Ask HN: How effective have the job posts on HN been? - <AUTHOR> I do come across job posts on the home of HN. Job postings by Y Combinator alumni, which are guaranteed to appear on the front page for a period of time.
How effective has been these posts?
Anyone here who has out the job post and can share some numbers? Anyone who has applied to these job posts? Others, what do you do/think when you see a job post?
We are working on a startup idea, and this question carries some value in validating our concept. However, it is not related to job openings. Our validation is primarily to understand user behavior. <comment><USER2> I owe my writing career to HN.

I have been writing my whole life (I probably put in my 10,000 hours before I left high school). But until recently, I'd never really considered it as a serious job option. Journalism rarely pays a living wage. Trying to sell book proposals is like trying to make a career out of buying lottery tickets. Unless you are confident you're the next J.K. Rowling [1], you should leave writing where it belongs: on nights and weekends, as a hobby. Or so I'd always imagined. And so I spent the last decade of my life resisting the call to foolishness and misadventure.

I've been lurking, arguing, and mucking about on HN for the last few years. I took awhile to realize that HN had become my primary outlet for writing. Once I figured it out, I committed more time to lurking here.

I responded to my first HN jobs post in mid-2013, for a writing job with Priceonomics (YC '12). They responded rapidly (same day, if memory serves), and I got to work right away. I have done some very fun, very interesting work with those guys. (And I hope to continue; in fact, I owe them beers when I get back into town!). That work went really well. In the span of three or four months, I landed an agent, a book deal, some NPR appearances, and some columns in national publications. I have yet to make Harry Potter money, let alone my previous salary. But in the meantime, I'm paying rent in San Francisco, doing something that doesn't feel like work to me. That's pretty cool.

Lately I've picked up a lot of freelance content marketing and writing jobs through HN Freelancer threads. I get a good response rate, and the people I work with have been awesome. I hope to keep landing these gigs every month or two.

And at some point, I'll get around to writing that book.

I apologize if this post seems glib, humblebraggy, or even non-humble in its bragginess. That's not my intent. I just saw this topic and felt an overwhelming need to share my story here. My path is atypical and ill-advised. Especially if you like making money. But I know of no other path by which I could have reshaped my destiny so quickly.

[1] Or Robert Galbraith, or whoever.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey .... I could not have asked for more... Thanks for the detailed response. It really helps in my understanding and adds a not of value.

<comment><USER3> "not" is: ton*

I know normally corrections are frowned upon, but this should be an exception, it completely inverts the meaning!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks ... yeah ... I meant ton ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know specific numbers, but the companies we've funded say they get good people from them.

</comment><comment><USER5> From the viewpoint of a job applicant, I have been very happy with the job postings on HN. Of the 4 jobs that I applied to over the past 3.5 years (I'm pretty selective), all 4 responded to me on the same day, and 3 resulted in phone interviews. Those numbers are very good compared to other job posting sites.

I found that job aggregation sites like Monster performed absolutely terribly. In that same category are the careers website that large companies like Microsoft and Boeing have, which are basically black holes. I can't remember ever getting a response from any of them. It's easy to spam your resume to dozens of jobs at once, but 0/1000 is still 0.

My favorite technique (which got me my current job) was to apply to the company directly after finding the job opening through Craigslist or other means. Applying directly got me a response rate of 14/17, and an interview rate of 10/14.

Emailing companies directly through Craigslist was fairly poor for me, and gave me a response rate of 2/8, and an interview rate of 1/2.

I realize that my sample size is small, but I hope it helps.

<comment><USER6> Your talk about "black holes" made me realize that when I apply anywhere I should put some URLs into my cover letters to see if anyone ever reads them.

<comment><USER7> How would you use URLs in the cover letters to check they were read?

<comment><USER6> Put them on a server I control and check access logs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My experience as job applicant:

Who is hiring, March 2014: I received three responses to my applications. One for code samples (no follow up afterward), one for quick phone conversation, and one for phone interview (Ed: three different companies).

Seeking Freelance, March 2014: No response.

Who is hiring, Feb 2014: No response.

Seeking Freelance, Feb 2014: No response.

YC Companies /jobs: No ACK or response in last two months.

<comment><USER9> Same experience here. Need to pass an online code puzzle -> a short phone interview -> No response.

<comment><USER10> Why is it considered acceptable to just cut off contact after a phone interview or an onsite interview?

If you get an onsite interview or phone interview, they should at least have the decency for a form letter "Thanks for applying, but we chose someone else." (especially after an on-site interview)

<comment><USER11> It is not acceptable.

I have tried to be courteous to everyone who has applied where I am. However, keep in mind that one recruiter may be dealing with 20-50 applicants in that week.

And it is never fun rejecting people. It is easy to want to put it off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We get great applicants ([https://circleci.com/jobs](https://circleci.com/jobs)), and have hired over half the company this way (maybe 6 or 7 people).

However, we have a lot that appeals to the HN crowd: a flat organization, CircleCI is written in Clojure, the company is half remote, we make tools for developers and we're committed to private offices per dev for SF hires.

So your mileage will definitely vary.

<comment><USER13> Why do you limit remote applicants with "US-only"?

<comment><USER6> Dealing with remote employees is already something of an effort. It churlish to take the minority of companies willing to do it and complain that they aren't doing it enough because they want to stick with their native legal and social system.

(Can I let go of my remote employee in London? Do I need to "show cause"? How much will it cost me just to get a lawyer to answer that?)

<comment><USER13> Hire as a [long-term] contractor and that's it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Until a year or so ago, they were our #1 most effective recruitment vehicle. (We got better at hiring; HN didn't get worse.)

<comment><USER13> Next step: get better at management to allow remote employment ;)

<comment><USER14> Yeah, no. Just not how we work. Sorry! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Note that there are two types of job posts on HN:

1) Who is Hiring threads, which are posted on the first of every month

2) Job postings by Y Combinator alumni, which are guaranteed to appear on the front page for a period of time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I meant the second type.

Was not able to frame it correctly. So I have copy pasted your definition and updated the description. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> We've posted two and received a total of about 50 applications.

of those 50 I'd say 65-75% of them are high quality candidates at least at first glance that are writing emails specifically about the postings we put up and referencing the things we say in the post vs just spamming everyone in the list with a generic cover letter and resume.

So far HN is the best source of high quality candidates for us as a startup working on hard technical challenges.

</comment><comment><USER17> I regularly (twice a month?) check [https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs](https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs) just to see what's out there. I'm not even looking for a job, just more interested in what startups are doing and what kind of employees they're looking for.

</comment><comment><USER18> Applied to 4 front end positions with a dash of Rails work, 2 of them had uninteresting work so I declined, 1 wanted me to jump through hoops answering some silly puzzles - "Lol no... I'm not 21 anymore, you want to hire me look at my credentials and open source code".

The last one was a great fit and I'm loving the work we're doing.

If you guys want to hire good people who actually respect themselves and will present your business well inside and outside, don't make candidates jump through your silly college-level puzzles. I'm too old for this shit.

</comment><comment><USER19> We posted on HN in November and it was very effective ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6653752](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6653752)). The volume of candidates that came from the HN post was much smaller than other channels, but the quality of candidates was much higher than all the other channels.

Here are the numbers we saw:

HN - 12 candidates total, 7 made it to the initial phone interview and 3 made it to a full interview....we made one offer and he accepted (and he's awesome).

Stackoverflow - 28 candidates, 9 initial phone interviews, 2 full interviews, no offers.

Indeed - 40 candidates, 6 phone interviews, none of them made it to a full interview.

Craigslist - 6 candidates, 2 phone interviews, neither of them made it to a full interview.

Two other thoughts...

I think the reason that HN worked so well for us is that we we took a very targeted approach...before posting, we spent a lot of time thinking through exactly what we were looking for and what we thought made working at BuzzStream a unique opportunity for the right person. We wrote a positioning statement for the job that we used as the starting point for our post. Getting the message right was critical.

The fact that we don't mind bringing on remote people makes things a lot easier.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you go through the whoishiring posts, you'll see some people actually do give numbers. For example, scribd:

> We've hired SIX full-time people and TONS of interns from these "Who is > Hiring" threads ... it really works!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7326306](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7326306)

<comment><AUTHOR> "who is hiring" thread is great...

My specific question is regarding the [https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs](https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs)

Also, some of the jobs show up on the homepage, how do they fare?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I got a great job through the the Who's Hiring thread. The company that hired me said the signal:noise ratio from HN was about 50:50, much higher than any other method.

</comment><comment><USER22> Multiple hires for Khan Academy. One of our best recruiting networks.

</comment><comment><USER23> I once applied to a job post in the one of the monthly "Who's Hiring" threads. I got a callback and we discussed the my experience, the company, and the position.

They were interested in conducting a further interview, but, based on the what I learned in the phone conversation, I decided we wouldn't be a good fit together and so declined to move forward.

I do enjoy reading the threads each month to see what the industry is up to from a hiring perspective.

</comment><comment><USER10> Just one data point:

I replied to every NYC posting one month. I got zero on-site interviews. (I do get interviews when I send resumes via other methods.)

I'm not wasting time responding again.

</comment><comment><USER24> We hired our frontend engineer, and he's been nothing short of awesome.

To put this in context:

We are an enterprise SaaS company (www.treasuredata.com). In other words, this is not something a lot of frontend folks are aware of let alone interested in by default. Still, we managed to find someone who was really good. He and another frontend engineer made a worlds of difference in our webapp and boosted customer engagement.

<comment><USER8> Very interesting company. Thanks for making me aware of it. I wasn't aware of an enterprise data storage, management and analytics SaaS company. This is my area of interest. I noticed you have couple of opportunities that I may be a good fit. Sending my application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great but terrible. Lots of initial contact with people I am offering them jobs with WordPress development and rails but very little followup.

<comment><AUTHOR> You had posted a job opening and got great by terrible response, or you applied to jobs, but no follow-ups?

<comment><USER26> I think it's supposed to read, "Lots of initial contact with people. I am offering them jobs with WordPress development and rails, but very little followup."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> 1\. I don't work in a technical domain

2\. I don't look at job offers on HN

3\. I never applied to job offers on HN

I hope this gives you a great insight!

</comment><comment><USER28> Got a few interesting nibbles after posting on the who's hiring posts, but specific hiring submission didn't get far. We're based in Cape Town, so perhaps reader geography plays some part.

If you're in our part of the world, have skills in frontend development, java, or python, and you want to work at a fast growing mobile payments company, send me a mail (email on profile)

<comment><USER29> Same as the other commenter, I'm interested. Canadian but I'd like to work in Africa. HN doesn't display your email address, you have to post it in your bio.

<comment><USER30> I you can find it in his previous comments, he's posted in the "Who's Hiring" before. I would repost but I assume it's something about avoiding spammers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> As an applicant [https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs](https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs) was always a fun way to read the pulse of the YC crowd. I saw something interesting, I applied, and now I'll be starting my new position in a few weeks! In a word; useful. :)

</comment><comment><USER32> I'd be curious to hear about how effective the ones that end up on the weekends are. I can imagine they are quite a bit less effective, but I could be wrong. Seems like it would be worth just delaying those to the next Monday, but that isn't exactly a new opinion.

</comment><comment><USER33> Myself and 2 other ZenPayroll engineers found and applied to ZenPayroll through the job posts on HN.

</comment><comment><USER34> I didn't find my current job directly through the monthly job post but, over a year ago, I found a link to AngelList and then from there I was able to find my full-time job, junior and all.

</comment><comment><USER35> I got my current gig at Monetate in December 2013 after seeing a post on Who's Hiring November 2013.

It turns out we've hired 7 our ~20 software engineers like this over the last few years.

</comment><comment><USER36> Seeking freelancer has netted me a 3 to 1 rate for new clients on average every time I've posted. Far better then posting on elance or similar sites.

</comment><comment><USER37> High quality candidates and also great discussions even with people we end up not hiring (Some we forwarded to other startups we knew were looking).

</comment><comment><USER38> I've posted many UI programmer job openings I have in my team, never even received a resume. Good programmers are hard to find.

<comment><USER39> I know this is a shameless plug, but my company, Mighty Spring ([http://www.mightyspring.com/getstarted](http://www.mightyspring.com/getstarted)) has a ton of front end people who would be interested in working at your startup ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I was hired from a regular HN post. But know of people hired through the job posts themselves. It works well.

</comment><comment><USER41> My current job I got through HN, in addition to a number of interviews. Not a YC Co though.

</comment><comment><USER42> I think this post should be a poll instead of just an 'open question'.

</comment><comment><USER43> Got my current job on here</comment>


Shut Up and Listen - <AUTHOR> http://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/09/06/shut-up-and-listen/ <comment><USER2> A textbook example from a Reddit thread: in a conversation about college, one poster lamented the existence of women's and minority groups (like the Society of Women Engineers or the National Society of Black Engineers) that exclude white males. A second poster pointed out that those organizations don't exclude white males, and in some cases white males are actively courted. The third poster responded to the effect of "sure, they let white males join, but I attended a NSBE meeting one and I was the only white guy in the room. As the only white guy I was extremely uncomfortable and that discomfort was basically the same as not welcoming white guys."

I don't think this poster was a racist or a bad guy, just someone that didn't realize how his privilege colored his perceptions, or how the privilege (or lack thereof) of others can affect _their_ perceptions.

<comment><USER3> Do you have a link to that? I'd love to be able to show that to others.

<comment><USER2> Ugh, I'll see if I can find it, I don't even remember what the original topic was.

edit - found it: [http://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/184uh5/as_a_w...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/184uh5/as_a_white_male_attending_university_i_should/c8botsc)

Looks like that post was heavily downvoted. You can read up the parent chain to see the other posts I referenced.

<comment><USER3> Thank you. It's almost too good to be true.

By the way, to 'read up the comment chain,' you can add '?context=3' to add the top 3 posts. Like this: [http://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/184uh5/as_a_w...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/184uh5/as_a_white_male_attending_university_i_should/c8botsc?context=5)

<comment><USER2> Thank, I'll remember that for future Reddit links.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a good old post by Scalzi, but the people who most need to pay attention to it are the ones least likely to pay attention to it.

EDIT: He also has a current post: [http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/03/21/two- simple-observation...](http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/03/21/two-simple- observations-regarding-women/)

<comment><USER5> There's hope, though: every time a link like this is posted, a few of the folks who haven't had their "ah-ha!" moments yet may get nudged in that direction (just as the commenter he quotes did). Those nudges do have an effect, and they do add up. Or at least, they did for me.

I just wish there was a way to make it happen _faster_.

<comment> mkr-hn It took a few times for me, but it happened on forums and Twitter many months ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think that the biggest privilege one can have, at least when it comes to matters of career and finance is being born to middle-class or better parents and having an above average IQ.

I would imagine a lesbian black woman with an Ivy league education has much greater odds of success than a straight white guy from the trailer park/slum who struggles with reading/writing skills.

I find it interesting that it is generally considered correct and fair that somebody has better income and quality of life because of high intelligence when this is a factor as much outside your control as race or gender.

<comment><USER7> But the point is, you're just imagining those things, which is what causes you to set up this neat little world where a black lesbian has an Ivy League education just because she's smart, ignoring all of the extra obstacles that would be in her way compared to someone with more social privilege.

You're able to do this by comparing different kinds of circumstances — the person born with white and male privilege but little money or academic skill (and indeed, these are handicaps!), and the person born into the world with similar handicaps, _who has already overcome them,_ preventing us from actually comparing their circumstances.

When oppressed people reach recognizable pinnacles of success, like an Ivy League education, it's because they worked _harder_ than lots of other people might have had to, despite other advantages they might have had.

<comment><USER8> _When oppressed people reach recognizable pinnacles of success, like an Ivy League education, it's because they worked harder than lots of other people might have had to, despite other advantages they might have had._

That would be better than the world we have.

Until I moved to the USA and observed the process first hand at an Ivy League school, I would never have credited the claim that there are people whose whole lives are based on having won the affirmative action lottery, and then playing the race card. This ticks me off, because having known such people I can no longer discount the possibility that any FUTURE minority person that I meet with the trappings of success is one of them. Most aren't. Most got there on their own merits, against all odds. But the nature of business is that a bad hire frequently costs much more than the opportunity cost of waiting to make the right hire. And that pushes you to not give the benefit of the doubt.

In particular I witnessed watching a black woman who had played the race card her whole life getting kicked out with a masters in math despite objectively knowing less math than I expected from undergrads. At the same time a much more competent white man who had a block in ONE subject area (and enormous success in many others) would have been kicked out with no degree at all if I had not taken a month of my personal time out to teach him all of topology. And a third person, an undergraduate black from England who had never received any preference, took an extra quarter to finish a well-earned masters on top of his BSc.

All three frustrate me in different ways. I hated seeing the ridiculously easy qual she was given compared to the rest of us, in written take home format yet, with a blind eye turned towards the fact that she was begging other grad students to do it for her. At the same time a student who had worked much harder and done much more got no breaks at all from the system. And in parallel I saw a truly deserving minority student, and know that for the rest of his life upon first meeting someone like him, I'll need to unfairly suspect his deserved accomplishments until I know him better.

Yes, I recognize the historical injustice. Yes, I recognize the barriers. But our current affirmative action policies give some a lottery ticket at the cost of perpetuating the problems into future generations. That's not what we need to do.

<comment><USER9> I'm not American but don't you have the same problem with rich kids whose parents donate buildings to get their kids through school?

If so, do you also discount the trappings of success of every person that looks like he could have rich parents?

<comment> jack-r-abbit Is there really a problem in the US with a huge number of people donating buildings to schools to get their kids in? I did not realize this happens on a large enough scale to make that an actual issue.

<comment><USER10> It's less literal than that.

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

<comment> jack-r-abbit Ah, yes. In a broader sense that probably is a bit more of an issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great, another guilt ridden diatribe against John Scalzi from John Scalzi. I've never read someone who is more obsessed about being a "privileged white male" than he is. I wish he would take his own advice or at least the first part of it. I'm not going bother arguing with him because really what's the point, this self-flagellation obviously gets him off and as usual it's all about him. Is "self-hating narcissist" a thing?

<comment><USER12> Self-flagellation? I went back to make sure I didn't miss anything but it looks like a post about understanding your privilege and how your success relates to it. It's a post about understanding the depth of experience that other people live with, experiences he has not had because of that privilege.

<comment><USER13> It seems that a trend is developing of labeling earnest introspection as "self-flagellation." See my comment at <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5375270> for an identical situation on a different subject. I don't want to make assumptions, but are people really that hostile to the idea of openly questioning oneself?

(I'm speaking specifically of the HN community, obviously the answer for the general public is a resounding "yes")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> the example of walking through a dark parking lot to demonstrated 'straight white privilege' is pretty shitty. in fact it's probably the worst example you could choose.

his 'privilege' of not worrying about being assaulted comes from the fact that he is 6' 280 pounds, not because he's white or male or straight. a big gay black man (or woman, for that matter) of the same stature probably doesn't feel that twinge of fear his petite asian female colleage felt walking through a dark parking lot.

smaller/shorter straight white guys still have to worry about getting beaten up or bullied or robbed. in fact bullying it's kind of a wide spread problem these days affecting everyone.

in my experience most straight white guys have no problem understanding their privilege in society, i work with a lot of them and they joke around about how being a "white dude" is awesome. it certainly doesn't suck. lots of these guys grew up in diverse neighborhoods or went to school with people from different backgrounds so they have heard stories or seen first hand how people different from themselves go about life. anyone with average IQ and

however, there are some that _just don't get it_ and no amount of reading blog posts is going to help them understand, it just takes time (age) and personal experience. or they're just a couple of IQ points below the threshold it takes to think about these things in an abstract manner (beyond "my life is all that exists in this world.")

<comment><USER15> I am a 5'6" white guy weighing 120lb. I don't feel fear walking through dark parking lots. The shortest path between my house and the closest grocery is through a large, poorly lit lot. The better lit street route would add, oh, about a minute to the walk.

I would _absolutely_ not walk through there if I was a woman. I don't really mind the small chance of being robbed -- a small chance of being raped is a completely different thing.

<comment><USER14> "small chance of being robbed"

do it in a bad neighborhood at the wrong time/place and this turns into "large chance of being cornered, beaten for being white/outsider/unknown, robbed, and if you put up any resistance, killed."

all your anecdote tells me is you don't venture far from your own safety zones.

my point is a bank, board room, police station, or any number of other places is a MUCH BETTER place to illustrate the "white, straight, male" privilege that exists.

<comment><USER16> Sure, but when relating a personal story about it, you have to go with what you got.

For the record here's mine:

I was the white employee at a hip hop club. The owner was black, as were my co workers. The clientele of the club was mostly black. I was a manager, but the owner was there most nights too - making me not the senior person. The cops were there a lot waiting outside to harass people leaving. I saw an awful lot of cops fucking with people for minor things, that the same cops didn't even glance at in other parts of town [1]. Incidents like fights were met with forceful reactions by the police - full out "lay on the ground and get cuffed" responses to small brawls, but worse fights at the other bar, the response was "hey break it up, go home, and don't come back tonight". This gave me an inkling to privilege.

Then one night some hoodlums were causing a lot of mischief in the street out front and the cops initiated a full on riot response. Woah - tear gas, arrests everywhere, 40+ cops. Again, the last time I saw something on the same scale of disturbance on campus, it was 5 cops, a couple of arrests, and a "disperse and go home" on loop on the PA. During the riot response, I was standing in the entryway with my boss, the club owner. The cops came up and tried to usher me to safety and arrest my boss for loitering. It took a lot of effort on my part to find a cop who would listen to the fact that the guy wasn't loitering, he was standing on his property for sane business reasons. That was privilege right there.

The other thing I constantly encountered was that delivery people, job applicants and so on, always assumed I was in charge, no matter if I was sweeping or counting money, and no matter if the boss was sweeping or counting money. In well over 75% of cases, it was just assumed I was the boss. Again, privilege. (I mean seriously, I dressed like a bum, and the bos had style. It was absurd).

[1] All my cop behavior comparisons are based on the job i had before that working at a college bar in the same town, closer to campus, where the clientele was mostly white college kids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is silly. Just because Scalzi has problems with listening to what people are saying, does not mean that everyone else has. Also, just because it's good to listen, emphatize and understand where people are coming from, it's not good for anyone to just stand there and take abuse. Nip it in the bud. Don't feed the trolls. Respect people who respect you. If people are silent and don't share their feelings and opinions, ask them questions, get them engaged into the conversation. Be a builder, feed constructive, respectful discussion.

Assuming that everybody has something worth listening to makes a huge, fallacious assumption that simply causes you undue suffering. People use words to inform. People also use words to manipulate and gain power over someone. Recognize the difference. You will feel much better and be a much more effective communicator.

Just because the only way you understand discussion is in order to share information and discuss things logically, someone else may just use words to try and twist your mind, use whatever dirty tactic to gain an advantage over you, or over a group. They don't care about logic, they don't care about information, they don't care about fairness. Only thing in their mind is power. Recognize.

<comment><USER18> >Just because Scalzi has problems with listening to what people are saying, does not mean that everyone else has.

Yes, but I can assure you that when it comes to discussing privilege, well, yes, everyone else does have.

<comment><USER17> Privilege is a heavily loaded word that is difficult to use in context of contructive discussion. You are by default swallowing the feminist bait and playing by their rules. Making it impossible to gain any ground because of fallacious, circular logic.

I'm not denying that privilege exist at all. I'm just saying that how it's understood and used is heavily biased and politicized. It would be much more productive to discuss about topics without resorting to feminist dogma.

<comment><USER13> FWIW, I found Scalzi's post to be much more constructive (not to mention well- written) than whatever agenda you're pushing here, which is coming across as fairly toxic...

It seems pretty clear that people's obliviousness to their own privilege is a much bigger problem than too many people "swallowing the feminist bait."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The concept of privilege only makes sense on a statistical basis. Whats the obsession with constantly applying it to single persons? That speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding. If being white is correlated with being high- earning, that doesn't mean every white is high-earning. That is just not the implication.

<comment><USER15> That's not what the concept of privilege means, though!

</comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit I guess I'm the only person that has had the "privilege" of being physically assaulted, several times... in separate states, and harassed and threatened for no other reason than being white. Yay privileged white me! Or maybe the only one that was denied financial aid because my father (not me... my father... single father even) was about $1K over the cut off. Damn him for working that second job and getting a few extra hours of overtime. If only he'd not been such a hard worker, he would have made just a tiny bit less and I could have qualified for assistance. However, this was my dad's money they were counting... not mine. _I_ didn't have money. It would have been nice if my totally (not) rich dad had been able to help me with college. Yay privileged white me! And then there was a whole set of grants I could not even apply for because I was white. Yay privileged white me! And then there is the law about making sure that all groups were proportionally represented in schools and jobs, regardless of qualifications. Yay privileged white me!

Not everyone in this perceived "privileged" class gets dealt aces. Not that it has to be some competition about who has the harder life (sure... you win that prize)... but some of us actually do get the shaft plenty and have to power through it like everyone else. But you can choose to use it as an excuse or you can choose to use it as inspiration. I chose inspiration! I don't complain about it [except in cases like this. ;)] or use it to dismiss the plights of others. I studied and earned an academic scholarship to partially fund my schooling. I worked nights and weekends to pay rent like everyone else. I worked hard to get where I am. And sure, people will just dismiss that and point a link to that "White Male: Lowest Difficulty Level in Life" article. Those people are hypocrites. If your whole argument is "You don't know what it's like" and "Don't judge me until you've walked a mile in my shoes" then you are not allowed to judge me until you've walked in my shoes either. I shut up and listen plenty and mostly what I hear is "Oh poor me and the tough hand I was dealt... I need to tell everyone else to shut up and listen to me because they can't possibly know the hardships I've seen." My "privileged" ass will shut up now. But shutting up and listening is not reserved only for "privileged whites." We'll gladly share that with anyone willing.

<comment><USER20> I think the OP was discussing more privilege in general, and using the stereotypical straight white male as an example. I agree with you that this is obviously a stereotype, but I don't think the OP used it as anything but just that. Your example speaks volumes about shutting up and listening, both by people of all backgrounds, and to people of all backgrounds.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Sure, I get that. But just like many other things, talking about stereotypes is generally looked upon as racist (or genderist, etc)... unless it is a white stereotype and then it's just fine because apparently we deserve it. Somehow along the way (probably due to the sins of our fathers) we've been shackled with some gross double standards that make it really difficult to take it all seriously. Hypocrisy is rampant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Rather than thinking of different perspectives (which the author mentions in the last paragraph), I like to think of the list of facts I know as divided into two categories:

"the things which I think are actually true, based on data I've obtained from _lots_ of first hand witnesses and, perhaps, first hand"

"the things which I dreamed up in my head, which allow me to tell a narrative about a phenomenon, but about which there are other people who _actually know_ the real answer if I can only find and listen to them."

This is mostly so I can fit an anti-relativist empiricist worldview into one where I have to listen to other people (especially when they're talking about interesting things) - i.e. while the universe (and morality) are deterministic, I have not measured everything about them yet (and I will never finish this task).

Also my chronic fear of embarrassment in unfamiliar social groups is helpful in making me shut up and listen for a while, and generally stops me contributing where I would "show my ass" as the OP says (although, as a white, straight, cis-male with too many qualifications, I tend to speak up and make a fool of myself depressingly often in spite of this.)

</comment><comment><USER22> Even giving all benefit of the doubt, what's the solution then?

If you don't personally treat anyone differently based on attributes outside their control, what else are you obligated to do?

<comment><USER23> Looking for a 'solution' is the wrong angle to take. There is no easy answer to any question that involves privilege. You can't make a decision about how it can be fixed and just fix it. It's an ongoing process and a living conversation.

That's why he says that it's not just about shutting up when you're called out on your privilege, it's also about listening. Accept that there are things in the world, and positions people are in, that you can't just argue out of existence.

<comment><USER24> People are all privileged in different ways and in different circumstances. I think this idea is what tends to get swept under the rug when pointing to some overarching Privilege.

<comment><USER24> Sure, you can downvote me but any married man will tell you that it's always best to have the _wife_ ask for something from someone else because women are perceived as being "nicer" and usually get such favors. When men ask, it's either intimidating to a woman or invokes a power trip with another man.

<comment><AUTHOR> People who talk a lot about "patriarchy" will point out that a society in which men are made out to be strong and aggressive and dominant doesn't just hurt women. It hurts all the men who would rather be reasonable and mild- mannered and effeminate too.

That's not evidence against there being a systemic imbalance. It's further proof of it.

<comment><USER24> >>>That's not evidence against there being a systemic imbalance.

I never said nor intended to imply there wasn't. But there's imbalance in _every_ system too. Which now makes it sound like I'm saying "Just shut up," which is really why I tend to avoid discussions like this because they become No Win. For everyone. Gah.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, indeed. Nobody here feels victorious. It's a lot of trekking through mud all around.

Anyway, I think that the fact that systems have imbalance is why we need to talk frequently about _what_ imbalance exists, and how we might fix it. It's also why we should stop this irritating habit of turning everything into a system of processes and functions that don't allow for human error. Plenty of people in the tech community think that a series of rules is the end-all be- all cure to every problem, and refuse to admit that rules often cause as many problems as they solve. Learning to listen and empathize with other people is a more valuable trait than ever, because there are more ways than ever to get away with not doing it.

<comment><USER24> I think to cut to the chase: Put yourself in someone else's shoes.

People used to be taught that. They need to be again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is "shut up and listen" a more winning group strategy than "keep telling others about our grievances"?

<comment><USER26> Fallacy of the excluded middle. NEXT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> When our brains encounter certain issues (politics, religion, racial issues, favorite editor) it automatically goes on the defensive and start filtering out everything and starts immediately thinking how to come up with bullet points to deflect the arguments. That prevents us from listening.

With respect to those kind of topics there are very few if any who can approach it with a clean slate. So it takes considerable effort to try to ignore all that baggage and listen.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, and lots of people think it's only The Other Side that does it. But most of us are wired to be tribal. Our Side does it, too. In fact, each of us ourselves likely does it.

It's good to have friends with a wide variety of political beliefs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The older I get, the more I realize two very fundamental facts:

 _People are remarkably different._

Like Clementine in the referenced comment, I'm continually astonished at how _different_ the experience of being someone else is from mine even in an ostensibly identical environment. Just walking in a room can be a remarkably different experience for someone beautiful, ugly, female, disabled, etc.

 _People are remarkably similar._

I see people do stuff that seems patently dumb are totally counter to how I would do things or how I feel. But as I learn more about the person, I invariably realize what they're doing makes much more sense in context than I originally realized. Much of the difference amounts to differing priorities or background. Much of the core human psychology leading to the behavior is the same.

I'm still trying to figure out how to reconcile these two observations, but the big one for me is to try harder to learn where someone is coming from, what their experiences and background are.

</comment><comment><USER30> Who is John Scalzi and why should I listen to him scolding people?

<comment><USER31> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scalzi>

<comment><USER30> Well, that's the literal answer. I guess my question is more of a rhetorical one - why does he take this rude, scolding, authoritative tone with his readers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Yet another HN article on Social Engineering.

<comment><AUTHOR> I enjoy this weird HN approach of taking ordinary life, applying weirdass labels to everything, and then trying to somehow "optimize" all of the various little categories.

This is about treating other people like their grievances are legitimate, and accepting that your own perspective on the world is not the only one that exists. "Social Engineering"? really?

<comment><USER33> Viewing the world through cynicism-colored glasses.

<comment><USER24> OK, I object to the misuse of the term "cynic."

[http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/01/25/in-praise-of- th...](http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/01/25/in-praise-of-the-cynic/)

Cynics would point to the very things Scalzi does.

<comment><USER33> For better or worse, the word "cynic" has changed meaning over time. My usage matches definition #1 here:

[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cynic?r=75&src=re...](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cynic?r=75&src=ref&ch=dic)

<comment><USER24> That matters not to Cynics and is only proof of the very corruption we mock.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's something ironic about a cynic, in the classic sense of "question everything and undermine assertions", protesting the corruption of his own self-declared title. ;-)

<comment><USER24> The Ironics are a different school of thought.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Large Projects Using Haskell? - <AUTHOR> http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2568

<comment><USER2> Heavily out of date.</comment>


How Data Analytics Can Help Understand Customer Behavior? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quarkanalytics.com/Blog/how-data-analytics-can-help-understand-customer-behavior/ <comment><AUTHOR> We use our blog to talk about the themes and areas that are most interesting for us: Analytics. Please feel free to explore more posts that we have published. Some of them are more general, for sure, others more detail with cases and detailed

</comment><comment><USER2> Why this feels like a clickbait?

<comment><AUTHOR> Why you said that?</comment></comment>


This Women's-Only Networking App Aims to Build a Community of Support - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40492852/this-womens-only-networking-app-aims-to-build-a-community-of-support <comment><USER2> I definitely do not want to have to verify my account by logging into facebook... and I also dont see how this is much different than, say, meetup.com + social media.

As a woman in tech who recently moved to a new city, I'll pass :/

<comment><AUTHOR> It's important for our community to authenticate that our users actually identify as women so we leverage FB to confirm that the women are real people. We appreciate the feedback and are already thinking of using other ways to sign up!

Present enables you to start, discover and participate in location-based conversations in real time. There's really nothing like it, let alone a network just for women!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is an awesome idea! As someone who moved to a new city recently with no friends or family, I've been waiting for something like this to exist!! Super excited to try it out, thanks for sharing!</comment>


Apple's Secrecy Doesn't Serve Corporate Governance - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/business/28views.html?src=busln <comment><USER2> There's a really effective way of dealing with your discomfort about Apple's policies - don't buy AAPL. Pretty simple. I personally am long on it because I trust what the board's done over the long haul. Might change.</comment>


Which character should represent the apostrophe? The Unicode committee is wrong - <AUTHOR> https://tedclancy.wordpress.com/2015/06/03/which-unicode-character-should-represent-the-english-apostrophe-and-why-the-unicode-committee-is-very-wrong/ <comment><USER2> Is this one of those things that everyone agrees (apart from the emotionally invested people with the power to change it) is absolutely completely infuriatingly obvious and should be changed immediately?

</comment><comment><USER3> Ever had a " stealth its way into your code, well hidden amongst a bunch of " ? Perhaps a ' in a bunch of ' ?

It's enough to drive you crazy.

<comment><USER4> Oh god. Never, ever copy-paste from Word documents when running SMS campaigns. Unicode characters are rampant and take up 6x as much character data, so when you're already pushing the limits with your message you end up going well over the 155 char limit for a message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What? Apostrophe is U+0027. The distinctions created by these extra Unicode characters will never be faithfully reflected in most text, because English speakers only have one key to type them with and don't care.

<comment><USER6> The author's point directly conflicts with your suggestion of using U+0027. The author correctly states that the apostrophe when used inside a contracted English word should be treated as a modifier letter. There is a Unicode apostrophe character set aside and labelled as exactly this--U+02BC.

The author's point makes sense to me. I agree and my initial thought is that the correct thing to do is recommend U+02BC be the apostrophe.

This is something for the future. It won't be faithfully reflected in text for years or decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> U+0027 has worked for me everywhere I've used it, and no one has complained that I was using the wrong character.

On the other hand, I've had to track down a ton of mysterious bugs caused by software "helpfully" converting characters out of the standard ASCII set, unbeknownst to the user (and they look basically the same)... only a hexdump shows the truth.

</comment><comment><USER8> Perl 5.22 adds a new kind of word boundary, spelled "\b{wb}" as opposed to plain "\b", that recognizes that apostrophes can occur in the middle of words.

</comment><comment><USER9> The author bases his entire argument on the assumption that "don't" is _obviously_ a single word in English and that there is no doubt about that.

I for one was quite surprised about that. When doing word segmentation for NLP it is common to split these contractions.

Plenty of people argue that it is a single word because there are spaces around it or simply because it is a contraction. Other argue it is 2 words since they are of different word classes.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm gonna say I'm rather happy that \w doesn't match apostrophes, aka string literal delimiters in some environments.

<comment><USER11> U+0027 (APOSTROPHE) is a string (or character) literal delimiter in some environments, and it might be sane (though inconvenient, for typing) to have an environment where U+2018 and U+2019 (LEFT and RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK) were character/string delimiters, but there is no sane reason U+02BC (APOSTROPHE, MODIFIER LETTER) should ever be a delimiter of any kind.

This article is about the argument that Unicode Committee recommendation that U+2019 (RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK) is the preferred character for apostrophe in English text is wrong (since, among other things, it breaks detecting matched pairs of quotation marks), and that the preferred character for that use should be U+02BC (APOSTROPHE, MODIFIER LETTER).

<comment><USER12> There are other situations where pairs of quotation marks can be unmatched. For example, in English it's common to have an opening quote at the beginning of each paragraph of a multi‐paragraph quote, but only close it on the final paragraph.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Since there's only one key on the keyboard that represents both single-quote and apostrophe, software has to guess which one you mean from context. I don't think there's anything Unicode alone can do to fix this underlying problem.

<comment><USER11> > Since there's only one key on the keyboard that represents both single-quote > and apostrophe, software has to guess which one you mean from context.

That's not at all true; while "guess from context" is one option, using modifier keys is also an option; there's a lot of software that does this for things which don't have distinct keys. Certainly seen this used for different widths of spaces, and different widths of dashes, even though the keyboard has only the space bar and the hyphen.

<comment><USER13> Only a small fraction of users know how (and are willing) to use modifier keys like that. I don't think it's practical to assume they'll change their behavior in this case.

<comment><USER7> sadly, even the use of the shift key seems beyond the ability of most users. just witness all the posts in online forums that look like this.

Fortunately, it does seem to have changed over the years (although I'm not sure to what extent things like auto-correct/auto-capitalisation contribute), so perhaps in the far future when keyboard layouts evolve enough, everyone will be using Unicode apostrophes and single quotes...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> +1</comment>


OBS the new iPhone security update - <AUTHOR> OBS! The new iPhone security update remove all: - WiFi passwords - All app logins <comment><USER2> My WiFi passwords were not removed with yesterday's update.</comment>


Ask HN: Apps for occupy movement? - <AUTHOR>

Facebook, Twitter have done their part. But when you are down on the street, "#OCCUPY"-ing it - the use case changes. What apps are the 99% using to fuel the Arab Spring? What can we do better with apps during the movement - in terms of communicating, organizing, informing? What app ideas have you spotted for this never before opportunity - passionate connected users with a purpose? <comment><USER2> I'm not in North America any more (moved to Chile), so haven't been catching up on the occupy movement in the last few weeks. So I'm no longer as familiar with the status of the movement.

But your question strikes me as odd for a few reasons, and maybe I'm just not understanding what you're asking. Is there something that Facebook and Twitter, which were very capable of being leveraged during the Arab Spring, is not doing? Is there something special about Occupy Wherever that these tools aren't working anymore?

Are you looking to help get involved by developing an app?</comment>


Announcing Actix web 0.3 – A small, fast, pragmatic, async rust web framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/actix/actix-web
I am happy to announce actix web - 0.3 release!
It is complete redesign of the actix web framework. It got a lot of new futures, like http/2 support via just release h2 create or better streaming support. A lot of performance related work has been done, actix web now as fast as raw hyper server on normal load and faster on pipelined load.
New user documentation has been added and a lot of examples. It can be used with diesel and redis.
Features:
* Supported HTTP/1.x and HTTP/2.0 protocols
* Streaming and pipelining
* Keep-alive and slow requests handling
* WebSockets
* Transparent content compression/decompression (br, gzip, deflate)
* Configurable request routing
* Graceful server shutdown
* Multipart streams
* Middlewares (Logger, Session, DefaultHeaders, CORS) <comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/actix/actix-web](https://github.com/actix/actix-web)</comment>


Ask HN: Which agile development process do you use or not hate? - <AUTHOR>

I am not really sold on any of them but we use scrum at my place of work and sometimes it makes me a sad panda. <comment><USER2> Well, in Norway nearly everybody uses "Scrum" but Scrum is not always Scrum. To make it rock, you need a certain mindset - in the team and the company - and culture. It is primarily about values and culture, not processes. Changing culture is hard. Maybe a different process might help with it (if it blends better with its current state) or may be not. The state os SW development in general makes me sad panda, especially after having read Poppendieck's Lean SW development: From Concept to Cash and then looking at real-world project all around.

<comment><USER3> "Scrum is not always Scrum." - Big point, haha - I see hundreds of people using "Scrum" and not Scrum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Could you elaborate a little on why you don't like scrum at your workplace?

</comment><comment><USER5> On an individual level, have you experimented with test-driven development?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have and I actually thought it helped a good bit, but then I got lazy and started writing test cases only after I develop.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Elasticsearch R client - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Tomesch/elasticsearch

<comment><USER2> Thanks this looks very useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad you like it!</comment></comment>


The Cabin in the Woods - <AUTHOR> http://scifiinterfaces.wordpress.com/category/the-cabin-in-the-woods-2012/

<comment><USER2> For those who haven't seen the film in question, there are some pretty serious spoilers. Perhaps a spoiler tag would be appropriate?

<comment><USER3> Having spoiler tags on everything that possibly discusses a movie is silly. The movie was released 9 months ago. By now, either you cared about the movie enough to have seen it or don't care enough to care about spoilers.

<comment><USER4> I care about spoilers and there's heaps of films that I'd like to get around to seeing when I get a chance, including quite old films.

I really hate it when I people give away spoilers. Like when I read something that casually gave away the ending of The Usual Suspects, which I'd been looking forwards to seeing.

<comment><USER5> I sympathize wholeheartedly. Few things are more maddening than finding out the ending to a plot you would otherwise have enjoyed.

I recently read _The Man Who Was Thursday_ by G.K. Chesterton – a thriller that I ran across a spoiler to years and years ago and was hoping I would forget. Eventually I had to admit I never would and read the book. I enjoyed it anyway.

The Kids in the Hall used to have a couple of comedy characters whose schtick was that they were trying hard to be evil but could only ever manage to be a little bit evil. One of the only-sort-of-evil things the characters did was give away the endings to movies. A friend told me that he saw them perform it live, and they picked some movie that had only just come out and _actually gave away the ending_. The entire audience yelled "Evil!" I thought it was taking the joke much too far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> WOw this was really, really in-depth! Cool blog!

</comment><comment><USER7> Which article are we suppose to read first?

Pretty bad user to interface design here

Wordpressuserinterfaces.SciFi.com

<comment><USER8> Yeah, Wordpress isn't great about this. But, to answer your question, the best place to start for The Cabin in the Woods is here: [http://scifiinterfaces.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/the-cabin- in...](http://scifiinterfaces.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/the-cabin-in-the-woods- overview/). Then use the next-post controls to move between them.</comment></comment>


iCloud unveiled at WWDC, MobileMe DOA - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/06/icloud-unveiled-at-wwdc/ I think limited bandwidth plans will limit a lot of the innovation that could have started with a free cloud api. Are there any numbers of subs on limited bandwidth plans? <comment><AUTHOR> I had text added, but it vanished on me. It seems like a interesting concept to give out a free cloud api, but how many people have 200mb plans that will make its practicality limited?</comment>


Right to be Forgotten clash raises Qs about the limits of Sovereignty online - <AUTHOR> http://www.rudebaguette.com/2015/08/03/googles-clash-with-france-on-right-to-be-forgotten-raises-questions-about-the-limits-of-sovereignty-online/ <comment><USER2> "Censure" the internet.</comment>


Ask HN: HN and Linux – tiny fonts problem - <AUTHOR> Whenever I open Hacker News on Linux, the fonts are incredibly tiny, difficult to read and imo ugly.
This can be solved by installing ttf-mscorefonts-installer and accepting the proprietary license.
I have looked at HN's CSS, and it seems okay (has a fallback to a generic font family), but the problem I think is that the default Linux font for sans-serif is too tiny when the size is set to 10 pt. Verdana, ..., look fine at that size.
I would recommend that the site's CSS be changed in some way (I don't quite know how exactly) to fix the issue with small fonts on Linux.
P.S. Happens on Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint with Chrome and Firefox. <comment><USER2> I run this user script in Firefox using Greasemonkey. It will also run using Tampermonkey in Chrom[ium] as well. It might work for you until the CSS is changed. It might not.

      // ==UserScript==
      // @name        hn_resize_subtitle
      // @namespace   com.kludgecode.hn.demo
      // @include     https://news.ycombinator.com*
      // @version     1
      // @grant       none
      // ==/UserScript==

      window.$hn_subtext_text_target =  document.getElementsByClassName("subtext");

      for (var i = 0; i < $hn_subtext_text_target.length; i++)
        {$hn_subtext_text_target[i].style.fontSize = 12;};

</comment><comment> java-man This, I believe, is a systemic [accessibility] problem with any browser, since day one.

They all should have additional settings:

1\. minimum font size

2\. maximum font size

to solve this kind of problems once and for all. I am actually very puzzled why nobody ever thought of that.</comment>


Did you know you could access hacker news via http://www.hackerne.ws? - <AUTHOR>

http://www.hackerne.ws <comment><USER2> Judging by my referer logs when something on my site gets posted here, people do actually use this.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.hackerne.ws>

</comment><comment><USER4> Pretty nice, better if it didn't redirect to www.hackerne.ws though...maybe I'm just too picky though!

<comment><USER5> I agree, the www subdomain looks awkward and unwieldy. They should make hackerne.ws the canonical name. Though they'll have to be sure to set their geographic target to the US in Google Webmaster Tools, unless Y Combinator has moved to Western Samoa? ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> did not know that. wonder what purpose it serves. "The .ws domain is an abbreviation for "Western Samoa", the nation's official name when two-letter country codes were standardized in the 1970s" -wik.

<comment><USER7> I believe a forum member purchased and redirected it as "a gift to the Hacker News community" and was immediately flamed for the inherent security issues.

<comment><USER8> Why isn't it actually redirecting though? Seems to be pointing, which is kinda strange. I don't even know how that is done.

<comment><USER9> It's a CNAME, and I guess the hacker news web server doesn't care what the HTTP host header says.

        www.hackerne.ws.	3565	IN	CNAME	news.ycombinator.com.
        news.ycombinator.com.	4235	IN	A	188.8.131.52

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> my login disappears

<comment><USER10> Different domain, different cookie.</comment></comment>


Tribute to the Legend, Happy Birthday Kobe MambaForever - <AUTHOR> http://theblackmamba.life <comment><USER2> Missing Black Mamba every single day. This is just a small attempt to share our love with all the Kobe fans out there.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a Kobe fan, it's always inspirational to look back at his memories. This website is really a small attempt to remember him again on his birthday. + It's "24/8"/2000 Happy Birthday Kobe!

</comment><comment><USER4> RIP to a legend. Miss him. I was sick for a week when he died. I was so sad.</comment>


Young people can't remember how much more wildlife there used to be - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2226898-young-people-cant-remember-how-much-more-wildlife-there-used-to-be/ <comment><USER2> Half of young people probably don't know milky way exist and can be seen due to light pollution. With urbanization knowledge about life outside of cities declines.

<comment><USER3> This loss is particularly bad to me because I don't know if there is anything else that can trigger so much wonder. I grew up in an area where science wasn't much known or very well respected, and even controversial. But seeing the Milky Way away from the city as a child had an effect on me, like letting me know in a peaceful way that there must be way more to reality than I was being told. Really sad that it's becoming harder for so many to experience that, they may never know what they missed.

<comment><USER4> >When the Northridge earthquake knocked out power in Los Angeles in 1994, numerous calls came into emergency centers and even the Griffith Observatory from people who had poured into the streets in the predawn hours. They had looked into the dark sky to see what some anxiously described as a "giant silvery cloud" over the shaken city.

>Not to worry, they were assured. It was merely the Milky Way, the vast galaxy that humans once knew so well — until the glare from electric light effectively erased most traces of it from urban and near-urban skies.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/business/31essay.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/business/31essay.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is the name of the book about shifting baselines? How 500 years ago you could throw a stone into the ocean anywhere and hit a fish?

"Paradise Lost"?

Edit: Found it: [https://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Found-Nature-America- Discove...](https://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Found-Nature-America- Discovery/dp/0226583414)

</comment><comment><USER6> Insects too of course.

I think pointing to modern agriculture is a pretty safe bet. You shouldn't just make farmers responsible. They have little choice because pressure from consumers comes directly back to them through retail and processors. Large scale producers have little choice. Those want to minimize the amount of suppliers anyway.

</comment><comment><USER7> Kids do not even spend time outside these days as it's "too dangerous". You could get run over or abducted by a pedophile.

Obesity and screen related issues like depression and anxiety run rampant. Do your kids a favor: take away their smartphones.</comment>


Facebook's Oculus Bid Runs Into Tech Claim - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303948104579534013624548846?mod=djemalertTECH

<comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr: A company called ZeniMax Media Inc, which makes video games, claims that John Carmack took ZeniMax's IP with him when he moved to Oculus, and that this IP was crucial to Oculus's success. An Oculus spokesman is quoted as saying, "It's unfortunate, but when there's this type of transaction, people come out of the woodwork with ridiculous and absurd claims."</comment>


Show HN: A pure C websocket server to find cycles in the English dictionary - <AUTHOR> https://lexicon-loop.now.sh/ <comment><USER2> Wow, that's pretty neat. I've always wondered how a person who's completely new to the language would go about learning it if he's given only the dictionary. He literally has all the information he needs, but can't actually do it.

>take just 26 KB?

That's really impressive. Node should really cut down on things.</comment>


Show HN: I launched a non-profit to fight Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://covidinitiative.org <comment><USER2> I can't see where the money is being sent to?</comment>


The Intellectual War on Race - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@omarh/the-war-on-race-e8556a3ba168 <comment><USER2> > IQ is highly correlated with heritability.

> 'The Bell Curve' talked about the correlation between IQ and heritability > over time

I can't wait to start hearing about Igon Values.

<comment><AUTHOR> I noticed that myself. I clarified my point. IQ is heritable within observable socioeconomic brackets.</comment></comment>


Switching from DISQUS to Facebook comments has improved discussions at Politico - <AUTHOR>

Has anyone noticed how the level of discussion on political sites such as Politico has suddenly improved when they moved from DISQUS to Facebook.
The troll count seems to have drastically reduced once real names are associated with comments.
It's great to finally read comments without feeling embarrassed to be part of the human race. <comment><USER2> On Ello, comments lead to respectful discussions without a real name policy. On HN, I don't often see many issues without a real name policy either. I suppose it depends on the community, policies and maybe actual content, but the point is, that imposing a system in support of real name policies will also sideline those concerned with privacy while also contributing to the bubble effect.</comment>


Moving away from GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ungleich.ch/en-us/cms/blog/2018/10/18/moving-away-github/ <comment><USER2> Gitea is a nice option for self hosted git servers, too.

[https://gitea.io/en-us/](https://gitea.io/en-us/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the pointer, it looks quite cool! We will check it out in more detail in the next days!</comment></comment>


Missing the point about microservices - <AUTHOR> https://erikbern.com/2018/06/04/missing-the-point-about-microservices.html <comment><USER2> IMO the idea of micro services makes sense when you have a bunch of services and they don't call each other. If they do call each other then they are coupled and that bring whole slew of problems and they are not independent anymore. Soon your system will looks like a messy graph.</comment>


Efficient parameter pack indexing in C++ - <AUTHOR> http://ldionne.com/2015/11/29/efficient-parameter-pack-indexing/ <comment><USER2> The C++ template system is quite possibly the worst functional programming language ever 'designed', with the exception of esolangs. It would be so much saner if we could just run normal C++ code at compile time, with the ability to manipulate the main program's types as values. Then operations like this would simply be indexing a `std::vector<Type>`, there would be no need to add hacky special cases to the compiler and/or massively increase compilation time, and it would be possible to do somewhat more complex things without going insane (e.g. a compile-time perfect hash table generator, like gperf but without needing an external tool).

Rust has something like this in the form of procedural macros, but it can't manipulate types and values, only raw ASTs. Apparently Nim can do it.

<comment><USER3> Your first paragraph actually describes D. In the D world the compile time language and the runtime language is the same thing. You can take a look to see if you like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would be nice if the article explained what it means by a "parameter pack" to begin with.

<comment><USER2> It's the variadic part of a C++11 variadic template:

[http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/parameter_pack](http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/parameter_pack)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The results are completely garbled for me.

Edit: Using an ancient version of Chrome on linux.

<comment><USER6> Same -- but I have js disabled. So that might be why.

<comment><USER7> Off topic -- but how do you navigate the modern Web without js?</comment></comment></comment>


Perceived Performance: Ways to Make Your Mobile Site Feel Like a Native App - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobify.com/blog/beginners-guide-to-perceived-performance/

<comment><USER2> "Everything Else Should Respond in Under 100ms. That number is the mental barrier after which things feel slow. Anything under 100ms feels essentially instantaneous to the user."

Not really, no. Anything under about 25-50 will feel instantaneous. Between 50-100 you're looking at something that doesn't consciously register as 'slow', yet feels vaguely sluggish - especially when it comes to responding to taps on a screen.

Native apps[1] typically respond to taps in < 20 ms and gestures in < 75 if not sooner. If your web app does not respond very nearly as fast, it _will_ feel slow to your users.[2]

The good news is that so many html5 apps fail at this, 100 ms is enough to make your web app look good in comparison -- just not in comparison to a native app.

[1] on bb10, where I've done this timing. may differ on othe rplatforms.

[2] anecdotal, I'm afraid, but I stand by it.

<comment><USER3> "Not really, no. Anything under about 25-50 will feel instantaneous. Between 50-100 you're looking at something that doesn't consciously register as 'slow', yet feels vaguely sluggish - especially when it comes to responding to taps on a screen."

Not according to empirical findings: [http://www.nngroup.com/articles/response- times-3-important-l...](http://www.nngroup.com/articles/response- times-3-important-limits/)

Funny that you mention BB10; I used to work at RIM (a handful of years ago), and developer relations were disseminating documents that said application developers should make apps respond in less than 150ms to give the illusion of instantaneousness.

Mind you, I'm not saying YOU can't perceive the difference between 100ms and 25ms, but that in the general populace, the limit of perception is around 100ms.

<comment><USER4> Dunno about mobile and perception, but IME, most piano players can tell difference between 20ms and 10ms latency between pressing a key and hearing a sound from a software synth.

<comment><USER5> and yet, just registering the keyboard press mechanically will give you a much wider range of varying latencies depending on how fast or slow you press. To recognize velocity, there is a switch at the top (near the hinge), and a switch at the bottom. The timing difference, which can amount to up to 200 ms, makes up the velocity. This has always confused me, on the one hand, you spend your time tweaking IO audio buffer to have the smallest latency possible, and then you would have this input device introducing "enormous" latencies, and have them varying too.

<comment><USER4> Are you certain that is how velocity is registered?

I mean, you could be right for all I know, but I own a number of devices (drum pads, specifically) which register velocity but which don't require that kind of latency to create the information; I don't see why or how that would be the case in most keyboard controllers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a great article, and all the mobile web performance tips are spot on. But please, don't take this advice and use it to try to make your mobile web app try to _be_ like a native app. Don't emulate android or iOS elements in HTML. emulate native performance, not native UI. there's no easier way to make your app feel wrong. You'll never be able to perfectly emulate a native android or iOS control using html and js, so stop trying. build your own UI that isn't trying to be something its not, so that your users can't tell when you miss.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the read, notatoad. You make a great point. This article isn't about looking native — it's about feeling native. The best part about the web is that it's platform agnostic. Most of the gestures and actions that feel natural to us are cross-platform so it's great that we can rely on those to get us where we need to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a companion to the OP's animation section, this year's I/O had a really good Chrome performance talk[1].

Lots of good stuff in that talk, especially about repaints, layers and memory usage. For those that don't even know where to start, this is a great source of how to profile your site for performance.

[1] [https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions/325933151](https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions/325933151)

</comment><comment><USER8> It's nice that momentum scrolling for overflow is now native both in iOS and Android. It was a pain in the butt to simulate it in JS. It's just so weird how it wasn't there from the start.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, definitely. It's still too bad that I have to tell iOS when I want to use it — and it comes with that status bar bug. But at least it's there to use.</comment></comment>


Functional refactoring in Scala - <AUTHOR> http://blog.8thlight.com/articles/2009/6/16/a-functional-refactoring-in-scala

<comment><USER2> Does Scala perform deforestation? If not, then separating construction and deconstruction is an abstraction win but a performance loss. A commenter, brandon, mentions this.

That being said, I've always preferred to think in terms of separation of (computational) concerns, something functional programming excels at. And it's often not hard to deforest manually when the time comes.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've only been playing with it for a few months but I really like Scala. Its worth remembering when you look at the code that this is a compiled, statically typed, language running on the JVM. Its so easy to forget this because it feels like coding in a scripting language.</comment>


Fact Follows Fiction: Real Bridges Based on Euro Banknote Artwork - <AUTHOR> http://99percentinvisible.org/article/fact-follows-fiction-real-bridges-based-euro-banknote-artwork/ <comment><USER2> This looks like an elaborate attempt to replicate the Königsberg bridge problem. Or at least, it should be, with its seven bridges to an island.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps Maths students will soon be studying the "Bridges of the Euro" problem, instead of the "Bridges of Königsberg" problem. That will solve two issues:

* the name Königsberg has not been used by most of the world for many decades. The city itself goes by the name Kaliningrad, although younger people often use the nickname "König" for the city. * the bridge count in now-Kaliningrad is not the same as in the famous puzzle.

(Yes, yes, I'm trying to show off that I went to Kaliningrad and checked out as many of the bridges as still existed.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> OK, here now an inside story(when I still was in school). One day, a close relative came home from work at ECB/EMI, a bit exhausted. This was the day they found out that the winning draft of the banknotes was indeed NOT FICTION but REAL buildings. This caused a little internal scandal, as I remember that a journalists discovered the real buildings in an art book. So the creator of the banknotes had to go back to draft and actually insert fictional buildings, modeled after typical styles of Europe. So at the very beginning of european banknotes, the subject of the OP post would have been the other way round.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is interesting but the 5 euros note does not really represent a bridge but an Aqueduct (looking really like this one [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_du_Gard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_du_Gard)). So you can't really walk on it like they show in their schematic proposal.

<comment><USER6> What distinguishes it as being an aqueduct rather than a bridge? (Visually, I mean.) Didn't the Romans construct them in very much the same way?

<comment><USER7> An aqueduct was a bridge for moving water instead of people.

<comment><USER8> Not only "was" but also "is".

Here's a list of canal aqueducts in the UK: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_canal_aqueducts_in_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_canal_aqueducts_in_the_United_Kingdom)

The newest aqueduct I saw listed at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqueduct_(bridge)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqueduct_\(bridge\)) is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathur_Aqueduct](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathur_Aqueduct) , which was built in 1966. It's meant for irrigation water .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Tom Scott also covered this last year: "The Fictional Bridges That Became Real" [https://youtu.be/S9E1wsxOSzM](https://youtu.be/S9E1wsxOSzM) [video]</comment>


Y Combinator to give people varied amounts of cash in latest basic income trial - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/21/silicon-valley-giant-y-combinator-to-branch-out-basic-income-trial.html <comment><USER2> I'm curious, wouldn't states like Alaska, that have a portion of oil revenues paid out to the population, be a good study of basic income? I'm not entirely informed on how it's setup there, but it certainly seems like a good observation point...

</comment><comment><USER3> Where do I sign up?</comment>


How to Get Funding for Your Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailymuse.com/entrepreneurship/ways-to-get-funding-for-your-business-idea/

<comment><USER2> Consider also the option of getting funding from a first customer. Many, many people have signed a contract on the basis of a napkin pitch before -- for example, approximately every consulting engagement ever. You can even sell the same napkin to multiple people in parallel. You can then take the contracts or memorandums of understanding to a bank and say "Hey, these represent money in the future, can we have money today?" and have that happen.

I apologize to all the business guys who are looking at me in slack-jawed amazement right now but they don't teach this stuff in engineering school.

<comment><USER3> I love the idea of fund-raising from customers. There are a few different angles on it, and one memorable one was the TextDrive thing[1][2].

That turned out a little bit controversial later[3], but it illustrates some nice, creative thinking. Is there a way you can get your customer to commit some money today, to an extent that they might not otherwise, based on future considerations? If you can do it without creating a scenario that bankrupts you _in_ the future, it might be worth a shot.

[1]: [http://www.joyent.com/blog/celebrating-textdrives-three- year...](http://www.joyent.com/blog/celebrating-textdrives-three-years)

[2]: [http://photodude.com/2004/06/01/textdrive-or-how-to- raise-40...](http://photodude.com/2004/06/01/textdrive-or-how-to- raise-40000-in-4-days)

[3]: [http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/16/cloud-computing-company- joy...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/16/cloud-computing-company-joyent- leaves-early-supporters-out-in-the-cold/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Many banks, such as Bank of America and Wells Fargo, have recently announced increased commitment to small business."

Hah! Nice one. Yeah, I once walked into a BOA branch myself and asked about start up funding, me being a long time customer, bills all paid on time, and a decent amount of funds in savings accounts there, surely they would consider helping me start a business, right? HA HA HA!!!

The deal is you have to be an established business that has already been banking with BOA with for _at least two years as a business_ before they consider granting you any type of business loan. Without that you can have a free lollipop from the bowl and then get the hell out.

</comment><comment><USER5> One other thing not often thought of. Capital is expensive. Not only do you lose some control when you take capital, you now have a responsibility to investors. Many seem to, in my experience (take that as you will), jump in acting like it's free money. Raising capital isn't the end goal. It's just the beginning. With a more traditional fund with actual customers approach, it's reasonable to do business as you'd like (obviously this invokes a debate of a startup vs a life style business) but with customer funding, you not only have validation, but you can always raise a more favorable round later. Github is one very good example of this. In the end, cash is king.

</comment><comment><USER6> Boy, that's a thin article.

Bootstrap good. If you need $1M+, you need VC. Duh.

The advice is okay hardly 'hacker news'.

</comment><comment><USER7> Accelerators should have been mentioned in the article.</comment>


Ash HN: Did Apple just kill hybrid apps like it did Flash some years ago? - <AUTHOR> Watching the keynote today, I couldn't help but feel like this was the end of hybrid apps. For a long time, the large downside to building hybrid apps was that performance -- especially for large apps with lots of custom UI elements -- was unmatched. But for a lot of people, though, these weren't major issues, certainly not enough to justify the added cost of building entirely separate native apps.<p>But doesn't today change all of that? It is clear that today was all about very, very deep integrations. More-so than a standalone app experience, it seems that now the future is to have your app expose services that allow it to seamlessly embed into all aspects of your phone's OS. And, in this future, it seems impossible how things like hybrid apps have any chance of staying relevant. Am I missing something? If not, what does this mean for projects like Ionic? <comment><USER2> Apple killed Flash deliberately, by choosing to support HTML5 exclusively. Nowhere today was anything mentioned about hybrid apps being banned from the App Store. So the analogy is flawed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most apps dont need a deep level of integration and when you do need it it's fairly trivial to write bindings for the native functions... So I'm guessing no

</comment><comment><USER4> Apple did just release a Apple Pay JavaScript framework, so I'm thinking not.</comment>


How to program independent games - <AUTHOR> http://the-witness.net/news/?p=1004

<comment><USER2> The optimizing for life stuff I think is the most important point here.

Using the hippest languages and techniques is just so much less important than getting things done in a simple, effective way that makes sense for you right now.

A little anecdote real quick. I have an Android app out there (and more on the way). I work with my girlfriend as kind of a team on Android stuff. We needed to implement an "action bar" kind of like the Android twitter app has up top. I saw a horizontal bar with two buttons. She kept insisting I dig through some of Google's open source implementations and go rip out some random code that I didn't write and don't yet understand and try to get it to work properly with my code. She was convinced this was the only right thing to do.

I refused. Whipped up some basic UI XML in a couple minutes with two images buttons for the actions. Done. While many people tweak and tweak, our app is out there. Nobody would know the difference between the official bar and my completely idiot-proof implementation.

All this kind of reminds me of a twitter post I made a while back when reading an argument here on HN: <https://twitter.com/BeyondHostile/status/20922938324688896>

</comment><comment><USER3> As someone who is (usually irrationally) paranoid about optimization, I found this talk to be inspiring. Also, Braid was by far one of the most wonderful gaming experiences I've ever had. So for that, thank you Mr. Blow.

<comment><USER4> Huh, so it isn't just me...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> An excellent talk, but the thing that I disagree with is his defense of having functions with thousands of lines of code in them.

It's true that breaking up a function into smaller ones just for the sake of it doesn't make sense, but if you have a function that needs to be over 1000 lines in the first place, it makes me think that the code wont be very reusable in future projects.

<comment><USER6> It's not going to be reusable anyway. It's application code, by the time it's actually polished, featureful and useful to the end-user it's so tightly integrated and full of special cases that you have to consider it a one-off.

Again, as Blow mentions several times, this is a domain-dependent thing. If you are shipping line-of-business code that sits around for 30 years, yes, that kind of polish becomes important. But games don't (typically) have that lifespan. If you want to do an update 10 years later you can remake it with all new assets as well as new tech, and the exceptions to this tend to be on a completely different scale from indie games(MMOs...) So when "in the moment" of bringing the game together you optimize for broad, fast changes, which favors having a bit of lengthiness and redundancy within the source.

Here's an example from a game I'm working on now:

I have some UI code that makes rounded-rectangle frames. I thought, when I first made it, that I might want to customize the look a bit(roundedness, thickness, coloring, etc.) so I parameterized it. As it turns out, I used the same parameters everywhere. So the abstraction wasn't useful. But at the same time, I don't really have a great need to refactor it, because the problem it causes(dirty looking code) is so localized to the instances where I create the frames. It's still there and the customization is possible. If I need something different from a rounded-rect frame I'd be writing completely different code, so it just doesn't make a huge difference.

On the other hand, one thing that I got wrong and want to fix is an architecture problem. I went in with an architecture tuned around a single, serializable scene capable of defining complex entities. But I made a game with a lot of UI/editing screens and one gameplay screen with very simple game elements. So ideally I would have had something with a DSL for defining those rounded-rects and tweens and positioning efficiently, better ways to manage all the scene transitions, a system to iterate on UI quickly(e.g. load a file = restart scene), and a simpler model for the gameplay. As it is, it gets a bit hacky in a few places, and the overall "shape" of the code is likely to be discarded, but I will be able to reuse lots of the pieces if I do a sequel or similar type of game; they'll just be assembled in a different way.

<comment><USER7> I've had similar experiences with games.

Yes, it's important to make the code clear. Shipping is so much more important than code reusability though. When the lifetime is small, rewriting it to be more modular isn't quite as justifiable as in a long-term project where you actually have the time to get it right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Compared to a naive solution, "putting things in a hash table" should take just as long to implement, not change the size of the executable, not be bug prone, not increase the size of the source code, not take longer to compile, and not take longer to link. The only way all these things could happen is if the programmer decided to implement a hash table from scratch every single time he or she wanted to use one.

This could also happen if the programmer simply never spent the five minutes necessary to get a library with a hash table implementation in it, opting instead to spend a third as much time on hundreds of occasions. I suspect that this is closer to what's going on...

<comment><USER9> Not to be insulting or anything but you kind of confirm one of the OP's points. That is there is a difference between "knowing" something and "deeply, intuitively understanding" something.

The OP talks from experience gathered over many years of "getting things done". I would listen very closely to him.

<comment><USER8> How do I confirm this point? Does my belief that

      local resource_name_to_address = {}
      local n_resources = file:read_int()
      for i=1,n_resources do
        local name = file:read_str()
        resource_name_to_address[name] = file:read_int()
      end

is easy to write indicate that I have not spent any time programming?

<comment><USER10> Not at all. That code IS easy to write. And when it's fine, it's fine. But when it's a bad idea, it's a bad idea.

This code allocates a lot of memory, needlessly. Why not just do a single `fread' to read in the TOC as one big lump, followed by a loop calling `strncmp' on each entry each time the offset of a particular resource is required? (You don't even need to malloc in this case; just decide that the TOC will never be more than a certain size, and put the buffer in the BSS.)

I personally would prefer the `fread' approach. It doesn't allocate lots of small pieces of memory, so the list of memory allocations is easier to read. You waste less space on malloc bookkeeping overhead, and/or you don't need to go to the effort of writing a specialised allocator for small allocations. If your hash table is closed, you won't end up with a big hole from where it had to rehash.

I've spent a fair amount of time getting game projects ready for release and it always, no matter how cunning everybody is (or tries to be), ends up with you - that'd be me, by the way - sitting there staring at a big long list of allocations, because something weird is happening. There are big holes appearing in the middle of memory, exactly where you don't want them, or there's just too much being allocated, or things are leaking, and the debugging infrastructure (if any) isn't being helpful for whatever reason. Probably those zillions of tiny little allocations exhausting the pool available to store the debug info.

This sort of thing is an easy way to eat up the man-hours saved by writing code like the above. Though I suppose that if you (and this would not mean me this time) can get somebody else to do the cleanup work, it probably doesn't matter.

Of course, once you've done all the hard work of following my advice, you could just pre-generate the hash table in the file already, maybe using a perfect hash system, and use that instead. (One of my colleagues used to like this.) That's fine, but... what's the point? You're about to LOAD A FILE. You have to assume it will take at least 0.1 seconds before the read can even begin to start. The difference between getting to the entry quickly, and getting to the entry _really_ quickly, will just get lost in the noise.

The points implied by this post are all there in his talk, I think ;)

<comment><USER8> It would be fairly difficult to create most of these problems if I wasn't writing the bulk of my game code in C or C++. If I wanted to rapidly develop a game worth shipping, I'm not sure why I would write more C++ than what's necessary to expose the APIs I'm using to some other language.

That is, writing 90,000 lines of the product in C++ is likely a case of premature optimization, or precisely what I was just told I shouldn't do. If not, it is at least a decision to spend hours upon hours of my life waiting for things to compile and days more messing with bugs that only show up if I don't compile with debug flags, which doesn't seem very life-efficient either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The biggest take away is that it is better to be direct than indirect. When you have only one component to modify, it is clear that the new code goes into that component. When you have multiple layers of components, it takes a lot more analysis to figure out which one is actually responsible. This is especially in the case where there are wrappers upon wrappers. It is a current programming style that I hope goes out of fashion quickly.</comment>


To what degree can my open source software be inspired by this patent? - <AUTHOR>

I see Charles Simonyi's PDFs and presentations on his Intentional Domain Workbench and decide he has the right approach and I want to make a tool like that.  So while attempting to start coding it I remember he was talking about 'lazy T2T transformations' (lazy tree to tree transformations), and I am trying to think of the best way to go about that, so I am googling 'tree transformations' and find lots of stuff, but not quite the right thing, so I google 'lazy tree to tree transformation' and on the first page is his patent
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7607099.pdf (Method and System for Reversible Design Tree Transformations)
Now I know that no one can patent the _general concept_ of a lazy tree to tree transformation for a projecting editor with multiple domains, because there are all kinds of ways to accomplish that.  But I am trying to figure out, to what degree can my method/system be inspired by Simonyi's without violating the patent or something.  I am thinking whatever I end up coding will probably be much less complex than what he has in the patent but I don't know.  Anyway I think I should try to understand what he is doing first before coming at the problem blind.
This isn't necessarily part of the question, but I intend to use MIT or some other open source license for my software. <comment><USER2> Determining whether you're infringing a particular patent is so involved that you would want to hire a lawyer. I know that's not a useful answer, but I can barely interpret my own patents without a lawyer's help; understanding other patents is usually a lost cause.

In general, don't read patents; intentional patent infringement has higher damages than unintentional. This may not really apply to you if you have no money, though.</comment>