Recent submissions

Comment · 9 years ago
I don't see where the author's reasoning is weak. A female tech lead / founder tried the standard way to get better representation of women at Google: try to hire more women, and found out there weren't enough highly qualified candidates to significantly move the numbers in the desired direction. Then as a founder herself, she tried to hire a higher percentage of women, and found there weren't enough candidates. She compared two approaches to fixing that: lowering standards (with negative effects she outlined), and generating more candidates from colleges. She recommends the later approach. The argument isn't novel, but it's also not made in a vacuum or from an ivory tower as she tried the "try harder" approach down in the trenches more than once, and so suggests "try different" instead.
Comment · 10 years ago
The are great advantages to individuals and society to paying less than the value of goods and services. If my daughter is ill, and a simple shot of antibiotics will cure her, should I pay $20 for that, or should I pay what saving her life is actually worth to me? I've enjoyed ever faster internet connection speed at my home (coming in two weeks -- gigabit!) I assure you I'm not paying the full value of what that speed is worth to me. The same for food, clothes, transportation, everything. If I really did have to pay the full value to me for each of those I would, by definition, be indifferent to buying any of them.

Market economics has some serious downsides, but it has vastly increased the welfare of humanity. More people have been coming out of poverty in China in the past few decades that ever before in human history.

If you feel it is unfair that as a developer you can create millions of dollars in value that you aren't being compensated for, then I recommend you consider ways that you could be compensated for this value. Perhaps instead of being an employee, maybe get involved in a start-up with equity (or found a company.) Having done so, I can assure you it's more nerve wracking than ever I would have expected, and harder to unleash the millions in value than one might expect, but it's still fun, challenging, rewarding, and worth giving a go! :-)

Comment · 11 years ago
This is an unusually dangerous security bug. Definitely agree with the Django team that all users of Django 1.8 should upgrade as soon as possible.
Comment · 12 years ago
Reading the article raised tangential questions for me: How comfortable is it for someone who's not a programmer by temperament or interest to get a computer science degree in college? Or, alternately, what percentage of computer science grads simply aren't programmers? I've never really thought about this but now I'm wondering!
Comment · 13 years ago
Amazon.com's business has always been marvelous to use as a consumer, but more puzzling as an investor. Their deferring of making money from operations has been the opposite of Apple's approach. I wonder: will Amazon some day turn on the spigot and decide to start making real money, and, if so, how will their company culture and outlook change if they ever do?
Comment · 13 years ago
I'm curious whether if the fire is again battery related whether Elon Musk will reiterate his offer to help with the battery technology. Tony Stark (who in the movie version is partly based on Elon) surely would...

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton