfully placed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I just finished at Hack Reactor in SF and honestly had a better experience than I could have hoped for.

Disclaimer: I don't have a job yet as my cohort just finished a week before Christmas.

As for me, before HR I had been a designer for about ten years and had been doing some front end dev work at my last job.

I'd say the number one reason to do one of these programs is not the curriculum itself, even though HR's is great, it's the opportunity to work in groups of really smart people on software engineering projects. HR seems to be pretty selective and this definitely pays off for their students. You will learn a LOT from your peers. A large portion of the program involves the self directed building of applications in teams, and this team workflow is the one thing you just can't really learn on your own.

Long story short I think it's a great idea but try to find a boot camp that really cares about selecting people they think are a good fit for the industry, not just a stat. You will benefit.

</comment><comment><USER16> I went to App Academy with no degree about 3 years ago. It costed 15k after landing an offer (3k up front).

For my first year out, I made ~80k in the bay area. The next year, my salary went up to ~120k.

I can save up 140k in the 4 years it would take me to get a comp sci degree. Enough for the down payment on a (small) home. I also have 4 years of programming experience on the fresh grad.

From my experience, about 10-15% of my cohort didn't get tech jobs. This is better than the 30-40% drop out rate of college. Also, people who are "just in it for the money" can pursue comp sci degrees as well.

I use none of the technologies I learned there. I could conceivably have done it all on my own. But App Academy put me on the right track.

I did put in a lot of time initially, ~50-60 hours/week coding for my first couple years. But I imagine comp sci majors go through the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've done two here in Chicago, one for Rails (my first Intro to coding), then another one for iOS.

Both times I did not have the intention of finding a "job" afterwards so that never factored into my decision. Instead my intention was to learn the material so that I could provide it to clients as an independent contractor.

If you go in with the understanding that you're going to have to put in several months of work afterwards in order to effectively provide for clients, or get hired for a job, the experience can be a great opportunity.

I met many great people with whom I still keep in contact with, overall it was a very enriching experience and I would highly recommend it for someone who's willing to put in the work.

Note: Both boot camps are now only teaching high school kids.

<comment><USER18> How would you rate that experience against going through some books, if you have to do a bunch of work on your own either way?

<comment><USER17> its a fair point, I have pondered just spending a couple thousand on dollar-a- minute live programming assistance, and then just creating my own course. I still think that's a really good route.

In the end though, if you value the in-person instruction that of course is hard to replace. I'm really glad I did them, if I wanted to jump into another brand new area of study I would consider it again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I read enough negative comments that I feel the need to weigh in here...

I went to General Assembly in NY in 2015. I had a great experience with them - learned A TON and was successfully able to change careers. I am now teaching at a bootcamp in Berlin, Germany. Attending General Assembly changed my life for the better, I can say the whole-heartedly.

The cons are the cost and the time commitment. It will take you many months to become a proficient programmer, this is only the first (several) steps.

You obviously need to be wary of bootcamps that don't live up to their promises. I would say stick to the bigger names in general, but do your research and make sure that the school has alumni who were went on to have successful careers.

A lot of comments on here are saying things like "Bootcamps are a scam" and "Bootcamps are just not worth it". This could not be further from the truth. These bootcamps have changed a lot of people's lives for the better. There are some bad ones out there (as with any institution), and it is ultimately on you to do your due diligence to make sure that school is right for you. But as for me, attending a bootcamp was one of the best decisions I ever made.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd ask anyone that went to a coding bootcamp to fill out a review of the bootcamp you attended at [https://schools.techendo.com](https://schools.techendo.com)

It not only helps out potential devs looking to attend bootcamps, but also helps the bootcamps themselves figure things out.

<comment><USER7> General Assembly is located in more than just NYC - see here for all campus locations: [https://generalassemb.ly/locations](https://generalassemb.ly/locations)

[https://www.coursereport.com/](https://www.coursereport.com/) is another site often used for reviewing/scoring various bootcamp programs.

(Disclaimer, work for GA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I went to a bootcamp in SF during spring 2015. I have now been working for a year at a YC startup doing front-end dev. I'm about to begin a new job (at a larger, more established company) focusing on full-stack dev in RoR.

Pros:

* Amazing community of driven, engaged people

* Week long interview/algorithms prep at the end of the program

* Strong curriculum, learning a ton of material into 3-4 months

* Learned about most key topics for web development (see cons for negative of this)

* Much easier to get job #2 (was juggling multiple offers) with experience on my resume

* No one said having bootcamp on my resume was a negative (possibly that's because the ones who did think that didn't even give me a first round interview...); more often seen as positive since I have more diverse background (used to be in sales).

Cons:

* Limited help getting a job after graduation

* Strong disadvantage to individuals who are new to the area when getting a job; most people got jobs through personal connections/networking

* Since time is so limited, even though we "learn" a lot of topics, the practice for each topic is extremely limited. This leads many people to feel unprepared come time to interview.

* Seeing a larger majority of bootcamp grads going into sales engineering jobs (maybe could be a positive too? depending on the type of job you're trying to get after graduation)

Overall, I think it really depends what you want to with your bootcamp education. With so many options out there with online learning, there are a variety of different paths to software engineering.

I wanted to move into an engineering position quickly, and learn in a more social/collaborative environment, so I really enjoyed my bootcamp experience. I would highly recommend it to individuals with similar objectives as mine.

<comment><USER22> > Strong disadvantage to individuals who are new to the area when getting a > job; most people got jobs through personal connections/networking

This is key. The people I know who found good jobs after attending a boot camp had worked at startups in non-technical roles, and they were able to rely on connections with their friends in the engineering department. They got hired back at the same startup as junior developers. They are good at their jobs, but there are other boot camp grads who are just as good who never would have been considered if they had applied for a job without a personal connection at the company.

The tech industry is really not that different than other industries: personal connections are at least as important as skills, experience, and credentials.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I attended a bootcamp in 2014. I regret it.

I entered because I wanted to switch from front-end development to full-stack. I'd really enjoyed what little I'd done with Ruby and Rails, so I fell for the pitch of this bootcamp that I could be retrained as a Rails developer in three months.

What I wished I'd known: \- everything about the bootcamp (schedule, curriculum, equipment) was set in stone. You are just a widget on a conveyor belt. \- the bootcamp's mandatory pair programming did not help me to learn the material at all. \- as others have mentioned, bootcamps are untruthful in their statistics. Mine even lied to the state regulators, claiming 90% of my cohort was employed as software developers, when maybe half of us were.

I ended up going back to my previous career.

<comment><USER24> _Mine even lied to the state regulators, claiming 90% of my cohort was employed as software developers, when maybe half of us were._

A prior employer employed an advisor at a famous Data Science bootcamp. We wound up interviewing a ton of his students (I guess required for him being an advisor?) and most hadn't learned enough to be useful. Not even up to a BA/BS in CS/Math level. Even after the program ended, many of them will still in the job market for extended periods of time.

My current employer has someone who had a non-technical job, left for a boot camp, and came back for a more technical job. In his case it worked because he had a lot of market context.

So it's hit or miss, but not worth a guarantee.

If most people can't make it through a 4 year CS program, how can open-entry programs create better output in 3 months?

<comment><USER25> > most hadn't learned enough to be useful. Not even up to a BA/BS in CS/Math > level.

Why would your expection be someone in 3 months learn what other people learn in 4?

You should compare them to high school students or self taught people with no job history.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've been thinking about bootcamps a lot recently as my wife is attending one and it's amazing to me how dismissive our industry is of bootcamps, while we're totally supportive of "self-taught" developers. People learn in different ways and the fact that we have no problem with people who sat in their basement reading to learn coding but we dismiss people who learn better from lectures followed by labs is bizarre.

As far as my wife's experience, it's a legit introduction to the craft and she'll be able to assemble crud web apps when she's done. It does not make up for experience, but neither does learning on your own or a CS degree.

<comment><USER27> I find it hard to separate 'self-taught' which generally equates to 'given a problem and time, they can figure it out through their own abilties' and a bootcamp where 'someone guided you to a positive result in a short amount of time, but I still have no idea if you can figure anything out.' It's the same thing that happens with certifications, as you know some are just exams you study and quiz for and you don't develop any real skills or a foundation for real skills. There are some certifications I personally would place value in (Cisco, CISSP) because I have personal understanding of what that actually means. At resume review time? most are ignore at best and concerning at worst if a resume is padded with them.

For bootcamps the general HR person doesn't know what it means, and the technical person on the other side probably doesn't know what it means either. I can't even name the 'top 3 bootcamp programs' offhand even though I have been skimming most HN posts for it. The way I look at resume authoring is that every line needs to provide direct value to the audience reading it whoever they may be and to tell me what you have done before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I did an online boot camp about 3 years ago. It was a good deal, because the price was right and I viewed it at structure for my self learning. That program no longer exists, but the have something called LaunchSchool now. Something like Free Code Camp or Pluralsight would be a similar level of rigor.

If you aren't already technical, I would view a bootcamp as the start of developing a career in tech. Maybe equivalent to getting 25% of the way thru college. If a college student can drop out after freshman year to get that 80K+ USD/year job, that student were pretty close to being career ready before ever attending college.

</comment><comment><USER29> I started App Academy two years ago. I had programmed in college and was generally code-literate, but had no portfolio, no confidence, and no idea how to build either convincingly. And I didn't actually have an idea of how code is written in a business context.

I learned what they were teaching easily, but it didn't really teach me to code in any way different than I had for tiny self-contained projects in college. I was on the hunt for 10 months, got a job, and lost it a few months later. I still don't really know how code is written in a business context, and I'm probably heading back to academia now.

Overall, would not recommend.

</comment><comment><USER30> I did not attend a bootcamp, but I have known a few who have. Of them, there were two types I found most successful.

1\. People who were also spending time learning on their own while working for peanuts (or even free) to gain experience.

2\. People who were supplementing their existing expertise (outside of computer science) with basic coding skills.

The people in group 1 certainly had a lower salary/years-experience ratio than people from CS backgrounds. The people in group 2 often increased their salary, assuming they learned relevant things.

</comment><comment><USER31> I had a great experience at the program I attended and would do it again in a heartbeat if given the opportunity.

> What were some of the positives or negatives?

I didn't have any negative experiences that were big enough to remember but I had many great experiences. I met lots of very smart people, learned a lot and built some cool stuff. It was a lot of work (a lot, probably 60-70 hours a week) but very enjoyable and definitely worth it.

> Why did you initially enter, and did you feel like it gave you whatever > tools you felt were necessary?

I was attending school in the evenings for a CS degree while working full time and at the pace I was going it would have taken much longer than I was willing to wait to be able to change jobs. I wasn't enjoying my job and the pay was less than awesome. My fiance (now wife) encouraged me to to try it and I applied and after a couple of tech screens was accepted and haven't looked back.

I believe I gained about 95% of the skills I needed there. However I did learn how to learn everything else I needed, as the saying goes I didn't even know what I didn't know. At the program I went to we even spent time doing practice interviews and reviewing our resumes so we were prepared for the job search.

</comment><comment><USER32> A Bootcamp is an object; A Person is an object, too. We cannot make any comments to an object, right? If a person enters into a bootcamp, it only creates the one to many relationship. That's it. Bootcamp.successRate = 99% has nothing to do with Person.landAJob. What makes a Person become an ideal candidate depends on what methods and properties you put into the person's instance. You have to work damn hard to build stuff(methods) within this object to stand out in the job market. Colleges, bootcamps, nowhere build the roads for you. They just hand you tools to learn a bit efficiently. You need to handcraft everything by yourself.

If you want to land a job, you can check out this repo. [https://github.com/jwasham/google-interview- university](https://github.com/jwasham/google-interview-university)

Everyone just works damn hard to get a job that he/she dreams about. Nothing comes easy.

</comment><comment><USER33> I was lucky.

I found Dev Bootcamp after flunking out of university. I guess that was a choice. I had grown increasingly afraid of my classes. They stressed me out. Sitting in lectures was torture. The reading seemed pointless. My professors didn't have time to for my unread, meandering questions. My TAs didn't want to spend all of the lab entertaining my musings, either.

I guess you could interpret all that as selfish monopolization of shared resources — TAs and professors have limited time to spend with their share of ~15,000 students; they're not tutors, after all. So maybe it's a good thing I fucked off.

I managed to finagle myself some independent studies, but these were even less nurturing than I had hoped, and I came out of them only marginally better at the subjects. My independent study sponsors were very critical, but not very constructive, and with no input into the process, they were more-or-less guilt-tripped into giving me a barely passing grade, and a vague sense that my efforts _were_ mediocre — but not, crucially, _how._

I have spent my entire conscious life dreaming up software products. It probably started as games, but I am a very connected guy — read, web-addicted Millennial — and the Tetris Effect knows no deontological divide. While I was flunking out of university, I was filling grid-paper notebooks with colored boxes. Uninterpretable, colored-pencil, overlapping, concentric or con- something else.

Some of these were UIs, and some of them were data models. I didn't know the difference, really. I didn't know anything about any of these. I didn't know those words.

I didn't have a major at university. I took introductory classes. Anthropology. Astronomy. Afromusicology. Robotics. Philosophy. I thought I wanted to be a writer. I still do!

But people don't read novels. This was 2010. The next great American novel was gonna be an app.

So that's what I wanted to do.

A friend of mine came home from school in Montreal, disenchanted.

"They're not real artists," he told me. "They're just concerned with their grades. There's no scene! They're not doing real work!"

I don't know how true that was, but he and I liked Silicon Valley. There was a scene, here. People were doing real work. They were bluffing. They were failing. But they were trying.

We agreed to start a company on the ride home from an early Quora meetup. We wanted to build an app to build the artists' scene he hadn't found in Montreal. Something to get people out to freaky little early-stage artistic efforts. And something to reward the artists.

We had no product sensibilities. We imported a Canadian software engineer, and he taught me how to install Hadoop. This is a good joke, if you're paying attention: at this point, I've only read one book on Python, and hadn't even yet written my first program. Hadoop is a non-trivial big-date-crunching ecosystem, a tool for reliable, scalable and sophisticated analysis of large data sets across disparate computing clusters.

We had no users. No designs. No business model, and three old PC towers in my friend's father's garage.

We had a startup fetish, and no mentoring. It took us more than a year to fail, by which time we'd thrown one (1) party, hashed out one (1) mockup, pitched one (1) investor and let slack two (2) academic careers.

Oh, but I learned to stay away from Hadoop, which is something.

So what the fuck was I supposed to do next? Go back to school for computer science? Sit alone at my mother's kitchen table reading SICP? None of that seemed the alacritous route from zero-to-CTO I was seeking.

Enter Dev Bootcamp.

(This story ends badly, by the way. Five years later, I am not CTO.)

I had heard about it from a friend with a real CS degree, who now has a read CS job at a real CS company.

It took me two tries to get in. They rejected my first application. I think they only let me in the second time because I offered to pay all $10,000 upfront. Did I mention I saved a lot of my [grand]parents' money by flunking out of public university? That's a weird way to put it, huh?

Dev Bootcamp was a phenomenal experience. I never felt so hot, so capable, so brainy, or like I was learning SO DAMN MUCH! I was psyched to get in early, psyched to stay late! I was flooded by a barrage of unassailable concepts, but among them were countless grokkable models to wrap my hungry head around. I started saying things like "you don't have to understand everything to be learning maximally", and imagining that drowning might not be such a bad way to die.

Sometimes, it was easy. And I got to play. My pair and I would finish an exercise, and I'd say, "hey, wait; before we go on, what if we tried to go further?" or "what if we tried that first step like this, or like this, or like this!?"

Maybe I just like having a pair — a captive audience for my japes, as well as a library of unknown unknowns who could only explain things at a basic level: my level!

I didn't know the exercises we were going through were trivial.

I sat on a couch all afternoon with giant Jenga blocks, trying to explain iteration, sorting and searching to a smiling, comfortably bewildered cohort. It was like magic: I was grokking beautiful immaterial things in a room full of crazy, ambitious people.

None of them were techies. Doctors, lawyers, hippies, mothers, just wandering, wondering people desperate to learn the secret art!

Leave no one behind, we promised ourselves. Our reputations are only as good as our peers'.

They made us cry. They brought in a shrink to walk us through interpersonal communication exercises. They had us sit in groups, every week, to talk about how we felt, what we were learning, how we were struggling. We cried! We embraced! We joked about recursion!

Our instructors were mad geniuses! They exposed themselves. They knew too much. They'd cover any topic. They'd go far afield. So long as we finished our SQL milestones, they'd sit at the whiteboard and explain absolutely anything. They were real people.

"There are two kinds of people," our instructor told us, one day. He pantomimed an intensely focused person hunched over a keyboard. He became exasperated. He threw his hands in the air, and stood up. "That kind, and then this kind."

He pantomimed another intensely focused person, hunched over a keyboard. He became exasperated. He threw his hands in the air. He lay his palms in his lap, closed his eyes, and drew a long, meditative breathe, then whipped around, and again began to energetically strike at his pantomime keyboard.

He stood up, finishing "only one of these people is a programmer."

They taught us yoga. My father loved this. "They're teaching you things I wish they'd covered in my classes."

He's an old-school Java programmer. Never taught me a thing. Didn't want to be like his father: controlling, forcing him to learn software to help the family business.

"It took me years in professional environments to learn these communication skills, the importance of health, of empathy," my father told me, when I got out. "They're really setting you up to avoid all the worst things about working in software."

He stopped bothering me about going back to school, after that.

Instead, I got a job writing software at an international business services firm, and Dev Bootcamp sent me a bottle of champagne.

I put a date on my calendar for three years after I was hired. "Quit Your Job," it said. When that date came, I quit my job. I have been freelancing ever since, and I've never been lonelier.

<comment><USER34> I love this. I can't tell how much is real versus a character you are creating, but I have to say, the Great American Novel has a lot more longevity than an app, and I think you could maybe pull it off, or at least a quippy book of essays that makes me LOL on the BART.

<comment><USER33> Which would you prefer?

<comment><USER34> The novel if you could pull it off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I went to App Academy a few years back. I ended up taking a software development job at just about the salary they advertised, spent over a year there, and then moved on to one of Amazon/Facebook/Google/Microsoft.

<comment><USER11> Hey aagrad, would be curious as to how you were able to transition over so quickly. And how's the interview process like for a senior level engineer?

<comment><USER35> I don't think I did anything special. At some point a recruiter from one of those companies messaged me on LinkedIn, then I spent a couple of weeks preparing with Cracking the Coding Interview. I'm not a senior engineer - <AUTHOR> interviewed for a mid level role but got a junior level offer. Probably didn't do well enough on the systems design questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Does anyone have any sense of how sensitive the bootcamp boom is to the overall monetary expansion of the last several years? If VCs stop piling money into dipshit startups, are these places going to go away overnight?

</comment><comment><USER37> I've never done a coding bootcamp, so feel free to ignore my comment if you feel it is irrelevant.

My overall observation with coding bootcamps is you shouldn't do them. At my current company we have turned away a very, very, large number of applicants who have come from coding bootcamps.

The reason being they have a very narrow skill set and no actual real-life skills. They all build the same projects (this isn't always the case), and seem to always share their bootcamp projects as their own projects.

The best applicants we come across are simply passionate about building quality software. They build things just to build things, and learn because they're interested. They gain a very solid understanding of mathematics and algorithms through MIT OCW, Stanford Online, Coursera, etc...see a pattern? If you're looking to learn to code just to get a job, you'll have a really tough time.

The top 1% of software devs choose where they want to work, they don't ask for jobs and cross their fingers - they're actually very passionate about their work and it truly stands out.

The point is, anyone who is looking to do a coding bootcamp should really ensure this is not the only thing they have when they come out of it. Love coding and solving problems, that's priority #1. The skills will come to those who enjoy it simply because you're always asking questions and learning something new.

<comment><USER38> I agree with what you say. I also KNOW that coding bootcamp works for the people running the bootcamp and no one else. If you go, you literally piss your money into the pocket of someone else, and leave with nothing of value. Amazing, depending on what side of the fence you reside.

<comment><USER2> That's simply not true. Plenty of students have had success after bootcamps.

<comment><USER39> I don't know if Fifer is in SV, but there's a big problem on this site of SV folks thinking that SV represents the rest of the world. But if you went to a coding bootcamp in Chicago, you'd be flooded with entry-level job offers in Milwaukee or Madison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It was great for me, but I know it wasn't for other people in my cohort/class. It got me my first software job and it definitely gave me at least a foundation to build on.

It's silly to dismiss a job applicant for having a bootcamp on their resume, but don't hire them for entirely that reason either. I have it on my resume.

</comment><comment><USER41> I went to the Big Nerd Ranch. A heads down intensive week of coding dawn until you drop. The others in the class were very bright and we had an amazing time. I'd highly recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER42> I did Hack Reactor in SF two years ago and had a great experience.

To be fair, I had already had two jobs as a developer and had been coding for about 4 years. I was self taught so I really wasn't sure at what level I was at the moment and felt I didn't know a lot of things. I decided to do a bootcamp in order to move away from living in Virginia and doing mostly WordPress + CSS web dev to living in SF and doing mostly Node work. I think doing HR helped a lot in doing this and it would have taken me a lot more to do this without it. For me, the experience was incredibly helpful since I was able to:

1\. Learn new technologies like Angular, MongoDB

2\. Improve/perfect my JavaScript knowledge

3\. Learn about CS: data structures, algos

4\. Learn Interviewing skills

5\. Have a network in a completely new city and see a bit of SF tech culture

Of all of these, I feel #3 was probably the most useful one, since I already knew a lot about coding, but all of these were important. I was able to get a job fairly quickly and now have a lot of confidence for tech interviews. It also really expanded my universe in terms of things I knew about and how my career could go. I'd say my imposter syndrome is completely gone because of being able to see how well many of my other classmates are doing.

That being said, my experience was a lot easier because I already knew how to code and already had job experience.

For my classmates, a lot of them that were relatively new to coding. Most of them were able to find jobs, although the process certainly was not easy (I've also heard it's getting harder every year), but many of them were able to pull it off. It does take a lot of work and dedication. In my experience, the two things I saw that differentiate the good ones from the mehs is 1. If they had previous coding experience (even if it was just a bit) and 2. If they were really passionate about it and continued learning after they graduated. If they had this, they did fine!

My suggestions for anyone considering a bootcamp are:

1\. Have some months of coding experience before going to a bootcamp. This will ensure you actually like coding and are decently good at it.

2\. Only go to a selective, high-quality bootcamp. There are a lot of scams out there. Asking graduates about their experience and outcomes is a good way to measure this.

3\. Before going ask yourself: Is this something I'd be willing to pursue for the next 10 years, even for next to no money? If you like it enough and are passionate enough about it, the answer will probably be yes and the short term barriers won't seem that bad. If you're doing it for $$$ or to just get a job, the answer to this question will probably be no.

<comment><USER43> This was pretty much my experience, and that of a few of my friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I went to a bootcamp in Toronto. The admissions person I spoke to made it sound expect an internship or a permanent job after the bootcamp depending on my progress and experience. I've been doing RoR full-stack dev for a few years so I thought for sure I could land a salaried position after the 3 months were over. (Plot twist!)

Many of the "mentors" didn't know the subject matter, and were struggling themselves in their careers. On day one, the at-home prep-course we had completed in advance of starting the bootcamp was re-introduced, so basically there was little point in doing the prep-course because you repeat all that material in class. Turns out the at-home prep-course exists mainly for the bootcamps to get a different tax code classification so they can pay less federal/provincial tax.

The companies that hire from the bootcamp use a government grant so they can pay their new hires $5/hour and the government covers another $10/hour. This is only for the first 3 months (they call it "probation period"). So new hires make $15/hour for the first three months, and then if you prove yourself (and they actually have the money to hire you), they roughly double that pay to around $30/hour after the "probation period".

Right after graduating I lost three job opportunities (even though I have a few years web dev experience, and these companies were very interested in me) because I'm over 30 and this gov grant all the companies are using only applies to people 30 and under. I started telling companies: "Hey, I'm 3x years old, is that an issue?" and some confirmed to me that yes, it was an issue, and that they were no longer interested in interviewing me.

I ended up getting hired by a startup that had me apply for another type of gov assistance that would allow them to pay me the same $5/hour while Ontario covered another $10/hour. I was their first employee. I built approx 50% of their app during my probation period, by myself. When I was done the 3 month probation period, they offered me $7/hour, a fancy title, plus bonus pay when (if) they get VC funding at some point down the road. I refused and am now looking for another job. The Career Services person at the bootcamp hasn't sent me any leads, but it's early Jan so I don't expect much, and I'm doing OK networking on my own.

This is the second time I've worked for a startup that used my labour for near minimum wage pay during a "probation period" and then tells me they have no money to pay me a fair wage. First time this happened was in Berlin. There are many companies in Berlin that survive by hiring people, paying them 1/2 industry standard pay for 3 to 5 months and then kicking them to the curb. Companies in Toronto appear to be doing the same.

<comment><USER45> I'm somewhat considering going to a bootcamp in Toronto and currently researching schools available here. I wonder if I can ask you more information about your experience with the one that you attended. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I did go to a bootcamp for Python/Django in SF, 2014. I was previously doing basic small biz wordpress sites and graphic design, now lead backend engineer at a 5-year old startup, making 115K when hired.

If you want to learn to code, definitely a bootcamp is a great resource. Sure, you can do it all yourself, find materials online for free, but putting in the time with other learners for 10-15+ weeks in an actual learning environment is for me worth the $10K.

A lot of people (who almost always have never done one) like to say that you shouldn't do them, you won't get hired, you can find it online. I'd ask them if they have a college degree, and they why waste your money at college when all the info is available online?

In the end you're going to get out of it what you put into it; before, during, and after. Obviously do your homework not only on the camp and instructors, but as well all the time you can into online resources.

I'll never regret my choice to go to a programming bootcamp. It literally changed my life in amazing ways.

</comment><comment><USER47> I did a coding bootcamp but it was far from my first experience coding. I was previously working in DevOps and did 2 years of a computer science degree prior, also countless microcontroller projects written in C and processing.

What the coding bootcamp did is kicked my ass into web development and gave me resources and people to get a job as a programmer. I think it would have taken me much longer to get up to speed if I would have done it on my own. It also gave me a chance to learn my learning style and gave me the tools to pick up new languages and frameworks.

The only draw back is I'm now in a position where I feel like i want to go back to school to bone up on Computer Science basics because I'm more into the craft and less about whatever market forces are doing. I'll be programming probably for the rest of my life in one form or another.

You should do one if you want to get into app/web development, but if you want to dive deep into computer science or do things not related to app development, just go do a computer science or computer engineering degree. I'm still considering doing my masters in computer engineering which will be a lot harder without a bachelors in compsci or computer engineering, but possible.

<comment><USER28> >> he only draw back is I'm now in a position where I feel like i want to go back to school to bone up on Computer Science basics..

Man, I totally know what you mean. I had done primarily Ruby & web stuff one tends to use with Ruby from 2009 until early 2016. I hadn't even considered programming outside of web development as an option. Then I fell into a cloud infrastructure role. Totally changed my thinking.

My new paradigm includes:

* Bash is cool

* Elixir is cool

* Systemd is cool

* Networking is cool

* Reading RFCs is cool

* C & Go sound like fun</comment></comment>


Senator Marco Rubio drops support for PIPA - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/SenatorMarcoRubio/posts/340889625936408

<comment><USER2> "Earlier this year, this bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously and without controversy."

Could that be because the Tech industry was pretty much excluded from the committee hearings?

<comment><USER3> Hence the next sentence:

"Since then, we've heard legitimate concerns about the impact the bill could have on access to the Internet and about a potentially unreasonable expansion of the federal government's power to impact the Internet. Congress should listen and avoid rushing through a bill that could have many unintended consequences."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >much of it occurring overseas through rogue websites in China.

What?

I'm seeing the rhetoric here quickly shifting to "overseas", we're trying to stop "overseas" piracy.

That is _so_ ill-defined. Does overseas mean it's hosted overseas? That it transits through overseas? That the founders are located overseas? The registrar? What if it's on a CDN? What if its a US based company that has datacenters overseas? What if it's a UK company that has US based datacenters?

What does that even mean?

<comment><USER5> Make no mistake. The entire site blocking mechanism of this legislation was always intended to target foreign websites. The broad overreaching scope that ignores due process and the DNS provisions, the part everyone has been mad and vocal about are the products of this. But the intent has always been to stop foreign sites.

The Pirate Bay has been the slipperiest fish to tangle with. Every attempt they have made to stop or block it, including alleged manipulation and influence of Swedish courts and law have failed. Because it's a foreign website and we have no jurisdiction over it. So they crafted this law with the intent to have the ability to block Americans from viewing it within America. The way it's worded, it's able to block anything else, too.

So since the outcry and the backlash, they have shifted their narrative to explicitly spotlight those dirty evil foreign interests. But I don't believe for a second that it was never the original goal.

<comment><USER6> I don't get why they haven't gotten their DNS name seized by ICE yet considering it's a .org

<comment><USER7> Because ICE has no jurisdiction. All of the ICE take downs are only for sites that sell physical goods (bootlegs, counterfeits, etc.) to people in the States.

<comment><USER8> Other than the rap music blogs, right?

<comment><USER9> and gambling sites..... dont forget them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Fight the Online Theft of American Ideas_

So copyright is supposed to protect _ideas_ now? And here I thought it was to protect actual works.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why do I have the feeling that he's still going to vote for it when it hits the floor?

<comment><USER12> Because he is a Republican.

<comment><USER13> PIPA was introduced by a Democrat, SOPA by a Republican, and both have wide bipartisan support.

<comment><USER14> Gettin' paid seems to have wide bipartisan support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Roy Blunt, Senator from Missouri, has also dropped support: <https://twitter.com/#!/RoyBlunt/status/159698998578524160>

Politicians are getting the message (which to them, may just be that dropping support is a quick and easy way to gain popularity with its younger constituents)

</comment><comment><USER16> "Therefore, I have decided to withdraw my support for the Protect IP Act"

PIPA, not SOPA

<comment><USER17> PIPA is the Senate version of the bill and Rubio is a Senator. He does not have a vote on SOPA. If both passed then they would need to be reconciled into a single bill.

<comment><USER18> The original title of the post said SOPA, he was just correcting it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How many of them will drop support because it's the right thing to do vs. the political thing to do?

This will crop up again unless we can get more viciously ethical people representing us.

<comment><USER20> > How many of them will drop support because it's the right thing to do vs. > the political thing to do?

Hopefully the same number who initiated support because it was the political thing to do in the first place.

The better question to ask: who in congress has both _read_ and _understand_ the implications of the bills? I'm inclined to think that number is ridiculously small.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Lee Terry (R-NE) and Benjamin Quayle (R-AZ) drop support for SOPA

[https://www.pcworld.com/article/248336/two_sopa_cosponsors_d...](https://www.pcworld.com/article/248336/two_sopa_cosponsors_drop_support_for_bill.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> I think he realized how ridiculous Sen.Harry Reid is saying that this bill is all about jobs when in fact the one sector that will mostly affected by this is tech. which is known for creating jobs</comment>