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How (not) to sell iOS apps - harper_
http://www.onslaught.io/article/how-not-to-sell-ios-apps
======
vellum
I looked at a bunch of the free apps and yours. Nothing about your app really
jumped out at me.
~~~
harper_
You might be right. "Solve a new problem or an old one better than anyone
else". Solving an old problem better than anyone else is difficult.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
This is How Wrong Kurzweil Is - Digit-Al
http://asserttrue.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/this-is-how-wrong-kurzweil-is.html
======
TeMPOraL
> But to say that we will see, by 2029, the development of computers with true
> consciousness, plus emotions and all the other things that make the human
> brain human, is nonsense. We'll be lucky to see such a thing in less than
> several hundred years—if ever.
2029 may be a bit early, but I think that actually to say it will take at
least several hundred years is nonsense.
Look at the timescales of scientific and technological progress. Pretty much
99% of all knowledge and technologies we use are less than 200 years old. Most
of it is less than 100 years old. We pretty much went from zero to space in a
single life time. And the progress is not steady, nor is it slowing down, it's
_accelerating_. One thing Kurzweil is definitely right about is that people
don't understand exponential growth. Or any superlinear growth for that
matter.
~~~
Digit-Al
I agree with you to a point. However, one of the big problems as I see it is
that we don't have any clue what creates consciousness, and can't even agree
what defines consciousness. It is very difficult to create something when
you're not sure what the goal is.
I think the writer of the article I linked to makes some good points, but I
don't necessarily agree with everything he says.
I think the problem with trying to predict something like that is that it is
not fully a technological problem. We can make predictions about when the
technology will be potentially capable of housing an intelligence, but it is
much more difficult to predict when we might understand intelligence and
consciousness enough to duplicate it. It could suddenly happen with the next
few decades, or it might never happen.
------
gosub
This is how wrong Kurzweil is:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near#Predict...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near#Predictions)
~~~
dack
I am going to assume you're being serious here, and that you believe the link
you provided proves "how wrong" he is. The other option is that you're stating
the opposite, but I can't tell.
That said, I don't see how that link proves him wrong at all. I don't think
it's reasonable to expect anyone to be exactly right with their predictions -
no matter how informed they are - so some inaccuracies in his predictions are
completely expected.
Especially when you are looking at an exponential curve, the absolute values
along the way can seem far off, but compared to a linear approach they are a
much closer fit to reality. Obviously the "singularity" is a huge point of
contention because of how ridiculous it sounds, but if we disagree, we should
come up with our own explanation. If AIs start improving on themselves in a
self-directed way with similar pattern-recognition systems as our brain, do we
not expect the advancement of technology to explode? If not, then why not?
It's really easy for us to sit back and criticize his very public, specific
predictions without making them ourselves. The questions we should be asking
are not whether the exact things he is predicting happen (although he has been
very close in the past), but whether his method of doing the predictions and
lines of logic make sense. If so, then he may be off by a constant factor, not
an exponential one.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Massive Cyberattack: Act 1 Of Israeli Strike On Iran? - iProject
http://www.npr.org/2012/08/24/159959300/massive-cyberattack-act-1-of-israeli-strike-on-iran
======
sambolling
derp
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
HTML5 <input type=range> and HTML5 Notification API coming to Firefox 22 - paulrouget
https://twitter.com/paulrouget/status/314290720108314625
======
lutusp
I'm glad to hear it -- I just wrote a page that needs it, one that looks
terrible with the lame substitute that non-compliant browsers offer instead (a
text entry window). At the moment only Chrome supports the range input type --
Firefox doesn't and MSIE doesn't.
The page in question: <http://arachnoid.com/relativity> (scroll down to the
General Relativity section to see the range control)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Programming Is Forgetting: Toward a New Hacker Ethic - mdlincoln
http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/programming-forgetting-new-hacker-ethic/
======
devnonymous
Insightful. (I read the transcript rather than watching the video and it made
a huge difference because that afforded me time to pause and think). Good
stuff.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Machine Learning and Node.js, is this a match? [video] - ftreml
https://youtu.be/SF8sluhCQTY
======
ftreml
Personally, when using node.js i am a little bit envious on python, for
pandas, sklearn, keras.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Quick question about HN Toolkit regex - winter_blue
I'm currently using HN Toolkit (http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039) to block Apple-related articles. Unfortunately the block fails to filter 50% of the articles.<p>My regex for filtration is:
Apple|Steve Jobs|iPhone|iPad<p>It should work fine, but it doesn't. If any one is using HN Toolkit and/or has a solution to this problem, please post it!
======
ScottWhigham
Send Xichekolas an email and ask him (he wrote it):
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Xichekolas>. He's helped me out before
with questions like this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Penguin scraps degree requirement - bootload
http://www.bbc.com/news/education-35343680
======
bootload
_" The firm wants to have a more varied intake of staff and suggests there is
no clear link between holding a degree and performance in a job."_
What a statement. No mention of how they do selection.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
California Approves Statewide Rent Control - dawhizkid
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/business/economy/california-rent-control.html
======
bhauer
I am a landlord in Oregon, but not California. The curious, although
ultimately predictable, outcome of the new rent control measure in Oregon is
that while I have historically had an arrangement with my property management
to be restrained in annual rent increases, they are now advising a default
annual increase of the maximum allowed (7 percent before inflation). This is
because larger adjustments cannot be made if and when necessary due to market
conditions, so it's smart to just steadily increase rent at the maximum rate
permitted. If I agree, I believe the result will be more profitable for
landlords, and hurtful to tenants.
The real solution to a housing problem is to incentivize and facilitate the
building of more housing. ADUs, relaxed zoning, reduced building regulations,
reduced fees for permitting, etc. I fear rent control is actually going to do
more damage to the housing market than good.
~~~
joshAg
The entire point of the law is to prevent you from being able to make those
larger adjustments, though.
How often do you replace tenants? And what's your occupancy rate? If you're in
a situation where you can reliably raise rent 7% YoY indefinitely without
decreasing your occupancy rate, then you were severely underpriced for the
market (and you should probably fire that management company for pricing you
that absurdly low). 7% YoY after inflation is a big increase that outstrips
average wage increases.
If you aren't severely underpriced, then what's going to happen is that when
you increase by 7%, the tenants will choose to end the lease because they can
find something cheaper (or they emmigrate from the city because nothing is
affordable), and you'll struggle to replace them with wealthier tenants
willing to pay what you think is market price, so you'll have to lower rent to
attract a tenant. Once you get to the point where your price is roughly in
line with what the market will bear, you'll only be able to squeeze one or two
years of rent increases out of a tenant before the non-monetary costs of
moving are outweighed by the cheaper rent, so constantly trying for 7% YoY
post inflation will just mean a decrease in your occupancy rate, both because
you'll be replacing tenants more frequently and because finding new ones will
take longer.
~~~
tolmasky
What in your second paragraph doesn’t apply without rent control? In other
words, what makes 7% the magic number? Your entire argument seems based on
market forces (if you raise too much, your tenant leaves and if there’s no
wealthy people to replace them, you're stuck). How is this not the case
without rent control? Do wealthy tenants somehow appear without rent control?
~~~
joshAg
Nothing. The parent comment was arguing that because the law now says that
rent couldn't increase by more than 7% they were now being advised to increase
rent by that much every year (ostensibly because they are now planning to do
this), and my response is that it's absurd to claim that anything in the law
will change things so that you could make that sort of increase now if you
couldn't already make that increase before the law existed.
~~~
closeparen
Many landlords are not paperclip maximizers. REITs are, but small time
families often charge below-market rents to the long term tenants they
personally like or can’t be bothered to replace. They feel comfortable doing
this because they can always revert to market rate later. With that long-term
optionality going away, some will revert to market rate or as close as legally
possible right now.
~~~
jacobolus
So in other words, landlords love to reserve the right to kick a tenant they
stop liking out at the drop of a hat for no specific reason, by jacking the
rent up as high as they want. As compensation for this power, they are willing
to charge well below market rates to help indigent tenants.
If they lose this “right”, they insist on becoming pure profit maximizing
machines?
~~~
cookiecaper
> So in other words, landlords love to reserve the right to kick a tenant they
> stop liking out at the drop of a hat for no specific reason, by jacking the
> rent up as high as they want.
It's disingenuous to pretend like the landlord is the only party with any
control. Landlords cannot remove a tenant at "the drop of a hat" by any
stretch of the imagination, nor can they arbitrarily increase rental prices.
Rentals usually involve a lease that protects the tenant from arbitrary
removal and price modifications as much as it protects the landlord from
unexpected vacancy. If you're renting, you should know when your lease is up
and know that the landlord has the option not to renew and/or to modify the
price. (If you're in California, you should also know that the new law
punishes your landlord for trying to do you a solid and keep your rent stable
across lease terms.)
On top of conventional lease protections, virtually every state has default
tenant protections written into statute that can't be overridden by lease
agreements, and that include a default implicit month-to-month tenancy term,
providing at least basic protection from out-of-the-blue demands to vacate.
If an eviction must occur, it has to be conducted as prescribed in state law.
Tenants overstaying or defaulting on their leases frequently can't be removed
without 3-6 months of legal wrangling, which is no fun.
~~~
joshAg
>>> (If you're in California, you should also know that the new law punishes
your landlord for trying to do you a solid and keep your rent stable across
lease terms.)
The CA law allows the rental price to reset to market rate for a new tenant,
so unless the landlord doing you a solid was planning to stick you
specifically with a rent increase down the line to recapture the present
solid, they can still keep your rent stable across lease terms.
~~~
yojo
I am a CA landlord of a single house. Keeping track of “market rate” is an
annoying exercise and I tend to just leave the rate unchanged for multiple
years (3-5) then bring it up in one go. The last time I did this the rent
increased ~12%.
Before, the tenant was happy because they got below market rent for 4 years,
and I was happy because I could defer pricing work without long term penalty
or risking a move-out during an already busy year. This new law will likely
result in my tenant paying more, and me working more at times I don’t want to
work.
It’s not the end of the world, it’s just one more annoying piece of red tape
that doesn’t seem to help anyone.
~~~
mratzloff
Was the tenant happy when you increased it? Increasing rent 12% in one go
effectively kicks out most tenants. A smaller annual increase will give them
time to adjust to market conditions and choose over a longer period whether or
not to move and to save up to do so.
You are doing no one any favors except short-term renters who never get an
increase. In other words, your so-called benefit is actually a detriment to
long-term renters.
~~~
yojo
I have done this twice with the same tenant without complaint or moveout. My
tenant was presumably getting basic inflation based increases at work, which
offset most of the delta.
Unclear on why doing it all at once is worse than doing it regularly and
extracting more rent in the period in between. Is the theory that they will be
unable to adjust their budget in 60 days?
~~~
avar
It's beyond me why people would think this is worse for the tenant. Can I move
to CA and be your tenant? You're basically giving your tenants free money.
Let's say the rent is $1000/month (for simplicity). That's $12000/yr in the
first year. If you increase the rent by 12% ever 4 years they'll have 3 years
of paying $1000/month, followed by a 4th year of $1120/month and so on.
If you instead raised it yearly by 2.87%, which give-or-take is the same as a
12% one-off increase we can calculate the net rent paid over the period in the
two scenarios:
$1000*12*3 = 36000
r=1000;x=1.0287;
(r*x^1*12)+(r*x^2*12)+(r*x^3*12) =~ $38106
The result is that by deferring rental increases you've given your tenant a
benefit of $2106, and we can safely assume the rent is a lot higher than
$1000/month. I.e. every month of the rent not keeping with market increases is
more money for the piggy bank.
~~~
aschismatic
Not only that, the money saved in the short term (those 4 years without a rent
increase) can be allocated however the tenant chooses. It can be frivolous
spending, or the tenant can choose to turn it into long-term investments for
compounding effect. I love being a tenant in these scenarios.
I think people that are arguing bigger rent increases that happen less often
are bad are assuming tenants are stretching their housing budget to the max
and won't be able to afford the large hikes. In which case they wouldn't have
been able to afford it with smaller increases either.
~~~
eyelidlessness
Getting a surprise bill for 48 months of interest free credit is still a
surprise bill. The landlord in question admits both to deferring out of
disinterest in tracking market value (which as a trend is simply not hard work
to determine) and to increasing the rent enough to recoup the rent lost by
deferring the increase. During this time a tenant has no idea there is a claim
on some undisclosed portion of their budget and has every incentive to set
their operating budget accordingly.
It is well known that most people can not afford significant sudden expenses.
I think the inability of some folks here to recognize how bad a 4 year rent
hike can be have the privilege of not being in that group.
~~~
cookiecaper
Renters generally understand that rent can be changed when the lease runs out
and should be braced for the possibility that there will be a moderate
increase. If the renter doesn't understand that, they probably haven't rented
much before, and they'll learn it the first time their rent increases. If you
are lucky enough to go multiple years without any adjustment, you should
expect that the landlord will want to correct the differential at some point
and budget accordingly.
Note this works both ways. If the market goes down, if no one wants to live
there anymore, tenants have a lot of room to negotiate. Vacancies are
expensive and the hassle of getting a new tenant is not something many people
want to handle even in good conditions.
------
phil248
I'm shocked at the ideological fervor here and the fact that virtually no one
seems to have looked at the details of the actual bill. This is nothing like
the rent control ordinance in SF that has caused $3000 units to get stuck at
$500 rents. That will _never_ happen under this law. The allowable increases
are so much higher than "normal" rent control laws that any given unit will
catch up to market rates in a matter of years, at most. Whereas the laws we
love to hate result in units getting stuck far below market for decades or
even generations.
The difference with this law is that a 20% rent hike will take 3-4 years to be
implemented instead of 30 or 60 days. That difference, while not enough to
allow all families to remain in place, will allow families time to adjust or
move within a reasonable time frame.
This law is different. If you want to complain about rent control in SF or NYC
or elsewhere, have at it, but know that most of your complaints do not apply
to this law.
~~~
34679
The lack of affordable housing always has been and always will be a supply
problem. When demand for homes outpaces the number of homes being built,
prices go up. Plain and simple.
Homes that are built for renting (mainly apartments and condos, but some
houses, too) are built for profit. If you make it less profitable to build,
fewer will be built. If fewer homes are built, the problem is compounded, not
rectified.
If you want to make housing more affordable, make it as cheap and profitable
as possible to build new homes. Get rid of the fees that can push over
$100,000 for a single family home in some counties, before the builder even
buys a nail or 2x4. In most states you can build a home for less than the
price of permission to build a home in some California counties.
~~~
FussyZeus
> Homes that are built for renting (mainly apartments and condos, but some
> houses, too) are built for profit. If you make it less profitable to build,
> fewer will be built. If fewer homes are built, the problem is compounded,
> not rectified.
Arguments like this continue to be made for more and more aspects of our
market: pharmaceuticals, heathcare services, elder care services, and now
housing. Everywhere you look the markets seem ill equipped to handle the needs
of people.
Maybe the problem is markets then? Maybe the problem is expecting our entire
society to work based on profit motive? I don't deny it's served us fairly
well for awhile, but it seems like we're hitting the wall a lot lately.
~~~
eloff
Markets are hardly perfect, but in this specific case it should be the most
efficient solution to the problem - if you could fix the zoning and other laws
that distort it so badly that it's dysfunctional. And your still going to want
to add incentives for things you value but the market does not - perhaps like
lower income housing. In some of the other cases you mentioned markets are not
necessarily the best solution. Canada benefits greatly from having a single
buyer for pharmaceuticals - that concentrates the negotiating power and we get
better prices because of it.
~~~
FussyZeus
What are the zoning laws you see as the problem? Serious question, I'm not in
that area and don't know much about SF's zoning issues.
~~~
sologoub
There are severe restrictions on density and heavy parking requirements just
to start. It’s much much more complex than that, but to simplify - people who
lived in a given area want it to remain the same.
SF Bay Area is creating 3+ jobs per new unit built (any unit). So the gap is
growing rather rapidly, resulting in demand far outpacing supply.
Most of the peninsula cities/towns do not want any growth and want to remain
single family home neighborhoods. However, based on demand, they should
probably evolve more into either denser row houses or apartment/townhome type.
The way to restrict this from happening is to require more land per sq.ft. of
housing and require more parking per bedroom and guest parking for Multifamily
housing. All this makes land use less efficient and therefore more expensive,
deterring development.
------
human20190310
There is no functioning market to begin with. Housing prices and rent are
through the roof in California, yet supply is not rising to meet demand,
largely because existing owners oppose new construction.
Turnabout is fair play. If owners organize politically to control supply,
tenants can organize politically to control prices.
~~~
ralusek
Let's just not even talk about the fact that regulation is the reason why
housing is scarce, let's just assume California is 100% at capacity. How the
hell does rent control increase turnabout? It just let's people who got in at
the right time have their status as a resident enforced indefinitely, when
there are plenty of people who are willing and able to pay far more in order
to live there.
~~~
human20190310
It hurts the owners who would be receiving the wealthy newcomers' money.
It doesn't solve anything directly, but it's an attack on the prosperity of
the people who are maintaining artificial restrictions on new construction.
A laissez-faire approach to both construction and rent would probably be a
better option. But that's already not happening, and it's not going to happen
without pressuring homeowners and landlords to stop opposing construction.
~~~
dgzl
Construction isn't easy anymore. we've taxed and regulated it into a luxury.
~~~
dcolkitt
Maybe, but construction may not even be necessary. Shipping containers can now
be easily retrofitted into stylish apartments. They can easily be stacked
eight stories tall.
95% of the work can be done in overseas factories and is subject to the same
globally competitive downward price pressure as every other manufactured good.
Build them in Shenzen at a wholesale cost of $30,000 per pod, ship them to San
Franciso for $2000, stack and install them at a cost of $8000. At 320 square
feet, that's $120 per square foot. The same cost as new homes in rural Texas.
All the California legislature needs to do is pass a law zoning everywhere in
the state for multi-story shipping container apartments. Then watch prices
plummet. Even for single family regular construction homes, because the
shipping container apartments will suck so much demand out of the market.
~~~
yocheckitdawg
Who the fuck wants to live in a shipping container?
~~~
dcolkitt
A shipping container is 320 square feet. Two pods can be joined into a single
740 square foot unit. That's a total cost of $80,000. Let's round to $100,000.
Assume a rental yield of 12%.
$1000 a month for a brand new 740 square foot apartment in the middle of San
Francisco. Plus with modern finishes that are frankly much nicer than anything
you'll find in the low-end SF rental market. I'd imagine quite a lot of people
would sign up.
~~~
patmcc
Why do you think construction price, and not land price, is the limiting
factor?
I'm in a high-demand city in Canada. The house I'm in right now is worth about
$70k. The land it sits on is worth $900k. Shipping containers aren't going to
help with that.
~~~
dcolkitt
It will if you stack them eight stories high.
Don't know where you live, but I doubt it's more expensive land than San
Francisco, where the average acre of land costs $3.2 million[1]. Taking that
acre of land, save half the area for green-space and courtyard. Use half the
footprint for shipping containers. Stack the containers 8 high.
You now have 242 double-pod units. The amortized land cost per unit is
$13,000. Assuming a generous rental yield of 12%, the land cost only adds $130
a month to the rent. That's hardly anything for a 720 square foot apartment.
The lesson is that even San Francisco land costs are no match for the power of
high-rise high-density housing.
[1] [https://www.6sqft.com/study-shows-huge-disparity-in-u-s-
urba...](https://www.6sqft.com/study-shows-huge-disparity-in-u-s-urban-land-
value-with-nyc-making-up-10/)
~~~
patmcc
Same ballpark ($2-3 million/acre) - and yeah, you're not wrong that if you can
get approval for 250 units in an acre you can have reasonably priced housing.
But the hard part in that equation is convincing whoever controls zoning to
allow for it - once you do that, whether it's shipping containers or
traditional construction you can have affordable housing.
------
bgorman
One thing I have noticed as I have become more aware is that many of our laws
are aimed at trying to freeze a moment of time, often by piling on
contradictory policies on top of each other.
Subsidize home loans Ban new construction Ban rent increases
It is no wonder why housing prices/rents continue to rise in these markets.
In software engineering sometimes conclude that a rewrite is necessary. How
can we completely rewrite our regulations?
~~~
baby
Stop making housing an investment?
~~~
cabaalis
I've seen this argument before. Why shouldn't it be an investment?
1\. Land is a limited resource. 2\. Property improvements last for a very long
time, and are incrementally improved. 3\. The buy-in price is relatively high,
so only very interested parties get involved. 4\. It's a home for goodness
sake, why would you not call it an investment?
~~~
manfredo
Housing cannot be both affordable _and_ and a good investment. The definition
of a good investment is a piece of property that has a price that increases
over time. The nature of exponential growth means that eventually housing will
become unaffordable if it is perpetually a good investment.
Society's expectation that housing is a good investment results in people
taking on significant debt to buy increasingly expensive homes. The
consequence is that homeowners have a huge incentive to suppress the
construction of additional housing, to inflate the values of their homes. And
when housing prices do fall, people's financial lives are ruined. Contrast
metros like SF, Portland, and Seattle with places like Tokyo where homes can
be bought for < $400,000. A big part of this is that housing is expected to be
a depreciating asset:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGbC5j4pG9w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGbC5j4pG9w)
~~~
kortilla
You’re conflating “an investment” with “an exponentially growing investment”.
~~~
strstr
That's sort of the classic interpretation of investment. AFAIK, the first
question most people ask about investments is "what is the expected rate of
return (relative to the risk)?".
I would not describe my car as an investment, since it's basically guaranteed
to depreciate. Housing could be expected to behave in a similar manner
(although that would likely require a decrease in population growth).
~~~
kube-system
The value of the structure does often decrease over time. The land might be a
different story, if it’s a neighborhood where people want to move. Location,
location, location. You can get property that decreases in value too, just
move into a neighborhood in decline.
------
wahern
Rent control is about housing security for existing tenants. Even a perennial
7% increase can be better than discovering your rent will jump 300% next
month.
But rent control in the absence of housing supply increases will undoubtedly
exacerbate the problem, and at a steady 7% inflation would also slowly price
out existing tenants.
Many parts of California already had rent control that was based on building
age. Theoretically this could have been the best of both worlds--improved
housing security for the majority of existing tenants, but an incentive for
new construction, which would be excluded from rent control. Of course, the
price of housing security would be marginally higher rent prices up front, but
in the real world that's a reasonable tradeoff. _Security_ and
_predictability_ are at the top of most people's hierarchy of needs, whether
they admit that or not, and regardless of whether they'd willing pay for it.
(Healthcare being a great of example of people predictably making irrational
decisions, requiring government intervention to mitigate the consequences.)
Unfortunately, new construction in California is extremely costly for entirely
unrelated reasons. I think most developers in California would have bargained
statewide rent control for development as-of-right. That California permitted
rent control again without doing anything substantive about lowering the costs
of development is inexcusable. I'm sure lawmakers told themselves that they
were buying the acquiescence of NIMBYs and local control advocates regarding
future development as-of-right legislation, but they're just lying to
themselves.
~~~
pcwalton
> I think most developers in California would have bargained statewide rent
> control for development as-of-right.
In fact, that was more or less the deal—until Anthony Portantino torpedoed it.
------
dgzl
I'm a renter in Oregon and I've been outspoken about this long before the laws
were passed. From my experience, people who support heavy laws, regulations
and taxes don't spend enough time considering potential side effects. They
feel like with enough support, they can just force anything they want to
happen, while completely disregarding the market.
I feel like an amount of the general public just wants Big Daddy government to
come in and authoritatively force everyone into an unnatural framework, which
is pure ignorance.
~~~
pvelagal
Well, i disagree with your opinion. Silicon Valley has been attracting a lot
of people from lot of states, who all need housing. Remember , size of
California is fixed. Housing in Silicon valley doesn't grow at the same rate
as number of people coming here. Added to that, foreigners living in foreign
countries ( who have never visited USA, who have no intention of living in
USA) are able to own land/houses in silicon valley , and do that purely for
monetary reasons, ie get more money out of the property , jacking up prices
even more. An ordinary American who wants to live in California is suffering
as a result of this. rent control or low income housing are essential tools to
make ordinary Americans’ lives better.
~~~
zamfi
> Housing in Silicon valley doesn't grow at the same rate as number of people
> coming here
Bingo. And why not?
~~~
aswanson
Existing homeowners don't want their living space turned into downtown
Manhattan because there's a temporary exorbitant demand for ad click
optimization and pic sharing networks.
~~~
zamfi
There's a whole spectrum between single family homes and "Manhattan". It's not
a binary!
The Bay Area's population has grown by 8.5% in the last 10 years. [0] Please,
that's not "Manhattan". That's one person on your block converting their
garage into a rentable unit.
Those "existing homeowners" are really messing things up for everyone because
they don't want Bob to turn his garage into a rental? Somehow I think there's
more to it than that.
[0]: [https://www.kqed.org/news/11741275/map-the-bay-area-leads-
ca...](https://www.kqed.org/news/11741275/map-the-bay-area-leads-california-
in-population-growth)
~~~
pacala
Full quote: The population of the nine-county region grew by over 600,000
people since 2010 — a nearly 8.5% increase — outpacing the growth rate in any
other part of California, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released
Thursday.
600k people is about as much as Seattle proper. Which happens to span 83.94 sq
mi. In less than 10 years. That's _a lot_ of construction.
~~~
zamfi
Huh? 600,000 people in the Bay Area's 7,000 square miles -- I don't see how
the Seattle comparison of "83.94" square miles is related.
No residential neighborhood in the Bay Area needs to turn into "Manhattan" to
house 600,000 extra people. If every block added a house we'd have extra
housing to spare. Zoning prevents a ton of development, and everyone pretends
they're fighting "Manhattan".
At Manhattan densities, the Bay Area would house 468 million people. That's
not what's happening, and no one is advocating for that.
We don't need to build Seattle in the Bay to house everyone. We just need
cities to stop dragging permits out years and every planning committee to stop
saying "no" to any small increases in density.
How much construction it is isn't super relevant -- if it's profitable, it
will happen!
------
kevindong
In NYC, rent stabilization laws have long had the concept of "preferential
rent."
Rent stabilized apartments have a limit to how much can be charged for them
(called the "legal regulated rent"). That amount can only be adjusted (on a
percentage basis city-wide) by a government board every year and by a handful
of other exceptions (historically: improvements to the building/apartment,
major repairs, new tenant in the unit---however some of these exceptions were
recently eliminated). The legal regulated rent is sometimes hilariously more
than what any sane person would pay for a particular apartment and landlords
would never be able to get a tenant at that price (for reference, as an NYC
renter, my preferential rent is ~26% less than the regulated rent).
So in comes the concept of "preferential rent": a price below what the
landlord is legally entitled to charge. That preferential rent is in effect
for the duration of the lease signed. With the recent rent stabilization
reforms in New York state, renewal leases on rent stabilized units will only
be able to charge the preferential rent plus that year's percentage increase
(as decided by the government board). Previously, landlords were allowed to
raise the rent all the way up to the legal regulated rent plus that year's
percentage.
In other words, before the recent reforms, landlords had a strong incentive to
keep the legal regulated rent as high as possible since they can always raise
rents upon renewal to that value. Previously, preferential rents were truly
temporary and the landlords had no obligation to maintain them upon renewal.
Now the only way to raise the preferential rent to the regulated rent is if
the current tenant vacates the apartment and the landlord finds a new tenant,
on whom they may charge any value up to the regulated rent.
It's difficult for landlords to kick out rent stabilized renters since those
renters are generally entitled to renewal leases, but one simple tactic before
was to just raise the rent from the preferential value to the regulated value.
With the recent reforms, this is no longer a viable tactic.
------
DevKoala
Rent control is abused in SF. Every engineer I know, who has been living in SF
for over 5 years is currently paying an absurd amount compared to their
monthly income. I even sub-leased an apartment from a friend who took off a
sabbatical, and he didn’t want to lose his rent control.
I don’t know who rent-control is supposed to benefit, but it seems broken.
Eventually these places end up in the hands of people who know how to game the
system. Just build more housing and the incentive will go away.
~~~
holy_city
When I was interviewing for jobs in the Bay area I noticed entry level
salaries (even at smaller shops) were in the range of 100-120k and rent was
like 35-40% of your salary after taxes. Certainly higher than the recommended
30% but it's not that different from somewhere like LA or NYC, even Chicago
and Miami aren't much cheaper.
Are my numbers just totally off?
~~~
ng12
$120,000 comes out to around $6k/mo. A mediocre studio in SF is pretty close
to $3k.
~~~
holy_city
After taxes it's a bit under $6,900 so 40% of that is ~$2,700. Browsing
Zillow/Apartments.com/Padmapper shows several thousand listings for studios
under $2k and single bedrooms around $2.2-2.7k, depending on area. SF proper
seems pretty tiny and the most expensive, is everyone just trying to cram in
there? Do people try not to commute?
~~~
shuckles
You are right that most casual analyses overstate the real cost of living in
SF. A Bart commute in the Daly City direction, or Oakland, or a drive in from
Pacifica all get you much more reasonable cost / commute trade offs for jobs
in the city. Certainly in absolute prices remain absurd.
~~~
TMWNN
I can confirm that as of December-January it was possible to find a decent
900-1000 sq ft house with two bedrooms in southern SF (Visitacion Valley or
Crocker/Amazon, say) or Daly City, near BART, for $3000 a month. Still more
expensive than than the comparable in New York, where a two-bedroom apartment
in Jersey City with a comparable commute to lower Manhattan was $2300.
------
fuzzieozzie
This rent control is a result of populism - plain and simple.
Rent control works for those already renting - and that is about it!
Everyone else suffers: those moving to the area, the landlords and those
wanting to build more.
~~~
baby
Rent control is a thing world wide. It’s not populism.
It’s the same concept as free healthcare or free education. It’s here to
ensure people can still find affordable places to live.
You can’t make everything an investment if you want a healthy society.
~~~
nerfhammer
It will not help you find an affordable place to live, it will help those who
already have existing leases hold on to them forever. Rent control does not
create an abundance of housing, it just creates a constituency of people that
gets a better deal than those who don't.
~~~
blisterpeanuts
Correct, rent control in the Boston area created haves and have-nots. It was
great for those lucky enough to get in, but the rest of us were effectively
subsidizing them.
------
mabbo
It seems more and more clear that California, or at least those in power in
California, don't _want_ to fix the housing problem. Because if you're a land
owner, the only problem is people trying to spoil the good times. All this VC
money pouring into the pockets of tech employees, and a larger and larger
fraction going straight into landlords' pockets. What's not to love?
If actually you want lower home prices, build more homes. Build tall (curb
height restriction rules); build everywhere (no more minimum parking rules);
build immediately (reduce complex planning permissions for developers). Just
build more.
Supply and demand will decide the price of most goods, and housing is no
exception. Rent control does not address the underlying issues that cause
prices to rise- lack of supply and growing demand.
~~~
seph-reed
Are there really not enough houses? I've always been under the impression that
there exists more than enough housing, but a lot of it is empty.
~~~
mabbo
Not enough to fix the housing problems CA has. Not nearly. And if that's the
problem, tax empty homes.
But even then, even if there are empty homes, building more will still fix the
problem. Let those foolish owners leave the homes empty- we can build more
anyways.
~~~
seph-reed
I really dislike the notion of clearing more land and putting up more cookie
cutter houses and apartments for the sake of saturating the housing market in
order to get people to rent for reasonable prices.
~~~
xvector
I really dislike the fact that I’d have to save for decades just to afford a
decent house in California.
The land isn’t doing anything just sitting there. I am totally fine with
clearing it out so people can actually afford houses.
~~~
seph-reed
Coming from CA and living elsewhere now, it honestly hurts me how much people
take that land for granted. It's so damn gorgeous and rare.
~~~
xvector
It is definitely stunning, and it can make a painful commute bearable, but I
would put the needs of my fellow humans over aesthetic.
That said, there is still a ton of "boring" land we can build on first before
cannibalizing the scenic drives.
~~~
seph-reed
> my fellow humans
This may be the pivotal pinch point which marks the root of our disagreement.
I honestly feel more fellowship with animals and computers than humans.
Also, when it comes to the "needs" of humanity, I think we've surpassed that
mark. It's beginning to appear that people are insatiable consumers that will
destroy anything for a bit of convenience, all while being unhappy the entire
time.
I'm not on team human.
------
joshfraser
When you mess with supply and demand there are always unintended consequences.
I'm currently a beneficiary of rent control and am lucky to be paying below-
market rate for my apartment. It would be nice to move to another
neighborhood, but it would be dumb for me to give up the savings. My neighbor
pays 1/10th of what I pay for the same size apartment. Neither of us are
leaving anytime soon. This is why there's no liquidity in the SF housing
market. They're trapped and live in constant fear of being evicted.
On a philosophical level, why should my landlord be subsidizing our housing
costs? If we want to make housing more affordable for low-income families,
surely there's a more equitable way to finance it.
~~~
hindsightbias
Why should we subsidize your landlord, paying on a Prop 13 valuation 1/10th
the market rate?
None of them are suffering.
~~~
rcpt
I don't like rent control but I hate prop 13. Interesting is that Howard
Jarvis rallied renter support claiming that landlords would be nice and pass
the tax savings on to tenants. Of course this didn't happen and there were
immediately movements for rent control around the state.
------
tmh79
The real solution here is to build more housing, as high prices are a market
signal of a shortage. While I support more unit creation more than I support
rent control, in the current crises we need both. What I still can't get over
is how much of CA land use politics is pure generational warfare, the olds vs
the millennials, and it seems that the millennials are finally starting to win
some fights.
~~~
pitaj
Rent control deters the building of more housing. It's literally part of the
problem.
~~~
cryptoz
Can you explain what you mean? I don't follow. Rent control is a bandaid that
provides a level of stability to the lower classes. They can live without
daily anxiety of being rudely defacto 'evicted' by radical, surprise rent
increases.
This enables a society to continue to grow and function at a somewhat more
sustainable pace, letting cities and counties grow without intense boom-bust
and crash cycles, with a more stable working class, and therefore a long-term
sustainable housing construction market.
I understand that rent control is no grand solution, and that we need more
houses built - but I do not understand how rent control is part of the
problem.
The problem starts and ends with personal and corporate greed. The rent
control is an attempt at constructing a sustainable, stable society from the
ashes of an out-of-control capitalism that is leaving most of its consumers in
the dust.
Rent control is not part of the problem and would _not_ deter rational actors
from building additional housing - I believe it would increase it.
~~~
ProfessorLayton
Rent control does indeed make the housing shortage worse in the following
ways:
\- It makes it so new renters subsidize the old ones, raising prices for newly
vacant places, defeating the purpose of controlling costs. It also doesn't
offer tons of protection from boom/bust cycles, as mainly those riding the
boom will be able to afford absurd prices in highly regulated places like SF —
Where a 1br can fetch 3.7k/mo (!!)
\- "FU, got mine" attitude disengages renters from organizing the same way
NIMBY homeowners do. For example, SF renters could easily outnumber homeowners
to allow much more housing to be built, but ~70% of housing stock there falls
under rent control.
I do want to be clear that I fully support controlling costs in some manner,
however, this desperately _needs_ to be tied to a solution that results in
more housing.
~~~
phil248
Luckily for all of us, this law will not create a new class of rent control
prisoners/devotees because the allowable increases are too high.
------
raldi
This is a misleading headline.
The problem with rent control is that it allows many well-off individuals to
collect ever-growing rent subsidies, to the point where after 10 or 15 years
their rent is a joke compared to what their (often less-fortunate) neighbors
are paying.
This bill does not have that flaw. Crucially, it sets the maximum allowable
rent increase to be well _above,_ not below, the historic long-term rent
curve. Over time, in the long run, rents will approach market-rate. And that
makes all the difference.
~~~
spaceflunky
What you're ignoring is voters resoundingly rejected Prop 10, the rent control
measure that went on the ballot LESS THAN ONE YEAR AGO. Which was pretty close
to AB1482.
Yet, despite the majority of voters saying no, the legislature felt it
necessary to push forward with legislation anyways.
Above all else, the government ignoring a direct vote from the people is most
disgusting of all and reason enough for why this should be vetoed.
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Prop-10-Califor...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Prop-10-Califor..).
~~~
raldi
AB-1482 is nothing like Prop 10.
------
thorwasdfasdf
This is a disaster. Have we learned nothing at all? Rent control won't help
anyone except those who already have a low rent place and it'll only help for
the short term until they need to move. After 50 years of ridiculous
regulations that prevent more housing from being added, we're still moving in
the wrong direction. This is truely a sad day.
~~~
scarlac
It's not ideal and no silver bullet, but having rents go up means "normal"
people living in places for years get pushed out of the city and land lords
get richer, faster. It seems to address that issue, which is not all bad on
the surface.
It's not the perfect solution, but what do you propose as something better
that still helps normal people not get pushed out?
~~~
rconti
I don't have a perfect solution, either, but I see unintended consequence from
this:
* Fewer rentals on the market
* More instances of landlords "re-occupying" a place (eg, ACTUALLY kicking out the residents) in order to fix it up (or not) and then re-rent to someone else at a much higher base rent, later.
When rents go up, tenants push themselves out (or, the market pushes them
out). When we devise tenant protection laws, we invent 'better' landlords who
find clever ways to PUSH out people who are paying below market.
If there was a way to artificially hold ALL rents down, it might be less
obvious -- but under a rent control scheme, everyone knows when you're paying
below market; you look at the classified ads (okay, craigslist) and see that
you could never afford to find a 'new' place like yours at the same price. The
tenants know it, the landlords know it. The tenants have protection. For
awhile. Until they don't.
~~~
pontifier
My uncle was given an eviction notice last month so the owner can fix the
place up. Expect many more people to get similar notices before the new
eviction protections kick in at the end of the year.
------
jseliger
Finally, a novel and innovate solution no one has thought of before.
What could go wrong?
[https://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-
rent...](https://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent-
affair.html)
~~~
tmh79
To be clear, this is a 20 year old article, the literature on rent control has
changed a lot since this was written. Basic economic consensus rn seems to be
that rent control is a poor long term solution to rising housing costs but a
necessary short term solution as the required supply shock wouldn't even be
able to happen in the near term even if regulatory barriers are eased due to
labor, construction, and land costs in expensive metros and that the
anticipated negative impacts of rent control (less liquidity in rental market,
higher prices) dwarfed by the impact of lack of supply.
~~~
melling
It’s a 20 year old story about rent control in San Francisco. So, we are
talking about a long term problem?
“ A few months ago, when a San Francisco official proposed a study of the
city's housing crisis, there was a firestorm of opposition from tenant-
advocacy groups. ”
~~~
tmh79
yes, and there was a huge well funded study a few stanford professors
conducted of rent control in SF in 2018 that is a much more accurate study of
the affects of rent control policies.
"Rent control appears to help affordability in the short run for current
tenants, but in the long-run decreases affordability, fuels gentrification,
and creates negative externalities on the surrounding neighborhood."
To be clear, the rent control studied was a yearly rental increase of ~2/3
CPI, or 1-2% annually, while market rents increased at about 7% annually since
the 50s in SF. The proposed policy is a rent cap of around 8%, which is higher
than the aggregate rent increase in the SFBA over the past 30 years or so
(also 7%). This isn't a rent control law as much as it is an anti gouging law,
disallowing landlords from increasing rent 10-20% YoY, which happens to maybe
1-3% of the market.
[https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-
eviden...](https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-evidence-
tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/)
~~~
dublinben
It sounds like this is a poor solution for a non-problem then.
~~~
tmh79
its a great solution for people who's landlords are price evicting them by
raising their rents by 25%. This law will allow people 2-3 years to find an
alternate living arrangement compared to the 30-60 days they have today.
------
jdavis703
There's three paths:
1) Rent cap landlords. The landlords will cry Big Government.
2) Abolish single family-only zoning and legalize backyard cottages, townhomes
and small apartments. The homeowners will cry Big Government.
3) Do nothing. Watch as more people start living in tents or endure super-
commutes that snarl your traffic and worsen climate change.
~~~
dgzl
I'm not a landlord or homeowner, and 1 makes me cry Big Government.
What if something crazy happens to the economy, say the dollar gets devalued,
and all you have is rental property for income? Realistically you would raise
your rental price.... But wait, there's a cap, and you can't.
2) "legalizing backyard cottages" is actually against Big Government, and I'm
with you there.
You're forgetting another option: deregulate and let the market compete.
~~~
wahern
> What if something crazy happens to the economy, say the dollar gets
> devalued, and all you have is rental property for income?
In San Francisco rent control is indexed to inflation. If the dollar is
devalued, inflation increases, and you get to increase your rent more. The
same is true for Oregon's new law, which permits 7% increases _in_ _addition_
_to_ _inflation_.
> You're forgetting another option: deregulate and let the market compete.
Rent control is about providing housing security and controlling volatility.
Over the long-term unfettered markets may produce optimal supply, but in the
short-term people can easily be pushed onto the street. As Keynes said,
"economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous
seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat
again". (The more famous bit is, "in the long term we're all dead.")
~~~
refurb
SF is capped at 60% of CPI. Inflation is 10%, you can get 6%. Doesn’t take
long for that to add up.
~~~
crashedsnow
In which universe is inflation 10%?
[https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-
release/consumerpricei...](https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-
release/consumerpriceindex_sanfrancisco.htm)
~~~
refurb
Let me restate that, if inflation was 10%, you’d only be able to increase by
6%, so you’d be losing 4% per year, which adds up quickly.
------
creato
> The bill limits annual rent increases to 5 percent after inflation and
> offers new barriers to eviction
The limits to rent increases seem like they are enough to avoid significant
short term spikes, while keeping up with market rate rents.
The biggest problem with some existing rent control (like in SF) is that the
limit is so low that rents can't keep up with market rates even over decades,
which is clearly terrible economic policy. Maybe this limit is high enough
that this won't be as much of a problem for the rest of California.
------
rubicon33
Ah, because it worked so well in SF to ease housing prices! So why don't we
expand the program?
Will never cease to amaze me just now inept politicians are.
~~~
mc32
This reminds me of the approach dictators have to issues. Issue an edict or
decree making the problem itself illegal. Problem solved!
~~~
fuzz4lyfe
Sparrows are eating a great deal of the produce grown in California, let's
remove them to end food insecurity.
~~~
mc32
Exactly! The “Four Pests Campaign” (除四害) aka the Great Sparrow Campaign (打麻雀运)
agree.
[1][https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign)
------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
AirBnb really changes the dynamics of rent control. If you rent to someone in
a hot market, you are entering a long term agreement with less flexibility in
raising the rent in accordance with market rates. In the past, when faced with
rent control, the landlord had to either accept it, or let the property sit
vacant.
Now, with AirBnb, landlords have a much more viable option. They can put the
property on AirBnb and have the flexibility to charge what the market will
bear.
I foresee that as a consequence of this law, there are going to be fewer
rentals and more AirBnb properties in California.
~~~
usaar333
Agreed if there were no other side effects.
However, since both NIMBY owners occupying their home and renters hate AirBnB,
it's quick to imagine anti-airbnb legislation (like what SF already has)
quickly passed if the tide turned.
------
souprock
Oh joy, politicians trying to get votes from the economically unaware. If you
thought there was a housing crisis, just wait. It's going to be crazy.
Here is a different article, more tolerant of private browsing:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/adammillsap/2019/09/04/more-
ren...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/adammillsap/2019/09/04/more-rent-control-
in-california-will-make-housing-problem-worse/)
~~~
tmh79
Limiting rent increases to max 8% (what this bill encodes) is only going to
affect maybe 1-3% of lease agreements annually. This isn't about vast controls
of housing stock, it about limiting 20% rent spikes people experience.
~~~
pitaj
At the cost of further disincentives to actually building more housing. What a
great idea.
Every field of economics agrees that rent control causes harm to the people
it's supposed to help.
~~~
52-6F-62
In a vacuum, yes. Just as much as on paper 0.1+0.2=0.3 but in most floating
point implementations it doesn’t.
In application Toronto has seen the opposite effect to what you describe. We
hear this argument over and over as we just had our rent control stripped, but
it’s counter to the experience.
Here’s one write-up:
[https://urbantoronto.ca/news/2018/11/people-why-universal-
re...](https://urbantoronto.ca/news/2018/11/people-why-universal-rent-control-
worth-fighting)
~~~
pitaj
Your article says this:
> So far, empirical evidence shows that rent control has not crippled the
> purpose-built rental market.
But the economic concensus is exactly the opposite.
[https://www.economist.com/the-economist-
explains/2015/08/30/...](https://www.economist.com/the-economist-
explains/2015/08/30/do-rent-controls-work)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/12/business/economy/rent-
con...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/12/business/economy/rent-control-
explained.html)
[https://www.businessinsider.com/does-rent-control-work-no-
it...](https://www.businessinsider.com/does-rent-control-work-no-it-actually-
increases-rent-prices-for-most-people-2015-9)
[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-01-18/yup-
re...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-01-18/yup-rent-control-
does-more-harm-than-good)
[https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/30/opinion/how-rent-
control-...](https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/30/opinion/how-rent-control-
hurts-the-poor.html)
~~~
52-6F-62
The article continues beyond that line.
They outline, with numbers, the practical effects of rent control in the
sample size of metro Toronto.
I’m not an economist but I didn’t think consensus was a valid benchmark
against empirical data.
~~~
pitaj
Consensus are built from empirical data of more than just one metro area.
~~~
52-6F-62
A consensus of opinion is irrelevant. And among those articles is hardly a
consensus. One wants regulations limited to an extent, another wants vouchers
instead of rent controls.
------
bradlys
Prop 13 but for renters now too!
I wonder if this was pushed by landlords. It's easier to push a 5% hike in
rent every year than random 10-20% hikes. Especially in a nearly tapped out
market. The prices are already astronomical and the home prices are
fluctuating/faltering. In 10 years, the rent will be 63% higher. And that's
after inflation. Your $3,000 1-bedroom will be nearly $4900 after 10 years.
Unbelievable. Will FAANG prop up landlords by adding 5-10% TC increases every
year? Startups certainly won't. They stopped increasing comp a few years ago.
------
claudeganon
The real solution is to decommodify housing.
>The landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and
demand a rent even for the natural produce of the earth.
-Adam Smith
~~~
wanderer2323
>decommodify housing
genuinely curious what would that entail, in practical steps
~~~
freehunter
My guess is to implement a higher tax on properties where the owner does not
live on the property, or put a limit on how many rental units a landlord can
own. Something like that could dis-incentivize large tracts of rental
properties.
~~~
nerfhammer
How does that create an abundance of housing?
------
mc32
I wonder if they put in measures to make permitting easier for builders so we
can actually get more housing built?
I guess we’ll find out in some years whether rent control entices builders to
build more or if it will depress the market for building (as it usually does)
such that at some point we see people (families) bunking together ala Soviet
housing solutions to demand.
~~~
Kalium
I know people doing that in Berkeley already.
~~~
pkaye
Berkeley and Oakland are two places that have outrageous transfer taxes when
you buy/sell your house. Its 15x what it is in most other cities in
California. Basically more impediment to owning a home.
~~~
Kalium
1.5% is definitely high, but I have a difficult time believing that it's a
larger impediment to owning than the generally high price of property due to
lack of supply.
~~~
pkaye
Its a lot to come up with with when you are struggling for a downpayment on
your first house.
~~~
mc32
It is a lot in some ways (it’s a remodel, or repair, etc.) but you’re not
going to buy your fist home in Berkeley if you’re working with a tight budget.
People are paying cash in some instances.
------
lettergram
I’m sorry, I think it’s pretty odd when you can’t set the price for your
property being leased.
If you like better rates, negotiate, fix zoning, or buy. If you can’t do any
of those, you should leave. The rest of the country is really not that bad.
~~~
blisterpeanuts
California already has a net outflow of people, especially middle class. This
is offset by immigration and undocumented migration from Mexico so that the
state's population actually continues to grow. But most of the newcomers are
not affluent, will almost certainly rent rather than own, and tend to live
together in large family groups like 10 people in one apartment. This is going
to keep putting pressure on the housing market -- people need a place to live,
they can't afford to buy, so the powers that be, in their wisdom, decided to
just legislate limits to the price, hoping no one would notice all the
unintended consequences that will definitely happen.
------
johngrefe
You hear that? That's the sound of my home rising in value as supply to
compete against it is reduced. Very cool CA!
~~~
baby
Hear this? These are the tenants that would have had to move out because they
made the mistake of not moving in a rent-controlled place.
------
chaostheory
It doesn't help the housing crisis when the core problem is severe lack of
inventory. It will help politically though since this helps seniors, the most
reliable voting bloc. Pricing controls will just make it worse for everyone
else, especially younger generations and families.
------
sologoub
Meanwhile in the booming Seattle: [https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-
estate/amid-build...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/amid-
building-boom-1-in-10-seattle-apartments-are-empty-and-rents-are-dropping/)
> “I’ve been renting in Seattle since 2014, and this is the first time where I
> felt like I have negotiating power,” said Kjerstin Wood, who went apartment
> hunting with her partner last weekend and got bombarded with offers like
> free parking that she plans to use to play landlords off one another. “For
> the most part, everyone we’ve met with has been very eager to get us to
> apply right then and there.”
> The trend is likely to continue: The apartment-construction surge that began
> earlier this decade is continuing at the same brisk pace, outpacing demand
> for rentals even as the city’s population booms.
And a 2017(!) article talking about vacancy rate in Downtown LA that has seen
a huge building boom (no not nearly enough to really depress prices, but
enough to stave off the meteoric rise):
[https://www.scpr.org/news/2017/09/15/75615/in-high-
vacancy-d...](https://www.scpr.org/news/2017/09/15/75615/in-high-vacancy-dtla-
landlords-offer-move-in-speci/)
------
robbiemitchell
The Bay Area desperately needs ~6-story units in every urban area and near
every public transit stop.
~~~
kshacker
Along with 6 story units, we need better commute. The challenge is that the
developers and cities lie and say hey we can add housing but we do not need to
improve roads, and even if we improve roads, we will improve it just a tiny
bit.
Please travel from Sunnyvale Saratoga starting at 101 at the north end to
85/DeAnza at the south end at 5-6 PM every day and see how long it takes to
travel 6 miles. Unless you live here and know it already, you will be
surprised.
But when it comes to selling housing, the developers, one example being of the
vallco mall owner, somehow gets their way without any indication that their
project will benefit the city, and thus rightly gets overturned at the ballot.
[ And this is from someone (me) who failed to buy a house in Cupertino and now
lives elsewhere.]
Anyways the way to build 6 story buildings can not be by making the living
worse for everyone who already lives there. Much worse.
------
stevenalowe
Just curious how the success of such a measure might be evaluated? Or is this
pure theatre?
~~~
roseway4
"... there could be a big effect in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods like
Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, where typical rents on apartments not covered by
the city’s rent regulations have jumped more than 40 percent since 2016."
A deceleration in rental inflation in neighborhoods such as the above? A
reduction in newly homeless populations?
~~~
rsj_hn
So are you willing to accept that if none of these things happen, and the
homeless problems increase, that this measure failed and should be repealed?
It's one thing to describe a proposal's _political motivations_ , but quite
another to actually declare that you might be wrong in your approach and are
willing to define object criteria for success.
------
blobbers
Regarding SF house prices in particular:
San Francisco prices go up => only tech bros can afford rent
San Francisco rent prices get capped => tech bros still need place to live and
win rental application lotto
Artists can't afford rent, but want to live in city full of tech bros and
glass condos?
It doesn't make a lot of sense to me why you'd want to stay in SF if you're
genuinely an artist. Is it a romanticization of the city's past rather than
the reality of the present - a stark line between rich and poor with tent
cities all around? An elementary school system not friendly to families making
community ties (random geographic assignment)?
SF doesn't have a thriving liberal arts school - the art academy is a profit
pit meant to create student debt. Aren't places like Berkeley, Pacifica, and
Santa Cruz much more attractive locations? Even farther south like San Luis
Obispo?
Lastly I am just going to ask this more fundamental question: should anyone be
allowed to live anywhere they want, and is that the right people are striving
for? Or is it simply they should be able to stay in the place they are once
they're able to `get int`?
------
bubmiw
Vote pro housing centrist fiscally right republicans , we need a more diverse
ca congress
~~~
raldi
"As in previous polling, the law [to dramatically increase the housing supply]
is more popular with Democrats than with Republicans, with 76 and 55 percent
support respectively."
[https://sf.curbed.com/2019/5/17/18629809/sb-50-housing-
trans...](https://sf.curbed.com/2019/5/17/18629809/sb-50-housing-transit-poll-
crisis-ca-yimby)
~~~
cybersnowflake
Yeah, thats why we're seeing oodles of houses now that the Democrats
practically control all of california. Are you trying to argue that the
current one party rule is a good thing?
~~~
raldi
I didn't say that. But the fewer Republicans there are in Sacramento, the
better the chances of SB-50 (or something like it) getting passed.
~~~
cybersnowflake
Ummmm...you do realize the Dems hold supermajorities in both houses right? Do
republicans have psychic powers they're using to control the Dems now?
~~~
raldi
A single state senator (one of the few Democrats who opposes SB-50) blocked
the bill from being voted on.
The supermajority was irrelevant.
~~~
cybersnowflake
So you blame republicans and want even more Democratic control of the
Legislature than they already have.
~~~
raldi
When did I blame Republicans?
~~~
cybersnowflake
You having problems reading your past posts? You just basically said evil
Republicans are blocking common sense housing solutions and indicated the
solution is an even greater proportion of Democrats but then said that a
Democrat blocked it and their numbers don't matter.
~~~
raldi
Could you quote the part where I said Republicans were blocking things?
~~~
cybersnowflake
"The fewer Republicans" et al
------
dev_dull
> _For a quarter-century, California law has sharply curbed the ability of
> localities to impose rent control. Now, the state itself has taken that
> step._
Yep. Because communities shouldn’t be able to decide for themselves. Make it a
state law. I’m just glad that (for now) these central planners are limited to
a state economy and are not in Washington.
Great news for property owners in CA. Studies show over and over rent control
legislation further restricts supply[1], so the existing housing will become
even _more_ valuable!
1\.
[https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/DMQ.pdf](https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/DMQ.pdf)
------
skybrian
Before anyone gets too excited, the cap is apparently 5% plus inflation per
year [1] which seems pretty mild? (For comparison, Oregon's rent control is at
7% plus inflation, and San Francisco varies but is below 3% [2].)
[1] [https://la.curbed.com/2019/9/10/20857225/california-rent-
con...](https://la.curbed.com/2019/9/10/20857225/california-rent-control-
bill-1482-approved) [2] [https://sfrb.org/topic-no-051-years-annual-allowable-
increas...](https://sfrb.org/topic-no-051-years-annual-allowable-increase)
~~~
pcwalton
San Francisco is _60% of inflation_ , which is the cause of all the problems.
It's not even in the same league.
------
mntmoss
One thing that tends to be excluded in most analysis of rent control is the
preference of landlords to operate fewer, more expensive units. When you have
more units, you have more to keep track of - more tenants, more staff, more
maintenance. A high-end luxury unit and a dirty fleabag mostly differ in some
move-in amenities and services; rich tenants might demand more, but they don't
trash the place _faster_. So every unit tends to be luxury by default since
that's where the upside is.
If your rent increase gets capped by rent control, your ability to stay at a
limited scale of operation and just add to the price gets squeezed, and that
motivates making more capital investments in property(and specifically in
vertical upgrades, since horizontal expansion puts them in a land bidding
war). It hits investment properties run by large companies the most, and
challenges them to use land more effectively to stay competitive, in the same
way that higher minimum wage challenges companies to use labor more
effectively.
However, we still need an SB50 or successor bill to deal with the build
restrictions. The landlords and developers can demand building big(and they do
already in many cases) but they're held back by zoning laws put in place by
NIMBY residents. The trick is that instituting rent control does something
change the outlook of the NIMBYs too, since their property value has a
relationship to the value of rentals. Rental rates and turnover slow down =
property values slow down = their house becomes less of an investment.
So it's a good first step either way.
------
kissickas
> California lawmakers approved a statewide rent cap on Wednesday covering
> millions of tenants, the biggest step yet in a surge of initiatives to
> address an affordable-housing crunch nationwide.
As though California is at all symptomatic of the problem of providing
affordable housing in the rest of the nation. They might as well say it's the
biggest step taken in an affordable-housing crunch globally.
A whole article about California's housing problem without a single mention of
Prop 13, though? That's some impressive willful ignorance.
~~~
rcpt
> A whole article about California's housing problem without a single mention
> of Prop 13, though?
It's insane how many of these there are. I even know someone who recently
bought a townhouse who didn't even know what prop 13 was.
------
walterkrankheit
This is interesting as Berlin, Germany is also set to pass a five-year rent
freeze to address tenant concerns and rising gentrification. I always
attributed to the fact that Berlin for some years has had a pretty left-
leaning state/city government and the fact that Europeans are more willing to
try things like this. As an American living here, I never thought I'd see such
a large scale action back in the States. Is it now 'global' zeitgeist at this
point to make moves like this?
------
dawhizkid
For those living in SF, this significantly expands the number of eligible
apartments for rent control. Right now only multi-unit homes/apartment
complexes built before June 1979 have rent control. Now everything (except
single family homes/owner occupied duplexes) built within last 15 years on
rolling basis is eligible.
Given how slowly SF builds housing, the fact that anything built 2004 and
earlier is eligible basically means almost everything except new high rises.
------
diogenescynic
This is only going to make the housing problem worse. They need to remove all
the onerous zoning laws and restrictions of building taller buildings. It’s a
supply problem.
------
pcvarmint
Rent control causes housing shortages.
It limits the price of housing to an arbitrary price which is below the demand
price of housing.
It fails to communicate the housing shortage with higher prices, and therefore
it does not incentivize the building of additional housing to relieve the
shortage.
Nor does it incentivize the finding of lower-cost alternatives, because all
prices are capped at the limit, and so there is no information communicated
about their relative differences.
------
rhacker
We absolutely need more ways to buy a house without all the rigamarole that
causes a buyer to sell at 20% more a year later. Banks and real estate agents
already force most people into selling at much higher. What if there was a
special kind of property that's good at in-and-out ownership, low friction
moves like rentals. Get rid of the bank and agent fees. Build it into the
lien.
Startup idea anyone. The demand would be high.
------
amyjess
And of course there are exemptions for mom & pop landlords in the law.
This is why I'd rather do business with big megacorps than with small
businesses; mom & pops are straight-up allowed to hurt their customers and
their employees in ways megacorps aren't legally allowed to. See also:
exemptions mom & pops have from mandatory sick leave laws, anti-discrimination
laws, mandatory health insurance, etc.
------
andymoe
Ok, now there should be very little reason or objection from tenants rights
folks not to pass SB-50 next session to make it easier to build density near
transit.
[https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB50)
------
d_burfoot
> “The housing crisis is reaching every corner of America, where you’re seeing
> high home prices, high rents, evictions and homelessness that we’re all
> struggling to grapple with,” said Assemblyman David Chiu, a San Francisco
> Democrat who was the bill’s author.
If your new law is such a good idea, why do you have to lie so blatantly to
promote it?
------
enz
In Paris, FR, rent control was approved a few years ago. The problem is that
there is no incentives for landlords to update their apartments and to
maintain them clean and good looking.
Before, a pretty apartment was typically more expensive than a similar
apartment (same size, same zone) which was ugly and Now, it’s same price.
------
camdenlock
Aren’t the effects of rent control well-studied and well-understood phenomena
at this point? Won’t this cause the rental market to become effectively
deadlocked? i.e. people staying put for very long amounts of time due to not
wanting to lose their low rents, landlords refusing to maintain their
properties due to lack of incentives, inefficient allocation of rental
properties (one person living in a 2 bedroom merely because the rent is low),
and so on?
This seems like a bad solution to a problem (housing shortage @ current market
prices) with an obvious solution (allow more housing to be built).
It’s almost like the politicians pushing for this policy don’t value the input
of experts and the application of research, but instead are only interested in
solutions that sound good at the most superficial level. Golly!
------
jklm
Can someone explain how rent control works? It seems like it only benefits
long-lived tenants. In the Bay Area, every apartment I’ve signed with
advertises a “1 month off” deal or some equivalent. That guarantees them the
option of at least a 9% increase in rent the second year.
------
40acres
I genuinely don't understand folks reaction to Rent Control bills like this or
the one recently passed in New York.
Don't you think that policymakers KNOW that the best way out of a housing
crisis is to build your way out? California has put out bills in recent years
to try to remedy this (ie. the bill that would require housing near transit
lines) that FAILED, breaking down all the local neighborhood associations and
powerful interests is not something that can be done in a single legislative
cycle.
Rent control is about making it easier for everyday folks to survive day to
day, its not meant to be a permanent solution, and if in 20 years this bill is
still needed it won't be for lack of effort, it will because the NIMBYs were
able to win out.
------
ecmascript
I live in Sweden, which is heavily rent controlled. Let me just say that this
hasn't worked out. Rental apartment contracts in larger cities gets sold on
the black market for larger sums.
Queues are over 10 years in many cities and there is no real way of getting a
rental apartment in any larger city. This means people are pushed into buying
a housing apartment which cost a lot of money and drives up prices a lot.
It's not viable or logical that an apartment in central Stockholm should cost
as much as an apartment in a small village in northen Sweden.
Norway, Finland and Denmark all have more free market and it's much easier to
find a rental in all those countries. I would advice against having rent
control.
------
aussieguy1234
Instead of controls like this, increase housing supply and let the market
drive down rent and house prices. If they do that, maybe the renters won't
have to rent anymore.
The landlord's would be much more afraid of this kind of market based
solution.
------
all_blue_chucks
The only way to drive down rents AS A WHOLE is to increase the supply of
housing.
Any legislation that makes renting less profitable will make BUILDING RENTAL
PROPERTY less profitable.
This sort of thing, on the whole, makes rents increase by decreasing housing
supply.
------
c3534l
What hope do we have for self governance when the poster child of bad economic
regulations, universally derided for having the opposite effect for which it
intends, can still be implemented? Are governments incapable of learning? Are
we doomed never to make any political progress on policies that are counter-
intuitive, even when there is overwhelming agreement and empirical evidence of
its harm? This makes me cynical of climate change. Even if we do achieve a
carbon-neutral lifestyle, who's to say the next generation of politicians
won't make the same arguments being made today against stopping climate
change?
------
alexmlamb
Has anyone done an analysis to see what fraction of the wealth generated by
silicon valley ends up in the hands of people who happened to own land there?
If normal houses cost millions of dollars, I could see it being a sizable
fraction.
I think the pricing mechanism plays a useful role in encouraging people with
valuable land to give it to others who will use it more productively. At the
same time, I think there's a risk that people who just own land could capture
an unreasonable fraction of the generated wealth.
Would it really be right for San Francisco homeowners to capture over 50% of
the wealth from Silicon Valley's success?
------
DoreenMichele
Well, more bad and broken policy coming out of the state that has a long
history of borking its housing policy.
This does nothing to fix the problem. They need to build more housing. A lot
more housing.
But, no, we can't do that. That makes too much sense or something.
For people looking for solutions, here is a link to a supposedly suppressed
Housing Development Toolkit put out by the White House in 2016:
[https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/images...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/images/Housing_Development_Toolkit%20f.2.pdf)
------
mark_l_watson
I have owned income property in San Diego for over thirty years, so I have a
direct interest in this.
After looking at the details, this law looks OK for the present but if we
enter a period of hyper inflation then it is not so good. The 5% plus
inflation might not be enough since the government jumps through hoops to
underestimate the rate of inflation. If we have 75% inflation and the
government admits to only 20% inflation (for a hypothetical argument), then
landlords will be damaged financially. I believe that sometime the government
will inflate its way out of debt.
~~~
negrit
The perfect way to do it would be to only match the rent increase by the
property tax increase. If the landlord isn't getting any increase on property
taxes then it's fair for the tenant to not get any rent increase.
------
dangjc
It's 5% rent increase, not the 1-2% seen in SF and NYC. Properties don't
typically increase in rent that much. This isn't likely to lead to the absurd
$1000 studio apartments in Manhattan.
------
foota
_California hurt itself in confusion_
------
whydoyoucare
Rent control benefits no one, nor the landlord and certainly not the tenant.
However, it is a classic "virtue signaling" used by politicians to advance
their career. This is no exception.
~~~
themagician
Rent control benefits current residents and communities from being disrupted
by real estate pricing.
------
PorterDuff
Now that I think of it, I wonder why the larger employers in the South Bay
don't build dormitories. Given a strong tendency to hire people fresh out of
school (or nearly so), I would think that a great big dormitory on the company
campus might be just the thing. It removes housing as an issue for a new hire,
ties them more closely to the company (quit, you have to find an apartment),
and they can spend their evenings shooting Nerf darts and shopping at the
GoogleGrocery and the GoogleCoffeeShop.
------
ozzyman700
I think Henry George's Land Value Tax is a great solution that can really help
us avoid a situation similar to what occurred during Mao Tse Tsungs
revolution.
------
pontifier
I've just read through this law, and I think there might be some problems with
it.
My uncle has just been evicted so that the owner can fix the place up and
raise the rent. Under this law, that would be illegal, but this protection
only comes into effect starting January first.
I expect to see thousands of similar last-minute evictions as anyone
contemplating this course of action tries to get their tenant out before the
end of the year.
------
antman
People will cry foul this will drive costs up in the long term. But we are far
removed from free market economics since cities have put restrictions in
building new housing thus keeping real estate prices artficially high. Now the
state puts rent cost restrictions that will drive the prices of real estate
down. Rent control seems to be used as a means to an end rather than a goal on
itself because politics.
------
mytailorisrich
Rent controls are either toothless or only help standing tenants.
Indeed, they work against supply while increasing demand. This does not help
people looking for a home.
------
chillacy
> Economists from both the left and the right have a well-established aversion
> to rent control, arguing that such policies ignore the message of rising
> prices, which is to build more housing.
Nonetheless while it doesn't fix the underlying economics, I can see how it
could be good to have a damper on the volatility of real estate prices, so
that prices swing over the course of many years rather than violently.
------
outside1234
The only solution to higher rent is to build more, a LOT more, housing.
The rest of this is just distortion on the economy that will lead to all sorts
of bad outcomes
------
xivzgrev
Hello, 11 month leases!
“Notwithstanding any other law, an after a tenant has continuously and
lawfully occupied a residential real property for 12 months, the owner of the
residential real property, in which the tenant has occupied the residential
real property for 12 months or more, with or without a written lease, property
shall not terminate the lease tenancy without just cause”
------
chank
We're already at unsustainable YoY rent increase levels in many places IMO. I
for one have no problems moving if my LL decides to increase my rent ANY
percentage. I know that over the course of my next lease I will always be able
to come out ahead by hundreds if not thousands of dollars for the same price
I'm currently paying and for sometimes better place.
------
flyGuyOnTheSly
Governments respond to complaints from the masses.
From what I've heard, rent in a lot of Californian cities is extremely
expensive, so I assume people are complaining about the price of their rent...
probably statewide to some extent.
Hence the new bill. It's just a reaction to a temporary problem.
Which will probably stay in place long past the problem is solved!
------
ScottBurson
So yet another thing -- along with Prop. 13 and the cost of housing, which is
partly the result of Prop. 13 -- that helps people who are already here, at
the expense of newcomers. I suppose you could argue that that's appropriate,
but it seems short-sighted to me. I'd rather see us build a lot more housing.
------
ummonk
It's still allowed to grow much faster than taxes under prop 13, which is
rent-control to benefit property owners.
------
samlevine
This will encourage landlords to tear down existing properties rather than
renovate them, as well as to not maintain them well.
Rental housing quality will bifurcate further, with poor and lower middle
class people living in worse housing.
This is bad policy. It's not replicating the absolutely insane policies of SF,
but it's still bad.
------
rudolph9
In Oregon rent control was applied in a very targeted way to encourage new
building such as exemption for the first fifteen years after a building is
constructed and rezoning of a massive number of lots to allow multi tenet
housing.
Did the California laws include anything to encourage additional housing to be
built?
~~~
vproman
AB 1482 also only applies to properties over 15 years old.
------
crb002
This is nuts. In Iowa this might be unconstitutional as the government is
prevented from rewriting contracts.
------
neonate
[http://archive.is/5jIXP](http://archive.is/5jIXP)
------
blisterpeanuts
Do statewide rules even make sense, in such a large state as California? The
housing markets in the rural east and north surely are not identical to the
housing market in the Bay area, San Diego, and LA. Even Sacramento's rentals
are an average $1000 cheaper than the SF area.
------
negamax
Most new (first time tenants) will get a cliff rent with next few years of
upside factored in. But this will benefit existing tenants. I still think
right law to change would be to allow high rises and right government
intervention would be to create large scale new units
------
gdubs
Text of the bill here:
[https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB1482)
------
alkonaut
This allows for time to adjust (move) which is good. It doesn’t allow the
person serving the espresso to the lawyer to live next door to the lawyer.
That may or may not be an ideological goal, but this doesn’t address that.
------
nemo44x
When rents are high we should incentivize development of more housing stock.
Increase supply until the market finds balance with the demand. Rent control
has the opposite effect. It’s a disincentive to new development.
------
rcpt
Between this and prop 13 it might be easier to just build a wall around the
state.
------
nullc
I wonder how much someone would charge for insurance to cover the difference
between 5%+inflation and market rate?
It's effectively a option on future rent prices... it shouldn't be
particularly hard to value numerically.
------
pkaye
What is the historical rate of yearly rent price increase in the bay area?
------
adventured
> The housing crisis is reaching every corner of America, where you’re seeing
> high home prices, high rents, evictions and homelessness that we’re all
> struggling to grapple with,” said Assemblyman David Chiu
Chiu is being misleading, to put it mildly.
The median home value in Texas is under $200,000; in Dallas it's only
$213,000. In Florida it's $235,000; in Tampa it's $219,000. In Illinois it's
$182,000; in Chicago it's $226,000. In Pennsylvania it's $174,000; in
Pittsburgh it's $146,000. In Ohio it's $140,000; in Cincinnati it's $144,000.
And so on. So much for every corner of America.
In California it's $548,000; in San Francisco it's $1.3 million. California's
housing problems are in fact not a national problem.
------
magoon
So every landlord will now raise 5% annually even if they hadn’t in the last.
That’s often the effect of governments regulating increases, from what I have
seen of stage utility regulation.
------
inlined
I recently bought a house in CA. Knowing this legislation was pending I didn’t
get roommates. I’d rather AirBnB than be forced into rent control. That’s now
two rooms off the market.
~~~
pcwalton
Did you buy a single-family home? The bill exempts single-family homes.
------
bcrosby95
Things like this can make sense in the short term, but there needs to be
sunset provisions to force a long term solution. I'm not really sure what that
would look like though.
------
tathougies
I thought california was trying to reduce its homeless population?
------
Fakira
This move is already proving pretty awesome for homebuyers like me as more
builders seem to be focusing on "build and sell" not instead of "build and
rent out".
------
bluntfang
What we really need to do is make owning a house more affordable. People
buying up rental properties is a bane on the housing market and human
existence in general.
------
pulse7
They could just build/provide new housing for everyone and everything would be
at normal rates... But if you don't allow, then the prices go up...
------
BurningFrog
This is _not_ "approve by California" yet.
It passed in the assembly, but must also pass in the senate and be signed by
the governor before it actually is law!
------
jeffdecola
Just great news. Landlords would also raise rents to kick people out they
didn't like. Then reduce the rent back with the new tenants.
------
ApolloFortyNine
Won't this slow down gentrification of a neighborhood? There's neighborhoods
in most cities that 10 years ago were 'the bad neighborhood' that have become
walkable and popular again.
It's hardly unfeasible for the bid area to have a rent of <$500, but after
gentrification could easily pull $1500. At a 5% cap a year, it would take
considerably longer to reach this price, which will likely slowly down the
conversion of these areas, as the demographics would change much more slowly.
------
edpichler
This is a really difficult-to-solve problem. I never found a city with good
prices for housing (compared to the local average salary).
------
test6554
So if a new apartment comes on the market in SF (never gonna happen, I know)
what rental rates can they start with? Whatever they want?
------
raz32dust
How does this work? Can't the landlord just refuse to renew the lease, and
then lease it out to someone else with a higher rent?
~~~
KODeKarnage
Turning over the leaseholder has a cost all by itself. But more importantly,
there is also the reputation damage you'd sustain by doing this. Consider, any
perspective leaseholder who googles the property could find that out that
you're kicking out the tenant to increase the rent. That would drastically
reduce the potential demand from people looking for the security of a long-
term occupancy. So, yes, it might be possible for a landlord to do that. But
if he does it twice, he will earn a reputation and only attract short-term
tenants. This means, it is an option only for the most short-sighted and
stupid landlords.
------
djrogers
Can anyone point to a place (city, state, country) where homelessness and
housing supply were positively impacted by rent control?
------
todd8
Rent control benefits renters in the short term who don’t want or don’t need
to move. However, property owners can’t price rents according to market
conditions. This suddenly lowers the value of rental property and will mean
that there is less incentive to build new rental property or maintain or
improve existing rental property.
Where else is it being done? Is it a success in these places? There must be
some places it is viewed as working or why else would California do this.
------
abstractbarista
Any rent control is a distortion that should not be done. Open up property
rights and get more high-density housing built. Done.
------
alexnewman
I'd be down if rich yuppies like me got not rent control, but a retiree got
all the protections. Where do we draw the line?
------
WheelsAtLarge
I agree that at this point rent control is a good option. Housing prices are
going up so fast that rents need to go up too. The higher rents then give an
incentive for house prices to go up. It becomes a cycle for both to increase.
But rent control by itself is not enough. The other leg of the solution is to
increase housing via governmental incentives. Otherwise, rent control will
make the situation worse since there is no incentive to increase housing.
~~~
olliej
The problem is that increasing rent has no restraint in CA.
When a landlord increases rent by X% they are saying that the value of the
property has increased by X%. Unfortunately businesses and landlords got
together to push (and pass) prop 13 which amended the CA constitution to
prevent assessed property value from increasing at more than 2% per year.
That means any time a landlord increases rent by more than 2% they are
benefiting from incorrect taxable valuation. Because property taxes cover the
infrastructure that supports homes + buildings (the roads, police,
firefighters, teachers, etc) they are directly offloading the costs of those
services onto people who don't own property: The people who don't own property
then have to (in addition to insane rent increases) pay higher income taxes,
in order to support those services the are functionally there to benefit the
undertaxed properties.
~~~
refurb
The cost of being a landlord is much more than just property taxes.
------
_ah
Another unintended consequence is likely to be a degradation in the average
quality of the housing stock. Everything gets old and needs to be replaced /
upgraded. With limited ability to pass on the cost of improvements, and less
mobility for tenants, the best strategy for owners is to extract value from
the property by neglecting repairs. The annual rent increase can be pegged at
maximum, while the building itself moves "down market".
------
LaserToy
Well, looks like I will be forced to increase the rent next year to a maximum
so I can decrease long term risk.
------
dingdongding
In the past 5 years in Bay Area. My rent has been increasing by 9-10% every
year, so I welcome this law.
------
rayiner
As a Marylander, I’m okay with this. Let California destroy itself. Better for
the rest of us.
~~~
pcwalton
An allowable increase of 5% per year plus inflation that expires after 10
years and exempts single-family homes and new construction isn't going to
destroy anything. That amount is in line with the amount market rate rents
have been rising on their own. We're not talking San Francisco rent control
here.
------
manav
The problem is we need new housing units and the local governments usually
make the construction process so difficult that it's becoming increasingly
unprofitable unless you are a very large corporation. This makes it even more
difficult, especially in the multifamily space.
------
baggy_trough
California is certainly coming out with a bevy of terrible legislation
recently. This particular one should be entitled "The Disincentive to Produce
and Maintain a Healthy Stock of Rental Housing Act".
------
mlindner
Well there goes the state. These people have no clue how to manage a state.
This will ruin what's left of the housing market and make the state completely
unlivable.
------
michalmartin
What has changed in the new state laws?
------
macinjosh
It is fun watching the Democrats running California to self pwn themselves
over and over with idiotic legislation like this.
------
telaelit
It’s about time. Landlords have been exploiting tenants in California (and
across the US) for far too long.
------
ganitarashid
The only positive about this (counter intuitively) is that it will show that
rent control does not work
------
munherty
Supply and demand
------
ARTEMbI4
Really cool
------
exabrial
Wow. State takeover of everything. Downright scary
------
baby
I’m surprised to read negative opinions about rent control. The alternative to
rent control is having one’s rent double next week. I’m amazed that rent
control was not a thing!
~~~
Mountain_Skies
Sorry if this comes off snarky but perhaps others posting here can see past
next week. All too often these quick fix Band-Aids end up causing more
problems in the long run while also spreading the problem far beyond where it
had previously been contained.
~~~
baby
Sure. In the mean time I’m not renting your place if it doesn’t have rent
control. And anybody who does is insane.
~~~
macinjosh
Market solutions in action in these last 2 posts!
~~~
baby
The market solution is rent control + more housing. We got one.
~~~
refurb
Except rent control means less housing!
~~~
negrit
Source?
------
thaumaturgy
HN: According to the simple laws of supply and demand, housing prices would go
down if we just increased supply to meet demand.
Also HN: These rent controls are just going to make the housing problem in
this state even worse.
I don't get it. If the situation were really as simple as the first statement
implies, then if this particular law was really going to have a catastrophic
effect on housing, that would just mean people would leave and demand would go
down and prices would fall, right?
Is it possible that California's housing problems are maybe a little more
complex than a few out-of-context pull-quotes from Wealth of Nations would
suggest?
~~~
Litmus2336
I think you're intentionally misrepresenting the opposing viewpoint. If rent
control artificially reduces the price of housing, more people will want to
live in CA. Less houses will be built, as less profit is being made.
Therefore, prices will be lower for those already housed, yet more people will
be unable to purchase a home.
Of course the million dollar question is how many less units will be built if
they're less profitable, and how many people will be enticed to move or stay
in CA because of rent controls.
~~~
thaumaturgy
> _If rent control artificially reduces the price of housing, more people will
> want to live in CA._
There were two other comments in this same subthread pointing out that people
are in fact moving out of California. (One of them has been deleted.)
It's almost as if f(california_net_migration) is multivariate.
> _Less houses will be built, as less profit is being made._
Residential construction in California has been approximately steadily
climbing since 2008 [1]. Even if I believed your premise -- which I don't --
reality disagrees with it. The conditions surrounding new residential
construction are so much more complex than merely "omg rent control".
A San Jose Mercury News article published last year discussed some of the
influences in new residential construction:
[https://extras.mercurynews.com/blame/](https://extras.mercurynews.com/blame/)
Strangely absent from that article though is that people don't want to just
"live in California"; they want to live in the same places where everyone else
is already living. There is plenty of affordable land in the central valley,
in Kern County, and lots of other places with stagnant economies and
depressing downtowns. But if you want to live in San Francisco, expect to pay
a stupid amount of money for a vacant lot [2]. Again: this is not a situation
that rent control is going to have any effect on whatsoever.
> _Therefore, prices will be lower for those already housed, yet more people
> will be unable to purchase a home._
Funny, this sounds quite a bit like the situation that Proposition 13 created
back in 1978 [3].
And yet, proposition 13 is rarely cited as a significant contributor to
California's housing issues, especially by the "this is simple supply and
demand" crowd. Personally, while I suspect proposition 13 has contributed,
there are lots of other factors, including foreign investment [4].
But maybe we'll soon see just how much of an effect that particular factor has
had in housing costs [5].
Sure though, rent control is gonna have a huge impact on California's housing
prices. Totally.
[1]: [https://journal.firsttuesday.us/the-rising-trend-in-
californ...](https://journal.firsttuesday.us/the-rising-trend-in-california-
construction-starts/17939/)
[2]: [https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/10/21/san-
francisco-v...](https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/10/21/san-francisco-
vacant-lots-millions/)
[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13)
[4]: [https://calmatters.org/housing/2018/03/data-dig-are-
foreign-...](https://calmatters.org/housing/2018/03/data-dig-are-foreign-
investors-driving-up-real-estate-in-your-california-neighborhood/)
[5]: [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/17/foreign-purchases-of-
america...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/17/foreign-purchases-of-american-
homes-plunge-36percent-as-chinese-buyers-flee.html)
~~~
Litmus2336
>And yet, proposition 13 is rarely cited as a significant contributor to
California's housing issues, especially by the "this is simple supply and
demand" crowd. Personally, while I suspect proposition 13 has contributed,
there are lots of other factors, including foreign investment [4].
Really? Because I am vehemently anti prop 13, and I don't think you have to go
far to find people that hate it too. So I'm not sure you can use that
criticism against me. That's essentially a straw man.
> Less houses will be built, as less profit is being made.
This is more or less a factual statement, that if less profit is to be made by
renting houses at least some portion of people will choose to invest in other
things. Whether that portion is even noticeable, I don't know
>There were two other comments in this same subthread pointing out that people
are in fact moving out of California. (One of them has been deleted.)
>It's almost as if f(california_net_migration) is multivariate.
If you want to have a serious conversation, being snarky isn't going to help.
Regardless of net migration statistic, California is still growing in
population. SF is still growing, and the state overall sees positive growth.
------
ahelwer
Perhaps an alternative real solution to the housing crises is the abolishment
of professional landlords themselves. Why should we support a system where
people can own many properties, each feeding them 1/2 of someone else's
paycheck? Public-owned housing is the future. It works in Europe and it can
work here.
Treating housing as an investment vehicle is fundamentally incompatible with
the ideal of housing being affordable. How can you possibly have affordable
housing in a system where housing increases in value (cost) at 5% a year? Who
could possibly afford it after several decades of compound growth?
~~~
mc32
So how is housing going to get built? Are you suggesting that the state have a
monopoly on buildings and housing? What process do we use to begin the
expropriations and confiscations?
~~~
munk-a
Sorry, to clarify... Are you saying that because we have public transit no one
can own cars anymore?
The generous way to read the post above is an arrangement where property
ownership can be both public and private - possibly where rental units are
majority state owned and private ownership is more concentrated in actual
residents.
~~~
dsfyu404ed
>Sorry, to clarify... Are you saying that because we have public transit no
one can own cars anymore?
You joke but many people here would support just that.
~~~
munk-a
Eeeeh, in the long run I think it'll just become unnecessary to own a personal
car for most people if self-driving car fleets become a thing - I dunno... it
might be a luxury like owning your own boat, if you're vacationing on a lake
you can always rent one so why pay to maintain something you very rarely
need... more apt might be to consider it equivalent to owning your own train
car.
At any rate I don't think personal property ownership should be made illegal,
it could just be made to cost - taxi companies are taxed for running a fleet
of vehicles and charging people to ride on them, that sort of mass property
ownership could be similarly taxed.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Moving into System Engineering - blacksoil
Hi all,<p>I want to ask for advice regarding getting a career in system programming. I have about 7 years of professional working experience. Last 4 years has been in the area of full-stack development (Typescript, MySQL, AWS, etc). Prior to that, I spent 3 years working on Android OS, but more on the frameworks layer (Java, C++, C), while also having some level of exposures on low-level Android code (i.e. HAL) and Linux kernel programming.<p>I've been really interested to have a career in a low-level system programming, especially in Linux kernel. But there are some obstacles: (1) Other than hacking as a hobby on the side, I don't have a concrete portfolio in system programming that I can show off to get an interview. (2) I'm currently based in South East Asia (Singapore), and it doesn't seem like there's that many system programming positions here?<p>I'm very tempted to take a few months off, to focus on building a portfolio around system programming. My questions are: (1) what would be a good project to work on or OSS to contribute to land a system programming job? (2) what career prospect is there for Linux kernel development? (3) what are the recommended system programming language with good career prospects? (4) how hard it is to get a remote system programming job? (5) is it a good idea to get an internship position to get my feet wet vs. just building a side project?<p>I'd really appreciate it if somebody in the industry can enlighten me :)
======
non-entity
Can't answer all your questions, I'm a hobbyist here, not a professional, but
I can offer a bit of insight on a few of them
1) The Linux kernel would be a good one to start. There are a lot of good
resources out there for getting started with that. Work on similar _nix
kernels could be helpful too. I 've done a little work on the FreeBSD kernel
which has decent document, and NetBSD, which has poorer documentation, but a
bit better code quality and a helpful community.
2) A good bit of companies hire people to do direct work on the kernel. Redhat
is the first that comes to mind. I imagine most if not all of the Big _N*
companies have teams working on doing kernel work. Many hardware and silicon
companies also have kernel work available. Not sure about companies in your
specific market, unfortunately.
3) C mostly. I imagine having solid C++ knowledge, but I don't think there's
much, if any, C++ directly in the Linux kernel. Knowing other languages never
hurts, I see a lot of relevant job postings mentions Python / Perl, I assume
mostly for automation. For more specialized roles I imagine there are some
other languages that could be useful.
I can't give much information on the other questions, as I'm just a hobbyist.
If I said anything that's flat out wrong, please feel free to correct me.
~~~
CyberFonic
AFAIK there is NO C++ in the Linux kernel. It's all C code.
~~~
non-entity
I kinda figured, just wasn't sure. I know the Window's kernel supports a
handful of features from C++
------
CyberFonic
May I assume that you read [https://lkml.org/](https://lkml.org/) ? If you
research the contributors, then you will be able to identify where they work
and thus identify any possible job openings.
Google's Fuschia project might also be of interest.
In general, kernel level programming requires years of experience. Most of the
work entails device drivers and sub-systems, e.g. filesystems, networking --
all of which rely on knowing standards and their implementations.
Being located in SE Asia, I would think that equipment manufacturers could be
interested in your skills in writing device drivers for their products.
Another area might be embedded systems, which in addition to Linux might use
one of the BSD variants.
In order to be effective at the low-levels, you need a good grasp of CPU
architectures and their many idiosyncrasies. In addition to x86-64, ARM and
RISC-V knowledge should be very applicable.
~~~
blacksoil
Researching LKML contributors is a really good idea. Thanks!
Yeah Linux kernel positions seem to require extensive experience. Do you have
any suggestion on what would be a good way to bootstrap such experience? Would
making contribution to Linux kernel OSS be the best way?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Looking for Mobile/Web Developers - VRealSoft
======
usamaejaz
What technologies are you looking at (if any)? I am a full stack developer
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Improved Seam Carving Using Forward Energy - seam_carver
https://github.com/axu2/improved-seam-carving
======
seam_carver
Don't think most people know about the improved seam carving algorithm (since
only the original is taught in most CS curriculums) and thought you might
think this is cool!
~~~
jaytaylor
It is a neat algorithm, hope you are able to get it merged into scikit-image
[0] without too much fuss~ good luck!
[0] [https://github.com/scikit-image/scikit-
image/issues/3082](https://github.com/scikit-image/scikit-image/issues/3082)
------
chatmasta
Seam carving is really cool, not just for the typical application of changing
images, but also as a method of fingerprinting images (and the other side,
anonymizing them). There are some interesting papers on these use cases via
Google scholar [0].
There are a lot of potential businesses that could be built around image
fingerprinting. Off the top of my head those include the obvious copyright/IP
monitoring, and also more novel ideas like "meme tracking" to observe the
propagation of memes across the Internet.
[0]
[https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=se...](https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=seam+carving+fingerprint&btnG=)
~~~
seam_carver
That looks pretty cool! Thanks for the link! I'll look more into it soon.
------
xg15
> _Both papers introduce different ways to "calculate the energy of a pixel,
> which is a measure of its importance—the higher the energy, the less likely
> that the pixel will be included as part of a seam."_
If I understand correctly, this function is basically how the algorithm
decides which parts of the image to cut (or stretch). So it seems like it
could be interesting to experiment with a range of different functions here.
Has anyone tried to e.g. plug in a CNN?
~~~
seam_carver
I'm unfamiliar with CNN's, but you can draw masks manually to protect/remove
parts of an image, or use a face recognition thing, or a motion detection
thing, etc.
~~~
TTPrograms
The biggest value of ML here would likely be to create a more useful energy
function. This could be informed either by object detection data or hand drawn
"energy" masks.
The other big change that could be useful would be to go with a non-greedy
approach. Say you want to scale down a crowd of people - how do you remove,
say, one person from the crowd instead of removing "low-energy" strips from
multiple people. The people in the crosswalk image sort of demonstrates the
difficulty of using basic energy metrics there.
One interesting idea would be to use GANs - come up with some parameterized
seam removal function (with number of seams a input) such that the resulting
image is still highly probable under the data distribution. So you can't cut
objects into weird shapes since there aren't images like that in the dataset.
~~~
seam_carver
By GAN, do you mean "Generative adversarial network?" I don't have much ML
experience so I don't really understand what you're saying :P
Do you know a good place to start? I heard Andrew Ng Coursera course is good.
~~~
clickok
I would not dive into GANs right off the bat. Ng's course is a good start,
maybe also buy or borrow a copy of Russel and Norvig's "Artificial
Intelligence: A Modern Approach"[0]. If you decide to look into deep learning,
I've heard good thing about Bengio's book (see also Hugo Larochelle's lectures
on YouTube) and if you want to learn more about reinforcement learning,
"Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction" by Sutton and Barto is frankly
amazing (and there's a great course on YouTube by David Silver).
From reading your code, you're probably familiar with most of the stuff you
need to learn ML, so I thought I would take a stab at explaining how you get
from "no machine learning experience at all" to "surely GANs will solve all
our problems". Broadly speaking, a lot of machine learning is just deciding
what your goal is (carve an image, play a game, classify objects, group
similar data points, etc.) definining an objective function (e.g., number of
sharp edge removed, player score, a classification loss function[1], distance
over points in a cluster) and then maximizing or minimizing that objective
function.
In classification, you want a function `f(.)` such that given a data point
`x`, `f(x) ≈ y`, where `y` is the correct label for that data point. Say you
have a bunch of these data points in a matrix `X`, and a vector of correct
labels `y`–– how do you come up with a function that correctly classifies the
data in `X`, and how can you do it so that data you might collect in the
future would also be correctly classified?
You could do this with linear least squares (come up with weights `w` to
minimize `|f(x) - y|`, with f(x) = x^T w) but unless your data is cleanly
separable, that probably won't work so well. There are a lot of possible
techniques people have tried, but lately neural networks have become popular
because they are powerful approximators, relatively easy to deploy, and pretty
versatile. But the training process[2] still boils down to tweaking weights
until `|f(x) - y|` is as low as you can make it.
General adversarial networks are kinda a tweak on this idea-- you start with a
bunch of images, and you train a network to generate images that are "similar"
to them; call the initial images the "real" images and the generated ones
"fakes". You want your network to generate fakes that are similar to the real
images. How do you define similar? Well, you have a _second_ network whose
objective is to distinguish between real and fake images. You train both at
the same time, using feedback from the second network to improve the first
network, and using the images generated by the first network as training
examples for the second.
Initially, the first network will generate splotchy garbage that the
discriminator can easily tell apart from the real images. Over time, the first
network improves, creating increasingly realistic fakes, while the second
network gets better at determining whether an image is real or generated.
After much training, you have two networks: one that is good at generating
images that are similar to the seed images, and another network that is good
at identifying if an image is real or fake.
––––––––
0\. It even has a website and example code
[http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/](http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/)
1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_functions_for_classificat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_functions_for_classification)
2\. See here for a nice explanation of the backprop algorithm,
[http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/chap2.html](http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/chap2.html)
or if you want the OG (original Geoff) paper on the topic, it's in the
proceedings for Parallel Distributed Processing 1986 -- "Learning
representations by back-propagating errors", Rumelhart, Hinton, and Williams.
~~~
seam_carver
That's a lot to take in; thanks for all the links!
------
innagadadavida
14 sec per image is excessive, is there either an implementation or algorithm
that can handle do this in less than 500ms per image?
~~~
seam_carver
It's 14 seconds to remove 200 seams on the 512-by-342 bench image, but I note
potential optimizations in the notebook.
Right now, the seam_carve function in scikit-image accepts an energy matrix,
which it then uses to generate the accumulated energy matrix. Forward energy
calculates the accumulated energy matrix directly, but I calculate the energy
matrix backward from it to be able to use scikit's seam_carve function.
If I write my own seam removal function or change scikit's, I think I could be
able to make the speed comparable to backwards energy.
Furthermore, the accumulated energy matrix calculation step in scikit uses a
double for loop, which might be able to replaced with some np stuff for a
speedup for both forward and backwards energy.
I should probably raise this as an issue on GitHub... thanks!
~~~
seam_carver
I actually realized I was doing a lot of unnecessary computation in my dynamic
programming step. I removed it and from 14 s it's now 8 s.
~~~
seam_carver
After talking with some friends, basically I could get this to be a lot faster
if I just wrote it in Cython. (the skimage.transform.seam_carve function is
written in Cython). Also, I realize now that the double for loop in Cython is
actually fast, so that means that the skimage implementation of dynamic
programming is optimal. But I can still change it to accept the accumulated
energy matrix!
------
imranq
This is the third assignment in Princeton’s Algorithms II course on Coursera -
highly recommended!
~~~
seam_carver
That assignment only covers the original seam carving algorithm; this post
also covers the improved seam carving algorithm!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Learning Assembly Language Is Still a Good Idea (2004) - jacquesm
http://onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/05/06/writegreatcode.html
======
ANTSANTS
I don't think programming in assembly language for modern architectures
(x86-64 as implemented by the latest Intel/AMD chips) will ever be as fun as
doing so for microcontrollers or embedded devices, because it's almost
impossible to keep all of their inner workings in your head.
A 6502 is a really stupidly simple machine. If you've had previous exposure to
programming in assembly, you can get a pretty complete understanding of the
machine in an afternoon. It doesn't take very much experience to get to the
point where you can take a look at a subroutine and figure out exactly how
many cycles it will take to execute, on which exact cycle this I/O operation
will occur, etc.
I've tried that approach with x86 (not even x86-64!) manuals before, and I ran
away screaming. I don't know how long it would take me just to be aware of all
of those instructions, let alone be able to even roughly estimate their
execution time across the hundreds of differing x86(-64) implementations! Just
peeking at Agner Fog's optimization manuals[1], I remember that some
instructions can take 20~ cycles on a Pentium 4 (probably the oldest x86
processor still in common public use), and 1~2 cycles on anything past the
Core series. Some instructions an Intel Atom will choke to death upon. With
some similar pairs of instructions, one of the two is faster on every machine
_except_ the Atoms! How am I supposed to reconcile all of these discrepancies
and write something that is anywhere near optimal for a large portion of the
x86 userbase?
You can make the argument that you don't need to know all of the x86
instructions to write a decent assembly language program. That's probably
true. Yet, part of the fun of working on a simpler system is that you can
write a piece of code and know that it is very close to optimal -- maybe you
could rewrite the whole thing and save a few bytes or a few cycles, but you
still feel like you've put your repertoire of tricks to good use and made
something that you would be feel reasonably comfortable showing off to the
experts. If I can't get that feeling on x86, only getting to beat a compiler
that has to work within the limitations of its language, and producing a
result where no one really cares (and can't even tell!) that I shaved a few
cycles here and there, there is little point, and not as much fun.
If you want to have fun writing assembly language, pick a processor
microarchitecture that you can comfortably fit in your head, and an
environment where you'll only have to deal with one or two implementations of
that microarchitecture. Intel and AMD, in the (very well justified) interest
of developing the most powerful machines on the market, have turned x86 into
something that is not fun to write assembly for, and not possible to fit in
your head (at least, without serious commitment on the level of "I am going to
make a career out being the x86 guy/gal"). Don't bother! Don't even bother
writing something for a platform where you need libraries to print something
to the screen, or convert a line of text into a number. Find a platform that
lets you turn lights on and off by poking addresses, and go from there.
In the mean time, I'm not at all surprised that no one tries to write optimal
software for x86 PCs. No user will feel the effort you put into shaving cycles
off of anything but the tightest loops and most critical of paths, and there
isn't even a scene of ``expert programmers'' comparable to the ones currently
around the 6502 or 68000 to appreciate what you do. The best you get is a
mention on Hacker News and a few wistful comments about the good ol' days.
</stupid rant>
[1] <http://www.agner.org/optimize/>
Lots of very useful information here, even if you don't ever want to attempt
programming in x86 assembly.
EDIT: The funny thing about all this is that even ``back in the day,'' a 6502
was fast enough that you could get away with all kinds of inefficiencies. You
find a game that blew your mind as a kid and stuff it into a debugging
emulator, trying to understand bits and pieces of how the engine works, and
find yourself laughing at trivial inefficiencies all over the place, even in
critical loops! Yet, even with all the hundreds or thousands of bytes and
cycles wasted here and there, then end result still feels plenty ``fast.''
~~~
whatshisface
> _If you wanna have fun writing assembly language, pick a processor
> microarchitecture that you can comfortably fit in your head, and an
> environment where you'll only have to deal with one or two implementations
> of that microarchitecture._
For those of you who read this and want to try it out, I highly recommend the
Propeller. The transistors were for the most part laid out by a single guy,
using only his brain and the silicon-tracing equivalent of notepad, but it is
powerful enough to run about the same applications you might find on a
commodore64.
<http://www.parallax.com/propeller/>
~~~
dkersten
I've also had a ton of fun doing this for PIC24 (the 16bit PIC family of
microcontrollers), which has an incredibly straightforward instruction set.
They're also quite fast, as far as microcontrollers go and while I do love the
Propeller architecture, the 8-core goodness makes them a little more complex
to thoroughly understand (though their deterministic nature and the fact that
you can actually count cycles reasonably easily makes them less complex than
most multi-core processors)
------
dochtman
Having worked with assembly a little bit (MIPS, for Coursera's Compilers class
-- but it's supposed to be better than x86!) and with LLVM IR a bit more (I'm
writing my own compiler for a language that compiles to IR), I really wonder
about the trade-offs for learning LLVM IR vs assembly if your goal is to learn
lower-level details.
In particular, LLVM IR is just so much easier to use, even though it lives at
a very similar level as "real" assembly. Granted, you don't have to take care
of register allocation yourselves, and the instructions are slightly more
abstract (an abstraction which is inevitably leaky), but it does really drive
home the differences between registers and memory, how pointers and addressing
are used at the lower level, that there are different calling conventions (but
you don't have to learn the niggly little details for each), it's portable,
etc.
Anyone who has used both more extensively who can comment?
------
unimpressive
If more of the "how to do X" articles focused on formal verification/etc or
assembly routines, I wouldn't feel as much that HN is bogus.
And since it was actually relevant, I will reproduce SparrowOS's comment
below:
"If you love programming more than anything, you are probably the kind of
person who wants to know assembly language. If your full heart is not into
programming, maybe not."
~~~
jacquesm
It doesn't help that the SparrowOS dude is certifiable.
~~~
TallGuyShort
Yeah what's the deal there? I always assumed he was a spam bot...
~~~
phaus
He's schizophrenic and the parts of his comments that look like spam are
actually algorithmically generated Christian songs.
~~~
chc
Lest anyone take this as a mean-spirited joke: This is the actual truth. He
suffers from schizophrenia and has a long-standing interest in algorithmically
generated Christian messages, which he seems to find meaningful.
------
networked
If starting with x86 assembly seems overwhelming to you there are a few
alternatives that might help.
First are virtual machines that were developed to be programmed directly in a
kind of assembly language. CHIP-8 [1] is a good example of one of those, being
a VM standard developed to make games run across a broad range of otherwise
incompatible mid-1970s hardware. It gained a new popularity in the early 2000s
and as a result you can now find CHIP-8 emulators for virtually any platform,
including your mobile phone, as well as a range of assemblers and other
development tools. It's a fascinating bit of history in its own right and also
a great platform to emulate in the first emulator you write. A bit further
away from the syntax of "real" assemblers is Linoleum [2], which is meant to
be a kind of a cross-platform assembly language targeted towards graphics
applications, but the principles behind programming in it are largely the
same. I can recommend both from personal experience, although CHIP-8 is
probably a better starting point.
Second, if you want something closer to real hardware I'd suggest learning how
to program for the MOS 6502, the CPU used in the Apple II and (with some
modifications) in the Commodore 64 and the NES gaming console. One way to get
started with it is Easy6502 [3], which is an online introductory course on
6502 programming bundled with an in-browser emulator.
[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIP-8>
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linoleum_%28programming_langua...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linoleum_%28programming_language%29)
[3] <http://skilldrick.github.com/easy6502/>
------
fnordfnordfnord
Randall Hyde is a boss. I was thinking about him the other day. I used to read
everything of his that I could find when I was taking courses at a place that
had no Randall Hyde. I couldn't find a reference to it, but he used to have an
annual-ish day of destruction for insolent computing equipment.
Nowadays I'm an electronics instructor at a JuCo. I don't teach any assembly.
I barely mention it. It was in the curriculum, and I specifically threw it out
[1]. There just isn't enough time to do everything, that everyone might want
us to do. I replaced it with Python and C [2].
C lets us get to building systems much quicker.
C covers more potential job opportunities than any particular architecture,
and no company can ever have a monopoly on C. C is portable assembly language.
Most people [3], when faced with the choice of optimize vs buy a better
microcontroller, they spend the extra two bucks.
Even though solving problems with assembly can be tremendously fun and
fascinating, I still prefer C. (sorry Randall).
[1] But I'm always interested in good arguments about the subject.
[2] and LabView, I'm embarrassed to say.
[3] people also includes the companies that hire our graduates.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Eventually every high-level programmer gets a fault on a line of code. It may
contain five or six dereferences, some temporary constructors, result
assignment.
Without knowing assembler it can be impossible to discover exactly which was
at fault. The programmer can thrash around for half a day swearing and
struggling.
And also, did I just call 'C' a high-level language?
~~~
fnordfnordfnord
>>Eventually every high-level programmer gets a
I'm hoping that any of my JuCo grads who go on to get real programmer jobs
(there have been a few) will get some more practice/training, than I can give
them in a couple semesters; maybe find a mentor to work with for a bit too.
>>Eventually every high-level programmer gets a... And also, did I just call
'C' a high-level language?
Sure looks that way ;)
------
KaeseEs
In the domain I work in (firmware for digital instruments and industrial
systems), knowing assembly isn't necessary for performance reasons so much as
for sanity reasons - a lot of vendor compilers for embedded devices are
incredibly flaky, and if you can't inspect the generated assembly you'll never
know what the hell is going on in cases where the code doesn't behave the way
you expected it to.
Heck, even when I have the privilege to be treading a more well-worn path (eg.
ARM/GCC), it's helpful to be able to tell what the compiler is transforming
(on a less charitable day I'd say "munging") my code into.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Very much agree. Assembler is not about efficiency; its about debugging.
------
c3d
The article focuses on writing great code, but there's another reason to learn
assembly language: for some specific aspects of a machine that were not
modelled in the higher level languags, this may be the only way to go.
For example, for HP Integrity Virtual Machines (sort of VMware for HP big iron
servers), I spent a lot of time writing low level vector code that just cannot
be written in any other language because it executes in some specific
restricted environment that the C compiler cannot deal with. Specifically, it
runs off a few reserved registers, has no valid stack (a TLB handler may be
triggererd by a TLB miss on the stack), and frequently use instructions that
are at best supported by compilers as inline assembly.
So it's not just about performance or style, it's also about semantics. And
that's part of the reason why in XL, all low-level operations are connected
with the machine explicitly. I reasoned that what worked for an addition would
alo work for a more bizarre machine instruction.
So in XL you have for the imperative dialect:
function Add(x,y:integer) return integer written x+y is XL.Bytecode.Add
And for the functional dialect:
X:integer + Y:integer as integer -> opcode Add
The list of opcodes is machine specific, but the way to connect to them is
not.
Does not solve the whole problem, e.g. The compiler still has to assume things
like "there's a stack", but getting closer to connecting machine and high
level languages.
------
eduardordm
I used to teach OS classes a local university, every summer I would teach 3 to
5 students how to build a bootstrap and a simple 'kernel' just using asm. The
rest of the class would just use GRUB and do something better, faster.
Anyway, I don't think this matters to our usual professional life.
(this person deserves to be heard, he built a large OS, dead comment)
he wrote:
"If you love programming more than anything, you are probably the kind of
person who wants to know assembly language. If your full heart is not into
programming, maybe not."
------
zxcdw
When will we be in a world when we don't have to deal with assembly language
at all? When can we just get the job done without having to understand or know
any of the things which go down there? Because that stuff pisses me off. Bits?
Bytes? I just want that freaking login box and implement some functionality
and _never have to deal what's under_. Is it _really_ that hard? Sigh.
~~~
jacquesm
When will we be in a world when we don't have to deal with molecules at all?
When we can just get the job done without having to understand or know any of
the things which go down there? Because that stuff pisses me off. Protons?
Electrons? I just want that freaking light to come on and implement some
functionality and _never_ have to deal [with] what's under[neath]. Is it
_really_ that hard? Sigh.
\--
I don't particularly like that style of arguing a point but this is just
asking for it. Knowing a higher level of abstraction without knowing a lower
level of abstraction is just fine. But knowing a lower level of abstraction
will give you a definite edge and if there is one thing that hackers are
always looking for then it is a way to have an edge over the rest. A way to do
something that is deemed impossible simply by knowing a bit more, a way to
achieve some feat by exploiting knowledge that is maybe a bit harder to come
by but not impossible. The ultimate level playing field, you get as many tools
as you're willing to learn how to use, with only your attitude towards
learning and your perseverance as the limiting factors.
~~~
joezydeco
I was going to write a similar analogy, but not as abstract as that. I was
thinking more like the automotive industry.
Most people want to just be able to buy and drive it off the lot without
having to understand how it works or what makes it tick inside. But there will
always be a need for automotive engineers.
~~~
greenyoda
Also, knowing a bit about how your car works will make you less likely to get
ripped off by a dishonest or incompetent mechanic.
~~~
tjoff
Also it will make you drive better and more efficient as well as care for it,
resulting in a far less need of an mechanic in the first place.
------
dizzystar
Ten years later, this article still resonates on so many levels. I hope we
reach a day that we all aspire to like those that refuse to download the next
x-behemoth flavor-of-the-day framework for all the reasons stated in this
article instead of deriding them.
~~~
demian
I hope only the best frameworks and tools, written by the best programmers,
get stadarized, so the application developers can focus on business logic,
data science/engineering and interaction design with a robust abstraction
below.
~~~
regularfry
If the _best_ ever won out, that might be a rational hope.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Darpa Grand Challenge: Autonomous Bipedal Robot - MiguelHudnandez
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2012/04/03/new-darpa-grand-challenge-humanoid-robots-preliminary-unofficial-details
======
MiguelHudnandez
For anyone wanting to sink their teeth into the previous grand challenge,
autonomous cars, there is a Nova special called "The Great Robot Race" [1].
It's available to watch on Netflix streaming [2]. I couldn't find a link to
watch the full special online via other means.
[1] <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darpa/>
[2] [https://signup.netflix.com/movie/The-Great-Robot-Race-
Nova/7...](https://signup.netflix.com/movie/The-Great-Robot-Race-
Nova/70050544)
| {
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From Silence to Sound - esoteriq
https://medium.com/@cmmhartmann/from-silence-to-sound-a93f742fae88
======
kradeelav
I was one of the few who was also implanted in '91, at 2 years old. (My
parents had to wait as medical regulations wouldn't allow the surgery to be
done to younger kids - nowadays they do at ~6 months, iirc. As the article
briefly mentions, the younger you are, the more neural plasticity you have.)
It's interesting to read the difference in experiences as for all intents and
purposes I was raised as a hearing-only child (no sign language or lip
reading) and didn't quite grasp the nuances until much later on. There was ~7
years of speech therapy to close the gap (so to speak) to hearing kids, but
after that it's been repeatedly mentioned that most folks assume that I hear
like everyone does. Wouldn't have it any other way, honestly - having that
modification done opened so many doors. (That being said, like the author,
it's amazing to be able to take the CI off to go to sleep. Soundless sleep is
something to be enjoyed.)
Would be happy to do an impromptu AMA if anyone has pertinent questions on the
topic. (Keep in mind that singular experiences are only singular experiences.)
~~~
mojuba
I'm very curious about the resolution and quality of the implant and how does
it affect how you hear music. Can you distinguish half tones? Can you hear
differences between similar sounding but different instruments (i.e. think of
various types of the flute)?
~~~
kradeelav
Those are good questions! Resolution is definitely less when it comes to music
- I can hear obvious signal degradation when it comes to somebody talking
through a bad phone reception for example, but the difference between a high-
def mp3 and a low-def mp3 is near indistinguishable.
I don't -recall- hearing half tones but that may be because I avoided
classical music out of personal taste and after a childhood of mandatory piano
lessons... it's been a while since I've gone near an instrument. Amusingly
picked up a strong fondness for 80's synthpop/EDM/industrial which feels like
it could be partially explained by it being 'beat heavy' and less
delicate/subtle with different instruments. Would be a fun study!
edit: Jumping back to explain that resolution/quality vastly varies from
person to person, even if they're using the same generation of devices - to
make a long story short, CI's hook up to electrodes within the ear, and the
more electrodes that can be sync'd, the better the resolution. Mine was an odd
case where I have a facial nerve right next to a cluster, and those had to be
turned off otherwise it would cause my face to twitch excessively whenever a
certain pitch of noise was played.
There's also single-implant users and bi-lateral implant users - most folks
these days opt for bi-lateral as you do get a whole 'nother level of quality;
I was one of the early bunch and have other medical complications that make
another surgery very difficult, and decided that since the single's been fine
for daily use, it's worth it just to stick with it.
------
woliveirajr
> This silence is the most absolute that any human can experience, one beyond
> the best noise-canceling headphones or earplugs.
The author mentions how she likes silence. This is interesting, as
non-100%-deaf people began to hear noises even before being born, and even
when placed in the best anechoic chamber will still hear sounds from the own
body. So few people in the world really knows what silence is.
------
hprotagonist
_Author’s Note. Although I use the word “hear” to refer to how I perceive
sound, that’s not an accurate term. Since cochlear implants bypass the natural
hearing process, we can’t properly call it hearing._
This is partially true. CIs replace everything up to the auditory nerve -- the
hair cells in the cochlea, the mechanotransduction at the eardrum, etc are all
literally short-circuited by the implant.
However, much of what we call "hearing", and basically all of the perceptual
aspects of it, begin on the AN itself, or in the areas of the brainstem and
midbrain that the AN projects to. These areas receive input from the AN as
would be true in a normal-hearing individual, with the caveat that the
available frequency spectrum is greatly reduced.
~~~
jrace
As someone who spent over a decade working with heard of hearinga nd hearing
amplification devices, I would argue that (much in line with your statement)
we don't "hear" anything until the auditory center in the brain process the
sound.
Even those with normal hearing do not process all sounds that arrive at out
Tympanic Membranes (and if we did...we would likely go insane from over
stimulation).
I had quite a few patitents that lost most of there hearing yet still had
constant tinnitus.
A small few even reported the tinnitus changing from a constant tone (whne
they had mild hearing loss) to almost recognizable speech and/ or music once
they had severe hearing loss.
It could be argued that even though they had next to no hearing they still
"heard" more than they cared for.
------
spacejunke
I cried reading this. Thanks for sharing your story.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Build hybrid apps with the Ionic Creator - mkremer90
http://ionicframework.com/blog/ionic-creator/
======
Brajeshwar
From the Site.
"Totally free!
We want to help more web and mobile developers become hybrid developers with
Ionic. Having great tools like Creator will lower the bar for getting started
with mobile development in general, and we love that!
To achieve this dream, we have decided to make the Ionic Creator 100% free.
While we might charge in the future for heavy usage, we will always have a
free version of Creator available, so you can quickly build Ionic and Cordova
apps."
------
taternuts
If only it were actually this easy to set up
([http://ionicframework.com/getting-
started/](http://ionicframework.com/getting-started/)) - just spent 45 mins
trying to get it working with an android target on an ubuntu box and I've had
enough, uninstalling everything
~~~
megablast
This is why I have up trying to write BB apps. It was just so hard to get
going.
------
pbreit
Surely this approach has gotta get some serious uptake soon/finally? For your
average CRUD app, coding in iOS and Android (and web) makes little sense.
Titanium was promising before it made the big shift to Alloy. Jquery Mobile is
oddly "meh". Ionic looks quite nice so far.
I see 37 Signals is making this approach work, too (albeit with different
tools): [http://signalvnoise.com/posts/3766-hybrid-how-we-took-
baseca...](http://signalvnoise.com/posts/3766-hybrid-how-we-took-basecamp-
multi-platform-with-a-tiny-team)
~~~
tootie
I don't think jquery mobile was ever a good idea for making hybrid apps. Aside
from the name, it wasn't nearly as flexible as original jquery. There's also a
distinction between what's needed for a mobile site vs a hyrbid app. If the
.js files are baked into the app, bandwidth and latency are non-issues. What
you need is to optimize performance only.
------
chrisdevereux
I'm not familiar with Ionic. It describes itself as a framework for Hybrid
apps, which sounds interesting, but all I can see described on the website is
html and css. Anyone mind enlightening me on what that means here?
~~~
JonnieCache
It's angular, with cordova/phonegap packaged alongside it, and then a whole
load of ionic sauce in the form of css and angular directives to make the
thing work on mobiles in a polished way. They're doing stuff like catching
every touch event and doing debouncing, while actually improving performance.
Some of it is quite impressive.
I'd recommend it if you need to make an angular app look and behave like a
native app as much as possible.
Unfortunately if you want to deviate from ionic's currently small pool of iOS-
ish design metaphors, then it's not flexible at all, that's what you sacrifice
for having everything else work with minimum fuss. I believe they are working
on remedying this, there's lots of stuff on the issue tracker about enabling
iOS Mail style layouts and so on.
In the end, it's just angular, and ui-router: this is its strength. Take a
look at the repo.
~~~
tootie
If you want flexible, you can just use vanilla Cordova. There's always a
trade-off between features and flexibility.
~~~
JonnieCache
That's exactly what I did in the end. I was hoping to use some of ionic's
general optimisations without using its UI components, but I wasn't clever
enough to work out if this was a good idea in the short time I had.
------
bildung
I cant't find either pricing or other hints of a valid business model
anywhere. That makes me a bit wary to try it out - how long can ionic exist
without income?
~~~
yesimahuman
Hey, one of the founders here. :) Rest assured our company is financially
strong and Ionic will only be getting _more_ love going forwards. We did raise
some money recently , but we actually have some nice revenue already (imagine
that!).
Unlike our past products, we aren't trying to build a company around just
Creator. It's a tool to help existing Ionic devs and train the future of Ionic
devs, and so we want to keep it free as much as possible to just help more
people build with Ionic.
~~~
tootie
That's awesome. I'm such a hater of the iOS dev requirements so I really hope
that the hybrid app space really takes off. Do you have any plans for
mitigating JavaScript performance on mobile devices? Do you see any movement
in building cross-paltform plugins?
~~~
mot0rola
JavaScript is fairly fast, the DOM is what is slow in my experience. I too am
hopeful that the hybrid app space takes off as well.
It would be really cool to see Ionic have some support for windows. Then I
could really see this being adopted at my company.
------
abluecloud
> Sign up below for early access to the Creator beta.
Annoying.
~~~
tylermac1
Yes, annoying that Ionic wants to beta test their new software package. How
annoying of them.
~~~
abluecloud
Yes, but it's not an instant access beta program. So whilst I appreciate they
want to beta it, I'd like to have a little play knowing that it's in beta.
~~~
yesimahuman
Sorry for the confusion. It's not in beta yet. No one is using it and it's not
quite ready. The list is for when that opens up, and we will be liberal about
letting people in.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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"You Don't Know JS" book series kickstarter - _getify
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/getify/you-dont-know-js-book-series
======
fuzzywalrus
I'll bite. I dropped $10 on it.
~~~
_getify
thanks so much for the backing. really excited to get this off the ground!
please help me keep spreading the word.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Our cities' water systems are becoming obsolete - clumsysmurf
http://www.vox.com/2014/10/6/6900959/water-systems-pollution-drinking-water-desalination
======
tomohawk
As far as I can tell, the biggest threat to water in my state are the elected
politicians. Certain municipalities are dumping raw sewage into the water.
They claim it is due to not enough money to build proper plants, but they keep
redirecting the money for other uses. There are now 2 specific taxes to
address this, and still the cronies end up with all the money.
~~~
kissickas
Where is this? I'd be interested in reading an article if you could link one.
~~~
USAnum1
I learned about this in passing during an urban planning class during
undergrad (it was a great elective, and I really think more people should
learn that stuff).
Combined sewer overflow [1] is essentially business as usual in many
municipalities. I happened to learn about the Detroit sewer system, but even
King Co in the PNW has this issue [2]. I like to think areas like that would
think ahead about this, given the high annual rainfall, but separate systems
are quite the expense.
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_sewer#Combined_sewer_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_sewer#Combined_sewer_overflows_.28CSOs.29)
[2]:
[http://www.kingcounty.gov/healthservices/health/ehs/toxic/cs...](http://www.kingcounty.gov/healthservices/health/ehs/toxic/cso.aspx)
~~~
jhalstead
It happens in Boston too.
[http://www.mwra.com/03sewer/html/sewcso.htm](http://www.mwra.com/03sewer/html/sewcso.htm)
------
tim333
None of the points in the article seem like anything particularly new. Looking
at the points they mention:
1) Upgrades needed - stuff wears out need maintenance - always has done
2) New populations need new stuff - again same old
3) Global warming may cause drought - or it may make it wetter. There have
always been droughts - again nothing new
The article also ignores things that are new - in parts of the world ground
water is being used up and will need a big change when that runs out. Also
greater prosperity my cause everyone to get pools and golf courses.
------
kashkhan
We will soon be able to make a water treatment plant small enough for a
neighborhood or even a house, powered by PV panels on the roof. Then the only
water needed would be the small amount needed to make up for evaporation.
The real problem though is golf courses which use as much water as domestic
use and ag which uses a whole lot more. We don't have a solution for
agriculture yet but parched places such as CA central valley will probably
have to give up on ag.
~~~
7Figures2Commas
> We don't have a solution for agriculture yet but parched places such as CA
> central valley will probably have to give up on ag.
The Central Valley is probably the most productive agricultural region in the
world. According to the USGS, "Using fewer than 1% of U.S. farmland, the
Central Valley supplies 8% of U.S. agricultural output (by value) and produces
1/4 of the Nation's food, including 40% of the Nation's fruits, nuts, and
other table foods."[1] California supplies about a third of the nation's
lettuce and is responsible for more than 90% of the organic output of grapes,
strawberries and other fruits and vegetables[2].
Ag is an important part of California's economy and a critical part of the
United States food supply. The loss of California agriculture would be
devastating to California and the entire nation on a number of levels[3].
I assume you weren't advocating for the state to "give up on ag" but frankly,
that's not going to happen and treating ag as a silo is not realistic. It's
easy for many to see this issue as a battle between cities and farms, but most
people haven't spent any time in the Central Valley and don't understand how
important and unique it is. The number of people in California who don't
consume the state's agricultural products and benefit from their contributions
to the economy is literally 0.
It's cliché, but we literally are all in this together when it comes to water.
[1] [http://ca.water.usgs.gov/projects/central-valley/about-
centr...](http://ca.water.usgs.gov/projects/central-valley/about-central-
valley.html)
[2] [http://giannini.ucop.edu/media/are-
update/files/articles/v14...](http://giannini.ucop.edu/media/are-
update/files/articles/v14n2_3.pdf)
[3]
[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/explainer/2...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/explainer/2013/07/california_grows_all_of_our_fruits_and_vegetables_what_would_we_eat_without.html)
~~~
Spooky23
I think it's a strategic problem for such a large portion if our food supply
to be concentrated in one region.
I think more pain here is good for the nation. There's no reason all of our
tree fruits, lettuce, etc need to be trucked out of California. I was in a
grocery store in Georgia when traveling awhile back, and couldn't find a
single Georgia peach in the produce area of a store, because California
agriculture completely dominates.
We have climate issues, but places like New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey,
etc could easily provide that same output, and there is plenty of water in
most east coast areas.
~~~
7Figures2Commas
> We have climate issues, but places like New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey,
> etc could easily provide that same output...
That's unfortunately not true. You need to appreciate just how unique
California's soil and climate are. Farmers from others parts of the world come
to California and literally marvel at what we have. In many parts of the world
the same technologies and techniques that we use are increasingly employed but
these regions still can't achieve the same yields.
Even if it's possible to grow certain crops in other areas, you will not be
able to produce in the same quantities as California can and, more
importantly, you won't achieve the same yields. Settling for substantially
lower yields effectively means you are accepting less efficient use of local
resources (water, energy, labor, etc.). That would be counterproductive.
> I think it's a strategic problem for such a large portion if our food supply
> to be concentrated in one region.
Even if there's some validity to this argument, the reality is that you can
only reduce the concentration so much. Growing _and_ distributing food at the
quantity required in an _efficient_ manner necessitates a higher level of
concentration than might be desired in the ideal world we don't live in.
~~~
Spooky23
I think you need to consider the long game. California was very forward
thinking in investments in academic agriculture resource... The state is the
Silicon Valley of produce. That's a miracle, but it only works if key
assumptions like that awesome climate remain there.
If we are in fact driving into an era of climate change, doing things like
permanently depleting groundwater may irreparably affect the ability to
continue the current model. That really worries me... I've never lived in an
era or place where food wasn't available. That would be a great shock to the
US if it were to happen.
------
Spooky23
They'll be replaced by populations shifting to places that can actually
support millions of people.
~~~
Klinky
...or we'll all start living inside favela-style communities in some dystopian
future.
------
justinator
> By Brad Plumer
That's quite the coincidence, there.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Language Innovation: C# 3.0 explained - nreece
http://blogs.tedneward.com/2005/09/22/Language+Innovation+C+30+Explained.aspx
======
smoody
The extension methods are very Ruby-like, which is kind-of scary. Don't get me
wrong -- it's a powerful idea, but have you ever tried to get a complete
definition of a class that is spread out over a dozen files in potentially a
handful of third party libraries? Since MSoft also controls the IDE, perhaps
they can create a single coherent view onto a class by combining the dozens of
files that extend the original class into a virtual document of sorts.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Visual Basic, PHP, Rails. Is Node.js next? - dwynings
http://andrewchenblog.com/2012/04/01/visual-basic-php-rails-is-node-js-next/
======
olalonde
IMHO, Node.js will not directly compete with Rails/PHP as long as it forces
programmers to program in an async style. As an example, async style makes it
impossible to implement lazy loading (a technique commonly used by ORMs).
Furthermore, Node.js is basically based on the idea of cooperative
multitasking[0] which carries a certain trust issue in large teams or projects
with lots of third party dependencies.
There is definitely a niche for Node.js but it's not likely to become a direct
competitor to Rails.
FWIW, I'm currently writing a web app with Node.js and have written multiple
Node.js modules and native extensions.[1]
[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking#Cooperati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking#Cooperative_multitasking.2Ftime-
sharing)
[1] [http://syskall.com/how-to-write-your-own-native-nodejs-
exten...](http://syskall.com/how-to-write-your-own-native-nodejs-extension)
~~~
wahnfrieden
Why does it make lazy loading impossible?
~~~
olalonde
A typical ORM allows you to do stuff like this:
var user = orm.load('User', 'some unique id...');
console.log(user.name + ' was referred by ' + user.referrer.name);
where user.referrer is another User instance. Since the user.referrer object
might be a bit slow to load from the DB, we want to delay its loading until we
actually use it (lazy load it) and not load it at all if we don't use it. This
is not possible in Node.js because every I/O calls (i.e. database calls) are
async. In other words, we have no guarantee user.referrer will be loaded in
time (before console.log() outputs the result).
Every time we want to load something from the DB, we need to supply an
explicit callback which will be called one the DB query is completed.
Of course, there are several ways to achieve the same result in async style,
but none of them are _transparent_ to the programmer. You will either have to
load the referrer object upfront or supply a callback whenever you need to
load it.
For example:
orm.load('User', 'some unique id...', function(user) {
user.referrer.onLoad(function() {
console.log(user.name + ' was referred by ' + user.referrer.name);
});
});
~~~
wahnfrieden
Ah yea - so it's not impossible, it just makes typical usage overly
cumbersome. Maybe this is something a coffeescript extension or analog could
help solve.
~~~
olalonde
Well, it is impossible to _transparently_ lazy load from a database.
CoffeeScript won't solve the problem since it is still ultimately limited by
Node.js' async libraries.
A "solution" would be to cheat and write a _sync_ database API but then, you
would break the assumption that everything is async with Node.js, making it
harder to work with other programmers or use third party modules.
~~~
xtrumanx
> CoffeeScript won't solve the problem since it is still ultimately limited by
> Node.js' async libraries.
I wouldn't be too sure about that. .net 4.5 is coming out with an await and
async keywords which will basically signal to the compiler that method should
be re-written to an asynchronous. So for the example you gave, if the await
keyword was available in coffeescript, you could just write:
await console.log(user.referrer.name);
And the coffeescript compiler could then re-write callback style.
~~~
roryokane
In fact, IcedCoffeeScript (<http://maxtaco.github.com/coffee-script/>) already
implements this, using keywords called "await" and "defer".
------
AdrianRossouw
I don't think node really wants or needs to be the new VB, PHP or Rails.
Somebody might build something with node that really competes in that space,
but for the most part the node community seems to be route around
'opinionated' frameworks and fall behind very very small libraries. I find it
a breath of fresh air tbh.
There's a constant influx of people who try to turn node/js into what they are
used to (be it java, php or rails), but I don't think they are really gaining
any traction.
Learn to appreciate node for it's strengths, which are actually very difficult
to communicate and really takes a level of understanding far beyond 'oh, i can
build a blog with this'.
------
alexbell
I found the last paragraph/sentence a little weird - "Until then, I think
people will still continue to mostly build in Rails with a large contingent
going to iOS – the latter not due to the superiority of the development
platform, but rather because that’s what is needed to access iOS users."
Rails -> iOS??? Apples and oranges.
~~~
edwinnathaniel
Ditto from VB to the other tech (php, rails). I think he is after something
else; a pattern/trend regardless the platform: desktop, or web , or mobile.
------
throwa
The future is more of a continued polyglot environment. Developers will use
different programming tools/ frameworks to provide different features for
their app via a service-oriented -architecture or something like that. This is
an example: a chat app built with Rails, Socket.IO, Node.js and Backbone.js
<http://node-chatty.herokuapp.com/chatty> See blog post on that:
<http://bit.ly/zorHYA> Everything is in rails but just the chat bit that makes
sense to be realtime is served by nodejs. Redis pubsub is used to communicate
between rails and the nodejs chat server. You can use ruby based event-machine
or async sinatra or async rack to write the chat server and communicate with
them with redis and drop nodejs if you are so inclined..
In summary rails, nodejs, php, java will continue to co-exist as tools and
people will use what they are most comfortable with and what gets the job done
in each problem space.
------
gexla
I think you have your order wrong. If you are talking about web frameworks,
then Rails pretty much kicked off the bloom of web frameworks in the PHP
ecosystem. There were web frameworks available in the PHP ecosystem before
Rails, but they all sucked and none of them had gained any serious traction.
Also, I'm not sure you could ever call VB or Ruby mainstream. Of course, this
depends on your definition, but hosting issues and a lack of things like a
Ruby equivalent of Wordpress (in terms of popularity and usage) has kept PHP
at the top for web development in general.
~~~
digitalzombie
I don't believe your statement. IMO the reason why Rails was popular was
because it was the only real MVC framework for Ruby at the time. PHP have
CakePHP, Zend, CodeIgniter, Symphony, etc... Python Django was before Rail and
it failed to have as much fanbase as Rail because it was also competing with
other within Python ecosystem.
~~~
gexla
CodeIgniter was released after Rails and at that time the developer listed
Rails as being an inspiration. Zend Framework was released after CodeIgniter.
I don't know the history of CakePHP and Symfony but Wikipedia shows they were
each released in 2005, which was before CodeIgniter but after Rails. That's
why I mentioned that Rails was an inspiration for a lot of the PHP frameworks
which came out after Rails. Again, there were already PHP web frameworks
available, but nothing really took off until after Rails hit the scene.
------
gfodor
The question is, when will people tire of learning new ways to make HTML web
pages that save to a database. I know I sure have.
~~~
kylebrown
Whenever other people stop needing web pages that save to a database. Until
then, we'll continue learning better (as in quicker and easier rather than
"new") ways to lazily create what people need.
~~~
ryan-allen
I'd argue in a lot of cases the new methods are not significantly better, just
significantly different.
I cynically believe that this is what happens when you ask a reasonably
intelligent programmer to connect forms to databases. They will get bored and
invent alternate techniques and want to use 'new' tools to pretty much achieve
the same thing.
I'm guilty of doing this myself, but I now see the pattern and I'm over it.
There is more interesting things to learn than the 'next hot thing' in web
tech and there's also something to be said about maintainability.
I've had to troubleshoot bugs in years old Rails applications on Ruby 1.8.7 in
Rails 2.1 that were jam packed full of the current trendy plugins of the time.
I'm telling you I'd prefer debugging and maintaining a boring old PHP app with
hand-rolled SQL statements over it any day. To be fair these apps are still
around because they generate income, but they don't generate enough income to
justify a 3-6 month long error-prone 'upgrade' project to get it inline with
the tech of the day.
I think this is why big-co standardise on years old tech, because building
every new thing in every new tech with 1000 programmers is a recipe for
disaster. Yes we need to try new tools, new techniques, but when
overwhelmingly the corporate world have chosen the safe route I suspect it's
not because they're old and boring themselves, just they've seen through the
smoke and mirrors and no longer buy it.
It takes a number of years working in a few environments to see this for
yourself (try telling this to an 18 year old hot-shot and they'll think you're
an old fuddy duddy). I believe there's merit when an old greybeard is yelling
at all the younguns because they left out not null constraints and omitted
foreign keys. They know (and have dealt with) the impact a few years down the
track.
~~~
kylebrown
> _They will get bored and invent alternate techniques and want to use 'new'
> tools to pretty much achieve the same thing._
Yup, and plenty of re-invented alternatives will be no better or worse than
the tried and true. But occasionally the new tech will be significantly
better; that's how tech evolves.
The main advantage I expect to get from experimenting with node.js and NoSQL
is to be able to take the client-side code that's on the web page (eg instant
form validation with javascript, and saving offline to html5 localStorage
because the customer wants it to work where they don't have wifi), and re-use
it on the server (would rather not have a second codebase in php or ruby-rails
to do all the CRUD). With coffeescript I write less boilerplate. And I have to
use the latest jQuery-esque plug-ins because the customer also wants touch-
screen drag-n-drop functionality.
To be sure, there is plenty more interesting things I would rather be
learning. But customers don't really care that I might find something else
more interesting than their project.
------
nchuhoai
Rails made it ridiculously easier to write common CRUD apps. Whoever is the
next fad, a rails comeptitor or rails version, it will find a way to make
real-time apps easier. While I love node, I do not think it has the particular
same appeal as Rails had a couple years ago. As an intermediate Rails
developer, I really hope 4.0 can bring some of the freshness and magic back
~~~
edwinnathaniel
... or make mobile development a lot easier.
------
ilaksh
I agree with what this guy is saying about form-based applications.
What I have just started working on is a system built on Node.js that is
designed to make developing CRUD and other common types of applications
efficient.
Its a little bit along the lines of ASP.NET, but with an aim towards making
things simpler. There are components with a front end in
JavaScript/CoffeeScript and a back end running on Node.js and Mongodb.
CodeMirror to edit the HTML/CSS and Javascript or CoffeeScript for the front
end and also the CoffeeScript/JavaScript of the backend of each component.
Front end components (widgets) are composable. As far as CRUD goes there are a
lot of different types of forms people want and so there isn't going to be a
built-in widget for everything, but to start with, there is a record widget, a
field widget, and a list widget. These widgets would be associated with
certain collections or fields in a database and so there can be multiple list
widgets for example displaying data in different ways.
To start with I am working on the basic component framework and editor with
some type of drag-and-drop composability for the front-end widgets. Still at a
fairly early stage.
------
gouranga
To be honest, where real time collaboration apps and updates are concerned,
we're using WPF and WCF on top of .Net. There's a lot ready to roll there -
much more than any open source framework. It's conveniently the "forms
paradigm" with a nice asynchronous network backend and scary scalability
(AppFabric/Azure really does scale!)
------
plasma
It's worth mentioning the upcoming .Net 5 runtime featuring await/async
operators to dramatically simplify async programming, read more at
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2010/10/28/async...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2010/10/28/asynchrony-
in-c-5-part-one.aspx)
------
Sindrome
It's scary to see VB, Rails, and Node in the same line of text.
~~~
moonchrome
But very appropriate IMO.
------
MartinCron
One of these things is not like the others.
(Visual Basic wasn't a web-specific technology)
~~~
randomdata
node.js isn't a web-specific technology either. It is an event processing
framework, like EventMachine on Ruby or Twisted on Python. And then PHP and VB
are programming languages, while the other two are only frameworks atop other
languages.
Beyond them all being tools programmers use, it is tough to draw any real
commonality between them.
------
elchief
What does Node have to do with forms?
Does he mean backbone?
~~~
nateps
Comparing PHP and Rails to Node.js is not quite right, as PHP and Rails are
application frameworks and Node.js is primarily a platform for creating
application servers. There are a number of more analogous frameworks being
written on top of Node.js, but none of them have reached a similar level of
maturity and adoption yet.
I believe that the author is arguing that Node.js could reach a similar level
of popularity as Rails if there were a framework that provided some of the
ease of use for common use cases, such as creating typical CRUD apps. However,
he also states that in order to displace Rails, such a framework would also
need to offer some distinct advantages, such as better support for realtime.
Backbone, Ember, Knockout, etc. are client-side frameworks. They make it
easier to structure complex client code, but they don't include a simple
solution for creating a server or synching data among clients and servers.
It's still under active development, but I have been working on a full-stack
framework on top of Node.js that is more like what the author was envisioning:
<http://derbyjs.com>
Derby provides server _and_ client rendering, and it automatically
synchronizes data in realtime. The idea is to make writing realtime apps so
simple that any app can take advantage of advanced realtime features, fast
server-rendered page loads, and instant client-rendered page updates.
------
crazygringo
Node.js bases everything around async programming, and this is just too
difficult for mediocre programmers to wrap their heads around, and use
effectively. (But it's fantastic for good programmers.)
I don't think Node is even _trying_ to follow in the line of those other easy-
to-use languages. Why would it want to?
~~~
batista
_> Node.js bases everything around async programming, and this is just too
difficult for mediocre programmers to wrap their heads around, and use
effectively. (But it's fantastic for good programmers.)_
It has nothing to do with mediocre vs good programmers.
A good programmer maybe better able to hold an async callback flow in his mind
than a mediocre one, but he too will be hampered by it. I.e both will be MORE
productive with non-callback async style programming. Callback style async
code is needlessly more difficult compared to linear style async code --and
the keyword here is "needlessly", as this difficulty doesn't buy you
absolutely nothing, only introduces more bugs and hampers readability.
(To clear another misconception, it also shares very little with event-driven
UI code --there the callbacks are much more coarse, based on high level
tasks).
Guido, the creator of Python, a good programmer if I ever seen one, absolutely
abhors async programming. And the designers in all modern languages, from C#
to Go to Scala to Erlang etc, have also decided against using the Node style
for async programming.
Plus, it's not like Ryan Dahl is some programming of Dennis Richie
proportions, or anything like it either. Compared to most language designers,
he is just a script kiddie. Considering, also, that node isn't even a
language, it's a hack on V8, similar to what dozens of people have already
done on other platforms, from Tornado to Twister, to EventMachine etc.
~~~
artsrc
> C# does have API's like this
<http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/7de1x8cb.aspx>
~~~
batista
Which is why they scrapped it and introduced async and friends:
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/csharpfaq/archive/2010/10/28/async.a...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/csharpfaq/archive/2010/10/28/async.aspx)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Godot Rust - homarp
https://hagsteel.com/posts/godot-rust/
======
kroltan
Which demonstrates my main peeve with Godot currently:
It was made for GDScript as much as GDScript was made for it.
Both the C# and Rust integrations _work_ , but they feel so wrong because the
whole engine was designed in this ultra-dynamic style. You end up writing
different code than you would otherwise when using those languages, to an even
greater degree than in other engines. You end up writing GDScript with a
different syntax.
I'm not saying the GDScript way is fundamentally wrong, and besides this issue
I think Godot is a great engine, but it is clear that in the current scheme,
every other language is a second-class citizen.
~~~
ForLoveOfCats
I've been writing C# with Godot for well over a year and a half now. I've had
technical issues, especially early on due to how immature it was, and I have
my own gripes with some APIs which is natural with something as wide scoped as
a game engine. That said I don't have to step outside the static typed
safezone very often and the instances where that is required is being reduced
heavily over time. GDScript got static typing and basic support for static
analysis which is being improved and expanded upon even further in 4.0. At
this point in time I would say that C# support specifically has nearly reached
first class citizen status and with the API changes in 4.0 which are making
signals and others more static will further improve the situation.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Late Meditations on XKCD 936 - gambler
http://insideofthebox.tumblr.com/post/75234834370/late-meditations-on-xkcd-936
======
aragot
I had a talk in 2005 and the person was saying passwords belonged to the past.
2014 and we're still there: Why?
\- We have browserside certificates. Granted they're not sexy.
\- We have logins by email tokens. After all, that's how to do password
recovery anyway, so why not promoting password recovery to the normal login?
\- We could have thousand kinds of SIM or USB passwords, such as YubiKey,
which would have features like, you only auth while it's in the slot.
Instead the last gov website I've used to declare my payroll employees takes
the birth date as the default password. And so many others accept my mother's
maiden name as an authentifying proof.
How did we get there?
~~~
harshreality
Browser side certificates only work in the browsers you install them in; the
average computer user will need tech support to help them copy a key/cert pair
to a new browser. The key is also probably not encrypted on disk (by default).
Emailing a login token to a user every time they want to log in requires that
their email is working and that they can get to their email, and would slow
down the login process. It would waste everyone's time. I think it only makes
sense as an additional authentication measure for high security applications
where logging in at a moment's notice is not a necessity.
Yubikey is okay for one or two sites _if you have one_ [1]. They cost money,
and serve no purpose other than improving security of logins. Compare to a
smartphone running a TOTP app. Most people already have a handheld device, and
a TOTP app and setup for a website is a free one-time install with one-time
setup and no ongoing overhead. It also doesn't require working email or even
working internet, which doesn't matter in the typical case but matters a lot
in edge cases. Email might be down. SMS might be down. You might not have cell
coverage at all.
[1] Yubikey only has two slots, and so you can't store unique OATH seeds for
more than two sites, right? How many yubikeys do you expect people to carry
around? How many sites even implement HOTP rather than TOTP? If every site
implementing 2FA implemented challenge/response for yubikey, then yubikey
would be great. However, TOTP is the dominant form of 2FA, and that limits the
usefulness of yubikey.
~~~
maxerickson
Gregarious device use should sort of be on the decline. To the extent security
matters, any ol' device is less and less of a good idea.
Still, I'd like devices to be able to ask my cell phone for authorizations
(maybe with a complicated enough UI that the cell phone can limit the valid
time of the auth).
------
arielweisberg
I've actually seen people use that XKCD comic as an excuse for designing
products that prevent the use of password managers.
Pass phrases do nothing to help you manage unique passwords for every site and
then expire them when necessary.
Sure pass phrases are great for encrypting your password database, but they
are not a substitute for password management.
~~~
nknighthb
> _I 've actually seen people use that XKCD comic as an excuse for designing
> products that prevent the use of password managers._
These people need to be publicly named and shamed, they're deliberately
putting their users at risk.
~~~
arielweisberg
I agree, but haphazardly shaming products/developers is not a way I want to do
it. I don't know how long such a statement is going to hold true once I have
made it. Also glass houses and all.
If someone maintained a database of products and how they interfered with the
use of a password manager or good password hygiene and there was a way to get
off the naughty list then that would be great, but that is a lot more work.
~~~
nknighthb
I wish you'd raised that idea like, three days ago. I would have had time to
work on it. :)
------
singingfish
I'll just pop this here:
$ cat `which xkcdpass`
#!/bin/sh
perl -MCrypt::XkcdPassword -E 'say Crypt::XkcdPassword->make_password for 1 .. 10'
~~~
Bootvis
For the chumps (like me) who don't know how to get the perl mcrypt module:
sort -R /usr/share/dict/words | head -n 4
~~~
sltkr
Even shorter: (and much faster!)
shuf -n 4 /usr/share/dict/words
Somewhat more seriously, Diceware works pretty well too as a low-tech, high-
quality password generation method:
http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html
(My only complaint is that a lot of words in the standard wordlist are pretty
obscure.)
~~~
rockymeza
[https://www.fusionbox.com/mouseware/](https://www.fusionbox.com/mouseware/)
we wrote this one at my company. It uses your mouse movements as a seed for
the random number generator.
------
vezzy-fnord
Most people who quote XKCD #936 miss the point. It has a decent message, but
taking it literally is a grave mistake.
This style of concocting passphrases (chain dictionary words together) as a
whole has a low Kolmogorov complexity, and can easily be imported by attackers
through wordlist mangling or using some advanced software features, such as
Hashcat's combinator attack.
Finally, humans are fallible. They'll always go for certain predictable
combinations, and certain permutations will be more widespread among those.
If an attacker has any suspicion you're using the XKCD algorithm literally,
it's trivial for them to make a move.
~~~
leephillips
Can anyone explain to me why he assings only 2^11 bits of entropy to a word?
Doesn't that correspond to choosing from only about 2000 words? If we choose
from the more typical adult vocabulary of 100,000 words, isn't that
log2(100,000) = 17 bits? Or am I doing it wrong?
~~~
bredman
I think he did this to show how even with a very restricted dictionary you
could still build a relatively secure login system. Having a restricted
dictionary could also help with the issues other people are discussing with
humans being socially programmed to select certain word orders as their
password under this scheme.
------
dnautics
I never bought into the XKCD 936 concept. Imagine using 20 web pages
regularly, and having to remember 20 unique word combinations of 4 words.
What I do is the following:
I have a function that reliably converts the name of a service -> some string,
easy to compute in the brain
passwords are salt + f(service)
where salt is a strong string of characters for critical services (financial,
personal info, etc)
and a weak string of characters for stuff i don't care about.
~~~
Fargren
That's effectively security through obscurity. If someone got one of your
passwords, he could try to figure out f()^-1 and reverse your funciton,
supossing its inversible; that would grant him all of your passwords with the
same salt. Specially since you just now published an outline of your scheme.
~~~
dnautics
All passwords are effectively security through obscurity, with varying sizes
of trapdoors. If someone got a hold of your piece of paper that has all of
your passwords written down on it, then you're hosed as well. _If you 're
being targetted, you're basically in trouble no matter what._ Sometimes
security just has to be good enough, for most users, good enough is such that
having one password compromised by a trawling operation is sufficiently
firewalled against having the other passwords compromised by an automated
agent.
Even so, you can bet that for things I really care about that are difficult to
reverse (such as, like, say a bitcoin wallet) I'm not going to use this
scheme.
------
giantrobothead
Pass phrases are more memorable and at least appear more resistant to password
cracking attempts, but as Mat Honan's experience and this recent post here on
HN
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7142916](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7142916))
both show, your account security can come down to a successful social
engineering hack on a minimum-wage customer service employee who has the power
to reset your account password.
~~~
batoure
This is true however a close read of the article you site would show that part
of the reason that that hack is possible is because in our current paradigm
the idea that someone would have completely forgotten their password. If pass
phrases became more common then perhaps customer service reps would be able to
be more skeptical of the social engineering ploy that was put to use in this
scenario
~~~
giantrobothead
Perhaps. Unfortunately, that's probably a pretty big "if".
~~~
batoure
True but it would be interesting to see some data on how many over the phone
password resets big service providers do on a day to day basis. That kind of
data would at least be a litmus to invalidate the current paradigm.
~~~
giantrobothead
I would like to see some numbers on that. Is it as pervasive as it seems, or
are the ones that get through just dramatic enough to set people on edge?
------
DanBC
I dislike the idea of allowing permutations in word order. Remembering a
strong passphrase involves muscle memory and finger typing, so having random
order for words in a pass phrase would not help most people.
Passwords are _horrible_. I can't wait for the day when we have 2FA with
something like a Yubikey (but better) and a short password.
~~~
gambler
Muscle memory works well for commonly used password, but what about rarely
used ones?
Words can be blended into a single impression or narrative for easy
memorization, and giving the user the ability to order them to support that
narrative will greatly improve usability. (Besides, if you're consistent, your
muscle memory will work just fine.)
------
invalidOrTaken
"The golden goose crows from the cliff."
I don't know if _this_ is the answer, but I like where the author is going. I
like the way PG approaches these things: will we be remembering ridiculous
combinations like r@bb1t24 in 50 years? Somehow I doubt it.
~~~
dnautics
I remember my amazon password from ~15 years ago.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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What Google engineer James Damore got wrong - happy-go-lucky
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170811-what-google-engineer-james-damore-got-wrong
======
TheRealDunkirk
So Damore wrote a treatise on how the "diversity mindset" \-- with it's
presumption that both (all?) sexes are equally biologically suited for
technical pursuits -- might actually have a biological component which is
being overlooked or, worse, willfully ignored, and the response to that is,
no, this isn't possible, and that the systemic cultural influences are beyond
his comprehension? So, the answer to his call for further discussion is to
double down on the original argument? Am I reading that right?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Brightbox vs Amazon EC2: Phoronix Ubuntu 12.04 Benchmarks - jeremyjarvis
http://brightbox.com/blog/2012/09/20/brightbox-outperforms-amazon-ec2-ubuntu-12-04/
======
jread
You have to careful comparing one specific EC2 instance with other providers.
Unlike most compute services, EC2 infrastructure is heterogenous. The
c1.xlarge instance compared might deploy to 2 or 3 different chipsets in us-
east-1, each with different performance characteristics. Based on the results
they posted, this instance appears to have deployed to a 2.13GHz E5506 host.
Most likely, Brightbox is using a homogenous infrastructure, and likely
something a bit faster, like X55, X56 or E5s. For a more apples to apples
comparison, they might have tested against an m2.4xlarge (8 cores) or
cc1.4xlarge (8 cores hyperthreaded to 16), which are also 8 cores and deploy
to X5550, X5570 or E5-2665. Based on my own benchmarking either of these
instances would have performed comparably or better than the Brightbox 8GB
instance.
The point is, you have a lot of options with EC2 in terms of performance, and
comparing a single instance deployment doesn't really do it justice.
[Edit] Here are a few links to Phoronix results for EC2 instance types not
included in their testing. m2s, cc1s and cc2s are the better CPU performers in
EC2 due to faster processors. If you do a CPU performance comparison, these
instance types should not be excluded (as I observe they often are):
m2.4xlarge - 8 cores - X5550 <http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1208019-SU-
CLOUDHARM39>
m2.4xlarge - 8 cores - E5-2665 <http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1208139-SU-
CLOUDHARM43>
cc1.4xlarge - 8 cores/16 HT - X5570
<http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1208127-SU-CLOUDHARM93>
c1.xlarge - 8 cores - E5506 <http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1208134-SU-
CLOUDHARM15>
These instances were tested using CentOS 6, which will be a bit slower than
Ubuntu 12.04.
~~~
comice
If the m2.4xlarge goes only on X5550 cores, then that does work out to be
about 26 compute units (as they claim). So I would expect a m2.4xlarge to
perform the same as a Brightbox large (which is about 26 compute units too).
The pricing (and ram spec) is very different though - not really a like for
like comparison, but I see that it's important to note their use of cpu type.
Interested in how xen vs. kvm is playing a part here too.
------
ridruejo
People keep comparing EC2 and other hosting providers in terms of performance
and pricing. However, the biggest value in my mind is related to the agility
it provides (you can basically model and control your infrastructure through a
programming API) and the whole ecosystem around it (CloudFront, Route53,
Beanstalk, S3). Some vendors, including Brightbox, have some of that
functionality but it is a very small fraction of what is possible with AWS
~~~
jeremyjarvis
Yeah - that's fair comment, we don't have the same breadth of products as AWS
for sure. I agree absolutely that agility is what it's all about though.
------
s_henry_paulson
From the comments:
In your price comparison you forgot to mention EC2 offers reserved instances.
Your instance would cost $466 USD a month, and an EC2 reserved c1.xlarge
instance would cost $102 a month with a 3 year reserved instance. If you
average out the cost to reserve an instance over 3 years, the total would be
$188 a month, This means EC2 is actually 60% cheaper than Brightbox.
~~~
jeremyjarvis
This is clearly a comparison of on-demand instances, where the common unit is
the hourly rate as with other IaaS. Reserved instances in themselves have a
cost in terms of commitment or risk (if you aren't able to sell them back
later).
~~~
RKearney
Then why not go by EC2's spot instances? Those would still be cheaper with
zero upfront commitment.
A c1.xlarge spot instance is $0.07/hr (right now) compared to the on-demand
pricing of $0.66/hr.
That means, assuming pricing stays consistent, a c1.xlarge instance would cost
$50 a month compared to $466 a month with Brightbox.
~~~
jeremyjarvis
Because it's not a common unit for comparison. The spot price can fluctuate.
Obviously.
(you edited your comment, so I'll edit mine :) ...
How can you assume the spot price will stay the same?
~~~
jjm
How can we assume Brightbox won't raise prices?
How can we assume Amazon won't raise base prices, possibly affecting the spot
market, then again this is a spot market! It's like asking how can you assume
stock prices (not exactly equiv, but thats not the point) will go up or down?
How can we assume anything?
We don't. I think the assumption on the wrong feature to market is the problem
here.
I only care that right now, EC2 spot are cheaper by a large margin. IF the
price raises to match then I'll adjust. I'm not locked in.
~~~
jeremyjarvis
@jjm both Brightbox and AWS have to give notice before increasing prices.
Again, I maintain the hourly on-demand price is a fair comparison
~~~
nphase
A fair comparison for what exactly? Many EC2 users optimize price for their
usage characteristics heavily with spot instances. Sure, a c1.xlarge costs me
$0.64 per hour, but I probably only need a few of those (at potentially a
reserved price point) as a baseline. Instead of scaling those up and down, we
choose to scale up and down with the c1.xlarge spot instances at a magical
$0.052 per hour price point and only switch to normal on-demand instances when
spot aren't available or the prices spike out of our target range (which,
historically, is rare).
Bottom line, comparing $0.64 vs $0.64 is fine for per-unit usage but doesn't
paint the full picture when it comes to actually building scalable systems on
EC2. Spot instances play a large role in that strategy.
------
RKearney
Posted on brightbox.com.
Surely this post won't be biased in the least.
~~~
kev009
The pgbench score is conspicuously missing too, which is heavily disk
dependent, which is universally heavily over-subscribed by VPS providers.
There's a smokescreen at the end "our storage is hardware RAID6 with 15k rpm
SAS disks" which means very little. (i.e. if that's internal storage across 8
spindles, it's barely going to sustain 1000 IOPS in anger. That could be
monopolized by a just a handful of VMs)
This link should be buried.
~~~
comice
I ran these benchmarks myself. The pgbench score just failed to run - I tried
a few times but it wouldn't even start. I put it down to a bug in the
benchmark. Should have explained.
But yeah, no diskio tests here really (other than the pgbench one, but I don't
know to what extent that would have tested diskio). The benchmark suite tests
were chosen by Phoronix. We'll do a diskio one at some point too.
~~~
mryan
pgbench will only stress your disks if the test database is too large to fit
entirely in memory (controlled by the scaling factor option).
bonnie++ results would also be interesting.
------
gizzlon
Looking at the pricing reminds me of how expensive cloud computing is if you
keep them all running 24/7..
The small one would cost:
server: £0.025 * 24 * 30 = 18.00
ip: £0.0035 * 24 * 30 = 2.52
20 GB /m out: £0.12 * 20 = 2.4
5 GB /m in : £0.08 * 05 = 0.4
= £23.32
Is this estimate correct? For this price you can get four and a half virtual
1-core servers, with 4 ip's, 4 TB of outgoing data and unlimited incoming
data.
Of course, cloud computing has additional features, so I'm not saying it's
never worth it. But it seems like a bad deal for most uses.
Am I missing something? or is this just the price you have to pay for the
cloud "extras" ?
~~~
giulianob
The advantage with Amazon is that if you get a reserved instance where you pay
a bit upfront, your hourly price drops dramatically. I think you can get
discounts upwards of 75% with reserved instances.
------
comice
We found comparing Xen to KVM on the same hardware showed similar results to
this too (things doing lots of ram allocations, like redis, do very well with
KVM).
------
ck2
If you are going to benchmark Apache, use 2.4 with event MPM which can be as
fast as nginx.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Your opinion: a simple cloud note & paste web app. - jakeme
http://scrib.in/index.php
======
vyrotek
<http://scrib.in/3e20tp>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple Approves iPhone App That “Promotes School Shootings” - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/20/apple-approves-iphone-app-that-promotes-school-shootings/
======
booticon
Can we please ban any TC article on HN? Nothing but FUD to generate pageviews.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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This is how Google is killing the Web - pmcpinto
https://medium.com/web-design-and-development/d9baf7179950
======
taigeair
Actually I don't really browse on my desktop or mobile. I always prefer to
type something to search my computer or phone instead of having to browse for
it. Unless it's on my home screen. I think it's pretty efficient.
------
ajanuary
"Look at all these devices with curated lists of shortcuts, now look at this
browser that has...the ability to create a curated list of shortcuts"
The only way Google is killing bookmarks is by being useful.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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GitHub Says ‘No Thanks’ to Bots — Even if They’re Nice - cyphersanctus
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/12/github-bots/
======
briandoll
I'm quoted in the article and I wanted to clear one thing up that was missing
from it.
When bots get reported to us by people using GitHub our support folks reach
out to the bot account owner and encourage them to build a GitHub service[1]
instead. As a service, the same functionality would still be available to
everyone using GitHub, but it would be opt-in instead.
A few months ago we heard from some developers of service integrations that
beyond the existing API features, it would be handy to be able to provide a
form of "status" for commits. We added the commit status API [2] in September
to accommodate that. We're always open to feedback on how the API and service
integrations can improve.
The point is, GitHub services are a much better way to build integrations on
GitHub.
[1] <https://github.com/github/github-services> [2]
<https://github.com/blog/1227-commit-status-api>
~~~
sillysaurus
Well, devs are always going to create bots. They're a fact of life.
Why not establish an opt-out convention similar to robots.txt? The idea is
that people who want to opt-out would create a ".robots" file in their repo,
with "none" in it. Any bot that doesn't respect the .robots file is
hellbanned.
The problem with opt-in is that people won't use it unless they (a) know it's
available, (b) know how to get it, and (c) actually go get it. So people don't
really do that. But establishing an opt-out convention like this solves the
problem entirely, and it's simple.
~~~
thwarted
Opt-out sucks because you are forced to deal with it. Opt-in makes the most
sense because there are no hurdles to jump in order to _not_ be bothered.
If no one finds or wants to use your service without it being forced on them,
it can not be that great of a service.
~~~
zem
you could have a single opt-in to bots-as-a-whole (as a github account setting
rather than per-repo), and then blacklist individual bots if they end up being
spammy. that seems like a nice balance between "do nothing by default" and
frictionless adoption of the feature.
~~~
thwarted
While this is a fine idea, why can't that be "opt-out to bots -as-a-whole (as
a github account setting rather than per-repo), and then whitelist individual
bots if you want to find out if they provide some utility"? That seems like
the proper balance between "do nothing by default" and the lest friction
required to use bots without requiring those who don't want to be involved at
all needing to do anything?
If it's about discovery of bots, then come up with some meaningful way to make
them discoverable (presumably better than the Apple App Store _zing_ ) without
people needing to be exposed to them by default.
~~~
zem
white listing individual bots is not low-friction. ideally i want the bots to
discover me, not vice versa.
~~~
thwarted
You do, but no one else does.
How about a header in email that the sender can include that forces the email
to the top of your inbox and makes it undeleteable? You can opt-out by having
an email address of [email protected] all the time.
~~~
sillysaurus
_You do, but no one else does._
How small-minded. There are many of us who want to be discovered by bots. We
just keep quiet because people like you have such strong opinions and aren't
afraid to be mean about them.
Wouldn't it be ironic if your opinion was in the minority?
~~~
thwarted
The people who want opt-in are not the bad guys here, and neither are the
people who want opt-out. The bad guys are those who poisoned the well, tragedy
of the commons, by abusing the system. Unfortunately, there is a greater
chance of abuse than there is utility, and it's more difficult for everyone to
manage opt-out on an individual occurrence basis than it is to manage opt-in
centrally by _trying_ to ban bots across the board. And neither are that
actually that successful, despite there having been individual successes in
some communities.
------
technoweenie
We got a lot of angry feedback about the whitespace bot that was roaming
GitHub for a while. We tried to sit back and let people deal with it
themselves (e.g. send feedback/patches to the bot owner).
We're not opposed to bots or services. We encourage it, and use one ourselves.
The key is making it opt-in so it doesn't bother people that don't want it.
Travis CI is a popular addon, but they don't have a bot that runs tests and
tries to get you to setup their service. They just focus on providing a bad
ass service that you _want_ to setup.
Edit: You 'opt' in to a bot one of two ways:
1\. You add their GitHub Service to your repository (see the Service Hooks tab
of your Repository Settings). This is how Travis CI started out.
2\. You setup an OAuth token with the service. Travis does this now, and
provides a single button to enable CI builds for one of my repositories.
~~~
jayferd
I distinctly remember a Travis bot sending me like 4 pull requests that added
a `.travis.yml` file...
~~~
stock_toaster
That was a troll bot someone not affiliated with travis wrote, as I recall.
------
StavrosK
> But here was a pull request from a GitBot. Bots don’t debate. “It’s like the
> first time you see a self-driving car on the road,” Michaels-Ober says.
Good thing he likened it to something we can all relate to.
------
calpaterson
In case any github people are reading this: you also have an annoying approach
to web crawling "robots". Your /robots.txt is based on a white-list of user
agents with a human readable comment telling the robot where to request to be
whitelisted. Using robots.txt to guide whitelisted robots (like Google and
Bing) is against the spirit of the convention. This practice encourages robot
authors to ignore the robots.txt and will eventually reduce the utility of the
whole convention. Please stop doing this!
~~~
sbierwagen
Robots.txt is a suicide note.
<http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Robots.txt>
My personal server returns a 410 to robots.txt requests.
~~~
tomjen3
I have no clue as to why the author of that shit is as angry as he is, but I
have zero interest in his opinion until such time as he learns to show me the
issues, and not just blindly assume that anybody who is not as enlightened as
him is a blind idiot.
~~~
sbierwagen
Okay.
------
avivo
Git bots may not be that impressive right now. But imagine a future where an
incredibly knowledgeable "programmer" is working with you on every project,
doing lots of the busy work, and even code reviewing every commit _you_ push.
Except that programmer is a bot. This future is possible - but we need to
encourage it, and not shut down the precursor at the first "sign of life".
If someone has a good track record of useful pull requests, would you mind if
they contributed to your project? Would you care if it was really easy for
them to write that helpful code because they've crafted the ultimate
development environment that practically writes the code for them? So why do
you care if the editor actually writes _all_ the code for them?
That's essentially what's happening when someone writes a bot and it makes a
pull request.
Sure, it sucks if there are unhelpful bots or _people_ spamming up a storm of
pull requests. But the solution to this problem is not to ban all bots or all
people - it's to develop a system that filters the helpful "entities" from the
unhelpful ones. This might be hard in some fields like politics and education,
but in software development this is tractable, right now.
I sincerely hope that this is what actually happens. This is one of the first
steps towards a world where common vulnerabilities are a thing of the past
because whenever one is committed, it is noticed and fixed by the "army of
robots". When an API is deprecated, projects can be automatically transitioned
to the new version by a helpful bot. Where slow code can be automatically
analyzed and replaced.
There are details to be figured out, an ecosystem to be constructed, perhaps
more granular rating systems to be made for code producing entities (human or
bot). Because it's "easier" for a bot to send a pull request, the standard of
helpfulness could perhaps be higher. Communication channels need to be built
between coding entities, and spam detection will become more important. But
simple blocking and a cumbersome opt-in system is not a good solution.
This might be a stopgap until better systems are built, but it is not
something we should be content with.
~~~
nnq
You need to _clearly make the difference between_ :
1\. real people (they can make regular pull requests)
2\. bots advertising you a code/assets improvement service (this _should never
be in the form of pull requests_ you should see this as _adds_ and you should
have the opportunity to disable them and github could try to get some revenue
by taxing the guys advertising through this)
3\. smart "code bots" that could actually do what you say: maybe at first
start by doing code reviews, then static code analysis, then even start
refactoring your code or writing new code, who knows... but _you would have
these in a different tab, like "robots pull requests"_ , at least until we
have human level general AI :) ...for the same reason that you have different
play/work-spaces for adults and children and animals (you don't want your son
and your neighbors' pets running around your office or bumping into you in the
smoking lounge of a strip-club!).
EDIT+: What the bot owner did in this case was to advertise without paying the
guy on whose land he placed the billboard (and on whose land he himself stays
without paying rent), except that it's much more intrusive than a regular
billboard you can ignore!
~~~
gbog
Those categories are artificial. What about a bot finding patches to send but
with a human review? And an army of humans sending spam PRs like they create
fake accounts on Facebook?
The gp solution seem more adaptive and open to the unknown.
~~~
nnq
(3) is artificial, at least for now. But I will always want to see the
difference between:
1\. Pull request or issues file by real human being for non-advertising
purposes (using the equivalent of a "spam filter" for them)
2\. Any other stuff! - I want this labeled as "something else", regardless if
it useful or spammy real bots or "human-bots" sending me adds.
It's a great future what the gp suggests, and I want it, but for now I want a
clear distinction between "ham" and "spam", and for now it's probably better
to separate "really human made content that's not advertising" and call
everything else "possibly spam". If the need appears, they can start filtering
the real spam. For now I just want everything that doesn't directly come from
a human labeled as "bot pull requests" or "bot issues" or anything else, but
labeled!
------
philfreo
A bot which does lossless compression on images in open source projects and
only submits a pull request (with all the relevant details) if there was a > X
percent filesize savings? That's not spam, that's just helpful...
~~~
mistercow
Potentially, yes, but what if the idea catches on and you have swarms of
overlapping bots submitting pull requests? And what about bots that are well-
intended, but dubiously helpful?
You might log in one day and find that your repo has pull requests from
fifteen image optimizing bots, thirty-eight prettifying bots for different
languages, four .gitignore patching bots, seven <!DOCTYPE inserting bots,
eight JS semicolon removers, nine JS semicolon inserters, twenty-four subtly
broken MySQL query sanitizers, and seventy-nine bots fighting over the
character encoding of the readme file.
~~~
viscanti
What about the well-intentioned but dubiously helpful PR from someone who just
doesn't know what they're doing? What if that were to catch on and you have
swarms of overlapping non-programmers submitting PRs?
These slippery slope arguments are a bit silly. If you're running an open-
source project, you can either accept PRs or not, and if you're accepting
them, you can review the code and approve it or not approve it. A PR from a
bot is the same as a PR from anyone else, it's either helpful or not helpful.
It's not currently a problem, and it's too early to speculate about worst-case
future scenarios.
~~~
mistercow
>What if that were to catch on and you have swarms of overlapping non-
programmers submitting PRs?
Humans can easily look at the existing pull requests and see if their work is
redundant. Bots can't. And as hackinthebochs said, human-submitted pull
requests involve effort which limits them.
It's not really a slippery slope argument. It's more an application of what we
can see having happened with bots in the past. Email spam for legitimate
offers is, after all, just about as annoying as email spam for scams.
~~~
thomaslangston
Why can't bots look at existing pull requests?
~~~
mistercow
They _can_ , but it's unrealistic to think that they will do so one percent as
intelligently as a human contributor.
------
atsaloli
I'd like to optimise my images. (The images on my website.) I looked at
<https://github.com/imageoptimiser> but didn't see which tool would do that,
or any way to contact the author. Is there an image optimisation tool in there
somewhere?
~~~
nwh
If you're on a Mac, ImageOptim is the perfect tool that combines a bunch of
open projects to crush down images. I use it daily, it's an incredible (free)
tool.
<http://imageoptim.com/>
If you're not on a Mac, the individual tools are still quite usable. Here's
some of them.
<http://advsys.net/ken/utils.htm> (pngOUT)
<http://optipng.sourceforge.net/>
<http://pmt.sourceforge.net/pngcrush/>
<https://github.com/kud/jpegrescan>
<http://freecode.com/projects/jpegoptim>
<http://www.lcdf.org/gifsicle/>
~~~
kawsper
Wouldn't that project also benefit from jpegtran?
~~~
nwh
ImageOptim includes it, I just couldn't remember the full name at the time.
------
lazyjones
I wouldn't mind bots that fix spelling mistakes in comments or even actual
bugs in code. But why not let github projects be configured to allow certain
kinds of bots?
~~~
jevinskie
Consider bots as "plugins" that you activate on a per-repo basis. I like this
idea!
~~~
masklinn
Isn't that exactly what Service Hooks or OAuth-authed systems provide?
~~~
uxp
I think that's what jevinskie was implying, as in this is a non issue since
service hooks are already established so there is no reason bots should be
allowed, they should plug into the correct API.
~~~
masklinn
> I think that's what jevinskie was implying
I'm not sure he'd have written that he "likes the idea" and would have failed
to mention Service Hooks if he did.
~~~
uxp
I read his comment as either sarcasm or passive aggressiveness.
"Wouldn't it be a great idea if there was a 'hook' mechanism you could opt
into that provides a way to add additional functionality to their site from
third parties?"
Or maybe not. I don't know, text doesn't convey emotion and body language.
------
malandrew
Right now they can be an annoyance, but this is something that could easily
become a great feature of github, the same way that @tweets and #hashtags
innovations came from the twitter community.
I would love for github to make bots something that you can subscribe to on a
"bot subscription page". I think they can be incredibly useful so long as they
aren't promiscuous, unwelcome and frequent enough to be seen as spam. You
should be able to handle these the same way you handle permissions for third-
party apps on Facebook or Twitter. The subscription page could also provide
bot ratings and suggest bots that are likely to be useful for your project.
This approach would also create a way where these apps could be useful for
private repos as well.
------
toobulkeh
Sounds like a debate between opt-in and opt-out. Why not both? Do an AB test
of a Bot vs. a Service. In some cases, opt-in is good (see: organ donors), in
other cases it's bad (see: Internet Explorer).
What if there was a community-vote that turned a bot and a particular version
of said bot from Opt-Out (app style) to Opt-In (bot style)?
I, for one, welcome our bot-coding overlords that clean up my code and
optimize it on each commit. Might save me a lot of time and a lot of power and
thought... if it's peer reviewed, like all open source software.
~~~
zalew
> opt-in is good (see: organ donors)
I prefer when people have to specifically say 'yes, I want my dead body to go
to waste instead of saving lives'.
~~~
tomjen3
Hey, when you put in price-controls don't complain about a lack of supply.
------
tocomment
I personally would use gists a lot more if they were indexed by google. As it
is I feel like I'm putting code down a black hole when I create a gist.
~~~
jQueryIsAwesome
Good idea; but maybe only the ones with a title and description; to index the
ones that have a clear purpose and not some random code without any idea how
to use it or what is for.
------
orangethirty
Question to the Github team:
Nuuton is currently crawling the web. The plans include crawling Github
(actually, Github has a specific and exclisive crawler built for it). Is that
permitted? If so, what are the rules? If not, to whom may I speak regarding
it? I know DuckDuckGo does it, but I don't know if they are crawlin gyour site
or just using what the Bing index currently has.
~~~
jgeralnik
Not connected to github, but look at <https://github.com/robots.txt>,
specifically the first 2 lines.
~~~
tomjen3
So yes, but only if you change your bot name.
------
lukeholder
I do think bots can be a great part of software development. I love the likes
of travisci and codeclimate integrating with GitHub - GitHub just need to
build a better app to deal with them. I assume private repos don't have bots
bothering them, but maybe they want to allow some? Checkboxes for types of bot
services you would like to allow per project?
~~~
technoweenie
We have GitHub Services: <https://github.com/github/github-services>. Anyone
can submit one. We'll probably accept it as long as the code is decent, is
tested and documented, and is for a stable service. If you're running some
custom build on a personal hosting account, use the web hooks. You can attach
web hooks or services to any of these events:
<http://developer.github.com/v3/activity/events/types/>
------
badgar
I've been annoyed by GitHub bots and enjoyed their contributions. IMO, GitHub
could/should have taken this opportunity to solve a problem and (once again!)
change how people code for the better through collaboration.
Perhaps now that they've taken money, they aren't as interested in tackling
new problems. Perhaps that's reasonable, since they'll need a lot of that
money to hire and keep operations folks who can keep the site up.
------
rsyncinside
I heard that Google is a "bot".
Do they say "No Thanks" to themselves?
Maybe the title should read: Google Says "No Thanks" to Other Bots
~~~
caf
The title has nothing to do with Google.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Netromancy - dnetesn
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/magazine/netromancy.html?ref=technology
======
toothbrush
“There isn’t a procedural way to live your life, and that might be inspiring
people to think mystically for guidance,”
Well, herp derp, then i guess i'll just have to go ahead and live my life
declaratively... This article actually gives me a sense of perverse optimism,
that perhaps i have a fighting chance in life if at least some of my potential
competition eschews logic :)
------
spacecowboy_lon
Exorcise hardware - shades of the Laundry files :-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why aren't there more rental apps for renting personal items? - fil_a_del_fee_a
Why aren't there more rental apps for renting personal items?<p>I have some DJ equipment sitting around that I would like to rent out to fellow DJ's. I did some googling, and only came up with peerrenters (which I cannot find the US App Store) and Zilok (which has no app, and is online only). Then I found frntal which seems promising. Then this article (with a clickbaity title), but has some good information on why renting personal items isn't a thing.<p>https://www.fastcompany.com/3050775/the-sharing-economy-is-dead-and-we-killed-it<p>Thoughts?
======
djinoz2
Sharing economy is usually supply side constrained. There needs to be enough
incentive for the "seller". If you are renting your mower for $20, the $
benefit is way lower than renting your house.
An acquaintance of mine setup
[http://www.rentoid.com/](http://www.rentoid.com/) a looong time ago and I
never asked but this is probably the reason.
What I saw was professional hire companies using the site as leadgen because
it was free advertising and they had lots of inventory. Makes sense right?
So the sharing economy had problems a long time before fastcompany shared its
wisdom ;)
~~~
fil_a_del_fee_a
That makes sense, thanks!
------
celticninja
It's hard for a renter to disappear with your house/apartment but easy to
never return your DJ gear.
~~~
fil_a_del_fee_a
Very True!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Educated Germans avoid social media - phreeza
http://www.dw.com/en/educated-germans-avoid-social-media/a-18875970
======
madez
As a german I can tell from experience that in Germany it is much more
accepted — and quite often even sympathized with — not to have a facebook
account than for example in Spain or Brazil. And it makes me proud, if I’m
allowed to add that.
~~~
BogusIKnow
As a German I don't use Facebook. Most of my friends also don't use Facebook.
For me it's just a waste of time and doesn't make sense.
~~~
theandrewbailey
I'm not German and I don't use Facebook either. For the last few years, I've
slowly noticed that people who use Facebook only do so because everybody else
does and loathe it somewhat, but can't bring themselves to pull the plug
because of network effects.
~~~
BogusIKnow
What I found interesting is the study that shows that Facebook depresses
people, because all their friends put up their best moments and photos and so
seem to have all wonderful lives.
------
orthoganol
The main reasons social media is used:
a) You have a career that requires some PR management
b) You're the type who gets pleasure in showing off (the best image of)
yourself to others
c) You are bored, and you get a small thrill from the attention
Are there any other reasons to be a regular, active participant on Twitter,
Instagram, or Facebook? I get 'just having one' as a sort of contact
directory, but beyond that...
Would an educated, independent thinker, someone who really tries to engage and
understand the world and has discovered interesting opportunities which they
pursue, really have any reason to spend significant time on social media?
~~~
Mandatum
Planning social engagements with friends. I can easily see who is going, let
organisers and everyone else know if they want to that I may not make it, as
well as see if there are other engagements that I've already agreed to go to.
I could do this with email and calendars, but I don't know 95% of my friend's
email addresses. We talk over SMS and Facebook Messenger. If I wanted to find
another one of my friend's I just search for their name, and if they have
privacy settings set to only allow friends of friends to search for me -
that's OK too!
I don't have to ask a friend for their email address, or their phone number
and then ask that person for their email address. I don't have to phone or SMS
people to see if they want to come, and I have an easy way to track it.
Sure, we all got along fine before social media. But Facebook has made
planning social events ridiculously easy.
I haven't posted on my wall since 2013 and none of my information like age,
email, phone number, etc is public. Sure Facebook has access to all sorts of
conversations I've had over the years, but so do my local ISP's and data
centres.
For anything that I'd truly like to keep private, I use PGP, OTR or chat in
person.
~~~
gcb0
the non naive way to look at this is that you and your friends gave up a
little freedom (using open, standard and interoperative ways to communicate)
for a little convenience (proprietary controlled communication medium)
~~~
rimantas
How do they give up that freedom? Did they sign some agreement with FB never
ever use any other forms of communication / events coordination? No, they did
not. Can we just cut this kind of crap? Facebook or any other social sites did
not take away any freedoms from anyone.
~~~
wolfgke
> Facebook or any other social sites did not take away any freedoms from
> anyone.
The freedom from data being stored about the respective persons?
------
waspleg
Maybe it's because a lot of Germans have already experienced a total
surveillance state and what that means for their freedom/well being when the
information is turned against them, or, at least, remember the stories from
their relatives who did.
~~~
kuschku
Btw, I’ll suggest the movie "Das Leben der Anderen".
Even today in German schools the GDR and the Nazi time are some of the most
important topics in history class, including us visiting the places, talking
to eye witnesses, etc.
That leaves quite an impression.
------
Bud
What the story ignores, but the data makes quite clear, is that Germany is
already an outlier here, regardless of the level of education. Probably
because income is less associated with educational level in a richer, more
functional society like Germany. Also notice from the data that the difference
between educated and less-educated folks is very slight, in terms of social
media engagement.
------
venning
This is only a measure of "social media popularity of national offices of
either head of state, head of government, or government as a whole" (with
respect to national education levels) according to the original report. [1]
The report also classifies the social media strategies of various OECD
countries, but does not list Germany's. [2, right side] Perhaps the
Chancellor's office has other priorities.
[1] [http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-
Management/oecd/governa...](http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-
Management/oecd/governance/government-at-a-
glance-2015_gov_glance-2015-en#page148)
[2] [http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-
Management/oecd/governa...](http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-
Management/oecd/governance/government-at-a-
glance-2015_gov_glance-2015-en#page149)
------
cup
Germany has a unique historical relationship towards domestic spying and
intrusion. I wonder if that influences Germans attitudes towards websites that
accrue personal data.
------
doener
Germany has - after Japan - the second oldest population on the planet. Maybe
this plays a role here, too as young people almost always use at least some
social media - regardless of their level of education.
------
thetrb
I find the whole premise of this article a bit weird. It starts with "Good
news". Why is it automatically good news that educated people use social media
less?
I'm a German living in the United States and find this part of German society
pretty annoying: Being super careful about anything that could potentially
encroach on your privacy (for example see the fate of Google Street View in
Germany).
~~~
2muchcoffeeman
Why is being careful about your privacy annoying?
~~~
singiht34-02
"(for example see the fate of Google Street View in Germany)"
and b/c you can't find everyone easily on facebook
~~~
2muchcoffeeman
I am not sure if that answers my question.
> _I 'm a German living in the United States and find this part of German
> society pretty annoying: Being super careful about anything that could
> potentially encroach on your privacy_
In the case of Google Maps, I understand that a non-functional application
might be annoying and at least Google makes some effort to blur data. But in
my reading of the original post, the poster is annoyed that the German
community at large has decided to exercise their rights to privacy.
~~~
thetrb
It just seems like a national pastime to post as little information about
yourself or anything you're associated with anywhere online at all. As an
expat that it makes it hard to stay in contact with many people.
It's everybody's right to do whatever they want with their personal
information, but in Germany it often gets to a point where you're being judged
if you yourself decide to post something on a social network site.
It also leads to all kind of weird regulations from the government (again, see
Street View as an example or the more recent EU-wide regulation of a minimum
age of 16 to open social network accounts).
------
a3n
I wonder if there are better and/or more alternatives to social media in
Germany than elsewhere. Maybe they're just too busy with other things, and
satisfied, to bother with social media.
------
zspitzer
Do comments on articles count as social media? The German newspaper sites
often have very active comment threads
------
gozur88
>Or is it historical? Have well-educated Germans better internalized the
lessons of German history under Nazi and communist rule?
I don't think there's any need to play amateur psychologist. From what I can
tell it's cultural from before the great "isms" of the 20th century. My
(German) relatives, who arrived in the US in the 1920s, were less likely to
share their business with non-family. That's how they were raised.
------
mschuster91
Many people I know moved their asses out of Facebook after Snowden. The NSA
did really help American companies /s
------
intopieces
Could educated Germans have read enough about the Stasi?
~~~
wolfgke
Or the Gestapo?
------
lucio
Maybe social media is seen as a waste of time? While you're reading facebook,
you're not producing anything.
~~~
treve
I think it's safe to say that it's not a matter of a recreational activity vs.
"producing something". I think it rather has to do with the fact that Germans
are very privacy conscious. Facebook (and other American application
providers) have a pretty bad rep.
~~~
kuschku
Indeed.
And, additionally, there are also those people who are still stuck on studiVZ.
------
asfandyaar
What about sites like reddit? I don't have any stats, but there seems to be a
good representation of Germans.
------
toehead2000
Scientific proof that the germans on twitter are retarded!
~~~
kuschku
Interesting idea.
Because Felix von Leitner (Fefe) has been arguing the same. Every time he
tries to discuss something, he gets long, carefully argued info via email, and
completely retarded insults via Twitter.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
FAA OKs first commercial drone flights over land - andrewmac
http://news.yahoo.com/faa-oks-commercial-drone-flights-over-land-125928627--finance.html
======
frisco
I hope that drones end up going through the same channels as traditional
aviation - you get a pilot certificate with a drone rating (Drone Quadengine
Land?). That would be very cool because it would get the drone operators in
the same system as everyone else, ensure they know the FARs and are
sufficiently skilled to be safe, and create a pathway that everyone could feel
good about being legitimate. Aviation is a really complex thing, and while I
wouldn't expect the complexity of a small drone license to be anywhere near
even a Recreational Pilot certificate, there's at least a weekend of stuff to
know here and it should result in a license.
The bar for CFIs would be different, too, and I imagine you'd end up seeing
tons of little Part 141-style drone schools pop up for $100 - $300 for a
Saturday or so. It would be like adding a motorcycle rating to a driver's
license. I don't think it would meaningfully hinder progress.
I feel like this is important even if they're exclusively limited to class G
airspace near the ground (and the reality is that in a lot of the congested
areas where drones are being flown, it isn't traditional class G airspace).
Add it onto the new light sport aircraft pathways and you make it easy for
people get into drones safely while also introducing them to the wider world
of aviation.
~~~
tlrobinson
I think there need to be different classes of drones. A kid who wants to film
his friends at a skate park with a 1 pound AR.Drone shouldn't have to get a
drone pilots license, while someone flying FPV 5 miles out probably should.
~~~
mbreese
Right now you don't need a license for a 1 pound quad-copter that is flown
within line of sight (for non-commercial uses).
The problem is that even for line-of-sight users, the FAA won't let you use
them for commercial purposes. So, your hypothetical kid would be okay filming
their friends, so long as they didn't make any money from it.
There are two issues with drones that the FAA needs to figure out: 1)
commercial use and 2) autonomous (out of sight) flight. The latter is much
trickier than the former. I'm all for autonomous drones having to get
certified (including FPV, since those would need some kind of fail-safe). But
even here, there might need to be a "hobbyist" class and a commercial class
with different requirements.
~~~
frisco
The reason the FAA is so nervous about commercial operations in general is
because in aviation there's nothing more dangerous than saying, "we'll be
there by 2:30." It's why the rules for Part 135 (charter) operators are much
stricter than for Part 91 (personal) operators, and go through the roof for
Part 121 (scheduled airline) operators. The commercial aspect adds a
potentially major consideration other than safety and so the FAA has a whole
separate way of thinking about it. The spirit of these concerns is probably as
true for drones as it is for manned aircraft, though the concrete
instantiations of it will obviously be different.
~~~
mbreese
You seem to be coming at this from a traditional aviation viewpoint (which is
valid). I'm coming at it from a modeling viewpoint. And I think that's where a
large part of the disconnect comes into play. From the traditional point of
view, you'd like to bring these drones into the normal aviation regulatory
framework. From the model point of view, large regulations are overkill and
are severely limiting the development of this industry.
I think that there are a couple of obvious rules that could be applied to
speed things along: 1) limit location and altitude of flying, 2) require
hands-on control (or take over), 3) require line of sight, 4) enforce some
reasonable weight restrictions (for cameras). If you could meet those four
things, then I don't see why you'd need to have a commercial restriction. You
might have other issues to deal with for insurance, but I don't see why the
FAA should care about commercial/non-commercial with such small craft.
Now, when you get into autonomous flight and real payloads, then that's a
whole other ballgame, where I think the FAA will have some real work to do. In
particular though, I'd hate to see them limit the hobbyist segment too much. I
think it would be a lot of fun to build a small, autonomous drone that could
fly using GPS waypoints with a camera. I just don't want to have to go through
2 years of certification to be able to fly it!
~~~
lsh123
You are missing important part: find a way to punish violators of these (and
other) rules. This is critical for safety.
~~~
toomuchtodo
Typically, if you violate FARs, you'll lose a huge pilot's license investment
(private, ifr, commercial can total in the tens of thousands of dollars).
It doesn't hurt to lose a $300-$1000 quadrotor pilot license.
~~~
lsh123
Correct. The question is - how to identify the drone pilot? With planes you
have N-number, transponders, FBOs, etc.
~~~
toomuchtodo
Require user registration by serial number on the drone possible? Or perhaps
require commercial drones use ADS-B?
~~~
LyndsySimon
Registering individual airframes doesn't make much sense - it's not unusual
for a single quadcopter to go through many design iterations over the course
of a few months.
It might start out as a 10" wide quadcopter, until the first major crash.
Instead of ordering a new arm, it can be reconfigured as a tricopter with the
addition of a servo. After a while, the tricopter might become a V-Tail if the
user likes the flight characteristics.
Then FPV kit might get added, or a GPS reciever. Now it's flying semi-
autonomously and the user wants better quality video, so it's transplanted
onto a 18" frame, fitted with a gimbal and nicer camera.
At what point does the multicopter need to change registration numbers?
A simple "You must have your name and contact info on it" rule would be more
than sufficient - and in fact is already the case for 90% of the aircraft out
there. I even have my contact info taped to the body of my little 4" Hubsan
quadcopter; I'll probably never need it, but why throw away expensive hardware
if you don't have to?
------
blottsie
This is a misleading headline. It approved BP to use a drone for pipeline
surveillance over land in Alaska—that's it. It's not a blanket approval for
all commercial uses.
------
stcredzero
Cargo drones have interesting implications. When the requirement of a human
pilot or crew/passengers of any kind at all disappears, the possible form
factors increase greatly. So, just a wild first-draft brainstorm here: How
about quadcopter drones that take off and rendezvous with an overhead
aircraft? Perhaps they deploy a drogue chute or streamer drogue in front of
the craft, which is equipped with something like the Fulton surface-to-air
recovery system:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_surface-to-
air_recovery_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_surface-to-
air_recovery_system)
(Similar devices have already been used to retrieve satellites that have
reentered the atmosphere.) Once the mother aircraft retrieves its assigned
drones, it stores them away, climbs to 50,000 feet, orients itself, then fires
rockets to put it on a suborbital trajectory. On such a trajectory, the mother
aircraft could reach any point on the globe in under 2 hours.
After the mother craft has reentered, it returns to a normal aircraft flight
regime, then releases the quadcopter drones to fly directly to their delivery
coordinates. Voila: same day point to point (city to city) small parcel
delivery anywhere in the world. (Perhaps even same morning or same afternoon.)
Obviously, there are a lot of potential problems. Lots more organizations
besides the FAA would have to get involved. The system described above doesn't
take into account international customs and the spread of invasive species.
There is the potential that people would try to use the system to deliver
bombs. Also, suborbital craft of such capabilities are basically ICBMs. Such
concerns would mean that the mother craft would have to land at an airport and
the cargo drones inspected before they are sent to their destinations. It
might be better to have the mother aircraft remove a cargo pack then drop the
drones, which would float away on the streamer drogue, re-furl the drogue and
resume powered flight back to base. This would save the weight of the drone
for the suborbital flight. Then customs could proceed at the destination
country mostly as usual, then the small parcels could be re-dispatched on a
different set of drones, or proceed by conventional delivery. (Which, by then,
could be a self driving vehicle.)
------
coin
First, -1 to Yahoo for disabling zoom on mobile devices.
On drones - I have yet to see the FAA (or anyone else) address separation
between manned VFR traffic and drones. VFR traffic maintains separation by
"see and be seen". In other words, you look out the window for nearby traffic.
Will drones have image recognition to detect nearby traffic?, I highly doubt
it. Another way of separation is using the aircraft's transponder. But this
won't necessarily work as not all aircraft have transponders. Many older GA
aircraft do not even have an electrical system (other than the magneto spark
plug system). A transponder is not required in class D, E, G airspace below
10,000 feet and 30 NM from a primary class B airport. The majority of the US
is class E airspace. I'm also curious if all these drones will have a
transponder (heavy given the battery usage).
The other way around is for the manned aircraft visually see a drone. Given
the size of the drones, it will be very hard. Also, will drones have anti-
collision lights?
Just like any new industry, safety regulations are enacted in response to
incidents. I predict we'll have a few mid-air drone to airplane collisions in
the 10-15 years. Once that happens we'll see better regulation.
~~~
LyndsySimon
> I predict we'll have a few mid-air drone to airplane collisions in the 10-15
> years. Once that happens we'll see better regulation.
I think it depends on the drones.
Consider that the DJI Phantom 2 Vision weighs 1.2kg, and an adult male
Canadian Goose weight up to 6.5kg. Barring the exception case of getting
ingested into a jet engine, bird strikes don't seem to be a huge problem.
Of course, geese don't have sense enough to stay the hell away from airports -
presumably, _most_ drone operators do. Even if we assume that all drone
operators will operate their drones wherever they'd like, whenever they'd like
- will there likely be more drones in the air than Canada Geese?
I really think the threat to manned aircraft (while real) is extremely
overstated.
------
mmaunder
I fully support drones, but this definitely is going to make life interesting
for light aircraft pilots flying around already busy airspace like SoCal at
relatively low altitude. Hit a 55 pound drone and you'll feel it.
~~~
mbreese
This is far more restricted than that. They approved the use of drones by BP
to survey their operations / pipelines in Alaska.
I think the restrictions in SoCal will be much more stringent.
------
rasz_pl
Last time I checked Court said to FAA they have zero jurisdiction over drones,
so they cant approve dick.
------
hitchhiker999
If you guys had any other type of government I'd be so excited for you right
now. I'm obsessed with RC stuff, this tech is just amazing!
However, seriously now - guys, come on... It's not going to end well for you.
You must know that. I dont _think_ I'm being what you call a 'tin-foil-hat
guy'.
It's a fair assumption that massive-scale general abuse will overshadow the
wonder of this technological achievement. Or maybe this has to be the straw
that breaks the camel's back?
~~~
anigbrowl
I'm guessing that if they had _dis_ approved it you'd have written another
message about excess government control designed to curtail natural freedoms.
~~~
hitchhiker999
No - I would not have posted that - you can go through my history if you like
to get an idea of who I am. If they had disapproved it I would have 'mildly'
curious as to why.
That's an 'Ad hominem' argument, you're making assumptions about who I am and
then attacking my personality.
Anyway, good luck to you all. I hope I'm wrong about this, probably am.
~~~
personlurking
Give it time, 'you all' will include yourself, and me and everyone. It's hard
to understand how someone might say your prediction isn't possible or likely.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Our Professional Elites Are Hired - tortilla
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/08/how-our-professional-elites-are-hired.html
======
grellas
The Big Law model (in which I worked for four years some time back and with
which I have dealt repeatedly over the years from one angle or another)
depends heavily on highly leveraged relationships within the firm, typically
with something like a 1 to 3 ratio between the equity partners and the young
associates who do the bulk of the actual hourly billing.
It also depends on the firm's having the capacity to do highly sophisticated
legal work while consistently adhering to standards of excellence.
Finally, it depends upon the firm's ability to induce the associates to adhere
to wildly oppressive work hours as part of their normal schedule, such that,
for example, when FB broadened its disclosure of user information there came
popping out a whole series of attorneys who had (in the former cover of
darkness) described themselves as "Slaves of xxx," or some variation thereof
(which FB automatically designated as company names).
These firms will pay the associates anywhere from $165K/yr to start up to the
high $200s, often with large bonuses tacked on to the base salary.
Why? Because it is basically a vast money-making machine for the partners who
lead and manage those firms and who pull in multi-million dollar annual
incomes. And the key to it is to have lots of talented bodies consistently
pulling all-nighters on major pieces of litigation and major deals that such
firms handle. Thus, whenever you read about a headline deal ("Skype to offer
shares in IPO at $1B valuation"), you can assume that there is a small legal
army at work in the background doing an orgy of billing.
For their part, the associates toil and slave in such systems for as much as 8
to 10 years in hopes of making partner so that they can one day be on the
receiving end of this money-making machine.
This system works well only if highly talented young attorneys can
consistently be recruited to handle the vast bulk of the billable hours
involved in such work. Thus, the most precious asset belonging to such firms
is precisely this pool of young talent, and they will pay dearly to get it.
What is more, such associates are paid in lockstep, meaning that if one of
these large firms "adjusts," the others will be quick to follow. For a nearly
unbroken period over the past 25 years, those adjustments have consistently
been upward. The craziness peaked in the bubble years of the late 1990s,
during which the associates themselves set up "greedy associates" websites and
compared notes on every dollar paid and every perk provided by their
respective firms. Of course, if any firm began to be seen as out of step with
what these young lawyers came to see as their entirely legitimate demands,
this would be suicide for the firm involved because the top talent would no
longer go there. Thus, one saw the spectacle of the most elite law partners in
the nation cravenly bowing and scraping to green new grads, all for the
purpose of continuing to curry favor with them for recruiting purposes.
It goes without saying, then, that the firms would easily shell out for the
sorts of things described in this piece - for expensive and luxurious flights,
hotel stays, cab fares, dinners out, etc. It was all part of the game, and not
a particularly costly part given what the firms would ultimately derive from
this labor-pool asset within their business models. During their summer
internships, they would be wined and dined as law students and would be
repeatedly told what a great place to work the firm was. Once recruited as
associates after graduation, they were introduced to the "slave system" in
spades, and the naive perceptions they had as students would often be deflated
in light of a sometimes harsh reality of endless, long hours and of often
harsh taskmasters who drove them with an unkind hand.
A significant part of this has to do with grabbing the students from the elite
schools but the real goal was to grab the talented attorneys from each
graduating class (this meant those from top schools and those from the top 10%
or so of second-tier schools). The practice of law in such environments is
truly demanding, and the goal was to find attorneys who worked hard, who knew
how to think, and who comported themselves with the highest standards of
discipline and excellence. Very few young attorneys can do all this
consistently, and they are in great demand.
In one sense, however, this piece reads like it must have been written a
couple of years ago. In reality, Big Law is still reeling from the latest
economic collapse and the latest crop of 3Ls is still largely unemployed, with
no serious prospects for improvement in sight for this particular labor
market. Even the Harvard 3Ls have largely had to settle for the types of
positions that, until recently, they would not even have begun to consider.
This truly is an artificial world and there is some doubt today whether it can
continue to operate in its accustomed manner. Time will tell on this. I
personally doubt it.
~~~
sbaqai
grellas, insightful post as always. Do you mind elaborating further on your
last sentence/point?
There was an article earlier on HN about the growth of legal outsourcing in
places like India, as well as the prevalence of four tiers of law schools
overcrowding the marketplace. In your opinion, is the current state of the law
labor market a reflection of recent economic shock, or do you think there is a
paradigm shift occurring to some degree?
~~~
grellas
The recent economic collapse has caused a general revulsion against the
billable fee structure that has been routinely used in large firms.
At their peak in 2008 before the collapse, fee structures had gotten to the
point where first year associates were being billed at about $500 per hour,
with senior associate rates reaching into $600/hr plus and partners ranging
anywhere from $700 to $1,000/hr (even paralegals would be billed at as much as
$350/hr plus, not to mention the summer clerks, who also would be billed at
such rates).
Even more, the standard practice in such firms is to travel in packs. Several
lawyers and a team of paralegals would be assigned to a typical project that
comes to the firm and every one of them bills time on the matter whenever they
talk to each other about it. Thus, a "team meeting" may wind up costing the
client thousands of dollars per hour, as the lawyers and paralegals ruminate
over the strategy of a case or the details of a discovery strategy, etc. Now
it is not the norm to have everyone globally assembled even for a large
matter, but even the routine, day-to-day handling of a matter winds up being
double- or even triple-billed, e.g., a court hearing at which a partner shows
up to do the argument with two associates in tow carrying the bags.
All in all, not a very efficient system. But, as noted in the article, there
is an incestuous network in place between the big firms and the general
counsel and other senior in-house counsel who effectively determine to which
outside law firms they will farm out the company's most complex matters. Not
only do the lawyers on the client have relationships with the big-firm lawyers
but they also operate under the "I can't be fired for using IBM" principle -
and this has led over the years to strong ties within this network that have
assured a steady and growing stream of work for the big firms from the most
prominent companies with the most complex legal needs, all in spite of any
inefficiency in billing or even overt billing abuses.
For a while, when all was still well, these same in-house counsel, under
pressure from management, began to assert themselves by questioning the
overbillings, etc. and this led to a pattern by which initial billings in a
matter became, in effect, akin to opening offers. Such billings would be
scrutinized and returned with complaints about this or that, would be cut
back, and would then be paid in what was generally regarded as still-inflated
form.
The downturn did change all this, with companies having had enough of this
billing model. In today's environment, the large firms have had to adapt and
have been forced to temper the old abuses with reduced hourly rates, fixed-fee
arrangement, caps, etc. It is still the same old machine but much humbled when
it comes to routine billing matters involving the in-house network. Very large
and very complex matters still command the old rates and the old multiple-
billing mechanisms, and that is why large firms salivate over the prospect,
e.g., of getting a prominent role in the Lehman bankruptcy or in defending a
prominent class action, etc. The problem is that there are only so many
matters of this type, and certainly not enough to support the range of large
firms in the manner to which they had historically been accustomed.
Thus, today, the field is much more varied even for the larger legal matters
that have traditionally gone to large firms. For discrete issues, such as
complex discovery, much of the work is being outsourced, e.g., to the Indian
companies you mention. Instead of having a team of U.S. lawyers and paralegals
poring over millions of documents at rates of $500 and up, you have a much
less expensive labor pool overseas doing this sort of mind-numbing work. You
also have a proliferation of smaller, boutique firms throughout the country
doing the same work as the larger firms generally do, by comparably qualified
lawyers, at half the billing rates. Some are set up "virtually" to enable
themselves to compete on price even more effectively. And, in response, as
noted above, the big firms themselves are adapting and discounting rates, etc.
All this represents a major change from historical patterns. I would go so far
as to say that it has left the large firms "reeling," if that term is not too
strong.
Will it result in a paradigm shift? In some ways, no. The network upon which
the large firms feed is firmly intact and it does not appear that anything
will change the basic ways in which the work is generated for such firms,
i.e., they will continue to get the prestige big-company work and this will
continue to support the existing structures. To that extent, the downturn has
basically caused a short-term shift in the relative bargaining power between
the company clients and the large firms. I expect this will shift back over
time because law more and more affects large companies, with ever-expanding
government regulatory frameworks, etc. in place, not to mention ever-expanding
theories of legal liability. In this sense, Big Law will continue to be a
"growth" business, albeit one that is temporarily in a slump.
In other ways, yes, however. Modern technology has indeed transformed the way
law works and it is far easier today for clients to find good law firms of
varying types to compete for their projects. Thus, at this level (which
certainly includes the bulk of the startup world), clients have a far broader
range of choices and this means more competition among the lawyers and better
billing arrangements for the clients. Clients in such cases do not need to put
up with things such a double-billing, or paying extensively for the learning
time of all those young attorneys who are part of the 3-to-1 ratio on which
the Big Law model depends. In these respects, I think the change is permanent.
Clients are more knowledgeable and the information is now out there to give
them good choices. This will not change going forward and is a good thing from
the client side.
The ultimate institutional constraint, though, that will continue to support
the current system is the guild system under which lawyers operate. Owing to
the force of the law regulating the field, one can only practice law in a
jurisdiction in which one is licensed and one who is not licensed can't offer
any form of legal services to the public. This system, though intended to be
protective of clients, acts much as the old guilds of the middle ages did in
making sure that only the licensed artisans get the work. This in turn creates
artificial scarcity, leaves it impossible for enterprising people to solve
legal problems through creative means, and generally leaves the client with
fewer choices and little ability to bargain over price. As long as this system
generally prevails, there will be no fundamental changes in the field.
Sorry to go on and on, but I do hope this helps give you an insight into the
broader patterns in the field.
~~~
abalashov
Very informative and interesting comment - thank you for "go[ing] on and on!"
It seems to me that the pattern you are describing also applies to Big 4
professional services firms like PriceWaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, etc, in areas
anchored around accounting and auditing but characterised by an ever-expanding
array of allied services. Would you care to comment on any nuances or
differences particular to them as opposed to Big Law?
~~~
grellas
Both are attempting to take what were traditionally fairly sleepy service
professions (this would be 50+ years ago) and transform them into worldwide
mega-businesses for their respective niches. This means that the old
partnership model has effectively died in both professions. Partners tend not
to sign on for life with such a firm any longer but rather tend to align
themselves more opportunistically with any given firm, ready to jump to
another as opportunity and the dollars warrant. For this reason, too, the
firms tend not to support partners over the long term and the loyalty factor
is much diminished from what it used to be. In short, both are now major
businesses, with all the upside and downside that comes with taking the risks
of major entrepreneurial ventures.
Thus, as firms trying to expand aggressively into new fields, with worldwide
operations, such firms are now subject to all the vagaries of major
businesses. In the past, a major law firm or a major accounting firm would not
have wild fluctuations in its firm operations - ups and downs, yes, but not
wild swings that could threaten its survival. Today, both large law firms and
major accounting firms have done the unthinkable: (1) systematically purging
their partner ranks to weed out less productive partners, (2) mass layoffs of
younger professionals to survive severe downturns, (3) firm explosions that
have caused some of the premier firms to go out of business altogether (in
accounting, Arthur Andersen, of course; in law, firms such as Heller Ehrman
(which was a 150-year-old firm, Brobeck, etc.). These are all symptoms of the
shift from staid profession to major business venture. Of course, the rewards
of successful expansion have far exceeded the risks over the years, and have
enabled such professionals to make returns on average per partner that easily
dwarf what such partners used to make under the old ways and hence they have
made this shift.
I don't think I am competent to comment on refined nuances between the large
firms within the accounting profession versus the legal and so will leave that
to others.
------
tomsaffell
I worked at one such firm for five years, and did a lot of recruiting of
undergraduates in that time. This is a mostly fair summary, but I take
exception to the following:
_Even getting an interview often requires attending an Ivy League
professional school or a very few top tier equivalents_
Anyone _could_ apply. All applications were taken seriously, and I worked with
several excellent people from non-Ivy-League schools. It would be much more
accurate to say:
_Even _knowing_ about such business consulting firms often requires attending
an Ivy League professional school or a very few top tier equivalents_
I always found this regrettable. It boils down to the fact that most
undergraduates have never heard of most business consulting firms (or the
industry at all), so a lot of work (consultants' time) and money go in to on-
campus awareness marketing. That doesn't scale well at all. So we ended up
doing it where we had the biggest bang for the buck (in the UK, this was just
Cambridge and Hull... err, I mean Oxford). We would sometimes send one new
hire to the careers fair at a few other universities.
Bottom line: anyone could apply; every application was taken seriously; 99% of
students outside Oxbridge had never heard of us, and that was too expensive
for us to fix.
~~~
silverlake
This is true. I went to a state school and had never heard of management
consulting until everyone I met from MIT went into it. I remember a dinner in
Boston where I kept asking them, why would a company pay a 24 yr old with no
experience for advice on anything? I still haven't heard a good explanation.
~~~
astrofinch
[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/04/consulting-isnt-
about-...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/04/consulting-isnt-about-
advice.html)
How about having someone to blame?
~~~
_delirium
It might be one of those apocryphal engineering war stories, but one I've
heard a few times: a consulting company is brought in by management with a
pretty obvious goal of ratifying something management already wanted to do.
The in-house engineers know what's going on, and what management wants
ratified, but they're supposed to work with this consulting firm. The
engineers at the consulting firm know that they're probably being asked to
ratify some already-made decision, and their job is basically to find out what
it is and recommend that. Early on, the in-house engineers just spill to the
beans to the consulting firm's engineers, and both groups more or less take it
easy for three months, short-circuiting the usual charade while management on
both sides thinks that some sort of consulting dance is going on.
------
ctkrohn
I've been on the other side of this as a Wall Street trading intern. As a
college senior in 2007, my future employer hosted a party in NYC for all those
who had accepted their job offers. Keep in mind, this is for people who had
already agreed to take the job -- not for potential candidates. Still, they
flew us to NYC from our respective colleges, put us up in a really nice
boutique hotel, reserved a very nice restaurant for the night, paid for our
drinks, drove us around in limos, served us brunch, and flew us back to NYC
the next day. It was totally outlandish.
Potential employers wine and dine their candidates because, well, that's how
THEY would want to be treated if they were applying. Wall Streeters are quite
status conscious, so of course they'll try to appeal to candidates'
materialism and sense of status. Law firms are no different, though they're
probably a bit more modest than your average investment bank.
It's the same thing as Google bragging about their massages and catered sushi.
Google is just showing that they have what their candidates care about. Your
average tech employee probably wouldn't care, and would maybe even be a little
put off if their employer took them to an exclusive club. Wall Street banks
are big on expensive dinners and bottle service, but many of them don't even
have gyms or subsidized cafeterias, much less free food. My firm didn't even
have napkins in the pantry!
~~~
enjo
I published a technical book at the age of 21. While I didn't make much money,
the publisher (who has since been bought and sold 3 times I think) certainly
wined and dined me at every conference and event that I went to. Great meals
and all the free booze I could drink. Not to mention the chance to flirt with
the always really attractive editors they sent out to work these things.
It sure made an impression on 21 year old me. There didn't seem to be a lot in
it for the publisher (other than keeping their writers happy I suppose). It
wasn't like my book was very successful. Hell it wasn't very good at all. At
21 I had the knowledge, but lacked the work-ethic to really put the time into
it.
I always wonder if that's all this really is. Folks who have the money looking
for an excuse to spend it (and make some kids year). I'm not sure it's a big
plot to make them dependent on the job. I really think that people, generally,
like to throw money around.
------
learningtobuild
A few random thoughts from long time lurker, first time commenter (I finally
have some value / expertise to add): The biggest thing that these interviews
are testing is structured assimilation. Banks look for someone who can
convincingly discuss their unremitting passion to enter finance as a lifelong
career without seeming either passionate or betraying an interest in the
money. Consulting firms structure 'case interviews' designed to test 'problem
solving' when they are really laying out a regimented structure which can be
most easily mastered through having a successful network of already-hired
junior consultants. Again, it's not that there isn't a desire to hire
creative, talented people, but the profile has to fit along certain metrics.
~~~
gruseom
What experiences led you to this assessment?
------
rdtsc
I think it basically comes down to a status signaling mechanism. They are
selling a dream to these candidates, so later they can sell these candidates
to their clients. And selling is just that -- appearances. I doubt other
schools don't have the candidates with the appropriate knowledge. However, I
am sure, they do not have candidates that are in $200K+ student dept, and who
expect to drive a Porsche bought with the signing bonus from their first job
after college, who know the tastes of various types of caviar, and spend their
vacations on private islands. One needs exactly these kind of people for your
customers to interact with. They exude class, luxury, superiority, and
confidence.
So it is about signaling a certain status position and it is about giving your
client the best ass cover they can imagine. Anyone hiring these consultants
can always point to them and say "Look, we had all the best people. If they
can't solve the problem, nobody can". These firms tap into that market -- the
market for golden scapegoats.
And the funny thing is, if the golden scapegoats fuck up, it is not a problem
-- on the contrary, bonuses still roll in. The firm doesn't lose reputation.
Because, after all, if these guys and gals can't do it, nobody can. The fuck-
up is just a demonstration of impossibility of solving the particular problem.
------
known
Management strategy while hiring a Consultant is _Heads I Win. Tails You Lose_
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Anyone looking for an intern?? - kiel
I'm a senior in computer science at Oregon State University. I'm looking for a internship to improve my skills and also bring my creative, outside the box thinking to a fast growing company. I enjoy linux development and probably know more languages then C3PO. I'm a hard worker and im looking for the opportunity to prove myself to the software world.<p>Thank you,
Kiel
======
mattwessels
StartupFriends.com is.. email [email protected] for details if
interested.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Efficient Graph Algorithms in Neo4j - gregorymichael
https://neo4j.com/blog/efficient-graph-algorithms-neo4j/
======
m0th87
Coincidentally, I just tried this out earlier today. `pageRank` yielded a
stack overflow, and `pageRank.stream` yielded an OOM error. The graph it was
run on was large, but not unreasonably so. Haven't dug into the cause of the
errors yet.
~~~
raccer
This is likely a query issue; I've had many queries go wild & OOM, once fixed
they work as you'd expect. There's also a config setting you can use to limit
in seconds the amount of time a query can run before it's killed, very useful
if you plan on running hand built queries on anything production (which you
shouldn't be anyways ;-))
~~~
jexp
Can you share more info about the queries that "went wild" on GitHub, so that
we can reproduce? Thx
------
raccer
Neo4j is awesome, after using at my last startup I'm super meh on table based
schemas.
------
Macuyiko
Does the pagerank algorithm include the personalized variant? The docs don't
seem to indicate that this is the case (i.e. no way to specify an alpha
vector).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask HN: Do you patent your software projects? - kgermino
In class today my teacher mentioned that most small coders don't bother filing patents for their programs because it's too expensive to be worth it. Is this true in the "real world"?
======
georgecmu
What class, what school, which country?
Generally, it's very rare for a 'program' to be patented. What usually gets
patented is algorithms and frameworks.
~~~
kgermino
It's an Electrical Engineering class at Marquette in Milwaukee WI USA. But it
was more an offhand comment by the teacher than a part of the lesson.
~~~
georgecmu
As another offhand comment, a lot of people believe that algorithms are not
patentable.
From
[http://www.lawtechjournal.com/notes/2003/10_030727_fagerland...](http://www.lawtechjournal.com/notes/2003/10_030727_fagerland.php)
/* "You can't patent an 'algorithm'" */
Not true. An algorithm, even a mathematical algorithm, is patentable unless
(1) it is not sufficiently disclosed to overcome the "abstract idea"
exception, or (2) it is executed with no useful application in mind.26 This
description of just what an "algorithm" is may be helpful: "Although one may
devise a computer algorithm for the Pythagorean theorem, it is the step-by-
step process which instructs the computer to solve the theorem which is the
algorithm, rather than the theorem itself."27 Under Alappat, the algorithm
might be patentable. The theorem itself, being an abstract idea, certainly
would not.
------
ilkhd2
And many, many coders are so averse to this idea, so they do not do this
obnoxious stuff.
| {
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Health Care Site Rushing to Make Fixes by Sunday - danso
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/30/us/politics/health-care-site-rushing-to-make-fixes-by-sunday.html?hp&_r=0&pagewanted=all
======
davesque
Pretty classic software drama.
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"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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PicoLisp: A Radical Approach to Application Development - prakash
http://www.picolisp.org/radical
======
kbob
The text on this page is garbled. Here's an ungarbled copy (PDF).
<http://software-lab.de/radical.pdf>
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"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Digg overtakes Facebook; Both cross 20 million U.S. Unique Visitors - zx76
http://blog.compete.com/2007/06/20/digg-overtakes-facebook-cross-20-million-visitors/
======
adamdoupe
Congrats to both sites, although I rarely visit Digg anymore and am addicted
to Facebook. Honestly, I'd rather have the market that Facebook has, rather
than the Digg market. I believe because of it's start, Facebook has a solid
hold on the college age market, while digg has a nice footing in the geek
area.
------
zx76
Thought this was quite interesting: "Average stay on MySpace is 2x more time
than on Facebook." What you think? Comment 4 was also quite interesting!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Hong Kong budget to hit record deficit of HK$139b with HK$10k relief - spyckie2
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3052405/hong-kong-budget-hk120-billion-relief-package-includes
======
spyckie2
Some personal context (and why I share this):
I moved from the US to Hong Kong 3 years ago and immediately noticed the
'vibe' of the city was not positive. In seeking to understand why, I dug in
and realized that practically everything valuable to a country - economic
foundation, control over destiny, identity, future opportunities, and standard
of living - was in a poor condition, and getting worse over time.
A year ago, the Hong Kong protests broke out. What people saw was the yelling
and shouting, the police brutality, the pleas for help. But what you didn't
see was the economic impact. Airlines, hotels, and restaurants were hit the
hardest. In my neighborhood in Sheung Wan, I've seen at least a dozen
restaurants come and go within the past year.
It was not a good year to be a small business owner or in the wholesale,
retail, catering, and hotels industry, and that's a good 30% (1m people) in
Hong Kong.
The economic impact hits normal people the hardest (as it always does). The HK
gov't will suffer, but it has a $HKD1.1T reserve, and is expected to eat into
in the next two years to weather the storm. However, those who will be most
affected by economic troubles will be the people of hong kong - the same
people who went out to the streets by the millions.
Those who were hopeful for economic recovery were waiting for the new year in
2020, and a political win lifted Hong Kong's spirit of recovery for just about
2 weeks before covid arrived.
The reaction to covid after Chinese new year was beyond imagination. The
attitude of the protestors were angry and desperate but lacked a true primal
instincts for survival. However, the threat of an epidemic (sars 2) brought
out primal fears as the entire population lined up outside dispensaries to buy
masks and toilet paper, clean out supermarkets, and quarantine themselves in
their small 400 sqft apartments for weeks.
HK went on lock down for 2 weeks to prevent the outbreak. It was the right
move, as other countries that lacked the same vigilance are experiencing worse
outcomes. But even with measures and the mitigated loss of health and life,
the damage is still felt, only on a deeper psychological plane. The economic
damage, as forecasted by many, is going to be much larger than we expect.
Covid kills not by overwhelming the entire body, but by shutting down major
organs, such as the lungs. The body reacts allergically by swelling in the
lungs, and because of the swelling, the lungs fill with fluid and become
unable to absorb oxygen, which kills the patient. However, if you keep the
patient alive by artificially supplying them with oxygen, the lungs will
eventually start working again and the body will fight covid off and recover.
Hong Kong is going through something similar. The fundamental problems that
plague it won't kill the city outright - but the symptoms might. Economic
recession may cascade into something much worse than 1 million protestors
yelling at the police.
There's an optimism, the same one that propels markets forward, that HK will
survive and recover. And I share that optimism, along with an unspoken dread
that it might not.
Some quotes from the article:
> “We can foresee the unemployment rate will rise further,” lawmaker Alice Mak
> Mei-kuen says, reiterating calls for an unemployment fund and opening up new
> jobs.
> Mak hopes the pan-democrats will not filibuster, and that the budget passes
> by the end of April.
> Hong Kong’s fiscal reserves are expected to drop to HK$908.5 billion in
> 2019-2020, Chan says, from HK$1.1 trillion.
> It comes from a 15 per cent jump in the government’s operating expenses to
> HK$611.4 billion and is equivalent to 22 months of public expenditure.
> In 2019-2020, the budget deficit is estimated to be HK$37.8 billion, the
> worst in 15 years, and accounting for 1.3 per cent of the estimated GDP.
> But in the coming financial year of 2020-2021, it will further snowball to
> an unprecedented level of HK$139 billion. The record deficit will account
> for 4.8 per cent of the estimated GDP and go well beyond the government’s
> fiscal principle of keeping it below 3 per cent of the GDP.
> For 2020-2021, total government revenue is estimated to be at HK$572.5
> billion.
> Chan forecasts a budget deficit every year from 2019-20 until 2024-25.
> The government's growth estimate takes into account the coronavirus
> epidemic, coming after a contraction of 1.2 per cent in 2019.
> If the city's economy contracts this year, it would mean gross domestic
> product has shrunk two years in a row, something which has not happened
> since Hong Kong's return to Chinese rule in 1997.
> “It is hard to be optimistic on this year,” Chan says.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Box.com becomes HIPAA compliant and partners with healthcare startups - Skeletor
http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/25/with-hipaa-compliance-cloud-storage-platform-box-makes-a-big-push-into-healthcare-invests-in-drchrono/
======
drcgirlie
This is really cool! Go drchrono!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why are pianos traditionally tuned “out of tune” at the extremes? - amelius
https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/14244/why-are-pianos-traditionally-tuned-out-of-tune-at-the-extremes
======
vnorilo
Related: in a grand piano, the hammers strike the string at a node of the 5th
harmonic (thus avoiding excitation), which reduces the beating from thirds
that do not match the harmonic series (due to equal temperament)
------
bloak
It seems that no one objected to the (slightly off-topic) claim that "the vast
majority of western music uses equal temperament". As I understand it, equal
temperament is just a way of tuning keyboard instruments so that they sound
the same in every key; a string quartet or a choir doesn't use equal
temperament. (And some people claim that J. S. Bach, who insisted on tuning
his own keyboards, didn't use equal temperament, either.)
~~~
systoll
It's a way of tuning so that all semitone intervals are an equal [2^(1/12)]
frequency ratio. The vast majority of western music, _today_ , uses equal
temperament. This includes most recorded performances of JS Bach's pieces.
It wasn't particularly common in Bach's time, though, and the math to do it
'properly' wasn't even known outside of China.
Today, though, it's everywhere. Modern Woodwinds are equal temperament due to
the placement of the holes. To match that, the entire orchestra is in equal
temperament, regardless of the requirements of the instrument.
Guitars are in equal temperament due to the placement of their frets -- to do
otherwise would require frets that bend between strings.
In isolation, people will [attempt to] sing in equal temperament, because
that's what 'all' accompaniment is like.
Barbershop quartets, acapella groups, and to some extent string quartets have
a tendency to shift _harmony notes_ toward simple fractions of the root note
of the chord, on the fly, even as the overall melody runs in equal
temperament. This isn't a different 'tuning', per se, but it is a thing.
~~~
mrob
Barbershop is notable for using the harmonic seventh, which doesn't exist in
the standard 12 note scale. Its frequency is 7/4 times the frequency of the
root, so a harmonic 7th above C is somewhere between A and B-flat.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_seventh_chord](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_seventh_chord)
~~~
yesenadam
From that page: the harmonic seventh is '"sweeter in quality" than an
"ordinary" minor seventh'. Well, as an ex- trumpet and trombone player,[0]
what it sounds is out-of tune, and is generally avoided, although the out-of-
tuneness can be compensated for by adjusting the trombone slide. It doesn't
sound particularly bluesy to my ear. Sure, sliding around the flat 7 and flat
5 areas sound bluesy, but just that note as a melody note sounds very flat.
[0] Playing brass instruments is a matter of using your lip to find the
various harmonics, and using the valves to flatten them by various amounts.
~~~
mrob
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with natural harmonics in a
melody. The opening and ending of Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and
Strings, Op. 31 uses them, and it sound good to me. Because it's notated as
equal temperament, the score is ambiguous, and there are two ways of playing
it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxVnSkX4Fco](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxVnSkX4Fco)
(13th harmonic high note version)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkLyK-
oSQ7A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkLyK-oSQ7A) (14th harmonic high note
version)
I suspect that brass players are unusually sensitive to deviations from equal
temperament because they have to work so hard to overcome them if they want to
play with other instruments (including other brass instruments of different
sizes).
~~~
yesenadam
>I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with natural harmonics in a
melody.
Not sure what you mean by 'natural harmonics', i.e. which ones you mean. I was
just talking about how the Ab harmonic (on trombone/trumpet) sounds very flat.
It's avoided because it sounds out of tune. I'm not sure what something being
'inherently wrong' would even mean. In music, if it sounds good, it is good.
>I suspect that brass players are unusually sensitive to deviations from equal
temperament because they have to work so hard to overcome them if they want to
play with other instruments
I don't know what you're referring to there - I've never had or even heard of
that problem. And I hadn't noticed or heard, and don't believe, that 'brass
players are unusually sensitive to deviations from equal temperament'.
~~~
mrob
By "natural harmonics" I mean notes at the resonant frequencies of the
instrument. Several of them are obviously different from equal temperament,
which means they will sound bad when played with other instruments. When brass
players talk about "good intonation", they often mean adjusting these notes
into equal temperament with valves/slides/embouchure/hand stopping. Because
brass players actually have to pay attention to the tuning, I wouldn't be
surprised if they were more sensitive to it than people who played fixed pitch
instruments like piano. The Britten piece is notable for the parts where the
horn player is instructed not to adjust the pitches to equal temperament, and
because it's a solo it still sounds good.
------
xchip
Related: If you have a piano you can check that by using my online tuner that
shows you the power of all the 88 notes a piano has. This means you can look
at the fundamental frequency and its harmonics too.
[https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/aguaviva/G...](https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/aguaviva/GuitarTuner/blob/master/GuitarTuner.html)
------
gtrubetskoy
The piano keyboard (usually) has 7 octaves. Frequency doubles every octave,
therefore if the lowest key is C, then the highest C all the way on the right
is
C*2^7
You can also follow fifths and arrive at the same note after 12 fifths. A
fifth of a note is 3/2 of its frequency. Thus, starting from the same C, you
arrive at
C*(3/2)^12
But...
(3/2)^12 = 129.7, while 2^7 = 128.
And that's (roughly) the problem that Bach's temperament addresses by ever so
slightly adjusting the frequency so that in any key it sounds "right".
~~~
dontreact
I don't follow this. The answer contained in the link seems more relevant as
it has to do with the fact that the harmonics of real metal strings are not
ideal and so the detuning at both ends compensates for this.
It seems like you are talking about what would happen if you tuned a piano
using something other than equal temperament. Why is the iterated fifths
relevant at all in this case?
~~~
jedimastert
Generally, Pythagorean tuning uses perfect fifths, as it's the easiest to hear
and to match using harmonics. That example is just showing that if you using
consecutive intervals (such as fifths) then other intervals (such as octaves
and thirds) won't line up.
------
fxj
Even electric (sampled) pianos are tuned that way. The difference from the
well-tempered tuning is given by the Railsback Curve
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_acoustics#The_Railsback_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_acoustics#The_Railsback_curve)).
For the highest and lowest notes it is as much as 30 cent. It comes from the
inharmonicity of the strings.
------
taylodl
Are they stretch tuning electric keyboards so if they accompany pianos they
both sound good together?
~~~
teilo
Aside from sampled instruments, there's the entire world of synthesis,
including the endless number of virtual instruments that have become staples
in modern popular and electronic music. As to your question: they are not
generally stretched tuned. Many instruments support alternate temperaments
through the use of .tun files, but temperament (with a few outlying
exceptions) only speaks to the interval deltas of the notes within an octave,
not of the entire range of the instrument.
However, it doesn't matter. The reason for the stretch-tuning of a piano is
due to the physical limitations of a vibrating string being unable to produce
the same harmonic intervals at the extremities of the instrument's range, and
does not apply to electronic instruments which, particularly in additive
synthesis, can generate whatever harmonics are desired, including harmonic
configurations that no physical instrument would be able to produce.
~~~
8bitsrule
I ran across this Red Bull video the other day; right at the beginning Mark
Verbos shows how his new synth design has (if I understand correctly) hardware
sliders to allow the user to adjust individual harmonics ... and circuitry
(Hadn't seen the like of that before.)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFxxvCXf-k0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFxxvCXf-k0)
More on Verbos:[http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2018/11/studio-
science-...](http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2018/11/studio-science-mark-
verbos-modular-synth)
~~~
yesenadam
"hardware sliders to allow the user to adjust individual harmonics" \- Ah,
just like traditional church organs.
------
teilo
The best guitar players also do a form of stretch tuning, depending upon the
range of the piece that they are playing. Just as on a piano, the high end of
the instrument will sound flat if they didn't. This is a limitation of all
stringed instruments.
~~~
mrob
Inharmonicity increases with string thickness and decreases with string length
(or effective string length when you're fretting it). It's most noticeable if
you play high pitched notes on the E2 string. However, slight inharmonicity is
just part of the sound and not a flaw:
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.515...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.515.8900&rep=rep1&type=pdf)
------
asplake
Wonderful! One of weirdnesses I’d noticed but never got to the bottom of
~~~
derriz
Indeed - I've been playing piano and guitar (badly) on and off since
childhood. I'm surprised I never wondered about this. It also explains why
tuning guitars purely by harmonics doesn't "work" \- you end up with the
bottom and top E strings sounding out of tune.
~~~
beat
Guitars are even worse, due to fretting. The act of fretting a note stretches
the string, which raises its pitch, and the amount varies by string and by
fret. So guitars are _never_ truly in tune. Not only are harmonics not
sufficient, but neither are electronic tuners! A guitar that is "in tune"
according to an electronic tuner is always sharp in practice.
And it gets worse from there! The tuning of a guitar string varies as it
decays. This is true of piano strings too, but not to the same degree. A
freshly struck string is vibrating more widely than a gentle or decaying note,
so it's stretching itself sharp. You can see this on a fast digital tuner -
the note will go sharp at first, and then settle to a slightly lower pitch. So
when you tune to an electronic tuner, are you tuning the initial pitch, or the
decayed pitch? This variation might be 20 cents or more.
Because of this, how to tune a guitar _well_ is very much a matter of taste,
context, and experience. I use harmonics and electronic tuners to get myself
in the ballpark, then start fine-tuning based on the guitar itself (each one
has its own quirks), and the material I'm planning to play. On acoustic
guitar, I tend to focus on getting the B string in tune with the D and A
strings first, by the quality of octaves for open C and D chords (which also
gets the A and D in tune with each other). Then I focus on getting the low E
in tune with an octave E on the D string. Then get the high E in tune in
unison with E on the B string. Finally, get the G string in tune with G on the
low E, an octave down. This means my G string is usually a bit flat relative
to the D and B strings, but that's okay - it's in tune for G chords, and being
a little flat is good for E major and D chords. I might adjust a little if I'm
playing in C/Am.
James Taylor has an _excellent_ YouTube video about tuning guitars
consistently with electronic tuners. It's very much to his taste and the
specific guitars he uses, but his principles are sound. And if you try it on
an acoustic with good intonation, you'll immediately hear that "James Taylor"
sound.
~~~
SyneRyder
To save others a click, I think this is the relevant James Taylor video that
you were talking about:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2xnXArjPts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2xnXArjPts)
And thanks for the video reference & your comment, this helps me feel better
about tuning my guitar, I thought I was just really bad at it.
~~~
beat
You're welcome! The most important takeaway, I think, is that to a certain
degree, "in tune" is a matter of opinion (for fretted instruments, anyway).
You can significantly change the tonal quality of the instrument while
remaining "in tune". That's the neat thing about the James Taylor video...
follow his method, and your guitar suddenly gets that James Taylor sound, very
rich and resonant.
Try experimenting with modal tunings like DADGAD, too. It's much easier to get
them "in tune", and you hear this beautiful resonance that guitars can make.
I brought this up on Facebook, and a friend who is an excellent player
responded with his own tuning method. He tunes the A string to a reference
(tuner, piano), and then tunes every other string to a fretted A note that is
in tune with the open A string. This is probably more "in tune" than the
highly resonant approach that I use.
------
kop316
I hate to say....the explanation is a bit wrong.
Music is based off of ratios in between each other. An Octave is 1:2 (For
example, A1 = 440 Hz, A2 - 880Hz, etc.). But the fundamental ratio for modern
music is the Fifth. Thr first eight fifths of F is C, G, D, A, E, B. Re
arranged, that is also C, D, E, F, G, A, B (a Major Scale). If you go to 12
Fifths from F, you get the chromatic scale. This will work for any starting
note, and is why we have 12 Major Scales.
However, we typically say a fifth has a 1:1.5 Ratio. This is an approximation
due to the overtone series. When a string vibrates (or a horn vibrates, take
your instrument), it vibrates at a fundamental frequency and several harmonics
above it as well. I cannot find it exactly, but I believe it is closer to
1:1.48 to make overtones work. This means the math does not work out between a
Fifth and an octave. To solve this issue, we use the approximation on the
piano so that the fifth and Octave line up exactly for the ratios (we tune
fifths slightly sharp and octaves slightly flat).
Now remember how I said music is all based off of ratios? Due lot this, we
need a common fundamental frequency that everybody can agree to tune to. The
musical world as decided on the A=440 Hz (which is close to the middle of the
piano). Due to the fact that the reference frequency is in the middle of the
piano, as you get out further, the approximation rears its ugly head.
This is why pianos are tuned "out of tune" at extremes.
~~~
kop316
As a fun fact too, the overtone series is also why you have different size
pianos. The longer string gives you a different overtone, and if i recall
right, the overtone is "more in tune" overtone series (if there are any piano
folks in here and I got that wrong, please forgive me, I am a mere trombone
player).
~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Inharmonicity is a trade off between the ratio of string length to fundamental
and stiffness (which is related to thickness.)
You could make a piano with really, really long bass strings, and the
overtones would be more linear. There would also be a lot more fundamental,
which is almost non-existent on the lowest octave or so of a grand piano.
Native Instruments actually sells a sample pack called The Giant which is
taken from an experimental long-string piano.
I don't think it sounds all that good, because there's something just right
about the colour of the "imperfect" bass strings on a fine grand. (That could
just be acculturation, but I'm not completely convinced that's the case.)
Contrariwise, uprights tend to sound boxy and constrained in the bass because
the strings are shorter than on a full-sized grand, and the overtones are even
louder and even less linear.
You can't do much at the top end, because nicely linear strings - like the
ones on a steel guitar - would have to be very thin and they'd be too fragile
to survive piano hammers.
The closest approximation would be a hammer dulcimer, which has a much sweeter
and more open top end than the percussive plink of a piano, but doesn't go
quite as high.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple v. Samsung Voir Dire Reveals Broken Promises - divy
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120923233451725
======
sbuk
Does this _really_ change anything? Do you not think that a reasonable jury
would come to similar conclusions? I'd call this clutching at straws TBH. I'm
not convinced that all of Apple's claims hold water at all, but some do have
merit, however ridiculous anyone seems to think design patents are. Painting
Samsung as an innocent party and blindly ignoring what is in front of your
eyes is wilful to say the least. Add Samsung's rather dubious attempts to
extract unreasonable terms on FRAND licenses which it seems had already been
licensed, it's hard to see them winning a re-trial. If they do, this whole
affair would give reasonable grounds for Apple to appeal any decision anyway.
Groklaw seems to be playing to peanut gallery here; there is little
objectivity and way too much partisanship to consider any of the articles
published there sound, or anywhere else for that matter, but a paralegal has
no excuse IMHO.
~~~
scott_w
I'm not sure it is wishful thinking. Pam does point out that the chances of
this changing the outcome are slim.
------
twoodfin
I don't get it. Why is it some kind of revelation that prospective jurors said
they wouldn't let their previous experience with related issues influence
their decision in the case? Isn't that bog standard _voir dire_ stuff?
ISTM that the legal system can't expect jurors to be blank slates on every
issue, that's just impractical. A judgement would really be thrown out because
a juror later commented that his foreman's experience with the patent system
was useful during deliberations? Was the foreman supposed to forget he'd ever
filed for a patent? That's a little like saying jurors deliberating over a
hit-and-run can't discuss their own driving experience. IANAL, but surely the
line you can't cross is a little further out.
~~~
jbri
Surely "presenting yourself to the other jurors as an expert due to your prior
experience" is over that line, no?
~~~
twoodfin
What's the evidence that he presented himself as an expert? He obviously knew
more about patents than some of the other jurors, so he was better able to
explain some of the material presented during the trial. Would it have been
better if he'd just stayed silent and left them confused?
I can imagine what crossing a bright line would look like. Something like: "I
know the judge told us X, but I'm an expert and really Y." But I don't think
there's evidence that's what happened.
~~~
KirinDave
The interviews with other jurors made it clear that they deferred to his
opinion in this case, the which makes it very hard for the foreman to deny
what happened. Groklaw links a lot of the interviews so you can see for
yourself, if you're curious.
I'm not sure why people are surprised here. It's not like the verdict against
Samsung wasn't warranted and won't be upheld in subsequent cases. The problem
is the juror's dismissals of other patents held by Samsung that clearly _were_
applicable.
The only thing that makes this broken patent system remotely tolerable is a
fiction of fairness. If we allow the jury to discard even this in punitive
fashion, then things are worse than we realized.
P.S., sorry for the first garbled iteration of this post. I'm still dialing in
SwiftKey for tablets.
------
at-fates-hands
Not sure about patent cases, but in criminal law, attorneys have the
opportunity to challenge jurors and have them removed.
If I Was a Samsung attorney, the people Grok just pointed out would be at the
top of my list to have excused from the trial based on their previous
litigation experience and bias.
~~~
cooldeal
Which they already did to a few jury candidates. Both sides only get a few
chances to do that, they can't remove everyone they want to.
------
bhousel
Couldn't this just be considered jury nullification? IANAL, but I don't think
the responses in voir dire (especially to follow the instructions of the judge
or the letter of the law) are any kind of binding promise.
Won't the appeals judge just say, "too bad for you, Samsung, for asking the
wrong questions and getting an unfavorable jury"?
~~~
t314159
Look at <http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120922171505170>
> Samsung was also treated unequally: Apple's lay and expert witnesses were
> allowed to testify "we were ripped off" and "Samsung copied" (RT
> 509:11-510:22; 659:2-664:19; 1957:15-21; 1960:15-1963:1), while Samsung's
> witnesses were barred from explaining how Samsung's products differ from
> Apple's (RT 850-12-851:20; 2511:9-2515:5), or even how one Samsung product
> differs from another (RT 948:14-950:17). Samsung was required to lay
> foundation for any Apple document (RT 524:15-525:19; 527:3-12), while Apple
> was not (RT 1525:12-1526:7; 1406:11-1410:8; 1844:16-1845:8; 987:21-988:20;
> 2832:6-12). Apple was permitted to play advertisements (RT 641:6-642:16;
> 645:14-646:7), but Samsung was not (Dkt 1511). And Apple had free rein to
> cross-examine Samsung's experts based on their depositions, but Samsung did
> not. RT 1085:6-11; 1188:9-15; 1213:17-1220:5. In the interests of justice,
> Samsung therefore respectfully requests that the Court grant a new trial
> enabling adequate time and evenhanded treatment of the parties.
~~~
taligent
Samsung was barred from explaining how the F700 was different from the iPhone
because they didn't submit the request in time. It is as simple as that.
------
blacklooksgreat
It's called Jury Nullification, kids.
By the way, I think Hogan said he was able, not that he would.
~~~
hesitz
Not sure, but I think jury nullification may apply only in criminal cases,
essentially because of guarantee that defendant can't be tried more than once
for same crime. With obvious misapplication of law by jury in a civil case I
don't believe there's anything to prevent correction of the error.
~~~
ars
No, it applies in civil cases, but the Judge has the power to set aside the
verdict (so it's not as powerful).
~~~
danielweber
_the Judge has the power to set aside the verdict_
That's not jury nullification.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Vector Space Mathematics Reveals the Hidden Sexism in Language - exolymph
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602025/how-vector-space-mathematics-reveals-the-hidden-sexism-in-language/
======
HoopleHead
Jesus H! Is there anything that doesn't upset Generation Snowflake?
The sky is gender-biased and transphobic, because it's BLUE instead of PINK.
People are inherently racist, because they like playing with WHITE snow, but
stand on BLACK tarmac.
~~~
exolymph
Did you read the article?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Employee gets £10,000 bounty for revealing software abuse - monkeygrinder
http://news.techworld.com/applications/3238361/employee-gets-10000-bounty-for-revealing-software-abuse/?cmpid=sbycombinatorschapman
======
dminor
What they want me to hear: don't pirate software.
What I actually hear: use as much free software as possible.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why am I getting asked to review books? - lukevella
I've been approached to review books a number of times now. I'm curious to know if this is common or not. Has anyone here been approached to do a book review? If yes, have you ever gone through with one? How does it work? Is it worth doing?<p>From my experience, in return for the review you get 2 free copies of the book and a mention.
======
skidoo
I have written several thousand review articles over the last dozen years or
so. Reviews of (in descending order) comics, books, films and albums, for
diverse print and digital media. It is possible that those who approached you
sincerely would like your take specifically. That does happen, but more often,
I have found, is the case of reviewing being a cheap effort at adcopy.
Honestly, I feel that aside from family and friends of those responsible for
the source work, reviews generally go unread by the bulk of the masses. I
really think most PR persons are incredibly lazy, and instead of making
efforts to think outside of boxes, rely heavily on the old standbys of
reviews, interviews, and press releases (ready for copy and pasting among the
blogging elite). If the creator responsible is not "a name", then PR persons
are compelled to get someone, anyone, to view the work. And then, more often
than not, the PR persons pray that such person will do the selling for them.
I realize this sounds bitter. (I've spent far more efforts on promoting indie
creators than I have on developing my own works, to very mixed results.) But
ultimately, composing review articles is essentially unpaid adcopy work. I
think a strong review should be handled along the lines of a high school book
report. The habit can be a neat exercise unto itself, as far as writing in
general. But there are many snakes in the grass.
All said, if the work/s in question truly strike you (for good or ill), then
by all means have a go at formulating your opinion on the matter for others.
If only for the sake of trying something new. But be weary of getting locked
into it. You do one review, then the publisher or producer may well send you
another soon enough. And as I am fond of saying, inundation only suits dry
fields.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Solar outstrips coal in past six months of UK electricity generation - iamflimflam1
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/04/solar-outstrips-coal-in-past-six-months-of-uk-electricity-generation?cmp=oth_b-aplnews_d-2
======
pjc50
Excellent news. There's a bit of a thumb on the scale because of the
seasonality of both solar and UK demand, but it shows that the feed-in-tariff
regime was an effective way of getting solar buildout.
The other factor is that EU directives (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Combustion_Plant_Directi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Combustion_Plant_Directive)
) are hard for the old 50s coal plants to comply with, and they're operating
at the end of their lives on imported coal since the dismantling of the UK
coal industry.
There is also the slightly bonkers scheme to run Drax on imported wood.
I always mention
[http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/](http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/) when the
subject of energy comes up on HN, as it's such a great resource and a neat
little web toy. But it doesn't show solar because there's no central live
metering. Currently 60% gas, 20% nuclear, 5% coal, the rest wind and imports.
~~~
toyg
Comments on TFA mention this site for solar monitoring:
[https://www.solar.sheffield.ac.uk/pvlive/](https://www.solar.sheffield.ac.uk/pvlive/)
(Note: it doesn't work well with Safari, use Firefox)
"Serving 11.3 % of GB demand". Not bad at all, for a cloudy island famous for
all-year rain.
~~~
pjc50
Thanks for that, a nice addition to the data.
I think climate change has, for the moment, been 'kind' to us in reducing the
famous rain. The downside is the south of the country is now short of water in
summer and parts of the uplands are prone to flooding ...
~~~
stevetrewick
Sigh.
> _Annual mean precipitation over England and Wales has not changed
> significantly since records began in 1766. Seasonal rainfall is highly
> variable, but appears to have decreased in summer and increased in winter,
> although with little change in the latter over the last 50 years._ [0]
> _The results suggest that there have been trends towards more protracted
> high flows over the last 30–50 years, but that this could be accounted for
> as part of climatic variation rather than climate change. There is no
> statistical evidence of a long–term trend in flooding over the last 80–120
> years. Thus, although climate change could be influencing floods, direct
> analysis of flood records does not yet provide proof._ [1]
> _The adjusted record shows no trend in reported flooding over time, but
> there is significant decade to decade variability._ [2]
> _A rising population, more households and greater wealth have led to an ever
> greater demand for water, putting the limited supply in the south of England
> under stress._ [3]
So no, if we like an evidence based approach, climate change has not had any
measurable effect on precipitation, flooding or water shortages in the UK.
These are basically seasonal variations exposing infrastructure weaknesses.
[0] p12 : [http://www.ukcip.org.uk/wp-
content/PDFs/UKCP09_Trends.pdf](http://www.ukcip.org.uk/wp-
content/PDFs/UKCP09_Trends.pdf)
[1]
[http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/360/1796/1327...](http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/360/1796/1327.short)
[2]
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2014.950581](http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2014.950581)
[3]
[http://catchments.nerc.ac.uk/issues/crisis/index.asp](http://catchments.nerc.ac.uk/issues/crisis/index.asp)
------
jsingleton
Good news. Now we need to deploy more grid scale batteries or other storage.
We have the technology (just as we do for electric vehicles). It just needs
scaling up and that's now a political/economics problem.
Solar doesn't show on the UK grid stats [^0] but it does on the French one
([^0]/france). There's an app that shows what this means in terms of CO2e
[^1].
I wrote a piece on electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel cells recently [^2].
Another option could be to synthesize methane [^3] using the Sabatier reaction
(as NASA does on the ISS [^4]). If this is burnt with CCS (underground storage
or to grow plants in greenhouses) then it would remove carbon from the
atmosphere.
[^0]: [http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk](http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk)
[^1]: [http://gridcarbon.uk](http://gridcarbon.uk)
[^2]: [https://unop.uk/on-electric-vehicles](https://unop.uk/on-electric-
vehicles)
[^3]:
[http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/mars_presentation.p...](http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/mars_presentation.pdf#page=40)
(slide 40)
[^4]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction#Internationa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction#International_Space_Station_life_support)
------
jbb555
Good. The problem of course is that you still need the coal generation
capacity for winter, and if you hardly use it other times, it becomes really
expensive for the capacity it's providing.
~~~
lostboys67
And its still subsidized which is great if you own a house with a south facing
roof and have a few grad to spare - you used to be able to get around 8%
taxfree guaranteed for 20 years.
------
ChoHag
What has outstripped coal for baseline production?
------
Theodores
There used to be millions of coal miners in the UK before Thatcher, millions.
Can anyone imagine the renewable sector hiring so many people, working long
shifts and doing physically hard work? That coal mining is now done the global
capitalist way but there are people still digging coal. A switch to coal is
valuable in that people no longer have to have such a risky occupation. It is
a shame this is not seen as a benefit and that it is all about CO2.
~~~
simonh
There hadn't been a million jobs in coal mining since the 1920s. By 1979 there
were about 200k coal jobs left. The tax payer was subsidizing coal to the tune
of £1.3 billion a year, just under 1% of total national GDP, not including the
increased costs to power and steel industries that were prevented from using
cheaper alternatives.
When Arthur Scargill appeared before a Parliamentary committee and was asked
at what level of loss it was acceptable to close a pit he answered “As far as
I can see, the loss is without limits.”
Coal was fatally wounded in the 70s when the industry became more heavily
subsidized, less productive (by 6% in 5 years) and failed to implement any
meaningful modernization or reform programs (Plan for Coal). By the 1980s it
was just too late to save it.
~~~
stevetrewick
How refreshing to come across someone who understands the economics and
doesn't just blame Thatcher.
~~~
neximo64
It helps alot with these things to read the newspaper from the older times
when the issues first came about. There's lots of reason lost in history books
and on the information we would typically read up on.
Last week i was going through 1880s articles, and got reason to why banks
aren't 'unlimited liability partnerships'. The realities were, they were in
the early 1880s. Then one Scottish bank failed and the courts went after
widowers and simple retail investors who owned the shares to get claim back
assets for depositors for the failed bank. Apparently taking money from
widowers then was absolutely terrible. They allowed banks to become limited
liability companies shortly after.
Not the best to repeat that today, as bad as limited liability banks can be,
it would be worse for them to sue household investors to reclaim deposits,
particularly when they can't enforce accountability in the company, being such
small investors.
Today if the idea ever caught hold, that old 1880s newspaper would shed light.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wikipedia website suffers global outage - Rabidgremlin
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10656680&ref=rss
======
johnfn
How did that article manage to shift from a report of outage to an editorial
on why Wikipedia is bad for college research?
~~~
seancron
And why is the entire second page quotes from Twitter about it, and the link
to the "latest discussions about the outage" a Twitter search for "wikipedia"?
~~~
chrismsnz
Welcome to what passes for the mainstream media here in New Zealand.
~~~
mahmud
The media crisis befalls both Trans-Tasman nations. SBS did a segment on news
broadcasts across NSW and found out most "breaking news" segments were
recorded days in advance, and in one session where the announcer deliberately
changes outfits. Viewers would wait for updates on bushfires and other similar
regional crises and they would be "updated" on news about the flavor of the
month, rapist footie player leaving a nightclub or doing shopping.
American media, however, is as efficient and fervent for their corporate
sponsors as any militant death-squad. In America, the footie player's ethnic
origin would be researched and the rape case made into a race-war, or the
victim tied to a political party in some fringe manner.
------
ars
I still think they should have taken up googles offer to host them for free,
no strings attached,
[http://www.technewsworld.com/story/tech/google-wikipedia-
hos...](http://www.technewsworld.com/story/tech/google-wikipedia-
hosting-40554.html) <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Google_hosting>
<http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Google_offers_to_help_Wikipedia>
~~~
kierank
Yahoo gave them some server space in Seoul at one point.
------
ramchip
I think some articles lately are too "news" and not enough "hacker". There's
very, very little information in this article, and Wikipedia being down for a
little while isn't especially intellectually stimulating.
------
macros
The perils of only having one datacenter :(
~~~
hga
I was reading some item (on HN probably) about how they have a big one in
Tampa, Florida, a small one in Amsterdam and are planning on building another
big one in Virginia.
That said, the article mentioned a time when a failure in Amsterdam lead to a
failure to fall over to Florida which took out the whole service for a good
while.
~~~
CapitalistCartr
I live in Tampa. We are the Lightning Capitol of North America {insert
Wikipedia link here}. Right now is the rainy season here, and generous amounts
of lightning. It's basically the monsoon season. So the power sucks here, and
even if you have excellent generators, as Home Shopping Network does, the
network connectivity is still bound by local limitations. Tampa is a terrible
place to put a data center.
~~~
_delirium
I think it's there for historical reasons, because Jimmy Wales used to live
there, so his company was there, and now it's a significant project to move
everything.
~~~
CapitalistCartr
It's well worth doing. Putting a datacenter in Tampa is like putting a lighter
factory in the middle of the fireworks district.
------
sliverstorm
Dear commenter: Wikipedia down? No, that's _not_ just like Google going down.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Heroku June Development Uptime: One Nine - CesareBorgia
98.15%<p>https://status.heroku.com/
======
carsongross
Saw this on twitter. Unfair, but hilarious:
http://memecaptain.com/893ea5.jpg
I know this: if _I_ was running my AWS cluster, I'd be doing a worse job of
it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The race to find the 'holy grail' of drone technology - goodcanadian
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/british-columbia/the-race-to-find-the-holy-grail-of-drone-technology-1.3671065
======
smegel
I would have thought the holy grail would be a battery that lasts a week of
continuous usage.
And we have self driving cars, arguably far more complex than the relatively
simple task of flying through empty space.
~~~
mdonahoe
That would be a holy grail for a lot more than the drone industry
------
ars
Why do you need AI for collision avoidance? Even the simplest fly can handle
that.
~~~
PhasmaFelis
Flies are far from simple. Read up on their biomechanics sometime. They have
six degrees of freedom--forward, backward, up/down, side to side, and rotating
around all three axes. They're fantastically sophisticated flying machines.
------
th0ma5
Anyone know the latest about ADS-B or ADS-B like initiatives for drones?
~~~
dbyte
What we really miss is an ADS-B low-cost variant for drones. Safety
requirements are different if ones takes into account the unmanned
characteristic of drones. Furthermore it will be a great exercise in solving
the known problems with the existing version. The main idea of broadcasting
navigation data is worth the shot to optimise even more the use of airspace.
Without lives at risk technical iteration can be, at least in theory, faster.
We need more IETF-style drafts and RFCs rather than classic standards (i.e
that require often more than 10 years to reach the market) to see a clever use
of such a technology in our daily-routine.
~~~
Animats
That's available. ADS-B receive only in a 6 gram package. A full ADS-B
transponder in a 20 gram package.[1] Now your drone is visible to ATC and
aircraft, and in turn, can see other aircraft, in areas where there's ground
radar.
This is more for commercial operations in class B airspace, where you need to
get permission from the controlling FAA tower. Real estate photography in a
city or shooting a movie, for example.
This doesn't help with avoiding stationary objects; that's a separate problem
and requires sensors. ADS-B just tells all the players in controlled airspace
where the other players are.
[1]
[http://www.uavionix.com/products/ping2020/](http://www.uavionix.com/products/ping2020/)
~~~
dbyte
Yes I agree with you but you are point out the existance of low weight
packages while I would say that cost is a more important constraint for
drones. I guess users can argue with the idea of equipping their low-cost
drone with an expensive certified ADS-B receiver. It won't be as cost
effective as one may think.
Also one has to consider that the mode S transponder is using a 24bit
identifier. While this has a lot of sense for modern civil aviation (there are
not as many planes) the same cannot be guaranteed as soon as you have many
more temporary users of your airspace (e.g. swarms of Amazon delivery drones).
IMHO regulators should aim first to create an effective solution that works
well for drones (e.g. allowing ATC to broadcast digital commands to guide
drones if necessary, btw there is a similar effort already for commercial
planes) and then find a smart way to integrate commercial and drone aviation
systems.
Btw really nice product!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How To: Stop procrastination (Dan Ariely) - sbt
http://bigthink.com/ideas/dan-ariely-how-can-people-overcome-procrastination
======
ZeroGravitas
It's a bit of a misleading title, it's not all about procrastination and it's
not much of a howto either.
It's about how you can do many things better than standard economics would
indicated if you take into account the irrationality of human beings.
For example, everyone leaves reports to the last minute. Commiting to earlier
deadlines makes no sense to a 'rational' human being, but can help actual
human beings.
Here's a link to his research paper on this topic:
<http://www.predictablyirrational.com/pdfs/deadlines.pdf>
And his book site: <http://www.predictablyirrational.com/>
------
jlees
How to stop procrastination, step 1:
Watch a video on how to stop procrastination.
Oh, wait...
~~~
windsurfer
It doesn't play for me. I guess I'll have to get work done now...
~~~
tome
I think you'd enjoy my favourite productivity blog:
<http://www.doitfuckingnow.com/>
~~~
philwelch
I was hoping for something with the same design sense as:
<http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/>
Your link is a lot more cluttered in comparison ;)
~~~
windsurfer
Haha, it has an RSS feed. I love that.
------
lysium
Actually, does not tell how to stop procrastination, just how they might help
people stop their procrastination in the lecture (offer early deadlines). How
am I supposed to translate this to my real life (where's no professor who'll
punish me if I don't keep my early deadline?).
Besides, made me procrastinate my work further by watching the video...
~~~
philwelch
There's a strategy called "structured procrastination" where you overload
yourself with work to the point where you can only put one thing off to do
something different.
One way to enforce early deadlines (well, short deadlines) is to take on
another project, get that done, and then for your other project, the deadline
is now a couple weeks shorter :)
~~~
mtinkerhess
Here's John Perry's essay on structured procrastination:
<http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/>
------
drcode
Since the website is down, here's a research paper from him that I assume
gives you the info from the video (probably more substantive as well)
[http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&...](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=5&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.predictablyirrational.com%2Fpdfs%2Fdeadlines.pdf&ei=aYDkScOWMpTrlQeV7fTfDg&usg=AFQjCNGmkOEDJ0JBsBk7QbKNGZvR9Gn5Aw&sig2=A-fdbyAWslsKj1B1YMBInQ)
------
thexa4
We'll look at it shortly...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cable Haunt vulnerability allows remote control of cable modems - Lyrebirds
https://cablehaunt.com/
======
crmrc114
Direct Link to report PDF from the page: [https://github.com/Lyrebirds/Cable-
Haunt-Report/releases/dow...](https://github.com/Lyrebirds/Cable-Haunt-
Report/releases/download/2.4/report.pdf)
------
Stierlitz
Why didn't the modem makers pick this up in the debugging phase of the
manufacturing process. They do have such a department?
~~~
Lyrebirds
We suspect that because the bug originated in reference code, that it might
have slipped past QA as it came from a trusted source.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: SupportKit embeds Zendesk into your iOS apps, with one line of code - gozmike
http://supportkit.radialpoint.com
======
acgourley
I am considering adding helpshift.com to our app - it's a native helpdesk
library which fairly expensive but seems to have great features and it covers
android/ios and even has unity integration. Anyone tried it?
------
pretz
I think you just saved me a lot of unnecessary development time. Thanks!
~~~
pretz
One followup: I feel really scammed by entering my email address just to be
redirected to github. If you don't want to give them your email address, just
click here:
[https://github.com/radialpoint/SupportKit](https://github.com/radialpoint/SupportKit)
------
moeadham
Looks Great. Obvious Question: When will you add Android support?
~~~
gozmike
Thanks! We're porting to Android and it should be coming up really soon.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Evolution of Character Codes, 1874-1968 [pdf] - dang
http://trafficways.org/ascii/ascii.pdf
======
iconjack
Enjoy this character code puzzle.
[http://realmode.com/punch22.html](http://realmode.com/punch22.html)
~~~
nickysielicki
I've been thinking about this all night. I can't seem to wrap my head around
it. Got a hint for me?
~~~
KMag
It's not possible if they want to be able to over-punch their current stock of
5-bit punched used tapes. Proof: take for instance the character U. U has 4
holes, leaving 3 unpunched spots, which means 7 possibilities for modification
(2^3 - 1 = 7). Those 7 possible modified Us must cover all of the 25 non-U
letters.
We can assume then that it's not a requirement to be able to over-punch their
existing used 5-bit punched stock. Then it's possible, and my proof above of
why it's not possible to convert a 4-hole U to more than 7 other characters is
a big hint as to one solution... think of a primary encoding and a secondary
encoding. What property must the primary encoding have in order to guarantee
any character in the primary encoding can be over-punched to one of 25
characters in the secondary encoding?
------
dang
Via
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11093735](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11093735).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Can I expect extra compensation for fixing product problem of employer? - newyearnewyou
There is a company we acquired that has a product, with an issue that prevents it from working as the diligence team believed. I was not part of the diligence, nor is my job description related to products of this nature (e.g. this is all occurring beyond the scope of the my job description). Nonetheless, I believe I may have a solution to this issue (to fix the product), but it is worth at least $2M to the company. I'd like to test and share the idea, but I'd like to be compensated accordingly.
======
patio11
Short answer: It depends.
More useful answer: It is the market expectation that salaried employees
devote their work-related efforts to the benefit of their employer. This issue
is work-related, even if not related to your job description; your
consideration for best efforts for fixing it is your salary.
If your employer wants to be extra special nice, they may decide to award a
discretionary bonus. This will be calculated against your normal pay, in line
with other discretionary bonuses [0], and not ordinarily on the incremental
business value contributed by your discovery.
[0] At US companies in the tech industry there is wide discretion in these
with the lower end being 0, the lower end of plausible being "Here is a gift
card for $20 at Applebee's", the mid-range in the tech industry being ~$1k,
and the upper range being "AppAmaGooFaceSoft can be _quite_ generous when they
want to be."
Broadly speaking if you want variable comp you generally have to be taking on
substantially more risk that W-2 employees normally take. If you were a
consultant who successfully sold an engagement with the same outcome, you
might well be able to negotiate $50k or $100k for the outcome.
There exists substantial variability in work cultures around the world with
regards to this question; I know of no geography which is more likely to award
a bonus than the US and many which are materially less likely. There exists
substantial variability between industries (with finance and sales-oriented
professions being most likely to pay directly for an outcome) and within
industries.
------
itamarst
To add to what patio11 said:
Even if as an employee you don't get paid a lot directly for fixing it, there
is still some benefits:
1\. You can use this as argument for getting a raise or promotion.
2\. When you look for next job, you can say "and I identified a problem, on my
own, which saved my last employer $2 million". Which should allow you to
negotiate much higher pay.
So overall it might still raise your lifetime earnings by a noticeable amount,
if you take advantage of it.
------
xstartup
What makes you believe that tossing problem in the market will not help find a
solution for lesser than what you are demanding?
I've had people quote me millions for fixing some key architecture issues
which I later solved by paying a few thousands.
Most people underestimate what market can offer.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What are the best resources for wannabe startup CEOs? - simonebrunozzi
======
scobar
I found sama's class
([http://startupclass.samaltman.com](http://startupclass.samaltman.com)) to be
a particularly great collection of knowledge. I remember catching a few almost
subtle drops of wisdom that I'd have underappreciated had I not previously
known some info I'd already picked up by studying other educational resources
on startups. I'm sure there are more that I did not catch. So if this class is
one of the early resources you utilize, then I'd suggest you revisit it again
later as well.
------
PeekPoke
Mummy and Daddys bank account and network. ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What do they mean SQL? - arisAlexis
I see all these highest paying jobs/skills to have and I am wondering. I have always programmed in different languages but I never really thought SQL is a language. Sure it is in a way, but you know like not a complicated one. You have joins,unions,some oracle stuff and some functions but hell, do people get 85k/year to just write SQL code? Is there a profession SQL developer? Is this included in the Database Adminstrator job?
======
flannell
I guess the acronym gives it away, Structured Query Language. Things can get
pretty hairy when playing around with triggers, indexes and foreign keys, not
just the SQL itself. I'd imagine for 85k you'd need to have experience in
replication and table partitioning. I also think the difference between a 25K
and 85K developer would be the difference in execution time of a SQL block of
code. It's amazing how much you can speed up queries by re-factoring the code
as well as knowledge of using different types of indexing strategies. I've
used SQL for 15 years, but not exclusively - it's always wrapped up with other
needed skills. HTH!
------
arethuza
Most "database" developers I've known typically specialize in a particular
area (integration, optimization, design, BI) for a particular technology stack
(MS SQL Server, Oracle...) and sometimes even for particular applications as
well (CRM, ERP, etc.).
It's not just a case of knowing SQL - but understanding the wider landscape -
data models with thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of
tables are pretty common in some contexts.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Netflix Uses Pirate Sites to Determine What Shows to Buy - Garbage
http://torrentfreak.com/netflix-uses-pirate-sites-to-determine-what-shows-to-buy-130914
======
alexeisadeski3
Looking at revealed preferences. Smart.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Rails 3.1 Adopts CoffeeScript, jQuery, Sass and.. Controversy - vamsee
http://www.rubyinside.com/rails-3-1-adopts-coffeescript-jquery-sass-and-controversy-4669.html
======
jarin
Well, bad news guys:
<http://doihavetousecoffeescriptinrails.com/>
------
dzine
I don't see why this should be controversial, it's so easy to switch to Haml,
Sass or jQuery when you need/want to. The defaults are there to get the
uninitiated off the ground as quickly as possible, and is in keeping with the
'rails way'.
I, on the other hand, have my 'own way', and rails doesn't in any way prevent
me from implementing that when I start a new rails project.
------
bradgessler
How will this be integrated? Does this just mean when I generate a rails
project, I'll see:
gem 'haml'
gem 'coffee'
in my Gemfile? That's cool, I just hope this stuff isn't vendored.
~~~
darklajid
Yes, that's about it. In fact, that's what the diff shows if you follow the
link.. :)
(no haml though). This is purely about adding a line saying
gem 'coffee-script'
That's it. Lots of 'nerdrage' in the comments though, feels like reading
4chan. Considering that more and more people like to point to Github as a
reference for their future employers I do wonder what the motivations are for
some of these comments.
------
bad_user
While I don't agree with this change, I have to hand it to DHH -- he brings
"opinionated" to breathtaking heights :)
And he's right -- these kind of changes may be controversial, but Rails was
never about being mainstream / safe / conservative. Rails was always about
being productive, and in that context taking risks is good -- which is the
reason for the dozens of Rails-clones written in dozens of languages.
~~~
jarin
It amazes me how many developers (even ones who like coffeescript) feel
compelled to rage on behalf some hypothetical developer who is capable of
learning all of the other stuff in Rails but whose head will explode the
moment he touches a .coffee file.
Not to mention the people who "left Ruby a while ago" but are somehow super
passionate about this commit.
~~~
bad_user
If you're referring to my disagreement, I disagree simply because IMHO, the
price paid for Coffeescript is not worth it. But heck, whatever.
~~~
jarin
Haha, I wouldn't really consider your post "raging" (if it was intended to be,
it needs way more hyperbole), it was a response to your comment about the
controversial nature.
------
akkartik
Why not haml? Was there a discussion about this?
~~~
petercooper
DHH finds it to be a "splinter in [his] brain":
<https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/58289541068492800>
Can't say I disagree with him. Sass extends CSS with extra functionality.
CoffeeScript allows complicated things to be expressed easily. But Haml is
essentially an aesthetic thing for coders who merely don't like HTML, IMHO.
(But luckily it's _so easy_ to add in and if you use the "haml" extension on
your views, it should mostly Just Work™ so it's all cool!)
~~~
_pius
_CoffeeScript allows complicated things to be expressed easily. But Haml is
essentially an aesthetic thing for coders who merely don't like HTML, IMHO._
Haml and CoffeeScript serve practically the same type of role (the greater
complexity of JS notwithstanding).
"It's just an aesthetic thing" can be used to dismiss practically anything,
even the differences between, say, Ruby and Java.
If you're writing a lot of HTML, turning
<div class="foo">
<div id="bar">
<span class="baz">
qux
</span>
</div>
</div>
into
.foo
#bar
%span.baz qux
is a big win. It reduces the noise in a template substantially and is a
perfect impedance match with the CSS3/JQuery selector syntax.
For what it's worth, I hated Haml until my third time playing with it. :)
~~~
prpatel
HAML is a DSL for doing HTML markup & templating, Coffeescript is a "language
extension" to JavaScript. How are they playing the same role???
~~~
bradleyland
"Is a rose by any other name still not a rose?"
I write HAML, the plugin generates HTML.
I write Coffeescript, the plugin generates Javascript.
Surely you can see how these two are similar. Yes, there are more precise
definitions for each, but pragmatically, they play a similar role.
~~~
petercooper
Except that a proficient Haml developer will still need to "think in HTML" and
Haml is just another way to express it.
CoffeeScript goes so far and introduces enough new concepts that you can
"think in CoffeeScript" and not worry about JavaScript _too much_.
You're right that the translation idea is similar but I can't agree that the
mental model for using both is similar.
------
drivebyacct2
Who cares? How much longer is this going to drag on? It doesn't force you to
use CoffeeScript, you can easily continue to write JavaScript or Sass with no
detrimental effects. If I understand correctly, it only changes the templates
created.
~~~
bdclimber14
It doesn't even change templates. I literally is one line of code in a
configuration file (the Gemfile) which most people populate with their own
settings anyway.
Without it being explicitly talked about, a Rails developer wouldn't see the
difference beyond "Hmm, I wonder what CoffeeScript is?"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask HN: Esperanto and Hacker News - LaPingvino
Saluton! Mi tre ŝatus scii ĉu estas aliaj Esperantistoj en HN, kaj kion ili pensas pri Esperanto por laboraj celoj.<p>For the non-Esperantists here (the most of the people here I guess): what do you think about Esperanto and about using it internally in a business (externally doesn't make sense, better use the native languages instead of the company vernicular).
======
bhousel
Current researchers believe that language influences thought to some extent,
so speaking Esperanto in your business might be an interesting way to promote
lateral thinking.
If you try it, you should share your results. Do your employees become more
creative, do they treat customers differently? Or does it impede problem
solving and employee retention?
Lots of really interesting info here on how language influences thought (and
even a PG 'Blub' mention):
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity>
~~~
LaPingvino
On the background I am doing already quite some preparational work (and I can
name you some organisations that work like this already) and it works out nice
:)
------
terra_t
Interlingua gets less press than Esperanto, but I think Interlingua is a much
better interlanguage -- interlingua is a latin-derived language that has some
modern features and the corners squared off; people who know English or other
european languages with a lot of latin influence can read Interlingua with
remarkable comprehension without any training, take a look at...
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_and_Interlingua_compa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_and_Interlingua_compared)
------
coderdude
Esperanto: An artificial language based as far as possible on words common to
all the European languages.
<http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=esperanto>
I don't speak Esperanto. Why would you use it internally while using some
other language externally? Why not just speak one language and be done with
it? It doesn't make any sense.
~~~
LaPingvino
I speak 9 languages by now, and it helps a lot to get to the customers to
speak their language. English-only communication fails to sell out of the safe
borders of the English speaking nations.
Esperanto is just used as a communication tool, just like we use better or
worse programming languages to get things done.
------
fader
Mi laboras ĉe internacia kompanio, sed (triste) ni ne uzas Esperanton por
komuniki. La angla lingvo venkis. Mi ankoraŭ ŝatas paroli Esperanton por
amuziĝi.
(I work for an international company, but (sadly) we don't use Esperanto to
communicate. English won. I still like to speak Esperanto for fun.)
~~~
LaPingvino
Is it a big company? I think you can move a lot more on this field in small
companies.
Mi tre ŝatus scii cetere ĉu vi aktivas en aliaj interretaj forumoj, kaj
kiunome... Mi ne trovis ajnan kontaktinformon en via profilo...
~~~
fader
It's around 350 people at the moment, on every continent but Antarctica. I
suspect that the talent pool of English speakers is larger than that of
Esperanto speakers and that they didn't want to add an additional burden to
the hiring process by asking people to learn another language. In fact, we
have an internal list of who speaks what languages and there are only two of
us listing Esperanto, and neither of us is fluent. (Though I could probably be
there in 1-2 weeks of serious effort.)
Mi ne aktivas en multaj Esperantistaj forumoj... mi ne kredas ke mian
Esperanton estas sufiĉa bona. :) Sed oni kapablas kontakti min ĉe
launchpad.net. Mi estas 'fader' tie ankaŭ.
~~~
LaPingvino
Mi estas administranto de la tradukteamo de Ubuntu en Esperanton en Launchpad.
Mi provu kontakti vin persone.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask YC: What do I, a graduating CS student, need to know to go into the real world as a programmer? - eznet
What do I, a new graduate, need to make sure I know to land a decent job in the 'real world' as a programmer? I am graduating in less than 2 months with a Bachelor of Science in Applied Computer Science (BSACS) and feel clueless about what is approaching rapidly - a.k.a THE REAL WORLD. I know this question has been asked and answered countless times (most of which I feel that I have read), but as is the case with all in the tech world, often this information becomes dated rapidly, is one sided or extremely biased. So again, what concepts, technologies, languages and various disciplines do I need to KNOW in order to be proficient, or at least to be good enough to land a job, as a professional programmer?<p>I find myself feeling as if I know all this 'programming stuff' but have no real clue of how to sit down and work in a development environment with other developers on a real project. Not only this, but I feel that I know a little about a lot - i.e. I am a jack of all trades, but a master of none. Clearly I have done problem solving and system design in my classes, but these projects are limited to core concepts based heavily on CS theory and are often very limited in size and complexity. I have been exposed to C++ (4 classes), Java (2 classes), VB.Net (1 Class), SQL (1 class), Discrete Mathematics (1 class), Project design and management (1 class), Advanced Algorithms and Design (1 class) as well as a sprinkling of various other 'CS-related' classes via my education. On the side I have played and dabbled with Ruby, Python, PHP, C, C# and a handful of other technologies that escape me now. I have a 3.6 GPA and have not made less than an A in my core CS classes since the beginning, but again, I still feel clueless.<p>Any tips, suggestions or criticisms are warmly welcomed (well, except criticism, which will be welcomed, just without the warm feelings attached). Please, where time and willingness permits, be specific - do I need to know how to design/write a compiler? do I need to know assembly (taking that class this term anyways)? If I want to make money first and worry about fun later, should I focus on corporate adopted technologies (Java, anything Microsoft, etc.)?<p>Thanks in advance!<p>-Matt
======
tjr
It seems to me that for most corporate entry-level programming jobs, the
knowledge of computer science required is really minimal. You _probably_ won't
be building any compilers or using assembly language.
There are exceptions, of course. Microsoft is infamous for being demanding of
their new hires. You'll likely find that the more a company's core business is
software, the more computer science skill they will demand of you. But there
are lots and lots of companies hiring programmers who have core businesses
other than software.
Which languages to be proficient in varies depending on the sort of work you
are doing. Browse current job openings; for the ones you find interesting,
look at what languages they are using, and then focus on those.
Contributing to some open-source software project is a good way to develop
some practical skills. Two months of part-time effort isn't a lot, but perhaps
better than nothing. If not that, then you yourself should learn how to use
some sort of version management tool, like Subversion. Go through a tutorial,
start storing your homework projects in it, etc. You won't get to see all of
the ins and outs of version management using it alone, but it'll be a start.
~~~
eznet
Thanks for the feedback tjr; especially so in regards to the 'version
management' suggestion. I have felt that this is likely someplace I need
additional knowledge and experience. I have accessed Subversion repositories,
but in truth, have never maintained my own nor would I know what to do in a
instance where it was actually required.
Learning version management is on the list to learn now :)
Thanks again, -Matt
~~~
apathy
You might want to play with Git instead. SVN is very, very easy to set up and
use:
svnadmin create ~/svn-repo
svn import myproject file:///home/you/svn-repo/myproject
svn co file:///home/you/myproject myproject-workingcopy
_Work in the working copy as you would on any SVN project._
I spawn new branches whenever I start a new project. I've also tunneled it
over SSH, HTTPS, blah blah blah, but it's boring now. Git is probably the
future for big projects IMHO. (Although GOOG gets by with Perforce, which is
basically SVN with some extra hooks)
Version management is a thought habit. Would you walk a tightrope without a
net? Why write challenging code without one, then? Similar to automated
regression testing, it's just another habit that offloads responsibilities
onto the computer so that you can work on more interesting things.
If you haven't built at least a trivial application in *nix, even just
something like a server for Dopewars, give it a shot. Obviously it's rare that
you'd need to do it for a job, since most of the interesting protocols have
good implementations, but you'll have more insight into when the standard
implementation is actually a really bad idea... that is to say, rather more
often than you'd think! It won't take more than an afternoon or two if you've
done as well in all your CS classes as you say. (One thing you might like to
do after that is go back and look at the twisting road the Subversion guys
went down as they implemented their DeltaV protocol -- considering that these
are old Apache developers, it's enlightening to see that they followed plenty
of dead ends, too) For extra value, do it on an embedded system, with its
totally different constraints. (If you have access to something like the
Xilinx rig that we used for the CPU engineering class I took, so much the
better -- FPGLAs can't help but become more popular as vertical markets are
more automated)
There are so many opportunities out there for someone with a good grasp of
both the theoretical and practical aspects... if you really like building
things, you ought not to have any problem finding a job to suit you with your
degree.
~~~
eznet
Thanks apathy, I checked out Git a little while back. I definitely think that
I need to learn more about both Git and SVN. From what little contact I have
had with companies, SVN seems to be the most widely deployed for those on *nix
platforms - that likely has something to do with the ~5yr jump that SVN has
(?) though...
Thanks for the encouragement!
-Matt
~~~
apathy
5 years? If you count from when FSFS became the standard (2005?) it's really
more like 3 years. I think Subversion will probably remain the standard for
your 'average' developer, and Git will make huge inroads into the more
elite/distributed teams, since it's the default repo for the Linux kernel. I
don't really see the point of learning how to use tools that other developers
are unlikely to use -- CVS, SVN (which is almost identical to Perforce), and
git have compelling projects which use them. Most others don't.
If you use SVN in a group, you should also use Trac, btw. It's fucking
amazing. _looks at Trac Hacks_ Holy mother of god, someone went and wrote a
plugin to make Trac play nice with Git and Perforce (AMZN and GOOG use p4).
Well, that's pretty sweet -- no effort required regardless of repo. And
apparently they added a continuous integration dashboard, Bitten
(<http://bitten.edgewall.org/wiki/Documentation/index.html>). I love those
Edgewall guys. Makes me want to go back to workaday development... almost.
------
thinkcomp
I interviewed a bunch of Stanford CS students recently, and was amazed when I
asked them about how much they had worked with databases. The answer I got
back repeatedly was "I've used them in class." Not good enough.
One person, who had worked at Google, used a database there. "What kind of
database was it?" I asked. "I don't know," was the answer, much to my horror.
Perhaps it's just me, but it seems like no matter which language you love
most, or what you're doing, your data will need to be structured, and it will
probably find its way into a database at some point in time. I don't care
which database it is--just learn databases!
Then at least people like me can think about hiring you.
~~~
tjr
I wonder how much this has to do with how databases are taught to students.
While I started programming when I was 12, I didn't really do much with
databases until I took a db class in college. Databases seemed boring to me,
compared to nifty stuff like AI and Lisp.
The class only reinforced that notion. The textbook (and the class) focused
mostly on some kinda funky little projects that didn't strike me as useful or
fun to build. It wasn't until I started experimenting with web applications
that I began to realize the power and intrigue of databases.
Databases truly are cool and powerful. But I don't think they look that way on
the surface.
~~~
jmtulloss
I agree with you. Databases seem boring. I've avoided database classes for
exactly that reason, but there's no way to avoid databases themselves. Many
applications have database requirements. I've started using ORMs a bit to
avoid ugly SQL, but they don't actually simplify things much. They mostly just
take care of some caching, transactions, and portability. You still need to
understand what's happening below to use them effectively.
If you want to learn how to use databases, look into writing a program backed
by SQLite. It's a great little database for desktop applications and it
requires almost no setup to use, which is perfect for when you want to learn
how to use a database but don't want to mess with actually getting one set up.
~~~
wheels
I agree that databases seem boring. I'd been using them for about 10 years
before last year when I had to write significant parts of one. Once I started
getting under the hood I realized how interesting a lot of the database
problems are. Turns out, the geek factor is pretty high. Problems like query
optimization, fast multi-dimensional indexing, full text search and so on give
a nice playground for CS mojo. :-)
Per SQLite: It is probably the simplest SQL database to learn. However, I fear
it might give a skewed perspective on SQL to someone just starting with it.
While it's fine for the simplest of applications, if you start building up
complex queries, its performance is orders of magnitude worse than almost
every other SQL DB, potentially leading one to falsely believe that such
things were to be avoided.
I personally find MySQL to be user-friendly enough for starting off with.
Though, honestly SQL in general is one of those things that I'm glad to know,
but find painfully inelegant.
~~~
jmtulloss
I agree that SQL is painfully inelegant. It's one of those standards you wish
had never been established. Like Windows, only worse.
As for starting with MySQL, it does reflect the actual SQL side better, but
it's another thing to install and have startup whenever you boot your
computer. For just playing around with SQL without committing to anything,
SQLite's a nice option.
------
JFred
1\. Forget coding, study management. Managers get more money.
2\. NEVER put the word 'test' on a resume. Do not mention it in any interview.
If they ask if you tested anything, say no. Lie, if you have to. Say the other
guys on the project tested. The kind of people who want to be coders usually
do not want to be testers. But if you're a tester once, they'll make you do it
for years.
3\. As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. The title on your first job will
stereotype you for your next, limit some opportunities and opening others. The
first two combined will stereotype you even more strongly. And so on.
So be as demanding as you can get away with. Don't just accept what they tell
you, unless you really have to.
4\. Go to grad school instead. You'll end up making more.
5\. A young programmer has to build a rep. One way is by making something
famous and open-source. Another is to put "Google" or "Microsoft" on your
resume as your first job. Or something like it.
6\. Figure out where you want to live. If your career is in finance, the
headquarters is often in New York. Embedded systems work is on the West Coast,
but all over, too.
7\. Defense contractors do a lot of software, mostly embedded. They've been
known to write a compiler for an airplane. So drop your al-Queda membership
and apply to Lockheed. But it's more bureaucratic and "Methodical" in that
world.
8\. There are three places to be employed in software: a) A software company.
b) A hardware company. c) Everyplace else. Software people are first-class
citizens in a software company, second only to the hardware engineers in a
hardware company, and somewhere below that in stock brokers, banks, and shoe
factories.
By hardware company I would include Intel, Cisco, and Sun, for example.
Web companies might be a 4th category, but I don't know those companies as
well. Instead of MBA's or electrical engineers (finance and hardware) you have
graphic designers.
What I'm getting at is that if you will be working with other professionals in
their kind of company, you will need to learn their needs and their business.
In a software company it's a bit of the other way around. At least in terms of
status: who is in charge.
8\. The right answers have to depend on you, otherwise the advice would be the
same for everybody. And we'd all be trying for the same job.
9\. I'm not rich, so why believe me?
~~~
eznet
As for #1, I don't really like power (specifically the responsibility over
others that it brings) and money is secondary to enjoying what I do. This also
relates to #6, which is the beach - so I am thinking I have messed up
altogether, and should have studied beach-bumology instead of CS :)
I have considered, and am still considering #4. I like school and I like
learning and so it seems like a fit... only problem is, school is freaking
expensive, so we will see.
I am also considering #7, as I have some contacts in that world having
supervised a small military contract refuel facility servicing Ft. Rucker Army
Aviation Training Facility for the previous 4 years of my life (I guess it is
suitable at this juncture to mention that I am 27 and that I have worked full
time since I was 18 - I have done school off and on along the ways). I also
had to deal directly with Sikorski Support and Lockheed Martin, as their
operations were in the same town and were related, and so I met people along
the way.
As far as #9 is concerned, I solicited advice; I didn't promise to believe it
;) Seriously though, this is kind of a spitball session for me where I am
hoping to get a considerable amount of BS, hopefully encrusted with slivers of
gold (perhaps from goldscholger?).
Thank you for the tips and the entertaining read - #2 & #3 are things I never
thought about and are things that I will be considering from now on!
-Matt
~~~
maximilian
Goto a cheaper grad. school - a state run one. I'm going to san diego state
and its waaaay cheaper than most schools and great for what i'm doing (applied
math). Professors are almost the same everywhere (some good, some bad) and
grad students are into what they study independent of location. If i was in-
state, i'd pay only $4k/year in tuition, which is an order of magnitude
cheaper than private schools. You might incur a bit of debt while working
towards a masters, but you'll learn a ton along the way and be very practical,
which is what a masters is for anyway - apply all that theoretical knowledge
to a real situation under the guidance of those who've do that all the time.
------
ajross
The really short answer is "how to code".
Forget technologies; forget grades. At best, they will get you in the door for
an interview. They won't make your a productive employee.
If you can produce working, deployable software on your own, then you will
succeed. Not that many people can, honestly. If you aren't sure if you can
hack, then pick a problem and solve it. If at the end of a week you can give
your software to someone else and have them use it successfully, you should be
fine.
Everything else is fluff, and can be learned on the job. If you can hack,
you'll do fine.
~~~
eznet
"'If you can hack, you'll do fine."
Thats what I am hoping for. It can just become overwhelming for a young-buck
(such as myself) when seeing all these frameworks and libraries and trying to
figure out which ones my future employer will want used. In my CS studies, we
have focused on a lot of 'whats under the hood' (aka linked lists, binary
trees, etc,.) and so when I see these frameworks, I cannot help but think
"which one do I use? Can't I just write the algorithm myself?!"
If I am understanding you correctly, if I can do this (know what is going on
under the hood), then the rest of the cards will fall into place (?).
Thanks ajross!
------
dusklight
Beyond technical skills, there are also people skills:
1\. People make bugs, you make bugs. Playing the blame game is not productive,
even if and especially when it really is the other guy's fault. Learning how
to be diplomatic is important.
2\. Big companies like to pretend that we are machines, but we are not. Be
aware that your coworkers have egos, feelings and emotions, and they do not
behave like machines. Machines don't try to hide their bugs instead of fixing
them because they don't want to look incompetent, for example. Machines won't
get hostile and obstructive if you don't like talking about their pet dogs
during lunchtime.
3\. The interests of the company are not always or not ever aligned with your
own self interest. If you do good work but your boss doesn't know about it,
it's like you didn't do it. A good manager will reward you fairly for working
harder. Don't accept pats on the back or "employee of the month" awards for
unpaid overtime. Only accept substantive incentives, like larger bonuses or
faster promotions, etc.
4\. A lot of times there are genuine incentives for an employee to
intentionally write obfuscated code -- it makes it more expensive for the
company to fire her. You just have to deal with it, and recognize that you
should also have some similar kind of leverage with the company.
~~~
eznet
I pride myself on my interpersonal skills - I just think it is easier and more
productive to be friendly (or at least amicable). Hopefully I can carry this
with me into the development arena as you suggest, though I don't think it
will be too much of a stretch :) As for #4, 'sneaky, sneaky!' Thanks for the
tip. Though I don't think I could intentionally obfuscate my work (just seems
dirty), I think that there are other ways of leveraging in a similar manner
and I will definitely be keeping this in mind.
Thanks dusklight!
------
angstrom
First off, feel free to start interviewing now. Most places have a 1-2 month
lag time between initial contact and the day you start the job.
Second, don't feel obligated to take the first job offer you get unless you're
ok with drifting from job to job like some people are. It's better to have
some focus about your career and doing what you enjoy. If they offer and you
honestly don't think it's a good fit keep looking.
~~~
eznet
I have done this on a limited basis, but everyone wants me to start now and
wants to pay me crap. I understand that I will have to start lower because of
my lack of experience, but on the other hand, I didn't go to school (and pay
for school) to start working for $9/hr from some small company. I have had
multiple companies try to hire me on for less than I would make working at
McD's - all because they are going to be 'paying me with experience'.
I think this sentiment is where you second note comes to play: I am not going
to take these jobs :) I guess I will do what I've been doing and just keep my
feelers out until the right thing comes along.
Thanks angstrom,
-Matt
------
wehriam
Matt -
From my experience success as a developer is about your ability to learn, not
a list on a resume. That you wrote this message makes me think you're on the
right track.
Money will come when you're good at something. It's easy to be good at
something if you enjoy it. Moving to a particular technology (only) because
the money is good is generally a bad idea.
~~~
eznet
Thanks wehriam, Of all of the things that I am 'sure of' as a result of my
education, my ability to learn something foreign would have to be it. I
remember my first C class - swearing that there was no way this voodoo magic
could ever make sense and actually be put to work and then by the end of the
class having to reference the examples less and just knowing more.
Thanks for the encouragement,
-Matt
------
eznet
Sorry to everyone who has posted here that I have been unable to respond to.
This thread grew quickly; which is FREAKING awesome - there is a list (on
paper) growing on my desk every couple hours from the nuggets that you all are
providing. I am a bit under the weather at the moment and have not been able
to compose very intelligent responses (its difficult when your head is in the
fog of theraflu and tussin). I have been really nervous about moving to the
next phase (aka education to employment), but this thread has really shown me
what I need to focus on more (a good deal of which I suspected, but now 'know'
because of all of your help) and what I already know that I need to carry with
me. Thankfully, much of what you all have said has let me know that I am aware
of more of the basics than I previously thought. What I do not know, I now
know that I need to know :)
Thank you again, to all of you! This thread is more valuable to me then I
could ever express with a simple 'up' rating :) Your time and words mean a
lot, so again, THANK YOU ALL!
-Matt
------
hooande
Programming isn't rocket science...there are elegant ways to solve problems
and brute force methods, but in the end the only thing that matters is that it
works and the client is happy. There isn't much they will teach you in school
that will really make you that much "better".
The biggest difference between school and work for me was the process and the
environment. Some of the big things I saw: * version control and development
process * rapid bug fixes and changes * managing your own ego * testing your
own code * working in teams, dealing with other people's code
These things are almost impossible to learn on your own. They are all things
that can inherently only be learned in teams. Which I think is the big
difference between school and your career...school is about you, your career
will be about what you can produce with others. You need to find a project,
anything, and get some experience working with a team (even a two person
team). That's my two cents
~~~
eznet
"That's my two cents"
And I thank you greatly for them as I, myself, only have about 1/2 a cent
right now :) I am seeing a lot of reoccuring themes there - notably version
control, egos, teams and testing, and from this I know where I need to go
next.
So, again, thank you for your cents!
-Matt
------
aristus
Learn to write concisely and clearly. (eg, don't use "feel" as a catchall for
"believe", "think", "be", etc. Cut out useless and passive phrases: "Clearly",
"where time and willingness permits".) Writing clearly is necessary for
thinking clearly.
The reason your question has been asked & answered so many times is that it is
too broad. Do you really think the people writing simulators at JPL have
anything in common with a cubicle drone at a bank? Would Java help a games
programmer, or a modeler at ILM? No -- no more than compiler design is
relevant to a cubicle drone.
I suspect you have not yet found anything you love to do. Figure that out
first and the rest becomes easier. I advise you ( _you_ , not everybody) to
take a "money job" at a reasonably tech-oriented company and learn as much as
you can. Do projects on the side, etc.
~~~
eznet
"The reason your question has been asked & answered so many times is that it
is too broad. "
I believe this to be an inherent byproduct of the asker's current phase in
their own personal development. When we ask, we are curious and unsure of
where to go next. I know the question is broad, as too are the answers, but
again, this comes from the fact that we are asking the 'seasoned' members of a
community for insight - insight gained from experience that we simply do not
yet have ourselves. Although I know there is no definitive 'ANSWER' for this
question, I do believe there to be beneficial and constructive input on the
topic that may still be made - hence, why I asked.
As to your suspicions pertaining to my lack of finding a passion in all of
this, I think you may possibly be correct. Don't get me wrong; I love
computers, languages, semantics and technology in general. One of my favorite
pass-times when playing with a new language is to implement some of the
algorithms and concepts from my advanced algorithm design and discrete
mathematics classes - its just fun to me. Despite the entertainment found from
doing exercises such as these, I have yet to find 'that special thing' that
drives me to working until 3 a.m.
I think that (for me) you might be correct; I was discussing this very same
"money job" topic with my wife before reading your response. It just seems
logical, considering my current knowledge (or lack thereof), to find a tech
oriented company to work from, hopefully encounter some mentor-types along the
way and learn what to do from there.
Thanks aristus7,
-Matt
~~~
pchristensen
I've been through a few jobs in the last few years, and I keep looking back at
them thinking "What an idiot I was for doing X" (for many, many values of X).
But then I realized that I hadn't really defined myself, my views on software
and development, business, etc. I was like someone who could run, jump, do
jumping jacks, etc, who went around saying "I want to do sports for a living".
I had basic tools and skills, but no direction. It sounds a little
embarrassing to say, but how else was I supposed to gain direction without
going through different experiences?
If you're not sure what you want to do or what really drives you, don't be
afraid to take a decent looking (but not necessarily dream-) job offer, stay a
year or so, then go to another _different_ type of company. Think of it as a
slow, well compensated data collection process that will lead you to a better
understanding. Sure it sounds lame when put next to the laser-focused
entrepreneurial stories on HN, but so what? Do what's best for you (and your
family - important consideration).
PS If you do that, don't forget to code and learn something _completely_
different in your spare time. That push/pull helps you grow a lot faster and
benefit both parts of your life. Right now I'm .Net by day, Lisp by night. How
much more different can you get?
------
dasmith2
Here's what I did, and it worked out really well for me (I made $68 / hr last
year, 3 years out of undergraduate). I got a job that paid a miserly $30,000 /
yr at first, but it was a small company and I got tons of experience. I was in
way over my head at first as you can probably guess from reading everybody
else's posts. But I worked and learned hard, and after that it was a piece of
cake.
If you are like me, I only wrote a couple of thousand of lines of code in
college. I'm up to somewhere around 150,000 now, and I feel proportionally
more confident and capable. I just scored an internship at Google actually.
Then my only problem was that I got bored, so I'm spending all that money on a
masters degree, which I am thoroughly enjoying.
------
gcheong
Worry aboout having fun now and the money later. If you worry about the money
now, you might end up chasing jobs with high pay and little future then you
might get used to the money and the fun jobs will look too risky. But if
you're having fun, learning new things the money will be there eventually
because you'll be making yourself more and more valuable.
Here is a good post that I think should give you some specific answers to your
questions: [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-
goog...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.htm)
------
dshah
You should know that the world is starting to slowly figure out that
programming is not like a manufacturing plant at that finding the cheapest
possible labor to do it is sub-optimal.
As such, you should (hopefully) have better opportunities as a developer now
than was the case a few years ago.
I'd recommend finding a team that you'd be really happy working with and can
learn from. The standard deviation on compensation is not that high in your
early career -- but that on fun and learning is. Pick the right group to work
with, it makes all the difference.
------
jdvolz
Long story short:
Version Control (Subversion, Git) Test driven development / Continuous
Integration Waterfall vs. Agile Practice talking to customers about what they
want (not sure how you do this without actually having customers) Databases
(MySQL, SQL Server are decent starts and commonly used) Apache / IIS
(depending on your platform) Pick a scripting language and learn it well
enough to automate things that are annoying. I like Ruby, but Python and
others are reasonable alternatives.
------
crystalarchives
I'd recommend getting familiar with Windows, Mac, and UNIX/Linux environments.
A lot more opportunities open up to you when you're competent in each of the
Big Three operating systems; you don't have to be a guru, just be experienced
enough to work comfortably in any of them.
It also gives you a chance to personally evaluate their strengths and
weaknesses and to see the design tradeoffs.
------
goofygrin
I'd say the old standby of "it depends."
There are a couple things that my college degree never taught me:
\- source control. If you're going to be in the MSFT stack, learn how to use
VSS. If you'll be in the LAMP stack, then learn svn. You don't have to know
how to administer them, just how to use them on a day to day basis.
\- databases. Learn to write queries (select, update, insert, join, create,
alter, etc.). Learn SQL Server and mysql and oracle syntax (probably not in an
out, but enough to know that there is a difference).
\- use cases and UML. Large companies and consultant shops will tend to
produce a lot of documents. If you know some UML and are able to make use case
documents, then you'll be ahead of the game.
\- build and deployment. Learn (n)ant, build, make, shell script, whatever. Be
able to build a piece of software and deploy it. It amazes me how many pieces
of software have no automated build or deploy scripts.
The question is how do you get this knowledge. It's too late now, but you
should have tried to either get an internship or a job while you were in
school. Now, I would pick something that you think would make a good project
and actually build it. Not just start hacking, but think about the problem and
really build it. If you are going to get a corporate or consulting job, this
is what you'll have to do, so get used to it :)
Pick something you're reasonably knowledgeable about and that you think that
you'd want to use or someone else would.
Here's a couple good ideas: \- student/employee/company directory application
(I've written at least 3 employee directory apps for clients. If you could
write a good one, this would be a definite way in to some places). \-
movie/bar/store/music/concert review webapp \- twitter clone \- facebook clone
\- cms tool (think lightweight cms) \- carpool creation site
All of these can be shelled out in a couple days with RoR/Django and would
give you a HUGE confidence boost and would be a great addition to a portfolio.
Of course, using a framework with obscure the sql details so maybe you'll want
to do it in ASP.NET with C# (VB.NET is _not_ what you want to know if you want
to be "in demand") and then do it in RoR/Django to get a feel for one vs. the
other. In fact, you could make a business out of them (if they didn't suck too
bad!).
I would use them as a learning tool, writing some rudimentary use cases for
what you want the app to do, diagramming a bit of your preliminary design (and
it will change, it always does), building a db schema, running queries,
writing code and integrating with a source control system. Treat it like a job
too and dedicate at least 3-4 hours a day 5 days a week to it.
I think the biggest change for full time students that don't work to handle is
going from 12-15 hours a week in school to 40+ hours a week at a job. At
school you have 5 times more free time than you do at a job.
~~~
Psyonic
I may be unusual, but I have more free time in the summer, while working full-
time programming, then I do during the school year. But maybe that is because
I'm taking 17 credit hours (5 CS classes, all upper division) at once. I
probably put in 60-80 hours a week, no exaggeration.
~~~
goofygrin
I'd say that you're doing the wrong thing.
I went to school full time (min 12 hrs) and worked full time (min 40 hrs,
sometimes 2 jobs) the entire time I was in college (hey graduated with only
$7k in debt though!). There is no way I'd have been able to, let alone wanted
to put in 60-80 hours for course work (still graduated cum laude, 3.5+ gpa).
Either you're in courses that you shouldn't be or you're doing too much "extra
work."
JMNSHO though...
~~~
Psyonic
You may be right. This is the last semester of my Senior year and I'm trying
to finish my undergrad up so I can start on my Master's next year. My Junior
and Sophomore years weren't as bad school wise, but I was working part-time
during both of them, so all in all I was probably still busy about 60-80 hours
a week. I guess my point is that I've gotten used to being really busy, and
working only 40-50 hours a week won't be a problem. Sounds like you're used to
being busy as well, working full-time all the way through school.
------
noodle
i think the biggest difference for me was this:
the "best" solution isn't always the right solution.
------
wallflower
Congratulations on graduating. There is a lot of excellent advice on
developing into a better programmer here.
Programming can be challenging and financially rewarding. And it can give you
the money to do the things you really like to do (which is up to you). Expect
burnout. It happens to most everyone.
If you are nervous interviewing, there is a fundamental behavioral-based
interviewing technique that you should know. A professor's husband told me the
secret (so many people do not know the secret to interviewing well
[programming trivia/programming whiteboard stress tests aside]). Google "STAR"
+ interviewing. Or I can do a short essay. Take interviews to practice - even
if you're not necessarily attracted to the particular company. Actual practice
(even mock) desensitizes you so you can shine better. After your interview,
mail a typed, hand-signed letter to your main contact - in it thank them and
_this is key_ tell them you will followup at such-and-such a date and time
(imagine which candidate will stick out - the one who took the time or the one
who could care less to put effort in _formally_ conveying interest in landing
the position). CollegeGrad.com is an excellent resource (and a has a book
worth buying - the advice landed me my first job) because someone who was a
hiring manager opened-the-kimono on what he expects (from cover letter to
screening interviews to site visits to even salary negotiations).
Before you start your job, consider taking some time off. To pause before you
start your career. Ideally, travel. Or do something you like. Once you start
working, your longest vacation will probably be two weeks long. The hardest
adjustment is from a collegiate environment to a professional one. With few
exceptions, all of us you meet on your first day of work have much more work
experience. Your "first day" may feel like its a big deal but to us grizzled
workers - it's not. Therefore humility is important. Don't show off your
knowledge. Ask questions about what people are doing. The more you talk, the
more they'll realize what you don't know. But if you don't talk a lot and ask
smart questions, they will assume you are smart. On the flip side, take the
initiative if there is something that interests (or more likely bothers you
about the way something is being done) - we get sometimes blind-eyed to the
problematic parts of a project - fresh perspectives help. Just be diplomatic.
Mentoring. Find a mentor. Don't force it - you have to become friends first.
Ideally someone who is 3-5 years older and ahead of you and at a position
where you want to be in three years.
Where do you want to be in 1/5/10 years? I started out with a group of college
grads who unlike me got out of their cube and took on initiative and have
easily jumped 2 or even 3 levels (e.g. managing 60-70 people). I'm still a
developer - I never really was interested in management but I need to
emphasize that you need to be proactive if you want to move into management.
On a side note, once you leave college you may fall out touch rapidly with
your friends, especially if geography is involved. Facebook helps but if you
truly want to keep in touch with your friends - you should take the initiative
- organize reunions (e.g. annual trips to New Orleans Jazz Fest). And
(Facebook helps again), have a system to remember their birthdays (and call
them).
~~~
eznet
I think that it has been hardest for me to find a mentor or even people in
similar situations as a result of my education being primarily online for the
last year - a decision I really regret making now. My wife took an accounting
job in a different city and Troy University offers the CS degree online
(primarily for the military) and so I have been completing my senior year on
the computer. This has made it difficult to meet people who are doing what I
am doing and to share our experiences about our journeys - thats why I turn to
kind people such as yourself ;)
I have joined some computing and programming groups here, but it seems like
most of them work together and the group is just an excuse to eat and catch up
on people's families and such. If I mention group coding or similar
activities, generally, the response is 'we should' and then no one can or
does... I feel like this is what I am missing the most - just being able to
lean over to my neighbor and asking 'hey man, how do you think you would do
this?' or 'How did you get that to work like that?' The personal touch, you
know?
Thanks for the tips wallflower!
-Matt
------
Boydski
Hey Matt,
Here are a few of my own humble suggestions for you. I've been developing for
23 years and have been in OOP on the Microsoft platform of tools for 10 years:
1) Most of the bulleted items below are great. Dusklight has some VERY
important things to say, as being a developer is surely NOT all about slinging
code.
2) Nearly everything JFred said below is great advice. However, I very humbly
do not agree on his #1 recommendation. If you are a programmer, then be one.
If you are a manager, then be one. If you try to be what you're not, then
you'd be happier stocking shelves at China-Mart at night. Concerning the upper
tier of income for developers, they make more than the managers, have way less
stress, easier schedules and WAY more fun. Consequently, every single
developer I've ever known that has climbed into management has loathed it. I
personally know a CTO who hated his job and busted himself back down to
programming. Same for a former corporate department director...went back to
programming (each making around the same money, BTW).
3) Now that you're graduating, your education is only now starting. Put
www.bookpool.com in the top 5 of your bookmarks...buy everything from them
(unless someone can give you a better, cheaper alternative).
4) Don't think on this one, just do as I say: Buy every single Head First book
you can, starting with the ones you know you'll be using right away:
"<http://www.bookpool.com/ss?qs=head+first>" Buy the "Software Development"
and "Object Oriented Analysis & Design" books immediately. These are not quite
as daunting as some of the other books out there that practically speak to us
in machine language.
5) If you end up going down the Microsoft path of development, then focus on
C#, not VB.Net. This is an extremely religious subject, so please don't allow
me to explain. I have an entire word document I created as to why. If you do
indeed go down this route, then buy the following Wrox Box as soon as you're
able: <http://www.bookpool.com/sm/0470048409>
6) Subscribe to every coding newsletter you can related to your chosen
technical focus and create a rule in your email client to funnel them into a
folder. Read them.
7) In my humble opinion, you're like a hammer without a handle if you can
program but don't know SQL and a DBMS or two. You may already know this, but
Microsoft's DBMS is SQL Server.
8) If you do go the Microsoft path, you can get versions of Visual Studio and
SQL Server Express for free. Also, since you're a student, they've also
recently come out with plans for you. Download what you can while you can
before you leave school!
9) Go out to various auction type development sites to bid for jobs that'll
allow you to not only practice and hone your skills, but will also give you a
small stipends and give you another notch in your resume. Example:
www.rentacoder.com
10) Relax. You're going to do great!
Boyd
~~~
eznet
Thanks Boyd, I have checked out the design patterns head first book and it was
incredibly intuitive and even entertaining to read. I have obtained a couple
more since, I just have yet to wade through them as of yet... I am going to
stop procrastinating on it and start reading them - tomorrow ;) I have
recently come to realize the importance of knowing a database (and management)
system or two. I kinda always knew that would be something I would need to get
a firm grasp on - something confirmed from your and other's words on this
thread. I feel that to be at the top of my list. I have read theory, best
practices and paradigms for four years now. I think I have come to a crossroad
where the application of all this theory and mess is the next move; a move
where databases will be important.
Thanks for the words of encouragement, Boyd.
-Matt
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Mysterious Case of Exploding Teeth - Hooke
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160301-the-gruesome-and-mysterious-case-of-exploding-teeth
======
dsmithatx
Argh this seemed so interesting until I read it and realized there is no
conclusion. I believe the explosions were real and probably chemical in
nature. However, these new click bait articles are making reading news and
articles very painful. Either HN needs an update or we need a new place to get
our news without all this blather.
~~~
ZenPsycho
I was expecting this to be the case where they discovered that all the victims
worked at the same match factory, and the dental explosions were being caused
by sulphur poisoning.
------
tcopeland
That sounds a little like Mark Eberhart's "Why Things Break", where he talks
about a company made a contact lens product out of materials similar to
Corelle. One product was almost ready to be put on the market when they
realized that there was the potential for pitting or scratches to result in
the lens shattering explosively. Needless to say it didn't make it onto the
shelves.
I recommend that book; lots of interesting anecdotes and some good
explanations of the underlying materials.
------
ergothus
Great, because my occasional nightmares about losing my teeth weren't scary
enough, now I learn they might explode...
------
mchahn
> there has been no documented case of exploding teeth since the 1920s ...
... which makes be believe this is baloney.
------
philovivero
tl;dr: A bunch of people had teeth that hurt. There are a lot of theories
about why, none of which fit the facts. It remains a mystery, but the most
likely explanation is people were exaggerating the pain and the event where
the pain ceased.
~~~
rosser
I don't see any support in The Fine Article for exaggeration being "the most
likely explanation". It's _an_ explanation, sure. In assessing its likelihood,
you went from tl;dr-ing to editorializing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: HN Sakura – see quick rising/falling HN posts before they're gone - dosy
https://hnsakura.xyz/
======
dosy
The Sakura season is short-lived.
So too are some posts on HN.
The rise sharply (blossom), only to fall even faster
Off the rankings forever.
This re-ranks HN by how fast the posts are moving through the HN rankings. A
chance to see the "fringe" posts that rise quickly and then are swallowed up.
A sort of reverse HN. A way to catch the HN Sakuras before they are gone
forever.
Hope you enjoy.
~~~
kseistrup
That's a nice idea.
Does the UI auto-refresh, or do I have to reload?
~~~
dosy
You must reload. In my experience the Sakura rankings do not change very
often, maybe once every couple minutes. I guess I could add a meta refresh on
the frame but I guess I also don’t want to overload my server without user
directed demand. Hmm, trade off. I think I will not auto reload for now.
Thanks for idea tho.
~~~
kseistrup
That's fine. Thanks.
------
O_H_E
Oh, nice
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A 2017 Nobel laureate says he left science because he ran out of money - Fede_V
https://qz.com/1095294/2017-nobel-laureate-jeffrey-hall-left-science-because-he-ran-out-of-funding/
======
etiam
Reminds me of a rather heart-breaking interview with a man who should have
been a laureate.
(I wish I had saved this at the time, but now I'm unable to give a link to the
video material)
The Chemistry prize in 2008 was awarded for fluorescent proteins, which can be
used to label interesting biological structures and functions. One of the
laureates' guests at the ceremony was a former colleague, whom they were
careful to point out had been absolutely critical for the discovery, implying
that he should have been sharing the prize.
A TV reporter caught this colleague for interview for a while during the
festivities after the main banquet dinner, and found, in addition to
congratulations to his friends and background on his contribution, a story of
extreme academic pressure and not getting enough money to sustain himself and
the research. To make ends meet, he left science and started driving long haul
bus transports, and that's how he had earned his living ever since. He looked
sad about it, but also resigned - claimed the pay is better and it's a lot
less stressful. You got to pay the bills and at least it's some financial
security. I found it a very moving story, and the reported seemed shaken at
that point too.
"But you were doing Nobel Prize quality research!"
"Well. That makes me a very overqualified bus driver, doesn't it."
~~~
DanielRibeiro
That's a great story! I found a book describing the story of Douglas Prasher
in more detail:
[https://books.google.com/books?id=L2zDBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA18&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=L2zDBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=Nobel+Prize+%22fluorescent+proteins%22+%22overqualified%22+%22bus+driver%22&source=bl&ots=CCaThA-
SKx&sig=b6u08w4aji0tDtS7Ntfr9osGlZI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjN7umrk97WAhXO0J8KHbLpDsIQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=Nobel%20Prize%20%22fluorescent%20proteins%22%20%22overqualified%22%20%22bus%20driver%22&f=false)
This is also told on his wikipedia page:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Prasher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Prasher)
On the bright side, it seems he returned to Scientific Research: _In June
2010, Prasher was finally able to return to science, working for Streamline
Automation in Huntsville until December 2011, and then from 2012 to 2015 in
Tsien 's lab at the University of California in San Diego_
~~~
etiam
Thank you kindly. It's good to know his name again, and it's something of a
relief to see that things seem to have shaped up for him since then.
I wonder how he's doing after the passing of Roger Tsien.
------
mcguire
" _He also said that these stars [that “have not really earned their status”]
have boasted to him that they almost never send their articles to “anywhere
but Nature, Cell, or Science“—among the three most prestigious science
journals. “And they are nearly always published in one of those
magazines—where, when you see something you know about, you realize that it’s
not always so great,” he continued._ "
I subscribed to _Science_ for a while (the only benefit I can see of AAAS
membership), and I was surprised by the work published there. I'm a computer
jockey, and not into the biology that _Science_ mostly publishes, but I had
expected it to be major, ground-breaking papers. Instead, it seemed like the
same kind of minimum publishable unit that goes on everywhere.
~~~
evolve2017
I think it’s unfair to discounts papers in a foreign field to one’s own as
‘minimum publishable unit’ - often the novelty and importance of a finding
requires some background, which the new, longer narrative abstracts in Science
are trying to provide.
~~~
mcguire
True, I'm out on a limb here.
But the "news" part of _Science_ is very good, and has insightful coverage of
science activities. In comparison with _the rest of the magazine,_ the
published research in _Science_ was...meh.
------
jaclaz
As a side note, there is another effect that we have to consider.
If these brilliant scientists/professors are not (adequately) financed for
their research, inevitably a large part of their time will be dedicated in
looking for funds, detracting it from the time dedicated to the research
itself.
So, not only some research is not possible (or gives scarce results) because
of the lack of funds, but the time spent in looking for other funds will
reduce the research results in a perverse spiral.
In a perfect world research institutions should be able to make their lead
researchers "worry free" (about the funding and the other bureaucracy
matters), as this condition is the one where creativity and productivity is at
the top level.
Since funds are obviously limited, maybe the issue is about starting too many
researches (underfunding each of them) as opposed to choose a limited number
of research projects and fully fund them.
But if you use this approach, the issue becomes the war for being selected,
the possible corruption (or simply bad judgement) of the selecting commission,
etc.
I guess noone has a proper solution to the issue.
~~~
jules
If you increase the funding then the supply of scientists will simply grow
until funding as again as competitive as it is today. The first order problem
is that the funding ends up with mediocre scientists rather than brilliant
scientists.
~~~
thenomad
This argument seems like it needs some evidence behind it.
Where's the infinite supply of scientists coming from?
~~~
Fomite
It’s not infinite, but the boom of funding during the Clinton-era fostered a
large increase in faculty positions, especially soft money positions.
------
apsec112
The current academic system is rigged to produce a continual "shortage" of
funding and jobs, no matter what the nominal budget is. If an average lab has
3 professors and 15 grad students, and the average professor stays for 40
years while the average grad student stays for 4, then in equilibrium only 2%
of grad students can become professors.
~~~
kaosjester
Don't forget the part where those graduate students do some 80% of the work
and make <20% of the income of their their supervisor (and, in many cases,
<10% or none at all in several), and the university hosting the lab absorbs
some 50% of all grants "off the top." A half-million dollar grant pays a
single graduate student less than 20k/year for maybe 5 years, which, in the
context of other companies that get these grants, is _absurd_. Independent
research firms working from the same grants pay their employees competitive
wages and _still_ accomplish research. If these companies could issue Ph.D.s,
academia would shrivel and die: imagine working at a company for 4 years,
getting a salary 3-4x what a graduate school would offer, doing real work in a
professional setting, doing enough research to write a dissertation, and
receiving a degree. The entire incentive to attend a university would melt
away.
~~~
jostmey
I don't think many people (even graduate students and postdocs) realize how
much money universities suck in with grants. For every RO1 a professor gets,
the university gets to add a substantial (typically greater than 50%) indirect
costs. The PIs don't care because their budget is the same, but what it means
is that there are fewer grants being handed out. Then the PIs somtimes pay for
the "training" that graduate students and postdocs get using their own funds.
For a top university, this can be 50K/year.
~~~
greeneggs
That's not exactly how it works. If an agency wants to give a $1 million
grant, for example, and the PI's university has a 60% overhead rate, then the
PI will draw up a $625,000 budget (as 625*1.6=1000). So the overhead
definitely matters to the PI---except there is little the PI can do about it
after joining a university. Most big universities have similarly high indirect
cost rates, which they steadily increase over time.
UC Berkeley (2016): 57%
MIT (2018): 59%
Harvard (2018): 59%
Stanford (2018): 57%
This story, from 2013, gives some of the context and history, as well as
averages for universities and other research insitutions (which can have much
higher overheads):
[http://www.nature.com/news/indirect-costs-keeping-the-
lights...](http://www.nature.com/news/indirect-costs-keeping-the-lights-
on-1.16376)
~~~
killjoywashere
And all that overhead money is going to 3 things: increasing healthcare costs
for the burgeoning retiree population of staff, increasing the number of
administrators subservient to the king (I mean, provost), and new
construction. The political class sees these additional jobs from the last two
as the core justificatiin for the government increasing student loans for
students and overhead for grants. They don't comprehend the science or frankly
give a shit about it. Maybe when they get cancer they'll have a vague sense of
interest in their organ system of choice, but that's about it.
------
santaclaus
This guy keeps it real as fuck. Love that he is rocking an Idiocracy hat
during an interview.
~~~
nether
He would not be a culture fit at any biotech startup, that's for sure. I love
how at the end of the video, the Nobel laureate in medicine takes a long drag
from a cigarette.
~~~
flachsechs
a lot of doctors and especially surgeons are closet smokers.
bad habits picked up during residency and ER/on-call work die hard.
~~~
sndean
> bad habits picked up during residency and ER/on-call work die hard.
I initially found it surprising how many residency program directors tell
interviewees that their programs don't allow illicit drug use. But yeah,
extreme stress can lead to some bad habits, and it's apparently common enough
to feel the need to remind candidates.
~~~
cperciva
When I arrived at Oxford University, the first thing they told us at the
international student orientation session was "don't try to bribe the police
officers".
Things like this don't have to be very common to be worth pointing out.
~~~
praneshp
Were there many folks from developing countries in the orientation? In my
orientation (at an American university), there was a huge emphasis on "you
might be used to plagiarism back home, but please take it seriously".
~~~
cperciva
Some students from developing countries, yes. And I'm sure that admonition was
largely aimed at them. IIRC most of the room looked European.
_you might be used to plagiarism back home, but please take it seriously_
Yeah, this is a problem my university runs into too -- international students
are around 20% of the undergraduate population but consistently around 50% of
the cases of academic dishonesty. :-(
------
j7ake
To add to these anecdotes, Ron Konopka (notably discovered the Period gene,
which controls the period of circadian rhythms in Drosophila) was denied
tenure and subsequently exited science.
Read more on his wiki:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Konopka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Konopka)
He died in 2015, about 2 years before Hall, Rosbash, Young won the nobel prize
for cloning the Period gene.
------
throw2016
Some kind of academic independence like a free press is essential for a free
society. Universities are often venues for dissent and perpetuation of ideas
as they provide the context and space for contemplation, research and
developing ideas.
This role has heavily and quite consciously diminished since the 70s. We have
already learnt a free press often does not function as we would imagine easily
co-opted into furthering various agendas and established interests.
With academia too engrossed in getting funding and a free press not really
'free' with their own funding constraints who plays the role of a watch guard
and informed comment. If everyone is too busy trying just to survive a society
in many ways ceases to be dynamic and loses its self awareness reduced to mere
trading and consumption.
------
Razengan
How come we have no international organization that does research for
research's sake, and is jointly funded by multiple countries and private
donations?
Or is there one and I'm just not aware of it?
~~~
OliverJones
Dr. Hall's short autobiography (the article linked here) shows one downside of
research-only orgs: the superstar effect - the celebrity principal
investigator effect. A prestigious research-only org can fall under the sway
of a single ego, or a few egos. When that happens it can drive away real
inquiry.
Readers of HN are generally accustomed to a winner-take-all approach to life.
That's also known as an inverse-power-law approach or a network-effect
approach. It's what makes cities and social networks get big.
Science policy well done struggles to counter this. It's smart to keep science
real by spreading the financing and the expertise around.
That being said, there are plenty of research orgs. The late lamented Bell
Telephone Laboratories, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Max-Planck
Institutes are just a few.
------
BrandoElFollito
I left academia 20 years ago after completing my PhD (in physics).
Getting the PhD was an awesome experience : intellectual effort, nice peers,
teaching was great and the parties in the campus were memorable. One of the
greatest periods in my life.
By the end I started to feel two things which drove me away : the begging for
money and the feudalism.
I was payed peanuts (which was ok) and was not willing to spend a big part of
my time looking after funding. I was a physicist, not a negotiator or
economist.
Then came the medieval feudalism where the mere fact that you had dr, or prof
or whatever was supposed to make others kneel in front of you. I did not
kneel, told a few professors (after they provoqued me for a long time) that
their contribution to the school was useless (no science, no teaching, no
anything, just sitting idle on their tenure) and inserted of telling me what I
did not know (that they were super heroes of finding, or whatever), they told
me that this is not a way to address a professor. I had a laugh and said good
bye.
I have a great job in industry, look at these years in awe but would not come
back. At least until something changes towards meritocracy.
------
SubiculumCode
And this funding model causes a lot of research money to actually be
wasted...because conducting research to followup bad research is not
efficient.
------
Nessuss
I'm shocked there has been no mention of The Economic Laws of Scientific
Research. Terence Kealey makes a compelling argument that government funding
more than crowds out private funding for Science.
I.e., we are worse off in terms of absolute contributions to Science because
'everyone' expects government to fund it - especially basic research _surely_
has no profit motive so only public funding can possibly work. Completely
wrong historically.
------
matt_wulfeck
The title seems disingenuous. He didn't leave science because of a lack of
funding, but because academic dysfunction caused the massive amount of funding
to go to those who don't deserve it:
> _In a lengthy 2008 interview with the journal Current Biology, he brought up
> some serious issues with how research funding is allocated and how biases
> creep into scientific publications. He complained that some of the “stars”
> in science “have not really earned their status” yet they continued to
> receive massive amounts of funding._
What should we do then, pile heaps of more money into academia? Sure, but also
address the obvious dysfunction in a meaningful way, or else it's wasted.
~~~
ryandrake
Hate to tell him, but welcome to the real world. This is not a problem
specific to academia!
Stars not having really earned their status? This is true in all institutions,
businesses, governments, schools, home owners associations, book clubs, sewing
circles, etc. Any group of people where "resources" are allocated by a human,
there will be people who earn their status and there will be people who
instead focus on influencing the allocators. Strange to have to tell grown-ups
this.
~~~
jknoepfler
I don't think Hall "needs to be told" anything.
The people who lost out here aren't Hall and the academics who can't get
funding. Hall is doing fine in the private sector. The people who lose in this
situation are the public, who no longer own the research output, and who no
longer benefit from the long-term gains made by primary research.
We should create, for ourselves, a sustainable research economy. We've failed
to do that. Are you suggesting it's impossible because you think "reality
isn't fair" or "people suck"? I don't think the latter entails the former.
~~~
pdfernhout
From the conclusion of this 1994 paper:
[https://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html](https://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html)
"Let me finish by summarizing what I've been trying to tell you. We stand at
an historic juncture in the history of science. The long era of exponential
expansion ended decades ago, but we have not yet reconciled ourselves to that
fact. The present social structure of science, by which I mean institutions,
education, funding, publications and so on all evolved during the period of
exponential expansion, before The Big Crunch. They are not suited to the
unknown future we face. Today's scientific leaders, in the universities,
government, industry and the scientific societies are mostly people who came
of age during the golden era, 1950 - 1970. I am myself part of that
generation. We think those were normal times and expect them to return. But we
are wrong. Nothing like it will ever happen again. It is by no means certain
that science will even survive, much less flourish, in the difficult times we
face. Before it can survive, those of us who have gained so much from the era
of scientific elites and scientific illiterates must learn to face reality,
and admit that those days are gone forever. I think we have our work cut out
for us."
------
galfarragem
_' Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at
it.'_ \-- Albert Einstein
------
hudibras
That last paragraph is brutal.
------
dang
Url changed from [https://qz.com/1095294/2017-nobel-laureate-jeffrey-hall-
left...](https://qz.com/1095294/2017-nobel-laureate-jeffrey-hall-left-science-
because-he-ran-out-of-funding/), which points to this.
~~~
tdhoot
With respect, "points to this" is a little misleading. The original qz article
had an interesting video (with reaction of winning the Nobel prize) of the
laurete which the cell.com interview misses.
~~~
dang
I missed the video, and it was sort of a borderline call to begin with since
the older article lacks the current context. So maybe I would have left it had
I seen that. On the other hand, IIRC what they did with the text was flat-out
blogspam, i.e. cribbed completely from the other source, and it kinda galls me
to reward that.
------
ggm
The prize went to Roshbash. I knew a Rasbash at university. Doubtless
different people, but is this name a shared root in some distant migration?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Are 3rd party browsers banned by Apple App Store Guidelines? - applenerdfan
The guidelines say<p>Apple's current say<p>> ### 4.7 HTML5 Games, Bots, etc.
>
> Apps may contain or run code that is not embedded in the binary (e.g. HTML5-based games, bots, etc.), as long as code distribution isn’t the main purpose of the app, the code is not offered in a store or store-like interface, and provided that the software (1) is free or purchased using in-app purchase; (2) only uses capabilities available in a standard WebKit view (e.g. it must open and run natively in Safari without modifications or additional software); your app must use WebKit and JavaScript Core to run third-party software and should not attempt to extend or expose native platform APIs to third-party software; (3) is offered by developers that have joined the Apple Developer Program and signed the Apple Developer Program License Agreement; (4) does not provide access to real money gaming, lotteries, or charitable donations; (5) adheres to the terms of these App Review Guidelines (e.g. does not include objectionable content); and (6) does not offer digital goods or services for sale. Upon request, you must provide an index of software and metadata available in your app. It must include Apple Developer Program Team IDs for the providers of the software along with a URL which App Review can use to confirm that the software complies with the requirements above.<p>That sounds like all 3rd party browsers are banned. Breaking it down<p>> Apps may contain or run code that is not embedded in the binary<p>> ... provided that the software ...<p>> (3) is offered by developers that have joined the Apple Developer Program and signed the Apple Developer Program License Agreement<p>Which means downloading random webpages that run software from users and sites that are not in Apple's Developer Programs is against that rules.<p>That would mean all 3rd party browsers are banned. What am I missing?<p>https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#third-party-software
======
drannex
Sadly you are required to use their browser rendering engine. This has been
their stance since the start, horrible for developers, great for their
dominance.
~~~
applenerdfan
you're missing the point.
According to the rules above you're not allow to use their browser engine to
build a browser. Every piece of software that run in your WebView has to be
supplied by Apple licensed developers. So a browser would be banned because
the websites visited are not by apple licensed developers.
------
colejohnson66
I’m not an iOS developer, but the way Firefox and Chrome get around it is by
using Safari internally. In addition, JITed code is not allowed, but
interpreted is.
~~~
applenerdfan
Please read the rules above.
It doesn't matter that Firefox and Chrome use Safari internally. The rules
above say all code run in that internal Safari must be written by Apple
licensed developers.
~~~
Tomte
No, they don't. They say "the software" must be from licensed developers. Not
the code itself. All those numbered sentences have "the software" as the
subject.
------
detaro
By that logic, no app could show a website anywhere. Clearly, Apple doesn't
consider websites to be "code" in the sense of that section.
------
tinus_hn
What is your point? Apple is not bound by these guidelines, they can approve
whatever they want. There’s no use in trying to find gotchas.
------
floatingatoll
What are you considering building?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Waiting 100+ Years for Version 2.0 - grellas
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110519/17104214346/waiting-100-years-version-20.shtml
======
grellas
Copyright terms in the U.S. did not always run into the 100+ years category.
Here is a rough summary of how the terms have evolved under U.S. law (the
details of which are nicely summarized here:
[http://ipwatchdog.com/2011/05/27/copyrights-last-for-a-
limit...](http://ipwatchdog.com/2011/05/27/copyrights-last-for-a-limited-time-
at-least-in-theory/id=17391/)):
1790: maps, charts, and books - 14-year term
1831: 28-year term with option to renew for another 14 years (musical
compositions, prints, dramatic compositions, photographs, works of art and
music added to list of protected works in 1800s)
1909 (a major act): 28-year term from date of publication, renewable for
another 28 years (applied to "published" works only, with state laws governing
unpublished works) (motion pictures added to list of protectible works)
1976 (another major act): newly published works (life of author plus 50
years); works copyrighted before 1978 (term increased from 28 to 47 years, for
75 years total with renewal) (applies to all works, whether or not published,
once in a fixed medium of expression; state laws preempted and no longer
valid; computer programs also protected by the 1980s)
1998 (Copyright Term Extension - "Sonny Bono Act"): works created after 1978
(life of author plus 70 years, with joint works tied to life of longest living
author, and with works-for-hire, i.e., corporate authorship, getting the
shorter of a 120-year term from date of creation or a 95-year term from date
of publication); works created before 1978 (total term increased from 75 to 95
years)
The rough summary above is just that and many nuances exist. If this all makes
your head spin, there is a nifty "public domain calculator" to assist you,
found here: <http://www.publicdomainsherpa.com/calculator.html>
The trend is pretty obvious: wildly long terms for copyright are in fact a
relatively recent phenomenon, as are legislative efforts to go back to early
works and give them _ex post facto_ term extensions. It didn't always used to
be this way. The focus seems to have moved away from protecting primarily an
author's rights to a creative work during his lifetime to protecting a
"franchise," often corporate, that lasts well beyond the lives of those around
when a work is created. These are policy decisions, of course, albeit (and
sadly) much influenced by lobbying today.
~~~
swombat
I thought this was worth putting into a chart. Assuming an average author life
of 75 years, this is what the extension of maximum copyright terms looks like:
<https://skitch.com/swombat/fbhmf/maximum-copyright-terms-us>
Basically, it's well approximated as an exponential curve, or maybe a logistic
curve (aka S-curve). Unless there's a serious change in the accepted
perspective of copyrights, it's not at all unreasonable to assume that within
our lifetimes, copyrights may be extended to last effectively forever.
Tragic.
~~~
sehugg
Mary Bono: "Actually, Sonny wanted the term of copyright protection to last
forever. I am informed by staff that such a change would violate the
Constitution. ... As you know, there is also [then-MPAA president] Jack
Valenti's proposal for term to last forever less one day. Perhaps the
Committee may look at that next Congress."
------
replicatorblog
I understand the argument about reforming patents in an accelerated age, but
how exactly do copyrights stifle creativity?
How would the public benefit if all of a sudden Mickey Mouse was in the public
domain? I can see a bunch of toy companies salivating, but how will it improve
the public good?
How has Mark Twain's work been remixed or creatively remained since it entered
the public domain?
Would publishers not have released "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" if "The
Scarlett Letter" was still protected?
Again, patent reform makes some sense since increased access to core tech has
proven to spark innovation in unforseen places, but I can't think of many
examples where copyrighted material entered the public domain to the benefit
of us all.
Also, copyright law seems to be pretty flexible with fair use provisions,
limitations on what can be copyrighted (e.g. no recipes), etc.
As a case in point consider Avatar. It was widely mocked as being "Dances with
Wolves with Aliens" and it is the highest grossing movie ever. How is that
possible when the IP world is as muddled as the author suggests?
~~~
iwwr
_I can see a bunch of toy companies salivating, but how will it improve the
public good?_
Unfortunately, IP companies are devising ever draconian laws that impact
liberties, legal due process and privacy. IP companies have made themselves
into one of the great enemy of civil liberties; if that is the logical
consequence of having to enforce IP, perhaps the whole system has to be
scrapped.
Still, framing everything in the context of 'public good' is a slippery slope.
Some things are right or wrong without utilitarian calculus.
P.S. Mickey Mouse is a Disney trademark, which makes it theirs in perpetuity.
Arguably, trademarks are the weakest and least intrusive category of IP.
~~~
derleth
> Arguably, trademarks are the weakest and least intrusive category of IP.
They aren't really IP; they're consumer protection. Trademarks are meant to
allow people to know who makes what they're buying by giving companies a way
to definitively mark their wares without having to worry that someone else is
going to rip off that mark in a confusing fashion. 'Confusing' works out to
meaning a given trademark only applies to a specific field of endeavor; look
at United Airlines vs United Van Lines, the moving company, or Cisco the
networking hardware maker vs Sysco the restaurant supply company.
I think it's fairly clear that whatever 'property' interpretation you can put
on those laws, it's subservient to the consumer protection aspects.
~~~
iwwr
Well, there are people buying fake Gucci bags, knowing what they are. The
consumer is not deceived, although the trademark is broken.
~~~
derleth
True, and that sounds like a place where the law is being tested in a way the
original authors never anticipated.
------
billybob
It has never occurred to me before how odd it is for Disney to take public-
domain stories, rework them into blockbusters, then lock them up with
copyright indefinitely. What a strange combination of ideas.
~~~
Vivtek
Well, but doesn't Disney's copyright just apply to Disney's own instance? They
can't claim copyright on _other_ adaptations of Rapunzel, just their own and
the specific style of character drawings and so on, right?
~~~
swombat
I believe you're correct. The accusation of hypocrisy is based on the fact
that Disney has vigorously lobbied to keep characters like Mickey Mouse out of
the public domain, while happily plundering the fairy tales and characters of
earlier centuries.
~~~
ssp
_while happily plundering the fairy tales and characters of earlier
centuries._
It's even more striking if you consider that those fairy tales and characters
are the products of many, many retellings and adaptations throughout history.
The Grimm brothers didn't write them; they just wrote down one version of a
lot of them. In a real sense, Disney's modern retellings are just the latest
iteration on this process.
------
noonespecial
I think what we've actually seen is the simple realization that government can
provide perpetual monopoly with the smallest of bribes (err campaign
contributions). Once the idea that the government would step in give you a
monopoly became understood, functionally infinite limits on it were all but
guaranteed. In 100 years, Micky Mouse will still be just as copyrighted as he
is today.
------
ralfd
"It freezes the first release as the only release for up to several
generations."
This article is rather lackluster.
First, I don't see a problem with this (there is rightfully only one definite
version of Casablanca or Gone with the Wind) and second I would deny that this
is really an adequate description of popculture of 100 media industry:
Superman was restarted/remade many times. Want to adapt/change is story?
Invent your own Superhero. Can't get a license for James Bond? Get a different
name for your super agent.
The movie rights for Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit were a few generations
unavailable (which is a good thing because Tolkien feared a disneyfication of
his books), but nothing stopped someone from dreaming up his own fantasy
world/story with Orcs.
~~~
orangecat
_there is rightfully only one definite version of Casablanca or Gone with the
Wind_
That's just assuming the conclusion. Should there "rightfully" be only one
version of Snow White?
~~~
bartl
>Should there "rightfully" be only one version of Snow White?
And it's not the version by Disney, because that is not the original one.
------
GHFigs
_Disney's hypocritical plundering of the past_
How do you "plunder" the public domain? Is there not an army of pedants out
there eager to tell me that copyright infringement isn't stealing because it
doesn't deprive anybody of anything? Is it not the point of the public domain
that anybody can use it?
~~~
swombat
See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2594477>
~~~
GHFigs
See what? You just used the same word in the same context, and it makes just
as little sense as it did before. Using the public domain isn't "plundering",
nor does it magically become "plundering" when a hypocrite, corporation, or
hypocritical corporation does it. It's a completely normal and desirable
aspect of having a public domain.
~~~
swombat
I think you have this impression that "plundering the public domain" is
somehow a bad thing - maybe that's where the misunderstanding comes from. I
don't think anyone who's using the term thinks plundering the public domain is
a bad thing - we all wish the public domain was even larger, so there would be
more plundering going on.
~~~
endtwist
Then the word you're looking for isn't "plundering" but perhaps "adapting" or
"borrowing."
plun·der
(v) Steal goods from;
(n) The violent and dishonest acquisition of property.
You can't steal that which is given away freely.
------
swombat
I only wish that this point was intelligible to those in charge of writing the
laws. Unfortunately, I think we are light-years away from this (valid)
viewpoint being considered anything other than a lunatic fringe. It's a shame.
------
zcam
So it s not about Textmate. Disappointed.
------
ChuckFrank
The Welcome to Las Vegas sign is great example of the benefits that come from
something not having copyright. Instead it becomes ubiquitous and justly
famous because people can include it in an infinite variety of
interpretations.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_Fabulous_Las_Vegas_s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_Fabulous_Las_Vegas_sign)
------
pasbesoin
It's the money. Without the money, we never would have gotten to this state.
So, in that regard, it's an artificial, state-enforced monopoly. A limited
monopoly affords the producer the opportunity to make a living in return for
significant contributions. However, we've... "regressed" to essentially
unlimited monopoly, the boundaries of which we continue to expand (e.g. DMCA).
We've exchanged physical fiefdoms for "intellectual" fiefdoms, to similar
effect.
------
hellojere
After reading just the title, my hopes on Coda 2 rised up a little. Damnit.
------
medwezys
When I saw the title I thought it's about Textmate...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
One Kings Lane, Once Valued at $900M, Is Likely to Sell $150M or Less - warrenmar
http://recode.net/2016/01/06/one-kings-lane-once-valued-at-900-million-is-likely-to-sell-for-fraction-of-that/
======
randycupertino
Color me not shocked. One Kings Lane just seemed like a rehash of another
overvalued flop, Fab.com
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Professors Consider Classroom Uses for Google Plus - joetyson
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/professors-consider-classroom-uses-for-google-plus/32131
======
janesvilleseo
I never thought of using it in this fashion, but it is strikingly obvious once
you think about it. Pushing it even further, or in similar light, the
workplace could also benefit from this. At our office we use SalesForce and
their Chatter feature shares the similar vein of communicating within
'circles' or 'subgroups'.
------
dfxm12
This type of social networking isn't really unique to Google+ though. The big
gains are going to be made when students can come together to collaborate on a
Google Doc, or a professor can share documents/other files with students.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Run Rust on your embedded device from VSCode in one click - praveenperera
https://ferrous-systems.com/blog/run-rust-on-your-embedded-device-from-vscode/
======
rckoepke
This is super cool to see a quick overview of. I have a few hobby projects
ongoing using C on Espressif chips. I wanted to use Rust for some of them
instead. While I'm very much looking forward to ESP32 / ESP8266 support for
Rust[0], this definitely encourages me to port some hobby projects over to ARM
and check out probe-rs.
0: [https://github.com/esp-rs](https://github.com/esp-rs)
------
davidhyde
I'm so grateful that embedded rust tooling has seen so much attention in the
past few years. Being able to just clone a repository and "click the play
button" and everything just works is amazing. This is a far cry from the
myriad of development studios and fragile setups you had to have running on
your machine a few years ago. I can't imagine writing rust code without rust-
analyzer too. Call me lazy but I need the autocomplete and the real time
compiler warnings mean that you don't have to build as often. It is such a
productivity booster, kind of like the early days of visual studio c# with
resharper.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft appoints Scott Guthrie new Cloud and Enterprise chief - Flemlord
http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-appoints-scott-guthrie-new-cloud-and-enterprise-chief-7000025973/
======
the_unknown
This is likely the first of many personnel moves at Microsoft. ScottGu is
favourably looked upon by the dev community so this move is likely to be well
liked by the .NET, Azure, ASP.NET, and Windows Phone coders out there.
Congrats and hope this means even greater things to look forward to with the
changes happening at Microsoft.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MongoDB has filed confidentially for IPO - abhi3
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/15/database-provider-mongodb-has-filed-confidentially-for-ipo/?ncid=rss
======
leothekim
They've made their share of mistakes, but they've stuck it out and have
definitely improved their product over the years. I wish them all the best for
their IPO. What would be really good to see As a measure of their business
health is an indication of how their cloud business is doing with respect to
their enterprise sales business. A healthy cloud business would signal less
volatility in the face of high revenue garnered from fickle enterprise sales
relationships that have been their bread and butter until the past couple
years.
~~~
meowface
Reliability and implementation ideas aside, MongoDB popularized document
stores and document stores can sometimes be a good thing (even if there's
usually little to no reason to prefer them to plain SQL databases for most
applications). So they deserve credit there.
~~~
GenericsMotors
Agreed; though the way they did their marketing early on the message they
conveyed was that document databases were here to replace RDBMSs. It was
extremely dishonest.
~~~
mattmanser
To be fair to them, it wasn't just them, it was everyone.
~~~
keithwhor
To be more fair to them, it was just them and the "everyone" you're referring
to was a result of a fantastic blatant + guerilla marketing campaign. Or maybe
I should say a MEAN success? :)
~~~
mikekchar
It may seem like that from a certain perspective, but I remember drowning in
the hype in 1992. It was going to be the next big thing: everything is going
C++; you want objects; why would you store relational tables, when you want
objects?; relational databases are just slow, clunky and complicate your code
base. The company I was working at even tried it... very briefly :-)
Unfortunately, I don't remember what we tried, but there were several around
at the time. This stuff wasn't invented by MongoDB.
------
myth_drannon
It looks like the NoSQL movement was just a fad and plenty of startups got
burned by it and some still stuck with this tech , writing inefficient
workarounds for something that comes OTB with the regular SQL databases.
~~~
dsmithatx
I worked with one of the largest ad publishing companies. They wanted to track
data about every client served an ad. This generated over 1.2 Terabyte per
hour of data when the MySQL master started to max out. We had the largest
possible multiple core system. It was going to cost my client $30k to upgrade
to SSD drives to get more out of MySQL. Also note we had to store this data on
an expensive SAN in order to feed the data at a reasonable rate to MySQL or
PostgreSQL.
I had just learned of MongoDB and went to school at 10gen for their sys admin
class. I talked to the developer about storing the data in NoSQL using a small
sharded cluster on a Friday. Monday morning he asked me to setup a MongoDB
cluster. Tuesday we moved over from MySQL. They ended up using much smaller
servers, got rid of the 3par and epsilon SAN's and saving tons of money.
My point is there are certain situations where NoSQL is still the answer
unless you can cluster your SQL write server. I've moved on from working with
Ad publishing clients but, I'm sure there are other places where SQL databases
are not adequate.
NoSQL might be or, have been, a fad but, like any tool when used for the right
job it works.
~~~
qaq
A production large scale ad. system system that was doing 1.2 TB per hour in
writes, was migrated over from MySQL to MongoDB in roughly 24 hour window cool
story Bro.
~~~
DenisM
Good point. How is it possible to move that much data from SAN to mongo
cluster in such a short time window?
~~~
qaq
and rewrite and validate all the code that was accessing MySQL to use MongoDB
------
hendzen
Both Hortonworks & Cloudera are the most similar recent IPOs. Hortonworks is
below the offering price, Cloudera has been basically flat. And this is in the
context of an insane bull market for tech stocks and the market in general.
So we will see how this turns out. It's been a couple years since they last
raised funding so its possible they didn't really have another choice. Chances
are if the numbers on the S-1 were truly great they wouldn't have done it
confidentially.
~~~
vqc
Do you have any info that companies that don't have great numbers tend to file
S-1's confidentially compared to companies with great numbers?
In my experience, companies that can file confidentially will, regardless of
their numbers (and I think all companies now have the option to do so).
~~~
hendzen
Nutanix, Twilio are two recent ones (IPO'd in 2016). They both were great
performers last year.
I don't have the time to dig up all the data and do a comparison of the
correlation between returns on companies that used the confidentiality
exception vs. companies that didn't, but it would certainly be an interesting
analysis.
~~~
vqc
Are you sure Twilio or Nutanix didn't file confidentially before its S-1 was
flipped public? I'm actually not sure if there's a way to tell, other than a
leak.
------
olegkikin
A side note: MongoDB now dominates the famous framework benchmark in the read
benchmarks.
[https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/](https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/)
~~~
kuschku
With 1.4% more performance than PostgreSQL, and far less guarantees w.r.t.
schema.
Yeah, that's not hard. It's surprising it took them this long.
EDIT: The performance comparison that was linked, and that I was referring to:
[http://i.imgur.com/Thk5DlU.png](http://i.imgur.com/Thk5DlU.png)
~~~
elvinyung
Edit: I'm dumb (and bad at reading words).
I don't believe this assessment is entirely fair -- MongoDB essentially
commits every write to a majority quorum of nodes.
Remind me again how many machines a standard Postgres INSERT/UPDATE commits
to?
(Disclaimer: I still like Postgres better.)
~~~
kuschku
The benchmark measures almost exclusively read performance, so that's not
really a question.
Now the real question is why mongodb isn't faster than postgresql in this
test. MongoDB gives so many guarantees up just to get more performance, and
then looses to PostgreSQL? This is the worst trade deal in the history of
trade deals.
~~~
elvinyung
Oh oops, totally misread "read" as "write" :P
------
jaequery
think it is a bad fit and a bad time for an IPO, their market just isnt big
enough and their losing a lot of steam as of late.
most importantly in terms of numbers, there is nothing going for them. they
arent exactly redhat level in terms of support, nor rackspace level for
subscriptions, and nor snapchat level in terms of market reach. this looks
like some last effort cash out sort of deal to me. weird to say that its
somewhat of a sad outcome for an once promising opensource company.
~~~
patrickfreed
>their market just isnt big enough
the database market is one of the biggest software markets out there, if not
the biggest.
>their losing a lot of steam as of late
at least according ot google trends, mongodb is more popular than ever.
>last effort cash out sort of deal to me
they're hiring like crazy and looking to grow a ton in the next year, so I
don't think that's the case.
~~~
shin_lao
>the database market is one of the biggest software markets out there, if not
the biggest
They only address a very small subset of the database market.
~~~
nailer
Passing the Jepsen tests mean they'd say they're addressing the larger part of
that market, rather than document stores specifically.
(I still think MongoDB, the company, isn't particularly great for the usual
reasons re their past behaviour, I'm just imagining what they'd tell their
investors)
------
noncoml
Congrats. I wish them all the best.
I know MomgoDB is not very favored in HN but if there is one thing Mongo
taught us, is that a nice and simple API to access your data makes a world of
difference.
------
notyourwork
I have never heard of a confidential IPO, how does this differ from any other
IPO that is in the news?
~~~
berberous
Starting with the JOBS Act (in 2012), certain smaller companies under a
revenue threshold were allowed to file their initial draft registration
statements with the SEC confidentially. It was meant to encourage startups to
go public and avoid the public eye while they negotiated their registration
statements with the SEC. It all goes public before the IPO.
~~~
notyourwork
Thanks for this information.
------
a13n
Wow I had no idea they were a for profit corp, rather than an open source
project. And my startup uses mongo. Mind blown! Good for them.
~~~
rpeden
There's no reason a for profit company can't ship an open source project. :)
MongoDB _is_ an open source project, and the MongoDB company is a for profit
corporation that ships the database and sells support and services related to
it.
~~~
discordance
Yes this is true, although what happens when the profit motivated corporation
doesn't make profits or loses revenue?
Isn't it more likely that a profit motivated OSS project will lose resources
in this case, potentially affecting the product?
~~~
ezrast
Check out RethinkDB, a competing product which had exactly this happen earlier
this year. I don't follow the project closely, but the Linux Foundation picked
up stewardship and development appears to be continuing, if at a reduced pace.
MongoDB is pretty popular, so while it would certainly be disruptive in the
short term for the sponsoring company to go out of business, continued
community development is all but assured.
------
flavio81
Really? I thought the MongoDB fad had gone away, that common sense returned,
and people either used proper document stores, or proper relational databases,
or graph databases.
~~~
dajohnson89
Could you be a little more specific as to what a proper document store is?
Mongodb has impressed me after using it for two years in a highly concurrent
and rapidly changing big data production system. It's not without its
significant headaches, but I've yet to find a database that is.
~~~
flavio81
There are many articles out there on the web, over the last 5 years,
addressing the many problems specific to MongoDB. For example:
[http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2013/11/11/why-you-should-
never...](http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2013/11/11/why-you-should-never-use-
mongodb/)
[http://cryto.net/~joepie91/blog/2015/07/19/why-you-should-
ne...](http://cryto.net/~joepie91/blog/2015/07/19/why-you-should-never-ever-
ever-use-mongodb/)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9912842](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9912842)
[http://developer.olery.com/blog/goodbye-mongodb-hello-
postgr...](http://developer.olery.com/blog/goodbye-mongodb-hello-postgresql/)
[https://www.andreas-jung.com/contents/goodbye-mongodb](https://www.andreas-
jung.com/contents/goodbye-mongodb)
~~~
dajohnson89
So what do you recommend instead?
------
api
This is huge -- we haven't actually had that many open source based IPOs!
------
nodesocket
Wow interesting. Anybody have their S-1 filing? Interested to see how their
hosted/managed offering Atlas[1] is doing vs support contracts.
[1] [https://www.mongodb.com/cloud/atlas](https://www.mongodb.com/cloud/atlas)
~~~
jnordwick
No public S1 until up to 15 days before the ipo under the confidential
provision.
------
chirau
I hope at some point they realize the value in queueing writes versus
prioritizing. Maybe I did it wrong but that totally put me off
------
pandemicsyn
Will be interesting to see if Datastax follows with an IPO of their own.
------
CyberDildonics
I hope their IPO filing doesn't get lost before it gets synced to disk.
------
gaius
Now we know for certain that we are in a bubble
------
arrty88
Get ready for another SNAP!
~~~
BinaryIdiot
I don't see why. SNAP hasn't really figured out how to make money and their
features were easy to copy (and copy better) in Facebook's properties.
MongoDB is far longer established, has a large enterprise business and likely
has a sizable cloud business. These are not "features" you slap onto another
product and then simply have users come flooding to you. No, databases are
pretty critical pieces of infrastructure.
As long as the business is solid this IPO should work out well, IMO.
------
perseusprime11
Will meet similar fate like Twitter, Snapchat...
~~~
bdcravens
Perhaps, but wouldn't it make sense to compare them to another software
infrastructure company, rather than social networks?
~~~
perseusprime11
I am not comparing them but simply predicting the fate based on overblown
expectations that were similar to Twitter and SnapChat.
~~~
bdcravens
I think it's easy to equate, because in our bubble we hear so much Mongo hype,
but to the much larger world, they know as much about Mongo as they do
Firebase or New Relic. Also, Mongo the technology has a different set of
expectations than Mongo the publicly traded company.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What do you think of this business idea? PDF printing & delivery - zackattack
The idea's simple: you upload a PDF, and then a hard printout is mailed to you ASAP. Useful if you don't have a printer, or want it mailed to someone else, etc. Like FedEx Kinko's except way simpler and only solving the one problem.<p>If you know of some place already solving this please let me know cuz I have some PDFs to print and I don't want to have to go to Kinko's..
======
paulsingh
Actually, I do this: www.mailfinch.com
It started out as a joke -- partly inspired by Dustin Curtis' Snail project
and the fact that my dad (and a bunch of his friends) sent a lot of flyers for
their small businesses.
~~~
Shamiq
That's pretty cool. What do you have that's automated?
~~~
paulsingh
The back-end printing operations.
------
revorad
I'm struggling to think of a genuine use case. The problem is the waiting
time.
It might work if your target user was someone who didn't need the printout
immediately. Otherwise, you'd have to deliver the printouts pretty damn fast.
Faster than Amazon to deliver a printer. But then, you'd have to charge loads,
so there may not be a viable business there.
You might want to look for people in some specific profession who have
printing problems. Otherwise this might be a solution looking for a problem.
~~~
zackattack
i agree, i'm mostly looking to see if anyone else has this exact same problem
~~~
revorad
Ok. What exactly is your problem though? Why wouldn't you just buy a printer?
On second thoughts, this service might actually be useful if the printouts are
to be sent to someone else so that you don't have to deal with the handling
and postage. For example, web or print designers might find it useful to send
hard copies of their initial designs to prospective clients as a way of giving
a quote. Small high street businesses and shopkeepers who don't have an online
presence would probably find it more convincing to see something in the flesh
rather than on a computer. In fact, designers could probably do this without
even being asked for a quote. Find the postal address of potential customers
and snail mail them some designs with a quote and your contact details.
Does that make any sense?
------
papaf
I don't have access to a printer this week and this would have definitely been
useful for me. When sending to third parties, its not just the effort of
printing that's being saved but also buying the stamps, having enough
envelopes and going to the postbox.
If this was also available internationally it would also cut delivery times
down if the printing was done in the local country.
------
cjg
From the suggestions made so far, it sounds like there are a variety of niches
where this might be suitable. Tailor your offer to each niche - for example,
you could offer a high speed courier (i.e. motorbike) option for those who are
speed (but not price) sensitive.
Perhaps offer a range of quality vs. cost.
------
cjg
This could come in useful for large documents or many copies of a document. It
could be significantly cheaper to print 1000 copies of a ten page document on
dedicated hardware (and have those copies delivered) rather than try to print
that sort of volume locally.
------
pbhjpbhj
Looks great to me. I don't personally have need of it, though if I found I had
need to send letters in the US it would be cheaper than airmail it seems (from
the UK).
If you want international trade you should probably list paper sizes in cm and
as standard measures (A4?, US Letter?) and give paper weights in gsm.
Do you only handle PDF?
Are you planning on using something like TinyMCE,
<http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/>, in your "type in your letter" box?
If you need someone in the UK then I'd be interested...
------
bluesmoon
about 10/11 years ago, this company called homeindia.com used to do this. The
idea was that a whole bunch of Indians work in the US/Europe and use email
every day, but their families back in India have no internet access. They
provided a service where you'd email stuff to them, and they'd print it out
and snail-mail it to the destination for a small fee. I have no idea if they
survived the dot-com crash of 2001.
They still exist today, but looks very different from what they were back
then.
~~~
revorad
DTDC couriers used to do that too.
------
ahoyhere
I just bought an expensive course on writing articles faster & more
effectively, and it was from a dude in NZ - he had it printed, bound and
shipped to me by: mimeo.com.
They offered great, very fast service and excellent customer service (had a
problem with deliverability in Austria & they dealt with it right away).
So the idea of routing around printing is good, but I'd say you should tweak
your use case.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Shuttleworth: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence - based2
https://lwn.net/Articles/719037/
======
based2
[http://linuxfr.org/news/ubuntu-abandonne-unity-mir-et-le-
mob...](http://linuxfr.org/news/ubuntu-abandonne-unity-mir-et-le-mobile)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hacking Facebook’s Legacy API, Part 1: Making Calls on Behalf of Any User - ssclafani
http://stephensclafani.com/2014/07/08/hacking-facebooks-legacy-api-part-1-making-calls-on-behalf-of-any-user
======
neilwillgettoit
As a security researcher, the most impressive part of this is the response
timeline from Facebook's security team. 3~ hours from first report to
temporary patch! That's insane.
~~~
eugenez
We also have a system for patching vulnerabilities which does not require a
full code push. It has been useful on a number of occasions. (source: I
patched this one)
~~~
stevenh
Does Facebook usually respond to exploit reports so quickly, or does the fact
that the discoverer (Stephen Sclafani) helped Facebook find bugs in previous
years mean that his emails were automatically flagged as high-priority?
~~~
eugenez
We try to respond to any exploit of this severity immediately, and will often
disable a feature temporarily while working on a fix rather than letting the
exploit remain open. It helps a lot when the repro steps are as clear as they
were in this one.
------
_nullandnull_
I'm not a huge fan of Facebook but that is one impressive bug bounty and turn
around time. Nice job to both parties.
~~~
beartime
whats wrong with fb?
~~~
nitrogen
In the spirit of [https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/), I'll assume
you haven't heard about the privacy violations, misleading or hard to find
control panels, and constant changes to visibility settings leading uninformed
users to unwittingly post sensitive information with public visibility.
Facebook (the web app) has its uses and reasons to like it, but there are also
lots of reasons not to like it.
------
brotoss
Pretty slick way to earn 20 grand...nice work
~~~
stevenh
Taking the following into consideration:
\- The severity of the exploit, which may be nearly the maximum theoretical
possibility on a site like Facebook, aside from SQL injection or remote code
execution
\- The multiple months worth of unpaid sleepless nights Stephen Sclafani
likely spent exploring countless dead-ends before finding this
\- The fact that he beat black hats to the punch by discovering it first and
thus saved Facebook and its users from millions, perhaps billions, of dollars
worth of damages stemming from vague and mysterious causes over an indefinite
period of time
\- The billions of dollars Facebook regularly uninhibitedly spends to acquire
a given startup
I feel that $20,000 is a bit low.
~~~
lstyls
"Insultingly low."
Really? 20K is about two months of salary for a Facebook engineer. So even if
he _did_ spend months on this like you speculate (he didn't) it's still an
industry-leading salary.
~~~
voltagex_
Holy crap, I'm working for the wrong company.
------
lnanek2
Reminds me of the whole SnapChat thing. People just aren't securing the
internal APIs their mobile apps use.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A collection of Python books - marban
http://importpython.com/books/
======
mjhea0
you forgot real python!
[https://realpython.com](https://realpython.com)
------
originalankur
click on free ( filter ) to see the free python books.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Windows 8 Vs. Mac OS X Lion: Feature by Feature - adeelarshad82
http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story/265435/windows-8-vs-mac-os-x-lion-feature-by-feature
======
rbanffy
This topic has two possible paths - oblivion and a bitter discussion full of
hatred. I hope it takes the first.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Debugging Go code (a status report) - abraham
http://blog.golang.org/2010/11/debugging-go-code-status-report.html
======
akeefer
One of the first things you will find out, if you attempt to write a new
programming language and then use it for actual production work, is how much
users of that language will miss simple, taken-for-granted things like
debuggers.
Creating a programming language by itself isn't all that hard. The real work
is actually making it usable with good error messages and stack traces, tools
like debuggers and profilers, editor support (if you're into that sort of
thing), and documentation and specs. All of that (especially good editor
support) is easily an order of magnitude more work than a parser and a
compiler, and that doesn't even consider libraries you might need to write if
you can't interoperate with an established language. (Spoken from personal
experience, for what it's worth).
~~~
nickik
but the real hard thing is to make a language people want to use. If you did
that the rest will be done by the comunity but even then it a lot of work.
One of there reasons new langauges are often targeting the JVM or the CLR. You
can reuse most of the tools and libs with less work.
~~~
akeefer
Exactly. Funny story there . . . we started our JVM language as interpreted,
more or less, and ended up having to write our own not-so-great debugger for
it. We decided to compile it down to native java bytecode precisely so we
could take advantage of all the native Java tools that work with standard
Java-like classes, such as debuggers, profilers, and even just stack traces.
That approach doesn't work so well for languages that don't match Java
relatively closely (i.e. stack traces in Closure are, I understand, pretty
horrific), but for our language it's turned out pretty well.
------
hartror
When it comes to debugging, nothing beats a few strategic print statements to inspect variables or a well-placed panic to obtain a stack trace.
I respectfully disagree with this statement.
Beyond simple issues a debugger is invaluable for following program flow and
inspecting variable/memory states.
And why does "missing .. patience" mean you are more likely to use a debugger
over a print statement?
~~~
supersillyus
In the last decade, I think I've pulled out a debugger only a handful of
times. Apparently many people use them, but for me, understanding my code,
writing tests, and tossing in some printfs has always been the way. I don't
have a problem with debuggers, butfor me it is usually about having theories
and testing them. This testing can happen in a debugger or in a print
statement or in a test, but a test always seems like the best idea, and a
print statement usually seems more straightforward to me than trying to stop
and inspect my program while it is running.
~~~
barrkel
You use this "my" word a lot. I personally use debuggers for debugging other
people's code, code that's possibly decades old, that doesn't have enough
modularity for good unit tests, and whose bugs in any case often only show up
in complex multithreaded integration scenarios. GDB only acquired
multiprocessing debugging support this year; to my mind it's pretty primitive.
------
enneff
How many people use debuggers like GDB day-to-day? I've found them useful when
trapped in a corner, but typically I debug with the source in hand.
Anyone got any good debugging war stories?
~~~
abhijitr
I would assert that it is pure folly to attempt to build a non-trivial
application in a compiled language without the assistance of a competent
debugger. You simply cannot iterate quickly enough through the debugging loop
of "Form theory" -> "Test theory" if you have to wait a minute for a build to
complete each time. Unit tests help, but will never get you all the way there
(good luck tracking down a leak with unit tests).
~~~
nickik
the repl is your friend even in compiled languages like haskell.
~~~
Devilboy
A proper REPL can do a lot of the same stuff you'd use a debugger for, and a
whole lot more. With a nice REPL you'll do just fine without a debugger.
~~~
arethuza
Why not use a REPL _and_ a good debugger? It's a nice combination.
------
pepsi_can
I've always used debuggers as a faster form of print statements. It faster to
inspect several values using the debugger than it is to write and then delete
a bunch of print statements.
However print statements become my go-to tool when debugging multithreaded
code.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you document and keep tabs on your infrastructure as a sysadmin? - redsec
I am wondering how do experienced sysadmin document and manage their infra.
======
cik
We use Collins
([https://tumblr.github.io/collins/](https://tumblr.github.io/collins/)) as a
Configuration Management Database, Ansible
([https://www.ansible.com/](https://www.ansible.com/)) for automation,
Terraform ([https://www.terraform.io/](https://www.terraform.io/)) + a bunch
of homebrew for orchestration, Packet
([https://www.packer.io/](https://www.packer.io/)) for multi-cloud (and
hypervisor) image creation and maintenance, powered by Ansible. Every since
thing is committed to a series of bitbucket
([https://www.bitbucket.org](https://www.bitbucket.org)) repositories.
We connect Ansible and Collins through ansible-cmdb
([https://github.com/fboender/ansible-
cmdb](https://github.com/fboender/ansible-cmdb)), then tie the entire thing to
our ticketing systems ServiceNOW
([https://www.servicenow.com/](https://www.servicenow.com/)) and Jira Service
Desk ([https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/service-
desk](https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/service-desk)), and finally,
ensure we have history tracking with Slack
([https://www.slack.com](https://www.slack.com)).
As a given, we yank test the entire world. If it doesn't pass a yank, it
straight up doesn't exist.
Whether it's bare-metal, virtualized, para-virtualized, dockerized, mixed-
mode, or cloud - we 100% do this all the time. There is not a single change
across any environment, that isn't fully tracked, fully reproducible, fully
auditable, and fully automated.
~~~
woodrowbarlow
what do you mean by "passing a yank test"? i assume "yank test" refers to
unplugging the network cable abruptly from the server under test, but what
exactly are you looking for when you do that?
~~~
cik
A yank test on process and infrastructure is more than a 'did it come up'.
It's a "if we totally nuke the thing" \- say, were we to rip the hard drives
out of a server, fry it, and recreate it - does it come up identicall(is).
That way we know our CMDB is accurate, our workflows are accurate,
credentials, ansible, terraform, images, etc. Right down to tickets.
It's how we manage all of our cloud customers.
------
vinceguidry
When I was working as a sysadmin, I kept a spreadsheet. I was told later of a
repository of information that supposedly was what my spreadsheet did, but it
didn't add anything new and was much harder to keep up.
I built it up using nmap and then shelling into each individual machine and
poking around to see what it did. This was back in the days before everything
became virtualized, so each machine on the network was likely physical.
I added information by walking the aisles and copying down the rack location
of every machine into another page on the spreadsheet. I eventually hooked up
a terminal to them all and matched network addresses to physical machines.
Only took a few weeks and when I was done, I knew things about the network
that guys who worked at the business for years didn't know.
There's no substitute for the good old-fashioned way.
I liked that job, it was fun.
~~~
majewsky
If you're by yourself, using spreadsheets and nmap is usually fine. If you're
working in a team of 5 or 10 or 50 sysadmins, spreadsheets turn into a huge
mess. You either have to distribute them via mail etc. after every change, but
then you will have concurrent edits that need to be merged manually. Or you
put the spreadsheets on a network share with file locking, but then it will
always be locked when you want to edit it because someone is working on an
entirely unrelated part of the infrastructure.
So you have exactly those sorts of problems that RDBMS are designed to solve.
Therefore it makes sense to move to a DCIM system using an RDBMS under the
hood, that allows for concurrent edits, and also can be accessed by automation
(cronjobs, CI, etc.) via some sort of API (or direct DB read access).
~~~
sedachv
There is an even better alternative. You can put infrastructure information
into the same version control repository where your infrastructure code lives,
and you can even keep all the benefits of spreadsheets by using plain text
format spreadsheets like Org-mode tables.
This means you do not have two sources of truth to maintain (what is in the
RDBMS, and how that relates to what is in the infrastructure code repository),
the RDBMS system does not have to reinvent versioning, you can see exactly how
your infrastructure evolves, you can do atomic changes to both the
infrastructure code and the infrastructure information that the code relies on
(obviously you need a modern version control system for this), and the
infrastructure code can access the infrastructure information in a much more
straightforward (and much easier to test) way.
~~~
dmannorreys
This would become very exhausting if working with very large infrastructures.
80 000 virtual and physical servers? Have fun keeping that data consistent, up
to date and available with Org-mode and version control.
I'm not saying your example is wrong, but "there is an even better
alternative" doesn't always apply. For smaller scales, sure.
~~~
sedachv
VMs need to be kept track of in whatever system you use for provisioning (AWS,
OpenStack), otherwise you now have three sources of truth: what the
configuration says should be running, what the DCIM thinks is running, and
what is actually running.
------
majewsky
\- keep inventory in a DCIM (we use Netbox)
\- configure _everything_ as code (we use Ansible for the infrastructure up to
OS level, Kubernetes w/ Helm for applications), have it read the values from
the DCIM so that the DCIM remains the single source of truth (we need to still
get better on this part....)
Links:
[https://github.com/digitalocean/netbox](https://github.com/digitalocean/netbox)
[https://www.ansible.com](https://www.ansible.com)
[https://www.kubernetes.io](https://www.kubernetes.io)
That's at work. At home, I do much of the same, except that maintaining a DCIM
is excessive for 2 VPS and a home network of 3 boxes.
~~~
rubenbe
I cannot comment on the DCIM side, but I agree on the "everything as code"
mantra.
For a relatively small setup I chose a combination of Ansible, Kubernetes and
Dockerfiles, but probably any combination will do. All these files are stored
in a git repo.
Even after months (or years) neglect, I can easily know what I configured (and
why!) and update where needed with a minor effort.
------
zie
I'm going to mostly disagree with everyone here, much to my karma's detriment
;P
I agree the end-goal should be infrastructure as code, and everyone here has
covered those tools well. You also want monitoring across your infrastructure.
Prometheus is the new poster-boy here, but the Nagios family, and many other
decent OSS solutions exist as well.
But you still need documentation. Your documentation should exist wherever you
spend most of your time. Some examples:
* If you spend most of your time on a Windows Desktop, doing windows admin type things, then OneNote or some other GUI note-taking/document program makes sense.
* If you spend most of your time in Unix land(linux, BSD, etc) then plain text files on some shared disk somewhere for everyone to get to, makes WAY more sense. Bonus if you put these files in a VCS, and treat it like code, and super bonus if your documentation is just a part of your Infra as code repositories.
* If you spend your time in a web browser, then use a Wiki, like MediaWiki, wikiwiki, etc.
In other words, put your documentation tools right alongside your normal
workflow, so you have a decent chance of actually using it, keeping it up to
date, and having others on your team(s) also use it.
We put our docs in the repo's right alongside the code that manages the
infrastructure.. in plain text. It's versioned. We don't publish it anywhere,
it's just in the repo, but then we spend most of our time in editors messing
in that repo.
~~~
antoncohen
I totally agree, but having "infrastructure as code" means less documentation.
Instead of documenting all the commands involved in configuring a machine as
service X (ssh, run apt-get, paste this, etc.), I have documentation on how
work with the configuration management system (roles in the roles/ directory,
each node gets one role, commit to git, open PR, etc.). That documentation is
in .md files in the config management source repo.
Instead of documenting how to rack a server (print and attach label to front
and back, plug power into separate PDUs, enter PDU ports into management
database, etc.), I document Terraform conventions (use module foo, name it
xxx-yyy, tag with zzz, etc.).
It ends up being less documentation, as the "code" serves to document the
steps taken, so the documentation can be higher level. Or if it isn't less
documentation, it is documentation that needs to be updated less often, so
hopefully there will be less drift between docs and what actually exists.
~~~
hobofan
Ah the good old "self-explanatory code that needs no documentation".
~~~
marcosdumay
More like code usually required extra documentation explaining it in a higher
level language, but nowadays we just write the program on that higher level
language so this extra documentation has gone away.
------
antoncohen
It might be helpful if described your infrastructure. There is a pretty big
difference between managing physical Windows servers in a data center and
managing Linux servers all in AWS.
If you are all or mostly cloud, Terraform + config management with a CI
pipeline takes care of a lot. Then a wiki that covers "Getting Started" and a
few how-to articles.
For physical infra you need the setup for DHCP, updating DNS based on DHCP,
PXE boot imaging, IPMI access and configuration, switch and router
configuration, what servers are connected to which switch ports, PDU
management and monitoring, and on and on and on.
You end up with something like NetBox
([https://github.com/digitalocean/netbox](https://github.com/digitalocean/netbox))
or Collins
([https://tumblr.github.io/collins/](https://tumblr.github.io/collins/)), plus
a bunch of other stuff gluing things together.
~~~
evangineer
For future work, I would definitely consider NetBox and Collins as alternative
options to GLPI.
------
beh9540
I think it depends a lot on the size of your infrastructure. I've used excel
docs on a shared drive pretty successfully where there's not much to keep up
on and changes are few.
In larger infrastructure setups (small service provider) we used a combination
of netboot, SNMP for monitoring with Observium and Nagios for alerting. We
were also a big VMware environment, so naturally we had a lot of inventory
tracking available through vCenter as well. I found a lot of opposition to
Configuration Management, given the lack of comfort with programming of some
sysadmins (Windows admins), so that's something to keep in mind as well. I
think mixed environments also can be challenging w/infrastructure as code, but
I'd be interested to see how others get through that.
------
seorphates
The past decade has been interesting and I'm still processing it.
My current thoughts are that an appropriate approach is for your systems to
document themselves via the applications that they run - inside out.
Though I must abide I cannot fully subscribe to "infrastructure as code"
anymore. It has proven just another shift, primarily in toolsets and who (or
what) gets say and sway over the capacity, capabilities and efficiencies of
the thing you actually care about - the app stack and all of its assembled
functionality.
In other words most approaches are still "outside in" \- one defines 'x' for
deploy fitments and that typically over and over and over again and,
typically, with a rigidity that can too easily override and overrule
effectively caging your application in scale and scope. With my current tact I
am trying to provide for 'y' to "self identify" (via some/any form of config
mgmt) where from here you can begin to effectively "deploy to any" by hooking
the "application config as code" that, in turn, defines its infrastructure and
deploys "outward". The "infrastructure as code" then becomes the servant with
its objects and platform definitions etc. and the "appconfig as code" becomes
the master where the latter defines its own scope and scale.
Infrastructures have a funny way of mutating into inefficient "definitions" of
something that once made sense, on the first day, and forevermore complicating
progress with capacity, rules and opinions.
But, generically, snmp is still pretty cool for telling me what I need to
know. Strapped that into any end engine and, boom, ask any question, request
any inventory.
So.. I track apps, not systems. Systems are expendable, applications are not.
------
brudgers
I don't do devOps but if I did...
[http://howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/literate-
devops.html](http://howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/literate-devops.html)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dljNabciEGg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dljNabciEGg)
------
itomato
There are several classes of "infrastructure" as a sysadmin; legacy, new and
critical.
Legacy stuff is done the old fashioned way - portscans and nmap. If it has an
open port, it's presumed to be intentional. If not, it's a target. I've seen
some success using tools like Pysa to "blueprint" existing systems into Puppet
code. Tools like SystemImager help here, too - enabling P2V and the creation
of "file-based images" compatible with version control and able to PXE boot
new clones.
New stuff is from-scratch IaC all the way to the metal. Ansible and git
submodules help me build "sandwiches".
Critical stuff blurs the lines. The machines, IP addresses, ports and living
connectivity can be documented, and "captured" to a limited extent with the
manual mapping and Rsync stuff in the Legacy category. Some of this critical
stuff is also "new", and is deployed in that fashion.
What about switchgear and Cisco configs? License strings, key management,
site-specific patching - all can complicate things.
More important than any of these is the ability for you and those around you
to see and manage the systems as they are launched and terminated.
In the old days, I used to use a shell script on a newly-provisioned host to
dump all its' details - dmidecode, environment stuff and so on. Those details
were pushed back to a common source and were a real benefit in the days before
_real_ config management came on the scene. CFEngine was way too complicated
and nebulous at the time.
------
falcolas
For me/us, it's a combination of infrastructure-as-code and metrics
reporting/logs. Most of our boxes are swapped out on a weekly or more frequent
basis, so the only accurate picture of what's running right this moment is the
graphs built by the metrics collection tools. The only accurate picture of
what's running on those boxes is the code which built the infrastructure.
There are a couple of exceptions, but those are actively being brought under
the above model (mostly because they are effectively invisible, and the
existing documentation for them is... incomplete).
Any documentation outside of that is stale in a few hours, and obsolete in a
week.
------
jcadam
Back when I was put in charge of IT Lifecycle management for my Army unit (not
by choice - "Hey, you've got a CS degree, so anything tech related goes to
you"), I kept it all in an Access Database, and ran off a report occasionally
to update my smartbook (3-ring binder full of stuff that my boss would
frequently ask about during meetings). Granted this was back in the early
00's.
------
owaislone
Terraform + Datadog + Cloudwatch
[http://terraform.io/](http://terraform.io/)
[http://datadoghq.com/](http://datadoghq.com/)
[https://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/](https://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/)
------
atsaloli
As a professional sysadmin, my go to reference on this is "Documentation
Writing for System Administrators", from the Short Topics in System
Administration series.
[https://www.usenix.org/short-topics/documentation-writing-
sy...](https://www.usenix.org/short-topics/documentation-writing-system-
administrators)
Also, this talk was very good:
[https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/lisa08/tech/gelb_talk.pd...](https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/lisa08/tech/gelb_talk.pdf)
~~~
jlgaddis
It's worth the $5, I assume?
------
allsunny
I've used [https://www.racktables.org](https://www.racktables.org) with pretty
good luck. It's PHP, which wouldn't be my first choice, but I've largely been
able to make it do what I want.
If you want something more clever; say keeping track of asset values etc,
you'll want a CMDB. Google around and you should find something that fits your
needs. We used SeviceNow in a previous life.
------
paydro
We put everything in code. We have several layers, but they if you're new you
can start with the lowest level and make your way up to find out how things
are provisioned and configured.
We're on AWS so we use cloudformation for provisioning and saltstack
([https://saltstack.com/](https://saltstack.com/)) for configuration
management. Cloudformation templates are written using stacker
([http://stacker.readthedocs.io/en/stable/](http://stacker.readthedocs.io/en/stable/)).
All AWS resources are built by running "stacker build" so nothing is done by
hand. We have legacy resources that we're slowly moving over to
Cloudformation, but more than 90% of our infrastructure is in code.
On top of cloudformation and salt we built jenkins (CI and docker image
creations), spinnaker (deployment pipeline), and kubernetes (deployment
target). The jenkins and spinnaker pipelines are also codified in their own
respective git repos.
All the repos here have sphinx setup for documentation purposes and the repos
tend to crosslink for references.
------
rbjorklin
I’ve found Zabbix works decently well and also covers monitoring. Zabbix Maps
can be nice to visualize the infrastructure:
[https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/3.4/manual/config/visua...](https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/3.4/manual/config/visualisation/maps/map)
------
bradknowles
So, one problem I’ve seen with most infrastructure as code solutions and CMDBs
is that they do a good job at the tactical level (more or less), and help you
answer “how”, “where”, “what”, and maybe “when” questions (depending on how
well they support orchestration), they typically do a bad job at the higher
level strategic “why” questions.
So, why do you structure your lambda jobs accessing CloudWatch Logs that way
as opposed to the other way? If you didn’t know that one way works and the
other doesn’t, you wouldn’t be able to understand that question. And that
might have domino effects on other parts of your system.
I haven’t found a good solution to documenting the high level strategic “why”
questions, other than to just write down the questions and the answer, with
reasoning, in some form of associated documentation — maybe in a wiki or
something. But, of course, the underlying issues may change in the near future
and invalidate the reasons for your decision. And the high level documentation
doesn’t have any way to be compiled directly into the lower level
implementation, so of course there is always the risk of drift.
I’m still looking for good solutions in this space.
------
tyingq
Vmware's tagging support is a lighter, more realistic option vs a "CMDB".
Come up with a key/value strategy that covers your need to track things like
app name, app category, environment (test, dev, load testing, prod, prod/dmz,
etc), and it becomes actually usable and up to date versus an always out-of-
date CMDB. And it's compatible with cloud resource tagging.
Sometimes, less is more.
------
outworlder
Spinning up new infra: Jenkins crafts Terraform tfvars based on user input,
runs plan, asks for confirmation, applies. Terraform state and vars saved to
S3. Chef and Ansible for provisioning.
"Documentation", in terms of where stuff is deployed and what is deployed is
not really necessary. We save this data to a DynamoDB table, query-able by AWS
Lambda functions, so other automation can pick it up and devops can query
data.
Documentation on how things work comes from dev teams, on how things are
deployed indeed comes from us, just simple wiki pages.
Services running in Kubernetes, K8s worker instances in auto-scaling groups.
If one node dies it is killed and brought up, K8s will reschedule the pods.
Same for the pods themselves.
Monitoring through Nagios(getting phased out finally), NewRelic and
Prometheus. Basic ELK stack for centralized logs.
Thinking about rolling out Vault for credential management. Chatops on the
pipeline (getting pieces in place first, like the db mentioned earlier)
I'm trying to get the company on board on immutable infrastructure, but it is
proving difficult.
------
rootsudo
I use One Note.
But I also use the o365 Suite.
Mediawiki is also good, but can be a bore to run another service for that.
But in the end a textfile via notepad/nano is all you need, really.
~~~
jftuga
OneNote over a text editor as you can drop in screen shots.
------
FatalBaboon
Like many here, I keep it described in ansible and documentation inside a git
repository.
But I feel like it's lacking. After a while you have so many ansible playbooks
and roles that they cannot give you a birds-eye view anymore.
I think I would MUCH prefer to have some sort of HTML representation, where
adding an instance/service starts by adding to that representation, and you
could click on every link or node to show its golden image setup, ansible
configuration, etc.
THAT, I could show to a newcomer and he'd get it.
~~~
petepete
I'm no expert but doesn't Ansible Tower do that?
~~~
FatalBaboon
Ansible Tower lets you execute a playbook via a web GUI, and keeps a log of
who executed what.
I'm not sure if it also shows some infrastructure graphs, but I'm talking
about knowing if links are up, how they are firewalled, where the config for
each thing is, etc.
When you host tens of services on hundreds of machines, this information is
hard to get a grasp on, no matter what you do or how well you documented
everything, because it takes a while to read through it.
------
richardknop
By having your infrastructure defined in version control using some sort of
domain specific language. For example, by using Terraform and only ever making
changes to your infrastructure via Terraform (manual adding/editing of stuff
in AWS/GCP console should be disabled so people can't do that). Then all
changes to the infrastructure are clearly documented in version control with
pull requests.
------
tyingq
Aligning a VMWARE tagging strategy with a cloud tagging strategy is one of my
current goals. Things like a full blown CMDB seem to always end in pain, lag,
and orphaned records. I'm happy enough with something basic that spans on-prem
+ cloud.
------
tmikaeld
I use:
\- [https://www.bookstackapp.com/](https://www.bookstackapp.com/) for portable
(Markdown), searchable (SQL), manageable (Users) documentation.
\- Ansible for automation and deployment.
\- Prometheus for monitoring all the Proxmox nodes and containers.
------
tootie
Can I piggyback and ask how people keep track of deployed software? Like if I
have 50 products deployed some of which haven't been touched in 10 years and I
want to be able to ramp up a developer to fix a bug on any of them?
~~~
jschwartzi
In the medical device industry you keep what's called a device history file
which tracks the configuration of each device you've sold by serial number.
This DHF is meticulously updated whenever something is changed. If someone
reports an issue this is information you can use to scope your initial
reproduction.
~~~
forgottenpass
I think you're mixing up DHF and DHR. Design history file, device history
record.
------
evangineer
GLPI with FusionInventory for IT Asset Management and Knowledge Base.
GitLab for repositories, adhoc documentation via gists and CI/CD.
Nagios for monitoring.
Open to trying other things out if they make sense.
------
peterwwillis
Asset management systems and network inventory databases.
------
skyisblue
Those using AWS ALB, how do you monitor your traffic in realtime? I want to
aggregate host names, ip addresses, user agents in realtime.
------
thrownaway954
Lansweeper ([https://www.lansweeper.com/](https://www.lansweeper.com/))
------
cat199
anyone have any pointers for simple an API driven managment of DNS/DHCP?
(like, I don't want to have to configure 1000 moving parts)
typically this seems to fall into the 'roll your own' or 'giant lumbering
enterprise behemoth' category that does 10 other things. I'm looking for the
sweet spot.
~~~
matt_wulfeck
At any reasonable scale you typically wouldn’t use plain DNS if you have to do
that kind of figuration. It would be done with a service discovery service
which handles SRV records.
That being said route53 has a reasonable management API.
~~~
cat199
thanks - should have mentioned specifically not looking at cloud services
(e.g. self hosted, but without needing 5 different polyglot microservices and
a service managment layer and 32GB of ram just to keep the whole mess running)
I see 0% need for this complexity in many cases on the presentation side - and
if faster response is required internally, the same API IF can be used for
service discovery or side-chain announcements, etc can be bolted on on a per-
application basis if desired.
I also see 0% need for this to be a cloud exclusive domain - e.g. hybrid
scope/location deployments, etc.
------
HeadlessChild
A configuration manager, Ansible for example. You basically describe your
infrastructure with it.
------
nunez
I deploy it with code. For hardware stuff, a CMDB, also maintained with code
------
hypnagogicjerk
What about securely storing credentials and passwords?
------
dxhdr
I'm curious how ChatOps practitioners handle this.
------
AdamGibbins
I'm not sure I understand your question fully? You write documentation, like
you do anything. And configure everything with code, so you can go read it
(Terraform, Chef/Puppet/Ansible, etc).
~~~
castis
OP is probably looking for someone to go a little further into detail on
exactly what you just said.
~~~
pnutjam
I use SCC (System Configuration Collector) to document our servers. Everything
else is just a collection of grep-able text files on our management server.
[https://sourceforge.net/projects/sysconfcollect/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/sysconfcollect/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sleep 7 hours or more per day and you die early - Mitt
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-09/uoc--wsf093010.php
======
jpk
This seems to be an unscientific conclusion. There's no mention of other
conditions the patients may have had or acquired before the follow up and how
those conditions may have played a part in their sleep habits and/or lifespan.
It's like saying, "a random sample of the population showed that people who
take insulin are found to be at higher risk for glaucoma." Of course they are,
because people who take insulin are probably diabetic, and glaucoma is a
common complication of diabetes. That doesn't mean taking insulin causes
glaucoma.
------
fingerprinter
I simply do not know how one concludes that sleep, among all other things, is
the reason for the deaths? When studying humans, how do you account for all
the other lifestyle variables?
Does anyone on HN do these types of studies and can comment? Seems so very
unscientific.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you WFH with schools closed? - teacpde
With the COVID-19, most companies in the valley have asked employees to work from home. It works out until now the schools/daycares are also closed. How do people with kids manage to work from home?
======
bryanrasmussen
there was another thread here recently where the user was discussing if it
made sense to show if one was infected on social media - I guess there are
several states available in actuality:
1\. don't know if you have had or not - had some symptoms now gone. 2\. no
symptoms ever. 3\. have it now for sure. have been tested 5\. might have it
now. 6\. have recovered for sure no longer dangerous. have been tested. 7\.
think you have recovered.
there are also some other things to check, like have it and have it bad.
If you and other families know you have it and someone is bad off in some
family could take care of the bad off kids.
If you have had it and are not a problem anymore you could go back to work (or
continue to work home) you could also take other people's kids who are bad
off.
Of course this does not handle your problem right now of needing to watch kids
and work, but in the future there may be ad hoc systems for taking care of
these necessary things. If you have connections to others through your
community you should maybe take the time now to figure out strategies. And
find out what will happen to kids if and when you get sick and are too sick to
take care of them?
------
bryanrasmussen
Luckily my wife does not have a job, we are a 1 wage household, obviously this
situation shows one of the downsides of the two wage family that is now
prevalent in Western Society. If you have kids old enough they could watch the
younger kids at least part of the time, but really without an extended family
the social requirement of two adults working and kids home does not function
with the requirements of raising kids.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
EBay Bans Auctions Of Digital Goods - parker
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080328/014049683.shtml
======
gordianknot
Great! It's never been a better time to start an eBay killer.
~~~
parker
Dude, I assure you, no one will ever beat eBay at being eBay ... their network
effects are in a different stratosphere.
But that doesn't mean it's not a good time to start a sweet company that could
someday eat eBay's lunch from a different angle ;)
~~~
gordianknot
Exchanges are much more primitive than search before Google. I'll hold you to
that assertion... :)
~~~
parker
I 100% agree with you. But Google approached search in a different way than
the rest, that turned out to be more effective. Likewise, I think there's got
to be a different way to think about selling that can really undermine the
traditional model... go forth, conquer!
------
wumi
digital goods = "huge, untapped" market
------
vlad
Software had to be on disc and I specifically remember that they banned
digital goods up until about 2005.
------
wmf
Next time, submit the original article please.
------
attack
Where am I going to sell my startup now?!
~~~
icky
Craigslist! ;-D
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Books on creativity? - vijayr
can you suggest me any good books on creativity? I saw some books on doodling, drawing (drawing on the right side of the brain by betty edwards etc) - what are your favorites?<p>Specifically those books that have exercises, not just theory. And preferably that can be done with paper/pen, or on a computer
======
andrewneilcrump
Whats the aim?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Jason Calacanis responds to Aaron from SEO Book - ashishk
http://calacanis.com/2010/01/25/my-thank-you-email-to-aaronwall-for-the-free-seo-advice-great-seo-great-guy/
======
aaronwall
"We can't tell whether Jason is misleading us about the proportion of scrape-
generated pages on Mahalo without access to any Mahalo page statistics."
Well, when doing a site search in Google for site:mahalo.com "Links Powered by
Google" there are 553,000 pages ___indexed in Google_ __which are using
scraped search result content (with optimized page titles) to help pull in
traffic.[http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amahalo.com+Links++Powe...](http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amahalo.com+Links++Powered+by+Google)
and keep in mind that is just links from Google...there are also chunks of
content from Google blog search, Twitter, and other sources (images, videos,
news) on those pages
he is full of ____ if he is trying to get anyone to buy that doing the above
is responsible for less than 1% of their traffic when Compete.com shows their
search referral traffic as being ~ 60% of their referrals
It is not just a few (thousand) 100% auto-generated
(experiment/stub/zebra/spam) pages that have scraped content on them...the
above search shows Google estimates over a half million pages in their index
contain content from their own search index...total regurgitation of 3rd party
content :D
And lets not forget that 1.) he is using people's optimized page titles as
content on his pages 2.) search traffic monetizes better via ads than other
traffic forms...especially the search traffic that lands on a page for some
random longtail keyword made up by arbitrarily combining chunks of 3rd party
content mixed together and re-aggregated. 3.) in addition, there is a $0
editorial cost to scraping these millions and millions of content snippets and
re-displaying them. 4.) he is making at least 5 figures a day from that
content scraping...with 100% certainty.
his 1% remark is just another form of misinformation. nothing new there!
~~~
vaksel
precisely, I think this is a perfect page for what he is doing:
<http://www.mahalo.com/card-games>
SEVEN powered by Google areas.
~~~
jasonmcalacanis
Our pages are built by our community, so the quality will vary. That page
doesn't have a "vertical manager" yet, but it will. Then we would build out
the content a little more.
It's not a perfect system, people can't put multiple search boxes in there.
However, that page will never rank well in a search engine (unless by a
fluke). In order to rank well you really need to have 500+ original words.
We're in the process of moving all pages to that standard. It's really a self-
regulating thing: if our contributors make short pages they never rank and
never make money. They get frustrated and we teach them how to make longer
pages and some day they may rank.
... it's really not a problem, and the truth is we rank for three things well:
1\. video game walkthroughs (typically 2-10,000 words!) 2\. how to articles
(typically 800 to 5,000 words) 3\. question & answer pages (typically 300 to
10,000 words),
Isn't this basic SEO (and i'm not expert): build original content and you
might rank. Build short pages, you don't rank.
All pages start short (just like wikipedia stubs do), and over time we make
them longer. that's the normal process.
~~~
trevelyan
Why has Jason's comment has been downvoted? People don't consider it relevant?
Amazing.
~~~
evgen
It is relevant, but I believe the downvotes are a response to the lack of an
option to otherwise flag a comment as complete bullshit.
------
kyro
Uh, that's not a response to Aaron's article. That's Jason acting naive and
oblivious to dodge the accusations, and taking on this whole 'aww shucks, can
you help me out a bit?' attitude to shift the discussion and get on Aaron's
good side. If you had a case against what you were accused of doing, you
would've published a well thought-out article, much like some of the articles
you've written that have been on subjects you're clearly confident and well-
versed in. But you have nothing this time.
Also, stating that such pages only amount to less than 1% of your revenue is
in no way a justification of the content theft you're committing. You're
cowardly sidestepping the issue. What have you got to say about the actual
content theft, rebranding of such content as Mahalo's, and knocking down the
original authors of that content by skipping on the credits and outranking
them?
You got caught, dude.
~~~
dangrossman
Have to agree, this is a non-response. That only validates that a real
response would not be a good thing for the company.
------
Towle_
Semi-unrelated to the actual content of this particular post: (I apologize
about that, by the way)
Am I the only one who simply can't stand Jason Calacanis?
He's often propped up as some sort of guru/authority/etc. of start-ups and the
Web in general, and I just don't see it at all. I've never read any words of
his and felt like a smarter or more knowledgeable person afterward; I only
ever see rather mundane platitudes.
Perhaps I just haven't read the right pieces of his? If anyone believes this
might the case, please consider responding to this post with a link or two.
I'm seriously very baffled by his image (and to be honest, I don't think
highly of Mahalo as a concept, for many various reasons I won't detail here
unless someone is interested in them).
~~~
davidw
> Am I the only one who simply can't stand Jason Calacanis?
One of the rules of this site is that you ought to write things that you would
feel comfortable saying to someone's face. And often it's very practical
because all sorts of people turn up to read stuff here. Including Jason, it
appears.
That said, I get a bad vibe too: why is everything he is associated with
seemingly "Jason's this" or "Jason's that". Generally, a startup is known
first and foremost as the company, not as "Alexis Ohanian's Reddit" or "Sergey
Brin's Google", but you _always_ find that guy's name in the same phrase as
Mahalo. I can't quite place my finger on why this bugs me, but perhaps it's
something to do with building something up as a free standing entity versus
lending your famous name to something.
~~~
Towle_
>One of the rules of this site is that you ought to write things that you
would feel comfortable saying to someone's face. And often it's very practical
because all sorts of people turn up to read stuff here. Including Jason, it
appears.
You know, despite being a total noob here, I still thought I had that one
checked off on my list of things to watch for...until of course Jason himself
showed up on the board (assuming it's really him, of course). I really did not
see that coming. But what can I do now other than apologize and hope he wasn't
offended? Sorry, Jason. :) No real defamation intended, just wanted to open a
discussion on the validity of the opinions you propagate.
~~~
davidw
I think it's still quite possible to say negative things to/about people, but
it really helps to imagine saying them directly to the person in question.
~~~
Towle_
Right, of course. I didn't mean to imply that I thought it a mistake to be
critical, just regretted and apologized for the manner in which I criticized.
Thanks again, David.
------
newsio
Jason is full of it. Playing stupid and meek because he got caught.
The original SEO book post and HN discussion are here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1073723>
EDITED: Added correct link (thanks icey!)
~~~
icey
Your link is weird for me - it takes me to page 2 of the listings instead of a
specific posting.
I think this is what you meant to link to:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1073723>
------
krtl
"we accidentally took that off when we moved to Mahalo 3.0 i think." Jason is
the last person who would accidentally make a move like that. Its all planed.
~~~
jasonmcalacanis
It's actually true... we can make mistakes.
... the truth is having short content pages indexed works against you--that's
why i no indexed them to being with.
Again, I'm not as big of an expert on SEO as Aaron, but I think there is
something called "page rank sculpting" in which you push your sites page rank
to high-quality pages and no-index the ones that are shorter in terms of
original content. We did that because one of our people read about it on a
blog.
We're probably holding ourselves back having removed this and we are putting
it back on because we didn't realize it was off.
That is why I thanked Aaron.
Is the page rank sculpting thing not a good idea? I thought this was a fairly
certain thing: only index the best pages.
~~~
krtl
Thats fair. Theres no denying Jason is good at what he does and understands
the web business better than most. I feel like this is an opportunity for
those on HN to learn the way he rolls and manages his business.
Of the pages indexed in Google that are of this type of spam in nature, Mahalo
accounts for less than .1% .. I think this is more Google's issue than
Mahalo's.
~~~
Psyonic
"Of the pages indexed in Google that are of this type of spam in nature,
Mahalo accounts for less than .1%"
Huh? I'm not sure which way I stand on this whole mess, but the fact that he
makes up a tiny portion of the "spam" doesn't seem relevant? Is a petty thief
less bad because he accounts for less than .00001% of theft in the world?
------
ErrantX
Regardless of who is right/wrong here this strikes me as a very glib response
to quite a serious accusation levelled at his business practices.
To me it doesn't seem to help his credibility.
------
qeorge
If Jason really wants advice, here's two things:
1) "Spreading our PageRank" is BS. More pages == more total PageRank.
Wikipedia's summary isn't half bad: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank>
2) Remove the nofollow's from the attribution links to content you've scraped.
Anything else is just plain rude.
~~~
jasonmcalacanis
but we don't scrape content. our search results do have abstracts but they are
smaller than Google's, and in some cases they actually are google's.
so, i think you have the issue confused.
Also, on #1 I think most SEOs would say your wrong. More pages does NOT equal
more page rank. It's the EXACT opposite.
MORE QUALITY PAGES and more QUALITY links = bette SEO from what the top SEOs
have told me. I hope this helps with your site.
all the best,
Jason
~~~
qeorge
Jason, I'm quite sure I'm not confused.
1) _"MORE QUALITY PAGES and more QUALITY links = bette SEO from what the top
SEOs have told me. "_
For this purpose, indexed by Google counts as "quality." Please read the
PageRank paper, and you'll quickly see that more pages in the index == more
PageRank.
That doesn't always mean putting crap pages into Google is a good idea, but
strictly speaking, it will raise the total amount of PageRank your site has.
Seriously, read the paper yourself.
2) _"but we don't scrape content. our search results do have abstracts but
they are smaller than Google's, and in some cases they actually are
google's."_
Perhaps scrape is the wrong term. But you absolutely do include other people's
content and nofollow it, for example all of the images on this page:
<http://www.mahalo.com/chupacabra>
NoFollow is meant for links to content which you don't want to "vouch" for. If
you've included their content in your page, I think you can vouch for it.
Maybe an honest oversight, maybe not. Either way, you know about it now, so
fix it.
------
aresant
Jason's sweeping "it's less than <1%" comments are getting tired.
Mahalo is a great money printing machine, but come on, those are pages
designed to do one thing - rip content quickly, monetize, and SPAM google.
~~~
webignition
_Jason's sweeping "it's less than <1%" comments are getting tired._
We can't tell whether Jason is misleading us about the proportion of scrape-
generated pages on Mahalo without access to any Mahalo page statistics.
I'm not for or against Jason on this matter, I'm just saying that we have no
data on which to base any conclusions. It's _possible_ he's telling the truth.
It would be interesting for someone to take up the challenge of creating a
small web app that finds all Mahalo URLs, heuristically examines them for
spamminess and generates some statistics.
Not that such an app would be of any particular long term use, but it might be
interesting nonetheless.
------
ashu
Google, any comment?
------
FreeRadical
To be honest it was quite a dignified response, I was expecting something with
more 'fire' when I clicked the link.
~~~
aresant
I think that the overly "I love you man" tone of his response indicates to me
that he's thumbing his nose at the situation and just being a bit of an ass.
~~~
mahmud
The passive-aggressive bromance is a classic deflection trick.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Programming is Not Terrible - molex333
http://blog.m1cr0sux0r.com/2013/10/programming-is-not-terrible.html
======
debacle
I have a hypothesis. Is it possible that the people who talk with wide-eyed
wonder about programming after doing it for ten years and the passion that
they have for writing software haven't come to appreciate the banality of
almost every problem that they're going to be asked to solve in the software
space? If you find putting together CRUD apps and laying out contact forms
challenging and engaging after ten years, you may lack the mental capacity to
really appreciate and understand why programming is terrible.
The reason open source software exists is because programming is terrible - if
programming were the digital orgasm that these people pretend it is, people
wouldn't have been bitching for years about how bad the open source ORM
they're using is - they would have rewritten it already, twice.
Programming is a menial mental task for anyone with the capacity to properly
abstract their real world problem into a solution that a computer can
understand, with a few bits of crunchy debugging on top, that has no reward on
its own.
We program, not because it is fun, challenging, or fulfilling, but because it
is morphologically necessary for our continued existence as solution creators
and problem solvers.
90% of the time spent programming is a slog. All of the enjoyment comes from
the 10% of time spent solving cool problems, but more and more as open source
technology gets better, sturdier, and more engrained into IT, the 10% problems
are being solved before ldconfig is done doing its thing, and so you're left
with 95% slog or 98% slog.
Are there domains where programming is still hard? Most definitely, but for
most programmers programming is no longer drole.
~~~
sequence7
Oh please. I have a theory about people who talk with patronising disdain
about how programming is easy and you can do everything with open source
already. Work is work, if it was all fun you wouldn't get paid for it.
If most programmers want a challenge in their day job they could try learning
how to communicate or how not to assume that everyone else is an idiot or even
try and improve the processes their team use so that everyone benefits.
The biggest problem I find programmers coming up against is cummunication and
understanding and yet 95% of them would rather point out how their immediate
coding problem isn't challenging enough to their almighty brains.
~~~
debacle
I guess you're assuming that I'm one of those semi-autistic types who isn't
happy unless he's slugging down coffee while trying to hack the Gibson or
whatever.
I'm not - the social aspect of problem solving, and especially the social
aspects of requirement gathering, is the best part of my job.
~~~
jasonlotito
> one of those semi-autistic types
This is vile. You aren't semi-autistic. You are or you aren't. And what
qualities are you referring to when talking about semi-autistic? Are you
referring lack of communication? Stimming?
How the _fuck_ does stimming have anything to do with slogging down coffee
while programming?
Seriously, "semi-autistic"? People like you are vile.
------
NathanKP
_If you like writing software, if you look forward to getting your next
assignment, then you should probably go ahead and pursue it as a career. If
you trudge through it and show some aptitude for it, but you don 't enjoy it,
please choose another career._
Exactly. It seems that recently there have been a lot of young people who are
treating the Software Engineer position kind of like the RN position. They
think "There is high demand for this profession so I'm going to study for it
in school and make big money, and this will be awesome."
But money !== happiness. RN is considered to be a good profession to study for
in college. But not everyone who studies to be an RN can be happy taking care
of sick and dying people all day, even if they are getting paid well. Likewise
not everyone who studies to be a software engineer can be happy sitting at a
computer writing code all day, even if they are getting paid well.
Some of us are happy to write code all day, and to "waste work" by rewriting
systems frequently whenever the business changes directions because we love
the challenge and the sense of progress as we get to see our coding skills
improving month after month as we learn new technologies and techniques. I'd
probably still be coding even if it was a low paying job, but I'm fortunate
that because I enjoy coding so much and do so much of it I've become quite
good at it and am able to make good money as a side benefit.
~~~
UK-AL
"If you like writing software, if you look forward to getting your next
assignment, then you should probably go ahead and pursue it as a career" -
The thing is academic/personal assignments are probably novel and interesting,
while 99% of business programming isn't. The jobs that have problems that are
novel or interesting, are damn hard to get.
So if you enjoy it at school/hobby, that has no relation to if your going to
enjoy it as a job. So you can easily end up hating your job.
~~~
NathanKP
_The jobs that have problems that are novel or interesting, are damn hard to
get._
I disagree. The monthly Who's Hiring thread here on HN is full of great jobs
solving interesting problems. If you find those jobs "damn hard" to get maybe
you need to learn some of the in demand skills or build a better portfolio of
projects that you've worked on. A github full of open source activity can get
you an interesting job quite easily.
A while back I put a very simple entry on an HN contractor thread and started
getting two to three job offers a month in my inbox, many from very
interesting companies doing interesting things. This was while I was still in
college, not actively looking for a job yet. I accepted interview offers from
a few of those companies and basically picked and choose who I wanted to work
for, which eventually lead to me getting a job at the startup I work for now
(storydesk.com) without ever needing to send out a single resume.
Maybe my experience is unusual, but I don't see it as being that difficult to
get an interesting job as a software engineer if you leverage a community like
HN.
~~~
UK-AL
some of the in demand skills? Such as?
Mobile Development Skills? I know that. The majority apps are boring though,
interfacing with a web service, saving and displaying data etc.
Web Devs Skills? I know Django the best, but again 99% of people using web
frameworks are just doing the normal inputting and outputting data out of a
database routine.
ML? I know that, but most companies only hire serious academic researchers, or
people with previous experience of it. I have MSc in CS with quite a lot ML in
it, but most are looking Ph.Ds;
Compilers? I've built a few prototypes. But very few companies actually need
this.
~~~
NathanKP
It sounds like you have enough skills. Maybe the only skill you need to
develop is how to sell yourself to the type of companies you want to work for.
If you don't mind some completely unsolicited advice:
I just checked out your HN profile and found a link to your blog. I checked
the blog and it is fairly empty with only two posts, and I see no Github link.
That's the first thing a good startup company is going to look at if they
think you might be a candidate for a position: your blog and your github.
I managed to track you down on Github via a Google Search and while two repos
seemed empty for some reason, Harlan looks pretty cool and non trivial,
showing a good level of technical skill.
The primary things I'd do if I were you is simplify and expand the message on
your blog to explain who you are and what skills you have and link to Github
prominently. Maybe on Github put up some more projects from a variety of
different domains, and write a few more blog posts about those projects.
Additionally blog theme says a lot about you. Right now the ideal blog design
if you want to come across as a "startup engineer" is something that looks
like Medium or Svtble. Your blog theme looks like a Tumblr.
(No offense intended but another slight thing to adjust might be the photo on
your blog. Obviously appearance isn't everything but in that photo it looks to
me like you have a smirk instead of a smile for some reason. If you choose to
include a photo it has to be one that makes you look like someone goodnatured
and a great employee, because people hiring in behalf of a company are going
to get one of their first impressions of you based on the photo, before they
even look at the Github.)
Anyway, once again I hope you aren't offended by my well intentioned by
completely unsolicited advice. For what it is worth I'm sure that you can get
an interesting coding job at an interesting company.
~~~
UK-AL
ok, what interesting problems are you working on? And I'll tell you if they're
interesting or not?
Because 95% of startups I've come across are solving trivial problems.
~~~
NathanKP
These are the things I've been able to do in the past year or so that I
thought were pretty interesting and enjoyable:
* Code to render PDF's into images using asynchronous streams to make it extremely fast.
* The same thing for videos, to recompress them for delivery to iPads.
* Code to use AWS to create a service that can be fairly easily scaled up and down dynamically in response to demand.
* Creating a highly tuned Node.js server capable of serving thousands of requests per second. Even basic CRUD operations can be pretty interesting to code when you are fine tuning server system level settings, optimizing database queries, using caching, etc to make sure that response times are all around 10-15ms even at hundreds to thousands of requests per second.
------
mschmo
Just a slight suggestion that doesn't actually have to do with the article
itself: Make your links stick out more. Maybe I just have bad eyes but I
really can't tell if a word is a link until I hover over it.
~~~
molex333
Thanks for the input, I have since modified this a bit to make the links more
visible.
------
Tloewald
Good post.
The original article (which this article addresses) falls straight out of the
most entitled kind of thinking ("the world owes me a living I enjoy"). I'd go
further: even if you don't enjoy programming, there are far more horrible ways
to earn a far worse living, and plenty of people have little choice.
Yesterday, I ordered pizza which was delivered by a guy older than me (and I'm
no spring chicken -- I learned programming on an HP calculator) who wasted ten
minutes finding my apartment because the delivery instructions were so poorly
printed as to be unreadable.
------
cnorgate
This 'response' was needed. Thank you! If anyone is interested in getting a
refreshing perspective on job and life satisfaction, you might consider
reading 'So Good They Can't Ignore You' by Cal Newport - great read on what
provides for a fulfilling career. I think the original writer of the post
could benefit from that.
[http://www.calnewport.com/books/sogood.html](http://www.calnewport.com/books/sogood.html)
Enjoy
------
AUmrysh
I got really burned out on programming my senior year at university and after
2 years of working alone on a massive web app. There are many other things I'd
rather be doing, like running a company or killing people for money or
something exciting, but I suspect that those jobs would get boring/old after a
while too.
The important thing to keep in mind is that your day job is a way to earn an
income. If you don't enjoy it, at least do yourself a favor and find one you
care to show up to every day.
If you really want to work on "hard problems" and other groundbreaking and
cutting edge technologies, you can always do it in your free time. Whether you
want to write software at work and then do it at home is another story, but
keep in mind that if you're successful, you can turn your side project into
your career, one you actually do give a shit about doing every day.
The great thing about software is that you are only limited by your knowledge
and determination. There are very few problems you need a massive expensive
computer to solve (at a small scale, at least), so your home computer is
usually just as capable as your work computer.
If you're bored with programming, why don't you start digging into the parts
that really get you excited. For me, that's functional languages and dynamic
typed languages, computer vision, and machine learning.
Don't be afraid to try new things and fail at them. If you just sit around
doing the same mundane work all day, don't be surprised when you believe all
of software is mundane.
I actually agree that programming sucks, but that's more to do with the fact
that you have to turn an idea into logic and math before you can make a
computer do it.
------
mathattack
_This would make one think that in the 70 's all software engineering was
awesome and exciting and everything that was done was cutting edge. The truth
is that at this time it was the same as it is today. They were writing machine
code (because they had to) and drivers for everything. They used punch cards
and time sharing machines. They didn't have GitHub or the Internet so code
sharing was not really possible outside your immediate social circle. I think
that there were some people then (just as there are today) who worked on
exciting stuff, but the majority were just doing a job._
This is very true. It's easy to have some appreciation for being closer to the
machine in prior eras, but it is a much better time to be a programmer today.
There are many more tools, and much more collaboration available. The time
from idea to completed project is much shorter. The ability to scale projects
is much higher. The wait time for code to compile and run is much shorter. I
can go on and on...
------
maligree
Huh. I understood the article he's referring to as something more along the
lines of "don't make «programming» your job, make it your tool". Similarly,
not becoming a "software engineer" means not becoming a merely guy with a
hammer, but a guy with and idea and a hammer. That idea I liked pretty much,
actually.
------
crazygringo
Excellent. This is what I wish I could have said in response to that other
article, but couldn't find the words for.
This post is exactly right -- and I've seen a few newly-hired programmers in
their first job out of college who had a very difficult time adjusting to the
"real world", where programming isn't about fun and games and self-fulfillment
any more, it's about creating real-world value.
There's nothing unique to programming in this -- journalists discover they
can't write about whatever they want, scientists have to follow the funding,
etc.
However, I do wonder if programmers, on average, might have particularly
inflated expectations of what their jobs will be like? Just like the original
blog post expressed. And what makes this so?
~~~
molex333
I agree, I wrote this to just to show that there are still people who enjoy
their work and think that it is a great profession.
------
antocv
Programming is programming.
It depends on what you are programming that makes it terrible or a joy.
Im right know payed to do another CRM in PHP and Id rather gauge my eyes out
at the end of the day than continue with it. Im not solving any problems at
all. Its just business/stakeholders/managers/whomever that decided a few
months ago that their CRM needed a "facelift" and here we are. We use some new
frameworks (slim), TDD, bootstrap/jquery, talk about agile/lean but in the end
the problem we are solving is just some stupid shit like making a document or
presentation better than what it was before. And the users are joyful. They
got to look at something new while at work. They compete with each other with
who will be picked to be among the pilot group, the new the cool. Like kids. A
day looks like, fix some "bug" in on the server in an older application among
arcane spaghetti-code, or some client-side jquery platitude (oh its you ie8
again?), write some new "functionality" which is fetch this data put it in
there display it like this, take this data validate, serialize and send it
over there. This is not even programming, it is bullshitting.
Then I go home and relax and read, after a while Im ready to play with python
and C, solving minor and sometimes bigger problems. Trying out some machine
learning at the moment. Ah the joy of hacking. It fills me up for next day.
~~~
martijn_himself
I am in a very similar situation. Except I do not have the energy to sit down
at home and do more programming, I am happy to get away from it until the next
day.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dementia rates decline in U.S., researchers unsure why - tokenadult
http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2016/02/11/Dementia-rates-decline-in-US-researchers-unsure-why/8051455195428/
======
proksoup
> results showing the number of dementia diagnoses in Europe has stabilized
> during the last 20 years
Diagnosis changes seem a possible contributing factor to me. We pick new names
for things and recategorize them.
------
saosebastiao
Could this have something to do with the nutrition science community's
reversal of a decades old vilification of saturated fats, which tended to get
replaced with much worse trans fats? Saturated fats are absolutely necessary
for brain function, and for a long while the standard recommendation was to
avoid them like the plague.
~~~
maguirre
Honest question. Where did you learn that saturated fats are important for
brain function?
------
reasonattlm
Reduction in vascular contributions to dementia due to the same technologies
that have greatly reduced cardiovascular mortality over the past 40 years
seems like a reasonable hypothesis.
A lot of the damage to your brain is due to deterioration of blood vessels,
leading to a continual series of tiny unseen strokes, in effect, silently
destroying tiny areas of brain tissue. The level to which that is present in
an individual has been shown to correlate pretty well with cognitive
impairment.
~~~
teslabox
The phasing-out of partially hydrogenated oils is probably more important than
any other factor.
~~~
maxerickson
That seems way too recent to be much of a factor at all.
~~~
sitkack
I was thinking lead paint and leaded gasoline. Whatever it was, it was
probably a long time ago.
------
marvel_boy
Who knows. May be it's because the next aging generation is more mentally and
physically active. Maybe is for the leaded gasoline.
------
scottlocklin
The problem with syndromes correlated with human behavior is they're vague
enough they could have 4-5 causative factors. The same is true of potential
causative factors in autism, sexual preferences or depression. It's even true
of very acute syndromes like Parkinsons disease (or cancer). We found one
direct cause of Parkinsons; fentanyl impurities -there might be 100 of these.
We want to use science to explain things, and of course, we should try, but
teasing out complex causes that may have multiple components over a lifetime
is extremely difficult.
------
gwbas1c
DDT?
In Silent Spring, the author predicts that DDT will cause brain problems very
similar to dementia. There is also a statistically-significant increase of DDT
in some patients with alzheimer's.
~~~
Houshalter
That prediction doesn't seem to be based on anything. DDT doesn't accumulate
in the body and stay for decades. A more likely environmental source would be
lead or other heavy metals. There are a million other chemicals and
environmental factors that could be correlated to it.
------
irascible
Ubiquitous Internet access keeps the elderly better engaged with the world.
------
x2398dh1
A few problems with the article's flow and coherence. First off, the article
conflates, "rate of dementia," with, "total incidence of dementia," which is
like confusing gallons of gas with miles per gallon. Secondly, the article
conflates, "dementia," with "Alzheimers," but - those are highly correlated
since Alzheimer's is the overwhelming cause of dementia, so we'll let that one
slide. The article starts off with a paragraph that states effectively that,
"They have been predicting there will be tons of dementia for years, but now
they are wrong!" Well Stephen Feller (author of the article), no, there is a
clearly demonstrated increase in the incidence of dementia that will occur in
the United States due to the baby boom population, which will increase the
incidence of dementia per total US population (call that IncDem/USPop), and no
one argues against that, in fact you even later state that in your article.
What this study shows, as your article states, is that among predominantly
white populations, in an above average income town (Framingham, MA), there has
been a decrease in dementia controlled by age-related factors, (call that
LocalDem/FramPop). So Dr. Sudha Seshadri, referenced in the story, likely
knows many of the mechanisms of why this happens, it's not like researchers
are totally clueless, which the article seems to open to interpretation by
using the article title modifier, "...Researchers Unsure Why." No, they are
pretty sure of some of the reasons why LocalDem/FramPop is decreasing:
basically, Framingham, being a somewhat higher than average income town, has
more exposure to healthcare education and practices, particularly to
alzheimer's reducing drugs such as Donenzepil, which delays symptoms of
Alzheimer's for an average of around 5 years if adhered to properly. There are
other health and psychological factors which tend to trace diet and well-
being...so a poor southern town, one can pretty easily imagine, might not have
had such a considerable decrease in their LocalDem/FramPop as Framingham, Mass
over the last 40 years. Also, just because one town had a lower
LocalDem/FramPop does not mean that there is a total decrease in the rate of
increase of IncDem/USPop, in fact that rate could be accelerating due to our
poor diets and expensive healthcare access. So perhaps a better title for the
article could have been, "Can a Mass. Town's Lower Dementia Rate Point to a
Better Path for the Looming US Dementia Problem?"
When someone writes a new article on the above improved analysis, you can
credit me and link back here. What we get with articles that have a lack of
rigor, like what Stephen Feller wrote, are people in the comments section
saying, "Well maybe it's because people smoke more weed," even though they may
well have read the whole article, the title and flow frames the discussion up
incorrectly.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Announces Q1 Earnings, Beats Analyst Estimates But Shares Drop - hiteshiitk
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/15/google-announces-q1-earnings-beats-analyst-estimates-but-shares-drop/
======
marcamillion
They actually don't beat analysts estimate.
Some analysts were way too bullish:
'April 15 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc. reported first-quarter profit that fell
short of some analysts’ estimates after it increased spending to enter new
markets and maintain its lead in online search advertising.
The company’s first-quarter performance failed to meet expectations lifted
when Intel Corp., a barometer of technology spending, forecast a surge in
sales and record profit margins.'
[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601010&sid=a3lW...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601010&sid=a3lWulcHAw70)
------
samratjp
"Thoughts on shipping the tablet: We’re really delighted by Chrome pickup
rate. In terms of Tablets. Last year with Chrome OS we said we are working to
have a netbook in the fall."
I am willing to misinterpret netbook as an internet device that operates like
a book. In other words, where is that mythical Android tablet from Google?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Watch and learn: How music videos are triggering a literacy boom in India - robg
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/09/19/watch_and_learn/?page=full
======
krakensden
Seems like a good companion to the "how to raise boys who read" article.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is this website intentionally bad? - kaishiro
http://www.noodleanddumpling.com.au/
======
aychedee
Ya know. It's probably the best restaurant web site I have ever seen. It has
the phone number, the address, the opening hours, and the menu all available
on the first page. And it loaded in less than a second on my mobile. What an
amazing restaurant website. I wish other restaurants would start emulating it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Grandpappy's Hard Times Survival - 2038AD
https://grandpappy.org/
======
octosphere
Summons the phrase _good links never die_. I like how this is not one of those
frightful Single Page Apps that weigh 3MB and require the latest Chrome to
work.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Launching really old code written in 2006 - vaibhav228
We have a project written in 2006 with old tech stack like Struts1. It has lot of frameworks written based on hash maps which can be replaced with good frameworks available. For example they have written workflows frameworks for validating a use case by executing different struts actions.<p>For some reason management did not gave launch signal at that time in 2006 and project was closed.<p>Now we are starting that project again and the plan is to use the same code base and migrate to struts 2.3.24.<p>They have written different modules as separate projects and creating jars and referring them which is good, but they have cyclic dependencies as well, which is my concern.<p>I have gone through code and the code is not good. Not written properly and lots of performance issues. All UI related written in plain javascript, no jQuery.<p>The old code does not work and not getting up, because some part of the code is missing. No documentation. No old team member.<p>Everyone is new. New team is very much frustrated with working on such code and delivery schedule is very tight.<p>I think even if we migrate and work out that code and get it up and running. The maintenance of that code will be huge task and will be difficult to add new features.<p>We already had discussion with client And looks like he does not want to use new technologies or re design it.<p>How should I convince my client to write using new technologies and re architect the solution. We can use some part of code they have written.<p>How should I come up with new solution which he will like and can at least think about doing a POC to demonstrate.<p>Please anyone faced with such challenges. How you guys convinced your management or client?
======
qubex
It all depends on the benefit your client expects to get out of this project.
What you are proposing will increase the ‘cost’ associated with this project.
Your client, if rational, will seek the best cost/benefit outcome. If raising
the cost makes the net benefit vanish, they won't do it.
~~~
vaibhav228
Thanks for your reply. I agree that it will increase a cost little. But
maintaining the code will have more cost.
~~~
qubex
Many smaller businesses have little understanding of concepts such as total
cost of ownership and maintenance over the lifetime of a product or system.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Greece's Varoufakis to Run in European Election – In Germany - tpush
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-election-germany/greeces-varoufakis-to-run-in-european-election-in-germany-idUSKCN1NU0QA
======
MrTonyD
For anybody trying to understand why the world is the way it is (global
politics and who really runs the world), I strongly recommend Yanis Varoufakis
"Adults in the Room". It describes the EU and its major players and what
really happens behind those closed doors (and it is nothing like what we see
in the newspapers.)
~~~
somberi
+1 on the recommendation. I found it fascinating.
His other book "Talking to my daughter about the economy" (1) is also a good
read - especially for parents that have teenaged kids (in addition to being
useful for the adults in the room).
There are many good reviews about the book, but an interesting negative
review, for a rounded view, can be found here (2).
(1) [https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1111145/talking-to-my-
da...](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1111145/talking-to-my-daughter-
about-the-economy/9781847924445.html)
(2) [https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/lucid-but-flawed-
pa...](https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/lucid-but-flawed-paschal-
donohoe-reviews-yanis-varoufakis-s-economics-primer-1.3274074)
------
thedailymail
The article neglects to mention one of the more interesting detours in
Varoufakis' professional life: his stint as in-house economist at Valve
Software. [http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began-
with-a...](http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began-with-a-
strange-email/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Is it too late for a late 30s person to start learning coding - prkvs
I am in my late 30s , i learnt basic C programming in school some 15 years back , means i picked up some basic programming concepts. I work in Software product company in a managerial/coordination role. I did make a few failed attempts to start with Python on Coursera , but could never finish the course due to work commitments .<p>In each attempt I manage to reach the basic classes(loops,while,functions etc) and lost from there, i am not able to cross that level and go to intermediate topics. What is the best way to cross that level and move to intermediate concepts?<p>If my objective is to learn coding+other basics so that i could build[1] and maintain my ideas[2] , how should i go about and what should i learn?<p>[1]- A quick Proof of Concept and deploy a working model to demo
[2]- Ideas meaning some Webapps/SaaS app
======
pizza
Try looking at bottlepy for a really simple webapp framework in python. Maybe
learning a framework in Python will make it easier to consolidate how Python
all fits together. It's not too late though! It just takes time to pick up the
rhythm.
The first book I used to learn (that made me feel confident about how to put
programs together) when I started Python was Dive Into Python (there's a new
one about Python 3, it's probably where to start nowadays). It was written for
people with some programming experience but I managed to piece together a
broad understanding without much previous programming exposure.
Programming is just another way of learning to build up a logical description
of something. It's like writing an executable proof. Give it a shot!
------
therealunreal
It's not too late, certainly not because of your age. It rather depends on
your personal life and free time (family, time constraints, etc.). My advice
is to go for it when you can spare at least 2 hours per day and you actually
enjoy it.
------
gjvc
Get a project. Having a concrete and useful task at hand is the number one
motivator to find out about the features of any given programming system and
stay using them. Begin simple. Keep it simple. Good luck. :-)
------
adrianN
It's never to late. Buy a book, or follow an online class. Do the exercises.
Programming is not easy, you need to be persistent if you want to make
progress.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Open API Initiative - tilt
https://openapis.org/
======
matrixcubed
[https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
101 Reasons Why Java is Better than .NET (Reloaded) - known
http://helpdesk-software.ws/it/29-04-2004.htm
======
ilkhd2
What about tail-call optimization? What about "correct" generics (as in .NET)?
What about startup time? What about closures?
Anyway old useless flame.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New App – Coming Soon Feedback Appreciated - JamieWilkes
We have a NEW App launching very soon, we need feedback on the design and concept please. This will be available on ios and android. Thank you in advance. https://www.matchstixx.com/
======
gus_massa
I really don't expect that someone will pay for this, I guess it's better a
fermium model.
If the user is the only person that has the application, it's not very useful,
the user MUST convince his/her family and friends to install and pay. And the
family/friends are not very convinced and think that they probably will never
use this app again, so they are very worried to pay. If they install for free,
they can use it later. This app has a very strong local network effect.
I think it's better a model like Candy Crash, were you get a few free plays,
and they regenerate slowly by time. But if you are in a big long party with
lot's of friends, your free plays will not be enough and you must pay to get
more.
Also, if the user only pays for installing the app you still have to pay for
the bandwidth an hosting each month forever. If the user pays when have to
play, you get some money each month/week.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Show HN: Ungrabbed – Available domains for startups and side projects - sasan
https://www.ungrabbed.com
======
marclave
Cool idea, appreciate the note in the inspiration of the project from Paul
Grahams "Change Your Name" [1]. Really looking forward to getting a surprise
email with some .coms.
Curious on a bit more detail about the domain name selection.
[1] [http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html)
~~~
sasan
Really appreciate the kind words! Right now, I'm searching for and adding the
domains manually. My biggest goal with the site is to offer domains that
actually look and sound good. Something a startup would genuinely want to use.
See you in your inbox tomorrow :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Dayta – data tracker for mindful living - zmxv
https://dayta.app/?hn
======
zmxv
I had been using Google Sheets to keep track of some of my daily activities.
Google Sheets is a feasible solution but the UI is not optimal for this use
case, so I built this web app and released it on the first day of 2020.
Hopefully Dayta can be a useful tool for those who are pursuing a mindful
life.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ancient Egypt may have given cats the personality to conquer the world (2017) - benbreen
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/ancient-egyptians-may-have-given-cats-personality-conquer-world
======
seibelj
What I love about cats vs. dogs is that cats only do what they want. If they
sit on you, cuddle, want pets, hang out, it’s because they like you.
I’m not saying dogs don’t like you. It’s just that they are “man’s best
friend”. I had a dog growing up and it was never as interesting to me as the
cats. I had 3 cats growing up (if one passed or disappeared, we would
replace), and as soon as I had my own place post-college, I got three more
cats! They are truly one of the inexpensive pleasures of life to me. I highly
recommend everyone get a cat! The Egyptians knew it 12,000 years ago!
~~~
dbcurtis
Cats understand work/life balance, and dogs don’t.
For a dog, the highlight of the day is running with the pack, regardless of
how much effort that is. Thus, the success of the dogsled.
The cat’s highlights are the daily private hunt, followed by a nap. There is
no such thing as a catsled. Channel that thought during your next daily
standup.
~~~
o_nate
It's interesting that dogs are seen as the more practical, helpful pet. And
certainly for much of history, that was true. However, in a modern, urban
environment, I'd say the situation has reversed. Apart from the intangible,
emotional companion benefits, I'd argue there isn't much practical use of a
dog for a city-dweller. On the other hand, a cat at least has the benefit of
keeping unwanted rodents out of your apartment.
------
gwern
Paper:
[https://www.gwern.net/docs/catnip/2017-ottoni.pdf](https://www.gwern.net/docs/catnip/2017-ottoni.pdf)
(I host it for a book review I wrote on cat domestication:
[https://www.gwern.net/Cat-Sense](https://www.gwern.net/Cat-Sense) .)
------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> Either way, type A and type C cats eventually intermingled in Europe and
> beyond. Today’s cats are likely a blend of both Turkish and Egyptian cats.
It would be really interesting to compare type A and type C with DNA from
modern cat breeds to find if/how much each of these types of cats contributes.
------
scirocco
Dogs have owners, cats have staff :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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ESR announces ForgePlucker: solving the data-jail problems of OSS hosting sites - Luyt
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1369
======
jgrahamc
It's amusing to actually look at the source code of this. It's a single file,
here:
[http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/forgeplucker/trunk/bugplucker.py?...](http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/forgeplucker/trunk/bugplucker.py?rev=7&view=markup)
Reading it, it looks like a total hack job by a poor programmer. For example,
HTML parsing it done by a bunch of regular expressions. Which include stuff
like
# Yes, Berlios generated \r<BR> sequences with no \n
text = text.replace("\r<BR>", "\r\n")
# And Berlios generated doubled </TD>s
text = text.replace("</TD></TD>", "</TD>")
All the pain of maintaining these little cases could have been removed by
simply running the page being walked through an actual HTML parser that
produces a DOM tree. Similarly the function dehtmlize contains a limit set of
HTML attributes that it will convert (e.g. it does not convert ).
Also, then you get stuff like:
# First, strip out all attributes for easier parsing
text = re.sub('<TR[^>]+>', '<TR>', text, re.I)
text = re.sub('<TD[^>]+>', '<TD>', text, re.I)
text = re.sub('<tr[^>]+>', '<TR>', text, re.I)
text = re.sub('<td[^>]+>', '<TD>', text, re.I)
Why have you got four expressions there? They are all doing case insensitive
matching yet there are upper and lowercase versions of each.
Hmm. The rest of the code is really pretty crappy. He could have just read the
thing into lxml and have done XPath queries to extract data. It would have had
the advantage of making clear what parts of the page he was extracting and
made maintenance easy.
~~~
esr
It's a proof-of-concept. Don't get hung up on the parsing details, I expect
I'm going to have to rewrite it at least twice.
~~~
esr
I've written something relevent here: "Structure Is Not Meaning".
<http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1387>
~~~
jgrahamc
Your reply doesn't address why you do the things I highlighted in my original
comment. For example, in the middle of your generic table parser you have code
specific to Berlios making it non-generic. That's there because you haven't
actually parsed the HTML you are trying to hack around it with regexps.
In your post you say:
_So instead, I walk through the page looking for anything that looks like a
hotlink wrapping literal text of the form #[0-9]. Actually, that
oversimplifies; I look for a hotlink with a specific pattern of URL in a
hotlink that I know points into the site bugtracker._
I don't have any problem with you using regexps to identify the particular
fragments you are looking for, my criticism is that you use them for HTML
parsing. For example, in your code you use a regexp like this
<A HREF="/bugs/\?func=detailbug&bug_id=([0-9]+)&group_id=%s">
This mixes structure and meaning to use your terms. You assume that there's an
HREF attribute after the A. Your code is brittle when it comes to a change in
the HTML (e.g. suppose the page author adds a CLASS= attribute).
This would not happen if you parsed the HTML into a DOM tree and then did
queries against it. You could quickly extract all the <A> tags in the path
with a //A query (or even all those that have an HREF) and get the actual HREF
robustly. Or you could not use XPath and use a parser that does calls backs
with robust lists of attributes.
Doing that would be both robust against changes in page structure, and robust
against changes in the attributes or placement of attributes in the <A>.
PS Is your name calling really necessary? In your post you refer to me as a
'snotty kid' and a 'fool'
PPS Also you say:
_If I did what my unwise critic says is right, I’d take a parse tree of the
entire page and then write a path query down to the table cell and the
embedded link._
I never said that, I said that you could use XPath queries to extract the
data. I never implied that you use a complete rooted path to get where you
want in the document. You've twisted what I actually said to fit into your
'structure and meaning' blog post.
~~~
statictype
>PS Is your name calling really necessary? In your post you refer to me as a
'snotty kid' and a 'fool'
Well, you said his code looks like a hack job by a poor programmer. That's
fairly insulting too.
About the actual mechanics of screen scraping, I guess your only issue is that
he could have used an html parser to sanitize the code first before querying
it.
~~~
gaius
_his code looks like a hack job by a poor programmer_
Well, it does. Specifying case insensitive match and then handling both cases
yourself reeks of someone who's never parsed anything before. The second case
won't even do anything, it's already been done! And even if the language or
the libraries worked that way, what about mixed case! Let alone parsing HTML
with regexps in the first place. Python has BeautifulSoup for not-well-formed
documents.
It's reasonable from that code snippet to infer the author understands neither
the language he's using nor the problem domain he's working in.
~~~
omouse
he obviously hates dealing with regular expressions and I do too. It's only
natural.
~~~
gaius
So he used double the number of regexps he needed?
~~~
omouse
double the expressions but they're simpler to understand perhaps.
~~~
gaius
No, the only reason to a) specifically add the option for case insensitive
matching and then b) copy-paste the _same_ regexp just with the case changed
is if you really don't understand what it means.
------
omouse
Jesus fuck, the first comments I see here are complaints about the code.
What about the concept? Is it any good? Is it worth working on?
~~~
cdibona
Yes and no... for most of the sites syncing svn from site to site is pretty
simple and usable, even if it can take a bit of time.
For bugs, code.google.com has a export mechanism and you can kind of gin one
up for sf.net via its feeds (I've not done it, so ymmv).
For wikis, we (google) store wiki content in the vc, so that's easy and so
we're pretty happy with the ability of people to pull info out of
code.google.com.
I think it is a non-trivial problem to take bugs from any bug tracking system
to any other different one. There are too many customizations and changes even
within single projects to make it a simple task. I think of taking a bug from
a Demetrius project to , say, jira and that strikes me as being a poor match
from a data perspective.
Backing up your data off of the hosting site makes a lot of sense to me, which
if Eric can make his program do, then that would be more immediately useful
than host to host migration. In my experience, people tend to stick with hosts
once they have an established project there.
------
9turningmirrors
"Currently there is one area director, for the Open Source Awards, John
Graham-Cummings" from: <http://catb.org/~esr/roles.html>
google result for "Eric raymond" "John Graham-Cumming" -
<http://bit.ly/3eCOSZ>
not that I'm trying to prove anything ...... rofl
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask HN: How do you say it? - mattlanger
I'm sure I'm not the only one whose introduction to computers consisted of sitting home alone and hacking away and only ever communicating about technical terminology via non-spoken media like IRC. What I wonder is if anyone else consequently developed their own quirky pronunciations for technical terms that differ wildly from convention.<p>As an example, I may pronounce "sudo" as "sue dough" or say "regex" with a soft "g", but what really makes my colleagues laugh at me is when I pronounce "bin" and "lib" with long i's (as in "binary" and "library").
======
cperciva
I usually say "su-doe", not "su-doo"; "reg-ex", not "re-jex"; bin, not "bine";
and "lib", not "libe". I also say "lin-ux", not "lie-nux"; and "s-crypt", not
"script".
~~~
khafra
Likewise on all but Linux, which I have pronounced "lee-nux" after a friend
showed me <http://www.paul.sladen.org/pronunciation/>
------
marssaxman
I doubt there is any such thing as "convention". Some words are pronounced
phonetically and some as fragments of the words they were abbreviated or
concatenated from; who's to say which is correct? People don't even apply
their own pronunciation patterns consistently.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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