Join our hacker house for new YC companies - thejash
http://www.founderflat.com/
======
nickpinkston
I'll vouch hugely for Josh "thejash". Josh is ultra hardworking, super smart,
and the least flakey dude that I know. He's also managed a shared housing
situation for years, so he's really the ideal dude to be doing this.

Disclosure: Josh and I founded/sold a company together and overall have been
good friends for many years.

------
mbeebe
Having just gone through the winter batch, the closer you are to YC, the
easier it is going to be.

Between dinners and office hours you wind up going there frequently. Traffic
is a big pain when trying to get to the dinners on anything other than surface
streets.

~~~
thejash
Other YC alumni that I spoke with felt the same way, which is a big part of
why the final location will probably be in or near Mountain View.

~~~
jedberg
It's not so bad if you are near any Caltrain or light rail stop, since both
stop very close to YC.

------
argumentum
List of potential craigslist houses I found, mostly in palo alto or within
minutes from..

<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2957756203.html>
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2952933250.html>
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2956453815.html>
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2956341339.html>
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2946849180.html>
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2949748841.html>
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2949736690.html>
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2947663166.html>
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2957990093.html>
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2948364081.html> (has basement!)

~~~
thejash
Thanks for the links!

It's tough to find huge places, so if you (or anyone) knows of suitable places
(>=6br), especially those NOT listed on craigslist/etc, please comment or send
me an email.

------
kirinan
This is a fantastic idea. I signed up for Ycombinator and since I'm moving
from Ohio, wasn't sure where I would be able to find housing. This solves that
problem. Im not sure how competitive it will be able to get into the "house",
but hopefully not that competitive.

~~~
thejash
If it ends up being really competitive (and we have more people than can fit
comfortably in one house), then we can do two or more. I have a number of
places that I'm looking at already, so I'm pretty sure we won't end up with a
situation where people can't live in any of the available houses*

*excluding rounding (like if there are 8 people and only 7 slots in one house)

~~~
kirinan
Awesome, well I plan on bringing a car if I'm accepted so whomever lives with
me will have transportation when I'm available. Good idea on getting more than
one, I think this can be profitable for you (if you are looking for that ) as
well as being a good deal for the people moving there.

~~~
thejash
I'm not looking for profit in this--it's a horrible business idea :) I'll be
happy if I get to meet some interesting people and don't lose all that much
money.

~~~
kirinan
The meeting people part makes up for any lost money anytime!

------
andrewhillman
This is a great idea. Might as well make the experience social since most YC
alumni regret not getting to know the other companies during the 3 month
period. Might be cool to have weekly pitch events/gatherings at the location.

~~~
thejash
The "regret not getting to know each other" is definitely something that I've
heard from recent YC alumni.

As for weekly gatherings--I think that might be a bit distracting for the
teams there, but I can see occasional gatherings being valuable.

~~~
carterschonwald
This. Thinking and problem solving is a social process, the human brain is
designed to be fueled via lots of nuggets of social. Theres a huge amount of
variability in what sorts of socialization different folks need and what form
it needs to take, but it's absence creates a terrifying inability to think
clearly and execute.

Foam earplugs plus around the ear headphones solve most hearing other people
distractions. :)

Point being, if my group is in YC this summer, we're definitely looking for a
social living space

------
mirsadm
I signed up (we applied for YC). Having gone through the hassle of finding a
place in a few places recently it is a huge pain in the ass. This is a great
idea but I'm not sure we'd be able to commit to a 6 month contract.

~~~
thejash
I think a 6 month contract isn't too bad, when you consider that it's
basically:

1 month for moving in before YC starts

3 months for YC

2 months for wrapping things up and finding a new place and moving

------
argumentum
Great idea.

I was thinking about creating my own post for a YC hacker house, but I'd
rather not deal with organizing and getting a landlord on board with something
like this.

------
bravura
Cost: $500 + $600 * numBedrooms) <= cost <= ($1000 + $1200 * numBedrooms)

 _You decide numBedrooms for your team. The fixed cost is to cover shared
rooms (kitchen, conference room, living room, etc)._

Larger teams will incur a larger utilization of shared resources, and hence
should pay more for shared resources. It more fair simply to divide the
overall cost.

~~~
thejash
That's true. But on the other hand, imagine this situation:

3 teams with 3 people. The house has 7 br. 2 teams each buy 3 br (for a total
of 6 of the 7 being used), then the other team buys 1 br, and they all always
work from and hang out at the house. It would be lame that that 3rd team was
paying 1/3rd the cost of each of the other teams. So this formulation was an
attempt to account for that.

Basically, my theory is--be reasonable. If you're using 42% of the house, you
should pay 42% of the costs. I'm happy to adjust the costs to make it work out
in a reasonable way.

------
larrys
I wondering what the reaction would be if a few well known and loved VC firms
(that have funded YC companies before) got involved and subsidized part of the
rent for something like this or even something on a larger scale. Thoughts on
that idea?

~~~
thejash
I'm not sure how subsidizing the rent would help the companies, especially if
they've already gotten into YC (and thus just got a bunch of investment, with
other investment pretty readily available).

Seems like it would be better to just keep the investing as direct dollars for
equity, like it is now. Unless I'm missing something? I'd be happy to be wrong
here. :)

~~~
larrys
I'm thinking of it similar to how corporations want their names on rooms
and/or buildings at colleges. Showing a level of support which, while not a
quid pro quo, shows support in a way that isn't directly linked to a benefit.

The support could come as monetary support and maybe doing the thing that PG
doesn't have the time for as mentioned here (coordinating housing):

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3650877>

------
dmvaldman
Just signed up. I've been sequestered in my fortress of solitude for too
long!!...Now if only I could get accepted to YC and cash in on this deal...

------
amccloud
Where is that Zencoder house? (<http://yfrog.com/09x7fsj>)

~~~
thejash
I don't have an exact address. I spoke with Jon (of Zencoder), he said it was
somewhere in the Santa Cruz mountains. Such a place is probably a little too
remote for most people (it was a 30 minute or more drive to YC)

~~~
argumentum
I don't mind, I have a car and don't mind sharing. I kind of like the idea of
living in a remote fortress, like a mad-scientist. But yeah, probably not
practical for enough people, unfortunately.

~~~
thejash
I agree with everything you said.

Hopefully you signed up and made a note about your preference for a remote
area?

~~~
argumentum
Yes, I did, though I'll only know today whether yc has a chance of happening
(interview invites go out this evening I believe).

------
citricsquid
curious, will you be funding this out of pocket with the rent from the people
living there used to reimburse yourself, or will you be using the rent paid by
the people living there to pay the rent? I assume the former but I thought it
might be worth you clarifying. Great idea, good luck!

~~~
thejash
I haven't fully decided--it's not going to be free, for sure. Probably, people
will pay me and I will pay the landlord, since that seems more convenient, but
I could easily be convinced to just have people pay directly instead.

As I said on the page, the goal is not to make money, so any payment will just
be to cover costs. I'm not quite wealthy enough to just give away the space
for free yet :)

~~~
citricsquid
My point was more that if one person flakes for whatever reason or a startup
drops out and you're financing the entire thing directly with the rent paid by
the rentees you're in for a world of hurt unless someone comes up to cover
it... I assume if you pay for it and then the rentees reimburse you the worst
case is you lose money; not that people end up homeless.

------
kcrussell
This is great! A great idea for any incubator area.

------
sparknlaunch12
Are pets allowed?

~~~
thejash
I can't see anyone objecting to a fish or something. As for cats and dogs...
my guess is probably not, either because other people would object, they would
be bothersome, or the lease would not allow for it. So it's possible, but
unlikely.

~~~
sparknlaunch
Thanks for the reply. Great idea to get like minded people together. We hope
you plan to share the stories and results from the house. Will make
interesting reading if all house mates end up making it big.


Show HN: Open-Source Anonymous Encrypted TLS+OTR Messaging Written in Go - RomanPushkin
https://hacktunnel.com

======
susi22
I'm still waiting for the day that somebody does a "super simple chat" with NO
dependencies. Why do they all need REDIS or some kind of persistence? Why not
just hold it in memory?

If you really have a use case where persistence & scaling is an issue you're
likely not going to use any of those chat servers anyways.

~~~
defaultcoder
One of authors is here.

Redis saves data to the disk by default but this can be turned off. That's
what we did. GUIDs of connected users are stored in memory with expiration by
the 10 min timeout.

I think scalability does not hurt privacy. It's nice to have 10 servers with
40GB memory instead of one with 4GB. Connections between servers can be
encrypted with TLS.

------
thomasjudge
"How safe is my tunnel?

Your tunnel remains safe until your password or our servers are not
compromised."

uhhh...

~~~
RomanPushkin
Fair enough, huh :) Actually, it's mentioned because we wanted to note it
somehow - it's always better to have this set up on your own server

~~~
kodablah
I haven't looked deeply into this implementation, but with OTR's forward
secrecy and 3.1+ authentication, is that not enough to defeat even the server
being compromised? (meaning, at least you would know it was compromised
assuming you trusted the actor on the other end)

~~~
Bogdanovich
If server is compromised, web app source code would probably change to
something else.


Retailers Are Losing the Software Talent Wars - jongraehl
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/retailers-are-losing-the-software-talent-wars-12012011.html
======
jtchang
I can't believe some of you are saying they should put together a bunch of
awesome programmers and rewrite their platform from scratch.

Certainly that is an option. But rarely is it ever the correct one. Your new
platform could be as riddled with bugs as the old one.

The truth is that finding good engineers is about knowing the right
incentives. Retailers are losing the talent wars because they don't know how
to compete. And while salary is one lever Target can fiddle with, it certainly
isn't the only one.

Target needs to look at the right incentives for the people they want to hire.
Is telecommuting an option? How about direct authority to approve changes? Or
the chance to build your own team? These are the incentives that matter to
engineers.

The problem is cutting through all the rhetoric in hiring. Target can say "we
want to revolutionize the ecommerce industry" but do any engineers actually
believe them? That's tough.

~~~
kls
_And while salary is one lever Target can fiddle with, it certainly isn't the
only one._

I would argue set high enough it is the only lever. Many that play the start
up game do so because first and foremost, there is the chance to earn far more
than they can at an organization like Target. Sure it's a long shot but, there
is at least the chance, if large organizations started to cross that chasm. I
believe that they would indeed start to attract talent. If one could become
moderately wealthy working for Target then a lot of people would choose that
option, sure it's not the fame and fortune of making it in a start up, but a
road somewhere in the middle is a road I would imagine that many developers
would be willing to travel.

~~~
bluedanieru
That's not very realistic and they almost certainly don't have the money for
it. Moreover, increasing salary nets diminishing returns for motivating people
after a certain point, and if it sucks to work for you, then no matter how
much you pay, people are going to get bored and frustrated and leave.

~~~
kls
I would be hard pressed to believe that they do not have the money for it,
while I was at Marriott I doubled our budget for salary and did not change
head count. I raised salaries above market rate and used some of it for merit
based bonuses. It was very effective in recruiting and retaining talent. It
was not the only thing that I did, but money cannot be discounted as a
motivating factor. I will cede to your point that it the place flat out sucks
even an astronomical amount of money may not retain your talent. But I am
giving them the benefit of the doubt that they are mediocre at worst.

------
adaml_623
I think that article is neglecting the posibility that Target (as an example)
has the software engineers who are talented enough to fix the site.

But what they almost definitely have is buckets of management and procedures
preventing them from fixing the site. The kind of person who is afraid to
reboot the server because it hasn't been rebooted in 6 months. Or who says if
we do anything then we might make it worse.

~~~
codeonfire
Also lets not forget micromanaging tech managers who's one or two years of
development before they went into management (hey they figured out technology
in one year unlike all those other saps) entitles them to force their stupid
and disastrous ideas onto the engineering team.

------
Roboprog
Hmm. Rather than spend $180 or $300 million to purchase tech companies, maybe
some of these stores could try paying Silicon Valley salaries to a team of 10
or 20 devs.

20 devs * $200 K (loaded) / year = $4 M / year.

... Assuming they had a way to bootstrap an idiot-rejection-filter.

~~~
bgentry
That's a much better plan. It's funny that they are unwilling to pay above-
market salaries to a few competent devs.

~~~
ajross
It's a terrible plan. Paying a bunch of rock star salaries just gets you a
bunch of people that _say_ they are rock stars. If you don't have any on
staff, you don't actually know if they are or not (pg has an essay about
exactly this).

History is filled with these kind of rock star failures.

Buying the company gets you a team that can verifiably build the product you
want, _because they already did_. That kind of conservative risk management is
worth a ton of cash in the real world.

~~~
droithomme
$200k isn't a rock star salary.

You are correct that paying market salaries for competent engineers does not
ensure competent engineers.

However it must be noted that _not_ paying market salaries for competent
engineers definitely ensures that one employes substandard talent. The market
is working well right now and competent engineers have no problem receiving
market rate. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever why competent engineers
will not find a job paying the market rate for their talent, and that is
exactly what happens. As for the companies that can not pay market rate, well
they are simply not competitive and will fail. That's how the free market
works and it is a very good thing.

Any company that requires being competitive in the tech domain needs to be
willing to pay for key talent. Companies like Target definitely need to do
everything they can. Arguments that incompetent developers are good enough are
absurd. Obviously what they have now is not working.

Building a site that can handle a nationwide retailer the size of Target,
second only to WalMart in brick and mortar stores, is completely non-trivial.
The top 2 engineers there need to be paid at least $1.5 million annual salary.
Sorry. I know many companies don't like this but there it is. Now obviously
there are many levels below this, but this requires a pretty large development
team and several below this level are going to be getting $200k-$400k. At the
bottom, the losers that are just out of college and don't know anything, those
guys are going to be making $75k to start. Because that's the starting salary.
Companies don't want to hear this. Only the fatuous useless ignorant
executives that have run the company into the ground should be paid these
salaries, in their opinion. Well, they can keep thinking that and see where it
gets them. Many will lobby Congress, that is a popular tactic. Pay a lobbying
firm $25 million and maybe you'll be able to flood the market with cheap
engineers from overseas who are willing to work for $21 an hour, and are able
to do the same things that any other $21 an hour retail employee can do.
Because the overseas guys that really know their stuff are not looking for $21
jobs, they are making the same salary as everyone else with their skill level.
Because that's how the market works.

~~~
moocow01
Sorry but in what world do you live in? Whatever world it is I'd like to join
because I've never heard of engineers making 1.5 million in salary. I think if
you look on Glassdoor you'll realize 200k is a very high salary for an
engineer at any company in SV.

(Also as a reference a Sr. Architect at Walmart.com according to Glassdoor
makes 120-130k)

~~~
Roboprog
Thanks for the data. And I won't be leaving the financial firm I work for to
go to WalMart any time soon from the sound of it :-)

------
joshwa
I work at macys.com, and here's where I recruit you!

Unlike most retailers, our e-commerce division operates on its own, and we
have the agility (and capital budget) to move quickly and act on big
opportunities. Yes, there's a lot of work and headache that's involved with
dealing with massive retail systems, and they have about as much legacy stuff
as you'd imagine a 150-year-old company with a history of giant acquisitions,
but thankfully most of us never have to think about that stuff except at the
edge of some giant diagram.

We have a whole bunch of floors in downtown SF that's just for dotcom--mostly
engineers, some QA, some product/management, etc. We're reasonably up to date
with new technologies--although we're a Java shop, some stuff gets done in
Scala, there's an active Hadoop project, and lots of big, interesting problems
in scalability, UX, big data, analytics, SEO, etc.

Example: I work on the internal-facing web product setup apps, primarily on
product image stuff. Every product has to get photographed (including getting
the physical sample from the manufacturer to the right studios, on the right
model, etc), color corrected (we sell items in 60+ colors) mapped to products
(is this the primary image? a swatch? a back view? which UPCs does it
represent? what happens if the color sells out?). This all happens at scale:
130k physical samples trafficked, 150k products, 250k images.

Too bad this is on a weekend before new year's, otherwise I'd get all my
favorite dev leaders in here to pitch you. We're growing (even in a down
economy, we're posting significant growth year after year) and hiring like
crazy (a current search shows 25 open FTE requisitions in SF, and our contract
partners even more).

The work environment is a little BigCorp-ish, but it's relaxed (it's SF, after
all), and they take work/life balance seriously, so if you're a hacker with a
family you're definitely welcome here. I work with a lot of really smart
people who get things done. Yes, we sell pants, but you get a 20% discount,
and you get to find out when things go on sale beforehand ;)

Current openings: <http://ecommerce.macysjobs.com/> Salaries are Bay-Area
competitive, full benefits package, etc.

or if you want to know more you can contact me directly at
joshua.wand@macys.com, with "Hacker News" in the subject.

 _NB going to bed now (11pm PST) but will be up in the morning to answer
questions_

~~~
chaostheory
I'm not sure if these are problems anymore @ macys.com, but here's a list of
issues I remember:

1) It is very hard for the company to match market salaries even though its
margins are pretty good for a retailer. The only retailer I know of that does
well in the salary dept is Amazon.

2) The development culture: I think this is every large retail company, but I
feel that you guys tend to favor anything coming out of Big Blue (or Big
Company X) as opposed to something technically interesting (but no longer
bleeding bleeding edge) in the open source world. You guys tend to buy stuff
instead of building. There's definitely nothing wrong with that given the
situation and culture, but I feel that it doesn't fit very well with the HN
crowd at large.

That being said, Macys.com has some of the coolest, nicest people that you'll
ever meet in the workplace; which is really great.

~~~
joshwa
To the best of my knowledge both of these issues are much improved over a few
years ago.

How long ago were you there, and working with what group?

------
hkarthik
Here in Dallas, lots of retailers have their corporate headquarters here. I've
done some consulting work for one of them in the past and a couple years ago
one of them was trying to recruit me pretty heavily for their big e-commerce
push.

Most of these companies don't have that many full time employees in their IT
departments. A handful of full time employees will oversee an army of
contractors and consultants. Most of these folks are specialized in SAP,
Oracle, Business Objects, etc and don't know the first thing about building
scalable web-based e-commerce.

The sites that do exist tend to be old, monolithic .NET or Java apps with
antiquated processes to deploy them. An old boss of mine that went to work for
one of these retailers said he had to get 5 physical signatures on a form to
push out a CSS file to the site.

~~~
kls
_had to get 5 physical signatures on a form to push out a CSS file to the
site_

That is a huge issue that developers see when they see an established company.
Then you add in existing technical ego's from other teams and you just have a
recipe for a stagnant crashing every month disaster. It's a generalization,
but we all make them, it is how we make semi-informed decisions based on loose
facts. Some large companies are wrongly maligned in the process but it's the
reality.

When I took over the web at Marriott, we separated it from IT all together and
made it a business division, in doing so we could make decisions independent
of IT approval and we I had an independent budget under my discretion. Many
companies just don't get how these slight organizational changes can make a
huge difference in a teams ability to deliver technology.

~~~
hkarthik
The retailer that tried to recruit me was led by a former startup CTO that was
doing much of what you described to try to change things. Aside from
separating IT, the other big change was to create a new campus/location with a
better dress code, no Web Sense, and a separate network domain.

This post reminds, I should check in with him and see how things are going.

------
prophetjohn
The fact is that being an engineer at Target is very likely a boring,
bureaucratic drag. The best engineers are overwhelmingly the best engineers
because they love what they do and hone their craft. Someone who takes so much
pride in what they do is not likely to get much satisfaction out of developing
a website that helps people buy a mop. It's a fine thing to do; people need
mops. But it's not a particularly interesting problem to be solving.

So, I think places like Target will always have this problem unless they're
willing to pony up the cash and offer more money than the interesting jobs.
After all, there's no reason that some behemoth like Target can't compete with
some SV startup in salary.

~~~
ams6110
Basic e-commerce for such things as mop-buying is a solved problem in 2011.
Not sure why you would even need a large team of top-notch developers at a
place like Target. A few good sysadmins and DBAs, and maybe some
graphics/front-end types.

Edit: Upon thinking about this a moment longer, I think that actually there
would be (or could be) interesting work at Target, simply because of the scale
of the operation. Though sadly you are still probably hitting the mark in the
"bureaucratic drag" assessment.

~~~
droithomme
Target is the third largest brick and mortar retailer in the US. Running a
computer network nationally for Target is not a solved problem. Sure, it's a
solved problem for #1 WalMart, using entirely custom software that WalMart
developed in house. But it's not like WalMart is selling that software to
Target.

~~~
tsotha
But how much traffic does Target get? The fact that it's the third largest
brick and mortar retailer means nothing at all.

------
desireco42
Not only that they have caps on how much developers can make, they are also
heavily miss-managed, full of crazy managers with insane ideas, consulting
companies with their own agendas, agile that is not even close to agile, etc.
You don't need to be in Silicon Valley to make decent website, you do have to
manage it and develop it properly, most don't do that.

~~~
jaggederest
Right, it's not a failure of recruiting, it's a failure of management and
environment: nobody wants to work at Target developing software no matter how
much money they pay.

~~~
reissbaker
It'd be interesting to know how much they pay, though. And how they adjust
salary over time.

------
mechanical_fish
So is it just me or does the main example in this article have a glaring flaw?
One that appears right in the first sentence?

 _For a decade, Target (TGT) outsourced its website operations to Amazon.com
(AMZN)._

I don't know about the other retailers, but Target's recruitment problem
begins and ends in this sentence. Target lost the talent war a decade ago; it
just took until now for the seeds of their destruction, _which they planted
and fertilized in Amazon's organization_ , to grow tall enough to be
noticeable.

Oh, well, I'm sure the management genius who scored a short-term boost in
profits by feeding the seed corn to Amazon collected a nice bonus.

------
sun123
I have worked in the IT department of a large IT firm. It is frustrating.
There is a long irritating procedure for doing even small things.When I
decided I'll be using jQuery in one of the screens, the guys at the "top"
stopped me saying it may violate copyright laws and stuff like that. Most
people are simply not aware of what is going on in the industry.

------
KevinMS
I must be living in some parallel universe. My resume just sits up on dice and
monster and the only hits I get every day are from the same useless
headhunters about exciting "6 month" ruby or perl gigs. Sure, I'm not the best
at selling myself, and I'm terrible at networking, but you'd think if all this
press is true about a dev talent shortage, I'd be seeing some more outreach,
even though I'd probably not be interested.

~~~
mattdeboard
> _I'm not the best at selling myself, and I'm terrible at networking_

Yeah if you want a cool job, or however you define the job you feel you
deserve, you need to sell yourself and network. Period.

~~~
KevinMS
Yea, but understand that is not my point, and I'm not asking for your Tony
Robbins like advice. If there was such a desperate market for talent out
there, I should be seeing it, regardless of whether I was selling myself or
not. Either their talent searches are incompetent or this is just manufactured
news for somebodies agenda.

~~~
brianbreslin
If they can't find you, dice or not, they won't know why they should hire you
or who you are.

~~~
KevinMS
But somehow those bottom feeding headhunters can find me and send me about 20
emails a day all for the same job.

~~~
ryanhuff
That's because you're swimming in their pond. Get out of Dice and find other
ways to meet people who work for the companies that you want to work with.

~~~
KevinMS
Guys, I'm not posting to get advice on finding a job, I'm trying to stay
relevant to the story posted.

~~~
mattdeboard
You suggested the article was 'manufactured' because your resume on DICE isn't
getting you job offers from high-end companies. We're telling you that you're
doing it wrong. It's relevant.

~~~
fractallyte
No: if a company was _really_ invested in looking for top talent, one would
expect to see prominent job postings on its website as well as
Dice/Monster/etc.

We shouldn't have to inveigle ourselves into a job in a convoluted networking
game. Post the jobs on popular boards, with relevant _informed_ requirements,
proportionate pay, and a proper hiring process.

So answer the top poster's question: _where are the job ads? Where's the
outreach from these needy companies?_

Apparently, nothing. Either the companies concerned are still in some
recruitment stone age, or the whole article is a sham.

~~~
kls
No very few people uses those sites anymore, the jobs are not there. That is
the point the other posters are making, the world has moved on, Linked-In and
other sites have become the hotbed of activity for recruiting. Headhunters are
just scouring the cracks of the internet (Dice, Monster) to find resources
that have not been put in front of these organizations, in hopes that they get
a hit. They are playing a numbers game. Tech unemployment is officially at
2.7% and I think most on this site would agree, it feels like it's somewhere
around that number.

------
jeremystine
Now that you have heard from big-Corp (Macy's) here is where I pitch you! I'm
a one man team working for my family biz Stine Home & Yard. We just launched
StineHome.com with very limited product (around 100 products) but goal by end
of 2012 is to have over 35,000 products online. Looking to bring on board
someone who has exerience with this. No bureaucratic bs. Would have a feeling
of a startup in a cool city. Preferably would live in New Orleans/Louisiana
area. If interested drop me a line at jeremystine@gmail.com with Hacker News
in subject.

------
mwsherman
Wouldn’t this state of affairs scream out for simple, off-the-shelf ecommerce?
Ecommerce platforms have been around as long as the web, but they are
enterprisey behemoths (last I looked, a long time ago).

Where is the Wordpress for retail?

~~~
mwsherman
Maybe the limiting factor is the ability to integrate with backend inventory,
etc. I suspect there is no lightweight (read: inexpensive developer) way to do
this.

(Which makes me wonder if there is a Wordpress for ERP.)

The other way to look at it is that for the 2-3 top players in a sector, there
can never be off-the-shelf. WalMart’s differentiation is incredible supply
chain, which they had to invent. Being a big guy means you are doing something
different, almost by definition.

~~~
floppydisk
Walmart is also pushing hard into R&D, see <http://www.walmartlabs.com/> . Of
all the traditional retailers, I'd say Wallyworld is the most invested in 21st
century retail tactics and actually doing a decent job of it.

~~~
ntkachov
I took a look at that website and noticed alot of the job openings were very
similar to job openings of Start-ups.

~~~
earl
Except you're working for a corporation that is actively evil. Walmart has a
long history of discriminating against women [1]; has an extremely high
percentage of employees who are on welfare (it's at minimum unseemly for an
employed person to be paid so poorly they still need welfare) (examples from
ohio[2]; general [3]; arkansas [4]; washington [5]); works hard to avoid
giving health insurance to their employees -- as of 2005 they only covered 44%
[6]; etc etc etc. There are far more reasons than the type of work to avoid
working for a corporation with such a _refined_ sense of ethics.

[1] <http://www.walmartclass.com/public_home.html>

[2]
[http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2011/jan/12/robert...](http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2011/jan/12/robert-
hagan/rep-robert-hagan-slams-wal-mart-over-workers-needi/)

[3] <http://www.alternet.org/story/22298/>

[4]
[http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=...](http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1321376)

[5]
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002791346_w...](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002791346_walmart07m.html)

[6]
[http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2005/nf200510...](http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2005/nf20051020_3732_db016.htm)

~~~
kls
Yeah I have to agree with you there, it would be hard for me to believe that
Walmart would not cut high pay developers at the first opportunity. I remember
AT&T forcing my paraplegic developer buddy to train his Indian replacement or
face instant termination. To me Walmart seems like the same kind of, eternal
quest for profit type organization.


Live Captions in Hangouts Meet - oshanz
https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/04/live-captions-in-meet.html
======
oshanz
anyone knows how does it works? apparently google meet doesn't has p2p
encryption. so maybe server doing this?


Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007) - tosh
https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_personal_productivity.html
======
lqet
While I think that completely avoiding a calendar or any fixed appointments is
a bit unrealistic (think of doctor's appointments), I agree and deeply
sympathize with the gist of it. One of the main reasons I quit my previous job
was that I was unable to get _any_ meaningful work done, because the day was
very tightly organized around a central ticketing system. Oh, you had a nice
idea to solve one of the problems in the long-term project the company is
currently working on? Too bad, because there are already 4, oh wait, 5, high-
priority tickets waiting for you, and by the time you have finished those, you
will have forgotten the idea. This happened so frequently and was so
frustrating that after a few months I just shut off my brain and was basically
a robot finishing off tickets assigned to me. Needless to say, I felt
miserable for 1.5 years.

After I quit, I lived off my savings for 6 months and literally had no
schedule of any kind. I woke up and did whatever I was interested in. I got
more work done in these 6 months than in the 2 years before.

~~~
yawaworht598
wow i feel a lot like you describe. I've been thinking about taking a few
months off just to reset and somehow figure out what I want to really be doing
but... it's scary. I have the money saved up for it to not be a problem. But
after the 6 months... then what?

What did you end up doing? Any advice?

~~~
lqet
If you aren't interested in freelance work, try to look for companies with a
dedicated research team. You usually won't find that in smaller companies, as
they cannot afford a few people trying to solve a problem for 2 years with
only a 60% chance of success.

PS: if you are really unhappy with your job (to the point where it affects you
physically), don't think it will magically get better if you stay. It won't.
This hope wasted 1 year of my life.

------
tuxxy
> When someone emails or calls to say, "Let's meet on Tuesday at 3", the
> appropriate response is: "I'm not keeping a schedule for 2007, so I can't
> commit to that, but give me a call on Tuesday at 2:45 and if I'm available,
> I'll meet with you."

Is it just me, or does this come off as exceptionally arrogant? It's literally
just telling people to plan their lives around yours. It just seems like time
spent with this individual is a token of charitable _grace_. This is the
opposite of what I'd expect professional behavior to look like.

~~~
adrianmsmith
_" It's literally just telling people to plan their lives around yours",_ I
agree, but on the other hand why should people have the right to tell you to
plan your life around theirs, isn't that arrogant of them?

Regarding this, and also not answering the phone, and turning off email, it
depends on what sort of job you have.

For me this is all about: my best work comes from when I'm in the flow. So
I'll do anything to avoid being taken out of it.

I am a software developer, freelance, mostly work from home. I have deadlines,
and I mostly work in fixed-price projects so the longer it takes the less I
earn per unit time. I can get high-quality work done the fastest when I'm in
the flow.

Is it the right of the customer to call me and interrupt me from my flow? I've
agreed to deliver the software by a certain time for a certain price, that's
it. They might be my client, but I did not agree to be reachable at any time
for any impromptu meeting on any topic of their choosing. I agreed to deliver
software, not reachability.

It's literally a zero-sum game. They want help planning something, or they
have a question, they're in the flow about that, they don't want to be taken
out of that flow. On the other hand, I'm in the flow about my thing, and don't
want to be taken out of it. It's perfect for the other people if I always do
what they want, but sometimes you have to stick up for yourself and do what's
best for you.

Calling them back a few hours later when I'm out of the flow, or emailing them
back 6 hours later the same day, has always worked out well for me.

I understand that not all jobs are like that. What I mean to say, it's
nevertheless wrong to assume that no jobs are like that. Mine is like that,
and the approach to using the phone outlined in the article. is great advice.

~~~
tuxxy
The examples you have given aren't really a proper equivalent to what is being
described in this article here.

Scheduling isn't meant to be some Randian, individualistic practice. It's a
collaborative effort between people that should say something of the effect,
"My time is valuable, as is yours. You seem to be interested in something I'm
doing and I'm interested in telling you about it. Let's find a time that's
agreeable to both of us where we are both unencumbered and can freely
associate."

If you're not interested in meeting, then you have options: 1) Ghosting
(controversial, but some requests deserve this response), or 2) Refusing to
meet.

Instead this reads as, "I value my time far more than anyone else I associate
with. If I so happen to be available, then I'll reward you with the charity of
my time."

One of these is professional and makes other people you associate with feel
valued, the other makes you look like an arrogant ass.

------
MRD85
Some of the points in this article I disagree with but others I like. Compared
to my past self I am "super productive". I have a full-time career, a single
parent to two young kids (approx 70% of the time I'm not at work I'm
parenting) and I study nearly full time (3 units per semester) with a perfect
GPA. I somehow still have time for "wasting", like commenting on online
discussion boards, going on dates, etc.

* Keeping lists: This one is huge. I have lists all the time which track what I need to have completed and when. I have watch lists for tasks like "get birthday present for this kids party", etc. I have a job list at work.

 _Procrastination: I use this all the time. It 's currently 7:23pm here, I'm
wasting time now and I have been since 6pm but my deadline is I wake at 4am
tomorrow to work.

_Food: This article touches on food but I feel it's really important. I eat
low carb because I find carbs make me far more tired. I also avoid large meals
because they make me tired.

Something that isn't touched on in the article: Find ways to save yourself
time. I get angry when I see an office worker earning 6 figures typing one
finger looking at the keys. Touch typing doesn't take long to learn but it
saves so much time and effort. Everyone has little quirks that take
time/effort to fix but pay off in a big way once fixed. Do it, it's worth it.

~~~
tosh
ymmv but often typing isn’t the bottleneck, thinking is (typing faster != more
nor better output)

~~~
lordfoom
But not having to think about typing reduces your cognitive load. Touch typing
as a coder isn't about speed, it's about freeing your mind from having to
think about your fingers.

~~~
onemoresoop
Touch typing is somewhat overrated. I never learn to touch type and never had
any regret over it, don't get me wrong, I do t peck for keys either but the
speed of properly touch typing is no need for me, I'm not a professional
typist. I on the other hand am great at remembering shortcuts and I think
that's way more important to my work than touch typing, I feel that using the
mouse to open a menu and click debug as a complete waste of resources and
mental focus.

------
paultopia
Um. "I don't keep a calendar" means "I consider my time more important than
yours, so we'll meet at my sole convenience." I would love to do that, but
everyone else in the world would rightly understand it that way and would
treat it as a refusal to do core elements of my job.

A: "Let's schedule a committee meeting."

B: "I don't keep a calendar."

A: "So what you're saying is everyone else on the committee has to find time
just for you? Fuck you, do your job."

Arnold Schwarzenegger could get away with that crap because he's a fabulously
wealthy A-list movie star. The rest of us, not so much.

~~~
blastbeat
Fully agree. Also the rest of the article has questionable advice. I doubt the
helpfulness of later lists and anti todo lists. Not answering the phone or
pretending to be incompetent sounds like an idiotic idea too.

~~~
operakadabra
Nobody is promising that every suggestion will work for you. Try everything
until you find something that does work.

------
Cthulhu_
If there's anything I'd take from this article, it's techniques to avoid
meeting cultures; there's far too many people that want to book an hour long
block for a meeting about a thing that can be decided on in five. I think
meeting culture is a form of decision anxiety - have we considered all the
facts? What if I'm wrong? Is everyone aware that this is happening?

It was really quite bad at my previous assignment. I'm in a much smaller
setting now and I'm really trying to avoid it from becoming a thing. If
someone asks you for a meeting, always consider if you can discuss it right
there and then.

For a lot of people, discussing it right there and then is already an issue
because they're spending what little time they have in between meetings to
coordinate other meetings. That is, they don't have five minutes to talk about
a five minute thing because they have a meeting in five minutes.

~~~
baby
See pg's article on maker vs manager schedule.

------
glormph
I dont think an anti to-do list makes me more productive. But I sure like to
keep a log of things done in a text file so I can find what I did later. There
is of course a limit to what I keep, but even one-liners etc can be stored in
it. Especially when used seldomly, I dont remember all the bash tools
invocations. And no, I wont "tear it up and throw it away".

~~~
codazoda
I also keep a list of things I've done. Typically I just add those things to
my to-do list and check them off.

There are other good ideas in this post and for me they're timely. I'm
crunching on a business where I teach programming through art work. I'm
definitely going to borrow some of these ideas for that. If that sounds
interesting to you, checkout
[https://splashofcode.com](https://splashofcode.com)

------
OJFord
> \- Anyone who needs to reach you so urgently that it can't wait until later
> in the day or tomorrow morning can call you [...] - Don't answer the phone

...great?

------
ticmasta
>> work on whatever is most important or most interesting,

how often are these two the same thing? Which are you supposed to do when
you've got all this open-ended, distraction free time?

And the whole "no schedule" thing comes off as cherry-picking data and
situations. Even when Arnold was making blockbuster movies do you think they
just filmed whenever he showed up, keeping an entire crew on standby?

Did you notice how all of his examples are individual activities? that's
great, but it's tough to accomplish meaningful, revolutionary work without
collaboration. Schedules are super-useful (and I'd argue required) for
short/mid-term planning and prioritization across teams where everyone is
important.

The approach here is for when there is huge asymmetry between parties - like
an emergency room and patients. You show up with everyone else, then they
triage (hopefully by importance, not interest) and process. Guess what? even
the specialist still have schedules so they can work within a broader system.

The approach here sounds like the "schedule" of a lot of affluent retired
people.

~~~
MaulingMonkey
We tend to be interested in important things we're competent at. That's how we
got competent at them in the first place. Shepherding interest - trying to
figure out what's interesting about something important that you haven't
tackled yet - can be useful to get competent at new things, of course.

In the emergency room, the pathologist will be interested in the sick kid
instead of the guy with the broken leg, even if the latter is "more
important". Unless the staff are getting overwhelmed by a mass-casualties
incident, that's probably actually the right approach. (I'm no doctor though.)

I like email and other asynchronous/recorded communication for collaboration
where possible, in lieu of synchronous meetings interrupting flow. But as you
point out, there's a lot of cases where this doesn't work. And even a bunch of
lone wolves working on solo projects can benefit from synchronizing lunch with
their coworkers for some socialization and facetime. I schedule that. It's
flexible and not super rigid, but it's still a schedule.

------
wj
If you're interested in productivity tips from fellow Hacker News readers:

[https://blog.startopz.com/10-productivity-tips-from-
hacker-n...](https://blog.startopz.com/10-productivity-tips-from-hacker-news/)

Some of my favorites that I compiled over time.

------
fourier_mode
I mean there are so many tips for being productive, book X says maintain a
schedule pre-planned for 2 weeks, book Y says do not maintain a schedule at
all. Book X says do a bit of everything daily, book Y says devote a day for a
single task. Hmph..

The only thing that works is somehow doing getting work done, rest is
irrelevant. And that's why I don't see a point on self-help book in general.


Chops – Make beats with your voice - gregsadetsky
https://www.getchops.app/
======
gregsadetsky
Hey HN! We're Tristan & Greg from Chops
[https://www.getchops.app/](https://www.getchops.app/) . Chops is an iOS music
making app that lets you make beats with your voice. We're currently running a
closed TestFlight beta, and are planning to launch soon.

Tristan and I are both musically inclined without being professional
musicians. Our Voice Memos apps are filled with bits of song ideas that we
recorded as inspiration struck. An issue we've seen with recording these
snippets is that 1) you can't layer your voice easily without using a
specialized looper app and 2) it always sounds... like your voice. We're not
pro beatboxers, so our "voice drums" don't sound that great. Enter Chops.

We've designed a way to create drum tracks using your voice -- you "sing" the
drums and then pick a drum sound (kick, snare, hi-hats, etc.). Check out the
video on our page to get an idea of how it works.

We're super excited to push this idea much further, and to make music making
more accessible, intuitive and fun. We feel that there should be a larger
overlap between music "fans" \-- this includes people that sing along to
songs, that hum tunes, that make up songs for their families -- and
"musicians" as the term is too commonly defined (e.g., people with a musical
education, professional artists, etc.)

If you feel even a tiny bit musically inclined, we'd love to have you be part
of this beta round!

Reach out to us hello@getchops.app for any questions or AMA here. Thanks a
lot!

~~~
bashinator
I've been wanting this for literally decades. I make mouth-click beats all the
time, and it's easier and more tempo-accurate than what I can do with my
fingers/hands. Does Chops support more than one "instrument" at a time?
Typically I use one click for the kick, and then a different one for the
snare. Can it act like a standard MIDI controller for external
software/hardware?

~~~
gregsadetsky
That's... exactly the use case we were thinking about! We've been using Voice
Memos to record song bits / mouth beats, and hopefully this is the better /
smarter version of that.

Chops does support multiple instruments at a time -- right now, you can layer
many drum and audio tracks (drum tracks play built in drum samples, while
audio tracks are those that you record using your phone's microphone).

The app is MIDI-based, but it cannot trigger external software/hardware
devices at this time. This is something that's on the roadmap!

------
phildionne
Love the "make beats with your voice" tagline, it's simple and effective. The
demo video on the landing page makes me think on an idea: why not allow
recording a video of your face while you record your vocal beat? It seems
people are using TikTok as a mean of physical expression (through dance,
mostly) and maybe your app could grow a subculture through the same dynamics?

Curious to see the final version!

~~~
gregsadetsky
Totally a great point, and other apps in this space -- typically those that
target a larger, non-"pro musician" audience -- do have more entertaining /
fun engagement mechanisms, such as recording a video selfie while singing /
karaok'ing, etc.

Really great idea, thanks a lot!

------
plumbus420
Reminds me of Mike Gao's Vocal Beater [1]. Too bad it doesn't seem like he's
been keeping it updated recently. He's able to beatbox and it'll automatically
recognize the instruments too.

Here's a demo of him using it on YouTube:
[https://youtu.be/OS7LeMHImBM?t=232](https://youtu.be/OS7LeMHImBM?t=232)

[1] [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vocal-
beater/id384844110](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vocal-beater/id384844110)

~~~
gregsadetsky
That's fascinating! We're 100% going into that direction, and the necessary
algo work to do this reliably is not trivial.

Thank for the great pointers!

------
dang
It would be better to do this when you launch. Right now it looks like just a
signup page, and Show HN requires that there be something for people can try
out:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html).

~~~
gregsadetsky
Hey dang, my sincere apologies about this!

The app is ready to test and we're reaching out to people who are signing up
with TestFlight links i.e., everyone will get to try out the app.

But you're right of course that there's nothing to try on the launch page --
there's only a demo video.

We'll be more careful for future projects, and will only post again about this
once we're live on the App Store.

Sorry again!

~~~
dang
It's ok! You're welcome to post when people can try it out. I think it will
have some appeal.

------
akimc
Signed up for the beta, seems super creative can't wait to try it. Cheers

------
rb212nyc
Very cool! Will check out.

~~~
gregsadetsky
Thank you! Looking forward to your feedback!

------
dvdsgl
Fun! :D


The Prostate Cancer Test That Saved My Life - satysin
https://medium.com/@RedHourBen/the-prostate-cancer-test-that-saved-my-life-613feb3f7c00#.w388qoi1s
======
bryanlarsen
I am not a doctor, but a Gleason score of 7 is not considered a high-
grade/aggressive tumour according to cancer.org.

It's certainly possible that the intervention saved your life, but I'm highly
skeptical. I think it just caused you unnecessary stress and trauma.

"Every old man dies with prostate cancer. Nobody dies from it." is the saying
I've heard. Obviously it's hyperbole, but the core is valid.

~~~
surfmike
IANAD but from what I understand the PSA test has a high false positive rate.

~~~
CWuestefeld
After the third year of steadily increasing PSA scores, my doctor was
concerned even though it was below the official "get worried" mark because of
my relatively young age and the trajectory.

I went to a urologist, got a request for the MRI which the insurance company
denied, and so had to follow up with the very unpleasant biopsy mentioned in
the OP (including missed work, pain, peeing blood). All for the result to come
back completely negative.

That was last year, and as luck would have it, this year's PSA score dropped
significantly.

I don't know whether I'd say that I'm not glad to have a definitive negative
answer, particularly since my father had prostate cancer. However, this false
alarm did cost an appreciable amount of money, time, and suffering.

~~~
zwieback
You're the classic argument against heavy PSA screening at a young age.
Statistically it's probably a net negative what we're doing right now. My PC
was actually caught with a digital (as in "finger") test, then followed up by
a PSA.

------
hadley
> Prostate cancer screening did not significantly decrease prostate cancer-
> specific mortality in a combined meta-analysis of five RCTs. Only one study
> (ERSPC) reported a 21% significant reduction of prostate cancer-specific
> mortality in a pre-specified subgroup of men aged 55 to 69 years. Pooled
> data currently demonstrates no significant reduction in prostate cancer-
> specific and overall mortality. Harms associated with PSA-based screening
> and subsequent diagnostic evaluations are frequent, and moderate in
> severity. Overdiagnosis and overtreatment are common and are associated with
> treatment-related harms. Men should be informed of this and the demonstrated
> adverse effects when they are deciding whether or not to undertake screening
> for prostate cancer. Any reduction in prostate cancer-specific mortality may
> take up to 10 years to accrue; therefore, men who have a life expectancy
> less than 10 to 15 years should be informed that screening for prostate
> cancer is unlikely to be beneficial. No studies examined the independent
> role of screening by DRE.

— [http://www.cochrane.org/CD004720/PROSTATE_screening-for-
pros...](http://www.cochrane.org/CD004720/PROSTATE_screening-for-prostate-
cancer)

------
bill_from_tampa
This is a hot-button topic, which generates much heat. Most men (>80%) will
have prostate cancer by the time they reach age 80 (ie, would be detected if
their entire prostate was examined histologically (which is, you may surmise,
not generally done). About 13% of men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer
during their lifetime. About 2.9% of men will die because of prostate cancer.

Does anybody see the problem? Most men who will have prostate cancer develop
will not die because of prostate cancer, but from something else -- and many
of these men (most, actually) will have no idea they have or had prostate
cancer ---> unless somebody goes looking for it.

A randomized controlled trial of prostate cancer detection using PSA was done
in the US (sponsored by the NIH). It did not find any difference in the
survival curves in men who were randomly assigned to PSA screening compared to
those who were not so assigned. The trial has been criticised.

Obviously any man who had prostate cancer found through PSA testing and was
treated and does not die from prostate cancer will be very happy, and
convinced that the screening saved their life. But the actual RCT data is more
complex, and PSA screening may simply be generating more "business" for
urologists and radiation therapists, without providing real medical benefit.

Note that there are similar questions about another hot-button cancer
screening topic, mammograms. But that is another chapter!

------
nathan_f77
Wow, I read this a few hours ago, and I didn't even notice that it was written
by Ben Stiller.

Here's a video where he talks about it:
[https://www.howardstern.com/show/2016/10/4/ben-stiller-
goes-...](https://www.howardstern.com/show/2016/10/4/ben-stiller-goes-public-
how-he-fought-prostate-cancer-and-
won/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=sternshow)

------
zwieback
I had a similar journey although my prostate cancer was detected at age 42 by
my family doctor during a routine finger-in-the-butt test at my annual
physical. He thought it was “diffusely enlarged”, then PSA test (high), then
biopsy (ouch!) revealed a 4+3 Gleason.

Like the author I had a radical prostatectomy but not robotically assisted.

Like everyone in our situation I was scared of the two I’s — incontinence and
impotence. Luckily no sign of either one, 8 years out the plumbing is working
fine. The annual follow PSA screening is a bit scary, so far it’s always come
back 0 but if there’s any PSA it’s going to be bad news.

All in all I’d recommend PC as a starter cancer — pretty treatable if detected
early on and if you have a skilled surgeon you can come out of it fully
functional. Age is a big factor, if you’re in your seventies it’s probably
best to just watch it, for us young outliers it’s good to get it out.

~~~
fokinsean
> All in all I’d recommend PC as a starter cancer

That is basically how it feels when I recommend Angular to people wanting to
try a JS framework.

Happy to hear you are doing okay.

------
gthtjtkt
What can we take away from this if we don't fit into the demographics of
typical PSA test subjects (40-70 years old or family history of prostate
cancer)?

Does it make sense to request one out of the blue, or is this one of those
things that will make your doctor give you funny looks and assume you're a
hypochondriac?

~~~
deepwave
I went, for example, because I felt a second or two hesitancy when needing to
urinate. See my below comments, which, sadly, have been modded down for
whatever reason...

------
deepwave
Get the PSA test if your over 45. Just get it. I just went through it as well
as a biopsy because the PSA looked fishy. I did the PSA as well as the Free
PSA test. I then had a 12-needle core biopsy, which, while unpleasant, let me
know I was OK. I need to, as do all men my age (almost 50), get tested yearly.
It's not a joke. It's tough to get men into the doctor for anything unless
they feel they're dying. Guys, get tested, especially if you have a wife and
children. You owe it to them, if not yourself.

A PSA test takes 5 minutes. It's a simple blood draw and you learn the results
in two days. Like ovarian cancer for women, prostate cancer is the "whispering
death". It's often too late if it's metastasized after it's detected, then
your chances are even less. Get the test, doubly so if you are a family man.

~~~
deepwave
I have no idea why my comment is being modded down. Guys who disdain hearing
good advice and the truth are beyond me...

~~~
unclenoriega
I didn't downvote you, and I can't speak for others, but for me, people giving
general, emphatic advice based solely on limited personal experience is really
annoying and often counterproductive. Perhaps you have further evidence to
back up your claims, but you didn't cite it.

------
lawless123
Does the PSA ever provide false negatives?

~~~
ogsharkman
False negatives are always possible, however in a quick search I couldn't find
any papers on the rates.


Cheat Sheets for Web Design and Development - tutorialfeed
http://tutorialfeed.blogspot.com/2009/09/16-favorite-cheat-sheets-for-web-design.html
In this post I'm sharing some very excellent cheat sheets to help web designers and developers. These cheat sheets includes Photoshop, CSS, HTML, JQuery, PHP, MooTools, MySQL, Ruby on rails, Flash AS and much more.
======
mildweed
A really comprehensive list of cheat sheets and tutorials: The Web Developer's
Field Guide: <http://360voltage.com/wdfg/>


The P programming language - msoad
https://github.com/p-org/P
======
qznc
Finally, a proper "P". I only had P'' and P# on my list.
[http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/one_letter_proglangs.html](http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/one_letter_proglangs.html)

~~~
klibertp
Nice list! There's also F* under "F": [https://www.fstar-
lang.org/](https://www.fstar-lang.org/)

~~~
qznc
Thanks! Added that as well.

------
acjohnson55
This sounds a lot like the actor model (e.g. Erlang, Elixir, Scala + Akka).
It's a great primitive for concurrency and distributed computing.

Is there a big difference here, or is this basically just an alternative
language for that model?

~~~
tekacs
Well at the top of the manual, the list of constraints[1] reads the same as
the actor model[2] (it explicitly uses local state ('store') to model
behaviour changes), with the word 'machine' substituted for 'actor'.

If anything it reads like the restricted form of the actor model produced by
using only Erlang's gen_fsm or Akka's FSM mixin.

(to be clear, using a restricted form with more constraints is a great thing -
even better here, where one of the domains they're serving seems to be fairly
restricted execution environments)

[1]:

        > Each operation either updates the local store, sends messages to other machines, or creates new machines.
        > In P, a send operation is non-blocking; the message is simply enqueued into the input queue of the target machine.

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model#Fundamental_concep...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model#Fundamental_concepts)

------
nickpsecurity
This is really neat. The synchronous languages like Esterel have been doing
great in real-time, safety-critical systems. As paper notes, the common
problems in distributed and operating systems are more asynchronous in nature.
Plus, modeling/verification and programming usually use separate tools. They
tackle both jobs with one tool for asynchronous programming that proved itself
out finding hundreds of bugs in a USB3 stack that's shipping to a wide
audience.

Programming languages rarely get better introductions and early results than
that. Props to the Microsoft Research team on this.

~~~
pjmlp
As mentioned the other day, it is this kind of efforts why I consider
Microsoft and to certain extent Apple, the ones driving for innovation in
safety on mainstream OS stacks.

Maybe Google as well due to their reluctance to improve NDK beyond being a way
to implement Java _native_ methods and port code into Android.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Right now they're focusing these efforts mostly on the drivers and hypervisor.
I'm not sure how much the kernel gets in terms of stuff like VCC. Just wait
till the Midori stuff starts flowing into their stack. It will probably be at
the app level for .NET in safety or performance improvements.

------
taneq
The manual is here (linked from github readme):
[https://github.com/p-org/P/blob/master/Doc/Manual/pmanual.pd...](https://github.com/p-org/P/blob/master/Doc/Manual/pmanual.pdf)

Calling a core language keyword "goto"? They're brave.

And I'm not convinced of the utility of baking their own C-like imperative
language when they could have actually used real C. There are already too many
C-like languages out there that are just different enough from C to be
annoying.

~~~
tinco
Did you read the manual? They use their own little language which is
imperative, but unlike C side effect free. To execute side effects it offers a
way to implement machines in regular C. This is for example how 'Timer' is
implemented in the manual.

~~~
bbcbasic
> imperative, but unlike C side effect free

Sounds like a dream language :)

------
Nullabillity
What's with all the single-character name programming languages? It's almost
as if they're trying to make it a pain to search for.

~~~
unsignedqword
Usually you can just search for languages with weird unsearchable names as
"*lang".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_\(programming_language\))
(Not really sure how you'd search for this language in particular, though...)

~~~
i_cant_speel
It's pretty easy to find with "p programming language".

~~~
Camillo
What if you have a stutter?

------
mahyarm
Is this used in the Windows 10 USB driver, like the windows 8 driver?

~~~
justanotheratom
To be clear, P is used for validating the asynchronous state machines used by
the Windows USB drivers, and not for implementing the drivers, which are
written in C.

And the USB driver stack implementation is same for both Windows 8 & and
Windows 10, so the answer to your question is - yes.

~~~
Camillo
The README says: "P has been used to implement and validate the USB device
driver stack that ships with Microsoft Windows 8 and Windows Phone". It's not
clear from your answer. Does Windows ship with a "USB device driver stack"
written in P, yes or no?

~~~
nickpsecurity
The way these normally work is that they do the state machine in the domain-
specific language, verify it, auto-generate code in something like C, and
compile that. That's almost all of them since it's easy to go from models to
code automatically for state machines. The Github page says:

"Not only can a P program be compiled into executable code, but it can also be
validated using systematic testing. P has been used to implement and validate
the USB device driver stack that ships with Microsoft Windows 8 and Windows
Phone. "

That indicates they modeled it in P with their tool compiling the P specs into
some executable. The individual functions the state machine calls would be
other C or assembly functions. Microsoft as tools like VCC, Verifast, SLAM,
etc to verify C in drivers. I'm curious what combo of them they used on it if
any.

~~~
Matthias247
For me it's a very interesting question whether they directly used the
generated C code from the P toolchain in the driver or whether they only used
P for verification of the state machines and reimplemented them in C.

Directly using the code would be a huge achievement and can help to avoid a
lot of issues that will come with reimplementing it. However it has also quite
huge requirements for the code generation. E.g. the scheduler must fit the
target system and must be performant for the use-case, the infinite-queue
semantics that the state machines seem to have are not ideal for a constrained
environment and of course there's questions regarding memory allocation and
garbage collection (which should mostly be avoided in drivers).

------
doublerebel
The event model is great. Forces inputs and outputs to be simple. I really
like that P reads like English. The use of goto, on, in, send all read well.
They use monitor but abbreviate function to fun, why not just write function?

I think it would be nice to drop the braces entirely. They seem to only
function as decoration. Also I would really miss ++, P has many convenience
methods including += but no ++.

------
crudbug
Interesting, is this used in production ?

States & Events provide a right model for async programs. SCXML [0] provides
some additional tools for creating abstract finite state machines.

[0] [http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-
scxml/](http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-scxml/)

~~~
tinco
Apparently it is used to implement the Windows 8 USB driver. I can't think of
a higher bar of 'in production' than that.

------
nickpsecurity
I found out there's been a new language, P#, with even more benefits than this
one:

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-
content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-
content/uploads/2016/02/paper-6.pdf)

~~~
akashlal
Its available alongside P:
[https://github.com/p-org/PSharp](https://github.com/p-org/PSharp)

~~~
qznc
Hm, there is another P#:
[http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/stg/research/Psharp/](http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/stg/research/Psharp/)

------
wybiral
What is the support for streams like in P?

~~~
darawk
I can't tell if this question is intended to be a joke or not, but either way
i'm in support of it.

~~~
wybiral
Where's the flush method?

------
noselasd
What does this implementation target ? Does it produce .NET assemblies ? Is it
an interpreter ? Compiles to native ?

Edit: [https://github.com/p-org/P/wiki/Creating-a-P-
Program](https://github.com/p-org/P/wiki/Creating-a-P-Program) indicates it
compiles to C code.

------
cosinetau
Interesting. When I was studying Group algebra and machine organization, I
felt there was a strong intersection between these two schools, and I think P
is addressing that.

------
geon
How does it compare to Ceu?

[http://www.ceu-lang.org](http://www.ceu-lang.org)

------
lewisj489
Is there a CFG spec I could look at?

------
nephrite
I hate languages with single letter names. They're impossible to google.

~~~
yoodenvranx
Yes, there should be some sort of RFC about programming language names. The
main requirement would be to choose some combination of letters which return
less than 1000 results on Google.

~~~
DonaldFisk
The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A language
will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good
name and now I am looking for a suitable language. - Donald Knuth


Ex-NSA Hacker Finds a Way to Hack Mac Users via Microsoft Office - SQL2219
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgxamy/hacker-finds-a-way-to-hack-mac-users-via-microsoft-office
======
kryogen1c
apple, microsoft, hacking, and the nsa all in the same headline. this editor
deserves a raise.

------
mikece
I don't know about everyone else but it's the _first_ part of that title that
catches my interest. "Executed a hack via MS Office -- yeah, great but tell me
more about the role of 'NSA Hacker'..." Notwithstanding the "What? No way..."
revelations in Edward Snowden's book about the United States' SIGINT-via-
internet abilities I suspect Snowden didn't even know the half of it.

~~~
save_ferris
> I suspect Snowden didn't even know the half of it.

Obviously, we’ll never know exactly how much he knew relative to the entire
scope of the intelligence community, but he pointed out multiple times that he
had pretty broad access to a range of tools and KBs based on his work
integrating various tools for the government.

He’s said himself that he doesn’t know everything, but given his ascent in the
government contracting world due to his technical skill prior to his
departure, I think it’s fair to take him at his word when he said that there
wasn’t a whole lot he didn’t have access to in terms of IT systems and
databases.

------
hollander
So if I create an test.slk file on my desktop, then rightclick > open with,
and select an app like Sublime (to be sure no other office apps like
LibreOffice), to open all files like this in the future by default, will that
solve this problem?

------
chris_at_lum
Patrick Wardle is a well-known security researcher focused on macOS, and
founder of Objective-See which provides free (as in beer)"simple, yet
effective OS X security tools."


Ask HN: Salary cut for position change Front-end – Back end? - knoblauch
Long story; I want to know if a salary cut is justified in my situation.
18 months ago, I started my first job as an android developer in a fintech startup, after graduating with my Masters in a top 20 university. When I joined, I was the only android developer and built 2 relatively complex apps from scratch (designing architecture,  app development, some security/crypto/api).
My CTO, to whom I report directly, knows since the day he hired me that I don't want to be doing front-end my whole life, and we agreed this summer that I'd be switching to the back-end.
At the time, I asked him if there would be any salary change with the switch, and he reassured me that there wouldn't be, because he allows his engineers to move horizontally without any salary change.
Since 2 months, I've been learning about the back-end language, Functional Programming, and other frameworks they use. All on my personal time in the evening and on week-ends.
Last week, the CFO asked to speak with me and told me that we'd have to sign a new contract, and that they're going to decrease my salary (by over 10%). His argument is that he wants to align my salary with the other back-end juniors.
This news came to me as a shock and I am very confused if this is a normal practice or not. I've explained the situation to some of my SE friends and older acquaintances and all of them without exception find it scandalous and have told me that I should not accept the offer and start looking for another job.
I feel like the company is not valuating my work and my experience at their place. During these 18 months, I have shown that I am able to learn and adapt fast, that I deliver good results, and they have seen that I am highly motivated and positive in a very consistent way.
(Continuing the text in comment)
======
knoblauch
(Next part of the text):

Obviously, this career switch would be a great opportunity for me to move into
the back-end world, learn a lot of new stuff, broaden my SE skills, build a
better CV and invest in my future.

There are many arguments that I can find on my side to find it disgraceful and
why they shouldn't decrease my salary. I feel I shouldn't even have to defend
my salary in the first place in this situation, as decreasing my salary is a
bit of a low blow.

Some notes: \- The startup has a lot of cash \- We are ~20 software engineers
\- I am quite confident that I could earn more than my current salary with my
experience if I moved to a bigger city in my country \- The other juniors
didn't have more professional experience when they were hired, and don't have
a better education \- I absolutely love the the project, and the other
employees, our culture, and the office \- Even if I do accept now, I don't
know why they'd want to do this to me when they know I am not happy with the
situation, as their are making me lose some of my loyalty to the company,
taking the risk that I'll leave when I get enough experience on back-end

I feel like they are forcing the pay cut on me, after promising me a switch,
then promising there wouldn't be any salary change.

HN, shed light on my situation and tell me what you think.

------
_ah
Sounds like this is a small shop. When you were off by yourself, your
compensation stood alone in its own category. If you join the other backend
devs, then your salary is compared against theirs and it "looks bad" on the
internal spreadsheet. This is an internal political game and your CTO is not
willing to spend his political capital on a junior developer. That may or may
not be a reasonable decision on his part. Your excellent work up to this point
(and future potential) isn't being weighed as much as it should be and there's
probably very little you can do to change that.

I wouldn't accept a pay cut. It's too early in your career for that.

The ideal option is to tell the CTO "I can't take a pay cut. Keep me the same,
and I promise I won't tell anyone." That might solve his political problem. If
he won't go for that, then your options are: (1) continue in your current role
(unhappy, but better paid), (2) leave for a different position. You probably
will want to start planning for your eventual exit anyway, since this smells
like a place with limited growth prospects.

------
JamesVI
I think it is reasonable for you to be compensated according to the skills you
have and the performance you demonstrate. I think it's reasonable for everyone
with similar skills and performance to be compensated the same.

You are moving from a role you have 18 months experience into one where you
have much less. Personally, I wouldn't cut your salary immediately, but I
would work with you to build a transition plan made up of SMART goals. At the
end of the transition period (probably 3-6 months in this case), we would
discuss your performance relative to the expectations of the role and level
you have transitioned into.

If, at that time, you were performing at a level more junior that you are
being compensated, I would offer you the option of returning to your former
role (assuming we still had a need for someone in that role) or level you down
and adjust your compensation accordingly.

The CTO was foolhardy in making a blanket promise that you could move
"horizontally" without impact to compensation, but the CFO is also overly
focussed on what could be a small amount money (2.5-5% of your total salary).

I'd suggest that you go back to the CFO and the CTO and propose a transition
plan with an eval at the end to determine your level and compensation. You
should also ask what the promotion path forward would be like if you
transitioned and were leveled down. Will you be stuck there for a long time or
will you have a chance at being promoted back up once you have a year of
experience? Then you can decide if a possible (presumably short-term) decrease
in compensation is a valid investment in your long-term career.

"my SE friends and older acquaintances and all of them without exception find
it scandalous"

Obviously, you need to balance an anonymous voice* on the internets against
your friends and acquaintances, but this really isn't that scandalous. Perhaps
they've just not experienced it themselves.

Actually, the biggest problems you have right now are that the CFO and CTO
aren't on the same page and that the CFO is making decisions about
compensation for engineers. The CTO (or whoever your direct supervisor is)
should be making your compensation decisions based off strategic decisions
taken in conjunction with the CFO (and others).

*I'm actually the head of engineering at a growing startup, but maybe I'm lying :-D


Any cool projects we could do on this state owned oil company database? - joshdance
Database of state-owned oil companies. A project of the Natural Resource Governance Institute, pulls official data on nearly 100 metrics concerning 71 oil/gas companies owned by 61 countries. https://www.nationaloilcompanydata.org/
======
thedevindevops
It'd be great for anyone who does Infographics.

Maybe a per country breakdown dashboard?

Prediction/forecast engine?

Use the National oil and gas reserves question and rank countries by estimate
of when they'll be depleted?

I'd love if someone linked this to a forestry or carbon capture by country
database to see the environmental deficit per country